Draper's Cabin
I. Central State Hospital
It was warm the night we chose to take a walk down to Draper's Cabin. I remember it was a strange sort of evening in the late fall. The leaves were curiously still thick on the trees and the moon hung slightly less than it's full, pregnant glory. It was temperate for that time of year and the combined scent of the autumn maple and unseasonable warmth pushed the lot of us into fits of youthful wonder-lust. If we knew what we would find there would it have made us think twice about our trek? Woefully, knowing our young natures and folly I dread it would not.
Perhaps I should first speak a touch about myself. My name is Henri Plant and I am now 43 years of age. My place of residence is the Central State Hospital where I am interred. I have not spoken since the events of that night so long ago but my condition has been determined stable and I have been assigned a lovely room with a window that over looks the court yard. I must admit that this missive has been years in the planning, and acquiring this particular room has been a portend of it.
I'm not particularly sure as to why I am thought to be mad, but I can only assume that it is because of my insistent silence. When one will not confirm through genial human communication the enacts and consoles the heart then one is deemed incapable of forming them. I suppose my appearance has done little to aid in the confidence of my sanity as I have grown quite haggard since my youth, and have taken little effort to cultivate my airs. My hair has grown thin, and my face gaunt over the years and I seem to carry a darkness about the eyes that unnerves even myself. I shudder to look into mirrors any longer.
As I said before this is all irrelevant. My purpose was to insure the reader that I am in fact quite sane and have been these many years. Perhaps not entirely when first I was arrested to this strange place with its arabesque halls, and Victorian oubliettes, but at this age I am lucent. For some passing decades I have been sane enough that I have not divulged the happenings of that night for the sake of my fellows: the other men and women of this state; no rather this world.
Perhaps it is the early onset of dotage that moves me to record all that I heard and saw that night or perhaps it is the chance for peace. A vain hope that my divulgence into record will ease the dreams that have not let me rest a single moment without intrusion since the event that I will speak of. Oh I was young then as we all were, and we had no idea what we were getting into. I remember it all as if it were yesterday that we first trekked into the Forestry long after it was illegal to do so. God help me I've seen every moment of that night in my dreams for almost thirty years. Were I insane at this age I would not have the capacity to divulge all of this. This is important. A sane person writes these words, and you must listen to them. Whatever you do take them to heart and pass them not off as the ramblings of a psychotic.
As I said it was unseasonably warm and the leaves had lasted late into the autumn year when the day that the trip was planned. There were five of us, rather inseparable we were in those days. It was the common story one hears of youthful friends. School was right around the corner and we were bored and idle as students of our age are wont to be.
We were five then, but only I remain at the time of this writing. The rest of us are to this day missing persons and I have been grilled mercilessly as to their whereabouts. I of course will not say and it was once proposed that I had some foul hand in their sudden, and inexplicable disappearances. By the end of this grave narrative you will understand why I have yet not divulged the truth of our experience and the dreadful doom of my companions.
As I had been saying we were five. There was of course myself but that has been covered. Beyond myself was Johnny Calendar, a boy my age and arguably my best friend in the world. He was a beautiful boy at that age, tall, slender, and straw headed. We were an arrogant pair of youths if ever such creatures crawled about the earth hence, or prior. John's eyes were not something that I paid much mind in those days, or the days prior to them but in retrospect I suppose some portion of me noted a strangeness in them. They seemed to always be looking for something that they could simply not see. From time to time I would catch them darting about as if some prescient gift sought some ineffable phantom on the peripheral. I have grown to wonder if he did not know what awaited us in those ancient, and blasphemous groves before we set out. His manner seems to match up to the descriptions I have since perused in books on all fashion of unhealthy subjects. I now wonder if he was perhaps in some latent sense psychic.
The next character of our tribe or motley was Rich Solberberg. Rich was (and I say 'was' assuming that Rich is not still present in anything but hateful memory) a touch shorter than we, and a good deal heavier. Why he ever deemed to spend his days with us was mysterious, but I imagine in retrospect that he had little choice. His parents were quite wealthy and had moved to our state when he was very small having made their fortune by some means of investment. Upon achieving what they felt was a retiring sum they acquired the means by which to communicate their further business in a much quieter locale then New York and sold their house. The funds that the sale of their home provided allowed them to purchase a much larger house, and plot of land here in County Morgan where the good earth is worth next to nothing compared to the coveted plots of the Big Apple. We jokingly called him "Richy Rich" and were known to take his chubby neck in our strong young arms to threaten the displacement of his yarmulke by means of a 'noogie'. Rich was one of the sweetest people I ever met, and quite generous in contrast to the image my parents had raised me with in regard to Jews.
Rich always had a girlfriend in spite of eschewing the physical pastimes that were so ridiculously valued by the lower bred members of our community. I suppose that is one reason why I enjoyed his company so much. Some part of me had always valued learning and among Richard's family it spent like a currency far more precious than any denomination secured in their bank accounts. I was always welcome there and it felt good in some way. I was always quite physical but I had this nagging feeling that on the horizon there was something more important. Johnny wouldn't ever hear of it, but his family had raised him as any good, God fearing Hoosier should be. To bring myself more to the point the fourth of our group was Charlotte McHenry, Richard's latest lady.
Charlotte was never what I would call a sweet thing but Rich seemed to like her for the time being. She lived with her parents and siblings in a patch of estate called Echo Lake and eked her way through school by a mixture of flirting with teachers, soft ball, and cheerleading. Her grades had always been poor but she would probably graduate with the lowest of standards. At her age, as many her age tended to be, she was quite beautiful. Her hair was long, and dark and always smelled vaguely of apples which I attributed to some shampoo, or other unknown product that was privy only to the more feminine types.
To look at her was to assume that she would perhaps grow into a model or movie star but such was the perception of inexperience. Were she to have lived another ten years the likelihood of her youthful beauty maintaining was next to nothing. It was already rumored that her experiences with sex and drugs had lead her to experimenting with Methamphetamines and her habitual tendency to seek out a father figure's affection in young men would likely have seen her birthing an accidental child by the end of her teen years.
However I tolerated her presence and persistently obnoxious 'country' accent because she always brought with her Rich, and sometimes her younger sister. Mary Anne was a year younger than Charlotte and not quite so beautiful, but something in her attracted me insistently. She was a touch thicker than her sister and her hair was not so consistently dark as though there was a second tone in an undercoat, or she had failed to dye it properly. Her face was not so classically angular as her sisters, but instead a touch rounder and to me more feminine. She had the most beautiful chestnut eyes one could hope to imagine and I would spend every moment that I could staring into them without being caught.
She wasn't like her sister either. She was quiet, and polite and though wholly uneducated and raised with the neglect one is oft to find among the alcoholic denizens of the Midwest's cultural pariah, there was a sparkle of intelligence in them. For me Mary was like some divine orchid plucked from the deepest, and most terrifyingly remote rain forest and hidden away, only to sprout from the filthiest pot of dirt that could be found. For me the term "diamond in the rough" had no tangible meaning before I met this girl. She spoke rarely and when she did quietly, but I delighted at the sounding of her voice in any event that I could muster it up.
This, as I feared, is going to prove the hardest part of my divulgence. My hands even now tremble and my head has begun its familiar throbbing. How poetically horrible that my memories of the most beloved person in my child hood should summon up with them by association the image of the redoubtable Cocytus that our ill fated trek found us enduring. Even now I see it's blackened, sacrilegious stone work over grown with squamous vines and putrid mosses. God help me...
It should be said that in the days of my youth the town of Martinsville by which the Forestry looms was not so developed as it is now. It is my understanding that the young of the region travel the areas quite frequently with little to no problems. I am however reticent to disclose that my silent studies have unearthed similar misfortunes of the area that plague the psyches of others of said region with nightmarish possibility.
I have heard ungodly tales spun of a spirit that haunts the old plot of Steppe Cemetery in the form of an elderly black woman buried there in an unmarked grave. I have heard stories of a Stygian devil hound that haunts the flora of that self same burial plot and watches for unwitting prey to tread its dark, sepulchral Golgotha when the night is right. I have read countless horrors that emerged from the Camby House and the countless theories abounding as to why such unthinkable madness haunts the grounds upon which it is built or why the Airport would purchase the area and inconceivably preserve it.
However in spite of all of these dark tales I find no reason why children of our age tread these grounds with regular consistency and find nothing particularly horrible, or mind shattering as we did. I have been over it a thousand times, perhaps a hundred thousand but regardless I am left with the same result over and over. Nothing can explain why we were so unfortunate as to cross that barrier between earthly sanity and whatever horrifying madness lingers on the dread edge of our known existence. As I said before I've no reason for what happened, and we had no reason for going other than sheer hebetude unless some member of us sensed that there was something there more than what we had imagined and some primordial want drew him there.
I have delayed long enough... I will now recount the terrible journey that the above mentioned youths undertook into the deep regions of the hated forest and divulge all that I, our lone survivor in the sense we know surviving, learned of the madness in Draper's Cabin.
II. Draper's Cabin
The Forestry itself is a sprawling plot of darkened trees and thick patches of briars and other such flora. Over time roads have been cut through its virginal territory so as to create the semblance of human control, and tameness in the depths of its cyclopean expanse. Some areas are even cleared and mowed to make them appear safe, maintained even, and adorned with shelter houses of dark wood for campers and tourists.
This description I feel should impose the underlying dread of the place. Even the man handled areas of low stumps and finely manicured grass are festooned with aging structures that are stained curiously black save for the immature graffiti that idle youths have adorned them with. Their old stone fire places and pits belie some sort of silent gravity as though the white ashes inside may have once been something that ought not to have been burned.
To think that we trekked through this harrying place in the dead hours of the night is miraculous and terrifying to me. Upon our decided insistence, or as I now recall John's insistence we loaded into the van that Richard's parents had gifted him for his sweet sixteen.
Forty-five minutes was all the longer we had to wait to until we had crossed the deep barrier that separated the dark tangle from the unwholesome country side that privately surrounded it for the Forestry bears no gate. I recall the trip to have a strange feeling of adventurous fear. I remember a sense of sexual tension in the air as we set out to place the world proverbially beneath us and deflower with our budding power.
I recall the sweetest smiles from Mary and how I had yearned for the courage to hold her hand and grip her tightly in my arms. There seemed a portend that I should go through with the act but I didn't have the courage. In any event, the excitement in that automobile was palpably optimistic.
Richard parked his vehicle in the lee of a shelter house in order to disguise our intents. Entry into the region is officially forbidden at the hour that we deigned to go but the DNR agents who randomly patrolled the area would often leave campers alone to finish their trips. Unfortunately we were not to stay in that ominous structure which in and of itself was frightening enough. We would take the back route to the trail that Old Draper himself had blazed before our grandparents were born.
It was still another fifteen minutes before we saw the structure in the distance but that could be blamed on the dense leaves that strangely had clung to their arboreal parents so late into that year. Already the feeling of excited optimism had transformed into quiet trepidation as the air itself seemed thick with the odd heat of the night. It hung around us oppressively as we approached the peakéd structure that loomed in it's small, fetid clearing beside a brook that hummed softly in the night with dread possibility in its song. Richard yelped and turned suddenly swearing that he had seen something looming vaporously in the low fog that seemed to plague the area as he pointed his flashlight in a dozen directions frantically. We calmed him and convinced him that we should continue on even though he protested so adamantly in that curious east coast dialect of his.
The structure was low, and of a build as old as the state itself as it was constructed before the county was formed and long before the states seized it as protected or preserved. Old Draper was long dead at that time, and as far as anyone was concerned the land was uninhabited.
It was based with aging, and decrepit stone work but largely preserved wood with an angled roof that had long since fallen to sag sickly in the middle. The edges had grown to sinister points at the end of it's gentle slope not unlike the horned moon. The shutterless windows loomed in its lichen scaled walls like empty sockets that seemed to peer into the depths of us. The old door was bolted but we slipped inside via those leering portals that so unnerved us. Charlotte followed Rich in claiming to have seen some iridescent spirit in the mist beyond us and began to demand in her unpleasant way that we turn back. We agreed we had come to far in our ignorance of what 'too far' really is.
Inside the old cabin the air seemed to grow warmer still and I remember a cool sweat on my skin that made me feel a touch unctuous. I wasn't sure if it was actually a nervous sweat, or condensation from the thick, wet air that seemed to bleed into our bodies unwholesomely; almost rapine. Mary Anne hung close to me and that filled me with a courage that was as unhealthy as the ghastly fear that we should have been feeling at that moment. There was nothing inside that was particularly of interest inside and we were on the verge of disappointment when Johnny demanded our help in some strange task. He had become convinced that the fire place was somehow unconnected, and could be pushed aside.
Though it took all of the 'boys' in our group we managed to actually prove his theory accurate and pushed the heavy, stone structure aside. It slid with a grim grating which caused the girls who watched our efforts to cover their ears and shiver with an almost intuitive dread. For the first time that evening Mary Anne spoke up without prompting and begged that we put the curious door back in its place as leave immediately, but her sister silenced her. Still feeling a touch insecure from her cowardice earlier, Charlotte made all manner of insults regarding Mary Anne's childishness, and vulgar comments about her femininity.
We stood peering into the ancient stairwell that loomed before us and recoiled at the fungal must that rose from its depth. One by one we turned our lamps down the aperture of slate, and limestone and marveled at its construction. It seemed dank, odious, and endlessly grim like some petrescent Acheron. Johnny was the first to begin descending its steps and one by one we followed. I was the last in line only so that I had to linger to reassure Mary that it would be ok, and convince her that we should continue. She begged to return to the van and there await the others. Oh but had I only listened to her.
The deep places of that unholy grotto are beyond my powers of description, as are all that we found in that ghastly labyrinth. We considered ourselves great trailblazers for some time chatting excitedly about how we had found this hoary tunnel after so long it went unnoticed. As I have hinted at before the walls were moist from water running through the porous stone and in some places there were thin, hideous roots pressing into the passage. That is to say that I assume they were roots and not something altogether more incomprehensible as even the greed of the hungry earth seemed abhorrent of reclaiming this damned place.
The walls seemed to be hewn through a dark slate or blackened limestone and, I do not know if this was a thin covering over more mundane bricks or some other construction. Other areas of this man made cave were actually stone and mason brick work made from more mundane looking limestone, but the dense fungus and lichen growth on them stirred in the mind a more alien or sinister origin. Thick, wet ichor dripped from the twisting root-branches and fell in noisome, and sickly dollops in the mud at our feet.
The tunnels seemed to go on forever and we found innumerable branching passageways and odd chambers that rested unfurnished but were stained in manners that turned our youthful imaginations into full gear. We each of us had our theories and we discussed them in hushed tones of awe. We wondered if perhaps this was the construct of some dreadful beast who was not human like perhaps a golem and asked Rich what he knew of them. He replied that he merely had heard of them and just because of his Hebrew heritage it should not be assumed he was an expert in Gibborim, or golems, or other ancient non-sense.
Suddenly we fell silent as the air around us, the dank, odium of the passage filled with the hideous grating that we could not mistake for anything but the replacement of the stone fire place. Our group fell silent, and then surged back to hidden entry way only to find it closed to all possible egress, and our combined strengths insufficient to restore its conductivity.
The tunnel then filled with the most loathsome sound that a man ever heard in his life. It was a dark, guttural chanting that seemed to permeate and freeze us in spite of the rising heat in the passage. Sweat clung to us as panic gripped our young hearts and Charlotte screamed. Ann held close to me and whimpered as her sister's dismay grew to a fevered pitch and the tall girl bolted away and disappeared in the darkness. Rich called for her to wait and followed after, albeit slower and more carefully. Her wretched alarum trailed off into distance as we pondered how ungodly deep these blasphemous caverns stretched, then it become more insistent, and dreadful. Her voice had taken on an air of pain and horror instead of the fearful chaos it held before. Along with that a bizarre sort of gurgling came with through it and left myself clawing madly at the stone slab that trapped us; screaming in my own terror.
Johnny drew my attention back to rational horror as he began to laugh and walked slowly towards where the Richard and the girl had fled. His cackling was inhuman in my ears though clearly the voice of a man none the less. I called for him to help me but he only laughed louder, and answered the chanting with a strange call of acquaintance. Our young minds were chaos as we wandered through the nightmarish corridors and empty rooms, following him. 'Nightmarish' I suppose was to be the most impressively accurate descriptor that I could attach to the sensation considering the detached dream-like state that we seemed to be trapped in. The air clung to us like viscous jelly.
We followed him for what seemed like an eon through those squamous stone passages until we came into a chamber that seemed to be the source of the hideous cantillation.
III. The Horrors Beneath the Grotto
The scene that lay within that sepulchral pit was so horrifying that it impressed itself upon my mind like a projector. I'm made to think of older computer screens that if left too long and gains a ghostly image that floats on it forever. There are times that I am caused to jump in startled horror thanks to the vaguely remembered mosaic that my sad retinas retain.
Before the three of us a wide and high chamber opened in a circular shape. It's walls were of a darkened limestone that took on a greenish hue from the thick, mossy lichen that clung to it. Streams of lumpy, off-white niter clung to the walls in streams. The atmosphere of the place was hideously oppressive and the heat was growing it seemed by the moment. My infant mind began to wonder if this was somehow the true Hell of the bible.
The roof of the room was a gently sloping dome that showed no sign of exposure to the above ground, so I knew we were either hellishly deep beneath the relatively cool, and placid forest above or under one of the forestry's many hills. I could see strange sigils on the walls but I took no real time to study them as other features drew my attention far more readily.
As I have said before the room was seemed the center of the labyrinthine Hades and further more the genesis of the hypnotic incantations that plagued it. The chamber was ringed with figures in long, black robes stood hooded with bizarre and grotesque masques that obscured their features. The squeamish façades seemed realistically featured as the faces, or heads of animals; so much so that they must have been made from the poor unfortunate beasts themselves. In addition to that, all of them were local creatures to be sure, and I believed I had found why local farmers so often complained of mysteriously vanishing livestock.
Among them were all manner of monstrous visages including cows, dogs, goats, mules, horses, wolves, foxes, and other such things that roamed the country side either free or in fenced fields. More wickedly still: Richy knelt before them in a state of terrified detriment.
There was a time a few years back when Richard had run afoul of a few of the local toughs in the town of Martinsville and had been soundly beaten for his troubles, or perhaps simply Jewish ancestry. These young men were truly brutes as one knows the term which was a common state for the denizens of the southern side of the town. However in this particular instance our dear friend Rich had simply managed to anger the loutish and possibly inbred boys and they gifted him a sound walloping for his trouble.
He had been quite pathetic for some two weeks afterwards. A broken nose, a face of bruises and all manner of other indignities from head to toe, but I should say the child was positively healthy compared to what these monsters had done to him.
Richard was on his knees with his hands bound behind his back by a pair of the bizarre beast-headed cultists as one of them held his head by the hair and forced him to look towards the center of the room. His mouth was swollen, and bleeding and his eyes had been beaten shut, then reopened with cutting instruments. The blood from his swollen, bruised eyelids oozed down his face thinly and dripped onto the fetid floor with sickening drips that were somehow audible above the drone that issued from the mouth of each ritualist. He was whining pitifully and tears streamed amidst his blood giving it an even stranger, runnier appearance.
More horrible still was the scene that he was being forced to bear witness to. Poor Charlotte, whom he had chased after and probably taken his lumps defending, rested on what I at first I believed to be a Saint Peter's cross. Horrified as I was at the time that her poor lacerated legs should writhe so pitifully on an object so unholy to Jesus was, I now realize, horridly misplaced with my knowledge today. Were these madmen mere Satanists I would have felt us a thousand times safer for their ignorance of true horror.
Charlotte was as I said bound, but my description paid no justice to the monstrosity of her situation. She had been stripped by cruel hands, and tied to a table that seemed oddly Y shaped, thus lending me to believe that it was an inverted cross at the beginning. Her body was covered with small cuts or possibly the lashes of a whip and inscribed ornately with sigils I would assume had been burnt in by a heated stylus. Her face was bruised but largely left unblemished otherwise as if to preserve that cursed beauty that the poor thing possessed at her age. Her hair was matted and tangled and I could see that she had been drug through the muck that layered the floor of the caverns.
Beside her stood a man and I know this only as his robe was open bearing his nudity and its multitudinous tattooed blasphemies. His mask was that of a great stag who's antlers numbered sixteen points. That hideous rack rose above his masked head and suspended charms of unholy portend as his arms (held up and out from his body) clutched mad instruments of murder that seemed to crackle with profane energy.
His cantillation rose above the others and his voice was hoarse, and morbid the likes of which one would expect from a Neanderthal. His words I have never understood, but never forgotten. There is no text translating them that I have had access to in my strangely undertaken investigations, but as I seem incapable of speaking without blurting those insane syllables out my research has been severely stifled.
For posterity I will attempt to approximate the dread canticle as best as I can in English script:
_"Be'fa Fathra Gho-mir!
Be'fa Gho-cheel Rammadârian!
Be'hla Ithree'fa Kâkanomiân!"_
As the darkly clad, buck-headed "priest" of sorts intoned those dread verbs of whatever forgotten or nonsensical tongue he screamed his ecstasy rose. Finally his chin lifted towards the sky and revealed to me one of the most singular horrors that I have witnessed in my life. Certainly I had seen nothing as terrible before, and since leaving that cursed copse I have lived a quite, and unperturbed life.
Where I thought there had been a mask I saw no separation. The thin fur of the execrable head traveled down his throat and ended just above his tattooed collarbones and I could see his throat moving to intone the foul anthem. Muscle moved as naturally as any muscle should, though contrastingly unnatural to the formation that a man's viscera should take. I realized that the lips of what I had believed before a masque moved as surely as were it alive.
You might think that it was an illusion caused by the stress of the moment and that my poor young mind (which I believe was more damaged by the sound of the chant that the images before me) concocted in some drear fancy. I will tell you now that it was no such thing! That atrocious cap was his head as surely as my fingers strike these keys!
I watched in mesmerized terror and waited for him to drop one of those hateful instruments of death into the girl whom I had never considered a friend, but never wished any ill towards. Time stretched on, and he did not.
Instead the chanting stopped and each of those beastly men (if they can at all be called men) turned towards the door that we stood in. I unconsciously put my arm up to insure that my body protected Mary's but my attention was soon drawn by something as doleful as the image of that deer-headed gorgon in front of us. Johnny was laughing again.
I might say that and hope to bring across my meaning when I know that there is no possibility of the word 'laughter' accommodating the sound that issued out of my long time friend, and companion. The sheer enormity of it caused my body to tremble with a terror so mind-numbing that I felt I might collapse right there. The monstrous tintinnabulation of his maniac cackle caused me to tremble for that short moment, and it seemed an eternity of hideous reverberation.
As my senses returned the stink of urine assailed my nostrils and I feared that poor Mary Anne had not had the fortitude to withstand all we were forced to witness here, but as I looked down I realized that there was a dark spot of moisture seeping through the crotch of my pants. It was not my younger companion whose bladder had failed her but my own! What tremulous madness must brew in poor young Mary's mind in seeing her very own sister trussed in such a fashion? At that age it seemed a spectacle that one would only expect to be delivered on celluloid.
I thought to check on her but before I had the opportunity Johnny's manner changed again. In place of maddening cachinnation was a dull noise that seemed more inhuman than anything I had previously heard in this place. He put his arms out in downward angles to his side and slowly began to turn in stationary circles. When he faced me I recoiled from his countenance in ways that I never imagined a man's face could inspire. His features were twisted into a fiendish grin that in all my imaginings a human face should not be capable of, and his eyes spun madly in his head in all directions that they could.
His mouth opened as his rotation began to bring his facing back to those inimicable cultists and the most dreadful sound began to issue forth. It was Johnny's voice to be sure, but something else was there a bit louder, and on top of it. He spoke in those same revolting syllables that the dark creatures had chanted in, but somehow I understood them inside my poor, fracturing psyche.
"Behold me!" he -it- said in that truculent, bi-vocal tone, "I am Rammadârian! Know that when you call my name, you call on ME!"
With God (if such an entity exists and I admit that I am unsure) as my witness he began to slowly rise until his feet no longer touched the pallid stone beneath him. Charlotte began to scream and redoubled her efforts to escape. Richard began to pray, swollen mouthed as he was for salvation from his God (or our God, or however the interplay between Judaism and Christianity works) with fervor, and desperation. The formidable rite master turned and gripped his scalp open handed. For the life of me I don't remember him ever putting his murderous tool away but his hand (or paw?) was most assuredly empty.
He lifted the poor boy's weight in one easy heft that seemed no more difficult than picking up a can of soup and fresh blood oozed out of his hair line as his scalp tore from the force. He whined in a manner both pitiable, and horrifying as the creature's mad eyes locked in on his own. Forgive my reticent feelings on disclosing poor Richard Solberberg's fate.
He fell silent for a moment then his mouth opened as if to scream, but rather than sound his mouth issued forth some manner of indescribable ichor that burbled and oozed with a stomach-turning plasticity. I soon realized that all of his features were following suit as his eyes seemed to melt from his head and became a kind of bluish, freak jelly that matched the issue of his mouth. As his flesh began to discolor and dissolve the beast released him and his body sank sluggishly to the floor. My stomach turned to the point of vomiting but I held it back for fear that I would draw undue attention to our location at the door and Johnny was doing enough of that already.
I expected lamentable Richard to dissolve fully and sink between the cracks in the odd symmetry of the floor's stone plates, but that would be more than I could hope for. His body transformed entirely into that opalescent, bluish jelly and began to writhe pathetically about as it grasped in all directions at nothing with plasticized psuedopods. The sickening, membranous jell looked in every direction in utter confusion, and horror and I knew this because it maddeningly formed eyes that just as quickly sank back into the base goo that they had formed from. It seemed also that the new form to which he had been transmogrified was more so endowed with ungodly plasticity as it formed and unformed mouths that screamed an unbearable shriek of anguish, and torment!
I shuddered and sought to seize the distraction to escape if such a thing could be done. My hand that had previously began to reach behind me pushed softly at Mary but I realized that I could not touch her. I looked back and understood immediately that she, somehow still more collected than I was had seized my hand and was strenuously attempting to break my trance like observation and pull me away. How strong was my transfixion that this girl could not move me the slightest; even though she was leaning into her tugging with all of her might!
With the realization of this I moved in a sudden and jerky manner much to the surprise of the both of us and we tumbled to the floor: she under my self. I quickly made to remove my person from pinning her to the floor and looked over my shoulder in anxious shock to see if the insurmountably hideous assemblage had taken note of our flight. They had not in fact, but rather had approached Johnny and with long, sclerous fingers began the task of tearing his clothing from him. A part of me wanted to lash out and save him but that part was quelled both by a most unwholesome fear of the spectacle, and a deep realization that the boy whom I had known with such unrealized love was gone in one way if not the other. I suddenly wanted him to awaken from his stupor and save me.
I pulled myself to my feet feeling the world around me as if a crushing weight that affronted my every fiber and retarded my movement. It felt as though I ran through a heavy body of water the way it sometimes feels when one seeks escape in a dream. Johnny was still speaking to the cult in that bizarre and mortifying tongue that I could by some abominable miracle understand. He declared that he was to be a vessel, and that he should be taken into the fold of this heathen society. I have to wonder to this day if this was not some profane destiny born into the boy by bilious fate or morbific breeding. In the meantime another group of cultists had wrangled the now gelatinous Richard-thing into submission.
I had already undertaken the gentlemanly task of hefting Mary Anne (who was not really a large girl) to her feet and we fled as if possessed. Our flight is hazy in my memory but I seem to recall the difficulty of the slippery ground being one of our greatest concerns. Another being that nauseating cantillation that seemed to follow our every step and infect us deeply with a profane gravity of the limbs. I had no idea where we even thought that we would go, and I feel equally that Mary had as little if not less of a clue. I've no way in which to calculate the passage of time during our flight as the watch that I wore about my wrist had broken during any one of my innumerable slips in the viscous, muddy ichor that infected the floor of the tenebrous labyrinth, or simply did not function in that vile place. I have no way to gauge the distance that we traveled for as far as I can tell you it is brobdingnagian in scope, or perhaps we simply ran in circles in our blind fear.
By now we had long lost our flash lights and our only source of vision in the abysmal black of the passages were the occasional, lambent mushrooms that clung tenaciously to the slick walls. I do know that our flight was in vain and served only to tire us as I'm sure the creatures who built this monstrosity were aware. There was no apparent entrance or exit save the one by which we came in through. Finally we paused for a brief respite in some small, disused chamber of that putrid structure to regain ourselves, and our composures.
I remember holding her tightly to my body in the hot, fetid darkness and sinking slowly to the floor where it was a touch cooler. The temperature of the tunnels was such that breathing was as great a chore as running and we had quite exhausted ourselves. The chanting had fallen away some time back and I could feel my body regaining its strength simply from being free of those hellish verses. I coalesced rather quickly I believe as I sat there feeling her small, quivering form in my sadly tired arms.
During this time a great measure of thought had twirled terpsichorean in my fragile, and undeveloped young mind. What were these people, if people they could be called? Where did they come from and how did they get here? What was this thing that they worshipped; was it real? Surely the awesome powers they had displayed (or at least that one of them had) must come from something. Was this some ancient science preserved in the horrific faculty or were they recent in acquiring it? Magic? Demons? At the time I was sure of it. Demons, devil worshipers; to my ignorant reasoning it must have been certain.
Had Richard been so ensorcelled as a response to his calling out to God, or was it in defiance of the act? Did they merely wish to show that our God was either non-existent or had no power here? Who was Old Man Draper, and what connection did he bear to this pernicious assemblage? Had he been a part of this horror, or had he simply built his house so close to it in blessed ignorance?
It was then that I heard them coming. I didn't immediately know what they were at first but a horrible understanding slowly sank into my weary and fevered brain. I had heard them from afar at first and as they approached closer I knew almost instinctively what they were. Oh poor, pitiable villains! Who knows what lives they had been stolen from to be transformed into the vile lap dogs of the damnable beast-men that people these caves?
From a distance their sick, echoing clamor could be sensed by regular ears, let alone our own which had grown much sharper with the rush of adrenaline and fear for our lives. It seemed that they came by the hundreds from the cacophony of their frightful chatter. Their queer, monosyllabic conversations were non-sense to me but easily memorable by its simplicity. They seemed to speak one word over and over but it switched between all the inflections of the Queen's tongue, only without its intricacy.
Their speech was almost believably human save for a strange bubbling, or gurgle in their alien voices. All that seemed to issue from them was a maddening chorus of "Fa. Fa. Fa? Fa. FA: Fa... Fa? FA: Fa." that may or may not have been any real form of communication. I stepped back from Mary and released her for the first time so that I might grasp her hand tightly and lead her quickly through the yet unexplored tunnel to our left. Were it the last...
As we hurried along we could hear even the beating of our own hearts and the slopping sound of our shoes galloping came to seem invidious. It seemed that any sound that we could make would be some insidious complot of our discovery to those putrid creatures.
We came out through a series of connecting tunnels and into a chamber that made the initial ritual room we had discovered seem a pleasant sight. This room was much higher, and similarly domed but in no way as bare as the first one. The floor was tiled with large stone slabs of identically bizarre symmetry to the initial cell that we saw and in this larger, less confused setting I realized them to form a huge, five-pointed star with deep recesses between the plates. This room was not nearly so filthy, but seemed somewhat spotted with neglect and veritably reeked of some sickening, death-like odor.
We stood for some time equally amazed at the furnishings of this room. It was as I said wide and in no way empty as the previous one. Strange contraptions of all manner sat collecting dust on one half of the room and great murals depicted all manner of unthinkable acts of depravity. The reliefs encircled the fullness of the cell and let us know with no uncertainty that this was the true room of absolute worship.
The center of the vast star-shape on the floor was a wide pentagon which bore upon its surface the truly dominating feature of that morbid camarilla. Looming before us was a rising series of dais platforms that were exposed in the front like some semi circular step and covered in the back by the nethermost regions of a gargantuan monument. The statue enraptured me with renewed abhorrence and transfixed us to the spot in abject awe of the terrible sight
The statue itself was dominated by a huge, semi-human looking figure who seemed to kneel, and look down upon us with wicked, unwholesome delight. He knelt on one knee, the other one slightly off to his side and he wore a calamitous outfit of archaic armor the likes of which I have seen never before, nor since. His hands were cupped together and flattened in such a manner as to form an altar for sacrifice as the murals had informed me. There was something altogether inimicable about his entire form, from his expression to his inhumanity which was only vaguely understandable.
On his right knee (the one that he held out bent) rested a petit looking woman of unearthly beauty but fiendish appearance. One of her arms rested on the monstrous man's shoulder, the other gently touched his breast. I felt that her features carried a hint of an oriental cast but I was unsure. Her curvature and form was beautiful in an unearthly manner even in that petrescent form, and her dress was eccentric, and lasciviously scandalous. Her expression seemed calm but there was an air of maddening profanity in her great, stone features that unnerved me at the very core of my psyche.
The third was a strange cloaked man of vaguely inhuman characteristics who's long, flowing , cape-like robes formed a sort of flowing barrier behind the other two. He stood just to the left of the pair and glared down essentially where we stood with an abysmal expression that struck an icy revulsion in my soul, and almost caused me to black out from the sheer sight of it. There came with this figure a feeling that was much different than the other two, a sort of frigidity and sickening calculation of irretrievable unholiness that riveted my senses and caused me to stumble for a moment. I could never hope to make anyone who had not gazed upon that abominable cenotaph understand the utter feeling of abrogation in the core of one's spirit.
The worst part of this was the perfection. The statue bore a seeming flawlessness that no mortal man or machine might duplicate though it bore a feeling of heaviness that belied the centuries that it had stood. It seemed like those dread figures might at any point stand and place upon us some inconceivable doom, or simply crush us beneath a titanic boot. Further I could swear the depraved figures whispered blasphemous litany's into my very mind.
Surely this aberrant thing could not have been moved to this spot by any natural means and that leads to wonder how many ages this cabal had infected the ground here. How ancient was this sepulcher? Had Draper simply the unbelievable misfortune of placing his home too close to their heretical domain?
Mary roused me from my thoughts and bizarre transfixion once again by moving forward and interrupting the eternal stillness of the three with her very lively and realistically moving body. I watched her wordlessly, awed by the fact that anything in this ancient chamber moved at all as she incredulously ascended the steps to the upper most dais and looked over the cupped hands of the alter and into the seeming void behind it. She recoiled from it and stepped back covering her mouth and heaving. I moved towards her but paused as she doubled over and vomited violently down the steps.
I rushed to offer the only aid that I could and pulled her hair back from the sickening torrent of her emptying stomach and patted her back comfortingly. She vomited several times and spent several moments heaving dryly and spitting out the foul contents before she looked up at me, red eyed and teary-cheeked.
"It's full of bodies" she said in a tone of desperate emotion, and I stared back at her with equal horror and incredulous shock. I turned and looked beyond the immaculately carved hands though I hesitated to approach them for the fear that they might suddenly reach out and snatch me. Sure enough the small pit that lay just behind the altar was thick with bodies of both men and beasts. I realized that there was a slight partition formed betwixt the fingers of those flawlessly sculpted hands and a slight depression in the dais itself. It connected to a small line-like divot that traveled down each layer of the dais.
It took little time for me to realize that this depression was in fact a sluice that allowed the blood of their hapless (or perhaps even willing?) victims to flow down in a directed manner to the gaps between the profane star on the floor. I pulled Mary up and led her away from the monolith and next to a wooden cabinet that was itself low, and alter like to rest. My mind kept racing and I could not control it by any means that I tried. Over and over the enormity of the things I had witnessed that day gouged at my poor, horrified subconscious with merciless enmity. I held her tightly to my chest and silently prayed for some providential salvation (I'll admit with shame) selfishly only for myself. That is when things became outrageous beyond imagining...
IV. The Translation of Jonathan Calendar
As I comforted Mary the sounds of approaching creatures caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up electrically. It was the gibbering of the gelatinous things again and they seemed to come from both of the adjoining passages this time. With little time to think and similarly little time to act I grabbed up Mary and shook her until she calmed, and quieted. I pulled her with me as I opened the door of the small cabinet and found it oddly empty. We clamored inside and I pulled it shut just in time to see the rush of those bizarre monsters sweep into the room.
I'm to this day unsure as to whether the beasts were even looking for us or just about some duty that they were set to by their insidious masters. The creatures moved about the room covering every square inch in a matter of a only a few moments and filled the cavernous chamber with their insipid chanting. There seemed to be ten of them and I could not help but wonder if poor little Richard was among their rank number.
They hurried about in maddening motions that seemed to combine the slithering of a snake, the fetid reachings of an amoeba and the abhorrent crawling of a slug as their amorphous bodies shifted putrescently. Small shoots seemed to push out in all directions randomly and eyes, mouths, and other strange organs seemed to just as chaotically form and dissipate. Whether they had any use for such organs I will never be sure. The one thing that I can be sure of is that the things are of incredibly limited intellect as they rushed over our hiding place many times without even a hint that they were aware of our presence.
Rather they seemed to be some sort of cleaning crew and their efforts left the room spotless to a level of strange, unearthly sterility. As quickly as the insane "Fa" chanters came they receded and the true masters of this sickening demesne entered. They brought with them both Jonathan, and Charlotte, both of whom seemed to have been cleansed. There seemed to be twenty of the odd beast-headed cultists in all and one of them led a cage containing a ram which seemed frightened to insanity. The procession approached the alter and flanked it on either side as their rite master, or high priest escorted Johnny to the base of the statue.
I will never understand the goings on of the procedure that I spied through that small crack in the door of the cupboard, but I realize the result. Johnny, who now wore one of their garments was disrobed and placed across the hands of the statue with his head facing towards me. The priest drew forth a long, and deadly looking sword and chanted maniacally as two attendees drug the screaming ram to the alter and held it down. They stretched its poor neck out beneath Johnny's. The chanting buck raised the weapon high as his spell casting (or whatever it was) reached an ecstasy. He cried out again to some strange demon, or deity and the weapon flashed a brilliant arc through the air, and neatly severed the heads from both Jonathan and the beast.
The right master lifted both heads and cried out ghastly anthems to their dark and otherworldly lord, then cast the human head away into the pit beyond. The "Fa" creatures must have cleared the saprogenic mass from it earlier because I heard the disembodied organ fall for some great time before finally striking stone with an echoing splatter. He placed the ram's head atop the former body of my dearest, and closest friend and God help me... it began to float. His naked body lifted into the air seemingly carried aloft by the detestable monolatry of the worshipers. His new eyes opened and he took a deep breath as he lowered onto the alter, and slowly placed his arms out as though he hung on the cross.
"Know me!" he bellowed in a voice that was like unto Johnny's but not truly his, "I am come at last! The dedication of our people is rewarded and our diligence is His path! I am the key! I am (...)" Forgive me this flaw. It seems that the Johnny-thing's name is the one aspect of his speech that I did not psychically understand.
They began to drag Charlotte towards the alter and she fought and screamed in their powerful grasps. Her screams still haunt me to this day as they pulled her towards her unfathomable rape in that low, and morbid place. I was able to shield Mary's eyes from the proceedings until this point, but at that moment I realized that Johnny (or what he had become) was staring directly at me as they prepared his first victim. I could feel him in my mind and I am thus assured that it was still Johnny if in part, but the insanity of that feeling! The pure, chaotic insanity!
I burst forth from the cabinet and pulled Mary into a mad dash for any kind of escape or I knew what revolting fate awaited me. He screamed in the sick speech of the cultists or their otherworldly deity and pointed to us as we fled and we were quickly pursued by undulating blobs. We moved so fast and hard that I feared that my legs might burst, but I could not stop. I had known him in that instant in a way that I had never known my friend before. Not because he was translated into that beast, but because I knew him truly: soul to truculent soul.
As we ran through the dark I collided roughly with a wall and she into my back. I viciously clawed at the brick and felt a single one of the slab-like blocks give way. My hands reached out and clawed insanely at the soft earth beyond it and it slowly gave way.
Before long I felt my hand break through to air. I pulled myself through that tiny aperture until I fell to the ground. I don't know why I didn't send Mary through first, but she may not have had the strength to dig the through the earth anyhow. I was lying near a creek bed that had long cut the side of a hill into a sloping cliff face!
I reached back through and grabbed Mary by the hands and began to pull her through but she suddenly stopped as if gripped by concrete. The screaming sounds of the blobs were close at hand and it became everything I had to keep a hold of that poor girl. She began to scream the most hideous, terrified howl and glared up at me with absolute terror, agony and panic in her eyes.
"Henri!" she shrieked maniacally, "Help! Oh God help THEY'RE INSIDE OF ME! THEY'RE CRAWLING INTO ME! THEY'RE INSIDE!" Her shrieks became a cacophonous bellowing of pure agony and as her body thrashed I performed the most shameful and cowardly action of my life. I let her go...
I recoiled from the hole and into the creek in a mad scramble to back away. One of the monsters tried to follow me but it seemed that the weak rays of the rising sun blinded or burned the thing to such a degree that it retreated back into their subterranean layer. I lay there in the cold water for the longest time. I've lost most of the time between the creek and the hospital to sheer instability. My mind was shattered and it took years to put the pieces back together.
I feel that this is the last thing I shall do, but I have arranged it so that these words will reach many ears. I know that my time is short and therefore my story must be told. It must be known that they're still out there and their plan to raise up that Thing is still in progress.
I know that I have little time left in the safe sanctity of my home here at Central State. Even now I can feel him out there somewhere and I'm certain that he has found me. Johnny always wanted me for his own, and I had known it intuitively, but now I know it from touching his very mind. My only hope is that the loss of my youthful looks will detract him, though I don't think it will.
I have had myself sterilized in the hopes that I would be unable to birth his calamitous god-thing into our world. I would kill myself but I too found something in that sending. I admit with a sort of shame that a part of me looks forward to abduction.
Know this:
His Name is Rammadârian
And when you call this name...
You call on Him.