It started out simple. I was visiting my friend’s estate while on holiday in New England; we would be searching for various antique books. The house itself is exceptionally old and has surprising detailing. The cornices of the house are decorated with hems of waves. The rest of the house is very odd in that its rooms are not square or rectangular in shape, they are varying ovals and hexagons. The corners peak upward to ceilings dark recesses covered in cobwebs and dust. The servants oddly enough don’t seem to clean very often if at all. That’s all I remember about the house from my last very brief visit. Here I stand before his house and I feel something deep within my stomach, a churning sensation almost painful. I toted my luggage up the steps of the home; it was here that I would spend the next few weeks and it is here that I will begin my descent into the bowels of this town; at this point I was unbeknownst to both.  

                                The foyer’s walls were a peeling sea foam green and the room reeked of mold. The house was an unnatural cold considering the smoldering heat outside. Then there was Sven, my acquaintance and accomplice in this tale. His unkempt mane of blonde hair complemented his stoic face and his piercing green eyes. He was quite the sight to behold. He told me about the book he had recently come across while going through a police sale, the book apparently belonged to a bunch of religious zealots whose compound had been foreclosed. He said the book appeared to just be random scribblings along with detailed graphs, charts and pictures with some footnotes in broken English.                

                                We walked through his home to his study which was vast compared to the small study in my small studio apartment. His shelves were filled with large, leather-bound tomes and some small paperbacks that appeared to be personal journals (who knows of what. They could be medical or small day to day happenings). The room had a high ceiling; its octagonal shape cast odd shadows. The carpet was an expensive tapestry that must have been custom made for the room as it fit its hulking form perfectly. He approached one of the behemoth shelves and pulled the aforementioned book from betwixt two large atlases. He opened it to a page portraying a large thing sitting…no…squatting over a throne. It appeared to have the head of an octopus but the body of a dragon and yet it seemed to position itself upright like a man. There were odd symbols and things, the only legible English on the page read “rites of the star spawn”. We both skimmed through the book, staring at its many paintings and odd drawings. But the way the damn thing smelled, it was awful. The book smelled like a mixture of piss and other strange bodily ichors. Luckily Sven had grown tired of the things and shelved it.

                                Sven and I proceeded to drink from his brandy collection, reminiscing about our college days and old love interests from days gone by. He told me of this girl he was infatuated with, her jet black hair was always up. He had tried on numerous occasions to talk to her but failed as she snubbed him at every conversational upstart possible. The way he described her still, even after all these years you can tell he still had pangs of guilt for never wooing her. Her name was Rebecca, a beautiful name. We sat there in silence as I imagined this beautiful girl; her condescending glares giving off some mysterious sex appeal. As I looked up at Sven I noticed he looked beside himself; whether it is from regret or just the pains of realizing how old we have both become. In that silence came a stirring in the walls that startled us both, it sounded as if an entire colony of rats moved and slithered within the wall when suddenly…everything went quiet. The candles in the room were snuffed by some wind without origin and there we sat in total darkness. There was a great guttural noise that resonated within that room, a noise that nearly reduced me to tears. It was a sound so wretched and sickening that I vomited upon myself. I sat there, immobilized with fear while the thing within the walls moved about us, its form making revolting sounds. I heard Sven across the room, I could hear his teeth chattering and I could smell his piss.

                                We spent the whole night in that room, in terror we waited as the nameless thing stalked us from within the walls. For hours we sat there after the thing left, hoping that it wouldn’t return. Morning came and we exited the study. Neither of us looked at each other and neither of us acknowledged what just happened. That day we spent in our own separate rooms, I didn’t leave mine until I heard a loud bang from Sven’s room. I stood at my door, shaking…not knowing whether the nameless thing had finally left the walls and begun its hunt. Finally I forced myself to open the door and make my way down the hallway. When I opened the door to his room there he was…hanging from the rafters, his dead green eyes staring through me.

                                As I stepped into his room I found pictures of a beautiful black haired girl scattered below him. I assumed this was his Rebecca. There were dozens upon dozens of these pictures. I began to sift through them, seeing less and less of a beautiful girl and more of an obsession. There are some of her much younger, I assume in her twenties. But then there are more, ones in her thirties and could be very recent. The odd thing is, they all seem candid. She’s always off to the far side of the shot or seemingly unaware her picture is being taken. I sat there for a while; absorbing the photos. I came across a picture that really caught my eye. It was Rebecca, with her sprawled across the couch in some room definantly not in this house. She looked so serene laying there, her arms gently holding a pillow to her chest. I wanted to lay next to her, I wanted to have her hold me and eclipse all this. I laughed. I laughed so hard it hurt, here I was at my friend’s feet and fantasizing over a woman I had never met before in my life and yet I longed to be with her.

                                I decided it best to clean up the photos and move them into my room, I would figure out what to do with Sven later. It horrified me how desensitized I had become from last night. I felt as if I should be crippled by all this, immobilized at Sven’s feet and yet, here I stand in my room surprisingly numb.  I thought it best to avoid the police for now; they’d toss me in an asylum if I told them what happened last night. Something deep within me needed me to stay in that house.

End of Part 1