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A Testament of Kendall Whitaker, Ophthalmologist, Amatuer Occultist

Northern District of Charinthosse, 1928

This story is inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft

I've often taken stock of the last few months of my life, curious of how I managed to convince myself that--by some perverted logic, what I've done was the 'right' thing. I suppose it was easier for me to just not think about at the time; trivialities between "Right" and "Wrong", the dichotomy of Good and Evil were all left by the door of a stuffy, basement laboratory that was only exactly what you'd expect.

One of the members of our Congregate (we didn't have the stomach to call ourselves a Coven, even though what we were elbows-deep in was akin to witchcraft. Even in spite of the discoveries we made daily in labs such as these, we refused to call 'magical' what we could apply mathematical formulae to) had discovered a means to create a more mobile laboratory so that studying could continue away from the bowels of the Free State of Fielora. While he has, as of yet, offered no substantial advances in our studies, Professor Harold Connigan demonstrated a rare pang of limited brilliance.

He labeled some of his beakers shattered in an unfortunate 'box dropping' accident at the university of his employ. Of course, there was no formal investigation into such--the story goes that he just shattered a few, poorly-aged decanters and showed the shard to the Dean of his college. They handed him funding straightaway to buy all new glassware equipment and didn't seem to be any the wiser. While originally, we'd taken the blessing where we found it, Professor Connigan proved his notorious clumsiness to our advantage. Over the course of several months, he'd procured enough equipment to create an entire chemistry lab in the heart of the Northern District of Charinthosse with no one the wiser.

While I maintain a bit of skepticism that no official inquiry was ever formed by Professor Connigan's prodigious clumsiness, we were all grateful for the higher class of equipment. Before the glassware we were stuck utilizing mortar and pestles, uncontrolled boiling and all manner of less precise measurements.

Whatever the case may be of it's arrival, there wasn't a soul there that wasn't grateful for it. Our laboratory--for sake of access, alibi, and all manner of other things--was located in a small restaurant, owned by a sympathizer of our efforts. The ram family's name escapes me currently, but nonetheless, they were strangely eager to accommodate this small branch of our amateur occultist society. We agreed--feeling that no one would question boxes moved up and down the stairs from the cellar, or the presence of so many scholars all in one location. Though now it does strike me that, in our focused efforts to explore, we'd never actually been patrons of our restaurant hosts--or at least, I hadn't.

The space they afforded us was small--only large enough for three beasts to stand side-by-side, so long as they didn't mind a nearly intimate closeness with one another. We'd also been given a single system of shelves to work with--all of which were quickly crammed with glasswares, beakers, ingredients and books in no particular organization; upon a single glance, it was precisely what one would have expected to find, if the words 'amateur occultist laboratory' were to come up in typical conversation. The only real departure from the macabre scenery was the absence of candles. Given Connigan's prodigious clumsiness, we all thought it best to not risk such things, instead opting to chip in, and furnish the dinner with electric lights in the basement of the restaurant--even though they were something of a mighty luxury.

Commonly used recipes were hung by tacks on the wooden walls surrounding the antique furniture on which we'd built our lab, as well as a modest typewriter, crammed into the corner of the room for jotting down the notes of both our achievements and failures into notebooks and onto papers that were stacked almost comically high in our closet laboratory.

Hours were short, there in that cellar we so frequented, each of us in such a passionate frenzy that we would rarely speak beyond the pleasantries of first arriving. Initially my invitation was one solely of formality--as an ophthalmologist I wasn't even remotely qualified to utilize the glasswares properly, nor did I even know what I was looking at. Much to the surprise of the other chemists, who initially held my company in more disdain than they would admit, I proved a quick study to the matters of chemistry, pharmacology and even the linguistics common to occultism. Perhaps it was my noviaty that allowed us to progress as far as we did.

Unfettered by the rigid rules of "Do and Do Not" of a chemist's trade--perhaps "unfettered" isn't the correct word, more "untrained" by the dogma, but whatever it was, I felt free-er to use my imagination in the chemicals and concoctions, even though my notes left something significant to be desired.

While others obsessed over their note-taking, I was far more relaxed in my approach, confident in my abilities to remember something as basic as 'which beaker I picked up', and 'how much I poured'. While I was more diligent on boiling times and temperatures than I was on other things, I found that the overall endless preening was distracting. The chemists would always argue with me about the potential to duplicate the results, but I was not interested in being followed down this morbidly-inspired path.

The Astronomy Tower of Charinthosse had proven to be a rich vein of manuscripts of all sorts; that much shouldn't surprise anyone, with the tower being a bastion of free thought and expression, after all. But what I found in those forgotten pages, crumpled at the back of shelves was something that felt more tangible than the 'what if' we were chasing.

The pages I discovered were something that I didn't disclose to any of the other members of the Congregate. They detailed the workings of something that was called a "homunculus"; a sort of sentient creature born of a carefully prepared chicken egg. I'd brought the pages with me to that lab beneath the restaurant on each of my visits, in hopes that I could act upon them some day as well as keep them away from other exploring, prying eyes that would scan the dusty shelves of the tower. But each of my efforts were spurned for weeks at a time--always finding one or two of the other scholars there, frittering away with their chemicals.

By divine stroke of luck, however, I managed to find myself alone in the lab one night, long after the restaurant had closed. Do not take that as an admission of guilt to breaking and entering; oh no. The Goats that owned the bar (all of whose names still escape me) were more than accommodating, and oddly eager to see me down in the lab. While I suppose I should have been concerned at their willingness, I was too focused on the task at hand.

In the bowels of their cellar, I stood over the endless tubes of glass and the beakers, filled with strange chemicals of varying colors and clarities. I kept the notes as close at hand as I possibly could, directly in front of me as to block their view from anyone who would otherwise open the door that stood directly behind me.

The page I had taken was something of an occult recipe--calling for things more archaic than I had ever heard of, to include one or two plants that were long-since extinct. Blessedly I was surrounded by the manuals left to me by chemists and other professors of botany and the like. While I won't pretend that it was easily done, luck would have it that I found a page, loaded to the brim with extracts and bio-equivalence notations. While the process of substitutions was arduous, and kept me far longer than I'd anticipated.

I believed that I could have been done in a week, should my progress have gone unimpeded, or had the substitutions not been so beyond my entry-level comprehension... Even then, the 'week' timeline that I estimated would have been made a matter of days or even hours, if I had only enlisted the help of my fellow Congregate members. While the semantics matter little, my endeavors were stretched over weeks--months even. I lost track, truth be told.

When the concoction was finally ready, I was, at long last able to begin working more directly around the preparations for the egg. Marvelously simple as it was, the 'creation' of these 'homunculi' were as simple as adding the chemical concoction to a viscous fluid, as well as what the text vaguely referred to as a 'living fluid'. Being the archaic nature of the text, I could only assume what it meant by such things--though I knew that such witchcraft often made liberal use of blood or various other secretions in their rituals.

I waited for as long as I dared, one evening in particular, to ensure that none of the other chemists would disturb my efforts. Rather than anything untoward in the laboratory, I drew a pint of blood from my own arm--dangerous as it was to do such a thing without aid. A single line drained from the major artery of my left arm down to a bottle, to add the blood directly to a dab of viscous, skin-protecting gel, and the prerequisite plants and herbs. While I would never consider it witchcraft, the scent of the mixture as it boiled was that of heavy metal, and that of a particularly earthy, bitter wine. The bubbles roiled slowly--dangerously even, as the mixture boiled, and I checked my time again before removing the line from my arm, only to bandage the wound carefully so that I could hide it adequately beneath my sleeve collar.

I moved the chair from its precarious perch in front of the typewriter in order to more carefully, and directly observe the boiling process of my own blood--watching it oxidize, and mix with the fluid and herbs, turning it into a stomach-churning shade of crimson. I sat, something close to mesmerized by the slow bubbling, my trance only broken when I saw the outline of burnt solution near the bottom of the beaker.

Dubbing it 'ready enough', I didn't even turn off the flame before reaching forward to retrieve a syringe of a daunting gauge. Drawing the solution into the needle was a slow, difficult task to comparison of any other draw I had performed. But, once properly seated inside of the glass vial, I was able to turn my attentions to the egg.

The instructions I had commanded that I insert the syringe directly into the egg yolk, and, for lack of any better term to come to my mind immediately, install the solution into it.

A dozen eggs and several accidental, self-stabbings later, I managed to impregnate a single egg. It sounds so mundane, thinking back on it... But I don't think I could properly describe the incredible sensation--the feeling of victory that came with such an innocuous task. All that needed now was incubation.

For an hour, I sat there with it in my hands, just staring at it, as if by some will that I could exert over it, I could force nature to move faster. I shook the notion clear of my head, instead redoubling my focus to what to do next. Part of me knew that, should I leave the egg here, it would be broken by accident by Connigan, or worse--studied by the other scholars that frequented the area. No. I had to take it with me, or at the very least, incubate it in secret. However, as an ophthalmologist, there was no place I knew of beyond this laboratory that could have provided me with such a safe haven for something so remarkably precious to me. No sooner had I decided to reach out, and ask for assistance, than it showed itself, again, with a concerning amount of ease and willingness, by the establishment owners. As if on cue, hell, as if they'd been expecting something like this, a solution was already in place.

While the assured me that they'd never incubated an egg in this manner before, my suspicion was that they were lying to my face. Of course, I couldn't prove such things to be the case, but, almost true to form, they brought me to their bread ovens, which were kept at a rather constant temperature via gas stove. The goats assured me that my egg would be safe, resting in a small, tin box atop the highest point of the stove. It would remain constantly warm, and hatch in a matter of weeks--if it hatched at all.

When I pressed them for the source of their knowledge, they insisted they had raised chickens in such a fashion. I accepted the answer out of reluctance to call them liars, one and all--standing in the cramped cellars, there were all manner of things that were exactly as you'd expect. The bread oven crammed against the far wall of a wide cellar, and neat rows of foodstock, separated into tidy bays dedicated to separate foods, with wine and whiskey barrels beneath. The stock room in the back, furthest from both the bread oven and the staircase to the higher floor would have been the only place they would have had to butcher chickens, but that hadn't been cleared for us and our laboratory... only cleaned of dust.

Grudgingly, I accepted their solution, and the next forty days were among the longest I have ever waited in my entire life. I checked daily at first--tempering my anticipation, and ordering breakfast for myself and my wife every morning for the first fourteen days, up until my beloved questioned the sudden obsession with the restaurant. I had told her several times of its atmosphere and sung its praises to help disguise my true intentions; even though it tempered her expectations, and made sitting in the main parlor of the restaurant 'near our usual table' something of an extreme oddity. While, in truth, I found the food bland, or over salted with minimal middleground, I had no choice but to aggrandize it--sacrificing several taste buds along with my pride in efforts of convincing my wife, only to go down to the kitchens below to thank them for the meal, and check on my egg.

I was widely unsuccessful in such, and for good reason. In fact, I was rather relieved upon her request that we stop arriving there for breakfast every morning. Though it did grate my nerves for the first few days immediately afterward, as I was half-tempted to rush just to check on the damned thing at any rate.

On the fortieth night, the goats were kind enough to send word that the egg had cracked. Even though it was an ungodly hour of night, I felt compelled to go. Despite my wife's protests--to which I blatantly lied to her, something with regard to an emergency surgery--I rushed from the property, only haphazardly dressed.

What usually was usually a fifteen minute walk to the restaurant was a sprint, completed in a quarter of the time. I was panting, and dripping with sweat by the time I arrived on their hearth. I could barely contain myself to wait as they opened the door--storming by them after issuing only the most brief of pleasantries.

My hands were shaking as I reached up to snatch the tin tray--the pads of my fingers and palm burning slightly, but I didn't care as I strode across the room to our laboratory.

Uneager to break the glass, I instead shoved the typewriter and books away from the table in dramatic flourish with a single arm, slapping the tray atop the table so that I could most easily peer inside. I reached up with my already-burnt hand to adjust one of the electric lights to shine it more directly onto the egg, not daring to disturb the tin's precious cargo further.

I stared down into the tin--the previously pale-yellow egg was now different. Rather than the smooth, even surface of the egg as it had started, the egg had a fractal pattern of inky substance, just on the underside of the egg. My eyes widened as I watched it as the pattern pulsated beneath the surface of the egg--all of the pattern seeming to emanate from two points--my injection site, and directly the opposite of it.

A lump formed in my throat as I stared down at it in horrified amazement, my jaw going slack as the egg began to roll about on its own accord. The surface began to crack, and give way to something that looked almost like a beak, but narrower, and longer than that of a chicken's. Half of the beak came forth, then the whole thing. Eventually, the sickly strands of a gray membrane began to ooze onto the tray as the creature fought for its freedom toward the yellow light of the bulb that burnt my hand still. I stood, transfixed as it clawed its way to freedom.

It was half-formed, by any stretch of the account. Its beak was an unnatural, elongated bone that lead down to a furry head--thick, black fuzz covered in more of the gray sludge. Its delicate shoulders already appeared broken, and disjointed; hanging from its arms were bleeding nubs where bone had pierced through flesh, as if to form some sort of wing out of its otherwise humanoid arm. Its body was unnaturally thin--frail ribs heaving with labored breath, down to its bony, unformed legs.

Its beak opened, and it unleashed a sickening, grinding sound--a sort of choked off cry for help. Its eyes still closed, it began to peck about, as if feeling for something. I watched the creature's brittle beak snap as it came into contact with the tin surface.

The noise... oh God Above... the noise it made.

Never had I heard such a high-pitched, pained keen in my life. It nearly sent me double, and I clutched my ears at the feeling of daggers piercing them. That noise broke its spell on me, whatever it had been.

It was not success in that jar--no--it was unnatural. Its existence wasn't the epitome of science, or pushing the boundaries of what was accepted by this Congregate. It was no achievement--it was abhorrent. It was proof of my own descent, however brief, into madness. Before I could convince myself otherwise, I grabbed the tin by the edge, and stormed from our lab--past the eagerly awaiting goats to shovel the whole tin into their baking fire.

The noise I had heard when the beak had broken was nothing compared to what came next. So desperate was our struggle to escape the death screams of that... that thing that we all adjourned upstairs--many of us panting from the efforts of our speed. I didn't care that my ears were bleeding then, nor did I even stop to consider what some... some thing born out of that deranged obsession would do. My eyes shot a sparing glance toward the stone chimney that rose from the cellar, through the floor, and up to the roof. It passed through the center of the dining area--as was a common style, and I only just then noticed the vents that allowed the patrons of the restaurant to smell what was cooking in the bread oven below.

I stormed outside and wretched openly into the street violently enough to cause my legs to nearly give out from under me. The goats watched me from the entryway of their home--their restaurant, but seemed otherwise unfazed, and disturbingly silent about the entire ordeal. I left in a hurry--and I haven't been back since.

I long since decided I wanted nothing to do with that place, or those things ever again. Do not be confused. It is not an issue of believing that what I created was hideous, or defied logic.

It was the grasp of Madness I felt on my soul, and knowing more than anything how much I wanted to repeat the experiment.