30 Jul Untold Tales Of Horror, Now Told

“Devilish dolls, haunted houses, ghoulish ghosts, freaky frights, dreadful demons, bloodsucking bats, peculiar pumpkins, bizarre bridges, fiendish phantoms, atrocious apparitions, maleficent monsters, wicked witches, and all things that go bump in the night!  Welcome to Untold Tales Of Horror Now Told.  I am your host, Alister Mortimer Cainswright.  Tonight, we tell the tales that no one is brave enough to tell.”  There was a pause, and eerie background music swelled then faded.

“If you believe in the university Halloween massacre, or that, perhaps, there are secret tunnels running below your university that house the dead, the ghosts of suicide victims hanging in your university hallways, or that stone statues come alive at night to eat students, then this program is for you.”

Alister ran through his podcast within his normal time and with a grand send-off.  “I hope that was scary enough for you.   Until we scare again, this is Alister Mortimer Cainswright, signing off.”

Allister closed down his DAW with a sensational feeling of satisfaction.  His stories this night were his own creations.  Sometimes when he had been less than inspired, he would read submissions from other writers, but this night he read two of his own horrifying.

The night closed its darkness around the college town.  Hard-pressed to see, Alister guided himself home, noticing the faint glimmer of artificial lights from windows and street lamps but overall, the town was asleep, idle and in a dormant state.  Alister seemed to be the only one who was making his way home.

After an exciting night of horror stories told exclusively by him for his many podcast listeners, he had no immediate plans for bed.  He was a nocturnal creature, loving the nightlife.  His thoughts were on the response he would get from his show.  The show went out live and people were free to respond as the show developed.  Later, he would post it on various other sites which would promote his work.  His voice was in high demand; many broadcasters looked forward to his work because it brought a much larger audience.

Alister looked forward to reading his comments after the show; it was a way for him to wind down. Once he reached his humble abode (which was nothing like his audience likely believed he lived in), he first scooped up his hairless sphinx cat, Abaddon, and made his way to the kitchen.  There he heated some milk in a dish, poked his finger in to make sure the temperature was acceptable, and then let his kitty go at it while he booted up his computer.

Alister poured himself a large orange juice and retrieved a bag of salted pretzels from the cupboard before plopping down loosely in his favorite broken-in leather chair.  The monitor lit up, and the screen was inundated with message after message commenting on the stories he had just read live on air.  He read with great satisfaction.  It appeared it was another hit.  His mind whirled ahead, spiraling deliberations while musing over what was next.  He had written many haunting stories of thrilling terror, but should he exhaust them so quickly?  He probably wouldn’t read so many of his own in a row so as to string them out a while longer.

But the one thing the listeners were unaware of was Alister was dying.  The doctors had given him six months, but he had defied every prediction and was on eleven months plus.  If he were honest, he had never felt better than right now.  If he could freeze time, this would be the instance when he would make it stand still.  He understood the odds were stacked against him; however he was quite a fighter.  He was the sort of guy that if you hit him and knocked down, you prayed he was out cold; otherwise, he was going to get back up and give a real beating to you.

Alister read every comment and personally responded to his subscribers.  A couple of hours later, he and Abaddon shuttled off to bed.  He was too exhausted for a second shower of the day.  He would take care of podcast stench in the morning.

Sometime in the night, he was awakened by a pinging sound.  He could have sworn he had muted the sound on his computer.  He mustered the strength to get out of bed and mute the volume.  He would not be able to bear the incessant sound all night.  As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out like a light.

Bing!

Again, his computer made a terrifically horrible sound.  Mumbling to himself, he stormed to the computer like a drugged zombie who had just lost his cool.  Not playing around this time, he muted the volume again and took the computer to the kitchen, far from his bedroom.  Hopefully, he would not be disturbed again.  Returning to his bedroom, he brushed Abaddon off his pillow and crashed into the bed with a thud.  Abaddon was not bothered; he purred quietly in some feline dream world.

Alister jerked violently out of deep sleep and did not know why.  His brain was scrambled, but he quickly gathered his senses.  He now realized something had given him a fright.  There had been an uncommon sound from the kitchen, a commotion and disturbance like a giant gong being smashed. Logically, he imagined a pan was unbalanced and slipped off into the sink or into the floor.  He hoped if it was the floor that the tiles were not chipped or cracked.  Staggering through the dimly lit hallway to the kitchen, trying to avoid stepping on Abaddon, who was dodging under his heels.

In the dark, he stepped on one of the assorted cat toys lying around.  It just so happened this was the hard toy with the prongs which stuck out.  It did not hurt as bad as a Lego

block, but it still smarted.  He threw out a sleepy explicative and motored on toward the kitchen.

Alister flipped on the light.  The kitchen looked normal.  He saw nothing out of place…wait.  His kitchen door leading to the back garden was a tiny bit cracked open.  It was miniscule, hardly noticeable, yet he detected it.  A chill raced down his spine.  He was overflowing with anticipation and consequential excitement.

Somewhat afraid, Alister made a quick scan of the kitchen to ensure he was positively alone.  If anybody or anything had entered the house, they would not have made it any further than the kitchen, he assured himself.  Going to the door, his ears were perked for any noises.  Slowly he opened the door wider and turned on the backyard light.  It was a powerful light that lit his narrow yard and shone as far as his rear gate, which led out into the main street.  Six-foot hedges ran down the sides of his yard, thick and impenetrable.

But there, impressed in the grass from the gate to the kitchen door, there was one set of footprints in the dew-covered grass.  The footprints led to the door, and there was no evidence of them returning to the rear gate.

“How odd,” he reasoned.  Barefoot and only in boxers and a t-shirt, he opted not to check the gate just yet.  He closed and locked the door.  Still spooked and nervy about the door, he opted to get dressed, put on his shoes which were in the bedroom and investigate the backyard a little closer and with more scrutiny.

With great suspicion (and holding a Louisville Slugger baseball bat firmly in his hand), he entered the backyard.  He measured his shoe size with the imprint in the grass.  Whoever was lurking in his backyard had at least a size 12 shoe.  He imagined it was one big fella.  Once Alister reached the gate, his misgivings were confirmed.  The gate was ajar.

He did not like this. He did not like this one bit.  Speedily he secured the gate and turned to go back to the house, but something peculiar took place that gave him pause.  The kitchen light flickered in sequence several times, and at the end of the blinking, the backyard light was extinguished.  “Holy mother of pearl,” he said to himself.  Stiffened in place with a sensation not much different than rigor mortis, Alister watched the window of the lit kitchen.  He was not going back in there until he was sure it was safe.  Gathering his nerves, which were severely frayed at that point, he approached his house with a sense of dread and heightened caution.  The kitchen light remained illuminated, and this gave him some assurance.  Working his way up to the window, he sneaked a peek.  Initially, he saw nothing. All looked as it should.  He considered the odd light episode, and with no other evidence of eldritch happenings, the only plausible explanation was the bulb in the backyard must have shorted out.  With his trepidation easing, he wanted to guarantee his safety, so he opted for another look through the window just to ease his fear.  What he saw nearly made him pass out.

He was in the kitchen!

He saw himself with his back turned toward him, standing at the table.  The person hovering over his kitchen table looked identical to him.  They were even dressed like him.

“What the devil?” The grip on the baseball bat loosened as a palsied terror swept over him like a hot towel and bore down into the pit of his gut to the point he swayed with nausea.  He leaned on the house with his shoulder and attempted to will strength back into his rubbery legs.

Alister was not necessarily a brave man.  His courage had never really been challenged before.  Oh, he stuck up for himself in school when bullied, but this was something otherworldly.  “How could it even be possible?  How does something as bizarre as this even occur?”  This was just like the unutterable secrets he wrote and did voice-overs for on his podcast.

He had to be imagining things.  Of course, he attempted to dissuade himself; maybe he was dreaming still.  A rational answer would come to him, he knew it, but nothing came.  The only thing he could convince himself of was there was a duplicate of himself haunting his own kitchen.

The yard lit up.  Not with light from the back porch light but with a resonating chatter that could only be called Al-Azif, which H.P. Lovecraft defined in his writings as “that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons.”  The definition was birthed from the ruins of Babylon out of the empty space of the amorphous crimson desert.

Alister had read all of Lovecraft’s materials.  Lovecraft was locked into secrets of grace older than mankind.

The sounds Alister was tortured with were far beyond the sound of common insects and bugs that crawl and fly at night.  He pondered, “What if Lovecraft had the phrase Al–Azif defined incorrectly? What if he meant something altogether totally different?  Possibly he was misunderstood, and it meant, Altajdif (The Blasphemy) or Alnazif (The Bleeding)?”

Alister was unsure why these thoughts were penetrating his mind and obscuring his thoughts, along with breaking his concentration.  He had to focus.

“What does any of this mean?  What does it have to do with me?”  He forced himself to premise his thoughts, and once he had control of them and built up the boldness, he concluded that the kitchen and the unwanted occupant warranted another glance.  With a waning audacity, he took a glint inside the kitchen.  Seeing no one, he slowly raised and surveyed everything in view.  He held his lookout position for at least 60 seconds until he was confident the coast was clear.  This is when he let out a sigh of relief, and his anxiety began to settle back into his comfort zone.  With his equilibrium restored, it was time he took his chances.

With his mind free from fearful exile, he walked in through the back door into the kitchen and took notice of a manuscript on the table.  It did not appear overly thick, but there were several pages.  He tightened his grip again on the handle of the bat near the knob end.  With his free hand and still eyeing the doorway from the kitchen into his hallway, he dragged the manuscript closer to him.  He had to sit down; his adrenaline had depleted.

The manuscript was possibly animal skin and had a note attached to it.

“I am you, and you are me.  There is only one way to be free.

Read this work on your show; we must let the whole world know.

Time is short, but there is still a chance to avoid the war of circumstance.

Evil is rising; it is already here.  Perfect love cast out all fear.

No time to think or meditate, do this now before it is too late.” Alister reflected.  “How unoriginal.  A two-year-old could have written that.  Lame, lame, dull,” he grimaced.

The manuscript was face down, so he turned it over, and the title emasculated him for a brief moment. The title was burned into the cover.  “Monsters are Real, Abandon All Hope: The Truth,” written by…Alister Mortimer Cainswright.

He paused, gasped.  “I didn’t write this,” he huffed aloud in denial.

That was the moment the nightmare began.  He heard light feet running, scampering from the far end of his hallway, coming towards the kitchen, growing louder as they approached.  Alister’s vigor weakened even more.  A dull throb forced pressure upon his temples, making him light-headed, almost as if a smothering hand was suffocating him.  His nose was smashed, and his lips could not utter a scream.  His desperate cries were muted by a moist, enormous invisible hand, and he was pulled to the tile floor.  With his strength exhausted and dried up as if all resilience had been sucked away by a siphon, Alister was unable to defend himself or resist.

Eventually, this horrifying episode subsided.  Alister had no answer to what he had just put through. His head hurt, his back ached; he was unsteady on his feet for a few minutes.  He poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat contemplating the manuscript before him.  Where had the footsteps gone?  Nothing appeared, nothing at all.

“Monsters are real, abandon all hope.”  Alister thought.  “Simpletons.  Pure and simple, feigning stupidity.”  With a strong aversion and detestation, he was tempted to toss the manuscript into a fire pit.  Although he loathed it, he could not say conclusively whether the events of the night were real or imagined.  In fact, the manuscript did have his name on it as its author.  Curiosity alone compelled him to read it.

The manuscript was redolent of an unhallowed age as dusty as the antediluvian period.  As vividly abhorrent as this night had been, he

thought himself pretty lucky to be caught up in the unexplained; after all, his podcast promoted this subject manner.  He never believed while working in his studio domicile that one day something of this magnitude would manifest itself.  He was being revealed the actuality of what he was creating from his mind.  But he could not shake the sight of his own double; it was entirely too unexplainably freakish. Opening the manuscript, whose pages felt brittle but did not crumble, he found the first entry, a poem without a title.

“There are creatures that creep and crawl,

They are the beast inside us all.

They turn and twist our simple minds

Into animals of every kind.

From the darkness in great numbers, they come

To devour the many to curse the some

From lofty heights they build their nest

And no man living shall find his rest

And from the earth from deep underground

They are so ordered by a demonic sound

It rises up slowly to the unaware

And in a hush, you find yourself down there.”

“Rubbish.  Pure rubbish,” Alister groaned.

Chapter 1

“Turn to page 13.”

“Short chapter.  How very peculiar,” he thought to himself.

He flipped the pages to page 13.

Embedded within the page, within its own secure indentation, was a ring of some sort.  The only words on the page in heavy black ink read, “Put the ring on your finger.”

“I will do no such thing,” he protested and closed the manuscript.  The manuscript flew open on its own, phantasmically shuffling the pages rapidly back to page 13.  The color of the words on page 13 now had chromatically changed from black to red.

“Ludicrous,” he denounced and slid his chair away from the table.  He stood at the table looking down, his back to the window.

Tap, tap, tap.  The sound was behind him.

Unwittingly he turned his head to see what might be making the sound.  To his transfixed horror and surprise, he saw himself in the window looking in.  A cold sweat ate at his chest and clawed his forehead.  How could this be?  The “him” that was outside was shouting something indistinguishable. Alister tried to understand, to read his lips, but he could not interpret what his other self was conveying.  Although reeling in tacit terror, he knew there was only one way to get the answers.  He raced across the kitchen, stormed through the back door, and had every intention of nabbing this look-alike, but his twin was not at the window any longer.  It defied all reasonability.

“How could he have gone so quickly?”  Even more puzzling was when Alister, who was now outside, looked in through the window, he saw himself standing at the table where he had just stood.

“This is impossible, absolutely illogical.”

His twin was doing something.  Alister craned his neck to see.  The twin put the ring on his finger, and in an instant, he was gone, vanished away.  Alister darted back into the kitchen.  His twin was gone, but the manuscript remained, turned to page 13, but the red letters were no longer red.  The letters were charred into the page of the book as it delicately burned with a match.  The ring was still lodged in the page.  He fought against the temptation but gave in and removed the ring from the page.  He examined it, looked it over, and found an inscription which read, “Isaiah 56:9.  Every beast of the field, come to devour, every beast in the forest.”

Alister remained mystified.  With much hesitation but compelled by a force too strong to resist, he placed the ring on his finger.  As the ring slipped tightly around his finger, he spun toward the window.  His twin was there again.  He was smiling and holding up his hand to show Alister he, too, had placed the ring on his finger.  He became instantly light on his feet, and everything in the kitchen became transparent with a translucent radiance.  Seconds later, the house was gone from around him.  Everything had disappeared.  Unable to make any determination of what had occurred, he considered his ominous situation carefully.

His surroundings were as barren and bleak as any, an utterly vast and innominate desert as any he had ever seen.  There was nothing nor no one for as far as the eye could see.  The immemorial air was inexplicable; at first, he choked but after a couple of hard swallows, his throat adjusted.  His next thought was to remove the ring, and hopefully this would return him home, but no matter how he twisted and tugged on it, the ring was truly stuck.

“This is just great.”

He didn’t even have his baseball bat.  It must not have made the teleportation…or whatever it was that had just transpired.  But the manuscript lay at his feet.

“Brilliant,” he sarcastically said as he picked up the papers.

He turned to where page 13 should have been, but there was no longer a page 13.

“This just keeps on getting better.”  He was amused, but not laughing.

One more scan of the colossal, tenebrific surroundings proved futile.  Carrying the manuscript under his arm, half afraid to read anymore, he began to walk in the way his feet were pointed.  He figured since he had no compass and there were no sun, moon, or stars, he had one in four chances he was going in the correct direction.

There was no road, no path, no footprints, no signs, not a single tree or landmark.  Truthfully, he could walk a hundred miles on this flat plateau and might just be walking in circles.

Alister did not want to languish forever in this faceless realm.

He estimated he had been walking for close to 30 minutes when in the very far distance, he saw a blurb.  It was something ahead that resembled a smudge on the landscape, and the smudge appeared to be coming toward him.  Without realistic options, he continued his approach.

As the two drew closer to one another, Alister recognized the person.  It was that scoundrel that had been in his kitchen, his twin.

“Now for some answers,” Alister said.  The two men mirrored one another.  The twin looked behind him and began to run.  To Alister, it looked like a panic run.  Alister then had the presence of mind to take the hint.

He glanced over his shoulder to only see his worst nightmare.

Giant black hairy-legged spiders were gaining on him.  This arachnid cluster had to be in the thousands, and each spider as big as a grown man.  The land behind him had turned dark, and the spiders were consistently and uniformly converging on his position.

Alister ran like he had never run before.  All things which wiggle, crawl, scuttle, or jump had joined the spiders in pursuit, of Alister.

He looked straight ahead at his twin, who was coming just as hard and fast.  Alister did not see what his twin was running from.  He detected nothing alarming within his field of vision motivating him to run.

Outside of reason and causation, overhead, the sky lit up with lightning streaking across the sky in zigzags…then, the lightning strikes began.

Alister felt like a moving target.  Because the terrain was so level, neither of the two saw the enormous crevasse between them.  They made eye contact right before both plunged into the unknown.  When Alister hit the water below, he flailed wildly, not expecting the cold explosion his body felt as it submerged.  Miraculously, he bobbed back to the surface and splashed exhaustively to the shore…but the shore was no place to be.  The sands were alive with devilish creatures beneath the surface whose slimy tentacles emerged to wrap their suckers around him.

Alister fought for his life, popping the suction cups loose and staggering into the dense sweltering vegetation of an unexplored jungle.  There was no retreating.  He could not begin to determine what hemisphere he was in.  For all he knew, he could be anywhere in the world or outside of it.  He was immediately accosted by living vines and aerating roots which sprung from the ground in crisscross patterns, over and under in knots, causing treacherous footfalls.  His feet were being poked, prodded, groped and grabbed at.  He found it most difficult to battle all of the elements, taking high steps and shaking loose his impediments.

He wondered what had happened to his twin?  Did he drown?  Succumb to the jungle?  He could not disregard the feeling of ineptitude; he should have tried to save him.  Matter of fact, he never actually saw him fall.  He only remembered looking into his own eyes.  Where was the manuscript?  He had lost that too.

The jungle humidity slowly drained Alister as he traversed the unknown.  He figured he had been in the heat for an hour or so when the most unexpected sight appeared directly ahead of him.  It was his twin.  Not knowing what to say, Alister said the first thing that came into his mind.  “What is happening?”

Not expecting a reply, his twin answered studiously.  “We are happening, brother.  We have the rings. Only one of us is going to make it back.”

“Why is that?  What is this all about?”  Alister got the sense his twin knew more than he did, and he was determined to get some answers.

“There is only one of us.  There can’t be two.  We both have the ring, so we are both candidates to go back, but there is only room for one.”

His twin was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.

“Who determines who goes back?” Alister inquired.

“We do,” the twin came closer.  “And I am torn between guilt and malignity.” “This makes no sense.  You are not real.  I am Alister Cainswright.  I don’t know what sort of game this is, but I will be going back.” “And I am you,” reminded the twin casting a formidable expression.

“I don’t think so,” Alister defended his position.  “You are not human!  You…you were created somewhere in space, behind time in unbounded outer regions!”

“I am here because you hesitated in putting on the ring.  If you had only put on the ring, I would not have been needed.”

“Needed for what?”  Alister needed clarification.  He desired real answers.

“One of us must read the manuscript over the air.  It is the only way to warn the world of what is coming, the impending storm.  The world must prepare itself.  There is a storm of barbarism and viciousness coming to the earth.  The podcast will reach those who can make a difference.  This ring is our forged protection, but only one of us can wear it.”

Alister wasn’t comprehending the full scope of what his twin was saying, but he was certain if only one was leaving, it was going to be him.

“So, you say a storm is coming?  Is it extermination?  A slaguther?”  Alister didn’t want to believe the worst, but nothing in these last few hours was believable.

“The annihilation is going to be on an apocalyptic scale.  I would not have been needed if you had not hesitated to put on the ring.  The warning must come from the podcast.”  Alister noticed the twin wasn’t coming any closer.

“What if I agree to go back and read the manuscript?  Where does that leave you, since you are only a shadow of who I am?” Alister suggested.

“A shadow?  I am what you were not.  Why do you believe the pantheon brought me into being? Azathoth has called me forth to prepare the world.”

“You are speaking of an abomination!  Azathoth is a grotesque mockery of everything lawful, moral, and godly.  You are talking about a world gone mad.  You are not trying to warn people; you are trying to induce chaos!” Alister said boldly.

With illaudable sarcasm, the twin said, “You are not as stupid as we penned you.” “Penned me?”

“Yes, we wrote the part you are playing.”  His twin said, flippantly.  He added, “You can’t kill an elder god.  They live beyond the concepts of time.  If you attack an elder god in one place, he already exists in the eons, so he lives on.  They are beyond us.”

“You’re not real.  I have done my homework.  I can simply remove you from the plain of my own awareness, and once done, you and these false gods go bye-bye,” Alister said.

“Sorry if I seem apathetic, but you do not know what you are talking about.”  Alister’s twin began to flank his position in an offensive move.  Alister shuffled his feet and matched his twin step by step in a clockwise direction, watching him intently.

“You can’t win.  I am the genuine Alister.  The gods need me, not you,” Alister challenged.

“I am here because they don’t need you,” the twin rebutted with orgulous pride.

“I can defeat them by my willingness to read the manuscript, which contradicts their decision to bring you into existence.  They need an authentic reading of the manuscript, and you cannot do it. Unquestionably a veritable representative is what they desire.  A carbon copy won’t do.”

Alister came straight at the twin.  His other self fell among the protruding roots which clung to him and bound him tight.

“No!  I can do it!  I want to exist!  I am you!”

The twin went into some grotesque convulsions as the poison of the roots, also known as gifblaar, attacked his nervous system.  Alister watched as his short-lived body was dragged into the canvas of the jungle floor, and in this self-imposed grave he would stay, rendered powerless.

Alister could not be sure what happened next, but in an instant, his consternation and dismay was gone, and once again, he stood before his kitchen table looking down at the grimoire manuscript.  He looked at his hand and there was no ring.  Quickly before the powers that be changed their mind and he lost favor, he turned to page 13.  There was the ring.  In black letters it read, “Put the ring on your finger.”

Emblazoned with a mental plan, without faltering, he removed the ring from the book and slipped it onto his finger.  He was more than convinced this was the correct resolution.  He prayed this would restore order.  In that moment, he never felt more alone, abandoned as a cold depression oozed its way in an irrevocable uneasiness to the forefront of his conceits.

He wore the ring until his next podcast, where he introduced the show as a “must read and to take heed, for the words of this story are true.”

At last, he read, “Beyond the reaches of the stars, an army is forming from the outer worlds calling all to gather into one place for the invasion planned, predestined, foreordained, and ordered.  Cosmic winds will guide the armies of beastly discontent to the door of the host, who will not resist but submit to the indwelling of the gods.  They are no longer fading thoughts of the past but are now presenting themselves upon the stage of humanity.  That is not dead which can eternal lie.  And with strange aeons even death may die.  Prepare yourself for the death of death.”

The podcast continued without interruption, and in concluding after the manuscript had been read in its entirety, Alister added, “Everything I read tonight I am asking – no, I am imploring you – remove these gods from the plain of your awareness and the warning which you have heard will be no more than a dark whisper that brushes against your check at a grave site.  The ravens are gathering, the wolves are descending from their mountain refuge, but you and I can hold them at bay.  I have done my part.  I have fulfilled my commitment to read the letter from the elder gods to humanity.  Now, will you join me in the resistance against the horde to come?  The best way to kill a god is to stop believing in it. Deicide is an omnipotent power that we all possess.  Join me in defeating death with our best weapon, human incredulousness.”

Alister stood from his podcast chair and walked to the bathroom.  He removed the ring he had worn from page 13 and happily dropped it into the toilet.  With a flush, he sealed humanity’s fate.