Power Trip

The investigators visit the house a leading member (and medium) of an organisation of psychics and mediums near Arkham. When they arrive they find that the house is surrounded by dead birds, insects and other animal corpses - in fact, every sentient creature in a radius of about one mile has died from massive internal trauma.

Photo credit

The door is unlocked, and the body of the butler lies in the hall. The medium lies in their drawing room, behind a camera set up on a tripod. All the furniture in this room is smashed, as if dropped from a height. The camera film, when developed, shows a strange man apparently levitating all the furniture in the room up to the ceiling. There is no sign of the man at the scene.

Soon afterwards, the investigators hear of a train crash in Arkham. Everyone on the train has died horribly in a similar manner - except one survivor, the mystery man from the photograph.

Possibilities

1 The mystery man is human, and a powerful psychic. However, his mind is vulnerable to a mental entity that is trying to take him over. He contacted the medium in an attempt to get help, since she is an expert in psychic phenomena. While he demonstrated his powers by levitating her furniture, the creature broke through and unleashed a lethal mental attack that killed everything around the house. He believes that the entity will unleash an even more terrible attack on his death, and he is trying to reach the coast so that he can steal a boat and take it far enough from civilisation before he commits suicide. However, his powers are desired by the US government, who have sent agents to kidnap him from Arkham.

2 The man is actually an alien being who feeds on mental energy. His levitation demonstration was a side effect of the huge energy flow while he drank the souls from the surrounding life forms. He must be stopped - and others of his species are trying to do just that. He is regarded as highly dangerous on his home planet and others of his species have come to take him home. He has gone into hiding in Arkham, and must be found before he needs to feed again.

3 The man is a tulpa - a projected body, which the medium had created from mental energy. His power is enormous, but the ritual required to animate him drained life from the surroundings, pouring it into the new body. The levitation was simply a side effect of this energy flow. The tulpa is now trying to create others of his kind, using the energy of entire trainloads of humans. If he is able to do this again, it will be the end for Arkham - and now, after the train incident, there is more than one of his kind...

© James David Beard