UNINVITED

UNINVITED Part 4

As the thunderstorm continued to rage outside, while wondering why I hadn't before, I noticed the furniture and other items in the room faintly covered in dried drops of splattered blood.

Picking up the lone piece of paper from between two burned out candles in front of the body, careful to only hold the edges of the paper, I examined the unusual, hand-written words. The words appeared written in a language I didn't immediately recognize.

Walking in a wide circle around the plastic tarp, Miss Larson picked up the book from the nightstand alongside the bed. As I studied the strange words on the bloody paper, Miss Larson began thumbing through the thin, bedside book.

Based on the black candles, the weird knife under the bed, the spiral markings and cuts on the body and undecipherable writing on the paper, I guessed Roger Price had performed some gruesome ritual here in his room.

One that ended with his death.

But what kind of ritual?

"What's that?" Miss Larson asked. "A ritual?"

"Huh?"

"You mumbled something about a ritual?"

I did?

"Oh." I stammered, not realizing I'd spoken out loud. "I don't know. Maybe a ritual. I don't have enough information, if I'm even on the right track. Just brainstorming. What're you reading?"

"His journal." Miss Larson explained. "Roger's dream journal."

Great.

"Any clues?"

"I'm not sure. The book mentions a ritual near the end, one of the last entries, but it's really creepy." Miss Larson explained.

Intrigued, I walked over to the bed, carefully avoiding the body as Miss Larson had. "What do you mean?"

"From what I could read, Roger had a strange obsession with something he called, 'astral projection'. As the diary goes on, he became convinced he could 'crack the code' on 'astral projection' from clues in his dreams when he slept."

"What?"

"I'm not sure I even know what that means."

"Miss Larson, from my rudimentary understanding, and I'm no expert by any means, astral projection is a willful out-of-body experience that separates the person from their physical body, essentially causing the person to travel outside their body and roam throughout the universe at will."

"Is that a real thing?"

"I don't think so. What else did he say in his journal?"

"Towards the end of his dream journal, Roger says he met someone in his dreams. Someone he doesn't name, but occasionally calls a 'great being' who promised him the power to project himself if he performs certain spells or rituals."

Rituals!

"Weird."

"He also goes on about how his dreams makes the text of something he calls 'the tome' clearer. There are several dreams about the tome and he says the tome is the key to the whole thing or something."

"Tomb as in a grave?"

"No. Tome as in a book."

"May I?" I asked, holding out my hand for Mister Price's journal.

Miss Larson immediately handed the book to me. "Please take it. I don't want to read another word of that thing." She commented. "I knew Roger was strange, but I never thought..."

Opening the dream log, I verified Miss Larson's assessment of the journal. Roger Price appeared, at least he wrote he had, to have been experiencing dreams where he made contact with an unnamed entity in his sleep. The unnamed person, in some of his writings, changes appearance in different dreams, but is always the same individual. Mister Price stated the entity promised he could grant him the power to project his consciousness at will.

Did this entity ask Roger to perform some sort of dark art?

Feeling uneasy myself, I placed Mister Price's journal back where Miss Larson had found it and turned my attention to the bookcase. Miss Larson joined me, standing extremely close to me.

Hoping the landlady returned with the police soon, I examined the bookcase. The expertly and elegantly carved wooden bookcase contained a slot for a currently missing drawer at the bottom and several shelves. The exposed shelves held dozens of books. The titles ranged from finance and banking, to several books on translating Greek, to some travel books and several occult related books.

One of the shelves didn't contain enough books to fill the shelf so a single bookend kept the books upright. The weird brass bookend appeared to depict a strange rat-human creature and its unnatural appearance, despite my previous experiences with the supernatural, gave me the chills.

Ignoring her previous statement about not wanting to touch anything, Miss Larson reached out to touch the monstrous appearing bookend. As she did, Miss Larson immediately recoiled her hand in shock.