
Recorded by: Caldwell Thorne
First Contact: March, 1947
Method: Veil Induction / Dream-Encoded Summons
[Handwritten Note – Caldwell’s Clarification]
Re: “Method: Veil Induction / Dream-Encoded Summons”“They don’t call. They don’t write. They dream into you.
Veil Induction isn’t hypnosis. It’s not meditation. It’s a threshold—crossed only when memory folds the right way. Usually happens in sleep, but not always. I’ve known it to strike during trauma, grief, even déjà vu. You don’t go looking for the veil—it finds a crack in you and pours through.
Dream-Encoded Summons is their way of saying: we left the door unlocked, and you walked through. You’ll know it worked if you wake up remembering things you haven’t done yet.”
—C.T.
Dear Inductee,
I was not recruited. I was called.
It began with a letter burned at the corners, delivered without postage, sealed with a spiral that folded in on itself—too many arms, too many loops. Inside, only a name: Office of Anomalous Phenomena (though sometimes, they call themselves something else—the Order Against the Profane, the Office of Applied Paradox). The titles shift, as if reality hasn’t quite settled on what they are.
The message was simple:
“We believe you can see things others cannot. Report to the old station in Brighton. Pack nothing. Ask no questions.”
So I went.
The station didn’t exist on any map. Not anymore. But when I stepped onto the platform, the train was waiting—dark metal, windows blacked out, no tracks visible in either direction. I boarded. They were already inside. Six silhouettes. None spoke aloud, but I heard them all the same.
“You’ve seen the veil,” they said. “But you don’t yet know how to listen to it.”
They showed me photographs: a shattered castle in Warwickshire that reassembled itself every full moon. A girl in a wheelchair, smiling across timelines. A field of mirrors that hum when no one’s watching. A house that exists in five locations but belongs to one man who no longer knows his name.
And always… a boy.
Watching.
Waiting.
The man across from me placed a sealed file in my hand—one marked “CLASSIFIED – RECURSION EVENT CANDIDATE: ANDERSON, F.” His other hand rested on a mirror. The reflection blinked before he did.
Then came the question. Always the question.
“Before we proceed,” one of them asked, “tell us what you believe evil is.”
I told them the truth.
“I don’t believe in evil. I believe in fear. In damage. In people who couldn’t make the right choice in the fog of pain. Evil is a word we use when we no longer care to understand what broke someone.”
The room didn’t stir. But I felt the answer ripple through all of them.
“That’s why you’re perfect.”
They sent me into the field with no weapon. Only a journal and a mirror shard.
I began at The Castle—a resonance anchor where Poe once wept blood onto the stone. The windows reflected stars that haven’t existed in this sky for centuries. I walked its halls and heard whispering in a voice that sounded like my own.
From there to The Hollow House, a childhood memory built into bone and grief. Elizabeth was there. She didn’t speak, but her reflection did.
Then The Warehouse, the place no one claims to know, though everyone dreams of. Its shelves held dates that haven’t happened yet. One crate was marked with my initials. I didn’t open it.
Not yet.
It was inside the veil that I learned to listen. It’s not a sound. It’s a pressure behind your thoughts. A memory folding back on itself. I slipped under for the first time during an encoded mirror ritual. I asked the veil one question:
“Where is evil?”
And something answered.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a presence. A shape burning into the inside of my skull. One word etched into static and shadow.
Salazar.
I don’t know how I knew it was a name. But I did. And worse—I recognized it. Like something I had promised to forget.
I asked again.
“Who is Salazar?”
And the mirror showed me my own face—laughing, weeping, fractured into three expressions I did not recognize.
They brought me back above only when my nose began to bleed.
Back on the train, they said nothing. They didn’t have to.
I’d been marked now. Chosen. Witnessed.
They tell me I’ll see Salazar again. Maybe in the mirrors. Maybe in myself.
I still don’t believe in evil. But I believe in the name the veil gave me.
And that is enough.
—Caldwell
Division VII, Active Inquiry


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