text: [Themes: Lovecraft, female protagonist]
  
  > Look around
  It is possible to feel claustrophobia out of doors. Sunlight fills the sky but somehow doesn't reach you here. Steep banks of bramble rise to the east and west, trapping you within a gloomy trough a dozen yards wide. A poorly-surfaced road leads north and south along the trough's nadir. Just west of it, camouflaged with rust, is the train track.
  
  A tremendous patch of milkweed, the stems abnormally thick and tall, grows on the east side of the road beneath the thorn bank.
  
  A green stone altar, once at the center of the shack, stands amidst broken boards and milkweed.
  
  (An earworm has lodged itself in your head.)
  
  > drop the earworm
  The earworm is seemingly resistant to all forms of interaction, and simply acknowledging it gives it strength:
  
  I get knocked down / but I get up again / you're never going to
  keep me down! Apparently Chumbawamba is still stuck in your head.
  
  [Author's note: messing with the earworm is entirely optional. Not that I would try to dissuade you from it!]
  
  > look at the altar
  A six-foot long and three-foot high altar of pale green stone, polished smooth. The sides are humped and bulged, suggesting poreless coral. The top is flat, and bears a shallow impression in the shape of a human body, with a slightly deeper cavity at the top for the face.
  
  > examine the impression
  It's the shape and size of a human body. For no reason you can name, you have the desire to get on the altar and lay yourself down in the impression; it seems your body would fit perfectly, as would, for that matter, your face fit nicely in the deeper cavity at the end.
  
  > get on the altar
  You get onto the stone altar.
  
  You lie down, settling your body into the impression and your face into the cavity at the end. The milkweed leaf mask protects your face from the strands of orange slime that you belatedly notice fill the cavity. Is it even you doing this? It feels like the most natural action in the world.
  
  As you press your face deeper into the cavity, your vision warps. The world seems to fold and buckle: what was convex becomes concave and what was concave becomes convex.
  
  The altar wobbles and inverts, giving you the bizarre sensation of lying atop a smooth green hole that floats in midair. Deeper within the hole is a shelf of green stone with several items resting (how?) on it.
  
  > look at shelf
  On the shelf are a postcard of Big Ben, a diary and an imaginary basalt sphere.
  
  > remove the mask
  You take off the giant milkweed leaf.
  
  > get on the altar
  You get onto the stone altar.
  
  You lie down, settling your body into the impression and your face into the cavity at the end. Is it even you doing this? It feels like the most natural action in the world.
  
  As you press your face down into the cavity, you feel something wet; your skin has met a tangle of slimy, orange strands that were growing inside the cavity.
  
  Your face turns numb. You are overtaken with convulsions, and the involuntary flailing of your limbs causes you to fall from the altar. The numbness spreads down your neck and across your torso as you lie frozen, body askew, at the base of the altar.
  
  It takes but a few hours for your whole body to be sheathed in wet, orange strands.
  
  Your breathing slows as your lungs gradually fill with fruiting bodies. Perhaps the slime reacts poorly to tears, as the last part to be overgrown with mold is your eyes, though eventually, as dusk falls, blurred orange tendrils knit themselves together at the edges of your vision. Their intricacy strikes you as ghastly and beautiful all at once.
  
  > examine ben
  A faded postcard with a picture of Big Ben on it. You'd guess the picture dates from the first quarter of the century.
  
  > examine DIARY
  A small brown book with embossed letters on the front, mostly worn away, spelling "DIARY". Inside it's filled with spidery letters in faded ink. According to the name inscribed inside the cover, this belonged to Phyllis Cragne.
  
  You think you remember your husband speaking of a "Great Aunt Phyl," a sprightly old lady who haunted his earliest memories and always wore tartan trousers.
  
  > examine the basalt
  It's a black stone sphere about the size of a basketball, and it doesn't really exist. There is (well, technically, there is not) a narrow slot on one side like that of a piggy-bank.
  
  > pull the string
  The doll intones: "Shun the stone altar! It is longer than it might appear!"
  
  > turn the head
  You rotate the doll's head, concealing its sinister face and exposing its insincere one.
  
  > pull the string
  The doll chirps, "I like the thing that isn't here! Yay!"
  
  There is a tinny sound of applause.
  
  > turn the head
  You rotate the doll's head. Its alternate face appears, scowling fiercely.
  
  > read the DIARY
  You read a few passages from near the beginning of the diary:
  
  "Danced with Freddy Morgan tonight. He's not the most graceful, but I'm hopeful he will improve. Tomorrow I leave for college."
  
  "How the professors scowl when they learn I'm a Cragne! I'm sure it would hurt my feelings, if they weren't all crusty old throwbacks with beards full of toast crumbs anyway."
  
  "Today in the sealed archives I found a most wonderful secret: evidence that the Court truly exists! One day I will join it -- I will make them let me -- and I will work harder than all the others who came before."
  
  You skim back and forth a bit, gathering that Phyllis Cragne was probably born around 1890, and that she started her archaeology studies at Ompompanoousuc College in 1918; she also seems to have become engaged to a local by the name of Frederick Morgan at around that same time.
  
  There's still a fair amount of the diary left; you could read more if you wanted to.
  
  > read DIARY
  You read a few passages from the middle of the diary:
  
  "It has finally happened! They extended an offer, and this morning, I accepted. I am looking forward to the fulfillment of my duties, particularly the travel necessitated by my new position. I wish I could persuade Freddy to come with me on at least one trip, but he's terrified of the ocean. I shall leave him to the calm waters of Vermont, with the promise to bring back a 'priceless antique' from each city I visit."
  
  "Received word of Freddy's accident."
  
  "Finished Prague. Turin, too. Magdeburg will wait until spring."
  
  You skim back and forth, gathering that during the 1920s and 30s Phyllis Cragne was often away from home on extended work trips. It was while she was on one such trip to London that Frederick Morgan was killed in a canoeing accident. Afterwards, and on through the 1950s, she spent even more time abroad, working tirelessly for the Court.
  
  There's still a small amount of the diary left; you could read more if you wanted to.
  
  > read the DIARY
  You read a few passages from near the end of the diary:
  
  "Bristletail greatly prefers the climate of Barcelona to that of Stockholm. I haven't informed her yet that next we must visit a ruined Norse colony in Greenland, where, it is rumored, the colonists briefly, and in desperation, worshipped Vaadignephod before all succumbing to the Black Death."
  
  "Bristletail shows an increasingly superb comprehension of Ancient Akkadian. Twice she has caught an error in my translations, saving me from not insignificant embarrassment."
  
  "Bristletail has grown stubborn in her old age, refusing to communicate with feral insects. She claims the act to be beneath her dignity. Still, I have never known a more capable archive assistant."
  
  You skim the text, reading of Phyllis Cragne's research. Throughout the 1960s she wrote frequently of Bristletail, her cunning familiar, which (who?) apparently took the form of an unusually large silverfish. It seems likely that Phyllis died in the early 70s, which correlates with Michael's early memories of Great Aunt Phyl.
  
  You've read the whole diary; you could read it again if you wanted to remind yourself of something.