The Cry of Cthulhu: Formerly: The Alchemist's Notebook Read online

  Still Thinking in 3 Dimensions?

  There are no hiding places.....

  Faren, a shell-shocked Vietnam vet, and his wife, Janet, inherit an old country estate in Germany around the time that Faren’s company transfers him to the same area. The two soon discover that the coincidence is really too good to be true. Their home, the schloss, rests near a timeworn door into the earth that is poised to open, exposing all to a horde of four-dimensional beings. Soon the line between our reality and that other space-time will be blurred forever, leaving mankind to be consumed by shrill, shrieking terror.

  Only one man has the slimmest chance to save our planet and, even though he has no place to hide, he prefers to run.

  “Gripping…One of the scariest books I have ever read!”

  Scott P Santodonato, Striplv Magazine

  Based on “…the greatest movie never made.”

  Tom Sullivan, www.DarkAgeProductions.com

  The BOOK of the DEAD as seen in the cult horror classics:

  “THE EVIL DEAD” & “EVIL DEAD II’

  [The Cry of Cthulhu] “is not only a homage to the work of H. P. Lovecraft, but it’s as if he wrote the book himself, possessing the mind and fingertips of one Byron Craft.”

  James B. Carter, HellNotes.com

  More Information available at www.ByronCraftBooks.com

  THE CRY OF

  CTHULHU

  By

  Byron Craft

  The CRY of CTHULHU

  (Formerly The Alchemist’s Notebook)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright ©, United States Library of Congress; The Tanist www.ByronCraftBooks.com

  Artwork by Tom Sullivan, Copyright 2013 Tom Sullivan @ www.darkageproductions.com

  ISBN: 1523479760

  ISBN 13: 9781523479764

  To my wife Marcia, who never stopped believing in me.

  Warning

  The statute of limitations has run out. What I stole from Miskatonic University, they still want back. They want to hide the truth.

  The theft of what the news media called the “Alchemist’s Papers” was made public in January of 1984 but the cover-up that followed, and the failed attempt to retrieve them, left the story only half told. The truth is about a fold in the soft and otherwise smooth surface of time. It is a harbinger of an evil so destructive that the current state of the world, plagued with terrorism and economic chaos, would only be a footnote in history by comparison.

  The tabloids had a heyday with the story, claiming apocalyptic doom, while the mainstream media labeled it as another crackpot interpretation of the “Book of Revelations.” Neither were accurate. Miskatonic University of Arkham, Massachusetts had done an effective job of discrediting the papers and me, and until now, no one would publish them.

  The one piece of information that they were unable to keep from the public was the existence of a covert organization within the university itself. We were a group of select scholars that investigated what appeared to be supernatural occurrences all over the world. It was alleged that during some of these investigations the group had acted like vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands, passing out judgment where they saw fit.

  My name is Thomas Ironwood. I was a resident professor at Miskatonic and head of the Physics Department. I was a member of the group, known then, to only a few, as the “Mythos Department.” My confessions to the press were not out of remorse for any wrong doing, rather as a revolt against my colleagues who were becoming dangerously lax in their retaliatory measures.

  I believed then, and believe even more today, that the individual stories of Faren and Janet Church, and Faren’s great Uncle Heinrich Todesfall, constitute a warning to an already endangered world and should not be suppressed. The rampant ignorance in the world has left me no alternative but to come out of hiding and go public with the documents.

  The plausibility of our planet being threatened by an ageless horror may automatically arouse suspicion to the authenticity of the following chronicles and possibly create a back-lash from the more serious elites in the media. How Miskatonic acquired the papers may be questioned. Why hide them if they are only a hoax?

  The chronicles are authentic. They required some editing to clarify the time lines. The accounts original forms were as a journal, a diary and a series of tape recordings. They have been edited into separate narratives subsequently breaking the work down into four parts.

  With the help of my publisher, we have struck out redundancies which often occur in personal journals and eliminated digressions which the elderly Todesfall was guilty of doing when his mind would stray from the story and wander unchecked into the intervening years. Faren Church’s was the least polished of the narratives, because his was a hasty account left on tape and required more extensive editing.

  For the remainder, we have left well enough alone. The chronicles accurately tell the whole story without additional enhancement.

  ***

  It lives and breathes not only in the depths of N’Kai,

  but in the deepest regions of our nightmares.

  Found amongst the papers and tapes stolen from Miskatonic University.

  Author Unknown.

  PART ONE

  THE SCHLOSS

  From Janet Church’s Diary

  I am almost out of Valium, only one more pill left. The stress is beginning to get the best of me. The tranquilizer is the only thing that has made life bearable for me these last few days. I wonder now what will happen next, if they will come for me after the drug runs out, or if I will be allowed to numb my last few minutes.

  They won’t come close to the schloss now. I have the lights burning in every room. I even have the oil lamp I found going and every candle I could lay my hands on is lit.

  They won’t come this minute. They won’t come until the mist hides the stars and the moon.

  Dear God! I am not even sure who they are!

  ***

  This evening, the mist rolled up from the hollow and engulfed the schloss and beyond. It moved across the road, lingering in low spots and ditches, until the entire countryside was covered by the milky vapor. It spreads throughout the thick woods for miles, and on humid nights, such as this, it has often reached as far as Valsbach.

  The countryside surrounding the house, even on the brightest days, is desolate and foreboding. Now, at dusk, the twilight lends the field behind our house a strangeness that sets it apart from the rest of the area. It suggests a watchful malevolence to the ancient trees, to the descending marshes with their thousands of chirping insects and the incessant croaking of frogs, to the time worn and vine covered stone walls pressing in upon the perimeter of the old estate, closing in upon our home as if intent upon holding me fast.

  Thick vapors from the hollow swirl and eddy about the schloss and the room in which I sit fills with moisture. The fog ascends in spirals from beneath the door and its long, wet fingers creep across the carpet with caressing strokes.

  Crowning a grassy summit, whose sides are wooded near its base with gnarled trees of the black forest, stands the old home of my husband’s ancestors. For centuries, its lofty tiled roofs and tower have looked down upon the rugged countryside. The exact age of the house is not known. Its roots, I guess, must go back centuries, before the beginnings of the Church family line. I know very little about the family lineage not being a Church by blood, only by marriage.

  The
villagers say the ancient house has always been here. They tend to be superstitious and sometimes given to fanciful tales. One teller of these stories is a homeless old woman who makes her living sifting through the back alleys and dumpsters in town. Her name is Ilsedore Hulse, and she is probably the oldest living resident of Valsbach.

  Once when I was able to get her alone and ask about my husband’s ancestry, she confided in me that the house had a blackened past and that, “evil still prevailed there as sure as the trees of the Black Forest have leaves and the creatures that dwell there have eyes.” She summed up our meeting by informing me in a dramatically lowered voice that the old house was there even when her great-great-grandmother was a child.

  Superstition plays an important role with these people and their fears can be justified living in an isolated area far from anywhere you and I would consider main stream. I can excuse their actions; their attitude towards us, however, is less than tolerable. It did not take me long to accept the shunned indifference by the shopkeepers and townspeople.

  What I did consider strange is the lack of visitors to the surrounding area of the schloss. Travelers seldom enter the woods that border our property and none come within walking distance of the old house.

  I have never seen any wild animals on our property. The woodland creatures, if there are any, are probably wise, because the overall aspect of the region would give anyone the impression of leering death. The ancient lightning-scarred trees seem unnaturally large and twisted, and the other vegetation abnormally thick and feverish; while curious mounds and hummocks in the weedy, pitted field behind our house, remind me of snakes and burial plots.

  The strain is critical now, by tonight, I am afraid that if my husband does not return home...I will be murdered.

  The woods appear to close in tighter about this lonely house.

  ***

  Damn it, where is Faren? He better get here soon.

  I have to remain calm. I won’t end up screaming into the night. I’ll start at the beginning. The record must be complete. I’ll tell you about my husband. I’ll tell you about Boston, Chicago and New York before receiving the telegram, and I’ll tell you about this place.

  I met Faren while still living with my parents in Ipswich, that’s in Essex County, Massachusetts. At the time, I was in the midst of making what I thought were two very important decisions. One, should I keep pursuing a major in art history and, two, how to clear up my complexion, when an old Dodge van lumbered down the street and died in front of our house. “Bring our boys home” and “Impeach Johnson” were painted on its side in day-glow colors.

  The sound of the ancient motor in its final death throes was followed by the slamming of the driver’s door. A moment later the hood was violently flung up and amidst the fury of clanking tools and sharp cursing, a full head of tightly curled hair shot out.

  “Have you got a piece of wire?” he shouted. Then he added impatiently, “A bobby pin, a shoelace, anything? Don’t just stand there, I have to strap this distributor cap down, I’ve got to be in Chicago tomorrow.”

  I wore my hair down and with a headband in those days and although I knew I didn’t look like I had just come from a hardware store, I felt embarrassed that I hadn’t and blurted, “I’m wearing sandals.”

  His blue eyes looked right inside of me, and then he cracked a smile on one side of his face and said, “Hey, what’s your name?”

  I was back in junior high again being asked to go steady for the first time in my life. The sensation shot through me, I became flushed, I am sure he picked up on it because he relaxed some, and with a broader smile stepped forward, wiping his hands on an oil stained rag.

  “I’m Faren. Faren Church. You still haven’t told me yours.”

  It didn’t take us long to get acquainted. I was able to get the required length of wire from my dad’s garage and in the time it took him to make the repairs on the van, he was off, and I went with him.

  Now, don’t misunderstand. I wasn’t that kind of girl. That was years ago, another era, and people were a lot different then. I know it sounds lame with the “new morality” that’s around these days but it’s the truth. Times were so uncertain then. The war was on and life just didn’t seem as permanent as it should have been.

  Besides, there was something about him that first day. He was so sure of himself. He had his whole life planned out and knew exactly where he was going. That was an unusual trait for a young man in those days, with the war in Vietnam in full swing and not knowing if he would be attending college in the fall term or taking cover in a rice paddy.

  Faren had a passion for photography then, which although has dimmed some, still prevails. His van was cluttered with telephoto lenses, tripods, light meters and other assorted technical paraphernalia. Faren loved life in the truest sense. He seemed to live just to capture its beauty; while on the other hand, his aversion for cruelty and brutality inspired him to exploit it in hopes of revealing its vulgarity.

  Faren hated the war. For many months we traveled together to different colleges in the Midwest, joining in demonstrations and rallies. Faren felt that we were making a difference and, besides, if we kept moving around, the draft board wouldn’t catch up with him.

  Our days were long and happy. We would normally have breakfast and if we could afford it, lunch while on the road. When we came upon a university, Faren would always find an off campus student house or a commune that would put us up for the night normally with dinner as an added measure.

  We never seemed to quite run out of money. Faren was very resourceful. I remember once when all we had was five dollars between us and the van broke down (it was always doing that) outside of Goshen. Goshen is a little town in Indiana where the entire economy is based upon the manufacture of recreational vehicles. There were a half a dozen service stations, restaurants, more churches than the Texas Bible-Belt, and a city hall. I must say they had a lovely town hall. In fact, it was the pride and joy of Goshen and Faren found a way to make it pay off.

  We hitched a ride into town leaving the van at a service station. Faren took several photographs of the new city hall, being careful to get the most dramatic angles. It had rained earlier that day making the building and surrounding parking lot glisten in the afternoon sun. Next, he and I went to the local high school and Faren paid a photography student our last five dollars to develop the film, under his supervision, of course. After a short drying of the negatives, he selected one and blew it up into an 8x10 print. Next we liberated the frame from around a diploma belonging to a chemistry professor in an empty adjoining classroom and framed the masterpiece.

  For Faren, it was a simple matter to walk over to the town hall and straight into the township supervisor’s office and solicit his work. You can imagine my surprise, when less than half an hour later, out strutted Faren with a hundred bucks in hand. After all, no one had thought of taking a favorable picture of the building to hang in its lobby. The Mayor of Goshen was pleased and we had wheels under our feet once more.

  Chicago ended our trek. The aftermath of the riots that occurred during the Democratic convention still lay in rubble when we arrived and I found myself picketing outside a police precinct with a group of strangers chanting “Free Tom Hayden.” We had been there outside of twenty minutes when a young man ahead of me, holding a sign that read “Students for a Democratic Society” turned, raised his voice above the crowd and asked, “Who in the hell is Tom Hayden?”

  Before I could answer him the chanting was disrupted by several helmeted policemen garbed in riot gear and wielding clubs. They herded our group into an arrest wagon. They drove us around the back where they moved us to a small windowless room. We were booked for creating a disturbance and demonstrating without a permit. That means we were photographed, fingerprinted and forced to spend the night in jail. Most of us were released the next day after paying a small fine, except for Faren. The police had run a check on his selective service status. He was classified 1A, draft eligibl
e, and they took him away from me.

  We were at least fortunate enough to have two weeks together before he was sent to boot camp and in the following three days Faren and I were married. We never left each others side during those fourteen short but wonderful days. Every night we talked for hours late into the evening about the draft, the war, our future and a solution out of the mess.

  A prison sentence was out of the question so we couldn’t just escape in the van. We weren’t far from Canada but Faren would not go. He loved America far too much to exile himself from it forever. Faren wasn’t like the majority of the anti-war radicals. He was against the war, of course, but not for pacifist reasons. He thought that restricting our military with “no-fly zones” and “demilitarized zones” became a no-win scenario littered with unnecessary casualties. He believed that we should make it an all out war and get it over with or get out. Nevertheless the only alternative seemed for him to go where the military sent him and stick it out for the next two years. It was my job to wait.

  Because of our youthful naïveté we felt that there was a strong likelihood that Faren could stay clear of any action. Faren was certain he could talk to someone in charge and make them aware of his photography skills. He would probably end up stateside for two years taking group photos of all the generals and their families.

  For a while it seemed that our little fantasy had come true. After basic training was completed Faren had been sent to Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas, which was to be his duty station for the next twelve months. I followed and took a part time job cashiering at K-Mart in nearby Wichita Falls. I also signed up for some afternoon classes in typing and shorthand at a local business college. Working checkout was not my idea of a career and I wanted something more lucrative to do for the next couple of years. Then, when Faren’s term in the Service was up, we would work on having a family.