Tome of the Outer Realm

by Anthony V.

The insidious flapping of those vast membranous wings still haunts me during the late hours of the night and is the reason I have since cast that forsaken book into flame. In the following I shall attempt to explain why every time a bird takes flight or I see a mysterious shape in the sky I become struck with terror.

It was on one night last summer I made a very unfortunate mistake, one that if I would of never done I would be free from the ongoing paranoia from which I now suffer.

It must have been near two in the morning, and I had not yet found sleep. I decided upon reading, for it is usually the only means sufficient to help me in such a matter. I withdrew an extremely ancient book at random from my collection to help ease my passage into the dreamlands. Upon sitting I realized that this book was one I had not yet read. I had found it long ago while visiting India. I was making my way through an ancient seaport bazaar when I spotted that queer tome of such great antiquity. It was in the possession of a seedy looking merchant who spoke a language not known to me, and when I asked him about the book’s origin he simply pointed toward the sea. Being an avid collector of such books, I was inclined to purchase this rare find. The merchant at first wanted an audacious sum for it but I manages to barter the price down significantly.

Upon returning home from India I placed it upon a shelf alongside many other readings of forgotten ages. I never read that miserable book until that loathsome night. As I rested in my armchair beside the glowing embers of the fireplace I opened the mold-encrusted cover. The book was written in arabic, a language which I am fortunate to have mastery over. What was portrayed from the actual text was indeed odd, telling of archaic myths, malign gods, and of certain cosmic terrors I would rather not discuss.It must have been near two in the morning, and I had not yet found sleep. I decided upon reading, for it is usually the only means sufficient to help me in such a matter. I withdrew an extremely ancient book at random from my collection to help ease my passage into the dreamlands. Upon sitting I realized that this book was one I had not yet read. I had found it long ago while visiting India. I was making my way through an ancient seaport bazaar when I spotted that queer tome of such great antiquity. It was in the possession of a seedy looking merchant who spoke a language not known to me, and when I asked him about the book’s origin he simply pointed toward the sea. Being an avid collector of such books, I was inclined to purchase this rare find. The merchant at first wanted an audacious sum for it but I manages to barter the price down significantly.

I read for an hour perhaps before feeling drowsy. The last few lines I read from that nightmarish tome are as follows:

“And She was cast into the void that is the Outer Realm by Aretok, a place long abandoned by the Other Gods that lies beyond the stars. Here She flies on Her great wings in the grey skies of oblivion. She watches over all, for She is Ar’Kattok; She is all seeing, She is all knowing.”

After reading this I must have drifted away, for nothing else can I recollect. For some time I must have lain in the comfortable nothingness that accompanies sleep when dreams are scarce to come, for I somewhat remember half waking two hours later and falling immediately back to sleep. Once again there was nothing and all was good until I was soon torn from my serenity.

What happened next I hope to God was wholly dream, for it was something so frightful to me that if the slightest reality played a part in this monstrous occurrence, I might find myself locked up in the asylum.

I seemed to “awake” in a sort of void, a grey nothingness that stretched out infinitely in each direction. Below there was nothing, and likewise there was nothing above. I shuddered at the sheer vastness of the place and the deafening silence that enhanced the miserable feeling of desolation. During this unwilling imprisonment in my own mind I could sense a maddening presence along with a horrid feeling of being watched by some distant and nameless thing. This faint notation of being observed eventually became so unbearable I began screaming maniacally, louder than I have ever screamed before. It felt this menacing presence was slowly driving me mad, my soul felt as if it was being peered into from ever direction, all the while hearing the putrid flapping of wings presumably being produced from my own mind slipping into insanity. I began to mumble incoherent words and sounds, sounds I was not aware the human vocal organs could produce. I screamed once again, and this time it was answered by another cry, a hellish, otherworldly shriek that immediately silenced my insane ramblings.

I could now make sense of what was happening again, the sound I had just heard had shocked me out of my blind confusion. A horrible realization then came, the sound of beating wings was not a product of my sudden and frightful delirium, but was actually coming from some point far in the distance. The sound, though distant, seemed to tear through the grey silence with a thunderous roar. I figured the immensity of the vile beating appeared louder than in actuality only because it was in direct contrast with utter and complete dead silence of the void.

It wasn’t long before I saw a blasphemous silhouette approaching with a sickening speed toward my general area, all the while shrieking incessantly. As I floated helplessly I watched with trepidation as the Thing advanced, the flapping grew in intensity and became all the more repulsive with every beat of the two pairs of immense wings now visable on the back of a serpantine body. Contact with gibbering monstrosity was now quite immanent, I could see the face, the face with an uncountable amount of abhorrent bulging black eyes, the face with the beak that hissed and cried in such a detestable manner, and Oh God! The tentacles, the viscous, slithering tentacles that came off the back of the head!

The monotonous grey surrounding me seemed to buckle and become distorted with the Thing’s coming. It swooped down at me, and there was a cry, uttered by myself or that which now held me I do not know. I was clutched in the things colossal prehensile claws unable to move in the slightest possible way. Shortly thereafter the wings fell silent, and it appeared I had stopped moving. I dared not open my eyes lest I see what my captor looked like up close, but some devilish force jutted them open. I cannot describe in mere words what I saw there, nor do I wish to attempt such a feat, for it was so appalling that the mere thought of it causes an unnatural revulsion within me.

The Thing spoke then in a unholy voice. It was that of a female, but with anomalous putrid raspiness to the it. Most frequently it would whisper sinisterly while other times the speaking would erupt into a blaring cacophonous fulmination and then die back down into that dreaded hoarse whisper. I did not fully understand everything It said, for I was set so aghast that my senses sometimes forsook me. What that abomination told and showed me no human mind should ever be held responsible to convey. It revealed its identity as the great winged Ar’Kattok, one of the three Ancients that existed before all else. She told me that the race of humanity will fall and be enslaved. Mankind will be enslaved and forced to worship Her malignancy, and She will revel in our pain. She will destroy the others that oppose her, those beings being the Other Gods Aretok and Nelototh, and the universe will once again belong to Her.

Her grasp on me then tightened slowly, and I lost the ability to breathe, I could feel my ribs fracture and break under the force being exerted on them. I was dying, My fate was sealed by the god that now held me in its clutches, my life was of no importance to her. I would perish before Her, I could not warn them of the impending doom the festers and broods beyond their ignorant eyes; humanity would not know anything of Her existence until She breaks free from her aeon-long imprisonment and rains death down from the stars.

My vision was failing, the darkness that foretold of death crept into my sight. Before I lost total conscienceness, images of a tenebrous and morbid future flashed through my head. I saw the Earth, a lifeless wasteland that is scarred from the marking of tempestuous fiery hot gales that rend the landscape. The ground was covered with a foetid greenish ichor in which things resembling gigantic centipedes crawled out from to feed on the flesh of men. Men were chained up to each other into long slave drives, and forced into bottomless pit from which a strange luminescence poured from by nameless white beings. Cries of anguish reverberated from within the pits, and the plastic creatures leading the humans to their apparent demise seemed to take a sickening pleasure from the unknown sufferings taking place under the Earth’s dead surface. Above all the cries and mourning echoes the cry of Ar’Kattok, sounding a victory call and her long last dominance of all things living.

I awoke in a frantic rage in the early morning, just as the sun was beginning to shine through my study window. I was laying prostrate on the floor, with that nightmare inducing book laying at the end of my outstretched hand. Could what I had seen in my dream been induced by some outside force, a blatant invasion of my mind? Or was my vision pure fantasy, derived from reading such ridiculous things in those last moments before sleep? Such things crossed my mind while lying on the cold wood floor. The thing that happened next, however, both bewildered me and struck me with a terror previously unperceived. As I took notice to the book, I saw something horrendous to the utmost extent, it frightened me so that I impulsively threw it into the nearly dead fire, causing it to bust into flames and release a noxious miasmic odor. The page the book was opened to I had not yet read, but it showed the exact images from my dream. Fascinated by this I hastily turned the page, only to find a picture of myself in gaunt hands of Ar’Kattok.My vision was failing, the darkness that foretold of death crept into my sight. Before I lost total conscienceness, images of a tenebrous and morbid future flashed through my head. I saw the Earth, a lifeless wasteland that is scarred from the marking of tempestuous fiery hot gales that rend the landscape. The ground was covered with a foetid greenish ichor in which things resembling gigantic centipedes crawled out from to feed on the flesh of men. Men were chained up to each other into long slave drives, and forced into bottomless pit from which a strange luminescence poured from by nameless white beings. Cries of anguish reverberated from within the pits, and the plastic creatures leading the humans to their apparent demise seemed to take a sickening pleasure from the unknown sufferings taking place under the Earth’s dead surface. Above all the cries and mourning echoes the cry of Ar’Kattok, sounding a victory call and her long last dominance of all things living.