June 6th, 1916. Wych Cross, England.

"Wake up, Sir. We're here." The driver said as he pulled the Model T into the driveway of the sprawling Burgess Estate.

"Already?" replied the old man with a yawn. "I must've dozed off."

He exits the vehicle and removes his top hat, wiping a bead of nervous sweat from his brow as he climbed the steps to the front door.

"Good afternoon, Sir." The servant greeted him professionally upon opening the entryway.

"Good Afternoon. My name is Hathaway. Doctor John Hathaway." stated the old man. "Can I, uh, Is Mr. Burgess available?"

"The Master is in his study, Sir. Please follow me."....




..."Doctor Hathaway! What an unexpected pleasure!" Mr. Burgess said as he turned to his gaze to the elderly man. "Compton. Some tea for our guest."

"Please, take a seat."

The two gentlemen crossed the opulent room together and took opposing seats by the fireplace.

"So. I take it you have reconsidered?" Mr. Burgess asked with a smile that never reached his eyes.

"After our meeting at the museum," Dr. Hathaway began, nervousness shaking his voice. "I...I know what I said, but...My Son. Edmond. I received a telegram this morning. His Destroyer was sunk last week off Jutland." He paused for a breath. "He's dead."

"I brought you the book. I had to." the Doctor said as he took the artifact from his briefcase with a shaky hand and passed it to the man across from him. "If what you were telling me was true...and it is true, isn't it?...about Death?"

"Quite true, Dr. Hathaway." Mr. Burgess replied, relieving the old man of the dusty tome.

Examining the ancient volume in the firelight, He speaks as a true smile crawls across his face. "The Magdalene Grimoire was all that the Order needed. We can hold the ceremony at the next full moon...And then...no one ever need die again."

Ellie Marsten listens to her bedtime story as her nanny reads by the candlelight:

"...said Tweedledum. 'When you know know you're only one of the things in his dream...You know very well you're not real'"

She knows it is only meant to entertain her.

...It terrifies her instead.

In his Father's Inn, Daniel Bustamonte sleeps. The shouts and songs of drunken adults do not shake his slumber.

He dreams of a castle in the air, above the Blue Mountians.

...A castle made of clouds.

Stefan Wasserman goes over the top again tonight as soon as it's dark. He never dreamed war would be like this. No one ever told him.

He lied about his age to enlist.

...He's almost fourteen.

Unity Kinkaid tosses between linen sheets. She dreams of a tall, dark man. His eyes burn like twin stars in her head. She mutters and whimpers; lost in a world beyond her understanding.

...Unity dreams.

Roderick Burgess's waking dreams are of power and glory...and of Death, of course.

...Especially Death.

The boy approached Mr. Burgess in his study. "It's Midnight; it's time." he said.

"Time." Burgess mused. "Ahh...No one has even attempted what we will achieve tonight. To summon and imprison Death." Grabbing the tome, he rose and began to make his way down to the cellar. "This will be a triumph for the Order, eh Alex?"

"Yes, Father" replied the boy.

"Father?" Burgess asked with a disapproving glance.

"Magus" the boy corrected himself sheepishly.

Just outside the chamber door. The Magus dons his robes and begins to ruminate aloud. "After tonight, I'd like to see Aleister and his friends try to make fun of me! They will make no more jokes, Alex, when Death is at my command...and I have the Magdalene Grimoire. Poor Professor Hathaway...even if we fail tonight, my son, Hathaway gave us the book. He'll be in our sway forever. The Royal Museum will be ours to plunder."

"Poor old fool." he concluded with a genuine smile.

"Everything is ready for the ceremony, Magus." one of the apostles said to Burgess in greeting as he entered the ritual chamber.

"Good." he said in reply. "To your places then...Let us begin."

He stands at the head of the mystic circle. For a moment, Roderick Burgess is scared. He thinks of the effrontery of his action: To capture Death...to bind the Reaper. For a moment he hesitates...but only for a moment.

"I give you a coin I made from a stone." he begins. "I give you a song I stole from the dirt."

"I give you a knife from under the hills and a stick that I stuck through a dead man's eye!"

"I give you a claw from a rat. I give you a name, and the name is lost."

With his left hand, he grasps the hilt of a dagger and digs it into his right forearm. "I give you blood from out of my vein, and a feather I pulled from an angels wing!"

As he places the ritual offerings into the circle, the words of the spell toll inside his head. Burgess realizes he couldn't stop now even if he wanted to.

"I call you with names my Lord! I summon with poison and I summon with pain! I open the way and I open the gates!...Come."

The apostles surrounding the circle begin to chant repeatedly: 'Come. Come. Come. Come.'

"I summon you in the names of the old lords!" the Magus continues. "Namtar. Allatu. Morax. Naberius. Klesh. Vepar. Maymon...We summon!"

As the offerings begin to catch fire, the chanting grows louder. 'Come! Come! Come! Come!'

"Ashema-Deva calls you! Maborum calls you! Horvendile calls you! From the dark they call you...from into the dark they call you!"

"Coin and song, knife and stick! here in the darkness...here in the darkness..."

The chanting rises in intensity as the fire burns hotter.

"Here in the darkness...here in the darkness..."

Within the circle, the air itself begins to burn.

"Claw and name! Blood and feather! The Magus continues. Here in the darkness...We summon you, TOGETHER"

"COME!!"




The air explodes with the force of a sonic boom and a figure lies unconscious within the circle.

"We did it." one apostle whispered to his neighbor. "I don't believe it. we did it."

They all stood for a long moment, shocked and wordless and amazed.

Except for Burgess. "No. We Failed." he said. The disappointment dripped from his words like bile. "This isn't Death. Damn it to Hell!"

"Even so..." he continued, as he began to remove the clothing and a number of objects off of the unconscious figure. "...I think...at the end of the day--this will have been a very profitable evenings work."

In her chair by the window, Ellie Marsten falls asleep into her favorite book. Her father carried her to bed.

...She never woke up.

Daniel Bustamonte returns to his best dream, but this time the clouds are flimsy, frail, less real...and then the clouds aren't there at all.

...Too scared to sleep, he sobs to keep himself awake until dawn.

Stefan's case is new to the doctors. They thought they've seen every form of shellshock. How long can a boy go without sleeping? When do the nightmares sneak out into the daylight?
The morphine is proving useless...It's sad.

...Stefan Wasserman went over the top.

Unity Kinkaid finds it harder and harder to stay awake. She now sleeps for almost twenty hours a day. She used to dream; to shift in her sleep, muttering and sighing, locked in half-remembered fantasies...Now she lies unmoving, breath shallow and silent, lost to the world.

...Unity sleeps.

The thing in the circle sits quietly.

It watches the door to the ritual chamber open as Burgess, his son Alex and a few others enter the room past the guards to gawk.

Roderick Burgess looks it in the eye and begins to speak. "As you see, the circle traps you incorporeally; imprisoning your material aspect. You won't get out unless the circle is broken, and the circle will not be broken unless I order it."

"Soon, we will discuss the conditions of your release." he concluded arrogantly and then exited the chamber with his entourage.

The Great War Two years in the past: An overdue stocktaking reveals the loss of books and manuscripts from the Royal Museum. Professor John Hathaway, Senior Curator, comes under suspicion.

He walks the museum after hours with the weight of a heavy heart. "You're a bastard Roderick Burgess; I was a fool." he thinks aloud to himself. "I was a fool to think you could replace Edmond. I was a fool to have given you that damned book."

Reaching his intended destination, he removes a centuries old Scottish dirk from its display case.

"You've bled me dry, but you can't blackmail me any longer." he continues aloud, gripping the hilt of the blade. "Damn you to Hell, Burgess and alas...I'm certain you will meet me there."


Professor Hathaway's use of a museum artifact in his suicide confirmed speculation that he was mentally unbalanced. read a newspaper article printed a number of months later. No suicide note was found.

At the inquest, accusations were made linking Hathaway to Roderick Burgess "The Lord Magus" and his "Order of Ancient Mysteries." Nothing could be proven and was cleared due to lack of evidence. The self-styled "Daemon King" refused to comment.

The 'Sleepy Sickness' as it was called, continued to spread across the globe. People fell asleep and did not wake up. They lived their lives like sleepwalkers; eating if fed, sometimes talking nonsense, dream-stuff...'Psychic residue from the Great War', some suggested. Others, doctors and scientists, more sensibly attributed it to a virus.

Unable to sleep himself, Stefan Wasserman killed himself a year after his discharge from the army.

...He was sixteen.