The Reading Potion was still at work. Even though Hope deliberately controlled his reading speed, the words still leaped into his eyes one after another.
The article was four or five hundred words long, yet he finished reading it in just over ten seconds.
Hope clutched his head. He had prepared himself in advance, so the newspaper didn't slip from his fingers again.
His brain hadn't had enough time to rest after he finished reading the previous article, so this even shorter one left him feeling more exhausted.
This article condemned Dunwich's residents for "inbreeding and willingly sinking into depravity," holding the Whateley family up as a prime example:
"...Wilbur, who matured too early... Hope, who suffers from albinism, and his mother... Neither child has a father... Old Whateley, who is obsessed with witchcraft... are merely a glimpse of the town of Dunwich."
Hope clutched his head... Although there wasn't a picture of me in it, judging by the reporter's description, I must have looked like an ordinary four-year-old child back then. Wilbur's rate of development, on the other hand, was too fast to make any sense...
No wonder he rarely called me "big brother." On the few occasions he did, his tone was always strange. Who would want to call a little kid their big brother...
No father... The reporter had interviewed other residents, too, and they'd all answered, "I've never seen Lavinia's husband." The reporter had listed this as one of the many signs of Dunwich's disorder...
Old Whateley seemed to care a lot about Lavinia. Had he sacrificed poor Dad to the Evil God already...
Old Whateley was obsessed with witchcraft... This rumor had probably been around for a long time. So when the reporter showed up, Old Whateley probably hadn't tried to hide it. Judging by the reporter's tone, they likely just thought the old man was superstitious.
More than any of that, what bothered Hope most was that the Whateley family had so readily agreed to an interview. Weren't they worried the article would spread too widely and outsiders would discover the family's secrets?
That didn't fit with Wilbur's apparent caution at all... Wilbur had still been young back then, so Old Whateley had probably made all the decisions for the household. Maybe Old Whateley didn't care, or maybe something had forced him to agree.
One eleven.
It was time. The second Reading Potion was ready, too.
Its appearance was no different from the previous one, and neither was its taste.
After swallowing it, Hope felt much less of that cool sensation than he had the first time. He guessed it might be because of the sloppy handwriting—he'd done his best to imitate it, but he'd never encountered the language before and didn't know the correct strokes.
Hope took out Number Four Hope's message...
It had failed. The writing still looked like earthworms crawling across the page, and he couldn't make out any meaning in it.
He was a little disappointed, but it had been more or less what he expected.
Old Williams's Reading Potion was something Hope had stumbled across by chance. If it really did happen to solve his translation problem, Hope would have to look up at the sky and shout, "I am the chosen one!"
If the Reading Potion was useless, though, Hope had only two options left:
First, the Whateley family. As a family of cultists, Hope was sure they had plenty of strange potions and spells, and one of them might be what he needed.
Second, Professor Armitage. Since he'd been able to give Elizabeth something like the Wooden Amulet, he probably had no shortage of extraordinary objects.
Besides, although the news article portrayed Miskatonic University as a place devoted to teaching, research, and scholarship, the fact that Professor Armitage worked there suggested the university itself had some ties to the supernatural.
Professor Armitage was naturally the more promising option. But considering the time involved, if the professor didn't show up, Hope hesitated over whether to use a few underhanded tricks on the Whateley family without getting caught.
Now that he'd confirmed the Reading Potion was useless, Hope prepared to return to Whateley House.
Before leaving, he tucked the Contract of the All-Seer behind the clock. He didn't need it for now, and keeping it at Whateley House would only increase the risk of Wilbur finding it.
As for the Steel Pen, Hope planned to...
"Ta! Ta!"
The birds calling in the woods outside suddenly grew louder. Their previously soft, gentle voices turned into a cacophony, interrupting Hope's train of thought. He immediately recognized the sound of Night Hawks.
Compared to the Great Night Hawk, their calls were less loud but more frequent and continuous, overlapping one another. They were those more common little birds, each about the size of a hand.
Hope frowned in annoyance. Their calls had never been pleasant, and after seeing the Great Night Hawk, he hated them even more. Now, just hearing them made his head throb, drowning out the cool sensation from the Reading Potion.
"Ta! Ta! Ta!"
Those creatures had come even closer.
Hope set the Steel Pen down on the table with the gas stove and covered his ears. He suddenly realized his throbbing head might not be caused only by the unpleasant noise... The two patches on his back where feathers were growing, over his shoulder blades, had grown warm.
A dozen blurry specks appeared in the distant sky, shifting positions as they slowly drew closer.
The Night Hawks that had been calling were flying in a flock. They flapped their wings as they approached, calling constantly. The sound reaching Hope's ears grew louder and louder.
With his ears covered, Hope felt as though he had a high fever. He wasn't in pain or dizzy, but he couldn't concentrate or keep his thoughts straight. It was miserable.
The feathers on his back kept growing warmer. Soon, they felt like warming patches stuck to his skin. The coolness of a summer night had been pleasant, but now the heat made Hope feel restless.
...Curse of Darkness... Hope bit his thumbnail. His thoughts were slowing... Was this the Curse of Darkness?
A blurry black figure suddenly appeared at the edge of his vision on the right, only two or three meters away.
"Who's there!"
He turned to look at the figure, but it floated away as well, moving neither quickly nor slowly and remaining at the edge of his vision.
Hope stubbornly whipped his head back the other way, trying to shake off the shadow. But it moved just as fast as he turned, still floating there. He couldn't look straight at it, yet he couldn't get rid of it.
Hope slowed his movements and kept shifting his gaze. As his eyes passed over the table, it appeared at the edge of his vision on the right.
The table occupied the spot where the shadow had been, and Hope thought this would force the shadow to move.
But it didn't. It continued floating there, strangely sharing the same space as the table. It neither blocked the table nor was blocked by it.
They occupied the same space, yet remained entirely separate.
The black figure seemed to exist in a different dimension from everything else. It looked jarring and unnatural in Hope's vision, unlike anything that truly existed.
It felt just like the edge of a pair of glasses. No matter how he turned his head, it always stayed in the same place...
Hope blinked. He thought he understood. This wasn't a real shadow, but an illusion—not something that truly existed, but a phantom in his mind.
It was an illusion left behind by the Great Night Hawk. Although it was shaped like a person, Hope could feel that it was the Great Night Hawk from the previous night.
He had killed the Great Night Hawk, but it had latched onto him.
The so-called "Curse of Darkness" wasn't dizziness caused by hearing the Night Hawks' calls. It was the Great Night Hawk's soul.
Night Hawks fed on the souls of the supernatural, and Hope had killed the Night Hawk, so its soul had become trapped inside him instead.
He couldn't see the soul normally. It had appeared now because of the Night Hawks' calls.
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