Horror 100 Volume 2

Stitch In Time

Some think of me as a monster, to others, just a cold blooded murder. One thing Father taught me was you could not control what people thought of you; you could only control your actions through wise decisions. If they only knew why killing Father and burning that wretched castle to the ground was a wise decision, in their eyes I would not be monster nor murderer, but hero.

I am Adam. That was the name chosen by Father and I shall keep it for as long as I exist or can remember it. They will not follow me and I hope they think I met my doom in the fire. It will be some time before the fire burns out and then they will be able to investigate. I was both elated and mournful as I watched the castle walls collapse in upon themselves, burying Father's body and the evidence of his work; his sins against man, of which I am the only survivng example.

The hull of this merchant cutter will serve as my shelter and it will ferry me to my new existence. The accomodations are of little matter; it's final destination is all that concerns me for now. Maybe the distance between me and the painful memories of my actions will allow me some peace; however, I do think it will take quite a while to erase the visions of tonight from my mind.

Oh Father! Why did you not heed the warning of your Father about that vile book? I can still hear your final breath escaping your mouth and the crunching of your bones as I pounded the life out of you with the very hands you gave life to. You should have left that book alone! Why did you think your Father took the time to hide it so well? You should have never gone into the cavern! You should have left that thing alone!

What saddens me most is that he did it out of love; he did it for his child, his Adam. It was his selflessness that wrought the wickedness of my actions. Father became aware that I knew I was not like the other children of man; I was his child. He had taught me how to live amongst them in the secretiveness of the castle walls. He taught me to speak as they did, to use cutlery instead of my hands, even the use of a napkin was taught with the same importance by Father. Yet he knew no matter how much he taught me, no matter how much Father cared for me, that I was truly alone. There was no one else like me, and the likelihood of man accepting me living in their midst was nonexistent.

Father explained to me that I was his miracle. From death Father created life. He told me of his grisly exploits in cemeteries throughout the countryside; risking the hangman's noose should he have been caught defiling the graves. He did all this to bring me life. He did it to remove death from mankind's lips so that the word's meaning would be forgotten over time. Those that did not understand the ways of science, those stuck in the world of ignorance, would surely burn him alive and destroy his Adam. That was his reasoning for keeping me hidden away all those years.

Father cared so much for me that he neglected the very work that born me into this world. The very work that drove him to help mankind he had ignored for much of my life. But Father saw my loneliness as if he felt it himself. He began to pour over his notes and making new ones, laying out the blueprint for another series of graveyard scavenging, and repairing the mechanisms that were damaged by the lightning that granted me my first breath. While I felt the love of Father's intent to birth another creature like me; this one a flower to my bramble, I hadn't the heart to tell him about how painful my existence was for the first moments of my life.

I tried to convince Father that I needed not someone like me for companionship. I was more interested in the world of man and how that one day I, Adam, would have a place among them. My words fell upon deaf ears as Father began to dust off medical tomes he had not touched in the six years since he created me. One book seemed to catch Father's attention in an odd manner causing him to pause and mouth out the words of the title.

Necronomicon was the word Father whispered in a hushed tone. He claimed he had discovered it by chancw and had never seen nor heard of the tanned leather bound manual. He was cleaning out Grandfather's study when the old castle relinquished a wall safe that had purposefully been mortared and concealed. Inside the safe, Father claimed to have found what he thought was a masonry block with an unfamiliar and possibly Masonic symbol etched upon its face. Breaking through the mortar, Father relayed that the tome had been wrapped in burlap, bound shut by wire, and packed with herbs that consisted of wolfsbane, belladonna, garlic, and sage. Father dismissed the concealment of the book and the obvious attemtpts to hide it from the eyes of the world as mere superstition. He then carefully opened the rather ancient looking volume and just inside, tucked away and forgotten, were a cluster of parchments scribed by Grabdfather. On one of the parchments there seemed to be a map which I examined over Father's shoulder; I often avoided disturbing him while consumed with his work. It showed the very castle that had become my incidental prison of protection and seclusion; it indicated that there was an underground passageway running underneath. It wound its way below the moors and into the valley where the Vistani gypsies loosely called home. The passageway concluded there with a single word marking its end:"Shub-Niggurath".