Jared AxelrodWriter of Adventure

When Randolf Carter phoned, I admit I thought nothing unusual of it!

“I do not know what has become of Harley Warren,” he said, his voice quavering. “Though I think–almost hope–that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing.”

“Aha!” I said! “A mystery! A missing person! Bizarre circumstances! Excellent! Please continue, Mr. Carter!”

And continue, he did! “It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown. The weird studies of Harley Warren were well known to me, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the languages of which I am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages I cannot understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired book which brought on the end was written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere.”

“Zounds! What did it say, man?!? What did it say?”

“Warren would never tell me just what was in that book.”

“Blast! No matter! I’ll take the case! Where was Mr. Warren last seen?”

“The place was an ancient cemetery…”

I cut the man off. “No, no. Cemetery’s are no good, man! We begin our investigation in…THE LIBRARY!”

Harley Warren’s library was everything Mr. Carter had sworn and more! A room filled to the brim with books! Books filled to the brim with pages! Pages filled to the brim with words! Words filled to the brim with letters! Why, you could sling a cat anywhere and come across something to read!

“I say, Carter! You wouldn’t happen to have the book Warren was reading before being swallowed up by the unkown, do you?”

“That ancient book in undecipherable characters which had come to him from India a month before?”

“That’s the one!” I said, giving the frail man a forceful slap on the back!

“It’s—koff—there on the end table,” he said, looking a little unsteady.

“Excellent! So, you and this Warren fellow. Were you close?”

“Sometimes I feared him. I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years. But I do not fear him now.”

“Oh?!?”

“For I suspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear for him.”

“You’re a creepy, creepy man, Mr. Carter! You remind me of my old sidekick, the poor doomed, fellow…”

But there was no time for idle reminiscing! No sooner had I gripped the tome than the entire library was awash with tentacles! I found myself in a grip such that I not known since my tussle with Madam Shuggoth in the adventure I have called “Revenge Is Best Served CRUSHED!” I thrashed about with the thousand tugging tentacles, spreading ichor all over my best satin cape!

“Zounds! Carter! You wouldn’t know of a good dry cleaner?!?”

But Carter was beyond thoughts of cleaning, dry or otherwise! The tentacles were dragging him deep into the depths of a gaping maw, the like of which not even light could escape!

“Hold on Carter!” I said! “I’ll be there in a jiffy!”

“I don’t think so, Mythos Man!” That voice! It was a voice that echoed from deep within my fondest nightmares!

I whirled! “Kid Mythos! I thought you were dead!” But the creature before me was far from the young Herbert West I remembered!

“Kid Mythos IS dead!” screamed the monstrous mockery of man standing amidst the undulating arms! “Call me….RE-ANIMATOR!”