December 7, 1978

  From Professor Henry Latham, Oxford University, England

  To Dr. William Carter, Crimson Falls, Massachusetts, USA

  Dear Dr. Carter,

  I hope this letter finds you well. I write to share with you a most peculiar incident that has been weighing heavily on my mind these past several months. It involves one of my brightest students, a young woman by the name of Miss Fiona Hargrave, who, prior to this strange event, exhibited no behavior or temperament outside the bounds of ordinary academia. She was intelligent, level-headed, driven, and hardly the sort to indulge in wild flights of fancy.

  It began in early September of last year, 1977, when Miss Hargrave returned from a brief weekend trip to Derbyshire. The purpose of her excursion was simply to explore the countryside, something she’d long wished to do before term resumed. However, upon her return, she appeared... changed. It was not merely her physical state, though that alone was startling, but the story she relayed, which was so bizarre I hesitated to take her seriously.

  She claimed to have experienced a vivid, almost tangible dream during her trip, a most disturbing dream in which she found herself deep underground, in a vast chamber that reeked of decay and filth. Surrounding her, she said, were people painted blue, chanting in some ancient tongue. The images seemed to linger in her memory as though more than a mere dream. There was one figure, in particular, she remembered clearly: a tall man with dark hair, who approached her. He did not speak but somehow made it clear that she belonged to him. She described, with some embarrassment, how this man made love to her in the dream, a detail that left me questioning her emotional state.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  What I found most peculiar, however, was that Miss Hargrave had no intimate relationships and, as far as I knew, was not one to engage in reckless behavior. Yet upon her return, she exhibited unmistakable signs of pregnancy.

  As the months passed, her situation grew even more bewildering. When the time came for her to give birth, what emerged was not a typical child but rather two leathery eggs, akin to those of a large serpent. You can imagine my shock when I first heard of this. The first egg hatched almost immediately, revealing a perfectly healthy, handsome baby boy. But the second… when opened, it contained a large, white serpent with jade green eyes, something no one could explain.

  Given your expertise in ancient lore and your interest in mythological serpents, I thought this event might interest you. It is beyond anything we’ve seen, and I believe there may be connections to older, darker histories buried in those Derbyshire hills. I would greatly value your insights on this matter.

  Yours sincerely,

  Professor Henry Latham