First story I've written in years. I'm super proud of it, and yea, I said it once before, but just in case you notice it, and want to yell at me about it, yea. I was super inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, and basically ripped a lot of stuff from the universe he built. Oh well. I liked it...and just in case it doesn't show up!

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Laughter in the Dark



I must write this down before madness takes me, or one of it’s myriad creations. As I sit here, in my study, I can hear it softly, the laughter. It’s a kind of heartless titter, like a hyena’s laugh, but even they have a sort of soul in them, this laugh...no, there’s a hollowness there, a dead, muted titter, a mockery of a laugh, but laugh is still the best thing that this can be called. It started after that incident in the jungles of Asia, that one fateful expedition that I pray to the Gods both old and new that I wish could be wiped from my memory. What my colleagues and I saw there, the year after our “escape”, all of it, I wish it’d never happened. I feel almost pity for myself, once the “fearless german shephard", now a frightened pup, terrified of shadows, laughter, or worse, oppressive silence. I know I must write down the event that changed our lives, for if the fate I fear is to befall me, it’s most likely already befallen my colleagues, and I pray for their souls.



That day, I’d finally made the discovery I’d spent countless months searching for. An ancient temple in the jungles of Thailand, or Cambodia. Older than Angkor Thom, and twice as mysterious, I had searched for it for another ancient deity worshiped during the Khmer empire, and wasn’t having much luck on my own, so I employed the help of my friends and colleagues, Messrs Toll and Winterton, a husky and ram, respectively, to help me in my quest. We found it eventually, and hastily packed for a trip to explore it. It was the find of a lifetime, the discovery that would launch my name in the stars! So we rushed giddily there, hired aids to help us, and wandered the forest in a quest for our temple. In the third night, when we camped, we heard it, a mysterious thumping. It carried with it a haunting beat, one that was hard to ignore. Our guides, twin marbled cats, shook nervously and wouldn’t stop murmuring about ghost tribes, and eldritch secrets. That night there was a fog, or perhaps I was dreaming, but when I was able to tell the difference between reality and dream, I was in front of the temple, alone. I called for my friends and guides, who had been looking for me. The guides say they heard that drumming again when I had gotten up and walked off on my own, they thought I was to be taken away and never heard from again. Oh how right they were, it just hasn’t happened yet! The fog cleared, and put the temple into even greater sight. It seemed grown from the very trees, with masonry put in only to create a type of completeness. The building style couldn’t be identified, even by our guides, who wanted to leave the sight, speaking some nonsense that I can’t recall. My colleagues and I didn’t listen, we ventured in the temple without hesitation, marveled by how it was built...or better yet, grown. The temple interior was a marvel, polished to a shine, it seemed the trees had received some kind of lacquer painting to match the onyx masonry, or maybe the wood itself was an ebon colored species, on recollection, the trees did seem out of place when compared to the other trees there. It went on for countless distances, full of various murals or abandoned altars with unmentionable stains. Whatever God or Gods were worshiped here, they were worshiped with a fervor, judging from the amount of altars in the temple. I finally found what I was looking for, a huge room that was all onyx, jade, and jasper, filled with statues of creatures that were probably fantastic, but the statues were destroyed, and I couldn’t be sure, but what I sought, thankfully, or maybe accursedly, was still intact.



It was a mural, a mural of the arrival and eventual worship of the God I can’t name. It was formless, at least it seemed amorphous, it seemed to be something different yet similar in each picture. For sure, it seemed a mass of mouths, porous, with only one eye that I could see, and when I did, I had to look away. I felt as if they eye was piercing me, looking into my soul, which should be impossible, but I felt it, and my heart did too. A few moments later, I heard Mr. Winterton call out, he’d found a passage behind a statue, one that was miraculously still intact, showing the God I saw in the mural in some attempt at a horse. The one eye in the center of its head, and the mouths creatively hidden as a mane, hooves, and its tail. An abomination, with a wicked beauty that no one would truly admit to. My colleagues and I ventured down the tunnel, our guides staying behind, afraid of the shadows, if only we’d listened to their fears.



The tunnel was long, longer than expected, and as we traveled we noticed the degradation of the quality until it was just a slope of dirt, and still it lowered. It wasn’t until we felt an unnatural heat that the slope leveled out, lighting the area with flare-sticks, we realized we were in a giant cavern. Larger than even the temple was. Our light only showed our faces, each with a look of marveled shock and awe. Our path split into forks, and though we were wont to separate, we did, Toll and Winterton went one way, while I went the other. The walls were painted with more murals, but not of the same origin or style as the temple. This was definitely a much more ancient aspect of the temple, if not the first temple to this nameless God. The rituals painted I can’t, no, wont describe. They were brutal, vicious....ugly. It wasn’t until I was halfway around that I noticed the smell. It was fetid, with a dead sweetness. It smelled like it was trying to mask itself with it’s cloying scent, but it only repelled me more. I noticed the pinprick lights that were Toll and Winterton, and realized they were slowly curving back towards me, so I hurried and found out that our paths would indeed meet again. As soon as I almost cried out in joy was when I heard the sound. I thought at first it was just a simple blowing of some subterranean wind, but when I paid attention to it, closely, I realized it wasn’t wind, but a kind of breathing. It was stuttering, uneven, almost a wheeze. It was coming from the pit that was on my immediate right. I dared not go closer to it, now that I realized not only was the sound coming from it, but the smell as well, and I think the smell was getting stronger.



Hurrying to meet my colleagues, on the other side, to tell them of the smell and the sound, I realized a book stand. The stand itself was a grotesque amalgamation of what looked like arms, hands feet, paws, and other unnameable limbs holding the pedestal that originally held what most likely was an equally disgusting book. The book was gone, but judging by the dust lines, it was removed recently. Asking Toll and Winterton what was on the wall on their side, they relayed the same thing I’d seen; an ancient mural of rites of worship for the dark Elder God that may still reside here. The thought sent a shiver down my spine, as I examined the tablet that once held a book. It was covered with a kind of hieroglyphics I couldn’t recognize, neither could Toll or Winterton. There was one hieroglyph that did make me think of the horse-form of the nameless God, but before I could say anything, I heard a sort of flutter, like that of leathery wings. We turned to search for what made the noise, but all we saw was darkness, that seemed to press even further than it did before. That’s when we heard it, that tittering laugh. It was coming from around us, down below and behind and above and right in front of us. We were frozen on the spot, then we heard the fluttering again, and that drumming started up, from the pit in front of us. When the darkness got stronger, a light began to glow, from the depths of the pit, the breathing had stopped, but the laughter and fluttering continued. We ran, ran as hard as we could towards the sloping hill that would take us to sanctuary...at least out of this infernal cavern. We heard definite flapping as we ran, following yet leading us. Someone cried out, as a wing, or something brushed them, I couldn’t tell who, it may have been me, but I was too focused on escape, before whatever was causing that drumming and that light showed up. We got to the sloping hill and became assaulted with wings, claws, and underneath it all that same, dead, tittering laugh. Our flare-sticks were lost as we scrambled up the slope, and it was only when the scratching and laughter stopped that I passed out.



I came to in a village far from the temple, it seemed that Winterton and Toll had also fallen unconscious, but according to our guides, who carried us to the village, we emerged from the tunnel, babbling, incoherent and covered in scratches and bruises. As the guides tried to find other folks to find the temple and close in the entrance to that cavern, they couldn’t find it, the guides said they led them to the exact spot, but all they found were crumbled ruins that was overtaken by trees of a familiar and native breed. We left that place without waiting to fully recover, and returned home, where I instantly plunged into records of ancient, underground temples in the Asiatic region. Nothing came up, until I searched for the amorphous God that so preferred the mockery of the horse shape. I saw word of the writings of a supposed mad horse from the ancient Mongol lands, writings of stories, prose, and maybe recipes for disastrous things and items of chaos. The only thing I could find was a single stanza of prose, it read



Not one truly leaves or dies that was ancient at antiquity.

And all at once it’s force returns through me.



Nothing else. I had no idea if the horse meant that he himself would be the receptacle of some mysterious force, or if the “me” was an ambiguous line to make things tie together, but in either sense, I was afraid. My cohorts were equally troubled, and told me they too were led to the mad horse, but of his writing they could find nothing. They were missing, or all destroyed. Then they told me of what they were hearing, and I felt again those chills down my spine. They were hearing the laughter from the cave. It was low, but they heard it whenever it was dark, when they walked down dark alleys alone. They were afraid they were going mad, and I couldn’t console them, because I heard them too.



Months went by, and all that happened to us were minor things, odd dreams, filled with the tittering laugh that continued when we awoke, dreams that took us to places we’d never dare go willingly, filled with fantastic buildings and terrifying monsters. Cyclopean, antediluvian, and full of odd proportions. The dreams always ended the same, with the terrible drumming following as I tried to find my way out, the laughter growing, and the loud and heavy footfalls of some unseen monster. I dared not search for it, fearing what I’d find, but I felt that I would behold it, at one time soon. The last dream before I decided to write this started the same, me, in that cyclopean city with its odd proportions and fantastically terrifying designs, but the drumming carried with it a message, a message that I can’t repeat, it was full of a murmuring, chirruping, and ululations that I couldn’t understand, but felt. Telling me their book was missing, their tome of legends. They wanted to find it, and latched on to the next people to venture into the caverns, since the thief managed to sneak in without being caught. So I was told to write this story, to somehow warn the thief of the woes that will befall them. We were but unwitting victims, and I fear what we’ve unleashed no one can stop until they get this tome back.



So here I sit, the clock is tolling midnight, it’s been a year since that fateful day, and I fear my time has come. I can hear it, the soft thrumming, slowly growing louder. A pox on whoever stole their of rites and legends! A curse on his family! I hope the punishment to you falls greater than what has befallen my colleagues, who I can’t get a hold of, and what’s soon to befall me. I can’t take it anymore, I can hear the tittering, the flapping, oh Gods, what’s that smell, it’s so sickening. It’s getting louder now, the drums, I can hear claws on the floor, it’s getting louder, the flapping, the laughter, the claws, the drumming. The darkness gets stronger, I can hear my door handle rattling, the clock is almost done tolling, the smell, it’s overpowering. I can’t bear it any longer, the flapping, clattering, the laughter. Oh Gods the LAUGHTER.