What the Hell Did I Just Read (2017)

What the Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel of Cosmic Horror is a 2017 comic Lovecraftian horror novel written by Jason Pargin under the pseudonym of David Wong. It is the third book in the series after John Dies at the End and This Book Is Full of Spiders.

The novel continues to follow author surrogate David Wong, his best friend John and his girlfriend Amy, who are living in an Midwestern town, and which is referred to as "Undisclosed" throughout the book. The town has long been a place from which eldritch creatures enter our world from other realities and dimensions, viewing humans as useful cattle at best and disgusting insects at worst. Dave and John have the ability to see these creatures, invisible to regular humans, after encountering a substance known as the "Soy Sauce" several years ago, as depicted in John Dies at the End. This has led to their becoming semi-experts on dealing with the supernatural among both police and the general populace, over the years gaining fame in certain circles, despite both struggling to maintain financial stability.

Synopsis

One night, John and Dave are called to investigate a closed room disappearance of a little girl named Maggie Knoll. After questioning her father, Ted, and following up on the leads, John and Dave quickly establish that the abductor is a supernatural entity that can present itself in different forms, even to people in the same room. As they continue their investigation by questioning Maggie's mother, Loretta, Dave's girlfriend, Amy, is confronted with a doppelgänger of Dave, who leads her to the girl's location under a pond near a collapsed mining shaft. As the girl is reunited with her parents, she identifies Dave as her kidnapper, but Dave and John manage to convince Ted and Loretta that this is another trick of the supernatural kidnapper.

John, Dave and Amy find and trap a small insect-like creature that can disguise itself as any living or inanimate object, inserting retroactive memories of its new form so that it doesn't arouse suspicion. Before they can investigate it, another child goes missing under similar circumstances, whose mother, Chastity Payton, believes it to be related to BATMANTIS???, a large flying creature spotted and filmed in the area. Police detective Bowman arrives to question David on Maggie Knoll's case and finds the second child unconscious in his house, after which he arrests all three of them. The cops take Amy, Dave and John to NON, a government organization with some degree of control over time, alternate dimensions and even death, who question them on the situation. Before NON can wipe their memories, Dave, John and Amy are rescued by Chastity Payton, who takes them to a motel, where she is staying with her son. Chastity explains that her memories are full of plot holes and that she was able to pierce the truth: she never had a son before last night, her memories of him were implanted, but were imperfect and didn't take. Exposed, the swarm of creatures switches to another disguise, prompting the group to flee from an armed biker gang. Dave and John take the Soy Sauce to get to the bottom of the mystery and awaken two days later with no memory of what happened. They discover that they have made significant preparations and left themselves written messages, but continuously proceed to miss them until it's too late and accidentally release the BATMANTIS??? creature from her confinement. Amy explains that the biker gang became convinced that ten more of their kids have gone missing, and that she has been working with NON to solve the case. Still experiencing lingering effects from the Soy Sauce, Dave and John are now able to see through the illusions, revealing that all documents on the "kids" are, in fact, blank and that "Maggie" is actually a giant larva literally feeding on Loretta Knoll, who does not experience a thing.

Dr. Albert Marconi, a long-time associate of Dave and John with deep knowledge of the occult, arrives in [Undisclosed] after Dave and John mail him their captured specimen while on the Soy Sauce. Marconi theorizes that the smaller creatures creating false memories are worker drones that allow the larvae to feed on the "parent" hosts before they hatch into the Queens, one of which is already living under the pond where the first "child" was found. Marconi designs a method to counteract the illusion, allowing them to capture the second larva and take it to NON, who already have "Maggie" and Loretta in their custody. NON explains that the only reliable way to kill the larvae is with burning sulfur, but when they fire it at the second larva, it begins hatching. Dave and John help NON take it through a portal into a parallel universe and witness as the larva hatches into a towering infernal monstrosity that changes the idyllic world into a hellish dystopia: retroactively, so that it has always been that way. They rush to stop "Maggie" larva from doing the same, but Ted Knoll and his ex-military friends storm the NON facility and rescue his wife and "daughter". Ted sends his family to Marconi, while he and his military group join John, Dave and Amy to blow up the pond mine shaft, believing it to be the nest of BATMANTIS???, the creature responsible for the kidnappings.