Episode 68: The Devil's Breath

In this episode we investigate the Devil's Breath, a supposed foul fog that blows off the Atlantic to plague the small town of Roque Bluffs every eighteen years. The mist causes disappearances, illness, and even death. What is this mysterious phenomenon and how is it related to one of America's earliest naval battles? Plus, the group shares their dreams...or should we saw nightmares.

Content Warning: mysterious illness, death, drowning, Satanic influences, speaking in tongues, loud noises, mysterious presence, dreams and nightmares, omens, warnings, puppets, black magic, cults, self-harm, dismembered body parts

Host: Chris Estes
Writers: Chris Estes
Senior Investigator: Tom Wilson
Senior Investigator: Lucas Knight

Senior Investigator: Megan Meadows

Senior Investigator: Mark Mercier

Sound Design: Chris Estes

Transcript

Malevolent Maine

Episode 68: The Devil’s Breath

Malevolent Maine is a horror podcast, and may contain material not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

INTRO: 

A potentially cursed piece of metal discovered by a blacksmith in the 1800s. A day where it rained frogs over one Maine town. And a family of people who only exist in the shadows of the home where they once lived. These are the cases coming your way in the next episodes.  

Hey all, it’s Chris. Here’s your every episode thanks and appreciation for listening. We work hard to bring you the best show we can, and we really appreciate you being here on this journey with us. It’s also your every episode reminder to like, follow, rate, and review this show wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us climb up through the evil algorithms and dark magics that power the internet. If you’re interested join our Malevolent Mob on Patreon, where you’ll gain access to all of our side-story limited series, our Malevolent Morsel deleted scenes, and more. Head over to patreon.com/malevolentmaine for more information. Okay…I think that’s it. On with the show…

The fog is thick all around you. There’s a heavy stench in the air, something acrid and sulfurous. You hear a sound behind you, a whisper in the mist. You whirl around but it’s gone. You hear it again coming from another direction. Then a third. It’s all around you. There’s something here in the fog with you. ANd it’s tugging at you, pulling you away from all you know. Will you go with it? Do you even have a choice?

This is Malevolent Maine.

Don’t hold your breath on this one, MMers…or maybe you should. Today’s case takes us to Roque Bluffs, a small coastal town in Washington County. Just south of Machias, this quaint town is home to a small state park, a kind but guarded population of around 300, and little else.

Unless, of course, you believe the local legends the residents will tell you if you can convince them to.

Roque Bluffs also has a special place in my heart. My grandfather took me to the State Park there several times when I was growing up, and I have fond memories of hiking the trails, canoeing Simpson Pond, and laying on the beach of Englishman Cove. I hadn’t been back in several years, prior to my investigation into this story, but even from my childhood, I remember the stories of the foul wind they called the Devil’s Breath.

No one in Roque Bluffs knows exactly how far back the strange wind began to blow through the streets, and with it the disappearances and terminal illness that followed, but most agree it has something to do with the old shipwreck just off the coast. 

On June 12, 1775, the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War took place off the coast of Machias. Residents of the fishing town captured the British ship Margaretta, which was attempting to buy lumber to aid the British in their occupation of Boston. A Maine vessel, the schooner, Eterne, was damaged in the battle, and before the crew could be rescued the ship sank off Roque Island, just across the bay from where Roque Bluffs came to be settled years later.

Stories claim that the drowned early American sailors rested uneasily in their watery graves. There are some who claim the sailors, in their final moments, renounced God for letting their vessel sink, and called to the Devil for aid.

Whether or not Satan answered their calls is unknown.

But every eighteen years or so, a foul wind blows in off the sea during the first month of summer. The locals describe it as sulfurous, like boiled eggs burned to a crisp in the fires of hell. Some have claimed to see a yellowish fog come in off the bay at night, though others disagree. They claim the stench, the so-called Devil’s Breath, isn’t something you can see, but feel, in your bones, in the dark of night when the dread creeps in.

The odor lasts for a day or two, three at most, and then dissipates, blown away on the summer breeze. But during that time, if Roque Bluffs is unfortunate, one of their own goes missing. Men, women, even children have all gone missing during the times when the Devil’s Breath blows. Usually it’s only one person, sometimes, like in 1955, two people, a young couple out on a moonlit stroll of the beach, disappeared. Some years, no one goes missing. Those years, the residents of Roque Bluffs considered themselves lucky. Whether it be the iron horseshoes people hang over their door or the sign of the evil eye they cast about before they go to bed, or perhaps nothing they have done at all, they all breathe a sigh of relief.

The alternative is much worse.

When someone from Roque Bluffs goes missing - and to be fair, there have been several tourists and visitors who go missing as well as full time residents - they always turn up, a few days later when the smell blows away and life begins to return to normal.

The returned have no memory of where they have been or of how much time has passed. They are often confused and disoriented. They mumble things about bright lights and deep shadows, but most of what they have to say about their time lost is completely nonsense. 

They are often pale and gaunt, as if they hadn’t eaten for weeks rather than the day or two they have been missing. They are weak and lethargic, and often begin speaking in tongues. With a few days of their return, the afflicted always succumb to their mysterious disease, collapsing and dying in fits of terror.

The aforementioned couple, twenty year old Barry Roy, and eighteen year old Bonnie Soucy, were found lying in the surf on the shore along Schoppee Point Road two days after they vanished in 1955. At first, the fisherman who found them thought they were dead, but when one of them made a noise, he quickly pulled them from the water to higher up on the beach before waving down a driver for help.

Roy and Soucy remain probably Roque Bluffs’ most famous victims of the Devil’s Breath. There was considerable interest in the story and it received lots of newspaper coverage at the time. Several experts tried to explain what happened to the local girl and the boy from away who had come to summer in the small Maine community. The most obvious one was drugs of some kind, but neither Roy nor Soucy were known to partake in anything, and none of their symptoms matched.

Another theory from a supposed “psychological expert” - their words, not ours - was that the couple most likely had been walking along the beach, perhaps at sunset, and fallen off a short cliff. They had sustained head trauma and suffered from amnesia as a result.

Father Michael Murphy, the Catholic priest at the nearby St. Mary’s Church believed otherwise. He had grown up in Roque Bluffs, attended seminary school in Bangor, and returned to take over the Catholic church. He knew the stories of the Devil’s Breath. In fact, he had lost a friend from grade school, Kevin Harris, to the strange phenomenon nearly forty years before the couple had disappeared and just as suddenly returned. 

When Father Murphy heard that the two had begun to speak nonsense in some strange language no one knew, he understood what he needed to do. Murphy attempted to cure the couple of the affliction. He spent countless hours praying over them, reading them holy scripture, even performing what we believe to be an unsanctioned exorcism on Bonnie Soucy. 

Father Murphy made extensive notes of his attempts to save the young adults. Most of what he recorded he kept in a black leather bound book. Several years ago we were able to purchase this book, along with several other pieces of Father Murphy’s experience as part of a church fundraiser. When the organizers realized some of the materials they were trying to sell were of a more… malevolent nature, we stepped in and purchased the documents.

More important than his notes, Father Murphy also used a tape recorder, still relatively new in 1955 to record what he believed was an actual case of speaking in tongues.

Glossolalia, more commonly known as speaking in tongues, is a practice where people utter sounds and syllables that do not match known language. This can be a language unknown to the individual, as when someone from Ohio suddenly starts speaking Mandarin with no prior knowledge. But in many cases the language the person speaks isn’t one that exists in the world at all, nor are they historic or ancient languages. They appear to be completely foreign to our reality. This has caused many to believe the language to be a spiritual gift, though whether from a benevolent or evil source, opinions differ.

During a session where Father Murphy prayed over Bonnie Soucy, perhaps mere hours before his unofficial exorcism, the priest recorded an incident where Soucy began speaking in tongues. We’ll play a snippet of that episode for you now:

BONNIE SOUCY: "Eztu’nal vekra’mon, shaii-molok, shaii-molok! Zan-duriel ek’tash varuun! Az’azouzis! Vash talokh ren'tha... ishnagoth zhuriel! Kas’thar... kas’thar vo’nedai! Shurak veloth!"

Less than twenty-four hours later, Bonnie Soucy was dead. Barry Roy predeceased her by about three hours.

Father Murphy passed away in 1997. He went to his grave believing that the missing couple had suffered the curse of the Devil’s Breath. In an interview done with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Murphy said he believed that the Devil had possessed the spirits of the drowned Revolutionary War sailors and every so often sent their souls out to find and corrupt more to add to the collection, Father Murphy believed that the smell, the strange wind off the sea would grow stronger and stronger over time as more and more fell victim to the foul disease, and that some day the Devil would strike out with such a force that all of Maine would be destroyed, if not the entire East Coast.

For now, what to do about the Devil’s Breath is unclear. After the events of last fall, we at Malevolent Maine had rededicated ourselves not just to uncovering the secret truths, but to combating the darkness that encroaches on our state. Where we can, we are attempting to undo the curses, to drive out the monsters, and cast off the spirits that haunt our home. 

What that means for the people of Roque Bluffs is anybody’s guess. For one thing, we’re not exactly sure the story of the drowned sailors is authentic. There is very little in the history books about the Battle of Machias, and even fewer references to the lost Eterne. First steps would be to find the sunken ship, lost somewhere beneath the waters of Englishman Bay. 

The cyclical nature of the Devil’s Breath suggests some sort of pattern, perhaps a nautical one. It could be that roughly every eighteen years a portion of the ship is uncovered by receding waters, releasing the curse upon the unsuspecting town. 

If we could find the location of the ship, we could examine the wreckage. If the sailors aboard the Eterne died horrible deaths, with anger on their conscience, there may be a way to ease that suffering, thereby breaking the curse. We know several rituals and ceremonies to cleanse whatever taint may be hanging over the wreckage and remains, but actually finding it remains the biggest hurdle.

Then again, it’s entirely possible that the story of the downed ship is a work of fiction. If that’s the case the cause of the foul wind may be something else entirely. It could be naturally occurring for all that we know. Though that doesn’t really explain the mysterious disappearances and illness. There are also scant historical reports of this. There are several that match the rough 18 year pattern that are documented in the 20th century, but before that, records get spotty. It doesn’t seem like this is just another urban legend passed down from generation to generation, but that;s entirely possible.

We, as a Malevolent Maine team, have committed to doing some exploration of the area this summer. According to the 18 year cycle we should be safe from the Devil’s Breath for another couple of years, so hopefully this gives us time to investigate, find the source of the corruption, and cleanse it before another victim falls prey to the curse. As always, we’ll keep you updated with what we find. 

Before we leave you for this episode, we have to talk about something that happened recently. As you know, we’ve been dealing with threats from Brother Magus of the Hermetic Brotherhood of the Cardinal Court, an occult order dedicated to blood rituals and advancing the belief in interdimensional beings who have secretly guided humanity and given those in the inner circle select knowledge to advance society. 

About a year ago, we came into possession of a black book that is part history of the HBCC, part blood magic grimoire. Brother Magus, the mysterious leader of this cult-like organization, discovered that we now have the book and has been demanding we return it to him, something we;ve decided we won’t be doing any time soon. At least, not until we can ascertain all of the book’s secrets and make sure it can’t be used for anything evil.

A few weeks back Brother Magus invaded our office. In our backroom he hid five dead doves, each bearing a charm with one of our names on it. In addition to somehow hacking our podcast recordings, this was a clear indication that he is capable of getting to us wherever and whenever he desires.

Well, it’s gotten worse.

Two nights ago, each one of us had our dreams invaded by Brother Magus. 

Dream manipulation is nothing new. In fact, there are plenty of ways individuals can manipulate dreams that don’t involve nefarious means. Hypnosis, therapy, even just trying to concentrate really hard on a subject can all influence the dreams you have. And of course there’s lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is the process of recognizing patterns and dreams and realizing you are actually in a dream, which gives you control over the dream environment.

This was definitely not that. 

This was something different; more akin to breaking and entering a home. Brother Magus was somehow able to infiltrate our dream state and deliver us unique visions. It is possible that all five of us dreamed about Magus organically, so to speak. Because the HBCC has been on our minds, each of us manifested the stress of dealing with this ongoing threat as a dream. However it seems unlikely it all would have been the same night with the same…language as each other. 

Each one of the team will share their dream with you. I’ll go first. 

In my dream, I was back in college, in the broadcast booth of the university’s radio station. It was dark inside and out. The small room was only lit by the weak glow of the control board and the flickering, faded “On Air” sign. I was flipping through tapes, like cassette tapes, looking for something. Music to play, I suppose, though when I worked there we definitely didn’t use tape for anything. All of the tapes were blank, no label, nothing, just that smoky translucent case and yards and yards of thin tape spooled inside. 

There wasn’t anything playing over the airwaves. The booth was silent except for my frantic flipping of the tapes. Something was wrong, I knew that. There should be music. I should be playing something. Something had either broken or wasn’t working right and I needed to fix it. I knew I should just unmute the microphone and start talking, but I couldn’t. It was like my voice had dried up in my throat. I needed to find the right tape. I needed to find it now. Dead air is bad, and this was all my fault.

And of course, it was only the final tape that was labeled. In smeared red ink it was labeled, “The Last Show.” In the dim glow of the studio, I couldn’t tell if it was marker or blood. With hands that shook, I reached out and slid the tape into the deck. It caught in place with a loud click that seemed to reverberate around the room.

I closed the door on the player and pressed play. The tape crackled to life and after a second or two of open air hiss, a distorted, garbled version of my own voice sounded.

“And now for our final guest… Brother Magus.”

The studio door behind me creaked open and I whirled around, expecting to see the cult leader, but there was nothing there; just heavy darkness. Then there were footsteps in the empty hallway outside, thunderous, sharp echoes that drilled into my brain. Something was coming closer, I could sense it, even if I couldn’t see anything.

I looked up at my own reflection, mirrored in the darkened glass of the studio’s big window. My reflection moved, not matching my own movements, but on its own, twitching and contorting. The reflection looked at me, its face opened in a silent scream that I could feel.

Then the board lit up - greens and yellows and reds. The hum of the open line grew louder, almost deafening. The sound drilled down through my headphones into my ears. It was too loud. Too loud. The speakers were going to blow. The board was going red.

I stared at the speaker, and it was vibrating, literally shaking, and suddenly, I saw hands inside of it. The claw-like fingers hooked onto the mesh grille of the speaker and started shaking it, like it was trying to rip free.

And then the voice. That awful, growling, deep voice from beyond time. 

BROTHER MAGUS: Return what was lost, or we will rewrite your story.

The sound was deafening, rumbling through my headphones, shaking the glass in the window, the ground beneath my feet. Then I was screaming too, mimicking my twisted reflection. I dropped to my knees, clutching at my ears, but the sound - the echo of that terrible nightmare voice - kept going. On and on and on. 

I woke up, the scream drying up in my throat. Beside me, an old radio alarm clock I hardly ever use was turned on, broadcasting low static.

TOM: So there I was walking through this forest at night. But, like, I thought the woods looked familiar, and the more I kept walking, the more convinced I was that this was the woods behind my childhood home. But…there was something wrong. The trees weren’t right. They were thin, twisted things, and their gnarled limbs were covered in what looked like veins. I thought I could see a pulse beating beneath the surface of some of the trees, but I couldn’t look at any one tree for long. 

There were strings. Or what looked like strings. Coming off the tree branches. They were thick white cords, but they didn’t hang down. They went straight up into the sky. And the sky… it was all black. Not like it was cloudy, the sky was clear but it was just… black. No stars at all, just these strings stretching up, impossibly tall, as if the whole forest was suspended on these white ropes.

I kept walking. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to stop, to turn around, anything, but I couldn't. All I could do was keep walking forward.

That’s when I realized there were things tangled in the trees. They were small, but human shaped. I could see the silhouettes of torsos and arms and legs. They all hung there, suspended in the trees. I don’t know if it was the strings or not, but these things were hanging there.

I got closer to one and saw it was a marionette, a wooden puppet with its strings all tangled around the tree branch. There was something familiar about the way the puppet was dressed. Then I realized it was dressed like me. Its wooden head dangled down, lifeless, so I couldn’t see its face, but I knew…deep in the pit of my stomach, I knew it was me. 

Then all of a sudden, its head jerked up and it stared at me with fiery blue eyes. It reached for me with small wooden hands and it rasped in a voice that came from a millenia ago.

BROTHER MAGUS: You were never in control.

TOM: The strings above twitched and I felt something coil around my wrists, my ankles, my neck. I struggled, but the strings were too strong, and slowly they began to lift me off my feet, pulling me upward. 

I was going up, higher and higher, and there, just at the forest’s edge, was a shadowy figure, more darkness than substance. I don’t know if he was a marionette too, or if he moved free of the strings that kept tugging at me. But it’s hand…that thing's hand, twisted and clawed, kept twitching, like it was controlling the strings that pulled me.

Then it spoke, and it was the puppet’s voice, too, and it was all around me, echoing through me.

BROTHER MAGUS: Return what was lost, or I will pull your strings next.

TOM: I wanted to scream; I tried to, but the strings held me too tight. They kept pulling and pulling and I thought they might rip me apart. And then… then I woke up in my bed. The sheets were tangled all around me. 

LUCAS: In my dream, I was sitting at this long, elegant dining table in an unfamiliar house. The table was beautifully set with candelabras placed in the center. Fine china plates and crystal goblets filled with dark liquid marked thirteen places around the table, fourteen including mine. My own plate was covered with one of those silver dome covers. I wanted to reach out, to see what was beneath, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew I had to wait. For who or for what, I didn’t know, but I had that feeling like I was supposed to wait.

The air was cool, like the house was drafty, but the longer I sat there, the warmer it got. I could hear the sound of a crackling fire somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. The only light came from the flickering candles, and deep shadows hung all about the room.  

Suddenly, the chair across from me slid out on its own. It drew back into the darkness, so most of it was hidden. I knew it was empty, I knew there was no one in the chair, but somehow, a long, shadowy arm emerged, and at the end of it, one pale, crooked hand. It gestured to me, to the covered plate. Whatever I had been waiting for, had arrived.

I reached out and when I touched the dome over my dish, despite the heat that had grown almost too intense to bear, I suddenly got a chill down my spine. The silver metal was icy to the touch. Still, I knew what I had to do. I pulled it away from the dish.

On the plate was a black book, leatherbound, and with pages as dark as midnight. The pages flipped wildly about, all on their own, back and forth, creating a wave-life effect that felt almost hypnotic. Words written in some glowing red ink appeared, then disappeared as the pages flipped, making them look like worms crawling over the blackened pages. I tried to read them, but they spidered away, dissolving before I could make them out. 

Then a sentence formed, and I was convinced the letters on the page were living things, wriggling into position. I read the words and at the same time, heard them spoken inside my head in an icy, menacing voice.

BROTHER MAGUS: You have always been meant for more.

LUCAS: At that, the candles dimmed, almost went out, and the darkness grew. The voice from the shadows coiled all around me like smoke. I knew who it was, but I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t say his name out loud. The voice wormed its way into my head, like a snake slithering through the grass, hiding from its prey. It spoke again and I felt tears on my face, though I didn’t remember when I had started crying.

BROTHER MAGUS: Return what was lost… or claim the consequence.

LUCAS: I woke up with a strange taste in my mouth, something metallic and harsh. And even though my room was empty, I had the distinct feeling someone had just been there, sitting at the foot of my bed, watching me. 

MEGAN: I don’t know how I got there, but I was walking through a massive, darkened museum. I’m the only one there, and lots of the exhibits are covered in drop cloths. The ones I can see all seem to be about people and places I know. There’s one for my sister, a whole display of clothes me and my friends wore in high school. There’s a life size recreation of the dock at my grandparents’ house. I can’t see the walls of this place or the ceilings. It’s huge. Everything sort of fades to shadow. So I just keep walking. I can hear my footsteps clicking on the stone tiles.

I’m moving towards the center of the museum. I know that, even though I don’t have a map and I haven’t been here before. In the middle of the room, under a soft spotlight, is this big glass display case on a black pedestal. The case is all foggy, and I can’t see what’s in there. I’m drawn to the case, but at the same time I’m starting to dread it. I can feel something in my stomach - not sickness, but that unease, that stabbing feeling inside, that means something isn’t right. But I keep going forward, I keep moving towards that case because now I have to see what’s in there. I have to know what’s so special it's here in the center of all of this.

With a hand that doesn’t even feel like it’s mine, like it’s a hundred miles away, I reach out and I wipe away some of the condensation on the glass case. There’s a bang on the glass and a hand shoots out of the fog or whatever is in there. It presses against the glass, right where my hand was. And I recognize that hand. The chipped, dark red nail polish, the small silver ring on the index finger.

It’s my hand. I’m trapped inside the case.

And when that thought crystalizes in my mind, when it becomes real, a face - my face - presses up against the glass, peering out with wide eyes through the spot I’ve wiped away. The me inside the case is dirty, her hair is greasy and hangs all around her face. Her eyes are bloodshot and darting all around. There’s something wild about her, something mad.

Her mouth opens and I can hear her scream, even though the museum is still silent. The me trapped behind glass starts pounding on the case, smashing her fists into it again and again, but I can’t hear anything. Not even the muffled thuds of her fists striking the case.

Suddenly a booming cracking sound echoes throughout the room and a thin line appears on the glass. The crack is like thunder, reverberating all around me, and inside that thunder, that rumble, I can hear a voice speaking to me.

BROTHER MAGUS: Do you really think you’re on the outside looking in?

MEGAN: Now the trapped me smashes her face into the cracked glass. She looks up at me, blood beginning to flow from a cut on her head. And she smiles - a slow, knowing grin. Then she smashes her head again and again against the glass. The crack turns into a spider web and she keeps banging her head again and again, smearing blood on the inside of the case.

The voice speaks again and I can’t tell if it’s in my ears or directly in my mind.

BROTHER MAGUS: Return what was taken, or this will be your final case.

MEGAN: Then the glass case shatters in a deafening spray of glass shards. Now I can hear the trapped me screaming, and I realize I’m screaming along with her. Or maybe I am her. Maybe I was her the whole time.

I woke up, and I thought for sure the mirror by my bed was going to be smashed. That I had heard the sound in my sleep, and… I don’t know…dreamed the whole thing. But no…the mirror was fine. Except…there were faint handprints… on the inside. 

MARK: Listen, I played a little football in high school. Nothing major. We didn’t win the state championship or anything, and I wasn’t exactly the star of the team. But in this dream, I was back in my old high school locker room. At least, I think that’s where it was. It looked like it, but…it sort of didn’t. I don’t know how to describe it, but it had that dream-logic where I knew this was my old locker room, even if there were things that were…off.

The lights, those long fluorescent tubes, were flickering, like in every horror movie, and they cast these long, deep shadows about the edges of the room. The air was thick with mildew and something metallic… was it blood? I don’t know. 

All of the lockers were closed, but as I stepped into the middle of the room, one on the far wall creaked open on rusty hinges. It was my locker. I knew that in the dream, even though I don’t think it actually was when I played. 

And then I’m across the room, looking down into the locker. I don’t remember walking across the empty locker room; I’m just there. And the locker isn’t…exactly a locker, anymore. I don’t really know how to explain it, but the dimensions are wrong. Like, I’m looking down into the locker, and it’s not this skinny metal cubby, but it’s bigger on the inside, like a small closet, I guess?

There’s a pile of football pads and gear on the floor. They’re dirty and used, scuffed up. But they’re not on the floor, exactly. They’re piled on top of…something. It’s moving, and the pads are shaking and jumping all about. And when I look closer it’s… it’s this writhing heap of fingers, all blackened, and they’re twitching and flexing like they’re searching for something.

I look up, somehow tearing my eyes away from this mass of thrashing fingers. There’s a helmet on the shelf. It has one of those visors in it, and when I look, I see my own reflection in it, but it’s moving all on its own, not reflecting me. The reflection sees me and grins…it’s that wolfish grin I remember seeing on my face last year…when… when…I wasn’t me.

Then the reflection speaks, and it’s this terrible rumble that I feel in my chest as much as I hear it. It’s not my voice, but something different, something older, darker.

BROTHER MAGUS: Some things are best left buried, but you went and dug them up.

MARK: Then the fingers begin crawling towards me, stretching impossibly long, like subterranean worms, reaching for my legs, hooking into claws and scrambling for purchase. I tried to jump back, but the fingers keep coming, reaching, reaching out for me.

And that voice comes again, impossibly loud, shaking the entire locker room. The doors to all the lockers tear open and are slamming back and forth with the power of the voice, but somehow I can still hear it perfectly over all that terrible noise.

BROTHER MAGUS: Return what was lost, or you will play a game you cannot win.

MARK: I’m running then, but those fingers are right behind me, and I know when they get me, they’re going to pull me back, back to that locker, or closet, or whatever it is. They’re going to pull me down into the grime. And they’re going to tear. So I scream, but my scream becomes a yawning hole and I’m falling into darkness.

Then I woke up. And I swear, in that split second before I’m fully conscious, I heard something, some metal scraping sound coming from my room. But when I woke up, there was nothing there.

Obviously, these dreams aren’t a coincidence. There are several consistent details that make these more than just the wild imaginings of sleep stuff. For starters, Brother Magus appears in all of the dreams, or at least his voice does. In all of the dreams he threatens us to return what we have, namely the Black Book, or something terrible will happen. 

More than that though, there is also the imagery of the hands. In all of our dreams, we each mentioned something about hands. Whether it’s Tom’s marionette-wielding cloaked figure, Megan’s double banging on the glass, or Mark’s writhing finger-worms, it seems like Magus is trying to insinuate he’s the one pulling the strings, so to speak; he’s the one in control.

We all woke up believing something physical, something real had happened in our rooms. In some cases there was actual proof of this - the radio in my room, the hand prints inside Megan’s mirror. In other cases it was more of an impression that some presence had only recently been there.

Brother Magus is targeting us now, and that must mean we’re getting closer to the truth or some secret he doesn’t want us to expose. 

For now, a few bad dreams seems like a minor inconvenience for uncovering whatever dark secret Magus is hiding. We’ve all put up some dream catchers and drew some protective wards in our bedrooms. We’re hoping these will keep out Magus’s nocturnal invasions for now.

But we’re getting close, MMers. And we’re not going to let him stop us.

As always, we’ll…

Stay safe out there, Maine.