Chapter One
May 6, 1997

"Great God of Madness"
by The Plasma Miasma

       There was a drift to the days that Frank Fontaine found comforting. Monday twisted into Thursday, Wednesday into July with hardly a skip or a heartbeat. There were twitches of time, of course, and sometimes the screaming in his mind grew red hot and irrepressible; yet life was better now, somehow. He woke chilled, and foraged for breakfast, sometimes without luck; but there was plenty of time to read in the library, or even in one of the bookstores, if he had managed to make himself presentable. Over the past... somewhat lengthy period of recent time... months, or weeks, or even years? he had started to take some sort of care of his body, making sure to bathe and wash clothes in the river with scavenged soap at least once weekly, in warm weather... though the water, and the darkness beneath the surface out where the water moved faster, terrified him, of course. It had taken him a lot of effort to get to the point where he could even approach the riverbank, let alone stand shivering in the water. Over time he found that he was able to withstand it if he did not look out toward the deep running open water, and if he did not listen to Professor Firth's restless whisper warning him that something formless was lurching up behind him. He had learned never to turn when he heard that dead voice, accompanied though it was with the heavy slooshing of water rolling off the back of some large living object that had just emerged from below the surface. He knew that there was nothing there, nothing substantial; and there wouldn't ever be UNLESS he turned. He knew this from experience. For he had. And there was.
       But the days had begun to blur in a not uncomfortable fashion. Not a happy blur, nor a sad one; just a blur. The horrors had become unobtrusive, like H.R. Giger wallpaper; and through his reading he was becoming quite conversant in politics and popular culture, both such comfortingly safe subjects, so removed from real life.
       And with that blurring had come a recognition that he was beginning to fit back into society, if only in the most marginal of ways. Adults no longer averted their eyes from him, children no longer stared as often at his shaggy disarray; counter people occasionally smiled at him as if he were a real, regular person, not a derelict; some would even attempt to draw him into a moment of banter. How's about this weather? Not bad for this time of year. Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. I don't pay much attention to the weather. I follow you; why worry about what you can't change? Why indeed. Why indeed.
      In deed, why done? Deed, why dead? See in dead eye. Why?
      I've lost track of time, he'd thought more than once. I'm timeless.
       No, the Professor would reply, you're just eternal.
       There was a bite to the wind that said it might be fall. Who knew what year? There was a grip to the bricks, that said he was held to the ground. Who knew which planet? There was a drift to the days, and Frank Fontaine was starting to believe that life could once again be liveable.
      Then he ran into Nancy.
      She didn't recognize him at first, but he knew it was her instantly. Why wouldn't he? Hers was one of the faces that loomed large in his memory, one of the faces that lurched at him from behind his closed eyes. She had aged, of course, and wore her hair shorter (she had changed the color, he noted - probably to cover the fact that it was as grey as his own); she had lost weight, but he imagined that everyone whose face appeared in his nightly predream horror show shared his inability to take pleasure in food. But he had no doubt it was her.
      He quickly evaded his eyes when she glanced his way; but it was that quick furtiveness, no doubt, that gave him away. Ancient man, like any predator, was trained to spot the quick dart of motion that indicated prey. It was genetic. The stacatto twist of his neck that turned his face toward the brick wall beside him garnered her instant attention. And with that attention slowly dawned recognition.
       "Jesus Christ," she sputtered,"Is that Frank Fontaine?" Frank kept walking. She began to call his name. "Frank. Frank!"
       It was no good. She wasn't going to just go away. She was following him. She put her hand on his shoulder. He shuddered and whirled with a yelp of shock. "Don't touch me, alright?" He considered putting on his "crazyguy" act, which was usually effective at staving off unwanted attention, but knew in an instant that Nancy would see right through it, or worse, take pity on him. She wouldn't be afraid, like most people are of anything strange. She knew that Frank Fontaine had nothing in him that was dangerous to another person, nothing at all. The danger he held was all directed inward.
      "Frank. What the hell is wrong with you?"
       "Everything! Nothing. I'm messed up, Nancy. Go away."
      "Frank. Frank! Look at me."
      He tried to slink away, but he could feel her will boring a hole into the rotted pilings of his resolve. His shoulders sank. He turned around.
      "Small frigging world, isn't it, Nancy? No matter how many miles and years we put between us, our past still draws us together like magnets. Entropy my ass!" He began laughing. He laughed a lot, but this time he was laughing at something that was actually funny.
      Nancy scowled. "Things do fall apart, Frank, look at yourself. No, don't it's too painful."
      Frank stopped laughing. "No, Nancy," he said, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper, "Sometimes destroyed things pull themselves back together."
       He turned around and began walking, knowing that she would follow, and began discoursing in a manner not unlike that of his days as a lecturing grad student. "Entropy my ass. You never saw me when I was in the House on the Hill, Nancy! You never saw the convulsions, the screaming night horrors. You've never had the needle in your arm, the wires on your temples, the white electric heat searing truth into your forehead. Ever been straightjacketed, Nancy? I woke once thinking I was in a web, spun round and round with white thread while the spider lurked in a dark corner of the padded room waiting 'til it grew hungry enough to feed. Don't look at me now 'til you've looked at me then!"
      Nancy had hesitated at first, then caught up with him and they now walked abreast down the cobbled streets of Exchange Street. "Frank. Do you think any of us had it easy?
      If you think so, I have a pharmacopia here in my bag that says differently. In fact, sometimes I think that the easiest thing is to just let your mind slide. No more fighting, no more struggling to think the sane thoughts, to do the sane thing. Let the visions come, let the voices prattle. No, I avoided the House on the Hill. And the Big House. And the Morgue. Dammit, do you think I'm lucky? Walk a mile in my boots."
      Frank turned left at the foot of the hill and entered a small restaraunt. The smell of cheese and garlic assailed Nancy's nose as she entered, making her stomach growl. Frank sat down in a booth, and Nancy seated herself opposite him.
       "You're buying, Nancy," Frank said.
       Nancy laughed. "Ever the mooch, Frank, ever the mooch." She looked down at the paper placemat in front of her. Some simple jumbles; acrostics; connect the dots (a bear, obviously); and a simple maze.The wrong path led into the gaping reptile jaws of a crocodile, but you had to be an idiot or a very stupid child to go down the wrong path.
       Frank looked over the table at her. He could see the oh-so-serious college student she had been once staring out at him from underneath the frown-lines and sagging eyes. "Some quantum physicists believe that two particles that interact once are capable of affecting one another over vast distances." He wondered if she knew what he was getting at.
       She could see the confident upper-classman that he had been imprisoned somewhere beneath the ragged hair, scruffy beard, and wild eyes. She opened her mouth and spoke, feeling instantly like an idiot or a very stupid child. "I saw Alex Horowitz the other day."
      At that moment, miles away in Arkham, the coroner had a very nasty surprise.