The Evil Clergyman

Overview

Recovered from notes intended for other tales, this fragment describes a boarder in an Arkham house like the Witch House - attic crowded with Puritan relics, a crystal cone, and the shadow of a clergyman executed for sins worse than heresy. Touching the cone swaps flesh across time with a screaming woman in a dungeon.

The piece breaks before resolution; links to Witch House, Thing on Doorstep, and Curwen exchange magic are explicit in atmosphere if not in plot completion.

Narrative Record

The roomer narrates discovery of stairs that should not lead where they lead, a journal in archaic hand, and the moment consciousness slides into another skull while a stranger occupies his. The woman’s terror suggests Salem or equivalent persecution era.

Fragment ends mid-escape. Archive reconstructs no official outcome; the clergyman may still wear modern bodies when cones are touched.

Witnesses & Aftermath

No named roomer identified in Arkham records; gambrel houses on High Street were surveyed 1938 with one attic sealed by order.

Published posthumously; readers report hand pain when handling quartz after reading - suggestive memetic, low incidence.

Archive Notes

Fragment protocol: do not complete story from dreams. Crystal cones in New England attics are confiscation targets. Cross-reference body-exchange files; treat clergyman as Curwen-tier threat with religious camouflage. If you wake in irons, you are not the first.