In which Howard gets schooled....

"Here it is," Lavinia said. "This is what I was looking for."

"Bizarre Plants?" Howard, aka HP Lovecraft said, looking over her shoulder. He's looking for a more "appropriate" body, but we haven't found one yet.

"Yeah. Maddy was asking about something - Gum Axtraxicia, I think. Something like that."

"Where is she?" I said.

"She and her sister went somewhere - I know, not a lot of help, right."

"In that time machine thingy?"

"The TARDIS? No. I think they took Aura's little car."

"I hope they got back before it started raining." It's been raining on and off - and more on than off - since Friday morning. We need it pretty badly, though. Everything was turning brown.

"Just made it!" That was Maddy. "Hey everyone, meet Bowie. She's the middle sister of the bunch."

"Sister?" Howard said.

"Yes. There are five of us," Maddy replied. "Myself, Sigourney, Bowie here, Swan and Alcyone."

"But she's...." Howard started.

"What? Black?" Lavinia stood up. "Oh for the Goddess' sake, Howard, don't start with that crap!"

"But - sisters? When they're....."

"That doesn't have a ****ing thing to do with it!" Since I'm trying to keep this somewhat PG, I'll leave some of Lavinia's language to your imagination. "When are you going to come to your damn senses and realize that we're all human beings, huh? It doesn't matter what color you are. I can't believe I even have to explain this to you. This is the twenty-first century."

"In our case, all Gallifreyians," Bowie said. "From the House of Jade Dreamers."

"We're sisters. We're all from the same genetic loom," Maddy added.

"Loom?"

"Our people lost the ability to bear children years ago. There hasn't been a womb-born child on Gallifrey for thousands of years now," Bowie said,

"And we're all the daughters of Cassilda, so shut up or else," Maddy added.

He seemed rather taken aback, but didn't say anything else about it. I think he has a lot to learn.....

Bonus pic - Maddy, me and Bowie.



















~*~
Note: HP Lovecraft's racism is pretty well-documented. I could only imagine what he'd make of Maddy and her sisters being such varied skin tones. And I can imagine Maddy ripping him a new one the instant he said anything ugly about them.

The reason I picked the four I did is because of the resemblance - and the fact that they were the ones of my crew who either didn't have backstories or didn't have well-defined ones. I think they look quite lovely together.

Bowie is a tan PKF Luna, BTW.

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. 

In which - Introducing Lavinia Whateley

I'm Lavinia Whateley, unquiet spirit.

Perhaps you've heard of me.

According to HP Lovecraft, I'm the somewhat deformed, ugly, crinkley-haired, slatternly albino freak who got knocked up by Yog-Sothoth and gave birth to the creepiest set of twins to ever walk the planet.

Okay, well - basically, that's true.

But allow me to explain.

I was born in 1878 to Noah Whateley of Dunwich, MA and his wife, Sophia Elizabeth Whateley, formerly Adams. At the time, my father was a self-educated farmer with a deep interest in the occult, which my mother shared. She came from Arkham and longed to attend Miskatonic University, but in those days, women weren't allowed to. When I was born, I was regarded as "deformed" simply because of my albinism. My parents were never rich - obviously - but we did have a comfortable, if modest, home and my childhood was happy.

But when I was twelve, all of that changed.

They - in town - tried to say that my father killed my mother, But that wasn't what happened. She was murdered by one of the so-called "undecayed" Whateleys - the "good" ones - when she rejected his advances. Jefferson Whateley, one of my father's cousins, wanted to sleep with her, but my mother would have none of his advances. So one night, when my father was away, he forced his way into the house and raped her, then cut her throat so she wouldn't tell. I climbed out a window and tried to go for help, but by the time I returned with some of the Frye family, it was too late. We couldn't go after Jefferson - dead women tell no tales and no one would believe the testimony of a twelve-year-old who was already regarded by most of the "respectable" folks as little more than a halfwit.

Is it any wonder my father went a little bit out of his mind?

To this day, I don't know why he didn't leave. Maybe there wasn't any place for him to go. But over the years, he became more and more obsessed with this idea of "opening the gate" between this world and - the other one. I think he believed that it would open the door to bringing my mother back. And I think he somehow reckoned that he'd be able to finally exact revenge on Jefferson and the rest of the "good" Whateleys.

Okay, maybe I'm not too bright myself. I let him talk me into the notion of being "the key to the gate." I thought I was just going to summon Yog-Sothoth, not wind up pregnant by - him? I guess it's "him."

Yeah, I should have asked more questions, A lot more. But he was my father. And I didn't have any reason at the time to think that he didn't know what the heck he was doing.

Which made two of us.

And I'll be honest - I loved the twins. Wilbur was a sweet baby. He never cried or complained. Why wouldn't I have been proud of him? And remember, at the time I thought I was doing the right thing. I really believed that we were going to save the world from itself, my father, my children and I. I believed that everything was going to be all right.

But yeah, as time went on, things got weird. Really weird.

It all went bad on Samhain night in 1926. Wilbur was convinced that this was the night, when the veil was thinnest, that he would open the gate at last. Except what he wanted to do had nothing to do with my mother, or my late father, or helping anyone. He intended to unleash the Elder Gods upon Earth, to call up Cthulhu from R'lyeh and the others with him. Except he needed blood to do it.

My blood.

I don't remember what happened, how he did it. But I do remember standing over my own body while he stared at me in horror, realizing that in death, I was far more powerful than he was or ever would be in life. I might have been only human, but I knew far more about the Old Ones than he did. And now that I was incorporeal, I could keep him from opening the gate. As for the whippoorwills heard screaming throughout that night - they and their deva were the ones who came to my aid, who helped me keep the gate closed and the world safe.

Psychopomps don't devour the souls of the dead, but they do eat nightghasts.

I chose to stay on in the realm, at least for now. Yog-Sothoth may be the Gate and the Key. but he's not the only one who knows how to work the lock. And he's not the only one who knows where the Old Ones broke through before, and where they shall again.

Not gonna happen. Not on my watch.