The Call of Cthulhu.

 

The Call of Cthulhu

 

Originally by H.P. Lovecraft

 

Rewritten by J. D. Wilson (A hack in the making!)


Edited by: Saphiel Wesker(An awesome guy and great eye for details)

 

Forward.

 

I know right?  A remake, I can already hear you screaming at your screens. “Damn it man, why, it was a classic and you screwed with it, you had no right!” Or something on that order at least. Now, I don’t like purple prose and I never have. This is an attempt to undo all of that so the story can flow that much easier. I know you don’t like this idea, I don’t blame you. I wanted to do this for some time and now that I have some free time I am going to try for it. I have no idea how this is going to turn out and perhaps it will be as terrible as you imagine, perhaps worse.  Thank you for reading this at least and giving it a chance.

 

Part One: Horror in Clay

 

The best thing in the world about humanity is our natural limited perception of the universe we live in. We were never meant to travel far from our island in the universe and to me it is obvious. Sciences are constantly pushing in all directions, and for now have caused little harm but someday when we least expect it random things will come together and reveal to us something so terrible we will not be able to accept our newly discovered place in reality and as a collective whole we will flee into the safety of a new dark age.

 

I wish for a new dark age on a personal level unlike I never had before. I suppose, someday another will figure out what I have been given on their own free will if they have it. It was given to me like some terrible curse from a family member that I hardly even knew, not in the sense of knowing, but of true knowing. I am getting ahead of myself, let me explain a moment. I will never knowingly give out details of this horror to anyone if I manage to live for long, I don’t expect to however. I write this in an attempt to ease my own mind, to piece together the madness that I can’t seem to shake from my mind. I assume that these notes I got would never have reached my hands if it not had been for the death that was not unexpected but came too fast for him to complete the destruction of his notes.

 

It began in the winter of 1926. It does not matter anymore what day it was, I cannot remember it now anyway. My great uncle was a famous old man I guess. Let me tell you about him for a brief moment, I say you as if I am talking to someone but it just makes it easier to write this, someone, even if they are in my own imagination has to know this. My Great Uncle was George Gammell Angell. I am not entirely clear on what he was, but I remember he was interested in languages of the ancient kind. I told you before that I did not know the man as well as I wished I would have now. Several museums resorted to his expert mastery of deciphering strange and ancient languages that their experts did not have any hope of knowing, Semitic languages I think was his area of expertise but I am not sure of this or anything else anymore. Anyway, the man was ninety two years old and for his age seemed to be still in good health. While his death was expected, it was not expected like this. I do not know the details, but apparently he was walking up some kind of a hill at a brisk pace, far faster than a man of his age should have been. He fell dead according to witnesses, for no discernable reason. The doctors who examined his body later determined there was a lesion in his heart of some kind after a debate that was the cause of his death. I had no reason to doubt this; the man was ninety two years old after all. Now though I wonder, and do more than just wonder at these events. 

 

George was followed by death and a desperate degree of lonely existence. His wife had died some time before and he had no children. It was I who was given the duty to be the executor of the will. It was a duty that I had never done before but I was willing to give it my best attempt. The man had nothing that would really interest me over all. Files and papers that I was expected to go through the best I could, in order to do this I had everything moved to where I lived in Boston.

 

 I was not excited to go through these papers and files, most of it I sent off to the American Archeological Society to be published at their own convenience. There was much here of little interest to me, however there was one box that didn’t quite fit with the rest, and it was the one I saved for last because something about it troubled me because it was the only one that was locked and for the life of me I could not find a key for this lock. This box had consumed my mind so greatly that it was a good while before it occurred to me to check my Uncle’s personal effects, his key ring to be exact. I found this key and opened the box, but my mystery had only been deepened.

 

 For within the confines of this container was nothing I’d ever seen before. A strange shape in clay, a thing that I had no choice but to physically touch to remove from the box with my hands and I feared it would come to life and cling to me as I removed it, to my great relief it did not. I proceeded to look through the box and found nothing that made any sense. It was full of random clippings of newspaper stories, notes and other ramblings that seemed unconnected by any means. Perhaps my Great Uncle was on to something, or perhaps he had lost his mind, either way I had not known him to be a sculptor of any kind so I decided to find out who it was that created this thing that disturbed his peace of mind and the more I stared into its alien form my own as well. What kind of mind could produce something like this?

 

I am sure you wish to know what it was. It was a rectangle, thin and brittle in appearance but made recently and this was the only thing modern about it. Five by six inches in area, barely an inch thick if you must know. Its atmosphere was something I could not describe; something inside of me rejected it completely even though my mind tried to rationalize it. I thought maybe it was an experiment in cubism, or a futuristic version of what art might be, but it felt prehistoric, beyond that if I dare suggest such a thing although at the time I didn’t know why. I could not identify the species of thing it displayed and the alien hieroglyphics told me nothing.

 

Above these hieroglyphics was a figure, something that was most disturbing to me. This was the form only a mind stricken with madness could have come up with. My own imagination tried to come up with the wicked combination and I the closest I could come was a terrible mix of an octopus, human and God help me, a dragon. The head was misshapen and its face was covered was what seemed to be tentacles, the body was large and scaly with a pair of what appeared to be ruined or underdeveloped wings. The outline of the whole thing made it far more frightful as if something in the dark recesses of my memory hated this thing. Behind the monster, for lack of a better word was faint suggestion of a city built from stones in a Cyclopean, you know, rocks piled on top of one another in a primitive manner, but it was hard to see any of this well enough to be entirely sure of anything and I dared not look too close for long.

 

The piece of writing that came with this in my Great Uncle’s own handwriting didn’t make me feel any better once I read it. The main document was headed with two words, one I knew, the other was the first time I had ever seen it. Cthulhu Cult, it said on the top and each letter of the first strange word was written carefully, printed to avoid apparently misspelling the word that seemed to me to be made up in the first place. The manuscript was divided into two parts from what I could tell. The first part was labeled 1925-Dreams and The Dream Work of H. A. Wilcox, Providence R.I. The second was called Narrative of Inspector John R. Legrasse, New Orleans 1908-Notes on Prof. Webb’s Account.

 

Now, I didn’t understand why it wasn’t the other way around. The other papers seemed to be disjointed notes seeming to be accounts of interviews with people about their dreams to citations from books on Myths, history and secret societies. The rest seemed to be random newspaper reports that all seemed to be dated in 1925 and their only connection seemed to be their allusions to mental illness and mass hysteria in groups. I didn’t want to read all of this, not yet anyway. I had come this far into the contents of the box though so I decided to read the main manuscript in the order my Uncle seemed to want it to be despite my urges to read the 1908 entry first.

 

I took a break. The contents of the box was as terrifying as it was compelling, like walking through an old house with each room revealing a little more of its horrible history. After a bite to eat I took a deep breath and put the manuscript in my hands and began to read. The whole thing took longer than it should have. My Great Uncle’s handwriting was hurried, and nearly in some kind of code all to its own in some parts of the text, but at last I was able to read the thing. I will tell here the important parts that you might be interested in.

 

March 1st, 1925. A man called upon my Great uncle, and with him he brought the bas-relief. It was the same one that I had seen, but back then it was still fresh and damp apparently as well being just made. The man was thin and dark, slightly neurotic as well. The man’s name was Henry Anthony Wilcox, although I don’t know why his full name was needed it seemed to be at the time. The man was an artist, or trying to be one as he was studying sculpture at the Rhode Island Design School. The man was living alone near the school and was more than a bit strange. He called himself psychically hypersensitive and often made a habit of telling people of his strange dreams that usually made others avoid him completely. Despite wanting to be an artist, he never seemed to interact with people of his own interests and most people seemed to deem him hopeless. I am not sure if this just came from my Great Uncle’s observations or Henry himself had said it.

 

Henry was the youngest son of an otherwise for all intents and purposes quite normal family that George seemed to be dimly aware of, although I am not sure how. According to the manuscript, all the artist wanted to know was the meaning of the strange hieroglyphics on his sculpture he had brought with him, yet something in the way he said it seemed to be filled with sarcasm and the freshness of the artifact was anything but old. Then Henry says this to him. “Yes, it is new, I made it last night in a dream of strange and ancient cites. Dreams are older than old Tyre, the ancient stone sphinx and even that of the Gardens of Babylon.” He said, as the handwriting got faster here, harder to read so it must have been transcript as he tried to keep up with Henry.

 

The transcript never says how many times the two met, but surely this could not have all been in one visit. The only evidence I have for this comes at the end. Again I am getting ahead of myself. Henry’s tale continues from here, it is here he tells of his dream that he calls it but it sounds more like a nightmare to me. He said he dreamed of cities built of titanic blocks reaching higher than he could see. Every tower glistened and dripped with strange green ooze that had no origin. All the walls and pillars were covered with the hieroglyphs, all unreadable. The horror and wonder of the ancient city was disrupted by a sound, a voice that was no human voice. Henry could only make out sounds that seemed pointless, but all the same he came out with this: Cthulhu Fhtagn. That word again sent a shiver down my spine when I read it.

 

The handwriting changed here. My Great uncle wrote down several things here I could not read for a few lines before he calmed down some, apparently he remembered something far more clearly now and he questioned the young man about all manner of things, strange questions if Wilcox belonged to any kind of secret society, cult or owned any strange books, but apparently after a few hours of questioning relented as the Professor seemed content enough to finally believe that the young artist had no interest or involvement in any such organization. Personally I do not know how long he studied this strange work of art, but many times in the manuscript is written the words “How could I forget?” I do not know what he forgot, but according to the manuscript the two of them met many times, each time Wilcox reported his dreams to the old professor for weeks. The dreams were always the same. A vast and dark city of dripping and vile, ancient stone, always with the same monotone shouting that made no sense, the only two sounds that resembled words at all the most were simply Cthulhu and something called R’lyeh. More strange words to infect my brain, all meaningless to me yet in their meaningless a dreaded kind of void filled me that I could not explain. Just because it was meaningless to me didn’t at all mean it truly was.

 

On March 23, the artist failed to show up on his regular appointment and it says that George went to where he lived and learned that he was sick with, something of a fever that appeared with no warning, screaming in the night waking everyone up in a dreadful panic. With nothing more they could do, they called his family who brought him back home. The professor then closely watched over the sick one as the case continued. The mind of the artist was wildly possessed with things and horrors best left unseen. Henry screamed in his sleep about a thing gigantic in size, miles high that walked. Of course in his dreaming state anything terrifying becomes much more intense in size and scope. The Doctor treating the afflicted dreamer told George of the things he was saying. At no time did Henry ever describe the thing that haunted his nightmares, but my Great uncle, somehow was convinced that this thing was the same as what was in the bas-relief he had made.

 

Henry’s affliction lasted until the second of April at about three P.M he sat straight up in bed, completely awake. At first my great uncle was happy to hear of the recovery and tried to get the memories from the afflicted one, but Henry could remember nothing of the event. Worse to the Professor, Henry’s dreams had all but stopped, this was apparent after a week of observations when all his dreams turned back to normal.

 

The first part of the thing I held in my hands ended here, but it appears my Great uncle was busy. There are so many notes in this box from people of all kinds. Notes of dreams and how he got people to record their dreams. The original questions are nowhere to be found, but the notes seemed to be separated into three different categories, and my Uncle seemed to have a sense of humor as well. The average person, the businessman and the society dweller, those he deemed to be average were averagely unhelpful. None of these people noticed any dreams at all and produced a completely negative result. “Useless, but useful” Was the only note he left under this category and I couldn’t help but laugh a little bit. I read note after note and very few ever sited anything disturbing.

 

The second category was the shortest; the scientific community must not have been very receptive to such nonsense as dream recording. Only five out of the fifteen cases reported anything strange, and only one case was there mentioned a feeling of abnormal dread of something in just beyond their sight. Again no people were mentioned here either, every one of these people was given a number, some kind of a code only my Uncle knew to protect their identity.

 

The last category was by far the most useful. Notes seemed endless here as I read them and I was sure that if these people were to compare notes it would have resulted in wide spread panic. These people were reported to be artists, writers and others of this sort. No names were recorded, but the notes said that many of them had dreams of increasing intensity from February 28th to April 2nd.  During the time of Henry’s delirium the nightmares grew worse. Some of the dreamers seemed to admit to seeing, or feeling something massive out in the distance that could not be described accurately. Notes say that when they tried they seemed to hit some kind of mysterious fog in their brain that prevented them from looking further. One case claimed to be that of a well-known architect with connections to the occult and other strange things people didn’t talk about, went violently insane on the day that Henry went into his fever. He died months later screaming to be saved from some monster from a kind of hell that due to his descriptions no one had ever heard of, a hell of alien stone and slime that stretched on in all directions. I wish my uncle had not used this infernal code to keep the identity secret. I did look for the architect mentioned but I could find no trace of such a man in any record despite the claim of the notes. I can only assume that those my Great uncle had approached had been confused at the dream questions. Now I know it is better that they shall never know the meaning behind it now.

 

Reading this I once more looked upon the various paper clippings that seemed randomized and largely pointless. Now though I realized that all of these did indeed have a connection, and the sources of these things were placed all over the globe. A report from London of a man waking up, leaping out the window, screaming all the way down as if something was chasing him only he could see. In South America a letter to an editor was rambling on for pages of a future to come from visions he had seen during this time, it was a hideous essay to read. From California a cult, or some kind of religious group donned white robes for some kind of coming experience that would reveal to them the truth, but it never arrived.  Even from shrouded India, items speak with carefully chosen words of social unrest and riots with no real meaning during the days of March 22nd and the 23rd day.

 

The strangest report comes from Western Ireland. A talented painter by the name of Ardois-Bonnot hung a reportedly hideous and blasphemous picture that he called “Dream Landscape” in the Paris spring salon of 1926, no picture of it was shown but I can only guess that this picture was that of ancient and vast stone, with green slime and something outlined in the black beyond, but it’s just a guess. I didn’t even bother to go through the bulk amount of the insane asylum collection for it would be too hard to tell what was connected. It was a very strange collection of clippings and even though it was all a good story, now I can hardly imagine my calloused rationalism now as I think back to it. The manuscript wasn’t finished, but at the time I needed a break from this assault on my mind, reading random connections that seemed to all be connected by one person’s bas-relief seemed impossible, a chance occurrence at the time.

 

Part Two: The Tale of Inspector Legrasse

 

Reading the second part it is no small wonder anymore why the artist’s bas-relief became so incredibly important to him. It appears that once before that George had seen the hellish outlines of this nameless thing, was puzzled by all of this once before and somehow had forgotten all of it. I don’t really understand how all of this memory can be recalled at the mention of the sound I am still trying my best to say. Cthulhu is proving impossible to say, but at the moment I don’t think people can say it or were ever meant to. I am getting ahead of myself again; I will reveal the second part of this manuscript as best as I could make it out.

 

In 1908 the American Archaeological Society held its annual meeting in St. Louis. Professor Angell had been given a prominent position in all of the deliberations and was usually one of the first people to be approached to answer questions that required an expert’s opinion to get as close as the truth as he could decipher it.

 

The most important outsider to stand out to George and in a short time was the main focus of the meeting was a middle aged man who apparently had traveled all the way from New Orleans for special information that seemed to be impossible to get from anywhere local. His name was John Raymond Legrasse and he was a police inspector, not the usual attendant of a meeting like this but he brought with him something very unusual. It was a unearthly and repulsive stone statue that he was at a loss to figure out where it came from. This man came for information on the statue and was not interested in the least by the science or study of archeology. The story, as it is told here, goes like this.

 

The statuette, or idol was captured months before in the swamps, south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed Voodoo meeting. The police discovered far more than they expected however, and it was unknown to them just how black this meeting truly was in reality. The police raid captured members but when they tried to gain information about this cult all they got in return was unbelievable tales. Nothing of any use was discovered and tracking the cult down to its source was impossible.

 

John was not ready for the sensation that his offering created. One look of the thing was more than enough to throw the men of science into an excited state and they lost no time in crowding around him to get a better look at the thing. It was a thing so strange and otherworldly that it seemed to hint at unopened and forgotten expanses of time and memory. No school of art had formed this horrid thing, yet millions of years seemed to be recorded in the dim and green hued surface of the aged stone thing.

 

This terrible sensation was finally passed around for close and careful study. It was eight inches in height and incredibly detailed. It showed a monster, a vaguely human outline with a head like an octopus whose face was a mass of feelers. The body was scaly, but looked as if it were made from rubber. Massive claws on its hind and its fore feet, long narrow wings behind. This thing seemed to have an instinct for unnatural malignancy. Its rubber-like body sat on its rectangular throne, a block with a strange language on it none could read. The head was bent forward so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of its huge forepaws that rested on the elevated knees. The entire aspect of the thing was so lifelike to the point it made the whole experience worse. It did not connect with any known form of art from the earliest days of human history or any other time anyone knew of. The stone itself was a mystery. The smooth greenish black stone had golden flecks and patterns that were unknown to geology. Despite having half the world’s language experts at the meeting the characters on the bottom of the block belonged to something as remote and distant from mankind as we know it to suggest a cycle of life that our world and imagination never had a part of.

 

The members of the meeting confessed defeat one at a time at the strange nature John’s problem. There was one man in the gathering who had a strange familiarity with the alien shape and writing and with some amount of courage he told what little he might have known. This man is William Channing Webb, a professor who passed away some time ago. He was a professor of Anthropology in Princeton University and an explorer of some renown. Forty eight years ago in a tour of Greenland and Iceland while searching for some runic inscriptions he instead discovered a degenerated cult, and as far as he knew a singular tribe isolated high up on the western coast of Greenland.


 The Esquimaux, whose religion was a curious form of devil worshipping that chilled him with its deliberate thirst for blood and unspeakable rites. It was a faith other tribes knew little of and only spoke of under constant questioning and did so under a shroud of fear. Saying it came down through the ages before the world was made. Their horrid religion worshipped an elder devil that they called Tornasuk. Professor Webb took a careful copy from an aged Angekok, or wizard priest and tried to express the sounds the best he could. The main idol of the cult was a very crude stone wall and it showed a hideous picture with cryptic writing, as far as Webb could tell it was a rough parallel of the ancient statue laying before them here at the meeting. It was then the professor; hit by a surge of terrible memory said something completely inhuman.

 

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. It was written down like this. I thought it was complete gibberish, the failing memories of an old man trapped in an evolving nightmare at the time. I should have left it alone, put everything away at this moment, but my roaming eyes looked lower and some force kept me reading it.

 

Inspector Legrasse looked up at these words and turned a deathly pale color as all the blood rushed from his face and he swallowed. “Sir, the members of the cult we raided, they said those exact same words but we could never figure them out.” He said. Some parts of this manuscript are direct quotes while other parts just seem to be recordings of events. I couldn’t decide what parts chilled my blood more. The fact that such a vicious cult could be spread around the world at this time was far more terrifying, but I kept reading on.

 

The professor looked up, just as pale and frightened. These words, as far as I could tell mean something like this. “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming” I read that phrase over and over again, transfixed. Beside it George made notes that suggested house actually meant temple and dead was actually dreaded. Either way didn’t make me feel better but I couldn’t imagine an ancient language would use such a friendly word as house and suggest their god was actually dead at all. What manner of beast was this, what type of person would worship such a thing? So many questions, and I sought more information and read on.

 

The Inspector who seemed to have given bits and pieces of his tale before seemed compelled now to give it all in detail. George seemed to be recalling it all from some distant memory but the details were enough, apparently everyone there was willing to listen to his dark tale.

 

On November 1st 1907 the police got a frantic summoning from a terrified swamp dweller. The dweller’s tale was filled with dark imagination and fears that a civilized man would dismiss; he spoke of ghost lights in the trees and screaming in the dark from the deeper parts of the swamp where not even they went. None of this was enough to convince Inspector Legrasse to investigate the superstitious ranting. It was then the half mad messenger claimed that since the sounds began some of their people had gone missing and the thieves seemed not to care who they took. No one was safe after dark, not even in their houses.

Legrasse, not willing to ignore such a claim despite how ridiculous it sounded rounded up nineteen men. They set out in the late afternoon of that day, allowing their frantic messenger to be their guide. The men moved to the edge of the swamp and to where the road ended. The men and their guide ventured into what seemed like a different era, the dark of the swamp felt prehistoric and they were sure that the light of the day never came here, not entirely. The place felt wrong as the silence overpowered everything and the shadows of the twisted trees seemed to move on their own as they moved through the stagnant water of the swamp for what felt like for miles. The police got to the swamp dwellers quarters, they were as primitive as expected, but the people greeted the police in a wild rush, thankful to see them, the police were treated as would-be heroes. The wind picked up from nowhere and far ahead of them a sound could be heard. The beating of wild and chaotic drums, faint screaming and dim reddish light filtered through the trees. The policemen tried to get a guide to lead them to the source, but not a single one would go any further than the village.  Legrasse and his men were on their own from this point forward to venture into the unknown.

 

The place they were walking into was a place of legendary evil and monsters. Civilized men did not go here and showed no interest in the place. There were legends of a hidden lake never seen by human eyes where there lived a massive and formless thing with glowing eyes. Strange bat like devils flew from the caves to worship it at midnight, each and every night. They said the lake and its monster had been there before the swamp existed, been there before any beast lived or plant grew here. It was nightmare in the flesh and to see the thing, legend had it would bring death. It made men dream terrible things so everyone knew to stay away from here. This deviant voodoo ritual was on the very edge of this hated area and Legrasse figured that this was more frightening to the dwellers than anything else.

 

It was almost a sick kind of poetry; it was the only way to describe the noises heard by the men as they pushed into the black swamp towards the red glare and the constant beating of drums. There is a big difference between the voices of men and beasts, and the voodoo gathering, despite being human had the voices of hideous animal fury that tore into the minds of the men as they walked forward, it was much like a windstorm from hell itself. Now and then as they approached the wild and senseless cheering would stop and their voices would rise together in a sing song chorus to chant that alien and terrible phrase: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! They had the words memorized, burned into their minds.

 

The men reached a spot where the trees grew thin and with no warning came into sight of the event as it was taking place. Four men threw up, one passed out and two more screamed involuntarily. The chaotic noise  of the event covered up their cries, fortunately. Legrasse splashed swamp water on the face of the man who passed out and all had somewhat recovered but still trembled and were filled with horror as they gazed on.

 

They stared at a grassy island that was clear of all trees and seemed to be the only dry piece of land around. On this island a writhing mass of people devoid of any clothing were dancing, if it could be called that, around a massive bonfire shaped like a ring. In the center of this was revealed an eight foot granite monolith and on the top stood the wicked toxic statuette in all its infamous glory. From a wide circle of ten scaffold set at regular distance with the flame covered monolith hung the bodies of the helpless dwellers who had disappeared, mutilated in odd ways. It was inside this circle the worshippers roared and moved endlessly from left to right, being between the ring of bodies and the fire.

 

The horror of the men was surprisingly brief. Duty came first, there was at least a hundred of the insane men in the group but the police relied on their firearms and plunged head on into the sickening sight. For five minutes the chaos was beyond description. Shots rang out into the dark and some of the group managed to get away. As he said before, he was able to capture forty seven of the group, kill five of them and badly injure two of them who had to be carried back by their fellow prisoners. Legrasse took the monolith down from the pedestal carefully as the prisoners got dressed.

 

After a trip of intense strain the prisoners were examined back at headquarters. They all proved to be from different regions of the world, some even proved to be white men with an evil look in their eyes, inhuman almost if one looked too long. There was no dominating race and it seemed all blood was susceptible to whatever dark influence this was. It was clear before many questions were asked that this was far more than what they first thought. The men and women of the cult, as mentally twisted as they were all had the same story that was their faith.

 

Their story is written down here and I had to read it twice.

 

They worshiped something called the Great Old Ones. They lived ages before mankind was even an idea. They came out of the sky when the world was young. Now these Old Ones were gone to various distant places under the sea and inside the earth but their dead bodies had told their secret to the very first men who formed a cult that had never died. This was that cult, the prisoners said that it had always existed and would exist hidden in the distant wastelands all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his temple in the city of R’lyeh would rise from the sea and bring the earth under his will. Someday he would call when the stars were ready and the secret cult would always be ready to liberate him and pray for his return.

 

To Legrasse it all sounded like a twisted version of Christianity. Praying to a being set to return someday at a random time, but instead of coming from heaven this thing would come from the depths of the sea and rule the world. An old thing returning from the grave to live and it was a priest no less.

 

The members of the cult would tell no more information. There was some terrible secret that would not be revealed. Man was not alone among the intelligent things of the earth. Shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few, but these were not the old ones, no one had ever seen the Old ones. They discovered in time that the chanted ritual was no secret, for the cultists would chant it in their cells over and over, carve it into walls with their fingernails if they could manage it. The police discovered that Cthulhu was in truth what the Idol was supposed to be, but no one knew if the likeness was correct or if the other old ones appeared as he did. Whatever the true secret was, it was never spoken by any of them.

 

Out of all of them only two of the prisoners were found sane enough to be hanged. The rest were locked away in various asylums. No one admitted taking part in the ritual killings, instead claimed it was all done by the black winged ones that came to them from their meeting place in the haunted swamp. An older member of the cult named Castro was the one who talked the most of the cult. What remained of his mind though was debatable as he claimed to sail to strange ports and talked with the immortal leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.

 

Castro remembered pieces of terrible legend that made the theories of all things pale. He spoke of other periods of deep time when other things ruled the world and they had great cities. He said the immortal Chinese leaders told him of the remains that could still be found as stones on islands in the Pacific if one knew where to look and that they all died ages before men came to be. There were arts that could revive them when the stars came around again to the right places in the cycle of eternity. These things had come from the stars and brought their images with them. All of this made mankind feel like a very recent and fragile thing.

 

The story of these Old ones continued on. He said they were not composed completely of flesh and blood, but they still had a shape. When the stars were right they could move from world to world at their will, but could not live when the stars shifted. Of course they would never really die; they all lay in their stone houses at R’lyeh, able to live by the mighty spells of Cthulhu to wait for the day when the earth and stars might be ready for them again. At the same time some force had to exist to liberate them from the outside and they couldn’t make the first move. All they could do was be awake, aware of everything that was going on and send telepathic thoughts to one another. After the first men came they transmitted their thoughts to the minds of the mammals, only in this way could the language of the old ones be learned and only the most sensitive could hear these all important messages.

 

Those first men formed the cult around tall idols that the Great ones showed them. Idols brought from dark stars. This cult would never die and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from his tomb to revive his subjects and resume his rule of the earth. It is said that the time would be easy to know as mankind would become just like the great old ones, moving beyond good and evil, casting out all laws and morality, killing with a joy denied them now. The liberated old ones would teach them new ways to shout and revel. All of the earth would be alight with a holocaust of freedom and ecstasy.

 

In the elder time, the chosen ones had talked to the imprisoned old ones in dreams, but something unexpected happened. R’lyeh with all of its wonder sank beneath the waves and communication between men and the Old Ones was cut off all at once. Memory never dies and the high priests promised the city would rise again once the stars became right. Castro dared not speak much more and cut himself off in a hurry, he never mentioned the size of the Old Ones strangely, and all he mentioned after this was that the cult might have come from Irem, the City of Pillars deep in desert of Arabia, which lies unknown and untouched through the ages.  The cult was not allies to any known religion and seemed to be unknown beyond the members of its cult. Castro’s last rambling thought made little sense. He said the immortal Chinese leaders stated that there were many double meanings in the Necronomicon that was written by Abdul Alhazred and that the initiated of the cult may read this book if one could call it that, as they chose. The most discussed couplet seemed to be this:

 

That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.

 

This was the first time I had ever heard of the Necronomicon, Alhazred or Irem. I read this section twice before moving on and all of it felt like stuff I would be much better off not knowing at the time. The second time I read it, I felt sick in a way I could not quite describe, a mental despair fell upon me I could not shake and a darkness filled my thoughts that I could not look away from. Now I couldn’t stop, I had to keep going because I came this far.  I was not sure what was worse. Knowing or being unaware but now I knew it was impossible to be unaware. I had long ago left the shores of ignorance and would never be able to return.

 

Legrasse tried to discover more of the cult and its history but Castro told the truth when he said it was a complete secret and it was only by chance that someone knew of the cult at this meeting he brought the statuette to. Even though the excited nature of the meeting is echoed by the conversations of the people who were there, nearly nothing of the event was ever published by the Society for fear of being called out as a fake and have their career ruined. It says here Legrasse lent the idol to Professor Webb for some time; there is no mention of what happened to it after Webb died. I can only assume either the Inspector got it back, or the idol disappeared back into the secret world where it belongs.

 

Now it made sense why my Uncle was so excited by Henry’s tale. I could only guess at what thoughts he must have had as his memory returned with such force like it did. I read all of this again and my rational mind decided that still, Henry’s tale was created because he indirectly heard of the cult somehow and all of this and, well, decided to pull something of a prank on my Great Uncle, so I decided to take a trip to Providence to meet with this kid and give him a piece of my mind for imposing on such a learned and aged man, and most likely led to his death over the course of the events I had read about.

 

Providence was a great place to look at, I wish I had more time to visit it and all its wonder but I was on a mission and dedicated to my cause. Wilcox still lived alone where my Uncle had found him on Thomas Street. A hideous imitation of seventeenth century design, and under the shadow of one of the finest steeples in America too, it seemed very out of place. I knocked on the door, and it slid open, not locked in the least and I figured something was wrong. I walked into the place expecting to see him dead on the floor, or just gone with empty rooms to explore. Soon I heard the noises of work going on and moved towards them. Once I entered his room I knew this artist was some kind of a genius and had profound talent, though I doubted any of his work would bring him any great fame for they were all horrific and full of nightmares.

 

The man was described, frail, and dark and as to be expect of most artists a bit of a mess. He turned as I walked into the room, not even bothering to get up or showing the least bit of shock at my appearance, he asked me what I wanted as if he was tired and uncaring of who came in. I told him who I was and my relation to my uncle and his eyes opened a bit wider in a clearer interest now. We spoke, I was trying to get him to confess some great cosmic prank he had pulled on my Uncle, but the more we spoke the more he described his strange dreams to the point I was convinced that indeed this was no trick. His dreams stuck with him. All of his creations showed this, and other horrible shapes.

 

He stood up and asked if I liked it. I lied and said yes, then with that he smiled, a grin that didn’t make me feel the greatest and told me to follow. I did and he brought me into a room with something in the middle, concealed with a black cloth. He walked to it and pulled off the cover and I stepped back. It was nearly identical to the statuette, well the outlines of the thing. Henry had never seen the full thing, so this was the best he could do or perhaps he wasn’t finished. My mind reeled and I immediately tried to think of some way he could have discovered this that wasn’t by way of some alien dream.

 

I tried to bring myself back to reality but Henry spoke of his dreams more poetically than ever and making me see that horrid city dripping with green slime, he spoke to me more details, he said the geometry was all wrong and could hear the endless chanting, mental calling of Cthulhu Fhtagn. Those words meant more to me than he would ever know. I saw his work, heard his dreams and dared not mention the cult directly to him. The artist was not agreeable to me exactly but all the same I wished him all the luck in the world on his future success and took my leave, honestly I was glad to get out of that nightmare filled room and couldn’t get out fast enough. Wilcox had been affected horribly just by a dream and I could only wonder how it affected the others. My curiosity was not easily tamed, having come this far already I decided I needed to take a trip down south to New Orleans to see what remained of the old raiding party and Legrasse himself to see how much of this madness was true.

 

I gathered my courage and took a train ride down to New Orleans. The town was filled with strange smells and sounds I had never heard before, but not entirely bad. Something about the city was warm and inviting on the surface, but I was not looking for the surface compliments and the happy setting. It was hot here, humid to the point of being willfully oppressive. I walked down a sidewalk, automobiles slowly crawled down the roads and everyone seemed friendly enough. I appeared as a ghost, my pale skin stood out against the tan skinned residents but they did not seem to notice me or avert their eyes. I didn’t know where to start looking so I did what anyone might do. I looked in the local directory and it only took a few moments to find who I was looking for. I didn’t even consider the gap of time and perhaps they were all dead by now.

 

Legrasse’s house looked as if it were from another age, it was white and smaller than I had expected. He saw me coming as he sat there on his rocking chair, an aged man with sunken-in eyes that had seen far more than I dared ask about. Those blue eyes gazed at me. “What might you want?” He said to me, not a question but a knowing accusation. I didn’t know what to say, so I said the only thing I could. “November 1st, 1907” I said to him and his hand slid to his firearm at his side, I took a step back and raised my hands, this move made him stop. “What you wanna know about that night, boy?” He asked me in an almost broken voice. “I want to know about the cult, that Cthulhu cult you found.” I said, not wanting to waste time. “Boy, you don’t want any part of that world. Go back to your big city office and do whatever it is you do.” He said to me and shifted in his chair, looking away. “My Great Uncle was George Angell. You met him once long ago trying to figure out the secret of the idol you found.” I said in hopes maybe that would help my cause. “I heard about your uncle, they got to him you know. The slippery bastard kept on the move pretty good for an old timer, but no one escapes for long. They’re relentless.” He said to me and it sent chills down my spine. “I need to know what it is. I need to know—“John took out his gun and pointed it at me.

 

 “Boy, all you need to know is nothing.  It’s the only defense. I wasted my life trying to break up this evil, it cost me everything and I accomplished nothing. Get out while you can.” He said to me but something about my eyes spoke to him in the moment of silence between him finishing and me taking my leave. “If your Uncle is who you say he is, truly you know as much as I do, perhaps even more. I didn’t see nothing but the stuff those savages did. The only one of my men to claim they saw more than this is Joe. Spanish guy lives on the edge of the swamp now, poor boy passed out in the raid and wasn’t right ever since that night. You can talk to him if you like, not that it’d do you much good, boy is half mad himself now.” Legrasse told me this and refused to say anymore, that gun did all the talking so I left in a hurry. Perhaps this Joe would know more.

 

Old Joe was something of a legend it appeared. Living on the outside of New Orleans, near the dreaded swamp, everyone knew Old Joe and he was not hard to find. I managed to make it to his place in a couple of hours, but in this heat it felt as if it were an eternity in some alien world. When I arrived Joe was standing at the end of a dock, staring off into the water and the trees. His clothes were dirty and torn in places. He turned with a wild look in his eyes, his beard covered his face. He looked at me as if he knew I was coming. “You come to see Joe, how come, what do you want to see me for.” He said to me in a hurried voice thick with the local accent. “You were there in the raid. November, I heard you saw something. I just want to hear your story.” I said to him and kept my distance.

 

 The man looked around to see if anyone came with me, but no one else was around. “We went down into that swamp. Those wild drums and stuff, I am sure you know all about it.” He said and smiled at this, then kept talking. “I was foolish enough to look up, past the flames and the mass of people. I looked over the trees and I saw it. I don’t know what it was, a glimpse of something beyond the trees, and heard the flap of the black wings. I saw it looking at me, into me and I lost all consciousness. I dreamed of things, wicked and old things. Older than Old Joe and all he sees around him. I woke up but the images never left, boy there is something out there in those trees. There is something that wants to come here, so I watch for it here every day to warn, to protect others from it.” Old Joe said with a laugh that frightened me, it was obvious to me he was quite insane but still I looked into the black woods beyond and couldn’t help but feel as if something was staring back at me.


“There is a storm coming, boy, a dreadful storm coming but they all laugh at Old Joe.” It was then he turned back to the calm waters and the trees and said no more, as if I didn’t exist at all. I needed more information, something that made all of this seem real, so I had but one other option. I needed to go talk to a cult member, an inmate. My brain reeled at this thought, it was against every natural instinct I had but I had no choice. I left Old Joe to his eternal sentry post and decided to go make my last visit.

 

The Asylum was a dreadful place to go. Once and awhile a great scream would ring out from a cell. Getting into the place was not as easy to do and since my Uncle said some of the cult members were placed here, I wondered if some would be alive still. It was my last lead before I could go back home, back to normalcy. I had gotten no clear answers here but more than enough information that the story was real in more horrible ways than one. “Cult, what cult, I don’t know anything about any cult. But we do have one inmate who might be of use. She screams the damnedest things on clear nights, and did so much recently that we had to keep her away from the others.” I thought to ask about the word Cthulhu but decided against it. “She was brought in before my time; stories say she’s the last of the captured members. The others killed themselves trying to get out,” The orderly said to me and I was worried, but together we walked through the halls until we got to her room. “This is Maggie; she’s usually harmless in the daylight so you have some time before we will come get you. I’ll be right down the hall if you need anything. Don’t expect much out of her though.” The man said as he unlocked the door and I walked in. She had blonde hair, it covered her face as she sat on the bench on the far side of the grey room. I wrote down what she said to me from this point on.

 

“Hello, thanks for visiting me. I appreciate it, for I rarely get visitors anymore,” she said but never looked at me. “You’re welcome. I am doing research for a story I heard about. I am just getting information from people who were there.” I said back to her and waited, but no response from her at all. “Cthulhu, it’s about that.” I said and she started to laugh and finally looked at me. I expected a hideous face, scarred and eaten with age. Instead she didn’t look a day over thirty years old and her eyes were dark green. “I remember the old one. Undying, eternal and forever,” she said and continued, “Yes, I was there. But there will be no story of it. No one will ever know beyond scrapings of information. I’ll tell you nothing.” She said and leaned back with a smile. “Come on, surely it would be better to tell the world and spread your truth throughout the world than keep it a secret. What kind of cult exists purely in secret, how do you get new members?” I asked and tried to provoke her into talking.

 

“The world, the world is full of outsiders, people who don’t belong to your morality and system. People like me who believe everything is a lie. You must know that the nightgaunts killed those people, we didn’t do it, we couldn’t do it right. Sacrifices must be prepared the old and secret way. No modern human hand is capable of carving the flesh in that way.” She laughed at this and smiled. I had never heard the word nightgaunt before and figured those must have been the black winged ones my Uncle wrote about. I went along with it. “I believe you,” I said but my eyes gave me away, my fear overwhelmed my ability to lie. “You haven’t dreamed of paradise, you haven’t seen anything yet you still wish to see. Your moral mind is too deeply rooted in protected vales of civilization. What is sanity, do you know what it is because I sure don’t, but I would rather believe in the truth of ages rather than lies, wouldn’t you?” She said to me and stood up, and was taller than I was. Her dark green, inhuman eyes gazed at me as she stood.






“I am trapped here in paradise, yet I long to leave towards the sea, towards the darkness of great R’lyeh and live forever there with our true master.” She said and took a step towards me as I backed to the door and started to beat on it, I was sure she was going to attack me at any second and I felt helpless. “Maggie, is it, sorry to have bothered you.” She stopped as I said those words. “Apology accepted, now leave here, go home to where it is safe and enjoy the rest of your meaningless life.” She said to me as the orderly opened the door and I got out of the room. I had little to say after this and all I wanted to do was go back home and go back to my life. I didn’t know what I was doing here, I was no investigator or crusader, and what was I thinking?

 

 I knew I was on the track of an ancient religion, but was it worth it? My Great Uncle had died over this and who knows how many others, yes at this point I did believe my Uncle was murdered by some secret rite that I may never know or understand. If there was anything to be gained by following this road were purely for my own gain and the world would become aware of yet a new and terrible thing to plague its already burdened and troubled consciousness. I did not know how to proceed, but I had learned much and now a dread feeling of being watched came over me in this primordial humid city. I needed to go home. A note of interest, I am glad I left New Orleans when I did. A month later, something I knew would happen did in fact take place. Old Joe spoke of a storm and one did come.

 

August 25-27th, 1926:

 

A hurricane struck near Houma. The steamship Cody, while lying 220 miles east southeast of Galveston reported 75 mph winds while the Argon saw northeast winds of 100 mph neat 27N 90.5W. The pressure bottomed out at 28.31" in Houma with estimated winds of 100 m.p.h. at Grand Isle.

 

Morgan City had 60 mph winds howl through town. Over five inches of rain fell. New Orleans gusted to 52 mph as the pressure sank to 29.37". Burrwood's winds peaked at 50 mph while the pressure fell to 29.55". At Houma, the sugarhouse was wrecked at Southdown plantation. The Episcopal Church was "smashed". Ninety percent of the sugar cane was gone after the storm.

 

 Serious damage occurred between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Lutcher, Caryville, Burnside, and Gismer saw streets full of wreckage which became almost impassable. Many trees were uprooted and barns were removed from their foundations.

 

Thibodaux and Napoleanville experienced winds of 120 mph. Houses fell as telephones splintered in the wind. The town of Thibodaux lost three churches, a warehouse, and ten stores. At Glenwood and Madewood, more than thirteen inches of rain fell in less than 12 hours. The pecan orchard in Shriever was gone. Early rice and cotton were beat down at Crowley.

 

Baton Rouge plunged into darkness as $20,000 in damage occurred to its electric company. More than seventy passengers from the Southern Pacific trains were marooned on a railway ferry barge in the Mississippi when two tugboats towing it grounded. A boat sank at Donaldsonville. The New Canal lighthouse was again damaged, causing it to be raised three feet after the storm. The third Timbalier Bay lighthouse was slightly tipped to the northwest. A ten foot storm surge was reported at Timbalier Bay; tides as high as 15 feet over-washed the southern coast of Terrebonne Parish, north of Isle Derniere. Twenty five people died and 4 million dollars in building damage occurred as it moved northwest towards Shreveport.

 

The storm made national news and was a tragic event. I know not if any of the people I talked to survived, but the destruction of the church and how it was described as “smashed” sent chills down my spine. It seemed more than random chance to me, but I seemed the only one who knew it. Nothing seemed to make my investigations continue anyway, and soon I gave up after returning home to Boston and tried to leave that brief, yet insane part of my life behind.

 

Part Three: Madness from the Sea

 

Life settled back down for me, the strange cult was forcefully pushed from my mind and I returned to my work, even though it wasn’t nearly as exciting as hunting down ancient secrets it was my true calling in life. I was in New Jersey, visiting a friend who was a gifted mineralogist and curator of a museum. I was examining reserve specimens on a shelf and to my surprise one of the rocks was laying on a shelf covered with a stray newspaper from Sydney, Australia; it was dated April 18th, 1925. The picture of the thing hit me hard. The image was identical to what was described by my Uncle, that Legrasse had found in the swamp all those years ago and molded by Henry in his nightmares.

 

I quickly freed the article and read it. It wasn’t very long and didn’t really tell very much. I will share what it said.

 

 

Vigilant Arrives With Helpless Armed New Zealand Yacht in Tow. One Survivor and Dead Man Found Aboard. Tale of Desperate Battle and Deaths at Sea. Rescued Seaman Refuses Particulars of Strange Experience. Odd Idol Found in His Possession.

 

The Morrison Co.'s freighter Vigilant, bound from Valparaiso, arrived this morning at its wharf in Darling Harbor, having in tow the battled and disabled but heavily armed steam yacht Alert of Dunedin, N.Z., which was sighted April 12th in S. Latitude 34°21', W. Longitude 152°17', with one living and one dead man aboard. 

 

The Vigilant left Valparaiso March 25th, and on April 2nd was driven considerably south of her course by exceptionally heavy storms and monster waves. On April 12th the derelict was sighted; and though apparently deserted, was found upon boarding to contain one survivor in a half-delirious condition and one man who had evidently been dead for more than a week.

 

The living man was clutching a horrible stone idol of unknown origin, about 1 foot in height, whose nature authorities at Sydney University, the Royal Society, and the Museum in College Street all profess complete bafflement, and which the survivor says he found in the cabin of the yacht, in a small locked box. 

 

This man, after recovering his senses, told an exceedingly strange story of piracy and slaughter. He is Gustaf Johansen, a Norwegian, and had been second mate of the two-masted schooner Emma of Auckland, which sailed for Calico, February 20th with a complement of eleven men.

 

The Emma, he says, was delayed and thrown widely south of her course by the great storm of March 1st, and on March 22nd, in S. Latitude 49°51' W. Longitude 128°34', encountered the Alert, manned by what appeared to be some sort of pirate order.

 

 Being ordered to turn back, Capt. Collins refused; whereupon the strange crew began to fire savagely and without warning upon the schooner with a unexpected heavy battery of brass cannon forming part of the yacht's equipment. The Emma's men were forced to fight, says the survivor, and though the schooner began to sink from shots beneath the water-line they managed to heave alongside their enemy and board her, grappling with the savage crew on the yacht's deck, and being forced to kill them all, the number being slightly superior, because of their particularly abhorrent and desperate though rather clumsy mode of fighting. 

 

Three of the Emma's men, including Capt. Collins and First Mate Green, were killed; and the remaining eight under Second Mate Johansen proceeded to navigate the captured yacht, going ahead in their original direction to see if any reason for their ordering back had existed.

 

The next day, it appears, they found and landed on a small island, although none is known to exist in that part of the ocean; and six of the men somehow died ashore, though Johansen is strangely quiet about this part of his story, and speaks only of their falling into a rock chasm. Later, it seems, he and one companion boarded the yacht and tried to manage her, but were beaten about by the storm of April 2nd, from that time till his rescue on the 12th the man remembers little, and he does not even recall when William Briden, his companion, died.

 

Briden's death reveals no apparent cause, and was probably due to excitement or exposure. Authorities from Dunedin report that the Alert was well known there as an island trader, and bore a bad reputation along the waterfront. It was owned by a curious group whose frequent meetings and night trips to the woods attracted much curiosity; and it had set sail in great haste just after the storm and earth tremors of March 1st.

 

Our Auckland correspondent gives the Emma and her crew an excellent reputation, and Johansen is described as a sober and worthy man. The admiralty will institute an inquiry on the whole matter beginning tomorrow, at which every effort will be made to induce Johansen to speak more freely than he has done so.

 

That article told me nothing, yet it fired in my mind a chain of events that had begun to flourish in my mind at rapid speed. What was this strange island and what interests did the cult have at sea? I knew the city was sunk under the waves and maybe, oh god, what if that is what the earthquake was? Did those poor sailors find that island? So many questions burned in my mind that it stopped me from doing whatever it was I was doing previously. My uncle had kept track of all of these things and they had no connection but now they did.

 

According to the International Dateline the storm and the Earthquake had come on February 28th. The Alert had been summoned from Dunedin to sail out to points unknown and on the other side of the world creative minds dreamed of strange and dark stone cities, and a sculptor, in his sleep formed an image of dreaded Cthulhu. On March 23rd the crew of the Emma landed on an unknown island and left six men dead, on that day the dreams picked up violently of the monsters pursuit. People went insane and people fell into a strange delirious fever. On April 2nd everything stopped, all reports of the dreams ended. What did it all mean? I felt as if something horrible was taking place here, it was all connected. I don’t know what happened on April 2nd but it had put a stop to whatever menace that had begun its attack on all of mankind. I had to know what it was.

 

With renewed energy I made plans that entire day and by the evening I was on the train to San Francisco. My friend did not understand why I had to leave and an explanation wouldn’t have helped much. I didn’t tell him where I was going, just that I didn’t feel good so I had to go home. I didn’t go home and long story short within a month I came to where my final hunt would hopefully begin. I was in Dunedin.


I wasted no time in questioning about the original crew of the Alert, but none knew very much about them besides they were very strange and sometimes violent for no reason, tales of a wild drumming and red flame in the distant hills where they were supposed to meet but it was just a story, one I guessed to know the terrible origins of all along was enough to tell me I was on the right track. I had also learned that Johansen’s hair had turned from bright yellow to pure white after he was questioned in Sydney. The last thing I learned was that he and his wife returned home to Norway and all they could do is give me the address they had.

 

I went to Sydney and saw the Alert, but there was nothing special about it now and looked much like any other ship I had seen. I went to the museum, my background as an anthropologist allowed me to see the strange idol. When I saw it I knew for a fact it was of same nature as my Uncle described, it looked exactly the same. No one knew what it was or where it came from. While this was wholly interesting to me, this was not what I wanted to find. I decided that I had to go and see the one who lived for myself, this had become more than a want, it was a need. I would go insane if I didn’t know the truth of this mystery, but at the same time I felt I might be just as at risk of the condition if I found out as well. A part of me couldn't help but feel that I was a cat chasing a string not having a clue what was on the other side.

 

I returned to the sea and escaped the horrible heat, far worse and so much drier than New Orleans, and set sail to Norway. The trip was long and I vowed after I got home I would never set foot on a ship again, all this water, something was very sinister about it now as I looked into the waves and couldn't not think of the slimy deep things that may be down there or what memories had been locked in it's terrible waves for eons forgotten by memory.

 

It was autumn, deeply so, by the time I got to Norway it was already getting colder there and I wanted to make my stay as short as I could. All I had was an address and positive thoughts. The address lay in the old town of King Harold who kept Oslo alive during all the centuries, my history was shaky though and I had no wish to discover any more than I needed to. I hailed a taxi and showed the man the address, he knew where to go and his English was too poor spare to any unneeded conversation. I didn't want to tell anyone anything though because at this point as I had learned anyone could have been part of this mad cult and any mention of it might end my life. It knew no boundaries, race or language for it was far older than all of those things I have learned are true.

 

The driver let me out, I paid him and he left. The house he brought me to seemed old. I didn’t know if it was made to look this way or not, and didn't care. I walked to the front door and knocked on it, steadily as to not scare anyone who might be inside. It was but a few seconds before a beautiful, but sad faced woman opened the door. I knew in my soul that the one I had come for was no more. The look on her face told me everything I needed to know. When I asked anyway, she told me in broken English that Gustaf had passed away.

 

The events in 1925 had broken him beyond the point of human resilience and he had revealed to her nothing more than he had to the public. I was disappointed and knew for a fact that this was all over. It was finished and there was nothing else I could do. She did, however, reveal to me that she had in her possession a manuscript of "Technical matters". We spoke and she told me how he died, it didn't make any sense to me but once again, the main cause was heart failure of an unknown origin. This seemed to be happening a lot to people who knew too much of this subject and it was eating away at me that this too would be my fate, I could only wonder what kind of accident would befall me and seal my doom once and for all. I persuaded her to give me the manuscript left behind; she didn't want the thing because she said he spent hours at a time staring at it. It was written in English, even after his death she couldn't read the thing, it was useless to her. I thanked her and wished her the best, but in truth there was nothing I could do about this, or it seemed anything else.

 

I made my way back to the shipyards and booked a trip back to London. It took me many hours to gather the courage to open this book, the book that had all the answers. I opened it and began to read in a secluded corner so that I might not be surprised by anyone while exploring this forbidden memory.

 

His voyage had begun as he told the public. The Emma had cleared Auckland on February 20th and had felt the full force of that earthquake-born storm, that lifted from the bottom of the sea horrors that filled the dreams of men. The ship was quickly under control and soon making good progress once again when from nowhere they were held up by the Alert. There was something worse about the crew than just being pirates. They attacked the Emma with no real warning and the crew of the Emma had no choice but to defend themselves, but these people had a terrible quality about them to make it seem if their destruction was something that needed to be done.

 

The idol they found on the ship was unlike any they had ever seen before, but in it there were golden flakes. Or what appeared to be gold. Johansen, a poor sailor who just lost their boat saw this and knew that these men attacked them because if they ventured any further their strange treasure might be discovered anyway. Checking the Alert's maps they discovered either where they had come from or where they were going. It was impossible to tell. The Second mate turned captain took his captured ship and they moved forward towards the coordinates marked. It was common knowledge there was nothing there, but they had nothing to lose but fuel and time by making the trip. The men felt uneasy about this but decided that it was worth taking a look.

 

The trip from their location didn't take very long and soon in the distance they could see a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and soon they saw the rest. The journal struggles to describe it.

 

"It was a coastline of mud and stranger oozing stuff I couldn’t identify; the rocks were placed on one another, massive impossible rocks stacked in great towers. I have seen pictures of the Pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge, and this is closer to Stonehenge, but it looks much older. There was glistening green slime reflecting in the moonlight, somehow the slime was making its own dim light to make the island visible."


The description alone was enough to make me shudder in my dark corner. The constant sounds of the waves were beating in my mind and becoming unbearable as I read, but I pressed on.

 

"The closer we came to this place the more curious we became. It was nothing like we had ever witnessed in our lives. The sheer size of the place dwarfed anything I'd ever seen, but worse still the angles of the buildings, if you could call them that, made some of my men sick if they tried to follow them for too long. I myself feel sick just trying to remember them. Those impossible and twisting stone towers revealing themselves in between the chaotic angled cliffs of greenish stone as we came closer to the shattered island. Sometimes we could see stone carvings of the idol, only in massive sizes in brief glimpses. I did not know why I wanted to come here, my notion that there was gold here was not going to be enough to keep my men from wanting to run, at least this is what I believed."

 

Johansen couldn't have known but this was the dream and corpse city of R'lyeh. His description of the place was identical to Henry's and I had to pause reading at this point and close my eyes. This poor man had gone to this terrible place when dreaming about it sent people into delirious fits. I almost closed the book and threw it over the side. Only a simple or desperate man would come to a place like this looking for gold. I wanted to jump into the past and scream at them to turn back and run. I read on though, turning the page and not knowing what would come next.

 

"We lowered a lifeboat to the water and decided that it was an illusion of some kind. We pushed through the angry waves to reach the slime covered shore. We found a dry spot and connected our line to an outcropping of stone. We looked upon the walls and sometimes they looked like they were bulging out, then a second later they appeared as if they caved in depending on where you stood. I was going to be happy with finding some kind of artifact to take home with us at this point. In my heart though I knew that there was going to be no gold here to be found, but something terrible, we shouldn't be here."

 

I couldn't believe they got on the island. They must have been in desperate states in life in order to walk onto the surface of R'lyeh. I was reading a memory, a unique memory and experience unlike any other on the planet in recorded history if what I learned was actually true, and now I had no doubt that it was all real.

 

"It was Rodriguez who first dared to climb up the tower, and once he got to the top he urged us to come and see. Like fools we did as he asked and we gazed upon a door like that of a barn. I could not tell if it was lying flat on the ground or was up against the wall, I know it sounds insane but we really couldn't tell. What we could clearly see was a carving of something on the wall. It looked like a squid mixed with a dragon and there were locks on the door around all the sides. Briden advanced in the twisted stone and found something that looked like part of a puzzle, stones that appeared like multi pointed stars. Briden pushed the stones and there was no result. It was Donovan who felt along the edges and pressed each point as he went. There was a horrifying sound at the last point, like the breaking of an awful seal. I looked towards the sound and saw door began to slide open."

 

I stopped reading. How could people be so foolish, I thought, but then I had to stop myself. There was no way they could have known, but I would have thought instinct would have stopped them by now. What man would enter a terrible place like this and start pressing buttons, there had to be more to the story. This journal couldn't have been completely accurate. There had to be a reason they would have done that besides simple curiosity. I almost wish I was there in some morbid extent to see exactly what happened, this journal was detailed but it left out so much it was infuriating.

 

"The opening was black and was almost a physical thing, like a cloak.  I was glad for not seeing what must have lay beyond, all of the sudden as a hideous smoke screamed from the opening. The smell was horrible, a million dead things decaying in the sun might have done it justice, and it burned our eyes and nose. Hawkins heard a slimy sound, slurping like something gasping for air in the black void, it was tense but I still don’t understand why we didn’t run at that moment. We didn't know what that sound was but we listened. Then as we continued to listen the thing, God, the thing lumbered from the black void."

 

The next two pages in the journal are blacked out entirely with ink as if he tried to write it down but couldn't get it right and blotted out any existence of the attempt. I flipped past the pages, eager to know what came out of the dark and to my horror he somehow found the nerve to continue, and parts of me didn't want to know anymore, like the men on R'yleh I don't know why I kept going when common sense told me to stop.

 

"It was a mountain of flesh that walked. Hawkins and Rodriguez  saw this thing and fell dead where they stood. I can't accurately tell you what it looked like, but indeed it was a mass of greenish black flesh and it looked like the squid demon on the door from that had unleashed it but somehow it was far worse. This was an accident, we didn't mean for this to happen. We tried to run but the beast was faster, or the men were closer, I couldn't tell. The three of them were swept up in its slimy and massive claws with incredible speed. Donovan was among them Guerrera and Angstrom were the others. I did not see what happened to them once the monster took them. Briden, Parker and I ran through the twisted landscape and it was insane. Angles were lying; steep angles once approached turned flat, flat ground turned into impassible walls. Just beside me Parker took a leap across what must have appeared to be a small gap to him, to me it appeared if he simply leaped off a cliff. I still remember the terror in his face as he fell and I couldn't tell if it was because of the monster, or the sudden realization he was going to die. The monster was behind us, we could hear it chasing as its clawed feet scraped against the stone, and its constant noise it was making. If it was chasing us or not, we didn't dare turn around to look."

 

Mountain of flesh, just how big was this Cthulhu? I could not imagine the size of it. But to the terrified men and how close they were I assumed it had to be three hundred feet tall, maybe more or less. A beast of that size would indeed believe itself to be a god. I did not believe Cthulhu to be any kind of a god but it might as well have been. It was a horrible beast from beyond time with psychic powers to cast nightmares from the bottom of the sea. An old one, their priest from what little I knew. I could only shudder at what else lay deeper in that dead city of palaces.

 

"We made it to the lifeboat somehow , a small bit of good luck maybe. I don't know. Briden and I unhooked the boat and pulled towards the ship as fast as we could. We were making good distance when the beast made it to the shore and stared at the water as if it were some kind of boundary for a moment; from here it looked as if it had six eyes and for the first time I could see its wings attached to it but they seemed wasted away somehow. I didn’t believe it could fly with wings like that. Its body was not muscled, it was like fluid under tight skin, looked like fat but I got the dreaded feeling this was not fat or weakness at all. It was huge, it stood like as tall as the giant, oversized buildings I have seen, I think the Railway in St. Louis is the closest to its horrible height. My God, how can something be so massive and still live?”

 

‘The two of us screamed at one another to move faster but the horrible noises did much to cancel out any words, it worked well enough though and soon we got back to the Alert and boarded her. The two of us worked together and got the ship ready to go. As we began to pull away the beast thing slid into the water without disturbing it, like oil on the surface. Briden the poor fool, he looked back and I don't know what he saw but he dropped to his knees and started to laugh madly as he curled up into a corner of the cabin, the poor soul would remain in this state for the rest of this cursed voyage until he dies. I do not remember when his broken soul left the body. I knew there was no way to escape, this beast whatever it was would catch us at this rate.

 

I turned the ship around. It was a foolish thought but it was all I could think of. Soon I was face to face with the monster and the thing did not move. The Alert collided with the titan's head, I think. The ship proved to be stronger as the two of us tore through the beast and the monster seemed to explode, like cutting into a still living fish seconds before exploding into a green cloud of vapors that smelled like a blood filled trench of the war days under the hot sun, I nearly threw up, and the only thing keeping me from doing that was the sight of that impossible island. I still lived and took the chance I had gained to escape. Turning the wheel and gaining distance between us I looked back one last time to see the green cloud reforming into its original shape. I do not know why, but it did not follow. I took the Alert and sped to the safety of the open sea.’

 

That was all there was, the book had nothing more written in it. I had hoped for a crude drawing of the monster, but no such thing existed. I closed the book and could do nothing but stare into the endless waves of the sea. I was nowhere near where the events took place but at the same time I never felt more vulnerable and wanted more than anything to get off this damned boat and get away from the sea and all it contained, not that it would help me do anything but feel a little better in the dark when it came.

 

 

Johansen would live through it all and write his journal after he got home, and reading this I knew that death was the only thing that would ended his memories if the universe would be that kind. But somehow I doubted that death would have the power to erase such a memory. Just reading about it was nearly more than I could bear to witness.

 

I have placed this journal in my Great Uncle's box along with the rest of the information I have collected. This is my record and it too will go into the box, this test of my own sanity that for now I believe to have passed, I think. I hope that this information may never be uncovered or pieced together by anyone else ever again. I have seen the horror of the universe and nothing feels right anymore, everything feels wrong, the sky itself instills in me horror. I look up into the night sky and something in me wants retreat underground, for what other things are out there, waiting?

 

His city is sunken beneath the sea once more. The Vigilant sailed over the spot where those foolish men walked but there was nothing there besides the open ocean, not even a trace of any kind of island was spotted. I suppose Cthulhu still lives down there, waiting for something, what for I cannot exactly say though and don’t wish to know. I do not know why he has not been freed again; perhaps the sinking of his city trapped him once more. But his cult still lives, dancing around fire covered idols in the lonely places of the world to bring him back, for what has sank may yet rise again, and the world of man may yet decay and scream with fright and a terrible chaotic frenzy. The Cult still lives and I fear I will go the way of my Uncle and that horribly unlucky bastard Johansen for I know too much. I just hope that if I am killed that my executors will take all of this information with them so that no other may see it and learn what horrible things I have learned.




Afterword:


It's not perfect, I am sure there might be a mistake still lurking here and there but we put as much effort into this thing as we thought we needed to do.


I hope you liked it. If not I expect some crazy fan out there to kill me within a week, but no matter. This version of the story is sent to various people all over the world so I'm not worried about it going away.


If you didn't like it, and I don't expect many to like it, It's okay. You always have the original to read and nothing is taken from the world you know. Art is fluid, stories should be updated from time to time and I looked for an updated version of this(Not very hard...) And couldn't find one.


You may have noticed but my version is longer than the original. 11,841 is the original(According to various sources online) My version is 15,195(Or somewhere close) words. I did my best to keep to the original spirit of the story, but some things needed to be changed and added...and taken out.


Again, thanks for reading it...if you got that far.


And Thanks to Saphiel Wesker, a true friend who edited this and made it better!