Dr. Cecil Walker's Diagnostic Notes

Diagnostic Notes

• Baltimore is glowing, all the time, day and night.
• The light seems to emanate simultaneously from everywhere and nowhere.
  • It casts impossibly refractive shadows apparently from light sources that do not seem to exist on our plane of reality.
  • That is, these shadows themselves cast shadows.
  • The shadows of the shadows cast light.
  • This should not be possible, obviously. I cannot understand it.
• Then, there is the lightning. It starts fires. It devastates the land. It seems to be a shade of green that is not usual.
• Ash has been falling continuously for weeks now. It piles up in drifts, like snow.
• Many people have chosen to leave the city.
  • This is understandable. I think no place is safe, but Baltimore is less safe than other places.
  • State and government agencies are already overtaxed. We can expect no help from them, but that is, in fact, what I expected.
• Those patients and staff who survived and had a place to go, any place, have been sent away.
• Among the patients who remain, Edgar Job is a singular case.
  • He has been struck by lightning at least a dozen times.
  • Not only did he survive this; he was completely unwounded.
  • Those who remain subscribe to the belief that he has become immortal.
  • Have I subscribed to this belief? It is logically impossible to prove a negative, but evidence suggests that he cannot be killed.
  • Several of the other patients tried to bludgeon him to death before they could be stopped. It seems that one does not hesitate to try to dispose of a Jonah these days.
  • Edgar Job has survived all attacks on him, whether by nature or by man.
  • These should have been deadly several times over.
  • To reiterate, he is not even wounded.
  • I think he has stopped eating. If so, this has made no appreciable difference to his condition.
• Dr. Keaton is not doing well. He is, however, trying to do good as he sees it. I have tried to convince him to leave Johns Hopkins. I think he would do so if he truly believed there were safety to be had elsewhere, but, as we both know there is not, he has chosen not to abandon his patients. This is more to his credit than to mine, for I know, as he does not that some form of aid may be on its way, or perhaps answers, at least. If this is indeed the end of the world, I wish to know why, and remaining here is my best chance of learning this.

-- -- --

There is a new symptom. It is odd to call it a symptom, for this is a symptom of the entire world. The world is diagnosed as being terminally ill.

Acute angles have become dangerous, potentially fatal.

Walls that come together at such angles seem to emit an invisible, yet clearly present, burning power.

Several people have been treated for burns resulting from brief exposure. This includes me.

Dr. Keaton was a victim of this. None of us knew of the manifestation of the new symptom. He had no reason to believe he was doing anything foolish by going to retrieve something from a space bounded by two walls coming together at an acute angle. As we watched, he burned before our eyes. It happened with remarkable speed, leaving only a charred lump of human flesh to bury. I hypothesize that the force emitted is some form of radiation.

The symptom is not confined to walls. My assistant, Barbara, was badly burned while bandaging me. She was using scissors to cut the bandages.

I have heard that a child was killed while playing hopscotch. Some of the lines of the drawing did not form proper right angles. I do not have the will to test this.