The Lost Story By Angela R. Hunt

The Lost Story

Dedicated to and inspired by Tim Dawson 

Written by Angela R. Hunt

Matthew hated his graduate school assignment. The old Miskatonic University had been purchased by a chain of Universities that were shifting the school to online programs. Matthew was finishing his degree in Library Science. His perception of rules as mutable had earned him the least enjoyable assignment. Dust and mildew assailed his sinuses. His allergies besieged him with red and irritated eyes. I might as well be Richard Pickman, the way I am starting to look. He thought as he saw his reflection in the grimy basement window. 

He found a stack of manuscripts. He assumed they were papers written by students. He started quickly leafing through them to see if they were worth keeping or if they would go to recycling. 

A thin beige book fell out of the stack. He fumbled for it and missed. It sounded like someone getting a hard slap to the face as it landed, the sound echoed. Matthew sighed and reached for the book. The cover was some kind of leather, stained and marked with some sort of design. It seemed to be another book bound in skin. It was too thin to be a rogue copy of the Necronomicon. It did not look like any of the dangerous books he had been taught to recognize and avoid opening. There were no words on the cover. 

He took the risk and opened the book. The parchment pages were yellowed, the ink tired but visible. The title “Through the Mind.” The authors, as there were two listed were H.P. Lovecraft, and E.A. Poe? Wait, they never wrote a story together! They never knew each other. Matthew struggled to recall if they even lived at same time and if there was a record of their paths crossing. 

Poe could not have written with Lovecraft, could he? How was it possible? Was it a fraud, a twisted joke? He took the book upstairs to show his advisor. Dr. Wilson was initially dismissive, until his eyes began to dance through the pages. His mouth moved as if it were chasing the words. His eyes grew large. His face grew pale. He turned to Matthew. 

“According to the Preface, Lovecraft had nightmares where Poe spoke to him. In his nightmares Poe was so terrified of something that he gibbered senselessly. Lovecraft grew frustrated, trying hard to keep what he thought was a figment of his imagination lucid. He thought that until one of Poe’s peers brought Lovecraft a letter from Poe. The letter is folded in the book.” 

He had paused, taken the letter out carefully. He gently opened it with tweezers, fearing the potential destructive power of time and entropy on the document. The letter seemed to be in Poe’s handwriting. The date was a week before his death. The letter told the bearer to hold it until a certain date over thirty years later, then to deliver it to a certain “H.P. Lovecraft” at a given address. Impossible. Whatever second letter was meant to be delivered was not in the book, or the pile of documents Matthew had found. 

Dr. Wilson sat down and began reading the actual story. His eyes grew large. His face drained to a pale grey as if the blood in his body had turned to ashes. He turned page after page, slower and slower. Muttering at times, shaking his head slowly. He could not stop reading. He did not look up. Matthew could not get his attention. After a while he stopped moving, he sat as if he were a statue in an English garden waiting for birds to land on him. Matthew reached out and took his shoulder to shake him, his body was rigid. Matthew could not move him. 

In a panic, Matthew shouted for help. Other faculty members came running. Matthew told them about the book. Paramedics came and loaded the catatonic professor on a gurney. They left. The other professors agreed it was probably a stroke, nothing to do with a book that obviously had to be a fake. One took it and scanned it into the computer system without reading it. “Just in case the book was damaged by handling-even a fraud can have value” he said.  

Then the professors gathered together around the book. As they jostled each other, reading at the same time, all unwilling to wait, the sight of them brought to mind vultures feasting on a rotting carcass. Matthew felt uneasy. The professors grew quieter and more focused. Pages turned faster and faster until they suddenly slowed like lovers reaching a crescendo. They stood silent and motionless. They were sentinels crowding around a cursed treasure. A computer tech came running wide eyed and out of breath. His face was red and his manner was unsettled. 

“Hey! Professor Johnson, that book you scanned- an odd thing happened! Come quick, somehow it’s gone public on the web! I keep trying to pull it off line, trying to change access to it but I think hackers must be messing with us or something! There are even spam ads going up about it! Is it really a story written by Poe AND Lovecraft? That is badass! If it’s true I am going to read it!” The professors did not move. 

Matthew stood, thoughtful. He took the folded letter from Poe out. The date it directed delivery to Lovecraft was actually in the last month of Lovecrafts’ life. Poe wrote it and died within a week. Lovecraft prefaced the story, whatever the story contained, with a narrative about a shared nightmare with Poe. The story might not be fiction. It could have been autobiographical. Matthew decided not to read the story. He called 911, letting them know that another batch of professors had “fallen catatonic.” 

Despite the work of the Dean and the whole I.T. Department, as well as many private consultants the story went viral online. People dropped like flies. Catatonia spread almost as quickly as rumor. People tried to be the one who could read it and remain unaffected. Not a one succeeded. Wards filled with the stony corpses of those who were impulsive enough to try. They eventually wasted away, never moving or eating again. It was a plague without a virus. No body fluid transfers, no immunizations- it REALLY was in the mind. 

Matthew earned his doctoral degree documenting the progress of the Mysterious Mind Plague. He never read the book he found by chance in a dusty basement in his youth.