In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, which I always love, a repost from a different source of the piece of writing that I’m still happiest with, even if it is a massive meta joke. Because I’m a fanny.
“Cthulhu fhtagn, Charlie Brown.”
How thankful it is that men, being only mortal creatures, thus have only mortal imaginations, and so cannot conceive the limitless horror that exists beyond the plain of the strictly material! Science itself would melt ceaselessly into air and the world that seems so ordinary, so everyday, would soon take on a grotesque hue and be of diabolical landscape were we to see things as they truly were, far removed from our arrogant supposed mastery of all nature and the supernature around us. But it is not so, for I have seen this other world, a world so horrifically real and living as to make this one a mere pastel mockery of it; a world I shall never forget.
My nightmare began as merely another ordinary day, since had I known what multitudinous terrors I was to face, I would have lapsed instantly into madness and thus been spared the horrors I would soon witness. I had lasted many years as Charles Brown, and as far as I knew, so I was to remain. I had spent some time as a base-ball player of some little repute, wishing to become as great as the all-star Joe Schlabotnik, but alas, despite continual perspertorial efforts on my part to make it “to the big time”, as it were, my character betrayed me; they said that always, I was too wishy-washy. As such, I gave up my dream and retired to a sleepy little area where time barely seemed to pass at all with my faithful beagle-hound, Snoopy.
I spent my time in the area with the odder characters of the area, aesthetes and their well-wishers who thought more of life than mere materialistic. I was instantly captivated by their charm and grace, their world view of beauty and wonderment for its’ own sake, especially the sibling duo at the centre of our little club, the van Pelts, an old established family of some influence, although the eccentricities of the current generation had lessened their reputation in the area somewhat. Lucy van Pelt had, despite her obvious charms and sterling work as a doctor of the psychiatric, a frightful temper which had alienated many of her close friends. As for Linus, the very heart of our group, he was prone to bouts of existential musings and depressive theosophy, carried around with him bundles of rags that he insisted were needed for his continued security in this material plane, and claimed to be able to see the very threads which made up the fabric of our universe. If it were not for the fact that apart from these declarations he seemed perfectly able and charming, I would have thought him a released lunatic from one of the numerous instutions at which Ms. van Pelt worked. Instead, I found him almost persuasive.
Our dinner began as it usually did, with our resident musician Schroeder, to whom Ms. van Pelt seemed curiously attached to, entertaining us with some light music as we supped. I glanced around at the assorted members of our informal group; the van Pelts, in heated discussion with one Pigpen, a man of sparkling intellect but, unfortunately, of cleanliness he knew little and as such a foul smell emanated from him so much that I hated the man deeply within my very soul, and Ms. Patricia Reichardt and Ms. Marcie Johnson, Ms. Reichardt being the owner of the local peppermint factory and the other being her companion, who displayed such affection to Ms. Reichardt that it had scandalised the local community. I looked around and realised what had been troubling me all evening. Two of our usual number, Ms. Violet Gray and Ms. Patty, were absent from our soiree. None of us missed our meeting even if sickness or injury befell us, so it was obvious that some mishap may have befalled them. I enquired about the two missing members to the van Pelts, and Linus looked at me with a disturbing bemusement, and replied to me that they were simply not needed any more, with such chilling finality that it seemed to stop the passage of the aeons.
Then Schroeder stopped, as the main attraction was to commence; Linus was about to speak. He gave a grandiloquent speech; raging against his conservative elders, saying their speech was to him as was the warbling of some comical trumpet, and that we must find some way to link with things that could not be truly conceived as of the natural world, to the great abyss of the beyond. Everything normally found good and right and moral was to him alien and disgusting, and everything terrible, ætherial and monstrous had a higher, noble quality to it. It was even more shocking than his usual pronouncements, but we did nothing but clap and clamour for more. More than that, he said, he had found what he had been looking for; a way to raise the creature he had been researching almost since birth – the Great Pumpkin, Highest of the Old High Ones, currently in dreamless sleep deep in the very bowels of the earth. He held up in his hand an ancient book, one I recognised, due to my short time studying Archaeology at Miskatonic University, as the Necronomicon, written by some mad Arab so long ago. It held the key to raising the Great Pumpkin to the world of real things and real men, whereupon, said Linus, he would shower the world with a multitude of gifts greater than we had ever seen, as long as the ritual was performed sincerely.
And so we retired to the chamber, I now feeling some great trepidation as we went down into the cellars of the van Pelt household. The basement had been set up to look like the altar in one of the raising rituals, and so we chanted, harsh alien words that seemed to have no meaning except hate, no tone except malice; “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Phum’khan R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”. And so our words and actions, both harsh and horrible, raised to a tumult of conflicting passions beyond all reason.
You must understand that I thought this all a passing fancy, an unreal idea, which was why I continued to participate in this orgiastic ritual. It was then that I was proved, to my continual dismay, drastically wrong, as a portal opened unto a black city, as awesome as it was terrifying, great black spires circling into the night covered with things beyond all human description, and the Great Pumpkin stepped into the world. Its’ fibrous tendrils, a deep green that reminded me of the grass on a grave, lay everywhere, running along everything, feeling their way back into the real, physical world than that realm of nightmare it once inhabited. My eyes were then drawn towards a flabby, bloated orange face, riven with scars and segments, twisted into a hideous mockery of something human. The others bowed to it, and it cackled a horrible speech, a speech of hatred and deceit, of destruction and chaos, of murder and revenge against those who had imprisoned it for so long. It was then that I realised that I must do something to prevent this grotesque creature from imposing its’ will upon humanity, and so attempted to kick the artefact, the Necronomicon, into the portal from whence came such a hideous visage, to pay penance for bringing it into the world.
As I shouted and ran for their sacred and terrifying artefact, Lucy van Pelt glanced upwards and gave a cruel smile more reminiscent of fiend than of mankind. With one swift, jerking motion, her eyes mocked my attempts as she pulled the idol away from me as I tried to kick it, and I fell through the altar into the area from whence the risen Great Pumpkin had crowed in unadulterated triumph. As such, I am recounting this story to you from a limbo of madness, of dark Cycloptican towers and with only the chittering shadows for company; with only Lucy van Pelt’s final words to me as my last chance to destroy their malign cult slipped through my fingers, to give me scant comfort and to keep me from remembering that I am indeed human whilst I remain amongst the creeping towers of the Great Dead City from which the Old High Ones rose:
“Blockhead.”
