literature

Shamblers in Darkness (Cthulhu Mythos) (Pt1)

Deviation Actions

SpikeValance's avatar
By
Published:
846 Views

Literature Text

Shamblers in Darkness

A Cthulhu Mythos short story by Spike Valance


***

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Howard Phillips Lovecraft


Strange to say in the Digital Era we all live in, but I like better committing to this copybook the memory and testimony of the weird events happened in the Northern Methodist Hospital and its surroundings during a horrible night I’d better have forgotten. Up to date Police is uncertain about the inquiries and the press has done everything to embroider something over them but no update or sheer leaking of private information has allowed it to write much about, especially accounting for the strange findings in the crime scene and the uncanny circumstances of the accident.

Yet almost everyone among officers and reporters have eventually forsaken any attempt of investigation resigning to label the thing as one of the manifold cold cases crowding the filing cabinets of the Police departments in any corner of the USA, due to the dearth or utter lack of proofs or evidences to properly reconstruct the whole vicissitude or at least part of it. Bloggers and freelance reporters only have gone on interesting in the case for a while, perhaps even indulging their fancies in foreshadowing dark plots and frailly feasible conjectures in the diffuse halo of anonymity and irresponsibility, protected by the cover of hearsay the Net often provides its users. However wild and daring these people’s surmises may sound, I can claim that none of the statements I’ve read or browsed so far has either barely skimmed the crude facts or only vaguely figured out the events behind them; even now I’m not sure whether this is a fine or worrying thing.

By the way I can’t be silent about what’s happened and after a long indecision I’ve willed, almost forced myself to collect memories and write my own version of the facts, likely the most reliable though subjective, perhaps. Once compiled, these pages shall be locked inside a safety deposit box somewhere; I’ll give the key to a person I trust and really hope to be not tingled by the idea to show or sell anyone its content, neither to make up a plot for a publishing phenomenon or a Hollywood blockbuster. As far as I’m concerned I don’t care about the venal facet of the thing – supposing that it has really got one and I don’t think so – the matter is that I’m seriously worried about the looming dark and hardly explainable side effects of the vicissitude, which might likely degenerate into a disaster or an inexorable bane for the all of us, if none is warned by time.

Put the thing this way it could sound like an appalling but eventually silly tall story or worse an uselessly alarming hoax. However unbelievable or doubtful my words may seem, I claim and swear that everything I’m reporting in these sheets, from the characters to the events, from the dialogues to the actions, is real and not the figment of a stolid or sick imagination. I also hereby warn everyone reading these pages about the uncanny first signs of what already happened to me and the persons witnessing the event, because it might soon repeat here or worse elsewhere and people could be unprepared to the worst if not informed in time. Mayn’t these words turn out an ill omen at last.

This told I proceed with my own statement starting with fictional name and surname I’m obliged to provide the reader the circumstances and everything considered. Doctor Daniel Ellington, former endocrinologist at Northern Methodist Hospital, somewhere in Texas; I intentionally omit or counterfeit actual name of the facility too since I couldn’t defend myself from the libel suits the events reported would earn me and in spite of all it’s still an excellent health care center and it’s not my intention to cast further shadows over it, although sadly it has been part of the misdeed’s scene. I’m defining myself former because I’ve decided to resign after the accident and especially after I’ve realized how much weak, frail and often misleading are what we ingenuously dub as unconfutable scientific truths and how few we actually know about the way the lifeforms, us humans too, interact with reality and respond its stimuli, even the least expected or expectable ones.

Everything has begun in a tepid night of early May. 11:30 PM, I still remember the time since I was working the night shift in my ward and by the way I cannot certainly forget it. Although the activity in hospital could rarely be defined "calm", I must admit that my routine hadn’t be that hectic or busy, on the contrary it’s been eerily almost relaxed, involved in usual monitoring of my own patients and sending fluid and tissue samples to labs. Up to that night, of course.

Having not further tasks I took a break sitting on the couch in the waiting room for a while. Soon after I sat the beeping sound of the elevator told me of someone incoming and as the doors opened I saw my co-worker Clarence approaching, likely back from the morgue in sublevel 2. Together we had attended the university and we were long-time friends making up a nice duo; the chaps used to dub us “salt and pepper” being me and him namely a Caucasian white from San Antonio and an Afro-American from Alrington. His highly deductive and sharp intelligence had allowed him to specialize in forensic medicine achieving the best records ever and it wasn’t uncommon to see him going backward and forward between the hospital and the police departments which often argued over each other to get his precious professional advices.

I’ve always reckoned him a resolute and strong-willed man, got used and somehow resilient to the toils and stresses the medical profession often subjects the all of us. Therefore I was a little surprised at noticing a strange sensation of anguish in his eyes, as lifeless and greyish as stones in an old weathered mosaic. Something had patently set him upset and I had even the absurd impression that his own face too, which I knew to be darker and glossier than ebony, looked discoloured somehow, like scarred by a sudden violent shock.

Clarence too noticed me and hinted a greeting with a brisk waving of the right hand. I gestured to him to sit down by my side and asked what had happened since he looked like having seen the Grim Reaper straight into the eyes.

“Something worse” he dully replied me with a glance half anguished half wild, the hairs of neck and arms standing on end for fright.

“You’re never going to believe what I’ve come across tonight.”

“Start telling and I’ll tell you…” I said but he hesitated nervously rubbing his hands to warm them up despite the almost summer temperatures.

“I oughtn’t have accepted but what’s done is done…” Clarence continued, whatever he was meaning.

“Come on…”

He took a deep breath exhaling an anguish-laden sigh.

“Have you heard of the murder in 73rd Avenue this early morning?” he eventually asked me.

“Something…” I answered “someone found dead in a flat in the outskirts. Man or woman?”

“Man, I believe…” he cryptically said.

“Why I believe?”

“It was a young man, Caucasian, cinder blond, 5.6 feet tall” my co-worker went on “Death by choking, the officers infer. The house was upside down but it seems not a gangland showdown or a robbery gone awry, nothing has been stolen indeed or so it seems. No parents or relatives, the ex-girlfriend only has requested the autopsy.”

“I guess who’s got the ungrateful task…” I glossed slyly.

“Yeah, indeed” he confirmed pointing to himself with a sigh “I could confirm the asphyxiation only but not the causes, at least so far. Though…”

“What?”

“There was something anomalous” he said shaking his head “way too much anomalous, starting with the crime scene…”

“Hey, don’t keep me hanging, Inspector Tibbs!” I ironically protested, Clarence just smiled faintly.

“So was I there during the on-the-spot investigation” he continued “no sign of burglary, no fingerprints but the victim’s ones and the all of the neighbours agree that the young man was alone before dying and none had come him around in the last 24 - 48 hours; on the other hand many of the tenants swore to have heard him screaming, someone said crying or pleading someone the way a junkie in withdrawal symptoms could, followed by a loud booming sound like that of a crashing bolt.”

“A gas leak? A microwave oven exploded?”

“Nothing like that” said Clarence “or better, nothing at all.”

“Maybe a huge firecracker, what’s so weird?” I asked. My co-worker took a pause and another deep breath.

“The corpse was sitting on a chair” he continued “the living room as shattered as after the Katrina Hurricane. Damp mucous mottles somewhere on the walls, a scratched sofa and all along the hallway where deep bumps and scratching furrows hollowed the floor, like deformed by something very huge and heavy… I don’t know if an elephant or a mastodon could do as much in a flat, supposing that any pachyderm could enter a building unnoticed.”

“Someone could had thrown a complete set of anvils from the roof like in toons” I said trying to make it less dramatic, but Clarence wasn’t really in the mood.

“Well, it’s for the forensic department to inquire and investigate about this weirdness, isn’t it?” I added shrugging the shoulders.

“It’s not that or, well...” Clarence replied “the body was unnaturally stretched and coiled and despite the bluish mottles staining the tips of the nails no trace of cyanide, strychnine or other venoms has been detected. The weirdest thing has come out with the autopsy.”

“Bugs in the guts?” I said with a sly ironic smile but I realized that my clue had instead involuntarily made my friend even more upset. I saw him startling and shivering and then briskly standing up with a snap and heading for the coffee machine. I followed him apologizing myself, because it wasn’t my intention to harass or tease him; experiences in morgue may often be really unsettling.

However nonchalant he tried to be, Clarence was clearly in strong apprehension and only after a wealthy dose of hot coffee in view of the night shift he seemed to calm down enough to loosen his tension and share with me his own perplexities.

“Seriously, man, what have you found so disconcerting?”

“Rather what I have not found” he spelt in enigmatic tone, nervously rolling the warm plastic mug between his hands.

To be continued
Shamblers in Darkness (Part 1) (Cthulhu Mythos) Next

Error is only human, but to persist in it, is diabolical:devilish:

Another attempt to an original Cthulhu Mythos written short story… with a smell of gauzes and formalin too. 

Credits for preview image to :icontheoracledragon:
© 2016 - 2024 SpikeValance
Comments3
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
lordhadrian's avatar
Exciting and intense :)