Chapter III: The House
The ascent to the house lay cloaked in quiet, the frogs and crickets stilled, their music surrendered to a frigid gust that clawed the air and a faint rain drumming the fallen leaves into the mire. The cult's malice hung heavy—those hooded wretches, their eyes burning with unhinged devotion, their tongues weaving that ceaseless litany: Wendigo. Was it a deity of old, a being from the void, a mortal steeped in nightmare, or some abomination defying reason? The journal's cryptic scratches offered no solace, yet a grim unease twisted in Grimm's gut, a shadow of peril that deepened as he neared the house, its timbers stark against the gathering gloom.
The back yard sprawled before Grimm, the wind rising to a wail, scattering brittle leaves in wild eddies as the skinned hides—ghastly relics—twitched and writhed in the gusts. A tattered sheet fluttered from the open door, peeling back to reveal a hallway cloaked in dusk, its far end marked by a cryptic threshold. A green luminescence pulsed within, a spectral lure piercing the gloom, summoning him deeper into its embrace.
His boots pressed against the floorboards, their creaks a dirge beneath his weight, as he closed on the steel lever thrusting from the wall, its chill biting his grasp. The shotgun hung steady in his left hand, a dark trophy, while his right hand gripped the lever, yanking it downward with a fierce snap. A harsh buzz reverberated, the green light fading to a wan, sickly yellow as the door quivered, a sharp click heralding its surrender to the void beyond.
A frigid gust swept through, a mist curling in its wake, tendrils snaking across the splintered floorboards. A stairwell plunged ahead, steep and swallowed by shadow, while a tight corridor below branched to three rooms, each shrouded by tattered sheets swaying faintly in the draft. Windows stood sealed with planks, the floors crumbling under decay's grasp, cobwebs festooning the corners like funeral lace. A sinister weight pressed against his soul, growing heavier, darker, with every step into this house of lunacy, its evil a palpable shroud tightening around him.
Shotgun raised, Grimm edged into the murk, its barrel a steady ward as his gaze pierced the dark. Rain battered the walls, a violent clamor erupting as though a storm had clawed from nowhere to besiege the cursed dwelling—too swift, too wrong. His strides lengthened, measured and hushed, gliding over the groaning wood to veil his advance. The cult sensed him, their vigilance a silent threat—he'd rouse no more of their wrath than the shadows already betrayed.
The shotgun's cold barrels brushed the tattered sheet aside, parting the veil of the nearest room to Grimm's left. His eyes narrowed, piercing the gloom as the space unveiled itself—a cramped hollow, faintly aglow with a half-melted candle, its wax weeping onto the floor in congealed tears. Across the room, a door sagged half-open, a shadowed maw. He advanced, boots whispering over the boards, and nudged the portal wider with the gun's steel nose, revealing a slender corridor—a wine cellar cloaked in dust. Above, cabinets loomed, their shattered lattices cradling a scant few bottles, aged and dust choked. Below stretched a long cabinet, its surface pocked with warped doors and drawers, while atop it sprawled open books, their pages yellowed, flanked by guttering candles casting feeble light amid the grime.
Grimm's gaze swept the tomes, their leaves frail as whispers, trembling on the edge of disintegration. His eyes steeled, a finger trailing the faded ink, until they locked on a book dwarfing its kin—its cover a grotesque enigma. He turned it, the texture cold and yielding—human skin, branded with the antlered pentagram that dogged his steps. Beneath, in ashen runes, Liber Mortuorum. "The Book of the Dead," he muttered, the syllables sour and jagged on his breath.
The binding groaned, centuries-old and fragile, as he parted the pages, fingers drifting over the withered script. A codex of fell witchcraft emerged—spells of transmutation, resurrection, and maledictions etched in shadow. Then, Wendigo blazed across a page, enshrined in the resurrection's grim fold. Sketches lurked beside—tall, skeletal shapes with stag skulls, their sockets void. The text whispered of a spirit insatiable, claiming souls to stoke a ravenous hunger, goading its prey to kill and devour until, swollen with corruption and flesh, it strode forth into the world of men.
Grimm's chest heaved, a tired groan clawing from his throat as he pored over the tome, its brittle pages quaking. "This is the spirit haunting me," he muttered, voice a raw scrape, eyes devouring the faded text. Each soul fed the Wendigo's strength—its portents clear: visions of its antlered terror, a foul miasma poisoning the air, and an unseasonal frost gripping the earth. He faltered, the icy veil that had stung his arrival—too deep for autumn—and those searing visions flooding his mind. His eyes blazed, breath catching, heart pounding wild. But the well's horror jarred against the sketches. He scoured further, then stiffened. Gnm'oth… The name iced his spine, a whisper from the abyss. An illustration glared—a slug vast as a quarter-mile, its maw a tangle of gray tentacles, each sprouting a gaping, fanged mouth. A cosmic sentinel, called to ward boundless expanses. His thoughts recoiled, the sewer's dread mirrored in that alien visage.
A sharp creak splintered the silence from above, yanking Grimm's gaze from the tome to the stairwell's shadowed maw. The cult's purpose crystallized—they sought to summon the Wendigo, that stag-crowned terror, while the tentacled Gnm'oth stood sentinel over some unholy secret. The creaking swelled, a relentless knell—he was not alone. His eyes locked with the stairwell's dark stare, its depths unblinking. Shotgun raised, he climbed, each step a muted groan beneath his boots, drawing him nearer to the lurking peril.
The stair's crest unveiled a tight corridor, two doorways gaping—one sealed with jagged planks, the other a beckoning void. His barrels swept the air as he edged toward the open room. Blood streaked the walls, tracing the antlered pentagram in crimson smears, while trinkets dangled from the ceiling, their blood-soaked forms weeping red onto the floor. A foul reek clawed his nostrils—decay, thick and rancid. Beyond, another threshold pulsed with a faint green glow, a spectral lure. His shotgun probed the passage, white eyes blazing through the murk.
The glow unfurled—a portal, its green light seething, framed by a grotesque arch of mutilated corpses, their flesh rent, bones jutting in a tableau of anguish. The infernal radiance bathed the carnage, a testament to inhuman cruelty. Grimm's weapon dipped, awe and revulsion warring within at the sight—crude, savage, beyond mortal ken. Then—a creak, sharp behind him. He whirled, only to meet the rifle's butt crashing against his skull. His frame crumpled, consciousness fleeing in a smear of green and black, his arms hoisted as cloaked shadows dragged him back, the portal's glare his fading beacon.
Grimm's thoughts dissolved into a dream-wrought haze, the Wendigo's shadow staining his slumber. Brutal apparitions flashed—fingers gouging flesh in crimson rents, bones breaking with sharp, echoing cracks, a slaughter of blood and slime unfurling in relentless horror, as though he were ensnared in an eternal night terror. The stag skull rose, antlers sprawling like a gnarled throne, its red eyes, deep-set and glowing, searing his psyche with their relentless gaze. Then—a screech, raw and harrowing, shrieked through his skull, a blade of sound rending the fabric of his tormented reverie.
He awakened.
The air hung thick with vileness, a rancid miasma, the floor yielding beneath Grimm's boots with a sickening squelch. A faint glow seeped from an archway, casting a pallid sheen across the tomb that entombed him—a crypt of horrors. Naked corpses sprawled around, their flesh mangled beyond recognition, discarded in heaps like refuse from some butcher's nightmare. His hands groped through the carnage, seeking the shotgun—a glint flickered amid the ruin. Fingers sank into a mound of slimy, cold flesh, a macabre slurry of bone and sinew, until they closed on the wooden stock. He wrenched it free, its barrels slick with gore yet still loaded. A flicker of confusion gnawed at him—why abandon him here, armed? He swiped the blood and entrails from its steel, gripping it tight, a lifeline in the abyss.
His gaze swept the pit, cadavers pressing cold against his legs, their stillness a mockery. Above, a stone dome loomed, vast and oppressive, six gaping tunnels piercing its walls into unfathomable dark. Underground again, trapped in death's embrace. A ladder gleamed faintly to his side—an escape. He lurched toward it, wading through the sea of corpses, each step a stumble—his boot plunging into a shattered ribcage, crunching through decayed flesh. The trek stretched endless, a grotesque slog. Then—a hand, icy and claw-like, seized his ankle from the mire. Another grasped, shrieks of torment erupting beneath, the dead stirring to drag him under their writhing tide.
The corpses' grip clung with relentless malice, their bony claws unyielding, threatening to rend Grimm apart as his massive legs churned through the mire. "What devilry is this?" he roared, voice a thunderous snarl, shotgun swinging down to his ankles. "Release me!" His finger wrenched the trigger—a blast erupted, gore splattering his shrouded face in a crimson veil. Shrieks of torment pierced the crypt as he fired the second barrel, shredding the hands at his other foot. Yet more arms burst from the charnel sea, skeletal fingers snagging his cloak, his trousers. His muscles blazed, each stride a titanic wrench against invisible fetters. A claw seized his coattail, yanking him down—countless limbs surged forth, clawing to drag him into their profane embrace.
Grimm's frame dipped lower, phantom claws tugging him into the mire, their jagged nails shredding at his coat as he strained against their grip. Their strength brooked no defiance, encircling his waist, his visage hovering above the grave's hungry jaws. Abruptly, a cosmic screech tore from the glowing tunnel, its sound a shroud of primal terror that enveloped the dome. The hands recoiled, heaving him back to the surface of the corpse-heap. "What terror is this?" his voice thundered, a hollow echo as the shriek closed in, relentless.
From the tunnel's throat, tentacles emerged, lashing the stone edges, their monstrous force crumbling the archway in a cascade of dust and ruin. It could be naught but one. More tendrils slithered into view, the squelch of slime a sinister hymn. Grimm staggered upright, ejecting the shotgun's empty shells. His hand plunged into his coat—"Damn it," he hissed, six shells clinking in his palm. Shik! Shik! They slotted into place, a sharp Clak! as he snapped the barrels shut.
The shrieks softened to a basso growl as Gnm'oth loomed forth. Its tentacles dragged a vast, slug-like bulk, unveiling a maw of abomination—rows of jagged teeth dripping gore and slime, fringed with wriggling tendrils, some bearing human fingers in a grotesque mimicry of life. Its slick, gray hide shimmered, studded with skulls pressing through the flesh, a mockery of its helpless prey. Limbless, it crept on those tendrils, ponderous yet unyielding—a predator whose grasp promised oblivion.
Gnm'oth's tentacles crashed against the stone floor, a deafening peal that quaked the crypt, their slick lengths dangling from the platform's edge, oozing slime that slithered down the walls to pool atop the corpse-strewn mire below. Its gargantuan form—near a quarter mile of writhing, gray flesh—lurched closer, tendrils stretching far beyond its grotesque bulk, probing the dark like the fingers of some blind, insatiable god. Grimm retreated a step, shotgun braced, his breath a ragged fog in the fetid air. The beast surged forth, a relentless tide of horror, and with a sickening lurch, its tentacles lashed out—snaring his legs in a cold, slimy vise, yanking him toward the gaping maw where rows of serrated teeth gleamed, hungry for his flesh, his scream swallowed by the roar of his own doom.