The Second Manuscript
You sit at your late grand-uncle's desk, the gas lamp casting long shadows across the study. Having read about the artist Wilcox and his disturbing dreams, you now turn to the second half of Professor Angell's manuscript: "The Tale of Inspector Legrasse."
The notes describe a meeting of the American Archeological Society in 1908. A police inspector named John Raymond Legrasse had arrived from New Orleans seeking answers about a stone idol he captured during a raid in the Louisiana swamps. Your uncle's handwriting becomes shaky as he describes the object.
It was a grotesque statuette—an octopus-headed dragon with a rubbery body, squatting on a block covered in unknown hieroglyphics. The mere sight of it had sent the assembled scientists into a frenzy of confusion. None could identify the stone, nor the writing.