Lovecraft tribute

[Mason]

This was a stream of consciousness-style exercise. I realized I was in the "Lovecraftian" mood that morning. I mention the stream of consciousness thing, because it is so broken grammatically, it shifts points of view, and just generally breaks the rules. Enjoy.


[ic=The Portal]
The edge of the stone portal was truncated with phantasmal scratches, deep charnels of pre-man, pre-civilized claws. As if something were imprisoned here, now escaped;
Larkin grimaced. The portal was wider than a man, but carved queerly. The design and contour did not propagate from a human mind, of that he was sure. The (monk) accompanying Larkin began to convulse at the sight of the thing, his grey robes fluttered, jostled by a warm pungent wind, sulfurous, stinking of cosmic hate, that suddenly emerged from the hole in the earth.

The jungle stilled.

Larkin was curious now and studying more closely the script along the archway, illuminated by a quickly produced lantern, took a sheet of paper and some graphite from his satchel, mechanically his eyes never leaving the deceiving characters that so frothily adorned the portal.

All the while-the stench and wind steadily increased. The monk, irate now, his shaven head - face twisted in a howling frown, yet no sound emerged from his throat. Larkin, captivated by the strange, wondrous, frightening characters was largely ignorant of the monks increasing anxiety.

Larkin picked a character at random: or not; he felt drawn to one in particular-a strange curving non-linear character, one that echoes great eternities, lost history, tragedy all in one. Whether it was a clever trick by the scribe or, by some impossible appendage, Larkin could not tell. It was both curved and straight, angular, three-dimensional and flat, and spoke of organic structure but also a mechanical scientific nature. Larkin was perplexed. It may have been natural for what Larkin perceived to be the most unnatural sort of anatomy.

The monk grasped his ears now, as if sheltering his mind from some voice or frequency that Larkin, a man of the west could not here, indeed his entire psychic structure built from a lifetime spent in cities could not hear. The monks eyes bulged and his tongue lolled in his head, his ears fumbled around his ears, but, the sound was too much, he began pounding his shaven head as if mad, and bolted into the portal, and Larkin saw him no more.

   Larkin, suddenly aroused from his scholarly pursuit realized he was alone, his guide deceived into entering the portal by some unknown entity. Larkin pondered entering the portal, to find his guide. He pondered the hole in the earth-the thing stood amidst rocks, and boulders some natural and some carved in the olmec model, but shattered-everywhere shattered. An ear of stone here, a tongue, two lips shattered there; as if destroyed purposely-carefully. The cuts in the stone were clean and precise. Suddenly in the recesses of his mind, a dream like image of Larkin toiling furiously, re-assembling the megaliths with some-offworld superhuman strength. Through the misty zone of his minds imagination or some vision beamed to him from the unknown, him; Larkin trembling before an incorporeal presence commanded:

In the valleys and towns of Ouxhactus{fictional S.A. province} Larkin gathering all the resources, monies and favors accumulated through a lifetime of scholarly pursuit, him; Larkin suddenly no longer the shy professor, the man with the nose-in-a-book features, glasses cast aside, aided now by supernatural vision and voice-A grim expression of determination, charismatically speaking, proclaiming, urging, conjuring the masses, the natives with wit of word and dialects unlearned, languages unbroken, goading the men to the mountains and jungles to build! To reform the rocks of these strange idols, with strength only given by zealous fervor-The black hand of the ominous portal just as suddenly recoiled from the mind of Larkin and he returned from his vision.

   Alone in the jungle-mystified by the vision, a mosquito landed on Larkins cheek, but such was the power of this lucid waking dream, that as the pest drew blood, he stood motionless, even as his instincts cried: Malaria! Disease! Death!

   Two water skins at his feet; he clutches his satchel protectively, instinctively, the sheet of graphite paper with the strange symbol contained within, instinctively noting its apparent protective power, the symbol on the outside of the portal, the dark cosmic horror within. Stay? Go? Enter? The portal stood quietly, a thing of antiquity, built long before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, long before the Old Kingdom stood, here was the portal built by some extinct branch of humanity, and now here was Larkin on the verge of his own extinction, a single decision clinging to his mind.       
Larkin fled. Through the jungle and night, without guide or rationale, a mad-man filled with maddening visions and all the while the screams of the damned monk plagued his mind, how he suffered in that pit of hell, that portal to nowhere and oblivion. Larkin wandered aimlessly until the first rays of light pierced the thick jungle canopy, and he found a trail that led him eventually, tired, hopeless to his camp.
[/ic]


  That is all.