Cthuloid menace In Niagara

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Posted by: Onaxthiel: In honor of Halloween I hammered out a Lovecraftian (very) short story. If you like HP Lovecraft, hopefully this makes sense. If you are not a fan, it may not make any sense at all. In that case, feel free to ignore this one as it has nothing to do with the drive.

Since ancient times the natives had claimed that one of their heathen gods lived beneath the curtain of the falls. While modern man has placed his faith in science and scoffed at the superstitions of his forebearers, it is undeniable that many people still feel a call of something primal and mysterious from the cascades. So did my brother and I determine that we should make the trip to the small town of Niagara, a place removed some miles from the larger city whose professors and doctors had reassured its citizens that they had nothing to fear from the myths of the regions previous occupants. What purpose these men of letters would have for misleading their fellow-men, I know not, unless possessed of the madness that comes with spending long viewing the falls of Niagara.
Upon this expedition we took our conventional accouterments, for both photo graphical endeavors, wireless communication, and other wonders of man's supposed mastery of the natural world.
We arrived at the turbulent waters to find them much as the rumors of previous travelers had described them to us. The sole strangeness of the place was at first its architecture. Only a genius or a madman could have envisioned such a disquieting collection of buildings. A spire reaching to the heavens, as blasphemous as the tower of Babylon, much of its weight collected at its peak like a balanced mace of an unseen but colossal knight of the old world. Next came an alien and grotesque megalith pyramid, misplaced from its proper place in the natural world to the shores of North America. A massive rotating wheel as of an unseen chariot presided over the hillside upon the opposite bank of the river, obviously a mark of homage to some other forgotten deity of the ancients. Amongst all these decadent temples were many storied towers filled with the necessities of keeping and catering to the lurid pleasures of the inhabitants of the foreign shore.
Unpleasant as all this was to observe, the aura that permeated the place was made worse by the apparent inability of the other visitors to perceive it. They seemed almost to enjoy the damp mists that flowed from the falls, engulfing them and moistening their clothes. At times peels of laughter could be heard from these other observers, their minds overwhelmed by the strangeness of the place. They shambled from one cascade to another, peering down into the swirling mists as if trying to divine where the bottom of the plunging abyss before them might be, until the primal fear would overwhelm them and back to safety they would go. This Hell mouth seemed to instill all men who viewed it with a sense of vertigo, or somehow else to twist their perceptions against what rational men might see, without their even being aware.
As my brother and I tread slowly deeper into this dark and weird reserve, we became aware of even more curious artifacts from the dawn of antiquity collected on this point. A gate, surely far to large for the dimensions of any modern man, stood as a testimony to the ancient race of giants which once trod this land. In tribute the ancient heathens of the region had built a giant bronze effigy, seated before the gate as if in a moment of study, his lap worn smooth from millennia of use as a sacrificial altar to the dark god behind the falls.
At first we found it easy to laugh at the backwards beliefs of these primitives, though our laughter was made somewhat more hesitant and uneasy by the overwhelming perversity of the place. Then we made an observation that made our laughter die in our throats. Before an abandoned church, made decrepit by years of ill use at the hands of the epicurean locals, stood a line of people clad in yellow cloaks. Some of these, the selfsame people we had previously observed in their frenzied viewing of the falls only a few hours prior. There was nothing frenzied in their appearance now. They stood in an orderly line before the corrupted shrine, arrayed in the yellow of some demented king, and scarce took notice of us, even as we undertook to photo graph them at some length. My sibling, always an unhealthy complexion, now paled even further as the assembly began to silently file into the putrid sanctuary, led by a hooded priest in orange. “Where do they mean to go?” he asked me shakily. “I know not.” I announced “but I dare not follow into that heap of Unitarian pestulance.”
Greatly sobered by this macabre procession, we vowed to leave this foul place, any vestiges of wholesomeness stripped bare by the weight of the evidence around us. The very first opportunity to break from the roads and perambulate upon a route through the thickets thereabout towards our auto mobile we seized with zeal.
Our process towards the exit was impaired almost immediately. Some unknown carver had undertaken to craft a warning to all that took this foreboding way to turn back. Or perhaps it was an invitation to other demented followers of their cult, a road sign to their great large jawed, many mouthed god beneath the waters. It may have been a graven image of some natives own devising, to honor the hideous deity there. I will never know which, for when he viewed it, my kinsman's tenuous links to sensibility seemed to stretch to the very limit, and begin to snap. He flew from the wooden idol before us, crying out loudly against all these things that should not be. He seemed to lurch of as quickly as his legs would take him, but in no particular direction, like a man driven to escape flames all about him, more than a man wisely attempting to escape his current locale. One would scarcely believe that his eyes functioned at all, so varied were his movements.
I gave pursuit as I was able. But due to his small stature, fleetness of foot and lack of a discernible path, I was unable to intercept him. While I pursued him, I called out; trying to arouse his mind from the sudden slumber it seemed to have taken, and simultaneously decrying whatever people had built this morbid, madness inducing place. Finally, just as he was reaching the edge of the great river downstream of the Niagara cascades, near the aretifact bridge of the ancient heathens, my brothers flight came to an abrupt halt. He fell to his knees, peering over the ledge to something below. I finally was able to catch up, exhausted and hyperventilating, to lay a restraining hand upon his shoulders.
Below us was a scene I would never have conceived, and one I wish I were able to forget. The yellow clad zombies from before had descended to the base of the falls, and were performing some occult ceremony at the behest of their high priest in orange. As they proceeded, a second color of this strange order emerged from a small boat in the mists near them, dressed all in blue. When their lines came into contact with one another, a great cry went up from assemblage. My ears were unable to discern all the alien syllables uttered in this weird chant, however it sounded like “LA LA Catulu phthung!” repeated over and over, rising and falling within the mass. I tried to stand, perhaps to drag, my younger sibling from this spot, but he was rooted, transfixed by the putrid ceremony playing itself out below us.
As the cries of the assemblage reached a fevered pitch and volume, there seemed to be skirmish between the blue and yellow figures. Finally, one of the yellow clad figures was set upon by members of both factions, and the orange priest gestured for this unfortunate to be brought towards him. Once this chosen one stood before him, the priest reached back to his own cowl and slowly pulled it back, silencing the gibbering masses before him, and reducing my brother to a near catatonic state. What his face looked like, I cannot describe. The ghastly visage before me was enough to make my intellect temporarily leave me, and I have no recollection of what occurred next, except for some vague impression of woods and road, until reaching our automobile. Somehow, my brother had followed me out as well, and sat silent in his seat as we sped away from this horrifying place. He spoke not a word forever after, and has been institutionalized in the Arkham asylum near Miskatonic university for the last few months. I go to see him at holidays, and he still never speaks a word. However, on my last visit, for all hallows eve, he showed me a jack-o-lantern that he had carved with his own fingernails.
On it was the same horrible face of the priest, the one that will haunt my imagination until my dying day, this inhuman face in orange!

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Photos

Blasphemous Tower of Babel
For the attention of Ancient Gods of other worlds

Decadent city of Foreigners
To serve their heathen needs.

decayed church
Now used for Blasphemous Processions!

Assembly of the yellow clad Cultists
Around their Cleric in Orange

Foreign vessel
Prepearing to disgorge its Cargo of Blue Dressed Cultists!

The Alien Vissage
My brothers\' only form of communication through his Maddness!

Comments

[zach]

(y)
Nicely done gentlemen, nicely done! :) Happy Halloween to you both!