London, 1936.
Sean is reading a physician’s case notes.
Eljara is already suspicious.
SEAN
So Catherine knows things Margaret has forgotten.
ELJARA
That isn’t supernatural.
Memory can become divided. Experiences can become inaccessible. People can even forget where information originally came from.
SEAN
Good.
Solved.
Tea?
ELJARA
There’s another file.
SEAN
Of course there is.
Never trust the second file.
ELJARA
Catherine talks about a man named Edward Vale.
His wife.
His children.
The factory where he worked.
An accident that cost him the tip of one finger.
SEAN
Someone Margaret knew?
ELJARA
No connection anyone can find.
SEAN
Something she read?
ELJARA
Possible.
Overheard?
Possible.
Forgotten childhood memory?
Possible.
SEAN
Still sounds like a rather poor ghost story.
ELJARA
Catherine also drew his house.
SEAN
Ah.
ELJARA
Including a room that wasn’t on the plans.
They opened the wall yesterday.
SEAN
And?
ELJARA
The room was there.
On the wall:
E.V.
1879.
SEAN
Bugger.
Later, Catherine sits opposite them.
Same body.
Different posture.
Different voice.
No possession.
No glowing eyes.
Nothing theatrical.
ELJARA
Were you Edward Vale?
CATHERINE
No.
ELJARA
Then how do you remember his house?
CATHERINE
I don’t know.
SEAN
His family?
CATHERINE
I don’t know.
SEAN
The hidden room?
CATHERINE
I remember it.
ELJARA
But whose memory is it?
Catherine looks towards the wireless.
CATHERINE
Do you ask the radio why it knows the orchestra?
Silence.
SEAN
Oh, bugger.
ELJARA
You think the mind is a receiver?
CATHERINE
You think because a memory is inside your head, it must belong to you.
ELJARA
And Edward?
Catherine’s expression changes.
CATHERINE
I don’t think I received his memories from him.
SEAN
What?
CATHERINE
I think Edward heard them too.
Silence.
ELJARA
Then Edward wasn’t the transmitter.
SEAN
He was another radio.
CATHERINE
Yes.
ELJARA
What was he receiving?
CATHERINE
Memories.
SEAN
Whose?
CATHERINE
Some were Edward’s.
ELJARA
And the others?
For the first time, Catherine looks frightened.
CATHERINE
Older.
ELJARA
How much older?
CATHERINE
I don’t know.
ELJARA
Human?
Catherine says nothing.
The wireless crackles.
Sean reaches over and switches it off.
Catherine relaxes.
SEAN
Did the wireless bother you?
CATHERINE
No.
SEAN
Then why did you relax?
Catherine looks at the silent radio.
CATHERINE
Because now there’s one less voice in the room.
QUESTION FOR YOU
If another personality inside your mind knew verifiable things about someone who died before you were born, what would frighten you more:
that the other personality was not entirely you —
or that it might be listening to something neither of you understands?
PLAY EPIC. FEEL THE STORY.
Psychologists and physicians were seriously discussing divided consciousness, dissociation and multiple personality long before the 1930s.
That does not make them supernatural.
And it does not prove that memories can travel between minds.
But Pulp Cthulhu lets us ask what happens when one fictional case contains information that should not be there.
Perhaps the brain is not only an archive.
Perhaps the mind can sometimes behave like a radio.
And perhaps the frightening question isn’t whether another voice can exist inside us.
It is:
Who is broadcasting?
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