“Stand back everyone, I’m from Cincinnati!”, I yelled, intelligently, at the frightened masses huddled inside of the aeroplane cabin, their faces ugly with fear.
There I stood, alone, amidst the crowd, looking over a rather broken man, who was gasping in pain, clutching at his own hideously twisted form.
“Just what does being from Cincinnati have to do with medical emergencies?” huffed she, a rather pointy-faced old lady, who by the tone of her voice, and the sheer stupidity of her question, was obviously from Toledo.
“Well,” I said ”Cincinnati is 683 feet above sea level, and 31 miles from the ocean, which of course makes me the anti-christ.”
“And who better to save the life of this poor man than one with such awesome and incredible powers of deduction as I?”, I added, peering around the innards of the fast-falling machine – looking for makeshift tools to do the job at hand.
There was little time remaining; The injured man’s leg was bleeding profusely all over the fine low-pile cobalt-blue carpet, his bones jutting awkwardly outward like the eyes of a strangled Cambodian prostitute.
“I will have to do a tracheotomy” I shouted, reaching my clutching hand empty towards the crowd. “I will need something very heavy”.
“Like your suitcase perhaps?” interrupted a rather interrupty and daft fellow with a manged and mangled weasel for an upper lip. “Your suitcase that fell and broke the man’s leg, shortly after smashing the brains of the stewardess on its way down from the rack?”
“That one?” he added, as if I did not know what my suitcase looked like. ”What is in that thing anyway, that it is so heavy?” he questioned, his mustache growing bigger and bigger with every dumb word.
“Well, what is the one substance on earth that could make something so small, so heavy?” I asked him, in a deservingly sarcastic and condescending tone. And since he was too poorly dressed to answer in a timely fashion, I answered for him: ”Why bowling balls of course, cunningly crushed into tiny little pieces! Any idiot would know there is not a case or bag out there which will fit whole bowling balls in the overhead compartment these days! BEHOLD! The powers of deduction!”
“Who would crush bowling balls just to bring them on board an aerocraft?”, he asked, as if he had completely missed the entire preceeding paragraph. I would have been embarrassed for him, were he not German.
“This is exactly why I am in charge! ‘Further demonstrated by my uncanny ability to deduce precisely what was in this bag!”, I remarked, holding the suitcase high above my head with surgical precision.
I then leaned attractively over the dying man, hammering and hammering at his throat with my suitcase, again and again – but it was too late; He expired soon after, despite my brave and dashing actions. I was just too late.
Off I ventured into the cargo bay with my loud and panicked admirers hounding my every step, and clutching at my fine wool jacket; This, perhaps in the all-too-common hopes that its swatches would heal their vapors or perhaps help their crops to grow.
Having no time for their foolish superstitions, I closed the cargo door behind me, and locked it; Saving these passengers was my job and my job alone, and I could not let myself be distracted or slowed by their screaming ways.
I grabbed a parachute from the wall, opened the hatch, and I was off. With luck, I would return with help before their situation became any worse.
There are many things to be found in Etta Diem’s eccentric attic shop. I remember visiting once where I spent nearly an hour sorting through a shelf full of beautifully crafted bottles — often called Egyptian Tear Catchers. Each of these small and elegantly spun bottles held a small tag that offered a name of the bottle and the properties of the fluids kept inside. One of the most tall and narrow of these bottles, painted an incredibly pearl like black and crimson and extremely beautiful, claimed to contain the tears of a mythical dragon of very old legends. When Etta’s back was turned I did a rude thing on impulse and removed the stopper of the bottle and lifted it to my noise. The smell alone caused my noise to recoil in pain and my eyes instantly watered. Nervously I tipped the bottle a pinch and watched a droplet fall from the bottle and hit the wooden floor with an evil hiss of burning. That one droplet burned clear through the floor, and then through the items that lie in the basement below. I quickly put the bottle back and excused myself from Etta’s shop. So it didn’t even cause me to pause or doubt the strange shopkeep when she showed me her collection of antique and very special scissors. Each elaborately crafted tool that she finds I take up to the Archive and do my best to study and document its cursed or enchanted properties. I drew up the diagram of the individual sheers that Ms Diem currently has in her shop. And below this image I have summed up the things claimed of each sheer. Please admire their eerie beauty, however… I don’t recommend you touch any of them, even for a second… (more…)
Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.
Lonely and sad, a specter glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, though his song
Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
Only the few who sorcery’s secret know,
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.
A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible’s camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—”elbowed” Magnapinna squid. [more at National Geographic]
… I am willing to wager, that these things are either incredibly good, or incredibly bad at dancing.
‘Ever see a normal squid do the Charelston? Ne’r a pretty sight.
Horrible beyond conception was the change which had taken place in my best friend, Crawford Tillinghast.
I had not seen him since that day, two months and a half before, when he told me toward what goal his physical and metaphysical researches were leading; when he had answered my awed and almost frightened remonstrances by driving me from his laboratory and his house in a burst of fanatical rage. I had known that he now remained mostly shut in the attic laboratory with that accursed electrical machine, eating little and excluding even the servants, but I had not thought that a brief period of ten weeks could so alter and disfigure any human creature. It is not pleasant to see a stout man suddenly grown thin, and it is even worse when the baggy skin becomes yellowed or grayed, the eyes sunken, circled, and uncannily glowing, the forehead veined and corrugated, and the hands tremulous and twitching. And if added to this there be a repellent unkemptness, a wild disorder of dress, a bushiness of dark hair white at the roots, and an unchecked growth of white beard on a face once clean-shaven, the cumulative effect is quite shocking. But such was the aspect of Crawford Tilllinghast on the night his half coherent message brought me to his door after my weeks of exile; such was the specter that trembled as it admitted me, candle in hand, and glanced furtively over its shoulder as if fearful of unseen things in the ancient, lonely house set back from Benevolent Street.
That Crawford Tilinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair, if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed. Tillinghast had once been the prey of failure, solitary and melancholy; but now I knew, with nauseating fears of my own, that he was the prey of success. I had indeed warned him ten weeks before, when he burst forth with his tale of what he felt himself about to discover. He had been flushed and excited then, talking in a high and unnatural, though always pedantic, voice. (more…)
“We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight. We shall see these things, and other things which no breathing creature has yet seen. We shall overleap time, space, and dimensions, and without bodily motion peer to the bottom of creation!”
Slow or dormant pineal gland? Unable to see Ultraviolet? Ever wonder what is out there in the ether swimming about your head, crawling on your dinner plate?
The Resonator is guaranteed to solve these and other problems!
… Unfortunately, due to a recent accident, the actual resonator itself is currently unavailable.
Quality metallic luster coated prints commemorating its first use, however, are available. These 5×7 prints have an archival rating of 200+ years, and are printed the same size as the original engraving by Myke Amend, on heavy metallic stock, in quality archival pigment inks, with a UV-resistant and scratch resistant coating!
Order yours now!… wait! Stand still for just a moment,I urge you! Okay, it has passed on to the other room. Okay, Order yours now, before it comes back!
