The Blanked Cold 🇬🇧 🇩🇪

-- Please note: This is the original text in English. You find the German translation on page 2 :-) --

"... and the name of the one who sat there, his name was servant to starlit chaos ..."

Anonymous, Staatsarchiv Tübingen, 1605

I

It is past midnight on this fateful Halloween when they come up with this ridiculous idea, an idea that will lead them past the now far-away Christmas and well into that ill-omened New Year's Eve. It is past midnight at that party at the institute, where they have already drunk so much that she brings up this idea. An idea that will confront them with the institute's unchartered past and may lead to surprise, joy, horror, nothingness, or all of that in one strange blend.

At that moment, well past midnight, when they talk about a lot of things, she mentions this old legend. The legend that the Institute for the Arctic Cultures they are part of was once founded on money of inexplicable origin. Of gold, copper, and silver. Knowing that everybody is well aware of the story. Because on that very same day, she came across his papers in the archives – the last records of Professor Allenton that have so obviously been written in utter confusion or a similar strangely disturbed state of mind.

So, she begins to talk about these papers and when they first all laugh, she goes down to where they are and brings them up. They stop laughing, all of them, and instead, there is a gleam in their eyes, a gleam that speaks of unfound treasure, undiscovered riches in a place that seems too far-fetched for modern thought and education. Allenton's notes are a mess, a mash-up of speculation and narrative, of folklore and science, with an even weirder undercurrent of something unthinkable, absurd, and maybe even monstrous. He, Allenton, talks about the inhospitable lands in the north and then quotes from dubious medieval German records and other documents in the Royal Archives in Stockholm and in libraries in Lisbon and Amsterdam. And through all that blur, there is a stream of instructions that may or may not form a ritual of sorts, something that culminates on New Year's Eve. She points out the unusual, minted gold coin that is still in the institute's possession and that according to the tales has been part of Allenton's pile that largely went into buying the very building they are in now, with its panelled walls and it pre-1900 chic.

On that fateful night, two full months ahead of the turn of the year, they all agree to follow Allenton's instructions, no matter how ludicrous these are, even in that drunken state they all are in.

II

Today, on New Year's Eve, as I sit here, it all seems wrong. Stupid. Insane. If I would think about it for a single minute, it would scare me to shreds. So, I don't.

It is all there: the needles, the bottles, the chimes, the smoke of vanilla tobacco. I arranged them throughout the room along with bundles of beeswax candles. The candles are burning slowly, casting a not-so-scientific light over everything. I also brought the heavy clothes and boots that the institute keeps for missions in the Arctic and Antarctic. And I got the rifles out of their safe, a pack of ancient repeaters, Lee Enfields, which seem so totally out of date but are the same models as in service with the Greenland Sledge Patrol today.

No one else has shown up. I knew they wouldn't. One by one they dropped off. Some explained to me they had parties and families to attend to, explained in many words, and some of them have for sure. Others have dropped off out of fear. They didn't say it, but I know. And I understand. I'm scared as well. Scared to the bone. Scared to death. But I cannot let this go.