Yet still she turns her restless head

I stood in front of the wooden door and the sign above it - FORTUNES TOLD & PALMS READ - and wondered why I was there. What had brought me here.

After my visit with Professor Hamilton, I went back to the motel I was staying at. I knew it probably made no difference, but I didn't want to stay in my own home, so I had gone to a motel and covered up every single reflective surface I could find.

As I walked into the motel, however, the desk clerk saw me and said, "Mail for you, Mr. Lee." That was impossible. Not only was I staying under a fictional name - Oswald Lee - I had only been checked into this motel since last night. It might have been the snake woman - but why mail? She already showed she could phone me if she wanted to.

I took the envelope from the clerk and went to my room. Carefully, I opened it:

Dear Mister Walker, 

You have questions. I have answers.  

Please go to this address: 

            [Complete Address] 

Good luck, 

A Friend

If it was a trap, it would have to be an incredibly obvious trap. And why try to trap me anyway? However, it was, perhaps they were sincere. They knew my name and where I was sleeping, perhaps they knew more.

So that was why I was here, in front of the door to "MADAM MORRIGAN'S." I was about to knock when the door opened. The woman on the other end was tall and statuesque, with dark skin and long black hair. "Well?" she said. "Are you in or out, Mr. Walker?"

What the hell. I walked inside and she led me down to a table in the center of which was a genuine crystal ball. "Are you gonna read my palm now?" I asked. "Maybe bring out the Tarot cards?"

"Don't be facetious, Mr. Walker," she said. "It doesn't become you."

"Fine," I said. "What do you know about my situation? How can you help me?"

"Those are two different questions," she said. "The answer to the first is that I know a lot. About your situation and others like it. You have been targeted by creature not confined by the rules of this world. A creature eldritch in nature, godlike in ability. The one that hunts you is one of many."

"Many?" I said. "There are others?"

"Yes," she said. She removed a deck of cards from her pocket and for a moment I thought she actually was going to try and tell my fortune with Tarot cards. Instead, when she flipped the cards, I saw they weren't Tarot cards at all, but had other things on them. A boy colored completely blue; a tall man in a suit without a face; a flock of birds; a large dog with blood-red eyes. "There are many others," she said as she spread the cards out in front of me. "They have been gods and monsters, myths and tales told in the dark." She turned another card and it was the image of a coiled snake with the body of a woman. "The one you have encountered hasn't appeared in quite a while. You are an unusual case, Mr. Walker."

I looked at the cards and then at the woman - Madam Morrigan - and asked, "Can you help me?"

She smiled and said, "I can." Then she turned another card and on it was the image of two triangles on top of one another, mirroring each other. As I looked at it, she grabbed my hand and said, "You must embrace the Archangel." With her other hand, she pulled out a knife from her sleeve and tried to stab me.

I backed away, but she held onto my hand tightly. She thrust the knife forward again and I moved out of the way, but she sank it into my shoulder and I screamed. Finally, I pushed her away and grabbed my gun from my pocket and I shot her three times in the chest.

She sank to the floor. And then she appeared again in front of me. She was lying dead and she was standing alive. I couldn't understand it.

She smiled at me with bloody lips and I turned and ran.