As a tenured professor of agricultural sciences at Miskatonic University, I had no reason to concern myself with obvious humbug. When I found, in a corner of the library, a handwritten manuscript marked, "APPHULHU CULT," I read but a few paragraphs before returning it to the mouldering stack whence it came. That night, however, I had nightmares of lightning strikes and rainbow-streaked apples. The next day, I returned to the library. The manuscript detailed a depraved cult that worshiped a being named Apphulhu, an otherworldly evil who would arrive after Five Signs. That sleepless night, the nightmares were augmented by a malicious and horrifying susurration, "Apphulhu ftagn." In the morning, I resolved to seek out the source of my terror in the hope of conquering it.
I sought the ancient city of P'nyveh described in the manuscript. I had inferred from the manuscript that P'nyveh was near the Everfree Forest. The first sign was the howl of timberwolves. The light of blue sparks, the second sign, guided me to an apple orchard. There I camped and waited. The sky turned ominous and cloudy at the appearance of the third sign, crows and flowers. That night was the fourth sign, a shower of meteors so violent that the heavens seemed to be torn asunder by monstrous claws. The sky threatened to crash down and extinguish all life that was or ever would be. The nightmare came again, now with images of apple ichor oozing from fruits of outlandish colors. I began to doubt my faculties. I had come here, alone, to face supernatural forces bent on my destruction. It was foolishness. Yet as fearful as I was, I was unable to resolve to leave the orchard. I shuddered at the thought that my mind had perhaps been already affected by those forces and that my will was no longer fully my own.
When I woke, I knew that it should have been morning, but clouds smothered the sky so deeply that the sun seemed to have been annihilated. That day was as black and cold as night, and I sat by my campfire, shivering and shuddering as I waited. Lightning struck over the orchard, and sparks darted among the trees. The fifth sign. I took a firebrand with me as I began my search. I found an enormous red-painted wooden building. At a distance, it gave me the impression of a barn, yet as I approached, no side seemed to have a definite shape. The extent of each wall seemed to vary as I studied it, and the angles at which the walls met seemed to change from point to point. One side had a door, recognizable as such from its jambs and lintels, but I could not tell whether it was upright like an entrance or laid flat like a trapdoor. I touched the door's clammy surface, and it gave way.
An intolerable odor rose from the depths of the barn, and a great orange thing shambled out. It was a tangle of legs and hooves, topped with a blond mane, and ending in a single great hole in its backside. I, frozen in panic, could not move from my spot. The thing scooped me up in a massive hoof and inserted me into its hole.
Inside the thing's cloaca was a book bound in pony skin. This, the manuscript had said, would be the Necroponicon. In it I would find either freedom or destruction. I opened the book. The horror! Page after page of apples, hideously arrayed in eldritch and unnatural designs!
In that moment my senses left me. I know not what happened in my remaining time in the creature's cloaca. After a time, I became conscious that I was gibbering. The visions dissipated enough for me to know that I was in the apple orchard again, and with effort, I was able to crawl to civilization. Yet I have not been able to resume my university post or rejoin my former society. I am confined to a sanitarium, for the visions take me frequently. In my few lucid moments I have written this warning. But I know not whether I do so of my own will or whether I am still under the control of Apphulhu. If the latter, then I pray my wardens will destroy this manuscript without reading it.