THE TERRIBLE BEAST OF HUEVELMAN’S SQUARE
Kelston Hubler
I desperately hope I am simply a madman. Nothing more than a complete lunatic rambling on in a musty concrete room in the psychiatric ward. Yes, a sane, reasonable man like me has been driven to begging for the greatest dream of pure nonsense. If anyone aside from me is reading this, a story even I won't read, I am probably dead, or being laughed at as I ramble insane nonsense behind a thick concrete wall. Here is the story, as it was, up to now.
I lived in London, in 1857. It's a musty town, with people and horses strolling up and down the muddy wet concrete roads, surrounded on all sides by crumbling brick facades crammed with crying families and starving workers. The crammed alleyways hide gypsies and circus travelers intent on selling you chicken heads and voodoo nonsense, as well as deranged serial killers who prowl the foggy night alleys, looking for women to decapitate for their own sick pleasure, immortalized in the Penny Dreadfuls you can occasionally buy if your boss gives you a raise. It's a crowded, murky, industrialized town, but no one cares, just going about their everyday business like ants in the dirt. I live on the third apartment in a crowded brick complex simply known as "the brick house", on Huevalmans square. The building sits on the corner of a crossway, with endless streams of traffic noisily bumping into each other the entire cloudy day, until night, when the fog sets in and everybody flees the streets to avoid murderers. I came from a small moor side farm near Exmoor. My uncle invited me to live in the city as his secretary for his small boat making industry he does as the docks. One day, I watched from my musty window, looking down at the dimming streets. The people began to drain into houses, the horsemen driving as far away from the streets as possible. The gypsies and circus men slid into empty wooden crates in the alley. Then the fog set in. Everything below my apartment was gray clouds, seeping through the streets, like that octopus in those cartoons my mother sends me from America. She finds political cartoons funny. I look on, staring at the tin shack roofs, when I saw it. At first, I assumed it was a man, rising above the flat tops of an apartment complex. Then, I noticed it was much bigger. It looked much like a lizard, if a lizard was as big as two burly Irishmen. It had a long snout and a triangular flat head. It opened it's jaws, making an ear-splitting howl. It suddenly ran towards my complex, and jumped off the building. I reeled in shock as it disappeared into the fog. For two minutes, nothing happened. I soaked in what I just saw, and how impossible it was. Was it some sort of phantasm? Then it's foot hit the window. I fell back, being caught by a wooden chair. It's foot was like a cat, if the cat's skin was grey and the cat was shaved. The creature's head reared up into the window, hissing. It's solid black eyes were broken by red slits, staring at me. Looking deeper into them, I swear I saw that the slits were cracks in the gates of hell, oozing blood-colored fire and blasphemous demons of latin grimoires. It's right paw rose up to the window, banging it violently. The glass began to crack. The creature was like a ghost of a prehistoric beast from hell! I began to lose it. In the back of my mind, long lost memories of man's ancestry of worshiping and fearing primal demons and gods flooded into my modern brain. I rapidly shot my hand into the desk, yanking out a chalk, and I began to scribble ancient, cursed symbols written by the high priests of the celtics and Egyptians, muttering ancient profanities that would make a church priest faint. The ancient demon stopped banging. In my ritualistic trance, I forced my eyes to look up at the horrifying beast in the window. It's scaly lips moved like writhing animals on the operating table of a mad doctor, emitting ancient Egyptian curses in a booming voice. It jumped off the window, vanishing into the fog. My body stopped giving me back control. I ran to. The window. The creature was gone. I sat back in relief, thinking it must have been a hallucination, until I heard a man's scream. The creature jumped up onto the opposite building, a screaming man in it's jaws, confirming any hope I had of sanity. Then it jumped back into the fog, disappearing.
I didn't sleep that night. I was too busy huddling in my protective pagan symbols on the wooden floor, shivering in fear, looking at the window to wait for the monster's next move. It never did. The next day I read of a man disappearing, with a picture matching the man in the monster's jaws. That day, I started my search to find out what I saw. I was no longer rational, I was like a wide eyed child, listening to every gypsy in the alley way I interviewed, every Cultist in the sewers, believing everything they said. I always retreated to the safety of my apartment every night, boarding up the window with planks from my uncle's factory, hiding under my bed. Every night there was knocking, for exactly one minute, then it stopped. The cultists and gypsies said the monster was Grakkyth, a monster from another world. They said the smog was angering the gods, and the smog was used as a river of sorts by demons like Grakkyth, swimming from their world to ours. Then, one day, passing a park, I saw an enormous statue of a giant lizard, which looked exactly like Grakkyth! The creator of the statues said they were animals from the Stone Age, long before man. Could Grakkyth be a descendant of one of these beasts? I would occasionally gather strength to peel back the boards, to find out what was knocking. I would see the animal slithering over the rooftops like a snake, even though it clearly had legs. When the beast slithered close to me, the board would force itself shut, unable to be peeled up for days.
As a write, my fear has driven me home, after a whole month of this hell. I have reeled in horror to find the pagan symbols protecting me had been swept away by the manager! The fog is setting in, and I'm trapped. I rush for the door, but it's locked itself. Oh god. I cannot find any chalk or drawing utensils in the drawer. No, my hands are bleeding! The board, it's peeling away like paper, crumbling to dust. The glass is broken! IT'S INSI-
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