That is how I ended up here, at Stormy Haven, the very least of places at which I thought I would find myself. The first few weeks were confusing, for I had conflicting memories. My mind told me that the creature I had been studying had not only won a battle of the mind, but had abducted me physically from my world to join the ranks of the long lost, the long dead that made up its world.
Yet, the doctor made it all sound so simple. They had found me lying on the parking lot of my building, screaming and trying to claw imaginary things from my body. A neighbor had called the police. One thing led to another, and I had ended up here, a psychiatrist analyzing me, prying into my thoughts.
I had immersed myself too deeply into a fictitious world that had appeared repeatedly in the works of one writer. Once it began invading my dreams, it invaded my conscious world, for it was all I thought about, all I saw. I had been living a lie willingly, for this was what I had wanted. I wanted to see what no others had, and lived to tell about it. I was so obsessed, that my reality meshed with another, chaotic reality. It would take time to heal; the doctor told me all this during the many quiet sessions in his office on the first floor.
I had become disassociated with reality because of the fiction of a long-dead man. The doctor would open the blinds and let in the sunlight, allowing a view of the lawns and flower gardens at the front of the building. He wanted me to see the real world for what it was – what it was before my mind had decided to make changes.
I recall how, at first I had not been convinced. It had really happened. My behavior was erratic, and I would struggle with orderlies to free myself, to run and find the entrance to the cavern and show them.
That had been weeks ago.
I no longer saw anything out of the ordinary, and I calmed (of course, they fed me medications to help with that) myself, finally deciding to do a little writing. I told them that I wanted to write a sort of journal about my stay at Stormy Haven, and the doctor agreed, as long as I did not write about monsters, and H.P. Lovecraft, and a mythical race of beings called The Great Old Ones. They would monitor my work.
In the meantime, I was confined to my room. I was given everything I needed to write, and write I did. The doctor read everything I wrote, and became increasingly pleased with my subject matter. I wrote about some of the others who lived there, the employees, how lovely it was outside, and how I could not wait to be able to walk about in the sun again, enjoying the trees and birds and everything else surrounding me in the real world.
What they did not know, however, was this very chronicle I wrote. I kept it hidden under the mattress, and I became quite active in keeping my room spotless, affording the housekeeper on the third floor a welcomed break. I made my bed as if I were in the military. I kept all garbage in the wastebaskets, kept the sink and toilet as clean as humanly possible, and when the head nurse discovered what I had been doing, she was a little angry at the housekeeper as if she had not been doing her job. I explained to her that the woman still swept and mopped and clean up after me, but I preferred a tidy room.
I soon received a visit from my doctor, who had actually been pleased, and looked upon it as progress.
Regardless, I have to admit now, as is the purpose of these writings, that the entire time I was here, they were here, too. While they did not show themselves to me, I would occasionally catch the foul odor I was so familiar with – the odor that had emanated from the cavern of the ungodly things, the odor of Cthulhu. I knew from the start that there had to have been another entrance into their world somewhere nearby, but no one else seemed to notice a thing.
I oftentimes wondered about my sanity. Had I really gone insane, or was I simply aware of another dimension invisible to most – a dimension that would cause insanity, for Lovecraft had claimed that if man had knowledge of things outside of the reality we all took for granted, it would surely bring insanity. Insanity from this knowledge was imminent, for our minds, having lived only one reality were not ready to take on another reality, another dimension right in front of our eyes, yet invisible.
I knew it was there, for the veil had already been lifted from my mind, my eyes. It is why they did not wait forever to pay me another visit. After all, I was a part of their world now. My time of writing this chronicle was coming to an end.
On the thirty-fourth evening of my incarceration in this dreaded place, I sat at my table, pencil and paper in front of me, and waited – the stench had grown so strong that I knew they were coming for me, perhaps for the last time.
I saw the nurse peek through the small window in my door, and I smiled. As soon as the face vanished, I hurriedly stuffed these papers under my mattress and sat on the bed. The door buzzed and opened slightly, and then the nurse appeared, all prim and proper in her uniform, wearing her lovely smile (a smile she had at first worn as a tool to soothe me, but had eventually turned genuine).
She had a small, white paper med cup in one hand, and a clear plastic water cup in the other. She handed me the water cup, and I filled it halfway from the bathroom sink. I sat on the bed, and she handed me the med cup, remarking on how well I looked that evening, and how it was an absolutely lovely evening.
Always the small talk, but she had been a rather nice person. Had been.
When she approached the bed, the door silently closed behind her, and the lights dimmed. She glanced up at the fluorescents and merely shrugged. I swallowed my meds, and suddenly foulness filled the room – I was not surprised to see the large form materialize behind her, huge nine-toed feet on either side of her. I did not even flinch.
The spindly-legged spiders with their membranous bodies slid from under the door, and I was curious to see them ooze from large pore-like sores on the thing’s body. They crawled across the floor, while some scuttled up Cthulhu’s body
The thick tentacles wavered in the air above the back of her head, and she noticed my eyes switch direction. That was all it took for her to become…aware. Her eyes shifted to one side and she saw the tips of the tentacles swaying near her face. She opened her mouth to scream, but one of the appendages found its way into her mouth, slithering down her throat. Her eyes popped in terror as she gagged; and she gawked at me, at my calmness, at my indifference.
The tentacles spread to reveal the huge maw with its pointed teeth. It widened, and the nurse’s head disappeared into its mouth all the way to her neck. I heard the snap and crunch of bone as it bit down, and for a moment, I thought it would swallow her head whole. Blood coursed down her uniform. The spiders swarmed over her as it spit her head out onto the white tiled floor, some vanishing into her neck cavity. Her body collapsed into the blooming pool of blood next to her head. Her face still had the terror written on it as the spiders started consuming the skin from her countenance. Her white uniform, now stained crimson, bulged and undulated from the things within it, feeding on her human skin.
In my madness, I quickly snatched up my secret papers from under the mattress and rushed to my desk. I glanced over and saw the thick ends of the tentacles attached to where I presumed its face was, and a large eye opened, glaring at me. But it offered no threat to me – we were suddenly one, and I began to write amidst the moist sound akin to that of a million feeding insects.
I put pencil to paper, and as calmly as I could, recreated what happened in my room that evening. I knew this would be my last entry. Someone would end up finding this, and I only hoped it would be the right person’s hands.
The din slowly ended, and I calmly turned and saw that the beast was still watching me with that calm, merciless eye. The spider creatures seemed to be finished with their task – some scurried under the door (which made me wonder just what was happening in the hallway), while others crawled up the body of the beast and nearly folded into themselves as they forced themselves back into the sores on the beast’s body. The watchful eye stared at me.
A spider crawled from the mouth of the nurse’s skinless face and chose to squeeze under the door.
That was it then. Was this display for my benefit? I knew Cthulhu wanted my sanity, but he had already taken that. Surely he knew that. The eye was emotionless. Their existence was our madness.
I again wondered what was happening on the other side of the door. I had to finish my chronicle, and then I would see for myself. I bent over my papers and continued – when I looked back, it was gone. I heard harried voices as if in a dream, distant and echoing.
I laid down my pencil, and hid the chronicle under the mattress. As I made my way to the door, I tried to avoid the body, the skinless head, and the blood. I opened the door as the voices grew louder. I then saw what I knew had been there all along. On the other side of the door was the entrance to the cavern, its edges pulsing as if alive, beckoning to me and offering a choice.
I had no choice.
I entered the darkness and saw the silhouette of tentacles far ahead of me, against distant, smoky flames. The shapes of other abominations became apparent. A large crow flew by, calling out in the dim. It landed on my shoulder and pecked once at the side of my head. And then the panicked voices faded away…
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