I told you when I started writing this whole thing that I didn't know any better, that none of us did. I still don't think we know anything about anything else, better than anyone else, but I can tell you that some of that previous statement was a lie. We didn't know better at the start, but when we did, when we learned... we should have ended. And we didn't. Maybe we're all fools for that, or maybe we're heroes for that. I don't think we're both, or either, really. All I think we ultimately were, were pieces in a puzzle greater than ourselves. Pieces that knew we fit into that puzzle. Pieces that Nyarlathotep knew fit into his puzzle.
Pieces with nothing left to show for it, other than several of us dead and insane, and a world that keeps turning, a world that doesn't really understand how close it came to death. A world that was shattered by another Great War, the stock market crashing, fascist dictatorships, and desolation. Was it worth saving, I wonder, if all this is the price? The war is over now - they say that Hitler killed himself in his bunker just last year, a small price to pay for the Nazis raiding London. They say that this past summer, the army boys took out Japan with a bomb capable of leveling cities, all because of atomic fission. They say now that radiation is the future, and I wonder who might have told them such a thing to make them believe it. They say, they say, they say... Do any of us ever learn?
It's been twenty years since the eclipse, and I'm older now, and wiser. An established professor of archaeology, having taken over the former Penhew Foundation. Nobody remembers it used to be called that anymore, nobody knows the hell that almost was and that I helped end. I'm just one more old man, perhaps with shell shock from the Great War. I hear they call it the First World War now, or that's what they're teaching children these days. It's strange - you think you know the world, and then something comes along that changes it all. Order becomes chaos, things fall apart, and the center fails to hold. I honestly wonder if letting Nyarlathotep succeed would have been better, but in my heart, I know the truth. It would have been worse. So very, very much worse.
Sometimes, Enala writes me. She's in her last days now, but she tells me she has built up a sizable following of younger Aboriginals, taught them the magics she has studied. She's a hero to those young men and women, but I pray to God she uses it for good. She seemed the most mentally stable of us all. Then again, so did Dr. Hildebrand when I last saw him, before he lost his mind. I hear he is doing better now, but isn't as well as he was. When the Nazis began to close out the state madhouses and ship their patients out, some brave soul managed to smuggle him out of Germany. I don't know how, but apparently they convinced him they were his dead wife, and he's in a mental facility in Yorkshire now. I haven't gotten the chance to see him, but from what I understand he's at least stopped screaming. Last I know, he was about to undergo a lobotomy, hopefully to fix his shattered mind. Maybe someday, he'll be alright again. Somehow, I doubt he will ever be the man he once was, and it pains me to know he lives such a broken life.
Sometimes, I look out at the stars, and I shudder. The same stars that I know Francis and Muuzaji still fly under, together, somewhere on earth. They never got rid of the wanderlust. They write to me sometimes, send me things they uncover on their travels. When they find things stranger and more dangerous, I hide them. Nobody knows what I've done with Gavigan's hidden room, how it stores the artifacts I've found on my travels, how it holds knowledge of things greater than ourselves. It's my duty to protect it now, my duty to serve the public behind the scenes as leader of the Byrd Foundation for Archaeological Preservation, of Tottenham Court in London. Nobody should have that knowledge, and nobody should be able to use it. It's worse than the atom bomb. It's worse than anything a human could ever do to another... and yet, is it?
It's been twenty years since the eclipse, and sometimes, I miss that year of adventure. That year of living dangerously. I wouldn't have given it up for the world, despite the hell it put me through. I met people, I changed lives, and I made a difference. Nobody will ever credit me for that, but I know, and the few who read this journal will know, and that's enough for me. I doubt those who find it after my death will believe it, but at least the story was told. The real story, the Apocalypse That Almost Was. Maybe it will help others caught in Nyarlathotep's twisted web, those who took his offer without knowing, accepted his game. Maybe even now, there are another five people chasing across the world in vengeance for a man they're convinced they're friends with, a man named Jackson Elias, a man who was never really a man at all. If they find me, I will tell them. Part of me hopes they do not. But then, part of me... hopes that they do. I miss the excitement, and the adrenaline, because I was never one to settle down.
I think Nyarlathotep knows that as well, because last night, I had a very strange and troubling dream. A dark dream, a dream the likes of which I haven't had in twenty years. I was in the chess room, with Francis, and Muuzaji, and Enala and Dr. Hildebrand. As we once were, back then, when we didn't know any better. The board was set, the pieces ready to begin. The white pawns were not chosen yet, they were nothing. But the black pawns, they looked like us. And betwixt those statues of onyx strode Nyarlathotep, His guise that of Jackson Elias, His eyes gleaming like twin obsidian jewels of malice, His mouth turned upward into a capricious smirk. He brought with Him Sarah, and she was dressed as a queen of the Nile. Beautiful. Radiant. Her hand rested on her belly, a slight look of contentment as she did so. None of us spoke for a very long time, until finally, He did. "Hello again," He murmured in that silver-tinged sable voice of His, as if speaking to old friends. "Would you like to play a game?"
None of us spoke. I woke from that dream in a cold sweat, terrified it was about to begin again before realizing... adventure is in my blood. Adventure is what I want. But like this? I don't know. I'm not sure I want to. I don't want to be His pawn again, this time on the side of wickedness. I don't want to be used... do I? I'm not sure if He will offer again. I'm afraid He will, and I'm afraid He will not.
Would you like to play a game? Such a simple question, and yet it's not, is it? It's not simple. It's not even a question. I think this will be my final entry into this journal, before I leave it in the hidden room for good. Before I leave it, and let my future actions speak for themselves. I already know my answer to Nyarlathotep's final query. I've always known. And as ever, the question remains, haunting and final.
Would you like to play a game?
-- Professor Clayton Byrd, Archeologist (January 16, 1949)