tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34932648509425314212024-02-02T10:23:45.220+00:00Cumbrian CthulhuPhotograph by Żaneta MiderskaAndrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-59502583567969915182013-09-16T18:11:00.001+01:002013-09-19T17:35:45.079+01:00Cumbrian Cthulhu’s First Donation To LDSAMRA!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_iPrwPHxonkBpgPAIHGSQ2SRsQEXfqkPcwaXp6vGv7D-UH887EjhwbTEEvhrnX90Xj6Nbnhw6Gr3mH_TOJ6GRvHXgTaovIhSEX4zIVzbmaW3R2dj-Yrt98udyW34YqMcGkb8vvA662Bk/s1600/donation+poster+words.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_iPrwPHxonkBpgPAIHGSQ2SRsQEXfqkPcwaXp6vGv7D-UH887EjhwbTEEvhrnX90Xj6Nbnhw6Gr3mH_TOJ6GRvHXgTaovIhSEX4zIVzbmaW3R2dj-Yrt98udyW34YqMcGkb8vvA662Bk/s400/donation+poster+words.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PLEASE SHARE THIS
PAGE LINK ON FB AND TWITTER!</b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Our first donation has officially been given to our charity ‘Lake
District Search And Mountain Rescue!’</span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">From production to promotion, sales to donation, we have finally
completed our first of many laps!</span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Below you will find the details of the donation day, brief
project history, photographs by Alan Cleaver and link to a video of the event.</span><br />
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Thank you to all of our CC contributors, promoters and
customers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>Donation Day</u></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">LDSAMRA kindly agreed to Cumbrian Cthulhu creator Andrew
McGuigan’s request to take a photograph holding up a big silly cheque.</span><br />
<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The handover and photographs took place at 10:30 am on
Saturday 24th August at the Keswick MRC centre down by the lake.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">This donation was the profits from the first two books, from
November 2012 to April 2013. Sale
profits since April 2013 will now build up for next year’s donation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8XojqfCy6eizHWYkoqaql1K5BI92d9vJrn6DzKP5hizClBYpeN0ai4bGGr93VGxupQ8gfOhpM7VxhuL_dTVM29fBdjBwUVtfgVHXPhyphenhyphenc5QhYMl7aLY-3WF4JC5DqLmWbc4DsFS7ew-pU/s1600/keswick1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8XojqfCy6eizHWYkoqaql1K5BI92d9vJrn6DzKP5hizClBYpeN0ai4bGGr93VGxupQ8gfOhpM7VxhuL_dTVM29fBdjBwUVtfgVHXPhyphenhyphenc5QhYMl7aLY-3WF4JC5DqLmWbc4DsFS7ew-pU/s400/keswick1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-goqaRddBdRRGOMOT3yEbmV-5GAsqBbfU9PFLXi9KQ3kSn0DjXhUoVf7RVv4rLy2bGWXjoYtvpEkNRXhXnWGQon4E1A0k624ytdHfYUSZsaBt0-TK2awzXahag0he7OK-v1esYYXztQ/s1600/keswick4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-goqaRddBdRRGOMOT3yEbmV-5GAsqBbfU9PFLXi9KQ3kSn0DjXhUoVf7RVv4rLy2bGWXjoYtvpEkNRXhXnWGQon4E1A0k624ytdHfYUSZsaBt0-TK2awzXahag0he7OK-v1esYYXztQ/s640/keswick4.jpg" width="426" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4uSBm7Vqbywu3TqaVIwmYrpwClewpVMXt2_e0TAwjY_gU39Olk7XZMqf77KSdQmBX29h1VrXNa9Z8oNm-BCUwz07pPPVuTfwsOQhbr3joTkzUwDHzQQ4Jp3tu2E3tgCEwqWg-x21enGU/s1600/keswick3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4uSBm7Vqbywu3TqaVIwmYrpwClewpVMXt2_e0TAwjY_gU39Olk7XZMqf77KSdQmBX29h1VrXNa9Z8oNm-BCUwz07pPPVuTfwsOQhbr3joTkzUwDHzQQ4Jp3tu2E3tgCEwqWg-x21enGU/s400/keswick3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Photographs by Alan Cleaver</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Present on the day were Karen and Stephen of Keswick
MRC, the McGuigan clan: Jennifer, Stephen, Suzanne and Andrew, Allan Mitchell
and Bryony Parrish.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We were given a guided tour of the Keswick Mountain
Rescue Centre where we got to see the training facilities, meeting room, the high tech call out and monitoring systems and the wide range of equipment packed into each rescue vehicle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We were privileged to meet Mike Nixon MBE, the only active MRC member to
receive a 60 year certificate. Mike thanked us for our cheque and
wished us great success with our future publishing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Andrew was pleased as well to finally meet Alan Cleaver, who
has long been a supporter and promoter of Cumbrian Cthulhu both online and in
newspaper print!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-northerner/2013/jan/02/cumbria-horror-stories">http://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-northerner/2013/jan/02/cumbria-horror-stories</a></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR7cHPrlX7YLik_FutjWDr6WcxnINBxWa9sc6pLbiCLqhIxQH0v0Qu1bQ-zp9LQ35Vf8X2kT9B12kbWPkeMejOWUWRkG8XSMrTUzpXFtHzyDEVPWr5lex9x40wXejAGHOpk70ZfrPHgTc/s1600/times+and+star.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR7cHPrlX7YLik_FutjWDr6WcxnINBxWa9sc6pLbiCLqhIxQH0v0Qu1bQ-zp9LQ35Vf8X2kT9B12kbWPkeMejOWUWRkG8XSMrTUzpXFtHzyDEVPWr5lex9x40wXejAGHOpk70ZfrPHgTc/s400/times+and+star.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Cumbrian Cthulhu in Times & Star, by Alan Cleaver</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Alan joined us on the day to photograph and report later on
the cheque handover.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">All in all the day was an enjoyable success and we look
forward to future yearly cheque presentations!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Here is the link to the video, many thanks to Stephen
McGuigan!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxX2Y_n0kG6hO9OqncFgC0U0vs2_QvcWPJ0PyNN67b7Ze06Jrsw5Ta4jbsLjfyQ9eUVAtxbLTrgf15F0HNqXA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>A Brief Project History</u></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The Cumbrian Cthulhu project was started in 2009 when Andrew
McGuigan wrote the first Cumbrian Cthulhu story ‘The chamber in the Hillside,’
a tale about invaders from the sea seeking to unearth a monstrous creature from
beneath the Senhouse Roman site.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">After being joined online by other writers and
our illustrator Andy Paciorek, the Cumbrian Cthulhu team collected stories to
self publish our first two illustrated anthologies in November 2012.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjre6mparLPXhZ0BBvPvBvgVq2syuaFk7hPY9rG0ntkDBjGiO0SacagOI4UeZ27eNLViIj1PNVCYbZ_RCAJrdGqpf2riN1Pxj23Mb-87xdDc3jLSnXI206WK48mgoQVkwbhe6nTt_Ntlcw/s1600/282904_10151154467526394_1470613421_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjre6mparLPXhZ0BBvPvBvgVq2syuaFk7hPY9rG0ntkDBjGiO0SacagOI4UeZ27eNLViIj1PNVCYbZ_RCAJrdGqpf2riN1Pxj23Mb-87xdDc3jLSnXI206WK48mgoQVkwbhe6nTt_Ntlcw/s400/282904_10151154467526394_1470613421_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Cumbrian Cthulhu Volumes One and Two</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyadrvVB6amq8RfDB0lYJey_i3weG_K83KBAeVJbms-XNolJlzHxppt7uUVgeFk-p2zYqEkEW1EJqg_YhG2Xg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Our Youtube advert, thank you Alex Goth and Andy Paciorek</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">In the spirit of the project, we decided all book sale
profits should be donated to a Cumbrian charity. LDSAMRA was chosen as a very
worthy recipient. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.ldsamra.org.uk/" target="_blank">LDSAMRA Homepage</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Books were initially sold on our publishing site Lulu.com
and then later on Amazon.com and other online retailers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">As the creator of Cumbrian Cthulhu, Andrew McGuigan ordered
boxes of books which were sold to relatives and work colleagues in order to
squeeze every extra penny profit by keeping costs low, utilising bulk orders
combined with occasional discount codes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CumbrianCthulhu" target="_blank">Buy our books on LULU.COM!</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cumbrian-Cthulhu-Andrew-McGuigan/dp/1291106316/ref=sr_1_1/276-3278155-2884906?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379607974&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Buy our books on Amazon!</a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Early word of mouth, Facebook friends and the relatives of
contributors have made up the majority of sales so far. Members of the CC
project took to email, Facebook and Twitter to inform both Cumbrians and
Lovecraft fans of the books.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We hope that news of the donation will further
increase awareness and encourage new sales!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpqjOvZK-_BsF3w9rioHX634EKa57ZK8N7v9VMQ2_BN-UWmSwA8-kfqksyH11As6ILDpMFcLrvcsTpL8ZAiOrs7GZAuc6HPsngkmDu93IMbB4WxdHUIlC5ijwfyrIcuamhRPv4cucw0aE/s1600/cc+mug3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpqjOvZK-_BsF3w9rioHX634EKa57ZK8N7v9VMQ2_BN-UWmSwA8-kfqksyH11As6ILDpMFcLrvcsTpL8ZAiOrs7GZAuc6HPsngkmDu93IMbB4WxdHUIlC5ijwfyrIcuamhRPv4cucw0aE/s400/cc+mug3.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Illustrations by Andy Paciorek</span></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<u><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Future of
Cumbrian Cthulhu!</span></b></u></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">What makes Cumbrain Cthulhu different to a one day charity
event is that the books will always be on sale. The aim of the project is to
build up a collection of books under its banner so that even in years to come
they can be stumbled upon, creating new charitable revenue which will always be
donated to LDSAMRA.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In the next two years we will have completed and published
all of our currently planned books: Four volumes of paperback short stories, a
hardback version featuring all stories together, a collection of Lovecraft’s
own stories for those new to his work, a book of Cumbrian Cthulhu roleplaying
adventures and finally a coffee table style book featuring the full colour art
and history of the Cumbrian Cthulhu Project.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We also have a new merchandise shop where you can buys
shirts, mugs and art prints featuring Cumbrian Cthulhu artwork from our books
and also designs unique to our souvenirs.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://www.cafepress.co.uk/cumbriancthulhu" target="_blank">'Cumbrian Cthulhu Sacred Relics' Our shop!</a> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgvIPNI5nnv-MgZn16kwM2j8eJx_uvI2_Zd4jFn-Tt5sexVRroFFDDOpjkMlzn5jTH5NJJ_tDzVge6WJL1pXFhYaxgBg0vmELsDUkpNVcyvQYrVT4CSKVeobME16qtuDHlr1NleFVJSKA/s1600/lamb+attack+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgvIPNI5nnv-MgZn16kwM2j8eJx_uvI2_Zd4jFn-Tt5sexVRroFFDDOpjkMlzn5jTH5NJJ_tDzVge6WJL1pXFhYaxgBg0vmELsDUkpNVcyvQYrVT4CSKVeobME16qtuDHlr1NleFVJSKA/s400/lamb+attack+2.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lamb Attack by Tony Clark, now on CC merchandise!</span></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW-RtIVuudPZ32wDXB4t9KV-1xVLAHqDPOglQJFN_L_fkIImEIa-4eesSJtyZQI9tuGJbBRCDSMqAQEmausYZynXvcPW6Jf8lmhqgMujAgLvQjTT8tc5CD6thP4RZtG9YYOCqX3mFCMAA/s1600/cc+shirt+flag.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW-RtIVuudPZ32wDXB4t9KV-1xVLAHqDPOglQJFN_L_fkIImEIa-4eesSJtyZQI9tuGJbBRCDSMqAQEmausYZynXvcPW6Jf8lmhqgMujAgLvQjTT8tc5CD6thP4RZtG9YYOCqX3mFCMAA/s320/cc+shirt+flag.png" width="294" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Cumbrian Cthulhu Flag Shirt</span></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">In October this year we will be releasing Volume Three of
our short stories and also the H.P. Lovecraft anthology.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">These will be on sale
through LULU.COM, available from Halloween.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG9h0-1iSQJ1DYLy_DgXFGomhm8lsEsXUdzq_JFkHpseXtOYetN7NDswZRavwCXahGu2HR0xAstA2DdGuB6xWh8ww5djQz0uIjQJgVCTLb2x1BVTvhGvuuMpLDJjH8peieejGhsvTubQU/s1600/cover+three+and+classic+loecraft+final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG9h0-1iSQJ1DYLy_DgXFGomhm8lsEsXUdzq_JFkHpseXtOYetN7NDswZRavwCXahGu2HR0xAstA2DdGuB6xWh8ww5djQz0uIjQJgVCTLb2x1BVTvhGvuuMpLDJjH8peieejGhsvTubQU/s400/cover+three+and+classic+loecraft+final.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">At Cumbrian Cthulhu, we always welcome new writers and
artists! </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Currently we are having a big push to increase awareness of our
‘Cumbrian Cthulhu Cover Art Competition,’ where artists can win the chance to
have their work featured as the cover of our hardback book, as well as a full
biography in our Art & History book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://cumbriancthulhu.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-great-cumbrian-cthulhu-cover-art.html" target="_blank">Cover Art Competition Homepage</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/246653712143690/?fref=ts" target="_blank">Facebook page for the cover art comp</a></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBz23dOLmncBv2gy_2qeakVAsQLGcKap_t909vcPmcY1a_IfKd0k_aN7miw2qdcy5I0Dl9-RNbBdOeNuIO9i3_bt71kQ7ENEAxvqSzFkKV1gB9Jh6P5TMnIpNXjKkTCW_FcnLwtk0Ew8/s1600/cc+COVER+ART+COMP+BANNER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBz23dOLmncBv2gy_2qeakVAsQLGcKap_t909vcPmcY1a_IfKd0k_aN7miw2qdcy5I0Dl9-RNbBdOeNuIO9i3_bt71kQ7ENEAxvqSzFkKV1gB9Jh6P5TMnIpNXjKkTCW_FcnLwtk0Ew8/s400/cc+COVER+ART+COMP+BANNER.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Thank you once again to the whole Cumbrian Cthulhu team, our
promoters and customers. We hope to donate more and more over the next few
years as word spreads and readership grows!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Please contact me with any questions!</span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Andrew McGuigan </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">cumbrian.cthulhu@gmail.com</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkOa453Oh0uS5d4oKzH64WMMF_pyTRhP6h9l505W2_rCQn3aOdsYsgVBXcwnJvFA1ua8BRrG57ji-1nBfDQUmIpQUoZdxadQhgyKBCxlm3ktAtxeRuCBIiy0_30uYXFj245YJYiCSQs-Y/s1600/cc+heart+ldsamra.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkOa453Oh0uS5d4oKzH64WMMF_pyTRhP6h9l505W2_rCQn3aOdsYsgVBXcwnJvFA1ua8BRrG57ji-1nBfDQUmIpQUoZdxadQhgyKBCxlm3ktAtxeRuCBIiy0_30uYXFj245YJYiCSQs-Y/s320/cc+heart+ldsamra.png" width="316" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>PLEASE SHARE THIS
PAGE LINK</b> <b>ON FB AND TWITTER!</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-45465623181348042862013-05-12T08:38:00.005+01:002013-05-29T08:59:30.161+01:00The Great Cumbrian Cthulhu Cover Art Competition!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfwylEUC6hFcoI8PqfehBJjI-tQIshI2_O23fGUjIto7DMlw0Twg1IUYB6jaO6lv7suLyVCYaRoUao7DXYJSTVUl3bqk_8VJVUcMcYE7YFiBEKgl_KSwC5ziJ3U9nwrAnKByAJycs3aw/s1600/cc+COVER+ART+COMP+BANNER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbfwylEUC6hFcoI8PqfehBJjI-tQIshI2_O23fGUjIto7DMlw0Twg1IUYB6jaO6lv7suLyVCYaRoUao7DXYJSTVUl3bqk_8VJVUcMcYE7YFiBEKgl_KSwC5ziJ3U9nwrAnKByAJycs3aw/s400/cc+COVER+ART+COMP+BANNER.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/246653712143690/?fref=ts">CC Cover Art Facebook Group and Gallery</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><u><b>The Great Cumbrian Cthulhu Cover Art Competition!<br /> Win the chance to have YOUR art on the cover of Cumbrian Cthulhu!<br /> </b></u></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><br /> </span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><br /> <u><b>BACKGROUND</b></u><br /><span class="text_exposed_show">
Cumbrian Cthulhu is a fully illustrated collection of short horror
stories set in the Cumbrian region and based on H.P. Lovecraft’s
legendary Cthulhu Mythos.<br /> <br /> We will be publishing a total of four
paperback anthologies, followed by a deluxe hardback edition containing
all stories together, entitled ‘The Complete Cumbrian Cthulhu.’
Alongside this we will be publishing ‘Cumbrian Cthulhu Art &
History,’ a full colour coffee table style book containing all our CC
art in large detail, with a full history of the project and those
involved.<br /> <br /> Our contributors very kindly give their work and time
for free, so that all profits from the CC books can be donated to Lake
District Search And Mountain Rescue (LDSAMRA.) It is in our interest to
raise awareness and promote book sales whenever we can. One of the CC
project’s main aims has always been to encourage and publish new writers
and artists.<br /> <br /> With this in mind we would like to announce a new competition open to all fantasy and horror artists!<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <b><u>THE COMPETITION!</u></b><br /> We are looking for the best full colour artwork inspired by the stories or themes of Cumbrian Cthulhu.<br />
Any medium is acceptable, from scanned in drawings and paintings to
digitally altered photographs. You may enter any or all categories as
many times as you wish and all entries will be proudly displayed on our
Facebook page. <br /> </span></span></span><br /><span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/246653712143690/?fref=ts">CC Cover Art Facebook Group and Gallery</a></span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"> <br /> <u><b>THE WINNERS!</b></u><br /> *Several selected
finalists will have their submissions and a brief biography published in
the ‘Cumbrian Cthulhu Art & History’ book.<br /> <br /> *One winner
will have their submission featured as the cover art for ‘The Complete
Cumbrian Cthulhu,’ and will have their own (non CC) artwork and full
biography featured in the ‘Cumbrian Cthulhu Art & History’ book.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <u><b>PROMOTING OUR BOOKS</b></u><br />
Some (but not all!) of the categories below indicate which Cumbrian
Cthulhu book the relevant descriptive text can be found. As stated
earlier, it is always our intention to encourage sales as the profits
benefit the Cumbrian Mountain Rescue Teams.<br /> The first two books can
be bought either on Amazon, or ideally from LULU.COM (Where our profit
and therefore donation is greater.)<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.com%2Fspotlight%2FCumbrianCthulhu&h=pAQHMZYNV&s=1" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.lulu.com/<wbr></wbr>spotlight/CumbrianCthulhu</a><br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <u><b>THE CATEGORIES!</b></u><br /> <br /> Pickman's Cumbrian Model-<br /> A Lakeland vista being captured by a painter, but the painter has captured something more interesting as well…<br /> A creature from a lake? A famous Cumbrian site turned Lovecraftian? Completely open ended.<br /> <br /> The House of Dark Lanterns- CC book 1<br /> The ancient lantern itself and the unearthly shadows it casts.<br /> <br /> The Elusive Valley- CC book 2<br />
Alfred's view up to the altered Wasdale Head. (Consider crystal rocks,
thrashing lake, alien colours, bizzarre stars and planets, mountains of
madness above horizon, the two gates, creatures in undergrowth.)<br /> <br /> The Cumbrian Cthulhu flag-<br />
An Occult relic. The Cumbrian flag with flowers replaced by Elder stars
and tentacles in the waters. Show the flag and its design in any way
you wish, completely open ended.<br /> <br /> Ashness Bloody Bridge- CC book 1<br /> One of the final photos taken before the photographers death.<br /> (The Classic Bridge shot. The winter sunset, the creature emerging .)<br /> <br /> The Occultus Carvetii- CC book 2<br />
Upon a rock shelf sits the open ancient book, showing evil runes,
illustrations of the Elusive Valley map, portal gates and jade key. (The
Moresby Swan, The Elusive Vallley)<br /> <br /> Caasand- CC book 1,2<br />
The ragged traveler- Administering cures from his potion belt to the
dying of Shonderhowe village (The Fell Faith), sharing sandwiches with
the young Alfred (The Elusive Valley), or a pose of your own creation.<br /> <br /> Cumbrian Cthulhu- <br /> An epic masterwork in a Lakeland Lovecraft theme. Completely open ended.<br /> <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/246653712143690/?fref=ts">CC Cover Art Facebook Group and Gallery</a> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"> <u><b><br /> SUBMISSIONS, QUESTIONS, DEADLINES AND JUDGING</b></u><br />
*All submission artwork should be sent as attachments to the email
address below. Any questions not already answered to the same email
please.<br /> <br /> *The final deadline for competition submissions will be 1st June 2014. <br /> <br /> *Members of the existing Cumbrian Cthulhu team will serve as competition Judges. <br /> <br /> <br />
Cumbrian Cthulhu prides itself on being a relaxed and friendly project.
We look forward to seeing your entries and we hope you enjoy creating
them and joining our team!<br /> Cumbrian.cthulhu@gmail.com</span></span></span>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-55511115400272190712012-11-23T08:21:00.001+00:002012-12-30T23:31:08.426+00:00Cumbrian Cthulhu Now On Sale!<!--[if !mso]>
<style>
v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
.shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
</style>
<![endif]--><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/>
<w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/>
<w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/>
<w:Word11KerningPairs/>
<w:CachedColBalance/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
</style>
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="2050"/>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1"/>
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]-->
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Charlemagne Std"; font-size: 28.0pt;">Cumbrian Cthulhu</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">‘All new tales of
Cumbrian horror inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's legendary Cthulhu mythos’</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Information regarding the Cumbrian Cthulhu charity project and the
upcoming release of anthology volumes one and two</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTwOVE8CJG9Gvbrn_5EfwRlj8_WEg5PXjiW9HCEH555mZpmWCvdw5d4r7Ek-FTzatLDtB3Pxzq2vrWjS4CCpUG_ckezXDnpnLRzkYnaIopR13SDHere_TwVsKfVlp6hTrX0lAqHGsedqs/s1600/cc+covers+together.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTwOVE8CJG9Gvbrn_5EfwRlj8_WEg5PXjiW9HCEH555mZpmWCvdw5d4r7Ek-FTzatLDtB3Pxzq2vrWjS4CCpUG_ckezXDnpnLRzkYnaIopR13SDHere_TwVsKfVlp6hTrX0lAqHGsedqs/s400/cc+covers+together.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Copperplate Gothic Bold","sans-serif";">The cover art of Cumbrian Cthulhu
Volumes one and two</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Cumbrian Cthulhu aims to encourage and publish stories by
amateur horror writers, celebrating the mystical beauty of Cumbria and the
timeless horror of H.P. Lovecraft.</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">We will donate 100% of sales profits from each volume
produced to The Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association (LDSAMRA).</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Both books are
available NOW from LULU.COM, our publishing site. They will be available on
Amazon.com in a few weeks, however we urge everyone to buy from LULU.COM, where
the profit (and therefore charity donation) is substantially higher.</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CumbrianCthulhu"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">Cumbrian Cthulhu on
LULU.COM</span></a></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CumbrianCthulhu"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">Lulu Link</span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";"></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>CONTACT DETAILS</u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://twitter.com/CumbrianCthulhu">http://twitter.com/CumbrianCthulhu</a></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://cumbriancthulhu.blogspot.co.uk/">http://cumbriancthulhu.blogspot.co.uk/</a></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="mailto:cumbrian.cthulhu@gmail.com"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">Email</span></a></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdLXF3Gmz2O-UmFwDZHHptj3N_ip43ZPTS_vt1LBtpNPjKxFVyi8ElH7_21i5NHP5BxgWpoD8kPw30jn9hvhBc_NMmnAtXvDla5NnwX9GFZSGU1loIMzkFe7SPs8z-c0Sa2osLeWgdpRc/s1600/A+FELL+FAITH+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdLXF3Gmz2O-UmFwDZHHptj3N_ip43ZPTS_vt1LBtpNPjKxFVyi8ElH7_21i5NHP5BxgWpoD8kPw30jn9hvhBc_NMmnAtXvDla5NnwX9GFZSGU1loIMzkFe7SPs8z-c0Sa2osLeWgdpRc/s400/A+FELL+FAITH+2.jpg" width="275" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Okay, so what on earth is a Cthulhu?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Cthulhu
is an ancient monster created by legendary horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.
Cthulhu lies in a deathly sleep in a sunken city, sending madness to the dreams
of mankind. His cultists on earth seek to expedite the prophecy that when the
stars are correctly aligned, Cthulhu will rise from the ocean to reclaim and
destroy the earth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Howard
Phillips Lovecraft (1890 - 1937) was an American author whose guiding aesthetic
and philosophical principle was what he termed ‘cosmic horror.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Although Lovecraft's
readership was limited during his lifetime, his reputation has grown over the decades,
and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the
20th century.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">During
his life Lovecraft encouraged other writers to use his created worlds and
monsters in their own stories. This tradition continues today, with regular
books being published every year. His stories continue to inspire writers and
artists today, with influences found in music, film and graphic novels. It is
our great hope that our ‘Cumbrian Cthulhu’ books will eventually become a part
of the Lovecraftian fiction legacy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Where did the idea for Cumbrian Cthulhu
come from?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My
name is Andrew McGuigan and I began the Cumbrian Cthulhu project in 2009. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am a proud Cumbrian myself, born in
Beckermet in 1975 before moving to the North East of England when I was a small
child. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When
growing up I was lucky enough to return every year during holidays. With
caravan and awning my family toured the Lake District, climbing hills, paddling
in lakes and finding pubs for me that served my favourite chicken in a basket
(often the Britannia at Elterwater.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Today my parents are
retired and living in the beautiful west coast town Maryport. It was during a
visit in 2009 that I read about the excavation of the local Roman fort site at
Senhouse. At the time I was re-reading a Lovecraft anthology which included the
classic ‘Shadows over Innsmouth’ and it gave me the inspiration to try some
writing. The proposed excavations seemed like an interesting situation around
which to base a horror story. By borrowing some local history books from my
parents I constructed a three part horror story set in 1950’s Maryport, using
the geographical references of the time, and bringing in some of Lovecraft’s
better known monsters. I have been a fan of H.P. Lovecraft for several years
and I admire the way that he encouraged his fellow writers to base their
stories on the particular creatures and worlds he had invented. It took a few
months, but finally I finished what would be my first Cumbrian Cthulhu story,
‘The Chamber in the hillside.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The story takes the form of three warning letters written
by an elderly archaeologist after he reads of proposed plans to excavate the
Roman fort site at Senhouse, Maryport. He states that contrary to popular
belief the area has been dug before, back in 1954 by a team he himself
assembled. The three letters describe the horrors that were found, and the
writer’s subsequent descent into madness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Having
written the story, I started an online blog so I could publish it there for
friends to easily read. It then occurred to me that other amateur writers might
wish to contribute stories in a similar theme and it may be possible to gather
together a small collection of new Cumbrian Lovecraft fiction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
so cumbriancthulhu.blogspot was born.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpZAH9YNtLiONzAzT0adql1Bfffn5B4BjP_JFMmIbqIdTrNxVNh5roZkiRLynys9F930zk_KsZIv1HIQb4p8L6eHIdDz_Rgrt9jyqpRRX7ubeC9-qMWotitEYmu5pr3dSYhS62Jg54A2U/s1600/CC+A+Mist+Friend+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpZAH9YNtLiONzAzT0adql1Bfffn5B4BjP_JFMmIbqIdTrNxVNh5roZkiRLynys9F930zk_KsZIv1HIQb4p8L6eHIdDz_Rgrt9jyqpRRX7ubeC9-qMWotitEYmu5pr3dSYhS62Jg54A2U/s400/CC+A+Mist+Friend+1.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">How did the other writers, artists and
contributors come to the project?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Once
my first story was online I sent out paper copies to several writers groups in
Cumbria and also the Times & Star newspaper. All of the letters included a
card advertising the blog site and an invitation to contribute stories. We were
lucky enough to be featured on the <a href="http://www.yog-sothoth.com/content/"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">Yog-Sothoth</span></a>
website, which was encouraging to see in those early days! Take up was very
slow at first, but a big change occurred six months later when I was joined by
our resident artist Andy Paciorek who not only wrote stories, but also
expressed a desire to illustrate each Cumbrian Cthulhu tale. Right from the
beginning I have always been very impressed by Andy’s work. There is no doubt
he has brought a much valued extra dimension to the stories and elevated them
from simple text to a solid unified collection.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The main boost to our
writing force came when I had a small article about the Cumbrian Cthulhu
website published in ‘Pulse’ an internal Civil Service magazine. Several
enthusiastic amateur writers made contact, and our total number of stories went
from eight to twenty within a year, all illustrated by Andy. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was mid 2011 that I decided to move forward with an actual printed anthology of
our stories and art. All of our contributors agreed that it would be in line
with the spirit of our project to donate any book sales profits to a Cumbrian
charity and we quickly decided on the Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue
Association. The horrors of our Cumbrian Cthulhu protagonists are nothing but
pure fiction, written for fun. The volunteers of LDSAMRA selflessly assist
those with real injury and placate real fear everyday. They save lives each
year and do their best to ensure that Lakeland walkers are well informed
regarding safety precautions and the potential hazards of the high fells and
elements.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I
have never published a book before and I realized that in order to make the
production as professional as possible I would need further help. I contacted
my old University at Northumbria to see if any creative writing students would
be interested in gaining experience as a proof readers and editors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Creative
Writing Programme Leader David Stewart was a great help, pleased to pass on our
information and to encourage the involvement of Northumbria students. I
received a reply on the same day of asking and we were pleased to welcome
recent graduate Lucy Collier to the Cumbrian Cthulhu team as our new editor. We
were also fortunate enough to recruit Kate Taylor and Matt Walby giving us much
needed help managing the research of media contacts and social network
promotion respectively. Ben Powell-Jones, a university friend of mine came
aboard as our book cover artist and was able to produce fantastic digital art
and titles to the exact designs I imagined, designs that were frustratingly
well beyond my own ability to realise! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
Cumbrian Cthulhu has grown, I have been constantly impressed by the generosity
of those giving their time and help freely either for fun, career experience or
just to be a part of a creative project alongside others. Without their
enthusiasm and hard </span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";">work
there </span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">would
be no Cumbrian Cthulhu book, promotion, illustrations or stories at all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Tell
me about the Cumbrian Cthulhu stories</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3493264850942531421" name="more"></a><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
stories are a tribute to both the imagination of H.P. Lovecraft and the awesome
beauty and rich history of the Cumbrian Lake District. You don’t have to be a
Lovecraft fan to understand the stories as each one is self contained with no
requirement for additional knowledge. Although the stories feature traditional
themes of horror, they do not contain explicit language or sexual content,
instead following Lovecraft’s themes of fear of the unknown mixed with
discoveries of insanity causing otherworldly creatures and gods. We believe the
stories would be of interest to fans of horror in general and fans of Lovecraft
specifically, as well as those interested in Cumbrian folklore.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">All of our stories are
fiction, but set within the recognised landmarks and history of Cumbria. Two
local tales of Cumbrian folklore have been adapted to fit the Lovecraft Mythos.
We have a version of the famous ‘Croglin Vampire’ story and also ‘The Treasure
of the Moresby Swan.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our writers research Cumbrian history back
through the ages, and tales take place in many eras: from Roman soldiers
building forts along the Solway Firth and turning back invading creatures from
the Maryport sea, to cultist villagers living in then wooded fells of
Blencathra during the building of Christian Furness Abbey. There are detective
tales from the 1950’s, treasure seeking crypt robbers in the 1970’s and a
modern Bed and Breakfast that serves some very strange sausages. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoJDDbg7emgA4MqlMygOyztOAzuavHbAItkSNfVBwnFLvaxLK6tKju-1gvBjlm-zyDYu5Y2jDsvYMjYPPb9VpjiOSAuN_ydSFKIQQzqPN5487Gvsz8COV5Co2lcgOOIeTo71Rpf-gghhQ/s1600/The+Sunken+Village+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoJDDbg7emgA4MqlMygOyztOAzuavHbAItkSNfVBwnFLvaxLK6tKju-1gvBjlm-zyDYu5Y2jDsvYMjYPPb9VpjiOSAuN_ydSFKIQQzqPN5487Gvsz8COV5Co2lcgOOIeTo71Rpf-gghhQ/s400/The+Sunken+Village+2.JPG" width="283" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Why give the sales profits to charity? Why
choose LDSAMRA?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As a group of amateur writers
and artists completing our first project, we are fully aware that our impact on
the wide world of literature may be very small! If we accomplish nothing else,
this is an opportunity to draw some attention to a good cause in Cumbria and
give something back to a place we all love. While sales will be unpredictable,
we would much prefer to give any and all of our profits to LDSAMRA, with the
relative increased readership being sufficient reward in itself..</span> <span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hope that by promoting LDSAMRA alongside
the book at every opportunity, we can at least do our very best to raise
awareness and help to increase donations to a very worthy cause.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Could I write for Cumbrian Cthulhu?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yes, please do so! cumbriancthulhu.blogspot.com<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is a home for budding horror writers who wish
to have their short stories published online. We will also publish physical
collections of stories as regularly as we have enough content and spare time!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The only requirements are that
the stories are set somewhere in the Cumbrian region and are based around the
themes of H.P. Lovecraft’s legendary Cthulhu Mythos. There are no grading
systems for your submissions, we all amateur writers here. As long as you are
happy with your final drafts and as long as they fit the criteria above and
have no illegal or libellous content, you are on! Feel free to supply your own
original artwork to complement your story. Cumbrian Cthulhu poetry is welcome
as well. You may revise your work at any time after publication online. The
Cumbrian Cthulhu website will always be a stress free and relaxed project,
ideal for new writers to ‘put themselves out there’ without judgment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Whilst it is our intention to
avoid editing and censorship, the only caveat we make is for submissions that
contain themes that would be considered deliberately overly extreme or
offensive. Remember that these stories are intended to be a representation of
H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos and always respectful to Cumbria.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Come up with a story idea.
Anthologies of H. P. Lovecraft’s works are available for reference and
collections of new Cthulhu Mythos tales appear regularly. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Research your setting
and era. Use accurate and interesting source material. There are many books
available detailing the history of The Lake District and the North West coast
of England. You can find beautiful photographs and personal accounts from the
villages, towns and industries as they grew throughout the ages. The region is
rich with inspiring vistas and preserved local tradition, fuel for any
overactive imagination! Send your submissions as Word document attachments
including contact information to: <a href="mailto:Cumbrian.Cthulhu@gmail.com"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">Cumbrian.Cthulhu@gmail.com</span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjntbvATbIpYeEzqQjplTmt8jdkVC_6uXP_VF1bKSMPWJFzlADLWI0OtjJxx5BuRAx_OirMVWmKuysU6Xfc1fFnPfpm3exDu1sX02UEF1Ok8ehU8j80WXF8POoFRkwTZ2GKVBMgyoMaiS4/s1600/THE+ECHO+OF+ECHOES.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjntbvATbIpYeEzqQjplTmt8jdkVC_6uXP_VF1bKSMPWJFzlADLWI0OtjJxx5BuRAx_OirMVWmKuysU6Xfc1fFnPfpm3exDu1sX02UEF1Ok8ehU8j80WXF8POoFRkwTZ2GKVBMgyoMaiS4/s400/THE+ECHO+OF+ECHOES.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A plea for additional sales</span></b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If
you buy the books, thank you! You have made a group of amateur writers, artists
and production staff very happy. We love you. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Everyone
involved in this project has kindly given their time and work for free. All
profits from Cumbrian Cthulhu sales will be donated directly to LDSAMRA. We
would very much like you to assist us in keeping the sales rolling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Please recommend the books to at least one other person so
we can continue to make donations. Why not buy someone a copy as a present, or
make them buy you a copy as a present? Nag until a friend or relative gives in.
Use the emotions of guilt, shame or the crimes of bribery and blackmail. Sit
with your victim until you have witnessed the online book sale transaction
completed. If everyone who buys a book gets another person to buy one, we will
sell a copy to the entire population of the world. It’s that easy. Unless of
course someone breaks the chain. I can only imagine the years of bad luck such
a deed would bring upon a person. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Anyway,
thanks again for buying the book. Follow our Twitter to check on plans for the
next book. We are always looking for new writers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">PS.
You should probably buy another copy just for yourself so you can keep it in
mint condition. It’s bound to be worth loads in the future, just like those
Harry Potter first editions. </span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Statement of fiction and disclaimer</span></b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">All stories and
characters are completely fictitious; this project was created with a great
love and respect for both Cumbria and Lovecraft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We would like to make it very clear that
Cumbrian Cthulhu is completely independent and separate from LDSAMRA and they
have no connection or involvement with the content of our books or
website.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a group of amateur writers
and artists we have merely chosen a slightly different way to make donations,
mainly due to Andrew McGuigan being too fat to do sponsored fell runs and yet
strangely still having no sellable cake or fudge making ability. Neither can he
keep his mouth shut long enough for a sponsored silence and the less said about
the confusion leading to the naked eating of the bath full of baked beans the
better. So if you have any issues with the Cumbrian Cthulhu books, speak to
Andrew. It’s really not LDSAMRA’s fault, or anything to do with them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">About LDSAMRA</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association is the umbrella body for
mountain rescue teams in Cumbria (UK). It covers the Lake District and Cumbria
in 12 member teams and is a registered charity solely funded by voluntary
contributions. Teams are largely autonomous, but LDSAMRA coordinates the development
of operational matters such as radio communications and insurance, as well as
the day to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">day running of an efficient,
voluntary rescue service. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the
teams rely almost totally on donations received from the public. Charitable
gifts are always gratefully received, either to specific teams direct, or to
mountain rescue generally.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.ldsamra.org.uk/"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">www.ldsamra.org.uk</span></a></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.justgiving.com/ldmra"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">www.justgiving.com/ldmra</span></a></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">WHAT HELP DOES CUMBRIAN CTHULHU REQUIRE NOW?</b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We need as much exposure and
promotion as possible please!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Feel free to copy any
information from this pack to publish on your website, or in your magazine. Use
any of the images provided alongside.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Link to our LULU.COM page on
Facebook and mention us on Twitter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CumbrianCthulhu"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-language: HI;">Cumbrian Cthulhu on
LULU.COM</span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We would particularly
appreciate any publication of the poster image advertising the books and the
LDSAMRA donation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Email me with any specific
ideas for assistance you would like to provide the project.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<br />Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-21138925557347142652012-03-28T20:57:00.001+01:002012-03-28T21:00:02.152+01:00Such a Quiet Place. Part One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi12mWZ0ZugowuSkphXVslN0qaTBnspRPhlNL8g7NC_g9FoAO0PiWPARoFOFX7gqJHW9alpqDr6ov6kosu0JlDIyHpzBki-epgbEaG_8Z_z6J7OLlNAF_h9Jg6Zh9bGnOIB_q0DbffeHf0/s1600/SUCH+A+QUIET+PLACE+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi12mWZ0ZugowuSkphXVslN0qaTBnspRPhlNL8g7NC_g9FoAO0PiWPARoFOFX7gqJHW9alpqDr6ov6kosu0JlDIyHpzBki-epgbEaG_8Z_z6J7OLlNAF_h9Jg6Zh9bGnOIB_q0DbffeHf0/s640/SUCH+A+QUIET+PLACE+1.jpg" width="456" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Such A Quiet Place</b></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Part One </b></span></div><div align="CENTER"><i>Written & Illustrated by Andy Paciorek</i></div><div align="CENTER" class="western"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>With Special Thanks to Andreea V. Balcan.</i></span></div><div align="CENTER" class="western"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER" class="western"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> </i></span> </div><div class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">So bitter is the touch of the cold fingers of fate, that should a car engine suddenly cease on a long winter night’s journey; it never does so outside a cosy inn, brimming with fine wine, real ale, hearty food, good cheer and a roaring log fire. No, it is typical, cliché perhaps, that when on such an evening, should a vehicle suddenly give up the ghost, it will decide to do so in the cold, dark middle of nowhere, situated to the back of beyond. </span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">And so it happened to me.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">The journey had run smoothly from Nottingham to Scotch Corner, where I took a short break at the service station and the opportunity to fill the tank with petrol and my own yawning belly with hot coffee and convenience food. It was upon resuming my journey north that my troubles began. Firstly the GPS stopping working and then the radio that had kept me company and kept me alert, with its mixture of music and talk descended into a crackle of static and no attempts to retune to any station were successful. By coincidence or otherwise, this coincided with a fall of snow. First a few flakes upon the windscreen, but then rapidly progressing to a flurry and then a heavy and rapid bluster. In both sound and vision now I was beset by quiet white noise. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Had my wife, Caroline, been in the car with me, I would have indulged her in jovial banter about the north – south divide (her being a native of Cumbria and myself hailing from Hertfordshire; the Midlands home we shared being our happy median) and how once past Scotch Corner I would have jibed her about how we were now approaching the ‘end of the world’. But she was not travelling with me; in fact it was to join her that I was making this journey. Earlier in the week she had received a telephone call informing her that her Aunt Isobel had taken ill. Being her nearest living relative, since the death of her own parents, my wife felt an obligation to the old woman, cantankerous and strange as she was. And she was a peculiar woman, short of temper and both very religious and highly superstitious in her ways. And old, very old, in her late nineties at the least but still for the most part strong and independent of character, despite her wizened frame, though she had been very lean and stubborn in the thirty odd years I had known her. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">We would make a point of visiting her maybe once or twice a year and take walks along the coast with the old lady or play chess with her in her ancient yet solid and attractive cottage. Chess was a passion of the old lady, and so sharp in mind and strategy was she that neither my wife nor myself ever came close to beating her in a game though we were rather adept players ourselves. “The sport of Kings … and Queens”, Aunt Isobel would cackle when claiming an inevitable checkmate. Yet in life she was never made a queen by any man. Unmarried, childless, Isobel was a true maiden aunt …apparently; however I recalled vaguely a conversation with my wife’s mother many years ago, when she spoke of a man whom Isobel had loved. He was apparently a seafarer – a fisherman or a trader, perhaps a smuggler or pirate for all I knew, but whatever his trade, for one summer he had seduced the Isobel and melted her heart. Apparently the man appeared, by my mother-in-law’s recollection, to be a couple of decades at least older than the teenage Isobel. It was not meant to be, as though he told Isobel he would return for her after his next sea voyage, he was never seen in those parts again. Isobel grieved fearing him lost at sea, but the truth may have been that there was an ‘Isobel’ in every port, the last one forgotten as soon as the next succumbed to his charms. It was said that after the second summer had passed without his return, Isobel never mentioned her erstwhile lover again and never fell into the arms or bed or another man. Though sometimes on our strolls along the shoreline I would see her gaze wistfully across the waves as if she still hoped against hope, after long lonesome decades, that her seadog paramour would still return.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">My wife’s mother was about ten years younger than her sister Isobel and of entirely different character. Rebecca, for that was my mother-in-law’s name, did not care for Derleth (though my wife has had an affection for the place since childhood and would visit as regularly as was feasible) and she left at the age of sixteen eloping with the man who a few years later would become her husband and the father of my wife. It was said that this caused quite a furore with Rebecca’s parents and they never spoke for many years, Isobel being the only point of contact. They had never approved of Rebecca’s choice of partner, mainly for the fact that he was an outsider, though he only hailed from nearby Carlisle. This irked Rebecca greatly, for although she was only a child at the time she was positive that her parents knew of Isobel’s dalliance with the seafarer, whom not only being non-local may have in fact even been of foreign descent, and never uttered so much as a whisper of discontent. This feeling was furthered by hindsight of the fact, as Rebecca was too young to understand at the time, that following Isobel’s summer of awakening, her belly had grown steadily rounder and larger for a few months until the girl wandered one day down to the sea and wandered back some time later bearing the pale, gaunt form she still possessed. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Ah, it seems I paint such a bad picture of Aunt Isobel, and that is unfair. She is good-hearted in her way, though not gregarious in shows of affection; she clearly has a soft spot for my wife and has always been very generous with us. She is also a very intelligent and creative person. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Numerous were her skills, she is an amazing cook capable of creating sumptuous meals often containing ingredients that she has grown herself in her garden or harvested from the sea and woods, for Isobel’s knowledge of local flora and fauna was encyclopaedic. Also in her garden she grew a vast array of glorious flowers which when picked and pruned she would arrange into stunning sweet-smelling displays both for her own cottage and for the local church. Crochet, embroidery and knitting she could execute with the minimum of effort and within her cottage was an old piano, which although I never actually heard her play I’m quite certain she could do with great aptitude. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Isobel was also a very skilled artist; her oil and watercolour studies of the sea, which made up the greater part of her oeuvre, had a drama and intensity that far surpassed the daubs of many a technically sound yet emotionally dry weekend painter. Her studies also of the local fungi and wildflowers and such like were of competent enough detail and clarity to illustrate the pages of any natural field-guide. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Notable in their absence were the inclusion of human figures in her imagery, perhaps a vague distant shadowy form out at sea or wandering the woods or coastal paths but never forming the integral subject of a picture.</span></div><div align="LEFT" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">It was then, I recall, with curiosity and wonder, that once when looking in her parlour cupboard for a replacement light bulb; I dislodged an old book from a shelf. It fell to the floor and a few brittle, foxed leaves of paper came loose from the binding. Picking them up I noticed two portraits rendered in pencil, less skilful than Isobel’s more recent work but still capable and undoubtedly of her hand. The first I looked at was of a young attractive woman bearing a hairstyle of 1930’s fashion. It was without doubt a picture of Isobel in her youth. A gentle smile was upon her lips but most striking were her eyes, I would recognise them anywhere, for in that drawing I could clearly distinguish the eyes of my wife and the family resemblance was strong; though my wife’s eyes carried a glimmer of curious mischief, Aunt Isobel’s now only seemed to carry a spark of short –temper and the dimness of distant sorrow … though I suppose at her age, that impression could be down to cataracts. The second picture showed a man, perhaps in his thirties or early forties, a thick crop of dark wavy hair, brushed back from his temples; upon his jaw a broad beard grew. Though it could be a fault in the drawing, there was something indefinably peculiar about the man’s eyes, yet so well rendered were the rest of the features, I suspect that this was a true depiction of the subject’s visage and not an error of draughtsmanship. He was shown wearing a dark-coloured heavy jacket and even if it were not for his striped Breton shirt, there was still an air of the ocean about this man. Beneath the drawing, written in very faint pencil was the legend “Athanius”, the name flourished with a partially erased “<span lang="en-US">♥</span><span lang="en-US">”</span><span lang="en-US">.</span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Isobel walked in the room at that point and had me fixed in her eye. A bit flustered I held up the drawing of the girl, “Self-portrait?” I asked. She waved her hand nonchalantly and just said, “A youthful folly”. Without giving me chance to ask about the man, thankfully she continued, “The other is just someone from a story”. Untruth was not something that settled well on Isobel’s lips, she was of the type that considered it better to say nothing than to utter a falsehood, but I knew who that man was. To spare her further embarrassment, I continued, “They’re very good. I notice you don’t do many portraits”. I remember then Isobel looked directly at me and proclaimed, “I would much rather paint the sea. It has its depths and mystery and dangers without doubt, but you know where you stand with the sea. With a person, you could capture in exact minutiae detail every line and crease of their face, every pore of their skin; a perfect likeness of the outside but can you ever really capture in paint or pencil what truly lies on the inside?” </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Anyway I digress from the predicament that I found myself. The failure of the satellite navigation was a nuisance even without the problem of the paltry visibility afforded by the continuous snowstorm, and my a-z road atlas was of little help in any case; for oddly the small Cumbrian village of Derleth had found itself neglected to be featured on any map, modern or ancient. Aunt Isobel would say it was because it was a quiet place that outsiders would fail to notice it even existed. “Such a quiet place”, was a stock phrase of Isobel’s – on the rare occasion that a motorcycle would roar through its narrow streets, she would mutter in agitation that, “This used to be such a quiet place!” My impressions of the area was that people in nearby towns and villages were well aware of Derleth’s existence but for some undisclosed reason, preferred to if at all possible shun the place and pretend it didn’t exist.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">So normally I would drive the first leg of the journey upon the motorway and my wife would take the wheel upon the rural roads. So my plan for navigation here was to drive northwesterly, if the car ended up in the sea then I knew I had driven too far. If I found myself in Ravenglass then I had not driven quite far enough, if in Seascale then too far.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">I had hoped to travel up with my wife, but commitments at my work meant I could not accompany her until after several days. We’d spoken on the phone a few times, but this morning I received only a text stating that there had been a change in Isobel’s condition. I replied also by text, just briefly expressing concern and well wishes and telling her my travel plans and a rough time to expect my arrival.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">However it wasn’t only the failing light and the heavily falling snow, that were to be the only difficulties of the journey, in addition to the failure of the GPS and the radio cutting out, since the service station there had been an odd rattling in the engine which had grown steadily worse with every passing mile. Miles that crawled as the snow grew thicker on the bucolic side roads. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">I knew that I couldn’t be far from my destination when the engine suddenly ground to a dead stop, but on that lonely, little-used road I may just as well have broken down on the dark side of the moon. I turned the ignition key again and again, not a whisper and all the while more and more flakes of white fell from the sky soon covering my vehicle. I picked up my mobile phone, intending to call my wife, to inform her of my predicament and then to telephone for road breakdown assistance. Neither was an option, for my cell-phone battery was as dead as the proverbial doornail. This was a matter of puzzlement as well as vexation as always I had ensured to charge my phone fully before setting out on long road journeys. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">So what to do now? I found myself in a quandary, remain in the car and hope that I’d be able to flag down a passing motorist for assistance or hope that the engine would miraculously mend itself (I had always been utterly clueless in matters of a mechanical nature). I had a blanket in the boot, and had decent enough winter attire, but with the car heating failing with all else, it would be a bitterly cold night. This road was rarely travelled never mind at night in a blizzard, to remain would perhaps be too great a risk, yet going outside was not a tempting alternative either. I sat for a while, trying in futility to turn the engine over again. I looked into the glove compartment, the only food and drink to sustain any wait or pass any time was a plastic bottle with a dreg of already stale mineral water in the bottom and a bag of boiled sweets, many of which had conglomerated into a sticky, kaleidoscopic, fluff-encrusted globule. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">I decided I could not just sit there and weather it out. The interior temperature of the car was already noticeably dropping and the condensation of my breath was gathering on the windows. I reached into the backseat of the car and recovered my holdall. Unzipping it, I gathered another voluminous jumper that I pulled on top of the chunky woollen sweater I already wore and slipping off my driving shoes, I put on another pair of thick socks and from under the passenger seat, retrieved and laced on my formidable walking boots. I then wrapped my scarf around my neck and finally put on my trapper-style hat and heavy wool overcoat, putting into the pocket the packet of boiled sweets, and at last my gloves – it was now or never.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">I opened the car door with a little difficulty as already the level of snow was rising on the road and I stepped out. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the monochrome world and to the sensation of cold wet flecks of snow blowing into my face and sticking to my eyes. I looked ahead expecting to see nothing save for snow, snow and more snow but yet … yes, much to my delight, through the flicker of white against dark sky I could discern the warm orange glow of streetlights and furthermore I could determine that their shape indicated a dwelling place rather than a stretch of illuminated road. I estimated that it lay a mile, at the most two away and although obviously not the ideal conditions for a stroll. There I would seek out if not direct assistance with my motor problems, then at least a telephone to contact my wife and surely somewhere to shelter from the snowstorm. I locked the car door, manually as even the remote central locking mechanism had ceased, more out of habit than out of necessity for I considered the possibility of the vehicle being stolen to be rather thin. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">And so I walked down towards the hazy lights, treading through the deepening snow, pulling my scarf above my lips and nose and holding my coat collar around my neck in attempts to ward off the bitter winter wind. In my mouth nestled a sticky clump of luridly coloured confectionary, chemically flavoured to resemble no fruit ever grown on this world. As my feet trod heavy, my mind wandered. I knew snow was forecast but I had not expected so much, so quickly. I could not ever remember seeing such an intense snowfall in this country ever. Even from my childhood, when we still had ‘proper winters’ this depth of snow took days to attain not the matter of little over an hour. It amused me to remember the joy I felt as a child upon looking out of a window and seeing the first flakes fall from the sky. Perhaps that is the true indicator of getting old, the first winter when you look out and do not think of sled rides, snowmen and snowball fights but instead think of blocked roads, fuel bills and burst water pipes. I laughed as I recall how as a child, how a hint of white would have my mother rushing me off to the local grocery shop to stockpile bread and milk and teabags as if the apocalypse was imminent. The shop was owned and run by a jovial Russian man called Mr Dragin (or as us children preferred to think ‘Mr Dragon’). He would smile behind his thick moustache, a twinkle in his deep blue eyes and even if several inches of snow had gathered on the ground by that point, he would always laugh, “Ahh, just a little dusting is all. When I was a child the snow was so deep we would walk amongst the treetops.” He would then lean down in a mock menacing manner and half whisper, “ And sometimes in those winters, the wolves in the woods and mountains would grow so hungry that they would come down to the towns and villages and look into the windows of the houses for little children to eat.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Strange, I hadn’t seen nor thought of Mr. Dragin for over twenty-five years but on that cold and lonely road, suddenly his face was as fresh in my mind as if I had last seen him only yesterday.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite the less than ideal walking conditions I made good progress and entered the area of habitation in reasonable time. I say inhabited yet for all I could see, except for the street lights and the odd cosy glow from house window, this place was as close to a ghost town as I’d ever seen. What few vehicles there were, were parked up and totally covered in snow. I walked along a short street and turned a corner. Ahead I could see the sea. A sea fret had gathered above the cold waves and tendrils of mist crept slowly over the coastline and headed inland. And there above the fog and the clouds of falling snow, high in the sky I gazed upon a slash of scintillating neon green. Too consistent and rolling too languidly and wide to be flashes of snow-thunder, this for the first time in my life, was a manifestation of the Aurora Borealis – the Northern Lights. I wondered to myself whether the high magnetic activity in the atmosphere had any bearing on the malfunction of both the GPS and my phone. Perhaps, though it may be stretching the supposition too far to suggest it was responsible for the complete breakdown of my car. Though I could’ve wished for clearer skies, there was something extremely beautiful and enchanting in viewing it through the cracks in fog and cloud, and to the natural soundtrack only of lapping waves and wait, yes I thought I had heard it before and there it was again the faint baying of dogs. Poor things, probably the guardians of a nearby farm; hardy creatures tolerant of most weather, but this was unusually testing conditions for both man and beast.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">And then familiarity overcame me as I looked to the jetty where there seemed to be a few men busy mooring up a boat. There was no mistaking the distinctive shape of the cliff line and silhouetted upon them the line of charismatic hawthorns, twisted into lopsided sculptural form by the winds. My eyes can gazed upon this vista before several times, albeit it in sunnier gentler conditions, and in the company of my wife and Aunt Isobel for I was nowhere else but in the village of Derleth. Having entered the village from an unfamiliar aspect and in disorientating meteorological circumstances I was both surprised and relieved to have chanced upon my desired destination. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">I would now proceed directly as best I could remember the way to Aunt Isobel’s house, being careful to keep to the higher paths for the beach and estuary areas were hazardous enough even in the best conditions. Locals seemed able to navigate the shifting sands as if by second nature, but Isobel had many tales to tell of outsiders finding themselves bound in the quagmire. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" class="western"><span style="font-size: large;">So I headed along Gaiman Road towards the main lit centre of Derleth and would navigate my way to Isobel’s from there. Still the snow fell and still the breeze blew bitter. The village was at first deathly silent and oh so still. People could not be blamed for not being out of their houses if they had no good cause for doing so. It was an evening for sitting in front of a good fire, with a nice hot drink and a good book or movie or music, not wandering the streets. I imagined myself to be soon in Aunt Isobel’s cottage, claiming a comfy armchair and sipping on a steaming mug of hot chocolate and I was comforted by this thought. My thoughts were suddenly shattered by a strange noise at the end of Glannoventa Street.</span></div>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-45379703256539944972012-03-28T20:46:00.002+01:002012-03-28T20:59:30.601+01:00Such a Quiet Place. Part Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6NOIs_26sJFmDGZsRNEwc8q6YTklFDwpISQSy6IJ9X8DZdjY1xdDKN5TinfEKmtWJ21gWtF7EltmXdAE6CyA5w4O8DQqDoqzVIg5JvLdMRiGM58tP5uChaSw7BAtXmLknsTGirKXkGZw/s1600/SUCH+A+QUIET+PLACE+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6NOIs_26sJFmDGZsRNEwc8q6YTklFDwpISQSy6IJ9X8DZdjY1xdDKN5TinfEKmtWJ21gWtF7EltmXdAE6CyA5w4O8DQqDoqzVIg5JvLdMRiGM58tP5uChaSw7BAtXmLknsTGirKXkGZw/s640/SUCH+A+QUIET+PLACE+2.jpg" width="448" /></a></div><br />
<div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Such A Quiet Place</b></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Part Two </b></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER"><i>Written & Illustrated by Andy Paciorek</i></div><div align="CENTER" class="western"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>With Special Thanks to Andreea V. Balcan.</i></span></div><div align="CENTER" class="western"><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I gazed through the misty haze below the orange glow of the electric streetlights that cast long deep shadows on the chaste white snow. I listened to the low guttural growl that issued from the end of that long terrace and squinted my eyes to discern the source of this noise. Silhouetted in the shimmering golden light were a pack of dogs. There seemed to be quite a few and the sight of them filled me with trepidation. Though the clarity of my view was obscure, I sensed instinctively that there was something not right about these hounds but even so their very presence seemed wrong. On holidays abroad in Europe and Asia I had viewed upon packs of feral dogs roaming the towns at night but never more than a couple of strays at a time had I witnessed in Britain. Especially here it would be assumed that their occurrence would not be tolerated, for Cumbrian sheep farmers are extremely protective of their flocks and the salt-marsh mutton and lamb of this area commanded a very good price at market.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There was something so unnerving about the gathering of dogs, that although it was a slightly longer walk and would mean being exposed to this wintry onslaught longer still, I decided to turn and take an alternative route down Lumley Lane. Here the walking was more hazardous even without the gathering inches of snow, for this street was still cobbled. The terraces of Derleth were mainly Victorian and though there were a couple of 20</span><sup><span style="font-size: medium;">th</span></sup><span style="font-size: medium;"> Century builds, the rest of the buildings were older, mainly 18</span><sup><span style="font-size: medium;">th</span></sup><span style="font-size: medium;"> Century cottages. I remember Aunt Isobel had said that all new building in Derleth had always followed the same labyrinthine pattern of what came before. She supposed that the mixture of hiding points and escape routes were of great use in the bygone days of sea smuggling (which she hinted were perhaps not quite as bygone as some may assume). She also said that there ran a greater maze of caverns and tunnels that led from sea-cove mouths to deep below the streets of Derleth, meandering out and upwards from the cellars of certain houses.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Though I slipped a couple of times and gathering myself up, dusting myself down and cursing, I made good headway to Aunt Isobel’s house and was soon at the wrought iron gates of Ambrose Cottage. I unfastened the latch and with a little difficulty as I moved away the gathering of snow behind it I proceeded up the path to the door. I found the door locked and gave it a gentle rap of gloved knuckles. No answer. I tried again a little harder and still no response. I moved around the house and could see the comforting luminance of lamplight radiating gently from out of the windows. I gazed into one and saw nothing except for the old leather chair in which Isobel would often sit and read her way through the copious collection of books that stretched along the walls. Isobel was a voracious reader of many diverse subjects, though the shelves were notably absent of the Mills & Boon type books that are a favourite amongst many women of Isobel’s age. I moved further along and gazed through another frosty pane into the sitting room. There I saw a small table, upon it a game of chess in mid-play. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">My mind ran over the pieces and I could see that a white knight was about to be claimed by a black bishop but beyond that I could not foresee any potential developments; the mind of Isobel would however already have been many moves ahead and the word ‘Checkmate’ would already be tickling behind her thin, tight lips. For some unfathomable reason the sight of the abandoned chess match disturbed me and a shiver ran down my already cold spine. In the hearth, only the bare embers of flame remained in the dry pool of grey ash. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I speculated on what the situation may be. If my wife and Aunt Isobel had just gone out somewhere for a little while (and would they in this weather?) then Isobel would have ensured that only one lamp at most would have remained lit and that the fire would be safely stoked to burn until their return. My wife had mentioned Isobel’s condition in her text and I wondered whether the situation had worsened and she had been taken into hospital. I was uncertain where the nearest hospital actually was, Whitehaven perhaps. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And still the snow fell. I huddled onto the small porch, looking under flowerpots in search of a door key to no avail. I popped another of the sweet and nasty clumps of candy into my mouth and contemplated my next action. Standing there in the freezing cold and waiting for who knows how long for their return home, did not seem to me the most enticing prospect. Otherwise I could walk further and try a neighbour’s house, though Derleth people were defiantly private and parochial by nature, surely they weren’t devoid of all compassion particularly on such a frigid night or alternatively I could try to break into Isobel’s house, causing of course the minimum of damage possible, and to get warm and to use the land line to ring Caroline’s mobile phone. Isobel, if well enough, would be most displeased at this, but rather her wrath than hypothermia. And perhaps if my prospects as a ‘burglar’ were not great surely a police cell would be warmer than here. I chuckled at this imagining, but my reverie of pondering was very soon to be shattered with an alarming ferocity.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It began with a noise rippling along the hedgerow at speed, shaking snow from its well-pruned leaves, a sound like the snapping of twigs. Then a hulking shape bounded over the hedge. I took it to be one of the stray dogs that I had seen looming before at the end of the street but it was of considerable size. In the glow that issued from the cottage windows I could make out strange and disquieting features of this beast. It appeared devoid of hair, its skin smooth and sleek with a silvery hue. Its head was oddly elongated and pointed ears clung closely to the domed cranium and its grimacing face held a drooling snarl. The teeth were long and pointed, its expression the epitome of the wild yet its eyes bore indication of a sharp human-like intelligence. I absorbed these features deeply in an instance for rearing up a little, the creature then leaped again directly at me. Instinct of self-preservation came upon me and I warded the advance of this freak hound or whatever it was, with a sound kick to the animal’s chest. This sent the monster sprawling into a drift of snow and I then made good of the moment and ran as fast as I could down the garden path. The creature caught up with me as I struggled with the gate and I felt a moment of pure agony as it sunk its long sharp teeth into the calf of my leg. But again I kicked out and delivered a heavy boot directly into the face of my weird assailant. It backed up again and prepared another assault. As it coursed through the air, I responded by slamming the iron gate hard into its body. Still it advanced, so again and again I slammed and as it bit at me, slavering and snarling, I finally managed to lodge its head tightly between post and gate, kicked it again and made my escape down the lane. Never in my life had I treated an animal with violence or cruelty, but what could I do? It was without doubt that this thing had my slaughter firmly upon its mind.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As I passed by the other cottages, I banged on doors and called for help, but to no avail. Some houses were lit up whilst others nestled in darkness but all were either empty or remained ignorant to my actions of distress. It became apparent that my pleas were to go unattended so I fell silent, so as not to attract the attention of the creatures, should any more be lingering close by. As I proceeded further, I noticed that no smoke flowed from any of the chimneys, which seemed exceedingly peculiar for such a cruel, cold night. Sweat formed on my body but chilled almost as soon as it ran from pore. Gazing upwards I noticed long icicles forming on guttering, the long slivers too reminiscent in my mind of long white fangs.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then as if a delayed echo of my earlier actions, I heard shouting and a banging coming from Glannoventa Street. I moved with caution but some haste to the intersection of Lumley and Glannoventa and gazed down the snow-covered street. I could make out the silhouette of a man to the middle of the road, and though walking was not steady in such conditions anyhow, I perceived by his stumbling gait that this person was drunk. He was banging on the door of the only pub in Derleth and shouting in a slurring accent that I took to be American, “Hey! What does a guy have to do to get a drink in this godforsaken backwater? C’mon open up!!” Again he banged on the door, but even from my distance and vantage point I could see that the interior of the bar was cast in darkness, yet still a lamp illuminated its hanging pub sign. In faded lettering it bore its name, ‘The Cuttlefish Inn’; and in need of a fresh lick of paint was the strange image of a malignant giant squid attacking a tall ship. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The man then caught sight of me and as if unsure whether I was really there or not started hollering, “Hey buddy!” I motioned a finger to my lips for him to remain quiet, but he either did not see or ignored this, as he plodded on in my direction, still shouting, “Hey there, hey buddy!”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He did not travel far for as he passed the arch of the covert that lay between The Cuttlefish Inn and Verne’s Butchery & Fishmonger’s shop, in a flash something launched out and grabbing him between formidable jaws, dragged the man into the gully. I froze for an instant, then I moved as if to go down to help though my legs it is true to say wanted to carry me in the opposite direction. But it was too late; his pained screams lasted only a few seconds only to be replaced by the repugnant sounds of wet tearing and then the crushing of bones. He was beyond my help, if indeed I had any to offer him, my own plight seeming increasingly dire itself.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Four or five more of these dog-like animals were gathered at the end of the lane and hearing the commotion were now sniffing the air and gazing in my direction. Clinging to the shadows as best I could, I navigated myself along the path. Though the cold and adrenaline had worked as an anaesthetic to some degree, my leg ached and I looked down and noticed that blood was dribbling from the wound on my leg, forming ribbons of blotched scarlet on the virginal white snow. I removed the scarf from about my neck and wrapped it tightly around my leg. I shuddered to think of those fiendish critters getting the scent of my spilled blood and for the first time thought favourably upon the falling snow, hoping it would bury all traces of my injury. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And so I meandered frantically, yet as silently and as hidden as possible, down the lane, looking frequently behind me. It was at this point my mind turned to my precious wife, Caroline and of Aunt Isobel. Tears welled in my eyes and quickly froze, as I hoped with every cell of my being, that they had not fallen prey to those bizarre creatures and were now somewhere warm and safe. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At the end of Lumley Lane, I came to a large converted barn. This edifice served now as a maintenance garage, though how it stayed in trade with Derleth’s paltry vehicle numbers and with the village’s isolation and attitude to outsiders, was a mystery to me. Whatever, the fact that its lights were on and one of the great doors stood a little ajar filled me with some hope. I laboured toward it and then something caught my eye. Lying in the snow, half-buried I could see the sheen of something metallic and digging in with gloved fingers, I retrieved a large adjustable wrench. Grateful of a potential weapon, I clung tightly to this heavy spanner and I pushed the door a little further ajar and cautiously entered the garage. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At first the repair-shop seemed to be deserted, but then I heard a faint shuffle, a murmur close to the maintenance pit and I proceeded guardedly in that direction.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What I beheld there filled me with terror and revulsion in equal measure. Lying on the floor, head down and preoccupied so as not to notice my presence was another of these brutes, a bitch… or a vixen; for looking upon the form I could not say whether it was in its characteristics canine, vulpine or even lupine. I assumed this individual to be female however by the presence of teats; yet obscenely I saw not the flabby dugs common to dog-mothers but a full and ripe human breast. At its other, this vile dam suckled a pup … but No! My stomach turned as I realised that sucking on that nipple was not a cub of any description but in fact a perfectly human baby! The female beast appeared to be licking affectionately at its head, which it cradled in an appendage which was neither quite paw nor hand but anomalous conglomeration of both. I must have emitted an involuntary gasp of disgust, as suddenly the creature looked up at me. Staring at me with her pale-blue eyes, her smooth brow furrowed and with nostrils flared and lips retracted to reveal gums and evil teeth, emanated a deep, guttural growl. I retreated slowly backwards and moved out of the door, pushing it shut behind me. I felt startled and sickened and became once more aware of the tool within my grasp. In my mix of emotion I also felt ashamed at myself, if I were more of a man I would have cracked open that she-dog’s skull and rescued that infant. I thought about going back to do just that, but I dared not and to add to my fear was confusion. The creature reacted not as a starving cur guarding a meal, but with the inherent maternal instinct to protect one’s own progeny. I considered now my next move, never in all my life had I ever felt so cold, so alone, so bewildered and terrified. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Looking towards the hills beyond Glannoventa Street, I could vaguely make out the forms of more of these creatures moving about. What were they? My mind raced with possibilities, were they diseased dogs or foxes? Sellafield Nuclear Power Station was not far away; perhaps they were the consequence of radioactive fallout of some hidden contamination accident? Was that possible? Yet they did not look mangy, their bodies were bald, perhaps covered in a silky down at most, their bodies were not clumped with patches of matted hair. They were ugly and weird certainly, but they did not look sickly. Perhaps then they were a species that were unknown to science; creatures that lived hidden in the woods or perhaps in caves, creatures like Dragin’s wolves that were now drawn to the areas of human habitation by extreme weather and hunger? Perhaps the answers would never be revealed to me, but of this I was sure – these animals were very strange and very dangerous.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Again though I was not allowed the time or luxury for either problem solving or self-pity. Behind me I heard a noise not unlike the clearing of a throat and I turned.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Behind me was another of the beasts, a male and a formidably large one at that. It gazed at me and as it slowly advanced upon me, the muscles upon its great shoulders and flanks rippled. Its eyes shone with a yellowish luminosity in the dim light and the snow seemed to melt as soon as it fell upon its hide. It leered at me with its broad mouth and then it pounced.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I swung the spanner with all the might I could muster and landed a perfect blow on the side of its skull. I saw a spatter of blood fly and heard a sickening yet satisfying crunch as the cold metal connected with skin and bone. The creature fell, but within seconds it was sat upright upon the carpet of snow. It drew one of its paws across the wound on its temple and wiped away a stream of gore that trickled into one of its eyes. I shuddered as I saw how arm-like its front legs were. It stared at me as it licked the blood from its sharp-clawed pads and then to my absolute horror, from its mouth, in a West Lakes’ accent issued the words, “Y’ll pay for that! Yer Bastard!”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This impossible turn of events naturally caught me off guard and seizing the element of surprise the fiend launched a second attack. Hitting me square in the chest with its broad head, it knocked me onto my back. Perhaps a little too easily than it expected for the force of its trajectory carried the beast into a forward roll. Slipping on the wintry ground as it tried to regain its footing, though a little winded, I was back on my feet and ready.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As it turned its head, again I brought the implement strongly across the animal’s head, hearing the grim sounds of its jaw smashing. Again and again I beat this brutish man-thing with the monkey wrench. With all my might, like a man possessed I brought down the metal tool over and over upon its head and neck and shoulders, and when it had collapsed on the floor in a fit of dull whimpering I still proceeded to batter its body for some minutes more. In a cold sweat, I looked upon it lying there on the white ground, blood seeping and bubbling from its crushed muzzle. Its chest still heaved slowly; it was not dead, but severely injured.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I could not relish in triumph for I felt wretched, I could not tell whether the blood that festooned my face and clothing was that of this travesty of nature’s, or mine or a brew of both. Furthermore I felt the trauma of finding myself in this surreal nightmare and I was sick with worry about the fate of my wife.</span></div></div>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-80494869386916539402012-03-28T20:41:00.002+01:002012-03-28T20:59:03.684+01:00Such a Quiet Place. Part three.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPDjGBTrh3PYcBh8c8FIxXi85y21I-XO_PLI4S51KVBcZ655HL1kcMktpWUQj6pkP5QikF42cVhKP1ZDuIKEdvV-e2P7gk-eOL0Xz2kgUB5V7gpv_SIR2BPIX8TBhTfMIlhki9PtzwzI/s1600/SUCH+A+QUIET+PLACE+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpPDjGBTrh3PYcBh8c8FIxXi85y21I-XO_PLI4S51KVBcZ655HL1kcMktpWUQj6pkP5QikF42cVhKP1ZDuIKEdvV-e2P7gk-eOL0Xz2kgUB5V7gpv_SIR2BPIX8TBhTfMIlhki9PtzwzI/s640/SUCH+A+QUIET+PLACE+3.jpg" width="456" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Such A Quiet Place</b></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Part three </b></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER"><i>Written & Illustrated by Andy Paciorek</i></div><div align="CENTER" class="western"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>With Special Thanks to Andreea V. Balcan.</i></span></div><div align="CENTER" class="western"><br />
</div><br />
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I had to keep moving though, I did not doubt that soon others of its kind would smell blood and discover their kin lying near lifeless in the frost. But where could I go? I just had to keep on moving. If the beasts did not kill me then surely the devouring winter would soon claim my life. To retrace my steps on Lumley Lane would likely be a fatal idiocy and Glannoventa Street was certainly a no-go area. With some difficulty I scaled a wall beside the garage into a yard and then finding the back gates of the yard locked and bolted, I scaled another which was no mean feat and sapped me of more energy still. I then made my way limping down the back alley towards Gaiman Road again. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There I traversed along the nearest thing to a main road that Derleth possessed, though with the deepening snowfall it was difficult to differentiate between road and field. I would have to keep my wits about me not to wander too close to cliff or to shore. As best I could I kept to the shade of hedgerow and the dark shadows of the scattered gnarled trees that lined the route. Slow progress, especially as constantly I looked around in all directions for the approach of more of these monstrous talking hounds. For the most part, luck finally seemed to be on my side, as I would only gaze upon the occasional beast at a distance or hear their howling carried on the wind. As I traversed over a dip, the most intense light I had seen all night momentarily blinded my eyes. Could it be? Could I dare to hope? But yes, indeed ahead of me upon the road was a car parked with its headlights at full glare. With trepidation I approached the car and as I neared I saw that the driver’s side door was open. Keeping to the shadows still I crept closer. My eyes then beheld a scene of the most gruesome atrocity. The driver of the car, a man as best I could tell, had been dragged from his vehicle by three of the abominations, which now were indulged like hellish gluttons in tearing him limb from limb.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Against wisdom and conscious effort I dry-retched groaningly and one of the creatures stirred and glanced upwards, its muzzle a mass of blood and flesh. Thankfully for me, though it was more concerned with the others claiming all the choice spoils and it dived its head back into the gory mess that had once been a man. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Again another route had been denied to me and what was the sense of heading that way anyway, back to my dead car, to my own death by freezing, on the slim chance I would make it that far? </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I again edged backwards keeping my eye on the car and the foul activity around it, and slipping behind a tree I climbed a barbed wire fence into a farmer’s field. This was a risky manoeuvre as I was heading away from any source of illumination in the darkest and most dangerous of situations, but I knew not where safety and comfort could be sought on this terrible night. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So wading through the deep snow in a gradually upwards incline, I wandered aimlessly, my clothing stunk of frozen blood, my leg and head ached and my lips were chapped to bleeding point. I felt nauseous, exhausted, disorientated and desolate. I was truly lost in all senses of the word but still something, some spirit deep inside of me spurred me onwards. I could barely see in front of me, the blackness of the night was impenetrable and clots of blizzard stuck to my eyelids and face. I fell over something, my hand touching something sticky and cold. Raising myself to my feet I realised I had stumbled over the remains of a slaughtered sheep, its body a filthy tangle of fleece and bone and scarce remnants of innards. Looking about me squinting my eyes, I realised that what I had taken for small hillocks of snow were in fact the carcasses of many more sheep, scores of them. All of them butchered roughly and callously, the field was a swamp of offal and wool. The predators had been here obviously, but where they now? </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I struggled onwards and upwards for what seemed an eternity, my body growing noticeably weaker from the exertion of the conditions. I stopped to catch my breath and in doing so I looked behind me. Looking down onto the Gaiman Road and beyond, though my visibility was dimmed, against the great white canvas blackened at the edges by sky and by Irish Sea, I could see here and there moving the figures of these strange dog-like beings and could hear them both barking and shouting in English. Some came across the snow-covered sands, not in a straight line but following as if by instinct the safe route over the salt marsh. Others streamed from the boats moored to the small quay and rushed along the jetty and across the road.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What in the name of damnation were they, where did they come from and how many of them were there? Below clearly progressing in my direction were at least fifteen of this foul brood. Were they and the freak unprecedented weather peculiar to this area, I wondered, or was the rest of Cumbria … Britain … perhaps Europe and further even, now also facing an onslaught … an invasion under preternatural snow-clouds.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I did not dally in hypothesis but forced myself further uphill as fast as I could drag myself.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As I approached the top of the hill, a mental map of the geography of Derleth gleaned from leisurely strolls with Caroline and Aunt Isobel etched itself upon the contours and ridges of my brain, and I knew what I would find at the summit of this crag. I hauled myself over the perimeter fence of the field and snagging my cheek upon a long barb of knotted wire, I felt a chunk of cold flesh tear away and a stream of metallic-tasting blood slid over my broken lips into my mouth.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I gazed from weary eyes and recognised where I was. Though un-signposted, this area was commonly known to the Derleth folk as The Hallows and across the track I could already see the long wall of Saint Beda’s churchyard. Upon the track, already beginning to fill and vanish beneath the constant fall of ice crystals, were the paw prints of a number of the animals. Though all seemed to head in the direction of the path leading into town, I knew the creatures had recently been in the vicinity and I must take the greatest vigilance. I crossed the track and I kept tightly to the way of the wall.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The church itself was small, little more than a chapel but the cemetery was immense; centuries of Derleth’s dead lay here. I had never been religious and had not been inside the church itself before, I was not a hardened atheist but I had no wishes to go into the domain of a God I didn’t believe in and would only pass through such doors on seldom occasions for weddings, funerals or rarely for the baptism of babies. I had however taken numerous walks around the graveyard with Caroline and Isobel, looking at the wildflowers and sometimes reading the epitaphs on the ancient, lichen-encrusted tombstones. Isobel would tell tales and anecdotes of those lying here that had died long before she was born and of those that she had known but outlived. I recall Isobel saying that prior to the construction of the Anglo-Saxon church, the Hallows, hence its name had already been an area of spiritual significance. She related how in times of the Roman occupation, the foreign soldiers and servants that had been taken into the work of the empire and stationed in the region, would pay pilgrimage to this area to worship their exotic gods and also prior to that even, that the native tribes had used the area for rite and ritual. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I reached the church gates and could see gentle rays of coloured light passing through the snow-caked stained glass windows and this granted me a feeling of hope in my desperation. I entered the gates with caution and again hope, as I was certain that I could hear the melody of a pipe organ from within the chapel. Perhaps it was gleaned more from watching the horror movies; that my wife and I would cuddle up and giggle at in the cinema seats when we were a young courting couple, more than remembrance of school-day scripture lessons but I thought that where else than the village church, would the inhabitants seek sanctuary. I hoped that the makers of those trashy movies were correct in their assumption that entities of evil could not pass into the holy interior of churches.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But hope again turned to despair, but then to determination once more, as I saw that though the cemetery was infested with those vicious monstrosities, my intention to enter that church was tantamount. I could not take the straight path into the church, so I had to meander silently through the snow-covered sepulchres so as not to arouse the attentions of those hellhounds. And yes by the token that I did not believe in God, I did not believe in the Devil either, but what could these beasts be except the spawn of Satan? Here I saw some, sniffing about and cocking legs and urinating on some gravestones, there a pair of them that appeared to be copulating upon the top of a long flat tomb covering the dusty remains of a respected village elder from a bygone age and worse still, some of the newer graves had been violated by these beasts. Digging into deep snow and soil below, they had retrieved bodies and bones on which they now gnawed and squabbled over.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I was not religious, but upon hearing the faint tones of the organ carried on the wind playing hymns that I neither recognised from wedding nor funeral; no Here Comes the Bride nor Jerusalem nor God is my Shepherd and witness to this dark tableau unfolding before me, I cried dry tears and I prayed. I prayed from the depths of my heart that I would make it through the doors of the church and find my wife safely waiting inside. Lo, though I walk through the valley of death … but my feet did not step on pastures green but sunk into deep snow and remnants of discarded and defiled putrefied human flesh.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But I did manage to reach the doors of the church, so engrossed were those demons in their disgusting activities that despite the chattering of my teeth that echoed inside my skull like the beating of an ominous drum, I managed to sneak past them. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Next to the church door I noticed the sign, over the paintwork declaring this to be the ‘Church of St. Beda of the Lakes’ crudely gouged into the woodwork as if by razor sharp talons, were the letters, ‘CTHULHU’. This word or name was entirely alien to my vocabulary, never had I heard it before nor did I know even how to pronounce it; yet there was something intrinsically familiar about it, as if it were engraved into the primal racial memory of mankind. The mere sight of it sent a chilling rivulet of fear coursing through my veins and resonating in every cell of my body.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I found the door unlocked and I entered the church.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I closed the door behind me and even before I turned to behold the scene before me; a nauseating stench crept into my nostrils, bringing bile to my mouth from my virtually empty stomach. It was an aroma of foetid and fungal incense, the smell of burnt tallow and rotten fish, the reek of human sweat, of damp dog and of abattoir floor. Yet this assault to my senses was nothing to what my eyes would witness next.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">My eyes accustomed to the air thick with incense smoke and steam and I viewed ahead of me first, seated in the back rows a number of figures wearing white satin hooded cloaks, men women and children and from front to rear they were rising in turn and filing down the nave as if going to receive Eucharist. Ahead of them the first few pews had been ripped out and thrown in a pile in the transept of the church. On top of this stack of wood were broken crucifixes, smashed statues of saints and ripped religious paintings. Quickly scanning the church I noticed in their place hung and stood instead horrendous icons of bizarre improbable angles and shapes. Upon the altar stood to one side a statue of a woman, her gender identifiable only by her swollen breasts, her head and lower quarters being a tangle of tentacles. On the other side was a carving of creature of an amphibious aspect and between them, taking precedence was a strange chimera – part humanoid, part octopus and bearing a pair of bat –like wings. Yet the living horrors I beheld in that once holy building were more dreadful still. A number of the devil-dog creatures milled about the church, some sitting as devoutly as parishioners at prayer, others were moving out of the side door. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At the head of the nave I beheld the most grotesque of sights. As the cloaked figures moved down the line they unrobed and prostrated themselves naked before the central of three figures. The men on either side bore the perfect heads of wild dogs. I instantly thought them to be masks but they were not. There were no lines between their hairy heads and their muscular dark skinned human torsos and the articulation of expression were far beyond the capabilities of the master mask-makers. Naked to their navels, save for intricately worked armlets around their biceps, below their waists they wore long skirts of silken material. The one to the right garbed in scarlet, the one to the left wore black. Bearing huge ladles in their great arms, both stirred huge cauldrons of a steaming evil-looking, rank smelling broth. In their midst stood the vilest of figures. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This central figure, which I took to be the high priest of this warped black mass, was garbed in silk vestments of a rich purple hue. Upon his head he wore a long mitre of the same shade; the base of which was circled with a diadem of silver and precious stones, worked into a convoluted web of intricate arabesques. His frame was stout yet powerful and upon his chin he bore a great beard of salt and pepper hues; the end of his whiskers appeared alive and writhed like medusae tendrils. His skin was pallid and shiny and seemed to be pulled taut across his bones, and was in places blushed with a hue of sickly pale green. His lips were wide and full, his eyes both bulbous and somewhat slit. Yet for all those inhuman deviancies of feature, I recognised this man-thing though I had never seen his person before. I remembered him from a pencil drawing I had seen briefly several years before, for this was none other than Athanius – the treacherous lover of teenage Isobel, seventy or more years previous. Though greatly mutated now compared to the portrait, it was him, of this I am certain.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Kneeling before this nefarious, amorous cleric of the oceans was a young woman of fine figure, her dark curly hair rolling down her back. With long tentacle fingers, Athanius was scooping globules of the steaming unguent from the vats and rubbing it all over her body and into her open mouth. A middle-aged man shed his white cape and kneeled naked before the sea-bishop as the young woman then moved to the side where the seats had been torn out and joined others in rolling about in pained yet ecstatic convulsions. The sight of their bodies twisting and turning and contorting as the hair fell from their scalps in massive clumps turned my stomach. Again I almost dry-vomited as I saw and heard the bones breaking and re-forming to new anatomy inside their skin. The noise of which provided a discordant percussion to the weird melody coming from the pipe organ.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Looking up to see who was playing the unearthly church music, I felt more sickened still.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There, virtually nude, save for the white cape that clung to a single brittle shoulder and hip, was Aunt Isobel. Grinding her body in a lascivious manner against the instrument, her fingers stroking the keys as if by instinct; Isobel threw her head back, the long white hair that normally was pressed tightly into a bun and furthermore covered with a headscarf when she went to church was now hanging freely down her ridged spine and onto her skinny buttocks. Her eyes rolled back into her sockets in frenzy and her mouth veered from gaping wide in rapture, revealing her ill-fitting false dentures to her biting her bottom lip so hard that flecks of froth and blood speckled on her chin. Like a synaesthete nymph, Isobel rode the music with furore, but she was no longer the attractive youth of her pencil portrait and resembled now, nothing less than a haggard matriarchal witch from a medieval engraving. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then a thought occurred to me, if Isobel was here then where was my beloved wife Caroline?</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The perverse Bacchanalian vista before me, the heat of bodies and candles, and the worry over my wife’s well being were taking their toll on me and I nearly fainted. Moaning I stumbled forward, sweat pooling on my ice-burnt brow; I reached and steadied myself on the post of the end pew. This attracted the attention of Athanius; looking up from his duties he removed his long scintillating fingers from the mouth of an elderly woman and with grease dripping from his writhing digits, he pointed at me. In a deep yet liquid voice he uttered, “Ah I see we have a late arrival”. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A gruff, thickset man turned his white silk-hooded head to look at me and declared, “He’s not one of us!” The coarse hard-faced woman sat beside him reiterated, “No. He’s not from these parts”. “Is that so?” asked Athanius knowingly, his blubbery lips spreading to form a grin revealing a row of small white piranha sharp teeth.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As white-cloaked men stood and reached to grab me and demon dogs walked up the aisles and naves toward me, outside I could hear scratching and heavy breathing at the church door. The fight in me had drained entirely from my body and it was only then that I noticed that somewhere on my strained journey to this dire place, I had dropped my weapon the spanner. I was racked with fear and repugnance, both at these gross entities and their blasphemous sabat, but also I felt disgust at my own weakness and myself for I confess at that instance both my bowels and bladder relieved themselves of their loads. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I could see no hope of escape. There was no escape from this living nightmare.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I closed my eyes.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I closed my eyes, wishing and praying to any good god that would listen that this was indeed a nightmare, a hallucination from which I would awaken. And even if awoke to find myself still in my car, entombed with snow and shivering and sweating with pneumonia I would smile. I wished with all my might, that I would open my eyes and waken from this fever-dream and gaze into the eyes of my wife.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I opened my eyes.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I opened my eyes and gazed into the eyes of my wife. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I would recognise those eyes anywhere. I recognised them instantly, even now as they settled into that bald-headed, long-muzzled, sharp-toothed face.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps there was a hint of recognition of me too in her eyes. A hint of recognition perhaps but not of affection, for I was and always had been an outsider. There was no longer the slightest glimmer of love nor even mischievous curiosity in the eyes of my wife. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I gazed into the eyes of my wife and saw only the merciless glint of raw animal hunger. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-33426719524081980122012-02-11T17:08:00.001+00:002012-12-30T23:37:46.845+00:00The Echo of Echoes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS6z57XQzz7UX87T_qW3tJstticXTD9iOwPEOOM3YfHaie2Z7kpXjgKhN9ATa7kO1ulrm7h_mKvszLFW5tttf8Nm4aSnKxgQjNjVzUqfRk5CLTIi7FPaVjmjMaigs3zH4XdLSyXuET61o/s1600/THE+ECHO+OF+ECHOES.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS6z57XQzz7UX87T_qW3tJstticXTD9iOwPEOOM3YfHaie2Z7kpXjgKhN9ATa7kO1ulrm7h_mKvszLFW5tttf8Nm4aSnKxgQjNjVzUqfRk5CLTIi7FPaVjmjMaigs3zH4XdLSyXuET61o/s640/THE+ECHO+OF+ECHOES.jpg" width="452" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><u><b>The Echo of Echoes </b></u></span></span> </div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><i><b>Written and illustrated by Andy Paciorek, </b></i></span> </div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><i><b>With special thanks to Andreea V. Balcan .</b></i></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">The day will come when you will be forced to take sides. There will be no luxury of apathy, no sitting on the fence, for those who do not oppose nor conform, will be crushed underfoot without mercy. The time will come to decide, whether humanity itself is worth defending against all odds or whether self-preservation and abandonment of your own species and everything you ever thought you knew is the wiser option. Either way you will lose.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">I sit here within this circle of stone sisterhood, scribbling my thoughts into my notebook with my papers scattered around me. My back reclining against the monolithic matriarch of Long Meg herself; I would rather, in what may be my last moments, be nestling my head in the lap of a living woman rather than a petrified witch of legend. Yet so foul now is the miasma of horror that exudes from my every pore, that I fear I would be shunned by the most lowly drug-addicted harlot. But not for any satiation of carnal desire do I crave the company anyway, so sombre and wretched has my demeanour been of late that there is no amour nor affection residing within my being. No, I would wish more for such a thing for the sensation of comfort and warmth, a reminder of what it means to be human, perhaps the illusion of hope that everything is going to be alright, that the world as we think we know it is not going to end. But everything is </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;"><u>Not</u></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;"> going to be all right! I have heard the echoes and the end times approach.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps I should explain how I came to be here on the dawn of this wintering day, here on the moors of Maughanby near Penrith, and how my life came to be in such disarray. Until recently I was a journalist, not for some mighty media empire or broadcasting giant, but merely a reporter for a local rag, The Westmoreland & Cumberland Chronicle, but still I was good at my job … too good. Attention to detail was my downfall, in career and in life. Closer scrutiny of certain local cases, recent and then as I delved further, I discovered historically, started to reveal strange patterns. In investigating myriad cases, - disappearances, strange deaths, thefts of religious and artistic artefacts, vague connections kept appearing regarding the names and properties of the Mordrake and Moorecroft families. Loose connections I grant you, nothing concrete to directly incriminate, yet I feel .. I know, that this is due to skilled concealment and repression of evidence on their part and of their associates from both sides of the law. From my research into both of these houses, I learnt that this was a skill that they had honed over centuries. Tracing the family trees back beneath dark soil to their tangled and gnarled roots, I discovered a hazy trail of mystique and maleficence weaving back to Brigante times and probably beyond. Oh yes, names had changed over time, but the blood lines remained strong and true, if at times mutated by interbreeding. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">Though the names of Demdike and Chattox and the like may be familiar to readers of the accounts of North British witchcraft, the names of Mordrake and Moorecroft are mysteriously absent, yet in terms of esoteric involvement and influence these families were and still are at the heart of weird and woeful occult, heathen practice. Sacrifice and slaughter and sexual deviancy are as endemic to them as the wealth and respect that they have gathered about themselves.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">I took my findings to my editors, Mr Leigth and Mr Bradley – two of the most different characters ever to work together. I had left my car-keys in the office one evening and had returned to collect them, when from behind closed doors I heard them discussing both my report and me. Actually it was only the heated voice of Bradley I heard; Leigth, though in many ways the dominant character of the pair is a man of few words. Bradley ranted about good reporters gone bad and law-suits from wealthy respectable members of the community who kept themselves to themselves, and a tirade of how the paper was concerned with facts and not works of fabulous fiction. So it was the next day, that Mr Leigth called me into his office and to cut to the chase, basically informed me in a gentle and tactful manner that I was due a rest and was required to take leave of an indefinite period. I was livid, but could say nothing and did as was bid. Yet I continued my research and it took me in an unforeseen direction, wide reaching in both geography and fields of study. And though my report was buried in favour of the usual and mundane tales of cattle markets and rescues of careless tourists to the lakes and hills, my research did not remain unknown to those parties it directly concerned. In my investigation, I learnt to my dismay that Mr Leigth was a close and personal friend of one Mr Algeron Moorecroft.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">That my career in the press had come to an end was without doubt and was the least of my worries. Though I was nothing but an insignificant ant in the families’ grand plans, it is an undeniable fact that the fate of many an ant is to be trampled beneath the heel of a heavy boot. Though I doubt there was anything I could do to halt their cataclysmic ambitions (of which I was only becoming aware at that point) I knew I might be considered an irritation, best rid of. I wondered only whether they would try to conform me or simply to annihilate me. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">They made it known to me that I was known to them. They made their displeasure apparent, not in so vulgar and obtuse a manner as verbal threat or poison pen letter; instead they spoke to me in dreams, telling me to desist. But these were not the worst of my night-thoughts by any means. As my research intensified and I delved further into the past and further across the globe, unearthing more and more dark buried secrets, nightmares of terrible landscapes, abnormal practices and malformed, grotesque beings infested my every sleeping moment. I had little respite when awake, but I could at least then try to master my own thoughts, even if the skin of what I considered reality peeled away before my eyes like the layers of a rotten onion. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">So I shunned sleep, I drowned myself in caffeine and through the shadier contacts I had made as a matter of course of my newspaper work, I armed myself with a hearty supply of amphetamine.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">But I have not spoken of their plans have I? Well not here, there are many folders of paperwork and files on my computer back at my house detailing my research, but already I suspect they may have been destroyed. The plans of the Moorecrofts and Mordrakes, and not only them but of kindred dark souls across the entire globe were nothing less than the end of the world itself. To be more precise they planned to be the heralds and the conduits through whose means the Old Gods would return to rule the earth for future aeons. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">The Old Gods … the forgotten monstrous force of eternity, their presence hidden from the masses, but known and served for centuries and across numerous nations by certain clans and families. The fools! Blind and greedy in their devotion to those foul eternal monsters, they think they will be rewarded for their obedience to the Ancient Ones but once they have paved the way of the New Dawn, set the machinery running for the re-emergence of the Outer Gods, they will have served their purpose and course and be utterly destroyed like the rest of mankind. Of that I am sure! I say re-emerge for they have never left this world, least not all of them. Many of greater and lesser degree sleep beneath the soil, within the mountains, below the lakes and oceans. Their tendrils spread across the entire planet, yet there are places where their presence still is more manifest – in the frozen wastes of the Artic and Antarctic, in New England, the Himalayas, regions of North Africa and in Asia and here in sleepy, beautiful Cumbria.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">I know how this must sound – the sleep-deprived, chemically polluted ravings of a man close to the edge. Yes, though I teeter on the precipice, I have never been more lucid. I even now emit a laugh, not the roar or a lunatic, but a small weary smile of gallows humour as I think on the irony of Bradley’s words. Fiction – Ha! All the miserable facts of everyday existence are the fiction, masks concealing the huge clandestine truth of existence. It is in the fantastic fiction of novelists and poets, in the images of artists where the real truths have if not entirely revealed, been most alluded to. What may be considered imagination or inspiration is instead sensitivity to the unknown things. There is more fact in the purple prose of the notorious Providence pulp-writer than in all the newssheets of the world. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">It is inevitable that it is so, of such magnitude is the presence and manifestation of the Great Old Ones that from the dawn of time to the dusk of their awakening and the midnight that falls at the death of the universe, ripples of their being have undulated back and forth across the vast dimension of time. It is to be expected that such echoes would touch the minds of and be represented as best possible by those of an openly creative disposition. It is there, manifest in the grotesque visions of Hieronymous Bosch, in the perverse ink-lines of Alfred Kubin and in the strange half-sleep drawings of Austin Osman Spare. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">It is there in comic-books and celluloid – Kubrick felt drawn and revealed truths without perhaps knowing it in his choice of literature to film – masked orgies, madness in the mountains, the worship of a devastating force, violence on the streets of a broken society, even in the silent sentinel monoliths the monstrous presence is manifest.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">Oh, they may claim other sources of inspiration, find other explanations to claim the monstrous genius as their own, but would they have dared admit that they didn’t know or even if they did know from where those thoughts and images truly sprung? </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">The echoes resonate in some of the lines of Gogol and Baudelaire, of Rabelais and Poe. William Blake knew it, he felt it – when he spoke of an eternity in a grain of sand he may well have spoke of the Old Gods; of their great cosmic fractal entity that replicates eternally from the microcosm of a molecule of a speck of dust on the scale of a butterfly’s wing to the ravenous nebulae that span light years across the depths of space. The echo of echoes, the harmony of chaos – the discord of logic, the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end; such is the magnitude of the Ancient Ones. Resonating through time they are the Ouroboros of the archaic alchemists – the infinite serpent that continuously devours and gives birth to itself.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">The echoes have of course been felt by others, still and growing stronger as the days approach. Manifest not in words of novels or poems, or on marks on paper or canvas but as acts of the most saddening violence and depravity. The world grows insane; lurid, tragic news-clippings gather by my feet, headlines screaming “Gruesome Torture-Den Found in Whitehaven Shed”, “Archaeology Students Die in Mysterious Circumstances”, “More Strange Disappearances at Ashness Bridge” “Young Mother Murders Newborn Son” … the list goes on and on. More and more people turn now to drink and drugs to blind their nightmares and waking horrors, as the Ancients stir from their womb of sleep, their presence becomes felt more by even the less sensitive. And there are other signs – the fluorescent froth that floats on Windermere heralding the awakening of the amphibious underlings of the breathing darkness. The black beacons are once more lit on the hilltops, invisible to many but drawing others to their death. And in the wider world, rioters take to the streets as nature rebels also wreaking more and more environmental disasters. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">Long hours I spent in my house engrossed in newspaper stories and genealogy papers, and in books and articles on science, witchcraft, ufology, meteorology, astronomy, clairvoyance, cryptozoology, applied mathematics, ley-lines, earth mysteries and many more diverse and esoteric subjects besides. I was gripped by the practice of reading and reinterpreting the riddles of Meso-America and of the Middle East, and the lines of grimoires and Enochian script and other eldritch tomes. Then what seemed at first like random and strange abstract jigsaw puzzle pieces began to lock into place displaying a weird and terrifying truth. Synchronous interconnections of people and places and events of past, present and future revealed themselves.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">The ancients felt the ripple of echoes, Nostradamus saw the hazy shapes in his pail of water, John Dee heard the faint whispers and glimpsed the vague forms of the Others in the reflections of his black obsidian mirror. In the glyphs and codices of the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Mayans, fluctuations to the common order were recorded but they were vague and more dimly understood for they spoke more of mathematical equations and of astronomy rather than of the horrendous events that will unfold. Much has been said of 2012 but the days of October 28 or December 21 or December 24 may pass unremarkably as the matter of configuration of the sun, earth and centre of the galaxy are just minor recurrent movements, single steps in a much longer dance. All molecules of matter will concur, not in a straight line but as a great expanding Mandelbrot spiral as the awakening occurs. The end may not come upon any of those specific dates, it is in motion already and the calendar becomes meaningless anyway for when the rebirth of the Old Ones and the death of the human aeon coincide birth and death throes will echo and ripple back and forth across the ribbons of time.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">And on the fringe, some have spoken of the return of the dark planet, Nibiru, but science has scoffed this with their data and astronomical observation, but their telescopes are faced the wrong way. Nibiru, Planet X … call it what you will, will return but from beneath, not from outward. It will rise from the soil and rise from the sea and explode forth from the mouths of men and beasts. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">And he too will return from his slumber at the bottom of the ocean, that great Devil-Fish deity I dare not name. He was sealed within his sleeping tomb for millennia, but I hope it may be possible that he may be trapped again but such folly for I fear his confinement was of his own bidding. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">He may be released by the direct intervention of the faithful deviant followers or it may occur through the foolhardiness and greed of deep-sea explorers. The hidden texts declare that the walls of his nadir cell are marked with warnings of all the written tongues of the time – Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian and the forgotten languages of the Atlanteans, Lemurians, Hyperboreans and of other forgotten extinct races. But did Carter and Carnarvon</span><span style="color: maroon; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">pay heed to the warnings on the tomb of Tutankhamun? They did not, and though the curse there was of questionable merit, should this submerged edifice be breached, he </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;"><u>will</u></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;"> awaken and he </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;"><u>will</u></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;"> rise and when he does great tsunamis will rage for hundreds of miles inland, drowning cities and claiming multitudes of lives.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">I discovered this and many more grim truths in my studies, but what could I do? I could write and warn, perhaps scupper the intentions of certain individuals who seek to bring about the abominations upon the earth, but there were too many others to take their place. I could not turn my mind off; still I dug deeper and deeper into more arcane material. I rarely left my home at that stage, only fleeting journeys to buy fast food, more coffee and cigarettes and the occasional drive into Newcastle or Carlisle to procure more Speed. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">But then I noticed I was being watched, being followed and it was no longer safe to stay at home, so I drove and wandered and walked and wondered. I knew I could not run forever, but I wanted more time to learn more, to satiate my self-devouring addiction to this terrible knowledge. And so I eventually roamed here to Long Meg. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">And now as I scribble what may be my final words, the light fails suddenly. Does the twilight fall already? I look upwards –the golden sun sinks into a spiralling winter sky of blue and grey and crimson. For all the cruelty of fate and the wasted chances of mankind, this is a beautiful place. The light falls sublimely on the sisterhood of standing stones circling me, in the distance horizon the faint outline of the mounts of the English Lake District. It is indeed a beautiful place … A beautiful place to die perhaps. I know my time is coming, I feel the anticipation of great change … the calm before the storm. I fear it but welcome it more for I know I will not bear witness to the darker times ahead. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">They are coming. I see their shadowy forms beyond the edge of the stone circle. Men, no not men, amorphous smoky man –like forms. Perhaps the bodies of men acting as the vehicles of another force, hungry to get out but confined in these mortal vessels until the physics of the planet are altered to suit their needs. Tendrils of purple mist seems to issue from their fingers and to caress the stone bodies of Long Meg’s daughters and is it my fancy or do I hear faint ecstatic sighs emitted from these petrified maidens upon the return and touch of their dark masters? </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">They come nearer. The faint purple mist creeps beneath the stones approaching me It is strange, they say your life flashes in front of your eyes when death approaches, I hastily scribble these words, but all that comes to my mind is an image of myself within the womb, strange … a comfort mechanism perhaps – I wondered whether before birth I had a vision of my death. Perhaps this is not death but rebirth. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">Closer still .. I feel a serene dread and both love and abhorrence for the encroaching beings. I realise I have not chosen a side to be on … the choice is not mine.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">My fingers touch the stone of Long Meg and I feel the grooves of a ‘cup and ring’ marking. The design of concentric circles engraved by the crude tools of prehistoric man . Oddly the touch of it soothes me, I recognise it as the eternal spiralling circle of time and existence, reverberations of infinite endless realities – the echo of an echo of an echo…</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: large;">They are here …</span></div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-45300035898068894112012-01-31T14:46:00.004+00:002012-01-31T15:15:20.168+00:00Friends of Cumbrian Cthulhu: Eolith Designs<a _fcksavedurl="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/" href="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/"><img _fcksavedurl="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/images/banner.jpg" alt="border=0" src="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/images/banner.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Eolith Designs' sculptures take their inspiration from the dawn and dusk of civilisations; from real and imagined histories, and the world of myth and legend. Bringing together things that were, things that could have been, and things that may be.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Each Sculpture is a unique work of art created by the artist. The processes involved in casting and finishing ensure that no two will ever be identical. Each design is also strictly limited and each sculpture comes with it's own certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered by the artist. The collection will change and grow as new designs emerge and others are lost to history.</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Check out the descriptions and links below to see the fantastic images on the Eolith Designs website! </b></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>“If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing.” </b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>H.P. Lovecraft – The Call of Cthulhu</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Egyptian Cthulhu is approximately 8½</span></b><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> inches (21cm) tall and weighs approximately 600g.</span></b></div><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b> </b></span><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328019206615106" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328019206615105" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/view-product.php?product=7">Egyptian Cthulhu</a></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333;">Following the collapse of the Hittite Empire around 1180 BC strange new religions emerged amongst The People of a Thousand Gods.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span></span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333;"> Kutullu appears to have been worshipped as an aspect of Illuyankas the great sea dragon. Few inscriptions remain and little is known of his cult. This statue hastily buried by priests before his temple fell to invaders is the only known image of the deity.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Hittite Cthulhu is approximately 9</span></b><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> inches (22.5cm) tall, including his base, and weighs approximately 330g.</span></b></div><br />
<span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328019206615106" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328019206615105" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/view-product.php?product=21">Syro-Hittite Cthulhu</a> </span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<a _fcksavedurl="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/" href="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/"><img _fcksavedurl="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/images/banner.jpg" alt="border=0" src="http://www.eolithdesigns.co.uk/images/banner.jpg" /></a>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-2719424813975489412012-01-25T08:40:00.002+00:002012-12-30T23:27:48.143+00:00Langdale and Pike Investigate, Part one<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp2s3YiRhtkVbGeK0ZPlbjbIxBiGubR8vYQrSzetZDn3objFIGIYSeva65hOKWJlzV5ZKl3NMFDbKfMNVDdGBfD3EpztEwkGjKAgYBY8_8COfQjxeHnMoPthnCZVpggqiq3d0tHY-WTcM/s1600/LANGDALE+AND+PIKE+book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp2s3YiRhtkVbGeK0ZPlbjbIxBiGubR8vYQrSzetZDn3objFIGIYSeva65hOKWJlzV5ZKl3NMFDbKfMNVDdGBfD3EpztEwkGjKAgYBY8_8COfQjxeHnMoPthnCZVpggqiq3d0tHY-WTcM/s640/LANGDALE+AND+PIKE+book.jpg" width="452" /></a></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Langdale and Pike Investigate</b></span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Written by Richard W. Straw</b></span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> Illustrated by Andy Paciorek </b></span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">They found the body a little after nine o’clock on the evening of November 17</span><sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, in the year of our Lord 1904. A young couple, walking home from an evening out, hurrying to escape the cold, took the short cut along the back of Lowther Street. And so they came across the body, lying in a puddle of gradually freezing water and blood.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">They had to call in the big boys for this one. Murder was unheard of in Penrith. Violence was rare, save the occasional bruise-up outside the Druids’ Arms when spirits were both flowing and high. The local police station was not equipped for such things. Constable Whitehead, junior at the office by virtue of being the most recent recruit, had been sent careering off on the road to Kendal on the station bicycle, and from there, a telephone call had gone to Carlisle.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">By the time the message got to Detective Inspector Langdale, via a healthy knock on the door from Sergeant Pike, it was well past midnight. Langdale was trying against all the odds to get a decent night’s sleep, his first for a long time. Cursing the world and all its iniquities, he stumbled to the front door, swaddled in blankets and sheets. The sight of Pike, big, bluff, enthusiastic, was almost enough to make him slam it shut without a word, but duty overrode annoyance just enough to restrain him. He stared at the sergeant questioningly.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Bad one, sir,” Pike said. That was enough for Langdale. “Body, very messed up, Penrith.” </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale suppressed a groan of despair. Thirty-one years in the force, and still these cases seemed to find him. Another long, cold journey to look at a corpse. Wonderful fun for a November weekend. He ushered Pike into the sitting room. The fire had long since died, and the room was morgue-like in its frigidity, but this didn’t seem to bother the sergeant, who perched himself on the chaise-longue, bowler on knee, smiling stupidly, whilst Langdale swore his way back to the bedroom, and attempted, with only moderate success, to get dressed in the dark and without unwinding himself too much from his sheltering cocoon of warm bedclothes. Ten minutes later, they were in a police trap, heading for Penrith. It was about then that Langdale noticed that his boots were on the wrong feet.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">They drew up to the police station at Penrith at about half past three. Langdale had attempted to sleep on the journey, but the bumps and bangs of the roads had made it impossible, so he had been reduced to huddling down into his overcoat and glaring jealously at Pike as he gently snored in the seat opposite, head buried beneath scarf and hat. There was no morgue, so a makeshift facility had been put together in one of the larger cells beneath the station. It was freezing down there, somehow even colder than in the open air. They were awaiting the county pathologist, but the messenger who had been despatched to Hamilton Gould’s house in Keswick had been told in no uncertain terms that he would not be rising before eight o’clock, and the dead could certainly be left in these temperatures. So for the moment, there seemed little to do. Langdale had sent Pike to the George Hotel to try to rustle up a couple of rooms, but the landlord was clearly more obstinate than the inspector, and no amount of banging on the door would rouse him at this time in the morning. An offer from Knowles, the local Sergeant in charge, to go and see the site where the body was found was met simply with an Anglo Saxon epithet. Langdale was sure Doctor Gould was correct. The body and the murder site could wait. He just wanted to sleep. Was that too much to ask?</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He and Pike spent the rest of the night on opposite benches in one of the empty cells, being gently serenaded by the drunken snores of one of their neighbours. He supposed he must eventually have fallen into slumber, as he was conscious of being woken by Pike just after nine o’clock, and a large mug of rather stale-smelling tea being thrust under his nose.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Doctor’s here,” Pike said, with loathsome chirpiness, “Thought you might like a cup of tea, sir.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">There was no other breakfast forthcoming, so he sipped gingerly at the tea, trying not to gag on the foul taste, and wandered to the makeshift pathology lab. He had barely got his nose around the door before Gould barked at him to “Leave me alone for at least an hour!” He beat hasty retreat and decided that the murder site might be a better bet.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It was a short walk to the murder site. There was a huddled hush across the town, people scurrying about in the frozen morning air, not looking at each other. Langdale wondered if the word was out already. He supposed police activity in a small town like Penrith was limited, and people would have noticed the new arrivals pretty quickly.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">About halfway down a cobbled back street, Constable Whitehead was standing, looking even more miserable and uncomfortable than Langdale felt. A makeshift cover of police capes draped over small chairs had been assembled. It looked fairly ludicrous, but as Pike and the constable moved the chairs, Langdale caught his breath. The puddle was very large, at least eight feet across in all directions, and covering the cobbles completely. It was now totally frozen over, a dark morass of crimson and grey.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale knelt down beside it. “Is there this much blood in the human body?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Knowles stood over him. “Most of it’s not his, sir,” he said. “He was found in a huge puddle of water. He mixed the blood in himself, if you take me sir.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike was wandering up and down the street, looking closely at walls, trying doors. He looked back at Langdale and shook his head. Nothing interesting there, then. He sighed and stood up.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Anything else significant?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pose of the dead man sir. He was lying straight on his back, arms stretched straight out to both sides. Bit like our Lord and Saviour on the cross, you might say, sir.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Despite himself, the inspector smiled at the image. “Religious man, sergeant?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Not really, sir. Christmas and Christenings only, I suppose. Not much worth believing in, these days.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Probably not.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">And one other thing sir. There were…marks on his face and neck.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Marks?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Knowles hesitated, and Langdale looked at him. The sergeant was a big man, in his forties, probably a veteran of the force. And he was really scared. “I think it’s better if the doctor talks to you about that, sir”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike had come back over after his fruitless search. By now, Langdale was swearing again. There was no breeze, but try as he might, he couldn’t get his pipe to light. A succession of matches was thrown over his shoulder in despair. “Who was it who found him?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike drew forth his notebook. “Local couple sir. Ellis and Alice Ellen.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale grunted. He put his matches back in his pocket. “Try saying that when you’re three sheets.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Nothing much to say about them, really. He’s a stockbroker’s clerk, she doesn’t work. Seems his parents were looking after the children, they went out for the first time in six months.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">They were coming home,” Knowles added, “this is a pretty popular shortcut for the houses on the far side of the town. As far as I can tell, they aren’t any bother. Certainly not under suspicion.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Still, wouldn’t hurt to get a statement. Pike, get onto it, would you?” He indicated the constable, who was rapidly turning blue. “Take this fellow with you too.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As Pike strode off, the Constable Whitehead hurrying to keep pace, Langdale ruminated on his unlit pipe. Knowles walked over to him. The big sergeant was clearly worried.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This is a decent town, inspector,” he said quietly. “We rarely have any real bother around here. Hasn’t been a murder in over a hundred years. Word of this spreads, and people will panic.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale nodded. He took of his hat, and ran his hand through his thinning dark hair. It was a gesture he often made in times of perplexity. Then a cold breeze drifted over his head, and he hastily replaced the hat and decided to stroke his beard instead. “Worse than that, if I can’t sort this out, London will get involved. We’ll get some flash sod from Scotland Yard. Or even – “he shuddered “- a private detective. One way or another, sergeant, we need to solve this one quickly.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">When they got back to the station, they found Gould sitting beside the corpse. In one hand, he held a small silver hip flask, which Langdale eyed jealously. In the other, he was holding a glass specimen jar up to the light. Something that looked like it belonged on a butcher’s slab floated in formaldehyde. Langdale felt like whimpering as Gould dipped his finger into the liquid and then tasted it slightly. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Devil of a mess, Langdale, devil of a mess,” he said, his rich Yorkshire accent echoing around the icy room. He pulled back the sheet from the corpse’s face. Langdale winced. The man looked normal enough – a man of thirty to forty, white, blonde, nothing much to look at ordinarily – except that his face was covered in torn, bloodied marks. They were circular, and slightly puckered. They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite place it. He needed his pipe to think, and he scrabbled around in his pockets to find it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Gould indicated something further. The marks continued around the neck, winding in a pattern all about the man’s throat. And the neck was horribly bruised. Langdale had seen the necks of strangulation victims. Two weeks ago, he had helped cut down the body of a sailor who had hanged himself in a warehouse in Silloth. But these marks were worse than anything he had ever seen.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Was he strangled?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Yes, but not to death.” Gould pulled back the sheet to expose the man’s chest. It was indeed a devil of a mess. Gould had stitched him back up, but the wounds were very clear from groin to neck. Clearly the man had been ripped open.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This is his liver.” Gould held up the sample jar. “Once I’d squished all the rest back in, there wasn’t any room left. I’ll keep it for the collection.” Langdale twitched. Gould was clearly enjoying himself. “Official line will be blood loss and internal injuries. Assault by person or persons unknown. Well, I say persons,” the doctor added, “but I think it’s more likely that an animal did this.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale had another go at lighting his pipe, but before he had even applied the match, the pathologist had plucked it from his mouth. He set it down on the victim’s chest, his own bulky body blocking the inspector’s route to retrieving it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Not in here, please. This is a sterile environment.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">An animal?” Langdale had read his Jules Verne. “An octopus?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Well, that’s what the marks on the face indicate. But I’ll tell you one thing…” Gould paused, drawing out the drama, “…aside from the puddle he was found in, this man hasn’t been near the water.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">About an hour later, Gould was done. He had packed up his things, scrawled a few cursory notes on the back of a charge sheet, promised a full report and a substantial bill for services rendered in the next couple of days, and then decamped back to his luxurious and no doubt warm country house that overlooked Derwent Water. Pike had returned from talking to the Ellens with very little to report. They seemed to be nothing more than an innocent young couple who had simply been unfortunate in their choice of short cuts. The sergeant had commandeered a small office next to the cells, and he and Langdale sat sipping at the station’s fetid tea, and trying to keep the cold out. Without success, Langdale thought. He had only just managed to rescue his pipe from being wrapped up with the corpse, but once again the tobacco was stubbornly refusing to ignite. Finally, he hurled it across the room, narrowly clipping Pike’s left ear. It whacked into the wall opposite and fell to the floor, neatly cleaved into two pieces.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It’s a filthy habit anyway, sir. My Elsie told me to give it up years ago. Never been happier since I did that.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">I bet you don’t drink either,” Langdale said poisonously.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Not really sir. Occasional pint of Grayrigg’s best bitter on my birthday. Healthy body, healthy mind, that’s what they’re saying these days, sir.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale decided to change the subject. “How is your wife anyway?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Very bonnie, thank you sir. Off visiting the mother in Newcastle.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale grunted again. It seemed to be the response of the day; much easier than actually having to say something coherent. His wife was off visiting her mother too. In Gretna. For the last six years. He decided to change the subject again. Second time lucky, he hoped. He threw Gould’s notes onto the desk in the middle of the room.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">So we have a man who has been strangled to death by an octopus. In the middle of a very dry town. No witnesses. No suspects. And we don’t even know who he is. Was,” he added pedantically.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike frowned. “Maybe someone was using some sort of weapon, to make those marks. You know, to incriminate the octopus.” The words sounded ridiculous as soon as he had said them, and the sergeant shrugged helplessly. Langdale laughed. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">You’ve been reading too many books, sergeant. The number of years you’ve been on the force, thought you would have left that sort of thing behind.” The inspector was already feeling a familiar tang of pessimism coming over him. The calling up of Scotland Yard was beginning to figure largely in his thoughts, and with that always came the terrible throb of failure. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike, being young and filled with boundless stupidity, was being more positive. “Well, the best thing to do is find out who he is. It’s a small town. We could put out an appeal.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">You want a poster out in this good town of that smashed-up face, with the header, ‘Do You Know This Man?’ We’d be lynched.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Well, how about an artist’s impression, sir? Elsie said that her friend Mabel said that these places are full of artists from London. They go round painting the lakes and being deep. Make money from doing portraits.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Very well, lad,” Langdale shrugged a resigned pair of shoulders. “You go and find an artist. Assuming you can get one with a strong enough stomach, get him to do a sketch of the victim looking…normal. Then you can put out your poster.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike jumped up, happy to be engaging in semi-productive industry. “What about you sir?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The inspector pulled his hat down over his eyes. “Thinking time,” he muttered.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He spent the next couple of hours dozing in the chair, wrapped up in overcoat and scarf, whilst a few speculative thoughts passed through his mind. Finally, tiring of this, he got up and wandered out, past Pike, who was ushering a young, delicate looking man into the station, and out into the streets of Penrith. A self-stated aim of wandering the town in search of inspiration lasted about a quarter of an hour. He bought a new pipe, and finally he ended up in the nearest hostelry, the Druids Arms, where he downed a pint of the best local bitter. The atmosphere in the place was odd – not unwelcoming or hostile, but fearful. He felt eyes on him the entire time he was there, gazes that questioned him and his success in dealing with the death that had come to the town. Clearly, Sergeant Knowles had been correct. Word was spreading. A few desultory attempts at conversation with the landlord came to nothing. He didn’t feel anything was being held back. It was simply that nobody knew anything. That was what was scaring them the most. Finally, reluctantly, he dragged himself away from the fire that was cosily banked up in the main parlour, and went back out into the cold.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">By now it was late afternoon, and the frost was settling in nicely. Langdale strode as briskly as possible back to the station. Thinking time had not really been very much use – he felt as in the dark as he had before going out. No identity, no clues, the only thing that seemed relevant was wounds from an animal that couldn’t possibly have been responsible. His head hurt, and he was sure that it wasn’t from the beer or the cold.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He stopped. For a moment, he felt the same feeling that he had in the pub. Eyes on him. He was being watched. He looked about. The usual hustle of a small town square, shops, two pubs, a small library and several offices, accountants, lawyers and the like. The shops were in the process of closing for the day. There were plenty of folk about, but nobody who seemed interested in the slight, uninteresting figure of a district police inspector. But the feeling remained. Finally, he shrugged. Let them watch him. As long as they left him alone, they could look at him all they liked. He trudged on.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">From the shadow of the library, a tall man watched as the policeman walked on. There had been a brief second of danger, but the moment had passed. The man was a fool, barely capable of understanding this world, let alone anything infinitely greater than it. The man smiled to himself. Remain vigilant, of course, but there was little threat here. Matters could continue.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">When he got back to the station, Langdale found Pike with a happy smile and a large pencilled portrait in his hands. It seemed Mr Seymour Ffoukes, of Lodge Cottage by Windermere, had done his work well.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Queer sort,” Pike told him, “Bit of a molly, if you get me, sir. But he’s done his job well.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale had to agree. The picture was an accurate depiction of the man of mystery laid out in cell six. He gave orders for it to be copied and distributed. As Pike and Constable Whitehead went through the laborious task of photographing the picture for distribution, Langdale decided the day had been long enough. He headed towards the George Hotel, where with almost pathetic relief, he was able to secure a room for the night. The delightedly roaring fire was leaping about the grate as he clambered into bed after a healthy dose of steak and kidney pudding in the hotel bar. It wasn’t more than five minutes before he was snoring roundly.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">A gentle tapping woke him. He opened his eyes to see, of course, Pike, bright eyed and happy as ever. Another cup of tea was preferred towards him.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Sunday sir,” said the sergeant, “Coming to church?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Biting back a particularly vicious comment about God and all his angels and where they could go, Langdale shook his head muzzily. He had forgotten Pike and his wife were happily committed Anglicans. The sergeant rarely mentioned it, but church on a Sunday morning was taken as a given. “I think my soul’s long gone, sergeant,” he managed eventually, “Go on without me.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">One thing for Pike, he knew when not to argue. He placed the tea on a table, annoyingly just out of reach, and left. Langdale finally extracted himself from the bed and grabbed for the cup as the one warm thing in the room. He gritted his teeth and took a sip. Rather better than the station’s, at least.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">When he arrived at the station, he found Knowles looking unpardonably smug. They had good news, and Langdale found himself feeling the first tiny glow of progress. Constable Whitehead was seated in the small back office with a little old lady, the picture of their murdered unfortunate between them.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This is Mrs Johnson, sir,” the constable told him, “She claims she recognises the gentleman in our picture.” </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale nodded suspiciously at the old lady. He was automatically suspicious of any female over forty. Something went wrong with them over that age. This one seemed no different, a wizened creature, eighty if she was a day, dressed in clothes that had been the height of fashion some time around the Battle of Inkerman. She stared back at him in equal suspicion, sharp little eyes focussing over her pince-nez</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Do you indeed, Mrs Johnson?” He was trying for friendly and expansive, but feared he just sounded drunk. He sat down. “So then, what can you tell us?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Well,” she began, clearly loving being the centre of attention, “I came to Penrith this morning to pay a call on an old friend of mine, Mrs Kaye. She lives just two streets over, you know. Have you met Mrs Kaye? She’s ever such a nice soul. Husband passed over in ’71, I’m afraid. Taken by the colic. And I always told her, Florence, I said – ”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Could we stick to the original story, please, Mrs Johnson,” Langdale interrupted. How he hated elderly witnesses. You got every fact except the relevant ones.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Oh yes, well, I was passing by your station and I saw that picture on your notice board, and I says to myself, ‘I’ll swear that’s our Mr Russell, if it’s not then he has a twin’, so I comes over to look at it a bit closer, and yes, I swear again, that’s Mr Russell, such a nice lad, Mr Russell, even if he is a bit odd, and he always keeps a bit back for me of a Tuesday, and – ”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Keeps a bit back? A bit of what?” Langdale asked, dreading the answer.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">A bit of sausage,” she told him. The inspector quailed in horror. “He’s the butcher.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Perhaps sensing the inspector’s keen desire to lamp the old trout, Whitehead had decided to step in “Where would that be, then, Mrs Johnson?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">She looked at him pityingly, as if he were a simple child. “Well, Shap of course. That’s where I live. Where else would he be from?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale suppressed his twenty-third despairing sigh of the day. “So this Mr Russell, he’s from Shap then?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Well, of course. How else would I know him?” She seemed astounded at the inspector’s mental processes. “I must say, though, I was surprised to see a picture of him in this town. Bit of a – what’s the word – cuts himself off – recluse, that’s it, bit of a recluse, is Mr Russell. I haven’t seen him for a few days. Not since he gave me that nice bit of mince last Tuesday. ” She paused in her ramblings. “I do like a bit of mince, and I’ve got lovely Mr Wallace coming over for tea tonight”, she said significantly, “I’m a widow, you know.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Hurriedly, Langdale indicated to Whitehead to cut the conversation short. The young constable rose from his seat. “Well, many thanks, Mrs Johnson, I’m sure you’ve been a great help. This information will no doubt help us to progress this case quite significantly.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Well, I do hope Mr Russell is alright,” she told them innocently. At the door she stopped and looked back. “I don’t suppose there’s a reward or anything?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale fought back the impulse to yell at her as if she were a junior constable. “I’m sure Sergeant Knowles will make you a nice cup of tea.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>And you’re more than welcome to that witch’s brew, you old harpy</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, he silently added.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike returned from church at around eleven o’clock. He hadn’t been very impressed with the local vicar – a bit of a non-conformist, it appeared. He told the inspector about his sermon, something about not truly perceiving the world that was around us, but by this point Langdale wasn’t listening. He was processing the information of the morning. If Russell had been such a recluse, what was he doing in Penrith? Logically, he had come to see something. Or possibly someone? Find the reason, find the killer. Langdale was not yet prepared to believe that the killer had not been a human being. Sea creatures did not attack people in the street. Not in Edward’s England, anyway.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Got to admit it, Pike, you were right about that picture.” Pike waved a modest hand, and the inspector went on, “We’ll have to get to this Shap then. Train?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Should think so, sir.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Then get a timetable. We’ll go as soon as we can and take a look at this butcher’s.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">This plan of action was unfortunately, and rather suddenly, curtailed. Whitehead entered hurriedly, clutching a piece of paper in his hand.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Sorry to be bothering you, sir, sergeant,” he told them, “but we’ve just got a message. Seems there’s been a bit of trouble at Windermere.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">A frown creased Langdale’s mouth. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>Just as things were looking up.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> “Lake or town, constable?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Lake sir.” He waved the paper. “Says here three children were skating on the lake, seeing as it’s been frozen in this weather sir, and they’ve gone in the water, sir.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale hoped his expression wasn’t as wearily nonplussed as he felt.. “That’s very unfortunate, but I’m not sure what it has to do with us.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Well, sir, you told us to look out for anything unusual. Seems the children didn’t just fall in the lake, sir, seems they were – ” he wavered over his choice of word, “ – well, seems they were dragged in, sir.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale seized the paper from Whitehead and scanned it swiftly. His eyebrows quested for the ceiling in surprise.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Tentacles?” was all that he could eventually manage.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As they wound down the hill towards the town and the lakeshore, Langdale could feel a suppressed sense of tension in the streets on Bowness. Murder of an adult male in Penrith had been bad enough. The seemingly random deaths of children in an apparently impossible way had set everything on edge. People in these small towns lived their lives by certainties and ritualised order. The smallest challenge to such order could set their lives spiralling out of control. And this challenge was far from small.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Down by the lakeside, a large crowd of people were gathered, being held back by what seemed an impossibly small number of policemen. Langdale and Pike leapt from the carriage as it arrived, and walked over to two men who stood behind the ring of police. One was Henderson, the local sergeant. He and Knowles eyed each other warily like dogs in a territory war. Langdale sent the pair of them away to argue over boundaries and demarcation, and then turned to the other man, a tall, middle aged fellow in large astrakhan coat. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Mordecai Freeman”, the man said, as if that explained everything. Langdale shook his offered hand, and came away with a business card. ‘The Windermere Patented Electricity Company’, it read.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Chairman of the Local Board of Commerce,” Freeman added. Langdale frowned. One of those self-appointed local leaders, he thought. Always bothersome. He let it go without comment however, and walked with Freeman onto one of the jetties that fringed the lakeshore, Pike on their heels. In the bitterly cold late morning weather, the edge of the lake was frozen over to about forty feet out. It was here, Freeman told them, that a group of children had been skating.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">And it was definitely tentacles?” Pike asked.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">That is what the witnesses say,” Freeman replied. “I have at least three people prepared to state under oath that large tentacles emerged from the lake just beyond the ice and seized upon three of the children. However, the local folk are often given to purposeless superstition and hysteria. “</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">No sign of them since?” Langdale lit a cigarette, and drew on it slowly. It just wasn’t the same.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Children or tentacles?” Freeman let out a bark of bitter laughter. “Well, it’s the same answer. No. Not a ripple.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">They looked back at the crowd. The stand off against the police was quiet for now, but the undercurrent that Langdale had felt as they entered the town was sharper than ever. Unfocussed anger, fear, uncertainty. All of which could be set off by the slightest spark. And if they did, there weren’t enough police here to control them.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Freeman nodded, reading his expression. “They are afraid and angry. Several of them have tried to take boats out onto the water to hunt … whatever it is down. And we had an ex-whaling captain living up in Windermere Village who offered to lend people his collection of harpoons. The sergeant has tried to close the lake, but it’s a very big stretch to cover. This could end very badly indeed.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">So what do we do?” Langdale asked. The question hung there unhappily, all three men’s gazes swinging between crowds and water in equal, uncertain measure.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Does anyone have a diving suit?” Pike said finally. Langdale sighed deeply. Just why did the sergeant have to open his mouth?</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Probably,” Freeman replied, “Why?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Well,” Pike said, “Someone should take a look down there.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">You won’t get anyone in their right minds to go down there lad,” Langdale muttered. He could see where this was going, and he really didn’t like it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">I’ll have a go,” Pike said, confirming his fears. Freeman’s face had clouded over darkly at all of this, and he shook his head fiercely.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">No, never, too dangerous,” he said emphatically, “I couldn’t possibly allow it.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">If there was anything guaranteed to get Langdale irritated, it was being told what to do by officials. Especially self-appointed ones. The pompous look on Freeman’s face made his mind up.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">You’ll excuse me saying this, sir,” he said, “But I’m not sure you have any choice in the matter.” He turned to Pike. “All right, lad. You’re on. But just make sure you come back,” he added, “because I don’t want to be the one who has to tell your wife.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Two hours later, and Pike, clad in a John Brown rig, was seated on the edge of a launch floating in the middle of the lake. To one side, Langdale was muttering platitudes and offering advice, to the other, Jones, a local boatman and owner of an old diving outfit from his days in the Liverpool shipyards, was tightening the screws on the heavy copper helmet that had been placed over the sergeant’s head. Behind him, two more men were finishing the set-up of the air pump that connected to the helmet via a long flexible tube. A second line, attached to Pike’s weighted belt, would keep him connected to the launch at all times and allow him to be hauled up in case of emergencies.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale gazed across the lake to the shore, where Freeman was standing arguing with Sgt Henderson, of the Bowness Constabulary. The businessman had proclaimed and complained and threatened, but in the end, the sergeant had stood by the inspector and declared that if he wanted to send someone into the lake, then at least that was doing something, and unless Mr Freeman (sir) had something practical to offer, then he really would be better off going home. Freeman had lapsed into sullen silence at that, but clearly he was off again now. Langdale didn’t care. As long as he was far enough away that he couldn’t hear him, then he could rant all he liked. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Behind the two men, the crowd of people had grown, but now they seemed more like a group of spectators than an angry mob. The illusion of activity that had been created by Pike’s act of foolhardiness had, for the moment, calmed their spirits.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Now remember, lad” he told Pike, “Straight down and have a quick look around. I don’t really know what we’re trying to achieve here, so I don’t want any stupid risks.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike tried to nod, but the suit prevented him. He resorted to a simple “Yes, sir.” Truth was, now that was seated on the edge of the water, he wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve either. If his wife had been there, he would have been on the end of the worst tongue lashing imaginable. The inspector was right. He’d be back, if only to spare his superior from that fate. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Jones lifted the faceplate up to the helmet. He felt Langdale’s hand on his shoulder.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Good luck, lad.” There was genuine warmth in the inspector’s voice. As the faceplate was screwed into place, cutting him off from the outside world, Pike smiled to himself. He knew the inspector wasn’t really the miserable soul he liked to pretend he was. Not all the time anyway. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Moving awkwardly in the suit, he stared down into the water. The grey skies reflected back from the surface, making the lake look colder than ever. Nothing was visible beyond that reflection. The air in the suit began to roar around his head, and he hesitated. Then he steeled himself. Faint heart, and so on. He took a deep breath – silly, of course, but it was strangely comforting – and pushed himself off the deck and into the water.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">As he hit the water, the shock of the cold nearly finished him off there and then. He was clad in warmest clothes, jumpers and thick trousers, and the suit was as insulated as possible, with layers of twill and rubber laid on each other, but it was still a cold like he had never known before. Deep breaths, two, three, four, gradually he felt his body adjust. Not exactly comfortable, but bearable for a short while. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">In the time it had taken him to do this, the weights in his boot and belt, compensating for the buoyancy in his helmet, had dragged him down towards the lake bed. At this point, the lake was about one hundred and fifty feet down, and it wasn’t long before he felt his feet touch bottom. He stood there for a long time, unmoving, feet sunk slightly into the silted lake bed. Then, slowly, carefully, he took one step forward. It wasn’t as difficult as he had feared. Slow, slightly awkward, constantly pushing against an unseen force, but possible. Another step, then another. Soon he was moving about with reasonable confidence.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It was only after about a hundred steps forward that he realised three things.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Firstly, he had no idea what he was actually looking for.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Secondly, he had no idea what he would do if he found it. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Thirdly, he realised that nobody had actually told him how to get back to the surface when the time came.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Elsie was not going to be pleased. And if he met an octopus then there would be hell to pay. For him and it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He stretched his neck and back to look up at the surface of the lake. Enough of the cold light was permeating down to allow him to see. Far above, he could see the bottom of the launch, and the two lines snaking down to him. They seemed terrifyingly slight. Hardly the sort of thing to place one’s life on. He tried not to think about it. He straightened up, and tried peering through the grill-covered glass of the helmet.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It was a world like nothing he had ever seen before. Grey, leaden beds of mud, tangled with weeds and wood, detritus from the boats that sailed obliviously on above him, and an almost constant sense of murk. He couldn’t see any fish, but he wasn’t sure if that was significant. Maybe they were just avoiding him. He tried to shrug, and then laughed as it was nearly impossible in the suit.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He set off, foot over foot, trying to move outward in what he hoped was a widening spiral of about a hundred feet. The mud, stirred up by his heavy treads, threatened to blot out the light more than once, but on he went, constantly moving his head back and forth in the helmet, trying to pick up anything remotely out of place down here.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">For a moment, he thought he had seen something. A shadow, flickering across his view. He shook his head inside the helmet. The shadow had not been large. In fact, it had almost seemed – man-like? No, not possible. He told himself every argument for why it could not have been, why it must have been an illusion caused by the seemingly endless miasma of mud. Still, just for that second…</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It was then that his eye caught the glint of metal. Just the tiniest glint, but it drove all other thoughts from his mind. Moving to his left, as fast as he could, he advanced about ten steps and tried to focus. The glint of metal had been the edge of a skate blade. Attached to a skate, worn on the foot of a little girl.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He stood and stared at her for a long time. Her legs had lodged beneath a large rock, which was preventing her body from floating to the surface. He briefly contemplated trying to get her free, but then he wasn’t sure anyone would want to see a child like this. He and Elsie hadn’t yet been blessed with children, but then, they’d only been married a year, so there was still plenty of time. He knew the inspector had a daughter, barely older than this girl, on whom he doted. She was with her mother in Scotland, and the inspector barely saw her, but he knew how much he cared about her. All of this flashed through his thoughts as he looked at the small form. She was blonde, about twelve years old, clad in a woollen dress and a red coat. The colour was stark against the paleness of her skin and hair. The blonde tresses, rendered near-white in the light, floated about her head in a halo. Her eyes were open. He wanted to close them so much, but knew it was impossible in these gloves. Those eyes – they were haunted by something terrible…and they were reflecting something.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He turned himself fully around and stared through the water. About twenty feet away from him, something glowed blackly. That didn’t make sense, he told himself, but it was the only description that came to mind. Something was sitting on the bed of the lake, and it did not look natural. The girl temporarily put from his mind, he took strong steps towards it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It was as if someone had put a plughole in the lake. Pike found himself looking at an almost perfect circle, about ten feet in diameter. It sat amidst the mud, simply a hole in the earth, but beyond that hole, he could see nothing. It was pure black, but this was a black that was more than simply an absence of colour. This seemed alive, flowing and moving as he watched. Water did not seem to be entering the hole. In fact, it was the opposite. It was as if the hole had extruded itself into the lake from somewhere else, and was reaching out, feeling its way into the world.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He had never seen anything remotely like it before. A sinkhole in the world. Where had that idea come from? He didn’t know, but he knew that it was true. And he knew that this was the ultimate source of all of their troubles.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He was concentrating so hard on the hole that, at first, he did not notice the shapes that were drawing around him. It was only when one of them touched him on the arm, just gently, but enough to be noticed, that he realised he was not alone. He jerked his arm back, shocked, and craned his head sideways in the helmet to stare out of the side port.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">A face looked back at him.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0.42cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It was not a human face, although there were elements that were familiar. The head shape was longer and thinner, the nose was pulled back into the forehead, the ears were shrunken and the mouth was almost fishlike, turned down in a perpetual frown of dismay. But it was the eyes that really scared him, yellow and lidless, gazing at him with a lack of emotion. The bald, grey-green skull was mounted on a scaled body, humanoid in form, but with webbing across fingers and toes, and a hugely ridged back, resembling the creatures in the reptile house at Edinburgh Zoo. At the neck were what seemed like gills, pulsing in slow, regular time.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">At the same time that he gazed at this creature, his mind was refusing to accept it. Pike had always been a practical man. He knew that Langdale sometimes regarded him as bone-headed, but that didn’t bother him. It was simply that he was methodical and careful in his analysis of things. This – this was beyond anything that he could ever have imagined seeing.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It took little more than ten seconds for him to take all of this in. Another ten seconds, and he had realised that this thing was not alone, that he was surrounded by at least ten, possibly more, of the same creatures. They were all looking at him. Then, he felt arms upon him. This time, the touch was not gentle. It was strong, furious, pulling and tearing at him with absolute hostility.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He thrashed about him wildly, the suit’s restrictions forgotten in his desperation. Briefly, he shook himself free of the attackers, then they re-gathered themselves, and flew at him with a renewed fury. He screamed out, the sound rebounding back at him from the confines of his helmet, deafening him, and in the moment of hesitation that this caused, they had him. They swept him off his feet, and were upon him, pushing him down into the ooze.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">An absolute madness of terror seized Pike, and he fought like he had never done so before. The weight of the suit and the water became nothing to him. Pike was not a small man, and he had grown up in a tough part of Carlisle. Despite his usually calm exterior, fighting was second nature to him, and he did it well. Punches flew left and right, the creatures falling away. He swung the helmet directly at one of them, feeling the satisfying whack of copper into skull, and the crunching of fish bones beneath the impact. But, in the end, there were just too many of them. He felt claws and teeth ripping into the suit, passing through the layers to let in the frozen water. Hands seized his arms and legs, more arms passed about his chest, pinning him down, bringing his struggles under control. Finally, and worst of all, he felt a sudden jerk at his head as the air line was torn free. Lying there, his view almost blocked by the grey weight of bodies, he could see it floating away towards the surface. Water began to flow into the helmet, and he choked on the muddy silt.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">One last effort. With a final scream, he pulled free of the creatures and struggled to his knees, then to his feet. He scrabbled at the weighted belt. If he could lose the belt and the boots then he might just be able to make a break for the surface.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">No good. They were on him again, their attack worse than ever. He suddenly saw how close he now was to the hole. Man and creatures teetered on the edge. And in one single flash of calm, he decided. He dug his feet deep into the mud and pushed, his body moving forward, accepting it. And they all plunged into the black.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">It wasn’t what he expected. It was not some free fall into oblivion. Instead, he felt almost cushioned, gently moving downwards. The water no longer flowed about his head, and the creatures no longer grasped at him. He was alone, lost in deadening silence.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Images flashed across his eyes. Langdale, standing in a room, looking serious and sad. A face he didn’t know, a blonde haired man, dressed in grey and black. Gould, fat and self-satisfied. And then someone else. He couldn’t quite make out the features. The face was thin, dark as if tanned, eyes shining sharply in shadow like a cat’s, and a vulpine smile spread across the mouth.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The faces fled, driven away by a new image. He seemed to be floating above a city, but this was not the simple and understandable architecture of a Carlisle or Newcastle. This was an insane, sprawling, underwater metropolis, an impossibly angled tumble of minarets and temples, vast libraries and echoing halls that stretched away from him in all directions for as far as he could see. Domed towers stretched up towards the furthest point, whilst endless deeps loomed beneath, threatening and dead. And over the surface of all the buildings, things crawled. Some of them he recognised as the strange humanoids that had attacked him. They gathered in small communities, staring sightlessly out at the world. Others had no clear form, swarms of flesh and tentacles, flowing into each other until he wasn’t sure whether it was one creature that he saw, or a myriad of forms.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Something else moved. Something that lurked within one of those deep places, something larger and more terrible than anything he had thus far seen. It stirred, and regarded him with an inarticulate malice.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">No more. He could bear no more of this, and tried to close his eyes against it, but it was no good. This world and its inhabitants were alive inside his head, dragging him deeper and deeper to join them in the perfect abyss.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Finally, he saw the face of his wife. He had never seen anything so beautiful, and he nearly wept for sight of her. As the blackness took him, he saw her smile and tell him that everything was going to be alright.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">There was nothing else.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Standing pensively on the launch, waiting, Langdale only felt the first lurch very slightly. Something had pulled at the line that was attached to Pike’s belt. He moved over to that line and plucked at it. It felt taut, as if pressure was being applied from beneath the surface of the lake.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The second time it happened, Langdale’s stomach lurched with the boat. And the third time, he felt it very clearly and cried out. Something was pulling at the line.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The launch began to move violently back and forth, causing the inspector and the other men to lose their footing. Narrowly avoiding being pitched into the icy water, Langdale reached for the motor that operated the pulley system on Pike’s line. He never reached it. His left hand was still resting on the line, and suddenly he felt the tension in it ease. He froze, staring at the line. It was a tough steel spun cable, capable of resisting an enormous amount of pressure. If something had caused it to come free…</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">One of the boatmen slammed his hand onto the lever on the pulley motor. It spluttered into life against the cold, hauling in the line. The line moved faster than it should have done, and then, suddenly, the end was flying at them, wrenched out of the water by the small engine. As the pressure on the line eased, the boat ceased its rocking motion, allowing them all to regain their footing. The cable danced angrily about the boat for a moment, then Langdale seized it and stared. It had been totally severed, the end neatly cut as if by a knife. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale swore angrily. But any further action was forestalled by a shout from Jones. He was pointing out into the water. As he looked, the inspector’s heart seemed to slow, then stop completely.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike’s airline was floating free on the surface of the lake. The sergeant was clearly not attached to it.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>I’ve killed him.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> It was the only thing that he could think. Pike, good, plain-spoken, ever-willing, decent, Sergeant Josiah Pike was dead, and it was all because of him. He felt so numb that he had even stopped noticing the cold.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Then he realised that Jones was now looking beyond the water, back to the shore. A small crowd of nine or ten people had gathered on the jetty. Freeman and Sergeant Henderson were at the centre of the crowd, and they stood over the kneeling Constable Whitehead. And Whitehead was kneeling over the form of a man in a helmeted diving outfit.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Even as he told himself it was impossible, he shouted at Jones. “Get this sodding boat back to land as fast as you can!”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Pike lay staring up at the ceiling, his pale expression blank and glazed. Beside him sat his helmet, badly bashed, faceplate glass cracked open.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale stood beside the bed in the Windermere Gate Cottage Hospital, watching a small phalanx of doctors and nurses tending to his sergeant. Physically, despite being exhausted and borderline hypothermic, Pike was fine. But he had made very little response to anyone who had tried to talk to him or rouse him. He had simply lain there and stared. Once or twice, words had been heard, but they seemed little more than delirious gibberish.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Nobody knew how he had got to the shore. One minute Sgt Henderson had been looking out across the lake, watching the launch moving violently on the water, the next there had been a shout from the crowd, and he had turned to see the body of the young detective lying on the jetty, spread-eagled and unmoving. There were witnesses prepared to swear that he had appeared out of thin air, but Langdale wasn’t having anything of that. Somehow, he had got to the surface, whereupon his strength had given out. What had happened in the meantime, however, only Pike knew, and at the moment, he wasn’t telling. There were rips in the diving outfit, however, and dents in the helmet that told an extremely disturbing story.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He had given immediate orders to seal off the entire lake – an impossible task, of course, but Henderson was doing his best, and had dragged in men from the neighbouring towns. Thankfully, the locals appeared to have lost their appetite for outrage, and had drifted back to their homes, shops and businesses with a sulky acceptance that this was more than they could deal with. How long that would last, Langdale wasn’t sure, but he’d take it for now.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Other than that, there really wasn’t a great deal they could do. The sergeant was in good hands, being tended for a few superficial wounds. Until he chose to come out of this hypnotic state, they would just have to wait.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale did all of his best waiting with his pipe, but for now, it still stubbornly refused to light. As he was trying his sixteenth match, Whitehead entered the room with a message.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">More of a summons actually. Mr Freeman was deeply concerned and would appreciate a word. He crumpled the note up in disgust and threw it over his shoulder. Then he retrieved it and put it in his pocket. Might be useful for lighting his pipe later.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Deep breaths, Langdale, he told himself. He left Whitehead to stay with Pike, then set off for the Windermere Patented Electricity Company Headquarters. This was a long, low building set just off the lake shore, in small grounds of its own. Oddly, as he walked towards the building, and then entered the main door, he saw nobody about. Not one person, not even anyone to greet him. He had heard that automotive processes were making the ordinary worker extraneous, but this was ridiculous.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Beyond the small main porch, the company seemed to consist solely of one large room. And within that room – well, to call it a machine was like calling the Endeavour a boat. It was a vast cathedral of brass and glass, a huge edifice that ran the thirty foot length of the room, full of twisted metal, sparking tubes and turning pistons. It chugged gently along, making surprisingly little sound, although Langdale for the life of him couldn’t see the source of its energy. Maybe it generated the energy that ran itself, he thought, although he was aware that really didn’t make any sense.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He didn’t notice he wasn’t alone until he heard the voice. “The patented electricity machine itself,” Freeman said. He jolted and turned to see him. The man was standing directly behind him, looking decidedly proud of his creation. “A prototype, of course, but in time, it will supply the electricity of the entire Lake District.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>And turn you a healthy profit, too</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, Langdale added internally. Aloud, he confined himself to, “It’s all very interesting, Mr Freeman.” If honest, he was telling the truth. He stooped to stare down one particularly finely wrought glass tube. “How does it all work, exactly?”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Freeman tapped his nose. “Trade secrets, Inspector.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Probably wouldn’t understand anyway,” he admitted.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Probably not,” Freeman agreed. The look on his face was not friendly. “But that is beside the point anyway. The reason I brought you here, inspector, was to tell you that I am extremely displeased with the way that you have handled this matter. I warned you not to take any precipitant action, and you wouldn’t listen. And now your sergeant hangs on the edge of death and we have a town that has been scared out of its wits.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Sergeant Pike is something of a law unto himself.” Then, feeling guilty at landing his prostrated sergeant in it, he quickly added, “But in any case, I support what he did. Better that than standing around doing nothing.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">You are his superior. I would not tolerate any underling of mine taking such action.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>Yes, well you don’t have Josiah Pike for an underling. </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">In the face of the man’s grotesque pomposity, Langdale felt very protective of his young bulldog of a sergeant. Time to take the obvious way out of this. “Be that as it may, in the end, Mr Freeman, I am not answerable to you.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Maybe not. But I am not without local influence. There are men of power, Inspector Langdale, and despite your small title, you are not one of them. I have sent word to your superiors in Carlisle, and I have no doubt that they will soon be recalling you following this debacle, and will replace you with someone a good deal more competent. Preferably from Scotland Yard, since I believe that the local constabulary are hardly equal to the intellectual challenge of this crisis.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">There was an awful lot of other-cheek-turning required at all of that, but somehow he managed. He confined himself to, “Is that it, Mr Freeman? Because I have work to do.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Freeman glowered at him. “For now. Although I am sure we will not meet again anyway, Inspector. Enjoy your trip back to Carlisle.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Langdale would be buggered if he was going let the pompous sod have the last work. He put on his most formal accent, suppressing his Cumbrian vowels. “Well, thank you for wasting my time, Mr Freeman. Now, if you’ll excuse me, until such time as I am told otherwise, I have an investigation to run and a sergeant to help.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He swung on his heel and left before another word could be uttered. Striding back to the hospital, his brain turned over the conversation. Scotland Yard – well, that had been inevitable since the case had started. Even if every message went as fast as possible, he had at least a day to pursue his investigations, and he intended to use every minute of it. Pike’s ordeal – whatever it had been – had galvanised him. There was a connection between everything he had seen so far, and he was determined, for Pike’s sake, to see this through.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He paused in his step. Men of power? What had Freeman meant by that? Secret handshakes and the old school tie? Or merely self-aggrandisement? He doubted it. The phrase had sounded rehearsed. </span> </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">He put that from his mind as he reached the hospital. Pike had changed little, although he had now closed his eyes and was snoring gently. Morphine, according to Constable Whitehead. He looked down at the sergeant. His face had assumed an expression of almost idiotic innocence in its slumber. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><i>Nice to be able to sleep the sleep of the saved</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, Langdale thought. He turned to the sergeant.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Stay with him, Knowles, and don’t let anyone near him. Least of all Mr Mordecai Freeman.” He wasn’t sure why he had added that. Somehow, Freeman didn’t feel safe. “Constable, we are taking the train to Shap.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">What for, sir?” The constable’s questioning tone was so disingenuous that Langdale had to laugh.</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">To visit the butcher’s,” he replied, “I’ve a hankering for a good sausage.”</span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">* * *</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">FULL STORY AVAILABLE IN CCVOL2 FROM LULU.COM</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI5vqBJGe9LTJUC3F43ycbvhjnUbhCxQCz86tZ0QL4yPzSXynN0wt6KyhIx6mfloSR0YL6oVeWmwKH8tNKsDJLKpH2x-OLcjaUAu4pyrVoAcL26OJTn2G5GIXbMKikMKSykLO02f-YMH8/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI5vqBJGe9LTJUC3F43ycbvhjnUbhCxQCz86tZ0QL4yPzSXynN0wt6KyhIx6mfloSR0YL6oVeWmwKH8tNKsDJLKpH2x-OLcjaUAu4pyrVoAcL26OJTn2G5GIXbMKikMKSykLO02f-YMH8/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-13513912517522183882012-01-08T16:01:00.003+00:002012-12-30T23:37:09.313+00:00A Mist Friend<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHshdITT6p5D-CE24htJKcROEp9CHQiuvsae6yZLPWj5f-Zku4-j7HazLAYpr5276DZRnZsmPBVswizx8rBvEMLWVWiX9X81JbaI0WYfIRkX8k6JGIfE8zXOkd-NfTW-azqkfQjd4oxdw/s1600/CC+A+Mist+Friend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHshdITT6p5D-CE24htJKcROEp9CHQiuvsae6yZLPWj5f-Zku4-j7HazLAYpr5276DZRnZsmPBVswizx8rBvEMLWVWiX9X81JbaI0WYfIRkX8k6JGIfE8zXOkd-NfTW-azqkfQjd4oxdw/s640/CC+A+Mist+Friend.jpg" width="371" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><u><b>A Mist Friend</b></u></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Written by Paul Musgrave</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Illustrated by Andy Paciorek<br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Nothing is black or white. Even night and day are entwined. There is an indistinguishable line between; discovery and theft, preservation and cowardice, innocence and guilt. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes things are grey; a bit misty.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I am waiting for an old friend which I have not seen for some time. Well at least I cannot recall when I last properly seen him. I have not slept for a while you see. Here I sit in the town square, my hometown of Keswick. I gaze up anxiously at the Old Moot Hall Clock Tower, checking to see if it was closer to the rendezvous time. I drink deeply and ask the waitress for a refill. All around the Northern Fell Mountains sit in attendance; as if awaiting a court in session. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">He was never late since the day when we were kids. Only for school, but not for adventure. We were best friends and every weekend we had expeditions to the surrounding massifs. With backpacks filled with none essentials apart from our compasses. The moral ones we would loose in the passage of time. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I can no longer make a distinction between awake and daydreaming. Although maybe a greater distinction can be made in the terminology; replacing day with night and dream with mare. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">My eyes were open, but before they were shut. The tourists and people were no more than gliding apparitions. The tangible world around me was merging into a more spectral one. Even the recognition of time as I fixed my gaze at the clock face was seamless with the precognitions. He would be here soon. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Although oblivious to most around me, my eyes descended upon two boys balancing on the steps below. As boys, we would precariously balance on the old dry stone walls which one day would be adventures along the Great Wall of China. I believed our friendship would always be as long lasting and as strong as those walls. It was in Asia where I last saw him.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">We had both decided to take an expedition after we both graduated from our respective universities. Although we never excelled at school, we both passed with flying honours in our respective fields. I specialized in Crypto zoology as part of my Zoology course. He took Archeology, and it was definitely the physical excavation he desired, and not the boring pre planning and ploughed fields he was interested in. We were ready for a real adventure. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The legend of Pangboche Hand had always fascinated us. And in our separate fields of expertise, we had obtained from good sources that it was real and still held in its monastery. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It was a long remote journey from Katmandu to the monastery after our long flight. The journey was hard like the weather beaten faces of the Sherpas and ponies. They carried most of the burden of our trip; but not as heavy as the burden I carry today. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In part the terrain was Alpine pastures, a place where the same flowers now grew in the gardens back home. The rope bridges over raging river torrents were harsher, and the freezing higher passes and immense ragged peaks bore no resemblance to the more humble flat tops of our mountains. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Villages lay scattered like our own isolated farmsteads and the children always greeted us. But they were never seen or straying away from them like we did. At every settlement Singh Lion statues stood guard and Nagas sat above every door warding off evil spirits; which showed they feared something more than any bipedal ape man in which we believed. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">At the monastery we were met with warmth; a rampart against the cold siege. The monks were hospitable unlike the ensuing elements outside. We would be undeserving of their kindness. We sought to deceive them once we saw the artifact. The discovery excited us more than when we were kids and came upon a colony of carnivorous local plants called Sundew. We would take it. They were a spiritual community who believed in the whole. We believed in the self, the glory. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The time is close now. I can see him coming; but only in my minds eye. A bank of mist had gathered on the top of Skiddaw Pike, and suddenly like a serpent apparition it consciously weaves its way down, through the dark woods and along the edge of Derwent Water. The image made me think in a twisted way of Wordsworth’s poem; I wandered lonely as a cloud. The mist itself was a procession, like Centurion guards before an emperor. An emperor about to pass sentence. An Osprey above screeches and recoils in flight, sensing what lurked within the shroud. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">We made it away from the Monastery with our Unholy Grail. No one pursued and we believed we were clear, unlike the darkened nebula sky above. We were out of the woods, but now endured frozen peaks. We would make it in the most severe conditions. We would spur each other on through whipping winds and snow storms. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">We came upon a ridge which we needed to negotiate. I was always the stronger climber and was at the top first. He was trailing by a few meters and was having problems with his sling. Suddenly, mist began to rise from below. The slightest touch froze me through my insulated jacket, more than any freezing wind. Then we heard a cry which echoed all around. The superstitious Sherpa guides had previously described such a thing. The fear on his face, his eyes pleading. This was far from the adrenalin rush we got from ranting farmers or compliant rangers who gave chase. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The mist had reached and now encircled the Hanwell Memorial Cross; the inscription read ‘Great Shepherd of the Heavenly flock’. The large, dark, unearthly figure gave no recognition to the monument, not this time. The passage bore no resemblance to itself as it had its own passage; a less celestial one. </span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I reached as I had done countless times before. My rucksack slipped off, extra rope, webbing and provisions, spilling to the ground, including the Hand of Unholy Glory. He gazed up at me with pleading urgency, his hand imploring for my dependable grasp. The artifact rolled in its casing, about to tumble, never to be salvaged. I turned with immediacy to gather the accursed object to put back into its holding. By the time I returned my attentions to my life long friend, he was engulfed in the mist. I could here his beseeching voice and mumbled payer, but could barely see his silhouette. I fastened myself securely and reached again and felt his gloved hand trembling.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
FULL STORY CAN BE READ IN CC VOL1, AVAILABLE FROM LULU.COM</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-81733083396356112792011-12-21T09:15:00.006+00:002012-01-15T09:13:54.602+00:00Thy Deep and Dreaming Sleep<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4zlRLMSlzvkcurwnx90ZoCIgoLhjCKfcDC4mdf8JinMkHOAvdClAdXPH3lEjuEMmQMOJwoMMMCd3ZYRvXiOv7YxMOCi6OgPXFw8qWK8W810TaOPt9uXcY2tesrZX6YcybKo_IEpdk4sw/s1600/Thy+Deep+And+Dreaming+Sleep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4zlRLMSlzvkcurwnx90ZoCIgoLhjCKfcDC4mdf8JinMkHOAvdClAdXPH3lEjuEMmQMOJwoMMMCd3ZYRvXiOv7YxMOCi6OgPXFw8qWK8W810TaOPt9uXcY2tesrZX6YcybKo_IEpdk4sw/s640/Thy+Deep+And+Dreaming+Sleep.jpg" width="442" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Thy Deep and Dreaming Sleep</b></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>by Richard W. Straw</b></span></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 12th</b></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Arrived just after half two, and settled into the cottage. It’s decent, a small bungalow, one of those old shepherds’ cottages that pop up all around the countryside, everything that I need for a couple of weeks of writing. The place is so quiet, the one thing that I’ve got here is time. God knows, I need it – the Knowles book is never going to get done, and April has been getting pushier. The mobile signal’s pretty poor around here, so that should keep her off my back for a few days, anyway. But I’ve got to get something done – that advance is spending itself pretty fast.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">There’s a small old-fashioned desk in the lounge, and I’m sitting there now, writing this. It’s a good sized room, so it serves as lounge, dining room and study. The telly is five channels only, but there’s nothing on anyway. From the window there’s a lovely picturesque view of the railway line and motorway. Still, I suppose nothing’s perfect, and the joys of double glazing mean that peace and quiet are pretty much assured. There’s an open log fire against the far wall that’s enough to keep the place heated, and some very odd art on the walls – there’s a picture above the fireplace that’s just a random mass of colour. No accounting for taste, but this stuff is just nasty.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tebay isn’t much of a village – nice enough, but little more than a couple of long streets. The local shops are actually in the motorway services, so I’ll be able to get a paper every morning, and eat breakfast in the company of lorry drivers and sulking kids. There’s a bizarre local legend about a witch and an egg but nothing much else – the place seems to have sprung up around the railway, and so it’s not much more than a commuter village for Kendal and a load of holiday cottages for the sort of lunatics who think getting lost in the fog on Scafell Pike constitutes having a good time.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Something odd when I went to light the fire. I had to clean out the grate, and there was a weird hollow sound to the tray when I was scraping out the ashes. Sounds like there’s a large open space beneath the fireplace, which seems peculiar. When I was little, we had a fire in my parent’s house, and my dad used to say that the grate was bottomless, and if you fell in, you would fall to the centre of the earth. Of course, the older I got, the more I realised he just had a bizarre sense of humour. Still, just for a moment…</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Knock on the door about five o’clock, received a visit from the woman who owns the place, Joanna Allen. She lives about five minutes down the road, told me to call if there was anything I needed. She seems OK, young (about thirty-five, I would guess, but then anyone under forty seems young these days), very pretty. That odd local accent. She told me a few things about the area that I already knew, rambled a bit about how the house had been in the family for a long time and recommended the sausages from the local butcher. Maybe it was just me, but I seemed to think there was – well, a spark between us? I don’t know – maybe it’s just been a long time.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Dinner at six, then spent most of the rest of the evening writing. Got past the 1960s section, but that was the easy bit. His notes of 1970 onwards are just a mess – drinking, drugs and prostitutes, largely. Trying to get it into some sort of readable order is going to be a hell of a job.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 13th</b></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Slept badly, just kept waking up at random intervals. I think I’m used to the noise of the city – the countryside is just too quiet for me, even on the motorway’s doorstep. Woke up with a headache and a bad back.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Procrastinated over the book. I’ve got to a section about coke that is just a shambles – Knowles is just screwed up. So I took the bus to Kendal. I bought a few supplies, got a John Connolly from an Oxfam shop, then went to the local library and looked a few things up. Idle curiosity really, a few things that Joanna had said about the house. Seems it has been in her family for a very long time indeed – hundreds of years, in fact, as far back as records go. It was only sold in the last few years to a company who run these holiday cottages. One note of interest – her grandfather was a local painter of some note – William Hawesworth, a minor national celebrity. His work was compared to some of the greats, and some of his stuff ended up in the National Gallery for a while. He started out as a war artist in the RAF, went to places like Iraq and Poland, but spent the rest of his life in Tebay. The records aren’t very clear, but it seems he went a bit odd – what they think was Parkinson’s disease. His works became more and more abstract, and less and less popular, and he spent his last days in the house, before dying in 1981 pretty much alone except for his daughter and two grandkids. Wonder if some of the pictures in the house might be his – it would explain the fact that they’re awful.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Just as I was leaving, I ran into Joanna. I don’t generally believe in coincidence, but I suppose there’s always room for these things to happen. We had a coffee in the library café and talked about this and that – nothing major, but it was relaxing in a way I haven’t felt for a while. If I had the time here I might be interested in her – I think she was flirting with me. I tried to ask about her grandfather, but she didn’t seem keen to talk. She did tell me she was with him shortly before he died – I suppose nobody wants to open up about something like that to someone she doesn’t really know.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">She left me to go to Morrisons, so I decided to be lazy and get a taxi back to Tebay. Taxi driver was the usual talkative type, rambling on about a combination of immigration, VAT and the environment. About halfway back to the village, I asked him to stop the car. Maybe I just couldn’t bear to hear any more of his assorted wisdom, but I’d also seen something that caught my attention. It was a sign for a private lake, Whinfell Waters. There was a footpath, chained off to keep anyone out, but I doubted that would work for the truly curious. And I admit it, I was curious. The sign threatened prosecution to unauthorised visitors and sounded off about the dangers of bodies of open water. I asked the driver to drop me off there. He was a little pissed off, but I paid him over the odds, so off he went. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The way to the lake was heavily overgrown, a mess of brambles and nettles and hawthorns that was a much better deterrent than the sign. I don’t know why I kept on – I’m not sure why I even wanted to see it, and I was very aware that I was trespassing, but something kept me going. I suppose a visit to the Lake District wouldn’t be complete without a visit to a lake. This was the ‘real’ Lake District, away from the overcrowded tourist centres of Bassenthwaite and Windermere. Sitting here and writing that makes it sound ridiculous, but somehow it seemed logical at the time. Eventually I came to an open area, and the lake itself. It’s not huge – maybe a couple of hundred metres long, and a seventy metres across, ringed on all sides by rising banks of still leafy trees. There was nothing very interesting about the scene, except for one thing. The surface of the water was absolutely still, as flat and plain as a table top. I stood very still for a long time, just watching and listening. The road was still near enough away that an occasional passing car could be heard, but aside from that, there was nothing. No birds, no animals, no movement, no breath of breeze on a cold October afternoon, not a ripple or a bubble breaking that sheet of black water. It was as if the whole of nature came to a stop in this small clearing. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">That’s quite poetic. I think I’ll keep hold of that. Might be able to use it one day.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And yet, in the midst of that lifelessness, there was one other thing – I am positive that I was being observed. Nobody was to be seen, but the feeling was very clear. It was getting dark, so I pushed my way back to the road, and managed to coax a signal out of my phone to order another taxi. All the time, to the moment that I got into the car, the feeling of being watched never left me.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I got home, I had a look at that picture again. It’s odd, but it doesn’t look quite as much of a mess as it did the other day. I looked closely at it, and sure enough, there’s a scrawled signature in the corner – I’m sure it’s ‘W. Hawesworth’. If I’m honest, I felt a bit uncomfortable. The chaos, the lack of even the slightest order - is this what it’s like to have Parkinson’s? Certainly it wasn’t quite – well, quite right, really.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Had to put it out of my mind. Dinner of sausages from the local – Joanna was right about the butchers – then a drink at the Cross Keys, and finally some work. Knowles’ stuff gets worse and worse. There’s an unbelievable rant about Marc Bolan that I’ve tried to edit into something coherent. It’s just as well you can’t defame the dead, or this book will never get to the printers. It’s half eleven now, and bed beckons.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 15</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><b>th</b></span></sup></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another bad night – the third in a row. I dreamt a lot – normally, I don’t tend to remember these things, but this one stuck in my head. Swimming in an ocean, no sign of land, and I wasn’t alone, but I couldn’t see where the other person was. Then a face appeared. I couldn’t make out the features. The shock woke me up.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Got about a thousand words down on the laptop, more drugs hazes and orgies, but my mind wasn’t on things. I took the bus to Kendal, and did a little more local research. Nothing very major, a few bits about Whinfell waters. There was a news clipping about an American tourist drowning there a few weeks ago. I tried to find out who owns the lake – nothing came up. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’m sure I’m being watched again. The feeling was very strong when I was in Kendal. I didn’t see anyone, but I felt the same as I did the other day at the lake. Why someone would be interested in me is beyond me. Maybe April’s got someone checking up on me. That would be paranoid, even for her.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another odd thing after dinner. I went to light the fire, and I would swear that the picture had changed. It had previously been a mass of colours, mainly reds and greens, no obvious shape. It had been pretty offensive to look at. Now, the colours appear to have moved into a swirl, a clearer sweep and form, more arranged and ordered than before. There seems to be a shape at its centre, but I can’t quite make it out. I swear I stared at that picture for more than an hour before I realised what I was doing. There’s something not right there. It freaks me out.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tried to spend the rest of the evening watching TV, but I couldn’t concentrate. Shooting Stars and Newsnight passed me over; I’m now writing this before going to bed.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 16</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><b>th</b></span></sup></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another bad night, with dreams that stayed with me longer after I woke up. The dreams are getting clearer, and the same images recur. I am treading water. Something moves about me, vast and unseen. A huge ripple breaks the surface nearby, and then something moves towards me so fast I have no time to react. Then the face again. It’s not human, that is the only thing I know. And then I either wake, or there is a flash, and it all begins again. I lay in bed this morning for a very long time, trying to get the images and the terror that they created out of my head, without success. The house is cold this morning, and there is a distinct feeling of damp in the air, although I can’t find any source. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And one other thing. Try as I might, I can’t rid myself of the idea that there was someone else in the house last night. I can’t see any evidence of it, the door is still locked, there’s nothing been disturbed, but even in the light of day, the house feels less than empty.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Had an extremely disconcerting experience in the afternoon. I’ve tried to write it down as clearly as I can remember it, but it’s not been easy.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I needed to get out of the house, so I decided, for reasons that seemed to make sense at the time, to go back to Whinfell Waters. I called a taxi and had it drop me off in the same place as before, then fought my way through the undergrowth to the lake shore.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It looked the same as it had. Just still and black. I knelt by the water, staring hard it, trying to see the slightest ripple. Nothing. There was a slight breeze, but even that failed to disturb those dead waters. Odd doesn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere. I bent towards the water, reaching out for it.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I really wouldn’t do that.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I pulled back my hand suddenly, stood and turned. There was a man standing about ten feet behind me. He was short, rounded, dressed in a sports jacket and brown corduroys. His hair was thin at best, and his face was covered with a smile that seemed glued on. It wasn’t a pretty sight.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’m sorry?” I said to him.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I really wouldn’t touch the water.” He was American, by his accent.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why not?”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not safe.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The two word answer was not particularly helpful, but somehow I believed him. I drew back from the shore of the lake, and walked to stand beside him.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Alan Locksley,” he said, holding out his hand. I shook it, but it felt the very definition of a cold fish. His hand was wet with cold sweat, and that combined with the round, empty smile to give me a proverbial shiver.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’ve realised now who his accent reminded me of. Loyd Grossman. What is he, New Englander? Best guess, that was where he was from.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I suppose you know this is private property?” he said. I bristled at that. I wasn’t about to be told what to do by this guy.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yeah, well I’m fairly sure that it’s not your private property,” I replied.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He shrugged an acknowledgement, then winked. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I didn’t reply. Despite an assumed mateiness, there was something about him that I didn’t like. After a while, I said, “I just come here for the fishing.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He laughed at that. “You forgot your line. And there’s no fish here. There’s nothing. That’s why I come here. The peace. Kinda like death, don’t you think?”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The morbidity repelled me, and I was silent again. We stood there for a long time, saying nothing, for at least fifteen minutes, looking out across the water. I could feel his attention on me for the entire time, but I didn’t react. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is an odd area,” he said at last. “Stone circles, witches and in-breeding. Reminds me of home.” He gave a low bark of a laugh. “But this place is the limit. They say there’s no life in the water whatsoever. Not even a microbe. That fascinates me. I’m a scientist by trade. Physics, but everything’s interesting. I’m always looking out for something…different. Guess that’s why you’re here.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I didn’t know what to say to him. If I truly thought about it, I had no idea why I was here. So I said nothing. Finally, he seemed to take the hint.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well,” he said, “Gotta be going. Work to do. I expect you too. Books don’t write themselves.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was a good ten seconds before I realised what he had said. How the hell had he known that? I turned to ask, but he was gone already. For a second, I thought to follow him, but something told me not to. I didn’t really want to talk to him, with his odd manner and false smile. I gave him a while, watching the lake and thinking, then made my way back to the road to call a taxi. I didn’t see him again. That was some relief.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Saw Joanna as I was arriving back at the cottage. Invited her to dinner tonight, and she said yes. I think I could do with the company.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is something very wrong about that picture. It is definitely not the same as it was yesterday. The shape at the centre is clearer again, and the colours more green than before. Am I losing my mind, or have those dreams simply made me see things? I really don’t know, but this house is beginning to get to me. I may give it one more day, but I think the hotels of Kendal are beginning to appeal to me.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Half past six. I have to stop writing for now. Joanna will be arriving very soon, and I haven’t got started on dinner yet. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 18</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><b>th</b></span></sup></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">A better night, solely down to Joanna. She came over, and we had a good dinner. We talked for a long time. I told about the exciting life of a ghost-writer for footballers and rock stars, and the fun of trying to put together a coherent narrative from the various ramblings I’ve been given over the years. I even told her about Ventures and The Last Kingdom. She thinks I should go back to novel writing. I think she was just trying to be nice, but maybe it’s time for a change. Advances for biogs are a lot better, though, and at least I know the beginning, middle and end when I’m writing them. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">She told me about her life in this village. Seems very quiet, and rather lonely, she seems to have looked after her grandfather and then her mother for a very long time. The house was sold by her brother a few years back. He’s a city analyst in London, and there’s no love lost there. She said he doesn’t understand the area. She’s carried on working here as caretaker. She says she misses the place. God knows why. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">She stayed the night. I woke up alone this morning, but she’d left a note to say she had a few jobs to do, and would be away for a day or two. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">No regrets, although I know it can’t go anywhere. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">No dreams last night, at least none that come back to me. I suppose I had other things on my mind – but a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, not even to his diary.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Back to Kendal. I seem to be spending my, life in the library, but the experience with the American had bothered me. Looked him up online, not a great deal but I finally found something in the Boston Herald. Seems I was right about the New England thing. And he was telling the truth about being a scientist. He’d been a physicist at MIT, a pretty good one, some radical stuff that I didn’t understand, but then he’d left under a bit of a cloud after a fire and a death two years ago. The details were vague, but he and some other guy, a research assistant named Jake Hauser, had been thrown out of the university, and had pretty much vanished. The other searches for Locksley didn’t go anywhere, so I tried this Hauser instead.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What came up was pretty amazing. A piece from the News and Star, dated just over a month ago. A man found dead on the shores of a lake. No obvious injuries, but wearing diving gear, so drowning assumed, but no sign of water in lungs. Inquest to take place in the next few days.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The man was Jake Hauser. The lake was Whinfell Waters.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">This just left me with one question. Just what the hell would two American physicists want with an obscure Cumbrian lake?</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I got back, I looked at the painting again. It had changed, I was certain of it. It was forming a picture of what seemed to be a living thing, with a face and body emerging from what had seemed just a couple of days ago to be random smudges of paint. I was so freaked by this that I reached for it, to take it off the wall and hide it away. The moment my fingers touched the wooden frame, I felt a tremor running through it. It ran into me, like a tingle of electricity. There was no shock or pain, but I still jumped back. I stood there for a long time, breathing hard. Then, I got my phone, and took a picture of the painting. It was the only way I knew for sure to see if the thing was changing like I thought. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Went to the pub for dinner. Not sure I want to be in the house with that thing. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 19</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><b>th</b></span></sup></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Last night was terrible – the same dreams as before, each time cutting out before the final moment. And this time, waking was even worse. There were times when I wasn’t sure if I was awake or dreaming, but all the time I could feel something else. A person? No, the word is presence. That seems so stupid when I write it, but it’s the only word I can think of. Watching, contemplating me, examining me in every detail. I couldn’t move, not to flee, not to shrink under the covers and hide. I just lay there, second after minute after hour, until the morning. The daylight hasn’t made it any better, really. I found myself able to move, but the house remains hateful, an object of speculation by something that I cannot see. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And the picture has changed again. The shape is there, clearer than ever, form, eyes, face. I know the face that is slowly appearing. It is the face of the thing that threatens me in my dreams. I took my phone out, but the picture I had taken yesterday was gone, replaced by an image of pure, deep black. It doesn’t want me to see too much. It prefers to look at me instead.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is alive.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I must talk to Joanna. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Five o’clock – no sign of Joanna at her house. There’s a van outside, seems to be a builder’s, bricks and cement, but nobody at home. I don’t know what else to do – I stumbled around the village for a while, and somehow I ended up in the tiny parish church. The vicar was nowhere about, so I sat in one of the pews and tried to pray. I swear I don’t believe in that stuff, but at that point God seemed my only hope. No answer to the prayers. Hadn’t really been expecting one.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I went to the Cross Keys and ate something. The food had no taste – I was aware of the actions, cutting, stabbing, chewing, swallowing, but they had no meaning to me beyond basic animal instinct. I have come back to the house. I cannot hide from it; at least in the house I might try to understand it. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 20</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><b>th</b></span></sup></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Watching, watching, where is it, why can’t I see it, it can see me, it’s not fair.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Watching.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Watching me.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is alive. It is awake.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And that painting, I hate it, I will smash it, smash, kill, break it, break smash please please make it go away.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Please.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Make it go away.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>October 21</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"><b>st</b></span></sup></span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am looking at what I wrote yesterday, and I am shocked. I do not know where the words came from. Something deep inside me, something reacting to the voyeurism of my constant and unseen house guest. I feel it even now, but today I can react with greater rationality.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Last night was, somehow, a better night. The dreams were still there, but an incident around two o’clock in the morning lent a solidity to what I am experiencing. Despite everything, despite all my terror and desperation, I remained in the house last night. I fear that I cannot escape the gaze of whatever it is that has found me, so I stayed in the heart of the storm, waiting, watching. I fell asleep in a large armchair in the bedroom, at least for a while.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">At about two o’clock, I heard something move. This was not the presence that has so tormented me, it was concrete, real. A floorboard creaking, a door opening, a furtive but physical feeling of not being alone. I stood, quietly as I could, and made my way to the bedroom door. I had left it open, and slipped quietly through to where it opened onto the lounge.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">A shape stood by the fireplace, a human shape, hands on the painting. There was nothing very interesting about the figure, and in that I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It was a human being, an intruder, perhaps a burglar, yet I was almost happy to see him. He was so unutterably banal when compared to what I have experienced. The room was dark, and I could make out nothing of the intruder’s features, but it was also clear that he had not seen me. In the instant of realising this, my foot caught the door, causing it to move slightly. The smallest of creaks, but he noticed. His head flashed in my direction, and I knew he had now seen me. And he ran. Fled for the door, faster than I could react. I made after him, but by the time I reached the door, there was no one to be seen.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The lock was forced. I propped a large chair against it and spent the rest of the night in the lounge. Nothing else happened.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Where does this leave me? I do not know. I want to run. I know every rational thought is begging me to flee, to run as far away as I can, and never look back, but I know that it would do no good. What I have found – what has found me – is too great to escape that way. There is nowhere in the world that is beyond its shadow. And the knowledge that there are also human agencies interested in this house, in that painting, does nothing to reassure my fears.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am trying to write it all down, to put into words what I have felt and heard. Words are my skill. Perhaps in their exercise I can come nearer to understanding. I have kept a diary for seventeen years, now. Nothing but the routine of daily life. And yet now it feel that it may hold my salvation.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I must find Joanna. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is someone at the door. I will continue writing later. </span> </div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am trying to get this down on paper as fast as I can. Recording this is pretty much the last thing I will ever do. I need to put my thoughts in some sense of order before the end comes. I need to occupy my mind against thoughts that are literally unthinkable. And yet I find myself far calmer than I thought I would be. Maybe it is because I finally know. I have seen the thing that has been haunting my dreams for the last few days. I have seen it, and nothing will ever be the same again.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">So I sit and wait to die. The blood loss may do that. Or perhaps I might let it take me. I have a choice. Plunge into the darkness or sit and drift away. The former might be preferable, but I am too scared of what might be in that darkness. I am scared that I might not die. And so I sit. I might try to sleep later. But not yet. Too much to say.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I had been attempting to write my diary when there had been a knock at the door. Hoping that it was Joanna, I went to the door and opened it. Locksley was standing there, an innocuous smile on his face. He was dressed in overalls, a large rucksack slung over his back, heavy boots on his feet, looking as if he was off potholing or climbing. His left hand rested on a large sledgehammer. In his right hand he held a gun, and it was aimed at me. I had to look at it a couple of times, it seemed so comically out of place. I surprised myself by my lack of panic. Shock, perhaps, but I simply stood there, calmly appraising him.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I assume you were the one who broke in last night.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He nodded in response. “I regret having to resort to such extremes, but I find that I need your help,” he said. His voice was very steady, but there was a tone in it that told of someone keeping something in check. I don’t know what it was, a twitchy energy, boiling away beneath the veneer of calm. Even if I hadn’t seen the gun, that voice would have told me that something was badly wrong. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I didn’t say anything, I just stood back and let him pass. He moved into the house, never taking his eyes away from mine, the gun never wavering. It seemed foolish to ask where he wanted to go so I simply walked over to the fireplace and the picture. It had, of course, changed again, tinted with green, and the face at its centre was now extremely clear. It wasn’t human, or for that matter anything that I recognised from this world. But on seeing it, Locksley’s smile broadened, and he gazed on it almost religiously. For the first time, the gun moved, his hands shaking with excitement.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">You want it, take it.” </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is hardly yours to give away,” he replied, “and whilst important, it is not the ultimate reason why I am here..” He looked back to me. “Do you know what this is?” At the shake of my head, he laughed. “Pathetic. So close to this pure perfection, to the point where you even commune with it, and you don’t know.” A pause, then he indicated the picture with the gun. “That is a key. A key to a door to a world beyond anything you could ever have hoped to see. But thanks to me, you will see it. Now.” He gestured to the hammer, and flicked the gun back in my direction. “Take the picture off the wall. Then use the hammer.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">To do what?” I thought I knew, but I wanted him to say it.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He seemed amused by the question. Another gesture at the fireplace “Break it. Break through the wall. And then…” – a laugh that was not sane – “then we shall see.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I didn’t feel that I had any choice. Besides, I wanted to know. I was more than curious to find out what it was that was haunting me, that drew this man here all the way from Massachusetts. And if this was a way to accomplish that, then so be it.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I reached for the picture. As my fingers made contact, I flinched, expecting the same tingle I had felt before. But nothing happened. I felt a wooden frame beneath my fingers, a length of wire at the back, a small picture hook in the wall. The picture was off the wall in seconds, and passed to Locksley. He threw it onto the sofa. For all his earlier words about it, it was clear that he placed little value on the picture in itself. To me, the act seemed calculatedly casual, almost sacrilegious in its triviality. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I picked up the hammer, swearing under my breath at the weight. I’ve never been one for manual work, but the gun was a great motivator. So I gave the hammer a few practice swings, then brought it down upon the lintel of the fireplace. My arms jarred badly with the impact, my shoulders screaming out with pain, but the structure of the fireplace gave way almost immediately, crashing down. Four or five further swings and the whole of the fireplace was a mass of rubble and metal. I put the hammer down, and cleared the rubble to one side, pulling the metal of the grate clear from the floor. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And in that moment, my childhood nightmares were real. My father had told the truth. Beneath the grate was an open space of an impenetrable depth, dark and cold, stinking with rot and damp. I fell back, gagging, but Locksley was unmoved.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The doorway to hell,” he murmured, as if reading my thoughts. I looked over to where he was sitting on the arm of the sofa. He simply waved the gun. “The wall. Keep going.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I picked up the hammer again, and started on the wall. Swing after swing, eventually, my arms threatening to snap at the repeated impacts, the bricks collapsed in, fell into darkness. The smell was now worse than ever, rising up from a large, open blackness. When I had opened up a gap large enough to accommodate a man, Locksley indicated to stop. He threw the rucksack to me. I opened it up. What he wanted was fairly clear – a rollout ladder of metal and wire, that secured to the remaining brickwork with a hook. As I assembled it, and then dropped it down into the darkness, he was retrieving a pair of large torches from the rucksack. He handed one to me. Then he made another gesture with the gun.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">You first.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gripping the torch in one hand, and the ladder in the other, I swung myself into the gap, and started a slow, reluctant descent into the dark. It was cold and damp, and more than once my fingers nearly lost their grip, but the descent was not far, and after about twenty feet or so, my feet felt floor beneath them again.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I shone the torch about me, its beam picking out the details of a plain, bare, empty cellar of stone. It seemed to be a perfect square, twenty metres across in every dimension, and the walls, the ceiling and the square flagstones beneath my feet were all coated in a foul green mould that was the source of the smell that had nearly overpowered me.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Locksley was now down beside me. He had thrown the rucksack to one side, and, ignoring the fetid green infestation, had thrown himself onto his hands and knees and was scouring the floor for something.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I could have run then, raced to the ladder, been up and out in seconds, pulling the ladder up and trapping him there, fleeing the cottage and never looking back. But he had me and he knew it. That was why he wasn’t even bothering to threaten me now. I wanted to know. I needed to know. And so I walked over and squatted down beside him.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What are you looking for?”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He grunted, a cynical laugh. More amusement at my ignorance, I supposed. “We’ll know when I find it.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I stood and watched him scrabbling about the floor, scraping at the filth with a small trowel, the sort you would use for archaeology, minutely examining each stone for some unknown detail. Finally, a low mutter of satisfaction. I walked over to him, as he shone the torch beam down onto a small symbol, a crude trident shape etched deep into one of the flagstones.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is that?”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">His name,” he replied, as if this was meant to mean something. He pressed his fingers to the shape, tracing it carefully, first one way, then the other. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the stone moved. There was no obvious sign of any mechanism, but the entire flag simply lifted up and away, revealing another dark opening.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Locksley stared at me, the dim torchlight illuminating an exultancy as it spread across his face. He pointed down into a further darkness, and I could see a stone spiral staircase descending even deeper into the earth.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Layers beneath layers,” he told me, “We are getting very close now.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">This time he went first, and I followed him down those stairs. This descent was much more difficult than the first. It was hard to keep the torch beam on the steps before me, and the slippery lichen and mould constantly threatened to send me off my feet and tumbling down into the dark. We descended much further – maybe more than a hundred feet, it was so difficult to tell in the isolating inkiness, but finally, I heard him breathe out and stop. A few seconds later, I had also reached the bottom.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Words can barely explain just how claustrophobic and lost that dark space felt. We shone the torches around, to show only one way forward, a dank looking stone passage that sloped gently down, encrusted walls about three feet apart, just over six feet high, enough for smaller men to walk comfortably in single file, but little more. Locksley smiled again, the torchlight lending his rounded features the quality of a demonic cherub, then he started down the tunnel, with me close behind. By now, I did not dare let him get far out of sight, lest the torch fail and I be left alone in this madness. I was in fact so close that when he stopped very suddenly, I nearly ran into his back. He switched off the torch and indicated that I should do the same.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of all the things I had been asked to do, this was the one thing I could not. I feared that blackness more than anything, and I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to do this. Impatiently, he grabbed the torch from me and pressed the switch. I flinched, as if hit, but then I realised one thing – I could still see him. The tunnel, and Locksley, were lit by a yellowing glow that seemed to flow from the stones of the tunnel itself. It was not a healthy light, but it was enough. Locksley smiled yet again, as if satisfied that he had been correct about something.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Bioluminescence. Suggestive.” That was all he would say. He started off again down the passage. As we continued, he spoke. It was half a lecture, half a confession, a commentary on our endless descent towards whatever it was waited for us.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I used to be a very good scientist. I researched physics at the highest level, ran the advanced particle research laboratory at MIT. I was invited to advise the CERN project. People valued me. I was touching on the very nature of what we understood as matter and reality. I touched the edge of space and time, and I came so closed to seeing and understanding what it all meant.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And then one day, one experiment, it happened. We were running an experiment to simultaneously split and accelerate the quark. Something happened. Something gave in the universe. A – a split opened, and I saw through to somewhere else. To the real world.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He stopped walking, turned and looked at me angrily. The anger wasn’t directed at me. It was sheer frustration at everything, at the universe. “How can I explain in words? Language doesn’t exist to express what I saw. This world…” - he waved his arms about him – “None of it is real. We are just the foundations at the base of reality. And what is built upon it? Existences layered on top of each other, nothing that we could understand, realities so vibrant as to make our brightest stars look withered and dead. And at their summit, the realm of gods and angels, creatures to whom we are merely constituent atoms. I saw it for one second. Any more and I would have become insane. And I wept that I could not be mad, for it would have been worth it. To gaze upon them for one second longer I would have sacrificed the last vestiges of my sanity.” He spat his last word out bitterly.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He started walking again. “There was a fire. They said I’d been careless, that I hadn’t followed acceptable safety standards in my work. I think something touched us that wasn’t meant to. The equipment I was using simply couldn’t deal with the load that was placed on it. Whatever the cause, the laboratory was burnt to the ground. One of my assistants was killed. My other assistant, Hauser and I were fired, made to look fools when we had pushed their work further than it had ever been.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">We left them to their ignorance. I had begun to realise that science was a blind alley anyway. Its dead hand could not bring me back to what I had seen. So I started to look elsewhere. New England is awash with stories about things that touch upon our universe in ways we don’t understand. Ghosts, they call them, demons. Nobody realises. I looked farther afield. Venezuela, Peru, Russia, New Zealand, I have travelled the world to find it again. And then I came across a story in one small place. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">In 1799, Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited the Lake District to see William Wordsworth, and the two of them went to the stone circle at Castlerigg. It’s a popular tourist site, but nobody quite knows what it was built for. They even say that the place is bewitched, and the number of stones changes from year to year. There are so many theories, and they are all wrong. I know it was a place of worship. Ancient Britons gathered there to worship their god. Coleridge wrote in his diary that Castlerigg troubled him in his dreams for a very long time – he saw things, things that people put down to his laudanum use, but what he was doing was communing with the life form that the stones venerated. His mind was open. Artistic minds are susceptible to these things. Minds such as yours and William Hawesworth’s. When I saw Coleridge’s words, when I read about Hawesworth and his madness, I knew at once. The stones, the house, they were all part of the same thing. And in a direct line between the two of them was that lake.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I knew now that I was on the verge of something significant. Art and science combining to show me the face of my god once again. When Hauser and I arrived here, I ran tests on that lake. There was nothing – not a trace of life within its waters, not even the tiniest of microbes. The vegetation that ran to its shores shrivelled and died when it touched the waters. Hauser was prepared to look further. He went into the water. He was fully equipped with the best diving gear, he was an accredited A1 diver who had explored the Great Barrier Reef and the Indian Ocean. But the second he went beneath the surface of the lake, he was dead. The thing in there would not suffer him to live. It will not suffer anything to come near it and know it. But his death was not in vain, however. Because now I knew. It is in the lake. It sleeps down there. I reasoned that the house must have some connection to the lake, otherwise why would it inspire such visions and madness in Hawesworth. There was nothing particularly interesting about the house itself, it had been around for several hundred years. But what had been there before? If we could break that shell, see what lay beneath…”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He paused. I realised that he had stopped yet again. This time, however, it was different. As I caught up with him, I saw that the passage had opened up into a vast space, a stone-built underground cathedral, a circle of at least seventy metres diameter and as much again up. The ceiling was lost in yellow darkness. And at one end, a large opening, rectangular, twenty metres high by fifteen across.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">How can I describe what lay beyond that opening? Locksley was right, words are inadequate to express it. But I must try. What I saw appeared to be water. It moved in the opening without ever entering the chamber, as if held back by a window, but there was no glass there. The water was green, dark. I knew that I was looking at the bottom of Whinfell’s lake. And in the water, there was something moving. Not a fish, nor an animal or bird.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It was huge. Any other time, I might have taken it for a giant squid, perhaps a vast octopus. To find something like that in the Lake District would have been ridiculous enough, but I knew that this was not what I was seeing. I could only get the vaguest sense of it, as it moved in the water. No real sense of shape, the edges blurred and undefined, as if its form defied the eye, its horizons not existing within my perceptions. And all the while, it pulsed with a slow, clear rhythm of movement. Breathing, or an unpleasant parody of it. For an amused moment, I felt that it was snoring. Locksley seemed to read my thoughts, and he nodded.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It sleeps,” he murmured quietly.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And then, the final madness. Defying his words, something moved. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It blinked at me.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I thought that we had experienced into every level of darkness possible as we had moved further and further down into the earth, but it had been nothing compared to the darkness within that eye. A huge black pupil, more than two metres across, purest jet black, and heavily lidded, so that the movement was slow and deliberate. As it blinked just once,</span><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I stared at it, and I knew that, even in this dormant, docile state, it was staring back.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">When Locksley saw that movement, he was lost. He fell to his knees, utterly enraptured, arms reaching out like a small child to its parent.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Master, I am here,” he gurgled. His voice was barely intelligible, all rationality had finally been purged by the ecstasy of what we saw.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is it?” The words were dragged from me.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">He looked up. His smile was simple, one of pure happiness. The same image of a small child, how he might have looked on being rewarded by an indulgent parent. It was the only truly genuine smile I had seen on his face.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">God,” he told me. “What else could it be?” He began to laugh, and it echoed horribly around the cavern. “All my life spent trying to unlock the secret of the universe, and I find it in a British backwater. Literally!” The laughing increased, became strained. The man was on the verge of total insanity. I think he would have called it euphoria. Either way, I knew that we were very close to the end. The knowledge of what I had seen had snapped me away from any further curiosity. If I had any move to make, it had to be now. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I moved back to the passageway, as fast as I could. But I had barely moved five steps when the crack of a gun rang around the chamber, and I felt something hit me in the shoulder. I fell to the ground, almost unbelieving. As I twisted on the ground, I looked at Locksley, who held the gun by his side. He had stood again, and was shaking his head.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Proceedings will not be interrupted,” he told me, then sadly added, “why can’t you understand the gift I have given you?”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The pain in my shoulder was unbelievable, spreading down my arm and across my chest. I could barely breathe to speak, but I managed a few words through gritted teeth.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What are you going to do?”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Worship him. Commune with the lord.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Even in my semi-delirium, that seemed crazy. Was he going to stay down here, simply kneel before that thing until he simply died of starvation and madness? I pulled myself to my knees using my good arm, and tried to crawl towards the passage again.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another shot rang out. This one did not hit me. I looked back at him again. Locksley was walking towards me, face set. He raised the gun and pointed it at my head.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The creature blinked again.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">A hollow, echoing roar of awakening tore through me, shaking the chamber. I saw the eye blink several times, and then move towards us. A slow trickle of greenish water oozed into the chamber from the opening, followed by an amorphous blackness.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Locksley turned away from me. The gun, forgotten, drifted from his fingers and fell to the floor. I grabbed for it, for all the good it would do. Locksley was no longer a danger, and against that thing, I knew bullets would be useless. Locksley was now a mere six feet from the emerging creature, and he was laughing and shouting continuously, words lost in the returning echoes of the roaring. He reached out to touch the darkness, and then turned back suddenly, staring me straight in the face. That was when he realised, just too late, that he had been wrong.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">And then a million tentacles exploded into the room, wrapping themselves around his body from feet to head, latching onto him, pulling him back towards the opening and the dark. One final moment of horror in his eyes, one last scream dwarfed by the sound of the creature that took him, and then the tentacles were forcing their way into his eye sockets, filling his throat, tearing at flesh and bone relentlessly. The scream was stifled, the moment passed, and he was gone, eaten by the dark.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The water continued to flow into the chamber, faster now, accelerating towards me. I could no longer see the eye, but I knew that it still saw me, wanted to take me as it had its acolyte. That was the spur I had to overcome the pain of my injury. Screaming against the dark, I got to my feet, and I ran. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What had seemed a slow and gentle slope as we descended now seemed a terrifying upwards ascent. I ran as fast as I could, stumbling from wall to wall, scarcely daring to look back. The occasions when I did, I could see the water following me, getting faster, from trickle to torrent to full wave. Things moved in the water, questing for me. I threw my arm back and let go two shots from the gun, the recoil threatening to send me off my feet and making me cry out with pain. The useless act of defiance was rewarded with a further scream from the creature, less of pain than anger. Something surged from the water and the gun was plucked from my hand. It was barely three feet from me now, the water licking at my heels, and I knew I could not go on. Maybe if I surrendered, it would be quick. I knew this was a lie, but now I had nothing left but the comfort of lying. I closed my eyes, and stopped running.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hurry.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">The quiet feminine voice, the soft accent, sounded so out of place that at first I did not react. Then I opened my eyes, to see the water and the darkness flowing away from me as fast as it had come. I turned back to the source of the voice. Joanna stood behind me, the painting in her hands, held out directly in front of her. Her face was set in gentle determination. She didn’t look directly at me, never took her eyes off the passageway.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hurry,” she repeated, “this will hold it back, but we must be quick.” </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I moved past her and continued up the passageway. She followed, still holding the picture out in front of her, backing up behind me. After an eternity we reached the stairs and ascended back into the cellar beneath the house. A pair of large industrial torches illuminated the room, but there was no time to examine things. She handed the picture to me, and told me to hold it towards the opening in the floor. Then she moved to the ladder, nimbly climbing back up into the house. Awkwardly pushing the painting under my arm, I made to follow, but as I put pressure on the first rung of the ladder, I felt it give. I jumped back, just in time to see the whole ladder fall, rungs and rope clattering on the stone floor, trapping me in the chamber.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Had it come free by accident? Was she going to find another way to get me out? I hoped against hope. I shouted up for her. At first, there was no reply, then her voice, heavy with sadness, drifted down and echoed around the room.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It’s too late for you. I’m sorry. It’s seen you. You might have escaped if it had only been in your dreams, but now you’ve been down there, it knows you for certain. You can’t come back up again. Not ever. I’m sorry.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What about you?” I shouted up. “Hasn’t it seen you?”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">There was silence for a few seconds. Then she sighed, loud enough to echo around the chamber. “I hope not. I have to take the chance. Someone up here has to close it off again.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">A rope was passed down into the chamber, with a large metal hook attached. I knew that she was asking for the painting. For a moment, I held out, thought of holding it hostage against my being left down here. But the moment only held briefly. I hooked the back of the painting to the rope. It disappeared up into the ceiling, and there was silence. Finally, the silence was broken by the sound of masonry pressing on masonry. I knew what she was doing, I realised why she had bricks and cement outside her house the other day. It was as if she had known.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">She was bricking me in.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I went crazy at this point. I ran up and down the room, screaming, shouting, swearing at her, at Locksley, at whatever it was that had brought us to this, venting my fury and terror at the world. I kicked over one of the torches, smashing it, plunging part of the room into the dark. It was this that brought me back to some sense of order. I ran to beneath the opening in the ceiling and shouted up, pleading with her, tears running down my face as I begged her not to do this. For a long time, there was no answer save the slow scrape of the bricks being put into place. Then, as the small gap of light from above gradually narrowed, minute by minute, she started to speak. Like Locksley, her words sounded like a confession. Unlike Locksley, there was little emotion in her voice, save regret.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">It’s been in the lake forever – as far as we understand that word. The Celtic people worshipped it at the stones above and in their chamber beneath the ground. They could not enter the lake itself as they knew that meant death, so they built the tunnel that gave them access. I don’t know what it is that holds the water back.” She laughed. “There are so many things I don’t know about it. I have read so many books to try to understand, but I can still only guess. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">They say it is one of the children of Cthulhu. It has a name, the symbol on the stone, but nobody knows what it is. I think it came here by accident. It slipped quietly through a weak point between its realm and ours and came to lie under the water, asleep. In time, it was forgotten, its influence over the local people faded in the light of reason and science. It stayed there, and nobody paid it any notice. The tunnel was lost, and they built the village over its foundations.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">My family own the lake and they used to own the house. They have done so for a very long time. Nobody knew the secret it concealed until my grandfather came back from the war and continued his painting. I think he had touched its mind in his dreams, and he realised that this house was special. Once he realised what was down there, he fled, and sealed it in. But he was never the same again. He started to paint strange things. He became more and more incoherent, and his friends and family became more afraid of him and his paintings. This picture was the last thing he did. It is one of the Old Ones, who warred with Cthulhu and his spawn.” </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’ve seen that picture move,” I told her. She laughed again, as if I had stated the obvious like a child.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course. I think, in its own way, it is alive. It created itself through my grandfather, to balance the thing in the lake. Once he had done that, there was no further use for him. We were told he had Parkinson’s disease, but my mother knew better. She had spoken to him when he was lucid, and she had believed him when he told her what he saw. She pledged to do what she had to, and she stayed here with the painting, guarding it. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">When my mother died, and the place was sold by Simon, I was terrified of what might happen, but I managed to be taken on as a caretaker. I hoped that this meant I could keep an eye on things. Until now, there hasn’t been any trouble. I don’t think most people can sense it. </span> </div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">That man changed everything.” I assume she meant Locksley. “His malevolence and stupidity disrupted things. I know all about his work. I think he saw Cthulhu. And so it has felt his presence since he came to the area, it has reacted and reached out – and then it touched you, felt your mind. Once it started to stir, I had to do something. I’m sorry I deceived you. I like you, but there are more important things to consider. I hoped I could stop it from taking you too far. But I failed. It must be locked away. I will replace the painting on the wall, and I hope that it can hold it.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Time was nearly up. I only had one last thing to say.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">You can’t keep it locked down here forever. It’s too powerful.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can try.”</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">No more words. The last of the light from above was extinguished. The final brick went into place.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">I sat on the floor, and wept. I am not sure how long I sat there, but eventually there were no tears left. As rationality returned, so did the pain in my shoulder. In the dim light of the remaining torch, I removed my shirt, and examined the mess of torn flesh. Eventually, I tore the shirt into strips and tried to bind it across the wound.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Locksley’s rucksack lay in the corner. Too weak to stand, I pulled myself across the floor and opened it. Some sort of knife, for hunting and fishing, a number of scientific pamphlets, a map of the area, a few items of warm clothing, and a notebook and pens. I pulled one of the jumpers over my head, then I took the notebook and a pen and crawled to the opposite wall, where the last torch continued its lone fight against the darkness. Propping myself up against the wall, I rested the book against my knees, and began to write.</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;">* * *</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">That is all. The torch is fading, its batteries are drained. I feel so weak that I can barely hold the pen any longer. My writing has become fragmented, illegible. I have tried my best to say what I saw, and these few words will remain testament to the thing that lies dreaming at the bottom of Whinfell Waters, and the sacrifices that have been made to keep it that way. I am going to switch off the torch now, and go to sleep. I pray that I do not dream.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: large;">One last thing. If by any chance you are reading this, then pray. Because the wall will have been broken again. And it will be awake. </span> </div>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-90777383346568368112011-12-19T11:14:00.005+00:002012-12-30T23:40:10.793+00:00The Bells of Blencathra<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiWZLnDFg9rd-spQ6-kyrpRUB8oZFMZrlTJIxQa3EK91tuTkCRikrILid7Xw6rGSp81r2vO0UBhWZqG9ctg5-ECFLwvmqsQpuVzqtIrimApBECpjlCyeGWtBtG9qxRUzixrhT5TOP200M/s1600/CC+X++blencathra+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiWZLnDFg9rd-spQ6-kyrpRUB8oZFMZrlTJIxQa3EK91tuTkCRikrILid7Xw6rGSp81r2vO0UBhWZqG9ctg5-ECFLwvmqsQpuVzqtIrimApBECpjlCyeGWtBtG9qxRUzixrhT5TOP200M/s640/CC+X++blencathra+small.jpg" width="442" /></a></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; text-decoration: none;"> </span></h1>
<h1 style="color: black; font-weight: normal;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-decoration: none;">The Bells of Blencathra</span></b></h1>
<h2 style="color: black; font-weight: normal;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-style: normal;">Written and illustrated by Andy Paciorek</span></b></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It may be said that the people of this nation may be divided into those that love Christmas and those that loathe it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet there are others that may actually fear it and it must be said that I am one of that number.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Let me explain for it is not a fear of joy and goodwill, for I am no latter day Ebenezer Scrooge, nor is it one of those irrational phobias that linger from childhood – though it may indeed be irrational, it is however a deep and abject dread that fills my entire being at advent, yet one that stems from a bizarre and monstrous experience that it was my misfortune to bear witness too.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Specifically, though I now shun all of December’s frills and festivities as best I can, it is the sound of bells that fills me with the utmost horror. </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">To put some perspective on the account I am about to relate, let it be known that my childhood Christmases were filled with as much excitement and fun as any and far more than many, for I had a secure, comfortable upbringing neither spoilt with an over-abundance of luxury nor was I deprived or abused in any way whatsoever. I was a regular child, dull even – not prone to the wandering and wondering imagination that some children possess. It was of this mindset that I was to remain, the Christmases of my teens and twenties spent in revelling with friends and those to follow in the cosy comfort of courting and wedlock … at least for a while. For this is where the story turned. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was the second year following the split from my wife and the first following the decree absolute. The first I spent in the city apartment that had for years been our marriage home. It was a Christmas spent in absolute misery, the endless same old Christmas songs that played eternally in shops and from the television, although always being irritating had in times past served for some ironic jovial sing-song now sounded like fingers scraped down glass, the happy smiling couples that I saw out in the streets Christmas shopping and heading to and from parties now filled me with pain and loathing for I was no longer part of that lifestyle (and though for every kissing couple at Christmastide, there are those that curse and quarrel, in my loneliness my eyes were blinded to those).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">There were no invitations to parties for me to attend, nor were there Christmas cards adorning my apartment, for the only envelopes that fell onto my doormat that year were letters and bills from solicitors. It was then that I discovered that all my friends were in truth her friends and had abandoned me when she did. I found company in the bottle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">So that Yuletide was spent in drunken, isolated sorrow in a house that no longer felt my own. I pledged to myself that the next and no others would be spent the same.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I moved apartment when my finances allowed, not far from where we’d lived together, but somewhere a little smaller, decorated to my newly found bachelor taste; somewhere to call my own. I could not abide to spend the following Xmas alone in the city, yet I still desired my own company and to get away from the hustle and bustle and tinsel and plastic trees.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">So it was to the English Lake District I headed that cold December, specifically to a holiday cottage that I had rented close to Troutbeck village. With car filled with food and drink and books that I had always thought about reading but hadn’t got around to I arrived at that lovely isolated cottage with its stunning views of Blencathra mountain.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> I unpacked, made a coffee on the stove and then drove to town to buy more logs to ensure that the fire would be well stoked for my entire Christmas break.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">All was well, as I sat warmly by the fire that cold Christmas Eve, I looked up from my copy of Jack London’s ‘The Call of the Wild’ and gazed out of the window just as the first few flakes of snow fell from the dark sky. Entranced I watched as the fall grew to a flurry and I smiled, the weather forecasters had got it wrong</span><span style="font-size: large;"> - it would be a White Christmas after all.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> I felt good, relaxed; it was better this way, isolated yet far away from the isolation of the maddening crowds and away from the solace of the bottom of the bottle (though it must be said that my cup of coffee was heartily topped to the Irish tradition – purely for the extra warmth factor of course).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">So in this contented state and hypnotised by the drifting flakes of white on the black canvas of night beyond the windowpane, I drifted into sleep. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I awoke, what seemed like minutes but a quick glance at my watch revealed to be hours later, for it was five minutes to midnight – almost Christmas Day. I threw another log onto the fire and was in contemplation whether to turn in then or to sit awhile longer with a snack and another hearty drink, but then something caught my attention… a distant sound of bells. Not improbable I thought, perhaps a church in a nearby village peeling out the chimes of midnight mass, but no, these bells were gentler, tinkling … distant yet somehow strangely close.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I looked out of the window and beyond the falling snow, which had now gathered upon the ground as a blanket of several inches in depth, I saw what appeared to be lights moving down the rough side of Blencathra. In colour they varied, bright yet in somewhat pastel tones of green and white and red and mauve. Peculiarly they appeared to be floating slowly, yet without doubt they also appeared to be moving upon the cottage at an impossible rate. Then, and now I stop momentarily, for to recollect and relate fills me still with incredulity and confusion and a cold rush down my spine… for there just within the garden of the cottage were a procession of figures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The bells were now chiming closely with a gentle intensity, the tinkling rhythm unlike any music I had ever heard before, unearthly and haunting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Who could these people be? It was surely too late for carol singers, perhaps a congregation of the faithful proceeding to church according to a country custom of which I was unaware?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I wiped condensation from the interior of the windowpane to allow me a better view, though clumps of snow that had stuck to the exterior still obscured the view a little. Yet unmistakably the figure holding a lantern at the forefront of the procession was wearing a robe of red and appeared to have a large white beard. Surely Santa Claus, despite being of apparently saintly origins, would have no place in a church pilgrimage? I then suspected revellers, but the cottage stood entirely alone for several miles, so what would they be doing here so far from the pubs of the towns?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Well, more fool them if they want to risk freezing for a giggle, however though I intended days of peace and solitude, if they were of a friendly disposition and if they came knocking, I would offer them some warmth and coffee.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As the convoy of figures moved closer to the cottage though, to my great terror I discovered that they were something far stranger altogether! Behind the scarlet cloaked leader were chained a troop of naked people, men, women, children. Their bodies were pale and gaunt, their expressions both wretched and ecstatic … as if drugged but still aware of some dreadful fate. And behind them,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> My God … behind them, herding them on, were a myriad host of the most eldritch beings. I cannot begin to adequately describe them … misshapen, chimeric beasts some like skinned dogs, others scaled or covered in bedraggled mangy fur. Their eyes … oh their eyes, burning bright and multi-coloured. Surely some bizarre fancy dress, a perverse heathen practice perhaps, you think? I’d like to think so, I really would.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">My attention did not alas go unnoticed and the red-robed entity turned to gaze my way and then to my dire dismay, he proceeded to walk towards the window. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I stood transfixed, both in fear and as if hypnotised by those damned bells, which seemed to be ringing in my head. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">FULL STORY CAN BE READ IN CC VOL2</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFhngAVsYOfWqMj1WTCZ7btSWds0xy6BdX2YDciSnvAjKuQ-nljzGbaT9b88n77J4a8_WlaaLd-xyF5HGSPUTvCHuJm6rMD-cgspG4-NFVZybFDkjZiMjX26nuKMHvtGBIhRbWhuxGQI/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFhngAVsYOfWqMj1WTCZ7btSWds0xy6BdX2YDciSnvAjKuQ-nljzGbaT9b88n77J4a8_WlaaLd-xyF5HGSPUTvCHuJm6rMD-cgspG4-NFVZybFDkjZiMjX26nuKMHvtGBIhRbWhuxGQI/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-37600027513912068672011-11-20T20:18:00.002+00:002012-12-30T23:44:28.940+00:00Invisible<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: center 216.0pt right 432.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmwiAKCwEb3GACwyoKM3Fn5aIg6TSUddRAilSk-XPwG_heA-wUvg1IIOiK_uwfa1-UCVfjwkR9XxF_kZMrFjhggMUqwGU-imRZGbU3BG1h7NlnumViRPF9DhsFYBjFaDBv7bveIxbh710/s1600/invisible.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmwiAKCwEb3GACwyoKM3Fn5aIg6TSUddRAilSk-XPwG_heA-wUvg1IIOiK_uwfa1-UCVfjwkR9XxF_kZMrFjhggMUqwGU-imRZGbU3BG1h7NlnumViRPF9DhsFYBjFaDBv7bveIxbh710/s640/invisible.bmp" width="451" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; line-height: 200%;">Invisible</span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; line-height: 200%;">Written and illustrated by Rich Blackett</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/>
<w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/>
<w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/>
<w:Word11KerningPairs/>
<w:CachedColBalance/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]-->
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The engine of the old Ford rattled
as she urged it faster than she knew was possible. The night was almost fading
now as she drove on through sleeping hamlets and farmsteads, each filled with
inhabitants blissfully ignorant of the invisible chaos under the skein of
reality. This night she had seen beyond the doors of heaven and hell and behind
the curtain of everything she knew.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
used her free hand to pull the coat tighter around her thin frame and kept the
other firmly on the wheel. The road finally evened out from farm track to
asphalt, so she stole a glance at Amelia asleep in the seat beside her - in
sleep at least, she was oblivious to whatever might be stalking them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It had
started innocently enough, like so many things, with Algie translating poetry
from an old cover-less book he'd found poking about in the Townend Library. He
had swept into their house, papers in one hand and a bundle of dusty tomes in
the other. It could only be the latest wild goose chase, but better that than
his drinking.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">You know
Ellen, these poems are extraordinary, like something from the Gharne fragments.
Pity the cover's been pulped but if I can put these together I reckon it'll
really help the first edition of New Visions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You know we <i>need</i> an exclusive and this'll really knock their
socks off!’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Algie was dressed in his usual dapper jacket and waistcoat, the same
sharpness that had attracted her when they had met at Amelia's soiree. He had
talked long into the night about his plans, increasingly referring to his
loneliness and his need to share this glorious future. The implication was
obvious and despite her father’s initial misgivings about the son of a bankrupt
bookseller. Algie's hyperbole had eventually won over her father and ever the traditionalist
he had even given them a generous nest egg as a modern-day dowry.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Algie was
oblivious to her but she had nodded all the same - New Visions was his
pipe-dream, a grand scheme that was always on the verge of, but never quite
coming to fruition. He always needed another patron or one more piece of
superlative art, but not one copy had ever been printed let alone sold. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He dumped his books and papers and returned
from his small study sans jacket and stood in his favourite spot gazing out of
the bay window. Ellen could sense another one of her husband’s bouts of
self-aggrandisement looming, and with his back to her Algie began rolling up
his sleeves; presumably to show he was ready to begin 'the great work'.
Previously this had been 'An Atavistic History of the Peak District', abandoned
in favour of “The Mesmerism of Slate – a Philosophical Investigation”, only for
this to be shelved to make way for “An Occult postulation on The Lyrical
Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge. She had only heard about each of these by
reputation and never by their text or publication. Perhaps finally she would
see some of the promise she dimly remembered from that soiree so long ago in
Ambleside. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I'd show
them to you but you know they'd be quite beyond you I'm sure, but I expect to
read the first one at the writers’ group tonight, so you'd better drop me off
early.’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Tonight,
oh but Algernon, I'm taking the car to see Amelia, and she doesn't have a
telephone so...’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘L</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">ook Ellen,
I think the fellows might have planned a few drinks for me, this being the Club
anniversary so if you drive me you could just collect me at 11:00?’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A few
drinks? But Algie you promised, I know you said you'd never take the Pledge,
but you said no more drinking, we can barely afford...’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Don't
start Ellen.’ He turned away from her. ‘It'll be fine. <i>I'll</i> be fine.
Just don't be late.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I'll try
to be on time but just wait in the lodge if I'm late.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">That's my
girl! I better get started right away so I'll skip dinner if it's okay. I'm sure
you made something lovely.’ He strode past her to the study pausing only to
collect a decanter of spirit and closed the door a little too firmly behind
him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I didn't
make any,’ she said to the space where Algie had been. ‘I'm glad you liked my
hair today.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It was after seven when Ellen
dropped off her husband. All the way to the Windemere Club Hall Algie had
talked of nothing but the stanzas he had translated, how he was the first poet
to create transfigurative verse and might even need to create new words to
describe the sensations the words had stirred in his heart.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I
completed the whole volume in four hours,’ were his parting words to his wife
before he slammed the door and trotted off to the Writers Club. Ellen drove on
thinking of her friend, wishing she would give up cigarettes. She wondered if
the new Radiogram might have been delivered. She and Amelia were so different
but had never truly grown apart, despite their disparate lifestyles. Amelia
wrote articles for The Cumbrian Monthly and had never married, while she simply
kept house for Algie, but her friend had always been there when her husband’s
drinking had spiralled out of control.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Pulling up
by the small house in the last of the evening sun Ellen could just discern
Amelia waiting for her in the long dark blue dress she loved. She stood to
greet her friend as the car rolled to stop by the veranda.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">How're you
beautiful? You should let your red hair grow a little Ellen; you don't have to
do everything Algie says. Go into the front room, I'll be through in a minute.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">She brought in a pitcher of water,
two tall glasses, set them on the table and joined her friend on the sofa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So then
darling, tell me everything, are you still Algie's invisible wife?’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">***</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In the Writers’ Club Algernon surveyed
the crop of the Lake District's brightest and most creative minds, to be sure
there were one or two dilettantes and introverts among them, but for the most
part they were all fellow explorers of the written word. He felt that between
them they had begun to map out new territories much as their forefathers had
tilled and tamed the land. Algie wanted to believe that his few calls to fellow
poetic sensitives had prompted the large gathering, but he was sage enough to
realise that it was the venerable antiquarian Henry Barton and his talk on the
verses of Khitai, which had drawn the crowd. The Club’s two-year anniversary
seemed to have gone unnoticed save for a lack-lustre banner at the rear of the
hall.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Barton’s
conclusions were intriguing to be sure, but any connection with Leng was pure
speculation and Algie had a sense that his short reading would be a hard act to
follow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He poured
himself a large glass of port. This would be his moment and they would not
forget him, and if word got around it might even instil some sense of awe into
his wife – or at the very least stop her staring into space like a weak-minded
fool. Her father’s money was all very well but she never appreciated the finer
things and simply nodded blankly when he declaimed verses that should have
moved her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Slowly the
gathering settled into their seats, each with a generously full glass. He
waited for the noise to die to nothing then began to read the first line…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">***</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So you've
never been unfaithful?’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">No, never.
Algie'd kill me, or the shame would kill him, or both.’ Ellen laughed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But you've
been tempted,’ her friend teased.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Well there
was this one time,’ she cleared her throat and reached for her glass</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Go on! Don't
be coy, tell me everything.’ Amelia stopped her friend’s hand. Her blue eyes
caught Ellen's gaze.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Do you
remember when you let me try on your mother’s dress?’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Algie was
such a bastard to you that day. I just had to put a smile on your face. Hah!
You looked divine in that dress though. Twenty years ago in Windermere it
nearly got my mother arrested!’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">You zipped
me up...’ Ellen faltered.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I zipped
you up, patted your behind and said, “You look good enough to eat.”’ Amelia's
brow had the slightest furrow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">...and
then you kissed me.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">***</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Algie's voice was hoarse and dry
from repetition, but he had to continue, his voice was no longer his to
command. Henry had been the first to stagger from his seat, screaming as
something terrible and indescribable happened to his arm, leaving it a belching
bloody stump. The club treasurer, without thinking, had dashed to Henry's side
and attempted to staunch the blood, but the inexorable horror continued and had
excised half the man’s head. Amid dreadful cracking sounds and sprays of fluid
over the terrified and fleeing club members, the invisible horror had brutally
exposed the bloodied grey cerebella.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">For
goodness sake man, it's the poem, it's feeding the thing, stop your damned poem
you fool!’ It had been Fenwick who had made the grim connection between the
unthinkable obscenity before them and Algie's oratory.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">What have
you done!’ Gasped Henry Barton above the screams and incomprehensible noises
that rapidly filled the hall. It was to be his last word on the subject as the
life force in him was abruptly snuffed out and he collapsed amid the increasing
carnage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Men flailed uselessly at the doors,
fighting and clawing over each other to try the brass handle, now slippery with
the blood of their friends. The shouts and screams were building as more body
parts were gnawed out of existence and an obscene absence of shape dragged a
man Algie recognised as a talented sculptor across the wooden floor of the
hall, only for his midriff to be bloodily erased from sight. Still Algie
continued to read. Rooted to the spot by forces beyond his comprehension, he
stared through, rather than at the paper moistening in his palsied hand. Algie
felt compelled, against all reason, to recite the poem again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">***</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">They had kissed for a long time,
pressing each other as close as they might and then slowly pulling apart and
gazing through the near darkness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Stay,’ she
whispered.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I can't. Amelia
he's been drinking and...’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Just stay,
have a cigarette.’ There was a sense of urgency to her words. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Amelia, I
don't smoke.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A cup of
coffee then, it won't take a moment.’ She pulled away from Ellen and grabbed a
dark slip.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">If I'm
late then he…’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He won't
mind if you pick him up late, he won't even notice you have my lipstick all
over you.’ She pulled on her blue dress and lit a cigarette. ‘What time is he
expecting you, half-past, quarter to?’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">What! I
have to pick him up at eleven’!’ In a panic Ellen began to force herself into
her clothes. ‘Oh god. He'll kill me.’ She caught a glimpse of the red tracks of
Amelia's lipstick smeared across her face.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Don't
forget this.’ Amelia opened her hand and revealed Ellen’s wedding ring.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">***</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Algie awoke to the scent of old dirty
wood, face down on the stage. Perhaps it had all been a dream, a brain fever
brought on by the port? But as he clambered to his feet and nearly slipped in
the crimson pool that led to the club secretary's eviscerated torso, he saw
with cold mortal dread that it was all too real.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">His skin
twitched with terror at the monumental horror that invaded his eyes as he
surveyed what remained of his peers. He felt an obscure sense of gratitude that
he knew little enough about anatomy that would enable him to identify the
mauled gnawed chunks that had once been men. Shaking uncontrollably at the
grotesque panorama and choking at the insidious blood-copper taste on the air,
an awful sound stilled the gag reflex in his throat. The unspeakable, invisible
thing was still there. It must have gorged itself on the flesh of the entire group
leaving him entirely intact. A thought hit him. Surely it should have devoured
him first?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">His eyes
glimpsed the crumpled translation sopping with blood at his feet and slowly,
inexorably it dawned on him what Barton had said - he had summoned the thing
that had laid waste to his peers. His words had brought forth the hungry
abomination that was resting invisibly somewhere in the hall. He should have
heeded the oblique warnings in the Gharne fragments. He had never been able to
find the book in the Old Library again, despite hours of futile searches - he
had only his rough notes to construct the rest of the epic. A dim part of his
mind realised that he had translated a ghastly summoning ritual to manifest a
creature beyond all human understanding. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He
staggered off the stage wondering distantly if the door would open now and if
he did escape, would it pursue him and for how long? Could he outrun it? Or
make it to the car?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The
lightest of touches opened the door easily and Algernon tottered into the
pitch- black night beyond the hall. He could hear the distant sounds of the
Baptist Church and the gentle lapping of the lakeshore, but his wife was
nowhere to be seen. Mindlessly proceeding down sinking deeper and deeper into
shock, his mind rebelled at what he had witnessed, maybe it had not happened at
all? Perhaps he was asleep in the back row of the hall right now, nudged into
some phantasmagorical flight of fancy by an interminable lecture on the Poetry
of Khitai?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Suddenly
there was light all around him, was he waking up, had it really been a brain
fever? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Algie!’ He
knew that voice. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">ALGIE!’ He
felt a blanket over his shoulders but still felt he should be walking. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I'm sorry I'm late Algie. I was at Amelia's
and well, you know how you say women can talk forever and... Algie? What's
wrong? What's happened? Algie talk to me!’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><b> READ THE FULL STORY IN CC VOL2, AVAILABLE FROM LULU.COM</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFhngAVsYOfWqMj1WTCZ7btSWds0xy6BdX2YDciSnvAjKuQ-nljzGbaT9b88n77J4a8_WlaaLd-xyF5HGSPUTvCHuJm6rMD-cgspG4-NFVZybFDkjZiMjX26nuKMHvtGBIhRbWhuxGQI/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFhngAVsYOfWqMj1WTCZ7btSWds0xy6BdX2YDciSnvAjKuQ-nljzGbaT9b88n77J4a8_WlaaLd-xyF5HGSPUTvCHuJm6rMD-cgspG4-NFVZybFDkjZiMjX26nuKMHvtGBIhRbWhuxGQI/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New";"><b> </b></span></span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
</style>
<![endif]-->Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-66961426608049046642011-11-18T23:20:00.006+00:002012-12-30T23:52:28.362+00:00That is not dead which can eternal lie<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieaWEhC_ZN0kqlW-6KqI_GZX1nMuE_YABUj6GuXEdKn1P8Jxk0B65UJlagE3aY-HVe6p5ELMn85cDW7ILWCylsKPXmSOmaimZ8TveZA5-rtAPav9husIHozsNRzIPldnn8w_CrZIZqpLg/s1600/THAT+IS+NOT+DEAD.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieaWEhC_ZN0kqlW-6KqI_GZX1nMuE_YABUj6GuXEdKn1P8Jxk0B65UJlagE3aY-HVe6p5ELMn85cDW7ILWCylsKPXmSOmaimZ8TveZA5-rtAPav9husIHozsNRzIPldnn8w_CrZIZqpLg/s640/THAT+IS+NOT+DEAD.JPG" width="445" /> </a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>That is not dead which can eternal lie</b></span> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Written by Glen Colling</b></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Illustrated by Andy Paciorek</b></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">My tale starts only 24 hours ago.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">One day, that has changed everything.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was a typical summer morning on Lake Windermere. The sky was a pastel shade of blue that was reflected on the calm waters of the lake. A soft breeze blew from the South keeping the heat down to a comfortable level.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I had come to stay with friends in Bowness only three days previously, hoping to find some peace away from the front line, and had already found a deep love for the area.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Each morning I would rise early, before the crowds, and travel down to the waterfront where I would hire a small boat and coast out onto the lake. There, I would spend many an hour lying back and letting the boat drift where it would as I watched the river birds hover above me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I had found a solace that was previously missing in my life, and I was trying hard to forget that in another two days I would have to report back to my unit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The first sign that I was in trouble was easily dismissed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">My boat began to bob up and down on the surface. But, lost as I was in my own thoughts, I passed it off as a passing rower, or a swan landing close by.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was not until my small boat began to bounce rather wildly that I started to grow concerned.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I immediately sat up and looked around me to discover that I was in serious trouble.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">To my right, a violently swirling vortex of water had formed upon the previously still surface and was growing larger. The mouth of the vortex was already two metres wide, spewing a cloud of moisture and causing the waters around it to roil and twist.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I reached over quickly and grabbed my oar as the hungry waters sucked at my craft. Plunging the oar through the rivers surface I began to push against the greedy pull of the vortex.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">At first my efforts seemed to come to naught as I was inexorably drawn towards the dark maw of the whirlpool. But slowly, oh so slowly, I began to edge away. Inch by agonising inch I began to hope that I might, just, get away.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">But Poseidon was not to be cheated of his quarry so easily and the vortex all but doubled in size. The drag of the swirling tides became too much and though I strained with every last reserve of my strength, I was pulled towards the violently spinning waters.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">My boat was caught in the swirling currents and I began to spin at such speeds that I was soon feeling light headed and a little nauseous. Water splashed over the sides of my boat, stinging my eyes. By now, the mouth of the vortex was a full five metres wide and with each revolution I sank deeper and deeper into the dark depths. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The black waters of the lake rose up around me, whirling around and around with a deafening roar. The peaceful blue sky was a tantalising promise that was quickly being pulled away. And then my faithful craft could take no more and the boards fell apart around me. Freezing cold waters grabbed at my clothes pulling me with desperate strength to the dark depths of the abyss. And finally, with a last sorrowful glance at a hovering osprey, the waters folded over me and all was black.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> --//--</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I awoke with a cough, the river water desperate to leave my lungs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As I lay there, my breathing harsh and strained, I took stock of my aches and pains. Amazingly, though I was scratched and bruised, I had suffered no permanent damage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">My clothes were sodden from the tepid lake waters, and my body shivered with a chill, but the very fact that I was still alive sent a warmth through my chest that I had never experienced in all my years serving on the front line.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Finally, I dared to open my eyes and take in my surroundings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I was lying on a stone floor, deep blue in colour with veins of green and black. It felt smooth to my touch, and oddly warm. The water from my clothes formed small puddles which gathered upon its surface.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Looking up, I found that I lay on a long path rising at a slight angle above me. To the other side the path continued down into a dark, still body of water. Sight of the path was soon lost in the stygian depths so it was difficult to judge how deep it went.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">All of this, stone and lake, were to be found in a narrow passage formed form dull grey rock that contained veins of a stringy green-blue algae that projected a soft blue light. The fronds of the algae writhed and twisted towards me as I moved as though possessed of a strange, curious intelligence. As a result of their insidious movements the shadows surrounding me danced and capered as though in a strange, macabre dance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It would seem that I was, somehow, below ground, with but two choices of egress.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I decided that I must move on if I ever hoped to return to the surface to relate this strange tale to my friends. However, the dark, still waters held no temptation to me. And so, I chose to climb the path and see where it lay.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I ascended the gently sloping path which led to a narrow archway carved from grey stone. As I moved closer I began to discern that the arch was not natural in its formation. Stone blocks, closely fitted, edged the entrance with a larger keystone in the centre.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">When I reached the top of the path I noticed that the stones were carved with some sort of pattern, or a language with which I was unfamiliar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The carvings were shallow in nature but cleanly cut into the dark grey stone with the use of a delicate tool. The script, if such it were, was harsh and consisted mainly of intersecting lines and loops. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Through the archway I could see the passage continue on a level path through another narrow tunnel, however, in the distance I could hear a soft thrumming sound, as though giant pistons or bellows were at work. My heart lifted at the sound, maybe I could find assistance further on, and thus a way back to the surface.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">--//--</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The writhing light cast by the algae never changed and made it difficult to guess the passage of time so I cannot say how long I walked down that mildewed passage, cut from the dead rock beneath Lake Windermere, but growling of my stomach reminded me that too much time had passed since I sat at my friend house for breakfast.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The pulsating rhythm in the distance became a beat of measurement that tracked my progress. <i>Thrum</i>, left foot forward, <i>Thrum</i>, right foot forward. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The air in the corridor was cool, but dry which I thought unusual for a cave system. And neither did it seem to move in any direction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Occasionally, I would come across more signs of the eldritch carvings on the walls, the floor, and in one instance the ceiling. I had decided they were definitely a written form of communication as I began to recognise certain repeating patterns. But I was no closer to discerning either their meanings or their origin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Finally I came to a second archway, identical to the first, built into the side of the passage. In my fugue state of mind I had almost missed it, except that I reached out a hand to steady myself and felt naught but air which caused me to loose my step and stumble.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Beyond the arch lay a vast cavern, its walls curved inwards to meet at a point above. The floor cut across the cavern on a raised slope, the sides sloping down about two feet to the cavern floor. It was lit from more of the green-blue algae and by its cerulean glow I discerned a strange, fascinating, sight.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Scattered around the room were artefacts that would make a historian weep.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Closest to me were a collection of Greek urns, carved with the images of Gods and mythical beasts, amongst them lay suits of lacquered armour and wide bladed spears. Alongside these stood a row of sarcophagi, their surfaces carved with faces of gold, silver and a jade, the white eyes of pharaohs and men of power staring back at me in the gloom. At the base of these caskets were scattered a number of coins, scarabs, gold jewellery and other paraphernalia.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Across from them stood the carving of a mighty alabaster bull, exquisite in its detail. Again, it was surrounded by pots, bowls and weapons.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">As I looked down the cavern I could see relics from every civilization of man through the ages, thrown haphazardly together in loosely organised piles.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I could not guess why such a collection would be brought down here, or indeed where so many artefacts could have been found. I began to suspect I may have found the base of an international ring of thieves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Except that the items had not been preserved. They were chipped and cracked, covered in dust and cobwebs. It was as though, once brought here, they were quickly forgotten.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">There was no other exit from this room so I turned and left the mystery behind me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I came across a further 3 rooms identical to the first, each filled with the detritus of the past, except for the last which lay empty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">--//--</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The thrumming sound was growing louder now, as I continued down the passage, and I could feet the faintest of tremors through the floor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The fourth archway I discovered looked as the others, however when I walked inside it was to find a scene straight out of a Bosch painting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The room was divided, floor to ceiling, by row upon row of sturdily constructed shelves. When I first entered I could see each of the shelves held several strange jars. The top two-thirds of the jar was glass and contained a semi-transparent orange liquid. I could not see what was lay within the liquid from the entranceway. The bottom third of the jar was a system of bronze tubes and leather bellows that inflated and deflated like lungs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Curious, I moved into the room for a closer look.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I stepped up to the first shelf and looked into the jar. At first my mind refused to recognise what I was seeing, and I felt my body grow tense with horror and despair. For, floating in the jar of liquid, was a human head. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The head was of a male, around twenty to thirty, with soft features and a faint buzz of blond hair on his chin and cheeks. Strangely, he was wearing what looked like a Roman helmet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The head bobbed slightly in the liquid in an obscene parody of a fairground goldfish. I could only thank God that its eyes were closed, I do not think my nerves would have held if I had to look into his dead gaze.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">In the next jar was another man, this time darker of skin. Across his head was an elaborate head-dress, similar in design to those I had seen on pictures of the Pharaohs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The next jar was a woman, with rich red hair that floated around the jar like kelp. She was obviously of Indian descent, and wore traces of dark Kohl around her eyes that had managed to resist the smudging effects of the liquid.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I turned and looked down the room at the hundreds of shelves, each of them containing dozens of heads and I felt my knees go weak. What kind of a person could be so ghoulish as to store these grisly ornaments like heirlooms to be treasured and observed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">For the first time in my ordeal, I began to feel the sticky clutch of fear in my chest.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was then that my nightmares took form.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">READ THE F<span style="font-size: large;">ULL STORY IN CC VOL1, FROM LULU.COM</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-61386918597312113692011-01-21T15:08:00.001+00:002012-12-31T00:05:36.126+00:00House of Dark Lanterns, part one.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV9NqlF22NdDa4FZqyrPxtdtRxQ46rjpiYLlV6J43_aL9Lg2kIsrUT5EvGXSOsYm0DMU0IKe8L1Rwt3m4-cEyEOFbWy86MyqFNo8Q6qhI3E2zbBr9ZGabRolG06U7Qh3tA7yCfuK98NDg/s1600/house+of+dark+lanterns+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV9NqlF22NdDa4FZqyrPxtdtRxQ46rjpiYLlV6J43_aL9Lg2kIsrUT5EvGXSOsYm0DMU0IKe8L1Rwt3m4-cEyEOFbWy86MyqFNo8Q6qhI3E2zbBr9ZGabRolG06U7Qh3tA7yCfuK98NDg/s640/house+of+dark+lanterns+1.jpg" width="448" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoSubtitle" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="body"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;">“The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">”</span></span></div>
<div>
</div>
<div class="MsoSubtitle" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">John Milton</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="font-size: large;">House of Dark Lanterns, part one.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">Written and illustrated by Andy Paciorek</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
The hammer fell on the last sale of the day at the Kendal & District Auction House and as proceedings drew to close and unsuccessful bidders and onlookers filed for the doors, those who’d secured their bids remained to finalise the details of their purchases. Carl Fieldman remained behind, though he was of the former rather than latter group, having been outbid on his efforts to buy a Regency bronze table lamp.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
He was friends with the auctioneer and had decided to wander over for a quick chat before heading home. Seeing him, Dewson, the auctioneer, gave a smile.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Unlucky, Carl.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl replied with no petulance, “Not for you, I bid more for that lamp than it was worth and I was still outbid.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Oh, Carl, you know as well as I that an object is worth whatever two or more people bid for it, and if it’s any consolation that solid oak Victorian writing table we had in today and would’ve expected to fly barely crawled to its bottom estimate!”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
He continued, “Actually, you could have done us a favour and bid a bit more. Money is of no consequence to your rival bidder and once he sets his mind on something he’ll obtain it, no matter the cost. Anyway, shh, speak of the devil, here he is.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl looked up to see a tall well-groomed man approaching. In his hand he carried a knobbly blackthorn cane of the type sometimes referred to as a shillelagh, but what perhaps would be more correctly termed a bata. Several steps behind him was a rough-looking man with thick side-burns and eyebrows and who was almost as wide as he was tall, solidly built not fat.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Ah, Mister Dewson and now to business” he said with a smile and extending his hand to shake that of the auctioneer, “Cash, fine I trust?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“As always, Mr Mordrake,” replied Dewson politely.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
The man Mordrake gestured to the squat man behind him, “Mr Soulby, if you will,” and with a plump envelope, containing more than the four thousand, three hundred pounds the item settled on, Misters Soulby and Dewson moved away to conclude the exchange.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Standing alone together, Mordrake nodded in polite greeting to Carl. Carl spoke, “Congratulations, it’s a nice piece. You got a bargain.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Mordrake looked at Carl curiously, then an expression of recognition passed his face as he realised Carl was his opponent bidder.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I did think I’d pick it up nearer the three and a half mark, but it is a nice piece, the curious embellishment of the figures of a satyr and a nymph on the base may not be to everyone’s taste but it sets it apart as an interesting object. Together with the other of its pair, which I do happen to already own, I’d estimate the collective value of the pair at perhaps more than ten or even eleven thousand pounds on a good day. Not that I’d resell.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
With that comment, Carl was assured that despite money being no object, Mr Mordrake was indeed cannily aware of his purchasing.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Mordrake thrust out his hand in greeting, a firm dry shake.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Lucien Mordrake at your service and I take it sir, that you are a fellow Luciferian?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl returned his name but was uncertain on the latter remark. Sensing this, Mordrake continued with a jovial smile.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“It’s my little joke, it’s how I refer to fellow collectors of lamps and lanterns, as Luciferians, that is worshippers of the light. Please excuse my wit, my wife constantly reminds me that it has a select audience of one fan and that isn’t her! So tell me, Mr Fieldman have you collected long?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl had warmed quite quickly to this man, though they were at different spectrums of social class and it would be assumed on first impressions that they had nothing in common except a fondness for old lamps. Stood in his jeans and scruffy navy blue woollen jumper, others of Mordrake’s ilk would not have given Carl the time of day, but Mordrake seemed intent on striking up conversation and that gratified Carl.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I do have a few personal pieces, but my interest is more professional. I buy and sell.” He took out his wallet and passed Mordrake a business card.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Mordrake read aloud.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Prometheus Ltd. Modern and Collectible Lighting. A fitting moniker, Prometheus was indeed a great keeper of the light, I hope though that you do not befall the same fate as he for your efforts,” he joked.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Picking up on the theme, Carl jested back, much to Lucien Mordrake’s pleasure, “Well, my liver seems just about intact so far, but I must admit to encountering a few vultures in the antiques trade!”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Mordrake examined the card again, “Actually I believe I’m familiar with your company, in fact I think I’ve bought items from you before. From the internet I believe, I’m not computer literate myself, cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but I do have my secretary keep an eye on that market place. I hadn’t realised you were based in the northwest, do you have a shop locally?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“No, I just run the business online, it keeps overheads right down. Though there is the tourist trade in Cumbria, it doesn’t cater necessarily to the specialist market. Also that’s why I sell modern lighting also, cannot depend solely on ‘Luciferians’.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Ah, wise,” said Mordrake, “But you do live locally? You have a regional accent.” </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Yes, in Kendal actually. How about you?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
‘Posh’ accents in Carl’s experience revealed no facts about geography.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Mordrake verified the matter.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“My main residence is in Cheshire, but I have Cumbrian ties and am currently stopping at a dwelling I own here, a retreat of sorts if you will. Actually it is the stronghold of my lamp and lantern collection. My wife will allow some of the more decorative lamps into the home but she is less tolerant of battered old Humphrey Davy Lamps and other such items.” </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Do you have a large collection then?” asked Carl.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Reasonably so, but rather diverse. I am no more discerning of Tilley Guardsman lamps than I am of Art Nouveau or Arabesque glass lighting. Phantasmagoria, Magic Lanterns, Chromatopes, Luminaires, works lanterns of all eras, decorative lamping of all periods up to and including Art Deco. All of these and more stir a passion in me. Perhaps I’m scared of the dark, do you think?” Carl smiled. </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Soulby returned having paid for the well packaged lamp he carried in his formidable arms, Mordrake took from him the receipt and the still rather plump envelope and placed them in his inner jacket pocket.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Turning back to Carl, he said “Actually, if you don’t have prior commitments, you are very welcome to come back now to see the collection for yourself and perhaps partake of a little supper. Mrs Soulby is the most splendid cook.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl considered this, he was not used to dinner invitations from anyone, never mind the ‘gentry’ and what were his other options – single and living alone, not even a pet –it would be another night of a ready meal for one and mind numbing reality television and soap operas or the same ready meal and equally enthralling though more important book-keeping. And he was very intrigued to see Mordrake’s lamp collection, so deciding the accounts could wait, he decided.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Why not?” “Yes, Thank you, I’d be honoured … If you’re sure it’s no trouble?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“If it were, I wouldn’t have asked” stated Mordrake, “Mr Soulby will drive you home later or back here if your car is parked outside?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“No, I came on foot, I live literally just around the corner.” “Splendid,” remarked Mordrake and gesturing towards the door with his robust wooden cane, the three men headed outside.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Mordrake and Fieldman stood outside the auction house whilst Mr Soulby went to retrieve the car. Taking a cigarette case from his inner pocket, Mordrake offered a smoke to Carl whom declined, but noted mentally that the case and the matching lighter with which Mordrake lit his own cigarette, were engine turned silver, impressive and not inexpensive pieces.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Very wise,” commented Mordrake, “an bad habit, yet a pleasure I will not relinquish. I’ve trod this earth many a long year, and despite the mutterings of physicians and the nagging of Mrs Mordrake, I reserve at my age the right to a vice or two.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl wondered silently at the age of Mordrake, it was difficult to discern; his face carried lines but not deeply set and his hair had the hue of steel. Mordrake was thin but solid, his cheekbones angular and his nose aquiline, but he had a strong and straight posture and did not appear at all gaunt. At a first glance he’d guess the man was in his sixties, yet there was something about him, something Carl couldn’t quite put his finger on, that suggested that the man beside him carried a considerably greater age.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Ah, here’s Mr Soulby now,” Mordrake gestured to a pearl grey car, that Carl recognised as a mint condition Jaguar mark II, that purred up beside them. Mr Soulby clambered out of the car, looking not the most debonair of chauffeurs admittedly, but dutifully opened the rear doors for them. Within minutes they were well on their way to Mordrake’s country dwelling.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
They initially took the road north west as if heading towards Windemere, but turned onto country roads and tracks just past Ings. Looking out of the window, Mordrake commented on the scenery.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I love this time of the year, it is most splendid,”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
He pointed to a copse of birch, rowan and field maple, already resplendent in their shimmering hues of vermilion and gold, tantalised by the onset of dusk.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“To analogise with our mutual obsession, I doubt whether even Tiffany could master these shades in glass. It’s a truly wondrous time of year, but nature takes care not to spoil us as the nights are already setting in quick”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl concurred sincerely with the appreciation of this simple but true beauty, but mundanely his mind was distracted by the questionable wisdom of taking the veteran car down what was not the smoothest of tracks. He subtly questioned Mordrake on the vehicle’s performance.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Ah, but she’s a reliable old girl,” said Mordrake, “and tougher than she looks. Yet this will be one of her last runs of the year. Necessity has it that soon she will be put into hibernation, until late spring and I shall travel by the less sophisticated but far more practical means of a four-wheel drive.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
He continued with a wry smile, “Failing that, Soulby has a couple of sound tractors.” </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Within too long, but already under the indigo veil of evening, they turned again and up the long driveway of Providence Farm. In the dim light, Carl could discern a number of buildings, some discreetly modernised into alternative use and some still retained for the practical purposes of a working farm. The farmhouse, occasional abode of the visiting Lucien Mordrake and the permanent abode of the Soulby family, stood prominent and set apart by the cosy light emitting from some of its windows.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
They pulled up beside one of the barns.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I’ll show you my lantern collection now, whilst Mr Soulby puts the car away and informs his good wife to set another place for supper,” informed Mordrake as Soulby opened the rear doors for him and Carl to disembark. “Please if you don’t mind,” Mordrake said as he passed Carl the box containing the lamp he’d recently outbid him for.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
The barn that they stood to enter, had been thoroughly adapted and secured, all windows were bricked up and a burglar alarm hung on the stonework above the heavy metal door. As he sought the correct key, unlocked and then pinned in a numerical code to gain entry, Lucien Mordrake casually pointed out other features of the farm; the cow sheds, hay lofts, horse stables, pig sheds, chicken sheds, sheep sheds, the abattoir.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Abattoir?” Carl questioned.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Indeed, it’s a full and working farm. We aren’t licensed to commercially sell meat slaughtered on site, so animals now intended for trade have to be transported live to a large slaughterhouse several miles away. For personal consumption though, we can and do still butcher livestock on site, and I’ll tell you this, the conditions for doing so are as clean and as professional here as they are at the commercial abattoir, if not more so and I believe it to be so, that the meat tastes better when the beasts don’t have the stress of travel. You may judge so for yourself later, when you taste Mrs Soulby’s cooking!”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl was of the cultural mindset where sausages appeared as if by magic, already wrapped, on the shop shelf and devoid of faces and history as living beasts, but as he was already hungry, he was quite certain such notions of his dinner’s life story and demise would slip his mind when he smelt and tasted Mrs Soulby’s culinary cuisine. </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
The heavy metal door creaked open. It was dark inside. Mordrake clicked a switch and a line of low wattage bulbs flickered on down the centre of the long single room that had once housed cattle numerous years before. Mordrake closed the door behind him and bid welcome to his Aladdin’s cave.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Plenty of lamps,” he quipped, “but no guarantee of any Genies upon rubbing!”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
He instructed Carl to put the box he was holding down anywhere that he could find room.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl placed the box in a space on the nearest table and as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could discern rows and rows of lamps and lanterns, some sitting on formidable wooden tables and chests, others in glass-fronted cabinets and many fixed to the stone walls or hanging from beams on the ceiling. Like a greedy child suddenly finding himself locked in a sweet-shop, Carl Fieldman stood there, mouth agape and goggle-eyed.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“This is incredible, just incredible,” he exclaimed.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Not a bad little collection, is it?” said Mordrake with a pride devoid of smugness. “Please, take a closer look at the pieces and let me know what you think.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Carl didn’t know where to look first, as soon as he focussed on a rare or interesting object, he caught sight of another just as intriguing. Mordrake lit a humble paraffin lamp which he would hold up at times to better illuminate details on the treasures held within the gloomy cow shed. As they leisurely paced the items, discussing ones of particular interest, Mordrake revealed,</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I must confess on rare occasions, when the whim takes me, I will have Soulby and his sons, when not too busy with their other duties, have all the lamps here that are still in working order (which is the majority of them, the others are waiting for parts to be fixed) all fired up at once and I will come in here and sit awhile. It truly transforms this lowly old barn into something wondrous. A Temple of Light! However I must take such delight in measured doses however, for not only is the awe great to bear so are the fumes.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
For some time further, they wandered the room perusing the lamps until finally they reached the end wall of the former barn. The bricks were whitewashed clean and to the left was a large walnut dresser. The lower half of this hefty item of furniture was compartmentalised into drawers, whilst a display cabinet fronted with thick, heavy glass dominated the upper portion. Alone on the interior shelf was an initially unremarkable lantern.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“And what treasure do you hold in there?” enquired Fieldman.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Lucien Mordrake could not conceal a note of concern from his features, and momentarily considered some excuse, some distraction to deter attention from the object inside, but then resignedly as is beyond his own decision, he took the old lantern from the head of his cane and placed it on the table and in turn rested the shillelagh leaning against it. He took his bunch of keys and taking a small, rather ornate brass key, he opened the display cabinet and carefully retrieved the lamp from inside.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Fieldman could see from the basic design of the object, having a sliding metal casing around the glass housing the flame, that it was a Dark Lantern. It was of a specific design unfamiliar to him, cut into the metal shutter were small apertures, but they seemed too haphazard and irregular to provide neat decoration and if for function only, their purpose was not immediately apparent. The casing of the lamp was copper-like in tone and had some evidence of a verdigris patina but seemed thicker and more sturdy; perhaps another alloy coated in copper he guessed. The glass had a smoky rose – amber tone, and both it and the metal shielding prohibited a better view of the inner working.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Naval dark lantern, pre-World War I ?” he questioned Mordrake.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
The older man confirmed, “A dark lantern of sorts, indeed maritime or at least once utilised at sea, but much older than WWI, much older indeed. It has been in the possession of my family since the mid 18<sup>th</sup> Century and I believe it be much older still.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Really? That is quite exceptional, are you certain?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Very certain!”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to doubt your word, but I was not aware that lanterns of this form were crafted so early. I took it to be a Dietz prototype or something of the sort. Presumably it’s too early for paraffin usage, so what was the fuel utilised? Ambergris?”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“It does require a special fuel,” Mordrake answered without much clarification.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I see this rather unassuming object has stirred your curiosity, it has that trait. It is certainly an object of wonder, more so than I imagine you’ll believe, but let me tell you how it came to be in our family’s possession.”<br />
<br />
<br />
READ THE FULL STORY IN CC VOL1, AVAILABLE FROM LULU.COM <br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIb11TQpkavs-DQKiHfe03aRgxLDAG6FgMV5F4gQ4JsKRqMw7aYY3hPu3IYngQ_rnNrNXxDWZ_d0dVkt10nG-edZdNx3605uDyepHUyFNANbK6WwYp8npX8LcbEqReNGgXN5EHBjZ78x8/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIb11TQpkavs-DQKiHfe03aRgxLDAG6FgMV5F4gQ4JsKRqMw7aYY3hPu3IYngQ_rnNrNXxDWZ_d0dVkt10nG-edZdNx3605uDyepHUyFNANbK6WwYp8npX8LcbEqReNGgXN5EHBjZ78x8/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-87886739014389458402010-10-07T19:10:00.005+01:002012-12-30T23:54:58.548+00:00The Overlords<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5IIdyUEa8fxMCNG9lXXRRwcz1Tzf5cAS6ihI4nQCjoPRTuzY73-dh8UdozM5rPYqvaU-wWGHaBHctcyb2opfXtdFbrxOcnrzrAAWf7ws3ZexVZoOaefcaIOtd182hlFX453GFP740VoA/s1600/the+overlords+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5IIdyUEa8fxMCNG9lXXRRwcz1Tzf5cAS6ihI4nQCjoPRTuzY73-dh8UdozM5rPYqvaU-wWGHaBHctcyb2opfXtdFbrxOcnrzrAAWf7ws3ZexVZoOaefcaIOtd182hlFX453GFP740VoA/s640/the+overlords+small.jpg" width="450" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The Overlords<br />
Written by Tony F Paulazzo<br />
Illustrated by Andy Paciorek<br />
<br />
<h1 style="margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"> </span></h1>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Who shall call their dreams fallacious / Who has searched or sought</i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: center;">
<i>All the unexplored and spacious / Universe of Thought.</i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: right;">
<i>‘Trismegistus’</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The last days were a mad time when the <i>things</i> walked once again upon the Earth. Caleb and the little band of settlers lived within the subterranean depths of </span><span style="font-size: small;">Cumbrian caves</span><span style="font-size: small;">, subsisting on lichen, and blind, bleached creatures surviving alongside them in the dark underworld. As they delved deeper below the surface, they found an alien world with its own ecology. They felt constant hunger, constant fear and constant despair, that they were no longer emotive but existing on day to day survival instincts.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">You know you’ve fallen from grace when you’re ripping into still bleeding animal carcass, eating a recently deceased relative or friend, drinking brackish water, fucking anything that’s warm just to feel – something. It was scary to think that all religion had been a sham, that mankind were just the failed slaves of an infinitely superior race, themselves cursed from time before living memory by yet another race, who, if they were even aware at all, viewed humanity as less than bacteria.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Jeera, a girl of about his age, stopped moving below him, he looked down, all disinterest to mirror her own face:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Are you ok?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Yeah, you?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He rolled off her, not even bothering to finish, “<b>Shit</b>! How long we been down this black hole? I’m going out of my fucking mind with boredom. I wanna eat something tastier than those white voles and goddamn worms.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She laughed, a nasty short bark, “You want we should go back out there and talk-”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Fuck, we’re an endangered species now-”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Just fuck off Caleb!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She stood up, her ribs pointing out of her emaciated body; standing at the cave mouth, looking into another cavern where their small tribe had set up camp. The little light they possessed came from a central fire - their eyes had adapted well in the five years they’d been cowering down here. Her bulging belly was at odds with the rest of her body, but all the females were pregnant, or trying to be; first rule of survival, procreation, even in madness. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;">She was pissed, Caleb was right – that always pissed her off. Humanity should be exploring the stars now, propagating outwards and laying claim to the universe; instead they’d found out the stars were already owned: Fuck! The planet was owned; even the Shoggoth had been here a billion years in one form or another, hiding in the dark depths of the oceans and stars, calling mindlessly to their dead masters, ‘Teleki Li’ until they found the Great Old Ones to worship and serve.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The night was the worst because then the shared dreams would come, tearing soul, body and mind apart, the universe literally came apart at the seams and they could locate you in that vulnerable state. Be found by the frog like son of Cthulhu, Ythogtha, and you would not wake up, but be found by your comrades ripped to shreds, or sometimes never found at all. Humanity was obsolete - they feared the future, for it appeared there was none, no help coming, no Superman.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She cradled the coming babe in her arms, praying to a non-existent god that it might stay safe in her belly forever, whilst at the same time fearing what might come out of her body, she’d assisted in the birth – and dispatching, of outright monsters, though Caleb had once postulated that they might be the future of humanity. We have always feared what is different to us, Jeera thought, and wished she didn’t have to give birth in this dark hell, didn’t want to lose whatever was growing in her belly. She grimaced, she felt sure the thing wasn’t perfectly human, had been changing, she could feel him in her mind, exploring, intimate sharing. She also felt pretty sure that the boy was Caleb’s, though there was no sure way of knowing, but as Caleb, again - damn him! had said, if we’re to survive the coming epoch then our way of thinking, of living, of being, must change to reflect the new cosmology.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The monsters didn’t hate us, they nothing us; at worst a nuisance attacking and killing their slave race and some human worshippers, after all, their predecessors had allowed us to evolve out of the oceans, had permitted our ancestors to serve them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Jeera hated Caleb, he kept her in a state of perpetual confusion, he seemed to prefer fucking her over any other girl, yet his mind was touched by the madness; he’d say things like...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Madness is the new sanity. If you stay sane then the new world will destroy you, you need to revel in the madness, hug it to your breast like sirens in the distance. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“We’re not even a footnote in history, let’s not go sailing off to that dark place quietly, sobbing in our caves, afraid to even look outwards at what might be out there in the light. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“We need to find our new place in the world, for I feel we may have one, we are adaptable, our new children are changing, yet we thoughtlessly destroy them for not having two arms, ten fingers – truly, we are the monsters, for if something doesn’t fit in our narrow view we refuse to accept it.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Yet deep within a part of herself, she wanted to be close to this mad thing, and if she ever saw him lying with another woman, another part, buried deep within, burned, however, she could show him no warmth, no intimacy except to open her legs willingly enough for him to enter when he so wished…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It begins by falling into darkness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Surrounded by stars of impossible colour, music of <i>chthonic</i> variance batters your very soul. Living starships flashed past at light speed, planets teeming, an explosion of life man had not been conscious of spread across the universe. Beings of cool, vast intellects that, unaware of our existence shared an apparent cold indifference to our survival. Humans were inchoate, unfinished, broken... </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The universe would invariably tear open and time became a stream travelling in both directions, where you could see the beginning and end of it, stretched across a strange landscape of burning sand dunes, bizarre skies and incredibly twisted cities, all angular and alien perspective; monstrous statues dotted here and there, alive with a vibrance of neuronic power; pyramids of ancient authority.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Then hieroglyphic writings would start etching across the formless lights and the damning familiarity would begin, as if you should understand what they were saying, and as universes flashed past at weird angles to the perceiver, as you began moving to the great centre where the formless beast would be eating away at the heart of the universe – forever hungry and howling in bestial derangement.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In the periphery of vision would be all the multitudinous realms of creatures, ill formed parasitic lights, and slimy, hairy, silicate based creatures of pulsating form and fact. Horrors that would send the tiny brain of man insane with one glance, angels and demons, the unknowable, the actuality of the verse was that reality was horror where everything ate everything, from the stars to the quarks: Mankind was the oddity in this reality, a botched experiment by the <i>Shoggoth</i>, those that would call themselves gods.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Through the black gaping maws of <i>Azathoth</i>, Caleb fell screaming in wordless agony, his very soul being ripped apart by the tidal forces that shredded light as easily as man shredded cotton. He awoke, in the dream state, to find himself on a grey blue world with five suns burning high in the azure sky. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He’d been here in his dreams many times, a tree lined path led up to two misshapen statues burning with energy, he would walk up to them and they would question him in an unknown tongue, and he would be unable to answer so they would bar his progress. Like the writing, the alien tongue sounded familiar, as if he should understand what was being asked, but it always stayed just beyond reach. He instinctively knew, that the further into his primitive brain stem he should travel – to understand the dead, ancient language, the madder he would be when he finally returned to the land of the waking.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Dreams were no longer the insubstantial creations of a catatonic mind, but just as real as your waking life, in which they could play out for years over a single night.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He sensed danger and dived for cover as a great old one thundered into view, like the dinosaurs of yore, they were huge, shambling amorphous creatures, one could be as different from another as light is to day. This one moved its bulk along a multitude of cilia and looked somewhat like a giant tree stump with a ring of eyes around its crown. It was being served by a group of Shoggoth and, Caleb noted, some few chimp like men, who shuffled on two legs, using their arms to speed their movement to keep up with the undulating Shoggoth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The reason Caleb hid was not because the creature (in the dream he became aware it was called <i>Vulthoom, the Sleeper of Ravermos)</i> might hunt him down to kill him, but simply because he might crush him if he saw him, he might not. <i>The Great Old Ones</i> had reclaimed the Earth, they bore no malice to the remnants of man, much as you would bear no malice to an insect, simply swat them out of existence if you noticed them at all. The Shoggoth, if alone, would attack, but never whilst placating their master. The chimp like creatures had become a relatively new addition to the dream, perhaps they were men who had accepted the madness and become slaves to the Earths new owners.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Mankind had had a conceit, about good and evil, their own sacrosanct inviolability, the rightness of their place in the universe. They had gained dominion over the Earth and had expected to lay claim to the universe in like respect. But in their own way they had emulated the hierarchical structure of their invaders from the very beginning. Perhaps <i>Cthulhu</i>, dreaming in the depths of the starry ocean had infected us, even then.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">At least in your dreams you could eat, it would abate your hunger, and even carry you for a few hours into your waking life, as Caleb strolled up to the two statues he helped himself to the fruits and berries he found on bushes and plants. The dirt track became a stone road in the wilderness, leading straight to his gaolers, and though there was nothing to either side of them he knew that to attempt to walk around them would mean instant death. This time though, something else had changed, there stood before him a man, deep black, with hooven legs. He was completely bald, and smiling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Caleb my boy, I’ve been waiting for you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Who, what, are you?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“You wanted a saviour boy, well here I am. My name is Nyarlathotep, though some call me the Crawling Chaos, and I answer only to Azathoth, the eater of souls. I have always been here.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“You are the deceiver and play men for your own amusement. You called forth the sleeping gods when the stars were right. By what right do you call yourself a saviour?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Nyarlathotep laughed; a fluty sound in the rarefied planets’ atmosphere, “You <i>are</i> coming along nicely Caleb, but still you are mired in your limited perceptions of the dimensions. Who is it that has permitted the human remnants to join in the true dream of the Verse? Who has given you the chance to not be a forgotten mistake by the rest of the Galactic Lords? It is I, your humble servant and friend.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He gave a slight bow, “Any thought is an image of the Truth and Good and Evil are the constructs of an imperfect Mind. Do you still not recognise this place? Do you still not understand what the guardians are asking of you? Should I kill you now and save you the bother of living? Jeera is waiting for you to become a man.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“What is the question they ask of me?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Oh, I could tell you boy, but you would still need to answer them to get through, so the telling becomes pointless. You must understand just a little more to pass through the gate.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Where does the gate take me? Why is it so important that I go through?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The man shape sighed, his image shimmering somewhat, as though about to change, “Oh my dear Caleb, do you understand nothing? The guardians and the gateway are allegory; it’s simply a way of opening your fourth neural circuit, sometimes I don’t know why I bother. You creatures seem to like crawling in the dirt and shit of the Verse, I really should just leave you to it.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“No please, help me understand the question. I shall go mad if I have to endure this for an eternity. I want to… I need to save Jeera. How do I understand the language, it is dead and buried and long forgotten.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“It’s all there in the meat muscle you call a brain, encoded in proteins and flickering atoms, a matrix that has existed for as long as you have. But I take pity on your miserable existence. You know where your oldest memories lie; you just have to open the doors Caleb.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As he faded away, a thousand shapes flitted through the ghost memory, a pharaoh of ancient </span><span style="font-size: small;">Egypt</span><span style="font-size: small;">, a black, furry, snouted creature, a gelatinous mass, a five-mouthed, morbidly obese woman with numerous tentacles, before fading into a dark fog that dissipated in the dusky silence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Caleb marched up to the guardians and their swords clanged down, barring him access, their thin reedy voices spoke once more into his brain, “What is your original name?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And he finally opened the doors into madness…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A billion memories assaulted him, a million entities, a million lives, all part of the whole. The entity that was Caleb was crowded out by all those other lives, their other lives: He was no longer Caleb but a shapeless protoplasmic <i>thing</i> which had just gained sentience, living on a planet long since destroyed in the youth of the cosmos, and it had a name, his name. He spoke it in a sibilant hissing and the guardians’ swords lifted, he was free to walk through, if he could walk, for in his vast life he had slithered, crawled and flown as often as he had had appendages. The memories and feelings were threatening to engulf him, Caleb screaming through all the other versions of himself to retake control of his body, but he could feel himself slipping through the maelstrom – how could the brain retain so much information without exploding?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“You just have to re-catalogue everything before you drown. The mind is size-less, a part of the infinity. Here, let me help.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Nyarlathotep created a library in Caleb’s mind and began stacking books at light speed, and when Caleb was able, he joined in to help, each book was a past life and he, Caleb, had been part of the Verse from the very beginning. As there was no good or evil, no love or hate, there was <i>no</i> life or death, just a changed state of being. They, all of them, Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, Caleb, the Shoggoth, Lloigor, Shterot, the Elder Gods, Jeera were as intrinsic a part of the material <i>and immaterial</i> cosmos as the gods, stars and planets…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Caleb awoke in slow degrees; he felt Jeera playing with his cock and pushed her, not roughly, away. He turned round in his library and picked a book at random and opened it…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Alien life…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“Where is this fantasy?” He shook his head in confused wonder, “They crawl and fly and slither – the dark and quiet things.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Jeera began to sob in the cool darkness, “Oh no Caleb, please no, not you…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He tried to explain, but even the simplest sentence had tones and structures and overtures that had to be conveyed – meat language was so constricting, so one dimensional. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Gently he said, “The darkness is at the end, we… in the light and you - so open.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">She held onto him in jagged denial, he stood in joyful dance, dragging her up onto her feet, giddily pointing upwards in smiles and vocal cues, “The dreams cut deepest because they are the real, not the real we think, but the deepest real. We hurt but the pain is nonsensical. We go. Now.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Jeera looked at him fearfully, “Go where Caleb? We live here now.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He pointed at her belly, “New life,” then pointed upwards in gleeful jubilance, “and light.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Every word, every thought, every silence, caused an emotional rollercoaster resonance deep within him. It was hard to separate meaning and intent from communication. She allowed him to pull her away from all that she had known and they began to leave the tribe she had called family. Mad or not, she would follow him wherever he led simply because she loved him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As they neared the surface his command of language came back somewhat under his control, and he spoke of his dream, and the breakthrough, and of his belief that man was not destined to cower in darkness, or be enslaved by the older race, that humanities soul was as old as the others. They had simply forgotten (or chosen to forget), the vast swathes of time, its’ true nature, it was not past, present, future or linear, but more like an ocean of intersecting ripples, yet she appeared to comprehend little of what he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“The first Gods of <i>WoMan</i> were nebulous thin grey whispers on the breeze, with no form or substance. Long before we had language to describe and substantiate things, our first Gods simply were… neither good nor evil, just vast shadows alive in our primitive meat-minds.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The light burned their eyes as they emerged, stumbling out of their self imposed prison into the harsh brightness of day. Blinking away the dancing spots they retired further back into the cave mouth to await the onset of dusk. Three other people had followed their lead, but were so far unwilling to commit to the great outdoors, hanging back and not speaking to the two of them. As Sol slipped down over the horizon, Caleb and Jeera once more ventured out, looking across a landscape pitted with what looked like meteors and unearthly anomalies. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The meteors were of various shapes and sizes, sat in a small depression within a circle of blasted earth, and even beyond that, where the plants and trees’ grew, they held a stunted, foreign appearance, as though their chromosomes’ had been interfered with. Also, dotted here and there, were howling gateways, created from the colours of space, a vortex of unimaginable intensity that could rip a man to shreds. They sat in the centre of five meteors arranged in a circle around them, and Caleb realised they were pathways, some to close by continents, others to distant galaxies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 5.65pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">When Jeera realised he was heading directly for one of them, she finally began to fight against him, pulling him backward in animal fear, but he cajoled and stroked and pressured her into walking forward. The wind whipped against them, abrasive on their naked skin, but he persisted, almost dragging the unwilling Jeera along with him. They stepped through.</span><br />
<br />
</div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> READ THE FULL STORY IN CC VOL1, AVAILABLE FROM LULU.COM</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<br />Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-711740638604590762010-09-18T17:48:00.007+01:002012-12-30T23:57:24.079+00:00The Stones of Pestilence. part one.<table border="0" cellpadding="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 556px;"><tbody>
<tr align="center"> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 414pt;" width="552"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB8p-VK8Z7D6vHXOqJSVJPNcE64dXafhVNLNmcEQEo3zFJV-1Btvlvq54iSEJl-DXvwt3kMHk3A0rB8ToS1CDWt1a1CzDEIDzo6tpMx2iJ-6HNWzKy-bZJYCyOkJH2ZFLklJqAS0WMYvE/s1600/the+stones+of+pestilence+part+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB8p-VK8Z7D6vHXOqJSVJPNcE64dXafhVNLNmcEQEo3zFJV-1Btvlvq54iSEJl-DXvwt3kMHk3A0rB8ToS1CDWt1a1CzDEIDzo6tpMx2iJ-6HNWzKy-bZJYCyOkJH2ZFLklJqAS0WMYvE/s640/the+stones+of+pestilence+part+1.JPG" width="451" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
The Stones of Pestilence. part one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Written and illustrated by Andy Paciorek.<br />
<br /></div>
<br />
<b><i>Never, believe me,<br />
Appear the Immortals,<br />
Never alone.</i></b><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"></span></i></b></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr align="center"> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; width: 414pt;" width="552"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal">
<i>From ‘The Visit of the Gods’</i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal">
<i> by Samuel Taylor Coleridge</i></div>
</td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A note to anyone, who may in time, hear or read a transcript of this recording. Please believe I am not mad, lest I think I am not. Though in the few weeks that have passed as I have lain in this bed, it is a question that I have often asked of myself. I now write of the strange occurrences that befell me whilst I am still able, though as I momentarily rest and reflect I cannot begin to rationalise any of it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1.5pt; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Due to the unfortunate events that coincided with my visit to </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Great Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">, I have omitted specific place names and have changed the names of prominent people, for I do not believe it is fair, after all their misfortune to put the spotlight upon them and potentially attract attention from curiosity-seekers and ghoulish tourists.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I had taken the red-eye flight from Boston to Manchester, and from there I had travelled first by train and then by coach up through north-western England, passing through some quaint towns and villages, and some not so quaint and thought not into Lakeland proper, I did enjoy some mellow British scenery and recoiled at the sight of a large and incongruous nuclear power-station. But that is indeed what I had hoped for, to take the rough with the smooth – to experience all that corner of </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Britain</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> had to offer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">My reasons for desiring authenticity had as much to do with my career as any personal choice, for by occupation I am a writer of travel books. However the travel books I write are not general guides, but are written with a different perspective. They could perhaps be described as biographies of places or psycho-geographical travelogues and focus both on the history and present life of locations as well as the people whom live and lived there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As a literary major, I like to follow in the footsteps somewhat of past writers, not travel-writers as such but novelists and poets, previous publications of mine include ‘From A Proud Tower: The Baltimore of Poe’ and ‘The Innocents at Home: Mark Twain and the Mississippi.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So to the English Lake District I was now set, travelling light, beyond basic toiletries, change of clothing and a quality lightweight wind & waterproof jacket (which I was informed was a must for this region), my only other luggage was a digital camera, a notebook and pens, and a well read copy of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; for the Lakeland poets were my impetus for coming.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">My books are not simply historical pieces either, for I like to include the words and thoughts and experiences of both myself and of the people I meet upon my voyages. For that reason I never read whilst travelling and certainly never plug music into my ears, instead I look out of windows and tactfully at other people and I eavesdrop conversations. Though in this instance conversation I overheard was not particularly stimulating and was mainly chit chat such as speculation over how Carlisle would fare in the coming football season or bemoaning how there was a hosepipe ban, when a couple of summers since they were paddling through kitchen floodwater. Still, I listened and gazed out of the window at field upon field and in the distance the rolling hills of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Lake District</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I reached the end of my route and dismounted the coach, glancing at my watch: 6.40 in the evening. Checking the timetable affixed to the bus shelter I realised I had just missed a connection and would have to wait for nearly an hour for the next bus heading towards Ambleside. I was weary though and had travelled enough for the day. My feet ached inside the only footwear I had brought, a pair of light walking boots, good enough for fair conditions on hill and moor, but rather too toasty for hours of plane, train and automobile.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I sat on a nearby bench and loosened the laces a little. The driver of the bus I had just travelled upon stood awhile nearby having a smoke before he would return back along the route. I asked him if there were any motels or hotels nearby. With a cigarette between two fingers and rubbing his short greying beard with his thumb, he replied that there wasn’t much choice as we weren’t quite into the tourist trap as yet, but there was a nearby bed and breakfast. He said he couldn’t comment upon either the beds or the breakfast, as he lived nearby he had never had recourse to try either, but that as part of the establishment there was adjoined a nice quiet pub that did decent food.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That sounded ideal to my ears! As a matter of course upon my travels I avoid corporate hotels that are branded so homogeneously as to be anywhere, but also at the same time don’t care to stop anywhere where I might be sharing my bed with lice or fleas. As it was tonight, in my fatigue I would have likely opted for the bench I now sat on or a cowshed were there no other options; so the suggestion sounded like luxury. I nodded my approval and cigarette in hand he waved directions, “Straight up this street to the end, turn left and second on the right, cannot miss it.” I thanked him and proceeded on my way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Despite overheated, slightly aching feet I was pleased to stretch my legs as the afternoon began to cool. It had been a hot day, hotter than I expected, though I knew it to be the British summer, I had not before visited this country and had half expected it, I suppose, to be shrouded in a permanent Victorian pea-soup fog.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I enjoyed my stroll up the old terraces and converted farm-buildings, listening to the bleating of sheep in the fields and upon the gentle hills beyond. It was a nice, quiet little place, not many people around and the few shops to be seen seemed already closed or to be closing; a tea-room, a butcher’s, a general store and post office combined, a small hiking equipment shop and a second-hand bookshop (which I would have had to fight temptation not to enter had it been open, lest my light luggage be transformed into a heavy camel hump laden with foxed-paged old tomes).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Within a short time I reached 'The Mellow Beck', from the outside it looked more than pleasant enough. A large old white painted stone building, with a noticeable adjoined division between the lodgings and public house area preceded to the front by a car-park, which had pleasant beer gardens to either end, one of which contained a small swing and slide for children to play upon and to the rear of the building I could clearly see the edges of a large garden that seemed to be dominated by a splendid array of colourful flowers. Beyond which could be seen an unspoiled vista that extended to the mountains of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Lake District</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I entered a small door to the left of the main pub entrance, which had to my relief a small sign exhibited bearing the legend ‘VACANCIES’. On first impressions, inside, I was pleased to note that it appeared very clean and well-cared for, if perhaps a little too old-world for my own décor tastes. At the end of a small corridor with doors leading off and a wide staircase beyond, was an old desk, behind which sat a woman speaking on the telephone. She was in her early 40’s, wearing a feminine, floral dress and with her mousy brown hair cut into a loose shoulder length bob she was not glamorous but could appropriately be described as attractive. Seeing me enter, she smiled, held up a finger and silently mouthed, “One moment please” as she rolled her eyes to what was one of those telephone calls. As I heard her voice in the background talking.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“8 to 8.30 at the very latest and no fizzy drinks or she’ll be up all night. Don’t let her get the lend of you!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I amused myself by looking at the pictures hanging on the flock wallpaper. Mainly </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Lakeland</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> scenes, either photographs or watercolours; but startling amongst them was a child’s drawing in wax crayon. It clearly depicted a vividly coloured bed of flowers with a stick figure girl stood amongst them. Childishly crude of course but still very clear in intention, which made the ‘sun’ all the more incongruous it was drawn heavily in black crayon, a disk with snake-like rays and in its centre what looked like a bright yellow cyclopean eye. It had a rather menacing effect. It was signed with a barely legible flourish, with only the letter ‘A’ being distinct.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Finishing her phone-call and noticing my preoccupation, the woman called in a voice with a gentle warm lilt.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“I see you’re admiring my daughter Amelia’s masterpiece, she’s barely 5 and already quite the little artist … precious and precocious!” She laughed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“She’s staying over at my mother’s tonight and has already got her tearing her hair out” she smiled motioning to the telephone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“I’m not sure what the big one-eyed spider represents though,” she said with a mirthful tone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I was momentarily bewildered until I realised she was talking again about the picture.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Hmm.. More like an octopus I thought” I replied smiling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">She squinted as if scrutinising the artwork, “Oh, well that makes a lot more sense now” she joked and then switched into a natural and pleasant business mode.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Anyway, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, how can I help?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Within too long, I had booked a room and had been informed of all the facilities and regulations, breakfast times, checking out time and so forth and then proceeded up the staircase to my room. It was an agreeable enough room situated in the attic area to the rear of the building. Its most remarkable feature was the view from the window. The mounts on the horizon were gently dimmed by a summer haze, which contrasted remarkably with the kaleidoscopic burst of colour from the flower garden below. I could not help but be stirred by the beautiful riot of hue and fragrance that rose from the blooms below to pervade my open window and fill the room with a gentle heady scent. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I took off my boots and lay fully clothed upon the bed, which felt cool and comfortable, letting my feet breathe and relaxing though not sleeping. A short while later I arose, freshened up in the bathroom and decided to investigate the pub next door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I was relieved to find the place neither empty nor extremely busy and loud. A few couples were scattered around tables, eating meals, a pair of young men were enjoying a game of darts whilst another were playing pool, some girls were sat chatting in a corner and an old man propped up the bar nursing a glass of beer. A short-haired man in his early 40’s wearing a pale blue open necked shirt smiled and called over from behind the bar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Good evening, are you wanting to order a meal?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Hmm.. Perhaps, I’m not sure if I feel hungry yet.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Ok, no worries, we serve hot meals until 8.30, after that you can order sandwiches from the bar if there’s any left or if not, plenty of crisps, salty nuts and scratchings” he beamed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“If you care to, please take a seat at a table and have a look at the menu whilst you decide and I’ll be over in a moment”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A bit bewildered by the sound of scratching crisp salty nuts, I took a seat and perused the menu. There were indeed some sumptuous sounding dishes listed, but although I’d only eaten a paltry airline meal and a snack, I still didn’t feel that hungry. The man came over and asked if I’d care to order, I replied that I would leave it till later and asked what he recommended.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Cannot go wrong with the lamb and mixed organic vegetables” he said, “All fresh, local produce. The homemade meat and ale pie is also very popular. As I say we serve until 8.30. Now, would you like to order a drink?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> “Are there any local brews available?” I enquired.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Certainly, amongst our real ale selection there is the Cumbrian brewed ‘Mountain Mist’ and ‘Stone Ale’, which is a very popular tipple.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“A pint of Stone Ale it is then, please”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As he busied himself with my drink, the barman glanced over and smiled. “Hope you don’t mind me asking, but I noticed your accent … American or Canadian?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> “American, I’m originally from </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Minnesota</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> but have lived most of my life in </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Massachusetts</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“I’d love to go to the States. We were thinking of going to </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Florida</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">, my daughter wants to meet Mickey Mouse, but it’s a long flight for a little hyperactive one so we may go to that one in </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">France</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> instead. So are you over here on business or pleasure, if you don’t mind me asking?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Sure, A little of both I guess, I only flew in this morning. I’m a writer, and I intend on following in the footsteps of the Lakeland Poets, so to speak.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Ah yes, we get a few people come in here either to or from visiting Wordsworth’s House in Ambleside. Got to say though, I don’t much care for his work myself. Some of what I’ve read, which isn’t that much admittedly was alright, but I don’t see the fuss over Daffodils, such a sickly colour. Just my opinion, like” he checked himself in case he’d caused offence. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“It’s not one of my favourites” I admitted, “I’m more interested in the darker deeper moments of the Romantic movement. I’d be curious to get inside Coleridge’s head.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> “Aye, Coleridge, well he’s not local born and bred, but he spent enough time wandering the hills yonder” He continued with a jovial conspirational whisper “If you want dark tales, you’d be best off talking to old Joe there at the bar, he said with a nod and a wink towards the solitary pensioner sat at the bar “Hearsay Coleridge himself ran into him and based his Ancient Mariner on the gruff old buzzard.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Without turning to look at us the old man growled “I’m not that sodding old and you’ll ne’er catch me in a bloody boat!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Taken aback by being caught out, the barman muttered, “Bloody hell, enough muck in those lugs to grow a load of spuds and still the old goat could hear a penny drop on a shag pile at fifty paces!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Aye, and I heard that an’ all,” retorted the old man, his back still to us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The barman shook his head in bemusement turning back to me, “Sorry, here’s me whittering on and you’ll be parched, pint of the Stone Ale wasn’t it?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Please, I’ll take it at the bar” I said motioning towards old Joe. The barman shook his head with a wry smile and headed towards the pumps. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I moved to a stool next to Joe and asked if it were ok that I sat there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Fine by me, lasts I heard, s’ a free country” he replied grumpily.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">He was a local character alright, I could tell and it was plain to see he was a regular customer of this pub; I wouldn’t be surprised if his shape were worn onto the stool upon which he sat. I subtly surveyed his looks and manner. His hair and beard were a mass of white curls, his skin rough, somewhat reddened and etched with lines that wrote of a lifetime of experience. Save for his clothes, an old suit faded to the same grey-green of the dry-stone walls familiar to the area and a shirt, probably once white, but now taking on the hue of a mushroom past its best, Joe had the vague appearance of a gin-blossomed Father Christmas.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Does tha want a picture?” he growled with no real sense of menace. Before I could apologise for staring, he lilted his head in my direction and fixed me with a scrutinising gaze. His stone-grey eyes infused with lines of blue were not unkindly, but I discerned that they revealed both a sharp dry sense of humour and a no-nonsense disposition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“American, hmm?” I nodded. He nodded, revealing neither approval nor disapproval. “Are you stopping here then?” he asked, with a vague wave of the hand indicating the establishment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Yes, for tonight at least” I answered.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Hmm” Joe nodded “Have they got yeh in the haunted room then?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“There’s a haunted room? Do you know which one?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“All of ‘em or none of ‘em, probably according to the punter. Depends on the clientele whether ghosts are good for business or not.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Not sure whether he was having a joke at my expense, I asked “Haunted by whom or what?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Well, there’s some like to say, there’s a melancholy white maiden walks upstairs. Having learned on her earthly wedding day, that her betrothed had been less than faithful with the milking maids, she threw herself from the upper window to her doom.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">He took a drink. “Has wandered in her wedding dress ever since.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Do you believe that?” I questioned.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Do I bollocks,” he said, “A fall from up there I’d doubt would do more than sprain an ankle. Nah, too neat too tidy .. too tourist-friendly. Half the pubs and all the castles in this country are haunted by cheated-upon women, so it seems.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“So you don’t believe this place is haunted then?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“I didn’t say that. Besides my belief or anyone’s belief don’t make something so or not. Belief proves nowt neither way.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Pausing for tastes of beer, he looked like he was about to say more, when the barkeeper put down my pint in front of me. I clumsily accustomed myself to counting out the unfamiliar sterling coins and paid for my drink.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">When the barman had moved on to serve a plump lady in a dress a size too small, old Joe spoke again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Long, long time since, this was no inn. It were just a big, old stone barn. So happens a plague hit the town, pretty much wiped out the whole population which was far less populated then than even it is now. It came and past, fast and furiously; those that were still living, couldn’t dig the burial pits fast enough. So, instead they heaped up the pestilent bodies in the barn and set them alight– right here where we sit and drink and those folks there are enjoying their roast lamb.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">He thumbed towards the plump lady and her equally rotund husband.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“The ghosts of the diseased are who haunts this place if anyone does. A charnel-house full of rotting bodies ain’t quite so romantic as a wistful white waif now is it?” As he chuckled to himself, I had to concur that it wouldn’t probably be the best marketing strategy for a Bed and Breakfast. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“So, the disease. What was it, Bubonic Plague .. the Black Death?” I asked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> “More like the Yellow Death” he chortled “Whatever it were, it were peculiar to this place. It didn’t affect anywhere else, not fore nor aft. There wasn’t an epidemic of any sort affecting elsewhere at that time. The only learned man in the town at that time was the Parson, and he was one of the first to succumb, so there was nobody to put it down in the history books and those that survived weren’t keen for it to be. They still needed to make a living selling their wool and milk and vegetables to market in the other towns and knowledge of a foul disease wouldn’t really do their trade much good. So they kept quiet and it’s just passed down as a local legend. Tales of a disease that suddenly came and suddenly went, causing those that got it to basically rot alive in a river of stinking pus. I noticed that those who’ve encountered them ghosts have never seen them, they smelt ‘em .. a raw, filthy stench, worse than the devil’s own farts!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Despite Joe’s pleasure for the grimmer details, the story intrigued me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“So it’s not known for sure that this ever happened?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“As I say, nowt was written down, but nose about the graveyard and the church records and it can be seen that something did happen to suddenly lessen the population of this town in a few weeks in 1786.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">He looked at me and continued “There are those of course, that have smelt the ghosts but blame the sewers or muck-spreading on t’ farmers’ fields, but have you noticed all them sweet-smelling flowers round the back?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I admitted I had. Finishing the last dreg of his pint and mournfully looking at the bottom of his empty glass, Joe said, “Aye. Bet you won’t find a single yellow bloom amongst them. Not there, nor in any hanging basket nor garden round the town. Even the farmers won’t grow Oil-seed Rape round here, though it’d turn a tidy profit. There is an inherent aversion to yellow, round here, cannot be denied.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I mused this over and noticed Joe looking expectantly at me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“So what was this ‘Yellow Death’? Something toxic in the water or food supply perhaps? What do you think caused it?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Now I do have thoughts on that, but hell if this tale-telling ain’t but thirsty work” Joe said, tapping his empty glass.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Sorry, of course, what will you have?” I asked gesturing for the bar man’s attention, whom I suspected was probably the landlord judging by the number of photographs of him hung behind the bar alongside the woman tending the desk next door and a little girl, whom I presumed to be his wife and daughter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> I had not yet even tasted my own beer, so engrossed had I been in the old man’s yarn. I took a sip now as the barkeep wandered over. The Stone Ale had a slightly flinty tang, not unpleasant but acquiring a taste which surely would be gained with each mouthful. Also I sensed that it probably had a greater kick than it first suggested. Another pint of it was poured for Joe.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“I hope you are not scaring the customers with horror stories, Joe? Or fleecing them for drinks?” the barman asked, eyeing the old man. Joe shrugged.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“It’s fine,” I said, “my pleasure. I’m not sure what to make of the story though, good material all the same.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That sparked Joe. “Aye, I forgot you’s a writer. Ere’ Mike. Better give us a whiskey chaser too, on him, if this fella’s gonna write up my words and make a fortune on them!” Mike looked at me, I nodded and handed him more money. This time it was Mike who shrugged as he turned to fix Joe a shot from the optics.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> READ THE FULL STORY IN CC VOL2, AVAILABLE FROM LULU.COM</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFhngAVsYOfWqMj1WTCZ7btSWds0xy6BdX2YDciSnvAjKuQ-nljzGbaT9b88n77J4a8_WlaaLd-xyF5HGSPUTvCHuJm6rMD-cgspG4-NFVZybFDkjZiMjX26nuKMHvtGBIhRbWhuxGQI/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFhngAVsYOfWqMj1WTCZ7btSWds0xy6BdX2YDciSnvAjKuQ-nljzGbaT9b88n77J4a8_WlaaLd-xyF5HGSPUTvCHuJm6rMD-cgspG4-NFVZybFDkjZiMjX26nuKMHvtGBIhRbWhuxGQI/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+2+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-52477361107840115362010-08-08T15:02:00.008+01:002013-01-06T17:29:04.006+00:00Ashness Bloody Bridge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii54C6ADknpl4DXfzO0bqSCodEUclANZo7FOnCkqjNiAbp6zg04pNHq6OPDumwq2nq5ua4HcJJNT90Kk8oMibqnxdWaw-uUdApyJOJpCBS8xl_4P09KV6KdfWn6IoDSUL5eZVTQczA2kU/s1600/ashness+bloody+bridge.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii54C6ADknpl4DXfzO0bqSCodEUclANZo7FOnCkqjNiAbp6zg04pNHq6OPDumwq2nq5ua4HcJJNT90Kk8oMibqnxdWaw-uUdApyJOJpCBS8xl_4P09KV6KdfWn6IoDSUL5eZVTQczA2kU/s640/ashness+bloody+bridge.JPG" width="448" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Story by Andrew McGuigan</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Illustration by Andy Paciorek</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A pretentious photographer up from London seeks to capture a rare Lakeland sunset, whilst becoming increasingly irritated by milling tourists, a mocking farmer and problems with the photograph which may be way beyond his control... </i></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
SAMPLE STORY SECTIONS </div>
<br />
The other so-called photographers had packed up gradually and left long prior to the approaching sunset. <br />
Most had been tourists with easy shoot digitals, or the occasional low spec digital SLR bought by those who think themselves a real artist, but were unable to commit the funds it took to get real results. They would return home and proudly display biscuit tin clichéd landscapes, wowing over the differences one patronising automatic setting made over another.<br />
These philistines thought film was a four letter word.<br />
To Adrian the use of film and producing photographs in the darkroom was real photography. The term was "light writing", an image etched into film, revealed only after careful chemical developing. As he set up he ignored the pointing and the laughter, but did feel a touch of annoyance when he overheard one man estimating the mega-pixel capacity of the Hasselblad as ‘one pixel.’<br />
As sundown approached Adrian was finally alone with space and peace to set up the shots he wanted.<br />
He had the bridge, the Skiddaw hills and an almost florescent orange sky all framed. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
The farmer leaned down from his seat grinning mockingly.<br />
“Them ones? Nay, they w’ eaten this eftanoon. Live feed.”<br />
“What on earth do you feed whole piglets to?”<br />
“Its fa an environmental restoration project, and I gets paid fa supplying livestock.”<br />
Dick turned off the engine again, favouring Adrian with a proud smile.<br />
“We are involved in t’ scientific re-introduction o’ creatures lang since disappeared fraa t’ fells, aal financed by gen’rous private benefactors.”<br />
“Ah, yes I read about some of that happening in Wales. Re populating rivers with beavers, wild cats and wolves in the forests, that sort of thing?”<br />
The farmers eyes narrowed and twinkled with strange amusement.<br />
“Aye. Aye, summit like that.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The new batch developed at least confirmed one small mercy. There was nothing wrong with his beloved Hasselblad. The problem was within the source.<br />
<br />
More than white blobs now, alterations in exposure and development techniques had revealed detail this time. Each white blob looked more like a flower head, albeit one that might have been designed by Pythagoras. Triangular petals, surrounding a diamond angled central bud or head. Thin ribbon like tendrils stretched back from each pale bloom into the impenetrable darkness of the under bridge. There was a plant like quality to the images, but multiple exposures had shown movement between shots. <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/>
<w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/>
<w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/>
<w:Word11KerningPairs/>
<w:CachedColBalance/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
</style>
<![endif]-->He would have to check deeper
under the bridge and secure or remove any of this reflective debris. Another
night spent at Ashness bloody Bridge, freezing his <span style="color: black;">bollocks</span>
off.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">READ THE FULL STORY IN CUMBRIAN CTHULHU VOL1</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">AVAILABLE FROM LULU.COM</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CumbrianCthulhu"><span style="font-family: Arial;">BUY NOW!</span></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s1600/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XNDhLwZ5wiGQQfL6A5ckCLTe4KVk4W3ZpmW2HIICoUCwYK2SBi76S1LNdKu8h1o0f4OgZRqfenAg4rBNQ0k_i4hWoqhdDTH35c7d5JYKSIIv32wHXV80tkrYR6uxHE3b89Yse05byUU/s400/CUMBRIAN+CTHULHU+FINAL.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-31599011423433511162010-03-24T17:26:00.006+00:002010-07-09T21:42:40.709+01:00The Chamber in the Hillside. Part Three<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSveOVctJif2DvJ0yI7rAJPfyj9cWt9u_qS8y61D-_8r_y-Hi1pdOHqP2GybU0y21uqFXj9RFgt6RCXd01vtHzGjikzFhi9tYCZSm5jKGPEH_mvF0gE_Ao6mtB-Nft0iDxKaPi6o4tYrQ/s1600/the+chamber+in+the+hillside.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSveOVctJif2DvJ0yI7rAJPfyj9cWt9u_qS8y61D-_8r_y-Hi1pdOHqP2GybU0y21uqFXj9RFgt6RCXd01vtHzGjikzFhi9tYCZSm5jKGPEH_mvF0gE_Ao6mtB-Nft0iDxKaPi6o4tYrQ/s640/the+chamber+in+the+hillside.JPG" width="452" /></a></div><meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></meta><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Generator"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Originator"></meta><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CFoo%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-language:EN-GB;}
@page Section1
{size:595.3pt 841.9pt;
margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt;
mso-header-margin:35.4pt;
mso-footer-margin:35.4pt;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">To the recipient of my two previous correspondences.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
I thank you for your continued patience and open mindedness, the latter being a quality which may keep you sane in the coming days.<br />
The final part of my story continues where it ended, with two archaeologists speeding back to a Roman dig site, ignorant of the trials before them. <br />
<br />
I had never fired a gun before, but with Johan’s shouted instructions I became quickly familiar with loading and firing procedures. Now that we were a distance from the horror of the Shoggoth, our minds were turning over rapidly with the revelations and implications of the night. We talked fast, barely pausing for breath as we pieced together our hypothesis of the terrible history deep beneath this town.<br />
<br />
Under Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Romans had established a strong line of defence along the Solway and they kept their people safe from attacks from all sides. They defended conquered territory from indigenous warriors, invaders from the north, and from a different type of foe altogether. These weird beings had been forced back to the sea by the might of the Cumbrian Legions. Butchered and piled into a stone tomb, whether dead or not. It was clear to us now that the Romans had been some of histories earliest conspirators. Documented history held no accounts of these sunken enemies. These creatures of the deep had been kept from the greater awareness of Rome. Did these secrets die with the empire? <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
In the ages since the cavern battle the Roman Empire had fallen in England, replaced by conquerors from Europe. Dynasties of Kings and Queens warred above through ages of iron and steel and into times of technology.<br />
Superstition gave way to science. Awareness of cultures before man became mere fairytale and then forgotten.<br />
And during these centuries, from under the sea, the Deep Ones slowly crept back into hidden temples and renewed secret pacts with those humans weak to the promise of power. <br />
<br />
These new generations would have no way of knowing where the Romans buried their secrets. It took a wait of nearly two thousand years and then excavations of all fort sites along the coast before secret Roman writings were unearthed. There were many eager ears waiting to overhear the findings discussed aloud by modern man in our naïve ignorance.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
It was so clear to us now.<br />
We had thought the bizarre Roman carvings were incomprehensible prayers or superstitious blessings, perhaps last rites for the corpse filled chamber that Johan fell into. The circle of words and pictograms on the chamber floor were not concerning the initial chamber, but rather what lay below it.<br />
It was a warning, identifying the contents of a second chamber.<br />
A many pointed star with spiralling centre?<br />
Whatever it was, these Deep Ones and their hybrid children had supposedly been searching for generations.<br />
That night they were going to attempt retrieval.<br />
<br />
Johan ran the truck straight up the grass hillside and braked hard to a stop at the dig hole. As he leapt out, Johan exclaimed loudly in his native tongue, pointing down the hill and out beyond the surf. There were several grey shapes emerging from the water, growing larger as they moved to the shore. When the water depth became shallow, the heads and torsos of the approaching Deep Ones became visible.<br />
<br />
The Finn gripped a long handled maul-axe in one hand and a genuine centurion shield across his other arm, his personal souvenir from the timeless cavern temple. He was relying on athletic prowess and blunt force to carry him through any oncoming battle. <br />
<br />
From over the old salt-pan fields below the coast road they came, weaving through mist shrouded, wintered caravans awaiting the summer sun. There were perhaps ten of them moving purposefully and noiselessly toward the hillside excavation.<br />
They possessed an uncanny gait, more of a loping hop than a human step. Although the night was dark, the large moon gave us clear sight of our enemy. At their sides webbed hands carried small round shields and curving short-swords. <br />
<br />
Their appearance was humanoid but also perversely amphibian. Those narrow elongated heads now so familiar when seen in a living context. Grey-green skin and white bellied, their large unblinking eyes staring as they closed in further. We could now smell that rotting fish stench, yet still they made no sound. <br />
When they closed to a distance of less than ten yards they slowed to almost a stop, regarding me with a singular unreadable expression.<br />
What if they had not come for blood? Would they parley with modern man?<br />
Should I attempt communication with the few words I had understood?<br />
<br />
Then all at once they leapt, and were upon me.<br />
Their barked croaking war cries were drowned out as my revolver fired again and again. Four of the creatures fell before the hammer clicked repeatedly on empty. I dropped the gun, unable to consider reloading in the face of such horror. Johan yelled as he stepped toward the flank of the group from the truck shadow, crushing a horrible skull and shattering a scaly arm.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Two Deep Ones engaged me from the front and I vainly dodged back and forth, trying to fend them off with desperate swipes of a scaffolding bar. Hearing Johan shouting in Finnish as he smashed his axe against weird armour spurred my opponents on to finish me quickly. They split apart and as I swung to catch the jaw of one, the other sent me limp to the ground with a wicked backhand shield blow to my temple.<br />
As I faded out of consciousness I could hear more of that horrible croaking as the clash of weapons grew more intense, and I heard my name cried out in desperation by a single human voice.<br />
<br />
It may have been an hour or only a few seconds later when I regained my senses in the shadow of the truck. My head was reeling with concussion and throbbing pain, but I was still alive. Steadying myself as I rose, I gritted my teeth and mounted the wheel arch, crawling into the back of the covered truck bed to watch the scene unfolding below.<br />
<br />
Brave, strong Johan was being dragged screaming backwards down to the beach and the crashing surf. His face and torso were bleeding from many wounds and his wild, hysterical struggling did nothing to loosen the grip of his four captors. They dove with the grace of those born to water and pulled him under the waves, his screams cut to horrible gurgling. They did not re-surface. It shames me to hope that he died immediately, but I fear that he may not have.<br />
<br />
Having taken me for dead, the remaining raiders swarmed down the rope ladder onto the floor of chamber one. Uttering horrible calls of exultation they surrounded the circular writings and kneeled inwards, their strange legs bending weirdly. From out of their number shuffled a cowled leader. His long robes were decorated with runes and symbols, the same I had seen covering Tom in that awful cavern beneath Netherhall. He swept a long thin arm over the Roman floor carvings and began to chant hideously, a guttural unnatural tongue that filled me with repulsion just to hear it. As the priest continued the air around the dig grew strange. I could see the floor of the first chamber beginning to alter. They meant to open the second chamber now.<br />
<br />
I must confess at this juncture to being unsure what motivated my actions. While it is true that I had witnessed the impossible horror of the cavern temple, I still did not believe there could be anything other than dead things in this assumed second chamber. My mind was reeling after seeing so much murder. All I remember was that I was not about to let these creatures desecrate our dig. Mankind had resisted before and would again. When the Romans had originally sealed the chamber there were some of these beasts still alive inside. There would be none alive when I had finished.<br />
<br />
From the back of the truck I hauled out the two large petrol canisters used to fuel our generator and the truck. I opened both and stuffed one of the nozzles with long streamers of ancient rags.<br />
With a heft and a grunt I hurled the first canister down into the chamber. I could hear the strange syllables of their language, raised in surprise as they scurried towards the rope ladder. Too late. The second canister with its burning wick landed amongst them and the widening fuel spill. Suddenly amidst the alien screaming, the entire chamber became a furnace.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
The burning petrol created a wall of fire that roared even higher than the lip of the first chamber. The invaders were dead. Their priest was dead. As I rolled onto my back in the truck bed I could hear the crack of the old roman stones as they were intensely heated by the wind fed blaze.<br />
The crack of stone.<br />
As I came to my feet wide eyed I heard the deafening crash of chamber one’s floor collapsing, and before I could react the monstrosity burst upwards from its broken cell, landing thrashing and writhing on the far side of the dig. As my eyes beheld the nature of the creature it was all I could do to bite down on my own hand and distract myself with pain, in an attempt to fend off total insanity. The thing was roughly nine feet in diameter, a nauseating sphere of lashing black tentacles with a terrible swirling alien eye that seemed to scan the moors. I could see ancient scars long since healed, evidence that its captors had managed to subdue it long enough for imprisonment. I was sure I was about to be met by its stare when the creatures attention was drawn elsewhere.<br />
<br />
The appearance of the Starbeast brought fearful moans floating on the wind from Maryport town. Hundreds of residents, awoken by the gunfire and explosions had looked to the fort site on the hill and witnessed the emergence. I slid to the dune base and limped towards the town, given hope in the presence of numbers that we might band together against this otherworldly foe. That is when I became aware that the terrified cries from Maryport had died on the wind, drowned out by a new noise. There were sounds of joyous cheering and the exalted shouting of an alien name, in an alien tongue. I realised with horror that I was not the only one in Maryport discovering ancient, local secrets that night.<br />
<br />
I scrambled up towards the brow of an adjacent field, away from the sea, away from the town, away from that creature. The bushes and hedges cut my skin and tore my clothes as I pushed through desperately, mud covered on all fours like some mad animal. The light emanating from the Starbeast was fading behind me and as I collapsed to gasp for air the archaeologist within me defeated my better judgement. God help me, I turned to witness the spectacle below. <br />
The Starbeast moved slowly along the open coast road toward the town. Screams of terror and worship partially masked by the crashing surf or carried away by the sea wind now came to me louder at intervals, as the residents of the port town witnessed their oncoming fate crawl ever closer on an undulating base of writhing, snapping tentacles.<br />
<br />
As I attempted to discern the shifting shape of this newly released prisoner of centuries and centurions long gone, my eyes kept being pulled to the chaotic vortex of light and colour emanating from the creature’s core. Such infinite new colours and described shapes, I could not look away. It was as though I was being shown a new palette of light and sound, whilst all the known shades of the human world faded into a drab irrelevance. My subconscious willed me to go to down to the road, to touch and embrace those colours, all fear fading against an uprising decadent longing in my soul.<br />
<br />
It may have been only a few minutes later, I cannot be sure, but I found myself standing on the coast road looking towards a now eerily silent town. The eldritch being was temporarily out of sight, blocked as the road curved behind high dunes. Its hypnotic influence had been disturbed allowing me to regain my senses and blink some moisture back into sore eyes. The creature was moving away from me, and was now drawing closer to the poor souls from Maryport harbour. There was now no sound coming from the town, I could hear only the hissing of the tide to my right, and the fading horrid flapping of the undulating tentacles up ahead.<br />
<br />
I crouched behind a grassy dune and forced my focus past the stalking horror. People were emerging now from the streets of Maryport, walking slowly and numbly toward the beach road and their fate. Both citizens and newly revealed fanatics had succumbed to the influence. It was more than I could bear to watch the outcome. I headed back up into the fields.<br />
<br />
I skirted stealthily around the village of Croscanonby, torn between silent self preservation and raising the alarm for innocents. There I saw a green rowing-boat fashioned into a seating shelter. Here I paused. Were the residents here simply people of the sea with innocent families? Or were they actually aligned to those from under the waves? I moved past without providing warning. Whatever their fate as victims or conspirators, I abandoned them to it. I pray I made the right decision.<br />
<br />
Travelling across country until daybreak brought me terrified and exhausted to the town of Aspatria, and onto the first train to take me far from the Cumbrian coast into the comfort of a landlocked city.<br />
<br />
My guilt and mourning at the loss of my team and of the strange people I had killed, coupled with witnessing an aberration of nature and history, nearly sent me over the edge. Nearly, I state, not altogether. For it is not madness to seek answers to queer questions, even when all else may think the subject deranged.<br />
<br />
I began to search for the marks of other-worlds wherever I travelled.<br />
<br />
By delving into societies hidden from everyday man I made discoveries in obscure libraries and private collections. I heard tales from other countries of beasts found elsewhere and of cultures that worshipped them. I saw drawings and descriptions of things no sane human should view in a book called the ‘Necronomicon.’ It spoke of Gods and races beyond our history, beyond our stars and beyond our reality.<br />
There came a time when my dreams made more sense than my waking hours and for a while I lost my focus altogether. I may have killed. The mind, dear reader, can only hold so much terrible knowledge. Some sanity will inevitably spill out when it is overfilled.<br />
<br />
It was only the reports from Cumbria that first made me doubt my sanity, or rather the lack of reports. There was no outcry of demon monster sightings, no investigation into murdered academics and the dig site was recovered as if never touched.<br />
<br />
A decade ago I drove to and quickly through the Maryport streets in a rented car. I observed all I could without stopping or leaving the relative safety of my vehicle, but all I saw was the appearance of a thriving coastal town, visiting tourists enjoying the sun drenched market streets and the salt spray of the harbour. Much had changed in the town’s geography; ‘The Laden Net’ and all of King Street were no more. I did not dare venture near the grounds of Netherhall, or the tower’s hidden tunnels, but I was informed that the beautiful house had been abandoned and then eventually burned down in 1979.<br />
<br />
Sea erosion had claimed the salt-pan fields below the dig site where the Deep Ones had stalked toward Johan and I.<br />
Interestingly enough, since that terrible night I have developed a powerful aversion to the sea. Witnessing this devouring of land by the relentless kingdom of the sea did nothing to help my Thalassophobia.<br />
<br />
What powers had the entombed creature used on those townsfolk that night? Where were the cultists who proudly stepped out of the shadow to revere the released demon? Had they died out or was the town now deeply rooted in the ancient worship of things thought by most to be myth?<br />
Though my sweated hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, and my eyes constantly darted about seeking unseen enemies, I actually feared little for my recognition. In truth my appearance has degenerated somewhat since my innocent and naïve first visit forty years previously, when I had arrived as someone still with some faith in man’s farcical version of science and history.<br />
Should I return and lurk in the town to help others as the deluded old priest had helped us that night? No, I had not the courage.<br />
<br />
An image returns to me occasionally. It may or may not simply be delusional hysteria, but it nags at me as important. I can remember looking back down into the empty fort chambers as I scrambled up toward higher fields. I swear I can envision my view into the cylindrical first chamber, empty of the thousands of warriors that fell to the blades of Rome. I could see the markings on the chamber floor, and down into the second chamber, free of its hellish prisoner.<br />
And there on the floor of that chamber, illuminated by fallen pockets of burning fuel, I can picture more hideously carved Roman inscriptions.<br />
Carvings denoting a third chamber below the second? Containing what? Or had this image merely bonded to me from one of my regular nightmares since?<br />
<br />
All this I was prepared to write off. Memories that seemed more plausible and explainable as psychosis. My brain clouding the recollection of that surreal night at the Maryport dig, in an effort to rescue my mind.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
That was until a month ago, and the revelations of the new archaeological find upon Mt Vesuvius, next to the destroyed old peak Monte Somma, high above Pompeii and Herculaneum.<br />
Heralded as the one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries in history, the site has revealed a large arrangement of Roman forts preserved beautifully beneath the ash. A circle of high walled forts, surrounding a strongly fortified inner bailey which sits tight against the side of the granite pinnacle ‘Gran Cona.’<br />
At the base of the hillside stands an enormous vault door.<br />
With the structure unearthed fully intact, historians believe this to be the only surviving example of an Egyptian influenced Roman treasure vault, tunnelled into the granite hill. The remains discovered indicate that the units stationed here were made up of only high ranking veteran soldiers, with no evidence of family quarters.<br />
<br />
Eager to enter the colossal vault door, none of these experts have looked past their greed and considered that the whole area may have been created not to keep people from entering, but rather to prevent things from leaving.<br />
I have identified a mistake made in the translation of certain identifying scrolls and tablets uncovered, and on the great door itself.<br />
Rash historians believe they have read a Latin word variant for money and wealth, although bastardised and regionalised so it appears slightly different.<br />
<br />
They are wrong.<br />
<br />
The Latin word for wealth has never been seen before altered for regionalisation; this is merely a linguist’s assumption to explain the unknown. <br />
‘Reliquum’ means protected wealth, also used for treasure and ‘what remains.’<br />
That is not the word they have read. <br />
The word on the door is ‘R’lyeh’ Not a Roman word, but rather from a tongue far, far more ancient.<br />
The inscription on the vault door in fact states: ‘Entrance to R’lyeh’<br />
The under city of Cthulhu.<br />
<br />
The entranceway fortified and protected by Rome’s best, then buried and hidden for nearly two thousand years by merciful God or Mother Nature herself, will be breached next month. AD79! The Romans battled the Deep Ones around their Empirical coasts! AD79! Vesuvius destroyed the keepers of the door! The stars are right! The time is now!<br />
R’lyeh has risen as was written, man has unearthed his own doom!<br />
Under the smug and arrogant cloak of ‘scientific discovery’ the modern worlds duly appointed grave robbers will find a treasure certainly, but not the one they will be expecting.<br />
<br />
The media of the world will have eyes and ears pointed towards the news of the amazing discoveries. As the first of humanities desecrators reach the subterranean corridors of most sacred R’lyeh, mankind shall see how childlike its perceived grasp on the earth really was.<br />
Heed my warning friend, for it is not too late for you.<br />
<br />
Many will refuse to accept the broadcast images sent to homes thousands of miles from the Vesuvius dig. They will believe the final recorded moments of the insane, terrorized dig team to be naught but an optical illusion, a special effect or widespread warped practical joke. Communications with the island will cease.<br />
Governments will be unable to stop either the outpouring of information to horrified citizens witnessing the blessed children of Great Cthulhu re-taking the coasts of the globe!<br />
<br />
Madness will likely take the planet and all shall fall who are not ready for the awakening.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Mark well my words, learned reader, when HE rises from his eternal slumber and sends mountainous tidal waves crashing through cities, there will be a new order of things and clever people such as ourselves can lead the masses in proclaiming subservience.<br />
<br />
Punish the unbelievers and raise new churches! Back to the old ways of worship. While others suffer eternal torment, we who proclaim his greatness as hafh'drn summoners will be given the mercy of a relatively swift death. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hail Lord Cthulhu!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ya na kadishtu nilgh'ri!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Beneath his terrible wings the sky will darken and the sacrifices will be heard! Shtunggli grah'nn fhhui Y'ha-nthlei vra Dagon chtenff!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ya hai kadishtu ep r'luh-eeh Nyogtha eeh, <br />
s'uhn-ngh athg li'hee orr'e syha'h!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-45989103620615635282010-01-23T12:10:00.006+00:002010-07-09T21:40:53.186+01:00The Chamber in the Hillside, Part Two.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxe0zapcgthTsSeuj_5xVyWg4wC6G17xDcAcZhk1YU_aC0ZAT9wb9syxNRyEVfqyeUwogcIYPNHmDZGS_oq0lcuCxc9hFNrGSsk36ByTfBbkPXNkl9FbA7IH1VugIzGigwDGfIMv4_4xA/s1600/the+chamber+in+the+hillside.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxe0zapcgthTsSeuj_5xVyWg4wC6G17xDcAcZhk1YU_aC0ZAT9wb9syxNRyEVfqyeUwogcIYPNHmDZGS_oq0lcuCxc9hFNrGSsk36ByTfBbkPXNkl9FbA7IH1VugIzGigwDGfIMv4_4xA/s640/the+chamber+in+the+hillside.JPG" width="452" /></a></div><br />
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></meta><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Generator"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Originator"></meta><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CFoo%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><o:smarttagtype name="PlaceType" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="PlaceName" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="country-region" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="time" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="City" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="place" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Oldstyle HPLHS";
panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:modern;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Freestyle Script";
panose-1:3 8 4 2 3 2 5 11 4 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:script;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoFooter, li.MsoFooter, div.MsoFooter
{margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
tab-stops:center 207.65pt right 415.3pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p
{mso-margin-top-alt:auto;
margin-right:0cm;
mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
margin-left:0cm;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:595.3pt 841.9pt;
margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt;
mso-header-margin:35.4pt;
mso-footer-margin:35.4pt;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">To whom it may concern.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Thank you for your patience whilst waiting on my story’s continuation. My life is now a chase for answers no man would want to hear, and I seldom have chance to arrange my thoughts around what I can now laughably consider comparatively saner times. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">I was describing the night in 1954, shortly before </span><st1:time hour="0" minute="0"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">midnight</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"> in the cold town of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Maryport</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Johan Erkko and I had been hidden from the pursuit of an unknown group.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">We had been rescued by a man named Father Roberts, a Priest of Maryport whose role had become that of a drunken recluse since his dockside parish had long since lost interest in his sermons.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">We were informed that our American archaeological colleague had not left </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Cumbria</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"> with the expedition’s chance for fame and glory, but had in fact been taken somewhere by force. We were led swiftly to the grounds of Netherhall, the stately home of the original founders of Maryport.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">The manor house was situated less than a mile inland with large, tree filled grounds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">It held a collection of Roman artefacts rescued hundreds of years ago from the grasslands around the fort sites. We kept our voices low having been assured by our strange new acquaintance that the residents were altogether ignorant of the town’s more nefarious activities.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Past the hall was a fourteenth century structure the old man referred to as the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Pele</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Tower</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">, the apparent reason for our visit.<br />
<br />
If the old man’s speech was rambling his step was surely not. He strode ahead gesturing wildly as he spat words, and we hurried to keep up. I made him explain or repeat several parts of his rant and I made notes of his words as best I could, scribbling into a pocket book. After all, if Tom had been a victim of a crime, the police would need all relevant details. If any of this was true.<br />
<br />
Below follows as much of Father Robert’s ranting as I was able to notate at the time, as he marched us quickly through the dark grounds of Netherhall.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
<br />
“You educated foreigners have to understand that folks in English villages apart from the big cities get some queer notions sometimes. There are a few bored lunatics with nothing better to do can lead others wrong in naked dancing an all sorts of depraved behaviour. Most of it is harmless but sometimes it goes too far I reckon. Ignorance breeds profit to some buggers. These local legends have the foolish running wild, and they’re quick to follow the lead of the strong willed.”<br />
<br />
We two archaeologists exchanged worried looks throughout, concerned that this could amount to no more that the village madman leading us out into the woods. There had been no request for money or strong drink as yet, but it felt only a mumble away.<br />
<br />
“We will no doubt find your friend among pretentious young fools playing dress up with robes and chants. I have asked them before about their little club but they choose to ignore me. If this is some prank to scare foreign gentlemen types like yourselves there will be a reckoning with the law! <br />
I followed them here when they took your friend, it was easy. Nobody pays me much mind these days.”<br />
<br />
The Priest led us around the wooded rear side of the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Pele</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Tower</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"> where we found a trail cut through the vegetation. The base of the tower had sections of masonry missing, revealing a large hole down into the foundations.<br />
<br />
“They seem to have dug out a den down there, under the tower. Probably bring along the wine and loose women, start up with their mumbo jumbo.”<br />
<br />
The old priest turned and stared at us both, before sharing his wisdom.<br />
<br />
“If there is one thing I’ve learned in all my time on God’s earth, it’s this: there is no shortage of virgins willing to be talked out of their innocence by persuasive men in robes. And most of them probably weren’t virgins anyways.”<br />
<br />
The priest winked with a rattling laugh, before motioning for us to be quiet and descending into the hollow.<br />
<br />
Father Roberts was mostly correct in his assumptions. In the foundations we found a circular basement, strewn with a few wooden chairs and blankets. It did not look like a romantic grotto, more of a look out post. There was no sign of recent habitation. A charming English metaphor regarding the pursuit of wild geese sprang to mind. Johan was about to confront the Priest when he stopped, inclined his head and sniffed. We followed his gaze and stepped back from the centre of the floor, lifting the low table to one side and hauling aside a section of wooden flooring.<br />
A circular opening dropped vertically into a long, black tunnel. That stale rotten-fish odour came strongly from the westerly direction. Worn handholds allowed us to descend without fear of being trapped, and we utilised wax covered candelabras from the basement to light our way.<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">The tunnel walls and floor were made of some sort of precisely cut black stone tile, interconnected in triangles. Neither Johan nor I could identify its geological origin, certainly much purer than Onyx. As we walked we could see no damage to the substance, only a smooth concave beneath our feet, indicating this path had been heavily travelled over unknown years.<br />
<br />
The old hallways seemed to throw doubt on the Priest’s confidence, until he found a link in his memory and launched into excited speech. We walked as he lectured.<br />
<br />
“These must be the smugglers tunnels! They are part of local folklore. I just never knew they was under the manor! Every sea town has its old stories and legends. They end up as poems and songs and that way survive to modern times. I’m going to tell you the yarns these local troublemakers will want you to believe. This is the legend, all witchcraft and nonsense mind you. The storm of 1888 destroyed most of the wooden docks and killed many seamen.<br />
That much is true to fact. The trouble is, seafaring folk have very powerful imaginations and tall tales grow in the years and the telling.”<br />
<br />
“The stories say that things were found in the washed up flotsam. Bizarre jewellery, idols and such. Strange fish and bodies of other things unspeakable, dragged up from the depths. Blasphemous rubbish if you ask me, which I notice you didn’t.<br />
They say a brig was washed up all the way from the </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">West Indies</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">! The few native types that survived took one look at those weird bodies and paddled themselves down to Whitehaven!”<br />
<br />
“There were those who sought to rebuild after the storm, those who had lost everything. Some chose strange methods, seeking out these smuggling tunnels and discovering some deep, dangerous caves. They took the weird jewellery and idols below, and they waited. And eventually when the waiting didn’t work, they tried a bit of worshipping. Sea monsters! Like mermaids and such no doubt! And in time they say they were met, and bargains were struck. Certain boats always seemed to find favourable currents. Sea trade boomed with some companies seemingly immune to storms and accidents. Other companies who didn’t believe in the old superstition and nonsense didn’t do so well.”<br />
<br />
“Got to be that worship wasn’t enough though. Sacrifices and mating rituals an the rest, they say. And people going missing. That’s all just mad talk and coincidence though. They reckon these sea monsters had lost something, and they set their followers to finding it. Some been lookin’ for generations, granddads through daddies to kids and onwards.<br />
The port came very successful for some people after that, and the town started to prosper again. People forgot about old wives tales of things from the sea and got on with their lives, on with the wars and such. It’s all nonsense of course. Trouble is there’s no religion no more. These people by the docks don’t want God in their lives no more, so old stories prosper again. I came here to be minister some thirty years ago. It was twenty years ago the church set fire. I haven’t led a service down there since.” <br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">It was a very uncomfortable silence that hung over us when Father Roberts finally finished speaking. He was a talkative man by nature and vocation, but we were all aware that his stories were as much to control his nerves as for our information. <br />
Something felt wrong down here. The strange tunnel still continued on and on, sloping down before us. We passed several tunnel junctions, but the peculiar smell we were following was coming from straight to the west, from the sea.<br />
Stalactites between the black tiles hung long and heavy with the slow mineral drips from above. Stalactites of that size would have taken thousands of years to form. These smooth stoned tunnels had existed for ages before the Roman invasion of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Britain</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">. So who on earth had created them?<br />
<br />
After some time the tunnel rose again and then ended, opening out into thick darkness. The breezing stench of putridity and the new echo of our footsteps told us that the cavern opening at the tunnel end was very large.<br />
<br />
Johan and Father Roberts moved in opposite directions, feeling around the wall of the vast cavern. They lit the torches in the regularly spaced brackets. We met again in the floor centre to marvel at the sights.<br />
<br />
The torchlight revealed peculiar wall decorations. A host of rectangular, back curving Centurion shields, mounted in great lines on the walls. Undoubtedly genuine and nearly one thousand and nine hundred years old, they were dust free and maintained polished as if ready for a Roman arm that very day. The floor was patterned with neat pyramids of helmeted skulls and adorning the low cavern roof were strange symbols created out of hundreds of arranged Centurion spears. These caves and tunnels had clearly been home to a massive battle. Johan was in awe of this unheard of level of preservation.<br />
<br />
Neither Johan or I were surprised when there was no sign of Father Robert’s alleged local pranksters. At this point I believe he was the only one of us who had faith they would appear. We knew we were dealing with something extraordinary. Professional curiosity overcame nagging fear for a time. The writing was on the wall, so to speak.<br />
<br />
The collections of symbols and arcane letters now allowed me some chance of translation. The more samples the better, and this cavern was covered in scripture of all sizes. There was a wall of star charts, completely unfamiliar to my eye but showing planets and suns as numerous as sands on a beach. <br />
Words were repeated next to pictograms similar to those on the dig chamber floor. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS";">“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn<i>”<o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Some of these I could now identify as names.<br />
An ancient god, dead or sleeping: Cthulhu.<br />
R’lyeh: its sunken city or grave.<br />
Words described ages and calendar measurement that bore no resemblance to human reckoning but showed a Roman battle standard marked at the top as if it had occurred merely yesterday.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">The pictorials on the wall were of a similar descriptive design found at many historic archaeological sites around the world, set in three distinct murals.<br />
Stick figures apparently representing humans were shown standing above a group of humanoids with fish or frog like heads, with waving lines of water separating them. <br />
Another picture showed the human figures encircled by the frog head figures and kneeling before that same swirling centred star icon we had seen at the bottom of the dig chamber.<br />
The final picture showed the humans figures and fish men mixed together, and a line below illustrated beings with the features of both.<br />
<br />
We wandered the cavern in awe, the flickering flames of torchlight illuminating new wonders with every step. The cavern of relics was silent and empty of life but as we stood with mouths agape, we became aware of a panting breathing from the adjoining cave ahead. <br />
The three of us gathered together and crept forward stealthily unsure who or what we would encounter.<br />
<br />
Tom was naked when we found him, although it took a few seconds to recognise him as our missing colleague, or even as being alive. This new cave was a temple, abundantly furnished with elaborate furniture of an unknown design, carved from the black stone used to build those ancient tunnels.<br />
<br />
At the back of the cave the floor held a carved shallow pool, containing submerged triangular portholes tunnelled straight down to the depths of the sea bed.<br />
The entire cavern system must have been cut into the lip of coastal rock, directly beneath the sleeping town. <br />
There was a small side cave as well, but our attention was immediately drawn to the room’s predominant feature, an ancient altar of that same strange black stone, its corners and edges smoothed to shined curves through use over aeons incomprehensible to man. <br />
<br />
And it was chained upon this altar we found Tom.<br />
<br />
In the wars of our history man has inflicted many physical cruelties on other men. I had read extensively on the subject as a young student, attempting to comprehend the fate and self-sacrifice that my parents and their peers suffered under oppressive fascist rule. There were atrocities committed on Tom that I had never seen even in accounts containing exaggerated hearsay. <br />
Any torture that man had invented was present, and measures had clearly been taken to preserve his life so that there would be no relief in an early death. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
As we approached his eyes danced wildly in the torchlight. His expression and gibbering speech betrayed the fact that he had experienced too much during his incarceration. The abduction, torture and whatever else he had witnessed had pushed his mind over the edge.<br />
<br />
Apart from the mutilations, Tom’s body was covered in many deeply cut arcane symbols, similar to those found all over the temple cave. <br />
I gently released his bonds and Johan quickly removed his long coat and wrapped Tom, covering his many wounds and preventing us brushing against the strange coloured unguents and caustic powders that had been applied to his body.<br />
Father Roberts stood in distress and clearly in dispute with his own ideals. His mission to rationalise our situation was rapidly becoming impossible.<br />
Tom leaned into me, clutching with mangled fingers. He spoke earnestly as if imparting secrets and great wisdom, but his words seemed fantasy at best.<br />
<br />
“They didn’t know! They didn’t know where the chamber was until we found the carvings! They have been looking for a hidden prison for over a thousand years! Tonight they will recover the unholy prize abducted by </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Rome</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">!”<br />
“Their race is older than the earth, Steffan! The city-continent of R’lyeh sank when the stars changed. They await the next change! The Deep Ones serve Cthulhu! His dreams come to men in theirs; they join him or go insane. They are everywhere!<br />
The city will rise when he awakes from millennial sleep, he and his Deep One servants will devour the souls of the world when the stars lie correct!”<br />
<br />
The priest was clearly shaken by Tom’s babble. He spoke in a cracked voice, making a final attempt at tunnel visioned reasoning.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">“It is a nonsense! The men who did this are clearly sick minded criminals, but are men none the less! They are charlatans! These stories can affect those with weaker minds! It is a con!”<br />
<br />
Johan gestured to the polished Roman weapons and armour. The big Finn was clearly losing his temper with the priest, but would still prefer a rational explanation to the alternative. <br />
“What of these? No degradation of metal! Pristine and ready for battle. They have been maintained since the day their owners fell! What culture of man do you suggest has persisted here unnoticed in nearly two millennia?<br />
<br />
I tried to reason with the irate priest, tried to make him understand that there may be things in the universe that humanity has not discovered or could not conceive of.<br />
There was no doubt what this place was: A trophy room of enemy spoils constructed after a very ancient conflict, and maintained ever since as an undying temple to unholy gods.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
That only served to make him more irate.<br />
“It is all lies I tell you! There is only one true God! He would not allow such abominations to exist.<br />
<br />
Father Roberts’ resolve was finally tested when we all entered the side cave to the left of the altar.<br />
We stood in silence.<br />
There was no longer hope of a rational explanation. <br />
<br />
The room was stacked with the old corpses of human servants laid to rest in grounds that they obviously considered sacred.<br />
Their reward for a lifetime of service to otherworldly gods and creatures.<br />
Many of the deceased bore recognisable marks, the same facial and skin deformities I had seen on certain living residents of Maryport, but these were more advanced. The distinction between human and something other was difficult to recognise.<br />
Father Roberts face was ashen as he pointed people he had clearly been acquainted with in life, now laid out in the clothes of the era they died.<br />
<br />
“This man went missing over a decade ago. We thought him lost at sea but it is clear to me now that he was down here concealing his appearance, doing the devil’s work. What unholy unions are causing these changes in man? False idols and rituals and degenerate inter-breedings! This temple is an evil! It must be destroyed in God’s name, purge this place! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!”<br />
<br />
The priest launched himself around the cavern temple, in his own mind becoming the divine weapon of Christian retribution. He smashed bizarre ornaments and idols, sweeping them from alcoves with flailing arms whilst screaming praises to God and damnation to heathen religion over and over. <br />
<br />
Tom leaned to me wide eyed and pleading desperately.<br />
“Stop him, stop him, there is a guardian! The Shoggoth will come! The Shoggoth will come!”<br />
Poor Tom could not take any more. The shock of his torture and the fear that this ‘Shoggoth’ person would return seemed too much. It was all I could do to hold his wrists to prevent him clawing at his own eyes. His body, pale through blood loss began to jerk and contort in my arms. It was a heart attack or fit of some kind that killed him and it was over very quickly. I have no medical training. I could not help. Perhaps the man needed the peace of death to truly escape whatever he had been through.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
I had no wish to see this ‘Shoggoth’ with my own eyes and I could see that Johan was also becoming increasingly uncomfortable in the situation and surroundings.<br />
The priest however, would not heed our calls to leave. He was busy tearing pages from ancient arcane books, shredding scrolls and spitting at unholy relics, all the time quoting Psalms and commandments.<br />
<br />
Suddenly we could feel it coming. A deep vibration emanating from the direction of those triangular pool holes. The water began to ripple and bubbles broke on the surface.<br />
Something was rising. <br />
<br />
Whilst I was a man confident in my ability to control my emotions, something felt very wrong here. I felt myself shuffling away from the altar, hugging myself tightly. A glance sideways showed Johan doing the same. We were both staring at the bubbling pool in the chamber beyond the altar. With small steps we edged ever back towards the cavern entrance, while Father Roberts raged and bellowed, smashing nightmarish statues of squid headed idols.<br />
<br />
Father Roberts ignored our frantic warning calls and as the Shoggoth broke to the surface we both began to scream.<br />
<br />
I felt what I can only describe as primordial terror, harking back to an age before the rise of modern humanity, when a cold fear would save a primitive life by filling it with the desire to back away and run from a predator. Johan and I clutched each other like frightened children as we backed pitifully away on shaking legs, our eyes still locked to the swirling, foaming whirlpool of water and the black horror emerging.<br />
<br />
Man has little business in describing a creature so out of our space and time such as that. I will do so in the basest terms, but no picture in your mind can capture the demonic essence of the entity. I remember a wide slick of black oil, but as high as a man’s waist. Its surface constantly changed, a mass of dark and sickly green bubbles that formed various mouths, spikes and horns, or large patches of hideous compound eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
It moved with the rolling smoothness of a heavy, thick sludge and yet here and there appeared strands of inquisitive tendrils, reaching out to grab and brush against nearby objects. The mere appearance was enough to make a man fall to his knees in numb submission, but the Shoggoth was not mindless, and its voice was even more terrifying. Its call emanated in directionless echoes from the body, angrily screaming out in a horrible alien imitation of Tom Braden’s voice. <br />
“Tekeli-li!,</span> <span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”<br />
Having fully expanded its bulk out from the pool, the thing surged forward toward the Priest. <br />
<br />
Father Roberts stood rooted to the spot in sheer terror. His faith and belief system had been shattered, ripped from him in the presence of the oncoming monstrosity.<br />
His only defence was a small crucifix outstretched before him, torn from a chain around his neck.<br />
A thick oily tendril lashed out from the mass and seized the cross, pulling it back into the beast’s form where it quickly dissolved. The Shoggoth shifted forward, rearing itself up in front of the Father as an undulating black wall. <br />
Its edges curled around the shaking man as he dropped to the floor, still protesting hysterically against reality.<br />
<br />
“It is not real! It is not true! Oh my God, help me! Lord save me! Save me!”<br />
<br />
The priest’s voice cried for mercy over and over as the Shoggoth engulfed him, hideously rending and sucking apart his flesh until the divine pleading turned to agonisingly shrill screams.<br />
<br />
Johan and I were already running down the tunnel by the time the screaming stopped.<br />
Although we heard many approaching footsteps at intersecting junctions, our adrenaline fuelled torchlight sprint kept us out of reach of pursuers. <br />
We exited the tower hollow and ran from the Netherhall estate, slowing only when our lungs and legs were aching.<br />
We journeyed on foot back into town, avoiding the main roads. The deep country darkness kept us both alert and paranoid.<br />
There was no point discussing what we had seen, or blaming hallucination or spontaneous mental illness.<br />
There was no denying the evidence. Besides which, the night was not over and we needed to keep our breath.<br />
<br />
We reached the lockup and entered our truck with fumbling fingers.<br />
Johan took the wheel and threw me a canvas bag concealed under Tom’s seat. I slid out the metal case and unlocked it with a key removed from poor Tom’s pocket. Only the American had felt the need to bring armament to the expedition, much good it had done him. The revolver felt cold and heavy in my shaking, clammy hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
We did not expect to see anyone whilst driving through the misty Maryport streets, being that it was well past </span><st1:time hour="0" minute="0"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">midnight</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">. But here and there were dark men in doorways, observing our passing. Our headlights always revealed those peculiar hybrid features now ominously familiar. Johan swore and hammered down the accelerator.<br />
The truck roared out of Maryport onto the coast road and towards our fateful dig.<br />
</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #270149; font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 22pt;">At present I can write no more.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #270149; font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 22pt;">I must move on again, scry the changing stars and find further sanctuary. Share my story with others you trust, but be careful: there are eyes everywhere. It is vital the truth is heard and understood.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #270149; font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 22pt;">I shall write with my final communication when the New Year is upon us.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #270149; font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 22pt;">Let it bring us all fresh hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #270149; font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 24pt;">Professor Andreas Steffan</span><span style="font-family: "Freestyle Script"; font-size: 24pt;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 216pt;"><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">The Chamber in the </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">Hillside</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: "Oldstyle HPLHS"; font-size: 11pt;">. Part 2/3</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-75532641907344003802010-01-13T16:32:00.023+00:002012-12-26T07:14:53.526+00:00About our Contributors.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH8yXMA5ipTJOsArKvqlNknfC9YMxIaJud6nrRCnVcGJ3nTzYwv_8uMkqu07uilrednmgO8d7G9CP_KeJzLStJ8O59npEbRpvkVeYLgKG74_rcr8NkImg8CdsvKiPbw0g7ZBU425B2w8A/s1600-h/type.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH8yXMA5ipTJOsArKvqlNknfC9YMxIaJud6nrRCnVcGJ3nTzYwv_8uMkqu07uilrednmgO8d7G9CP_KeJzLStJ8O59npEbRpvkVeYLgKG74_rcr8NkImg8CdsvKiPbw0g7ZBU425B2w8A/s400/type.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/>
<w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/>
<w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/>
<w:Word11KerningPairs/>
<w:CachedColBalance/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #29303b;">Andrew McGuigan</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Creator of
Cumbrian Cthulhu</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author of ‘The chamber in the hillside,’
‘Ashness bloody bridge,’ ‘A fell faith,’ ‘The elusive valley,’ ‘The treasure of
the Moresby swan.’ Co Author of ‘Return to the Grange.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It has been an interesting few years
watching Cumbrian Cthulhu grow from one story to (at the time of writing) two
books! It is my intention to produce four books of stories and also a contest
leading to a full colour Cumbrian Cthulhu art book. More on that another time.
If the writers and stories keep coming in, and the sales and donations keep
going out, there is no reason why Cumbrian Cthulhu could not be a much longer
series of volumes. So keep buying them!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">A big thank you to the following people who
helped smooth the evolution of the Cumbrian Cthulhu project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank you David Stewart and Northumbria
University for helping us recruit the talents of Kate and Lucy. Thanks to Allan
Mitchell for additional proof reading, and to those who have kindly listened to
me babble on, specifically Pete Stocker, Maggie Fraser and Louise Stals. Thanks
to my parents Stephen and Jennifer McGuigan for the Cumbrian history books and
the image for the back of volume two. Thanks to Dick Preston of Kemplerigg for
accent assistance in ‘Ashness bloody bridge.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The stunning Wastwater sunset featured on
our first cover was photographed by<br />
Żaneta Miderska, who was born in the seaside town of Gdansk and has been living
in London since 2005. See more of her beautiful images at: miderska.digart.pl</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">My biggest thanks goes to my lovely wife Suzanne
who was mostly patient with my constant requests for help with the endless
technical problems I was unable to overcome myself, such as correctly sending
emails and using page-break. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Andy Paciorek<span style="color: #29303b;"></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Cumbrian Cthulhu illustrator</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author of ‘House of dark lanterns,’ ‘The
stones of pestilence,’ A quiet place,’ ‘The bells of Blencathra’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and ‘The echo of echoes.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br />
Andy Paciorek is a graphic artist, drawn mainly to the worlds of myth,
folklore, symbolism, decadence, curiosa, anomaly, dark romanticism and otherworldly
experience, and fascinated both by the beautiful and the grotesque and the
twilight threshold consciousness where these boundaries blur. The mist-gates,
edges and liminal zones where nature borders supernature and daydreams and
nightmares cross paths are of great inspiration.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Andy was the first to join the Cumbrian
Cthulhu project alongside Andrew McGuigan, and has been an enthusiastic partner
throughout, eager to discuss and assist with its evolution. Apart from
occasions when a writer specifically wishes to provide accompanying art, Andy
is the official illustrator for Cumbrian Cthulhu.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Andy has found a great deal of artistic
inspiration during trips to the Lake District, capturing images through
photography and sketching, to manipulate later. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Andy also expresses a different part of his
creative psyche by working with other varied creative souls, most notably and
very differently through the Balcan~Paciorek Symbiosis and as part of the
Stegorek mongrel art collaborative.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">To see more artwork by Andy Paciorek please
visit www.batcow.co.uk/strangelands</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Lucy
Elizabeth Collier</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Editor </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I live in Northallerton, North Yorkshire. I
am a recent graduate from Northumbria University, where I studied English
Literature and Creative Writing. I am currently undertaking an internship as an
Editorial Assistant at Mslexia Publication in Newcastle, where I hope to
further my interest in publishing. I'm a keen badminton player having competed
for my University and town and I am an unashamed Zumba-bopper. Aside from
Cthulhu, I am currently editing a couple of previously unpublished author's
novels whilst also, determinedly slogging over my own.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I was made aware of CC through a
mass-circulated email within uni. Editing has always been a pleasure for me, as
I am lucky to behold a meticulous eye, so the opportunity for involvement was a
snap-up from the start. CC boasts a manic amount of writing talent in what can
only be described as an exciting niche of genre and very different to your
usual reads. It's the unusual aspect of CC that will appeal to readers and
writers who want to extend an arm out to the wild and whacky. It's wonderful to
be a part of something that genuinely delivers on effort and quality for the
purposes of the Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association charity.
(Also, it's hard not to appreciate the irony of this when you read some of the
stories!)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Anyone who's been walloped by Wordsworth
will appreciate just how spectacular this area of England is. As a frequent
Holiday goer to the lakes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I am continuously amazed by its sights. My
best friend has a little cottage in Keswick, which will always freeze the
memory of my boyfriend attempting to 'plank' on the bonnet of our 4 man boat on
Derwent Water Lake... Water: Unharmed. Matthew: Slightly less so</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Ben
Powell-Jones</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Cover artist</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Ben is originally from the North East but
now resides in London which flips between feeling like a divine blessing and a
horrifying curse, depending on the mornings commute. He works in TV, devising
Entertainment shows and preparing graphics for pitch documents.<br />
His main interests are practicing Muay Thai and freestyle wrestling and reading
comic books. He realises this is not what his parents wanted his interests to
be at 31.<br />
He also enjoys writing about himself in the third person.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I think the CC project is an excellent
initiative and was most pleased to be invited to be a part of it. I was also
most pleased at Andrew McGuigan's patience as I consistently missed deadlines.
I think the proceeds are going to an excellent and worthy cause, and one that
deserves more exposure. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Growing up in the North East, with a
grandmother that lived in Kendal, I have many memories and a strong feeling of
attachment to the Lake District. I remember as a child feeling that the old,
stony houses and dark, unlit lanes were a different world from where I was
growing up. A special place, certainly. After reading the stories included,
I'll probably never un-terrified walking after dark there anymore, so thanks
for that, writers!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">Matt Walby</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">Social network
promotion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">I live and work in
Newcastle Upon Tyne as a call centre advisor. Outside of work I am a martial
artist training in jun fan and kali. I have helped with the promotion of
Cumbrian Cthulhu by running the Twitter account (@CumbrianCthulhu), building
relationships with other Cumbrian, Lovecraft or Cthulhu related Twitter users
in order to spread the updates and promotional material to as many people as
possible and by association, hopefully promoting the work of the Lake District Search
And Mountain Rescue Association in some small way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">I heard about the
project through my friend Andrew McGuigan and wanted to join as I am a big fan
of horror. I will be spending quite a bit of time in the Lake District in 2013
in preparation for the Pen-Y-Fan Fan Dance in May and The Wall Run along the
route of Hadrian's Wall in June. I very much approve of the profits going to
LDSAMRA. They do fantastic work which they could never receive enough credit
for. They provide a great service to all Lake District visitors and help keep
the Lakes the great tourist attraction it is.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Kate
Taylor</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Cumbrian Cthulhu advertising and promotion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I live just outside the popular Cumbrian
tourist town of Keswick on the shores of Derwentwater but study at the
University of Northumbria in Newcastle. I have recently completed a degree in
English Literature and Creative Writing and have been awarded a studentship to
study an MRes in Creative Writing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">When I'm not writing for my tutors I'm
writing my own brand of fantasy and/or magical realism: currently I'm working
on a fantasy trilogy, a web drama set during the apocalypse and a detective
noir reimagining of Greek mythology. You can find a weekly blog about my life
and writing on blogspot under the name a.k.a Kate. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">LDSAMRA is close to my heart because my
family are big walkers. It's good to know that the proceeds from this anthology
will be keeping them and others safe on the fells.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Glen
Colling</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author of ‘That is not dead which can
eternal lie.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I was born in Sunderland in the North East
of England. I currently live in Seaham with my wife Veronica, my son Phillip
and two gerbils Thomas and Blackbird.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I have been a great fan of H.P. Lovecraft
for thirty years and have read, and re-read, his books many times. I based my
story under Lake Windermere and I have, on a number of occasions, looked into
its waters and wondered what may lie beneath.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">My family and I have often holidayed at the
Lakes, usually a B&B at Windermere or a cottage at Kendal. The area is so
striking it takes the breath away, especially on a dark, foggy, damp day when
the clouds hang low over the hills. Great material for books!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Tony
Paulazzo</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author of ‘The Overlords.’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I now live in West Yorkshire but originally
hail from London. My main source of income (and second love) is working with
and repairing computers. I keep a dream diary which should probably tell you
more than you need to know about me. Many of my stories, or at least the seeds
of them, come from my unconscious dreams, and I love the blurred boundaries
that dreams create. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I loved the ruggedness of Cumbria, and
thought about surviving here in end of the world stories, you know the sort,
unexplained plague, nuclear war, but then someone took me to White Scar Cave
(my first ever cave, slight claustrophobia, not somewhere I would willingly
go), and Cthulhu whispered into my ear and from that visit the story pretty
much wrote itself. Now I love the Cthulhu mythos, but I’d never read what
happened when they finally reclaimed the Earth as their birthright, what
happened to us, humanity, when Gods truly walked amongst us, so here is my
attempt. I hope you like it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Paul
Musgrave</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author of ‘A mist friend.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I live in Staithes, a picturesque village
in North Yorkshire just 10 miles north of Whitby. I work for Revenue and
Customs at Stockton and deal with work involving individual tax returns. In my
spare time, I like running and do a lot of the local 5K to 10k runs and also
play 5 aside football in the evening. My favourite hobby though, is drawing and
doing caricatures for friends and family. When doing a few cartoon strips, I
have enjoyed the writing part and that is why I was interested in writing a
story on one on my favourite subjects. I visit Keswick (the place where I set
my story) regularly for walks and to enjoy the scenery of one of the most
beautiful places in Britain, if not the whole world. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Richard
E Straw</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author of ‘Thy deep and dreaming sleep,’
‘Langdale and pike investigate.’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Co Author of ‘Return to the Grange’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">These stories represent Richard's first
actual completed prose since he wrote a story about an exploding rocket for a
school exam. Yet another member of the contingent from the North-East of
England, he spends most of his time in the world of amateur musical theatre,
and enjoys playing old men for shows with his local Gilbert and Sullivan
Society. Most of his recent writing involves editing the scripts of short
Victorian Operettas. He is however working on a sequel to 'Langdale and Pike Investigate',
entitled 'Langdale and Pike Strike Back' (any rumours of a third part, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">'</b>Langdale and Pike's Last Stand', are
completely without foundation). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Rich
Blackett</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author and illustrator of 'Invisible'</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Rich lives with his family in the North
East of England. He has written for online and print based music magazines as
well as stories in the Steampunk Compilations </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">"Tales from the Asylum" and it's
follow-up "Beyond the Asylum."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">He also contributed to the ebook anthology
"Like a Corset Undone” and as part of The Nothing Machine has released a download
only dark ambient album. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The story was inspired by a blend of true
and (hopefully) fictional events, and was partly influenced by a an archive
newspaper article of a figure leading a car through dangerous fog in Langdale.
It should also be noted that the excellent Townend library does not contain any
books of dark knowledge, at least not anymore...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Rich has been a visitor to The Lake
District and Cumbria nearly every year of his life and is now introducing the
next generation of his family to the beauty and tranquillity of the area. He
and his family stay in Ambleside often twice a year and relish the chance to
unwind and explore the ancient hills. When he saw the article asking for
contributions in the internal Civil Service publication Pulse, he immediately
responded to the chance of giving something back to the area and to such an
important charity as LDSAMRA</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Richard
Gore</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author and illustrator of ‘Odd sausage.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Painter of volume two’s Cumbrian Cthulhu
flag.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3493264850942531421" name="yui_3_2_0_1_1350226848192865"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3493264850942531421" name="yui_3_2_0_1_1350226848192864"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3493264850942531421" name="yui_3_2_0_1_1350226848192863"></a><span lang="EN-US">Richard Gore grew up in the north east of England, gaining his
degree in Illustration in 2006 before heading off to travel around the world
for a year, visiting every continent, excluding Antarctica , on route. He
currently combines working in an office with as many creative external projects
as he can muster. Some of his recent endeavours include writing an illustrated
children’s novel which he aims to get published in the near future, showing
artwork at regional and national galleries and producing wildlife artwork for
an international agent, recently getting to the finals of the BBC wildlife
artist of the year for his work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Richard heard about the Cumbrian Cthulhu
project through friend and colleague Andrew McGuigan, who was looking for
writers to contribute to the project. Richard being interested in both writing
and illustration offered his services in both fields, writing a short Cthulhu
piece and helping add to the illustration of the novel.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Richard has visited the Lake District on
numerous occasions, sampling the culinary delights, whiling away time in second
hand book shops and hiking in the hills and mountains, most notably getting to
the top of Scafell Pike last year. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Through travelling the world Richard has
visited many wonderful natural sights and believes that the beauty of the Lake
District is not outshone by such sights as Northern Italy, Southern New Zealand
or The Andes of South America. He is delighted that profits from the sale of
this book will be donated to the Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue
Association allowing others the explore the beauty of this area of the world in
increased confidence and safety.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Casey
Rae-Hunter</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Author of ‘The Cove.’<br />
He is a musician, recording engineer, author and editor from Washington, DC. In
addition to his work in political communications, he is the founder and CEO of
The Contrarian Media, a popular online hub for writings on music, media and
metaphysics. His 2009 album, Eldritch Musicks, is based on the weird fiction of
HP Lovecraft, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood.</span></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
</style>
<![endif]--><br />
<div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-8753460106417793792009-12-16T20:08:00.007+00:002010-08-09T19:19:50.954+01:00THE COVE, By Casey Rae-Hunter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLZp_9cnY8H63jOmOWka_KV3Gryjx30lwbsQ6yaSv0MgfD34Nee-oC49RABfF3DPV_P7eobkYA6KnUSYVJNTMV15MTx3w7s2n0DaLjfqMHipNxJ_n6llxmT8hcuXdhWKktb44vOABjKis/s1600/the+cove.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLZp_9cnY8H63jOmOWka_KV3Gryjx30lwbsQ6yaSv0MgfD34Nee-oC49RABfF3DPV_P7eobkYA6KnUSYVJNTMV15MTx3w7s2n0DaLjfqMHipNxJ_n6llxmT8hcuXdhWKktb44vOABjKis/s640/the+cove.JPG" width="450" /></a></div><meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></meta><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Generator"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Originator"></meta><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CFoo%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><o:smarttagtype name="country-region" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:595.3pt 841.9pt;
margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt;
mso-header-margin:35.4pt;
mso-footer-margin:35.4pt;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<br />
Story by Casey Rae-Hunter<br />
Illustration by Andy Paciorek<br />
<br />
<br />
I did not set out to discover anything, least of all what “makes me tick.” At no point in my average-length career in the field of property insurance did I once have the inkling to explore what psychologists and chemically addled reprobates might call “the periphery of consciousness.” I’m certainly well read; retirement spent in the provincial seaside bosom of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Cumbria</st1:place></st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region><st1:place>England</st1:place></st1:country-region> affords plenty of time for literary investigation. Yet even my lazy consumption of books borrowed from the local library did not awaken any desire for self- discovery. They were all someone else’s stories, visions, anxieties.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My daughter, on the other hand, away at a liberal arts university not terribly far from my own unostentatious Northern accommodations, always had an instinct for personal</div><div class="MsoNormal">revelation; at least the kind approved by the bohemian professors she so desires to impress. I never faulted Emily for these tendencies. After her mother died, seeking meaning became her primary pursuit. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that, in my estimation, there is positively no sense to be made from the myriad banal activities that comprise our time on this planet. Nor is there any consequence to our search for significance in our own lives or the lives of those around us. It is merely chance and biology that sets the course of our brief existences, whether we ascribe metaphysical significance to the crushingly mundane or accept our lot as fleeting nonentities in an utterly cosmic trifle.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I say that I am retired to this coastal community, I exaggerate. Only summers are spent at this salty idyll; during the colder seasons I — like all but those blasted birds that squawk mindlessly as they scour the shores for aquatic carrion — migrate to more hospitable climes. This year, however, I’ve stayed longer than usual, partly because of the balmy weather, but also due to my increasing fondness for wandering the long stretch of beach, which becomes significantly more traversable as the tourists depart to wherever it is from which they came. In September, for example, I practically have the entire coastline to myself. Often, I find myself strolling along the water’s edge well into the evening, my galoshes making obscene sounds as they connect with the clumps of soggy vegetation that threaten to overwhelm the sand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet I am not the only lingerer as summer’s sultry hollows are subsumed by the chill of encroaching autumn. The flea market just outside of town is still open, its garish trinkets glinting as its unpleasant merchants move indolently among the wares. I must confess a persisting obsession with this grubby bazaar, though I had never actually wandered along the makeshift display tables dug haphazardly into the pebble-speckled sand and wispy sea-grass. That is, until a couple of weeks ago.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On that day, having walked my bicycle to Toby McMullen’s repair shop to resolve a persistent problem with the derailleur, I decided to venture to the flea market while my ailing ten-speed received its wrench-and-oil remedy. After all, it was only a couple of miles down the road from the bike shop, just a few clicks past the sign marking the approach to our sleepy burg. Toby had some other repairs ahead of mine, and he told me that my chariot would likely not be ready until late afternoon. So, with my army surplus rucksack dangling from one shoulder and my trusty water bottle in hand, I made my way to that vulgar emporium which had, for unknown reasons, captured my interest. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not going to say I wasn’t disappointed by the flea market; it was hard not to be.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dusty videocassette tapes of films no one had ever wanted to see were crammed into milk cartons alongside dog-eared books and Popular Mechanics magazines from an era when transistor radios were novel. As the lone soul perusing the tables that day, I was significantly outnumbered by the sallow-faced merchants who stared blankly into some imperceptible distance and spoke to one another, only occasionally, in a language I could not discern. After strolling mutely through row and row of commercial detritus, I came across a small assortment of jewelry, all clearly handmade. The items ran the gamut from unsightly to grotesque, yet I found myself transfixed by their peculiar allure. One piece was not as unseemly as the rest; in fact it could be considered handsome in its own queer way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A dragonfly pendant, delicately carved out of some kind of metal that may have been a relative of pewter, but whose obsidian surface reflected the afternoon light in an uncanny manner. With its bulbous eyes fashioned out of what appeared to be twin rubies and a protracted tail that came to a meticulous point, the object betrayed artistry utterly at odds with the rest of the merchandise on offer. For some reason not entirely known to myself — but in no way a product of that chimera of modern psychology, the subconscious — I immediately thought of Emily. Perhaps it was my daughter’s penchant for flitting from one obsession to another, or maybe the fact that she owned precious little jewelry that didn’t once belong to her mother. No matter the association, I knew immediately that this curious object d’art was meant for her. I hastily purchased the dragonfly from a swarthy-looking fellow who took my bills, crumpled them and shoved them in his ratty sweatshirt pocket, after which I abruptly left that abysmal market to pick up my bicycle.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Later that evening, I decided to mail the dragonfly to Emily at her college. There was a small box in which I’d been keeping thumbtacks that almost matched the pendant’s strange charm. A possession of my own grandmother, the box had traveled from <st1:country-region><st1:place>Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> to this very coast sometime before the Great War. A suitable vessel for what I, in a moment of atypical sentimentality, imagined could become a new heirloom. As I reached into the plastic sandwich bag in which the flea marketer had so ungracefully deposited the dragonfly, a sharp pain immediately struck my thumb. I involuntarily yanked my hand back and shoved the wounded digit in my mouth. Blood. With the other hand, I gingerly dumped the dragonfly on the unvarnished conglomeration of wood that passed for my dining room table. Flipping the pendant this way and that with my uninjured hand, I searched for a razor-edge to blame. There was the pointy tail, sure, but as my fingers probed its tapered end, I felt nothing sharp enough to draw blood.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At any rate, the wound was entirely superficial, and I was quite able to prepare the dragonfly (and box) to mail to my daughter with tomorrow’s post. Having accomplished this small task, I found myself unexpectedly fatigued, so I retired to my modest single bed, where I fell fast asleep. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To say that my dreams were bizarre would be an understatement. At one point in my troubled rest, I explored an oversized Victorian domicile at the center of which I was certain to encounter the savior of mankind, whose being it was my task to swiftly extinguish. I am in no way a religious person, but the experience was so palpable that I recall resisting that which appeared to be my destiny: to foreclose forever the possibility of human salvation. I drifted from this nightmare to another in which my lower half had been replaced with a heinous mass of pulsing tentacles covered in sensitive cilia that ached like a thousand papercuts. Huddled around my misshapen self were strange figures in gossamer cloaks woven from the silk of the spiders that lived in their toothless mouths. These ghastly characters set about the task of spooning into my own maw a pungent fluid the color of diluted motor oil and with the consistency of infant excreta.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I awoke to a bright wash of yellow light directly in my eyes and the sound of screeching voices and what might be termed music, depending on the relative sanity of the listener. The intrusive luminescence I immediately realized was from the disused lighthouse that protrudes like a narrow finger from a scraggy peninsula that intersects my bedroom window. In the three-and-a-half decades since I’d first visited this town, I had not once seen this ramshackle beacon illuminated. Strange as this may be, I was more disturbed by the terrible sounds that seemed to emanate from somewhere along the beach — how far from my home, I could not make out. I pulled myself out of bed, opened my window and craned my head like a punch-drunk mongoose. A blast of cool, briny air hit my face as I squinted against the harsh light that beamed directly into my eyes every ten seconds. The sounds were louder, but I still could not determine their origin. I jerked my head back inside and hurriedly closed the window.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My nearest neighbors were a quarter mile away, but surely they could hear the cacophony, too. That is, if they hadn’t already decamped back to <st1:place>Dudley</st1:place>. Should I ring them? What time was it, anyway? I suddenly felt compelled to investigate the source of these perplexing sounds. This urge was in no way keeping with my typical behavior; my more rational self would have called the Myerson’s or simply taken a sleep aid and pulled the covers over my head. But in this odd instance I was gripped with the dogged desire to follow the racket to its source. And this is exactly what I did.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Armed with nothing but a flashlight and a sense of determination to discover what was going on out there, I scuttled down the wooden pathway leading to the beach. The sounds had increased in volume, though I still could not determine who — or what — was making them. Shrieks blended with the incessant thrumming of some sort of stringed instrument that rose and fell with the crashing of the nighttime tide. Somewhere within this discordant racket I thought I heard words, but their meaning was entirely unclear. Every so often, a concordance of voices would join together in a single utterance and then fall back into aural chaos. Once on the beach, I set off in the direction of the perturbing racket. After about a mile of trudging in the darkness, flashlight illuminating only a brief path before me, I realized I was no longer moving parallel to the sea. In fact, judging from the diminishing sound of the surf, it seemed that the sea was several dozen yards behind me. Nonetheless, I pressed on, mostly because the din became more defined with every step.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At some point, I found my flashlight’s beam swallowed by darkness blacker than that of the night to which my eyes had only recently grown accustomed. It took me a moment to realize I was pointing the thing directly into the mouth of what appeared to be a cave, or at least a hollow of some kind. I edged closer, reaching out with my free hand to better determine the particulars of this formation. I felt along the stony edges of a substantially large opening and plunged my arm forward into empty space. It seemed that the mysterious sounds were coming from somewhere inside. Although I’d never encountered anything resembling a cave in my many walks along the beach, I resolved to enter this Stygian aperture. Pointing the flashlight a few feet ahead, I stepped into the blackness.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The air inside the cave was dank and oppressive. My shoes crunched along small pebbles that had been spared being ground into sand by moon-maddened surf. I walked for maybe five minutes until my flashlight found accidental focus on the cave wall to my right. As the light glanced the granite surface, I caught my first glimpse of the sigil that would come to weigh heavily on my waking hours and beleaguer my already troubled sleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t the only marking the cave wall, which was positively cluttered with a hodgepodge of what seemed to be a kind of hieroglyphic language along with primitive symbols. Some looked like crudely constructed mandalas, others betrayed a more advanced technique. The icon that I found my eyes drawn back to was somewhere in between; a rudimentary circle bisected by what looked like a numeral four and several smaller symbols that floated on the periphery like alien satellites around a geometrically perverted planet. The sigil seemed altogether familiar — where had I seen it before? As my mind was searching for suitable evidence connecting me to this unnerving emblem, I was jostled to attention by a disquieting wail, which sounded like it came from a woman. Newly motivated, I hurried through the cave towards that terrible sound.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sometime during my harried flight through the darkness, I began to discern a faint glimmer of light ahead. As the edges of the cave wall came into definition, I noted the absence of markings along their surface. Several paces later, I found myself back under the starless sky, standing on a sandbank several dozen yards above the beach and the restless, inky ocean. Below me was the largest bonfire I’d ever seen in my life, around which danced figures that were illuminated only by the spasmodic flicker of towering flames, twisting in a chaotic dance of their own. I immediately dropped to the grassy dune, as not to be seen by the debauched revelers. I counted around thirty or so figures, all naked as jaybirds, many entwined in a mockery of romantic intimacy. Howls and shrieks accompanied strange chants of unknown province; at one point I was certain I saw a woman climb atop a man’s back as though mounting a horse, propelling both rider and steed into the roaring flames.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Transfixed by the scene unfolding before me, I decided to wend down the embankment for a closer view. From my new perch, a pair of school busses’ length from the bonfire, I could make out a bit more detail. There were shapes emerging from the water, slithering slowly up the beach like deranged amphibians. I couldn’t see much detail, but they were essentially slug-like, with elongated flipper-things protruding awkwardly all along their bulging, distorted forms. Every so often, a human dancer would leave the fire and lay prostrate on the beach, after which one of the beasts would wriggle upon them until they were covered entirely in a palpating mass of sea-flesh. The sounds that came from these creatures were truly horrifying, but it appeared that they received pleasure from the foul activity. I shudder to imagine what was experienced by those underneath.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At that point, I was altogether revolted, yet I could not tear myself away from the scene. The dancers twirled madly around the fire like an infernal maypole, coupling and decoupling, some diving headlong into the flames, others scurrying down the beach to be smothered by the slug-things. Just as I was about to scream or run, or both, my gaze fell upon one of the dancers, whose long blonde hair whipped behind her as she writhed and arched to the terrible music, the source of which I still could not determine. As she rounded the corner of the bonfire, her face was suddenly illuminated by the blaze. Emily.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Panicked, I found myself scurrying back up the sandbank, almost involuntarily. As I fled towards the cave entrance, I began doubting what I saw. It couldn’t have been my daughter — she was already well into her first semester; we weren’t scheduled to see each other until Thanksgiving at the earliest. Besides, it was terribly dark, and I couldn’t be sure of anything I saw — not the slug things, and certainly not. . . Emily. I raced through the cave, not stopping to examine the strange symbols I had discovered on the way in. I’m not sure how I managed to find my way back to my home, but somehow I did. And I know that I eventually managed to fall asleep, as I woke up the following afternoon with sheets still moist with sweat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the coming weeks, I spent much of my time scouring the beach for anything resembling a cave or the beachhead on which I witnessed the chthonic celebration. There was no evidence of either. Nightly, my sleep was disturbed by hazy remembrances of what I saw, as well as frustratingly incomplete flashes of that strange sigil I’d encountered in the cave. I was certain that if I could only manage to get that symbol on paper, then these vexing visions would cease. I spent long afternoons that would often bleed into early morning attempting to recreate this baffling sign. Yet the more I tried to delineate its geometry, the more its full configuration eluded me. Notebook upon notebook was filled with incomplete renderings, but in recent days I’d come tantalizingly close to rendering this uncanny insignia.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Close to Thanksgiving, I received a phone call from Emily. She wanted to join me for the holiday at my seacoast retreat. Though I was in no mood to entertain, I knew that my future time with her would be limited as her academic and social life took precedent over visits with her father. So I somewhat haltingly made my invitation. “Is there something wrong, Dad?” she asked with her typical composure. “Not at all,” I replied, trying to put the image of her face in flame’s flicker completely out of my head. At this point, I had mostly convinced myself that I’d merely imagined that it was Emily writhing around the mammoth bonfire. It was, in fact, all I could do to maintain something resembling composure.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When my daughter arrived, I immediately noticed something was different about her, though I could not place what it was. She’d always been an independent person, even as a young girl. Certainly, more so after her mother’s passing. She greeted me with winsome aloofness, and our subsequent conversations were a bit trivial, yet hardly unusual. Such is to be expected when you haven’t seen someone in a while. Besides, it’s not as if I wasn’t distracted. As we ate our Thanksgiving meal, I found myself obsessing over that sigil. Perhaps I could find time after dinner to open my notebook and work on solving this agonizing riddle. I was certain I’d captured the symbol’s general orbit, and the lines were more or less accurate. But there was still something... off about my rendition.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I put it out of my mind, deciding that it was time to present Emily with her gift. I never actually mailed the dragonfly pendant — other. . . things. . . had come up. So as we sat by the small fireplace, I handed her the antique box. I hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but the night I pricked my thumb on the dragonfly was the same night that I’d witnessed the fiendish gathering. Yet only a fool would imagine a connection. A fool or someone whose grip on reality had become compromised. Was I cracking up? I banished the thought and concentrated the best I could on Emily’s reaction to the gift.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“The box originally belonged to your great-grandmother,” I explained, my voice sounding smaller than I had expected. “You never met her, but I’m sure she’d have wanted you to have it. Anyway, it’s not about the box — go ahead and open it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Emily did as instructed. I’m not sure what I expected her reaction to be, but whatever it was did not transpire. Her eyes did not grow large; she did not let out a little gasp or an “Oh, my God!” — instead, she gazed at the dragonfly with a subtle look of knowing, one corner of her lips turning up in an off-putting hint of a smile. After a period of silence, she simply said, “It’s lovely, Daddy.” I felt no desire to solicit any further opinions about the object. In fact, I felt somewhat nauseous.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Outside, it was raining heavily. When Emily declared that she was going out for a while, I was stunned. “Where would you be going on Thanksgiving night in weather like this?” I asked. “Well, I thought I’d go downtown and maybe see if the bookshop is open.” I knew she knew it wasn’t. “Are you sure?” I responded meekly. My stomach was doing flip- flops. “I won’t be long,” she answered. “Just need to stretch my legs.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Well, if you’re going out, you need to put on some boots. You should still have a pair in the closet.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I know where they are.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I’m still not sure it’s very smart to go out in this weather. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Dad.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“OK, OK. Just. . . be careful.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Emily pulled one of the rickety kitchen chairs closer to the now-opened closet and rolled up a pant leg. As she slid on an oversized boot, her long blonde hair fell in front of her face so that I could no longer see her features. So I simply stared mutely at the legs of the chair as she reached for the other boot. She rolled up her second pant leg. And then I saw it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The sigil was tattooed on her pale white ankle. I could distinguish all of the angles clearly now. I knew what was missing from my sketches. At that moment, thoughts of anything but completing my illustrations completely evaporated. I stood up abruptly and walked to my study.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Um, OK, Dad. . . I’m going out now.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m sure I answered in some fashion, but by the time the front door closed a thousand miles away, I had already opened my notebook to the unfinished symbol. I knew exactly what needed to be done. I rolled my decrepit office chair closer to my desk and hurriedly sat down. Just a line here. . . and one there. . . and there was that slight hook on the part that looks like the numeral four. . .</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I completed my work in short order. I stood straight up and stared intently at the symbol that had caused so many sleepless nights. Now, things could get back to normal around here, I thought. I just need to lie down for a while. I attempted to make my way to the bedroom, but the wooden floor was suddenly slanted at such an angle that I found it difficult to reach the door. I felt dizzy, and grabbed for the edge of my desk to steady myself. But what I touched was most certainly not my desk. It was much older and more ornate, with grotesque carvings all across its colorless surface. There were new pictures on the wall. Only they weren’t pictures at all, but rather bizarrely shaped holes that seemed to spontaneously assume strange new angles. Within them were swirling distortions of faces, illuminated by a sickly, unnatural light. Somehow, the windows had disappeared. And the walls were no longer met by ceiling, but instead extended into what looked like obscure infinity. I found myself being pulled by some strange force ever closer to one of those twisted shapes in the wall. Soon, I was inches away from the warped orifice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As the room began to sway around me, I heard the strains of that infernal instrument whose source I could not discern. The walls were no longer walls, but throbbing organs whose terrible pulse achieved a maddening cadence with the music. I heard laughter, screams and deafening ripping sounds, as though the very fabric of my physical apprehension was being rent to ribbons. At that moment, I knew I had no choice but to submit, to tender my resignation to reality. I thought briefly of Emily, and then I leaned forward into that heinous opening. I felt the entire world dissolve, and accepted my hellish providence.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><br />
Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-26206653731708200332009-11-22T15:26:00.005+00:002009-11-23T20:46:16.613+00:00Cumbrian Cthulhu on 'Lovecraft News Network!'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHxveu1zy3lnjL3MO0qS42ob0sVRR-7lE44sf0Ivs7lR6GH2K88PQAZzKvstNHgWOVu0ms-lyZZqgTeE5uvEB4RQSt_789jjUd2-h6f5OCqugQqyKGTtIF6h5ntua7laKAF81CaIvgy0o/s1600/CNN2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHxveu1zy3lnjL3MO0qS42ob0sVRR-7lE44sf0Ivs7lR6GH2K88PQAZzKvstNHgWOVu0ms-lyZZqgTeE5uvEB4RQSt_789jjUd2-h6f5OCqugQqyKGTtIF6h5ntua7laKAF81CaIvgy0o/s320/CNN2.jpg" /></a><br />
</div>Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback to 'The Chamber in the Hillside' Part One.<br />
I am ready and waiting to receive your own submissions!<br />
Part Two will be issued to Cumbrian writers groups and then posted online in December. <br />
<br />
Big thanks go to everyone at <a href="http://lovecraftnewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2009/11/lnn-interviews-british-author-andrew.html">The Lovecraft News Network</a> for their interview and help promoting this site!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Finally, our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by the terrible recent floods in Cumbria. Let us hope that people can get their lives safely back to normal as soon as possible.Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3493264850942531421.post-13628334211713841782009-11-01T20:41:00.017+00:002010-08-09T19:23:09.952+01:00THE CHAMBER IN THE HILLSIDE (part one) by Andrew McGuigan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVMOT5Dm1rM2s11LlZ0tPU-iSFrvahF4dimqSLWw57y0oK1TcBpaUF0lQSZotO0kuhRmcs57DgeUZ9bMHJtnYateP2ibwXURtYwF1CePI-E8B9zEGNkF0uIiUcB2Mh_-Zi0ue2dfoejVM/s1600/the+chamber+in+the+hillside.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVMOT5Dm1rM2s11LlZ0tPU-iSFrvahF4dimqSLWw57y0oK1TcBpaUF0lQSZotO0kuhRmcs57DgeUZ9bMHJtnYateP2ibwXURtYwF1CePI-E8B9zEGNkF0uIiUcB2Mh_-Zi0ue2dfoejVM/s640/the+chamber+in+the+hillside.JPG" width="451" /></a></div><br />
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></meta><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Generator"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Originator"></meta><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CFoo%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><o:smarttagtype name="place" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="country-region" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="City" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="time" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="address" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="Street" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><style>
<!--
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-language:EN-GB;}
@page Section1
{size:595.3pt 841.9pt;
margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt;
mso-header-margin:35.4pt;
mso-footer-margin:35.4pt;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Story by Andrew McGuigan<br />
Illustration by Andy Paciorek<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
To whom it may concern,<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Although it would be easy to dismiss my words as those of a madman, I beg you to read on. My story is based in the region of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Cumbria</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in the North West of England. The town of <st1:city><st1:place>Maryport</st1:place></st1:city> lies on the west coast, overlooking the <st1:place>Solway Firth</st1:place> and North to <st1:country-region><st1:place>Scotland</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is next to Mayport that the Senhouse Roman Fort site is located.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">I write to you now having heard that the plans to fully excavate the site will soon be coming to fruition. The indications are that a civil settlement or ‘vicus’ lies under the fields surrounding the fort. There could be other military buildings beneath as well, pre-dating Hadrian’s Wall.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Be aware that things may be found in that chamber in the hillside. Although it may not seem it, that area has been dug before. I know what they will find beneath.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">My team was sadly not able to conclude its examinations.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Hear my confession and heed my warning. It all started on the day of the floor cave in.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The team sent from London in 1954 included Dr. Johan Erkko from the University of Helsinki: a broad shouldered historian of military architecture and active middle aged athlete; Tom Braden, a private archaeologist for hire from Boston, expert in Roman conflicts and personal antiquated gain. That just leaves myself. Professor Andreas Steffan, my specialty being ancient languages. I had come to <st1:country-region><st1:place>England</st1:place></st1:country-region> from <st1:country-region><st1:place>Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 1936 as a child of eight years; my parents sadly did not survive the war, victims of educational persecution under the Nazis. By 1954 I was an enthusiastic young professor ready for his first organised and funded expedition.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">My love of languages had made my own English speaking accent an enigma to many and a small source of revenue for myself in gentlemen's club wagers.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The preliminary excavation of Senhouse Roman Fort would give the three of us the first opportunity to go deep into that site. Other forts along the Solway had already been dug and recorded, and so would be useful comparisons to ours.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">We enlisted the help of local labourers who could be trusted to know when to dig fast and when to dig carefully.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We had dug below the top soil, uncovering the usual low walls, timber remnants and pottery shards. The fort structure was deep in the grass land on the hillside above sea level, and far enough back from high tide that there was no additional damage to preservation. We were a few days into standard excavation when we discovered an unusual flooring structure beneath what would have been a guard tower. There were four corner tower areas but the foundation of one was a solid stone slab, rather than the fragmented timbers found elsewhere. It was when we were brushing down the corners of the structure that the accident happened.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Johan vanished from view as the floor beneath him fell away, leaving nothing but a surprised shout and an uprising cloud of dust to mark his previous position.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The stone under base turned out to be the ceiling of a sealed chamber. Dashing over and shining torches into the gloom below we could make out the shape of our colleague some twenty feet below, lying spread eagled and coughing atop a huge mound of ancient debris.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It took close to an hour to prise off the other huge stone slabs that comprised the chamber ceiling, Johan waited below, recovered from his fall and anxious for sufficient light to examine his inadvertent discovery. We secured a rope ladder to the base of our equipment truck and lowered ourselves down, overloaded with lights, charts and sampling kits.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The chamber itself was twenty feet in diameter, close to fifty feet deep and cylindrical in shape. It was clear that this was the first time it had been breached since it was built some years ago, around AD78. There were no doorways either around the inner base or at any height on the curved shaft of the chamber. This coupled with the nature of the piled debris that had cushioned Johan's fall lead us to a simple and definitive conclusion. This was a Roman burial pit of a kind previously unseen by man.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Tom was the first to discern the content of the enormous decayed pile.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It took him nearly a minute to vocalist his realization to the group, at which point even seasoned archaeologists such as ourselves cried out and were stumbled slightly.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The dry decomposition of centuries had reduced the thousands of bodies to mere rags, bones and dust flesh. Some strange items of armour such as thigh guards, wrist bracers and the like were all too corroded to identify.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Whoever these people were, they were clearly soldiers of some sort. The nature of the haphazard mass burial indicated they were certainly enemies to the Roman garrisons located along the coastal forts. We quickly took samples from a cross section of items and fragments, many of which were close to disintegration. As fascinating as the grisly pile was, the real treasure was revealed when we checked around the base of the vast corpse pile. On the floor of the chamber, showing between the rags and bones, our lanterns revealed inscriptions chiselled by Roman hand.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The most likely enemies of Roman coastal outposts would have been the Celtic Brigantes from the valleys of the <st1:place>Lake District</st1:place>, or rampaging Scotti crossing the Solway or following the coastline south. Both were historically known to contain painted warriors within their ranks, and also extremists who employed decorative flesh piercing and sometimes skull binding to deform the head shape and scare their enemies. This would partly explain the strange elongation of many of the skull remains found in the burial chamber, but so many of them? We had made a discovery that would make historians rethink the balance of indigenous tribes during Roman Britain. There had been nothing like this uncovered at any of the other forts along the Solway.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Tom noticed that the undersides of the slabs ripped from the chamber roof also had markings. These were a might more disconcerting than the symbols on the chamber floor, and were unmistakable in their origin. Claw marks. Hundreds of deep and shallow abrasion scraped into the thick slabs by bare hands and finger nails. Some of the occupants had been very much alive when the heavy chamber roof was finally slammed shut.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We worked furiously, digging deeper and deeper into chamber, hauling out sacks of ancient cadaver via a rope and pulley mechanism braced to the truck. Johan was happy to exercise his arms pulling the rope on the surface, enjoying the wide open coastal panorama after his recent experience of mild necro-claustrophobia.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">As a team our appetite for discovery was refreshed with every new symbol uncovered.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">As natural light failed above we switched on portable generators, the noisy petrol motors forcing excited communication at a shouting level. Finally at <st1:time hour="9" minute="0">nine o'clock</st1:time> we downed tools. With arms exhausted and eyes stinging we secured the site and drove our small truck into Maryport town, eager to wash the dust from our mouths and discuss the day's events.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We found 'The Laden Net' free-house down on <st1:street><st1:address>King Street</st1:address></st1:street> at the North quay, situated near a ship repair gridiron.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Although a little run down, it nicely suited both our purpose and pockets. Jobbing archaeologists of l950's could not afford to be drinking cocktails luxuriously in their hotels, despite the more romantic notions fostered later by <st1:city><st1:place>Hollywood</st1:place></st1:city>. Tom was the exception to this rule of course, his own private antique enterprises had given him wealth and connections, which he tried his best to not brag about in a crass manner.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Sadly he was not always successful in this endeavour.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The inside of ‘The Laden Net' was very much like the outside of ‘The Laden Net': dark, quiet and smelling vaguely of rotting fish. It contained several low tables with a mismatch of chairs spread out in front of the dark wood bar.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">We four tired workers slumped at our table and let our minds and sleuths run free.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">There were perhaps six other locals, fishermen by their look, either sitting in pairs or quietly in solitude. We were undisturbed and had space to excitedly chatter, just as required. The landlord seemed content to keep us regularly served with heavy glass tankards of delicious nut-brown foaming local ale. Time flew as we debated the meaning of our discoveries and the importance they would have in the rewriting of Roman history books.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By eleven or so it was only our table left, smug and excited at the possibility of fame and fortune, and more than a little drunk.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">We finally left the pub when professional curiosity for the next day's dig overcame the importance of another drink. Tom staggered off towards his hotel, Johan and I to our modest rented rooms.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Myself and Johan rose and met early the following day, arriving to find the dig site vandalized.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The heavy iron cover we had towed across the chamber opening had been scattered carelessly onto a sand dune some distance away. It must have taken another vehicle like our truck, or at least horses and chains to move the thick sheet iron so easily. We checked the area but it seemed the robbers had realized there was little of instant value to be had. We had stored the bones and corpse remains in our vehicle containers with the small number of other relics and stone carvings found.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It took the two of us little time to bring the site back to order, the only real mess being in the chamber itself, where the small piles of bones had been spilled over. Someone had clearly been inspecting the Roman carvings.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The new day gave me chance to properly examine the floor of the cylinder chamber.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">We fully cleared the floor and began the long process of translation.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The carvings took the form of a circular diagram some six feet in diameter, filled with writing, pictorials and symbols.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Although most of the characters were in Latin a number of pictures and symbols belonged to a language I had never seen before, Arcane and clearly ancient, these words or names were mentioned numerous times but were too obscure for me to begin extrapolating order or meaning. Then there were the pictorials. Bizarre illustrations of a many pointed star with a spiral centre. Was this an identification of the tribe buried in the chamber? Could it be alchemical writings, or descriptions of geographical direction? Perhaps a rare Roman cult worshipping local Gods? Sadly even with an extensive background in ancient languages, I could not construct a working vocabulary or lexicon.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By lunchtime Tom had still not turned up. Johann and I ate heartily of mouth watering local produce kindly provided by our landlady. Fresh crusty bread served with cold <st1:city><st1:place>Cumberland</st1:place></st1:city> sausage and honey roast ham. An assortment of cheese, pickles and fruit washed down with sweet cider. Our spirits were high and we mocked the American's weak constitution compared to our robust European drinking abilities.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Our concerns regarding Tom only began when the sun fell.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A visit to a local village phone box proved worryingly unrewarding.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">There was no answer at all from Tom's room.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The journey back to town was fast and silent, both of us lost in thought. I personally did not want to voice my suspicions to Dr. Johan. It would not be prudent as group leader for me to undermine a colleague without being sure of all of the facts.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Tom was staying at ‘The Golden Lion' on <st1:street><st1:address>Senhouse Street</st1:address></st1:street>. He had smugly informed us that previous occupants had included such luminary figures as Charles Dickens and George Stephenson. I'm quite sure Tom felt he was finally staying among peers of his level.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The on duty receptionist was a strange looking man who I thought more suited to back of house work rather than dealing with customers. He was quite hunched over for someone of apparent middle years, with disconcerting bulging eyes and bad skin.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps it was actually preferable that he was in the reception rather than in the kitchen handling food. He smelled like an unwashed fish gutter. When I informed him that I was unable to contact my missing colleague, he replied coldly that Tom had checked out late the previous night, leaving no forwarding information or explanation!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By the time I left the hotel I was seething with anger. I knew Tom's reputation as a mercenary collector, but he was being paid well by the university for his loyalty to the expedition. The thought that he was out there somewhere making exclusive publication deals felt like a major betrayal.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Johan and I sat miserably in the ‘Laden Net.’ Betrayed by the American and faced with Roman carvings that seemed to amount to no more than insane, superstitious graffiti, we were at a low. We drank a little, and occasionally muttered a half baked idea to salvage some credibility with the university. Tom would take the credit for the mass grave discovery, using his reliable media contacts to downplay our involvement and gain his own team.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As the drink took hold my mood was soon as bitter as the beer. I asked the barmen if he had seen our friend from the other night and he claimed that he couldn't remember anyone but Johan and I being present! The absence of the previous night's frivolity allowed me to notice new details in our host, throwing a dark and untrustworthy aspect on him in my eyes.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I noticed then that he was another like the hotel clerk.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Those large unblinking eyes, the bad skin and the shifty disposition.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Had he been paid for silence by Tom? What did he know about the site vandalism? Were we now some sort of local laughing stock? Within an hour I was asked to leave the pub, my incessant questions and raised voice drawing cold attention from the other drinkers.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">We left, but still maintained the air of slurring indignation displayed by most drunkards facing forced exile.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Out in the black misty streets we trudged towards rented lodgings, our footsteps echoing into the night on slippery cobbles. I had not feared retribution for my embarrassing outbursts in the public house but as we heard the quickening footsteps in the mist behind us, we increased our pace. For all my bluster, I had no wish to receive a bruising from an angry dock worker. The hammer of steps behind us grew louder; there was now a small group in pursuit. We were so busy looking behind us as we turned the corner that we barely avoided bowling over the large man standing there.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">He hissed at us for quiet and barged us roughly into an adjacent doorway. The door was closed quickly behind us and he held hands to our chests to keep us still.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Our followers outside passed by the house. Some of the steps seemed strangely out of stride with the rest, denoting a weird rhythm I did not identify until much later.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">If I had known on day one what I then discovered later perhaps I may have dropped my books and ran from the site. What would you have chosen in my position dear reader? Would you prefer to know of an impending doom that you cannot hope to stop? Or is it better to live your remaining days in blissful ignorance? My letter is in your hands of course so you still have that option at any time should the truth prove too uncomfortable.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When we were sure those outside had gone we pushed the man’s hands away.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">For all our protesting, Johan and I were stunned into silence by the old man's hurried explanation.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He told us that he knew where our Yank friend had been taken.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>At present I can write no more, I fear my location has been compromised, and they will be upon me soon. Share my story with others you trust. It is vital the truth is heard and understood.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Look for my next correspondence at the turn of December.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Regards,<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Prof. Andreas Steffen</i><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></meta><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Generator"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 10" name="Originator"></meta><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CFoo%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><o:smarttagtype name="Street" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="address" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="time" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="City" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="country-region" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="place" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Oldstyle HPLHS";
panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:modern;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Lovecraft Cursive";
panose-1:0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-2147483605 8 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
p.MsoFooter, li.MsoFooter, div.MsoFooter
{margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
tab-stops:center 207.65pt right 415.3pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
@page Section1
{size:612.0pt 792.0pt;
margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt;
mso-header-margin:36.0pt;
mso-footer-margin:36.0pt;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1
</style>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #19012f; font-family: "Lovecraft Cursive"; font-size: 24pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><o:p></o:p></span>
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div>Andrew McGuiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00456229095064258495noreply@blogger.com2