Horror

THE RECOLLECTION OF THE EVENTS OF JANUARY 8, 2015

Five years ago, my former colleague at the University
of History in Platinum, Indiana, dropped out of college
in favor of stranger studies. Following his slow
months-long descent from his scholarly work in order
to make time for increasingly archaic and frankly
worthless pastimes, Kelton Haven (my colleague)
made the personal announcement to myself alone
that he was leaving Platinum and returning to his
hometown in Nanatuska, someplace far north of
Platinum but well within the bounds of Indiana
nonetheless. Having much concern for his well being
at large, I questioned his motivations - furtively,
thoroughly, he explained that he was pursuing the
opportunities that awaited him in his town of old.
More specifically, he ascertained to me that his
motivation did indeed lie in the secrets that were
inexplicably buried in the rural Midwestern town of
Nanatuska.
He left with his dubiously acquired books (a meager
collection at best, each book of which was
exceedingly thin with rare knowledge) on a rainy day,
and as he departed - I stood at the foot of the
university's impressive front spire, able to easily see
the vast concrete parking space - there came a
brilliantly effulgent flash of lightning brighter than any
I had ever seen. Presently I was blinded only for a
moment, but when my eyesight returned to me, I
could have sworn that Kelton's navy blue car was
thrice farther away from my vantage point than it
should have been. This, though, I passed off as a
mere hallucination of a worried mind.
I gave little thought to Kelton Haven in the
proceeding months, but soon enough my attention
was drawn back to his strange behavior. One day I
sternly remembered one of his most capricious
peculiarities - it had appeared unexpectedly,
catching me off guard and shocking me to the core.
In our shared dorm, not everything could be kept
secret at all times, which occasionally included badly
timed glimpses at the other's lack of clothing. In one
such circumstance, when I had arrived back at the
dormitory after an extended day of grocery shopping
as well as acquiring specific textbooks, I'd stepped
back into our own dorm, where immediately I saw at
the end of the hall, in the joined livingroom-and-
kitchen, Kelton standing bare-chested over a table,
looking over one of his denser books. At my sudden
intrusion, he spun around quickly, allowing me an
unobstructed view of the simple yet all-consuming
black tattoo spanning from his lower chest to his
upper belly. Its form I can hardly describe, as it was
composed of such unusual patterns which somehow
could not be accurately categorized as simple or
complex. It was an enigma, out of place, and
shockingly out of character for Kelton.
Why would he blemish his body with such a
blasphemous thing? This question burned in my mind
for close to three years (after two years following
Kelton's departure) until, finally, I received an
unexpected letter from an old friend in the mail. As
expected, the sender had been Kelton Haven - this
strange medium of communication fit with his recent
eccentric demeanor, as there were many easier means
available, including the lightning-fast utilization of
any computer easily obtainable from nigh every
modern store in the world - and he wrote in such a
bizarrely foreign script barely intelligible as English
that I admit that I had to reread his letter several
times simply to make sense of it. Additionally, there
were numerous inconsistencies in the spelling and
grammar of his letter, as if the grammatical rules and
dialect of another language were instinctually rooted
in his brain and actively interfering with his
comprehension of English. This letter is, word for
word, mistakes included, as follows:
Dessember 10, 20-14
My friend Daer, Bryce Cunning, bringing to you i Givv
invitations for Yuu to come to my old toun Nana-
tuska (alu-kum, ganju eal'jeol) - discussions hevy
will Follo for uss to reLearn thoz thinngs i qwit For
Whoom my formle egucation yaers aggo fife. To come
Yuu my Nana-tuska residential.
Aside from the most unusual English (if it can be
labeled as such), I took notice that the date of the
letter was several weeks late. The day of its receipt
was January seventh, nearly a month delayed. If
anything, this lateness inspired me with more passion
to pay a visit to my old colleague, especially
considering that his hopelessly broken English shined
light on his growing instability, possibly even hinting
at his future inability to care for himself. Additionally,
I knew that the nearest place of care for the mentally
insane in Nanatuska was dozens of miles west at
Helensville Asylum, a place with an especially bad
reputation when it comes to crucial details such as
sanitation and overall health of its patients. I settled
on the decision to make the hours-long drive to
Nanatuska (I had been there before on rare visits in
years past before I had met Kelton), if only to check
up on my former colleague's collapsing mental state.
The day that I departed from my recently-acquired,
modest, residential home, a storm was brewing on the
horizon - offering threats of blizzard, and relentlessly
to boot. Weather forecasts had already predicted
snowfall possibly reaching up to two feet or more,
and I cared not to be caught in such a catastrophe
before beginning my upstate journey to Nanatuska.
Unfortunately, I was not faced with much fortune; the
longer I drove, as hours passed, it became clear that
the storm front was scattered very far north,
originating from someplace in mid-Michigan
(probably as lake effect snow from colossal Lake
Michigan) and forming a swell in the sky that would
not likely disperse until it had released its load (and
its fury) upon a fair portion of northern Indiana.
Giving me a figurative jolt now and then were
occasional uncannily bright flashes of lightning
toward Nanatuska, though the storm was not to fall
until much later.
Luckily I arrived at Kelton's Nanatuska residence
shortly before the storm commenced - unluckily, I
found the place vacant of all signs of life. Snow
outside of his home, piled a mere few inches in depth,
revealed no recent passage of human footsteps (in
fact, the only prints present were those of myriad
squirrels and birds), and all lights inside were
dimmed dishearteningly. This evident vacancy
sparked my concern, as anything could have
happened in the weeks during which the letter was
on its way to my own home. I powered up the creaky
front steps and knocked first on the door, praying for
a second that perhaps Kelton was only asleep and
unharmed. No response came, however, and I found it
prudent to try the knob - the door swung open
effortlessly, and immediately I was greeted with a
pungent odor of paper and leather. Stepping inside, I
groped around on the wall for a lightswitch and
flipped it, bathing the room in light. My jaw was
agape instantly.
Scattered around the room haphazardly were
hundreds of moth-eaten papers torn directly from
Kelton's ancient books, displaying writings in
unintelligible scripts and drawings of eerie beings
with lanky bodies, slim legs, and wide skulls with no
obvious facial orifices, or of lights in a black expanse
passing for the sky, or (more despairingly) of
unnatural shapes descending from the skies whilst
engulfed by a brilliant glow of orange, cyan, or white.
The longer I explored this papery labyrinth, the more I
felt a growing sense of unease, as it slowly dawned
upon me with the chills running up and down my
spine that I did not belong there. Looking extensively
upon the intricately detailed drawings (early historic
in origin, assumedly dating from at latest the third
century, BCE, judging by the style used, the quality of
the leather pages, and the wornness of the paint) and
seeing the increasingly unearthly monstrosities
painted upon them, I became increasingly aware of a
mentally gnawing sensation, almost as if my mind
were being violated by a vile sort of energy. Then,
with one fateful glance, I recognized a recent
handwritten note on the back of the door I had just
opened to make my entry:
Januwarry 5, 20-15
Nauw leevv - Thay ar nat oure Frends.
The moment that my mind finished dreadfully
processing that petrifying message, blinding light
swallowed me from all windows, accompanied by an
intense mechanical warmth and a deafening roar of
machinery. The room pulsed rhythmically as if shaken
by colossal engines, and every single thing present in
the room shook violently or toppled about, if it wasn't
flung inexplicably across the room or launched to the
ceiling as if by reversed gravity. My heart began to
race immediately, and even with my blinded eyesight,
I managed to race through the open doorway and over
the ground wet with flash-melted snow, and climbed
into my car, slamming the door with enough force to
form a miniscule crack in the window. Light still
engulfed everything, and I became astoundedly aware
of vaguely humanoid shapes descending from the sky
- in the sheer madness of the situation, with
unnatural vigor I rapidly pulled out of the driveway
and hurdled onto the backroad, racing determinedly
to escape from the aerial nightmare. As soon as I hit
the roads, the light diminished completely, but I was
still blinded - this time by the blustering snow
falling at an undeniably blizzardly rate.
I could not see even as I guided my car through the
empty backroads, but I realized that I must have made
a wrong turn when I mistakenly arrived at a dead end
surrounded on all sides by dense forest trees
curiously lacking layered snow. Moments before I was
capable of swerving the car around and continuing
my escape, the ominously effulgent light returned and
swallowed me whole. The car rumbled as it
abandoned the damp ground in favor of greeting the
hot air, and even the trees surrounding me reacted by
painstakingly leaning away from the intruding alien
light. My mind was wracked horrified as hands tipped
with six wiry things clamped to every window of the
car, numbering in the dozens until, finally, they
parted ways in the middle of the windshield to reveal
a single disturbing culmination of everything deemed
unholy by mankind and certainly a portion of the
animal kingdom.
The voices I heard from unexplained sources in that
fading moment - they spoke a horrid creole of
English and something not belonging to our Earth.
What can possibly communicate in such a grueling
manner?
What occurred between that and my awakening in my
car in the driveway of my disturbingly snowless
Platinum home is a mystery to me. I woke with the
feeling that a minimal period of time had passed,
perhaps only a number of minutes or even seconds,
yet the surroundings suggested otherwise. Now, it
was dawn, and the sun was shining weak warmth
upon the cold environment. As I said, my home was
lacking in snow - the premises of the neighboring
homes were not, and in fact snow was piled three feet
high at the very least. That, though, is not the most
jarring factor. Strangest of all is the fact that I woke
shirtless, lying in the back seat of my car, with a
stinging sensation ranging from my lower chest to
upper belly. Looking down, I glimpsed with the
greatest horror I have ever felt in my life a black
tattoo identical to the one which Kelton Haven had
received five years prior.
In addition to that, though to a lesser extent, was a
quiet, dim desire to look more into the things that
Kelton had studied so profusely - of course, that was
shrouded by my innate horror. As for this
documentation, I write it for the sole purpose of
marking my story before it is too late, for I fear that
my own mind might be commencing to slip. At the
same time, one can only wonder what lies beyond our
atmosphere, who may be observing from the heavens
above, and where those who go missing but are never
found disappear to. That pondering is what leads me
to believe that my stability is limited in the near
future, and that those things that I met not be
provoked any further.