The House of Lovecraft

[JJewel]

Now that I have written the title I appreciate on some level it may well be considered wrong?

But no matter, Ive written it now!

What I propose is simply we do a thread of a Lovecraft story and I am gonna start right now, each and anyone can join in and continue the story until we have a satisfactory ending that probably involves everyone dying or being driven mad as is tradition with his work.

-0-

It began on a dark rain filled evening at the start of October, I had returned late from my job at the University.

My housekeeper informed me there was a package for me, delivered by a very shifty foreigner with large luminiscent eyes. He croaked through thick fish like lips "Deliver this to Professor Thornskill, its important he understands" and then this odd individual had departed with an odd shuffling hop by way of his walking.

I took the package to my study and lay it upon the desk, .....

 

[JJewel]

Okay no takers, will try again and give it a few gos before we give up on it...

--

Pouring myself a sparkling mineral water, as I had vowed many years ago that alcohol would no longer pass my lips. I took a sip and sat down at my desk.

I examined the parcel, it was about book sized, sealed in brown paper with string around it keeping it together, their was various older stamps and address`s on the paper but they had been covered over with white tape. From the drawer I took out scissors and cutting the string, carefully unwrapped the package. Within was a second smaller package of white cloth and a letter atop in fine quality paper with my name beautifully written across it in red ink.

I opened the letter first and carefully read the words within

 

[Capricorn42]

Hi @JJewel , this sounds like fun.
--------------------------------

There were just two sentences:

I know you will remember the night of the shipwreck, and I know that you cannot forgive. Yet, I hope this package may, at least, shine a light upon the darkest of shadows and help you to understand.

There was no signature.
With a chill in my heart I glanced at the mantle and at the photograph that stood there, and then I turned back to the package.
Beneath the wrapping was a wooden box, plain and sturdily fashioned, and with clumsy, reluctant fingers I prised off the lid.
I cannot say what I expected to find. I hoped to find nothing. The note had fractured my calm and ordered world and allowed old terrors to raise up their heads.
As it was, the box contained just one item, and for me the lights did fade as I picked it up.

 

[JJewel]

It was still warm and pulsing, just as I remember it from that dark night in my state room, deep within the armoured bulkheads of the Prinz Eugen.

The hideous green glow beat steadily as I held it in my hand. I sensed the pace quicken, slowly at first, as if it recognised who held it once more.

Recognised that it had returned to its owner!

I looked once more at the photograph and cursed the day I was tricked into that unholy contract.

----------------------
Hey @Capricorn42 lets see what you can do with that, or anybody can even?

 

[CTRandall]

But denial is hard habit to break. Even with that hideous thing lying in the palm of my hand, with the stench of sea and rot filling my nostrils, I could not bear to look at it. I shut my eyes, blocking out the pale light of the sphere. Memories battered at the gates of my mind, shades of the dead and damned, but I turned away from them and buried myself in the mantras and meditations that, for so many years, had kept my waking mind safe from all thought of the past.

Until one face, one piteous and horrid face, broke through. With a whisper that sounded of sea lapping at sand, it spoke.

'The sea gives back what once it took. The sea takes back what once it lost.'

And it all came rushing in. I must have screamed. I think that is why the housekeeper came in.

 

[JJewel]

I awoke to find faces above me, concerned and weirdly distorted as if underwater.

Slowly my eyes returned to normal, and with my sight my other senses to were restored.

"Thank goodness Doctor, he is awakening!" spoke my housekeeper.

"Some sort of shock I suspect, he is a Professor at the University you say?" Silence from the stranger for a moment, "Overwork can have such an effect, plenty of soup and rest and no work related visitors"

His voice faded as I felt my right hand itch and burn, I held it up in from of me ignoring the others. It was tightly clenched around the sphere and the green unholy light was radiating from between my fingers and yet

 

[BAYLOR]

It generated no warmth. if anything, the sphere was icy cold and seemed to be drawing all of heat out of me and, at a deeper level , it was feeding off of me.

 

[JJewel]

No one else in the room seemed to find it odd that my fist was clenched and that it was radiating green cold light. Had I fallen back into the bottle after so many years?

I pretended everything was normal and smiled blandly at their words of soup and rest.

They appeared out of focus to me, as I said underwater, and as my eyes swam over them I noticed the face at the window, 2 stories up!

 

[Capricorn42]

"You must rest," said the doctor. I murmured thanks as he guided me to a chair. His face rippled as he surveyed me, before he turned to the housekeeper.
What of the window, I thought. I saw - I thought I saw - but now the window was blank, nothing there to be seen.
I shook my head. A deep and beguiling tranquillity was creeping upon me. With some effort I focussed on the doctor's words.
"He's ready," he was saying. "Time to begin, I think."

 

[CTRandall]

Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh.
Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh.
Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh.
Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh.
Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Y'hah vulgtm sil'ha ne! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh.

 

[Don Coyote]

The glowing orb pressed and flattened in my palm. I could feel it being absorbed as the minions- my minions spoke the words of summoning. They were weak creatures of the land, humans, I believe they call themselves. Weak fools all! Yet...

Fools with enough powers to recall me from my long exile. Soon, I would return to my Queen and reclaim my throne. My Beloved. Oh, how I longed for her! She transformed into this weak, land locked form. I hated it! But it saved me from Not Being.

I could feel this vessel change as the chanting continued. But it wouldn't be enough. A sacrifice would be needed and my hunger grew sharp. Soon, I would devour the minions. Not now. Not until their work was done.

Perhaps just a taste...

"No!" cried a presence in my head. "I can't let you do that!"

Whoever you are, I snarled at the presence, I will find you. I will devour your soul...

 

[Capricorn42]

Ravening hunger is all I remember from then on; a pulsating ache of raw vacuum within my belly that could not be sated. I was swamped and my mind, already broken, fragmented into a thousand shards.
It was as if I walked between worlds. Here, I was a man. There, a snarling creature. In this world, scared and crying out for pity; in the next a hollow-eyed demon with a gaping, blackened smile.
Through worlds I fell, and the voice in my head shrieked at me to wake up, to turn away, to make it stop.
And stop it did.
I opened my eyes to see the doctor and the housekeeper kneeling before me.
"Master," they said as one.

 

[Edoc'sil]

This flash of prescience was fleeting yet none the less disturbing, their faces now round and pink before me had but moments ago been grey and swollen. Had they been kneeling, had I been kneeling? Again flashes of visions curled around the edges of my sight and I clasped my head in my hands groaning with fright.

The doctor placed his hand on my shoulder which startled me into awareness, I groped at him weakly trying to prize myself from his grasp. His touch sent shivers down my spine. Suddenly I stood up and frantically began throwing open my wardrobe, tossing clothes and coats asunder to reach the box beneath. The box I swore I would never open, the box I told myself was only there for peace of mind. Dragging from its depths the long green bottle, I took hard pulls from the neck, swallowing the amber liquid that burned in my throat.

Finally quenched, my nerves slightly settled I turned to the figures in my room to see their apprehensive faces looking back at me.

"Well yes, for the nerves, I gather." Muttered the doctor who quickly averted his gaze and began gathering his tools back into his satchel "Quite right I suppose."

"Yes, yes surely." Replied my house keeper who herself couldn't stop staring. I caught my reflection in the mirror above my mantel and saw the hollow sunken eyes and the face sheening with sweat. I too could hardly believe what I saw, was I the same man that had received that parcel not just ten minutes before? I sat down heavily on my bed too weary to reply and with my arm draped over my eyes waved them away to ponder upon what had just occurred.

I seemed like just seconds had passed but when I withdrew my arm I saw that night had fallen outside my window, time had passed by me completely. What had happened? I looked around to my desk to see the open box placed upon it and that accursed letter sitting right beside.

Where was the orb I thought all at once, I cannot let it fall into the wrong hands! I looked around frantically, it must have slipped out of my hand when I was under the spell of those doomed visions. I looked back in the box, under the desk, under my bed, even back in my own secret casket. Nowhere to be found. Suddenly I remembered, the doctor! He had been gathering things in my room placing them into his satchel!

 

[autodidact]

Did that which was held within the vessel of the orb know me as I know myself? Did it know my name— Dr Jonathan Mason? No, of course not, for I do not suffer the curse which befell the family of that poor naive victim whom I have left to a fate far more palatable than that he would otherwise have suffered, had the laws of unnature been allowed to take their fateful course.

How could I know such a thing? And did that knowledge give me the authority to intrude upon the affairs of another? The answer lies in the promise I had made to his father many years before. The promise I made by his death bed and how that promise made him accept the embrace of the grave almost with joy. Of how his nephew, his only living heir, would not suffer the indignities of that other world. The world of the deep. Those indignities which he himself had so narrowly avoided since his ill-fated voyage to a far away land, its secrets so alien in its affectations to all but those who held the gift of true knowledge. A gift which I, the last of my line, possess together with the responsibilities that accompany such a charge. The myriad responsibilities of protection.

This night, my responsibility is to protect the nephew from an evil so powerful that to release it would change not only him but the laws of nature itself, the world as we know it, into a randomness too hideous to comprehend and too powerful to survive. And of those who might survive such a cataclysm, it would be debatable if they could further be called human. Such is the diabolical nature of the unliving essence held within this orb of evil.

The horse skitters as I approach. Could it be the orb? "Stephen," I say, "be careful tonight. Our trip to the university may be a troubled one."

"I'm prepared John," he replies, as he pats his saviour from the Crimean Peninsula where he served as an officer in the service of the Crown— his trusty service revolver that is holstered by his side. "Get in, quickly. The horse hears something, and I can feel that something's chill."

"Indeed, we must make haste." I reply, as I open the door to the carriage and get in. My satchel feels heavier than it should, and I feel something of a fear I have not felt for many years. The fear of a death capable of claiming not only the body, but also the soul.

"Move on, girl," I hear, and the carriage begins to sway as we leave the grounds of the house. But our destination is not the well-worn familiarity of my study.

 

[Edoc'sil]

The gentle swaying of the carriage, the sound of the horse's hooves betrayed the beating of my heart in my chest. Thumping so loudly I thought that Stephen would hear it, a bead of cold sweat ran down the crevise of my back and my hand shook as I absentmindedly pulled the bottle from my satchel, that I had put there without thinking and drew upon its contents. Already falling back into those old ways.

The way I was just after that fateful night onboard the Prinz Eugen. My mind naturally drifted towards that time; I had tried to block it from memory but now I saw that it was necessary to relive it. Someone-or thing-had returned and was placing its dangerous machinations upon my life once again.

I heard Stephen pulling on his wet skin as rain began to fall, cascading down the window, gems catching the lamplight glow as we trundled our way towards our mission. It was raining hard that night aboard the ship too, we had left London some days earlier on an important duty to study the strange reports of sea creatures, new to science, being hauled up from the deep.

Some had been taken back to the university for study but had decayed unnaturally fast, leaving us only with strange drawings and the hushed whispers of the seamen who had been the ones to drag the nets.

Without warning the carriage gave a great lurch to the side, the horse breying her hooves scattering on the cobbles. Stephen had cried out as he was thrown from the driver's seat, where I heard him hit the cobbles with a horrifying thump. I scarcely dared myself to peek out of the darkened windows. I could see Stephen lying in a pool of lamplight on the floor where he had fallen. This roused me to action and I threw open the door, jumping out into the rain.

Thankfully he was still breathing, although unconscious. I looked around to see what had hit our carriage with such force only to see a dark bulk just behind the forward wheel. We had ridden over something? My heart quickened even more as I saw the bulk move.