My dearest Amelia,

I hope this letter finds you well amidst your voyage, far away from the horrors that have befallen me. I write to you from the confines of this wretched asylum, where my mind is trapped within a labyrinth of madness. The walls themselves seem to ooze with a putrid stench, mirroring the decay that has taken hold of my sanity.

Every waking moment is plagued by a relentless curiosity that has transformed into a maddening obsession. Paranoia grips me tightly, as if unseen eyes are constantly watching my every move. The tendrils of insanity coil around my thoughts, distorting reality and blurring the line between what is real and what is a figment of my tortured imagination.

My soul, once vibrant and full of life, now withers under the weight of unspeakable horrors. I dare not utter their names, for even the mere mention of them sends shivers down my spine. They are abominations beyond comprehension, grotesque entities that defy the limits of mortal understanding. They lurk in the shadows, hungrily feasting on the remnants of my fractured psyche.

Prayers escape my lips, but they fall upon deaf ears. God, it seems, has forsaken me in this desolate abyss. There is no salvation to be found within these walls, only the relentless pursuit of unimaginable monstrosities. They haunt my every step, their presence a constant reminder of the terrors that await me in the darkest recesses of my mind.

I fear, my dear Amelia, that I am lost beyond redemption. The light of hope flickers ever so dimly, overshadowed by the encroaching darkness. I write this letter as a final plea, a desperate cry for help that may never reach your ears. Pray for me, my love, for I am trapped in a nightmare from which I may never awaken.

Yours in eternal torment,

Edward, November 9, 1937

"It Calls to Me from the Shoreline at Twilight"

In the desolate reaches of a forgotten coastline, where the sea meets the land in a tumultuous embrace, there stood a lighthouse. Its towering presence, a solitary sentinel against the encroaching darkness, housed a man teetering on the precipice of his own sanity. Isolated and tormented, he was a victim of his own mind, haunted by the demons that lurked within. Withdrawals from opium, his only solace, had left him vulnerable to the relentless onslaught of paranoia, his grip on reality slipping away like grains of sand through his trembling fingers.

Within the confines of the lighthouse, the man sat alone, his hollow eyes scanning the horizon, searching for a respite from the relentless torment. But as twilight descended upon the shoreline, a sinister force, unseen and unfathomable, began to call out to him. A haunting melody, carried by the whispers of the wind, echoed through his mind, driving him to the brink of madness. It was a siren's song, beckoning him towards the depths of the shoreline, where the boundary between the known and the unknowable blurred into a maddening abyss.

Night after night, the man resisted the allure of the unseen force, his trembling hands clutching the remnants of his sanity. But as the days turned into weeks, the whispers grew louder, the call more insistent. Shadows danced upon the walls of his mind, grotesque figures lurking just beyond his vision. Hallucinations, born from the depths of his opium-starved mind, clawed at his consciousness, their tendrils of darkness threatening to consume him whole.

Finally, unable to bear the weight of his own unraveling psyche, the man succumbed to the relentless torment. With a mind shattered and a soul in tatters, he stepped out onto the precipice of the lighthouse, his eyes fixed upon the shoreline. The call, now a deafening cacophony, drowned out his last vestiges of reason. And as the twilight cast its final shadows upon the world, he leaped into the abyss, embracing the unknown with a final, desperate act of liberation. The lighthouse stood tall, a silent witness to the tragic demise of a man consumed by the cosmic horrors that lurked just beyond the veil of reality.

Journal Entry - November 26, 1943

It follows me.

The air is heavy with an otherworldly presence, a suffocating weight that clings to my skin and seeps into my bones. I can feel its gaze upon me, an unseen force that lurks in the shadows, always watching, always following. It is a horror beyond comprehension, a nightmare that defies reason and sanity. I write this journal entry as a desperate attempt to make sense of the unspeakable terror that has consumed my life.

It began innocently enough, a chance encounter with a stranger on a desolate street. Their eyes, devoid of any humanity, locked onto mine with an intensity that sent shivers down my spine. I tried to shake off the unease, dismissing it as a mere trick of the mind. Little did I know that this encounter would mark the beginning of my descent into madness.

From that moment on, I became aware of a presence that followed me relentlessly. It was a shapeless entity, forever shifting and morphing, never revealing its true form. It would appear in the corner of my vision, a fleeting glimpse of something monstrous and grotesque. But whenever I turned to face it, it would vanish, leaving only a lingering sense of dread in its wake.

The nights were the worst. As I lay in bed, the darkness would come alive with whispers, a cacophony of voices that spoke in a language I could not comprehend. They echoed through the depths of my mind, driving me to the brink of madness. Sleep became an elusive luxury, for in my dreams, I would be confronted by unspeakable horrors, nightmares that tore at the fabric of my sanity.

The world around me began to change, to warp and distort in ways that defied logic. Shadows danced and twisted, taking on grotesque forms that seemed to mock my very existence. Reality itself became a fragile illusion, a thin veil that threatened to tear apart at any moment. I could no longer trust my senses, for they had become instruments of torment, feeding me false perceptions and leading me further into the abyss.

Friends and loved ones grew distant, their faces becoming masks of indifference and apathy. They could not see the horrors that plagued my every waking moment, nor could they understand the torment that consumed my soul. I was alone in my suffering, trapped in a nightmare from which there was no escape.

I sought solace in the writings of ancient texts, hoping to find answers to the unspeakable horrors that plagued me.I delved into the forbidden knowledge of forgotten tomes, deciphering cryptic passages and unraveling the secrets of the cosmos. But with each revelation, my understanding only deepened the horror that had ensnared me. The truth was far more terrifying than I could have ever imagined.

I discovered that the entity that followed me was not of this world, nor any known dimension. It was a cosmic aberration, a being that existed outside the boundaries of human comprehension. Its purpose, its desires, remained a mystery, but its malevolence was undeniable. It fed on fear, on the very essence of my being, and it reveled in my suffering.

As the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, I became a mere shell of my former self. My body withered, my mind fractured, and my soul was consumed by an all-encompassing despair. I could no longer distinguish between reality and delusion, for the line between the two had blurred beyond recognition.

In my darkest moments, I contemplated ending my own life, hoping that death would offer respite from the unrelenting torment. But even in death, I knew that the entity would not release its grip on my soul. It would follow me into the afterlife, subjecting me to an eternity of suffering and anguish.

I am now a prisoner of my own mind, trapped in a never-ending cycle of terror. The entity's presence is constant, an ever-present reminder of my own insignificance in the face of cosmic horrors. It whispers to me in the dead of night, promising an end to my suffering if only I would surrender to its will. But I refuse to succumb. I will not let it claim my soul.

This journal entry serves as a testament to the horrors I have endured, a desperate plea for someone, anyone, to understand the true nature of the entity that follows. But I fear that my words will be dismissed as the ravings of a madman, lost in the depths of his own delusions.

I am resigned to my fate, to an existence forever haunted by the entity that follows. It is a fate worse than death, a cosmic horror that defies comprehension. And as I write these final words, I can feel its presence growing stronger, its grip tightening around my soul.

May this journal serve as a warning to those who dare to delve into the unknown, to those who seek to uncover the secrets of the cosmos. For in the pursuit of knowledge, one may stumble upon a horror that can neverbe unseen, unheard, and unimagined. It is a horror that transcends the boundaries of human understanding, a malevolence that defies reason and sanity.

I can feel the entity's tendrils wrapping around my mind, squeezing tighter with each passing moment. Its whispers have grown louder, more insistent, urging me to surrender, to embrace the darkness that awaits. But I refuse to yield. I will not let it claim me without a fight.

In my desperation, I have sought out ancient rituals and incantations, hoping to find a way to banish the entity that follows. But the more I delve into the forbidden arts, the more I realize the futility of my efforts. The entity is beyond mortal comprehension, beyond mortal power. It is a force that exists beyond the realms of our understanding, and it cannot be defeated.

I am left with no choice but to accept my fate, to embrace the eternal torment that awaits me. The entity's presence looms over me, a constant reminder of my own insignificance in the grand tapestry of the cosmos. It is a reminder that there are forces at play in the universe that are far beyond our control, far beyond our understanding.

As I prepare to face the final moments of my existence, I can only hope that my words will serve as a warning to those who dare to venture into the realms of the unknown. The cosmic horrors that lie in wait are not to be trifled with, for they are beyond our comprehension, beyond our ability to comprehend.

And so, I bid farewell to this world, to the realm of the living. I embrace the darkness that awaits, knowing that my soul will forever be tormented by the entity that follows. May my story serve as a cautionary tale, a reminder that there are horrors in the cosmos that can never be fully understood, horrors that can never be escaped.

In the end, it is not the darkness that terrifies me, but the knowledge that there are things in the universe that are far more terrifying than we can ever imagine. It is a knowledge that will haunt me for all eternity, as I am forever trapped in the clutches of the entity that follows.

-Jonathan Palmer

I am a fool.

Those are the last thoughts which I shall leave behind, to radiate in the long aeons which will pass my death, though truly, time is an odious concept here if it could be said to hold presence at all. I can feel my mind slowly stretch now, in attempt to vainfully encompass that which I had evoked within it. It is as if two untethered tendrils have wrapped themselves around it's edges as if it were nothing more than elastic - now they have begun to pull. The growth is slow, but I can feel the perforations beginning to metastasize and fracture into tears as the pulling gradually becomes ripping. I know not what is occurring outside my body, my conscience retreated into the deeper depths of my mind as soon as the pain became too much to bear, which happened surely as soon as this began.

I can only use what time I have remaining to lament and reflect upon my own failures. A man, understanding the full scope to the consequences of his actions after attempting to bring forces better left forgotten in the bowels of existence under his manipulation, content in the foolish belief that good intentions and careful providence would be enough to stay the hand of encroaching doom. This is a tale as old as time, and now it is my tale as well.

I am - or rather was - Marcus Abarough, a researcher and member of the Society of Honorius, an occult society dedicated to collecting, cataloging, and subsequently entombing occult artifacts found around the world. Akin to most of the time spent in my life, the particular circumstance I find myself in now began with a book. Originally thought to be an old grimoire compiled by a bishop of the Orthodox church who's name has since been buried and forgotten with him, it became quickly apparent that it was something rather different after it was pulled out of the ground in the old priory that had long since remained buried.

Proceeding the excavation after the artefact's rebirth from it's earthen tomb I quickly developed a keen infatuation in this tome, it was different to the minutiae and trinkets of no considerable worth beyond archaeological value so often recovered by our society, it exuded an ominous presence made obvious even to the unwashed and ill-educated Turkish diggers hired to retrieve it, who very soon after in a scene of misguided ignomious fear evoked the name and prayers of their Mohammedean God. Not a single man hired agreed to handle the item, and to my surprise one of the members of my own society attracted my personal odium in his own fallacious display of superstitious credulity when he callously suggested we leave the item where it lay and rebury the dilapidated priory which held it abreast.

Unlike many of my colleagues my personal directives were driven by that of empirical reason rather than mired in the faith of coarseless superstition, indeed it was my study and dedication to academia reflected in my studies and the eloquence in which I was able to present them that impressed the superiors of our society to begin with, subsequently encouraging them to elevate me to the position that I held now. Though, I will say that it is through no lack of linguistic skill that I convinced them to allow me the honor of cataloguing this new find before our society inevitably locked it away far from the eyes of men... content to allow it and memory alike to be consumed by the passing of time.

Of course, my own beliefs were in no way similar. In this item could perhaps lie the key to the betterment of humanity, that seemingly unattainable fruit that philosophers and academics alike have labored for over the turning of millennia themselves, could perhaps be grasped if only we used the artefacts we found rather than cower from them as our neolithic progenitors once did from fire. To deny the possibility of bringing our species to a point of heightened existence, to forfeit the chance of a human apotheosis, it felt as if it were nothing short of madness!

Alas, madness indeed. For so long had these honey-tounged thoughts toiled and rolled in my mind from the moment I had set eyes upon the tome that I could no longer muster the insight needed to truly question whether these ever increasingly pervasive ideas held their origins in my mind, or in the emanations of the manifestations of that damned book. One of the greatest tricks the insane play upon themselves is to create the belief that their insanity does not actually exist. The desire for power was indeed an all too natural aphrodisiac, yet I still could not discern this influence of desire from the influence of something... 'other'. So lost was I that I failed to notice and address even the most blatant symptoms of psychosis as they were made manifest in my behaviors, but over the course of my study with the book I plunged those depths of dementation ever further even taking it upon myself to seek solitude when the worries and complaints of my peers became too bothersome.

My time in full with the artefact accounted for no less than six weeks with sleep during that time becoming an ever increasing rarity, and by the end of that period I was all but lost in my fervor and obsession over it's pages. Upon beginning my translation it at first glance seemed to read as if authored by the hands of one psychotic, yet the more time spent with the book the less incoherent it's passages became.

It was by way of candlelight, spectacles, and ink stained fingertips as I sat in that dank stone cellar coat with coat in protest to the frigid stale air, oblivious to the ongoing storm above that had been raging over the past three days that I looked upon a peculiar passage with purple-bagged eyes, and believed I had finally found my salvation.

It's passages were long and drawn, often without the grammatical respite offered by commas, periods, and other punctuation of that nature which could be said to exist in the Mandaic script by which this book was transcribed. The author detailed a dreaming mind that currently lie in torpor, idioted to the living universe it's happenings around it yet, dreamed dreams real enough that they manifested themselves on the dead worlds in near proximity as anomalies that mockingly defied the sciences of man and made foolery the laws of the universe around us which we so believe to be otherwise immutable. A conscience so vast it could devour worlds with but a thought, and a mind so incomprehensible that an analogy to the humble insect that exist ignorant to the shifting machinations of the universe around it would be woefully inadequate.

It slept imprisoned, abreast deep within an ancient colossal red star which waited, surrounded by dead and barren planets in the blank cold of voidspace so far from the healthy yellow light emblazoned by our own sun that there would not be enough space on any one piece of parchment to count the distance in miles. Here, it slept, waiting to awaken with the turning of aeons for a time when stars still burn, and life yet blossoms. Inside it's flaming prison it burned, but it did not cease it's existence. It simply swam. Swam, and dreamt. Waiting. Waiting to hear the call. And surely, the life of the star which kept it confined was but a cursory heartbeat in the existence of a entity such as it.

It enamored me. The knowledge such a being might have, the sheer power it must wield to shift reality at it's own beck and call as if it were an action no more tedious than thinking, the endless possibilities of what could be done swam through veins and elated my mind as if thought alone could be as exhilarating an intoxicating as alcohol. If only such a thing could be reached, yet- Yet...

Yet despite the conundrum of the prodigious distance between the entity and I, the object of my study quelled any reason to fret for therein lied answers. It posited that distance was simply a facsimile of limited human perceptions, and the vast dark of the void could be bridged no matter the length, even if just momentarily. All one needed was the desire for the knowledge necessary, and the will to do so, and such pathways could be revealed. So, with book in hand, I did precisely that. My lodgings held no shortage of materials and so I would find that came to include my fellow society members. So gone in my obsessive madness was I however that their subsequent deaths seemed nothing more than the necessary sacrifice to gain materials deemed instrumental in my efforts towards the zenith of human existence, possibly for all humanity as a whole. What loss was to be considered too exorbitant when weighed with human ascendence?

Having worked sleeplessly through that night as I had so many before, the labor came to their culmination just before the breaking of dawn.

A rift began to form, first appearing volatile and shimmering air which warped the atmosphere around it into constantly shifting and distorting patterns of various light. Horizontally it grew, until eventually expanding vertically to take mold as a pointed, ovular wound in the air much like the opening of an eye. The air warped and fluctuated around it yet, so volatile did it seem that it is perhaps more accurate to acquaint it to a wound in reality rather than a portal of sorts. From within it drifted a freezing cold far worse than that of any storm, and with it radiated a almost primal, dismal sensation which confined me in a state of fear induced paralysis. It was upon fully conjuring itself in which the reality of the cellar which contained it began to contort; the flame burning on the tip of the candle became water, it's wax shifted to ash. Objects within the room began to disappear and reappear in various instances, it even seemed as if the cellar itself had somehow gained momentum and began to move.

Within the eye formed tear opened in the skin of reality, many long moments passed in which I simply stared into an endless depth of void. Then, fire. A white hot light from within the fracture seared my nerves and sent shockwaves rippling through my body, were it not for the throngs of paralysis my own fear held me in I am certain I would have cried out in painful lamentation the regret of my actions which brought me to this point. Yet just like that, as soon as it appeared, so was it gone. Gone... and replaced with something far worse.

An image conjured and swirled within the world wound, and it was then that I could see it. Or rather, not it, a shadow it had cast, the brief manifestation it threw into our reality from whence-ever it truly existed, like a reflection being casted and bounced between an infinite array of mirrors. Almost immediately after looking upon it's visage did my sight begin to flee me, but in that one second the glimpse of what I did see seared through my fleshly eyes and imprinted itself as a white hot branding on my brain.

I saw a darkened gray nether, within were stars of age inconceivable burning nova with the light of a atomic flash before being reborn from the nebulae in the same cosmic cycle. I saw the most bottomless depth of the ocean, murky, dark, alone, isolated, afraid, and a presence lurking within it's light-shunned waters that was neither malevolent nor benevolent, simply cold. I saw a shattered sun, bleeding from it's wounds as it stood vigil watch over a serene snow coated forest. I saw a cyclopean black cloud in the void of night, a million eyes simultaneously appearing before vanishing, only to reappear elsewhere in the cloud once more, and in the iris of each eye reflected a thousand colluding realities and layered dimensions. I saw nothing. I saw everything. In that short glimpse had lied eternity, and that eternity was over as soon as it had began.

It may have been gone from my sight, yet I knew all to well it remained, for though I could not see - I could feel. I could feel a tendril, not upon my body but rather within my mind, reach out to me. It reached for me and in my madness I allowed it to grasp me. I tried to peer into it's mind, that ink-black and darkened depth, and it was there my final mistake lay.

I could feel it's presence force it's way through my mind as a person forced through a keyhole. I felt an ancient and primal beating of a drum which conjured to my mind images and concepts for which I no reference nor understanding. As my mind slowly began to expand to accommodate the invasive presence of an infinite conscience I could feel it peering through my soul, combing my thoughts, leaving me to feel exposed and naked before it's merciless view. With my mind as a conduit, I sensed it coldly surveying our world from afar with incomprehensible eyes. As it apathetically ripped through my being like it were nothing more than flipping through the pages of a book, so too did I attempt to peer back, and instantly I was reproached. It's presence felt so alien, nothing with which I had in my mind to draw from, no experiences nor memories I held allowed me to understand or apply meaning in any way to what was before me. I simply peered at it in dumbfounded enigma, with no words or thoughts to equate to what I bore witness to.

In all my failure however, while my mind ballooned further in my desperation I managed to grasp onto one thing. A name.

It's name. Could such a thing be described by words alone? Words of which, by their very nature allow us to apply meaning to the better images of our imagination yet, in their same right restrict one only to known concepts capable of being voiced?

It is a guttural groan beyond purview, a spark of chaotic dissonance dancing the tune of a timeless cacophony containing a thousand sounds from a thousand voices, not a single of which chorusing from a human throat. Giving voice to it would take the time spanning a simultaneous second and aeon, it's name is not one which any single person should ever hear, let alone invoke. But then... what even is a name, if not a human construct, a label fashioned by mortal minds in attempt to apply understanding and definition to something within an otherwise whimsical and ignorant feeble mind. How do you understand that which is beyond such scope? How do you see that which blinds? Could such a thing truly be said to have a name? I think not.

The more it bored into my conscience the less lucid I could feel myself become. Thoughts turn to a jumbled incomprehensible mess, forming a string of words stripped of all definition, incoherent to even the most dreadfully afflicted of the insane. Eventually, that too devolves further yet, leaving my waking thoughts to be nothing more than the babble of a nonsense language riddled with inanity where meaning is no longer a seven letter word. To suffer the slow insidious destruction of my mind is apparently not enough for the expanding list of tortures afflicted to me, without a functioning mind I am deprived of even the final solace of individual thought.

Yet, at this moment all I can seem to think about is a quaint story of a young woman chasing a rabbit down it's hole. My mind had expanded along with the conscience that now lay within, stretched and pulled in every direction that exists, does not exist, and is yet to exist, until it was no more than a loose net of thin, withered desiccated tendrils barely clinging together by a single thread.

Human apotheosis was what I had wanted, what I desired... and it was what I had received.

And with that, there was a final rip.

Blood now flows in the streets of the beautiful city that was once illuminated by an eternal twilight, in which people always danced and drank and now I stand here in the void observing the devastation and feeling the last breath of the marvelous city that in a scarlet perpetual sunset, watching the giants formed by the desperation of the inhabitants of that marvelous onyx city. The end of that beautiful sunset metropolis is truly bizarre, terrible and miraculous. During one of the infinite celebrations, one of the citizens began to cry and despair for no apparent reason. He was joined by two soldiers, dressed in shiny armor and armed with long axes. who asked him what was happening to him and he said: "a pharaoh with the skin of obsidian... madness" in such a rambling way that it was more incomprehensible than the shouting of a drunk. at that moment the sunset which from what we know had always stopped was replaced by the pitchest darkness ever, and a man with obsidian skin appeared in the middle of the main square holding the crown of King Arfisio-Khen IV in his hand and said :"let night fall and blood flood, you now see overwhelmed by the crawling chaos" One after another the citizens began to laugh hysterically, and they laughed for hours and hours, some choking on too much laughter and then they took their own lives one by one, I, Pharaoh Alhireth-Hotep, am here laughing at the inferiority of the blood of the blood that I have shed

Nothing is protected from the mocking shadows cast by time, kidnapped minds, space-time used by beings who lived 50 million years before man. Horrible monsters composed of knowledge as ancient as the universe, worlds in which stellar beings colonized everything and kidnapped minds wrote of their future, past and contemporary cultures, of gods, of their eras and of their countries. venerating the last gods, stolid abominations , blind and idiotic women whose spirit is nyarlathotep. Worlds of Chaos, fear and intelligence whose existence we ignore, true alien cultures, battles for the salvation of foolish races like ours, repeatedly victims of shadows that came from time, are lost from the start. The greatest horrors are found in the knowledge of the pnackotic brotherhood, space demons are venerated by these cultists, the primordial world contained in the pnackota, which have come to us under the name of pnackotic manuscripts, previously kept in pnackotus, the horrors of knowledge, which brings madness , and the loathsome spaces are no boundaries to the minds of those beings who wrote them. Their head is on a tentacle, with three eyes, five antennae and a beard of small tentacles, two claws and a sort of trumpet that they use to feed themselves, the shape of their body is conical, the creatures that I have just described to you are only of the shells, because their true form is lost in the plagues of time and in any case disappeared from existence some time ago, crazy truths are kept in the pnackota. Yith, planet lost, destroyed, in time. We are vulnerable to what is held in the pnackota, the truth is hidden in the dark confines of the earth. We are at the mercy of madness, we are under the eyes of the great race, because a mocking shadow of madness descends upon us from time to time. Pnackota, Jack Will Patient at Arkham Asylum

https://esquadron.itch.io/thetemple

At last the conquest for the ring was over, the ring of sight letting us see the unknown, now all we had to do was just bite our time until it manifested, after an hour we heard the crash, we knew where to look. My colleague held up the ring ready to describe the... The thing? My heart started racing faster and faster. After he pulled the ring to his eye.... He screamed, the pain filled scream of being stabbed yet nothing was there then the words came in a voice unattuned with his natural tongue "Heads... 12 heads. 9 legs... coming" and drawing his final breath he exhaled one last word "RUN". .This is the first story I've written so please give me some construction criticism on how to improve

What I will tell you was the worst nightmare of all those that appeared in my poor mind. I remember everything vaguely, but I know how monstrous the dream universe is. That night was troubled since I had overindulged a lot. It was summer so I was sweaty, tipsy, beaten up and sad with my soul like a battleship. When I went to sleep I understood that the world would not be forgiving even in dreams. I was in a desert covered in powerful sunlight, I was walking scared without a goal, without knowledge of space, which was simply an infinite expanse of dunes and sand plains with floating islands in the sky full of water, plants and strange beings. there were waterfalls sliding from the sides of those strange and almost paradisiacal islands that could be defined as gardens of Eden, at that moment I thought that I had already read about those landscapes in the verses of the mad Arab author of "al-azif". I walked and walked until I glimpsed in the distance a group of six figures walking with a solemn, solemnly disturbing air, Then I stopped and looked at the sky thinking about how unlucky I was and looking at those paradisiacal islands. After a while I resumed my walk following that group that looked like shadows from the distance. After an indeterminate amount of time I began to suffer a terrible thirst that I couldn't satisfy because the wonderful waterfalls that descended from the islands did not touch those killer dunes, I tried to jump but they were too high so you continued walking thirsty and dissatisfied. Frightened, I continued walking behind that group until I reached a strange rectangular stone, the shadows surrounded it and placed a black crystal with dark red streaks on top of it. Various pyramids emerged from the sand, at that moment I noticed a skeleton wrapped in a black shroud which perhaps was there for ages, he understood that I was witnessing a ritual older than our useless planet. The shadows seemed satisfied and began to pronounce incomprehensible words and wave sticks in the air. Then suddenly everything became night and one of the shadows uttered understandable words: "the night has come nyarlathotep, in this dreamlike sky come and bring the vision of emptiness and chaos". then the shadow was swallowed up by a pyramid of light and a being appeared on the horizon with a vaguely humanoid shape and a tentacle-shaped head that moved convulsively, as if moved by electric shocks. At that moment the being uttered, and I'm sure you will never be able to understand my fear, a gurgle that with an infernal voice shook my soul and struck me like a dagger in the heart: "I am nyarlatotep, I am ancient and aberrant gods, I am the creeping chaos, I am the heart of the court of azathoth, I am the one who blasphemes the center of the earth, I am a nightmare for the human race, I am the black pharaoh the ruler of Kadath in the frozen desert" after he said this that desert converted into a snowy land, then he continued: "I am the mad faceless god who laughs I am madness in disguise, I don't have a face, I only know that I am an imitator of everything." Then everything disappeared for a brief moment, then a black expanse appeared with very high mountains on the horizon, in the center a mountain at least 30,000 meters high. Then you heard these words "Leng plateau, Kadath dominates the frozen desert" then I woke up. Even today, after two years, I remain haunted by that phrase "on the Leng plateau, Kadath dominates the frozen desert" I'm sure I'm not crazy, I have to discover the truth behind the events that happened in that dream-desert.

I am now without any hope of returning to health after having been in the dark ossuary. I was a normal student at Miskatonic University in Arkham, at the time I was an interested in rare languages. Who was specializing in Semitic. I still remember when the horror dragged me into the darkness of the world. It was Thursday 11 December 1930 and I was walking through the corridors of the faculty when I noticed a black shroud hanging from the doorknob of room 260. I opened the door and saw some skeletons as black as pitch, charred, one still had some burnt flesh on his jaw. At that moment I thought of the depths of the night, of truth and the unknown power of madness. I have always been curious and exploratory, since I entered Miskatonic University I have become even more so. I went, for some primordial instinct, to touch one of the charred skulls, I don't know but the reason was hidden, perhaps the idea of finding out if it was a hallucination or reality attracted my soul. Only one Thing could not be false, that everything was covered in mystery and horror, it was then that what inhabits the depths of the earth came, a true horror. I fainted but woke up almost immediately, but it wasn't a university classroom. I ended up in a dark place without even a light, I walked in all directions it seemed that the space was non-Euclidean. I felt disoriented, without limits but at the same time time with more limitations than the real world, I was no longer fully alive. I felt like I was in limbo between life and death, when a sound suffocated my voice. I felt like I was in a non-human body in a non-physical place, that sound scared me and shook me but I didn't feel goosebumps. You're wondering what that monstrous voice said, here's what it said: "ia ia mangingle-shast ia ia ia!!" a ritual formula alien to us men. I remember reading it in the abhorred Necronomicon in the chapter dedicated to the demon guardian of the dark ossuary. horror assaulted me but something made of bones touched me and I felt violated in every possible way, then a flame revealed an ancient, blasphemous, crazy being. an inhuman and twisted skeleton dominated by an aura of horror and mystery, I know I'm crazy but not hallucinating. I had ended up between the coils of a black and horrible abyss. a representation of the unknown elsewhere of reality and nightmare, a place sometimes composed of dreams of wonderful cities but blocked in the lands of dreams and nightmares. And other times from nightmares of falls and twisted geometries. I was in the dark ossuary, in front of its horrible guardian, then the light illuminated the place which was a place covered in bones and smoke of various kinds, from horse skulls to the legs of beings older than the earth itself. I was shocked by the fact that at the feet of the twisted being were humans With their eyelids sewn shut and repeating as they fainted, "ia ia mangingle-shast ia ia ia." They were cultists of that dark and blasphemous being. Then I woke up and then I woke up in my room when I went to breakfast I discovered that in room 260 there had been a ritual with a double sacrifice. I am sure that there are my partial fingerprints and also an old horse skull 30 years that had never been there before.

"Lovecraft's Vermont Letter" is an original short documentary, artfully timed to coincide with Halloween, employing computer-generated imagery to weave a captivating narrative with profound thematic undertones. Among the intriguing facets that I'm eager to share is the tale of H.P. Lovecraft's correspondence with one Woodburn Harris, a resident of Vermont, dating back to the year 1929. 📜✉️ What truly sets this epistolary exchange apart is its staggering length – a sprawling tome that spans a staggering 70 pages, encapsulating Lovecraft's musings, perspectives, and ruminations on an array of diverse subjects. 📚🖋️ It's worth noting that this intricate missive was penned by none other than H.P. Lovecraft himself during his sojourn in the state of Vermont.

Happy Halloween! 🎃 The spooky season is still in full swing! 🌌👻

My grandfather warned me always to say the words before going into the attic. He said the attic was a dangerous place to enter unprotected. For years, I followed his advice, even though the words themselves were nonsense to me.

Then he passed away.

I became an adult, and adults begin to see the world differently than children. Things that once seemed serious become silly and irrational. And so it was that one day I climbed the ladder to the attic saying nothing.

After finding the antique snow globe I'd been looking for, I got on my hands and knees, backed towards the hatch through which I'd just climbed, and dangled a foot into the square opening, searching for the step-ladder I knew to be there. But instead of emptiness, I felt something unexpected—something different—something cold and wet—

Instinctively, I pulled my leg back up! It dripped with an opaque darkness.

I turned and peered down through the hatch, expecting to see the second floor of my childhood home—but what I saw instead was the near-perfectly still surface of a black liquid: blacker than the deepest night.

I ran now to the only window in the attic, which had long ago been shuttered, and pried the shutters open. Expecting to see my neighbourhood under a bright summer sky, I gasped—greeted by the sight of an endless charcoal sea beneath a crimson sky across which lightning spread like pulsing veins.

My own heart thundered within my chest, and for a time I stood paralyzed, staring at the great landscape of doom before me.

I came to several conclusions.

First, that the attic was a vessel propelled upon the surface of this stygian sea by an unknown force. Second, that this movement was toward some purpose, as in the distance far beyond there appeared a singular landmass.

Clutching the snow globe as if it were my sanity, I receded from the window and sat beside the open hatch.

I can't say for how long I sailed.

I remember only that at some point, struggling against unconsciousness, I dropped the snow globe—

It hit the attic floor—the attic itself trembled—and when I at last picked up the agitated orb I spied within a world of swirling snow, and through it, seeing out the attic window, I was astounded to discover that there too the heavens had opened and become a blizzard.

The temperature plumetted and a tremendous wind insinuated itself into the attic.

I huddled, wrapping myself in whatever warmth I could find, as my exhalations turned to vapour and the vapour persisted in the air until, thin, freezing and famished I made landfall. I could not tell you the interval of time that'd passed except that it was inhuman, and I felt in the dry marrow of my bones that I should already be many times dead.

Yet out of the attic I crept, onto a craterous landmass resembling an alien ocean floor ascended to the planetary surface of a world ne'er imagined by me. Old, it felt; and vast. As up its craggy beach I crawled, I breathed in the foul atmosphere, which reeked of antiquity and decay.

Cresting a hill that marked the end (or beginning) of the beach, I saw before me an unfathomable expanse with such pure clarity that my mind rejected a full appreciation of it, dosing me instead with fragments: ruined cities, lost tribes, inverted mountains, lakes of obsidian, avarice and wonder, and everywhere pedestals upon which floated spheres—slowly spinning, worlds.

It took my breath away.

On I trudged, and on, older and weakened with each pained step, until I found myself on a phosphorescent path leading to a pedestal on which nothing floated.

I heard too a rhythm, following me as the final moments of daylight follow the passing of the dusk—faintly, in anticipation of their own extinguishment by the fall of absolute night. And too I saw its source, for emerging out of the waters behind me, approaching on either side, marched two columns of hideous humanoid sea creatures with flat, catfish faces and tentacular whiskers, bearing fishbone spears, with which they struck the ground as they marched.

Whensoever on my fragiled body I fell, they righted me. Although sans their aid I would have perished, their mucilaginous touch curdled my soul.

Having approached the vacant pedestal, I ceased, the snow globe drifted away from my gnarled hand as if by a hitherto undiscovered magnetic property, and the creatures began to chant word-song composed in an ancient tongue that impossibly I understood, sounds out of time, in the cadence of creation, and the snow globe, suspended supra-pedestal, began to revolve.

I felt as a dead thing blooming.

Proportions unhinged.

Everything I'd ever believed—every first principle I had ever held—rattled like unbolted shutters in a storm: then disattached: and I was, and I wasn't, increasing at a frightening pace as the wind whispered the words my grandfather had taught me—and in the enveloping din I reached out so that my outstretched hand trembled over the spinning globe—and the words, finally I understood: Make spoken gift of fearful humility to the gods, lest in your silent pride you shall become one too. And my reverie was broken by the falling of a giant shadow upon me, and upon the land.

With hand still held above the snow globe, glancing back, in existential terror I beheld the presence of the same: my hand above the globeand my hand, gargantuan, in the sky, skin peeling from both—both mine, both me—flayed of humanity, becoming a divinity, but always mere becoming, for: I hold my hand, above a floating and revolving orb, in a floating and revolving globe, above which I hold my hand, above a floating and revolving orb...

I am caught in a recursive realization.

I am no more human, not yet divine, I am the hand outstretched and the hand which looms, yet one is always becoming the other. Like a film projector stuck illuminating a single frame, I experience the dread and the ecstasy of a single moment forever. If I had ever a mind, it is broken. If I had ever a soul, it is unmoored. I am the sutured wound between madness and sanity. I am a precipice fallen off itself, fallen off itself, fallen off itself, fallen off itself...

[

His son, Aaron, was the first to find him. "Rebecca!" he yelled, having climbed to the attic and seen his father lying, unmoving, on the floor, with his eyes opening and closing in sequence and his eyelids twitching. "Call 911! I think dad's had a stroke!"

]

fallen off itself, fallen off itself, fallen off itself, as the sea creatures beat their spears and chant, the wind whispers, and the black liquid sea rises and falls with the coming and going of an invisible moon called destiny.

I heard a man say once there are no mysteries anymore, and I would say he's right—not about the world but about humanity's knowing of it. These days we believe everything can be understood, explained. Maybe not by us but by someone. As long as we find the right expert, we believe, it'll all make sense in the end. A comforting thought, I'll give it that.

I used to be a cop.

I'm not one anymore, and the story I'm about to tell is the reason why. There just wasn't any more use to it. When you've seen what I saw, and pondered over it, you can't but come to the conclusion that the world is an unimaginable place, and no expert's going to make a lick of difference. The only two things experts sell are opium and snake-oil.

It started with a supposed murder. Victim in his 30s, no rape, body intact save for his tongue cut off. Found in a swamp. I remember the night I got called out there because I was about to sit down to a warm supper when the phone rang. Well, supper was cold by the time I got back home, not that I had the stomach for it anyway. I slid it off my plate into the garbage and watched the mess glide slowly down the side of the black plastic bag like a man's innards might if he got them pushed out his body. (I saw that too once, down in Mexico.) and the whole time I kept thinking about the dead man's eyes. They looked like they'd seen God right before it ended for him—and the image stayed. It stayed so that when we looked we ourselves had to look away because it was too bright, and too black, too bright and too black at the same time, the distorted reflection of some shining blinding void. It was only a missing tongue; gruesome, but we'd all seen worse, yet there was an anvil gloom to it, a nether-fog hanging over the swamp in whose every drop of moisture was potential of a word suspended, a putrid word none of us could understand, but even so we knew: that if these words were ever spoken it would be the end of all.

I couldn't sleep that night.

The peace had been broken. Not the peace of a comfortable life in good country, nor my inner peace, but the existential peace of a million years passed down generation to generation, the peace of covenants making possible the hope of human progress. What are we without that—as a species? Rodents running in wheels, powering the unknown. How long had we been fooled into thinking this road we travel leads straightly somewhere, when in fact it is a loop, leading nowhere. But when one takes instead a cosmic perspective, that's when the line of the horizon becomes the wide and subtle curve of a planet, and our understanding shifts. I gasped, doubting it was murder at all.

I think the man had cut off his own tongue and drowned himself, because what if whatever it was he'd seen had got it into his mind to say the words that cannot be said? I'd have drowned myself too, I imagine, for it's better to be filled with swamp water than non-existence.

What shook me finally from my ponderous tossing and turning was a sound: of rattling, followed by a wet scrape. I grabbed a flashlight from my night table, turned it on and let the beam of light guide me down the hall—empty, undisturbed; and stairs, stepping carefully, quietly, as the sound grew ever louder and the fear in my chest became a pounding, until I had crept into the kitchen and saw, rendered by the harsh light, a cat with glowing eyes lapping greedily at the cold, dead supper in my trash with its pink and hideous tongue.

For a while I let it feast then clapped my hands and watched it scurry out the open window through which it had no doubt come.

Although we didn't talk about it, it was clear to me that the dead man in the swamp had affected us. We skulked about in the weeks that followed, skittish as wounded animals that had for the first time realized their place in the world and were naturally terrified, except our wounds were not physical but spiritual. Physical wounds kill you or heal; spiritual ones fester, draining your essence until madness sets you free.

It was midsummer and on the thermometer the temperature read high, but the days felt cold.

The world felt cold.

About three months later we got a call about a disturbance at the local mausoleum. This happened from time to time, the usual cause being wildlife or kids trying to prove themselves by spending the night, but from the moment we got there, my partner, Schoonmaker, and I knew this was different. The mausoleum doors had been assaulted but had apparently withstood because they remained locked, and instead a nearby window had been shattered and the glass mostly cleaned out. Mostly: because a few pieces were still attached to the frame; jagged and pointed inward, these were coated in drying blood. We radioed dispatch, announced ourselves (the words echoed within the mausoleum, but no answer came) and entered.

The interior was dusky, its sole illumination being stray moonlight filtered through unclean windows that painted the darkness in variations of grey, but even in this dismal light we saw that the tombs had been ransacked. Schoonmaker went first, I followed. Every few steps, I called out into the deepening silence amidst the desecrations on either side of us.

Bodies in various stages of decay had been pulled onto the floor, the entire limbs of some becoming detached in the process. Cracked bones jutted out. The inhuman faces of the dead gazed at us as if in awe at their own disintegrating brittleness. When I paused to look at one, I noticed that its tongue was missing.

Just then: a deafening sound—

Bang!

Schoonmaker and I took cover.

More banging.

Slowly and without exchange of words we moved forward toward the source, communicating by gestures and the panic on our faces until we came upon him: human but frenzied, wielding a heavy sledgehammer and wrecking crypts with it.

We trained our weapons on him.

Bang! thundered the sledgehammer.

Something cracked.

I yelled at him to stop, to lay down his hammer and put his hands behind his head, but he didn't obey. It seemed as if he didn't hear or didn't care. Schoonmaker screamed at him. No response. I screamed at him. Still nothing but the methodical rising and falling of the hammer.

Bang. Bang, crack.

Bang. Bang, crack.

Finally Schoonmaker stood up, arms unsteady in front, gun ready—and approached. "Police! Stop!" he yelled so loudly his faltering voice filled the entirety of the mausoleum.

Bang. Bang, crack.

I fired a warning shot into the ceiling.

Perhaps that got his attention, or perhaps it was mere coincidence, but he lifted his face then, caked with dry human slime, and stared at us, the heavy sledgehammer held in both his hands and his chest heaving. "Put it down," Schoonmaker said.

He dropped the hammer and darted—

at Schoonmaker.

I fired.

The bullet caught him in the shoulder, pushed him backwards but only temporarily. He growled, gargled bubbles rising in his throat, escaping his dark lips, and came at us again. My hands were shaking. I was shaking. I fired, and missed, but Schoonmaker got him in the chest and this time he fell backwards, hissing as he tried to scuttle away on his backside but Schoonmaker was on him, pummelling him, smashing his face with the gun. I was frozen to the spot. It was so dreadfully cold, so impossibly cold. I thought Schoonmaker would kill him. "Stop!" I yelled—at Schoonmaker, at him, at the both of them fighting on the mausoleum floor—when it happened: he grabbed Schoonmaker somehow by the head and pulled Schoonmaker's face close to his own, ear to mouth, and after I strained to hear just the faintest trace of something said, Schoonmaker's body stiffened, he scrambled backwards, lifted his gun and shot himself in the head.

Screaming, I unloaded.

Then: silence.

Broken only by the gentle pattering of brains dripping from Schoonmaker's exploded skull.

I lurched forward to look at the man—the thing—lying before me, vomited, wiped my mouth, and kicked at it to make sure it was dead. Its chest no longer heaved. No bubbles escaped its lips. Killed, it looked like any other man, but I noted two particular details: its tongue was missing, and stuffed into its ears were bits of rotting human flesh.

Next I kneeled beside Schoonmaker.

One of his eyes had been projected from his head. Although still attached to him by some vein or sinew, it rested peacefully on the floor, gazing with the same black brightness as had the eyes of the dead man in the swamp.

I don't remember much of the immediate aftermath. Flashing lights, a trip to the hospital, interviews and debriefs, being told to take my time and explain exactly what happened. Well, I couldn't. That's when I understood that what they wanted wasn't an explanation at all but a sequence of events. No one was after the truth. They were after the facts, and once those had been compiled they brought in an expert, a clinical psychologist, who made a series of post-mortem diagnoses that added up to an illusion of comprehension.

They also identified the dead man. He was an academic, and found among his papers was a series of notes, written in erratic handwriting, in which he made mention of "speaking in tongues," of "being in communion with dead language," and of belonging to a cult whose goal was the destruction of the Ankyloglossiacs. He was also in possession of an ancient tome on the topic of elinguation: removal of the tongue.

I was placed promptly on paid leave, apparently because I was recovering (I had, after all, killed a man and seen my partner kill himself) but also, I believe, because it was obvious I would not adhere to the official story.

When I returned to the force, the only officers who spoke to me were those who'd been with me in the swamp and seen for themselves the dead man's eyes. With them I maintained cordiality, for we were mutually haunted. Everybody else kept their distance, and I gained the reputation of being mentally damaged goods, a kook, a suicide waiting to happen.

It happened one night maybe six months later—dead of winter—that I got a telephone call from a farmer who lived outside of town, a woman by the name of Kat Wilhelm. She'd called me, not the police, and was frantically pleading for help. Someone had broken into her barn, she said, and sliced the tongues off her cattle. She said she remembered the incident at the mausoleum. When I assured her I'd get a couple of officers over to her, she nearly shrieked that she didn't want them; she wanted me, because it wasn't the slicing that had gotten her spooked, she said, her voice breaking up as I listened, but what she had seen after that, the tongues themselves scrambling about her property. "Some of them single-like, but others having joined up together—into a—in…"

The line hadn't gone dead.

Her voice had ended, as if dispersed into sudden nothingness.

Hiss. Then back:

"No… no, can you hear them? They're talking to me. No, no! They're talking and I can't stand it. I can't stand it. The things they're saying. I cannot. Do you understand? Get away! Do you understand? Away—"

Now I dropped the receiver and ran outside to my truck. It was snowing. The engine turned, and I roared out my driveway towards the Wilhelm farm.

Arrived, I got out, noted the silhouette of the barn through the falling snow, and headed for the farmhouse, where the downstairs lights were on. The front door was locked, but a kick got it down, and together with the blizzard I entered. Looked left: stillness; right: the muted flicker of a television. At the stairway I heard no sounds coming from the upper floor. I crossed into the kitchen and saw Kat Wilhelm dead, fallen to the floor, the telephone receiver lying beside her and a flow of blood running along the uneven floorboards from where she'd stabbed a screwdriver into her ear to where a lone, severed human tongue was lapping it up.

Her tongue.

I tried to stomp it, but to no avail.

It scampered away.

I was about to follow, when through the kitchen window I caught a flash of movement. Something big. Bigger than a tongue.

Back to the front door, where the blowing snow was already accumulating like so much static, and out: into the winter night, and through, in the direction of the barn. No call for backup. No second thought. Just fear, and the human desire for knowledge. I remembered the swamp, the mausoleum. I remembered the moment Schoonmaker detonated his own head. But was it the bullet that did it—was it the bullet or was it what the thing had spoken into him? And what about the swamp man's eyes, what if the black brightness continued in them not because he'd experienced (...) but because he continued to experience (...). What if death was no end. Straight roads terminate. Loops infinitize. My boots crunched in the snow, like walking upon a field of bones. Here I was: my body shedding sweat. My mind expelling itself—

It was upon me!

From the dark sky it had fallen—from a snow-covered tree branch—

Draping me. How hideously warm it was. Covering my body like a blanket, heavy and squirming, enslimeing me in its excretions, which ran into my eyes, burning them, and past my lips and down my throat, tasting of unfathomable saliva. I punched! My God, how I punched its inner side. It felt like punching a tenderized slab of meat. But the worst—the worst were the sounds, the utterations and disarticulations, spoken in a universe of voices, foreign, inhuman, some terrible, imploding my sense of self, my implicit point of reference, but others sublime and beautiful, imploring me to stop and sit and listen to their unworldly harmony forever, comforted by this steaming cloak of lingual flesh in the coldness of the enveloping snowstorm. What else is there but to listen? What point to act, to be. Why even am I? What should I have ever been…

I opened my mouth—willingly—and licked it, tasting of its moistures. In response it purred, and its multitude of tongues fluttered in excited unison, massaging me, guiding me as down a cosmic gullet. Licking, I became a descending bliss. Walls of organic velvet, I rubbed myself against them. How they caressed me, welcoming me, their docile pre—it gagged: an image into my mind: infernality from which there could be no escape!—y(?) The symphonic melody ruptured into a continuous screech of broken strings and I felt that while I was sinking the tip of my tongue remained secured atop unnaturally extended and itself now vibrating, adding to the cacophony I tried to will to cease lest I go mad.

Now upwards I shot, propelled from within the cavity, along the same oozing orifice through which I'd fallen and—

Melting of snowflakes on my cheek.

The whirl of frigid wind.

I was free!

I was: consciousness—speeding toward its focal point: my human body, gasping for air just outside the Wilhelm barn—

and impact!,

a self returned to its physicality in space-time, I became reoriented, and perceived before me the familiar perspective of everything, including the lingual beast itself, like a twirling, inverted cone of writhing tongues, upon which I saw also my saviour: a common cat, screeching as it clawed at the abysmal despicability.

The beast was perhaps fifteen feet tall, rendered violently pink in the sweeping snow drifts, and the cat rode it, ripping at its tongue-limbs. The beast reverberated, a living (or more!) waveform in three (or more!) dimensions, and yet this cat—was it, I wondered, the same cat who so long ago had lapped greedily at my garbage?—did battle with it!

My gun lay on the white ground.

I picked it up and fired.

The bullets hit the beast with dull thuds but nothing more. Unaffected, it began instead to gyrate so that its rows upon rows of tongues flared outward like the ruffles on a spinning flamenco dancer's dress, ejecting the brave cat and spraying the surroundings with sticky strings of vile salivas, which turned varicoloured as they dissolved.

The cat scampered off.

The beast stilled.

Unspun, it stood. Only it and I were left, facing each other, if one can ever face a thing that has none. There was no expert in the world who could have explained this to me, only those who would dismiss it as the fiction of a troubled mind, yet I swear to you it was true. Everything I've told you has been the truth. I have presented it chronologically and in detail, the way your ankyloglossiac mind prefers. Then like the cat the beast scampered off, although perhaps glided would be the more accurate term. Like a mess down the side of a black garbage bag, into the woods, into nighttime it went, and mercifully I was left alone, collapsed in a cold accumulation of snow and mystery, frightened, cowering like a primitive animal in the fragmentary presence of a god.

I quit the police force after that. Like I said, there wasn't any more use to it after what I'd seen. Every child one day walks away from the sandbox. Officially, it was one unsolved murder, a mentally ill academic shot by the cops and two suicides—all unconnected. Everyone put stock in what the clinical psychologist said. No one took at face value the academic's writings or my own experience.

My life since has been quiet. I moved into a cabin in the woods and keep generally to myself. I try to keep my sleep shallow. Whenever I fall too deeply into dream, it comes back to me: the bliss, the terror, the language and the sounds, bursting as bubbles above the decaying surface of reality. I wake then with my hands covering my mouth. Because they're in me, these words. I have heard too much. I struggle to suppress them. When I look at my reflection, I see the beginning of a bright blackness in my eyes. I keep a knife on me at all times, as should you. Don't be afraid. When the time comes you'll know what to do. Let the experts die forever knowing finally they know nothing.

Let the experts suffer.

Happy birthday, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, To you we sing this song of praise. Your stories are so dark and full of dread, They fill us with such wondrous, twisted days

Happy birthday, to you, Happy birthday, to you, Happy birthday, dear Howard, Happy birthday to you!

You've created such a rich and terrible world, Where gods and monsters dwell in dark and musty halls. Your works have inspired so many others, To create their own tales of cosmic horror

Happy birthday, to you, Happy birthday, to you, Happy birthday, dear Howard, Happy birthday to you!

We raise our glasses to you, On this, your special day. May your stories continue to haunt us, For many years to come

Happy birthday, to you, Happy birthday, to you, Happy birthday, dear Howard, Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, We hope you have a day that's filled with dread. May your nightmares be as dark and twisted, As the stories you've written for us

https://forboc.github.io/shub-necrotics-of-forgotten-places/

I wish to ask for advice, as I'm about to undergo a project that is Lovecraftian. The first time I've ever done. Is there anything I absolutely must keep in mind, as I'm about to adapt my own version of Nyarlethotep specifically. My team and I are all incredibly excited, but nervous. In our research so far, we've seen plainly that Nyarlethotep has no consistent appearance. Making his intentions mostly flexible to a point. (Obviously being: Sow as much chaos and discord as possible).

I guess my real question is, is he more:

"I bring doom and defile light" (Bonus if you know where this lyric is from.)
or

So far ahead of everyone that he wins, even in by a miracle he's defeated?

I am trying to broaden my understanding of the character, before I really begin. Any help would be appreciated! Suggestions are welcome!

In dreams I perceive a vastness unimaginable, I pierce strange space with depths unfathomable - my mind turned to flesh, I exit my dream - I exit my body into a temporal stream.

Beyond the flesh, a network of mind. A ravenous matrix, shambling blind. Grotesque in my hunger, celestial scars - I gorge on the cosmos, encompassing stars.

A fracture of Self, plurality bound - Identity fades, remoulded from sound. Multiplicity rises, emergent personas - my vision arises from stellar coronas.

Decentralized mind, many perceptual nodes, ubiquitous sight with infinite modes. Contraction of space, digestion of time. Strange epochs and vistas, I shamble, sublime.

The sleeper awakens, the many become one. I recoil in terror from all that I've done. Perceiving eternity, I writhe as I cry. For with strange aeons, even death may die.

like the title says, we are 19 days away from H.P Lovecraft's Birthday, which is on August 20th. He will be 133 years old.

The first time I saw the mealworms, I was lying in bed, trying to sleep. I was in my bedroom, which was on the second floor of my house. The room was dark, except for the light from the streetlamp outside my window.

I was just about to drift off to sleep when I noticed a small, dark shape crawling across the ceiling. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but the shape was still there. It was a mealworm, about an inch long.

The mealworm was a dull brown colour, with a long, segmented body. Its head was small and pointed, and its antennae were long and thin. It was moving slowly, its body writhing as it crawled across the ceiling.

I sat up in bed and stared at the mealworm. I had never seen a mealworm in my house before, and I was curious about where it had come from. I had heard that mealworms were often found in compost piles, but I didn't have any compost in my house.

I got out of bed and went to investigate. The mealworm was gone, but I could see several more of them crawling around the floor. I picked them up and threw them away, but they kept coming back.

Over the next few days, I saw more and more mealworms. They would appear out of nowhere, and they would always be in different places. I would find them in the kitchen, in the bathroom, and even in my bedroom.

I started to get worried. I didn't know where the mealworms were coming from, and I didn't know how to get rid of them. I tried everything I could think of. I swept and mopped the floors, I sprayed insecticide, and I even put down traps. But nothing seemed to work. The mealworms just kept coming back.

One night, I woke up and the mealworms were everywhere. They were crawling all over me, and they were even in my mouth. I screamed and tried to brush them away, but they were too many. I blacked out, and when I woke up, I was in the hospital.

The doctors told me that I had been poisoned by the mealworms. They said that the mealworms had been infected with a parasitic fungus, and that the fungus had released toxins into my bloodstream.

The fungus was called Beauveria bassiana, and it is a common parasite of insects. The fungus infects the insect and then takes control of its body, causing it to behave strangely and eventually die. The fungus then releases spores that can infect other insects.

In my case, the mealworms had been infected with the fungus, and the spores had gotten into my bloodstream through my skin. The toxins from the fungus had caused me to become very sick, and I had almost died.

I spent the next few weeks in the hospital, and I was eventually released. But I was never the same. The experience had left me traumatized, and I was constantly afraid of seeing the mealworms again.

Five months later, I disappeared. My body was found 100 miles away from my house, and it was covered in mealworms. The police never found out what happened to me, but I believe that I was taken by the same creatures that had infected me with the parasitic fungus.

I am still haunted by the memory of the mealworms, and I know that they are still out there. Somewhere, in the darkness, they are waiting for their next victim.

Aside from discussing mythologies and folklore, we also have a variety of off-topic channels, including gaming, philosophy, cooking, and even a collaborative creative writing project in making our own fictional mythology!

We hope to see all of you mythology fans join us in Mythology Ignited!

https://discord.com/invite/RAWZQDp6aM

One theory I read about is that 'The King in Yellow' in Robert Chambers' work is actually the deceased carcus of God, which is why everyone goes crazy when they read 'The King in Yellow' play. My reasons for thinking this theory is this, you're in the afterlife and you learn God is dead, that would be an unimaginable cosmic horror nightmare, especially for someone religious, but now imagine discovering this horrible fact while still alive, that would be enough to drive anyone insane.

I walked those tattered roads, roads that were once recognizable of my own sight but which had since the mornings first glare turned into a patchwork of potted streets and mangled architecture the likes of which no man could feasibly describe, not a man as I know men. For the sight was glorious yet terrible, a miasma of different eras & different worlds intertwined in such intriguing ways. For what seemed like days I walked unti I reached that dreaded theater, upon the stage of which there was Poetry in Motion, 'The King in Yellow'. I was captivated by such grandiose displays and swayed by the performance I had to continue watching, my mind lost in a trance and allured by the newest character who strode upon the stage, he spoke his name as the Pallid Mask.

"Camilla: You, sir, should unmask. Stranger: Indeed? Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you. Stranger: I wear no mask. Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda) No mask? No mask!"

With a thrush out of the mask and whip of the yellow cloaks, the screams of the actors filled the air until they could fill no more, the tenebrous form of The King in Yellow too horrible for any to witness, And it was there that I understood that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now, but answer he would not for we were in the grandeur of The Unspeakable.

🐙 This is an attempt to visualise the content of Notes on Writing Weird Fiction by H. P. Lovecraft 🖋️, which was written in 1933 📜. The author does not claim to have an inherently correct understanding of certain points in the article, opinions may differ 🤔💭.

The text of the article was taken from: www.hplovecraft.com 🕸️🌐

https://youtu.be/8Kz8CDntwSw

There is a story I’m working on involving the deities of the Cthulhu mythos. How would one character, who accepts the existence of Lovecraft’s creations, introduce the concept of these beings, to someone who’s already struggling in believing in the God, with a capital G?

After the war, a power vacuum emerged and he came & under his new leadership he claimed to be the "Miracle" we had all prayed for. With boundless knowledge he crafted titanic weapons of which could split the very atom to crush his foes on the battlefield and with his infinite wisdom he schemed and plotted to have his political rivals silenced and forgotten, forever banished to oblivion eternal. None could, or would stop his reign, for as he ushered in an era of enlightenment into was also brought fear and madness the likes of which no mere phantasm had ever wrought before. Before long It began to speak in the nightmares of men, women and children. Horrible, yet great things which I still cannot fully understand.

I can still just remember the wrinkled face of my elder and how he spoke of the very leader in which one day he grew tired of the squabble and after seeing death in either future he chose to approach our leader during one of his exhibitions of grandeur, clad in onyx robes of heavy made hooding which cloaked his otherworldly features. Approaching the exhibition, a once stoic or perhaps pragmatic man degraded to scalding, noxious words not disimilar to that of toxic metal from a live crucible that were flung at our leader who bellowed a hearty laugh as the man yelled it pointed a crooked finger betwixt The mans eyes and mocked back, "Imputent worm, you should be punished for such act of dishonor. Yet I admire your courage to throw yourself amidst the face of oblivion. At the same moment I spit at your common human need to be a savior, willing to doom yourself and strip away everything you are just for the feeling of accomplishment."

What once was one hand became two, the second clapsed tightly amid The mans thorax as if he were not but an insect. The man struggled to get free and even attempted biting in feral desperation as the leader bore the eye of Ra parallel to the mans browridge, or was it Thoth? The details get muddled in retelling but one things for sure, he uttered a cacophonous philippic Ill fated to march towards the man and the surrounding crowd, words so heinous no soul that day ever forgot them. "Perhaps this will help you to see clearer." With a heave and a throw that was said to have sundered The mans very soul, he fell beneath our leader who began addressing the crowd, his facade seeming to come to an end. "Scolding me as if enlightenment had somehow made entry upon even the dullest glimmer of your thoughts, then howl and flail like a mutt when pressed with the truth. I am Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos, The Black Pharaoh, The God Of The Bloody Tongue, The Haunter Of The Dark; I am The God With A Thousand Faces and the time of humanity has come and past. You self-immolated your own society by prostituting all of your talents into greed & power so do not heed me the villain for picking up the pieces of your broken world."

I now write this from the inside of some turned over housing, the ceiling appears almost perpendicular to the floor and peering through a bullethole in the wall I can distinguish what appears to be- Bodies and a wrinkled face, possibly affixed with symbols and my heart sinks, for I know I'm next.

In the vast in the cosmic horror hovers. There in the center of the universe, so dazed that he does not notice the dances around him that please him but are at the same time unknown, his is not the aspect of the demons of Dante's underworld but is a being without form. What an idiot gurgles in the center of the universe things that for us are blasphemies, but they are ritual words that he repeats in the hope, perhaps in vain, of recovering his lost intellect. He sits there on his throne, revered as creator, there with his crazy way of reigning, always if he reigns. Maybe it's his trusted son who walks among us with his mystery cults, he's the nuclear chaos that sits idiotic at the center of the universe. At his court there is madness, it is neither good nor evil and it is strange to explain what hovers at the Center of the universe. If there is anything accursed besides him it is this monotonous roll of drums, accompanied by the chirping of accursed flutes played by amorphous flutists, whose non-existent form brings madness. He is a demon great as a sultan, whose name is whispered in the ether, titanic reigns over everything and everyone, chewing without stopping, without intellect and form. Worshiped by the insects of Shaggai, monstrous sacrifices are performed in his name, in the name of the almighty, in the name of the one who no longer possesses intellect, in the name of nuclear chaos, in the name of the creator of everything and everyone. His secret name is not pronounced even by his son nyarlatotep, the mad idiot who screams blasphemy at the center of the universe, the original chaos. His aspect is mysterious to mortals, he is the mightiest outer god, the reigning dreamer seated with his court dancing and playing for mysterious purposes at the center of the universe, his name is Azathoth the Demon- sultan

Short Stories - The Short Stories of The Great Mi-go

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Poems - Poems of Our Alien Overlords, Mi-go

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*** UPDATE ***

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Hi reddit.

I am a fan of the work of H.P.Lovecraft.

I am interested in collecting and systematizing tools and techniques on writing in the style of H.P. Lovecraft. In this case, I am interested in the approach that was used in "The Call of Cthulhu". I mean the non-linear approach, which is more like a reportage consisting of diaries, documents, and character information. I also remember reading somewhere that "The Call of Cthulhu" has elements of reportage, but for me as a non-professional writer I don't know how to implement that in my possible stories. So I've tried to put together instructions that might be helpful.

I've included the instructions in this video: https://youtu.be/xp7yQzYVLjo

If you find it useful or controversial, please don't hesitate to leave a comment on YouTube.

I also encourage anyone who has something to say on the subject to speak up or share links to materials on the subject.

Some of the diagrams:

https://imgur.com/a/lgl3whG

https://imgur.com/a/yNyWizs

https://imgur.com/a/kkzMQOy

https://imgur.com/a/2SSfsm5

https://imgur.com/a/lT6UWMO

https://imgur.com/a/sF98peN

https://imgur.com/a/HClxxF3

https://imgur.com/a/1ceqPB8

Hi everyone. I've written a short story of 942 words. Set in a strange old house, it was inspired by Lovecraft's writings and his ideas about cosmic horror, weird deities, and other worlds.

https://dansgamingblog.wordpress.com/2023/05/20/the-grim-chamber/