The names, characters, places and events in this story are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. All characters are over the age of 18. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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He fled from the City; his nerves could take no more. It wasn’t just the dust and the heat nor the acrid traffic fumes and noise. Not the incessant din from late night bars and honky-tonks. It wasn’t the sad, gray faces of crowded, downtrodden people heading to and from deadening jobs in the City. It wasn’t even the roar of airplanes overhead ferrying people to and escaping from this fetid metropolis. No, it was far worse than any of the humdrum horrors of urban life.

A new family had moved into his street. Well, not exactly his street but his block. To be precise it was on the corner of the next block over but where one came, more would follow. Outwardly, the man was pleasant and was supposed to have taken up a post as a doctor in the hospital’s emergency ward. He drove an imported white BMW and could be seen driving to and from work and to the stores with a friendly smile on his face. He heard that the children were doing well at college. But the man and his family were not local nor even from this country. Where had they come from? Why had they really come? More importantly, what strange, unwholesome dark gods did they worship? What foul sacrifices did they offer up in the secret depths of their basement? What about the man’s veiled and robed wife? What lay beneath those voluminous clothes? Was what lay hidden fully human or concealment for some utterly alien body? And what about the rest of their fellow cultists? When would they arrive to his genteel and secluded tree-lined neighborhood? It was not to be borne. He had warned the authorities several times but all that had happened after he sent a letter to the Chief of Police was that a patrol car had called to his apartment and warned him sternly about racism. The burly cop, less than half his age, advised him to leave the family alone.

So he fled to the coast, if only for a few days, just to calm down and give himself strength before returning. He drove to Kingsport where the gray Atlantic waves crash against high cliffs and where, if you stand and look eastwards across the ocean, the next landfall is the old country — England itself — with its gently rolling hills and thatched cottages with roses around the door all set within bucolic green pastures.

Kingsport itself had changed a lot since his last visit several years before. That incredibly ancient house up in the clouds on the very highest bluff had become a club house for the Clifftops Country Club and he saw with horror as people in pastel clothing drank cocktails beneath gaudy parasols. The tottering, wormy houses lining streets that were old when Congress raised the flag of revolution had been refurbished and turned into tony gift shops, chic boutiques, couturiers, artisan bakeries and coffee shops and now tourists walked the cobbled streets, their children eating cotton-candy and toffee-apples. Even that decrepit house on Water Street which had once belonged to a sinister old sea-captain had been replaced by a Starbucks.

Eventually, he turned into the Bay Business Inn, a tavern that had been built no later than the reign of the second King George, when he pulled up in soul-destroying shock. What had happened? In place of the ancient brick and wooden building with its graceful fanlight and square-paned windows was a bland corporate hotel made of concrete and bronzed glass. Out front, the flag of the hotel chain flew alongside the stars and stripes. Numb, he parked and walked up into the lobby. Behind the pale wooden counter, next to a potted palm, a small young woman of South Indian origin was tapping away at a computer terminal. Where was the oak table with the ancient leather-bound register? Where was the paneling and Victorian oil paintings depicting seascapes and hunting scenes?

Sensing him approach over the thick carpet with the business’s logo woven into the pile, the woman looked up. She wore a purple uniform jacket and skirt and her name badge told him that she was called Arivazhagi. That sounded more like the name of some eldritch goddess from the outer darkness, he wondered.

“Can I help you?” she asked pleasantly.

“Mr. Phillips. I’ve got a reservation,” he managed to stammer. He could not get over the loss of his beloved link with the distant past when things were much simpler and better than now. He completed the registration and she handed him an electronic key card. Gone the old brass Victorian keys the old place used.

“What happened?” he managed to say.

“Oh, the old inn burned down. An electrical fault apparently — well the wiring was so old. It couldn’t be replaced and it was uneconomic anyway so the owners got permission to build a modern hotel instead. It’s so much better now, don’t you think?” she said with a smile.

Phillips couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

“You’re in room 49. Have a nice stay,” she concluded before turning back to her computer.

Forty-nine? Four and nine? That added up to thirteen — a number of ill-omen. What was going on? He could not stay in that room. He tried to explain.

Arivazhagi looked at him quizzically and tapped onto her keyboard.

“We do have the Bridal Suite and the Ambassador Suite available, but they both cost a lot more.” She named a price but Phillips shook his head. He would have to take 49 but he was starting to wonder whether it was all part of a plan to destroy him. A deeply-laid plot, probably made by his neighbor and his cabal of followers. This Arivazhagi was certainly in league with them. The porter who took his luggage was also undoubtedly part of the coven as his accent showed he wasn’t a native-born American. At his room, he tipped the porter a few bucks but made sure their hands did not touch. Who knew what contaminants festered on the man’s skin?

In his room, he locked the door and surveyed the room. It was a bland hotel room, similar to many thousands of others across the states. But its blandness was undoubtedly a veneer concealing horrors hidden in its depths. He crossed to the window and saw it had a view over Kingsport’s marina and to the Atlantic beyond. But some kind of somber darkness now lay over the vista. It had not the clear, sunlight clarity he expected but it was like a muted shadow — some unearthly blackness filtered down from the depths beyond the stars — had covered Kingsport and the people enjoying themselves below were wading through a soul-sapping lightlessness that offered no respite.

He turned away from the tinted window and unpacked his luggage. He felt tired after his drive and he did not want to venture out into that uncanny darkness so he undressed and slipped on the fluffy white bathrobe he found hanging in the bathroom. He lay on the bed for a while, his ears alert for any sounds coming from the corridor. Were any cult devotees gathering outside even now, about to burst in and bear his struggling body away to sacrifice to some unholy being, ancient when the Earth was young? He could not bear the increasing tension any longer so got up and peered through the spy hole set in the door.

Opposite his door was another door but unlike his, this had no door number and stood slightly ajar. He gasped. What lay beyond​? He knew he would get no rest until he had satisfied himself that no danger lurked behind that portal and that he had closed and preferably locked it. Clutching his robe around his throat, he opened his room door as quietly as feasible and crossed the corridor. Glancing up and down the passage, he saw nobody was about. Barefoot, making no noise, he tiptoed over the carpet and listened at the crack of the slightly open door. Holding his breath, he heard no sounds.

With mounting trepidation, he put his hand to the door but there was still no reaction from whatever might lie behind it. Applying pressure, he gradually pushed it open, hoping there was nothing on the far side. As light from the corridor penetrated the tenebrous gloom, he stifled a scream. He was wrong — there was something beyond. Something indescribably loathsome and vile. Something with no place on any sane, clean world. Something that must have descended from beyond the curves of time and space when life had not yet arisen on this Earth.

The chamber was small and in the center of the fane crouched the monstrosity. It’s body was the black of utter midnight, of the lightless voids between the galaxies themselves, while blurred blood-red hieroglyphs defaced its surface. He was glad that without his spectacles he couldn’t decipher their inhuman message. It’s shape was indescribably horrific being neither a cylinder nor a dome but bearing the form of both. Its black hide was smooth in places, squamous in others where it had no right to be so. Worse, far worse, was the single rugose tentacle protruding out from what may be its front while a long, very long, flexible tail extended behind it, stretching out for what seemed like infinity. Even with no discernible eyes, it regarded him balefully.

He felt it’s mental tendrils take control of his mind. He tried to free himself from its domination but it was too late as the creature, if that is what it was, took over. With repugnance, he found his hands taking hold of this alien monster and its hide felt intolerably extrinsic, chitinous and unyielding to his touch. He had no choice and he was forced back into his room, the alien anomaly closely following him. He shut the door behind him.

Then, horror overwhelmed his mind. The monstrosity’s increasing ascendancy over his psyche caused him to undo his robe and drop it onto the carpet. Now, he stood utterly naked and vulnerable before this vile organism, his frail human body completely helpless in its worship. He had no choice. Then, worse, far worse, its hollow tentacle-like trunk attached itself to his groin, swallowing his member. He kicked out at it, hitting a vile extrusion on its side, and in response, it made a strange, insectile buzzing, droning sound. He collapsed to the ground, kneeling before it in a strange and abhorrent act of obeisance, still with that hideous appendage clamped over his erectile organ.

Immediately an obscene and repellent consumption happened. Despite himself, despite his best attempts to retain control over his body, he felt his phallus become rigid and hard and strange pulsations built up in his groin area. He cried out, forgetting himself in fear at this phenomenon. Yet worse than his throbbing tumescence, the monstrosity’s detestable suction seemed to be consuming his life force, sucking the very essence from his being. It could not be borne but it had to be endured. However, there was an obscene delight underneath his horror, an unwholesome pleasure as the ingestion took place. He shrieked as his mind expanded as the monster’s humming and suction took hold and expanded his penis, drawing the vital essences from him.

Finally, he cried out in his agony and ecstasy as his mind seemed to explode in an indecent torrent of feelings, “Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!” he yelled. He hunched over as the last drops of his vital essence fled his body and deep into the droning creature’s inorganic structure. Strange white ichor covered the tip of the alien creature’s tentacle-like trunk.

The room door burst open and Arivazhagi stood there, key card in hand.

“Mr. Phillips, are you alright? The people in the next room heard screams,” she said as she stood at the threshold. Behind her, a young couple stood with wide open eyes and mouths.

She took in the scene before her. A pallid, naked, middle-aged man hunched over a vacuum cleaner dripping with his semen, his penis shriveling to insignificance.

“You filthy pervert. Pack your bags and get out before I call the cops.”

Mr. Phillips looked up and knew the depths of utter humiliation and mortification. How he wished the darkest, deepest most Stygian pit of Hades would open and swallow him whole.

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Author’s Note: I hope Lovecraft can forgive me for what I have done to Kingsport!