I found a door off to the side of the library, it says restricted. I shudder to think how anything in this place is restricted. I would never be able to let it go if I didn’t check inside the room though. I don’t know what I expected, but what I got was surprising.

The room is clean, sterile, and unlike anywhere else that I have been in my time here. The rest of the town approaches a vibe most firmly realized as nostalgic, but this place had a spotless, almost sanitized clinical feel to it.

There is a single shelf containing some hard leather bound books, the journals were bad enough… is this really another situation for me to get involved in? There’s nothing good in a single god damn word recorded in this place.

Curiosity killed the cat though, and that will probably be what kills me too. I am curious though, this place came out of nowhere and maybe there’s a key to getting out of here between these pages.

I opened the first folder and had no idea what it is that I was staring at. The first picture is that of a young man, black and white, possibly in his mid twenties. He looks tired and haggard, but still somehow I can spot an air of enthusiasm about him, he has kind eyes. Underneath his picture scrawled in black marker is the term “pre-transformation”

His name is or was Victor Alkott according to the scrawl on the back of the photo. It looks like he was an explorer of some kind. The date on the picture is May the fourteenth, nineteen twenty six.

There are a few pictures of some desert ruins, the first few shots are taken far off with a powerful piece of equipment before moving in closer. It looks like there was some kind of excavation happening.

Papers, papers and more papers. Some of it is scrawled together like chicken scratch, some of it is organized and neatly presented. I can’t be sure if it was all written by the same person in varying states of mind or different people entirely.

Let’s see, I found a page of notes dated May the sixteenth, so that would be two days after that first photograph was taken.

I can only assume that these are his notes:

“The dig has gone better than expected… After the locals were persuaded things came together quite smoothly. The grave of the Red Priest is finally an actual achievable goal. No longer a fairytail or myth, but something real. Finally the proof that will set this world aflame.”

Odd, so they were searching for something. A grave… Not the smartest idea to be fair. Also the way “persuaded” is written gives me the chills. Not sure what they did to those people, but I am sure it couldn’t have been good.

A few more pictures that don’t seem to be of anything in particular… wait. There’s one of the dig but much closer. I can actually make out what it is that they are excavating. It looks to be some form of ruins. There are markings on it that are in no discernable language that I recognize. They must be thousands of years old.

There is another picture, of a door.. or more of an archway I suppose. It seems to lead into a darkness that is almost indescribable. Whatever was behind those doors… They should have never disturbed, I’m positive about that. It’s a miracle they documented this honestly.

There’s another photograph of Victor, this one is dated May the eighteenth. There is no enthusiasm left in his face and there is clearly something deeply wrong with his health. His eyes are hollow and sunken in. He appears to have lost an impossible amount of weight in the four days since the last picture. I can hardly even believe that it is the same man.

I found another journal entry it was hidden behind more papers, this one is scrawled in messier hand writing, with a crimson ink:

“They made a mistake finding this place, but not me, I am right where I am supposed to be. Mortal coils and sacks of flesh that tether us to this realm, no longer a need for any of that. I have become something more-“

The writing then deteriorates into something unreadable, clearly forcefully written. I can’t make out any of it. Then there are more photographs.

I see a bunch of the locals who were mentioned previously. They are sitting down with their backs against a wall. They seem sickly, their bodies are haggard and there appears to be lesions that have formed across their skin. Their flesh looks as if it is rotting… Large open sores that let me stare into their bodies in a way that no person who is alive, or dead for that matter, should be seen.

I would have thought them dead, if it wasn’t for the pain behind their eyes. There is still life there… despite them maybe not being sure about whether or not this life is one that they want to continue living.

There are some other people off to the side of the photograph that I can’t properly make out. I do see a shadow though… It appears as if at least one of the figures is in a gas mask of some kind… They must have been concerned with contagion.

There is another photograph labeled as such:

“Aftermath”

It is a mass grave.

There must be at least thirty to thirty five men in the crudely dug pit. The rot on their flesh has progressed at an alarming rate, their bodies now leaking their insides out through the various sores. I can see the splatters of blood that came from each body as they were thrown on top of each other.

Definitely gasmasks, I now have a better view of one of the men, up and to the left in the corner of the picture. He is armed with an older looking rifle and is dressed in khaki army fatigues.

They were cleaning this up.

There are a few more scraps of paper with scrawled notes:

“Contact with the infected host carrier results in rapid deterioration of the flesh. Internal organs shut off not long after that. Doesn’t have to be skin to skin contact. Carrier exudes a fine red mist which travels at an alarming rate.”

Okay, so whatever they had found was carrying a kind of viral infection and apparently as far as I can tell was now responsible for the men in the grave.

There is one last photograph of a man hunched over a body, taken from behind and clearly from a hidden point. The man hunched over is skeletal, dressed in black and his face is not seen. I can’t be sure what he is doing to the body, not sure that I want to know.

There is writing on the back of the photograph.

“Viktor Alkott, Patient Zero, only known photograph after exposure and full transformation.”

The poor guy was the one responsible for all this death. Whatever they had found out there, the people here were working on containing it. Who bankrolled all this, hunting Alkott nearly a hundred years ago? At least that amount of time meant that meant he was dead now.

Right?