NaNoWriMo 2006 novel. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days. Quality may suffer.
Montague James and Howard Lovecraft approached the abandoned graveyard towards late afternoon, they followed an old, disused, and frequently overgrown path into the heart of the salt marshes. The marshes stretched all the way to the horizon in every direction with only the occasional tree to break the monotony of the view, a jigsaw pattern of raised, scrub bristled causeways winding around pools of thick brown mud that shone like silver water in the sunlight and cracked in fissures sometimes a foot across as it dried. A gentle smell of decay rose up from these pools of decaying matter that lent the hot afternoon an anxious nervous edge. Grackels cackled across the wide flats and seagulls called to each other as they wheeled overhead, there was not another human being or sign of one in sight until they arrived at the graveyard.
It was a small decaying lump of land marked by three tall silver birches, in amongst the trunks of the trees was a path trampled and cut through a thick maze of gorse that covered the ground about a foot to two foot deep and from which poked the long forgotten tips of headstones weathered sharp as flint by the centuries. The path led to a small area cleared of vegetation to expose three granite slabs. Leaned up nearby besides one the lonely stones was a spade and a pick and an old bag just as Lovecraft had described.
Montague noticed that Lovecraft had become rapidly anxious as they approached the site and now flitted around the edge of the clearing refusing to look straight at the granite slab. Montague sat down on a gravestone, wearily unshouldered his bag, took out a bottle of water and took a long drink.
'Fine location your friend picked,' he said, 'I'm getting too old for these long treks into the unknown. Water?'
'Thank you,' said Lovecraft, taking the bottle.
'You checked the bag I take it?'
'Nothing but an empty water bottle and some old sandwiches.'
'Well then,' said Montague, 'lets get to it.' And he took up the pick and started to pry open the middle slab, after a moment of dithering Lovecraft came over and helped him. Together they lifted the stone and slid it to one side. There was a hiss and rising stench of putrefaction.
'Blimey,' said Montague, waving the gas away from his nose, 'I see what you mean, that is particularly foul.'
After the smell had dissipated a bit he peered down into the dark aperture of the hole but could see nothing so went to his bag to retrieve and light the lamp. Lovecraft hung back at the edge of the clearing, wringing his hands together and muttering something to himself.
Montague shone the light into the hole and saw a winding and crudely cut stone staircase descending down into the earth, the stone walls dripping with moisture and some dank green slime that ran down onto the stairs where it showed evidence of boot prints. Montague walked directly over to one of the surrounding birch trees, stretched up and, with a little struggle, pulled off a stout branch from which he snapped away the surrounding twigs and the thin end leaving him a solid and hefty club which he wielded like a weapon.
'It looks fairly slippery,' he said, 'we'd better use the rope to tie ourselves together.'
'I don't think we should go through with it,' said Lovecraft.
'You don't?'
'It's the smell, it's positively unworldly, something is down there that is not right, that is not meant for human eyes.'
'Here,' said Montague, fetching a hip flask from his rucksack, 'have a nip of this and pull yourself together.'
Lovecraft drank and then said, 'we should not go.'
'Good god man, the body of your friend is down there and he deserves a Christian burial.'
'I don't know what good that might do him now.'
'And the book, the book he has on his person, that has to be retrieved.'
'It is better lost, he said as much himself.'
'My dear boy,' said Montague, 'this is not the first crypt I have ventured into and it does not look to be the worst. When we first met you told me that you were a fellow traveller, well mister Lovecraft, this is the journey, to spread the light of human reason on the dark places of the world, to discover and to report, to find out what lurks in dank holes, to seek out the truth.'
'You go if you must,' said Lovecraft, turning away, 'but I beg you not to.'
'Very well then,' said Montague, and he slung the coil of rope over his shoulder, picked up the lamp, took a swig from the hip flask himself, and ventured cautiously into the hole.
'Be careful Mister James,' Lovecraft called after him, 'for you may find what you seek.'
