Chapter Text
Journal entry I: The Clinic
I awoke to darkness and a single sound, a breath; I wasn’t sure if it was my own. Where was I? Who was I? Why was I here? From the quiet dark, a voice rang through “Oh, yes…Paleblood…”. My sight began to clear, like so many cobwebs being slowly torn away; a blurry sight came into focus. An ancient man in a yet more ancient wheeled chair garbed in old attire sat before me. concealed in the throws of shadow. A lantern hung somewhere exuding a dim warmth and light. He continued in a kindly voice. The sincere friendliness was unsettling; the tone was too youthful for his aged frame. “Ah yes, well you have come to the right place. Yharnam is the home of Blood Ministrations.” I noticed then that I was laying on some sort of table and strapped down by my appendages; I couldn’t move and had no power in my limbs.
“Min…istrations?” The words fell from lips with no strength and no sound, but he heard me all the same.
“Yes, you need only unravel its mysteries.” I began to notice his slow-rolling towards me. “But where is an outsider like yourself to begin?” Closer... “Easy! With a little Yharnam blood of your own…” He leaned over and for the first time I could see his pale face. His dirty ivory hair and beard were overgrown and unkempt; bandages covered his eyes though there were two bulges where sockets should have been. “But first, you’ll need a contract.” He pulled out a mirror from somewhere in his tattered garments and held it up to my face so all I could see were my own features. Panicked gray eyes matched by brown disheveled hair, high cheek bones and bone white skin which I wasn’t sure to attribute to my situation or my natural complexion. “Go on, give it a little breath.”
It was beyond my ability to resist and as my breath fogged the glass, I could see trace lines running through the clouded surface. I was only able to make out three letters before the mirror was yanked away. E L I. I knew it wasn’t the whole of my name, who I was, who I had been…but it was enough to fashion some sort of identity to cling to for now. Eli...
“Good! All signed and sealed.” The voice seemed to grow more excited “Let’s begin the transfusion.” He rolled away from me as slowly as he had come. “Oh don’t you worry.” He reached out with a hand that was far too thin and with a strength that should have been impossible, tilting my head to the ceiling. There I saw only darkness and a cylinder of crimson fluid that was tinted around the edges; a vicious bile hue. From that cylinder trailed a single snaking tube leading down, in my direction. “Whatever happens… you may think it all a mere bad dream...” He began to giggle hysterically like a child but with the wheezing of an old man. My vision began to blur and the world around me faded into a shallow oblivion. The last thing I recall was the small enclosed spaces and the taste of acrid metal.
The world came back to me slowly. I wasn’t sure if I was still sleeping but I began to see the room around me by the argent light that permeated through some cracks or windows high above, too faint to see. Some sort of sanitarium. I looked around with what movement I was able, and in doing so noticed blood seeping up from the many cracked floorboards. It exuded forth and the sanguine body grew ever larger in size and form. Then in one impossible nightmarish moment, one long broken claw emerged. Soon the rest of a monstrous form of something, some inhuman creature, rose from the crimson pool. A wolf built in man's image. Its flesh rotted away so that muscle and sinew formed pinkish contrast with the sable fur that covered large sections of its body. But this unholy nightmare was finished by the most ungodly aspect of it: two yellow pupil-less eyes lit by an inner glow, fueled by some hatred or hunger that I had no frame of understanding to comprehend. It pulled itself free from the pool drenched in gore and clawed its way across the floor to me.
I attempted with all my strength to break free of my bonds, but still no strength was in me. I watched helpless as the… thing reached out a single claw of bone. It almost seemed gentle, as if to caress rather than rend me. As it neared somewhere from deep within its hulking frame came a burst of light; a torrent of fire and howls of pain. The conflagration did not spread, save for in and throughout the creature and the pool was left untouched. As the monster fell to ash the room continued to fill with blood. Panic gripped me and even within my sheer terror and confusion many little white arms appeared around me. Many I could not see but could feel across my legs and arms, crawling on top and over me. The sensation tingles in me even now. Many small pale men, all deformed in unique ways, though all with mouths agape... crawled closer to a single center point, my head, my eyes. The ghouls began clambering over each other making terrible hissing sounds. Quickly they filled my vision until all the world was white and then black. Once more the world faded to nothing to that other side of the binary and to the comfort of non-remembrance.
In the darkness there was nothing but I could still feel my awareness, feel my mind trapped; the embrace of unmoored reality and apathetic entropy. Even in this dream, there was no haven. Somewhere deep in this abyss, I heard it. Like mother’s lullaby a harbor in a storm; I heard a single calm, slow, female... voice. “Ahhh, you have found yourself a hunter!”
I was awake then, though I don’t recall awakening. The room around me was dark and dilapidated. I found I was no longer bound and, slowly rising, I reasserted full control over my faculties. I was clothed but felt viciously naked. Sliding off my prior prison, I began to explore the room that had played as my whole world up until now. Rows upon rows of cabinets and shelves, floorboards cracked and missing with no trace of the blood from the vision that I hoped had been a dream. Swarms of beakers and test tubes, medical instruments of the common and uncommon sort and lingering dross of procedures or experiments I’d rather not dwell too long on. But perhaps most importantly was the single journal left on a vacant desk in the corner. It contained blank pages save for one single entry on the inside cover Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt. There it was again, the same word the chaired man had used. Paleblood; what was it? Why had my former self sought it?
I now write in this journal an account of my experiences, whether for my posterity or my own sanity it is something mundane and routine is a source of comfort. I fear that my understanding of the events around me will only lessen with time. There is a door before me now and the shadows on the walls are not enough to sate my curiosity; in spite of my unease, I must know what lies out there. I must end these nightmares or be so ended.