THE SEDUCTION OF ST. ETIENNE.
By Jamie.
Inspired by the works and philosophies of H.P. Lovecraft.
Contains Drug Use. Scenes of Graphically Grotesque Cosmic Horror. Arcane Lovecraftian Weirdness.
Chapter One. Where Angels Fear to Tread.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far".
H.P. Lovecraft. "The Call of Cthulhu".
Doctor James Finch.
London. 1892.
It was in my twentieth year that I first encountered Antoine St. Etienne, an American of French descent. My great-uncle, William Bexley-Finch, who had emigrated to America before I was born, had recently died at the age of sixty nine. I had only met my great-uncle once as a boy, when he had returned to his native England on a honeymoon with his beautiful young American wife. Bexley-Finch was left a widower not long after the couple's return to America, his young wife had died after a brief illness. My great-uncle was heart broken and as he never remarried or fathered any heirs, his estate was bequeathed to me. I had had some correspondence with my great uncle in the previous few years, especially concerning my plans to study medicine and become a physician, and he had recommended the Miskatonic University's medical school in the town of Arkham, Massachussetts, where he had settled with his ill-fated young bride. Miskatonic University was as prestigious and highly regarded as Harvard or Princeton.
My decision was made when I travelled to America to claim my inheritance, the brilliant young physician Doctor Allen Halsey had recently been made Dean of Miskatonic's medical school (the youngest man to ever be appointed to such a prestigious position), and I enrolled forthwith for the opportunity to study under such an eminent physician. It was at Miskatonic University that I first met Antoine St. Etienne, a student of philosophy and esoteric pre-Christian religions. We soon became firm friends and many a long night was spent at my great-uncle's house in Arkham debating philosophy, politics and religion. To understand St. Etienne's personal philosophy and the part it played in the horrific events that were awaiting us in the future, I will quote my old friend: "All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hairsplitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible fantasies. In theory, I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist." (I often teased my friend on the irony of a dedicated atheist such as he having the family name of a Christian saint). To clarify my own personal philosophy, I class myself as an agnostic. I believe that there must be some higher power at work in the universe, but I have found the contradictions and hypocrisies present in the Christian religions unacceptable to a logical, rational mind as did St. Etienne, although he actually came to despise Christianity with a venomous passion, whereas I was rather indifferent to the church and it's teachings.
In the course of time I graduated from Miskatonic University with full honours. I had taken a bride, a young nurse, Mary Elizabeth Sawyer, and we had returned to my native London where after completing my internship I set up my medical practice. St. Etienne had always envisioned primitive "savages" as being aware of supernatural knowledge unknown or lost to civilized man, and it was in his quest for spiritual enlightenment that he embarked on many expeditions to study and take part in the pagan rituals and the drug induced spirituality of native shamans and witchdoctors. From the sweat lodges and rituals of the Apache Indians, the peyote and jimson weed induced spiritual states of the South American Yaqui Brujo's, the Dreamtime Corroborees of the Australian Aborigines, to ingesting psilocybin mushrooms with a strange sect of Tibetan monks in a remote mountain top monastery, St. Etienne's expeditions had taken him far and wide. I received irregular correspondence from my old friend detailing his experiences and his belief that he was standing at the threshold of spiritual revelation and enlightenment (this belief I suspected was inspired by the substances consumed in these pagan rituals). The last correspondence I received from St. Etienne detailed an expedition to the Orient. In the vast, sparsely populated regions of Northern China he had discovered an ancient manuscript, purportedly written in 950 BC. It was in Hong Kong where he had the ancient manuscript translated, that my companion of old seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. My correspondences went unanswered, and enquiries with the authorities in Hong Kong yielded no clues as to the fate of St. Etienne. I concluded that my old friend had met with some misadventure or foul play and it was with some surprise that after many months of thinking him deceased, St. Etienne again made contact with me from right here in London.