Archive for Gaming

Next one of the many princes asked why Medusa, alone among her sisters, had snakes twining in her hair. The guest replied ‘Since what you ask is worth the telling, hear the answer to your question. She was once most beautiful, and the jealous aspiration of many suitors. Of all her beauties none was more admired than her hair: I came across a man who recalled having seen her. They say that Neptune, lord of the seas, violated her in the temple of Minerva. Jupiter’s daughter turned away, and hid her chaste eyes behind her aegis. So that it might not go unpunished, she changed the Gorgon’s hair to foul snakes.

-Ovid, The Metamorphoses – Book IV

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The smell of ancient tomes is heady for one dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, and traversing the halls of an ancient library even more so. Dusty shelves, the smell of musty books in the dry air, dark halls lined with books… these are like ambrosia to the initiated. But the pursuit of knowledge can be fraught with peril, for hidden among these lost tomes a presence waits patiently in the dark. While the prey gently caresses the spines of arcane volumes, his stalker seeks to lure him closer.  

A book falls to the floor, the startled explorer moves towards it to investigate. As he beds to pick up the book, he notices that one of the bookcases is actually a door and stands slightly ajar. The lure of hidden rooms in such a vast and amazing library is beyond temptation, and he slowly pushes open the door. Inside lies a circular room with book lined walls, and in the center stands a podium holding a massive and ornate tome.

As he opens the book, the sound of rustling paper and smell of musty books grows stronger. As he looks up, a monstrous creature places cold, dry hands against his face… its desiccated face stares down at him, it’s eyes sewn shut yet still seeming to see, words carved across its face. It seems to be hanging from the ceiling behind him, something like a cross between a man and a spider. The surface of its body covered in words and symbols, a vast torso that looks like the skin from several people had been sewn together and carved up like its face.  

Before the scream can leave his throat, something hard and sharp pierces the back of his skull, and all that he was is drained away in an instant. As his companions search the halls for him, the sound of rustling pages and the smell of musty books follows them, searching for seekers of knowledge, searching for more.  

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If it were not for the help of a scorned mistress, we would never have gotten so far.  The surface of the oak door was covered in an intricate pattern of symbols and words, though nothing we recognized.  As we traced the pattern the mistress described, the carvings began to glow with an inner light.  Suddenly the door opened with a soft puff of air.

Before us stood an ghastly sight… leathery skin covered the frame of a being that might once have been human and carved, ever so intricately open its flesh were words.  It did not move upon our entry.  In fact it looked quite like a mummy unwrapped from its linens.  It appeared that one hand seemed blackened as if some intrepid explorer got their torch too close.  As Clayton stepped closer to examine the cramped writings, I surveyed the rest of the room.  Here was a treasure beyond anything we could hope to imagine.  Books thought lost to humanity, hidden here. 

I was just reaching to stroke the spine on an exquisite copy of Liber Ivonis, when Clayton shrieked.  I turned to see my partner’s hand, held fast within the dried and leathery grip of this human book.  How it had moved, apparently so beyond life, is beyond my understanding… but as I stood in shock, I could see it’s mouth begin to form words.  The dry cracked lips whispered in a language I didn’t know, and my partner stood fixed to his spot, bond to the strange creature before us.

As I drew my gun, a sultry voice spoke behind me, “We can have none of that my dear…”.  Something hard can across the back of my head with such force that I fell flat.  Something warm trickled down the back of my neck.  As I lost consciousness, I was certain that I could see the words carved into it’s skin glow and swirl and dance between it and my partner.

I awoke with a start, lying by the ghastly figure, no longer speaking, no longer moving.  Clayton was no where to be seen and the rare books that had lined the walls of this secret room were gone. 

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Sarah Louise Cawthrope Northcott
1869 Ontario, Canada – Nov 21, 1944 California, USA

Yes sir, “gran” was there. She didn’t hit ‘em much, owing to her bad heart. But she called which boy got axed when and made us cut ‘em up and other things besides. [long pause]

Uncle Stewart [Gordon Northcott] sometimes didn’t want to cut ‘em, and never once wanted to eat ‘em, but he couldn’t say so to her, no sir. Her look could make Uncle do anything, ANYTHING…. [sobbing]
–Court transcript of defendant’s grandson, Sanford Wesley Clark, age 15, witness at the sentencing hearing of Sarah Louise Northcott, Riverside County, December 31, 1928. Continue reading »

The men in black

Sometimes their clothes are ill-fitting and their demeanor is very weird. Sometimes they themselves are hunchbacked, crippled or grotesquely malformed. They can speak in a mechanical-like voice or appear to have trouble breathing. In many cases, they have visited isolated farms in hard-to-reach places without any car in sight and walking through mud and goo without dirtying their pristine shoes…they try to pump you for information or they make disquieting remarks about your past or your future. They also have a startling way of simply disappearing after they speak with you. – John Keel, Introduction to The UFO Silencers by Timothy Green Beckley Continue reading »

Eyewitness sketch
Artist unknown

“They appeared on the side of the road,” the drunken man who obviously hadn’t bathed in days slurred. “They tried to drag me off. Looked like frogs…sounded like em too. They had a hunger in their eyes, I know what they wanted…they wanted me!” The bartender kicked the man out shortly after, playing his story off as the ramblings from the whiskey he had been drinking. I would have to, if not for the claw print I saw on the man’s arm. Continue reading »

The first thing Christie knew of his imminent demise was a cold, damp sensation in his hand. He opened his eyes and looked down the length of his arm. There was—unlikely as it seemed—a severed hand in his hand. More unlikely still, the two hands were exchanging a grip of greeting, like old friends. He stood up, making an incoherent noise of disgust in his throat and trying to dislodge the thing he was unwillingly grasping by shaking his arm like a man with gum on his fingers.

His mind spun with questions. Had he picked up this object without knowing it? If so, where, and in God’s name whose was it? More distressing yet, how was it possible that a thing so unquestionably dead could be holding on to his hand as if it intended never to be parted from him?

-Clive Barker, The Body Politic

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Dispatch – “911, what is the nature of your emergency?”
Caller – “I just shot and killed an intruder. He was wearing a mask and had a knife.”
Dispatch – “Okay, stay on the line, we are sending someone right away. Caller ID doesn’t seems to be working, give me your address”
Voice in background – “He’s gone!”
Caller – “What? I shot him four times!”
Dispatch – “Sir, stay on the line. What’s your address?”
Voice in the background begins screaming. Sound of phone falling to the floor. Sound of screaming. Sound of Two gunshots before the line goes dead.
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What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke…It held George’s arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957.

–Stephen King, IT

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Sketch drawn by an eye witness.

“As I looked at it… it kind of looked a minute like an ape. And then I looked at the head and the head was very big and it was a very weird head It had bright green eyes and the eyes just glowed like, they were just looking exactly at me.” – Abby Brabham, eyewitness, 1977. Continue reading »