Helldorado by David J. West

Author:David J. West [West, David J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lost Realms Press
Published: 2021-10-04T22:00:00+00:00

This is the original version of A Manuscript Found in Carcosa taken from the collection Tales of the Al Azif – a shared theme collection I did with some other Lovecraftian authors. I later expanded this another 10,000 words and released it as book 4 in the #SAVANT series, but I thought why not allow people to see this original version here.

A Manuscript Found in Carcosa

1.

Ayesha pulled the covers up over her chest and nestled into the fluffy pillow. Moonlight splashed against the wall through the open window where a warm breeze fluttered the curtains. The room was cast in various shades of grey and inky blue from both the moon and a few dim city lights. The soft sounds of her parents preparing for bed downstairs was comforting. Somewhere in the hot dark below her window, a hawker called and bid guests enter the hotel next door. It was a familiar enough sound, for Cairo was still a bustling city with folk coming from all over the world to witness the wonders of the past and exotic intrigues of the present. What would the future here yet hold, she wondered? Her grandfather had just returned from the Haj and was arguing with her father earlier in the day from what she did not know. She was pleased to see him, but he was a strange man.

She was almost asleep when fear crept and knelt upon her bed. She couldn’t fathom what was causing the sudden anxiety, they very panic that gave her chills despite the night heat and blankets. Then the slightest whisper of movement caught her eye. A tiny spider was dancing across the bare stucco wall. It made its way toward the ceiling corner directly across from her where the shadows lingered.

She watched it almost casually, unperturbed at its presence yet wondering what caused a garden of fear to sprout all around her. It was no threat, so tiny and fragile in its own way and yet, she could not take her eyes from it as it meandered closer and closer to that dark corner opposite her. Were its legs growing longer as it grew closer to that space? Was it a trick of the shadows casting eerie light on those thin spindly appendages? It looked like it was expanding. Sure, that the dark was playing tricks on her, she watched in disbelief as the tiny abomination seemed to grow larger with her every heartbeat. It reached the corner and the shadows lengthened in rapid succession.

Her eyes grew wide in fright and terror took hold of her heart, gripping it in an icy vise despite the heat of the balmy night. The drum of her heartbeat threatened to explode out of her chest. Surely the thunder of it must be waking her parents.

The legs widened, and the misshapen body stretched and took on the form of liquid shadow, roiling blackness that coalesced into the form of something caught between the shape of a spider and man both.

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