First order of business: basic survival. You needed to look less like a fugitive who’d wrestled a psychic lawnmower and more like… well, just another piece of Stillwater Creek's urban detritus. Using the last few crumpled dollars from your pocket, you bought soap, cheap disinfectant wipes, and a handful of adhesive bandages from a dollar store whose bored cashier didn't even register your torn clothes or the dried blood crusting your ear. You found a secluded, relatively clean restroom in a seldom-used wing of the city's main public library–a place you’d normally avoid, but large and anonymous enough to hopefully slip through unnoticed.
Locking yourself in a stall, you did your best to clean up. Washing the blood and grime from your face and hands felt like scrubbing away layers of the nightmare, though the phantom chill remained. You dabbed disinfectant on the deeper scrapes–stinging like hellfire but hopefully staving off mundane infection, the last damn thing you needed. Bandaging your raw hands felt like a small act of defiance against the encroaching chaos. You tore ragged edges off your shirt and trousers to make them look less like evidence of a violent struggle and more like general wear and tear. Looking in the cracked mirror above the sink, the reflection was still alarming–pale, haunted eyes staring out from a face etched with exhaustion and trauma–but marginally less likely to attract immediate police attention. You looked like shit, sure, but hopefully just regular shit, not escaped-from-an-alien’s-nexus shit.
Next: shelter and resources. Cash was critical. Your meagre funds were probably–almost certainly–gone. Selling your work phone felt too risky–too traceable, too much potentially compromised data. You briefly considered panhandling near the bus station, but the thought of drawing attention, of subjecting yourself to pity or scorn while your mind felt like fragile glass, was unbearable.
Instead, you gravitated towards the city’s underbelly, the places where people fell through the cracks. You found a sprawling homeless encampment under the rusting girders of the old Southside Bridge, a chaotic shantytown of tarps, salvaged wood, and despair hidden from the main thoroughfares. It wasn't safe, not by a long shot. Hard-luck stories mingled with untreated mental illness, addiction, and the quiet desperation of people with nowhere else to go. But it was anonymous. People here were generally too preoccupied with their own survival to pay much attention to a newcomer keeping their head down.
You found a relatively secluded spot near the edge of the camp, under a dripping overpass support beam, shielded by discarded pallets and piles of refuse. It wasn't much, but it was out of sight. You spent the first night huddled there, shivering despite the relatively mild autumn air, sleep impossible, every shadow seeming to writhe, every distant sound morphing into clicks or whispers.
Food came from scavenging–half-eaten sandwiches discarded near office buildings downtown (venturing there felt like walking into the lion's den, but hunger gnawed), bruised fruit from market dumpsters, contributions from a surprisingly well-organized soup run operated by a local church group whose weary volunteers asked no questions. Water came from public fountains or restroom taps filled into discarded plastic bottles. It was a grim, hand-to-mouth existence, stripping away the last vestiges of your former life, grinding you down to the bare essentials of survival.
But amidst the degradation and constant low-level fear, you started to listen. Truly listen. Arthur’s paranoid theory about the linguistic drift being a diagnostic tool proved chillingly accurate. Here, in the unfiltered, uncensored margins of society, the Bloom-speak wasn't just present; it felt… thicker. More concentrated. Not necessarily in the volume of usage, but in the way it was used.
Among the camp's residents, the terms weren't just casual slang; they often carried a weight of lived, albeit misinterpreted, experience.
Felt that Veridian Weft tuggin' hard last night, man, a grizzled man muttered, nursing a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. Like the whole damn ground wanted to pull you under. Knew the shakes were coming.
Was he talking about substance withdrawal? Or genuinely sensing the subtle shifts in reality Arthur described?
She's gone full Thoughtless Garden, poor soul, a woman sighed, gesturing towards another figure huddled motionless under a filthy blanket, staring vacantly at nothing. Used to talk up a storm, now... just empty. Like the lights are on but nobody's home, 'cept maybe the weeds.
Was it catatonia? Severe depression? Or the terrifying end stage Arthur documented?
Damn cognito-shift got everyone turned around, someone complained near a sputtering campfire. Can't trust what nobody says no more. Words keep slippin'. Feels like thinkin' itself is gettin' sticky.
The terminology was mutating, too. New variations emerged, adapted to the specific anxieties and realities of life on the street. You heard terms like 'Sidewalk Bloom' (referring to the pale, crystalline growths appearing in pavement cracks, often mistaken for drug residue or strange mold), 'Static Haze' (describing periods of intense confusion, dissociation, or auditory hallucinations that seemed to sweep through the camp), and 'Whisper Cracks' (the belief that listening closely to decaying infrastructure–crumbling concrete, rusting pipes–could reveal hidden messages or warnings).
This wasn't just semantic drift; it was a form of communal, emergent folklore crystallizing around the genuine psychic and environmental pressure exerted by the Bloom. These people, ignored and marginalized, were inadvertently acting as the city's canaries in the coal mine, their fragmented language mapping the contours of the spreading infection, even if they didn't understand the source. Their vulnerability, their proximity to the city's decaying infrastructure and neglected spaces where the Blooms seemed to thrive, made them highly sensitive, albeit unreliable, barometers of the encroaching madness.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
You started cautiously talking to people, offering a cigarette scavenged from a discarded pack, sharing a bit of salvaged food, just listening. You never mentioned Sable Hill, Arthur, the bunker, or the Nexus. You framed your questions carefully, pretending to be new in town, confused by the local slang.
"Heard some folks talking about... uh... 'Still-Blooms'?" you might ask casually, feigning ignorance. "What's that about? Some kinda weird fungus?"
Responses varied. Some shrugged it off–"Just weird shit you see around, man. Don't touch it." Others offered fragmented theories–"Government experiment," "Pollution from the old factories," "Bad luck sign." But a few, their eyes holding a flicker of that same haunted awareness you saw in the old man (and felt growing within yourself), leaned in closer.
"Nah, it ain't just fungus," one wiry man with track marks up his arms whispered, his voice raspy. "It listens. Feels cold, right? Like it's drinkin' the heat outta ya. Seen 'em grow bigger when people argue nearby. Seen 'em pulse when the sirens go off. They feed on somethin'. Not sunlight. Somethin' else."
"The Thoughtlings," an older woman wrapped in layers of salvaged blankets murmured, rocking back and forth slightly. "They tend 'em. Seen one once, down by the canal. Tall, pale... clicked like dry bones. Grandpappy used to say they come when folks think too hard 'bout things they ain't supposed to. Said thinkin' is how it breathes..." Her voice trailed off, her gaze becoming distant, unfocused.
These fragmented confirmations were terrifying, validating Arthur's research while simultaneously highlighting the sheer scale of the insidious infection. The knowledge wasn't confined to obsessive researchers or hidden bunkers; it was seeping into the collective consciousness, manifesting as street-level superstition, misinterpreted phenomena, fragmented warnings passed down through generations of the city's forgotten.
During the days, when the camp was less active, you started venturing further afield, exploring the city with newfound caution, using your understanding of the Bloom-speak as a guide. You avoided the 'hotspots' Arthur had marked–the Annex, the rail yards, the Canal Quarter library (shuddering at the memory of the Bloom Tender inside). Instead, you sought out the 'quieter' zones, neighbourhoods where the linguistic drift seemed less pronounced, where the ambient psychic static felt lower. These tended to be newer suburban developments, sterile business parks–places with less history, less decay, less accumulated psychic residue for the Bloom to apparently feed on.
You also started looking for ways to access information securely. The main library felt too risky now, potentially monitored. You found smaller branch libraries, community centers with public computer terminals, using them sparingly, logging in for brief periods, always wary. You created anonymous email accounts, searched for news about Eleanor Thorne, Miskatonic University, anything related to para-linguistics or unexplained phenomena, careful to avoid the specific search terms that had fried the burner phone.
Results were frustratingly scant. Miskatonic University existed, apparently a small, prestigious, but deeply weird institution back east, known for its esoteric collections and eccentric faculty. You found a faculty directory. An E. Thorne was listed under Special Collections, her title simply 'Archivist & Researcher (Non-Standard Acquisitions).' No direct email listed publicly, just a departmental contact form. Risky. Too easy to monitor. You needed a back channel.
How did Arthur send his encrypted files? His notes didn't specify the method. Old-school PGP encryption? A dark web drop point? A secure FTP connection routed through multiple proxies? You lacked the technical expertise and, more importantly, the secure hardware and network access to replicate anything complex.
You spent hours poring over Arthur’s first notebook again, searching for any overlooked clue, any hint of his communication methods.
You reread the final, frantic entries. ‘Contacted E. Thorne… Sent encrypted files… Risky… Mentioned the Ash Meadow patterns…’
Patterns. Arthur was obsessed with patterns. Not just the linguistic drift or the Bloom locations, but geometric patterns, historical cycles, even mathematical constants appearing in unusual contexts.
Could that be the way? Not a password, but a pattern? A sequence hidden in plain sight? You examined the strange symbols Arthur had scribbled on his maps, the complex diagrams in his notebook. They seemed chaotic, but maybe there was an underlying logic, a cipher disguised as madness. It felt like staring into an abyss, trying to find meaning in the fractal chaos of the Bloom itself.
One rainy afternoon, huddled under a dripping bridge, nursing a cup of lukewarm soup from the church van, you were sketching idly on a salvaged piece of cardboard with a burnt stick from a dead fire, trying to replicate one of Arthur’s more complex geometric diagrams from memory. It was a nested series of triangles and spirals, interwoven with lines that seemed to represent energy flow. As you drew, trying to recall the exact sequence, the exact angles, the ambient static in your head seemed to shift. The usual chaotic buzz momentarily resolved into a faint, coherent signal, a fleeting whisper that wasn't Arthur's voice or the Bloom's cold logic, but something different–a faint echo of the transmission you’d forced through the Nexus?
‘…ry Penvarnon… signal fragment detected… harmonic resonance unstable… source compromised… attempting secure handshake… repeat… attempting secure…’ The whisper faded back into noise before you could grasp it fully.
A signal fragment? From Thorne? Triggered by you recreating Arthur’s pattern? Was the pattern itself a form of address, a way to tune into a specific conceptual frequency? It was the most fragile, tenuous lead imaginable, likely just wishful thinking brought on by exhaustion and psychic trauma. But it was something.
You spent the next day obsessively redrawing the patterns from Arthur’s notebook, trying different sequences, different combinations, focusing your intent, trying to recapture that fleeting moment of coherence in the static. You felt like a primitive shaman trying to coax rain from the sky with elaborate dances, hoping to stumble upon the right psychic frequency to ping Eleanor Thorne across the void. You earned more than a few strange looks from the other camp residents, muttering to yourself, scribbling alien geometries onto salvaged scraps. You were rapidly approaching the same precipice of obsessive madness that had claimed Arthur.
But you had to try. Because out there, beyond the whispering pines and rusting bridges, beyond the concerned citizens complaining about semantic driftwood, the Bloom continued its silent, inexorable spread. The Veridian Weft tightened its grip. The Still-Blooms pulsed patiently in the dark, forgotten corners. The surviving Children of the Bloom were likely regrouping, their faith hardened into vengeful fury. And somewhere, maybe patrolling the quiet suburban streets or lurking near another burgeoning Nexus point, the clicking creatures continued their watch. The static lingered, growing stronger, a promise that the silence wouldn't last forever.
You needed Eleanor Thorne. You needed answers. Before the garden fully bloomed and consumed Stillwater Creek entirely. Before the whispers finally dragged you down into the silent, thoughtless dark.