Tag archives for monsters

There was this funny legend that Old Lady Margaret still lives in Margaret Mansion. Silly, isn’t it? Margaret Mansion is called so because it was built by a Lady Margaret two centuries ago! But we were bored so we went to check it out.

What we met there might have been Old Lady Margaret. A skeleton laying on the dining room floor. It might have been dead for two centuries—but it was alive! As we argued what to do about it, lots of women—Ladies Margaret?—appeared around the corpse. Some were quite young, some terribly old, some probably dead. I screamed and ran. The others…I don’t know, I was too frightened to look back. Will you help me find them?

When you look at time from a higher dimension, human life really is a line. Creating a Time-Frozen loops a tiny part of that line into a never-ending circle, but from the point of view of Yog-Sothoth and other forces invoked to create this being, the potential remaining part of the line already exists. Sometimes those forces make a separate entity out of this loose thread—a Time-Tangled.

If ever I should to that moment say –
“So beautiful thou art, a little longer stay!”
Then I’ll care not who me with chains may bind;
Nor if I and my little all to ruin be consign’d;
Then let the church-bell toll my funeral knell!

J. W. Goethe, Faust, English by John Wynniatt Grant

Human life goes in a line from birth to death but changing this trajectory is no problem for cosmic powers. Spells invoking the power of Yog-Sothoth to change the course of one’s life were known throughout history and used for many purposes.

One of the most radical effects such spells can cause is the creation of a Time-Frozen. They’re a person trapped in a personal time loop, never aging and constantly reliving one brief moment while the rest of the world moves forward. Some people use this spell on themselves to preserve a moment of perfect fulfilment; others, to escape a terminal disease or some other looming misfortune. Others yet are cursed by someone else.

In the ancient days procuring sacrifices for the Old Gods was a fairly simple matter. One need only capture them from the neighboring tribe, or perhaps purchase them from a slave trader.

With the dawning of the Victorian era the world became infested with ridiculous notions such as the rights of man, watched over by police forces, and filled up with busybodies who care about the “downtrodden”. Things became much more difficult.

Enter Elliot Montgomery, Esquire, doss house owner, entrepreneur, and procurer of sacrificial victims for any number of diabolical conspiracies.

“Bring on the multitudes….to nourish the Artist, stretch their skin upon an easel to give him canvas, crush their bones into a paste that he might mold them. Let them die, and by their miserable deaths become the clay within his hands that he might form…”

– Maxwell Brock, Beat poet

Creating a piece of artwork can be like a particularly difficult birth; more so if the act of creation has resulted in the birth of an iconodule, a foul and hateful entity that lives within a piece of artwork.  Iconodules are born of frustration, despair, and envy, fused with human creativity, imagination, and desire to create: a tempestuously fertile ground. Iconodules have been found in sculpture, in paintings, even in the written word, corrupting first the work they hide within, then their creator, and finally others within their sphere of influence. 

Jessica did not look so well so I sent her home early. Our cataloging of the library donations was almost finished and I did not mind staying late. This set of books came from the home of a recently deceased local recluse named August Taylor. Seems his nephew had no interest in keeping his library when sorting out the estate.

It was midnight by the time I had everything recorded and sorted, but when I left, Jessica’s car was still in the parking lot, underneath the light post closest to the front doors. She sat slumped against the driver’s side door. Her skin had gone a sickly gray, and her pale green eyes were glazed over in a yellow film. A sharp wheeze rattled from her throat as she struggled to breath. By the time the ambulance arrived, she was gone. That…thing had already emerged.

Her head cracked open like a brittle egg dropped on the pavement. Something moved amongst the black sludge that drained from the opening. It was a sleek, inky looking thing about the size of a tennis ball. A myriad of tiny eyes glistened in the soft glow of the parking lot light before it rolled or sloshed off into the night.

I had collapsed into hysterics before the paramedics got to the scene, and when they saw Jessica, one of them remarked, “looks like another one. Just like August Taylor.”