Five and the mysterious cabin at the base of the mountain
in H.P. Lovecraft-mode.
I’ve not read any of the Five-books in a very long time. So much time has passed that their imprint on my mind has to be carbon dated in order to figure out the exact amount. To make things worse, when I did I read them it was in Swedish too, so I have no idea how the Blyton woman really wrote. But thankfully, the story gives me a chance to mimic the other writer instead. It’s much better and quite sicker-funnier as well.
I feel I must tell you what happened on that frightful night when the five of us decided to investigate the mysterious cabin by the mountain. I don’t want to, but I feel I must or else I’ll loose whatever little there is left of my mind.
“Come on Timmy!” George ran up the hill while her dog slowly paced and jumped behind her feet. Behind them, the rest of us walked knowing little of the horrors that awaited later that very same night. My sister, Anne, carried the knapsack, a knitted basket filled with all sorts of food imaginable by humans and Gods alike. She felt she had to carry it, as she trusted neither our brother Dick nor me to handle it out of fear that we should eat it before we arrived. It would turn out that we had bigger things to worry about soon.
“But please Anne. Just a small taste of the delicious bread with cucumber-sauce and roast-beef, as I’m starving so much I’m going mad,” Dick whined as he slouched forwards in a never-ending pace of slowness. At the time I wouldn’t have minded a small bit myself, but Anne was relentlessly stubborn, so much so that I almost mistook her for George, but alas, her demeanour gave her away. George and Dick and Timmy suddenly leaped ahead as we could see the cabin’s dark and murky exterior although it was still a bit up the road. Anne and me still walked slowly, I couldn’t help to feel sorry for her to carry all that food by her lonesome.
When Anne and I arrived at the cabin, the others had already pushed the door open and while sunlight gazed into the doorway for probably the first time in decades my brother and cousin pried on the inside of the building, trying to discover all it’s secrets as fast as they could. When the both of us entered Timmy greeted us with a loud friendly bark and nuzzled his nose against my leg, he was clearly as hungry as the rest of us. Anne’s stomach growled not lesser so than George’s or mine, so she walked up to the table they had cleaned up and spread out the tablecloth and put the food on the table. I can still taste it, as it was the last meal some of us ever had and that sort of thing tends to leave its mark on the memory.
We ate ourselves stuffed and later we just sat down, hindered to perform any kind of activity by the food in out abdomens. It was Timmy who first noticed that something in the cabin wasn’t quite as it should have been, he got anxious and restlessly persuade his notion to stalk up whatever it was that caused his unrest. Soon he disappeared, but no one of us noticed it at first, not until George began to look about.
“Timmy! Where are you? Timmy!” she screamed and than she turned to the rest of us. “Why doesn’t ha answer? Something must be wrong as he always comes hither when I call after him like that.” In George’s voice we could hear hysteria building up.
“Maybe he found a rabbit or two playing around,” Dick joked but not even he found it particularly funny. Even though I would have preferred not to, I arose from the floor where I had rested.
“We must find him then,” I said. “I didn’t see him run out so he must have gone astray in the house.”
“But how? The cabin is far too small to get lost in, even less so to get out of hearing-range. Something must be wrong.” And she was right too, something was very wrong in the cabin as we would soon realise and we would curse the day we first heard of the place.
We all decided to walk as one and as such we hurried down the corridor peaking into every room we passed on by in our search. When we go to the room furthest in, we made a discovery second only the George’s lost dog. In the wall a gaping hole appeared, the hole was in itself a terrifying omen as it had what looked like sharp and pointy teeth and the darkness that oozed out of it made the air damp and vile, tainting the entire room as it affected the walls into creating the feeling of them slowly pushing inwards.
George, never one for restraint, urged us on into the darkness although she did agree to wait for us to get a proper supply of food as well as lamps to guide and light up our path down and forwards. The cave that existed behind the cabin was a twisted maze of hallways and large halls that were so drenched in darkness that they seemed to stretch further than I see in the dim light that eradiated and flickered from our lamps, the very light which changed what we could see with every step we took. Anne clutched to my left arm as the images that were created frightened her, as she need something to make her feel more secure. George never showed any fear but we all knew her so well that we knew that she too was terrified and had goose bumps and her bones chilled to the very centre of her being, we knew this because she had by now stopped calling out for Timmy with a loud voice, afraid of what would answer.
Although it felt as days, we must have walked for several hours on that path that constantly lead us further downwards in the long hideous cave system – none of us had eaten, the fear kept our hunger in place far better than I was comfortable with. Suddenly there seemed to be a light coming from something up ahead, this made Anne gasp and Dick, George and even I followed her example in this. My forehead was shimmering with pearls of sweat that poured out from under my hairline and my legs trembled and produced a fait rickety sound as we slowly sauntered towards it. We could hear some sort of chanting, a few words repeated into an endless stream of sounds that bordered very well to gibberish. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftaghn! Ia! Ia!
When we arrived there my bones chilled to a yet unknown ice-cold substance and my blood turned into vile. There I saw the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen and then, when my mind reeled I took a step backwards and I believe that is what saved me in the end. George, my poor cousin never saw it as she only had her eyes on Timmy that lay on the ground in the cave, a subterfuge she was unable to see that only lured her into a trap so heinous that I was glad her pain was quickly over. My brother and sister stood as frozen, unable to move away from the horror that lurked in the cave, it grabbed them and when I close my eyes I still see their faces covered with slime and sticky yellow substance that oozed from the beings scales and sores. As I darted away from there back into the darkness, tears flowed down my cheeks and unable to see my legs persisted in hitting the sharp edges of the walls. For a while the sound the thing made echoed through the caves together with screams I can only imagine belonged to my siblings – they didn’t reassemble their usual voices at all, as if it had somehow done something unspeakable with them – this rung in my ears and it only urged me on even when I felt like collapsing in a heap. Instead I sometimes were forced to run for all I was worth at the same time as I ate, the bread still tasted like a bit of heaven when I fully knew that my friends and I must have surely descended into hell somewhere during our long walk in these forsaken caves.
I alone live to tell this tale, but I don’t know for how long my mind can withstand the pressure and force me deep into insanity, perhaps my body will give up sooner and give in to the death I can’t bring onto myself by any other means.
