Stonehenge (Story - Horror)

Kathyrne · Posted: Mon May 31, 2004 8:57 pm Post subject: Stonehenge (Story - Horror)

I originally posted this story at Renderotica. I believe that it would be recieved well here as well, so I have decided to post it. I hope that my efforts are enjoyed.

Thank You,
Kat

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My name is Dr. Alan P. Bennett. Perhaps you have heard of me? My brief tour of the northern New England states where I discussed the Out-Phase Frequency Syndrome and its historical impact upon the environment there? No? I’m not really surprised. There are so few who have heard of me outside of the Arkham Institute. Those of us who have studied the elder texts and know.

But I digress. We were talking about my visit to Stonehenge, weren’t we? Yes, I did have occasion to visit the place once. As the ancient texts tell us, there are many old places in the world that had been frequented by the lesser beings that the great old ones held under their mindless, near cacophonic sway. Though these ancient, extinct creatures no longer roam the surface of the world, the places of their unholy worship still have power today. And, according to my researches, there are certain nights of the year in which the planes of the etherium grow quite thin. That the veils of separation might part, and one might have the occasion to see that which is not native to this, our world of science and logic. Things so wholly unnatural that to glimpse their gross malformation is to court the very depths of madness itself.

I did not fully believe in the veil of worlds or the depths of the universal truth in those days. Oh, yes, I had made my speeches and could point out all the relevant texts, both chapter and verse. But these were intellectual properties only, for though the arena of New England was rife with the power and influence of the elder gods, and nowhere was their influence more potent that Arkham, I had neither seen their terrible glories with my own eyes nor found any evidence so conclusive as to be irrefutable of proof. It was thusly determined that I set out for that area of the Old World where the ancient monument of Stonehenge lay.

Though many recognize the festival of Sam Hain, better known for the popular holiday made over in its image called Halloween, few understood that there was another ancient holy day that held power just as great. But while Sam Hain celebrated the equinox of Fall, Beltain was its sister and took place within the spring. The Wicca understood this, of course, as did the ancient Druids, and it was to their descendants that I first approached.

It was a curious thing that, though knowledgeable upon the subject, I could find not a single member of their order that would be willing to traverse the moors with me and sit through my observation, for observation was my only goal. I had my equipment with me, of course, to record all the levels of energy and sound that might give credence to my suspicions, but should I prove so fortunate as to actually witness something, as I believed that I surely must, then I had no desire to intrude upon it, but merely to capture the proof of my beliefs for the scientific community at large.

Still, despite my lack of guidance and the dire warnings that I had been given, I made my way to the ancient stone sentinels that rested upon that lonely hill, and I settled myself to wait. Night was quick in coming, and a most curious fog was equally swift at rolling in. I felt myself tingling, for surely this was a profound portent that my labors would be rewarded. Yet, as hours past and nothing even remotely unusual became apparent, disillusionment began to sink in.

Many of the ancient stones had fallen since their first days, and there were ample places where a man of thin build and none to tall a height might find shelter from the cool, biting winds. It was in one of these that I had retreated after eight o’clock when the chill breezes began to blow. With my thermos warming my hands, and my body bent low in my niche, I began to hear the first sounds as of someone approaching. My disappointment increased, for I had no desire to see my nights work postponed by the presence of an intruder, yet I decided against surrendering my hiding place, for the night was cold and I had grown quite comfortable sheltered between the ancient stones as I was.

The figure that made her way out from the mist-choked darkness was so unusual that I found myself frozen in her contemplation. A small, elfin creature, the crest of her head could not have topped much over five-feet, if it topped that height at all. Her body was gaunt so near to the point of skeletalness that it was almost a physical pain to look upon her. She wore a pair of old, faded blue jeans and a loosely bloused tunic to cover this fact, but the bagginess of her shirt only underscored the thinness of her arms and the slender, bony shape of her tightly sheathed thighs and hips. Her hair was dark in color and draped halfway down her back, but its teased and tangled mass was so thin that, despite the way it flowed freely and wildly from her head, one could see the shape of her skull as if through a thin and gauzy veil. I could not clearly see the features of her face, but I was oddly left with an impression of a certain heart-shaped roundness to it that was at complete odds with the long, thin tapering of the neck upon which it was supported.

Perhaps it is a measure of how stunned I was, but I instinctively hunkered down further within my hiding place and watched the girl quite closely as the hidden moon peaked out from behind its sheltering curtain of clouds. The time was growing close to midnight, and if there was anything to happen in this ancient place, I knew with unfounded certainty that it would happen then. Yet, as loath as I was to see my opportunity wasted, I could not move myself to interrupt this too thin girl as she dusted the nearest of the overturned stones and settled herself cross-legged upon it as a seat.

From a curious carved wooden tube upon her back, the girl produced her flute. Never before or since have I seen its like, and I can tell you that it was of such grand design, such incredible beauty that I felt my eyes sting with tears as I laid myself to look upon it. The instrument was long, as long as the young woman’s arm from shoulder to fingertip, and thinner than I felt such an instrument should be. It seemed to have more sounding holes along its length than such a device should have as well, but never having been much of a musical bent, I had no expertise upon which to base my assumption. For a second or two, the young woman simply held her instrument, her face staring out into the swirling mists as if listening to a song that only her ears could hear. Then, with a slow deliberation that felt both glacial and irrepressively powerful, she raised the flute to her lips and began to play.

Of that tune, my description now completely fails. It was beauty beyond beauty. It was so subtle that my ears could scarcely hear it, yet I drank of its full measure as though I was consumed with thirst. I could feel a slow, muffled beat, as if from some antiquarian drum, and did not know if this were some ancient enchantment or merely the pounding of my own deeply thundering heart. The flute did not play, it moaned. I would not have thought such an instrument given to such base and morbid desolation until I had heard that thin girl begin to play, and in but a moment I felt as if my heart had been shorn from my breast! It was all that I could do to keep from fleeing in panicked desperation to hurl myself off the nearest cliff!

I watched with eyes so widely spread that my eyelids began to ache. I trembled worse that a newly born babe. And out of the corners of my eyes, I could almost see the moon-cast shadows begin to dance to that ancient song; could almost see them shift to reveal the echoes of times immortal; when things that were not meant to be offended the natural world with their heresy of existence. It felt as if hours had slipped by as the flute girl had played, yet with a suddenness that drove a spike of agony through to my very bones, the tune stopped and the girl let her instrument shift imperceptibly from her lips.

The witching hour had arrived at last, and my befuddled mind took long moments to unravel the mystery of what had just occurred. It was only when I noticed the sickly greenish light shining deep within the fog, only when I heard the sound of maggots squirming beneath a thick carpet of hair, that I began to understand.

One of the elder things that had once roamed freely across the land had once again returned. It was no greater beast, for if it had been my chances of surviving its initial appearance with my sanity intact would have been next to none. Even so, I shook more violently in my hidden place as I watched the horror begin to coalesce from out of the fog. Its head was barely recognizable as ursine, though none of its features were of a complimentary size, and fully half of its short muzzle was drawn back from its yellowed teeth and disease-infected gums. It was huge in size, nearly as tall as the giant stone blocks that surrounded it, yet it seemed unable to stand properly despite the presence of no less than seven arms with which to accomplish this. Its hide was greasy and had great patches of hair missing, exposing the raw, glistening flesh that made up the horrid thing’s skin. I watched it move as it walked closer to the stones, and had to clamp my hand about my mouth to keep from retching. Its bones moved unnaturally, giving one more an impression of some bizarre corpse filled with maggots and carrion worms than anything nature had designed, and even to me its motion seemed halting, as if its very movements were a cause for pain and suffering.

A more hideous spawn of Hell I could not imagine, and as the brute made its slow way across the tiny clearing between the stones, I realized that it was headed right for the flute playing girl. She had not moved, no doubt consumed with madness and fear, and for a single moment I longed to cry out, to warn her and shake her from her immobility. And yet, I did not act, for though the unwholesome thing that shambled across the grass appeared slow to my eyes, some primitive animal instinct warned me that it could move more rapidly than I should I even attempt to flee.

For a moment, the pair seemed to watch each other, then, to my utter amazement, the girl simply raised her silvered instrument and once more resumed her interrupted playing. I was astounded! Her tune did not shake or quaver with even the slightest trace of fear. It was as sublime, as eerily entrancing as it had been before, and, to my further amazement, the fetid brute that towered over her in all its wretched glory simply stood and listened. Its seven massive limbs shifted and its body swayed as if it were dancing to that ancient, driving beat.

Then I noted how the creature’s twisted muscles knotted. How its massive, snaggletooth claws dug deeply into the earth and stone. It was not dancing! It was striving with all of its inhuman might, trying to resist some force that drove against it as irresistibly as a blowing gale of hurricane wind. Its growls were filled with anger, its snarls of frustration and thwarted rage. Inch by inch, it slithered back, losing ground far too slowly, but with the interminable push of eternity.

How? How could this tiny slip of a girl thwart and drive so massive a beast? What powers had she leashed that would allow her press this otherworldly intrusion before her with nothing more than those antiquarian notes of song?

But then the answer struck me. The flute! Of course! It had to be some ancient artifact, perhaps dating from the time of the elder gods themselves. There were stories of such potent artifacts, signs and sigils that had the force to drive the dark ones back into the twisted depths of eternity into which they had slunk to slumber. The girl was a member of one of the wicca groups, sent to safeguard me from the malignant forces that they knew must be present at all such times. I felt my spirit buoyed that they should seek to dissuade me, yet send to me a defender so well equipped despite my refusal to heed their warnings.

Still, as the monster took another step backwards, I could tell that it refused to be driven further. Human frailty could not match the ancient, unbridled power possessed by the minions of the elder gods, even when armed so splendidly. I could see that the unwholesome abomination had lowered it head, and reaching out two of its misshapen paws, it began to haul itself forward once more. The girl did not move, nor shift in even the slightest regard. Her tune spun on, uncaring of the ground that her target began to recover. It would be a shame that so dedicated a witch be destroyed, but I held my gaze resolutely upon the tableau unfolding before me, determined that I should at least bear witness to the last brave moments of the girl. I could not rescue her, of course. If I were to even try I should accomplish no more than my own demise. Yet, perhaps if I were most fortunate, once the brutal beast was finished and had shambled its way forth once again, I might perchance to find the most excellent instrument the girl had used, and mayhap return it to her clan.

Abruptly the ethereal music stopped, and all three of us held our place as well as our breaths. This would be it then. I prepared myself for the moment of slaughter, refusing to turn my eyes away. The beast only sniffed at the air, and, had I not known better, his expression was one I might almost had said was that of bewildered fright. But, most unusual of all was the face of the girl, for she simply tilted her head and looked at her executioner with eyes that were full of sadness. Unfolding her thin legs, she rose from her perch atop the stone, her feet silent as they brushed the long grass, and she shook her head as she turned, facing the living atrocity before her.

It was not until that moment, when I at last saw her eyes, that some elemental terror woke within me. The moon chose just that moment to shine fully upon the young woman’s face, chose just that brief second to illuminate her eyes, and my breath caught within my throat, for surely there was no girl alive whose iris’s had that oddly veined pattern of icy blue completely devoid of even the slightest shadow of a central pupil’s depth. They were inhuman eyes, eyes that held within them the pits of human misery and suffering from the dawn of all time until the screaming end of the universe itself. My sanity slipped with no more than the merest glimpse of those eyes, and the horrid, towering thing upon which she gazed let out a shuddering moan that could only have been inspired by abject terror. For a moment, she held the unclean monstrosity before her with no more than the strength of her gaze. Then, with slow deliberation, she parted her lips and she spoke.

I do not know what word it was that she said, nor even if it were in any language ever heard by the ears of man. In fact, my brain recoiled from even the thought of understanding those hushed, barely whispered tones, running from the knowledge as mindlessly as a deer might flee a forest fire. Yet, for all of its silence, for all of its hushed softness, that word held within it the most potent of unnatural powers.

The nearest of the stones still standing beside the girl shattered instantly as if struck down by the hand of God. The tablet that had served as her perch only moments before groaned as if a thing alive as its mighty surface cracked. For a distanced of a dozen paces, the ancient amphitheatre heaved with torture. Stones that had stood since time immemorial shattered and cracked and fell. Yet all of this was of no consequence next to the devastation that was wrought upon the target of her word.

The great, mighty beast, whose sinew and muscle must have surely been more durable than the finest metal every wrought by the hand of man, twisted and convulsed. The horrid brute’s massive, worm eaten body instantly shredded and turned inside out. Bones that could have withstood any force shattered and cracked like kindling. Its foul, blackened blood had little chance to drench the ground, for it bubbled and boiled as it spilled into the air. Its organs burst, its flesh unraveled, and in the blink of an eye, only a few shredded length of its tattered hide remained.

My mouth worked soundlessly, ignorant of the blood that flowed from my shattered teeth and gums. Even so far away that the entire breath of the circle stood between us, the force of that uttered sound had burst veins within my eyes and forever shattered the bones within my ears. Red tears streaked my face, oozing my life from the orifices of my face, yet, despite my agony, I knew that I would still survive. I had not been the target of that word, and I had been just far enough away that its powers, while devastating, had not seen fit to slay me. Through the crimson haze that clouded my vision I watched as the girl inspected her victim and turned as if to go.

Within my mind I began to gibber. What was she? What unspeakable horror was this, unleashed upon our world, unsuspected by even the greatest of scholars? I furiously began to write everything I had witnessed into my journal just as quickly as I could. The facts would support me. They would see the broken stones, see the remnants of the beast, and my colleagues would believe the incredible story that I would relay. I would reveal this monstrosity of ancient power, cleverly clad in the trappings of a thin, almost sickly girl, and the human race would stand forewarned against her.

Then, to my further horror, I saw the girl stop. She paused, as if listening for a sound that sat just outside of her hearing. Once again, this sad girl shook her head, and again she turned about. With desperation , I wrote more furiously, trying to finish my message with some degree of coherency, trying to give some hint of what had occurred upon this night. Something had to survive. Some shred of warning had to be made. I grasped my diary in both my hands and flung it as far away from me as I could, praying that some bit of its fragile, leather bound paper might survive.

For in that very instant, the flute girl stared at me, and she parted her lips to speak…

Greek · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2004 9:55 pm Post subject: Re: Stonehenge (Story - Horror)

This is a true horror story. Very well written. As I read I became involved. It was as if I was there witnessing the events as they happened.

Thank you for a most excellent story. Looking forward to more.
_________________
I am a romantic, a seeker of beauty.
Even from souls corners most despairing,
Beauty none the less.
-Sunheart-

radiosilence · Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 12:16 pm Post subject: Re: Stonehenge (Story - Horror)

As soon as I started to read the story, I thought that Dr. Alan P. Bennett had appeared in issues related to the Arhkam Asylum (you know, in the way John Constantine has been here and there throughout many comic series).

So I googled for him. Lol, the second result for "Alan P. Bennett" was from an actual conference (he's been on a conference, right? at the beginning of the story). These are his actual words:

"Excellent—in 20 years the best and most useful seminar I have attended. The quality of the panelists was uniformly excellent. The topics were immediately useful. The group discussion was at a consistently high level and genuinely stimulating."
- Allan P. Bennett, Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis, Jackson, MS

Just thought I'd share this with you. A strange and magical coincidence.

Now, I go off to finish reading your story. So far, it's really good.