WARNING! The following story is quite graphic. If you are sensitive to text depictions of violence, supernatural horror, and genocide, it may be prudent to skip this story. It was mid summer, but the season had lost its shape and form, smearing into a gray blur that seemed neither summer nor autumn nor spring, but an unnatural amalgamation of these. An oppressive gloom hung low over the city and its people like a fog, coupled with an uneasy dread without cause or reason. It was a sign of the times - Foreboding had gripped the hearts of the world, as if an instinct had awakened within us, sensing the arrival of some impending calamity; a doom that only some forgotten sixth-sense within us could detect, but our minds were as-yet ignorant. The feeling was disquieting. Nervousness, fear, apprehension, without discernable cause… The Fear teased weaker minds into madness, and stronger minds to despair. “It was the war,” many of us thought to ourselves. “It has gone on so long, with no end in sight. We spend the products of our industry and intellect and get nothing in-return but the mangled bodies of our children.” - but that was not the cause. The Fear came before the war. The paranoia that it had cultivated, the nerves it had frayed; the panic… one could even argue that it was The Fear that caused the war. With such feelings, paranoid imaginings manifest enemies everywhere, eyes watching from dark corners with leering malevolent intent.
I do not remember when the feeling began. Perhaps it came on gradually, building within us. Perhaps it came all at once, and we simply didn’t acknowledge it. No one spoke of it, but all felt it. It lurked in the wan faces and nervous glances, and the nights of unattainable slumber, where none dared face what horrors lie on the other side of consciousness - perhaps fearing never to return.
The Fear had been brooding for some time when that inexplicable summer descended… and that summer was when He arrived; the Stranger. Nobody knew from where he came, this one who calls himself Etheras Dela Fay, Ancient Blood of the Pharaohs. It is said that he came forth from Egypt, but none there claim him as their progeny. Others claim he came from the far north, with his blazing-white fur, the color of the nordic frostlands. Still-others say he is not of this world, and came from a distant star, or a parallel reality far fairer and crueller than our own.
But none could question his genius. His experimentation into the fields of magnetism and photonics had rendered him peerless for the Nobel of Physics, in this year of our lord. But unsettling rumors were whispered about the nature of his experimentation; that the fennec sought answers to questions never intended for mortal inquisition. That he was delving into powers beyond rational comprehension. In the dead of night, strange noises from could be heard from his laboratory for miles in all directions. The groaning and screaming of metal, like a thousand dying souls, as the fennec tore at the structure of matter itself, splitting it, and studying it, and recombining it in configurations never intended to exist in our universe. Flashes of unnatural color flitted across the night sky, as nature itself protested His violations, and some claim to have even seen shadows move upon the walls of the neighboring streets without a source to cast them.
Of course, as a scientist of some repute, I place no stock in rumor and hearsay. But I still distrusted The Stranger. His discoveries were suspiciously convenient; altogether too easy; too quick. It was as-if the mysterious fennec possessed the answers already and merely conducted his experiments to justify his knowledge… and to grow his celebrity. He lavished in the praise and recognition. Before long, Etheras Dela Fay had cultivated a sycophantic following, and interviews appeared in all the leading periodicals. He was a science writer’s wet-dream; brilliant, beautiful, enigmatic, and pushing the boundaries of knowledge... and the boundaries of what could-be known. The Fennec began to tour his experiments, moving from university to university with truckloads of strange machines to demonstrate the findings of his inquiries. And this is how I met The Stranger. A colleague mentioned that Etheras would be touring in Shoreham; my alma mater, and that the secrets revealed at his demonstrations were mind-expanding and fantastic. I made certain to attend. I believed that if I could witness Lord Etheras’s experimentations, perhaps I could uncover his deception.
A great multitude had gathered in the auditorium for the evening’s “performance”. Scientists, politicians, and the local social elite in evening clothes, packed shoulder-to-shoulder into the crowded lecture hall for an evening of enlightening entertainment… to distract them, if for only an hour, from the crippling dread engulfing their world. Here, a feeling of apprehended excitement thrived. Bathed in the dim yellow house stage lights, several machines of unknown device rested ominously in a semicircle upon the stage. Each sprouted a unique array of thick opaque tubes, wires, brass dials and rods and shining chrome impediments of mysterious purpose. Sitting in an armchair at the center, studying some ponderous tome intently, was the white fox himself, silently turning the pages as his audience amassed. Before long, he looked up and at a clock on the wall, and then out at the crowd. I was startled by his eyes! They were golden yellow, and I could discern no pupil. But I had no doubt that his sight missed nothing. As Etheras’s gaze swept the audience, it fell briefly upon me. I felt it... not only physically, but as-if he were reaching inside of me. Inside my mind… inside my thoughts… inside my soul. It seemed to linger there for an eternity, dissecting me, analyzing, weighing and measuring… But the gaze had touched me for only a moment before it swept on. And as it moved on, I felt violated, as-if that gaze had excised some vital part of me, and left me with a gaping wound where something had been taken out.
He asked if we ought to begin, and without hearing an answer, he turned to his instruments. What came next, my consciousness shudders to comprehend. The machines came to life, with the sound of whirring motors and the whine of capacitors, and a bass thrum low and slow. I could feel it in my entrails, in my bowels, its noise vibrating sympathetically with my seat... Or perhaps with our bodies and minds. Etheras spoke about how he had probed the very fabric of our universe, questioning where reality ends, and what - if anything - lies beyond. He described the foundations of matter, and its physical creation and destruction. He showed us how to draw Dark Energy from the vast cosmic river of power beyond our physical universe. He harnessed Gravity and bent it to his will, demonstrating its elusive properties. One by one, all the mysteries of science poured forth… like a ritual… like a godless religion knowing no bounds or humility. The most intimate secrets of Mother Nature were torn from her and exposed completely - indecently - for all to see.
And then he came to the final machine.
Etheras spoke that he had solved the uncertainty of the universe by developing non-photonic microscopy capable of resolving images of the smallest possible matter and beyond. His proudest invention: The infinitesimalscope! High upon the presentation screen, he projected it’s image. It looked down upon a piece of unbleached paper, and as he spoke, it began to zoom. At first, all we could discern was the page. Then we could see the fibers. The zooming continued, and we could see the cells, and it kept zooming. Proteins, then the molecules were revealed, and still he kept zooming. The lights in the auditorium flickered and dimmed as the infinitesimalscope drew more power; magnifying, zooming. Atoms appeared, and still we looked smaller, deeper. We saw fermions and bosons, quarks and leptons, and still-deeper we went. Down, down, down through masses of constituent parts; nameless in this undiscovered country. Until at last there was only one shape. One tiny formation from which all matter and energy is built.
My fur began to rise as static electricity built in the air, along with the reek of ozone, and an uneasy racing fluttered in my chest. The lights had all died, snuffed by the copious hunger of the machine. Steam rose from its cooling apparatus. Only the projector illuminated the auditorium now. The machine’s mechanisms had become deafening. Louder and louder as we went deeper and deeper, and through the cacophony I thought I could discern the whispering of voices… unintelligible and frantic.
But the image kept resolving… kept zooming… Etheras Dela Fay told us that he did not care about the hierarchy of matter. He had a deeper quarry. He zoomed until there was nothing to be seen; an empty place so deep that matter ceased to exist, and yet he kept zooming, looking closer, looking deeper, until the very fabric of reality started to become thin. It became semitransparent. The crowd gasped as we could faintly discern shapes… the shapes of what waited just beyond our universe. We zoomed, and the image began to resolve.
There were screams then. On the screen were thousands of masses darker than the darkest black, giant and formless and quivering with a demonic fury, like spider webs in a hurricane - all reaching black tendrils, clawing and grabbing with violent hunger. They rolled among eachother, pressing against the fabric of our universe, teeming, tearing, trying to get in, each with three glowing yellow eyes, writhing amongst eachother with an insatiable rage.
The audience exploded in an uproar of terror; shouting, sobbing, praying, vomiting. Madness wrenched their minds, one jumped from the balcony, others dug out their own eyes with fingernails or pens, more simply collapsed. The rest rushed for the doors, trampling eachother in the clamor to free themselves of the horrors upon the screen, but in vain; the image had been permanently etched upon their minds.
I stood aghast, unable to move, gripped by some unyielding force. The comforting buzz of madness somewhere deep within my mind began to whisper… it tempted to save me from this terrible truth! I managed to tear my eyes from the screen and my gaze fell upon the fennec. He was looking at me, a contemptuous amusement twisting his lips, watching.. studying me. He didn’t speak, but somehow I knew what he was thinking.
“Your mind is not as feeble as the rest,” he said without words.
“You’re going to let them in, aren’t you?” I thought back, unable to keep the question from my mind.
“Yes,” came back the reply.
“Are you one of them?” I asked back, those yellow eyes… those terrible yellow eyes… the same pupil-less yellow eyes as monsters from beyond the void, focused on me… measuring me, dissecting me.
Then he just smiled, turned, and strode leisurely through the backstage curtains, white tail swishing behind him, and disappeared.
I gathered control of myself, and joined the throng at the door, fighting to spill out onto the street. But my urgency had fled. I looked back. The screen was dark, the machines had gone silent. All that remained of the horror was the lingering stink of ozone and vomit, and the sobs of our injured minds and bodies. When at-last I emerged onto the street, to my surprise, the crowd lingered, milling-about unconcernedly. They chuckled at the cleverness of that “final trick”, and boasted how they were unafraid, not fooled. It couldn’t have been real, could it? How silly! … But despite our jovial dismissiveness, it’s evidence dwelt in every eye… the panic that had taken root just below the surface. And as we dispersed back to our homes, loudly extolling the wonders that we had seen, the seeds of terror went with us... and gestated.
What happened next remains unclear to me. Time passed. My own laboratory work continued, but realization dawned with an increasing frequency that moments of my days and nights could not be accounted-for. I found myself in locations with no recollection of how I had arrived or what my purpose had been... like a sleepwalker awakening. Weeks later, I discovered in horror that I had contacted my close friends and associates, and had advised them to attend an Etheras Demonstration. Many had already heeded my recommendation, and thanked me for introducing them to such mind-expanding revelations, with the same uneasy laughter and barely-suppressed panic in their stares.
Strange rumors began to circulate among the population. At night, dark forms were said to roam the forests of the countryside and the alleys of the cities. Unearthly sounds echoed from unseen mouths in the dark. Animals began to disappear, and then the birds. Finally, people began to go missing without any trace. And yet, none would go searching for them, or ask questions. It was as-if they had never existed at all.
Snow had fallen on my porch. But how could that be, I wondered? Snow in summer? Had I been sleepwalking again? How long had I been gone? I wiped the dust from my mirror and gazed at the stranger within. What looked back was unknown to me. Sunken eyes, unkempt mangy fur, and frightfully emaciated. He looked at the skinny sticks of his arms… *my* arms... mere flesh clinging to bones. What had happened to me? I should eat, but upon inspection, my provisions had gone to rot. Donning a jacket and boots, I stepped out into the darkness of the winter evening city. All the lights of civilization had gone out. With only the green glow of the moon to light my way, I trekked to the corner bakery, skirting between scatterings of individuals standing without purpose in the cold street, gazing up at that moon, unmoving. It loomed huge and ominous in the midnight sky, and when my eyes fell upon it, I felt something coming down from that moon. I stopped and stared like the others… waiting… watching. And we began to move, involuntarily walking, forming a queue to some unknown destination. All around us, I could hear the unnatural terrors from the void between universes... the nightmares of the gods... but I could not turn my head to see. I did not want to see. I was content to follow my queue to our destination.
We made our way out of the city, ponderous step by ponderous step along a deserted highway, and down an offramp to a neglected road. We walked. The trees loomed overhead - reaching, clawing. The leafless winter branches of white birch, like finger bones tightening over us, until our column emerged once more under the glow of that unnatural moon. We stood at the edge of a vast wound in the world. An excavation like a pit-mine, with a broad path along the rim spiraling down, gaped before us. The broken asphalt underfoot yielded to packed dirt, as we made our descent into the depths. That is when I detected it - the reverberation of some vast and terrible machine groaning beneath the ground, rumbling hungrily.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Him. The Stranger. The Lord Etheras. He stood by the rim of the pit, watching… white fur glowing with some unearthly pale light against the dark of the midnight sky... and I could feel the smirk upon that slender muzzle as he gazed down upon me. And as my body walked, pulled by the horrible mechanical heartbeat of that device below the earth, he forced images into my mind. I saw the corpses of a million-million worlds, blasted and smoking, strewn with the festering bodies of extinct species. I saw the swarms of void monsters, consuming whole planets - meat, plant and stone - leaving nothing. I saw universes rendered lifeless ruins… with a pale glowing white fennec, lounging upon the shattered monuments of murdered civilizations.
And then I passed into the tunnel beneath the bottom of the pit. Shrouded in darkness, my feet knew the way, deeper, down deeper, until the tunnel opened upon the cavern where I beheld the machine...
….and that is when I knew that our story had come to an end.
----- Happy Halloween, my minions!
This is the surprise I had waiting for you... my finest work,(so far). It is a tribute to the Master of Horror... no, not Stephen King. Stephen King is very plain and boring comparatively. The Master of Horror is HP Lovecraft. He practically invented the genre. (He *did* invent the genre of Cosmic Horror, which is technically the genre of the story told above).
In fact, the story above is based on an HP Lovecraft short. Can anyone guess which? First to answer correctly gets a pat on the head from the prince of eeeevil. :)
Anyway, if you're not much of a reader, I made an audio presentation of it and its up on youtube!
Pardon me for the poor editing. I'm not well-versed with video editing. I actually intended to make a much more elaborate video, that flipped through all of the evil-ish Etheras artwork, but ran out of time. Actually I commissioned a piece just for this story, but that also ran out of time.
Anyway, I will be doing a presentation once I have some feedback about "Writing Lovecraft". I studied his work extensively to mimic his style, as well as interviews of various Lovecraft experts.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this! Please share among friends, ask questions down below or on youbertuber. And have a HAPPY (and safe!) HALLOWEEN. :)
----- Artwork by the amazing :iconAimi: Etheras the Fennec (c) www.etheras.com
----- Repost Authorization Rating: FREE Dunno what that means? Be sure to read this: https://www.sofurry.com/view/365517 ... before reposting.
