A woman discovers an old video camera hidden in her garage that conjures an ancient cosmic entity.

Premiered at the 2020 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival

https://www.tumblr.com/tragedyseries

link youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI9fKfX5V68

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22477180/

A religious girl prepares a presentation about a painting titled "Portrait of God". What she sees challenges her beliefs.

The Beholden of the Shifting Vastness

written by Universal Monk

Part 1

Evelyn strode into the archive room, a hushed thrill tingling down her spine. She’d come all the way from BYU-Idaho for this, having caught wind of a library of lost LDS manuscripts buried deep in the sprawling basement of a university library in Utah.

She would never have known if it hadn’t been for a cryptic post she stumbled across late one night on Lemmy. Tagged by a user long since deleted, the post whispered of "forbidden revelations," secrets buried in the deepest corners of the forgotten library. Hidden manuscripts, it hinted, were waiting to be found—relics of visions too dark to ever reach the public eye.

According to the user, these weren’t ordinary manuscripts—they were penned by early Mormon settlers, writings that delved into ancient rites and visions too unsettling for the light of day. The words seemed to pulse on her laptop screen, tugging at Evelyn with a strange allure, promising secrets sealed away and nearly erased from history itself.

The archive wasn’t well-marked; she’d asked two librarians and followed three different signs before she finally spotted the narrow, dim hallway that led to it. The air grew stale as she descended the staircase, and a faint musty smell mingled with the dust in the air, lending an eerie weight to the room.

Rows upon rows of aging, leather-bound tomes lined the shelves, their titles barely legible from decades of wear. Evelyn ran her fingers along the spines, looking for any sign of the “lost” texts she’d read about.

Most of the volumes appeared to be typical LDS history and theology—interesting, but not what she’d come all this way to find. Then, just as she was about to lose hope, her hand landed on a small, nondescript book wedged between two larger ones.

The cover was a battered, timeworn leather, marred with scratches and age, its surface barely holding onto what once might have been a rich, deep hue. In the dim light, a faded silver symbol emerged—a pair of interlocking circles crossed by a single vertical line, almost pulsing in the quiet room.

Evelyn leaned in closer, squinting, trying to make out the title, but the letters had nearly vanished, rubbed away by countless hands or perhaps by the passage of years. Only one word remained, etched with unsettling clarity down the spine: Testament of the Beholden.

The title almost seemed to hum, as if it alone held the weight of untold secrets, watching her back.

Heart pounding, Evelyn yanked the book from the shelf, a thick cloud of dust puffing into the air, curling and billowing like smoke as she pried it open. The pages crackled under her fingers, fragile and worn to a yellowed, brittle thinness, as if the weight of years had seeped into every fiber. Each line was marked in a strange, spidery script, twisting and crawling across the paper like the scrawl of an ancient, unseen hand.

As her eyes adjusted to the script, she began to realize this was more than just a forgotten theology book. The opening pages were filled with passages blending scripture and peculiar, apocryphal verses, things she had never heard in any Sunday or BYU lecture.

The pages whispered of the group called “The Beholden of the Shifting Vastness,” a sect of Mormon settlers from long ago who, if the author’s fevered words were to be believed, had witnessed “visions from beyond the stars.” They believed they had peered into the void where “the giants of the under” stirred. These beings, they claimed, were not of this Earth.

They were ancient entities who slumbered just beyond the thin veil of reality, visible only beneath desolate desert skies when particular stars aligned. The Beholden wrote of vast shapes shifting in the ground, monstrous shadows that waited, patiently, for those who dared look too long.

In a passage that sent a chill through her veins, the text hinted that the knowledge wasn’t new but came from none other than the prophet Joseph Smith himself. His famed visions had revealed more than the public ever knew. Smith’s encounter with the divine was not limited to celestial angels or holy messengers, as he claimed in the Book of Mormon; he had also seen these giants from beyond, the “Sentinels of the Under.”

He had, the passage stated, uncovered these details from the sacred Golden Bible—the very plates that gave rise to the Book of Mormon. But fearing that such revelations would condemn his fledgling faith, he chose to withhold them, sharing the dark truths only with a select inner circle of believers.

Hidden in his private accounts, this knowledge became the Beholden’s secret foundation, a grim theology concealed from the faithful masses. They believed they alone had been entrusted with the visions too terrible for the public eye, revelations that hinted at a cosmic mystery far older and darker than any church could bear.

A prickling sensation crept over her skin as she read. The words were disturbing yet enthralling. The Beholden, she learned, believed these beings watched over them, protecting some and cursing others, depending on how they were venerated.

Each passage sank darker than the last, layered with instructions for rites, chants, and the strange recounting of visions whispered among early pioneers.

One entry detailed an encounter during the Great Trek, as Mormon settlers journeyed through the vast prairies toward Utah. They spoke of a figure, impossibly tall, as towering as a mountain and as black as the deepest night, emerging across the open plains.

Its shadow stretched over their entire campsite, cloaking wagons and tents, suffocating the firelight. The figure moved with an unnatural silence, gliding over the land and leaving the prairie grasses flattened in its wake. Accounts spoke of entire groups falling to their knees, struck with a primal fear, unable to look away as the shadow passed, casting them in the grip of something ancient and unknowable.

The Beholden insisted this towering figure was no mere hallucination but a terrifying reality. These were guardians of forgotten worlds, ancient entities that still watched from beyond the prairie’s edge, patient and unwavering, waiting for those who dared stray too far from faith’s protective path.

The Beholden took this knowledge as sacred, a warning passed down to those brave enough, or foolish enough, to seek the truth beyond the pages of scripture.

She couldn’t pull herself away from the book, and the room around her seemed to fade, her world narrowing to the aged pages before her.

Eventually, Evelyn tore her gaze away, feeling disoriented. She closed the book and tucked it under her arm, intending to ask the librarian about checking it out.

But as she turned, she froze. Through the tall, narrow windows that lined one side of the basement, she thought she saw something—a faint, shadowy figure that towered against the fading daylight outside. Just as quickly as she’d noticed it, the shape dissolved into the shadows.

Evelyn shook her head, dismissing it as a trick of the light. But as she made her way up the stairs, the eerie feeling lingered. And that night, as she lay in her borrowed apartment, her mind buzzed with words from the manuscript, descriptions of towering shadows and desert hymns. It was late, and she knew she should be sleeping, but she couldn’t resist.

Against her better judgment, Evelyn opened her laptop and searched on Lemmy, hoping to find some connection or insight. Her heart sank as she scrolled—the community threads she’d once found were gone, wiped clean as though they’d never existed. She searched again, this time sifting through obscure forums and half-hidden corners of the internet, but every lead was a dead end, each link leading nowhere.

Frustrated, she glanced down at the book resting beside her, the embossed symbol seeming to glint with an unsettling familiarity in the dim light. She hesitated, then opened it, fingers trembling as she skimmed over the passages that had haunted her mind. The words seemed darker now, the ink richer, pressing into the pages as if bearing the weight of a thousand unspoken horrors.

Evelyn poured over the book, each yellowed page drawing her deeper into its labyrinth of strange words and twisted beliefs. She could almost hear the echoes of the Beholden of the Shifting Vastness murmuring from beyond the veil of time, their chants scratching at her mind like whispers caught in a sandstorm.

The passages were riddled with instructions for ceremonies, prayers in a jagged language she’d never seen, and hymns that seemed to hum with a life of their own, written in curling, unfamiliar symbols that made her head ache when she stared at them too long.

One hymn, titled The Chant of the Sands, kept reappearing throughout the text, hinting at rituals the Beholden had used to summon the "guardians of the endless Under,” figures whose names had long since eroded from memory.

“They offer knowledge in shadows, power in silence, but ask your devotion in whispers…” she murmured, her voice trailing as the words seemed to echo back, resonating against the walls like a ghostly harmony.

As she read more, she saw that the Beholden had worshipped these enormous beings hidden beneath the earth—eternal watchers who slumbered below, only to rise again. Her heart pounded, a thrill mixing with dread, as she realized the text spoke not of God but of immense, indifferent entities who existed on the fringes of reality itself.

She decided she needed sleep. Her mind was a tangled mess of shadows and half-formed fears, each unsettling revelation looping back in her thoughts. Maybe, she told herself, a few hours of rest would clear her head, make everything seem less… ominous.

But as she dimmed the lights, her room cloaked itself in darkness, and the book lay open on her desk like an eye staring back, unblinking. She pulled the blankets up to her chin, her pulse finally slowing.

Yet, sleep would not bring comfort tonight. Little did she know, the strangeness was only beginning.

Part 2

She woke up to a sound like dry wind scraping across dead leaves. She rubbed her eyes and looked around, squinting at an odd detail she hadn’t noticed before: her windowsill was dusted with a thin layer of dirt, dark and fine, as though someone had smeared it there deliberately.

It coated the sill like the fingerprint of some shadowy hand reaching in from beyond.

Her fingers hovered over it, tingling, before she finally touched it, trailing a line through the dark powder. How had it gotten there in the dead of night?

From that night onward, the shadows outside her window began to grow, creeping longer and thicker, twisting into strange forms that shifted and swayed like they had some intention of their own.

She could have sworn they watched her in the quiet hours, unmoving and patient. And sometimes, when the night was still and the apartment felt unnervingly silent, whispers rose faintly outside the glass—deep, guttural hymns in a language that sent chills down her spine.

She couldn’t understand a single word, yet the sounds rooted deep in her bones, stirring an ancient dread that left her frozen, listening in the dark.

“Evelyn,” her friend Nora said one afternoon, pulling her from her thoughts. “You look… terrible. Why are you worrying so much about this stupid old book?”

Evelyn forced a smile, brushing off her friend’s concern. “I’m fine. It’s just research.” She hesitated, her fingers trailing the edges of the book. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Nora’s face paled, her eyes darting between Evelyn and the book. “You’re being really weird.” But Evelyn turned away, already back under the book’s spell, ignoring the warning ringing in her friend’s voice.

That night, Evelyn came upon the last ritual, a forbidden practice known as The Invocation of the Darkest Veil, a rite that promised to draw the gaze of the guardians—those towering beings who drifted just beyond sight, ancient and unseen.

"Speak your words," the text intoned in curling, archaic script, "and they shall answer.”

Each line seemed to slither and twist off the page, whispering secrets that felt too alive, pulsing like veins in the parchment.

She read it in silence, feeling a coldness seep into the room, chilling her from within. Outside her window, the shadows thickened, pressing against the glass like a dark tide rising, silent and unyielding, as though something vast and ageless waited just beyond, observing her from behind the veil of night, its patience stretching back through untold centuries.

The room felt like ice, each corner thick with an unnatural chill that seemed to seep into her bones. Evelyn could hardly breathe. She clutched the book in her trembling hands, its pages a blur beneath her fingers. She didn’t know why she felt the need to open it now or why her lips parted, words tumbling from her mouth in the forgotten tongue of the Beholden.

“Ar-voc, uhn-da-leth,” she whispered, her voice wavering as each syllable left her lips.

The strange hymn rolled out of her mouth, low and guttural, each word woven with ancient intent. As she spoke, the air turned heavy, almost viscous, and the walls around her room flickered, bending and shifting like shadows cast by firelight.

Her bookshelves, her bed, even the light itself seemed to warp, pulled toward the corners of the room as if something else were forcing its way in.

The flickering slowed, and in its place, Evelyn saw it—an endless plain stretching out beyond her walls, a bleak, desolate expanse under an alien sky. The ground was black as ash, shimmering like shards of glass beneath an otherworldly sun that loomed low and blood-red.

Shadows drifted through the dirt, massive figures trudging along the horizon like spirits caught in eternal pilgrimage. And amidst them, a whisper—a deep, resonant hum, like a distant thunderstorm groaning against the fabric of reality itself.

Evelyn couldn’t tear her gaze from the vision creeping into her reality. The land itself seemed to seep through her walls, a pitch-black dirt oozing across her floor like liquid shadow. It spread, thick and consuming, pooling around her feet with an unnatural coldness, clinging to her skin as if alive. She felt it winding up her ankles, heavy and suffocating, as the foul, decayed smell of ancient soil filled the air, darkening the room in a shroud of dread.

The whispers twisted in the air, thick and venomous, curling like smoke through her ears, coiling around her thoughts, wrapping around her bones.

“Seeker,” it hissed, the sound filling her skull like an echo in an endless chasm. “Behold... the gaze of the shifting vastness.”

Then, it rose—emerging from the dirt like a mountain draped in shadow, a single eye vast as her wall, dark as the void, lined with throbbing veins of molten gold that pulsed like a heartbeat.

The eye was ringed with jagged, predatory teeth, gleaming with a hunger that made her skin crawl. From the gaps between the teeth, wiry tendrils of something that resembled iron wool jutted out, swaying like grasping fingers.

And then, skittering among the teeth, spider-like creatures with eyes too many to count darted in and out, watching her with glee, their fangs twitching as if savoring her terror.

The monstrous eye hung there, peering into her, peeling back her flesh in its gaze, as though reading every hidden thought, every whispering fear she’d ever buried. Evelyn’s knees gave way, the crushing weight pressing into her chest, pulling her forward, closer, into its dark and endless stare.

The whispers grew louder, surrounding her, filling every part of her mind until she couldn’t hear her own thoughts. The shadows from the dirt crept closer, sliding across her floor, winding up her legs, pulling her down into their embrace.

Evelyn tried to scream, but her voice was swallowed by the shadows, her cries snatched away as the black filled her vision. The world around her faded, reduced to nothing but sand, darkness, and the unblinking, all-consuming eye of the Beholden.

As her last moments slipped away, the words of the hymn she’d read echoed, wrapping around her like a funeral shroud.

The next morning, her apartment was silent. A faint outline of dirt marked the floor, and on her desk sat the open book, its pages whispering in the stillness, waiting for the next seeker to uncover its secrets.

END

“And if you follow me out there, I will shit a live ANIMAL!”

Mike Murray slams the crooked screen door so hard it boings back open. Nothing quite like a failed door slam to further bend a man. Torn between slamming it again and stomping off, Mike opts for stomp. Fuck her, he thinks, if Master Piggles slips in the dog door and tears shit up, her problem not mine.

His wife Sheila has that infrequent, yet persistent, bee in her bonnet this morning. That bee is named jealousy, and in Sheila’s case, it’s more like a hornet.

Sheila believes men are dogs that would fuck a snake, given an extra hand to hold its mouth open. There is no misandry involved in this belief, if you can get your head around that. She doesn’t hate men in the slightest. A cheating man is simply a man with an opportunity, a natural law of the universe, unavoidable as death and gravity. In Sheila’s world, busty blondes forever throw themselves at her husband’s feet and he, only a weak male, is powerless to resist. It’s her job to fend off the barbarians at the gate, keep her man pure.

He might actually sign up for that gig if he could get it, but middle-aged white guys, even with factory original teeth and hair, aren’t in that sort of demand unless said guy is loaded. Michael R. Murray is not loaded. Always a faithful man, old hound dog faithful, the accusations cut deep. If he’s going to be accused of dipping his wick in strange pussy, he might as well get some strange pussy. It’s just not fair.

The seed that grew today’s go round was a text message.

“HEY YOU! What’s up? Want to meet up tonight?” Either a wrong number or a scam, Mike doesn’t care. But Sheila cares. Sheila cares very much.

“Who is this person? Ha! Who will you meet? Ha!” She always throws that Filipino “ha!” when she’s bent. Today she’s well past bent, she’s positively corkscrewed.

“Hell I know babe, someone probably fat fingered their text.”

“I want to know who this is! Ha!”

“Then call the damned number and ask! I dare you! I’m out!”

Mike chunks his rifle case in the F150’s rusty bed, yanks his camo hat down tight and gives the key a vicious twist. I’ve got to calm my happy ass down or I’m getting pulled over before I get there, he thinks. He’s only had four Keystones, barely a buzz for an old soldier like Mike, but maybe just enough buzz to ride out the weekend in a freezing cell, both watched over by, and bunking with, Santa Rosa County’s finest.

“Maybe I’ll get hammered out there, spend the night. Bitch thinks she’s mad now...” But that’s no good and he knows it. An hour after sundown she would come marching down the trail, hunting those ever elusive bimbos, stripping Mike’s very last reserve of cool. There won’t be any bimbos, and they both know it, but the forms must be followed in these sorts of things.

It’s a cool, breezy October day in the Year of our Lord 2024, Saturday, 19 past 2 o’ the clock, poofy cumulus graze an otherwise clear blue sky and he’s headed for their camp in the boonies. Camp is Mike’s little slice of redneck heaven.

Turning the corner just past where the road peters out into forest, visitors are greeted with a flag strung between two pines, “Welcome to Swinebrook! A place to camp, kayak, canoe, throw lead and other redneck business!” Centered between the text on a brown nylon background is a stylized pink pig, giving the viewer a porcine side-eye. As with the other signs, tree trimmings and miscellaneous obstructions, it’s hung to clear a 5’8” man. Swinebrook is a bit inhospitable for tall folk, and that suits him just dandy. After all, it is his place. OK, their place since he married Sheila, but he’s got 8 inches on her. The talls have enough advantages in life, they can duck now and again if they want to visit.

Swinebrook sits on 5 acres of prime Northwest Florida swampland. When his inheritance landed at the credit union (grandma having gone starkers with Alzheimer’s), he figured a land purchase was a now or never kind of deal. Knowing he would eventually nickel and dime the money away if he didn’t make a play, he found the perfect getaway spot. Just off I-10, buried far back in the forests on a dead-end private road (damned near impassible if the neighbors haven’t plowed the sand lately), Swinebrook is the sort of place no one stumbles into. Who would go back there and for god’s sake why? Guests often make a crack about banjo music. Yeah, that one never gets old, such sublime wit. But he’s not too annoyed. After all, if city people find the area sketchy, good, keeps ‘em out. Hailing from across the Pond, Sheila’s friend Nancy had come for a visit, and she is just such a city person.

One morning of her brief stay at chez Murray, Nancy came scrambling back in the house, having been enjoying her coffee on the front porch.
“Forgot I was in Florida and there might be alligators roaming about! What was I thinking?! Ha ha!”

“No worries!”, Mike soothed, “We’re in town, far enough from water that they’re not walking overland. Besides, they’re lazy ambush predators, not going to chase anyone.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell Nancy that a gator big enough to take on a woman her size would be a rare one indeed. Americans keep monsters of that caliber stored deep in the Louisiana bayous where they belong, and in any case, Mike doubted Nancy could run from much of anything.

The Murrays, having gushed about Swinebrook, took Nancy out on her last night. Figuring it highly improbable she had ever seen an AR-15 in the London burbs, he thought she might get a kick putting some lead downrange, a crazy American tale to share over mulled wine (or whatever the hell they do) with the blokes back home. “My goodness Nancy, tell us you are pulling our leg! How very exciting! Does he carry it to market and is it true that Stateside visitors are issued loaner pistols? How many brigands has he gunned down?”

They never get as far as popping off a few. Nancy was getting visibly nervous as the sun went down. Truth be told, she was damned near twitching in fear. “Looks like it is getting dark! (big smiles) We should probably be going back, yes? Ha ha! But I really like your place and it’s been great, great fun!” Turns out, Nancy had never been in the woods before, was probably keeping her eye out for rabid leopards and toothy baboons. Mike is soon to find Nancy’s fear quite reasonable. There are far worse things lurking in the swamp than common reptiles.

Today he was pretty much ready to roll out, which was fortunate, as scrambling into clothes, filling the cooler, and loading the truck, all while trying to pitch a meaningful conniption, kind of takes the wind out of the old sails. Even were it not God’s perfect day, Swinebrook would still be the place to get badly needed peace.
Mike has the routine down pat. After all, he’s done it 100 times.

Unzip the tent porch and peg the flaps back through the nylon loops, open the main room, grab some targets, tape and headphones, hang the paper on the range. Next, unlock the raggedy storage shed, fill a couple of glass ashtrays with today’s chosen caliber, maybe a box of shells if that’s what we’re doing. Back to the tent porch, twist the cooler spigot, and dunk the fresh ice and beer while last week’s water runs out the drain hose. Walk to the big table by the fire ring, set the beer down, have a seat, good to go, and… back to the tent, because he has forgotten to snag a koozie, inevitable as death and gravity.

If it were summer, he would grab the sun umbrella out of the shed, but it’s not that kind of day. It’s the kind of day for breeze in your hair and sun on your face and Mike is here for it. He is going to follow the usual plan, drink a beer and revel in the silence. And when that gets boring, he'll crank Spotify’s country list and shatter that silence with his Colt .45 or shotgun of choice. That paper ain’t gonna put holes in itself. Today’s choice is the new-to-him coach gun, two barrels of old-school, 12-gauge fury. He’s pretty sure he’s got it working smooth, if only the new sight doesn’t fly off. Again.

He pulls the half rotten beach chair off the storage hook and unfolds it. Probably fair to say, Mike has no ass, or as first wife always said, he suffers a medical condition doctors refer to as “noassatall”. Lacking stature and padding, a couple of porch pillows lining the sprung seat is a must. The plan is to spend 20 or 30 minutes sipping beer and simply looking around, never know what might pop up.

Last month an osprey landed high up at the far end of the range, polite enough to let him watch through his scope for a few minutes. Two weeks ago he got his first up close and personal look at a pileated woodpecker. Those are some big mama jammas! Absolutely stoked, he ran straight to Dollar General and bought a feeder and pair of suet blocks. So far, no repeat performance, but Mike’s a hopeful guy.

He has just crushed his second Keystone Light and is headed to the tent for another when two local pups come tear-assing up the trail from the nearest pond, blowing right by without so much as a “Howdy do!” You know the sort of country puppy; big, excitable, friendly, dumber than a sack of hammers. These two doorknobs typically creep up on visitors, silent as ninjas. Mike has about jumped out of his skin a time or three, looking down and BAM, there they are, right at his knee, patiently waiting for a head rub. They are not waiting around today.

Nothing rustling out there, nothing giving chase, the hell? Still, Mike’s plenty damned spooked, this not being a normal event on a sunny Saturday afternoon. They wouldn’t run from a human, unless it was beating their asses, and even then, they would stop for him, hoping for succor. Black bears are around, and though they occasionally tump out the trash cans by the highway, he has never seen evidence of them close to camp. A Florida panther might be worrisome, especially a female trailing a pair of cubs, but they’re far rarer than black bears. He has only ever spied a single male, a hulking beast on a lonely creek far from here. Besides, if there was one back there it would probably have given a scream, and that distinctive woman-being-ax-murdered sound carries.

Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, and promptly getting it ass backwards, he gets it right on the second try. He wears his rifle like all the cool kids, high and tight across the chest. Having studied a GunTube video presenting a pair of mercs taking R&R from killing Russians, he thinks he’s finally got the sling right. At least it hangs comfortably, is quick to sight and he doesn’t get whacked in the dick every time he bends over.

Our man is not the shoot first, excitable sort. Mike thinks that particular brand of asshole deserves a Darwin Award, and they often get one. Still, he has his rifle pointed low but ready in case something murderous comes crashing out of the palmettos. Not taking his eye off the path, he finds himself both indecisive and torn with curiosity. Maybe an angry squirrel rattled them? They’re only puppies after all, might be running from a scary looking bug. On the other hand, if there’s a black bear or panther back there, he doesn’t want to put himself in the position of having to shoot it. Excepting wild pigs, Mike doesn’t have the heart to kill unless it’s a mercy thing, and those few times, though necessary, have stuck to him, every death a clear memory. He may be a gun shooter, but he’ll never be a gunslinger.

He stands there a full minute, mouth slightly open, listening, head swiveling on a short arc.

“OK Mike, get your shit together and calm the fuck down.”

Hearing his own voice helps, though it didn’t come out as loudly as expected. Still nothing. He pats his left kidney for the third time, yep, pistol still there, loose in its holster, ready.

“Oh god damnit, grow a pair and just walk down there. Even if it’s a big animal, a shot or two will scare the shit out of it.”

Having got his pecker up, Mike sets off, not quite creeping, nor in any rush. 150-feet down he turns left into Sheila’s personal site, Brookside. Brookside has its own cute flag: “Sit a spell, relax and unwind, watch the sun go down.” Same statant pig, yellow on a blue background this time, a perfect Pantone match for Ukraine’s national colors. Mike is a big fan of both Ukrainians and vexillology, though he can only pronounce the former.

Gaily decorated, yet tasteful, Brookside rests at peace. Minnows pop just under the swampy water, all the action there is to see. Maybe a low splash down trail? Turtle falling off a log no doubt. Happens all the time, too skittish to ever let him get a peek. Country animals are not city animals, country cousins run at a pin drop.
Pointing south, the trail widens into a boulevard flanked by the shallow ponds that make up a good chunk of Swinebrook. Rue Royal the sign says, très Vieux Carré. Mike being a drunk, and Sheila, born and raised a big-city Manila girl, are right at home in the French Quarter. The next campsite down the rue is the Garden District and you can just bet it has its own cutesy flag. (Green pig on that one.)

Mike lowers his rifle, rests his arms a minute, listens. Nada.

“In for a penny I guess. Let’s just walk to the end, see what we see.”

Feeling a little bolder, having sensed nothing in the wide open space, he sets off again with a little more spring in his step. Down at the Garden District camp, he hears another, closer splash. And was that a grunt?

God. Damn. Despite loving wild animals, and having a pet pig back home, Mike shoots wild boars on sight. Thinking on the possibility of a charging pig, and it won’t be just one, he tightens up. A sounder of only 10 animals would level the main camp in an hour flat, he’s seen them in action. If he finds pigs rooting in the muck, Mike is prepared to kill every last motherfucking one of them. Only question is how many he can nail before they run oft.

Beyond the Garden District, the trail cramps up. Not much down here, he hasn’t cleared his way this far yet. Ducking a fat banana spider’s golden web and twisting past a pair of trees, Mike gets a good look at the far end of the pond and his brain promptly strips gears.

Sixty feet away, just across the water, a centaur is chowing down on a decomposing corpse. Not your Harry Potter centaur, chest muscles rippling, hair flowing, head held high and noble, no, not that sort. One of those would be a mercy compared to this abomination before the Almighty. Filthy and stinking even from this distance, it bends down to tear another chunk of pig flesh. Rather than bringing the rotten meat to its face, it bends at the waist and feeds, arms darting in and out of the corpse like a crab picking over a dead fish. The torso is sweaty slick, the flanks splashed with fetid swamp muck. Its hair, where patches haven’t fallen out (torn out?), is long and greasy, a sickly yellowish gray. Its right eye is a white haze, blind for certain, but Mike’s not seeing details right now. Mike has gone a little blind himself.

He stands mostly frozen, yet vibrating so hard you can almost feel the static rolling off his body. His rifle hangs loose in its sling, dropped to his chest, forgotten. Somewhere along the line, he’s fumbled the laser sight to ON. The dot jitters on the ground to his left like a nerve gassed spider. His arms hang slack at his sides, right hand giving the occasional twitch, mouth loose, eyes jitter bugging in tight arcs. He can’t feel his heart, but it’s hammering and it’s about to choke him out. Though drawing air just fine, his neck walls feel like overinflated inner tubes, carotid pumping in, jugular out, both struggling with the raging blood flow. To an outside observer, his neck pulses like it’s ready to give birth. He did promise his wife a live animal, but that was to come out the other end.

When a person is scared shitless, time doesn’t slow down, just seems that way. Instead, the brain speeds up, starts scrambling for options. My brothers and sisters in Christ, Mike is beyond scared shitless, Mike is bugfuck, brain running wide out on the open highway, hell bent for leather.

Growing up in the sticks, he’s been in a few near-death scrapes, entertainment being different in the boondocks, but he’s avoided the aforementioned Darwin Award. So far. At those times when death was certain, a calm, and mostly unused, part of his brain kicked in and calmly informed him:

“If you don’t do something in the next, oh, 3 or 5 seconds, you are going to die. Right now. Your call my man.”

Before today, he had always found a way out, found that “something”, that ass-saving option. At the moment, no options are bubbling up. His mind has, at least momentarily, jumped ship. “OK Mikey take care love you bye BYE!” His mouth opens and closes twice, lips pressing together and out, maybe trying for a plosive? “Please”? Who he might be begging, and for what, remains an open question.

Hallucination is the idea that begins to get him unstuck.

OK OK OK. This can’t be real. So what did I get in my body to cause this?

A traitorous part of his brain pipes up, “C’mon! You ate your body weight in hallucinogens back in the 90s and never saw a thing that wasn’t there. Perhaps you’ve been on a 4-day meth binge and forgot? Nah. Also, see that pig head sitting on its stump staring back at you? See the flies blacking out it’s eyes and the maggots roiling out its snout? You’re not that imaginative my friend. While we taking a reality check, hear any birds? Even the insects have gone quiet. Suppose they’re all hallucinating right along with us?” OK, I’m still calling this a psychotic break. I have to get out of here, get help.

“No warnings, no precursors, no sleepless night? Not even a twitch? You’re toodling along in the woods and BAM, centaur? Hell, if our brain cooked up a centaur, it wouldn’t be that thing. It’s there, I promise you.”

Whatever I’m seeing or not seeing, I’m out.

Mike tries to turn, but his head is in a vice, no way on god’s green Earth can he take his eyes off the horror. The fiend, on the other hand, intent on his rotten pig, hasn’t glanced at him. Apparently decomposing swine makes a toothsome meal.

Maybe it hasn’t noticed me.

“Yeah, right. You know it knows you’re here. He’s just busy noming up his succulent din din. That animal reeks and it’s grown maggots, been dead a week, easy. It probably slaughtered the pig and left it to ripen up in the sun, came back today for harvest. And you’re next.”

Had Mike summoned the courage to look further afield, he might have seen the wisdom in that penultimate phrase, “came back”.

30-feet behind and to the left of the centaur floats a hole in reality. No Dungeons and Dragons sort of portal, surrounded by shrieking dragon heads, promising eternal punishments screaming in the Abyss, only a perfect circle of vegetation, too perfect to be natural. 10 feet wide, it floats just off the forest floor. If he had eyes to see, he might note the quality of light past the circle, see a redder glow, as if the day is further along in that world. Through the looking glass, the vegetation is both darker and greener, listless despite the cool breeze on this side.

He’s screaming at his body to obey, turn, run, anything, just move god damn it. OK, compromise, just back up, slow. He makes it 10 feet until he backs into a tree and his knees melt out from under him. Falling on his ass, the rifle’s assist button pokes him under the solar plexus, hard. Just what the doctor ordered, Mike scrambles to his feet and jerks his weapon level. The strap flies taught, a perfect fit, the red-dot sight dead center on the beast’s torso. He jerks the trigger, no bang, no click, safety is up.
The centaur jolts straight, freezes and stares him in the eye. Black blood and greasy fat flow down its chin, dribbling on its chest. Mike’s soul comes unmoored, but his legs can still pump. He is on autopilot and he is off to the races.

Sun is down, moon is up, and Sheila is positively fucking torqued off. She slams her Toyota to a stop behind Mike’s truck and bounces out, lights on and running, intent on scalping the first floozy she lays hands on. Somebody, maybe two somebodies, is going to be very damned sorry in the next 60 seconds. She has no idea that a few hours ago, Mike was as sorry as he had ever been in his life.

She stamps halfway to the turn which will open onto the main camp before unease sets in. If Mike’s here, and here’s his truck, he should have lights going. Even if he’s out of batteries, there should be a blazing fire visible through the trees.

She calls out in a voice meant to project authority, meant to declare, “I am here on business and my business is you.” Starting off with steely command, her voice trails down meekly.

“Michael! Where are you? HA! Why don’t you answer your phone Michael?! … Who is here?! Michael?”

Silence.

“Mike?”

Turning the corner, sure enough, the camp is cold and dead. Sheila can’t put her finger on it, can’t quite articulate what is off, going by the slim moonlight. She fumbles her iPhone flashlight and shines it from side to side. Nothing is closed or put away properly, like he simply up and left. And even if he wandered off, and there aren’t many places to wander, most of the land being impassable muck, he sure as hell wouldn’t have left his prize 12-gauge hanging on the rack.

Now she is positively spinning in circles, sweeping her meager light around and around. She has completely forgotten the key chain light her husband gave her. It’s tiny, but it outshines a lousy phone LED all day (night) long. She inches over to the table looking for clues. Maybe she’ll luck out and he brought her pink pistol to play with. It’s the only handgun she’s comfortable with, and while it might take her a minute to get it in operation, it would sure as hell beat a sharp stick, which she doesn’t have either.

Shuffling along the edge of the table, she kicks something soft, partially hidden. She doesn’t look, assuming it’s some of the crap he stores under there spilling out as it always does. Her lack of attention may be a temporary mercy because she’s pushed an old combat boot back under the table, a combat boot with the owner’s foot inside.

Weeping and nearing dead panic, Sheila flails out the Stations of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows, and starts muttering a Hail Mary. She is feeling the need for all the Grace she can summon this evening.

“Oh, Jesus help me…” She pronounces it “jee-sous”. Mike always found that kind of cute.

And was that a grunt?!

“Have you ever read any H. P. Lovecraft?” Ted Levine’s Hunter S. Thompson-inspired character, counterculture author Thomas Blackburn, asks intrepid journalist Anne Roland (Katia Winter) in 2013’s Banshee Chapter.

When Anne says she hasn’t, Thomas continues: “Wrote a story in about 1930-something-or-other, was about a scientist who created an electronic device, a giant tuning fork. It emitted a resonance wave. It stimulated anybody who was nearby, their pineal gland, allowing them to experience planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality. He would see incredible, sometimes horrible things — these… entities. He kept turning it up higher and higher, ‘cause he was really getting off on seeing this shit. But it was too late when he realized that the entities… they could see him too.”

Thomas is referring to the short story “From Beyond,” first published in 1934. From the outside, it would be difficult to spot that Banshee Chapter is a loose adaptation of this tale, or of any Lovecraft story for that matter. There are no tentacles, no blasts of that pinkish-purple light that we’ve all collectively decided is the color out of space. Instead, director Blair Erickson’s film leverages proven real-world conspiracy theories to make us question how many horrors we might find if we peeled back the corner of our accepted reality and peeked behind...

Dark Horse Comics has announced a spin-off to its fan-favorite cosmic horror graphic novel, Beyond Mortal. The publisher's upcoming comic series Jumpscare will introduce fans to its titular horror superhero this February.

Per Dark Horse, Beyond Mortal's creative team, Cullen Bunn and Danny Luckert, return to helm the upcoming four-issue limited series. Jumpscare is lettered by Jim Campbell. The publisher's Jumpscare description reads, "Strong, fast, and violent horror fan-turned-vigilante Jumpscare can conjure any gore-soaked weapon from any gore-soaked movie she’s watched. With this power, she's become a force for good in Empire City, hacking her way through ne'er-do-wells and monsters alike. Now, her enemies want her dead, and a mobster-turned-monster, Grindhouse, will do whatever he can to bring her down"...

NASA has released its latest Galaxy of Horrors posters. Presented in the style of vintage horror movie advertisements

https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/immersive/galaxy-of-horrors/

https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/new-nasa-posters-feature-cosmic-frights-for-halloween/

https://nerdist.com/article/nasa-galaxy-of-horrors-sci-fi-posters-black-hole-mercury-dark-energy/

Cosmic Fear is a disturbing Lovecraftian horror experience from the author of The Land of Pain and The Alien Cube. Since the dawn of mankind, mysterious phenomena beyond human comprehension have occurred. Your studies suggest that everything is part of one, big picture. The solution is near; the next expedition will be the crucial one. You turn your gaze to the stars: what lies hidden in the unfathomable depths of the cosmos? Night falls as the horn's haunting call echoes through the woods. The Great Ceremony is about to begin. Live your worst nightmares in the darkness of the forests, explore ancient castles and seemingly abandoned villages to uncover the secrets that torment your soul.

Announcement Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QND2UhKSoU

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3306920/Cosmic_Fear/

Many tabletop games feature intrepid heroes battling the minions of the Cthulhu Mythos. Options like Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green allows players to investigate strange mysteries, encounter horrific scenes and wrestle with their own sanity. The Arkham Horror Files, which sprung from Fantasy Flight Games’s legendary Arkham Horror board game, are a collection of games and other media that have introduced tabletop gamers to the Cthulhu Mythos for almost 20 years.

The company has a bountiful portfolio of Mythos themed games including the third edition of Arkham Horror, the miniatures board game Mansions of Madness, a=and the hidden traitor game Unfathomable. They just released new expansions for the Arkham Horror: The Card Game which they sent along for the article. I also recieved an advance copy of the Arkham Horror Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook to review...

Direct link to my story, "The Grasp of Midnight’s Thorn" on a different Lemmy instance:

https://sh.itjust.works/post/27303439

This genre is actually my favorite and makes up most of my own writing.

I checked the rules and didn’t see anything against posting our own work, but if it’s not allowed, I’m happy to take it down.

In this video we will be exploring cosmic horror through several movies, a TV show, two tales and a manga!

I've often thought lighthouse keeping would make a fine second career, albeit mostly because in my head, it would give me endless time to write (and finish Baldur's Gate 3). You won't have much time to write in Static Dread, sadly. The world has ended, the oceans teem with squirmy, extra-dimensional lifeforms, and it's your job as the apparent sole surviving lighthouse keeper to distinguish vessels loaded with eldritch horrors from vessels loaded with people who need saving from eldritch horrors.

Going by the teaser trailer, below, this appears to be comparable to playing border guard in Papers, Please, but it's less political and more tentacular. You field queries over the radio, run your finger down a clipboard, and decide whether to kindle the lamps or beg the coastguard to blast that ship back to hell. There's a dialogue line in the trailer which I, personally, would consider highly untrustworthy. "It's consuming my team!" screams a self-described ship captain. "Please, send help! Gosh..." Look, "friend", no genuine human being says "gosh" in an emergency situation. Not even British human beings say "gosh" in an emergency situation. That's what you say when somebody tells you the pizza-flavoured crisps are back on sale at Aldis...

Did you ever have a dream of running your own cult? well Worshippers of Cthulhu, has you covered! Take control of an unknown Shepard leading his flock to awaken The Great Old One himself. Fresh out in early access, you check it out on Steam for £20.99...

... Worshippers of Cthulhu is quite a meaty game. It also provides an enjoyable challenge. Although I confess, I struggle with City-Builder games quite a bit. The overall gameplay is interesting with how you must also defend your island as well. No issues came up, and the game was great for guiding you through the steps. After finishing the first chapter, I left it at that, as I prefer playing full games. As seen when it came to my Greedfall 2 Preview.

I can see myself putting a fair amount of hours into the game. The road map also looks to be bringing some interesting stuff, such as more Eldritch horrors to control and a sandbox mode.

This video was made for Buffer Festival 2023!

CREDIT:

Executive producer: Cathy Jenkins

I played this during one of the NextFests, and I’m psyched that it’s almost out. Think of Slay The Spire, but with Lovecraft.

As readers and writers, there are many immediate images that we conjure when imagining the weird tale.

Jeff and Ann VanderMeer from their site Weird Fiction Review give an excellent overview and definition of the Weird and by association the weird tale:

“As a twentieth and twenty-first-century art form, the story of The Weird is the story of the refinement (and destabilization) of supernatural fiction within an established framework but also of the welcome contamination of that fiction by the influence of other traditions, some only peripherally connected to the fantastic.” (...)

Books suggested:

• The King in Yellow By Robert W. Chambers

• Zothique: The Final Cycle - By Clark Ashton Smith

• The Great God Pan By Arthur Machen

• The House on the Borderland By William Hope Hodgson

• The Horla and Others By Guy de Maupassant

This Halloween, comedian and filmmaker Mike Handelman has created a new vision in terror: a family restaurant called Verne Wells Lovecraft! With the help of director Joe Whelski, artists Rocco George and Dylan Mars Greenberg, and musicians hot glue and the gun, this short begins as a commercial for a family dining establishment that soon becomes something far more sinister. If you love Adult Swim’s surrealist brand of comedy, then this is a must-watch.

“Verne Wells Lovecraft was inspired by my time doing spooky improv comedy dinner theater at New York’s Jekyll and Hyde Club. It was an extremely cheesy (but fun) sort of Mel Brooks-ian animatronic experience where the fantasy was the restaurant run by magic, full of public domain characters like Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Wolfman, and of course, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So for this project, I thought of making my own restaurant using a different set of public domain IP.

Because three is better than one, and it felt so weird and specific to the kind of crazy person who’d open a place like this, I went with Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and HP Lovecraft. And rather than Manhattan, which has been done, I put it in nearby Jersey City, for its own weird history and because New Jersey is kind of a joke unto itself (apologies to anyone from there, at least it’s not Long Island).

Verne, Wells, and Lovecraft, besides being in the public domain, come with such rich worlds and established fans, but the one I’m most drawn to is Lovecraft, because what’s funnier than cosmic horror? I’d love for Verne Wells Lovecraft to become a movie or TV show, but for now, I’m just happy I got to make something cool with my friends that incorporates my own weird sense of humor, puppets, Dylan Mars Greenberg’s amazing 3D world-building, and of course, music!”

Featured in the DreadXP’s Indie Horror Showcase and coming December 2024 – A bizarre road trip buddy comedy meets Appalachian cosmic horror in this psychological horror story full of fear, heart, and strange sights.

After 3 years of development, Duonix Studios is excited to announce that their critically acclaimed 10 Dead Doves is launching on Steam this December. The exact release date will be announced soon, but fans of its unique "Dovecraftion" horror can already have a look at the new teaser trailer that was just featured in DreadXP’s Indie Horror Showcase today!

“One of the most ambitiously cinematic indie narratives I’ve seen in a while – it’s impossible to not be charmed by the back-and-forth between leads Mark and Sean.” ​- Rock Paper Shotgun

“It truly takes something wild, weird, or just plain spectacular, to remind you that actually, yes, horror can still surprise you. 10 Dead Doves is very much its own thing from the off.” ​- DreadXP

“10 Dead Doves (A+ name) makes a strong statement with its staggeringly strong production value, intriguing mystery, and polished gameplay. Simply put, 10 Dead Doves is not to be missed.” - Bloody Disgusting

Since the early days of Doom and Quake, super-fast FPS games – the now-dubbed boomer shooters – have brought us some of the best PC games of all time. Combine that speed and power with one of the most luridly compelling settings, the eldritch unknown of Lovecraftian horror, brought to life in striking comic-strip style, and you have Forgive Me Father 2. One year since developer Byte Barrel launched it into early access, the full 1.0 release arrives today on Steam, and it’s one you’ll definitely want to see for yourself.

Forgive Me Father 2 ticks all the boxes of a great boomer shooter. It’s fast but slick, driving along its relentless action with a pulse-quickening soundtrack. The Lovecraft-inspired setting brings some fantastic atmosphere and design to the world, continuing the tale of the Priest from the first entry. It boasts a look that could stand out in any crowd; a dark fantasy whirlwind of gloriously vibrant comic book shading, lavished with blood and tentacles aplenty. And then of course there’s the guns, the beating heart of all the best FPS games.

It’s safe to say you’re spoilt for choice in this regard. Forgive Me Father 2 hands you some of the most inventive weapon designs I’ve seen in a long while, each lovingly animated with distinctive and bizarre firing styles. What starts out as your run-of-the-mill handguns, revolvers, and shotguns quickly descends into the realm of the eldritch and surreal...