"Those who seek Answers, not know what truths they will unveil. Curiosity is histories greatest strength, yet mans ultimate downfall"
Desmond Harris 10/07/20
Chapter 1: The Investigator
Boston, 1930.
The apartment smelled of mothballs and stale rain. Harrison P. Love dropped his last suitcase onto the warped wooden floor and exhaled like a man shaking off ghosts. The place wasn't much—four walls, a sagging ceiling, and a cracked window that rattled every time a streetcar clanged by—but it was his. A step forward, or so he told himself.
He shrugged off his trench coat and draped it over the back of a chair. The tan fabric was worn thin at the cuffs, but it felt wrong to take it off, like stripping away armor. Boston might be bigger and louder than Arkham, but it still had shadows deep enough to swallow a man whole.
He fished a Lucky Strike from his breast pocket, lit up, and leaned against the desk he'd bought secondhand from a pawnshop on Tremont Street. Smoke curled lazily to the ceiling. The office was quiet—too quiet.
Harrison wasn't used to quiet.
When the phone rang, the sound cut through the stillness like a gunshot.
He jumped, nearly knocking over the chair.
"Love Investigations," he said, clamping the cigarette between his teeth. His voice came out rough, low, and edged with exhaustion.
"Is… is this Harrison Love?" The woman's voice on the line was high-pitched, trembling. She sounded like she hadn't slept in days.
"That's me. Who's this?"
"My name's Grace. Grace Whitmore. I was told—by a friend—that you take missing persons cases."
"I do. Who's missing?"
"My daughter. Clara. She's nine years old." A ragged breath. "She's gone, Mr. Love. I… I don't know where else to turn."
Harrison rubbed his temple. "Ma'am, have you gone to the police?"
"They won't help," Grace said sharply, the words cracking like brittle glass. "Not in Arkham. Not for her."
The name hit Harrison like a brick to the chest.
Arkham.
A place he'd sworn never to see again.
"What do you mean, not for her?" he asked carefully.
Grace hesitated, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "She's colored. Adopted. In Arkham, the younger they are, the easier it is for folks to… to get away with things."
Harrison's hand tightened on the receiver. He knew all too well what Arkham did to people like Clara. To people like him.
"I'll pay whatever you ask," Grace said. "Just… find her. Please."
"Do you have a recent photo?" he asked flatly, staring at the water stain spreading across the ceiling.
"Yes. I can meet you tonight. I'm at the Essex Hotel in Boston. Room 6."
He didn't answer right away. His Sixth Sense flickered faintly in the back of his skull—a low thrum, like a distant bell tolling underwater. He rubbed the back of his neck and felt cold sweat there.
"Mr. Love?"
"I'll come," he said. "Give me an hour."
⸻
An hour later – Essex Hotel, Room 6
Grace Whitmore was younger than Harrison expected, no older than thirty, dressed in a navy-blue coat with a frayed hem and dark circles under her eyes. She clutched a small locket in her pale hands like a talisman.
"She's all I have," Grace whispered, sliding a worn photograph across the table.
The girl in the photo smiled, gap-toothed, her hair tied back in two neat braids.
Harrison's Sixth Sense flared again, sharper this time. For a moment, he swore the photo moved—Clara's eyes rolling upward, her mouth opening wider, wider, until the smile split her face clean in half.
He blinked. The image was still.
"She's been missing three nights," Grace said. "The locals… they said she ran off into the woods. But I heard things, Mr. Love. Voices." She shivered violently. "And… dreams. I keep seeing a tall man. Black as pitch. No face. He… he tells me where to bring her if I want her back."
Harrison's gut turned to ice.
"The Black Pharaoh," Grace whispered.
His cigarette burned down to the filter.
"I don't know what's real anymore," she said. "But I know Arkham isn't safe for her. Or for you."
"Who says I'm going?"
Grace's eyes hardened. "You're going because you care more than you let on. I saw your ad in the paper—'no case too cold, no trail too dark.'"
He looked away.
"Please," she said softly. "If you don't help me, who will?"
⸻
Later – Harrison's Apartment
The Boston rain was relentless. Harrison packed his revolver, a flask, and two spare shirts into his suitcase, moving like a man heading to his own funeral.
He stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror.
Blue eyes stared back—eyes that didn't belong to him.
For a moment, they seemed to glow faintly gold.
"You shouldn't go back there," he murmured to himself. "You know what's waiting."
But his Sixth Sense thrummed louder now, like an engine starting deep inside his skull. Arkham was calling.
And something old, something hungry, was waiting.
⸻
The Road to Arkham
The night bus rumbled along the wet road, carrying Harrison toward a town he'd sworn never to return to.
The passengers were… odd. A child hummed an off-key melody that made Harrison's ears ring. A man in a black suit with a crooked smile never seemed to blink.
As they crossed the bridge into Arkham, the fog thickened, swallowing the stars.
Harrison dozed, only to be yanked into a dream.
A tower of black stone.
A sky choked with alien constellations.
And a figure—tall, robed, its face a shifting blur of a thousand eyes and mouths—spoke in a voice like cracking ice:
"Welcome home, little prophet."
Harrison woke with a start. The bus had stopped.
"End of the line," the driver said without turning.
Harrison stepped off into the swirling fog.
From the shadows, a beggar whispered:
"The girl's gone. But he isn't done with you yet."
Harrison turned, but the man was already gone.
A faint wind carried a whisper to his ear:
"You came back."
⸻
End of Chapter 1