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[Retro]

Wow. Quite a good story! Very well-written, especially the descriptive passages.

[Soadreqm]

Yeah, this was awesome. I am in awe.

[frightlever]

I wrote this as a Lovecraft pastiche once - tried expanding it, but it got mired while I was researching urban spelunkers.

---

The Underground

“We should get started,” I said.

Mole looked at me as though I was crazy.

“We can’t start, boy,” Mole said. “Site manager isn’t here yet.”

Mole, real name Mike Burrows, had been with London Underground through a lot of re-shuffles and changes in management. Like most labourers his age, he’d embraced the metaphysical concept that a job only existed when someone in authority was there to observe it.

I’d never meant to still be working here, two years on, but I knew one thing for sure, and that was when I was Mole’s age I’d have a job I wanted to do. I headed down the tunnel, shining my torch to see what the damage was like. The Tube is riddled with disused passages, some dating back to the early 19th century when the massive undertaking was started. There are a lot of routine inspections carried out and often work needs to be done to keep things safe.

We had word there was a large crack in one of the tunnel walls.

“Best be careful, boy,” Mole said. “When I was about your age, my crew was working down here and two men went missing. Never found them. Ghouls took them.”

“Ghouls? Talk sense, Mole.”

“It’s true, some of these tunnels cross next to their warrens. They’re ancient beasts that serve the old gods. They only surface to snatch stray men to eat, or grab a woman, if they can get one, for some you-know-what. You’ll be all right with me boy. I’ve got ghoul blood in me, on my father’s side.” He lurched at me, shining the torch up at his face, cackling like a madman with an enormous grin on his face.

That was when the crack in the tunnel wall crashed open in a shower of masonry and rock. A fist sized lump struck my head, dazing me, but a large section of the wall had fallen across Mole. I crawled to him on hands and knees, shining my torch off to one side of his face to check on him. He was breathing in short bursts, moans seeping from his mouth, as his eyelids fluttered. A dark reflection in his eyes made me glance behind me, and the torch fell from my nerveless fingers and my whole body went rigid.

The thing emerged from the hole in the wall on all fours, like an animal, but stood once it was in the open. It had a body about the size of a man’s but it’s limbs were longer, with stringy muscles and spindly hands that ended in wicked claws. There was nothing about it to suggest reticence or caution, as it regarded us with its black saucer eyes, showing no more fear than any hunter would for his prey.

I was powerless to move as it leaned its face into mine and I could clearly see the ugly slash of a mouth settled in mottled brown-green flesh. It opened this terrible maw, and my face was bathed in a sickly sweet stench. Impossible thoughts of flight hammered in my head, as it drew its warty tongue along the side of my cheek. Then it turned away and retreated back towards its burrow, casually grasping Mole by the head on the way and pausing only long enough to snap off one of his legs at the knee where it had lodged in the rubble.

From the first moment it laid its claws upon him, Mole did not stop screaming. Even as I fainted and the blackness claimed me, I could not get the sounds of his agony out of my head.

It was many months later before I could think clearly again and when I did, I dwelt long and hard on Mole’s fallacious claim that he had an ancestor who had been a ghoul. But more insidious thoughts than that preyed on my mind, as I kept returning to memories of my own mother and her persistent refusal to ever speak to me about my absent father.

---

The trouble with Lovecraft, from a modern reader's point of view, is that he's description heavy and dialogue light. Makes it pretty hard to digest.

[Umi]

TC:  I had read the small exerpt from your novel in the arena thread, but I hadn't realized how good of an author you were until this.  This...Well this is beyond the quality I normally see in the books I read (And I read A LOT).  I would love to read anything else you got and will definitely buy your book when you publish it.  Great freaking job.

[piecewise]

imma start writing the other story I had in mind. Not df related but still lovecraftian I think. We'll see how it turns out eh? Just to let you know, I write rather slow at times so it may be a bit.

[Djohaal]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This double-tower thing was loosely inspired in your ziggurats, although far taller 

accept it as a tribute

[Urist Imiknorris]

Shiny.

[TheCze]

I forgot that this is actually the main thread to the story so I'll repost my review I wrote in the general forum:

So I printed out your story and finally got to read it.

I really liked it.
Here some detailed thoughts (warning: also contains spoilers to Lovecraft storys):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

+Good idea to use humans as the viewpoint of the story
+Very nice intro
+Concept of the engravings is great
+People getting mad was good, combined with the history of the miners attacking each other in the records
+Story catches Lovecraftian kind of horror well (degress of the people around Besmarkezat and the dwarfs inside, unrecognisable shapes, old civilizations etc.)

-Sometimes the motives of the characters are not clear (e.g. Why does the dwarven King allow them to go there, Why do they have to follow the mad human into the depths of the mountain instead of just leaving the place)

Another point, neither really negative or positive, is that you stay close to the style Lovecraft told storys.
Having written Lovecraft Fanfiction by myself I know that it's hard not to use some story mechanics he is using (and to have some of them in the story is actually nice).
There are also some analogies in your story, there are quite a few elements from "At the Mountains of Madness" in it (expedition, engravings, the chase and the regrettable looking back) aswell as some resemblances to "The color out of space" mixed with a tad of Innsmouth look.
You incorporated this elements very well in this story and things like a research expedition and the engravings match DF perfectly(Hell, I always have to think of DF when I'm reading Mountains of Madnees or Shadow out of Time ), but in the end it might have been a bit to close to AtMoM.
Another typical Lovecraft thing you had was the intellectual main character aswell as the whole viewpoint of the story which I liked very much. The motivation of the main character to move on, even though he is afraid is explained very well (except for the point mentioned above where they decide to chase the mad human)

Overall I really enjoyed your story, it was a good read and I'd recommend it to any fellow DF and/or Lovecraft fan.

Have you written other horror stories yet?