5August came in a bit cold that year. I remember I had my bedroom window open on the night of the last day in July. It was colder than I had felt since probably early May. It was a cold year all around, I guess. Maybe it was a sign of what more was coming, or maybe not, but I noticed the chill as I sat writing all the same. It made me cough as I went, though I suppose it wouldn't have been such a draft if my door had been shut. I noticed rather briefly that it was exactly twelve o'clock when the first shiver ran up my spine, but thought nothing more of it. I had figured at that point that it was not going to last longer than a day. August was supposed to be the middle of Summer, and cold simply did not fit in during that time of year. Whatever the reason for it, as far as I was concerned the drop in temperature was not to last.
Regardless, I was preoccupied by something I considered far more worthy of my time then contemplating the weather. It was August, and I had an obligation tied to that month. Every year, when the month of August rolled up, my parents would pound on top of me to get a job, get a boyfriend, and get out of their basement. This was because August held the unfortunate anniversary of my birth, and this time it marked the end of the twenty-seventh year of my being. As such, I had planned to spend the entire month working harder than any other month to achieve the goals set before me. Of course, I had no plans to get a job, get a boyfriend, or get my own place.
No, this was August. Better known to my circle of online friends as "Derleth August". This was the month where everyone in the writing circle worked to produce no less then one short horror story a week. The activity on the forum, as a direct result, increased drastically. There were thirteen regulars, all of which were known to contribute several stories a month, and upwards of around sixty others who would come and go and return as they pleased. The others offer some good material, but in such relatively little volume that I barely remember it when faced with the mountains the regulars have built. These regulars are the people I consider my friends, though I only know most of them by their pen names. My twelve friends, and me.
First, there's the forum's creator and administrator, WorldBuilder. Real name Manami Shinozaki, she started the forum three years earlier when she was only twelve, tired of being surrounded by peers obsessed with anime. She liked anime well enough herself, but her almost unnatural love of Lovecraftian horrors put a wedge between her and everyone she knew over in Japan. So she turned to the internet to find kindred spirits, and here we were. She has a magnificent grasp of the English language, better than most of the native English speakers on here.
Next come the moderators, known only by their pen names SoulJob and CleaverOfHope. Both are loud and obnoxious teenage boys with immature senses of humor. Thankfully, they are both remarkably good at masking those traits when they start writing a short story. Soul, as we call him, is only seventeen. Cleaver claims to be turning twenty in October, but he claimed the same last year. Both live somewhere in New York State, and to date have been the only regulars to actually physically meet. I could have met them if any of us had passports.
BennyMac is our oldest member in actual age, a full fifteen years beyond me. We don't know his real name, but we do know he lives over in Scotland. He has been doing this longer than any of us, and his short horror stories have been published for decades now. He's the professional, and we heed his words carefully.
CircleKnight is our most recent addition, though older than everyone save for BennyMac. He came on-board back in April, and we mostly figured he would just be like all the others and disappear in a few weeks after possibly dropping off a story. After hearing his ideas we didn't doubt it would be a good story, but then he started posting the stories. Since then, he has been bombarding us with almost more than we can handle reading. It's all quality horror, too. He apparently just needed the right motivation, and twelve readers was just enough.
Sirengypsy was the first to join the forum after it was made, signing up seven months after the forum's creation, a good five months after Manami had given up hope. She lives in Florida and, other than the consistently good stories we don't actually know anything else about her. She compliments other people's stories and thanks us for our compliments, but seems content to not say anything more.
StiltsOfStigma and WhitemanLuigi are our resident comedy horror writers. They're great writers, and they can make amazing stories, but I think the forum could have done just fine without dancing zombies. Their other works are better by far, but we can all tell that they're still just weird teenagers. But then, most of us are.
WildcatHowl is the only Canadian other than myself, but she lives clear across the country. She has never left Vancouver in the eighteen years of her life and is almost as much of a social outcast as me. Almost, but not quite, because she's still got another ten years to go before she's as ridiculous as I am. She's an amateur writer, plain and simple, but she has spirit and brings a more adventurous perspective to the horror genre. We call her Cat.
SleeperWarlord remains enigmatic regarding his global whereabouts, though his profile page says England. He is kind and gentle in his words, until he's writing a story. He is one of the few among us who writes not only short stories, but drawn out epics. The long ones aren't particularly in the horror genre, but we all respect them for what they are; golden walls of text. His short stories are usually fixed in the horror genre, and have the unique flair of medieval settings.
TheFlakker is the resident loudmouth. We pretend to ignore him, and I think he knows this, but we all actually pay very close attention to him and his ranting. He's usually a lot more right than anyone wants to admit. He probably does know, otherwise I doubt he would keep hanging around the forum. We actually value his presence a lot, but we all figure it's best not to let him know that.
DreamThunder lives somewhere in the southern states, and is probably the easiest writer among us to pick up. Her real name is Karie, and she claims her stories are inspired by events that happened to her in real life. Whether or not that claim has merit is none of our concern, though we all likely secretly think she's somewhat insane.
And then there's Jester. Me. My real name is Jester, just the same as my pen name. Out of all of us, I work the hardest and come out with the least amount done. That's why I don't have a job, or a boyfriend, or a place of my own. It's because I'm seldom away from my computer. I'm always writing, thinking, planning, and rewriting. Despite the distances, Manami and Cat are like sisters to me. They're far nicer and smarter than my actual sisters. Most of the guys act like older brothers, conveniently forgetting that only Benny and Knight are legitimately older than me.
At this particular moment, merely a few minutes after August began, I was stuck in my writing. Normally, I would simply stare at the screen while pretending I would come up with something, but this time I did differently. I moved over to the internet and headed to the forum. I simply snooped the main thread for a few minutes to determine whether or not anyone was on, and quickly found that there was no one. I hoped that meant they were all writing.
I began to type out a message for them, in case anyone came back soon. "Can't figure out what to do with this next part. Help would be great, cause otherwise I'm gonna be late on this one." Then I sat back to watch the forum, refreshing the page every few minutes in the hopes that someone would pop up and answer. Any reply would have been nice, but I understood that everyone could be busy at any given time.
About the third time I refreshed the page, I saw a different name show up as the most recent poster. It was a name I didn't recognize. TheDestroyer. I clicked on it to see what they said.
The message was short and simple. "Jester, listen to the night." Short and simple. And creepy.
I clicked on TheDestroyer's name and went to their profile to see if this was their first post. To my surprise, it was their second. Their first post had been the second post on the thread. They had been absent for years, only showing up now to tell me to listen to the night for inspiration. I went back to the main thread to see if I could coax more out of TheDestroyer.
"Welcome back, Destroyer. What made you come back?"
I was half expecting to sit there waiting for an answer that didn't come for another several years. Instead, the answer was up the moment my post loaded. "I never left. Just haven't been talking. Now it's time to talk, Jester."
It took a moment for what I was reading to sink in. This person, whoever she was (I knew she was a she by her profile), had been lurking on the forum site since its creation. I wondered, with a cold shiver that could have just been the breeze, how well she knew us all because of this. It was unsettling to know that someone knew things about you that you never thought you told them. I struggled to find the words to respond.
"Okay. What do you want to talk about?" I still wasn't satisfied with it when I clicked the button to post it, but I couldn't let her slip away. I had to say something.
Her answer was just as quick as the last one. "Listen to the night. When you hear it speak to you, go find out what it's saying. Then come back and tell me what it said. Don't tell anyone else, though. Then I would have to find another way to talk to you."
My first thought was that she was playing a trick on me, and my immediate second was that it wasn't even the original owner of the account but instead a hacker. I was working on coming up with a witty and snarky comeback, like telling her that the night had called her rude names, when the wind blew through my window again. It was chilly, and it made me decide that I wanted the window shut for the time being. I stood up out of my chair and stepped over to the window, reaching up to slide it closed. That's when I heard the voice of the night.
It was a cold, deep howl that sounded like it came from the throat of an old man. I instantly wanted to go outside and seek out whoever the voice belonged to, but something inside me convinced my body to stay where it was. I didn't call out to try and find out who it was, because I knew my family would have objections. I didn't make a move to run out and find the source of the eerie wail either, but I also didn't close the window. I stood and listened, each second growing more caught up in the voice's sounds.
The voice wailed and howled, as I previously have stated, and those words are correctly accurate. It also moaned, whining some, and then gasping. Then it would cry a bit before something much worse. It sang. The voice sang, and it sang beautifully. I couldn't make out the words, and I doubt I would have known them if I had, but it reminded me of chanting I had heard from the North American Natives. This thought caused an image to conjure up in my mind of an old Chief laying wounded in the woods behind my house. Perhaps he had been attacked by someone, or possibly even by a wild animal.
These thoughts eventually spurred me on to step away from the window and grab my jacket. I exited my bedroom and turned off my light, closing the door as quietly as I could. I ran up the stairs, trying my hardest not to be heard by my family. After much arduous working, I managed to get through the back door and step into the night. Standing out there, I could now hear the voice much clearer. It sounded quite a ways into the trees, but not so far that I wouldn't be able to find my way back home.
I ran to the sound of the injured man, a rush of nervous adrenaline jolting through my body. Pushing my way through branches, I got more than a few scrapes on my hands. The further I went, the closer the sounds of the man's voice got. I kept pushing my way through until it sounded like he was right in front of me, then promptly cursed myself for not bringing a flashlight.
I knelt down and searched the ground for the man, because it sounded like he was on the ground right there. My fingers searched through the dirt and rotting plant matter, hoping to brush against a man's leg or arm so I knew where he was. Just when I was about to give up, I stumbled across the first hint of a Human being since I left my house. My hand touched a smooth round rock, and when I went to pick it up my thumb went through a hole and touched the dirt under it. I wrapped my other hand around the odd rock and lifted up off the ground, and my other thumb found a second hole right beside the first.
For all of a second, light shone through the trees and illuminated the object in my hand. Frightened, I jumped back and let out a stifled scream as it stared up at me through hollow eyes. A Human skull.
If that moment had allowed me to think clearly, something far more striking would have come to my attention. Instead, I turned and ran. My sense of direction unimpeded, I was back at my house faster than I would normally have thought possible. Terror driving me, I carelessly rushed through the door and down to my room. Careening through the open door, I was back at my computer in an instant.
I had managed somehow to grasp at some logic and reason now that I had returned to the safety of my room, and so was able to cohesively put my thoughts together. This enabled me to act rationally, and so I started by refreshing the forum thread to see if TheDestroyer had said anything more.
She had, and her latest message left no room for question or mistake. "Private message me."
She had, somehow, led me directly to an ethereal voice and a Human skull. If she had done it intentionally or accidentally, I did not have it in me to doubt her credibility any longer, so I obeyed. I moved off the thread and into the private messages, typing up something to say with much difficulty. "There was a Human skull out in the woods behind my house! Somebody died there! What do I do?"
Gradually, I had become less panicked than my message indicated, but only through a series of slow and quiet self-reassurances. In the brief moment the light hit the skull and I could see it, I saw that it was bleached white. As such, it was blatantly quite old and had had the sun's rays hitting it for most of the day. I remembered, and remember to this day, no residual fleshy bits or rotting organic matter hanging off of it or otherwise still clinging to it. In fact, there was no such disgusting encounter even in the dirt around it. It seemed obvious to me that the death had occurred a long time ago. Possibly several centuries. Although this did give me slight cause to worry if I had stumbled upon some ancient Native American burial ground, I swiftly dismissed the notion and moved on.
And then the response came. "Jester, you didn't listen to the night, did you?"
I found myself cursing my ineptitude, and immediately after I cursed the fact that I would now undoubtedly be required to go back out into the night and determine what the disembodied voice was actually saying. Slowing down and thinking for a moment, I realized I had heard something. The singing from through my window. I hastily replied. "The voice I heard was singing, but I couldn't understand it. It was in some Native American language."
TheDestroyer came back immediately with exposition that blew me away. "Ah, so it was him. I've been looking for that man since he died. He was murdered, I believe, in 1783. Probably a Tuesday, in April most likely. That's when it was supposed to happen, but murders are not always supposed to happen. Sad that you can't understand it. If you could, we might be able to help him with his last wish. Are you sure you can't try and transcribe some of the words?"
I regret that the part of my subconscious which still viewed this whole thing as some sort of hoax managed to jump ahead of my proper thought process and I responded quite inappropriately. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, maybe?"
I gasped out loud at the possible consequences of my action, covering my mouth with my hands. I hoped with all my might that TheDestroyer would not be offended. She answered long before it would have ever reached my mind that I could easily have sent another message apologizing.
"Troubling and problematic as it would be, I doubt that is the case. Regardless, you need to leave your house now. You found the remains, and now the murderer will be coming after you. Get out of your house so it cannot hurt your family."
It wasn't until that moment when several realizations came upon me. First, I was being told that the culprit of a murder committed over two hundred years ago was now coming for me. Second, I believed it. Third, this murderer was being referred to as an it. Fourth, I believed that too.
I didn't even have the time then, but if I had I would have then started to ponder the meaning of some other things TheDestroyer had said. Things like her having been looking for the victim whose skull I had found since his death, which would place TheDestroyer at a similarly ancient age. This was in contrast to my initial impression of a cute teenager with ginger hair, as is my initial impression of everyone on the internet. I also wasn't certain how I felt regarding her apparent dismissal of my regretful mockery. It didn't sound like she thought it not a possibility, but rather more like she simply didn't think it was the case today. Is it coincidence that the last August Derleth story I read had the characters portrayed reading Lovecraft's own stories right next to the Necronomicon? It itched at my mind more than I thought it should, considering I was thinking about works clearly and purely fictional in nature.
But, as I said, I did not have the time then to think much on these musings. Something more sudden and horrifying came to my mind. It was nothing more than the simple thought that there was nothing I could think of that might have caused the light in the woods. It was too far for any beam of light shone from the edge of the trees to illuminate the area I was in, but the whole place had been brightly lit for all of a second. The light had come from behind me, the direction of my house, but I never saw anything that could have caused it. At least, I had assumed it had come from behind me. Remembering that moment in which I saw the skull clearly, its face and top were clearly lit. A light from behind me would have left the skull in shadow, and from either side the light would not have reached the opposite side. The face would have been in shadow if it had come from in front of me. The top of the skull, the face, the sides, they were all well lit. The only way it could have happened is if the light source was above me, but there are no lights in the woods.
And then I remembered my bedroom door. I had closed it on my way out. It was open when I came running back in. I had run into my room and gone straight to my computer without a second thought. I was sure I would have seen someone hiding in my room, though. Even some thing, unless an adventurous squirrel was now hiding under my bed, where there isn't much room for anything much larger. I would have seen anything, unless of course it was hiding in my closet. My closet, which was right beside my bedroom door, exactly where I wouldn't have been looking in a mad rush to my desk. It was only by the miracle of my still owning an incredibly outdated CRT monitor that my fears were confirmed without my having to turn and look directly.
In the glass reflection, I saw a hideous shape moving out of my closet and making its way towards me. I knew instinctively what it was and what it was doing. It was the thing that killed the old Native American man so long ago, and it now wanted to kill me. I was sure, with every fiber of my being, that I was the next victim of this creature. And it was a creature, not a shred of Human or animal features on its mass, nor anything else I could identify with. All of it strange and alien to everything I had ever conceived, even in the weird and twisted dreams that came after binge-reading Robert E. Howard or Frank Belknap Long. There was nothing I could even so much as call legs or arms. Scarcely a thing that might be referred to as a tendril or tentacle, though those terms did it little justice. In spite of this, it was not a blob or an amorphous mass either. It had a definite shape, just one that defied my ability to put into words.
I was frozen with fear. At that point, all logical thought went from my mind. It was almost as if the creature behind me was a natural repellent to any sort of mental process that would be required in order for me to survive. I felt my muscles seize up and my eyes water, and I soon realized that I was now paralyzed in a truer sense. Something the creature had done to me kept me from moving. My lungs flared with pain, and I stopped being able to breathe. It reached out and grabbed hold of me, still paralyzed and too frightened to look either way. Whatever part of its anatomy it used, I felt myself being dragged into it and it began to envelope me. If I hadn't already been disabled twice over, I would have now been unable to escape from the creature's monstrous grasp. As a part of the creature rose up in front of me, an ungodly forest of dripping blue stocks poking inwards at me from the purplish-black fold of flesh, I realized I had seen something that one part reminded me of in the Sundew plant. This was far from a comfort, as I also knew what those plants were famous for.
Beyond the likely deadly protrusions, my desk was almost out of view. My computer was still on, humming electronically as if nothing was happening. I wondered, in my dying daze, how long my friends would take to figure out that I was no longer among the living. I wondered if they ever would realize it, or if perhaps none of them had responded because they too had met similarly horrifying demises.
My entire body was jolted by the impact of my chest against the desk. I hadn't expected to fall forwards with the creature pulling me back towards itself, so it hurt in no small way. However, I could feel my muscles turning more limp. They were tired and aching, but I could move them again. On the other hand, I was preoccupied with the bewildering sight before me. Sitting on my desk, beside my keyboard, was something I thought I had dropped back in the woods. Thinking back now, I know that in my panic I never actually dropped it until I needed my hands for the computer. Staring at me from the safety of my room, where I should have been safe from this monster, let alone this chilling gaze, was the skull from the woods behind my house. I had run through my house in the middle of the night, a Human skull clutched in my hands.
My left arm was free, and I could move it, so I reached out and plucked the skull from my desk. I lifted it over my head and smashed it into the nearest part of the creature that was holding me. It didn't do much, and I hadn't expected it to, but it was only the start of fighting back. I reached for the next thing my hand could find, which was my radio, and hurled it behind me. The sound of the radio shattering on the wall, whether the creature caught and threw it, or it bounced off, or I simply missed, was definitely loud enough to wake at least my youngest sister. I reached to grab the next thing available just as it started to pull me back. My fingers caught on one of the drawers of my desk, pulling it open. The drawer stopped, not coming any further, so I reached in and grabbed what felt like a book. Pulling the book out, I prepared to fling it at the creature.
Suddenly, a scream split the air. A horrible scream that could never be recreated by any stretch of Human imagination, and anyone who tried would certainly go mad in the process. The creature screamed, as if it were in sudden and terrible pain that it could never have anticipated. Similar to the pain I felt when it dropped me onto those stalky, dripping protrusions the moment after. The book in my hand still, I pulled myself up by my bed. One look at the book and I could hardly believe what I was seeing. At the least, I would have expected the Holy Bible. Instead, it was my copy of Slash's autobiography that, as far as I could tell, was causing the creature honest and sincere pain. This, of course, did not mean I was willing to look directly at the thing.
It occurred to me that perhaps there was something in the drawer that the creature was reacting to, so I jumped over to my desk. Still refusing to look behind me, I reached into the drawer and wrapped my hand around the obvious answer. A small necklace with a cross made of silver hanging from it. I realized that the answer was in the horror I loved to read. I remembered in an instant a story called The Space Eaters... or something like that. I couldn't remember at the moment who wrote it, but I distinctly remembered the colossal thing reaching down from space being driven off or maybe even killed by a fiery sign of the cross. The cross was just decoration to me, but maybe it was the key to surviving this strange encounter.
I whipped around, holding out my hand with the silver cross dangling from it. The creature screamed and lurched towards my window. I watched it, looking directly at it, as it busted through the glass pane and wooden frame. The glass and wood shattered, and the creature popped the wire mesh screen out into the yard. It was too large for the space it was trying to escape through, and when it squished itself through it broke the surface of its flesh. The semi-liquid matter that squirted onto the walls, which also cracked from the forceful exit, was a greenish-purple color somehow without being brown. It was enough to make one throw up, but I didn't. Maybe I'm just stronger than most.
Or, you know, maybe I was just already out of it because I had made the mistake of looking directly at the creature as it fled. The only explanation I can think of is that the sliver cross saved me. Not only from the creature, but from the madness looking at the creature had instilled.
When I woke up, it was almost noon on the first of August. My entire body was sore, and I couldn't remember why. I was seated leaning up against my bed, a shredded shirt laying on the floor next to me. I realized that I must have torn it off in my madness the night before. The silver cross lay on the floor beside my hand, a dark red cross-shaped mark in my palm. The mark was tender, and touching it brought the memory back. The cross had burned my hand, burning the madness from me. If not for that cross, who knows what I might have been driven to do. I don't suppose I'll ever know for sure, but I wonder if just seeing that creature had caused me to become possessed. It was a stretch, maybe, but I wasn't so far from believing demons were real as I was the day before.
My room was a mess, but I was alive and the creature was nowhere to be seen. The substance it had left on the walls seemed to have disappeared, but had eaten well into the wall. I figured out pretty quick that some of it had also gotten onto me, and that was why I had removed my shirt. I just hope my brother didn't come into my room while I was topless.
I spent the next few hours tidying up a bit and getting a different shirt on before getting down to business. Sitting down at my computer, which was still on, I ran my fingers through my black hair and tied it up in a ponytail. Then, opening up a new writing document, I got to work writing down my experience from the night before. An hour or so later, I thought to check back on the forum to see if TheDestroyer had messaged me again. Also, to see if that all wasn't just a dream. Sure enough, there was another message from my new friend.
"Are you still there?"
It had been several hours, so I had no way of knowing if she would ever respond, or even see it, but I answered quickly. "I'm still here. I think I scared it off. Who knew a cross would have that effect?"
I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised when she came back in only a few seconds. "Good. You scared it off with the sign of the cross? I could have told you that would work. Anyway, did you get a good idea for a story?"
Shaking my head, I answered her question. "Yes. Yes I did."
The story Jester refers to is indeed The Space Eaters by Frank Belknap Long. I do suggest going and reading it. I also suggest going and reading other stories written by the (non-fictional) authors mentioned in this story. Go read H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and Robert E. Howard. They're great.
Also, don't forget to review and tell me how I did. Thanks for reading!