The Stars Are Right

Chad Sylvester has been a patient at a mental institution in Arkham for nearly 80 years. In a catatonic state, Sylvester only awakens from this state for one night every thirty years. On each of these nights he acts in a very bizarre manner and bizarre things happen in the surrounding countryside. Sylvester’s condition developed after he got lost in the woods on a hunting trip and was stricken with fear and hysteria over something that he had witnessed in the woods but did not dare speak of.

Possibilities

1 Chad Sylvester was the first and only human being to ever see the great Hastur the unspeakable in his true form. Permanently stricken with catatonia, Sylvester only returns to his senses every thirty years when the great Hastur visits earth in his true form.

2 For unspeakable reasons of their own, the mi-go took Sylvester’s brain to Yuggoth. They replaced it with an artificial brain and the body was placed in an institution staffed by allies of the mi-go. Every thirty years the mi-go return his brain to his true body for a short period of time.

3 Sylvester accidently breached the barriers between the dream world and the waking world. This gateway is only open every thirty years and he is forced to return to his body for one night every thirty years or he risks becoming ungrounded from the laws of reality and drifting forever in limbo between our world and the dream world.

© Paul Comeau