Member-only story
The Frost Beneath
A Lovecraftian tale of breath beneath the coals.
As excerpted from a single page of handwriting, water damaged and partially scorched, found beneath a floorboard in the study of the late Elliot Danforth, Arkham, Essex County, Massachusetts. December 12th, 1942.
There’s something watching me from the grate.
Not metaphorically, not the aching paranoia of a lonely man in winter, no. It breathes. Slowly. Wetly. Like a bellows filled with tar.
I first heard it three weeks ago. It was a rasp, a kind of bubbling suck, like a boil breaking beneath the embers. I told myself it was the draft — old brickwork, shifting air — and I did what seemed quite sensible at the time.
I added more wood, poked the coals, built the fire higher.
That became a habit.
Then a compulsion.
Now, it’s an offering.
In retrospect, that first log was the worst mistake of all.
I am the last Danforth, or was. I suspect the name will not survive this house. My grandfather, Francis — yes, that Danforth — came back from Antarctica with his brain leaking through his words. They institutionalised him for a while, then let him go. Claimed he was harmless. He wasn’t, of course. He wrote. And he hid what he wrote.
