Madness in the woods

"Horrible beyond conception was the change which had taken place in my best friend, Gavin Philips. I had not seen him since that day, two months and a half before. When he had answered my awed and almost frightened remonstrances by driving me from his house in a burst of fanatical rage.

He told me about the monster who lurks in the forest, which will turn you insane."

Gavin Philip's Diary 

11th September 2021 

Craterville, Maine

At that moment, I immediately knew, I will be dead the next morning. 

My memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in Craterville, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there.

It was undoubtedly a doomed evening, my wrist watch was striking 7, waiting for the final bus under the shed, I was reading the final chapters of 'At the mountains of madness' by HP Lovecraft under the street light. 

The light bulb was swarming with moths and fireflies ambushing all the light coming from it, the eggs and baby moths were crawling all over my body.

It was getting darker as I sat down on the bench covered with fungus and spiderwebs. 

My eyes were heavy and all the dark circles under them, made me look like a terminally ill patient. My whole life was fucked up. 

"Hey man do you want a lift? You look tired let me help you out", a mysterious voice felt in my ears, I raised my head upwards to check the situation around me. 

It was A young man who was holding a McDonald's burger in his one hand and his other hand was holding the steering wheel, he was riding a bus. 

"Well thanks I would like to go to Thisplace Hotel, would you help me get there till dawn breaks?"

He nodded,"yep, get in let me open the gate", he said with a friendly grin on his face. 

He was a skinny man with curly hairs and lots of pimples on his forehead and neck. He was too young to be a bus driver but I was okay with that. 

He pressed the button next to the steering wheel and the sliding door widely opened in front of me, I removed the fedora hat from my head and waved it side by side to throw away all the baby moths resting on it.

I walked inside the car and occupied the seat number 7, which is so-called a lucky number. 

"Would you like to have a slice of sandwich?" He raised a sandwich slice and offered me some. 

"No, thanks I am full", I shook my head and rejected his offer. 

"At the Mountains of Madness", He said with a great energy in his voice,"I just love that book, it contains so many flesh eating, bones crunching monsters."

"Yeah, I am glad it is fictional", I said with a laughing mood.

"I don't think so", his voice changed from funny and soft to serious and hideous, the colour of his eyes changed to blood red with all his blood vessels in his eyes, he was grinning insanely, his skin was nearly touching his eyes,"I heard one of them lurks in this damned city!"

"Would you want to meet one?", His voice became deep and hard similar to a daemon with constant drooling all over his clothes. 

"Pardon me sir, I was carried away", his tone again became like a human again, the blood vessels in the eyes disappeared," I just love these monsters."

"You look tired and sick, you can sleep in here", he said while taking a sharp drift towards right, I ended up hitting the window pane. 

"What was that?", I screamed while my hand was still on my injured head.

"There was a cat in my way", he said coldly. 

I was tired as fuck I've been working in that insurance company for 5 hours and I want to take a rest. 

I propped against the soft seat and calmly closed my eyes, I could feel something was fishy, but I don't care as long as I can get a nice sleep. 

There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of silver; vortices of blood and fire, swirling out of the dark places and heavy with perfumes from beyond the universe. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange flamingoes and turtles of unrememberable deeps. 

It was a ghoul in black who followed me with a hammer in his arm, giving me a grotesque look leaving behind the blood stains on the carpet. 

In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint, 

distant baying as of some gigantic beast. It is not dream—it is not, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to see The Black Plague; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from 

behind fallen monuments. 

"How will you tell the world?" 

"End occurred once before, soon it will occur again do not fear it."

"Shemitah will burn down this world."

I swiftly opened my eyes, my body was wet with rain water and I was smelling like a dead fish. I thanked almighty god that all those things were just the nightmares.

Whether the dreams brought on the fever or the fever brought on the dreams I did not know.

I realised the bus was no longer moving, the driver halted the journey and the place where I was, was far beyond my orignal destination.

I was in the middle of a silent place,

Trees were eight feet long all over, dark grey, flexible, and infinitely tough. Stalk 3 inches diameter branch after 6 inches into five sub-stalks, each of which branches after 8 inches into five small, tapering tentacles or tendrils, giving each a total of 25 tentacles. 

Some Trees have such uncanny resemblance to certain creatures of 

primal myth that suggestion of ancient existence outside Craterville becomes inevitable. 

Wierd sounds of crickets and wolves barking like zombies. 

"What is happening here?", I shouted with surprise and anger,"why you brought me here."

I could see his face through the mirror, it was motionless he was just sitting there with his eyes open and an idiotic smile on his face.

"Death is not an end, it is the doorway to the next place." 

Those were his last words, he was hiding a Collier flintlock revolver under his sleeves all the time, he raised the gun and placed it under his chin and at the next moment I saw a gush of blood coming out his head like a fountain and it later was on the steering wheel blowing the horn with his head covered in blood.

May the merciful gods, if indeed there be such, guard those creepy forests, Fool that I was to plunge with such unsanctioned phrensy into mysteries no man was meant to penetrate; 

fool or god that he was-the black plague, who led me and went before me, and who in the end passed into terrors which may yet be mine. 

I walked out of the bus and it was my biggest mistake. I checked my phone to call 911 but the network was dead. The place where I was standing alone was the unknown.

I saw a hooded figure reaching towards me with a roque mallet in it's arm, I caught a glimpse of his face in the yellow beam from a Monster tree. It was a noble, even a handsome, elderly countenance; and bore the marks of a lineage and refinement unusual for the age and place. Yet some quality about it disturbed me almost as 

much as its features pleased me-perhaps it was too white, or too expressionless, or too much out of keeping with the locality . 

He lowered his grip and raised the mallet up in the air and tried to bash it on my head, but he ended up hitting it straight into the grass making a large crater inside the ground, thanks to my swift reflexes which helped me to escape the blow of his weapon. 

His mallet got stuck in the mud and it was my chance I kicked straight up into his neck with my heavy foot.

More hooded people arriving from the woods behind me, they were rushing towards me like hungry predators. I was surrounded by them. 

They stood around me in a circle, with their hands crossed around their chests. Their face was covered in black and their clothes had a deep layer of fungus, they raised their hands together in the air and started throwing salt and slime on my body. My previous wounds were again activated, I screamed a lot with top of my voice. But they didn't stopped haunting me, I tried to come back on my feet again but failed, salt and slime was everywhere. They didn't stopped until I fainted.

I woke up with a severe pain in my leg, I then realised I was missing a part of it. I was trapped in the log, I didn't know why they are doing this

I begged them for sparing my life, but they didn't listened to my cries.

I could see the hieroglyphics of the ancient mythical monsters carved on the tree branches. 

Above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evidently pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of a man with two faces and four limbs, one face was of a monster and other was that of a little kid. 

It was then that he began that rambling tale which suddenly played upon a sleeping memory. There had been a slight earthquake tremor the night before, the most considerable felt in the state of Maine for some hours and their imagination had been keenly affected. 

They called him 'The Black Plague'. 

They placed large number of stones in form of Pentagram around my body and started chanting some nonsense. 

A guy was holding a large book, with cover made up of forest wood. 

On the dark cover above the horrific picture of a satan like creature, it was written in Urdu, translated as NECRONOMICON. Containing some indescribable languages, far beyond my understanding. 

Everyone was holding their daggers and sliced each other's arms with one blow.

Another blast occurred in the woods which declared the arrival of that demonic entity, Cult members started blushing under their hoodies and fell on their knees, to welcome it.

I was the perfect food for the monster, according to them, they burnt my clothes and covered me with salt and slime as seasoning.

After an hour or so my eyebrows began to flutter and all the terror running down my spine. I started fidgeting and started moving side by side, there were no clothes on my body which made it easier to slip away from the ropes because I was sweating a lot. 

I sighed and started pushing the log upwards, with the full force I moved away from the ropes and neqrly jumped out of it. 

As the guy started reading the excerpt from the NECRONOMICON, the hideous trees started growing taller and more hideous than before. 

There was thunder in the air that night I went to the deserted forest in Craterville. I was not alone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of the grotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and in real life. I was also surrounded with mad cult members. 

I fell straight on my head as I crawled under the ropes they saw me doing so. 

I sprinted to the place to find the place where the bus was located in order escape these growing woods and insane cult members. 

The forest was glowing in purple. 

Another blast, this time it was nearer than before. 

Their grin grew larger. 

I saw a tent beside me, a large tent. I crawled into the tent like a lizard, my legs were shaking like a pendulum. 

The figure, which I discovered while I was in the tent was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It 

represented a monster of insanity a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore 

feet, and face of a baby attached to its chin. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and 

unnatural malignancy, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with indecipherable characters. 

It felt like human meat with rocks stuffed inside it.

And there was a barrel full of kerosene oil, and an old lighter in the same tent. 

It was the time, when all the cult members were busy with the NECRONOMICON. I got the chance to escape, but first it was necessary to burn down this forest of insanity, if I have to escape for real.

The forest spirit will absorb me.

The forest was growing up at the faster rate, the number of tentacles on each tree extended from 25 to 40. Leaves went darker and the spores from the alien mushrooms were floating all around me. 

Tree branches were touching the clouds and becoming more thick and purple. 

I opened the lid of the barrel of kerosene and throw it towards one of the mutated trees. The lighter was turned on and the cult members were on the knees, continued reading the spells from NECRONOMICON. 

Now the trees developed evil artificial eyes within their ugly branches, they were glaring at me trying to put a nasty spell over my mind. 

"I am not afraid of you", I tossed the lighter to the living trees to burn it out in fire and the fire will spread to the other trees.

It started burning from the bottom, fuming a dark, suffocating purple smoke instead of a black one.

Fire couldn't burn them down, the slime from their tentacles ruined all my plans, the fire stopped from further spreading and the branch of the trees remained unburnt.

All my hopes of finding a way to escape were destroyed. 

The only way to put an end to this insanity was to crumble the NECRONOMICON into pieces.

I went deep inside the tent and picked up that monster figure and went straight to the cultists. 

I smashed the head of the cultist with the same figure who was reading that book. His head was bleeding, and some parts of his brain was visible, floating inside the blood. 

"Here it ends!", I light up the lighter once again but now without wasting any unnecessary time, I tore off the opening page of the book and placed that burning lighter over it.

"For god's sake don't do that", the cultists started speaking up with pain and sorrow in his eyes,"for the sake of the world don't."

"Ofcourse I will do that", I put the page on fire and at that moment, the trees started to dry away, the artificial eyes fell off their branches, their tentacles turned to dust, the purple leaves turned black and started rotting. Everything was burnt to the ground. 

One more blast, This time it was the greatest I could hear giant footsteps from the distance.

I know, you will not believe me but still I am telling this to you. 

I saw him, I saw the great Black Plague!

It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries with two heads, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of blackish light all over the forest that bore down upon me, his other baby face was grinning at me, crushing the dead bodies of the trees and slithering over the ashes that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.

I saw him directly with my eyes, he is real and now he is free. 

The forest tied him up in his place and cultists were trying their best to suppress his demonic powers, but now it escaped. What the hell I did?

There was much more than I could remember, but even what I did remember each morning 

would be enough to stamp me as a madman if ever I dared write it down. Some frightful influence, I felt, was seeking gradually to drag me out of the sane world of wholesome life into unnamable abysses of blackness and alienage; and the process told heavily on me. 

My health and appearance grew steadily worse, till finally I was forced to give up my position and adopt the static, secluded life of an invalid. Some odd nervous affliction had me in its grip, and I found myself at times almost unable to shut my eyes.

The man who found me said that I must have crawled a long way despite my broken bones, for a trail of blood stretched off as far as he dared look. The gathering rain soon effaced this 

link with the scene of my misery, and reports could state no more than that I had appeared from a place unknown, at the entrance of Craterville.