A story in the style of H P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
A writer called Alfred Jonathan Herbert West is in an asylum and is being asked why he has aged so rapidly into a seventy year old man. We learn that the owner of a mysterious castle has become a pile of dust...and is still alive as that pile of dust. We also learn that one of Alfred's friends has survived. Against the power of one of the Great Old Ones, how did they survive?
Tropes relating to the work:
- Apocalyptic Log: Technically the whole story: at the end, Alfred notices the person writing his speech hasn't moved for about five minutes and screams for the nurse before being throttled to death by the body of the doctor, all while the doctor still writes what is said, down to the noise of Alfred dying. Definately one of the stranger examples of this trope.
- Dead Man Writing: The doctor at the end.
- Eldritch Abomination: Kél-Ban-Z'án.
- Fate Worse than Death: It's a H P Lovecraft style story, what did you expect?
- To be more specific, the owner of the castle has been transformed into a pile of dust...and he is still alive. It is stated that Alfred managed to save some of him by putting part of him into a small box. Alfred himself has been aged by at least forty years. It is suggested that one of his friends has had the same fate as Alfred. Of the others, one has been brainwashed and transplanted into the body of a daemon (which is foreshadowed), one has been swallowed whole by the Great Old One Kél-Ban-Z'án (who is described as not being able to digest anything, which suggests he is still alive in the Great Old One), one has dropped down a deep mine shaft as part of a summoning ritual and the last was re-captured and Alfred never learns what really happened to him, although it is assumed that they killed him.
- Foreshadowing: All of the character deaths, via dreams that the characters have.
