THE CROOKED SPECTRE (NYARLATHOTEP)

THE CROOKED SPECTRE (NYARLATHOTEP)

"I hesitantly descend the staircase, my eyes never leaving the door of the house. The noise beyond is so faint I can hardly be sure it’s there, and the windows that flank the door show only the hint of shadows moving across them in the night. I have Stella’s strongly-worded assurance she is coming, but her attempt at relieving my anxiety only sparks a thousand thoughts in my mind. Is that her now, safe and sound, on my stoop? Is she lying there injured, trying desperately to gather my attention before something more tragic befalls her? Or is it something else entirely? Something worse than my 

sleep-addled mind can imagine?"

"The drawing in the book is crude, yet it clearly etches out a shape amid the dark scribbles and scrawl. A body of twisting lines intersecting, ganglinous and knotted; an eyeless face full of row upon row of teeth. Multitudinous digits protruding from backward-bending arms. The drawing is of pure nightmare, and yet I sense attitude in the line, as though the artist is not fearful of the beast but envious, or perhaps enamored. It exceeds reason that such a thing should be real, let alone stalking me for something so simple as disturbing a pile of stones and taking the old black book on which they sat; yet Lunen is dead and gone and Marguite no longer has eyes with which to see or a mouth which can speak of what has happened. One by one my friends have been taken; taken by that crooked spectre in its relentless pursuit of me."

"Stella is all that remains of my life; my poor, disbelieving, intractable Stella. If it is not her there on my stoop, if she has yet to arrive, it will only be a matter of time. Do I dare open the door to greet her? Or should I let her face alone what is intended for me, allowing me to prolong my life that much longer?"

"My hand is on the doorknob for an eternity as I wonder what I will do."

Simon Strantzas, The Crooked Spectre
Written Exclusively For an Illustro Obscurum Collaboration