Eye witness

"I have a comment."

Gerson got a lot of interested looks from around the room. The world had gotten used to the fact that monsters existed at all, but most people had never met one. He was a curiosity wherever he went.

"I don't think the reconstruction of the Kamosh statue you showed is right. My memory isn't what it used to be, but when I saw the original, it had-"

"Excuse me." The archeologist's face showed polite doubt. "Did you say 'the original'? This statue is the only known of its kind, and it was discovered in 1824."

"Please don't interrupt. That's very rude. As I was sayin', when I first saw the original - eleven, maybe twelve thousand years back -"

The archeologist opened his mouth. Gerson glared at him until he closed it.

"- its arms weren't like that. Your replica was made after they removed them. You can tell because the sleeves are hollow. They never broke off.

"Y'see, the original statue was weird. Most of it was normal. Just a guy sitting in a chair wearing an odd hat. But the arms were different. First off, they were made of different rock. Sort of green-blackish with golden specks. Pretty, but very hard to place. It looked like they built the rest of the statue around it, get what I mean?

"Truth be told, they didn't even look like arms, unless you squinted. They didn't look like anything else I've ever seen, except maybe some pictures of Azathoth in the Necronomicon."

A man two seats away scraped his throat. "I think we have it in the library downstairs. I could fetch it if you'd like to show us."

"Thank you, but I've got it covered. Lemme see." Gerson dug through his satchel. "Here we are." He pulled a book with a leather cover through the opening. It was several times as large as the satchel that had held it. "It's a first edition copy. Abdul was nice enough to sign it for me, see?" He pointed at a feverish scrawl on the first page. Then he leafed through it, looking for the right illustration.

When he found it he held it above his head. It showed a hideous tentacle, crawling across the page, all right angles. It coiled around beasts, plants, men, entire civilizations, keeping them in its grip and contorting them into uncomfortable poses. The whole gave an impression of strife, not caused by ill intent, but there because the tentacle didn't allow differently. Looking at it at length was difficult.

"It was kinda like that. Can't blame 'em for removing it.

"Now, there was a furnace inside the statue. When they made prisoners, they typically took them to a hatch in the back, and they..."

-----

Walking through the gate out of Miskatonic University, tightly gripping Gerson's hand, sunken in thought, Frisk eventually asked "How much of that was true?"

"Oh," Gerson said, a twinkle in his eye. "Perhaps about half of it."