The Terror in the House:
A Patrick Fright Memoir

By Brian Miller
10.30.2004
 

1. Jane

	A paper delivery guy found her. I'd like to tell you that it was a middle school kid throttling his Huffy and earning dough for his comic book or baseball card collection. Instead it was a loser named Adam Garfield. Adam was 34 and still lived at home with an invalid mother. The paper route gave him just enough to keep buying donuts and pay-per-view porn at night; just another loser with a car that somehow still ran.
	The house where she was found, 21 Summerset lane, wasn't on his list. It was abandoned and boarded up. Older kids hung out there and got drunk or high. Heavy metal band names and profanities tagged the wood boarding up the windows and doors. The paint peeled and stained eternal. The wrap-around porch creaked enough to scare away neighborhood children on silly dares. When the children would grow and finally start watching black and white movies, maybe an English teacher will show the movie version of To Kill A Mockingbird at the end of the year because there's no time to read it and every kid on Summerset lane or Harmony circle or nearby Apple Grove lane would see that gloomy day-for-night shot of the Radley house and think of 21 Summerset Ln. Trees hung around it like a cape, trying to hide it from the decency and suburban recipe of the neighborhood around it. Its last tenants, the McCalebs, moved away a few years ago thus ending the piles of Hefty bags filled with dirty diapers and TV dinners that the ever-growing clan consumed. I suppose every neighborhood has a house that doesn't quite fit. Maybe one's painted forest green in a grid of happy pastels, or one fashioned after a barn amidst plains of ranchers. 23 Summerset, home to Ken and Alice Anderson, stood unremarkably tidy. The lawn mowed, the mailbox painted in Holstein spots, a lovely wreath hanging on the front door. The whole neighborhood followed suit. Maybe the trees around number 21 were this area's way of sweeping the unwanted embarrassment under the rug.
	Adam Garfield was right there with it amongst the dust bunnies and age-hardened crumbs; another unwanted embarrassment. Every morning in the pre-dawn light, Adam looked out at the gloomy lonely place hidden away from the streetlights and think about the future. It wouldn't always be like this. Someday, he'd have options. Hey, he might even buy that place. Buy it cheap, fix it up, make it a part of the neighborhood again. Every morning these thoughts would blip in his head, every morning he'd look at that decrepit house with its bowing awnings and warped porch and think that maybe someday things would be different. Then every morning he'd round the corner, chuck a paper for Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, and move on.

	October 29th. Adam didn't move on. Adam didn't chuck a paper for Mr. Anderson's hurried breakfast before work or Mrs. Anderson's leisurely mid-morning skim-over before Ted showed up with his tennis pro forearms and arrogant little smirk. No, none of that happened on October 29th, because Adam saw something new in those familiar gloomy shadows: a flash of pale white. Adam slowed down to scope a closer look at the mound of something on the porch. Adam should've shrugged his shoulders and rounded the corner to fill another day with soaps, Doritos, and perhaps a nip of Jack Daniels that night after his Ma's asleep. He didn't though. He saw a newcomer to his forgotten world and maybe it's a cat, stray and cold and trying to get inside, and maybe it ain't. Adam pulled to the curb and put his car in Park. If it is a cat, what if it's rabid or something? He got a rolled-up paper and walked up the path. He squinted in the darkness. The trees covered the waxing witch's moon. It's too big to be a cat. It's not moving. It's white. He took the creaking stairs in growing tension. How come it's so much darker here than on the sidewalk? His hand went vice-like on the paper. In the dark, things are blurry and soft. He focused hard and spots popped in between the color of his surroundings. He looked through grainy film at a body on the porch. Leaves blew across the wooden planks and caught sticky under outstretch arms and legs. It's too dark for details. He didn't see hands. He didn't see feet. She's laid out spread-eagled. Da Vinci came to mind. Adam Garfield dropped the paper. The girl must be cold, she ain't movin'. Hell, she ain't breathing. 
 

2. Jack

	The sun's up by the time Jack gets there. He caught the call just as he pulled into the station. It's too early for him. He pounds coffee and feels it heat him up on the inside. It's brisk and neighbors are already gawking over the tape line in their bathrobes and slippers. A crew is up on the porch snapping pictures and bagging shit.
	Jack takes a look. She's young, call it 15 to 18. Her belly button's pierced. Her skin's tanned. She's nude. She's trimmed. Jack thinks she's popular in whatever high school she goes to. Make that whatever high school she went to.
	That's where humanity ends. Her hands are gone, her feet are gone. Her head is gone. Call her Jane Doe. She's laid out spread eagle. The cuts are clean. There's no blood. Her skin is blue. A labbie lifts her right arm. Her underside is harsh purple. She checked out a while ago. There's weird shit written underneath her in a circle: nothing as corny as a pentagram but symbols nonetheless. Jack thinks ritual. Jack thinks no face, no prints, no dental records, no tattoos, and no distinguishing marks. Jack thinks he's out of his depth.
	A uniformed officer fills him in on the neighbors. It's an abandoned house, last occupants vacating approximately 6 years ago due to trouble in the family. No one's seen anyone go in or out of the house. No one's heard anything coming from the house. No one's seen anyone suspicious around the neighborhood. According to the guy who delivers the paper around here, she's been there less than 24 hours because he didn't see her yesterday morning. No one's seen anything. Jack's head goes under. Jack starts holding his breath.
	The science geeks are done. They pick her up and zip her up. They start snapping shots of the porch. Jack gets up close. Jack takes his own pictures. No blood anywhere. Designs and symbols in the circle look like rust. Coppery, granulated, stuck to the wood. Labbies scrape some into an envelope. Jack rubs some between his fingers. Luckily, they don't burn off. Jack checks acid off the list. He asks a guy with glasses what he thinks it is. He guesses paint.
	Jack scans the crowd. Killers come back. Killers watch their work. Jack looks for faces that turn away and doesn't find any; just neighbors in housecoats and slippers. Terrycloth and bunny ears; suburbanites spreading the collective conformity. Jack's lungs start to burn.
 

3. Patrick

	“Can you hear me, Tom?”
	The large woman across from him frowned. “His name was Tim.”
	“Is, my dear, IS. Your husband has kept his name even though he has left his body on this plane.”
	She was still frowning.
	“Can you hear me, Tim? Henrietta is here and wants to speak to you. Come to me, Tim. Share your lingering thoughts and anxieties of this world so that you may be free to move on to the next.”
	Henrietta's talking again. “I don't want him to move on.”
	“I know, I know. You miss him so much. You can't keep him where he is though,  in a void of nothingness.  Henrietta, you have to let him go.”
	Her face reddened. “He ain't goin' nowhere until he pays what he owes on Clarence!”
	“Henrietta, I don't think Tim has access to any ATMs where he is.”
	“That don't matter none! He owes for Clarence and I ain't gonna let him go nowhere till he pays what's due.”
	“Henrietta, I still don't think... wait... I feel something Henrietta. I feel someone reaching out to me... from beyond... it's Tim!”
	Henrietta's pug face brightened. “What's he say what's he say?”
	“Tim says... to quite whining and get a job.”
	She pounded the table with her massive arm. “You tell that son'bitch that I'll get a job when I damn well want!”
	“Calm down, Henrietta. The link with the spirit world is tenuous and fragile at best. I need your positive energy to keep the door open.”
	Henrietta grunted like livestock. “Ask him where he done hid the money for Clarence.”
	“Tim... Tim... please relent... bare your worldly secrets to free yourself from the invisible bondage of antediluvian space... Now Tim, don't goad her...”
	She bent forward, spilling over on the table. “What's he say what's he say?”
	“Oh it's nothing... let him speak more...”
	“What's that bastard sayin' to you! I done paid and now I wanna know what the son'bitch is sayin!”
	“Tim says to get lost. He's tellin' you jack and shit and you can guess which one he'll let slip first.”
	A tear came to her eye. “That's my Tim! That's my Tim!”
	“Yes, yes... Tim says he...”
	“Tell me where the money is!”
	“He's mumbling something, I can't quite...”
	“Tell me where it is god'dammit!”
	“Henrietta, please...”
	Tears popped from her eyes. “Tell me where it is you good-for-nothing son'bitch and stop messin' with my bed at night!”
	“It's in attic next to the Yoda costume and the rocking horse now goddamn it woman stop bothering me!”
	She was gone before I came to. This is why I make them pay first.

	The sign on my door says “Patrick Fright, Professional Psychic.” Most people think that I'm a fake and yeah, they're right. I'd like to tell you that a hack like me would go belly up in half a week, that people are smarter than letting a con man like me hustle them. Instead, I do quite well. In my experience, the type of bereaved widow or soul-searching loser that would go to a real psychic will also come to me. Most of them wear their answers on their face alongside their questions, problems, hopes, dreams, and all that other crap. I suppose you could say I suck at being psychic but do OK with guesswork. It gets easier too. I razzle a chump once, she's likely to come back. I dazzle her twice, she's mine forever. My day planner is full. I have a notebook on each “client.” Yeah, I know what you're thinking and just shut up about it. We all have to pay the bills you know.
	This girl, Henrietta. She comes in with a cheap ring on her finger and dark circles under her eyes. Her clothes are dirty and she's got a Toys R Us walkie talkie falling out of her purse. This may surprise you, but most of the time I feel pretty good about what I do. If crossing over and spieling about love and tenderness helps people move on then it's fine by me.
	My place is downtown. There's a record shop half a block down run by a dude named Connor. Connor has a tendency to burn one in the back during office hours. It's a nice place to bullshit about indie bands and put down rap, but I've been in there too often when kids glom new releases while Connor gets low behind the curtain. You don't need to be a psychic to figure he'll be out on his ass in six months. Call it my mesmero act. My finger pressed to my forehead. My brow creased. “I predict...” 
	A block down the other way, there's a book shop in a deceptively massive basement space. Stairs lead down under a house into an underground haven of rare books, obscure magazines, and the occasional independent comic book. The guy that runs it, Danny, plays it up real nice. He has a big sign that he lugs out to the street every morning with a mysterious arrow pointing down at the stairs. He caters to the conspiracy clowns, the occult oddities, and the peering pervs.
	Together, we make up the “artistic” district of historical downtown. We don't sell antique furniture so they have to call us something. Connor and Danny are friends. We all hang out together. I'm telling you this because, despite the yin-yang symbol painted on my storefront window, I am a normal guy leading a normal life. I need you to believe this because the tale I'm about to tell is decidedly outside of what you and I call “normal.” I probably shouldn't even bother to tell it since you won't believe it anyway. I don't have to be a psychic to know that. What the hell, though. It's Halloween, everybody likes a good yarn. Turn some lights off, let the wind howl at your windows, curl up in some warm place protected from whatever may crawl across the floor or slither from under your bed and listen to what I've got to say. It's worth hearing alright.
 

4. Cameron.

	Dark circles puffed under Cameron's eyes on the morning of October 30th. Sleep didn't treat him well the night before. He was old enough to realize it probably had something to do with all the excitement from the day before, what with the police, the ambulance, and everyone standing around gossiping all day. It was just starting up when he left for school and still in full effect when he got home that afternoon. Sure all the authorities were gone but the tape remained and so did his neighbors. Didn't they have jobs to go to? It all seemed to make sense though. The old McCaleb house was always creepy, Cameron thought. Not just because it was dirty and empty either. Some houses just affect you that way, like the way the sidewalk stained and muddied in front of the house on the corner but not along any others. It was the sort of house he would've dared his buddies to sneak into at night, if he wasn't too old for that kind of stuff of course. Ghosties and Goblins didn't really stand up to guidance counselors and 	that hag bitch Mrs. Strassburg (she went by Mrs. but everyone knew she wasn't married). Cameron had more pressing things to worry about on that particular morning.
	They changed the acronym every year. The only thing that really stayed the same was the little blue books that you wrote your answers in. Cameron was in 10th grade and that meant not only did he have to worry about the Math and English standardized tests but also the Citizenship Exam, which was a major pain in the ass. 10th grade Social Studies had nothing to do with anything but Citizenship. On the first day, the teacher told Cameron and his classmates that they are guaranteed to forget 90% of this crap a month after the test. Hell, they'd be lucky to remember that there are three branches of government instead of two or four. So, really it was just an exercise in memorization; more shit to cram in a kid's head that has nothing to do with sports or pop music or who's dating whom: the important stuff.
	October 30th was day one of the MSTCE: the Maryland State Theme & Composition Examination, in which every student from every school puts down themes on two subjects in their little blue book and makes sure to hand in all note paper with their work. Cameron, who was taking a forensics and debate class which had him writing political position papers once a week, was not worried. He was just tired. When he did get to sleep the night before, he had wicked nightmares that woke him up soon afterward. Cameron was a fairly well-adjusted kid – no drug habits or broken homes or anything like that – so he usually saw his occasional anxiety dream as nothing more than amusing. Shit! My paper's not done! Crap! The alarm didn't go off and I'm running late! Fuck! I'm swinging so high on this swing and I just jumped off but I'm falling forever! Last night though. Last night was something different.
	In his dream, Cameron woke up and looked out his window. Things were off because all of the streetlights on Summerset were burnt out. The light in his room was pale blue instead of pale orange. He heard leaves rustling outside and branches snap. It sounded like the occasional pack of deer had appeared outside. Cameron got out of bed and peeked through the blinds. The moon waxed full and cast everything in long dark shadows. A figure, impossibly tall and stretched taller by the inky pool of blackness flowing behind him in the pale blue tones of midnight, stood high in the middle of the street. He wore a crumpled thatched hat and an old flannel shirt that covered his narrow frame, long arms hanging at his sides. The apparition started stumbling forward slowly. His shadow seemed to burn into the street. The man, if it was a man, didn't walk so much as scrape along the pavement. That sharp grating caught in Cameron's head and made him shiver. Sparks flew up behind the tall man's heels, shooting orange fireflies in the infinite hole of black that made him look 12 feet tall. The sound spiked into Cameron's brain. He gasped for breath. The tall man looked up at his window. His eyes burned orange.
	Cameron out woke up shaky and sweaty. He looked out his window slowly, timid and afraid, and saw nothing. The street lights were on, showing all of the houses on the block. Well, all but one. The corner house, number 21, was shrouded by the trees.
	Now Cameron was fried. He sat on the bus and couldn't get his dream out of his head. He wished it would be like every other dream and recede with the tide to lurk just out of his conscious mind's grasp scant seconds after he woke up. He closed his eyes and saw the fucker staring at him, burning at him with his muffled orange pits. They burned under something, through something. He saw more now that Cameron could think about it. It was almost as if his face was covered with something...
	Jason asked him if he was ready for the test today. Cameron said sure. He said he even had an idea on what to write about.
 

5. Sarah

	Jack hits the lab. Jack follows procedure. Jack treads water.
	Make Jane Doe as Sarah Whiffen: Gap employee-cum-ritual homicide. Sarah was a teenager, her mom filled out a Missing Persons nine days ago. She said she knew to wait 24 hours before calling the police from the movies. DNA matches Sarah to her mom: the M.E.'s a genius.
	Jack has a high school headshot now. Sarah's pretty and popular. She had good teeth. Jack wonders where her head is right now. I know, but telling would ruin the fun.
	Jack gets more M.E. info: the body's drained of blood. The body's been dead a week easy. The body's rape kit is negativo. No pleasure, all business.
	Jack hits the Gap. The manager tries to sell him khakis. The badge makes his voice crack. He hasn't seen Sarah: she wasn't scheduled to work until the weekend. Jack doesn't care, he's got plenty of air now. Jack the expert swimmer, out of his depth my ass.
	Sarah had friends. Sarah had boys. Sarah had enemies; popular kids always do. Sarah's friends flock together. Saturday mornings are spent making blueberry pancakes and watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 on DVD. Jack takes them all together, friendly-like. The look wide-eyed and shake their heads. Sarah didn't have any enemies, Sarah never had any problems, Sarah was perfect. Their puffy eyes glimmer. Summer and April and Candy, they don't have a clue why this happened. April's mom sits silently: don't steal my daughter too, Mr. Police-man.
	Sarah's mom is a mess. She says her baby's been missing ten days now. She says her baby's the most perfect thing ever. She offers up a yearbook. Jack peeks. Words all over the inside covers, tons and tons of hearts and smileys. Half of it's in pink. “Have a great summer, keep in touch!”, “I loved sitting next to you in Trig”, and paragraphs of girlie-script nostalgia.. Jack eagles in. Jack reads it all.
	Hidden amidst the sap: “Thanks for the beaver shots, have a great summer”
	Return trip to April's house. She plays coy. April's mom makes coffee, April leans in close: “That's Scott. He's sort of a dork but we all have to put up with him.”
	Swimming laps in this shit: “He's Summer's brother.”
	Scott's high school photo: quiet smile and airbrushed zits. 
	Summer's house, Mr. friendly. Jack spots the Jack-O-Lanterns on the steps. Call them Dopey, Scary, and Slaughtered. One's outfitted with fake blood and an axe thunked into the noggin. Jack rings the doorbell: “Summer's not here, neither is Scott” says Summer's Mom. Jack's looking for something Sarah may have given Scott. Summer's mom relents. Jack scopes Scott's room.
	Creepy shit: Angry music posters, a black shirt torn to shreds over the lamp. Drapes closed, rubber gloves and empty ice cream cartons hanging out on suspended netting above. Summer's mom goes to make coffee. Jack checks out Scott's psyche. The closet is 100% black. The candles are melted. The incense saturated everything.
	Scott's computer's unlocked: oops. Jack pokes around. Jack finds voluminous amounts of porn: degrading stuff, angry stuff, fantasy snuff. Jack finds long letters to Sarah in the My Documents folder. Jack scans quickly and gets the gist: here's my heart, I will never send this. Jack fires up the email. The punk doesn't filter his spam. It's all penis enlargement and free Vicodin to Jack's darting eyes. The coffee's ready. Jack asks nice: “Is Scott at school, ma'am? I'd like to talk to him briefly.”
	She retorts assholic: “It's a school day isn't it.?”
	Scott's skipped. A parental note is expected tomorrow or there will be consequences. Chronic truancy is a sin. A teacher says he's a good kid gone bad. A guidance counselor says he's a bad seed. A random student says he's queer. Maybe she said “asexual like a flatworm” instead. It's noonish. Jack hits the cafeteria and spots the loser table. He asks around, Scott doesn't eat there. He eats in the photo darkroom instead.
	Jack thinks dysfunctional doesn't mean ritual murderer. Jack thinks guidance counselors don't know shit. Jack thinks he needs to talk to this kid soon.
 

6. Shella

	I get walk-ins all the time. Hell, that's half my business right there. People downtown, antique shopping and feeling adventurous with money to burn. Call it premonition: if people are willing to overpay for used nightstands and knick knacks, they're willing to throw some money at a palm reading, cup of tea, or gaze at the ol' crystal ball as well. The wife hoping to get rich, the teenager hoping to get a girlfriend, the single woman hoping for love: easy money.
	That day though, the 30th, I had to work for it. A girl walked in, said her name was Shella. No one names their kid Shella. I saw her boots, binding up the calf, what more vulgar people in this world might call “fuck-me” boots, and pegged her as both a fake name and a Vachss fan. Her real name was Jessica, but I didn't really care. I was on the phone with Danny when she came in, bullshitting about something mundane. She was attractive and young with a great figure and pale skin. Her clothes were tight though, and showed her off rather well. I saw maybe a stripper, maybe worse. I creeped a bad vibe from her; get this over quickly.
	“Good afternoon...”
	“Shella.”
	“Of course. What can I help you with today, Shella?”
	“Don't you know that already?”
	“It's like a switch I flip. You show me money, I turn on the lights.”
	She didn't believe a word. You don't have to be psychic to read body language. She lit a cigarette and didn't bother to take off her sunglasses. Pissed off or hiding a shiner? She paid up and I took a guess.”
	“You're in a relationship with a man... a forceful man.”
	“Go on.”
	“You love him but he has a temper...”
	“Go on.”
	“Sometimes he gets very angry...”
	“Don't you need a piece of my hair or something first? Don't I need to pick a card?”
	“Tarot readings cost extra, but I'll hold your hand if you want.”
	She puffed her cigarette and inhaled through her nose. Her body said “fuck you,” her face said “Whatever.”
	“So tell me my future, Mr. Fright.”
	“Patrick.”
	“I can read.”
	“Your future is somewhat unclear. It's a fork in the road.”
	“Go on.”
	“If you continue your current course, I see bad things. I see a hospital visit, maybe more than one, but can't see if that's in the future or the past. Have you been to the hospital lately?”
	“Don't you know this already, Mr. Fright?”
	“Well the amorphous aether isn't like TiVo, there's no on-screen guide for reading minds.”
	“Go on.”
	“I see the fork being this man you're with. I don't mean to be rude, Shella, but you should leave him. He's no good for you.”
	She stood, thoroughly non-plussed.
	“Thanks for your time, Mr. Fright, but I'm afraid that you're not what I'm looking for.”
	She offered her hand and I took it. Her flesh burned hot, I saw baaaad vibes: A group of guys in some basement, a stack of books on some desk, H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, a wicked blade with jags and curves for no reason, hours full of crazy talk shoved into my head in a second, some guys leveling the playing field, some guys waking up those that sleep in dark prisons, some guys opening the door. She let go hard, backing up and staring at me like I'd just tried to kiss her. I saw her eyes through the sunglasses, wide open and freaked. She hurried out. She left her purse.
 

7. Alhazred Alhais

	The subject: Write about the first time you learned to do something. Fuck. That doesn't fit at all. Cameron stared at the paper, trying to comprehend how lame this subject was. The first time he learned to do something? What kind of boring-ass story did they want him to write? The first time he tied his shoes? Roos were still better if you asked him. Priceless minutes ticked by as Cameron stared at his blank pale blue pages and thought about the first time he learned to do something. It was almost like a block. Every time he tried to think of anything, the tall figure on the street came scraping back into his mind. Pencils scribbled all around him. Teachers stalked the rows as if it was even possible to cheat on an exam like this. I guess someone could've snuck in some Hemingway or something, but kids his age never read anything unless they absolutely had to. They never wrote anything either. Perhaps that was because on those few instances where they did have to write, it was always on a lame-ass topic like the first time they learned to do something. Mrs. Strassburg passed Cameron and said to hurry up. Angry mean bitch. That settled it. Fuck it, Cameron thought. He picked up his regulation #2 and started writing:

Theme #1
By Cameron Anderson.

	The figure on the street was neither dead nor alive. It lived in a sense that it fed and slept and hungered, but not in the sense that you or I live. I sit here tonight, gentleman, in this cozy study before this raging fire on this cold winter's night to tell you about the first time that I learned to be scared.
	Forty years ago, I lived on a dead-end road with no streetlights and sporadic houses. One night, I awoke to a terrible scraping noise. I tell you, friends, It was like rusted nails screeching against your inner ear. I went to my window and looked out to find a horribly tall figure straggling down the middle of my sleepy little street. The moon cast a pallid shadow upon him, illuminating only his ancient thatched hat and stretching a shadow of darkness thirty feet behind him. My eyes were shocked open, I tell you I couldn't move a muscle, dear gents! Alone on the street, the tall thing seemed to call out to the entire neighborhood. I can hardly explain the feeling; it's like he called out to my mind. I heard him speak in some guttural groan and inexplicably understood it. Its name was Alhazred Alhais and it was a harbinger of the Great Idiot God, sent to this place to prepare a chosen few for consumption by Him in the Gulf. It stretched its arms out to form a cross in the languorous shadow that slithered down the road. I'll tell you now; I have never to this day been more scared in my life.
	Sure, I thought I knew what fear was. Camping out in the woods behind my house, my friends and I used to challenge each other to walk in the woods with our flashlights off. A snapping branch here, moving branches there; before long our childhood minds got the best of us all and we had to flick on our lights and run back to the tent. That was fear, true, but nothing on the plane that I felt in my mind that night. For it wasn't just the site of the elongated human-like creature that crawled along dark corridors deep in the darkness of other worlds and found itself on my road that particular night. No, it was more than that. It was the feeling that the monster had found my open eyes and burrowed deep into me, that he had his cold fist clutched on my heart and allowed me to live by sheer indifference. I could feel it in me and my skin shivered when it spoke.
	The thing looked at me then, and I could see cold pits of orange fire blaze underneath a decrepit potato sack. I zoomed in and saw the mad Alhazred Alhais for what he was. The crumpled thatch hat, the blank face of burlap rotted thin and burning underneath, the impossibly narrow chest stuffed with hey, leaves and corn husks, undulating with nesting and feeding rats. The animated scarecrow dragged his pitchfork on the blacktop behind him, sending sparks flying and bouncing in his shadow. The thing looked weak, but I felt his strength in my mind. I felt it and cringed.
	It was all I could do to drop to the ground and shut my eyes. I knew I was defenseless against such an abomination. A child in his early teens stood no chance against the ageless. I huddled up below my window and hoped it would pass me by. I heard its scraping and the low dragging feet underneath. A dog started barking and stopped suddenly. It didn't have time to howl in pain.
	There was a pond across the street from me. It serviced flood overflow and also stood as a small waterfowl sanctuary. I used to take pictures of it for my photography class. When the scraping stopped, I braved another look. Alhais was still there, but he had turned off the road. The cruel points of his pitchfork now gleamed in the full moon and I could see his back poking with branches and dusty with black feathers. The hat clung to his head as if stapled on. Alhazred walked into the pond without creating a ripple. He was there, then he was there, then he was there, then he was gone. The night echoed silent once more. My head cleared and became my own again. That clawing itch that I would later come to think of as insanity simmered down and left me with shaking muscles and chilled sweats. For that night at least, it was over.
	I'll tell you that I never saw that tall figure again, on that street or any other. I'll also tell you, dear friends, that I never took another picture of that pond nor swam in it again. I've been lucky in my life to only be that scared once, for it is a lesson that does not need to be learned twice.

	Cameron cracked his knuckles and looked at his blue book. He'd filled both sides of every page, writing the last sentence in a meandering path that went up the margin to fill the last bit of paper. Everyone else was still scribbling. He looked at his watch and found that only five minutes had passed. Mrs. Strassburg passed by again and said Quality not Quantity. Cameron hoped she'd die alone and unhappy.
 

8. Scott

	He had to come home some time. Jack takes the time to catch a nap and think about implications: the nerd brother of a popular girl, crushed hard on sis' more-popular friend. It reeks of hormones and passion, not ritualistic murder. Jack thinks the violent type might escalate to rape or kidnapping, but not lopping off hands and feet. Scott as chronic masturbator? Probably. Scott as vampire killer? Nah. Jack thinks deep, he thinks Scott lacked the balls.
	Scott gets out of a SUV. He waves at the driver and starts inside. Jack swoops in. Jack intercepts. Jack offers a coke and a smile. Scott sees the badge and clams. Scott tries for the door, Scott's mom intercepts. Jack backs off, Mr. friendly. Jack's on the diving board diving into miles-deep shit no problem, Scott's sweat implicates. Jack re-thinks Scott's balls, maybe he's got it in him.
	Other leads: The house. Neighborhood intel says previous owners the McCalebs moved out three years ago. They say bad shit went down. They say the McCalebs left crying and one short. The house: abandoned since then, haven for coming-of-age gropes and late-night dare-scares. The house: unprintable, keeping its secrets. The design found under Sarah looks cultish. Web hits found: a perfect copy of something found in some role playing game. Not Dungeons & Dragons this time. Something named Call of Cthulhu.
	The paint used contains blood; no surprise there. The blood is Sarah's; Jack doesn't need to be a psychic either. It's mixed with paint, semen, and ground-up bone.
	Jack calls it quits for the night. He goes home, watches a sitcom, and dreams of Sarah.
	The next day is a Friday. Jack hits up the high school, everyone's dressed up. Girls should NOT being wearing some of that stuff. One kid has speakers built into his pimp suit. He blasts the theme to Shaft as he passes Jack by. One kid is dressed up like Mr. Brown from Reservoir Dogs. Dig the skinny tie and bullet hole. Jack hits the principal's office. He's led to a classroom and interrupts Mrs. Strassburg's grammar quiz. What kind of teacher gives a quiz the day after a state exam anyway?
	Scott pops sweat waaaay in the back row. Mommy's not here now. Scott sulks out. Jack throws Sarah's yearbook down on the desk. Scott denies his sordid signature. Jack says bullshit. I know it was you, Scott. I know you torch, Scott. I've seen the letters. The principal's silent behind his desk. Scott stumbles and mumbles.
	Q: Where were you yesterday, Scott?
	A: sick.
	Jack mentions his house call and Scott stares at the Principal. Vague interest in a raised eyebrow is all he gets.
	A: OK so I skipped.
	A: OK so I was at a friend's house.
	A: OK so I was getting high.
	Mr. Friendly comes back. Now we're getting somewhere, Scott. Jack asks who his friend is and where he lives. Scott bursts out in tears. Vague concern on the principal's face; yeah, it's time to call the parents.
	Jack asks Scott if there's anything he wants to get off his chest. Jack stresses murder as serious fucking offense. Jack stresses guilt by association and accessory after the fast. Jack stresses leniency for cooperating minors with clean records. Mom's silent indignation leaves town. Fear and worry move in and throw raucous parties. Scott stops sobbing and spills:
	“This guy Andrew, ‘cept no one calls him that cuz he tells everyone that his name is Jasper instead. Jasper's a cool dude. He's got a drum set in his basement all sound-proofed so he can play loud. He's always hooked up and has a monster stereo. I met him at a show. He's into some weird shit though, always talking crazy when he's high which is all the time. Anyway, I mentioned Sarah to him a few times, he knew I wanted her. We talked one time and he kept saying he could help me out, like that movie where Steve Martin's nose gets huge; feed me lines and teach me game and stuff. He always had women around, they were hot too. I mean he was a cool guy; why not, right? So I showed her where she lived one time, talking about her. When she went missing I went over there. His basement was all boarded up. He said it was an infestation; he kept complaining about how he'd have to get his place fumigated now, that the guy was coming next week.”
	Scott starts crying again. Mom's comforting with a ghost white face. Jack asks: where's he live?
 

9.  Howard Phillips

	I'd like to say that, being a perfect gentleman, I picked up Shella's purse and immediately called after her to return it. I'd like to tell you that I didn't sit down, dump it out, and look through all her private shit. Instead, I managed to wait until that next day before giving in. She hadn't come back so I thought maybe I could get her address and return it to her. Her purse was filled with typical stuff for the most part. A couple items caught my interest:
	1. A print-out web-search of psychics in town. My bastard fake-O competition: Rosie's Palm Reading, Sexy Psychic Sadie's Tarot and Massage, Déjà vu prophecies and prophecies. All hacks like me.
	2. A pendant displaying a warped star with an eye in the center, flame where the pupil should be.
	3. Her driver's license. She's Polish; let's call her Jessica J.

	I wondered if she was as rude with Rosie and Sadie as she was with me, or why she'd keep this pendant in her purse instead of around her neck. I closed up shop and walked down the block. Danny was about as busy as I was, reading a big dusty book and tapping his finger in time with the jazz that he wafted through his basement space.
	“Hey Danny, did you see that girl go by?”
	“I work in a basement, Patrick. I don't see anyone unless they come in.”
	“Yeah, but still. This girl gets noticed. Tall, hot, trashy.”
	“Didn't see her, man.”
	“Well, she came in for a reading and left without her purse.”
	“Did you look through her private shit?”
	“Yeah. Check this out.”
	I flash the pendant. It seemed more at home in this dank place amidst stacked leather-bound tomes and soft lighting.
	“I recognize this.”
	“You do?”
	“Yeah”
	Danny locked the register, put a “back in 5 minutes” card on the counter, and started talking as he walked deep into the corridors of his shop. Brainstorm Books mazed and turned underneath the entire block above, creating a serpentine dusty trail that Danny actually had to post maps of at row intersections and corners hallway. It's the type of place you could actually get lost in, the type Danny has to spend ten minutes just making sure everyone's gone before he locks up at night. Apparently there's a fire escape somewhere to meet regs, but I've never seen it.
	Keeping up with him, he told me about a guy named H.P. Lovecraft and the twisted shit he wrote in the ‘20s. He was of a sort to keep writing in his consistently alternate universe, a world thinly shrowded from great beings out of time and space that would drive any human insane just by looking at their cyclopean size and grotesquerie. He said that the dude didn't drink, didn't drug, or anything like that. Aside from a little bigotry, the guy seemed like a normal chap, except he wrote about demons and nasties and rats in the walls of course. Apparently, his work attracted followers who picked up on the stories when old Howard Phillips kicked the proverbial bucket. All together, it's referred to as “Cthulhu Mythos.”
	Danny stopped and kneeled down. After craning his head to the side and running his fingers over several oversize books, he pulled an old paperback off the bottom shelf and started flipping through it. When he found what he was looking for, he passed the book to me. I saw the drawing on the pendant: a warped star with an eye in the center, a flame where the pupil should be. The text called it The Elder Sign. I read aloud:
	“A magical symbol created by the Elder Gods as protection against the Great Old Ones, it functions as a protection glyph. One bears on the door leading to Cthulhu's tomb.”
	“Yeah, that's right.”
	“OK, who the hell are the elder gods, great old ones, and Cthulhu?”
	Danny got down on his haunches and pulled out two more books. They screamed déjà vu over and over again.
	“You should read these if you really want to know, but basically the Great Old Ones are huge monsters that would eat all of creation for no good reason, and the Elder Gods are huge monsters that don't like the Great Old Ones but would also like to eat all of creation for no good reason. Cthulhu is a Great Old One, probably the most popular.”
	“Most popular?”
	“Yeah, there's even Cthulhu plushies now. It's funny if you think about it.”
	It was at this point that I realized that I was taking all of this seriously.
	“So, basically this girl is a fan.”
	“I guess so. I mean, why else would she have the Elder Sign in her purse?”
	“Good question.”

	The books looked nice and all, but the Internet made finding out about this crap a lot easier. Lovecraft may have tons of fans but his style is dry as shit. I hooked up a few searches on Danny's computer and read up on the whole mythos thing. Since my job relies on assuming there are ethereal planes and spiritual realms where lost loved ones wait and play solitaire or whatever, it's not too hard for me to buy Lovecraft's spiel. There's that line though, the one that's supposed to tell you what's real and what's made up and hits the silent alarm the second you step over it. That line was close. I decided to see Jessica again. As it turns out, I didn't have to wait long.
 

10. Alice

	Ken stayed home on the 29th and Ted had appointments on the 30th so just around the time that I found Jessica waiting for me in front of my store, Alice Anderson bid her husband Ken and son Cameron farewell to work and school, slipped out of her housewife terrycloth robe and into her adulterous satin teddy, and poured a glass of wine from the box of Franzia in the refrigerator.
	Ted showed up around 9:30. I'd like to tell you that this affair tore Alice apart inside with guilt; that Ken was a good man and Alice was paying for a momentary indiscretion with successively ugly scenes of misconduct. I'd like to tell you that this was the last time and that Alice had called Ted over to end it clean. Instead, Ken was uninterested in Alice and only stayed with her for the sake of their kid. Ken might've even known about Ted were it not for the fact that he was too busy hiding his own sideline amusements. Yep, Alice really liked Ted. She liked to see him in her house and in her bed, and he liked her to wear her ring when they were together. Think about that if you start feeling sorry for them in the next few pages.
	Ted wore tight clothes showing off his physique. When Alice answered the door in her violet teddy, he scrunched his face in discomfort. Those pants of his had to come off NOW. It doesn't take a psychic to know what happened next. Queue the train going in the tunnel, the flower blooming, the oil derrick pumping. Ted and Alice took a little trip together to a place where thinking is optional, if not discouraged. As their bodies worked together, their minds hit the beach. Alice laid out and baked her skin, letting the warmth spread over her entire body. Ted sat in a chaise lounge and frantically worked on long division and obscure baseball facts to maintain control. The waves were calling but he closed his eyes and denied the release. Both were too busy to notice something wash up on shore with the gently lapping surf. An old thatched hat filled with holes and thoroughly waterlogged caught up against a piece of driftwood and lagged there. A form took shape under the shallow foam.
	Ted ended with a bang. Queue the oil derrick hitting black gold, the fireworks exploding, the champagne bottle popping. He rolled off and they both opened their eyes to an impending narrow shade stretching up over them from the foot of the bed. It's ridiculously long arms flashed to their throats where it held them with strength uncommon for such multi-jointed hay-stuffed appendages. Scarabs scrabbled from beneath the rotting fabric of each sleeve. An insane growl pawed its way into their heads, Ancient tongue that their mouthpieces could never attempt to vocalize. Somehow it made sense: Behold the Crawling Chaos, The Haunter of the Dark. I am here as is my lord's will.
	The Black Man's pitchfork slammed into Ted's six-pack. He was a bug stuck to a display board. Bed springs popped and dark blood gurgled into the mattress. He couldn't scream, for the scarecrow wouldn't let him. Instead he bit his tongue off, lopping the flab of muscle, still moist with Alice's taste, down his chin, flopping onto his chest. He tore his lips back in unheard pain and blood squirted and sprayed from between his teeth. He braced his back and a glut of it threw against the headboard.
	Alice was transfixed, unable to move. The gentleman beast's burning orange embers held her in sway. Inside her head, his gravelly insane tongue weaved her consciousness into trance. Twigs snapped and leaves rustled as Alhazred Alhais, sometimes known as the Father of Knives, Bringer of Pests, and the God of the Bloody Tongue, bent near Alice and took breath in to ageless lungs. His find was not favorable.
	Ted's mind burned from the center. A great fire swept through him and arcs popped across his vision as if he'd been microwaved in tin foil. The dulled blunt edge of Alhais' voice came to him again: You have seeded this woman with child. This is unacceptable. To both of them now: You were to be the Daemon Sultan's bride but this heathen has soiled you. I now have no choice in the matter.
	The scarecrow snatched his pitchfork from Ted's abdomen, leaving dark pooling eddies of crimson bubbling and leaking across his chest. He raised his arm and Ted rolled on his side with taut muscles that obeyed a higher power now. Ted leaned over to Alice. Their eyes met for one terrible moment where, cowering somewhere down deep in the farthest corner of their minds, they saw each other's fear. Ted dipped his gushing mouth down, coating Alice's neck with slick arterial red. The color had left Ted's skin now, growing ashy white and pale. The thin man stood before them, insolently playful pits of orange ember glowing vividly through threadbare burlap, and toyed with its fleshy marionettes. Ted bit down on Alice's throat, grinding through skin, cartilage, and windpipe. His eyes flashed with fear and sorrow, then closed shut to protect the orbs from the spray of hot blood that shot out from Alice's wound. He could feel her in his mouth but couldn't do anything to stop. He fought back with his mind but you don't have to be psychic to know that a gigolo tennis pro is no mental match for a god. Ted tried to faint but couldn't. Instead he lunged upward, ripping the center from Alice's throat. His own throat went to swallow. The bony flesh and gristle lodged halfway down. He could feel his lungs start to burn.
	The leafy thing with raven feathers stuck into its back now turned its insane fancy toward the girl where whatever the Black Demon had whispered inside her head started to unweave. Her skin flushed red as her lungs sucked in air from the gaping maw of her throat, choking and sputtering on the blood that was everywhere. Huge fans had splashed against the walls when Ted took his last love bite, and the mattress quickly collected the remainder. Both of them were close to death now, but the great scarecrow trickster had one more curiosity to satiate. Alice's skin, now sunburnt red and beaded with sweat, started to boil and bloat. She turned demon-red, inflating like a hot dog. Her breasts ballooned out, her belly distended, and her thighs stretched tight. The dam broke. The rest of her blood rushed out from between her legs in a dark scabby river. She deflated instantly, her body now nothing more than skin overlaying bone. Ted's head was tilted up, forced to watch as he silently choked to death on Alice's throat.
	Both of them now still and silent, the tall figure popped and cracked as he kneeled his impossibly long legs to the floor. He examined the lake of red that still lingered on Alice's thighs. The orange pits flared and what would almost make a smile glanced his blank face. A small white sack sat on the carpet with a miniscule severed tube limply attached. The slightest idea of little hands and feet struggled inside the milky membrane. It was cold. The being that some called the Faceless Sphinx stood and skewered the pre-life clean on a dagger point of its pitchfork.
 

11. Jasper

	The cell phone vibes on his way to Jasper's: another shitstorm on Summerset, next door to Sarah's dump. The catching detective, Dave Jergens, let's Jack know: “The crime lab's sweeping it now but maybe you can swing by when you can.” Jack returns: “When I'm done here.” Call it wicked coincidence. Harsh cop truth: more bodies mean more evidence. The killer got another one but maybe left more of himself. Jergens says he's doubtful. Jergens says it's a couple this time. Jergens says there's blood everywhere but no designs or ritual shit. He hypothesizes twisted adulterous passion crime. The husband's catatonic, imagine coming home to that. Jack still smells a connection. The house scratches on him. Maybe evil does seep through.
	Jasper lives in a shit heap house in the industrial district where everything looks dirty and wet. Jack spots an SUV in the driveway. Jack rolls up slow and sees eyes peeking through the blinds. Made already. Jack gets out and knocks on the door, Mr. Friendly. Inside, his nerves are firing, he smells a lead wafting through the garbage and pollution. Jasper answers, Jack makes a mental mold:
	Dirty black hair hanging in clumps, narrow face, hollow eyes, pale-ass skin. Piercings through nose, eyebrow, and labret. Ears covered by oily hair. Make his lanky ass 6' even, 130 lbs. Tattoos up his arms, typical self-expression stuff.
	Jasper asks if anything is wrong, jack says a girl is dead. Jasper offers condolences. Music pipes loud from inside: depressing machinery shit, drills and hammered tin as rhythm. Jack says Scott spilled, let's see that basement. Jasper asks for a warrant, Jack asks if he'll need one. Jasper consents: “Of course not, Officer, I have nothing to hide.”
	The interior reeks. Major Goodvibes and his muse Mary Jane haze the lights and coat the peeling paint. The den: make it three delinquent youths sitting on couches hiding paraphernalia. There's a checker board on the table, they feign interest. It's a shampoo boycott, a black t-shirt convention, and a face make-up refuge all rolled into one. Call it goths gone wild. One black-haired girl sports a crucifix tattoo on her neck. Under her pound of make-up, Jack thinks she might be attractive. Jack gets her name: Lindsay. Lindsay sits silent, self-suffering, and scared. Jasper signals behind Jack. Jack misses it: “Point to the basement.” Wood planks piled next to a door, call it damaging debris. Jack decides not to wait for a warrant. Jack sniffs probable cause. Jack's through the doors and down the stairs. Jack sees a drum set, a dirty mattress, an old white tub stained pink, a fuckload of candles, and-
	SAP!
	Stars glance across the world. Jack goes down for the count. In this world, Jack falls through bottomless darkness and floats on unseen thermals. Outside, Jasper and his cronies load him into the trunk of the SUV. Jack's face presses up against a book bound in what I'd like to tell you is leather.
 

12. Jessica

	She was waiting for me in front of my shop, smoking a cigarette and leaning against my door. As I walked up I took further notice of her legs in those boots. I wouldn't guess a stripper liked reading horror fiction from the ‘20s but I guess I've heard weirder things.
	“I left my purse.”
	“I know, come on in.”
	She sat cross-legged and I let her smoke inside. Those boots seemed to shape her calves perfectly. For the longest time, she just sat and smoked. She wouldn't take off her sunglasses. She didn't look in her purse at all when I handed it back to her. Still, I didn't have to be psychic to know that she knew I looked at her private shit.
	Her will overpowered mine, I talked first.
	“I didn't mean to pry...“
	“Sure you did.”
	“Yeah, well, anyway... What's this if you don't mind me asking?”
	I pulled the pendant from my pocket, holding it up so the stylized star design could catch and shimmer off the light.
	“You don't know?”
	“Well, I guess my question is more along the lines of why you have it.”
	“Protection.”
	“Protection from what?”
	She took off her sunglasses. There were no shiners, but I could see that one iris differed from the other blue to green.
	“It offsets some people. My eyes, I mean.”
	“Oh?”
	“Yeah, some people say it's a mark. Special sight. Hypnotic.”
	“You should be in my business. You'd make a fortune.”
	“I'm not interested.”
	I gave the pendant back to her. She put it in her pocket.
	“Why don't you wear it around your neck?”
	“I can't”
	“Why not?”
	“It's complicated.”
	“I've got all weekend.”
	“I don't.”
	“What?”
	“Never mind. Will you do me a favor, Mr. Fright?”
	“That depends on what it is.”
	“Will you read my palm?”
	“Sure.”
	She offered her hand to me palm up and I took it in mine. I saw a group of people in a circle, I saw her in the middle all painted up with weird shit, I saw a dark house tucked away somewhere amidst trees that were dying. I let go hard. My heart raced and thumped in my chest.
	“What did you see?”
	“What?”
	“Do you have a car? Can you take me somewhere?”
	I guess her eyes worked their magic on me. I closed up shop early for the weekend and walked her to my piece of shit car in parking.
	“Where you wanna go?”
	“Your place.”
	Call me psychic. I saw us getting together. I let it happen.

	I touched her electric, she cooed in my ear. I laid her down and told her I was thirsty. She said she was hungry. I left her boots on. She didn't complain. When I found my way inside, I saw her life:
	Jessica J's born under a baaaad sign. She grows up quick, smart and bored, playing stupid for kicks. Her parents die too young, she rambles and ambles and does this and that across the years. Guys fight for her attention, she always plays coy. She lets her figure make money to live on and pass the time, looking always looking. She tries a relationship once. He hits her, he gets in an accident at work. No one thinks it's her fault that he dies, including her. She's protected. She's bored. She finds Jasper. Jasper's a punk that hangs out in park zoos. He has a way with people, especially Jess. She falls for him, finds all sort of new compulsions. Jasper seduces, Jasper indoctrinates. Jasper's on a mission, he has duties. He spiels endlessly on it. Jessica takes it all in, it seems logical enough to her. Jasper loves those eyes, says she's special. He says she's chosen. She says Whatever. Jasper lets his ideas drive him batty. Jessica watches him start believing what he's saying. Jasper forms a group, recruiting through the Internet with role playing games and obsessive lore. Somehow a plan forms. Jasper tells Jessica why she was born. She believes it because it feels right for once. She's scared by it, terrified. She plays along but secretly wants, needs to get out of it. She's too late. Jasper's started something she can't finish. Jessica goes looking for psychics. I fool her first.
	I saw it all, everything she'd ever done or known.  I didn't last long. I was a lousy lay. I got the feeling she didn't mind.
 

13. Nyarlathotep

	The rat-infested scarecrow stood in the basement of 21 Summerset Ln. and waited. The infernal chaosium communed with the abyss glimpsed before him. The portal peered open in a cold limitless eye. The thing's master beyond the lens grew hungry. It danced and gyrated in infinite space in a ring of gelatinous servitors, panpipes and flutes stabbing and brushing the hazy form of the great nuclear chaos as it pranced and leapt in idiotic splendor. It spewed forth servants from its great celestial maw. Alhazred greeted them in our place as they galloped through the doorway and collapsed on their own weight. The greasy slobbering things yelped and whined against the onslaught of smells and sounds in the unfinished laundry room. Growing pools of viscous liquid leaked from harsh red teats along their underbellies. Gleefully, the creatures rolled on their back and wiggled their tentacles into the air. The beasties were hungry, and they would soon feed. The Black Man felt his disciples growing near. The Coming was about to begin.
	The woman. The real one, not the fun he'd had earlier, was also on her way. She wasn't aware of it, yet also she was. Her fate was written on the stars the night she was born and has led her along unwavering to this point. She would come, and then his master would feast on her soul and seed her womb. The tall man looked up through the low basement ceiling, through the two stories of cobwebs and debris, and up at the stars which had once again stumbled into alignment.
 

14. Dave

	So Jack's the name is it? I must say it's nice to meet you. Now wake up or we won't have time to get to know each other.

	The world comes back to Jack slow and fuzzy. He sees shadows unblurring, he smells blood, he hears chomping and slurping. Jack snaps his head up. His cheek burns like acid. His head swims and a lump the size of Wisconsin throbs. He's tied to a chair in what looks like a bedroom. Used rubbers spot the grody carpet.
	Where's the sound coming from?
	The drapes are open, letting sunset light in through the broken glass and wooden boards. He sees the torn wallpaper, beer cans and bottles in the corner, and graffiti on the walls. “Metallica”/”Janice Robertson is a whore”/”I love my Mary Jane”.
	What's making that horrible sound?
	The chair is old, falling apart. Jack's handcuffed behind his back and his ankles are tied to the legs. He easily pivots the chair around.
	Dave Jergens, dead.
	A group of bloated yellow abominations huddle around his body like vultures. They each have a long tentacle that rips and tears with small hooks and feeds chunks into their drooling holes. Jack sees several rows of razor teeth shred a piece of Dave's midsection before disappearing down the beast's gullet. Their mouths look incapable of closing.
	Jack makes himself not scream. The critters have wrong dimensions; their little bony hooved legs should never be allowed on a fatty bag of skin like that. They sit all clumped and congealed with bumps and pustules. Little nub tails wagged furiously as they feasted. Their teeth chattered, their bellies sloshed, their tentacles slithered.
	Dave's face twitched. Thankfully, he's dead. Jack sees that it's just one of the things tugging at Dave's neck. Dave's face pulls down. A beast slithers its searching tentacle across Dave's face. It plunges into an eye socket and Dave hears a pop. That's when he screams.
	One of the swallowing mongrels snaps its sole eye toward him, pink and inquisitive. It starts rolling its way toward Jack, flapping its worthless legs on the floor as its bloated form somehow slides forward slowly.
	Jack hops backward in the chair which creaks and groans each time he lands. He makes it up against the wall. Now two things are curious. Another couple stay on Dave, rooting their tentacles around in his guts and pulling them up like some bloody crackerjack prize. Jack grabs slats on the back of the chair and flexes. The wood bends but doesn't break. He pushes with his back and feels the chair wiggle. He kicks up with his feet and feels the legs loosen. The pink salivating piglets are closer now, catching the carpet in the small hooks of their tentacle protrusions. They reach out toward his groin.
	The thought of his dick going down one of those shark-toothed holes does it for him. He stands up hard, clenching the back slats. The chair snaps and splinters. Jack's wrists grind against his cuffs. His legs kick out and break the chair apart, swinging a leg still tied to his ankle wide. The stinking carrion feeders flinch back, their tentacles curling up to protect their eye. Jack doesn't bother to hesitate. He takes a step forward and punts one of the fat bloated things with all his force. It doesn't fly, it explodes. The sullied yellow skin tears easily and yellowish white foamy ichor erupts all over his shoe. The other one squeals and lashes out with its tentacle, hooking Jack's ankle. The pain is immediate. Jack feels the tiny hooks ridged along the tentacle take hold and what feels like thousands of miniscule suckers attach to his skin through his sock and pant leg. He immediately begins to bleed. Jack doesn't think. He whips around quickly trying to fling the thing off of him. It feels like a massive ball and chain as he kicks out again, flinging the squealing monstrous sack of guts into the air. It collides with a wall, grunting hoarse and timid. It lets go of Jack and lays against the sideboard whimpering and whining. Jack can see its eye looking up at him with hurt sadness and fear. A spreading pool of curdled yellow stink seeps into the carpet. The thing's harmless now, and the other two have left Dave and made their way out of the room. Jack nudges it with his crusted shoe, rolling it over. The thing's belly is split in a long gash where it hit the wall, leaking all of itself out in retched spasms.
	Now he hears movement. The remaining pseudopods squeal like pigs outside the bedroom. Jack sits down beside the ex-cop and starts to root through his pockets. He feels the soft wet of his exposed insides, he feels what could be a leather belt, he feels a gun. Jack shifts up to Dave's jacket and roots through the pockets. Voices talk downstairs, getting louder. Other things too, massive footsteps felt through the floor, invisible fingers trying to open up his head. Jack shuts them all out and concentrates on his fingers.
	The key slips in his bloody fingers. He thinks for a moment that it's fallen into his guts somewhere, that he'd have to feel around in there just like those things. Then he finds it again and slowly unlocks his cuffs. He takes Dave's gun from its holster, checks the rounds, and peers out the bedroom door to the upstairs hallway. Jack doesn't think about what he just saw. Jack doesn't think about what he just did. Jack has this idea that if he did stop and think, he might not bother to get himself started again. Jack thinks that maybe if he looked back and really studied the deflated carcasses of those things behind him, he'll never leave this house. Part of him wants to stop, to just sit there and start drooling until someone from downstairs or whatever massive enormity that stalks nearby finds him and puts an end to all of this.

	No. Just get out of here. Go now and think about it later. That's what psychoanalysis is for.
 

15. Nathaniel

	“It makes a certain level of sense, doesn't it?”
	“What does?”
	“That they saw what they wrote.”
	“Are we back to this now?”
	“We never left it.”
	“So you believe in that pendant huh, that it protects you.”
	“I have to.”
	“Why?”
	“What else do I have?”
	We laid out and talked forever. Our time together spent me completely. I remember not being able to feel my toes afterward. I suppose I'm lucky that she had so much to tell because I couldn't have moved if I wanted to. Of course I already knew it all, but it was nice to hear her speak.
	“Something bad is happening.”
	“Ouch. Was I that horrible?”
	“You know I'm not talking about that.”
	“Yeah, I know.”
	“They need me to be there soon. At that house.”
	“Don't go. Stay here with me.”
	“I have to go. I feel it.”
	Her body was tense even after I did my duty. I could feel the anxiety radiating from her. Our minor diversion did nothing to abate it. I absently traced the birthmark on her lower abdomen with my finger as she spoke. It looked remarkably like a seven-point star.
	“They're almost ready.”
	“Where is it you have to go?”
	“This house a little ways from here.”
	“Why that house?”
	“It's a gateway.”
	“How do you know?”
	“Jasper told me about it. A kid named Nathaniel McCaleb went missing there once.”
	“You mean he was kidnapped out of his own house?”
	“No. I guess the McCalebs had five or six children. The parents were questioned afterward but both swore that they didn't know where Nathaniel was. His body was never found.”
	“Jesus. What happened?”
	“Don't you know already?”
	“Now that I've slept with you, I feel we can drop the whole psychic routine, OK?”
	“They said he went down to the basement to play with some toys. An hour later, the mom called down and didn't get an answer. She went down and the basement was empty.”
	“Did the kid sneak out or something?”
	“He was only 8 and there were no basement windows or anything. Only one way out.”
	“So this guy, Jasper. He thinks that means something?”
	“Yes. He's insane.”
	She brushed my hand away from her and looked at me.
	“I have to go.”
	“Why?”
	“I can't stay away”
	“I don't get it.”
	“Will you help me, Patrick?”
	“How?”
	“Something's opened and I don't know how to close it”
	“Like I do?”
	She straddled me then, showing me her body one last time, looking down on me.
	“See this?”
	“Yeah, your birthmark.”
	“It's why I have to go. I'm marked.”
	“Marked at birth, huh.”
	“You know it.”
	
	We dressed quickly. She asked me to fasten the pendant around her neck. I felt fear and anxiety beneath her soft skin. We were headed for trouble, or at least she thought so. After giving me the address, 21 Summerset Ln., she kept talking. She spieled Lovecraftian lore, talking about Great Old Ones and Outer Gods and all that nonsense. I'd like to tell you that I believed every word of it and primed myself for what we'd find in that house. Instead, I started wondering about Jessica J's mental state. So she had a blob birthmark that looked a bit like a star. So what? Mine looks like Elvis in the right lighting. You don't have to be psychic to know what's real and what's make-believe.
	Then she held my hand and I followed her.
 

16. Jonathan

	The street felt wrong when Jonathan Lisch pulled into his driveway. It felt overcast even though he could only spot two or three puffy clouds in the sky. He remembered 7th grade, how Mr. Barber had them make viewers so they could go out and watch the solar eclipse. Instead of looking up at the dark fiery circle in the sky, Jonathan spent his time looking everywhere else. It was like the world was wearing sunglasses, tinting everything into an eerie visual style that every movie with a day-for-night shot would remind him of. Bright, but not. Daylight, but not. The afternoon of October 31st was also like that for him. His neighborhood looked deserted. Cars were in the driveway but something told him it was a ghost town. The vein's dried up, sonny. We're a movin' to Tombstone. Especially the old McCaleb place across the street. Jonathan had known the McCalebs and their tribe of children before they moved away. They were nice enough people; Jonathan didn't understand why the house never sold after they moved out.
	It looked like shit now, that's for sure. In this light, it even looked like the trees were dying. The house, normally shadowy even on the brightest day, blurred and darkened whenever he tried to look directly at it. Strange.
	Jonathan walked inside his home. He'd taken off early today to beat the traffic and, yeah, because he was so fed up with his boss' crap that if he stayed till five he might take a lesson from ol' Ken Anderson over there and kill a few people himself. Nothing like a workplace massacre to end the week. Happy Halloween, assholes! Of course there were no messages on his answering machine. There were no messages because Jonathan had no life. He spent all his time at work and all his money on alimony and child payments and whatever else that bitch ex-wife of his could milk out of him.
	Jonathan hit the fridge and grabbed a cold one. He popped the cap and walked into the den, which was where he saw the creature walking through his wall. It was vaguely humanoid, walking on two legs with long loping arms that bent in several places, but also insectoid in features. Its face had large protruding mandibles that click-clacked when it spotted him, large glassy black eyes which extended up over its head to the back, and what looked like plate armor extending over his sloping lean abdomen. It hunched over quickly, as if in recoil, and stared at Jonathan with vacuous dead black eyes. He saw that the form's leg still phased through his den wall.
	Jonathan dropped the beer and started backward for the door. The solidifying thing click-clacked his jaws open and shut again, growing darker as he haunched into the room and crept on the floor in silent smooth movement. Jonathan eased through the doorway to the living room where the tinted sunlight tried to shine through large windows. It dug its three blunt segmented claw/fingers into Jonathan's carpet and easily ground through the wood underneath. It was seething now, ratcheting itself up in jerky movements and emitting a high-pitched siren-drone as it click-clacked and moved with fluid momentum. Jonathan thought it looked like a snake getting ready to...
	Jonathan quickly turned and ran full-tilt toward the door. He heard a hounding wail behind him and felt pincers bite into his shoulders, pulling him up and back. Jonathan flew through the air back into the den and landed hard against his entertainment center. DVDs fell and picture-frames shattered around him. Rivulets of fire coursed into his body from the wounds on each shoulder. A cold realization that whatever it was had poisoned him with its alien touch vaguely knocked around inside him. The shiny green-black figure crouched in the doorway, blocking his exit and raising its massive arms above its sloped muted head. The mandibles click-clacked opened and he could see a tiny hose that must be his mouth pucker and drool. Its eyes, what Jonathan first took for matte black, now glowed a faint violet. He tried to slide back against the wall but his arms were quickly losing their feeling. Somewhere in the most logical corner of his mind, Jonathan knew that as soon as the poison reached his heart, he was done for. He prayed it would happen before this thing started in on him. He pushed with his legs and huddled back against the wall, watching the creature, now half-translucent again, shimmering between there and not, angling between this place and others, watch and study him. Fear grasped him then. The thing was playing with him just as he'd toyed with ants when he was younger before decapitating them with a bottle cap. This would not end well.
	Another pair of hardened chitin arms came through the walls and grasped him. He could feel the hard exoskeleton soften then dissipate as it phased out and the arms slid into him. The first creature bared open its jaws and let loose another hounding wail as the second one started to materialize in front of him. The thing's arms pulled back long enough to solidify then thrust into his belly with immense power. The thing picked him up and, with an easy jerking motion, lopped Jonathan in half. The first quickly crawled over and worked on his legs while Jonathan saw the second one close in on his face. It smelled faintly of grease, Jonathan couldn't move his arms. The shambler's face got up close. Jonathan noted that it didn't breathe. He looked into the vast expanse of the shifter's eyes and saw infinity. Then those click-clack mandibles opened and a spray of liquid coated his face. His vision flared like overexposed film as the acid melted him away. The last thing to go was his ears, which filled his head with violent sucking sounds as the monster started to feed.
 

17. Lindsay

	Dave doesn't have any spare clips. 19 shots: make them count.
	Jack peers into the hall and sees stairs at the other end. The hall's filthy with urine stains, debris, and rat turds. Those massive footsteps come from the room next door. The door's closed. Jack doesn't think it matters; if it wants out, some measly piece of warped wood won't stop it. Jack hears it breathing, heavy grunting breaths as it stomps around. Jack walks out slow and silent. He reaches the door and half-expects it to tear apart. Jack imagines some giant scaly beast tearing through the wood right in front of him, scoping him for its next meal. It doesn't though. There's a symbol written in the center of it: a warped star with an eye in the middle. The points of the star run somewhat as the symbol was clearly scrawled in blood. Call it gore graffito.
	Jack reaches the stairs. He hears voices downstairs, some quiet others loud. He picks out Jasper's easily. It's telling everyone to hurry up and get downstairs. Footsteps patter. Jack creeps down, gun drawn and ready for revenge: “No one saps me, assholes.”
	The foyer's empty. The house oozes wrong and cries for Mr. Clean. All the broken windows let the breeze through, he glimpses police tape outside in the darkening dusk. Jack sees some ritual shit painted on the floor. He knows where he is.
	Gun first, Jack sweeps the ground floor. He finds rats in the kitchen, he finds blood in the dining room, he finds Lindsay in the living room.
	Lindsay's kneeling in front of the fireplace, she doesn't see him. She's all wrapped up in something. Jack approaches and hears nonsense: “G'lkkien eered Nyarlathotep”
	Jack peers over her shoulder and sees something on fire in front of her. More drivel: “as'un tge a-ymir”
	The girl's head nods. He can see the crucifix tattoo on her neck pulsing. She's spewing out babble: “n'gai Nyarlathotep qll'ibi tomr u xix”
	Jack pushes the barrel of his gun to the back of her head: “Outside. Now.”
	Lindsay shrieks: “Ia! Ia! tsurgith ftagn!”
	She's on her feet instantly, Jack's thrown backward and lands on his ass. Lindsay's arms raise and burst in running seams of blood. Slick black musculature bulges out from her loosened torn skin, her fingers slide from their fleshy sheaths with long talon nails. She turns around and Jack sees her face. Inside the rings of black eyeliner are scared eyes, terrified eyes that just now realize that all this shit is REAL
	Lindsay goes to scream. Her mouth stretches out to horrendous proportions. Her high pitch wail chokes up, another set of teeth start sliding up from her throat. Jack fires before he aims: 18, 17, 16. The shots go wide, pitching on ruined fireplace stone and drilling into rotting drywall. A black hound's maw pushes Lindsay's teeth away in cracking splinters. A long slender tongue lolls out from giant fanged jaws and leaks slick drool Lindsay's skin crawls underneath, bubbling and stretching. Her feet split open; shiny black claws burst out on the natty carpet.
	Jack fires again: 15, 14, 13, 12. They burrow into the thing's mouth and Lindsay's head and her neck and the fireplace behind her. Her legs start ripping now like The Hulk's pants when he transforms, uncovering the sleek dark thing underneath.
	In her heart, Jack! Quick while you can still kill it! In her heart!
	Jack fires 11, 10, 9, 8, 7 into Lindsay's chest. The elongated hellsteed grin screams open, forcing Lindsay's emptied face down around its neck. Thick freshets of black-red blood sputter and shoot from the new holes in its chest. It slobbers and bleeds hot all over Jack. Its roar strangles to a whimper and the thing collapses on top of him dead.
	Sounds coming from downstairs, they heard the screams. Jack scrambles out from underneath the stinking demon with the Lindsay Halloween costume and careens back to the foyer. He makes for the basement door. The front door bangs open. Jack turns and shoots wild. Jack hits someone in the doorway. Fuck, Jack shoots ME.
 

18. Azathoth

	You don't have to be psychic to know that getting shot in the shoulder really fucking hurts. I went down like a little girl, screaming out every swear word I knew. Jessica put her hands up and yelled to stop. Jack was a mess I tell you, blood all over his shirt and face, yellow crust coating one foot and leg, his hair messed up and sticky with who knows what. Of course he also looked like the world's biggest asshole at the time, but that's probably because I still felt his bullet burning inside my body.
	I sat down in the doorway and Jack asked us who we were. Jessica told him to get out of there but then Jasper appeared across the room. Two acolytes bunched around him holding bats and table-leg clubs. He held them back.
	“Jessica. You're nearly late. And who are your friends?”
	“I'm not doing what you want me to do.”
	“We both know that you have no choice.”
	Jessica tensed then released. She took my hand and pulled me up on her shoulder. I heard her scream TOUCH JASPER, FIND THE WORDS at me but no one else seemed to notice. Jack pocketed his gun on the sly and took my good arm around his shoulders. Jessica swallowed dry and stepped forward.
	“We're going downstairs”
	Jasper and company (their names were Sean and Dodge but they're not all that important or interesting. How they ended up in that room on that day is perhaps another story for another day), stood back and led us downstairs.
	The laundry room wasn't a laundry room anymore. It had transformed itself into a seething jungle of alien life leaking out from the corner of the room. Several more gastric pseudopods rolled and lactated their puss-filled whitish fluid on the floor, their tentacles curling and writhing in the air. Their pink eyes sang with joy. It was the music; dissonant flutes and panpipes scuttled and fired from every angle of the room, attacking my ears and clouding me with urges to leap into that black hole and see whatever there was on the other side. Pools of vomit stewed on the floor. I guess the music affected everyone.
	The lightbulbs were all burned out but there were a shitload of candles lit everywhere. I guess séances always need candles for some reason. I knew this better than anyone. After all, you can't expect to commune with the mysterious spirits from beyond and attract them to your world with a lamp from Ikea can you? There were also a few books in the corner. Most of them were similar to what Danny showed me back in Brainstorm Books, but one reached up and slapped my attention silly: bound in ancient grey flesh, the cover of the grimoire read De Vermiis Mysteriis in cracked flaking black ink. The tome looked antique in every sense of the word; even the locket that held the covers together had long ago rusted and fallen apart. Only two golden brown nubs marked its onetime presence. Jack dropped me in the corner; Jasper's pals took their places. Jessica stood defiant in front of them. Jack eyed the little fat monsters in palpable rage. 
	So there we were, the six of us plus a few other little critters, all hunkered around an open doorway to nowhere, adrift in maddening song and, in my case, bleeding profusely from a bullet wound. Jasper's buddies kneeled in a semicircle toward the corner and started chanting. Jasper pulled a cruel blade filled with jigs and jags. He looked at me and Jack.
	“You two will be witness to this. Keep your eyes open and don't move if you want to live through the night.”
	I felt Jack click: I saw him killing all three with perfect double taps from his Glock. I gripped his arm and thought JASPER LAST. The black blood that caked his face made the whites of his eyes stand out spooky and crazed. 
	Jasper turned around and knelt next to his fellow worshipers. They all joined in unison above the constant tilting sound of the flutes. Jessica appeared in front of us nude, facing the dark corner with arms spread open and fists clenched. A wild cacophony grew as the undulating pseudopods squealed and harsh whispering voices swirled around all of us, bouncing off the walls at wild angles. The door slammed shut, sealing us in, and I felt the concrete floor start to vibrate. From the missing dimension came an unspeakable groan of madness and girth. It's the kind of sound you want to cut your ears off to keep away from; the kind you fear just hearing might drive you insane. I could see nothing from the gateway at all but felt cosmic winds against my cheek, undercut with millions of voices whispering unintelligible tongue. The candles didn't flicker; there were no fireworks, no explosions. I felt my skin tingle as if every cell felt an immense presence nearby. And then it spoke to me.
	Imagine the very center of everything chaotic and inhumane, a great swirling mass twisted and contorted over galaxies and millennia. Imagine its gaseous spirit bubbling and frolicking in the wild ether of nowhere, its magnificent force spreading ripples of effect throughout existence. Imagine the brain of such an entity, driven to babble with time and insanity, a great Idiot God that holds kingdom over all that ever dip away from logic and stability. Behold Azathoth, the boundless Daemon Sultan. It called to me in its archaic tongue toward that cyclopean void.
	I'd like to tell you that I was strong, that I denied the Idiot God his whim. Instead, I stood and started toward the great blackness that spread from that mossy iris in the corner of the laundry room in 21 Summerset Ln.

	A gigantic tentacle had come through. To think of the size of that thing, ridged with barnacled suckers, steeped in jagged daggers, barbarous spikes formed at its tip, lashing around the room amongst us. That I could've actually touched such a thing with my flesh and blood hand defies my thought even today. Yet I was walking toward it in stupor, hypnotized by the Outer God's infinite tongue. It was then that I felt Jessica hot against me, my hand in hers. How she burned. My senses returned to me. The tentacle jerked and smacked into her, coating the side of her body in mucous. As it curled around her, enveloping her completely, she yelled.
	“Say the words! Say them clear!”
	Her voice triggered Jack and I both. He drew his gun and, just as I had seen, shot in tight, controlled bursts. I lunged out over Jasper. His awe of Azathoth's very tip of its unimaginable girth broke and he tried to dodge and stab me. I caught his ankle and flooded into his brain. I found all sorts of private shit. Jasper's buddies fell slack with two chest-shots each. I heard Jack's last two bullets fire and immediately felt them in my chest. He hadn't missed though. I felt them enter Jasper in quick gouts and rumble and ricochet around inside him. He faded fast. Jessica was gone. The great green/yellow appendage had snapped back into the nothingness and come back empty-handed. Azathoth had his bride.
	I frantically grabbed at Jasper's brains, searching for what Jessica told me to. He must know it, even as insane as he was to summon forth such a creature. No one opened a door without knowing... And there it was. I opened my eyes and belted out the words as they came to me. It was nothing I could understand. In fact, I couldn't believe I was even pronouncing the stuff. It worked though. The hole began to shrink down, catching the enormous tentacle and holding it fast. The gigantic thing thrashed and flipped, and pounded the wall next to the hole. I heard the ageless creation cry quickly as if he'd just stubbed a toe. The words finished pouring from my mouth and the iris closed. The great tip of one of Azathoth's many tentacles lay twitching and shrinking next to Jasper's body. It was over, the door was closed.

	Severed from its host, the tentacle shrunk to the tiniest size. Nowadays it looks like a withered branch. We kept it of course. We also burned the house to embers. That week went down in the books for our local Police Department, you can be sure. Jack was suspended indefinitely pending further shrink prognoses. I told him to shut up about the whole thing but he wouldn't listen. Eventually, he left the force completely. My shoulder still hurts sometimes but I don't mind it much.
	How did I wake up from the hypnosis you ask? It was the Elder Sign. Jessica palmed it when she undressed so Azathoth came after me instead. I'd like to tell you that she loved me and sacrificed herself so I wouldn't have to endure an eternity getting caught in the teeth of chaos itself. Instead, I'm pretty sure she gave me the pendant because she knew Jasper would never close the gate and I was the only person who could find the words to do it. I guess she didn't have to be psychic to know that if the door remained open, all sorts of beasties would come through and start causing trouble.
	They've got a new house on 21 Summerset Ln. now. It's bright and cheerful and fits the rest of the block just fine. One night when they were building it, Jack and I snuck onto the site and scrawled the Elder Sign in the foundation's wet cement. Hey, can't be too safe now can we?
	Jack and I went into business together after that. Aside from making a dubious first impression, the guy's not half bad. He doesn't buy my psychic shtick but then again neither do I. Yeah, we had plenty more adventures, most even wilder than this one, but I suppose it's getting late and you have some trick or treating to do. Maybe next Halloween I'll share another tale for you. Oh I almost forgot! I passed out after speaking the closure spell that night, A comforting dreamless sleep hit me like a ton of bricks and I guess the little amount of blood that I had left kept me alive long enough. I woke up in a hospital bed a few days later. Jack however, had a little more to do that night.
 

19. Richard

	The tentacle drops and the flutes stop. Jack stands there with Dave's smoking piece. He knows it's empty but doesn't lower it. Not yet.
	I'm laid out on the floor passed out, the rest of them are laid out dead. Jack remembers to breathe. He surveys the scene: baaaaad vibe. Books in the corner, one looks familiar. Jack walks over and looks at the big old one. His cheek burns.
	Leaves rustle behind him. A twig snaps. Jack turns and sees the tallest fucking scarecrow ever looming large on top of him. Its arms vice around his neck. It picks him up, hold him real close. Jack sees burning orange bonfires glowing through the burlap sack that makes up its face. He hears him guttural low in his head: “You will pay! You will pay for that!”
	Branches snap, rats fall out of its shirt, dry leaves crunch. Jack sees light, Jack sees stars, Jack scopes tunnel vision. Alhazred's holding him up to the ceiling now, looking up at him as he crunches scratchy hay-infested hands over his throat. His cheek ignites. Jack passes out.

	Sleep now, Jack. I'll take the reigns on this one. “Alhazred Alhais. Ia! Ia! Nyarlathotep clagn! Nyarlathotep debaiis xix imiis cntah! Nyarlathotep Ia! Nyarlathotep chtah!”

	Jack falls to the floor in a slump. The empty husk of the scarecrow crumples and folds to the floor. Liberated rats scurry off into holes in the walls. Only one person's around to hear the Crawling Chaos' frustrated roar as some unseen wind blows him away from this place. Only one person's awake to enjoy the silent aftermath of the closing gate.

	I haven't had time to thank you, Jack. I thought I knew what hell was from some of the places I've been, but they were nothing compared to so many years spent in service to that damnable tome. I think it's time we were introduced, Jack. The name's Richard. Richard Upton Pickman.

END.