Creature from the Abyss (competition entry)

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”

“So spoke the mad poet Abdul Alhazred,
And I pondered it’s meaning for a time,
Then by chance strange events unfolded,
And now I too speak in rhyme.”

“These simple rhymes give me comfort,
Against a backdrop of perverse reality,
Where chaotic infernal aberrations live,
That destroy all logic and sanity.”

“What we call our everyday normal lives,
Is but a facade, a web of lies,
True horrors exist beyond our reckoning,
I have witnessed such, with my own eyes.”

“One night when the wind held its breath,
And the gibbous moon hung eerily,
I ventured into that dark evil crypt,
Cautiously. Fearfully. Warily.”

“Down ancient steps of darkened stone,
Into an abyssal hole, deep and dark,
By flickering candlelight I found it,
A flagstone stained by infernal mark.”

“With great effort I moved the stone aside,
To reveal a darker more dreadful pit,
And a horrid keening rose from below,
Of some vile frenzied thing, leaping in a fit.”

“What horror lurked in that shadowy hole,
I raised my lonely candle to better see,
And swiftly regretted my foolhardiness,
The horror of it’s visage, rent my sanity.”

“I screamed, an unearthly falsetto,
That in the darkness, echoed dreadfully,
Magnifying the spine chilling terror,
To an indescribable cacophony.”

“Such creature could not be natural,
Not made from bones and skin and meat,
But what most terrified me, in the end,
It appeared to be unfinished, incomplete.”

“Then by some weird quirk of fate,
Something gathered on that fell night,
Although the crypt was still and quiet,
Something extinguished my candlelight.”

“Darkness. Absolute and unbearable,
I floundered, terrified, as panic swelled,
But by some good grace I keep my nerve,
Relit the candle, and my panic quelled.”

“When at last my courage returned,
I gazed down into that abysmal place,
Of that dreadful, unnatural abomination…
No sign.
Gone.
It had escaped!