I remember finding the damned thing to this day: the rotting yellow binding crumbling off the spine, pages cracking with each touch as if they were about to break off into dust, the musty smell as it rubbed off onto my fingers and hands, the text written in finely inked cursive and beginning to fade from human sight. There was no title on the horrible encyclopedia, and no dates inside to indicate the point in time it was written to someone unfamiliar with determining the age of books. The only indication of what I held without reading a single page was the name written inside the cover, the name shared by me and men in my family for generations: Kenneth Roberts. Which Kenneth Roberts it was before me I did not know, but the familiarity of the name drew me in with a temporary and false sense of peace.
The name was as old as the family, every other man, skipping a generation, inheriting it. To my knowledge the home where I discovered it was ours since 1803, but there was no way of telling whether the awful work had been created before or after that time. Perhaps it had been brought over to America by my ancestors as they crossed the Atlantic. It could also theoretically be from my thrice-great grandfather during his travels of the Himalayas. Briefly I considered that it could be as recent as the first Great War, but the thing seemed far too ancient for that.
As I carefully thumbed the fragile pages, I saw things no sane man could fully comprehend, things no good and holy hand could ever have written. Had the authorities been aware of its existence it would surely have been banned and burned, and I pray to this day no copies exist. Inside were symbols I would not have imagined could be drawn – stars with more points than lines to match, pulsing blackly as if powered by some inner power source; gelatinous figures of ghastly proportions, limbs slithering across the pages as if it were a modern tablet; interconnected symbols resembling the cuneiform of ancient Sumer and the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, yet more simple as if suggesting greater antiquity.
What appeared in English chilled me with horror even more than the abominable images and archaic languages. Rituals invoking godlike beings filled with references to immoral sacrifices and blasphemous, midnight activities littered the pages. Calls for self-mutilation, bloodletting, barbaric feasts, and forceful breeding bridged the gaps between the rest, a hateful and malevolent religion from beyond the depths of space and time.
Yet none of this was the full extent of the horror, and indeed the final revelation which so greatly rattled my sanity had nothing to do with general morality or concern for others in general. The fear was not in any way altruistic, and for long after I did not think of anything other to or outside of myself. For in that dreaded rotting book was one tale far beyond the others I had read – palms sweating, eyes aflame, and mouth gaping wide. It told of how Kenneth Roberts was honored above all, a martyr of the cause, a saint of the damned and patron of the wicked. He was nobody special by blood and birth, nobody ruling on ideas of gold or economy, Instead he had been chosen for his unimportance. Chosen to host their hideous messenger in his own body, his blood, his very DNA, and to pass it down, generation to generation, until one day the blasphemous chaos would transform its host, and the vile creature would be born again.
It is clear the only option is suicide, the ending of my family line.
submitted by /u/Purple-Tatters
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Quelle: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cthulhu/comm…_weird_fiction/