Case File 002 — Field Report, Agent Nocturne
Location: Briarfield, West County
Date: [REDACTED]
Status: Closed / Unresolved
They called it a missing person’s case, but that wasn’t quite right. The man wasn’t missing — he was present, standing in his garden, staring up. He just couldn’t remember what he was looking at.
Neighbors said it began two weeks ago. First, he’d stop mid-conversation, gaze skyward for several minutes, and then resume as if nothing happened. Soon he stopped speaking altogether. When I arrived, he hadn’t blinked in nearly an hour. Eyes fixed on an empty sky. No stars, no clouds, nothing reflected.
I approached slowly. Introduced myself. He didn’t respond. His pupils tracked movement but not meaning. His lips moved, but the sound was too soft to catch.
I wrote in my notes: Patient aware of direction above; exhibits reverence or recognition response. I looked up, too. Just habit. The kind of mistake you make once.
There was something… off. The horizon tilted a little too far, like the world had been hung slightly crooked. The longer I looked, the harder it was to tell if it was the sky or me that was leaning.
Inside his house, every window had been painted black except one. On the kitchen table: a torn map of constellations, outdated by nearly a century. The same pattern repeated over and over in pen, but with one star missing each time.
When I asked the locals what he did before this, they said he was a cartographer. Drew maps of places that didn’t exist anymore — drowned towns, burnt forests, roads rerouted and forgotten. He specialized in what’s gone.
The human body can only stare so long before it rebels. His eyes were bloodshot, his throat cracked from the air. Yet he stood there still. A statue carved out of devotion or terror.
I closed the case after midnight. Official cause: catatonia induced by environmental trauma. Unofficially: he was looking for something that wasn’t there, and it looked back.
They took him to a hospital in the city. He hasn’t spoken since. The doctors say his eyes move in his sleep, like he’s tracking something moving across a ceiling none of them can see.
I told the archivist to file this under “Atmospheric Phenomena – Cognitive Collapse.” But between you and me, I don’t think it’s the atmosphere we should be worried about.
End log.
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