Ian Derbyshire

If you don't know of Ian's work, he has graciously consented to introduce a new, short fiction, Mythos story here. Thank you!

Ian's an aspiring writer from the wintry city of Ottawa, Canada and currently works the high glamour job of Senior Technical Advisor in a call centre - but hopes to step down soon into a smaller role as a professional writer. He lives happily with his girlfriend and two cats in a high rise one bedroom mansion.

Ian has been published at www.darkrecesses.com and is a featured writer at www.horrorlibrary.net. His latest major project:
www.livejournal.com/users/dravenport is outstanding work.


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Jade's Escape: The Ominous Return


The straw in the corner was stained an ominous shade of red in places. Water dripped from the stone ceiling created a steady ‘plonk, plonk’ that threatened to drive Jade insane. There was only one door, made out of iron, and it opened out into the corridor. Jade had spent a lot of time throwing herself against it in an effort to tear it out of the wall but the decrepit looking stone walls were stronger than they looked. Jade’s body twitched, apparently it still remembered the futile abuse it had suffered, indeed if she took off her shirt she knew she’d see a mass of purple and green fading bruises painting her arm and shoulder.

Is this all there is left?

A discouraging thought, Jade beat it senseless and resumed her pacing. She had no idea how long she’d been kept down in this dungeon, there were no windows just a small gate on the door where torch light barely illuminated her cell, but it had to have been days.

She had been given food twice, she never heard or saw the person who brought the bowl of stew, but twice when she hadn’t been able to stay awake anymore she had woken up to find it steaming on the ground.

Jade had tried screaming, but all it did was echo painfully off of the walls. She’d also crammed her head against the gate on the door, trying to look up and down the corridors for any hint of where she may have been, but all she saw was a scratching on the wall across from her, directly under the torch.

Nyarlathotep comes

Whatever that meant.

Jade’s legs grew weary and she sat down hard, her back falling against an unyielding wall. The urge to cry rose again but she quelled it. Just then a black wing flew through her mind and she started violently. She shook her head from side to side, trying to clear it. Her mind ran from the winged darkness to a safe place, her father’s old summerhouse where they vacationed when she was a child. Jumping in the lake.

She swam and swam until she saw something sparkle on the floor of the lake. She called to her Daddy and dove deep. She kicked and kicked but it seemed like the distance was growing, the shine was getting further away instead of closer. Jade pushed hard and had almost reached the object when her foot was jerked backward. She turned to see that her ankle had become trapped in seaweed. She yanked but couldn’t free herself. Her lungs burned and she flailed uselessly. Her vision began to dim and her mouth opened involuntarily as she cried out Daddy!
Then the burning sensation was gone. Her vision cleared and she was standing in a city sunken below the surface of the water. Her hands leapt to her throat but needlessly, she was breathing!
Jade gazed at the marvelous city, taking in the high fluted columns, the giant domed buildings, the bizarre statues of bipedal frogs. She had to crane her neck to view these structures, as small as a nine year old is, Jade was certain that if she was as tall as her Daddy she would still be forced to crane her head.

She wandered the city for hours, taking in the statues, each stranger than the last, until she came to the most magnificent building yet. It was another domed building, with huge archways for doors, but carved on top of the dome was an octopus, glaring down at the square in front with malevolence in its eyes. Jade felt compared to walk beneath the archway and into the building. She struggled to climb the large steps inside, they obviously weren’t meant for the short legs of her kind, but eventually reached the theatre, wear she saw Him sitting atop his throne, awake, waiting. She screamed, her mind detaching from her corporeal self forever, and she never saw the small humanoid figure standing at His ‘right hand.’ Slight, dark featured, he held a walking stick with the handle carved in an intricate squid, its tentacles wrapping around each other until they formed a point at the bottom.

Nyarlathotep smiled.

Her eyes opened but Jade never woke again. Her body stood and walked out of the open cell, down the corridor, up the stairs and out of the basement. Soon the thing that had been Jade was standing with the rest of a group, in what had been someone’s living room before he took over the house.

They stood there, facing the old-fashioned Victorian lounge chair. He sat there, hands braced on his intricate walking stick, and he smiled to himself.

Across the city people woke screaming.

Nyarlathotep was back.