Doctor Thomas had told the orderlies to give him heavy sedation every day. Still, the doctor found it profoundly odd, that not just one man, but two, had hair that had turned stark white, overnight. It was extremely rare for patients to have changes in hair color. Even the most deeply troubled patients would only get a streak of gray here and there, if at all.
The doctor continued further down the hallway, and switched over to the opposite side. He passed two other patient’s rooms. One was screaming, and the other in heavy sedation, asleep. At the third door, he came to the room where Greg Umbridge lay upright, with his back to the wall. He waved at Greg, and saw, with excitement, that the man’s eye twitched, ever so slightly.
“How are you feeling today, Greg?” Dr. Thomas asked him, through the glass of the door.
He didn’t expect to get a response, but remarkably, he saw Greg’s lips begin to tremble. Greg’s mouth appeared to try to form speech, but all that came out was a strange jargon of sounds, that barely sounded like the English language.
“Would you like me to get you a piece of paper, and a pencil, Gregory?” Dr. Thomas asked.
The slightest of movements, up and down, of Greg’s head to this question was enough to send Dr. Thomas running down the hall. He rushed into his office, and called up two orderlies from their patrol on the second floor, to help him with Greg.
It had taken a great deal of effort from the orderlies, to get the still sluggish patient into a sitting position. With some finagling, they got him into a seated position on his bed, with a pad of paper, and a pencil in his hand. It was the kind of pencil that you had to click the eraser to write with. A skinny, balding orderly named Todd flanked Greg to his right, and a chubby, short orderly named Jim stood by the patient on his left. Dr. Thomas was not going to take any chances, after the incident with Seth the previous week.
“Go on Greg, it’s okay; just slowly write down what you want to tell me,” Dr. Thomas said.
Greg looked up at Dr. Thomas, slowly. His lips began to tremble, and he tried to speak. Noises came out, bits and fragments of English, but Greg was unable to put them together. Greg shut his eyes tight, and breathed deeply. Then, he placed the pencil to the pad of paper.
It took Greg five minutes to write out the word. It was a crazy sounding word, written with a trembling hand, so that the letters contained crooked lines. When he was finished writing the nonsense word, Greg lay down on the bed.
“Greg, do you want us to go?” Dr. Thomas asked.
Silence was all the only answer from Greg, who appeared to be back in a complete state of catatonia. Dr. Thomas motioned to Todd and Jim, to leave the patient’s room with him.
Doctor Thomas made his way back to his office, after sending Todd and Jim back down to the first floor. He walked over to his desk, and sat down. He put the pad of paper with the strange word onto the desk. He switched on a green desk lamp, and stared down at the word. And for no reason at all, Dr. Gerald Thomas shivered.
The word on the pad read Lalpatzik.
X
The next day, Doctor Thomas called in, and let the chief of staff for the asylum, Harold Weston, know that he was going to be out for the day. He drove from his spacious home, just outside of Dunwich, to the town of Arkham. He visited the library of Miskatonic University, a place he remembered with great fondness. Dr. Thomas had received his Ph.D in psychiatry from Miskatonic. He had spent many an hour in the old library, with its notably high ceilings, and rare collection of old books.
First, Thomas went to one of the many computers near the front entrance of the library. He did an Internet search for the word, Lalpatzik. The one thing that every site he traveled to had in common, was to mention that the word Lalptizik was found in a book from the 19th century, by an anonymous author. Although the title of the book was Qanoon-e-Islam, Thomas was intrigued to discover that this text had very little to do with the Islamic religion. However, the book appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin. There were theories that a man named Abdul Alhazred had written the book, but no site he checked could confirm this.
He searched the internet database for the Miskatonic library, and found to his shock that not only were there reference books for the Qanoon-e-Islam, but that a copy of the original text was to be found right in the basement of the library. So, Dr. Thomas made his way down to the basement of the library, to the rare books section.
He was greeted with much hostility, when he asked the elderly woman who sat at a desk before the archives, if he could look at the Qanoon-e-Islam.
“Why in hell would you want to look through that book?” the old woman asked him.
In the typical fashion of those involved in the mental health field, the doctor answered her question with another question.
“Why do you seem so against having me look at it?” he said.
“Well, you can look at the ratty old thing if you want, but most of it is gibberish,” the old woman said. She fidgeted with her hands, and he saw that there were scars along the tops of them.
“How did you scar your hands?” the doctor asked.
She sneered at him, from beneath her thick spectacles. She was dressed conservatively, in a dark blue dress with long sleeves. She probably doesn’t like to show off her arms, perhaps she has scars on them too, Dr. Thomas thought to himself.
“Ain’t none of your Goddamn business how I been scarred!” the elderly woman replied, and got up so fast, that at first, the doctor was confused. She looked over her shoulder at him, with a scowl.
“Well do you want to look through the Qanoon-e-Islam or not?” she asked him.
“Yes... yes, of course.”
X
It took him three hours of leafing, and scanning through the massive text before he found the word Lalpatzik. But, none of the passage made much sense to him. He read it aloud: “Ia Lalpatzik wgah’nagl fuh jufghen zo’shiant Kadath.” Below this, the text went on in English, though whether it was a translation from a previous text in another language, the text did not specify. He continued to read aloud.
“Lalpatzik, the great gateway opener, is the spark to light the way for the rest. He waits in the great dream city of Kadath, beyond the stars, for the day a madman will set him loose.”
How cryptic, Dr. Thomas thought. He wrote the strange words, and description of Lalpatzik, onto a piece of paper in a notebook he produced from his briefcase. This short mention was all that was to be found of Lalpatzik in the entirety of Qanoon-e-Islam. He leafed through until the end of the weighty volume, but found no other mention. He got to the back cover, and noted that written at the center of it were the words “Property of Joseph Curwen”.
On his way out of the rare books section, he heard the old woman mumble something under her breath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” he said, unable to keep his tone from being flippant.
She looked into his face, and he saw one overwhelming emotion shine through her facial features. That emotion was fear.
“I said, may God have mercy on your soul.”
X
Doctor Thomas wasn’t sure why he wanted to visit the field where Patrick had died, and where the other two orderlies had witnessed the murder. He wasn’t really sure why he took out the paper with the words on it either. But he did, and he began to read the strange words aloud.
“Ia Lalpatzik wgah’nagl fuh jufghen zo’shiant Kadath.”
It was right around sunset, and after a minute, Dr. Thomas smiled to himself, and turned to go. What did he figure would happen? He had let the mental illness of a patient infect his imagination; that was all, and nothing more.
Thunder boomed above him, and the setting sun was blocked out of the sky. It began to pour with rain, and he saw a flash of lightning touch down on the field, after he heard the thunder. He looked up, and screamed.
The vapor rose out of his skin, a strange green color. It burned as it left his body, and he fell to his knees from the pain. A few seconds later, and his vision greyed.<
br />
Doctor Gerald Thomas died at exactly 5:57 pm, on that previously cloudless day, May the 30th.
Death was not the end for his soul.
X
Doctor Thomas consisted entirely of a green vapor now, and he tried to scream, though no sound was produced. He was roughly three feet in length, and a foot in diameter. He traveled inside one of the gills of Lalpatzik, along the top of its giant wing. He was sucked inside the elder god, and as this occurred, he was awarded flashes of all the evil thing had seen and done. He saw whole civilizations laid to waste by the elder god, Lalpatzik. He saw strange creatures on distant planets, slaughtered, and assimilated; just as he had been, into the great beast of extermination, Lalpatzik.
He was pumped back out of the gargantuan creature’s body, as it flew through a tunnel that appeared to be made of lighting and cloud. He floated about the elder god’s head, if such a thing could be called a head. He saw one of the huge stalks of its eyes turn toward him; saw the giant eye the size of the front door of a house. It blinked, and he heard the thunder laughing.
He saw the stars and the endless black void all around him, though he had no eyes to see. He was unsure how he felt or saw anything, and yet he still saw and felt; he still sensed. He wished more than anything that his senses would die, as his body had.
Suddenly, the great beast was above a strange planet, with alien vegetation. He saw gigantic stalks that looked like a cross between a giant mushroom, and a giant broccoli plant. He saw a river of gold that traveled underneath a long bridge, made out of a bright red and purple plant matter, or what he took to be plant matter. As Lalpatzik lowered its great frame to the planet, the land of Kadath, Dr. Thomas’s soul knew that the bridge was more rock than plant, though it was comprised of equal parts of both components.
In his green vaporous form, he scanned the terrible, alien horizon, and saw what looked like a great chair, made of the same red and purple plant slash rock matter. And atop this chair sat none other than Seth O’Malley, his human form somehow pure, and intact. But, his eyes were the bright white of lightning, and sporadically, electrical currents would travel over his skin. Somehow, his flesh remained unharmed. He was naked.
Before Seth were thousands of different colored vapors, of varying shapes and sizes, somehow trapped before the strange throne on which the madman sat. Seth inhaled, and a new vapor traveled into his mouth, and was then exhaled through his nose, to be followed by yet another vapor of yet another color and size.
Doctor Thomas’ soul was allowed to escape from beside Lalpatzik’s massive head, and he traveled below to where the others were trapped. He floated towards the throne of the madman. He maneuvered his way around the other souls, and made his way to the front.
As he floated toward Seth, the man smiled, and laughed.
“So nice to see you, doctor,” Seth said.
“Come, see the beauty that is total and uncontrollable, universal chaos and madness.” Seth said.
Seth inhaled, and the doctor traveled inside the former man, who was now a god in this dreamland, this strange planet. Somehow, Dr. Thomas’ soul, which was now green vapor, knew that he was to be a prisoner on Kadath for eternity. And he saw what was to become of the other planets that existed among the great black void of the universe. Saw the death and devastation; the fire and the plagues, and the overthrow of humanity. Humanity, that was just one tiny species among thousands throughout the universe that was to be killed, and trapped on Kadath with him, forever.
He never stopped screaming, though he had no lips to produce the sound. Seth had given him one final gift. The gift of total and unending madness, forever.
BLOOD, GUNS & TENTACLES
Kirk Jones
I was five when I fired my first gun. I can’t recall the model. All I know is that it had one hell of a kick, too much of a kick to be Dad’s old .22. The damned thing left my shoulder black and blue for a week. I shrugged it off as well as I could, held back the tears so my father’s friends wouldn’t see me cry, but I vowed that from that day forward I’d never fire another gun again.
I made good on that vow for seven years, until Dad dragged me into the woods during the fall of ‘76. He came home empty-handed almost every night that season, so I figured the odds were in my favor. I could hit the woods, get him off my back, and not have to watch anything die. It was miserably cold that year, and the only thing stirring in the forest was a handful of dead leaves that managed to remain secured to their respective branches until after the first frost. As always, Dad plucked a few artist’s conks off stumps along the way, picked up the scattered limbs of dying trees, handed them to me, and told me to draw something. I was never much for drawing. I was never much for anything really.
Two hours and about one hundred stick figures later I had Dad’s rifle cradled in my shoulder with a doe in the crosshairs. There was no turning back. I thought about aiming off target, but that would have meant getting dragged out the next season, hell, maybe the next day, with another whitetail in my sights and Dad breathing down my neck. So I fired.
I thought I had missed. That deer just stood there, unblinking. Then it dropped. Now, I’m no avid hunter and never was. I’ve seen my fair share of hunting programs though, enough to know a deer doesn’t just stand there after being shot. But at the time I was too transfixed by the experience to realize how irregular the deer’s reaction was.
Dad’s hand came down on my shoulder. “That was a good shot,” he whispered. “Let’s go get her.”
I nodded, and we climbed down the series of short boards leading back to the ground so we could haul our kill home. Dad inched up to her slowly and prodded her gently with his gun. “She’s beautiful,” he said. And she was, with a flawless coat as white as the impending snowfall. Not a drop of brown covered her body. As I stood there over the doe, Dad unscrewed the cap from his flask, which I always assumed was filled with liquor, and poured the contents between the deer’s lips. It was water. He turned to me, “a sign of respect.” He put the flask in his pocket and stood beside me. “I was a lot like you when I was young. Never liked to see an animal suffer.”
“Why do you hunt then?” I asked.
“Someday you’ll understand.”
In my life I’ve ran into all kinds of hunters. Some do it for sport. For others, it’s some sort of instinctual drive for conquest. They find something beautiful and the first thing they want to do is either screw it or kill it. Boil it down, they want to tag it. They want to capture that beauty and make it their own.
Then there are some hunters who do it for survival. When the nearest grocery store is forty miles away and an annual cold snap entails temperatures of forty below for weeks at a time, it’s just common sense to stock up. Those are the ones who seem to have the most respect for the hunt, because the kill is just a means to an end, not the end itself.
But no monuments to sport adorned the walls of my childhood home. And Dad gave most of the venison to our grandfather, or the other folks in town who probably couldn’t have afforded to make it to the store even during the summer months. Truth be told, I never really understood why he hunted, thus my initial aversion to it.
Dad grabbed one of the rear legs and turned towards the horizon. “We better get her home.”
“Don’t you have to,” I made a stabbing motion towards the deer’s underbelly. “Cut it or something?”
“This one’s too important for that.” He nodded towards the other leg. “Give me a hand.”
X
We got back home and dropped our gear off in the garage well after dark that night. Mom sat at the dinner table, her food untouched. If any shot was fired within a mile of the house and Dad wasn’t around, Mom was a nervous wreck. The evening I shot my first deer was no exception. To Dad’s disappointment, this apple, this apple that just fired a gun for the first time in seven years, didn’t fall far from the tree. Even though Mom and I heard guns going off all the time, I don’t think we ever got used to it. To us, that soun
d ringing in your ears meant only one thing: death. In part that was Dad’s doing. He understood hunting to kill, but shooting for pleasure was lost on him. He always said you only shoot guns for two reasons: to sight them or to hit your target. So we knew that when he fired, he generally intended to take something’s life.
Once Dad stumbled in with me following close behind, Mom’s anxiety made an abrupt transition into anger. “Dinner’s cold,” she said, pointing to the liver and spinach on the table. Then she noticed the white hairs lining our sleeves. A frown spread across her face. “You got something, didn’t you?” she asked.
Dad smiled.
She reached for her coat. “I don’t have time to cut it for you. There’s too much work around the house. You’re going to have to get Jim to do it.”
My father set his hat on the table. “Jim’s already butchering for everyone else in the neighborhood.”
“Let’s see it,” she said, ushering us out the door. Over the years Mom had grown tired of feigning interest in Dad’s hobby. By the time I was twelve, she wasn’t as adept at holding back her true sentiments, especially since every deer he brought home meant more work for her.
“It’s a small one. Jeff got it,” Dad said.
“You got it?” Mom opened the garage door and walked in before I could respond. “Well, come on then.”
“Nice one, eh?” Dad asked, looking at me.
“Was it sick or something?” Mom asked.
“It’s albino.” Dad knelt before the doe and ran his hand across its white coat. “I’ve only seen a few when I was a kid. Must run in the local population or something, because seeing even one in your lifetime is pretty rare.”
New Tales of the Old Ones Page 22