The Call of the Mountains of Madness

or

Why I should have stayed home

A tale of Horror, Despair and Human Stupidity

featuring a bunch of scientists and a crazed military pilot

by

Prof. William Dyer, Head Geologist from Miskatonic University

I was in the library of Miskatonic University, the place in which I've taken some of the worst decisions in all my life. As for why I was there, well, the life of an Arkham citizen can be very straining, and I was still learning to cope with the results of my doomed Antartic expedition, so, I went there seeking a relief. I liked the sugar-coated ladies' romances, they had the same effect to my sanity as a painkiller. Naturally, I couldn't borrow the book because I didn't want to give Armitage a written proof for him to blackmail me into paying my debts for late books, and because my grad students respected me as a dark and brooding figure, broken by the madness I found in the accursed ice. I didn't have the heart to shatter this image.

The struggle of Lady Catherine to be respected by Lord Maurice had me so invested that I didn't notice the shadow looming over me. Fortunately, this didn't end with an angry librarian kicking me out of the forbidden section, but with someone politely coughing to grab my attention.

I froze for an instant, praying that the person didn't have read the title of the book. To my relief, it was a young man, but not one of my students. He looked like a freshman and, other than a hair of a peculiar red clay soil color, he didn't have anything remarkable on his appearance. He did look a little… off… but I couldn't put my finger in what caused me this impression. I felt that, given the chance, he would bite half of my face off, but that wasn't specially remarkable. I mean, I have some students from Innsmouth in my classes. Frankly, I don't know why we still accept those rascals.

"Are you Professor Dyer?", he asked, eagerly. He had a British accent, with a curious dash of a Germanic intonation. Clearly not a student, unless we suddenly became world-wide famous by something other than our high student mortality rate.

I nodded and apologized for not remembering him. He grinned, showing a disturbingly sharp row of teeth, and answered:

"Don't worry, we've never been introduced. Maybe you've heard about my grandfather, he is somewhat famous. I'm Maarten Van Helsing. Grandpa Abraham visited Arkham thirty years ago, or so. I don't know if you've heard about that case. Kingsport. Violent killings. People with a weird disease. Old doctor swinging a giant hammer and being followed by a much younger couple. Dr. Armitage scolding two twelve-years-old children that thought it was funny to sweep random books from their proper shelves..."

Things slowly got back to me. I was finishing my PhD at that time and was at the library making some final research for my thesis when the aforementioned old man with a hammer arrived and greeted Armitage. It was a dark time, in which people that came out at night couldn't be sure that they would come back home safely. Something was terribly wrong at Kingsport and the thing started to affect Arkham (because of course it would). But the most eldritch and incomprehensible thing that happened at this occasion, something that will haunt my nightmares until the end of the time, was the unnatural sight of Armitage's smile. When he saw his old friend, he smiled broadly, probably for the first time in years, and it was truly unsettling.

This probably explained why someone that isn't a Miskatonic student could not only enter the forbidden section, but also speak aloud in there without being shushed by those assistant librarians that pop out of nowhere. I shook his hand, still curious with his purpose in talking to me, and we exchanged some pleasantries. Still grinning, he said something that bothered me at the time, I didn't know why:

"Arkham didn't changed much since the last time I was here. I know I was just a boy, but I still remember how much I liked here."

One or two more exchanges and his face became a little more business-like. He waved a book at me and asked bluntly:

"Did you had anything to do with that, or it was solely a work from this Lovecraft man?"

It was the little brochure that had bothered me so much by the last few months. I'm not a very good writer, and I didn't trust myself in being able to convey all the horror that my expedition saw in the cold winds of the Antarctic. I needed someone talented and, more importantly, someone cheap to help me with the task. Just like I'm doing right now.

Note to self: do NOT read the final product of this second attempt at an auto-biography. Nothing good will came from this.

But I digress. It's unfair of my part to mistrust the brave and valorous writer that is taking notes of my case. He will not put words in my mouth when I'm not looking. Not a chance of this happening.

AHEM!

Back to those those days, I was running out of options and soon would have to resort to writing the thing myself and asking for Armitage's merciless revision. Enter that guy that was always snooping around in Arkham, to find new things to write. We met at the library and, as always, I made the terrible decision to let a horror writer write a serious scientific warning. You know, if I was any good at sensing my impending doom, Danforth would not be mentally scarred by now.

…Are you giggling? I'll look for another person to write this down. Hmpf!

Anyways, it turns out that everyone thought that Lovecraft just wrote a romanticized version of my expedition, and I would look even more crazy if I insisted that this was the truth.

I don't know why I trusted that young man so much that I explained all of this to him, I just did it. He heard everything very seriously and nodded once or twice as I spoke. Then, he said the fateful words:

"Good. Enough of beating around the bushes. You are probably wondering why I'm here. It's simple. I'm here on business. I represent the Starkweather-Moore Expedition and we want to hire you as a guide."

Things were about to get ugly.