You have just been awoken from a terrible dream.

You see the floating orange numbers of the alarm clock, and in your confusion and grogginess they seem to sway in your vision.  At last they settle directly before you.  It is 4 in the morning.  Time for work.

The room never quite comes into focus, but you manage to find your cleanest dirty shirt and pants, and what is probably one of your less loud ties.  You’re through the doorway in five minutes, without breakfast or coffee or even a smoke.  Halfway down the stairs you’re stilling pulling on a loafer.

It’s still dark on the street, and you start the short walk to your office.  The hint of gray light in the sky goes unnoticed by the dozens of sleeping bums you pass, but you look into the sky for something.  It could snow.

"Hey man, you got some change?"

The young man in front of you has a shaved head and wears the uniform of the hundreds of street kids who are just like him, ripped and dirty clothing, leather and spikes.  Words are visible as patches all over him, like tattoos: Cramps, DK, Sick of it All, Accused.  Gibberish, perhaps, or bands.  You feel the latter is most likely.

"What are you going to spend it on, kid?"

"Food, mister, I’m so hungry."

"You’re not gonna buy drugs are you?  Heroin or something?"

"No way, I just need a bite to eat."

"Bullshit.  If you’re not going to buy scag,  I won’t give you any money."

You know it’s cruel.  You can’t help it.  That kid is probably from a rich family in Falls Church.  He’ll go home to his own wing of the mansion.

A tug on your sleeve almost pulls you around, but you break free easily and keep walking.

"Hey, you fuck!  Get back here!  Just ‘cause you’re all high and mighty, you can’t tell me what to do!"

You continue ignoring him, but he won’t give up.

"Fuck you, man!  You’ll get what’s coming to you when the time comes!  Your soul will burn under the lamp of Alhazred!  Die wesenner fremdes kommen!  Die ein, unt zwei, unt ein tausend!  Fich dich! Deine seele ausgaben deinen Korper!  Dread lord of the deep, you will rot, pawn of Askra-herti!"

The youth spits, and you feel it hit the back of your trench coat.  He has said too much, and you almost lash out, but manage to keep walking.

Father Hastur damn you.  Get a hold of yourself, man.  They’re just playing with you, you tell yourself.  It’s true.  You reach your office without being molested further, and you flash your badge at the security officer, and speak a code phrase.  The voice reader flashes a green light, and you pass the armored turnstile into a short hallway.  Taking the left hand door, you enter another corridor, which to a visitor would be surprisingly dirty.  It is poorly lit by a handful of flourescent lamps, two of which flash with a dim violet light as they reach the last hours of their life.  They may or may not be replaced this month.

The third door on the left is your office.  You handle a great deal of sensitive information, so you are placed for safety in what is known as the Assholes’ Asshole, referring to the enormous government bureaucracy.  This is where projects are buried, and where yours is hidden.

The door is blank.  It is metal and reinforced, with a complicated card lock and voice reader.  You say your phrase, and after a few moments are admitted to your office.  It reeks of mildew, and is very spartan.  A desk in the middle of the room, surrounded by a phalanx of file cabinets.  A computer sits unused, dust on the screen.  The fax machine next to it has been busy, and its flimsy thermal paper has curled off the desk and onto the floor, where it has piled up and resembles some ancient scroll.  A small red light flashes on the machine, and you ignore it to pick up the phone and dial a memorized number.

"Terence, can you patch me through to the NSA?  Yeah, Washington office, not Fort Meade.  I’ll hold.  Hello, this is Agent Lucas from the Defense Department.  I’d like-" you pause and look at a paper on the desk "-Captain Charles Brixt’s office please.  Yes, I’ll hold.  Yes, Captain Brixt’s secretary?  Hello.  I’m Agent Lucas from the National Reconnaisance Office. I need to meet Captain Brixt ASAP.  I have some recon information for Brixt, Klaxon Traffic, Eyes Only.  Can I make an appointment for later this morning?  Fine, ten is fine.  Thank you."

After hanging up, you find a new manila envelope and stuff it with random papers.  You put a red security label that reads EYES ONLY over the mouth, and write KLAXON over it in black magic marker.  Now you wait until ten, because Captain Charles Brixt of the NSA is Agent Beard of Delta Green, and you are going to kill him.

Thoughts churn in your brain for hours, aching and never coalescing into anything solid.  Nine o’clock arrives and you set off through a ghetto neighborhood into the Capitol Mall, and then out again to an office building that houses some of the NSA departments that are centered in Washington.  It hums from activity and life, and you get a headache, which will pass.

Inside the building you go through a long security drill.  Frisking, metal detectors, eye and voiceprints.  Your envelope is fondled and x-rayed, and at last you are cleared to go, and enter the main lobby.  An MP directs you to the third floor, Suite 350, and you climb the stairs.  You begin to sweat.  By the first landing you feel as if what you are thinking must show.  Did that person look at you wrong?  The second landing comes and you twitch nervously.  Two secretaries are gossiping and as you mount the stairs again you hear their conversation.

"Miriam, I am telling you, he is so cute!  You should go for it.  Let him take you to the movies, or coffee, or Kadath in the Cold Waste. No man knoweth Kadath in the Cold Waste."

"Sherri, you are such a tease.  You know for a fact Cthulhu is not dead, but only dreams in his house at R’lyeh.  The stars are not right.  And besides, I don’t have anything to wear."

You must have imagined that.

The third landing comes, and a very fat man in a suit jogs past you.  You open the door onto a hallway, and see Suite 350.  Father Hastur, grant me strength.  Let me walk these yards.  Let the pain end.

You walk miles and miles to cross the thirty feet to the door, and you are exhausted, sweating and drooping as you turn the handle.  The secretary looks up.  You show her your identification and her eyes roll back up into her head.  She bares needle-like fangs, and makes a sibliant sound before waving you to the door.  It opens on its own in a blur of heat haze.

Brixt, or Beard, sits behind his desk in a well-appointed office that is light years away from your hole in the wall.  He is a middle-aged man with short gray hair.  He wears a conservative suit and has his hands folded in front of him.  You throw the envelope at him from across the room, and it lands on the desk.  For a moment he appears alarmed, then his face tightens.  You feel a stabbing pain in your leg and look down.

A blue flame has sprouted from your thigh, and after a moment it blossoms.  You are burning.

A moment of agony passes and you are extinguished as quickly as you are ignited.  Your reflexes kick in, and with a silent prayer to Hastur, you unfold and begin flowing to Beard with amazing swiftness, but it is not enough.  Before the first tendril of your substance touches him, you feel the pain again, and are frozen.  Like a movie reel played backwards, you flow into yourself and fold up again.  Frozen as Agent Lucas, you cannot do anything.

"You were Agent Lucas at one point, weren’t you?  Or is he just an occasional form?  Don’t answer.  I know you were sent to kill me.  Who was it this time?  What dread being this week?  A creature of fire surprised me last week in my garage.  The week before that it was one of the damned Mi-Go.  Who do you answer to?"

You can’t do anything, even squirm.  Some force is pressing against your mind, probing the headache, and the force has Beard’s voice.  Another presence is growing, and it must be Father Hastur.

"Well, who is it?  Or will you kill yourself before you talk?"

You wish you could.

"That’s right, talk.  I would like to talk to you.  I’m not going to let you have failed your mission just to die.  Saving people like you is my thing."

A human part of you notices that Beard looks and sounds like the actor Gene Hackman.  He seems to have read it from your mind, and smiles.

"That’s good," he says, reading your badge, "Agent Lucas.  You can still think like a normal person.  I do look like Gene Hackman.  No, I didn’t read your mind.  I just get that all the time."

This is the most bizarre nightmare.  It is far worse than any dreams you’ve had of the Lake of Hali, where you can see nothing  but the lake and a shadowy form that is Father Hastur.  And this is real.  Bruce keeps talking, and you don’t really hear.  You’ve drawn off into some muffled, dark realm of the mind where you’re safe.  For now.

Time comes and goes, like it always does, and the pressure in your head builds.  You’re afraid to open your eyes, even though you know something is being done to you.  It doesn’t matter.  You remember a day in March.  You were a child.

It’s a late snow.  Flakes fly by with the wind.  Your father is holding your hand, but your father has died since.  You were only three, and all you can remember is him holding your hand.   You’re in front of the county home your parents have, an antebellum farmhouse wedged in the woods.  The driveway stretches back a half mile from the main road, and it is filling up with snow.  Your father is taking you ice fishing on the pond by the woods.

You fish for a little while, because it’s just too cold.  Your father tells you that it’s time to go in for hot cocoa, and he walks out to the ice hole to pull his hook and line out.  He falls in, and you run away, back to the farmhouse and get mom.

The rest is confused.  Mom runs out and meets you half way, throwing you over her shoulder.  She was watching from the house.  She’s screaming, and your father has disappeared under the ice.

They told you, when you were a little older, that your father drowned.  As an adult you looked into it, and the truth was different.  Your mother, who was institutionalized for a time after that, made curious statements.  She claimed to have seen a dark thing grab your father and pull him in, and that it was killing him.  Though the pond was dredged, no body was ever found.  That was all very strange.  You don’t remember any dark thing.  Your father slipped on the ice, and fell in the hole.

"…took cellular samples.  It’s incredible.  You remember in school the demonstration in school where they poured oil into a jar of marbles to demonstrate space, or density or some such?  It’s like that.  Only, the marbles are his cells, and the oil is… god knows what."

Why is a Frenchman talking?

"Any further analysis?"

"None that I can make, Sir.  We’ll be sending  Berry along with Ellspeth and Ennio to the Smithsonian Institution, to use the electron microscope.  I’ll tag along if you wish."

"I defer to your professional opinion, Agent Billette.  What about his EEG?"

"Very strange, sir.  Earlier he slipped into deep Theta, and then began REM like I’ve never seen.  He’s in alpha, now, and from the monitor I’d say he’s responding to our talking.  He’s all yours, sir."

"Well, Lucas, you’ll be staying with us for a while.  The only thing we can do is to keep you contained for your own good.  I plan to have a long conversation with you."

"Father Hastur save me, father…"

"What?"  You hear him rustling papers.  You refuse to open your eyes, but in a moment they are pried open and taped.  Beard is holding something in front of your face.  "Does this mean anything to you?"

It is a paper, with scribbled markings all over it, and stains.

"What I’m holding was taken from someone who called it an ‘Unspeakable Oath.’  It obviously wasn’t unwritable, though it certainly is illegible."  Beard laughs, and you shiver involuntarily.  Within a moment his voice is hard again, and you feel his pressure bearing down on you harder than ever.  "They called on Hastur when they died, called on Hastur to save them.  Hastur killed them, or maybe they killed themselves with fear.  I’m not going to let that happen to you."

The headache is building, increasing alongside the pressure of Beard’s mind grinding at yours.  Beard removes the paper from your sight, and then he is blotting your forehead with a tissue.

"You never signed an oath like that.  You didn’t have to. You were born and bred to it, weren’t you?"
Beard is sitting next to you now, and his hand rests on your brow still.  "You lost your father.  I lost my son.  Let that be some common ground."  His voice is heavy, and you’re crying amid the sweat.  "I’ve already been told to kill you when I’m done, if not sooner.  They say you’re a danger, and not worth the risk.  I’m not sure yet if I disagree, but I’m going to do my damnedest."

Time speeds up.  Beard’s words are indecipherable.  The pressure and headache increase to the point where you feel incapable of even hallucinating.  All that remains is oblivion.

You’re in another place, a bare room.  The walls are padded.  A slit in the door opens, and somehow you drag yourself over.  Beard’s eyes show through.

"Lucas, you’re going to be here for a long while.  I’ll see what I can do for you."

He begins to leave.

"Captain Brixt"

You hear him gasp.  The eyes don’t reappear at the slot.

"Captain Brixt, I would still kill you if I could.  But I don’t have to."

His voice takes a long time to come through the door.

"Why is that, Lucas?"

"Because you’re already dead.  You’re worse off than I am."

The slit in the door slams shut.