Just a story I wrote, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model. As I mentioned in a recent posting, I’m trying to build a proper theme for my blog rather than just random stuff based off of the daily prompts. This is longer than I planned (about 10K words). I think I’ve got a better chance at getting people actually read what I write if I keep it short at first so they can get a feel for my writing style/storytelling. For this one I tried to mimic Lovecraft’s style with mixed results. I’ll probably come back and rewrite bits (or all) of it at a later date.

One thing I do want to get better at is getting across the time period of the story when writing in the first person. This story is set in the early 1980s as I wanted it to be more recent than Lovecraft’s period, without the advantages of modern trapping, such as internet searches. In this case I used a single reference to Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which felt a bit clunky. In Twinkle (set in the early 1930s) I was able to reference Hoovervilles, Prohibition, and the Great Depression, but they all fed into the story somewhat, so I thought it worked better.

Anyhow, if you have time and like horror stories, please give the story a read! 🙂

Ah Wingate, come in, come in, make yourself at home, I'm so glad you could come over at such short notice. It's just that for this last week I've been holding inside myself such a horrific damnation that I've just got to tell someone.
That's it, sit down by the fire; I'll get us a drink. I'm damn glad you came over for it's the first full moon since my discovery and... and, well, it just got to me that's all, I'm damn sorry about the hour I really am.
Yes, yes, I'll explain what it is all about; I'm sorry, but it's not easy. No, don't apologize, it's my fault, I'm a bit worked up. Let me explain.
Do you remember Andrea, my youngest. Yes of course you do, I was forgetting, your boy was at school with her. Andrea was never like the other two, she was always a bit, well...unusual. I used at first to attribute it to her birth up in that hunting lodge we had been staying in just outside Arkham when Judith - God rest her soul - gave birth to her prematurely. Tony and I had been out hunting at the time, but my eldest – you remember Philip, you met him last Christmas, and you and he were discussing whether Reagan's election would set America back on the right path.  Anyway, he had sprinted into town – the lodge had no phone - and fetched in the doctor and midwife, so that Judith was all alone when Andrea came out and had passed out with all the pain by the time they got there.  The doctor and midwife arrived in time to finish up the delivery, though I do recall thinking it must have been difficult because there was an awful lot of blood on the sheets, apparently from when the cord was cut.
To be honest - and I've never told a soul this before - I must confess that when I first saw the mite, I thought her a bit, well, ugly.  Yes, I know that that’s a terrible thing for a father to say about his daughter, but something about her wasn't quite right.  Perhaps it was the fact that her eyes seemed a little too wide with a bit of redness about them, or that her nose seemed, how can I describe it, unnatural.  No that's misleading, it's just that it was too small and somewhat misshapen, sort of like a snub nose shape, but too short in top so that it was like she was looking down her nose even if she was looking at you face on.  And, well, her face, well it's just that it, well, had a wildness about it, that’s all.  And I know surface beauty is only skin deep and all that and it’s the person underneath that matters, but it's just that the other two took after myself and their mother quite closely, but Andrea didn't, she was too, well, well I don’t want to say ugly because that would be unfair, but, well…feral looking.
The doctor and the midwife acted a bit off when they showed me the child and I swear that they were whispering some strange things as they hurriedly went to their car and drove off back to Arkham once all was in order but I didn’t really think too much of it at the time as I needed to take care of Judith and the boys and, well, the new addition to the family.

Now as she grew up, I treated Andrea well, not spoiling her, mind, but giving her a good upbringing just like I did the other two, and they turned out ok; but Andrea was always rebellious, both as a child, and as she grew older. It wasn't that she was violent or abusive, far from it, but she was always, how can I put it...impious? Look, look, let me explain what I mean, for don't get me wrong, I loved Andrea as I loved all my children.  Even now, knowing what I know, some of that love is still there.  It's just that Andrea always seemed to have a mocking disregard for anything good or holy.  Now as you know I'm a regular church­goer, though I couldn't bring myself to going this week, what with all that had happened.
As I was saying, I'm a regular churchgoer, as was my dear Judith, and we always made the children go; we saw it as our Christian duty to. Now Phillip and Tony were fine, they still go now, even though Phillip's married and moved away, and Tony's at college.  Andrea though, Andrea went because we made her go, and I always got the feeling that while the service was being performed, Andrea was listening to and watching it mockingly, like some damn heathen, mocking the good Lord Himself.
It was the same with Judith and I, she always treated us with half-concealed contempt as if all our values and beliefs were of nought to her.  As she grew older, her tastes went, well, Bohemian.  What I mean to say is that she started reading books of a dubious religious nature - some were quite blasphemous in their claims, and on at least two occasions, having examined some of the texts, I forbade her to keep them under my roof; but she ignored me, or rather humored  me  in  that  mocking  manner  of  hers, saying  that  she would, but never doing so, instead just increasing her collection, and I, damnably, left it alone hoping she would grew out of  it.   I wish to God that I had been more firm!  Still, it's too late for that now.  Her music tastes were the same, always tunes that never seemed to me quite right for a normal person to listen to.   Ok, I didn't mind her listening to Holst's 'The Planets', I like a bit of classical myself, and I could accept her interest in some of that 'Heavy Metal' music, a lot of kids today go for it, though it just sounds like just loud noise to me!   It was the other music that worried me, I don't know where she got it from, and she would always say from friends, but I never met any of her friends, and she had always been quite a loner both in school and afterwards even if, as she got older, she went out most nights.  She always went out alone and came back alone.  Anyway, that music, if that's the right word for those sounds, that music was, I don't know, like a kind of cacophony of animal noises, and yet not animal noises, they never seemed to have any of the qualities I associate with animals in them, does that sound strange to you?   I'm sorry it's just that the ululations were of a quality that seemed wrong to me, seemed to be unnatural.  Those tapes with the music on were always the type you do yourself, never proper commercial ones.  I questioned her about this - after all, I will not condone illegal copying – but she just said her friends produced the noises, and then would give that mocking smile of hers.  At the time, I just assumed her friends were into some new wave music scene with all those synthesizers and the like, but now I think I know better.
Anyway, as she got older, she got worse.  She hardly seemed to eat, spent almost all of her nights out - though she would never tell us where, just that she was going out to a 'nightclub' with some friends, and I'm pretty sure she was cutting classes at school, despite the fact that I had told her how important a good education was.

As time progressed, she seemed to become more and more disinterested in her physical appearance. Her face kept its feral quality, and her eyes seemed to become redder and redder, which I put down to her terrible sleep schedule. Similarly, her skin became paler - which I assumed was because she only seemed to go out anywhere after dark, and her teeth always seemed to be unhealthy. I don't mean that she needed regular dental work - indeed she never had so much as a single filling - it's just that there was something wrong about those yellowy teeth of hers, not just the hue, but they seemed too sharp, too much like an animal’s.
Surprisingly, though she ate sparingly and never seemed to exercise, she became, in a somewhat 'boney' manner, quite toned, her thin frame heightening her layers of muscle. Ironically, I assumed this to be the result of the nightclubbing - I've heard that dancing can be a good form of exercise - and that's why I never forced her to tell me just where she was going at night, lest she become moody and stop going out.
Andrea could never hold down a job sadly, her manner I suppose, whilst just about tolerable to a close relative like myself, was a grating point to an employer or co-employee, and she never lasted a month in any place. I had wanted her to go on to college myself, like the other two had, but she wasn't interested and went to pot somewhat, for she seemed all her days lounging around, and all her nights out 'nightclubbing', though I always disdainfully felt she must be borrowing from her friends to pay for the latter, for she didn't have a great income, and no money was missing from the home; likewise I found no evidence of any criminal deeds in her room - yes I must confess, I pried around in it when she was out on several occasions, but it was only for her own good that I did it.

The turning point I suppose was when she started writing those weird tales when she was eighteen. The few publications that cater for such stories were interested enough in such material, and she seemed to get quite an income from her stories considering that it isn’t a proper job. I did try reading some of the stuff, you know, to show an interest, but I dare say it was all beyond me, all that witchery nonsense and the like. I did what I could to encourage her, though, glad to see that she had found her niche in life, even encouraging her to write a full length book, not just those short stories that she produced, but she took no notice, even expressing an opinion that she considered the writing to be but a means to an end, a way of raising money, which, as I said, is no way to go through life; you must take your work seriously I told her, but she just laughed at that.
Well as you probably know, she moved out about four months after that, went to live in Arkham, even saying in that unnatural humor of hers that she was 'going back to her roots', which always puzzled me, because she had never been in that town itself before, and we had left the lodge where she was born - which was just outside Arkham - when she was less than a month old, and never returned.
I must confess that I felt somewhat lonely in my old house after that, Judith had passed on, and all the children had moved out, though the eldest two still kept in touch. I tried keeping in touch with Andrea as well, but she never replied to the majority of my letters; those that she did reply to got only the scantiest response, and she never bothered to have a telephone fitted. I had hoped that she might invite me to come and stay with her for a weekend or something, but she never did.
About a month ago I received word from the Arkham police force. Apparently, Andrea’s landlady had not seen her for almost a fortnight, and as she was already behind with the rent, took her spare key and entered the apartment. Behind the door were several letters from myself and publishers plus several circulars; and by the dates on their postmarks, it seemed that some had lain there for the past eight days. The rooms, though sparsely furnished, were in an unkempt, though not upheavaled state, and a thickish layer of dust covered most places as if Andrea had not bothered to clean her home at all.  A couple of manuscripts lay by a typewriter in the study, along with several copies of magazines of the type that she wrote for. However, though nothing seemed to be missing as far as possessions went, Andrea was nowhere to be seen, nor was there anything to suggest where she might had gone.
Through my letters the police had traced me as her next of kin, but nothing could really be done to find her, for there was no sign of foul play, and no-one had the faintest idea of where she could possibly have gone, least of all me.
I was worried about the lass, I must admit, and a week later I thought 'Blow it! I'll go down and see if I can trace her myself'.  After all, the police weren't bothering. So, I contacted her landlady and arranged to take over her tenancy, paying up Andrea's back rent plus enough for my own stay which I expected to be about a month.

Andrea's apartment was, I must confess, not really to my taste. For a start it had a certain dinginess about it, which the layer of dust did little to enhance. Her decor also left a lot to be desired, for the wallpaper was of drab white and red stripes that had, judging by its faded condition, been there when she arrived, and the carpets weren't much better either, all as threadbare as they come. Really, I suppose, she had little real decoration of her own in her apartment, just three paintings in her study - but God in Heaven, what paintings they were! Even now when I think of them, I shudder, such was their repulsiveness.
Here, let me refill your glass, I dare say I'm not being the best of hosts, but please forgive me, it’s just that this is the first chance I've had to tell anyone what happened.
Anyway, as I was saying, those pictures, they made me shudder I must admit. The first was a monstrous blasphemy of a graveyard scene; it was painted as if the viewer were peering over the shoulder of a foul abomination as it crouched inhumanly at the edge of a dug out grave - the coffin lid removed to reveal a fresh corpse - and its sinuous arm was stretched out and stroking the dead man’s face; for the love of God, I could almost feel its caress on my face, as if I was the corpse! Can you imagine that Wingate, to be viewing a picture and feeling as if you are in it and in such a guise!
No, no, I'm getting myself worked up, please excuse me. No, I don't want you to call my doctor, I'll be okay, it's just the memory of that picture and its two companions.
It's okay now, I've calmed down, so I’ll tell you of the others. The second picture was of a similar creature as the defiler in the first, only now all of it was evident, and I can't help but wish it had been otherwise, for by the Lord, it chilled me to the bone. This beast alone would have been horrific enough, but the scene depicted it squatting on the stomach of a man in the clothing of our Puritan forefathers who was upon the floor of a typical seventeenth century home. What made the picture so truly...evil, was the way the fiend had ripped open the poor man's chest and had inserted its claws into his innards - oh the look on his face, the look on his face! I could hardly bare to look upon the scene, for the eyes would always look into mine, somehow, somehow...no I can't go on it was so ghastly, so wrong.
Forgive me Wingate, I'm not in too good a state am I! I'll get us another drink whilst I calm down; I certainly need another - and you?...No, okay, I suppose I did knock my own back a bit quick, but so would you if you had seen what I have. The third was the worst of them all, and its title 'Ghoul Feeding' I think sums its contents up best.  Something about the fiend it pictured - its caninistic face, its drawling jaws, its charnel booty, as I live and breathe, it repulsed me more than you can know! According to the signature at the bottom of it, it was painted by one R.U. Pickman, and though I have no idea who he is or was, from that picture that demonical portrait - I never wish to know!
I think I've made it pretty clear that I disliked those paintings, but I left them up - even if I did try to avert my eyes from them - as I thought that Andrea must have had them for some inspirational purpose to do with her writing - an idea that several of her stories backed up - and I hoped to, well I don't know, gain an insight into how her mind was working in those last few weeks before she vanished.  It probably seems a weird idea, but I half thought that those pictures would help me think like her, though in all honesty I’d never managed up until then to do so. Strangely though, in some ways they did.
Anyway, I'd been there a week or so with no leads - nothing in the house pointed to any planned trips or such, and Andrea didn't seem to have any real acquaintances - or so I thought - except for magazine editors and the like, whom she only dealt with on a purely business basis.  It seemed that she had no friends at all in the area, least none that I could find, and no-one ever called at the place for her. Similarly, local institutions such as hospitals and the like had no people in them who fitted Andrea's description, well actually one place, the Sefton Asylum, did have someone similar who I went to see, but it wasn't her, even if the young woman’s mannerisms were reminiscent of my girl.  Her face full of a mocking contempt that, unlike Andrea's, contained a mad rage which filled me with an unnerving horror.
Anyway, after about a week, I noticed the well in the garden of the house - Andrea's apartment had occupied the downstairs and a young couple had the upstairs - a right queer pair they were; he was normal enough to look at, but he never seemed to say a word to anyone, and she, well she had a certain strangeness about her, her eyes didn't seem quite, quite...well forget about them, I avoided them as best I could anyhow.  Where was I, oh yes, that's right, the well.  Anyway, I noticed this well in the garden; I'd seen it a couple of times before when I looked out the window, but I'd never really paid it any heed previously.  Anyway, I took a longer look at it one day, I don't know why exactly, it just seemed to catch my attention for some reason, and before I knew it, my eyes were locked onto it. It didn't look that special, overgrown as it was by weeds and the like, but on an impulse, I went out and looked down into its dark depths. The smell that it emitted was, well disagreeable to say the least.
What I did after that however, was, I suppose, the product of having seen too many old horror and thriller films and, it seems so silly now, I got hold of a flashlight and went back to the well and climbed down into it using a ladder I found by the side of the house. Okay, okay, I admit it seems a silly thing to do, no, no, I know what you're thinking, I think it must have been those damn paintings acting on me, but I climbed down into that well, feeling for all the world like a total fool.
Well I expect you now think I'm going to tell you that at the bottom of the well was some hidden passageway, and you're not a hundred percent wrong neither; for, in that sinister pit of antiquity, illuminated by my powerful flashlight, I saw the remains of an archway, its base about a foot above the grimy mud and slime of countless years that filled that man-made hole. I say the remains, for, judging by the discoloration, the bricks that filled it in had been in place at least a hundred years or so. I tried banging upon the stone covering, plus the wall sections around its edges, but it seemed solid enough, and I dare say since its bricking up, no-one's entered the tunnel by that means.
I quickly ascended the ladder after that. My hunch had been wrong I decided, there wasn't some hidden passageway down that well which Andrea could have found and entered, I guessed that my imagination had been to blame, and that it had been running wild at the time I decided to enter the well, or my desperation to find some lead to Andrea's disappearance was making me try anything - it's a terrible thing to feel so helpless and impotent when one's family is concerned.
Well after that I suppose my hopes went downhill, and I became a bit despondent about ever finding Andrea; after all, I had no leads whatsoever.  I couldn't find any of her contacts except for a few magazine editors who were as helpful as they could be but didn't really know anything about her, save that they found her work to be of exceptional quality, and when I questioned the local shopkeepers, none of them, except for a newsagent and a girl who worked in the post office near her home, had any recollection of her ever buying anything in their shops when I showed them the most recent picture I had of her. Okay, I know that they have a lot of people going in and out of their shops, but Andrea was, well, distinctive. Surely her queer looks wouldn't have been overlooked if she were a regular customer. Strangely enough, looking back on it, I don't think that there had been that much food in her cupboards anyhow when I got there - that's partially what made me think she was planning some trip - though I suppose knowing now what I do, she never frequented the regular stores that much.
Another problem was that Andrea had, it seemed, no regular haunts, at least not in Arkham or any of the surrounding area, for none of the staff in the normal places young people go to were of any help, nor were the people of Andrea's age themselves. Indeed, judging by what I found out, it seemed that the lass never went out at all, except to buy a newspaper or some more typewriter paper, or to send off a manuscript to a magazine, though I did learn later that this was far from the truth.
But I'm getting ahead of myself once again, anyway as I was saying, I seemed to be getting nowhere in my searches and I was, to be honest, on the verge of packing it all in and going back home. Then, by chance and partially inspired by a story Andrea had had published in a magazine called 'Necropolis File' - one of those journals that publishes fiction and supposedly occult fact side by side I connected two apparently unimportant facts together and came up with the most startling of ideas. As I have said, the well in the garden had a bricked-up passageway leading from it. However, what I suddenly realized was that the passageway had pointed towards the house, and, in addition, I recalled a pair of floorboards in the cellar that I had tried to avoid stepping on due to the spine­ tingling creak that they produced. I must confess that I felt even more foolish as I went into that cellar again than I had when I had descended into the well, I was truly clutching at straws this time I thought, but, well, you know how it is when you're at your wits end.
Well as you no doubt have guessed, I prized up those floor­boards, finding them surprisingly easy to remove, and below was, after a small drop, the passageway that connected to the well's blocked up entrance at one end, and at the other, well I did not like to guess.
Well, in spite of my qualms about the unknown, I got hold of my flashlight and entered that perilous tunnel of nether secrets, my courage surprisingly good considering. First off, I made my way towards the well's entrance, for a reasoning that had as much to do with making sure nothing was lurking down there that could follow me once I had begun tracking along the other route, as it had to do with finding out if any other paths led off from the well's terminated entrance. Not surprisingly, all I found down that way was the dead end I expected, and, worryingly, the bones of a small dog or cat. I say 'worryingly' because of the arrangement of the bones, for they were not in the normal skeletal format that would be left if they had been the remains of a creature that had died and then decayed to bones but were strewn around the dead end in a most shocking manner, as if the poor creature had been torn to pieces, either before or after its demise. I dared not touch those remains physically, but cautiously bent down and, with the flashlight beam shining directly onto them, I examined several of the bones where they lay upon the floor. Now as you know, I'm no anthropologist, and one set of teeth marks is much like any other to me, therefore, from what I saw upon those yellow-white remnants, I shuddered with the realization that the tunnel was home to some large, vicious-toothed rats, or at least so I thought at the time, later experience taught me it might be otherwise, and if I had the nerve I would go back to that tunnel and retrieve those bones to show to someone, a scientist or the like.
As it was, I left those remains where they were and retraced my steps back to the cellar entrance, and then onwards along that sinister passageway, my flashlight's beam low upon the ground ahead, and my ears straining with the effort to hear any rodents scurrying along the floor, or appearing from imagined holes all around me, creeping out to devour my flesh, to tear apart my body.  God!  You can't begin to understand how I felt as I walked along that passageway, my feet the only testimony to the existence of a living being among the musty walls. I've never been afraid of rats, even if I'm not over­keen when it comes to rodents, but I both feared the sudden appearance of those saw-toothed vermin in that hellish route, and yet would have welcomed them with relief, for everything seemed so dead, so empty, so unnatural.
Four hundred yards along the way, the route split in two, a path veering a little to the left, and another fork at almost a right angle going to the right. I was somewhat unnerved by this, for I imagined becoming lost in that maze of passageways, becoming as lost as that cat or dog had done, and, perhaps, Andrea had done - the idea reviled me no end, to be lost in the maze for all my remaining days, only able to see where I was for a while before my flashlight ran out, and then the rats, my god, the rats! I dared not even begin to conjure up my eventual demise in such a situation, it was just too horrible for my mind to dwell upon down there.
To prevent my fear becoming fact, I resolved to keep to as straight a path as I could, working through those other passageways another time, privately hoping that I would discover Andrea's fate - good or ill - very soon, so that I could depart from that claustrophobic tunnel of dubious age and heritage. So, continuing down the left fork, I walked on, still cautious of rats, but now, as the all-engulfing darkness seemed to be waiting lurkingly beyond my flashlight's beam, I also feared something else, something intangible, something I couldn't name, yet something I felt was there, waiting.
The next fork I reached - the Lord alone knows how far along the tunnel that was, though I recall a sharp bend to the right at some point, plus numerous small curves back and forth along the route - that next fork was almost like an alcove leading off the tunnel proper, into what, for some reason, I assumed to be a longish room, though my only reason for thinking this was its property of producing a reverberant echo. What was it echoing? I was just coming to that. The actual noise, at the time, was of a type I could not recognize - comparing it in my mind with that of an animal feasting or sleeping, though even these seemed inadequate in describing the unholy sound that emitted at irregular intervals from the subterranean hall.  And the smell. Oh, the smell! How can one describe a smell which no healthy person should ever be forced to endure, mixing as it does the dank of the tomb with the fetor of the corpse with the...Lord! I know not what else it was that I felt waft over me; so powerful was it that it almost seemed to have a form, like a sudden surge of some miasmic gas.
My options, as I saw it, were three in number; either retreat back along the way I had come - running away in primitive fear, go along the tunnel proper and know that whatever lurked in that hall was behind me, possibly between me and the only exit, or, as horrible as it may seem now - and believe me it seemed far worse then, to enter this primaeval den of decay from which emitted that sound. I knew I must choose the last of the three, though every instinct told me to run away, to get out and leave Arkham; but always my mind returned to Andrea, who, for all I knew, could be lying injured in that room. With barely contained disgust, I took a mouthful of the fresher, though musty, air of the tunnel, and entered the large forbidding undercroft, at first holding the flashlight at arm’s length so that I could see in as far as possible, then bringing it in close, suddenly desiring to be as near to the illumination as possible, wishing to be in the illumination itself, yet fearing to be seen, to draw attention to myself, wishing with all my heart that I was truly alone, and that the noise and sound had a natural source.
You must forgive me Wingate if I pause a moment there, I don't wish to seem like some storyteller leaving his audience in suspense until the next episode, but what happened next has haunted my dreams - my nightmares - for many nights, perhaps even more so than the final horror. You'll have that final drink now? Yes, I don't blame you, I'll have another as well, even if I have had more than I like to have.  Alcohol blots out so much.
There, that's better, I'll try and continue now.
As I was saying, I entered that chamber - that pit - with my flashlight scanning the scene ahead. All went quiet once the beam entered the room, save for a scuffling sound, which made me think of a rat of unthinkable size moving furtively about in an attempt to surprise and capture me, and I nearly withdrew there and then. My nerves tense and my courage just about holding, I swung the light around in a wide arc across the room, the beam not reaching the far wall at all. What I saw turned my stomach, and I doubt if even Andrea, with all her sinister tales and stories, could adequately describe the horror before me.
Upon the floor, in various states of dishevelment, lay the remains of bodies that were once human, though in several cases only instinct told me that this was so, such was their state. Can you imagine the horror of such an array of morbid remains, some so fresh that only the severance at the neck tells you that the face whose eyes stare at you so is actually dead; whereas some of the bodies were so old, so decayed, that it seemed as if I were a trespasser in a crypt. Between and sometimes partially sprawled over the more distant bodies lay greyish masses which I at first took to be other corpses, but soon realized were not. I later learned what these masses were - my original belief not too far from the truth - but at the time I could only wildly speculate within my mind as to their nature.
In disgust I hurried the beam round fully in its arc, anxious to leave the scene, but then, worse of all, my beam picked up a blasphemy so close, so distinct, that the mere fact that I managed to stay conscious shows how much the previous scene had hardened me. For, clearly in my flashlight beam, I saw a being I had espied before, or at least a similar type of creature, a being whose form an insane artist had portrayed in a painting as sitting on the stomach of one of our puritan forefathers, yet in the flesh, if that is the right expression in the circumstances, the beast was far worse, its face more caninistic, its fangs more vilely resplendent as the saliva dripped down them, and its eyes, oh its eyes! There was something in those eyes which shocked me more than the rest of its form, for, as my beam palely illuminated in those reddish orbs, I believe I saw madness in its most potent form, a madness that transcended all I had ever held possible, that defiled all I had ever held holy. I had though the madwoman I saw in Sefton was bad enough, but this was almost like, how can I put it, well let’s just say that if among these creatures, insanity comes with age, then the mad creature I had seen in Sefton is but a child, while this being was a full-grown adult of innumerable years!
As I have said, I did not faint, however this is, in itself, a supposition, for my next memory is of awakening on the bed in my room at Andrea's old apartment. No, don't get me wrong, I hadn't dreamt any of it, all of it had been horrifically real, and my shaking hands, and shaking body, well testified to the shock. At first I tried to tell myself that it was all my imagination, but it felt so real, too real, and the dust on my clothes, coupled with the fact that I had awoken fully dressed sprawled upon my bed, made me so sure of what had happened, that I dreaded to go down to the cellar for fear of what I might find.
Eventually I overcame my terror and went down to that dark antechamber below the house, but the floorboards were in place again, either pushed into place from above, or pulled there from below, I dare not guess which now. What must have happened, I judged, was that my mind snapped momentarily upon seeing that fiend, and I ran back mindlessly to the house, pushing the boards into place before hiding in the bedroom in sheer mad fright, fainting eventually due to the strain upon my nervous system, and coming round sometime later, lying there in a pitiful state. One thing however makes me doubt this reassuring idea, one thing that sent a shiver along my spine more than anything else that happened that day. I discovered it by chance that evening, and because of it I never managed to sleep that night despite my exhaustion. It was simply this: in Andrea's study, stuck into the typewriter, was a piece of paper that had not been there previously, upon it was typed, 'Go away Mr. Martins - For your own sake.'

It was a couple of days after that, that the young man who was to have such a catalytic effect upon my search turned up. I had been, I must confess, on the verge of taking that loathsome note's advice, all my desires to find Andrea shattered by the horror I had unearthed; please believe me, these…creatures, these creatures are as real as you or I, and I wish to God I still had the inherent ignorance and skepticism humans are born with and which most spend their entire life blinded by.  That's why I turned to you, Wingate, you at least have an open enough mind not to think I'm mad, or, if not, you at least have the decency not to show it. Anyway, two days after my encounter in the tunnel, a young man turned up on Andrea's doorstep. The stranger introduced himself as Mr. Howard Phelps, and enquired after a Ms. Andrea Martins whom he had been told dwelt at this address. I informed him that I was her father but did not know her whereabouts and bade him enter, curious as to the nature of the visit.
It seemed that Mr. Phelps was an author of macabre fiction like Andrea had been, and that he had secured her address through the 'Necropolis File' magazine a couple of months ago but had only just managed to find the time to come over to America from his native England, totally unaware of his quarry's disappearance. The young man had long been a fan of Andrea's work, describing her at one point as being 'a dark princess of the graveyard' whatever that means, and had taken the trip out here in the hope of meeting Andrea personally so that he might entice her to work upon a joint project which Mr. Phelps had in mind, for the young Englishman had devised a storyline which he felt was, in several places, a perfect vent for Andrea's specialist matter.
Now please realize Wingate, I was still shaken by my discovery of two days previous, and this man was the only person who seemed to have any connection with the unreal world that was solidifying into a terrible reality before me, albeit only in so much as he wrote weird tales like Andrea did. Almost furtively I questioned him about the types of things Andrea had had published, and apparently innocently I asked if he believed in such 'stuff and nonsense'.  Surprisingly the young man had a fairly strong belief in the occult matters that graced the pages of the magazines, even if he did say that the vast majority of the pieces produced in mass appeal works were either debasements, romanticisms or totally incorrect versions of actual occult lore.  I then showed him the paintings that still hung in the study, and he was as shocked as I was by them, though after the initial shock wore off, he began examining them with a morbid interest, particularly the one entitled 'Ghoul Feeding' by R.U. Pickman, which he seemed to recognize through reputation rather than by actually having seen it before.   It seemed, according to Mr.  Phelps, that Pickman had mysteriously disappeared in the mid-twenties, and that the painting went to his father; when the old man had died it had vanished from among the property within his house, and dark rumors claimed Pickman had come to reclaim it from some dark pit of evil.   Mr.  Phelps guessed that it had somehow fallen into the hands of an art dealer who had seen its occult-lover potential and had sold it to Andrea after reading some of her work and seeing the young author's obvious love of ghouls.  This last statement I latched onto, for it was the true reason I was pumping the young Englishman for information so much; I confessed to him that I knew little of ghouls and asked him if he could enlighten me.
Ghouls, it seems, are humans who have become debased through the devouring of human corpses and the like, and through certain rites connected with the moon. These nether beings are a form of what occultists call 'undead', that is, a state betwixt life and death, and are, supposedly, one of the few types of being who go from being living to undead, the majority of undead becoming so from the state of death.   Ghouls did breed it seemed, though the young were usually exchanged for human young, and the stolen child would be reared as a ghoul, whilst its changeling would be raised as a human, and yet retain its natural characteristics - 'two ghouls for the price of one' as Mr. Phelps had quipped.   Much more he told me Wingate, most sadly going right over my head, and I gathered that he himself was somewhat well versed in the study of undeath as Andrea had been.
Finally, I could stand it no more and, motioning him to sit down in that hellish study - the three ghoul paintings leering down	at us, I told him what had befallen me but two days before, instructing him not to interrupt until I had finished. As	I spilled out my tale, Mr. Phelps, to his credit, sat diligently listening, obviously restraining from asking the myriads of questions that were forming in his mind.   That he believed me, I did not doubt, and when I had finished, his questions were the intelligent probes of a serious-minded student of the occult, rather than the skeptical sneerings of the unbeliever or the foolish babblings of the ignorant or superstitious.  He had a map of Arkham with him which he had purchased so that he could find his way about the town.   Now he spread it out before us and tried to make me recall just how far I had journeyed in the tunnel, plus my directions, though sadly I was of little help.
Mr. Phelps' next suggestion chilled my inner self; the young English author suggested a further descent into that pit of ghoulish horror, with ghoulish being without a doubt the most fitting description possible. I, naturally, replied that I never wished to enter those subterranean catacombs again as long as I lived, and I advised him not to make that mistake himself. The young author was undeterred however; whereas to a sensible man like myself the very idea of going looking for such beings was abhorrent to every instinct in my body, to a man like Phelps, to whom the dark secrets of the crypt are a thing of splendor, it was a dream come true, and he even spoke of making contact with them, of communicating with them in some way, perhaps through any changelings that were among them - the fate of the Puritan in the painting that loomed above us didn't waver his longing, the possibility that we could become the ghouls' victims was not, in his opinion, sufficiently dangerous to deter further investigation. He was, he announced, going to enter the tunnels at the next full moon, which was in four days’ time, and follow them through until he found the ghouls' meeting place for the time of celebration, for the full moon was, he said, of great significance to those unholy creatures. In trying to entice me to come along, he pointed out that all the ghouls would be at the celebration - possibly in a graveyard or crypt - and the tunnels should be empty.  Added to that, I had been spared the last time and was probably not considered a danger by them, indeed they might welcome me he said, a thought that filled me with utter revulsion. Also, he added, he knew somewhere where he could get hold of a revolver which should provide ample protection - normal bullets supposedly being enough to kill a ghoul - though he didn't expect to need to go to that extreme.

Looking back, I suppose Mr. Phelps had a far better idea of what had become of Andrea than he let on, and that probably led to his subsequent attempts to coerce me to join him in his foolhardy escapade. In all honesty, his attempts were really quite unethical - though I suppose horror authors don't have any real ethics - and he acted upon my desire to see Andrea again, hinting, as he did, that the lass might have become enmeshed in dealings with the ghouls, perhaps a long study of their nature.  It would have explained her vividly grotesque accuracy in describing their actions in her stories, and she might conceivably be at the ghouls' celebration, or even back in the tunnels whilst they bayed and danced to the moon. With this carefully applied suggestion, the young Englishman finally won me over, and I agreed to go back into that subterranean nightmare world, both eager and fearful of the approaching full moon, my desperation to see Andrea again and to get this matter over and done with clashing violently with my loathing to ever step beneath those cellar floorboards again, to ever walk in the darkness of the unknown again - especially now that it was partially known! Mr. Phelps proved to be positively exhilarated by the coming prospect of meeting a ghoul, and, having become my houseguest for the week, more through my own desire not to be alone in that apartment at night than for any other reason, he proceeded to study Andrea's stories carefully, plus several unusual texts that he had among his own possessions, including one in, I think, French, that dealt with ghoul cults around the world.
Two articles in the newspapers of the day preceding the full moon, one in the morning edition and the other in the evening's, served to unnerve me somewhat, and I nearly changed my mind about re-entering that unhallowed maze beneath the town. The first was, possibly, totally unconnected with the bizarre nocturnal occurrences I had unearthed in my search for Andrea. It was simply a small piece about the planned vigil of the Reverend Harvelle, pastor of the Asbury M.E. church, and two of his congregation, as after two of the last five full moons the pastor had noticed marks on the ground, and also on the graves, in the church graveyard which pointed to carefully covered up desecrations, and the Rev. Harvelle had vowed that it was the work of devil worshippers, and cited a similar occurrence back in the days of Dr. Wallace, the church's pastor in the late twenties and early thirties. This possible evidence of the ghouls' activities worried me considerably, but Mr. Phelps merely said soothingly that it might just be coincidence, many of the darker cults hold great store by the full moon, and even if it was the work of ghouls, wasn't it what we had expected.  Indeed, were we not hoping that such a ceremony was taking place that night! I had to concur reluctantly that he was right, though the article in the evening's paper sent me into a cold sweat, and I almost fled Arkham immediately rather than be around for the middle of the night, when the unblinking moon would stare down upon the world.  It seemed, going by the newspaper's story, that the madwoman I had viewed at Sefton had decided to attempt a breakout that afternoon, and had, in her desperate bid for freedom, broken one of the asylum staff's arm, and killed another before her recapture. What made me start so upon reading this, however, was that, when the madwoman was recaptured, she had been engaged in feeding upon her poor unfortunate victim's flesh! Mr. Phelps, damn him, chuckled upon seeing this, and merely pointed out that, in his view at any rate, the matter was no different from a lion in a zoo attacking its keeper, and he put forward an opinion that perhaps the poor victim had deserved it through some act of cruelty towards the madwoman - whom I now wholeheartedly believed to be one of the foul ghouls I had agreed to meet 'en masse' as it were. To my damnation I allowed Mr. Phelps to talk me round once again, and though all my senses told me not to re-enter those catacombs of death, his persuasion and my desire to see Andrea again won through and I prepared myself for that night.

When the night did fall, and dusk darkened the sky, I was loathed to notice that it was, paradoxically, what I would have once called 'a fine night'; not a cloud was to be seen, and the evening was warm despite a slight cool breeze that stirred the higher branches of the tall trees in a smooth rhythmic motion causing a maddening swishing sound - maddening, because in the still darkness of the night, prior to my entering of the cellar I was listening intently, though I know not what for, for the ghouls should not have been anywhere close at hand except, that is, far below.
We entered the tunnel in the cellar at 11:48PM, I remember looking at my watch, and began traversing its musty passageway. Mr. Phelps - who had with him a small camera, one of those mini tape recorders and his surreptitiously purchased revolver - took the lead, shining his sturdy metal torch's beam far ahead of him, a look of unusually sinister cast upon his face, a smile of demonic glee faintly perceivable on his lips, despite his attempts to keep cool about the matter. The young Englishman had said, as if from a book, something about attempting to arrive at the lair which I had stumbled upon at the exact middle of the night - 'that is, not midnight, but the time at which dusk and dawn are equidistant, and when, supposedly, the moon is at its zenith on nights when it is full.'
I remember shuddering as we passed the first fork, that perpendicular turn off to the right which I had planned to explore another time when first I came into that pit, and now, as I recalled it, and its unexplored nature, I felt a surge of nameless horror pulling at me, beckoning me to run back, turn and flee back to the safety of Andrea's apartment; but even as I felt this desire, fear gnawed at my innards, what if we were being set up, what if I were being set up and Mr. Phelps was in on it with them? What if I did turn and run, run back to that only opening of which I knew, what if I ran back and found it sealed, or found them, loathsome them, waiting in the cellar! Where could I run, where could I go - back along the passageway leading to the well, where the route ended in a dead-end, where those gnawed bones lay! For the love of God, Wingate, you cannot begin to comprehend the fear that gripped me as I caught sight of that first turning up ahead, as we drew level to it and felt the slight breeze that wafted almost unperceivably from along it. Mr. Phelps seemed less affected by this fear than I, and though he shone his torch along its narrower causeway, he seemed to discount it as the probable exit out into the ghastly festival, saying, as he did, that going by his map, it was most probably the route they used when going to the Asbury M.E. church, and no doubt their changeling kin who still walked among mortals had told them of the vigil being kept there; besides, he said, according to certain texts he had read, this night was the feast of Nitokris when the place of the festival must be swarming with the spirits of unhallowed age and darkness, which he doubted the Asbury M.E. church possessed.
I kept careful track of time that night as we walked towards our unknown fate, and it was past one in the morning when we reached the lair in which I had met with a fully debased ghoul for the first time.
We only spent a short while there, for it was empty, and Mr. Phelps was more interested in what he called 'the main event', that is, the festival itself. The hall was, even when devoid of its nefarious occupants, potently sinister, and I held back at the entrance while my companion entered to study the charnel remains left by those undead fiends. While he was crouched down examining certain sets of bones, I stood uneasily watching him from the entrance arch, nervously shining my beam around the room and occasionally down the passageway, my loathing for the place and its inhabitants now beginning to apply to Mr. Phelps as well as he crouched there, occasionally picking up actual human remains and studying them with inhuman callousness.  It was hard to say which I hated more at that moment - the ghouls to whom this was a natural way of life, or Mr. Phelps who had chosen to pursue such unholy matters with such morbid grave lust.
Presently the young Englishman rose and returned to my side, his eyes now alight with a feverish quality that I disliked more than I can say.  How any man can remain unmoved by such an unholy scene and call himself human I do not know! I recall closely studying his face in the torch light as he beckoned me on down the passageway, searching it for what I now feared most of all, the attributes of one who has fallen into the degradation of the ghoul, but I found none.
Of the remaining tunnel, I remember little, my mind was paralyzed by fear, and I walked as if in a dream. I recall various curves, and occasional turnings off to the right or left, and several times Mr. Phelps led me back along the route we had come, cursing the wrong turning which had proved to lead to nothing of any use - just another entrance for ghouls to come and go through, not the festival we sought - and he would look at his map and check the time and order me to hurry up , an order I tried to comply with, even though he was my junior and had no right to give me commands.
My first real memory after finding that lair, that ghoulish domain, was when we left this subterranean hell and passed through a hole which only after I had regained my senses in the pleasantly cool night air - the wind having picked up a fraction - did I realize what it was. We had had to crawl the last few feet, and the soil was slightly dampish and loose along the end of the passageway; looking down at this entrance to the tunnels I saw why, for, perhaps through some truly ghoulish jest, those night fiends had chosen to use a sepulcher as the entrance to that graveyard, one of those large affairs of stone or marble - like a one-man crypt in itself - with a heavy stone lid that is set in place. Only this one's wasn't.
My mind was that of a dullard, and Mr. Phelps' command to 'come on' passed through my head ineffectively and by the time I knew what I was doing and began my pursuit of him, he was some way ahead, having almost totally forgotten me in his haste to confront a ghoul. I looked at my watch as I climbed from the tomb and saw that it said two-something, I didn't care what in my fear. Almost mechanically, I began to follow Mr. Phelps, and as I reached the low hedge that split the graveyard in two, and over which he had briefly before passed, I froze. For, across from the other side of the hedge, and across several years of life, my ears once again heard a sound I am now loathed to describe save as an unholy cacophony of unnatural beasts, the same noise I had heard often being played in Andrea's room when she was still at home, before she came to Arkham. But now, hideously, I realized what those sounds were, and why Andrea smiled so vilely when she said her friends made that 'music', for, as realization dawned on me, I knew that I was listening to the songs of the ghouls as they bay to the moon.  That horrible ululation, so unlike human speech, was the sounds of those night fiends reveling in a most unwholesome manner.
Cautiously I peered over the tangled array of small twigs and leaves, my flashlight turned off and thrust into my pocket, the only lighting upon the hellish scene before me being that ghoul-entrancing moon, for Mr. Phelps had left his torch by the sepulcher, carelessly dropped in his haste. Before me, on the other side of my natural cover, was a scene that even the most open-minded student of the myriad forms of life that exist within this world would have been hard put to credit. For, among the graves of countless years, and illuminated by the pale light of the full moon after its zenith - a lighting that gives a morbidly dull white cast to all that it shines upon - those denizens of forgotten tunnels and forbidding crypts, those sinewy, grey-skinned debasements and degradations of man which folklore gave whisperingly the name ghouls, danced in a manner which denied all semblance to their possible relation to normal beings. My God, Wingate, can you begin to imagine what it is like to view those unclad fiends waving and leaping, baying and shouting, all in gross adoration to the full moon. Somehow the moon seemed too bright upon the scene, by all reason it was as if I was looking upon a scene in the afternoon, but with the brilliant golden sunbeams transformed into spectrally pale fingers of pale white light, ghoulish light; I swear Wingate, I really do, the moon, though we all know its light to be merely the reflection of the sun upon a non-sentinel sphere of rock that orbits the Earth, the moon was shining too brightly, it was illuminating the scene before me, and perhaps others like it around the benighted part of the Earth, but somehow I knew, by what I saw before me, and what I glimpsed in the area surrounding the festival's boundaries that the moon was favoring the area of the celebration and giving it more light than it cast upon the surrounding area, as if in unholy recognition of the insane cacophony!
Whilst my mind reeled with this revelation, I saw my companion approach the unhuman figures. This intrusion seemed displeasing to the moon which lost its powerful radiance upon the festival, casting it back into the half-lit world it should have been. Two ghouls stopped their reveling and approached Mr. Phelps, and an eerie 'meeping' sound came from several of the creatures, as if in conversation.
The two ghouls seemed to be conversing with the young author, and I gained the impression that at least one of them must be a changeling brought up as a human. Mr. Phelps seemed both excited and uneasy, I suppose that now that he had fulfilled his desire to meet a ghoul, he was somewhat less happy about the prospect, his writer's mind having up until then furnished an almost romantic imagery with those beings, and now, up close, he saw them for what they were - vile debasements of life. The conversation was outside my earshot, for they spoke in a low tone, like men planning a murder, but towards the end the voices became raised, and though I could still not catch the words, the manner in which they spoke was clear – Mr. Phelps' voiced seemed panicked, like the squeal of a rat caught in a trap, and the ghoul who was acting as spokesperson and whose voice was damnably familiar, their voice held a note of cruel malignancy, like a devil casting a mortal into a pit of Hell.
Despite being only a few seconds of real time, what happened next had an unreal slowness about it that cut out any sound that my throat could utter or scream. The young Englishman's left hand went for his jacket pocket where he had stored the revolver, and this sudden movement caused the two ghouls to react in a most horrible manner. The spokesghoul, if that's the right expression, thrust out their sinewy muscular arms and gripped poor Mr. Phelps by the throat and left wrist, choking him with the one hand, and stopping him from reaching for his gun with the other, the author's fingers snatching pathetically at his pocket, not finding purchase on the weapon in time. The other ghoul's hands thrust into the young man's stomach viciously, the long fingers and claw-like nails outstretched like eight blades, whilst the thumbs were left pointing out to the sides. Why this was done was soon apparent, for, as those unclean skewers dug into Mr. Phelps' gut - ripping in up to the knuckles - the hands closed and grabbed a hold of the bottom of the rib cage, the thumbs now coming round for a better grip, and pulling upwards tearing flesh and cracking bone and exposing the soon expiring author's innards to the all-seeing moon which started to regain its illumination on the nightmarish world, giving me a better, though unwelcome, view of my companion and his two murderers.
And then I screamed, and I was still screaming madly as I ran wildly from the graveyard, as I ran wildly down the streets, I didn't stop my insane yell until I reached the bus-stop about a quarter of a mile down the road, and there I lay, gibbering idiotically until the rays of the sun began to appear and I began to regain my composure with each new beam of normal, sane light. It took me two hours to find my way back to Andrea's apartment plus a great psychological act to actually go back inside. My fears about returning were, it seemed, well placed, for upon my re-entry to that now loathed abode, I found Mr. Phelps’ things gone, and my own packed. The paintings were gone - I think I would have destroyed them otherwise - and in the typewriter was a note saying simply, 'You were warned.' I did not dare check the cellar. Within the hour I was leaving unhealthy and unholy Arkham and I have no desire to ever return. But let me tell you what really destroyed my nerve that moon­drenched night Wingate, I can see by the look on your face that you think you know the reason, but I doubt it. It wasn't the horrific death of my companion that unhinged me, for thankfully that seemed unreal amidst the morbid display of fiendish glee, like just another vision in a view of Hell.  Similarly, it wasn't the face of the spokesghoul, whose doglike features I knew so well, with her small misshapen nose and madly red eyes, for, from the moment that Mr. Phelps told me about the lore of ghouls, I had suspected as much. By the look on your face Wingate, I think you now fear as much; for, damnably as it may seem, Andrea, my Andrea, the being I called my daughter since I first laid eyes on her, was a changeling, one of those repulsive ghouls' own spawn.
But that wasn't it, that wasn't what sent me screaming away from that accursed graveyard that night, for, as I said, I feared as much in the light of all I knew. No, it was something far worse, something I had never even considered; for, in the returning moonlight, I also saw that other ghoul who had killed Mr. Phelps, and horrifically I realized a dire fact. That ghoul, though much transformed from human life, still retained the basic features of its natural heritage, and in its face, I saw a likeness that led to my insane flight, a likeness to my dear Judith’s own face.  My God, Wingate, that other ghoul was my natural daughter!

(In case anyone is interested, the pictures were created by combining AI Art for the backgrounds/dead bodies, adjusted pictures of me in the female roles, and Photoshop/BeFunky filters.)