Nimzonia
07-06-2005, 22:34
I'd like to share with you dear people a short story I wrote recently. Feel free to dissect and belittle my writing at your liesure.
Here it is, my Lovecraftian tribute to all those Christians who felt it necessary to burn Harry Potter books.
If anyone here is one of those (and I know some of them lurk on these forums), then this is for you. Enjoy.
THE BOOK
by C. S. Watson
I know now more than ever, that there are truly cryptic and blasphemous knowledges that have accompanied man in fevered delusions and prophetic whispers since first he set foot upon this earth, and that man, whether acting through some agent or through his own demented insight, has oft sought to put such unhallowed lore to writing.
I speak of my own experiences with writings of this nature, and of how they opened in my mind great harrowing vistas into the deepest and darkest layers of perception, of which man has caught brief, maddening glimpses throughout the ages, and are now bared open to my mind, racking my subconscious with images from beyond the veil.
Even as I, in pyretic frenzy, struggle to put what I have seen and heard in legible form, I am tormented with visions of those squamous horrors that swarm over the feculent corpse of a fallen angel, of the jagged gates of a city of pain thrown open to a tide of willing sacrifice, amid the cacophonous howls of evil triumphant.
My account of this untrammelled malevolence is certainly not for my own indulgence; indeed, my hand is tremulous even as I try to shake out these accursed words. No, let this testimony stand as a dire warning to those who would follow in my footsteps. I have tried to tell them, but find that the influence of that darkness I now see so clearly, has permeated further into the hearts of men than ever I imagined, and it is my last hope that those few who remain untainted should find this document, and heed its monition before it is too late, for I fear the end times are upon us.
It began some months ago, I cannot say precisely when, for my recollection of the intervening time is not fully complete, at a meeting of the Christian Gentleman’s Club, which in those days I was known to attend. Our membership was limited to only the most upstanding, and I was proud to be counted among that brethren. The meeting in question was led by Dr. Heiligman, an old friend of mine from our college days, and a fine scholar. It was he who had written many fine papers on such subjects as sociology and critical psychology, and thus we had no immediate qualms in accepting his good judgement, when he laid out the book upon the meeting table that day.
He stood and cleared his throat, and thus spoke to us, “If I may present a curiosity, which has rather taken my interest of late. Naturally, as a father I take an interest in all that my children read, but I must admit, I was surprised to find this volume rather more engrossing than the usual fare.”
There was a round of prim chuckles at the thought of Heiligman delving into a child’s storybook, but all of us present craned forward to read the legend Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on the tome’s cover, as he pushed it out to the centre of the table.
“Chortle if you will,” Said Heiligman, “But I assure you all, that the book is challenging and entertaining beyond my expectations, and I recommend that all of you procure yourselves a copy, not least that I might have friends to share verses and witticisms with.”
“Oh really, Heiligman,” scoffed a man, Burthold I believe it was, with an incredulous look, “Are you suggesting that this esteemed company lower itself to such juvenile literature? Why, I doubt even half of us ever were children!”
“Nonsense, Burthold; live a little!” Heiligman chuckled, “I suggest you all acquire a copy, and we’ll read it together. If it doesn’t take your interest, we’ll write the whole episode off as a grand misadventure, and I’ll recompense you for your trouble.”
The tone of the room remained one of jovial amusement, and even I, sceptical as often I was of new and unexpected ventures, willingly took the title and author down in my diary, and made a note to buy a copy later that week. It was a decision I still regret, and no amount of desperate prayer will reverse.
As it happened, I bought the book the next morning, on my way to the office. It seemed innocuous enough; a brightly painted paperback cover, and praise from a number of respectable newspapers. I had no idea what horrors I was gladly embracing from those dire pages as I began to turn them, during one quiet hour in the office canteen.
My suspicions were immediately aroused, after barely more than a page, by the book’s seemingly whimsical endorsement of the occult and the esoteric. With rapt horror, I continued to turn the pages merely out of a morbid desire to discover what sinister depths of occultism and diablerie the tome would plumb before it would release me from the vicelike grip of its mesmeric glamour.
I know not how long I remained under the book’s spell, only that I was at once released from its insidious duress by the sudden chiming of the clock upon my mantelpiece. I discovered to my amazement that I sat in my smoking chair, while in the fireplace, flames crackled and threw their sallow light in leering flickers up and down the oak panelling of my study walls. Having no recollection of the time that had passed since first I opened that diabolic cover and pored over the mephistophelian arcana within, I felt a sense of deep and all-consuming disgust overwhelm my being, as though I had stumbled into the grave of a heretic, and lay paralysed in the cadaver’s withered arms. My vision blurred, as sensation returned, and I stumbled forward abruptly, as though released from some palsy, fetching myself a blow to the head from the corner of the coffee table.
I awakened at noon from a pageant of horrible dreams, to discover that the book had toppled from the armrest of my chair to lie with one corner touching my outstretched hand, as I lay sprawled upon the carpet. I shuddered at the thought of such an intolerable evil allowed to exist any longer, and at once reached to hurl the misbegotten thing into the fireplace. But I hesitated; for this was not the only copy of the vile manuscript. I had to warn others of the horrors that strained to be released from those eldritch pages.
I would need allies. I seized the book at last, crossing myself in the certainty that the power of Christ would be sufficient to ward off its influence if only for a short while, and resolved to speak with Heiligman at once; for should any be able to resist the malicious charms of the book, it would surely be the principled assembly of the Christian Gentleman’s Club.
With little care that I was unshaven and still in my smoking jacket, I hurled myself from my rooms with a single minded passion, and headed immediately for the club forthwith. I realised that I was weeping with fear and zeal, as I hammered frenetically on the door, and staggered into a surprised Heiligman as he opened it.
“Dear Lord, man, what has got into you?” he gasped, as I seized the lapels of his jacket.
“The book is evil, do you understand?” I uttered, in what must have been a strangled and rather overwrought voice, so deep was my ferment, “We must warn them! We must warn them all before it is too late! We…”
At that point, I stopped, for I realised the true horror of the situation before me. Each of my esteemed brethren sat, symmetrically along either side of the long table, his copy of the book open in his hands, and wearing a glazed look of marked surprise at my outburst, as though I were a lunatic; they saw not the truth of my words, so deeply were they ensnared in the cloying grip of that baleful prose. I looked from disgusted face to disgusted face, searching for an ally, any who might shake off the book’s spell and be redeemed.
“Burthold!” I cried, lunging for the sleeve of the old antagonist, in the hopes that at least he would see the horror of the damned codex that only two days before he had scoffed at. But he threw me back with furious vigour, incomprehension in his eyes, and I saw that he was as engrossed in the malignant opus as any of them.
With a last fearful look, I let out a wail of anguish, and stumbled back out onto the streets, ignoring the cries of the damned as they echoed behind me. I had no further recourse but my pastor, for surely he above all, would see clearly the evil of the thing, and the need to purge it from society by whatever means.
My pace was rapid and my step vertiginous, as I made my way to the church. I do not recall how long I howled and thundered against the door, “Help, pastor, I need help!” I cried. I may also have shrieked wordlessly, in my despair as I waited, such was the intensity of my disconsolation by that point.
When at last the door opened, and I staggered inside, I was horrified; for as the pastor stood, wearing the same insipid look of stupefaction as those poor, lost souls at the club, I saw clearly open upon his table a copy of the book, merely laid out before his chair, beside an empty coffee mug, as one might read for pleasure rather than to exorcise the foul spirits that I now saw clearly, writhing and contorting within its noisome pages.
I gaped wordlessly at the man, at a loss as to how one so holy could have fallen so far. I sensed, perhaps through heightened awareness granted me by my rejection of the thing, that he was not himself; that something darker and more ancient occupied his shell. I felt a rush of acute fear, as I bolted from the place, dropping my copy of the book there and then, and fleeing with the haunting shrieks of the demoniac in my ears.
It is done. I have put the torch to that false church, and burned hollow its bedevilled eaves, as I have done to the Christian Gentleman’s Club, and whatever other dens of this anathema I have uncovered, for I do not remember them all. They are all dead, God rest them, but with some small hope, their souls had better chance of redemption now, than had they consumed fully the poisonous bile of blasphemies and heinous portents contained within those detestable pages.
As I complete this account, with only the sound of the relentless dripping of wax for company, I embrace the end. My sanity strains under the horrors beheld unto me, and I can no longer face a world in which such evil runs rampant. It is only in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can have such a descent as mine.
I have fortified myself against the damned that roam without, and now, nestled in my stony womb, do I hear their maddened howling approach. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. They shall not have me; my end shall be of my own design, and not wrought at the rugose phalanges of whatever terrible miscreations the vile power of the book has made of men.
I hear an eerie voice intone, “Pol’iyss! O p’enn Ap!”
Never! They shall never take me alive, to their rotting parlours! I shall die by my own power! The window! The window!
THE END
Here it is, my Lovecraftian tribute to all those Christians who felt it necessary to burn Harry Potter books.
If anyone here is one of those (and I know some of them lurk on these forums), then this is for you. Enjoy.
THE BOOK
by C. S. Watson
I know now more than ever, that there are truly cryptic and blasphemous knowledges that have accompanied man in fevered delusions and prophetic whispers since first he set foot upon this earth, and that man, whether acting through some agent or through his own demented insight, has oft sought to put such unhallowed lore to writing.
I speak of my own experiences with writings of this nature, and of how they opened in my mind great harrowing vistas into the deepest and darkest layers of perception, of which man has caught brief, maddening glimpses throughout the ages, and are now bared open to my mind, racking my subconscious with images from beyond the veil.
Even as I, in pyretic frenzy, struggle to put what I have seen and heard in legible form, I am tormented with visions of those squamous horrors that swarm over the feculent corpse of a fallen angel, of the jagged gates of a city of pain thrown open to a tide of willing sacrifice, amid the cacophonous howls of evil triumphant.
My account of this untrammelled malevolence is certainly not for my own indulgence; indeed, my hand is tremulous even as I try to shake out these accursed words. No, let this testimony stand as a dire warning to those who would follow in my footsteps. I have tried to tell them, but find that the influence of that darkness I now see so clearly, has permeated further into the hearts of men than ever I imagined, and it is my last hope that those few who remain untainted should find this document, and heed its monition before it is too late, for I fear the end times are upon us.
It began some months ago, I cannot say precisely when, for my recollection of the intervening time is not fully complete, at a meeting of the Christian Gentleman’s Club, which in those days I was known to attend. Our membership was limited to only the most upstanding, and I was proud to be counted among that brethren. The meeting in question was led by Dr. Heiligman, an old friend of mine from our college days, and a fine scholar. It was he who had written many fine papers on such subjects as sociology and critical psychology, and thus we had no immediate qualms in accepting his good judgement, when he laid out the book upon the meeting table that day.
He stood and cleared his throat, and thus spoke to us, “If I may present a curiosity, which has rather taken my interest of late. Naturally, as a father I take an interest in all that my children read, but I must admit, I was surprised to find this volume rather more engrossing than the usual fare.”
There was a round of prim chuckles at the thought of Heiligman delving into a child’s storybook, but all of us present craned forward to read the legend Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on the tome’s cover, as he pushed it out to the centre of the table.
“Chortle if you will,” Said Heiligman, “But I assure you all, that the book is challenging and entertaining beyond my expectations, and I recommend that all of you procure yourselves a copy, not least that I might have friends to share verses and witticisms with.”
“Oh really, Heiligman,” scoffed a man, Burthold I believe it was, with an incredulous look, “Are you suggesting that this esteemed company lower itself to such juvenile literature? Why, I doubt even half of us ever were children!”
“Nonsense, Burthold; live a little!” Heiligman chuckled, “I suggest you all acquire a copy, and we’ll read it together. If it doesn’t take your interest, we’ll write the whole episode off as a grand misadventure, and I’ll recompense you for your trouble.”
The tone of the room remained one of jovial amusement, and even I, sceptical as often I was of new and unexpected ventures, willingly took the title and author down in my diary, and made a note to buy a copy later that week. It was a decision I still regret, and no amount of desperate prayer will reverse.
As it happened, I bought the book the next morning, on my way to the office. It seemed innocuous enough; a brightly painted paperback cover, and praise from a number of respectable newspapers. I had no idea what horrors I was gladly embracing from those dire pages as I began to turn them, during one quiet hour in the office canteen.
My suspicions were immediately aroused, after barely more than a page, by the book’s seemingly whimsical endorsement of the occult and the esoteric. With rapt horror, I continued to turn the pages merely out of a morbid desire to discover what sinister depths of occultism and diablerie the tome would plumb before it would release me from the vicelike grip of its mesmeric glamour.
I know not how long I remained under the book’s spell, only that I was at once released from its insidious duress by the sudden chiming of the clock upon my mantelpiece. I discovered to my amazement that I sat in my smoking chair, while in the fireplace, flames crackled and threw their sallow light in leering flickers up and down the oak panelling of my study walls. Having no recollection of the time that had passed since first I opened that diabolic cover and pored over the mephistophelian arcana within, I felt a sense of deep and all-consuming disgust overwhelm my being, as though I had stumbled into the grave of a heretic, and lay paralysed in the cadaver’s withered arms. My vision blurred, as sensation returned, and I stumbled forward abruptly, as though released from some palsy, fetching myself a blow to the head from the corner of the coffee table.
I awakened at noon from a pageant of horrible dreams, to discover that the book had toppled from the armrest of my chair to lie with one corner touching my outstretched hand, as I lay sprawled upon the carpet. I shuddered at the thought of such an intolerable evil allowed to exist any longer, and at once reached to hurl the misbegotten thing into the fireplace. But I hesitated; for this was not the only copy of the vile manuscript. I had to warn others of the horrors that strained to be released from those eldritch pages.
I would need allies. I seized the book at last, crossing myself in the certainty that the power of Christ would be sufficient to ward off its influence if only for a short while, and resolved to speak with Heiligman at once; for should any be able to resist the malicious charms of the book, it would surely be the principled assembly of the Christian Gentleman’s Club.
With little care that I was unshaven and still in my smoking jacket, I hurled myself from my rooms with a single minded passion, and headed immediately for the club forthwith. I realised that I was weeping with fear and zeal, as I hammered frenetically on the door, and staggered into a surprised Heiligman as he opened it.
“Dear Lord, man, what has got into you?” he gasped, as I seized the lapels of his jacket.
“The book is evil, do you understand?” I uttered, in what must have been a strangled and rather overwrought voice, so deep was my ferment, “We must warn them! We must warn them all before it is too late! We…”
At that point, I stopped, for I realised the true horror of the situation before me. Each of my esteemed brethren sat, symmetrically along either side of the long table, his copy of the book open in his hands, and wearing a glazed look of marked surprise at my outburst, as though I were a lunatic; they saw not the truth of my words, so deeply were they ensnared in the cloying grip of that baleful prose. I looked from disgusted face to disgusted face, searching for an ally, any who might shake off the book’s spell and be redeemed.
“Burthold!” I cried, lunging for the sleeve of the old antagonist, in the hopes that at least he would see the horror of the damned codex that only two days before he had scoffed at. But he threw me back with furious vigour, incomprehension in his eyes, and I saw that he was as engrossed in the malignant opus as any of them.
With a last fearful look, I let out a wail of anguish, and stumbled back out onto the streets, ignoring the cries of the damned as they echoed behind me. I had no further recourse but my pastor, for surely he above all, would see clearly the evil of the thing, and the need to purge it from society by whatever means.
My pace was rapid and my step vertiginous, as I made my way to the church. I do not recall how long I howled and thundered against the door, “Help, pastor, I need help!” I cried. I may also have shrieked wordlessly, in my despair as I waited, such was the intensity of my disconsolation by that point.
When at last the door opened, and I staggered inside, I was horrified; for as the pastor stood, wearing the same insipid look of stupefaction as those poor, lost souls at the club, I saw clearly open upon his table a copy of the book, merely laid out before his chair, beside an empty coffee mug, as one might read for pleasure rather than to exorcise the foul spirits that I now saw clearly, writhing and contorting within its noisome pages.
I gaped wordlessly at the man, at a loss as to how one so holy could have fallen so far. I sensed, perhaps through heightened awareness granted me by my rejection of the thing, that he was not himself; that something darker and more ancient occupied his shell. I felt a rush of acute fear, as I bolted from the place, dropping my copy of the book there and then, and fleeing with the haunting shrieks of the demoniac in my ears.
It is done. I have put the torch to that false church, and burned hollow its bedevilled eaves, as I have done to the Christian Gentleman’s Club, and whatever other dens of this anathema I have uncovered, for I do not remember them all. They are all dead, God rest them, but with some small hope, their souls had better chance of redemption now, than had they consumed fully the poisonous bile of blasphemies and heinous portents contained within those detestable pages.
As I complete this account, with only the sound of the relentless dripping of wax for company, I embrace the end. My sanity strains under the horrors beheld unto me, and I can no longer face a world in which such evil runs rampant. It is only in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can have such a descent as mine.
I have fortified myself against the damned that roam without, and now, nestled in my stony womb, do I hear their maddened howling approach. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. They shall not have me; my end shall be of my own design, and not wrought at the rugose phalanges of whatever terrible miscreations the vile power of the book has made of men.
I hear an eerie voice intone, “Pol’iyss! O p’enn Ap!”
Never! They shall never take me alive, to their rotting parlours! I shall die by my own power! The window! The window!
THE END