Editorial Note: this was entered in the first ever Wicked Writing contest hosted by
and judged by . I added a few words and have posted the result here. If you’re not keen on Lovecraftian fiction, how about the first episode in my latest superhero serial?Cool beans? Proceed, if you dare…
Arthur had reached the final words of the ritual. He risked a quick glance back over his shoulder. There they stood, his devoted followers, gathered on the lonely shore of this northern coastline, chanting the words not one of them really understood. An abandoned lighthouse rose just behind them and to their left, its paint worn thin, its lantern long since gone dark. Arthur didn’t mind: a whopping great big spotlight sweeping in right in the middle of their ritual would’ve put a considerable damper on things. All the same, he’d checked it an hour before just to make sure. It was dark and deserted, just as he’d hoped. At least that would go well. He wasn’t entirely sure the ritual would work; he’d never tried it in full before. It had to work, hadn’t it? The books couldn’t be all wrong, could they?
He was terribly afraid it wouldn’t and he’d be embarrassed in front of the gathering, such as it was. In the books he’d read the followers were all thoroughly devoted disciples clad in suitably sinister robes and looking very impressive; the ones he’d assembled were somewhat less so. Near the back, for example, was Mr. Archibald Barnes in tweed, laboring over the pronunciation of the cryptic words he’d copied over again on a sheet of broad-lined notebook paper. He had only gotten involved because he was sure there was some sort of deep mystery behind all this, and he would be darned if he couldn’t “figger it out jes’ like m’ crossword what I do on Sundy,” Nearby Mr. Barnes stood Arabella Lockwell in her late-summer finery, bless her, putting overmuch emphasis on the wrong places. Well, perhaps bless her wasn’t the right phrase.
Miss Lockwell fancied the whole thing a great game, a delightful little amusement. She’d actually laughed when he’d come by to ask her specially. “Oh yes, you dear man, of course I’ll come,” she’d said, “It sounds deliciously spooky! Won’t it be fun!” When she’d said goodbye and the door closed, he’d heard a faint sound of a telephone dial turning, followed by more laughter. That accounted for the presence of several other ladies in the crowd, Miss Lockwell’s friends no doubt, gathered to join in the amusement.
Well, soon she would see. They would all see. Oh, how they would see.
The wind began to pick up. The sea churned restlessly. Arthur motioned for everyone to keep going. Mr. Barnes squinted up at him, and then at the paper. “Are y’ sure about this?” he said.
“Of course he is!” Miss Lockwell said, stifling a giggle. “Now, we must all join hands and chant, and then, oh, I forget the thingummy’s name, but whatever-it-is will bubble up and float about and we’ll all be just terrified, won’t we, Arthur dear?” She laid an especially nasty sort of twist on dear.
“Just say the words,” murmured Arthur, “Just say the words and then I’ll be remembered and everyone will know-”
Then they were all interrupted as the sea split apart and a monstrous green mass rose up, aswarm with tentacles and eyes in all the wrong places. Everyone on the shoreline fell to their knees in terror, even Arthur. The whatever-it-was in the sea rose to its full height, staring down upon them. Words came, sonorous and impossibly loud, thundering against their ears until their heads rang and the blood came.
The time is not right. The stars are not ready.
“But-” Arthur somehow mustered the strength to gasp. “I summoned you, I did the ritual as you asked!”
I did not ask you.
Arthur could feel his sanity beginning to go. In desperation he tried a final plea for mercy. “But you don’t understand, I read all the books! I know the words! I-i-in his h-house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming! Cthulhu fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn!”
I was waiting. Now you will wait with me.
Suddenly it reached towards Arthur and he was swept up and it was as if the universe folded around him and all was dark and even shapes and math were wrong and he’d always been good at math and now it wasn’t and he wasn’t and he didn’t mean and then and then-
Neither Archibald Barnes, nor Arabella Lockwood, nor anyone else in the little gathering ever spoke of that night. They tried to forget it, just as they tried to forget Arthur. They particularly avoided the lonely stretch of sand by the shore, where a long ugly gash in the dirt remained. When a week later the lighthouse inexplicably collapsed into ruins and then was swept away in a freak storm, no one said anything about it. They never talked of it, or of the beach, or even to each other, ever again. One by one they moved away from the town and scattered across the country, living their lives as far away from what they refused to acknowledge as truth as they could.
In their dreams, however, they remembered. In those few last moments lying alone on their separate beds in their separate houses staring up at their separate ceilings waiting for sleep to come, they remembered. And if in those moments they happened to listen very hard, they could just hear Arthur’s faintly distant wails. “Cthulhu fhtagn! Chtulhu fhtagn…”
Nice! Bite sized and delicious like Arthur. Also gold stars for using “aswarm”. I would like to employ this word more often.