The Cobbe House v a hidden revelation and a decision

Having met Tony last week, and experienced the uncanny while at that terrible hospital; I became determined to find both Cerci  and Nell; and for one last time, go to the  Cobbe  house, to finish this problem once and for all.   I became increasingly resolute as I felt increasingly under attack from a source that I could not see, but felt that was all around me. Moreover, that tin
soldier being in my home made things incredibly difficult; to the point that I thought about going alone to face, what needed to be faced. Yet, the more I thought of that, the more I felt utterly terrified to do so.

Moreover, the dreams that I had experienced  of late were getting harder and harder to fight against.  The dark place where I went  at night, became indredibly real... It’s like our world, in as much as it has all the same roads and streets in it. Only it’s twisted, no… corrupted…into something hideously alien. Some buildings glow with a white phosphorous light, some are whirlpools of darkness; It’s  like I am trudge walking, in a liquid of dark green half-light, where floats these  strange luminescent spheres, that have the ppearance of jellyfish, yet are not jellyfish but consume each other with a ferocity that is hard to put into words; but also there rest  hideous and violent thing’s that must have been human once, that roam in the shadow’s and are terrifyingly impossible to describe; for fear of losing my sanity. 

Every morning I wake up feeling more and more drained, while that damned tin soldier always seems to find its way back by my bedside, no matter where I place it. Last night I put it in my Uncle’s safe downstairs. This morning, again, it is there on my bedside cabinet staring at me with its cold face. I am starting to
see features in it now, so grotesque and malign; I scream awake when I open my eyes.   

I decided to go to the library and conduct a little private research on the subject and found something remarkable.  I came across something called “Bangungot” from south east Asia, to be exact from the island chain of the   Philippines and an
ethnographic study carried out by a well-known researcher, who shall not be named, as it bears little relevance to this text who discovered that "Many of the Hmong people of the islands, believe that a sudden and unexpected death is due to malevolent supernatural forces." Specifically, that of a child whom has
died both suddenly and unexpectedly and who can literally drain the “life force” out of its host.

Symptoms of this disease, though some would also call it an attack include a sudden wasting away of the body in the physical realm; as the dream state becomes ever more powerful.  The loss of motor control reflexes and a creeping insanity as the individual begins to lose control of what “reality” or his or her sense of what this is. Of course, I can accept that each individual’s notion of what is real, differs from individual to individual; however, it is this sense of being in touch and touching, that is lost. I am finding myself at a loss to explain, what is going on. I look in the mirror and see this half me, with sunken glittering eyes, wrinkled skin and drawn self and know that  IT is trying to kill me; yet I cannot explain it to another person without sounding insane myself.

  More recently this rather frightening wasting away has been shown by scientific studies to be virtually identical to “Brugada
syndrome”, which is well-described in medical literature as a cause of sudden cardiac death, in association with a violent stimulation of the Pineal gland of the brain; which is most stimulated during  sleep…the point is, what has occurred and what is occurring has led me to the personal conviction that something evil, unhuman and deeply malevolent, drove my dearest friend insane. It took his life and is trying to do the same thing again: to me.  In our nativity as children, we called it “it”; but perhaps a better name would be a dream stalker, for its as if I am being literally haunted, chased or driven to death in my dreams.  I am writing this down, knowing inside how insane it sounds.  But it is more than insane.

 Due to my uncle’s long connection to historical research; and since his rather tragic and unexpected death  recently; I being one of his beneficiaries, have managed to gain excess to his extensive archive, that he kept in his dusty, dry, many shelved oak lined  apartment’s, close to the town library.

 In mulling over the many papers found there, I uncovered a link both to this particular region of the world and the Sanderson
property. According to the document’s, Mr. Cobbe  employed a pair of female servant’s from the Philippines, whose names were Chona  and Lualhati  Ocampo. Whether this happens to be their names or not is questionable, as it is the  names given  under the registry of transfer from London and Malaca on the ship Tiberius, notable  in that that it  took the occasionally, profitable though very difficult route around Cape Horn;  for both the purchase of Copra, oil and slaves, stopping at the Rhode Island port as or when necessary.

From the start the Ocampo’s found life in this town of Bridgeton difficult to say the least. There is recorded through local church gossip that became associated with the house and specifically in relation to the Ocampo’s,  in as  much as their form of Protestantism, was far too strict and specifically, their  prayers were not  “uttered at the proper time or directed towards the proper object” ; all of which led to grave speculations in relation to the sisters  who became shunned by the townsfolk when they came from the Cobbe  house into town for any necessary items.

According to the documents, five years before the house became afflicted with trouble’s, Chona, was found to be pregnant. A male child, of notable mixed race origin, was born and duly named “Andrew  Cobbe ”. This led to speculations about who was the father of the child?  It seems, through inference of the available recorded data, that the child must have belonged to
Mr. Cobbe senior himself, who also tried, but with little effect to press upon his physician some problems or bizarre malady with Andrew’s health, that were not being fully addressed.  This Andrew, was recorded as being a sickly boy from birth; Yet, though there is a register of his birth, there is no register of his death.   He, like Chona and Lualhati mysteriously disappeared precisely one calendar month, before the death of the first
Cobbe child on the narrow road to the house. 
       The tragedy’s that followed the Cobbe  family then overshadow the disappearance of the Ocampo’s whom, though were considered as being the cause of the problems
associated with the Cobbe  family are never discussed in any form of direct evidence found in the form of local correspondences to date.  Armed with this new information, and with the loss of Tony I sought out Nell and  Cerci , in the hope that we could exorcize the house and rid ourselves of  whatever malevolent form of creature that had infested the house; and fed off the Cobbe's  Tony and  subsequently myself.

In many ways Nell, Cerci and I had drifted apart. Our letters and telephone conversations had become increasingly infrequent, and discussed trivialities over honest feelings.  Nell, having moved to New York was living in the Brooklyn region of the city; close to the bridge close to Heart Crane’s muse.  She had become quite a celebrity, and was making many eyes turn on Broadway. 
Not so for Cerci  whom from her last correspondence was struggling with a child Called Daniel. 

When I spoke to Nell, about the death of Tony, she was already in tears about it.