An Original Pre-Halloween short story: "It’s the Great Pumpkin, H.P. Lovecraft!"

 It’s the Great Pumpkin, H.P. Lovecraft!

©2024 by Brian James Lane

Amid the wearisome toil of the library’s archives in the year of our Lord 1966, I was appointed to an unsettling task—a meticulous survey of ancient and obscure boxes unearthed in the forgotten recesses of the Miskatonic University Library’s newly reopened annex. Formerly consigned to dust and decay, this forsaken domain resurrected to accommodate the ever-expanding accumulations of knowledge. It yielded something far more sinister than mere forgotten manuscripts.

As I ventured into the dimly illuminated chamber, the oppressive atmosphere seemed to press heavily upon my chest. Thick fetid odor of decay and disuse clung to me as I proceeded with my grim duty. The musty smell of mold and age—old parchment birthed a malady of sorrow. There, behind the splintered wooden doors of a small, dismal office, I encountered a collection of wooden storage boxes whose very presence exuded an aura of malignant purpose.

The office itself was a relic of a bygone era, its walls adorned with faded ornate wallpaper etched with inexplicable geometries that seemed to writhe and pulsate in the flickering light. Adorned with arcane symbols and otherworldly runes, the boxes spoke of forgotten rites and forbidden eldritch practices. It was amidst these recondite artifacts that I found the heart of my discovery—two objects of unutterable strangeness with their forms incomprehensible to mortal understanding.

These artifacts were more than mere physical objects; they were the withered and near-spent bodies of entities yielding a profound and insidious nature. These were ancient gods of devastation and malaise—the old ones. I observed them with growing unease as they radiated an unsettling luminescence in unnatural hues of blues and greens. Their pulsations formed a disquieting rhythm that suggested an ancient, unspeakable connection to time immemorial. The corpses bound the beings within the confines of a wholly otherworldly prison. They awaited my next deed.

The terror intensified as I delved into the crumbling texts associated with these artifacts. They revealed a horrifying truth—the entities were not mere spirits of the void but malevolent beings intent on transcending their spectral confines. Arcane mystery shrouded their ultimate goal. This was to consummate a vile union, thereby spawning progeny that would breach the veil between their ethereal realm and the physical world. This abominable progeny was to be born from an unlikely vessel—a pumpkin, not just any pumpkin, but one cultivated in the most sincere of seasonal patches. Only in such a pumpkin patch would the malevolent spawn find its true vessel and emerge into our world.

As weeks passed, an insidious malaise pervaded the annex. Strange phenomena became frequent—eerie whispers in the darkness, spectral apparitions flitting at the periphery of vision, and an ever-present chill that seemed to sap the vitality from the living. Whilst perusing the accursed manuscripts on one such ominous evening, I unearthed the full extent of the impending horror.

I translated tomes in a tongue long dead through inexplicable insight, drawing upon sinister forces through ritual and malign magic. I performed the dark arts and the veil between the worlds thinned on the verge of the season’s most solemn celebration. I had convinced myself it was of my own doing, yet I knew that there were other influences scheming against me.

The knowledge of such a calamity drove me to frantic measures. In an effort to thwart this abominable convergence, I sought to sever the arcane link between the entities and their intended fruity womb. The very fabric of reality seemed to resist; it was as if the office itself were conspiring to aid the malevolent entities in their dark design. I was the sole voice of reason, yet I feared my sanity long gone.

I engaged in the final, desperate rite one fateful night to contain the malevolent entities. I resolved to imprison them within an even more improbable vessel—the seed of a pumpkin instead of a full-grown gourd. The night air was thick with an eerie energy as I cast the incantations necessary to transfer the beings into this frail vessel with the desperate hope that their malignant essence could be subdued within the confines of such a mundane object. The office was engulfed in a wave of unearthly energy erupting from the artifacts. The walls seemed to close in, warping and twisting under the strain of the entities’ burgeoning power. The very essence of reality seemed to bend as the grotesque, eldritch forms of the beings slithered and writhed with malevolence that defied human understanding.

In the midst of this nightmarish struggle, I fought with all my strength to contain the horrors and directed the final vestiges of my otherworldly incantations into the pumpkin seed. The beings writhed against the confines of the kernel, which fought wildly in my grasp. The struggle reached its zenith and soon the germ stilled. I buried it in a potter’s field speaking a cleansing ceremony that was more of an apology to God than of necessity or function.

Unbeknownst to me, the seed grew and formed a patch of pumpkins. It was to be a glorious harvest of orange fruit like none seen before. There, under the light of a full Halloween moon, an unlikely group arrived. They were bent on summoning the beast, drawn by the earnestness of vibrant and unfettered growth.

A young boy and even younger girl shivered in the cold night. The duo awaited the arrival of the insidious offspring. Nearby, a beagle howled an eerie summoning call. There, in the most sincere of pumpkin patches, it arose. They watched in silent horror as the Great Pumpkin, emerging from the biggest pumpkin in the patch’s hallowed ground, burst forth into the Halloween eve. The grotesque spawn emerged into the autumnal twilight without so much as a promise of tricks or treats.

Thus, without the full knowledge of my error, I took the malignant collections I exposed and buried them in the hidden alcove of a wall amid in the annals of forgotten history. I hoped my experience would merely remain a stark reminder of the ancient horrors that slumber just beyond the veil of human understanding, awaiting the opportune moment to unleash their darkness upon the world. Yet, I feared, I was too late in my conspiracy.