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-It has arrived!- the excited voice of Liz said from the other end of the line. -Come home, I'll be waiting for you!

Liz and I had met five years ago. She was new at high-school, a transplant, an outcast, shy as a mouse, standing on corners doing her best not to attract any attention. I was the popular guy at school, say a sport and I was probably good at it. We seemed to have nothing in common, and for a long time, I didn't even realize she existed. This is how cheesy love stories start, right? Except she never fell in love with me and I never realized that she was the love of my life, she fancies women better and I had been lucky enough to find the love of my life. No, we met through common interests, interests that didn't seem to suit neither her nor me. It was one Halloween night, there was a Lovecraft reading at the local library and I had to go. Needless to say, none of my friends understood why I'd want to go to the library on Halloween and they dragged me from party to party. It took me a while to find a way to sneak out unnoticed, and, therefore, the reading had already started. I slipped through the main door into the decorated library hallway, it was eerily creepy. A skinny girl, dressed up in a dark tunic, was reading a passage from "At the Mountains of Madness". I had never seen anyone read Lovecraft with such passion, and it took me a while to realize I knew her. When I approached her, during the library party, she looked nothing like the girl at school. She was sociable, chatty, and eager to interact with anyone. We bonded over our mutual love for terror stories, and now we had it, the book we had been tracking down for so long was finally in our hands.

-I'll be there in ten minutes!- I said as I grabbed the car keys.

I told Dana I was going to Liz's and drove as fast as I could. She was waiting for me on the porch and rushed inside as soon as I set foot on her front yard. On the coffee table of her living room lay an old large oak box. Its hinges were rusty and it had intricate carvings depicting sea gods and the underworld, a large iron lock stared at us, waiting. Without saying a word, Liz produced a key from one of the pockets of her long flowy skirts. Her cheeks were rosy and her dark eyes sparkled with excitement. Her hand trembled as she approached the key to the lock, and we both held breath as she introduced it. The lock opened easily. An even older book lay on top of a dark blue silk cushion. It smelled of old library, and we were too scared to touch it. Gold faded letters glimmered back to us, untouched by sunlight for centuries. "The Necronomicon" it read. We sat there, staring at it, for a long time, wanting to touch it, but too scared to do so. Liz gave me a glance and I nodded. Yes, she had to be the first one to touch it. She lifted it from the pillow, reverently, and opened it with care. She flicked through the pages until she found what we had been looking for. Her brow furrowed as she went through the words. We sat in silence for ten minutes, her perusing through the passage, me staring at her. She then put the book on the table, open at the page she had just been reading.

-Can it be done?- I asked as she leaned back on the couch.

-Yes.

-Yes, but?- there had to be a "but", I knew.

-It requires sacrifice.- she paused for a second.- Human sacrifice.

-We will find someone,...

-No.- she interrupted me.- It has to be me.

-No!

-Yes. It's my destiny, I need to die so Cthulhu can rise.