Doc Doctor — Roleplayer Guild

@Griffintaur

Warning; the Magna Pater's profile is quite a lengthy read. Might want to make sure you find a comfy chair and don't skim the details. I want to make sure you understand how all of its abilities work. 

In short, its fighting style is that of an ambush predator whose powers are centered around taking advantage of the five senses. It simultaneously uses its own senses to relentlessly hound opponents through virtually any obstacles whilst attacking their own senses to disorientate them and mask its presence. If any part seems too strong for the match up, just say so and I'll nerf it for our fight!

Aliases: Marmappa (Translated to 'Dreamfather' in Tamil, first known name given to it by humans), The Sleeper of the Clandestine, Shasheuss-Gux (Seminole), Salmu Pulhu (Sumerian), The Great Father

Species: Primal Nightmare

Lifespan: As long as it can continue drinking blood. It doesn't age when it sleeps for years in-between large meals.

Age: 2,387 (Current Physical Form), otherwise timeless and unrestricted by the concept of age.

Appearance: The Magna Pater takes the form of a monstrosity with slime slicked, mottled brown flesh and no hind legs. Its only limbs are two craggy arms adorned with thickly webbed wings which start at the hands and annex down either flank halfway to the base of a powerful, gorgon-esque tail. The wings each bear thirteen additional clawed phalanges extending from the arms and flanks. It has three long, webbed fingers and a thumb on each hand, with the middle digit bearing a claw eight inches long. The other claws are half that length. The span of its grip is immense, to such an extent that were it to grab a woman about the waist with one hand, its fingers would nearly touch. Its head vaguely resembles the chiropteran caricature of a rubber hand puppet turned inside out, whose distinctly malleable features shift and bulge in cooperation with the unknown physiology operating beneath the flexible cartilage of its skull. The Magna Pater wears a dripping maw packed tightly with gruesome tombstone teeth, concealed beneath flabby lips most frequently pulled back into a sardonic, dog-like grin. Childhood fears, once long forgotten, echo dimly through unseeing, oily eyes. These features are accentuated by long, crinkle cut ears and wrinkled leaf nostrils. It has a sharp, hollow tongue which can extend four feet from its mouth, acting as a siphon to suck in blood. Dermal Lorenzini papulae, similar in appearance to the thousands of little tube-like legs on a starfish, coat its skin and may protrude when needed. When inactive the sensory buds retreat into the body, leaving the flesh spongy and pocked. Has a pair of retractable, double-jointed feelers on its muzzle just below the eyes which can't be seen when fully withdrawn. The feelers are two feet long and are made up of eleven cartilage joints. Hundreds of smaller inch-long antenna resembling twitching cricket legs haphazardly garnish the feelers from top to bottom, spreading when the feelers emerge and smoothing back when they retract. Both feelers taper into a split, forming two soft prongs at the end like the tip of a snake's tongue. Its ears, nostrils, and eyelids can fold and smooth down like vacuum seal flaps to prevent unwanted particles from gaining entry. In particular its eyes have nictitating membranes as an additional safeguard. An arrowhead-shaped fluke constitutes the tip of its tail, and can narrow or widen at will. It is an invertebrate, bearing no spinal column. From snout to tail base the Magna Pater is over eight feet long. The tail is eighteen and one-half feet, and each arm is six foot five to the wrist. It weighs in at a rough total of 387 kilos.

It has no reflection and both the monster's motion and form exhibit a surreal, lurid quality that offends the basic innermost sensibilities of any remotely natural or sane organism. Its overall appearance is so terrible that a single, clear sighting is stressful enough to turn the hair of a common man gray over the course of a single hair growth cycle, and white by the second. The effect itself depends on how well they've mastered their own fears, which refract through its eyes and flow unseen but not unfelt through its physical impression to form a subconscious insight within the victim, that they may know the Magna Pater is the vessel through which the worst of nightmares may be made both true and eternal.

Abilities

~Resistance and Physical Output: It can withstand the hottest or coldest inhabited planetary environments, able to easily outlast and outperform any Earthly life form known to science. Its body temperature adjusts to match its surroundings, with the aid of specialized glycoproteins in both its fluids and body which produce immensely powerful antifreeze molecules. The only organism that approaches (but does not exceed) the Magna Pater's vitality is the tardigrade, a micro-animal able to withstand 6,000 times atmospheric pressure, endure 1,000 times the lethal radiation that a human can, and immediately undergo reactionary chemobiosis to become immune to deadly toxins. The Magna Pater has five pseudohearts behind its circulatory system, the only effective way of killing it being the destruction of the brain, which is buried beneath layer after layer of thickly wadded muscle and cartilage. Like a snake, any limbs separated from the Magna Pater's nerve endings will proceed to react to stimuli and be capable of independent motion for up to two hours. Most often this results in the severed limb maintaining a 'death grip' on something it has captured, or attempting to capture whatever touches it, via a reaction similar to the Palmar Grasp reflex found in babies. If the Magna Pater's head is severed, it can retain consciousness for up to two hours as well due to its self-controlled metabolism and ability to survive without oxygenated blood. 
Its body is even naturally insulated against electricity, to the point of shrugging off multiple lightning strikes during an electrical storm. Sticking a claw into a wall socket gives it about as much of a buzz as an expired can of Red Bull. It processes pain in a manner entirely different from Earthly creatures so that it doesn't experience physically or mentally distracting negative sensations. It knows when it's been hurt, and the knowledge itself is sufficient to influence its decisions.

It can physically dominate any creature in the animal kingdom, able to casually strangle elephants to death, separate their vertebrae, and twist their heads off, or yank the limbs off polar bears with only slight difficulty. It can run down a cheetah the way a cheetah runs down a gazelle, using the phenomenal might of its tail and arms to propel itself. It can sustain a high rate of strenuous activity for months on end and can fight without limit so long as it has a food source to draw energy from. As for the Magna Pater's physical durability, even without contracting its muscles to harden itself its body is tougher than an industrial tractor tire as per the physiology required to thrive in the deepest parts of the ocean and in space, withstanding a minimum of 1,000 times atmospheric pressure. When its muscles are contracted to full hardness, it can endure 6,000 times atmospheric pressure at the cost of its mobility being reduced to no more than a sixth of its maximum efficiency. It takes roughly three seconds for the Magna Pater to harden itself to this extent, and another three seconds to return to its standard physiology. It can isolate and contract individual muscles to harden specific points.

~Its dermal Lorenzini papulae function as electroreceptors and touch receptors, with twenty times the sensitivity of a human hand. It uses them for electrolocation to find the bioelectric fields of targets immune to sonar and infrared, detect electrical signals in muscles (permitting it to respond near simultaneously to the motions of its prey), follow hydrodynamic or aerodynamic trails, and to circumnavigate the globe. The range for detecting life forms via electrolocation is 1,200 meters, and the range to read their muscles is 600 meters. In regards to following dynamic trails, its range is 2,000 meters.

~Keen hearing and sonar. It's echolocation has a maximum distance of 6,700 meters and can detect objects moving at half the speed of sound. Its hearing is so good it can locate a victim even through miles of dense forest and with its back turned. Anything faster than its echolocation it can sense almost instantly via air pressure gradient.

~Lungs: The Magna Pater has three crude lungs, whose purpose is not respiration but to aid in the generation of sound. 

~Life: It can survive in any sort of atmosphere which supports life, or even in the vacuum of space. It gains energy from a form of oxygen independent phagocytosis, digesting biological matter to power its body instead of breathing.

~Stealth: Its mucous gums up and muffles any minor sounds it may make when sneaking, and the Magna Pater is utterly immune to any magical or supernatural detection that doesn't naturally or scientifically originate within the five known senses. That is to say, it cannot be located via any kind of sixth sense. One may still detect it supernaturally, so long as said form of detection is directly based from sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Sensory fields relying on electricity, magnetism, chi, telepathy, and the like are all wholly ineffective, even if the field is translated into one of the five senses by proxy. Sonar can detect the Magna Pater, because it directly relates to hearing. Seeing through the mind's eye, however, does not count as a direct correlation to sight. Rather than resulting in a blank spot in the midst of such a field, it would simply be as if the Magna Pater was never there.

~Heat pits: Can detect all forms of heat and energy, similar to infrared in snakes. This includes light itself. The heat pits are located on the inner linings of its mouth, nose, and ears.

~Fluke: The broadhead fluke at the end of the Magna Pater's tail measures six inches in length and four in width. It can narrow down to a stabbing point or flatten out almost to the sharpness of a blade. Just like the rest of the Magna Pater's body the fluke can soften or harden, and when hardened it can resist pressures upwards of 6,000 psi. At full swing it can gouge sizable chunks out of an oak tree and skewer a grown man like a fish on a pike.

~Tongue: Can draw in blood through a wound like an industrial vacuum cleaner, enabling it to drain a human body as quickly and thoroughly as a dehydrated fat kid with a juice box at lunchtime. The tongue itself is a powerful muscle that can choke victims to death, tipped with a hypodermic-like tip made of the same chitin as its claws. It can also squirt, inject, or spray pressurized blood and saliva, or launch its tongue out like a harpoon (in the manner of a chameleon) at speeds rivaling Major League baseball pitches.

~Natural weapons: Its teeth and claws are composed of a complex chitin and protein polymer, harder and sharper than a Humboldt squid's beak, which can pierce modern body armor. The Magna Pater wields a bite force of more than 15,000 psi, twice that of the strongest recorded bite measured from a Nile crocodile. Its broad, spade-shaped molars and canines are perfect for shearing through bone and muscle. Its tail has around 90,000 muscles, flexible enough to delicately pick up small pebbles, strong enough to grind masonry stone to powder, and fast enough to accelerate to whip-like striking speeds, enough to break the sound barrier at the tip.

~Can freely bend its entire body like rubber or stiffen to become hard. It lacks bones, instead maintaining its shape through different varieties of tensile muscle and cartilage. It's entirely multi-jointed and able to twist any part of its body 270 degrees in circumference. It can stretch itself within reason, potentially gaining several extra inches of reach in a pinch, as well as squeeze into any opening that it can fit its head through.

~Capable of entering a state of metabolic stasis which can last for decades. It retains spatial awareness during this "hibernation" and can awaken at will.

~Sense of smell: It can track down others thousands of kilometers away just by smelling them on the clothing of its prey.

~The Pull: The Magna Pater and the places it most often visits bear a quality that faintly arouses a victim's morbid curiosity when nearby. This doesn't work if one is aware of the monster's presence. As an example, were the Magna Pater to be waiting outside of a locked window, the victim may feel vaguely compelled to go to said window and look out, but not unlock the window after sighting the horror beyond it. The monster can decide whether or not a victim feels the "Pull". It has scarcely any effect on those with a strong will and a firm grasp of what is real, since the Pull is predominantly meant to snare children.

~Intelligence: Is highly sentient. It has more than two millennia of experience in its current form as a highly prolific interdimensional serial killer, can grasp (but not speak) all languages, and never makes the same mistake twice.

~Can quickly regenerate from wounds by consuming blood and flesh. The amount of mass healed is proportionate to how much is consumed, I.E one pound of food to replace one pound of damaged tissue. It can selectively heal different parts of its body, and any excess food it eats is stored for later regeneration. It can hold up to 110 kilos of food in its stomach.

~Wings: The membrane of its wings is far tougher than Kevlar and can completely stop bullets from a .950 JDJ hunting rifle. The maximum wingspan of each arm, when stretched, is comparable in surface area to a queen size blanket, and the membrane itself is twice as thick as a padded backstop mat. The membrane is composed of specialized nerve and muscle fibers which can expand, contract and move freely with incredible strength, more than enough to hold and even break the bones of virtually any mortal creature it catches. As could be assumed from the crushingly powerful phalanges ridging the wings, they aren't at all meant for flight but to allow the monster to both guard against particularly dangerous attacks and to catch and smother prey. It can secrete vast amounts of mucous from the membrane just as it can from every other part of its epidermis.

~Dream Feelers: The Magna Pater's feelers function to receive dreams rather than such things as scents or sounds. When the feelers are fully extended, the Magna Pater can view the dreams of every creature on the planet. It can influence dreams, but the influence decreases the further one is from the Magna Pater. When within a thousand miles it can only very slighter alter a dream, almost imperceptibly. At three-hundred miles it can turn a good dream into an uncomfortable one, or make an uncomfortable dream into a nightmare. When the target is within a hundred miles, the Magna Pater can easily cause nightmares, and even night terrors, but can't entirely influence the contents of the nightmares or dictate exactly how they proceed. It can also wipe the memory of said dreams before the victim wakes up, and tell with perfect precision when the victim will awaken. Over the course of several months and with continuous pestering, it can impress early onset Alzheimer's and dementia onto a victim at this range.
When the Magna Pater is thirty miles or closer, it can manipulate dreams entirely and force the victim to witness any scenario it desires. Unless the target has immensely potent and self sustaining mental defenses set up to stop planetary-level psychics (psychics who can, in the least, influence events from across the distance of a large diameter planet), the nightmares may unequivocally result in the victim reverting into either a permanent vegetative state or violent lunacy, immediately losing their mind from fright as the Magna Pater fully claims them as a part of its transcendental nightmare. It can also inflict them with overnight Alzheimer's and dementia, entirely deteriorating their mental faculties over the course of a single dream. The Magna Pater's range may be limited to a thousand miles, but the concentration is in excess of planetary psychics. Furthermore, when the Magna Pater is in a state of stasis its reach is doubled.

~Sound: The Magna Pater can emit infrasonic and ultrasonic frequencies with incredible potency thanks to its specialized lungs and vocal organs. When just below the range of human hearing or at the limit of its vocal range, fifteen kilometers, it can make a typical male human feel uneasy, off-balance, and slightly nauseous. Within eighty yards it can match the frequency of a victim's eyeballs to create temporary blindness or gray spots, damage eardrums, induce vomiting, cause difficulty breathing and heavy drowsiness (can force an average man into unconsciousness after just few minutes), and severely affect balance to the point of the victim having great difficulty staying on their feet. At ten yards the effects can rupture eyeballs and eardrums, or even cause lethal cerebral hemorrhaging when used on the average male human.

~Stomach: As evidenced by its ability to immediately digest whatever it eats, the Magna Pater's stomach utilizes a lethal super acid that can dissolve any organic matter in mere seconds. Though typically this acid remains in the stomach, as the Magna Pater cannot mass produce its acid as easily as its saliva or mucous, it still weaponizes this asset. It can turn its stomach inside out to engulf difficult prey and digest them externally, a feat most consistently displayed by certain species of sea snails and starfish.

~Sex: The Magna Pater is able to mate with any organism larger than thirty kilos, regardless of gender or lack thereof. Its young are hundreds of malformed, inch-long worm creatures that die hours after squirming out of the victim's body through the skin. This ability has no biological prerogative, only instituted for the sake of cruelty.

~Mucous: The Magna Pater's most versatile and powerful asset. Its body mucous and saliva contain anticoagulant, cytotoxic, and bufotoxic properties. Those whom it bites or claws will suffer gradual necrosis, unstoppable bleeding, and fast-acting, nightmarish hallucinations. Supernatural forms of healing are drastically hindered where the Magna Pater's juices are concerned, the anticoagulant preventing even magic from clotting or regenerating blood cells, although the monster is immune to its own toxins.
The speed at which the bufotoxins take effect depends on how close the wound is to the head. As an example, were it to jab one of its claws into a large man, it would take roughly several minutes for the poison to take effect from a foot wound, and several seconds if the wound was near the head. Were the Magna Pater to inject a victim with its tongue (which can mass produce large amounts of saliva), even a blue whale would succumb in less than a minute if it were pierced in the center mass. The toxin has a median dose of (LD50) of 1.3–2.1 ng/kg, making it a top contender for the most potent toxin in the world.
The viscosity of the mucous can be regulated, allowing the Magna Pater to be extremely slippery or adhesive. The mucous at its stickiest can bind even the strongest of victims, partially deaden the momentum of heavy impacts, and tear off the skin and muscle of any victims that are unfortunate enough to come into contact with it.
The mucous is flame-retardant, boasting a stupidly high melting point and repelling most structural changes instituted by outside forces. So long as it has the mucous to do so, it can endure military flamethrowers, oil fires, and even a napalm bombing. The mucous is scentless and masks odors, provides an extraordinarily high resistance to electricity due to its non-conductivity and insulating properties, and bears an extremely low freezing point to act as extra insulation against low temperatures. When at its stickiest, it bonds on a molecular level to whatever it touches. The Magna Pater's body is the sole exception, the only matter that the slime doesn't fuse molecules with. Instead the slime clings to the monster like an exceptionally potent form of superglue, and is released from the Magna Pater's body when more layers of mucous are secreted beneath to uproot the first layer, in a word, "sloughing" off the slime.

It can convert and secrete up to twenty percent of its body weight in mucous at a rate of 16 liters per second, provided the entire body is producing the mucous. It becomes significantly faster when empty and can regain the weight by eating.

~Malocchio: 
It may use this power by shutting down its other senses. Before it uses the Malocchio, the intended victim(s) will have a brief premonition of the danger to come, a split second to avert their eyes. Those who see the Malocchio will see also a fragmentation of its true essence, and a connection will be made. It's a thoroughly foul experience with no proper comparison, though it could be (vaguely) referenced as psychic rape. Afterwards, each time the victim goes to sleep, they will enter a trance and begin moving in the direction of the Magna Pater, wherever it may be. They will awaken at the time they normally would, such as a few minutes for a nap and several hours for deep sleep. It also allows the Magna Pater to see with the eyes of its prey whenever it uses the Malocchio, even at the same time if there are multiple victims. By using the Malocchio on one who is already cursed, the victim's sight will be replaced with that of the Magna Pater's until it deactivates its eyes. As it shares the sight of any victims cursed by the Malocchio, this enables it to mix and match the eyes of any marked opponents or claim new victims of the Malocchio by proxy, requiring them to merely look into the eyes of a victim whilst the Malocchio is active. 
Furthermore, a victim of the Malocchio is highly subject to the Magna Pater's dream feelers. A thousand miles with the Malocchio is the same as three-hundred without, and so on.
The only way to break the Malocchio is to kill the Magna Pater's physical body.

The Malocchio is a passive curse that has no immediate negative effects unless the victim is entirely under the influence of the Magna Pater's hallucinogens, in which case the victim enters a 'waking dream' and may be immediately taken into the monster's nightmare, whereupon their mind is forfeit. If the bufotoxins haven't taken full effect then the victim will be considered only partially dreaming. The Magna Pater can influence these hallucinations with its dream feelers, but its degree of control depends on the progression of the toxins.

Looking into its eyes for too long can result in the victim's body becoming riddled with cancer at a later period in time, I.E developing prostate and skin cancer two years after the encounter. It takes roughly seven seconds of eye-to-eye contact (does not have to be constant) before the dormant cancer cells begin taking root.
The Magna Pater can only keep the Malocchio active for at most sixteen seconds, and cannot use it again until the same amount of time has passed. As an example, if it only uses it for ten seconds and then deactivates, then it must rest its eyes for ten seconds. The Magna Pater is able to travel to any realm or dimension that withholds a victim of the Malocchio as well, by way of entering through their subconscious and manifesting nearby. It cannot use this to reach a victim it already shares a realm with.

Those that are consumed by the Magna Pater whilst cursed by the Malocchio are reduced to their "essential salts", or "sleep sand" within its body, the physical manifestation of their very being reduced to salt-sized particles. The amount of sand attained from a single victim is always a little less than a single ounce, regardless of body size. Their consciousness is bound to these grains, and at the monster's whim it can excrete its victims dry through its hypodermic tongue and leave them to be forever lost in the earth as inert particles buried beneath the crushing weight of the ages, their last tormented memories and nightmares intermingling with the otherwordly virulence of the Dreamfather to form an intimate and inescapable hell. It may also deposit or blow the sand into the eyes of a victim to induce slumber, or if the victim lacks said orifices, the Magna Pater may simply inject them with the sand. Either method will always result in the victim losing consciousness after thirteen seconds, their motor functions and cognitive abilities degrading with every passing moment. The Magna Pater can only hold the sand of a single victim at a time. It always keeps the sand of its last victim in reserve.

Behavior/Personality: The Magna Pater is what a child thinks of when the word 'monster' occurs to them for the first time in their life during dead of night, the shadow of a warning cast by nature itself in synchronicity with the presence of a lifeform within its atmosphere that should never have existed. It makes no noise, has no mercy, cannot be reasoned with, and lives only to drain the blood and devour the flesh of all living things it can bind within its greasy wings. Despite its incalculable intelligence, it never makes any attempts to genuinely communicate with victims. It has no desire for social interaction or personal expression, being a life form beyond both concepts.

It enjoys all manner of prey and is especially inclined to go out of its way to find toddlers and infants, but it is shy and despises the light. It prefers to remain in damp pitch-blackness, where no eyes can spy it and no light can fall upon it. Areas that it has frequented for many years are imbued with a multitude of bad vibes, as could be felt in a grievously haunted house. Its lairs are moreso thickened with an underlying feeling of unreality, as if partly submerged in an eerie, malleable fantasy.

("The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.")

It frequently impregnates victims, keeping them alive until its malformed young are birthed. It often eats both the victim and the young, doing these things not for food but to inflict prolonged torment. The few who come into contact with it and live may never be the same as before, for above all else it is a creature of persistence, a malady made mobile. Even if one leaves the Magna Pater, it'll never leave them. A variety of lifelong physical complications and psychological ailments can stem from a meeting with it and it never stops pursuing its prey, regardless of where they may travel. It will also track down any living thing that leaves its scent on a victim. This leads to the Magna Pater consuming the families of those it hunts, along with anyone those families had come into recent physical contact with. Though one may travel often and abroad, once the Magna Pater has chosen a victim their fate is inevitable. It could take days, weeks, months, even years, but eventually on some cold and moonless evening one will awaken to see a sticky face with dead eyes peering through their bedroom window.

(Drawing found in the desk of ten year old Vidya Singh, who went missing in Kanpur, India, two months after claiming to have seen a demon in his backyard.)

History:

In truth it is a primal horror that represents the physical manifestation of an ethereal, reincarnating monster originating in and as a part of an eternal non-Euclidean nightmare extending past the boundaries of reality, a sentient nexus made from the bad dreams of gods once dreaded, but now long forgotten, gods that have never been affiliated with a human realm. The oldest literal translation of the creature's name, and the name of the nightmare (for it resides within itself) is that of the "Dreamfather". In order to fully influence other spheres with its presence, it must obey most of the natural and dimensional laws present. As such, it casts forth a tangible extension of itself. Through this physical presence it may gradually submit other lifeforms and habitats to its will and alter their fundamental states of being, laying claim to every body, mind, and soul that spends too much time nearby. The ancients avoided mention of its mortal titles in fear of drawing its attention from afar, instead referring to it as "The Sleeper of the Clandestine". Even in death it can live again when one-hundred years of incubation within its true form has passed, though it can't retain the memories of its previous life. Only can the Magna Pater be permanently stopped if its pneuma, its true state of being, is destroyed or sealed away. Though it's nigh impossible to destroy the full entity, which in and of itself exists in abstract form, the Magna Pater can be ultimately contained and potentially trapped forever by capturing its pneuma, which leaves its eyes when it dies, in a stone of turquoise weighing at least five pounds. Turquoise was regarded by Aztecs and Native Americans alike to be the holiest of stones, and infinitely more potent than a woven dreamcatcher at stifling nightmares. Such is the truth. When filled with the pneuma of an entity like the Magna Pater, turquoise becomes everlasting, immune to degeneration from time. The monster may still be set free if a being of sufficient power breaks the stone, though such a being would require spiritual energy greater than what is currently held by the entire human race combined.

The Magna Pater travels far and with little preference, drawn to whatever realm has foolishly called it via black magic. In Sumeria it was worshipped as an obscure and cruel deity to which countless sacrifices were made. Before the Seminole Wars it was dreaded by the Creek Indians, who gave it many names and forms, as it was too wicked a thing to exist under any one description. Even the most vile of devils balk at associating with it. Fortunately it is a petty thing, and despite the magnitude of its origins, it remains content to personally antagonize one victim at a time. It treasures existence, but only for the sadistic pleasures it can derive from bringing pain and grief to other living things. 

Though it lingers not permanently on this planet, it's anchored here during times of inactivity. Only, anchors tend to move from time to time. It's a concept rarely reckoned with except in bedside yarns spun by superstitious housewives of the old country. A mother who fears that should her twins venture out past the tree line where the porch light ends to play hide and seek, one of them might go missing while the other one, too late, realizes that it's no longer a sibling they're hiding from. Yes, mothers fear for their children. Out in the sticks, boys explore. It's what they do. They adventure, following wherever a fancy may lead. Out into vacant lots, under railways and through the boonies. Sometimes boys find small caves and cracks large enough to crawl through. These are hidey holes, but few boys hide in them. Always, the reason is because the possibility exists that the hidey hole is occupied. Cougars? Snakes? Yes, very often that's the case. Mother says to watch out for animal dens.

Sometimes, though, just sometimes...

There might be a hidey hole that wasn't there before, or isn't there anymore. One that travels. An opening to another place, a lonely place with a voice all its own. A crevasse five feet long and three feet wide. A soft wind churns out of the icy nether, a subterranean current that tousles the hair. It smells of mildew. Even a brave boy can hesitate, but the call of the secret is strong. It knows you by name, it beckons with fantastic mysteries. A lure, but not of the kind men set to catch fish. This lure pulls you down, not up. The blue sky transitions into a black void. It is too tight a fit to turn around. You can only back out, and all the while choose to either stare ahead or shut your eyes. To continue is to encounter a winding network, a sweating labyrinth of dolomite tunnels whose dimensions are identical to playhouse tubes. Some stretch for a hundred miles or more. Each one leads to the same place, and never back the way you came. The longer you remain in the tunnels, the more drunk you become. Your bearings fade, until there is naught but a dream of disorientation. The deeper you crawl, the more an oozing sweetness like that of a putrefying wound tints the air. Echoes so distant and dim that they could have been mistaken for tricks of the imagination trickle along the damp walls. Sooner or later, all will reach the end. 

For some it takes days, others minutes. Always they wind up in the lair. One-hundred and fifty feet high and three miles in diameter. Hulking stalactites and stalagmites bear witness to the supreme age of the chamber, a lichen hellscape of death and graverot. For all the lair's imposing size, every inch of the floor is concealed deep beneath a disorganized carpet of skeletons, wet with moss. Every other surface seems powdered with a strange talcum dust, whose scent is not a physical thing, but scarce, indecipherable emotions. In the middle, looming in the distance, is a hillock whose pinnacle nearly reaches the ceiling. At this point the muddled dream ends, and what feels to be a sick hallucination born from a lucid fever begins. The Sleeper of the Clandestine slumbers upon a towering butte of soggy bones, the bones of children, reigning over its decaying empire on a haphazard throne several thousand lives thick. It's too dark to see anything. You cannot see when the dread form, glazed over with black corpse moss, starts moving for the first time that year. Like ancient clockwork gears, like a reptile out of the cold, it needs to wind up, warm up, shrug off the drowsiness of hibernation. It always moves slowly at first, even clumsily. Bones can be heard rolling down the hill as the Sleeper stretches. Now and then it speaks, or seems to speak.

"Journeys end in lovers meeting."

-Shakespeare, Twelfth Night-

-Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House-

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