M. Amanuensis Sharkchild The Dreamer of Chimerical Fiction The Dark Verse From the Passages of Revenants (The Dark Verse, Volume I) The Unlike Light Becoming the Sky What the Flesh Cannot Keep The Gift of the Crossroads The Changing Feyth (Part 1) The Bearer of All That Can Be Felt Between the Corridors The Phoenix Imago The Chambers of Nature's Machines The Changing Feyth (Part 2) Sounds of the Deliverer Fate The Missing Come Home The Captive Inside Bringing Back the Unordinary Time into Death The Science of Faith Normal Faces Names: Unsonselvitzsol Names: Tillalel Names: Felfoldhart Finding the Host That Sustains The Skulker The Coming of the Unexpected Character Feast The Something Beyond Silence The Clock's Many Hands Playgrounds Never Wondered About The Fragmented The Changing Feyth (Part 3) Mantis, Malevolent Pathway for the Dead The Road Show The Song of Dusty Hearts A Megacosm's Secret Initiation of Members Confronting the Formless The Deviations The Taking of Hallowed Creation Stumbling upon Preterition The Changing Feyth (Part 4) Symptoms of the Astral Thirteen Door Roulette The Hunt Names: Apherdane Names: Chillanthon The Ilks of Devotion H.P. Lovecraft Edgar Allan Poe Lord Dunsany A Collection of Strange Works by Sharkchild The sole purpose of sharing with you a unique world of horror and fantasy that will follow you to the visions of your sleep Chimerical Fiction Horror Fiction Fantasy Fiction Horror Fiction Podcast Chimerical Fiction Podcast Fantasy Fiction Podcast Let death not grip you by the throat Let religion not bind you by its laws Let love guide you through eternity I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider John F. Stifter and his quantum, cosmic collection of art The Dark Verse shall be the greatest independent podcast of horror the world will ever know Scary Stories Horror Stories Fantasy Stories Chimerical Stories Supernatural Horror Cosmic Horror Lovecraftian Horror Horror is the way the world views itself; dreaming is the horror we create for ourselves Quantum Cathedral rages with psychedelic, CGI art made with Zbrush and Maya Twilight Zone The Outer Limits The Strange The Bizarre The Whimsical Horror Featured at its Best The Future Writer of Horror Horror Author Chimerical Author Armored Publishing Armored Books Sharkchild's Remains e-Commerce Shop The Pieces of His Remains The Ancient of Somnolence Doorknobs Best of Horror Best of Chimerical Fiction Howard Phillips Lovecraft Dagon The Statement of Randolph Carter Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family Celephais Nyarlathotep The Picture in the House The Outsider Herbert West—Reanimator The Hound The Rats in the Walls The Festival He Cool Air The Call of Cthulhu The Colour Out of Space The Whisperer in Darkness The Shadow Over Innsmouth The Haunter of the Dark The Tomb Beyond the Wall of Sleep The White Ship The Temple The Quest of Iranon The Music of Erich Zann Under the Pyramids Pickman's Model The Case of Charles Dexter Ward The Dunwich Horror At the Mountains of Madness The Thing on the Doorstep Lord Dunsany The Sword of Welleran The Kith of the Elf-Folk The Ghosts The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth Blagdaross Idle Days on the Yann A Shop in Go-by Street The Avenger of Perdondaris The Bride of the Man-Horse The Wonderful Window The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap The City on Mallington Moor The Bureau d'Echange de Maux The Exiles' Club Thirteen at Table The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla Edgar Allan Poe MS. Found in a Bottle A Descent into the Maelstrom The Masque of the Red Death The Pit and the Pendulum The Premature Burial The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar The Assignation Berenice Morella Ligeia The Fall of the House of Usher Eleonora The Oval Portrait Metzengerstein William Wilson The Tell-Tale Heart The Black Cat The Imp of the Perverse The Cask of Amontillado Hop-Frog The Man of the Crowd The Murders in the Rue Morgue The Gold-Bug The Oblong Box A Tale of the Ragged Mountains The Purloined Letter The Man That Was Used Up The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether Some Words with a Mummy The Lake—To— Sonnet—To Science Fairy-Land Introduction "Alone" To Helen The Sleeper Israfel The Valley of Unrest The City in the Sea Lenore Sonnet—Silence Dream-Land The Raven Ulalume—A Ballad Teh Bells A Dream within a Dream The Twilight Zone Rod Serling Charles Beaumont Richard Matheson Where Is Everybody? One for the Angels Mr. Denton on Doomsday The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine Walking Distance Escape Clause The Lonely Time Enough at Last Perchance to Dream Judgment Night And When the Sky Was Opened What You Need The Four of Us Are Dying Third from the Sun I Shot an Arrow Into the Air The Hitch-Hiker The Fever The Last Flight The Purple Testament Elegy Mirror Image The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street A World of Difference Long Live Walter Jameson People Are Alike All Over Execution The Big Tall Wish A Nice Place to Visit Nightmare as a Child A Stop at Willoughby The Chaser A Passage for Trumpet Mr. Bevis The After Hours The Mighty Casey A World of His Own King Nine Will Not Return The Man in the Bottle Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room A Thing About Machines The Howling Man The Eye of the Beholder Nick of Time The Lateness of the Hour The Trouble With Templeton A Most Unusual Camera The Night of the Meek Dust Back There The Whole Truth The Invaders A Penny for Your Thoughts Twenty Two The Odyssey of Flight 33 Mr. Dingl, the Strong Static The Prime Mover Long Distance Call A Hundred Yards Over the Rim The Rip Van Winkle Caper The Silence Shadow Play The Mind and the Matter Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? The Obsolete Man Two The Arrival The Shelter The Passersby A Game of Pool The Mirror The Grave It's a Good Life Deaths-Head Revisited The Midnight Sun Still Valley The Jungle Once Upon a Time Five Characters in Search of an Exit A Quality of Mercy Nothing in the Dark One More Pallbearer Dead Man's Shoes The Hunt Showdown with Rance McGrew Kick the Can A Piano in the House The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank To Serve Man The Fugitive Little Girl Lost Person or Persons Unknown The Little People Four O'Clock Hocus-Pocus and Frisby The Trade-Ins The Gift The Dummy Young Man's Fancy I Sing the Body Electric Cavender Is Coming The Changing of the Guard In His Image The Thirty-Fathom Grave Valley of the Shadow He's Alive Mute Death Ship Jess-Belle Miniature Printer's Devil No Time Like the Past The Parallel I Dream of Genie The New Exhibit Of Late I Think of Cliffordville The Incredible WOrld of Horace Ford On Thursday We Leave for Home Passage on the Lady Anne The Bard In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch, The Last Night of a Jockey, Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Prove 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Mad Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Cesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Caenter at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool M. Amanuensis Sharkchild currently lives with his wife in Santa Monica, California As a zealot of the imagination, he embraces the strange, the bizarre, and the great unknown His mind is a haven of unique life where species of the cosmic take reign Noumena Anatomy of Life Misanthropolis Burden of Solancement Retrospection Burning Monument of Pain Triumph and Loss Marionettes Through the Element Fire and Water However strange it may be what is written here, let it soothe your soul Master of Horror Master of Chimerical Fiction Fantastical Horror Bizarre Horror Strange Horror Cosmic Horror Lovecraftian Horror Horror Podcast Literature Podcast The Dark Verse Sharkchild Stories that will follow you to the visions of your sleep The Unlike Light From the very day we first breathed the dusty air of the keep, I knew doom would plague the innocence of our souls The sweet, effervescent smell that spread amongst us imparted a horrid sensation of life when despair was its true insinuation Hard floor beneath our feet and cool, steel walls beneath our touch told us of the thousand escapes never to succeed The imprisonment was demoralizing, but we were given everything we needed for survival: food, water, and clothing These were, of course, the commodities blessed by death and used only by the wishful The dwellings of our strange cage consisted of rooms spanning the dimensions of about three thousand square feet More than enough bunks filled the vacant rooms for sleep, and pillows even lined them, providing their own attempts at luring us from the cold, cruel reality of fear A kitchen took up a large portion of the space, particularly its oversized pantry, holding food to last us for years The stove worked wonderfully and chopped wood spoiled us, encouraging us to indulge a laziness no one had We could not have asked for more, but we certainly could have used less This was the joyless place we tried to make home, but home—peace—was something that would never be known again, not with these memories Considering the level of the keep where we lived as the first floor, numerous other floors descended below us We were acquainted with five of those floors, though we knew several more existed A stairway shifted its location upon each floor, making a unique, indirect path and a difficult descent Each subsequent floor was also larger than its predecessor, having higher ceilings, larger rooms, and longer staircases The most haunting attribute of this abominable structure was that the further one went down, the brighter it got, and this light was no result of electricity or fire; this light was the evil of dawn spawned into its most sinister, incarnate form We much preferred the first floor, the pure, thick blackness of the first floor Nothing but the blindness of pitch darkness could lull my worries away Sight was not meant for the keep and souls were not meant for the keep Light should never have been the guardian of good It made the hope of salvation a bleak afterthought tucked away in the pockets of my mind, only to surface accidentally in the curious dreams of my shallow sleep Even the pale hue of dreams caused me to tremble, their luminous qualities poisonous It was most assuredly not fate which brought the group of us to the keep There was some unknown hand that willed it upon us, orchestrating an iniquitous course to become our own I was but sleeping soundly in my own bed next to my wife when the thieves of witchery awoke me with their ugly force, driving me into a box like a cadaver and beating my head until I went limp My wife did not scream; she did not even wake I was an ordinary man with a dearly loved family They could not have taken me with crueler timing—my improperly healed fists prove it When we initially explored the floors below the first, we were ecstatic to find a growing light, and rooms filled with thousands and thousands of books, all of them ancient texts Though we stopped periodically, nothing hindered our gnawing hunger for the glow of golden light Not even the clattering of claws brought hesitation to our pace It was only when we saw the first of the things that we stopped in our tracks, midway down the third staircase The unlucky one of our group who tripped and fell down the stairs gave half of us the time we needed to escape The rest were overtaken by the Creatures of the Light I dare not describe them, for even the words might beckon them to where sight meets imagination The popping of lungs as those left behind screamed was enough to boil skin and send tongues to the back of throats We spent the next few weeks huddled tightly in our quarters while the disease of insanity spread amongst us There were not many of us who could maintain keen awareness As the scraping from the Creatures of the Light echoed eternally beneath us, beating our hearts with the force of intrepid grotesqueness, visions of uncanny terrors overwhelmed our thoughts Some of us moaned out into the dark, crying absurdities in monstrous fright There was no interpersonal comfort left; each of us was left to cope using what meager, emotional resources we had I was one of the wishers, the optimists I let the distant prayers I knew my wife and children made stagger me against the temptation of death There were only a few of us who held strong enough longings, and it was we who lived on and on beneath the blanket of darkness, feeling our way to food and eating it without the commission of the stove for fear of unwanted attention We knew ourselves to be safe in the dark since the Creatures of the Light never advanced upon the first floor The closest they came was between the third and second floors, struggling to come upon us with all of their might It was not the lack of bravery that hindered their advance, but sheer pain When they encroached upon our darkness, we heard their distinct, muffled squeals of unrest It was a sound most similar to a wheeze caused by lungs gasping desperately for air By the time I gathered all the courage I would ever have to find a way out of the keep, only three of us remained The girl never spoke, but I could always hear her steady breathing coming from beneath her bunk I brought food to her whenever I ate And the Indian, the religious man, kept me company during the most troublesome of times It was the three of us for many months Everyone else had either succumbed to the Creatures, or to kitchen knives, or to nooses and suffocation Those who perished within the first floor were buried beneath books on the second floor; it was not enough to keep away the scent of decay, but it was enough to pay them reverence When I had devised my plan for fleeing the keep, I told the Indian of it, but he thought of it only as foolishness He wished me luck, but could not muster the sanity to join me in my demented quest I let him be and tried little more to dissuade him from his decision It was for the better that he stayed I later decided; someone had to take care of the girl When I said my goodbyes and began my descent to the third floor, I heard the Indian mumbling chants of protection His ways were not of my beliefs, but I felt better in knowing he cared about me; I even felt stronger and more confident He was a good man and I knew his soul would be saved My steps down the second staircase were cautious I carried with me water, a knife, matches, and six smoke candles attached to my belt, crafted meticulously during weeks of work with wood ashes, excrement, sugar, and the knowledge of the Indian I painfully used the stove for my purpose, beckoning the Creatures of the Light to a horrible proximity, their wheezing searing every nerve end in my body When the final step of the staircase had been left behind, I took a deep, trying breath through the bandana tied over my nose and mouth; I was now in their territory I darted quickly through the level, finding no opposition The Creatures were not expecting me and were spread amongst the lower floors Against the stealth of my movements, my heart raced with a ferocity I had never known, each beat causing my eyes to pulse from their vigilant gaze Sweat flowed repugnantly from my pores and my clothes quickly became damp I skulked without challenge through the third and fourth floors Dreadfully, and under torrential admonitions from my fear-laced mind, I arrived at the furthest point in the keep any civilian had attained, alive The golden light began to corrupt my flesh, tingeing it with the nasty filth of the nether There were no shadows left now, so in reflex I quickly pressed myself against the nearest wall Soft clanking from further ahead alerted me to the demon presences I unlatched one of the smoke candles to ready myself The other five candles hung from my belt, ready for when they, too, would be needed I closed my eyes for a moment and prayed desperately to God, asking Him for all of His attention, all of His protection, and all of His love This was the beginning of my Exodus The strike of my match awoke the Creatures At first I did not see them, but I could sense the pausing movements and the changes of direction I lit the smoke candle and it erupted into a volcanic fountain of life After an initial, skeptical step, I lunged forward with all of my might and all of my speed into the light to frantically search for the next stairway, the fifth Smoke poured about me as I went, curling like blooming flowers at my feet It would have been suicide to have attempted this without a trial of the smoke against the Creatures, so weeks earlier, when the first of the seven candles had been completed, I used it against them It was not an easy test to execute, and I lost many hours of sleep to the fear of how it could all go horribly wrong, but it worked more wonderfully than ever I could have imagined When the smoke came to life, the Creatures of the Light shrank away as if it were creeping death With part of my plan validated, I dashed like a madman through the corridors of the fifth floor, bringing with me the darkness that was my shield The Creatures of the Light hissed their ghastly wheezes as I passed, following me closer than I had expected Their spectral limbs reached for my flesh and they chanted diabolical mumblings that wore at my strength and mind Panic encroached upon me like the emphatic lightning of a storm, pinning me against the pinnacle of dread The fifth floor was much larger than I had hoped, but I eventually found the staircase I stopped atop the stairs and placed the lit smoke candle on the ground before it exhausted, allowing me to unlatch another and light it The Creatures of the Light circled around me, but angrily seethed from my path when I thrust aloft the next smoke candle and continued my descent Light poured about me as I entered the sixth floor, its source still an unfathomed mystery What opened before me was remarkable, though I could spare no moment in which to pause and observe its masterfulness What I did see was looming pillars supporting a great hall, balconies overlooking grand atria, and even perfectly placed vegetation The Creatures of the Light swarmed upon me from all directions—there were more of them than I could count Still they wheezed and still they murmured their wicked incantations of odium, a chorus of agonizing dementia There were now staircases within the floor leading in all directions, leading down and up and around the keep’s hall I made quick decisions and ran wherever I felt down would be the overall victor So many of the Creatures had come upon me by this point that they squirmed and pushed each other about in unsettling actions; they fell from balconies and jumped on top of each other, desiring viciously for the smoke to cease its flow Shrouded by the emissions of my fourth smoke candle, I finally found the way out of the sixth floor, but at this rate I was soon to be horribly devoured The sixth staircase was immensely long and frightfully steep, calling for a drastically slower pace than I would have liked It was on this staircase that the Creatures began shoving those of their kind closest to me into the sanctity of the smoke and my precious space Several of them fell down the stairs, emitting howls of disgust as they tumbled, while others actually fell into me, lashing and writhing amongst the smoke and my flesh I lost my focus along with my footing and fell myself I fell but a small distance; it was, however, enough to bring about my death if my grip on the smoke candle faltered I hastily scrambled to my feet, standing with a dislocated shoulder and a hand of ghastly white wrapped so firmly about the candle that the joints felt sure to snap under further stress I was on the keep’s seventh floor The unlike light was indescribable It was brighter than any sun and thicker than air When I came into it, I felt it rush through my clothes and plaster against my skin; I felt it pierce my eyes and pour down my throat It took hold of me in the way the mother’s womb protects and encapsulates a growing embryo But it was not warm, it was cool and vacant and it probed me, searching for things not even the soul knows how to find Wrongness swelled within me in contaminating gestures of violation The Creatures of the Light began to mold with the light, scrounging all around me, above and below as if in water, mumbling continuously their awful words They flowed in and out of the light like they were a part of it, like they were all one I recall my fear then as being more heavily manifested than helplessness beneath the unruly tools of torture And, increasing the frailty of my situation, the smoke candle clenched so tightly in my fist had run its course and was on its last breath I was at the watershed of my journey There was no longer any choice needed in my continuation; there was no turning back And so, with conviction, I justified my actions and embraced what I expected to be my last actions in this life I lit both my remaining candles Their fresh smoke spewed over me in thick, putrid beauty With the scrap of what life I had left, I ran wildly into the heart of the unheavenly light over ground that was not solid, but a shifting tumult of sand My feet sank with each step, draining what little energy I had left Now desperate, the Creatures of the Light were chaotic in their approaches, scratching at my hands in a merciless attempt to make me drop the darkness, but catching only my arms in heaps of cloth and flesh I did not feel the pain; I only felt the light swirling in my veins, scouring my body to its incorporeal depth The onslaught of the Creatures continued and a transparency began to flourish within me beneath the light’s reaping grip I closed my eyes and saw through my eyelids as if they were not there, and my aching muscles began to melt away from the consistency of definition I was fading into the light, becoming it I wanted nothing more than to swallow the smoke in my hands and let it scrape the insides of my tissues, consuming the infectious illumination along its path Instead, I was drowning as a primordial evil dragged me down into a pool of lurid nightmares From that point on, I only remember falling through the light as the words muttered by the unholy Creatures infested my ears Their syllables became a sadistic sludge of comprehension as my ears grew cruelly attuned to their speech “Inside is ours forever on, look not to free your presence With ties of white we choke your life, tighter as the moon smiles your misery Wider as the blood flows freely, we make anew in you what once was lost.” I fell into unconsciousness, smiling as I drifted into blackness I was found covered in soot in a coffin resting in the basement of an estranged cult’s mansion, wrapped like a mummy in white linen Through no means understandable, I had been preserved and kept alive through many months in what was recorded as a coma Twenty-nine other coffins were found, but everyone else was dead Two of those coffins were empty and among the dead they found no girl or Indian When I opened my eyes upon being rescued from the coffin, I saw nothing—sweet, empty, pitch-black darkness Although my fists were mangled and my shoulder dislocated, relief poured down my spine Darkness is what should be expected when one is blind I much prefer the darkness