Best Little Witch-House in Arkham

That book is filthy. Wicked. Dangerous. Yet it feels so comforting to own it.

No, that watch doubles as a high-power flame-thrower and a bidet.

THE SLITHERING QUIVER OF THE RIVER LIZARD'S TWISTED LIVER-BLISTERS In the city of Phlemuria, three miles west of Ulthar in the Elder Dreamlands, folks had a saying: the god of Fate is no more than a capricious old pig-herder made cranky by an embarrassing rash.

THAT IS NOT DEAD WHICH CAN ETERNAL LIE /AND WITH STRANGE AEONS, EVEN DEATH MAY LIVE AND LET DIE

Reginald’s furnishings, I noted, were solid oak. Oak! Now there was a wood you could trust. I noticed something odd about his bookcase—something that caused a small but sharp bell of warning to ring in my mind. Most of the volumes on its shelves were quite old, and bound in rotting human skin. Finally I noticed the thing that had set off my inner alarm: the bookends were mismatched. One was a human skull and the other was a kitschy little plastic owl. Certainly plastic has no place in the decor of a gentleman’s study.

My hands shivered like twin albino bats in an Antarctic ice-cave, assuming such caves served as lodging for such bats. I’m not really sure. They’d have to be pretty hardy bats. What would they eat?

1. Dark Lord of the Screaming Abyss 2. Protector of the Night-Gaunts 3. Messenger of the Crypt Gods 4. Vile Master of the Blood-Soaked Torments 5. Father of the Black Scorpions 6. Uncle of the Flesh-Eating Hawks 7. Second-Cousin of the Accursed Pharaoh with Pubic Dandruff 8. Niles Lathotep 9. The Killjoy of Kadath 10. Discount Abdul, the Persian Carpet King—Half-Off This Week Only 11. Keeper of the Sacred Camel-Toes 12. He Who Doth Swing Both Ways in Darkness 13. Minty Belasco 14. Big Jake

What’s that you say, girl? A foamy-mouthed kitty bit your ass and now you’ve gone mondo batshit?

The thing looked like an especially unsavory cross between a mangy hound-dog, a Tasmanian devil, and a scruffy, drug-addled, middle-aged British rock star.

I happened to run into Anton at the Arkham Public Library just a few days later. I was walking down a shadowy hallway when he came bustling out of the Forbidden, Unspeakably Dangerous, Never-To-Be-Checked-Out-By-Anyone Section with a notepad in his hand

I only hope you are never tempted to venture into the library’s Forbidden, Unspeakably Dangerous, Never-To-Be-Checked-Out-By-Anyone Section to peruse our secret copy of that most shocking and insanity-inducing of ancient tomes, typeset at a point-size convenient to those with impaired vision—the Large-Print Necronomicon!

If what’s behind that door is so terrible, shouldn’t we carry a machete or two? A kitchen knife? An especially sturdy cocktail umbrella?” “There is no weapon on Earth one could wield against such terror!” he moaned. “Oh, I see. Then we should just go in unarmed. Well, fine. Lead the way.

And at 10:23 p.m. Central Time, a cornfield in Buttercup, Iowa split open and It emerged: that selfsame deity that the Pre-Atlantean, Post-Lemurian Serpent Priests addressed by Seven-Thousand-and-Twelve Sacred Names (Number Eleven translating to “Whatever It Is, We Wish It Would Just Leave Us Alone”); that lugubrious critter known to the ancient Aztecs as He-Who-Drips-Sweat-All-Over-Our-Nice-Clean-Temple, to whom they sacrificed the lymph nodes of their enemies after they’d given the hearts to gods they actually liked.

Miss Tuppenceworth, W.’s pretty blonde secretary, looked out the window of her office, which served as antechamber to her superior’s sanctum sanctorum. “Why is it that whenever H.P. shows up, the sky is suddenly filled with multi-colored silhouettes of shapely women flying about? One can see outlines of guns among the female forms, and hear music filled with saxophones and trumpets. And there’s this sort of swirly gun-barrel shifting to and fro…Decidedly odd.