The Call of Cthulhu

The CampfireThe openingFree

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is that the human mind can't put everything it knows together.

We live on a quiet island of ignorance, in the middle of black seas of infinity. And we were not meant to sail far.

But someday, piecing together scattered facts will open up such terrifying views of reality that we will either go mad, or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

I pieced some of them together. This is how.

My great-uncle was a professor of ancient languages. When he died, he left me a locked box. Inside were his notes. And a strange little sculpture.

The sculpture was made of clay. It showed a monster. A thing with the head of an octopus, a mass of tentacles for a face, a scaly, swollen body, and long, narrow wings on its back. It squatted on a block covered in strange writing.

It was hideous. It was alive somehow. Looking at it made you feel sick.

And under it was a word written in my uncle's handwriting. A name. Cthulhu.