Brigits-Flame June 01 Entry - Ranch
From the writings of Abdul Al’Canhazred
It is with significant trepidation that I inscribe these words into the public record. What I have witnessed with these two eyes is not within the realm of the sane, and I urge those that are purehearted to avoid these pages from the uttermost regions of my being. Go in grace; I commend your souls to Heaven, Insha’Allah. What took place at the Rancho Perdito, in the place white men call New Mexico, is not for you to know.
It was a cool morning, that November day, when Mr. Hobart set out with his retinue, as men will in that part of the country, to hunt for copper in the heart of the rock. At that time I had hired myself out as a professional dowser, and I knew Hobart’s pockets ran as deep as his greed. Pray judge me not, reader, for being mercenary. I had recently come into difficult financial straits, and my research has always required allowances for incidental costs, shall we say. So any employment was welcome. Had I known I would end up detecting more than water in those thrice-cursed hills, I would not have said so much as a hello to Hobart, not for all the silver in Arizona.
That cool morning, we left Hobart’s ranch and wandered off into the mountains, following the reports we had gleaned from a few Pueblo of what looked to be surface indications of a deeper copper vein. We had canteens enough for the five of us, two burros, and a pack horse. But to conserve water, I would dowse before we set camp. Hobart hadn’t believed my ability, and so he ran me through several tests before engaging me: blindfolded, and with my ears stuffed with cotton, I correctly identified the location of a glass of water in his kitchen cupboards fully ten times out of ten. Some things do not need to be heard with the ears, nor seen with the eyes.
It was several hours into the mountains on that first day, when the sun had risen high in its arc and I had gone a little bleary-eyed, that the part of me that hears-but-does-not-hear detected that first too-deep, thrumming cry. That first dread lol. Yes, reader. The Lol of Catthulu.
Quake with terror at the writing of his name, sad mortal race! Catthulu the Eternal is an ancient god, wicked beyond the computation of Man; we are like yarn in his yard-long claws; we are sardines in his Eternal Tin, to be skewered and eaten with impunity; we are in thrall eternal to his Great Cosmic Yowl.
We had made camp for the first night by a tiny stream when I heard the un-sound again, a discordant vibration in the very pit of me. I must have let out some kind of whimper, because Hobart noticed.
“What’s the matter, Abdul? Your stomach not agreeing with you?”
I remember not what I said, probably some joke about the fragility of the Arab stomach as regards the consumption of beans (for the record, a misconception. We are a hardy people.), and it was forgotten. I asked him if he perhaps heard a coyote in the distance, or something similar. But neither he nor any of the other three men around that fire admitted to hearing anything. I tried to be jocular with them but felt my desire to converse wane as a thin trickle of dread slowly iced up my spinal column. I could sense the dim and pervasive elemental evil of Catthulu's presence, but knowing not what it imported, I said nothing.
It was early the next morning when Acosta found the statue.
From there, all was madness.
To be continued.