I was looking at the pit from further away, up on a rocky rise with the sun off to my left, and I heard it for the first time.
The noise was both a high-pitched whine and a deep hum, with something like the buzz of every buzzing insect on Earth, all coming from deep inside the hole. As the sun got fainter the sound crept nearer, and I began to make out a voice among the other sounds. It was not exactly talking, but kind of mumbling to itself in not quite English. I got the feeling that I would understand the words if I could just concentrate, or remember, but I desperately didn’t want to know. As the noise grew something flickered and moved in the darkness, black on black, then I swear it looked at me!
I wasn’t in bed when I woke up and I panicked before I realised I’d fallen asleep in front of the telly. It was some Open University pish, but for a few horrible seconds I thought it was the sounds from my dream, that they had followed me back. And even though I was on my settee right against the wall, and the lights were on, I could still feel something huge behind me. My head and bladder were both bursting, but I didn’t move a fucking inch till dawn.
Unemployment worked out pretty well for me actually. My stamp was all up to date so I got dole money, and I got to sleep during the day. So for weeks, as long as I stayed awake till dawn every night, I never had the dream. So once I was thinking straight I tried to work it out. I pulled myself together, thought about it sensibly and looked up some stuff about dreams on the net.
It’s all so logical when you look into it. Apparently, a deep dark hole represents your own subconscious mind, and if you’re afraid of it, it’s because you’re scared of some aspect of your psyche that’s repressed or hidden, perhaps some violent or perverse sexual urge that your conscious mind won’t accept because it would clash too much with your self-image, or maybe a secret fear of failure or feeling of inadequacy.
The desert represents isolation and loneliness, or the fear of those things. The setting sun is a major change or a new beginning. And - get this - anything with tentacles is a vaginal symbol. This isn’t metaphysical nonsense from the mind-body-witchcrap section of the bookshop; this is proper psychology. I got it on Wikipedia.
So perhaps I’m afraid that my new life is going to be lonely and friendless (and probably sexless) because deep down I’m a bit of a cunt? That’s kind of true, but I looked for a deeper meaning as well. Apparently our dreams talk to us in layers of metaphors. So, interpretation number 2:
It’s not coincidence that I had the first dream the night Jessie left me. She was my longest relationship ever but it still only lasted as long as it took her to get to know me properly. Once people see past this jolly persona and meet the real me, they run like fuck. I’m frightened that the monster that’s inside me cannot change and eventually it will drive everyone away and leave me to die alone in a social desert. I’m not sure about the big tentacly thing – if anyone was afraid of sex in the relationship it was Jessie. That was partly why we broke up, though mainly it was because I’m a cunt.
But then there’s the other stuff I found on the net. There’s a whole mythology, about this stuff. If you start googling things like tentacle, pit, monster and dream these things crop up fairly soon, and if you dig a bit deeper it all gets creepy as hell.
They’re a proper religion, the Worshippers of the Old Ones, and they meet up at night and do weird shit. They don’t have a website as such, and they certainly don’t publish whatever it is they do, but there are forums, groups and chatrooms about it. I’ve started hanging around these sites and some of the posts describe exactly what’s happened to me: the nightmares, the terror, the certainty that the creature has followed you out of the dream and just needs to given the right signal for it to eat everything on the planet.
Their take on it is a bit different. According to the Worshippers of the Old Ones (one of the main forum sites is called wooo.org – I thought that was funny) the tentacly things are ancient gods, and we the dreamers are the chosen and should be honoured. I didn’t feel fucking honoured; I thought there were lots of sad gits in the world who can’t hold down relationships and have metaphorical dreams, and I’m one of them.
So I signed up anyway (with a fake name and a newly created webmail address – I’m not totally brainless), and started posting some of my experiences. It was quite therapeutic just to tell someone else, and I got some sympathetic replies, as well as a couple of abusive ones. But I stuck with it and started getting into it a bit. It was almost like having friends again.
Most of the users were guys like me, and we kind of sympathised with each other, but some were proper weirdoes and their posts took it all so seriously. There are guys who drug themselves up so they’ve got no chance of waking no matter what happens in the dream, then they post what they see, as well as tips on what combinations of tranquillisers to use. And there are theorists and guys who talk like high priests of weirdshitology.
I have seen the cities as they existed before our world was even formed, and as they still exist, as close as a blink, or the width of a scalpel blade.
Nothing we humans can ever achieve will come close. We are trapped in our straight dimensions, only perceiving even these with such pathetic senses that we are barely alive at all.
If mankind’s greatest achievement is to bring about its own destruction in the service of the Old Ones, then we will have our place in history, for eternity. We are to them as the tiniest of crawling creatures seem to us; we would end a billion such little wriggling lives to enhance the happiness and comfort of one human being, so why should we balk at out own relative transience and insignificance?
If our extinction were necessary to restore the Old Ones to this reality, we must accept our fate with humility, and for the honour that it is.
Forum post from forums.wooo.org
It’s easy to get drawn into this shit. I was still freaked out by the dreams, although my new nocturnal lifestyle meant they didn’t come as often, but I started to feel like I was a part of something. I’m beginning to understand why people go to church. It’s not all the God shite – it’s just a place go where you can be one of a group, and be accepted. In a way it was comforting to think I wasn’t nuts. That must be the ultimate selfishness – it’s easier to accept that there are ancient monsters about to destroy the world than doubt my own sanity.
I might have got really into it more, but an altercation with some former colleagues changed everything.
I wasn’t going out much, but I had to go and buy food, sign on once a fortnight and fuck up a job interview every so often so it looked as though I was trying – otherwise they’d stop my money. So I was coming out the Jobcentre Plus one day when I spied Fat Shug from the site standing across the road. He spotted me too and I saw him get his phone out and call somebody. I knew exactly what was coming – these cunts can bear grudges for decades. Shug had been one of the guys on the scaffolding and he was best pals with Pikey, the guy whose arm got broken the day I lost it. Pikey is the kind of wankstain who could seethe forever if he thinks he owes somebody a doing. I acted cool, pretended I hadn’t seen Shug, walked round the corner, then sprinted. I’m not a coward but I’ve got a lot of experience running away from trouble. The trick is not to run fast, but to get out of sight as soon as you can. Run up alleys and turn corners and get on a bus if you can do it without getting spotted. I thought I was on top of this, but I hadn’t counted on Pikey being about half a mile away and having a car. I ran along Broomielaw, up Oswald Street and ducked into Waterloo Lane, where I stopped and looked behind me. As I expected, there was no sign of Shug, so I relaxed a bit and walked through the alley and out onto Wellington Street, where Pikey and a wee weedy guy I didn’t recognise were just getting out of a battered Vauxhall Corsa as if they’d been waiting for me. I nodded and smiled and said, “Alright, Pikey?” Then I turned and ran back the way I’d come. I could hear the heavy footsteps behind me but I knew I was faster. I almost made it to the end of the alley when Shug lumbered into view right in fr
ont of me. I ran right into the fat bastard, cannoned off him into the rough alley wall and sprawled on the ground.
Moments later I was curled up being kicked from all directions. Someone was shouting and swearing but the details have gone. I heard and felt ribs crack, and I remember a kick to my face that flattened my nose and snapped my head back so hard I thought my neck must be broken. After that it’s kind of fuzzy.
We have our greatest opportunity to hasten the Old Ones’ return in just a few days. The alignment of stars and the state of our consciousness will be perfect on -- -- -- at 22.30 Greenwich Mean Time.
We, the Priests and Officers of The Worshippers, will be at our sacred location to perform the ceremony, and with your help we will triumph! The power of your dreams can penetrate the darkness, and we shall be opening a channel through which your power can finally invite the first of the Old Ones through. From 22.00 on that night you must all repeat this mantra and keep repeating until you sleep. If we succeed you will all awake to the glorious return of the Universe as it was meant to be. If for any reason we should fail this time the stars will not be so favourable for another two thousand years.
Memorise these words and say them aloud at the right time and we shall see what mankind in all its frailty is capable of!
These are the words that will make the universe whole again! Say them aloud! Incant! Feel your own power!
Phnglui mgnaf ganagl phtan
Phnglui mgnaf ganagl phtan
Nyarlathotep Yuggoth k’nyan Yoth
Samaan DiRosa, Samiins Hikar Dan Sdi Rosa
Khandar Khandar Khandar ganagl phtan
Forum post from forums.wooo.org
The dream came so suddenly and vividly that it was more like waking up. I stood with the sun behind me so my shadow stretched out like an accusing finger, pointing directly at the hole, perhaps a hundred yards away.
I looked round and saw gently undulating sand dunes with rocky outcrops here and there, everything red in the refracted sunlight. It all seemed more detailed than before, completely real. I bent down and picked up a handful of sand, so fine and dry that it flowed almost like liquid. It was the colour of skin, and I felt its texture and heard the whisper of it hitting the ground as it ran through my fingers. Then, presumably because it was in the script, I stood and faced the pit and strode off towards it.
I stopped at the edge, closer than ever before, and stared in. The blackness was absolute, with no variation or shadow, an apparently airless space, made of nothing. I stood and dared it to do its worst. Then the sounds came. Up to then, I had forgotten about being afraid, but at that first dusty breath in my ear the terror returned in all its ferocity. My legs felt like they were made of sand, and would crumble beneath me if I moved. My mind lost all reason and spun in my skull like a trapped bird. I was completely immobilised and had to stand, barely breathing as the sun vanished behind me. With a massive act of courage I shut my eyes tight and I swear I never opened them again, but in the way of dreams I could still see what was happening, and, horribly, I could still hear.
The air carried an idea of words that needled into my brain, wanting to be heard and understood, and then the buzzing joined in. It was like a swarm of bees but with a deep undertone like the slower beating of much larger wings. The sounds grew, changed, mingled, with a rhythm like the worst music you’ve ever heard, or something like language. I sensed that I knew how to understand if I just opened my mind, but that the understanding would destroy me. I stood like a blind sapling in a hurricane as the sounds whirled and raged and tried to push into my mind.
And finally the darkness in the pit began to expand, inflating like a giant bubble, as slow and inexorable as the hour hand on a clock. As the sun was swallowed I was engulfed. What I saw there I can’t write down. There are no words, and my senses were confused. I tasted the darkness, felt the sounds, heard the flavour of my own despair, and everything was just wrong.
This time I did cry out as I woke. No, that’s not right, I screamed like a girl, so loud it hurt my throat. I tried to sit up and reach for the light switch, but I couldn’t move, as if I was tied to the bed. The lights were too bright, there were needles sticking in me, and when the nurse came she thought I was crying because of the pain, even though there was so much morphine in me that you could have sawed my leg off and I wouldn’t have felt it.
My vision was blurred, I was clammy with sweat and breathing hard, and as I lay helpless, pain blossomed in my head then started exploring, testing parts of my body and looking for good places to settle. None of that mattered, though, because I could still almost see what had been in the darkness, just out of the corner of my eye.
There isn’t one creature, no single god. The darkness in the pit is made of these things, billions of them, each as big as a planet or, looked at differently, the size of a man, the width of a shadow. They swarm round our world like starved predators round a caged zebra, and I think I understand what will happen if they ever manage to force their way in.
I have had a vision, a dream within a dream, and I have seen the day when the Old Ones return.
The first thing to fail will be gravity, which gets weaker when applied to more dimensions, so our solar system will no longer be viable. The gravitational pull of Earth will no longer be strong enough to hold an atmosphere, so our precious air will just spiral off into space and leave everything that breathes to die, gasping and clutching at the last few molecules of life. With no atmospheric pressure the seas will go next, drifting like mist into the void until the Earth is a dry and barren wasteland. The Sun will lose its hold on the planets, which will all start an endless final voyage into the darkness of space. Then the Sun itself will fizzle out, expanding and cooling until all that’s left is a cloud of cold dust, gradually dispersing into space. We will be long gone by then, but the Old Ones will be there, starting to rebuild their own universe among the eternally expanding and cooling remnants of ours.
And there’s that last forum post – the one with the incantation. That’s the scariest thing of all. It gives us a date for the end of the universe, and it’s now.
I’ve been out of hospital for two weeks, and it has appeared every day on every site since, and I’ve read it so many times I have memorised that last passage without meaning to. I keep scanning it for anything I might recognise; I don’t know any of the words, or names, or whatever they are, but the whole thing seems familiar. Somehow that’s worrying, like having an itch you can’t quite find. Since this whole thing began I’ve had the feeling that I almost fully understand what’s happening, but it’s just out of my reach. And now it’s the night. It’s after ten now on the date set for the end of everything, and I have the power to help it along, but no right to veto. I have no idea what to do, but those words keep spinning round my mind, the sense of them still beyond me, but tantalisingly close.
I hear the words coming from a dozen different places within earshot, or maybe it’s just in my mind. And I’ve found myself mumbling them under my breath without realising. I’m going to sleep now, and if nothing happens tonight this will be a funny story for the grandkids. But the words in my head are growing, as if they have an echo. I hear them from a thousand places at once, and some of the voices are impossibly deep, and seem to buzz.
Stewart Horn is a professional musician based on the beautiful Ayrshire coast in Scotland, UK. His fiction has appeared in Screaming Dreams's Estronomicom magazine, in The Horrorzine and the Horrorzine's best of anthology Feast of Frights. Further work is due for publication this summer in Crowded magazine and the Tales to Terrify podcast. His poetry has appeared in print too.
He is a book reviewer for the British Fantasy Society and a member of the Glasgow Science fiction Writers' Circle. He one day intends to add some content to his blog at stewartguitar.wordpress.com
Story illustration by Lee Copeland.
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Cthulhu Does Stuff is a monthly comic strip by Ronnie Tucker and Maxwell Pa
tterson. Visit their website, Max and Ronnie do comics.
Maxwell Patterson is a freelance writer, available for parties, corporate events and Bat Mitzvahs. You can contact him at [email protected].
Ronnie Tucker is an artist who plies his wares (eww, gross!) at http://ronnietucker.co.uk/. You can contact him at: [email protected].
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Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #4
Submitted for Your Abhorrence
by Robert M. Price
I believe that Carol Serling once remarked that her illustrious husband Rod was a great fan of H.P. Lovecraft and Weird Tales. But if that is the case, there is precious little sign of it in The Twilight Zone. As a young boy I feared the show, scampering off into my bedroom when the theme music began on my parents’ TV. Soon after, as still today, I came to love The Twilight Zone, and even episodes I have seen many, many times, manage to give me a chill. Just last night, I watched Richard Matheson’s “Night Call” (first aired February 7, 1964). There was a gap of many years, however, when I was not watching the reruns, and when I did again see this favorite (which had once made it hard for little Bob to sleep), I was surprised at the ending! To remind you (not that you need it, of course), the story concerns an elderly lady who is tormented by calls at all hours from someone insistent on talking to her but who seems to have little to say but eerie moaning, finally forming itself into a plaintive “Hellooooo?” At length the phone company tells her she cannot have been receiving such calls because they have traced them (how, if there weren’t any?) back to a fallen wire -- at the cemetery! She visits it, only to find that the still-unrepaired phone cable touches down on the grave of her old fiancé, whose death she had caused by insisting on driving, then losing control of the car. She realizes the decomposing stiff has been taking advantage of the storm damage to rekindle their old acquaintance. She had snapped at the caller to leave her alone, but now she is eager to talk to her long-lost love. Home again, she picks up the receiver and tentatively speaks into it, hoping her dead boyfriend will reply. He does, but he reminds her that she had told him to drop deader, and that’s that. Ulp. Well, all those intervening years, I had “remembered” the story as ending up in the cemetery with the sight of the phone line dangling at the grave plot. I guess I was subconsciously editing it! That, I still believe, is a more powerful ending. But I digress.
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