H.P Lovecraft Theme Event - Dear Dr Richardson

Dear Dr James Richardson,

It is with great regret and not a little fear that I begin this correspondence. Loathe as I am to bring this evil into your life, Professor Racksworth was your associate as much as he was mine and the recent turn of events that have so marred our lives and haunt me even now ought be explained as fully as they may be given the circumstances that so suddenly envelope us.

It would, I consider, be best to begin with the bee. Least I can think of nothing else to call it, so bee will suffice for now so long as you bear in mind that it was, in fact, nothing like a bee. To avoid any further confusion than I have already caused you I will explain further. We will leave the bee horror to the end, lay the blame at the cowardice of the writer and move forward.

The tragedy of current happenings began to become apparent on what had thus far been a perfectly normal Monday morning at my office on Blandford Street some few days ago. Business has been good and it was in jovial spirit that I received a call from our erstwhile colleague Professor Racksworth. Though any good mood of mine was quickly shattered when I heard the sombre tone of voice through which Oscar addressed me, stating it was of the utmost importance that I meet him as soon as possible. Were that I had known now how things would come to pass! I would never have left my office and set upon a chain of events that would before long submit me to such horrors as I can barely force myself to express on parchment.

When I arrived the coffee house was busy and it took me a few moments to pick out the full figure of our friend in the dark and pipe smoke hued room. I remember now even the smallest details; such as how foolish I felt that I had no hat to remove upon entering the premises and that even so small a detail as this would be picked up and remarked upon by clientele of mine who may perhaps be in residence. Considering this fact now leads me to believe that perhaps my frame of mind was even then not so balanced as I had first thought, surely a consequence of dearest unshakable Oscar’s voice possessing such a perceptible tremor, the likes of which I have not heard in the full twenty years since I have held his company.

Our friend kept his own council in a corner farthest away from the entrance and windows, I was certain he had seen me enter and yet made no attempt to make his presence known and it was not without a little irritation that I joined him. For all my scorn any ideas, save those of concern, left my head when I looked closer upon him, wreathed as he was in shadow and trembling so that he could barely hold his pipe to his mouth.

I began with my concerns about his health, the man did not look at all well and I beseeched him to come away from public regard and into the confidentiality of my office where I could examine him so that my worries be assuaged. This he declined with a response that sent, not for the first time that afternoon, a chill down my spine. It was the wording of the reply that caused to well up in me the blackest of fears, for a man of such well known and happy mood, a person who’s company I have enjoyed at cricket, at soccer, and not a few fine dining events, for this man regarded and loved as light hearted through the university curriculum to answer with such hopelessness. It was as though it was not our friend that spoke the words and yet I remember them perfectly: “It’s too late for that now. Too late for all of us.”

Suffering no interruption he then began to lay on my shoulders a shame he must have carried for many a year. Stopping only when his weakening constitution forced him to do so. Oh how we have underestimated our companion James, how we have failed to peer past the blue waters on the surface and consider what black horrors may rest at the bottom of even the calmest oceans. For the things he told me were monstrous and it brings me no pleasure to pass this knowledge onto you now yet I feel it crucial that you know, as I do, who our friend really was and to gain what advantage you can in early recognition of a stalking nightmare that I fear it may already be too late to escape.

He had, it emerged, been conducting a number of experiments out-with the university mandate, that much is certain. The specifics of it initially remained unclear to me, for it was through much coughing and uncomfortable writhing that our friend spoke to me until at last I could stomach the sight of his suffering no longer and insisted that he come to my office and lie down. He agreed grudgingly and to tell the truth I think he did so only for fear of losing the witness to his testament were he not to oblige.

Why I was chosen as our friend’s confidant I have no clue but the man pursued the issue of confession with relentless vigour and would tolerate no change of subject. This distressed me much for at this point I had dismissed the entire business as some kind of mania brought on by an unknown ailment and so I looked to divert the business of conversation to more mundane matters as a means of grounding the Professor in reality. I feel no shame in admitting to you dear James that no small amount of cowardice was involved in the decision for the ghastly nature of the things he told of left me aghast.

He maintained he had been trying to find a way to bring about an end to retardation through the manipulation of instinct-intelligence. Oscar claimed that instinct was the building block of all intelligence and could be manipulated to form all the basic functions of the brain; processing, memory, even creative genius. The man babbled on and the terminology was beyond the understanding of a simple practitioner of medicine but from what I gather he had looked to extract from animals the basic proponents that make up the modern psyche.

But it was of the medium that he spoke most, and it is what I remember most clearly for it reinforced in my mind the notion that our friend truly was out of his mind. Again and again he ranted about how he had found a suitable medium from which to draw the material. “The bee” he would repeat to himself in between sentences and in the rare pauses I was allowed for consideration. How quaint, I thought at the time, that so randomly one of God’s creatures finds its way into this delirium. Alas, I would lose any sense of quaintness all too quickly.

By the time I brought Oscar back to my practice the day had grown into dark night and working hours had long since finished. I was able to afford his reputation some measure of protection as I was certain we were unnoticed in our entrance. How strange this must sound to you James! The idea of me carrying our friend half on my shoulders, the thought that one of the sharpest intellects we have ever known had gone quite mad before my very eyes. But I assure you I speak no word of a lie and you must take me at my word friend for much may yet depend on your actions, be sure to waste no energy on concerns of my sincerity.

It was following my examination of Oscar that I began to question whether the man’s story was indeed a product of lunacy. A sedative had allowed me to run through the standard health check procedure and I must say I have seen nothing like it in my two decades in medicine. His body was riddled with sores, awful lesions that protruded a grotesque distance from his skin and seemed alive with noxious vitality. These curious swellings of which I had not seen before in my life covered over half of his body and with red sores concealing much of the rest so that no sign of healthy skin was visible. And the heat! His temperature was incredible, please allow me some manner of respect when I tell you that not one of my thermometers could measure it. Why, you know as well as I do that any man with such a furnace burning in his body would be not long for this world and yet he had walked, albeit weakly, alongside me not ten minutes before!

Laying the blame initially at faulty instruments and having made him as comfortable as I could I retired to my study to take down in note what of his story I could remember so that they it be of some use for any future study of what I was convinced was some ailment unknown to God’s England and perhaps to all of creation itself. It was from these notes that this letter has taken form. He had, I recollected, been concerned with a sting from a bee that he had suffered during one of his experiments. Oscar was not allergic and for him to worry so over a bee sting simply assured me more that the man was of unsound mind.

But when I considered the hinted at monstrosity of the experiments he had conducted on the insects I could not help but wonder what form of darkness he may have called up from the inferno. As a man of science I was initially ashamed of myself for allowing the idea that he had created something ‘evil’ to have any sway over my actions. I do not... or, I should say, did not believe in such a concept and had even in the situation felt critical of the Professor for utilising such a crude definition. Not more than an hour had passed before I steeled myself to check on his condition and to examine again the area where he claimed to have been stung for any sign as to whether or not his current condition was anything more than a massive reaction of an allergic nature.

It was with surprise and astonishment that I considered the view afore me in my treatment room. For where Racksworth once lay there was only an empty cot and a draft blew coolly in my face through the open first story window he had surely used for his escape. Escape dear Richardson! A man with a temperature of over one hundred degrees and a body covered in leprous lesions finds the strength to climb through a window and walk stealthily into the night? Yet it was true and he had not yet escaped my view as I saw his shape disappear menacingly into the gloom of an alley that leads away from Blandford Street.

I would like to convince myself now that it was fear for our friend, and not of his crazy story that motivated me to give chase though I suspect differently. You must forgive my telling of the tale at this point for I can barely recollect now those nightmarish hours stalking the diseased man through sinister back alleys, cruel descents and sewage splattered embankments. The sheer wonder that he had held together enough to walk faster still into the nearby woodlands that surround this city. I cannot recall how long I loitered before concern and curiosity obliged me to follow him into those dark abodes of the wild things that even now, long after the pioneering times, still hold lingering fears for those who live nearby.

Had his paced not slowed so, I may never have found him at all and been doomed to wander deeper into the woodland and far from the lights of the city. The idea chills me so even now for I have never liked that place, there is too much of the wild in it, a savage garden it is where man cannot help but be reminded that the real world is much less forgiving than that in which we live. The real world is alive James, it has teeth and if given the chance it will eat us alive.

Buried in such thoughts I had let the trancelike Oscar slip from my mind and saw now that he had vanished, his white shirt no longer glowing faintly afore me though he had been no more than ten feet ahead. As I followed in vain pursuit of some half imagined trail I cursed my own stupidity, was cursing even as my left ankle plunged into the hole through which he must surely have crawled. I was lucky the shaft was at a slight angle and I had caught but the edge or else I would have tumbled forwards into that nightmare labyrinth, built by something long past the forgiveness of God.

This is not a proud tale of mine James and I take no pride in telling you that I found in myself the courage to follow into that dark cavern of earth and soil. I say this because I was not myself by then, scared to try and find my way home yet afraid to continue it was a frenzied action of instinct that made me follow Oscar and nothing so noble as bravery. The burrow was perhaps just big enough for a man to crawl through prone though it was repugnant in the extreme. All manner of beasts that thrive in the blind bosom of Earth and gorge themselves on one another with merciless abadon writhed under my hands. I tried to push from my mind the things that squirmed and popped as my hands went over them in the pitch dark, so many there were that before long my hands were covered in a viscous fluid and a scent most foul assailed my nostrils.

Retching and spluttering through clandestine tunnels I felt I was going out of my mind and I feel certain that had things persisted in that manner for much longer I would be quite insane now. Yet it was no trick of the mind that told me the tunnel was slowly getting wider. As it opened I noticed ahead a most vivid phosphorescence, a natural light so many feet below ground that was both engaging and disturbing to behold. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the scene before me yet once they had it was all I could do to keep from gouging them from their sockets and screaming so loudly as to surely bring about my doom in a tunnel collapse or by alerting the fiends that I now beheld of my presence.

Any courage I once had snapped in an instant and I wriggled back up through the nightmare labyrinth to escape the hellish visage cruel fate had afforded me. What was real and what was not I cannot be certain but what my damned eyes saw in that instant before I fled was of a vast hive-like cavern lit by a fire as of the countless grave-fed fireflies of the Styx. And this most monstrous construction was not the worst, nor were the droning insects that milled about it.

Fouler was what hung suspend from the ceiling, what was once Oscar’s bee, now a massive and hideous abomination of incomprehensibly sinister insect thought dangling bulbously and giving damnable life to the drones that pulsed from around it. Worse still were the objects gathered together and stuck in tangle near the cavern wall, though I saw it for but a moment I recognise only too well the form of our dear Oscar tangled amongst other bodies that even then showed faint signs of vitality.

I wish it were not so. I wish I could dismiss them as corpses dear James but I cannot. They were alive, alive as they were bound, alive as their cloths were torn and peeled from around them by the terrible drones. Alive, even, I fear when the lesions split and thousands of abominations freed themselves from the nourishment of their corrupt flesh. There were six bodies at most my friend, six who had been stung and found themselves in their last moments under the pitiless glare of that abomination that hides from the light of day and God’s own justice.

I fear there may not be much time my friend, we have had four patients since that night complaining of bad reactions to stings and while this is normal for the season it now falls upon whiskey to give me the oblivion of dreamless sleep that I require. For now my dreams are haunted by that awful entity below the ground, feasting in a cavern that must grow wider every day till it grows tired of the dark and strives for the light of day and we children of heaven must become naught more than sustenance for the abomination.

Though my reports have since been dismissed as mania and no burrow ever found I feel certain that what I saw was real and will suffer no-one to tell me otherwise. Let the fools lay charges upon me even as the door to hell bends and sways with the sinister poundings that now fall upon it. I do not deny having Oscar here in his last moments and will not change my testimony even as they seek to twist it for some fanciful notion of justice to quiet worried minds and calm sleeping babes.

I grieve for our friend James, I grieve for what part he has played in this hell that must surely one day come to earth. Most of all I grieve for you my friend, for your dear wife and your young Emily.

May God keep you safe and bestow in you such advantage as may come from the prompt knowledge this letter has bestowed.

Yours in earnest

Henry Wilfred Messenger M.D