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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Prudent-Dig-9812 on 2024-10-12 22:38:09+00:00.
Hey guys. Brennan here again - here to update you all on the roommate situation.
If you haven't read my first post, you can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fyk2qj/i\_found\_something\_really\_weird\_in\_my\_roommates/.
It’s been a long few days, and a lot has happened. I needed some time to process it all before I wrote this up, so sorry for the delay. I know I was rambling a little last time, but I tried to get my thoughts more in order before posting tonight.
First of all, I appreciated the advice on what I should do next. The consensus was that I needed to talk to Aldous directly about the symbol and what started happening after I saw it. Honestly, I didn’t love the idea. I still worried I was somehow imagining it all, and that he’d think I was absolutely insane if I told him everything.
But in the end, after a second day of stress and random bouts of nausea, I decided to go for it. What the hell, maybe he really needed the place to stay too and wouldn’t mind living with a possible “paranoid schizophrenic,” as some in the comments of my last post suggested. On Wednesday night, when Aldous came out of his room to grab an apple and a cup of ramen, I stopped him and said I needed to ask him something.
The whole day, I had tried to come up with the best way of phrasing things to sound as sane as possible. But in the end I chickened out and barely managed to say, “Hey, I saw a drawing in your room, and now I feel sick whenever I remember it. Do you know anything about that?”
He looked at me strangely. “That’s odd,” he said. “What was it?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “It’s a lot worse if I intentionally think about it. Am I losing my mind or is something weird going on here?”
“I don’t think you’re losing your mind,” Aldous said. “But I wouldn’t worry about it too much - I’m sure it’s just a passing thing. I’ll be sure not to leave anything lying around that might bother you in the future.” He went to stand up. “I’m very sorry you haven’t been feeling well. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” He picked up his food and was about to go back to his room.
“There’s one more thing, actually,” I put in quickly. He stopped and looked back at me. “Ever since I saw the symbol, I’ve also had this really weird feeling. Like someone’s watching me. It comes and goes, but when I feel it, it’s really strong. It’s freaking me out.”
Aldous’s face took on an expression I had never seen on it before. He looked pale, way beyond his normal fair skin tone. He was so obviously alarmed that I immediately started feeling panicked as well.
“Oh,” was all he said. He sat back down, leaving the food on the table.
“So you do know what’s causing all this!” I said nervously, but getting a little angry, too.
“Not exactly,” Aldous said. “But I have an idea.” He sighed, his hands fidgeting in his lap. “I never thought for a second you could get involved in this,” he said, almost to himself.
“Involved in what?” I demanded. “What are you actually doing in there all day and night?”
“Mostly research,” he said. “Like I told you. And it is related to school, in a way. I’ve been conferring with one of my professors for recommendations on how to find the right books. He just doesn’t know what I’m using them for.”
“Which is…?”
“Alchemy,” he said. In the last few days, I had actually looked up and been reading about alchemy, so now I had a better idea of what he might be talking about.
“But that stuff is fake,” I said. “People didn’t know much about chemistry, but they tried mixing things together to see what they could make. Plus all the magic stuff about turning things into gold and potions of immortality. You can’t actually be trying something like that.”
“You’re not wrong,” Aldous agreed. “Alchemy, as it is known to the world at large, is mostly nonsense. But you can use certain arcane methods to create substances with anomalous properties, some of which are very desirable.”
What does that even mean? I wanted to ask. But for some reason I found myself asking, “Such as…?”
“Follow me,” he said, walking toward his room.
I stood up but didn’t follow. “I’m not going back in there again.” I shuddered at the thought of seeing the paper with the symbol again.
“I think I know which symbol you saw,” he said quietly. “It’s put away now.”
“Fine,” I said, “but this had better explain everything.” By now, I was starting to think I really wasn’t the crazy one here, but I couldn’t resist hearing the full story.
He nodded. Upon stepping into his room, I found it mostly unchanged. But I did notice that in the bulb at the far right of the chemistry set, there was a thin layer of watery, gold-tinted liquid on the bottom. I also noticed that, in one corner of the room, all the plants seemed to be dying, as if Aldous had been forgetting to water them. He tapped me on the shoulder to direct my gaze back to the chemistry… alchemy… set.
“Here,” he said, picking up the bulb with the golden water, “is what I have to show for my work so far.”
“What is that?” I asked. “Some kind of potion?”
“Elixir,” he corrected, giving it a swirl. I watched a couple of minuscule goldish flecks dissolve into the liquid as it spun against the walls of the bottle.
“What does it- What does it supposedly do?” I asked skeptically.
“Well,” he sighed. “I was going to wait until this weekend, when I’d have enough to give it a proper trial, but if you must know…” He walked over to the sickly plants and picked up one of the pots. The plant was drooping all over, and most of the leaves had started to turn brown at the edges. “It’ll have to be absorbed to do anything,” he said, picking up a watering can. “Ideally, I’d just mix in a few drops with the water, to see how it works and figure out a rough ‘dose.’ But now that you’re in this too, you at least deserve to see some proof of what I’m working toward.”
He took an eyedropper from a stand near the makeshift lab. Very carefully, he drew up a bit of the “elixir” from the bulb and put a single drop onto the still-green end of one of the browned, curling leaves. After a few seconds, the liquid seemed to start seeping down into the leaf.
“What’s it doing?” I asked.
“Give it a moment. It’s not instantaneous.”
I obeyed, watching with bated breath. The liquid disappeared completely into the leaf. For a few seconds, nothing happened. But then I could see that very slowly, the leaf was turning green again. The green, healthy color seemed to be moving up through the brown and replacing it, or maybe something was flowing into the brown part that made it plump up with life and substance again. Before my eyes, the whole leaf became completely restored.
I looked at Aldous in shock. “How is that even possible?”
“It’s too complicated to explain it all right now.” He set the plant back with the others. He picked up what looked like a small glass watering can and poured water into it from a jug before putting three drops of the elixir into it. “What’s important to know is that there is more out there than pure science can currently explain. Certain icons and symbols exert effects on the environment around them. Certain properties can be transferred from one object to another or created using particular symbols and materials. What I’m trying to do here is create a substance with the ability to heal illness and wounds.”
“And it works?” I asked, barely able to believe what I had seen.
“It’s too soon to say,” he answered. “I’ve only tested it on plants so far. Before, I poured it directly into the dirt, and in a few days the plant had not only healed but also grown rapidly.” He pointed to another plant in the room, this one vibrant and lush with new shoots. “But that used up all of the elixir I had managed to distill so far. It’s difficult and time-consuming to make, so I don’t want to waste it. Hopefully I’ll be able to find out how much is actually needed at a time for simple restoration of usual health.” He gestured to the watering can, which was now tinted a very pale yellow.
I thought it all over for a minute. “But what does this have to do with what’s happening to me?” I finally asked.
The hopeful look disappeared from Aldous’s eyes. “This particular alchemical process requires fuel. Not like heat or oil, but a sort of… metaphysical kind.” His eyes darted over to his desk, toward a particular large book in a stack on the corner. “The symbol you saw - if it’s the one I think it is, and I feel pretty sure of that - allows one to tap into a current of this power. But it’s not a totally safe method. At least, not for the person who uses it.”
He looked back at me now. “I’m not a hundred percent sure why the symbol has made you so nauseous. If I had to guess, it’s because you were a virgin when you first saw it.”
“A WHAT?” I demanded.
Aldous laughed nervously. “My apologies. That’s the term that was used in the old days for those who had never looked into a symbol of power before. They really should have chosen a better word. But people still say it nowadays, unfortunately.”
“Who? What ‘people’?”
“Listen,” he said, a bit sternly, “that’s not important right now. What matters is that I used this particular symbol to tap into a fuel supply, so to speak. And it’s working, it is. But in the process,” he said, slowly, “the sou...
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