Inheritance
My grandfather, Albert Helzinberg, died last month.
I hadn't really known the man. My parents had died in a bizarre accident when I was six. I was raised by my Aunt Tilly, my mother's sister. Because of this I didn't have much to do with my fathers side of the family. Aunt Tilly actually refused to talk about the old man, she seemed almost afraid of him when I would ask her about about my family. I can't say when I had last seen my Gandad. Yet a few days after his death I got called to see his lawyer.
Apparently he had left me a small inheritance. Very small actually. It consisted mostly of his library. He had been quite the book collector, and since most of his money had been taken up by funeral payments and other expenses, all that was left of his belonging for me to get were his collection.
I was surprised by all of this. I told my Aunt, and she said to just refuse to accept anything that was his. This struck me as odd, and wasteful. It wasn't like my Aunt to throw away something that might be worth money. But she was adamant that nothing good would come from having anything to do with my Grandfather.
It was on a Friday when the books finally arrived at my apartment in Brooklyn. The UPS man had me sign, then started to bring in box after box of books. There must have been hundreds. They filled my spare bedroom and most of my living room area.
I figured I could maybe go through them and see if any were worth any money. Perhaps put them up on E-bay and see what I could get for them. After all I could use the cash much more than the clutter. Not that I'm drowning in debt or anything, but there's a difference between treading water and swimming. I hoped that if a few of these were rare old books maybe I could manage a nice vacation out of them.
I took a weekend off to unpack the books, piling them up as best I could in different piles based on if I knew the titles, if they looked old, or if they seemed like trash. It was going pretty good when I came upon the locked box. It was inside one of the UPS boxes they had used, but it was leather and very old looking. It was heavy and had an old rusted lock on it with a key still in it. This got my attention. Clearing up a space I began to see if I could get the box open. Unfortunately it resisted my efforts, the lock was rusted just too much, and since I didn't want to damage it there was only so much force I was willing to use.
I went to the store later that day and got myself a can of WD-40. I ended up using almost the whole can on the old lock, but after a while I was able to turn the key. The box opened with a high pitched grinding noise and a release of rather noxious fumes. Inside the box were 5 books. They looked odd, each very old and with a binding that almost looked like leather, but if so it was no leather I had ever seen before. Almost a pinkish color. Each book was written in some foreign language that I couldn't read. The first was entitled De Vermis Mysteriis, the second was Unaussprechlichen Kultan, the third Deamonalatreia, and lastly Al Azif. The fifth book was newer looking than the rest, it was a collection of artistic drawing by someone named Richard Upton Pickman. These I put aside, because after flipping through the drawings I figured that anything so abhorrent as these pictures were must be worth something to someone. They were of the most horrible subjects, yet done with such a realistic style that one felt like you could reach into them.
I decided that I should try looking up the titles of the other 4 books, as well as the artist who did the drawings. Perhaps these might be worth some real dough. I flipped through the books a bit, there were some disturbing pictures in them, and the one called Al Azif had some almost mathematical equations in it as well. I wondered why the book seemed to feel almost greasy, in fact touching it kind of made my skin crawl. I stared at the words in it. It almost looked like they weren't even real words in it, just squiggly lines racing across the pages. As I blinked I fancied that the words almost seemed to move around, an interesting optical illusion probably caused by the weird foreign writing. I stopped looking at after a while because trying to make sense of it was giving me a headache.
The next day I went on the internet and started to search. At first I had little luck. Amazon had some of the books, but they were obviously either much later versions or more likely different books with the same names. None of them looked remotely like the volumes I had.
Then a break of sorts when I stumbled across a reference to a writer, a Lovecraft. Yet the article I read suggested that the man, some horror writer from way back, invented the books. That of course had to be false, these books at my table were much older looking than to be just under a century and were certainly not imaginary. The books he used in his fiction were of the same name, and also dealt with evil things. I wondered if maybe he had based his stories around the information he had found in the books then pretended they were fiction in order to hide the fact that he'd read them at all. I followed link after link about the books, yet no matter how much I delved I couldn't find any reference to anything that looked remotely like my inheritance.
stymied in my efforts I instead decided to try and translate some of the books. If I could manage to pick out a few phrases then maybe I could get results from googol. So I went looking for for sites that would help me read the strange words inside the books. This took much longer than anticipated, but after a few hours I had managed to copy out some phrases in the Kultan book, which it turns out was in German. Yet the phrases that I managed to switch into English didn't make much sense to me. Just gibberish about people worshiping corpses, or something like that. One of the words came back as meaning dead gods, which I guess meant either zombies or Jesus. It kind of made me think of some of the pictures in that Pickman guys book. Some of the words didn't even seem to have a translation, I couldn't decide if they were meant to be names of people and places or maybe written in some sort of code.
Frustrated with everything I was glad when my Aunt called me on the phone, interrupting my work and giving me an excuse for a break. She seemed uneasy as we talked, and I realized that in her own special way she was edging around questions about the books I had gotten. I finally got her to the point of the call, which was she was uneasy about me reading some of my Grandfathers stuff. She told me, hesitantly, that she always wondered if the old man had had something to do with the night my parents died. It was one of the reasons why she had kept me away. To her my Grandfather was into unholy stuff, and she didn't like to think that it might have now been passed on to me.
I have to admit that all this made me laugh. Who knows, maybe the old man had been some weird satanist, but it was all just headtrips for idiots as far as I was concerned. I told my Aunt that I had no intention on keeping any of the books, that even now I was in the midst of trying to find a little out about them so I could put them up on E-Bay to help finance my vacation. This seemed to relieve her a lot. I also told her that who knows, maybe it was meant for some dark rites, but that it meant nothing to me. In the end I convinced her that what I had read was all just the babbling of some sick little people who didn't know better. Nothing to worry the heart of a good woman like her, or to trouble my sleep at all. To prove it to her I read her the passages that I had been able to translate over the phone.
I was not alarmed at the time when the phone went dead. The fact that it happened right after I finished the passage I was reading didn't even register on me. I figured that either the connection got broken, or that my poor Aunt had accidentally hung up on me. I also didn't get too concerned when my attempt to call her back was met with failure. I began to think that maybe she was a little upset that I had read to her from a book that she considered evil. So I left it at that and went back to trying to translate the books I had.
It was about a half an hour later that the phone rang again. I assumed it was my Aunt, meaning to either apologize for the hang up or to chastise me for the reading. What I wasn't expecting was the police.
The next few days were such a blur that I didn't have much time to think. There was the funeral to arrange, which took up much of my time and even more of my mind. It had to be closed casket. There was no choice due to the shape the body was in. The police seemed to want to talk to me constantly, updates on how the search for my Aunts killer was going, about how outraged the people in the community were over her violent death, the charity fund they raised in her memory. I was amazed at the amount of people at her funeral. I knew that my Aunt was a good women, after all she had raised my poor orphan self, but the fact that this many people knew how good a women she was was stunning in a way. Sometimes we don't realize the impact that the people in our lives can have on others.
After she was laid to rest the whirlwind didn't slow down right away. It turned out that she had left me quite a bit of money. As well as her home. As one of her few family I got the majority of her estate. Even after the bills were paid off I was going to be able to live quite a comfortable life. Aunt Tilly had spent years storing away money just in case, now it had become my just in case money. But none of this could touch the fact that my Aunt was gone, murdered in a horrible fashion. The last real touch of family I had. I was alone now.
It must have been almost a month before I got to look at the books again. I had had everything of mine moved into my Aunts house, a nice little place out in the country. It was perfect. Quiet and just off the direct path. It also had a sturdy basement. That was critical. After all, I need a place away from the light if I'm to deal with the dark.
See, I figure that whatever I read in that book caused my Aunt's death. The way she was killed, well it's the same as pictures drawn by Pickman. The horrible things done to her body, no man could have achieved that. Let the police stumble about and look for a maniac, only I know the truth. The fact that it was something called up by my Grandfathers books that tore my Aunt to shreds. I also figure that my Aunt may have been correct about his having a hand in my parents death. Their strange accident could be tied into something in these books. See, I have translated even more of the book, I know some of their horrible secrets now. They talk of evil and secrets. They tell of things that weren't meant to ever exist, and how to make these things do your bidding.
I also know exactly what I must do. What I have to do, in memory of my poor dead Aunt.
There are so many people in the world who deserved to die instead of her.
The only question left is, who should I call and read to next?
I hadn't really known the man. My parents had died in a bizarre accident when I was six. I was raised by my Aunt Tilly, my mother's sister. Because of this I didn't have much to do with my fathers side of the family. Aunt Tilly actually refused to talk about the old man, she seemed almost afraid of him when I would ask her about about my family. I can't say when I had last seen my Gandad. Yet a few days after his death I got called to see his lawyer.
Apparently he had left me a small inheritance. Very small actually. It consisted mostly of his library. He had been quite the book collector, and since most of his money had been taken up by funeral payments and other expenses, all that was left of his belonging for me to get were his collection.
I was surprised by all of this. I told my Aunt, and she said to just refuse to accept anything that was his. This struck me as odd, and wasteful. It wasn't like my Aunt to throw away something that might be worth money. But she was adamant that nothing good would come from having anything to do with my Grandfather.
It was on a Friday when the books finally arrived at my apartment in Brooklyn. The UPS man had me sign, then started to bring in box after box of books. There must have been hundreds. They filled my spare bedroom and most of my living room area.
I figured I could maybe go through them and see if any were worth any money. Perhaps put them up on E-bay and see what I could get for them. After all I could use the cash much more than the clutter. Not that I'm drowning in debt or anything, but there's a difference between treading water and swimming. I hoped that if a few of these were rare old books maybe I could manage a nice vacation out of them.
I took a weekend off to unpack the books, piling them up as best I could in different piles based on if I knew the titles, if they looked old, or if they seemed like trash. It was going pretty good when I came upon the locked box. It was inside one of the UPS boxes they had used, but it was leather and very old looking. It was heavy and had an old rusted lock on it with a key still in it. This got my attention. Clearing up a space I began to see if I could get the box open. Unfortunately it resisted my efforts, the lock was rusted just too much, and since I didn't want to damage it there was only so much force I was willing to use.
I went to the store later that day and got myself a can of WD-40. I ended up using almost the whole can on the old lock, but after a while I was able to turn the key. The box opened with a high pitched grinding noise and a release of rather noxious fumes. Inside the box were 5 books. They looked odd, each very old and with a binding that almost looked like leather, but if so it was no leather I had ever seen before. Almost a pinkish color. Each book was written in some foreign language that I couldn't read. The first was entitled De Vermis Mysteriis, the second was Unaussprechlichen Kultan, the third Deamonalatreia, and lastly Al Azif. The fifth book was newer looking than the rest, it was a collection of artistic drawing by someone named Richard Upton Pickman. These I put aside, because after flipping through the drawings I figured that anything so abhorrent as these pictures were must be worth something to someone. They were of the most horrible subjects, yet done with such a realistic style that one felt like you could reach into them.
I decided that I should try looking up the titles of the other 4 books, as well as the artist who did the drawings. Perhaps these might be worth some real dough. I flipped through the books a bit, there were some disturbing pictures in them, and the one called Al Azif had some almost mathematical equations in it as well. I wondered why the book seemed to feel almost greasy, in fact touching it kind of made my skin crawl. I stared at the words in it. It almost looked like they weren't even real words in it, just squiggly lines racing across the pages. As I blinked I fancied that the words almost seemed to move around, an interesting optical illusion probably caused by the weird foreign writing. I stopped looking at after a while because trying to make sense of it was giving me a headache.
The next day I went on the internet and started to search. At first I had little luck. Amazon had some of the books, but they were obviously either much later versions or more likely different books with the same names. None of them looked remotely like the volumes I had.
Then a break of sorts when I stumbled across a reference to a writer, a Lovecraft. Yet the article I read suggested that the man, some horror writer from way back, invented the books. That of course had to be false, these books at my table were much older looking than to be just under a century and were certainly not imaginary. The books he used in his fiction were of the same name, and also dealt with evil things. I wondered if maybe he had based his stories around the information he had found in the books then pretended they were fiction in order to hide the fact that he'd read them at all. I followed link after link about the books, yet no matter how much I delved I couldn't find any reference to anything that looked remotely like my inheritance.
stymied in my efforts I instead decided to try and translate some of the books. If I could manage to pick out a few phrases then maybe I could get results from googol. So I went looking for for sites that would help me read the strange words inside the books. This took much longer than anticipated, but after a few hours I had managed to copy out some phrases in the Kultan book, which it turns out was in German. Yet the phrases that I managed to switch into English didn't make much sense to me. Just gibberish about people worshiping corpses, or something like that. One of the words came back as meaning dead gods, which I guess meant either zombies or Jesus. It kind of made me think of some of the pictures in that Pickman guys book. Some of the words didn't even seem to have a translation, I couldn't decide if they were meant to be names of people and places or maybe written in some sort of code.
Frustrated with everything I was glad when my Aunt called me on the phone, interrupting my work and giving me an excuse for a break. She seemed uneasy as we talked, and I realized that in her own special way she was edging around questions about the books I had gotten. I finally got her to the point of the call, which was she was uneasy about me reading some of my Grandfathers stuff. She told me, hesitantly, that she always wondered if the old man had had something to do with the night my parents died. It was one of the reasons why she had kept me away. To her my Grandfather was into unholy stuff, and she didn't like to think that it might have now been passed on to me.
I have to admit that all this made me laugh. Who knows, maybe the old man had been some weird satanist, but it was all just headtrips for idiots as far as I was concerned. I told my Aunt that I had no intention on keeping any of the books, that even now I was in the midst of trying to find a little out about them so I could put them up on E-Bay to help finance my vacation. This seemed to relieve her a lot. I also told her that who knows, maybe it was meant for some dark rites, but that it meant nothing to me. In the end I convinced her that what I had read was all just the babbling of some sick little people who didn't know better. Nothing to worry the heart of a good woman like her, or to trouble my sleep at all. To prove it to her I read her the passages that I had been able to translate over the phone.
I was not alarmed at the time when the phone went dead. The fact that it happened right after I finished the passage I was reading didn't even register on me. I figured that either the connection got broken, or that my poor Aunt had accidentally hung up on me. I also didn't get too concerned when my attempt to call her back was met with failure. I began to think that maybe she was a little upset that I had read to her from a book that she considered evil. So I left it at that and went back to trying to translate the books I had.
It was about a half an hour later that the phone rang again. I assumed it was my Aunt, meaning to either apologize for the hang up or to chastise me for the reading. What I wasn't expecting was the police.
The next few days were such a blur that I didn't have much time to think. There was the funeral to arrange, which took up much of my time and even more of my mind. It had to be closed casket. There was no choice due to the shape the body was in. The police seemed to want to talk to me constantly, updates on how the search for my Aunts killer was going, about how outraged the people in the community were over her violent death, the charity fund they raised in her memory. I was amazed at the amount of people at her funeral. I knew that my Aunt was a good women, after all she had raised my poor orphan self, but the fact that this many people knew how good a women she was was stunning in a way. Sometimes we don't realize the impact that the people in our lives can have on others.
After she was laid to rest the whirlwind didn't slow down right away. It turned out that she had left me quite a bit of money. As well as her home. As one of her few family I got the majority of her estate. Even after the bills were paid off I was going to be able to live quite a comfortable life. Aunt Tilly had spent years storing away money just in case, now it had become my just in case money. But none of this could touch the fact that my Aunt was gone, murdered in a horrible fashion. The last real touch of family I had. I was alone now.
It must have been almost a month before I got to look at the books again. I had had everything of mine moved into my Aunts house, a nice little place out in the country. It was perfect. Quiet and just off the direct path. It also had a sturdy basement. That was critical. After all, I need a place away from the light if I'm to deal with the dark.
See, I figure that whatever I read in that book caused my Aunt's death. The way she was killed, well it's the same as pictures drawn by Pickman. The horrible things done to her body, no man could have achieved that. Let the police stumble about and look for a maniac, only I know the truth. The fact that it was something called up by my Grandfathers books that tore my Aunt to shreds. I also figure that my Aunt may have been correct about his having a hand in my parents death. Their strange accident could be tied into something in these books. See, I have translated even more of the book, I know some of their horrible secrets now. They talk of evil and secrets. They tell of things that weren't meant to ever exist, and how to make these things do your bidding.
I also know exactly what I must do. What I have to do, in memory of my poor dead Aunt.
There are so many people in the world who deserved to die instead of her.
The only question left is, who should I call and read to next?
posted by Azathoth100 | 10:05 PM
1 Comments:
I read this at work today...Damn Az you're good!
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