In which let's just call this "From The Void"

I do not know how long it was.

For seeming eons I floated, both aware and yet unaware, at once a part of all creation and yet apart from it, seeing all that had been and was and was yet to be...

Yet, I did not see this. 

The cold green fire, the icy burning, the swirling, mocking, silently shrieking horror that tore me from - where I know not - hurling me through endless space and time until I collided, unaware, with a force that rent me from my senses, left me in unknowing blackness...

Until....

"Hello, Howard."

A voice, human.

I opened my eyes - dumbly aware that I somehow had eyes again to open. The figure leaning over me, white on white on - pink? 

I should have known who she was, but my senses had been torn from me. I attempted to focus my eyes upon her.

"Remember me? The crinkly-haired, slatternly deformed albino slut you so gleefully shamed in your stupid little tale? How much did they pay you for that one, anyway?"

That one? Which one? Which...which.....Dunwich?

"Lavinia?" I somehow succeeded in sitting up. 

"That's right." Her displeasure was evident. "Of all the idiots that idiot had to bring back, he picked you."

"Bring back?" I still could not fathom where I was nor how I had come be there, but my memory was returning. I was - had been - Howard Philip Lovecraft, failed writer of weird fiction. Where I was now, and in what form, I knew not. I knew I was in a body of some sort, for I could move and speak. But where and how I had come to be in it - as well as the identity of the "idiot" Lavinia spoke of - I knew not. 

"We've been afraid of this happening ever since Dr. West escaped from prison over Halloween. We think he had help." The speaker was - a cloth doll?!

"Who - surely you cannot mean Herbert West?!" This could not be. 

"That's him," Lavinia said. "The first idiot."

"Idiot indeed, but just intelligent enough to be dangerous," her companion agreed. "By the way, I'm John Ashton Smith, Paranormal Investigator, Miskatonic University."

Miskatonic.....surely I was mad. Surely this was a product of my fevered imaginings, not....

And yet, the most abysmal shock awaited. For when I raised my hand...

"It could be worse," John Ashton Smith's pink-clad companion spoke. "At least he stuck you in something that was finished. He tried to stick a bunch of spirits in these half-finished doll bodies he got from this obnoxious woman in Arkham."

"Bishop?" Lavinia said. "Yeah, she's a little off. So much for the "undecayed" side."

"Will someone please tell we where I am and what - what is going on? Why am I a nightghast? And how..."

"Okay, first, technically, you're a gargoyle," Lavinia said. "And secondly, Herbert West tried to bring you back from the dead, but he forgot that anyone with half a brain - which is about all you have, in my opinion - is going to be useless for a few days until they get adjusted, so he just left you in the woods out back. And thirdly, I don't appreciate the way you slandered me and my family at all. Not to mention trying to blame my mother's murder on my father, And I don't care how much you didn't agree with my life choices, as they say, you had no freaking right to shame me or my children. Okay, maybe Wilbur didn't turn out the way I hoped, but a mother can only do so much. At least Edwin is a good son, despite you making him out to be a horror."

"Edwin....?"

"They both had names, you know. And I trusted you to tell my side of the story. Not turn it into some cheap, good-against-evil load of garbage!"

"I would agree that you do owe Miss Lavinia an apology," John Ashton Smith added. "She and her son have proved invaluable advisers to the Paranormal Studies department."

"But why would West have tried to - reanimate me?"

"Because you're the one who wrote all of this down." Lavinia's tone softened somewhat. "If he has you on his side, then guess what? We're screwed. If he finds out you've some to your senses, he's going to go after you. You have a choice to make - him or us. The Old Ones aren't the evil ones. It was Wilbur's human side that doomed him. He fell in love with power." She looked square into my face. "You have a chance to help make all this right. What are you going to do?"

What could I do? I had to trust Lavinia and her most unusual friends, even though she had just cause for despising me - truly, I had wronged her.

"Perhaps start by admitting that I was wrong about you," I confessed. "Then perhaps see about finding a different body."

"One thing at a time, okay?" she replied.

~*~

- Maddy's note - I've been searching for a BJD to turn into HP Lovecraft for awhile, with (obviously) no success. So I settled on a Monster High doll for now. Somewhat appropriate, no? Although if anyone had any ideas for a BJD that's not too out of scale for my crew (nothing over MSD size, please) I'd love to hear them.

And yeah, I tried to write this in Lovecraft's voice. I don't think I succeeded.