Two Consonants

Two Consonants

Elizabeth Steele Elmore Leonard says never to start a story with the weather. Surprisingly, the night everything came together, and which no one would wish even upon their worst enemies, the sky stalled itself, sputtering blue for miles and miles. Some force, beyond all human recognition, banished every cloud from the sky. The land cracked with energy. When it began, it no longer seemed like Oregon, my home (for better or for worse) but a desert in some remote region of Hell. The green rushed away. The great, hot weather disturbed me very deeply as I sat half-naked before the typewriter imagining myself a Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg of the new generation. Funny, I should try to become one like them, when my cosmic inspirer is so much darker, so much more arcane. Halfway through the first sentence of a short story, recently begun, a bolt of lightning struck a tree next to me like a grand dues ex machina. I jumped. Midnight is the witching hour for many people, and though I am always awake at that damnable time the slightest noise shakes me to my core. A tapping came on the window. Wind blew like she-ghosts wailing for lost sailor loves. The tapping increased, as did my paranoia. Then, the wind turned into a voice that sent shivers of fear down my spine. I couldn’t turn back to look. “H….P…” the voice rasped out. I’d heard those words before. In a friendly time, and a friendlier tome. It seems that on my application for a private school in Barcelona, my mother abbreviated the name of my fathers company, Hewlett-Packard, which caused some confusion. The teacher though it a nickname, and called out that name. Even bearing those two letters for a short time was enough to damn me for all time. For, in that confusion, the Fates decided that I would become imbued with the powers of one of the greatest and most tormented writers of all time—far greater than Poe or even Conan Doyle. In that short time, the old power of words to shock, anger, scare, and awe transferred into me from some otherworldly place, where HP Lovecraft must be banished to by those unknown terrible creatures of cracking mind’s dreams. The voice called to me, ever rasping, ever coughing. “No, go away,” I called. “H…P…” “Go away.” “HP, H…P…, HP,” the voice droned. Banging at the keyboard, I wrote out a few words, incoherent to the first portion of the sentence. Then a large hand, rough and wrinkled, pounded down hard on my shoulder. I started back slowly, hoping that if I looked I would find nothing other than a parent or a friend. But a friendly sight did not await me. I turned, and a monstrous being presented itself to me, its large proboscis like a dagger nearly stabbing me. It sang those two consonants again, in that awful mix of chirp and death cough. I shook my head. “That’s not my name.” The thing picked up a book, large eyeballs oozing with puss, and held it in my face. I held back vomit. The thing insisted, and forced the book into my hand. A collection of Lovecraft stories I’d forgotten I owned. “Wha—what is it you want?” “Old… guhgods, …. Write.” The things nodded, and pointed to the page. “write, old gods. Nyraggaliffilheim.” I spat up then, and some of my blood came along for the ride. The creature touched its skeletal hands, textured like sandpaper, to my forehead. I grew sicker. My lung tried to claw its way outside my body. An intelligence, not my own, entered my body. I could do naught but stand back inside my mind and watch the scene, as my body started to pour out strings and strings of nonsense, some ancient language. I found I could understand the meanings, despite the archaic word forms.

R’lyeh assurgeth linchu ia Cthul’ia. Ia, curseni—Ia Ia R’lyeh.

(Cthulu rises, stars align, R’lyeh reclaims former glory) And then, as soon as the being entered me and wrote those words, the wound of the weather sealed. I came to, and found myself all alone. The words still glowed on the screen. I turned the monitor off, quickly, not daring to look at the curse. I knew enough about Lovecraft’s writings, which most people assume merely made up, to understand all that would come to pass. Havoc and chaos would come again to the earth, as the Old One’s returned. And the most terrible city, more feared than Mu or Atlantis, would return, populated by servants of all those evil beings. I wept. I knelt down and for the first time in my life, really prayed. If that God so many people are crazed about exists, surely he would stop this. It didn’t help, the panic still stirred up inside me. I looked out, and saw the dark of night, many stars shining like beady eyes of vampire bats waiting to sink their fangs into human blood. The clock told me the time, early morning. The sun should have come up… I ran outside. No one else was around, the walls of being broke down, and I found myself surrounded only by those stars. What could I do? Ia! Yggdrasi cthulhu narkun shi into. Un polop kaktul. R’lyeh! “Dia ad aghaidh's ad aodaun... agus bas dunarch ort! Dhonas 's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!... Ungl unl... rrlh ... chchch...” I remembered the story, Rats in the Walls. Was this happening to me? Argg ort Ia daemons? I couldn’t let it happen, I looked through all time and space and reached a pistol, loaded. Who to save? Myself, and …. Ktul Ktul ia ort narkun shi’pitaee. Cthulhu R’lyeh rise. I fell to the ground as I saw the waves of the ocean recede, and that terrible city make its way up into our earthly realm. I fell and I coughed. Cthulhu! I returned to the wakening world, a sharp pain in my neck. Missed! How could I have missed? They tell me I killed a beautiful woman, but I didn’t. I saved her. Yes, the walls of being are back now… a shield against men knowing all the cosmos can contain. They don’t believe me, but when the great green cephalopod ancient beings his devouring of all earth, they’ll have no excuse. Ia! I warned them. Just like Lovecraft tried to. I warned them, and he warned them but no one listened, though it fiction, or though it insane. The end of humanity is coming! To stop it? Is that insane? The fates wish me to continue to try and tell—I must break out of this place, I have to get out… I know the language now; I’ve found a copy of that mystical book. Necronomicon… by Al Azhrad. I’m learning the spells…. The first one is reanimation. My target is that same man of Rhode Island, self-proclaimed Providence, HP Lovecraft. I call on him, since his two consonants damned all man kind. 1

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