A working title

A little something I wrote recently, I hope you'll enjoy it.

[Working title]

I first found the thing in a small box, buried in decades of dust, at the very bottom of one of the many crates of the natural history museum that bore the title “misc”. Though made of the same mouldering cardboard thousands of other such artefacts reside in, this one bore strange symbols, an indescribable mash of strange shapes and symbols which seemed to make my eyes swim in their sockets. Sealing the bizarre package were two bands of iron, wrapped around it almost in parody of a child’s birthday present.

Though I felt a flush of dread as my reaching fingers wrapped around the package, I pulled it free from its resting place, and inspected its card. Though the dust and neglect had taken a horrendous toll upon it, enough remained that I learned that the thing, whatever it was, was found out on south of England in the middle of the Second World War. It was also stored alone, but was apparently found with several other mysterious objects. By now I noticed a strange feeling of heat emanating from within the box, and although I put it down to nerves and I quickly hurried from the musty storeroom, my curious prize tucked under one arm.

It was 1:00am on a rainy Sunday evening that I, through scientific curiosity and several glasses of strong liquor, was able to overcome my trepidation and approach the thing with intent to reveal its contents. The steel bands I noticed, as I worked at them with a crowbar, were marked with strange pictures, depicting scenes of alternating plenty and slaughter, with a ram-headed humanoid figure at the centre of each, seemingly a figure of both undisputed love and unmatched hate in equal measure. At last, though, the bonds that held them together came loose, and both bands broke from the box immediately. At that moment I could have sworn a flicker of hushed speech, inconsistent as the wind and lighter than a feather, fluttered through my small London apartment, though my mind was elsewhere.

For below me, dimly lit by a shoddy electric lamp, was the box. A mania I haven’t felt before or since started to lick at the edges of my mind, driving me to pull the box nearly in two as my hands delved for the prize within it. Grasping something, I withdrew, pulling the object close to my chest and clutching it as though it were a fresh-born babe for a moment. As my calm and rational senses returned to me, however, I pulled the thing away from me, and observed it for the first time. I still tremble to remember its features. It resembled a goat’s horn, crudely torn from the skull by an unskilled hand, with a small ebony carving of an unspeakable snarling creature wrapped around it. More disgusting about the odd totem was that it was slightly wet and warm, with strips of flesh and clumps of blood and hair still clinging to its base.

Recoiling at the disgusting sight of the horn, I hurriedly threw it onto the table and returned to the box, looking for any reason why such a thing resided there just a moment before. I found nothing but scrunched up balls of inexplicably dry packing paper until I reached the very bottom, where some form of note, torn from a rather cheap notebook, baring script written in a hurried hand. Little script remained legible and I crossed the lounge as to read it in a better light. The note was a collection of strange tales and findings relating to an ancient Celtic lord of rebirth, a mythical figure from before the time when the Roman Empire clasped its hands around the British Isles. As my eyes continued the arduous task of decoding the spider-like handwriting I felt a strange apprehension, and looking up I noticed the horn had come to rest on my table in such a way that the imp clutching it seemed to stare in my direction with soulless, carved eyes. I shook my head to cast away fears that the thing might be haunted, and resumed my reading.

It was to prove more than fruitful, as it so happens. The paper had given tantalising clues as to the otherworldly nature of the strange object I’d happened upon, and the paper bore a signature, that of one Edmund Finch. Added to this was the unmistakable crest of the University of York printed in the upper left of the page, and I quickly resolved to seek him out. Why I did so, I cannot truly say now. If I had a clue as to sights and events I would soon witness I’d have sooner discarded the wretched thing into the Thames and be done with it, but something drove me. A strange and perverse urge of wanting to know more about the artefact, and it’s miraculous, if morbid, freshness made me resolve to book a ticket on the first train in the morning bound for York. That this was no ordinary lump of a dead animal I was certain, as I noticed with a slight sickening in my stomach as I undressed for bed, in the small bedroom opposite the lounge, that the beady, glassy eyes of the carved imp had not left me since I had discarded it some hours earlier.