Editor’s Note: Sorry for the delay! AT&T @Home decided to do their server migration this weekend, and I spent hours working on getting my Internet working again so I could post this.
Richard Upton Pickman demonstrated the relative ease with which a human can devolve into the homovoric depths of ghouldom. However, what if a human, once descended to that bestial plane, decides that it wants to recapture his humanity.
My memories are very confused. There is even much doubt as to where they begin; for at times I feel appalling vistas of years stretching behind me, while at other times it seems as if the present moment were an isolated point in a grey, formless infinity. I am not even certain how I am communicating this message. While I know I am speaking, I have a vague impression that some strange and perhaps terrible mediation will be needed to bear what I say to the points where I wish to be heard. My identity, too, is bewilderingly cloudy. I seem to have suffered a great shock – perhaps from some utterly monstrous outgrowth of my cycles of unique, incredible experience. Continue reading »
I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences – Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism – there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely
virtual phenomenon.
Continue reading »
The horrible conclusion which had been gradually obtruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost, completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recess of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as I might, in no direction could my straining vision seize on any object capable of serving as a guidepost to set me on the outward path. That nevermore should I behold the blessed light of day, or scan the pleasant bills and dales of the beautiful world outside, my reason could no longer entertain the slightest unbelief. Hope had departed. Yet, indoctrinated as I was by a life of philosophical study, I derived no small measure of satisfaction from my unimpassioned demeanour; for although I had frequently read of the wild frenzies into which were thrown the victims of similar situations, I experienced none of these, but stood quiet as soon as I clearly realised the loss of my bearings. Continue reading »
High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud house whose honored line is older even than the moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Counts, and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the footsteps of the invader.
The place is a zoo, I thought, a little disturbed, as more and more people packed themselves into Casey’s Irish Pub. A Karaoke DJ was going full swing in the corner, and what seemed like hundreds of milling bodies pushed and gyrated on the dance floor. Beer flowed endlessly from the taps as several pretty young waitresses rushed beverage after beverage to their customers. Continue reading »
She is at it again, I realized, as I slowly stirred awake in my bed. The glowing dial on the bedside clock read 1:40 AM, and the steady tapping in the walls was growing louder as Mary felt her way through the walls of my old farmhouse. I sighed, flipped the covers off of me, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. My stun gun sat on the dresser. I took it with me as I left my bedroom and headed for the cellar stairs. Continue reading »
Her online screenname was “KnickKnackQueen”, and he shocked himself when he asked her to meet him; normally he only began to pursue his prey after talking in the chat rooms for a few weeks. This time, it took only a few hours for him to realize that the inevitable ending was likely to happen. He had to have her, and soon. And so when the knick-knack queen said maybe, she would think about it over night and let him know in the morning, he knew he had her. She gave him her phone number, and he gave her his. A real number, it would ring, but not anywhere around here. And no one was likely to answer a payphone in the middle of a rundown shopping center with only an IGA that was almost out of business on a Sunday morning. Continue reading »
“Bill, what is this?” asked Susan, kneeling in the damp freshly-watered soil between a row of string beans and another of tomatoes. I didn’t answer her at first, concentrating on carefully pulling out a clump of weeds, taking are not to disrupt the stalk of one of my tomato vines. The moist dirt reluctantly gave up the clump of prickly weeds, the roots dangling wetly beneath my gloved fist. Continue reading »
On a beautiful starfilled midnight, in a clearing surrounded by trees with stable root, the Night People gathered for a meal.
Illivant squatted and warmed himself by the fire, inhaling the rich aroma of the spitted meat. Not long before, Illivant had been resigned to roots and leaves instead of proper food, but a stray current had brought a brace of drowned fisherman to shore.
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