While I idly wandered the blogosphere today I stumbled upon something that apparently is supposed to analyze your writing and identify what famous author your literary work most closely resembles. Now I’m not one who needs a boost to my ego, I already know I’m awesome, but I figured it would be an interesting lark to see what my eccentric style of fictional works here would reveal. In truth I think I know who I write like, but let’s see if this little program and I are even in the same library, let alone on the same page.

First up for analysis is a work of fiction that is based on a dream I had. If that’s not Lovecraftean, then I don’t really know what to say. Analyze this oh mighty web app: A Promise Broken, A Life Unraveled. Result?

Hmm, that’s not at all what I expected. I’ll confess right now that I don’t think I’ve read a single piece penned by Gertrude Stein. The result is still surprising, but we’re just getting started. Ok, let’s see what happens if we analyze something a bit more light-hearted in Takes Half Damage.

Really? That’s amusing… or concerning depending on your viewpont. Apparently what I would consider to be my most light-hearted bit of fiction on this blog puts me in the King camp. Odd that. Maybe we are throwing too much text at the thing. Let’s spin the wheel of fortune again with a Douglas Adams inspired bit of numerology fun in 42.

That’s more like it. At least this result makes sense… course the text actually links to the Wikipedia page about the use of the number 42 in Douglas Adams’ books, so maybe this should be thrown out as a false positive. But let’s assume that the previous, albeit odd, results are valid and try something more considerable. Let’s stop fooling around and go with something very dark with an obvious horror slant. Analysis of Ol’ Cob’s Webs yields:

What? Seriously? That can’t be right. The only thing I recall of Twain with regard to horror was trying to actually read it in High School. Maybe this thing’s confused. Let’s try something simpler again for the web app to chew upon. We have been throwing lines of text in short story form at it all this time, so let’s change it up a bit. Analysis of the small poem Hallows Eve resulted in this:

Closer. At least we’re back in the horror camp. But I’m not quite sure I believe this result either. It’s not like that poem would hold a candle to anything written by Stoker, but we’ll assume the program has gotten itself back between the lines again and try this one last time. For this analysis let’s see what happens when we blur history with fiction in Mythos Tome: Eruditio de Sodalitas des Occultus Aranea:

Wow, six seperate works of fiction by your’s truely and six seperate, distinctive, and highly acclaimed author results. Apparently I’m somewhat of a literary cameleon… and here I thought ALL of my works had a bit of a Lovecraftean feel to them… At least the app finally got the right answer on this piece of fiction.

So for fun let’s consider each a cross-section of the whole Kevin and combine them all for one glorious result:

Yeah, ok. I give up. I guess I can live with that… but seriously, I think something’s wrong with this program. Maybe check it out yourself: http://iwl.me/ and report your results.

A bonus post born of the Ol’ Cob’s Webs work of fiction. Like all good Mythos stuff, this blends some fiction wtih reality and history. Blurring the lines is a well practiced art in Lovecraftean inspired works.- KO

The spidery work Eruditio de Sodalitas des Occultus Aranea (transliterated as Mysteries of the Secret Society of the Hidden Web.)

The text was reputed to have been written when an infestation of spiders accidentally ran through some spilled ink and wandered across several reams of parchment. Though coerced to recant under great phsical duress, the scribe who witnessed the strange birth of the occult book did not recount this fabulous tale even to the death. He claimed that when we discovered the manuscript, the long exposure to the ink had killed all but a few remaining spiders. These bloated and dying creatures were presumably finishing the last of the occult lore.

Originally the manuscript was never bound, even when copied, the pages usually consisted of parchment or sackcloth roughly tied together with mean strips of rope. Only later copies saw the spidery script transferred to large bound tomes of various shape and makeup. Occultus Aranea (the shortened name given by the Catholic Church to identify the book) was never mass printed, making the book difficult to identify and detect since it was always transcribed a single copy at a time and the layout of the new copy would almost certainly not resemble the previous.

According to the Catholic Church, the original copy of this occult text was burned beyond repair in the Great Fire of London and the last remaining copies of which were known to be destroyed during the Great Chicago Fire though some may lie in the dusty libraries of rare book collectors. The Papacy has declared the work heretical and, though it is considered irretrievable and lost to antiquity by all scholars, has never removed the text from their list of banned books since its inclusion in 1666 at the decree of Pope Alexander VII.

The Catholic Church’s own documents indicate that this text did contain references to a great spider-like god secretly worshipped by the degenerate Cob Hermitage in central Europe. The official response from church officials is that all members of the Cob Hermitage were killed as heretics in the late 1500s. However, rumors persist (and the presence of the text first in London, and then in Chicago would seem to confirm) that members of this secret society did indeed survive to finally make their way to the Americas to found the Old Towne of Cobham.

The Towne of Cobham was located in Virginia in the County of Surry on the James River, and at the mouth of Gray’s Creek. On the opposite side of the river was Jamestown, on the opposite side of the creek was Swann’s Point. So completely, however, is the Towne of Cobham a thing of the past that comparatively few people now living have ever heard of it, and fewer still know where it was located. This old town site should not be confused with the place about two miles down the river now call “Cobham.” A warf was built there in the early 1900s and named “Cobham Warf.” There is nothing left of the warf now, however, but some piling. After it was abandoned, “Warf” was dropped from the name and the site became known as “Cobham.” Thus the old name has been carried about two miles down the river.

William Cob, last descendant of the original colonists and founders of Cobham was a wealthy businessman in Chicago during the years preceeding the Great Chicago Fire. He would often spend the fall in the Towne of Cobham but was delayed in leaving Chicago because of a issue with some figurine shipments from overseas. He would never again visit his namesake however, for by strange coincidence, immediately following the great conflagration in Chicago, residents of the Towne of Cobham fell ill to a terrible disease. The entire town was quarantined and surrounded by the local militia. There were no survivors and the disease was never fully identified. The entire Towne of Cobham was set fire and burned to the ground. William Cob lost everything in both fires and drifted out of history.

This post is part one of a three part series. This fictional horror story is the inspiration for a spell Ol’ Cob’s Webs and the creatures it summons. I’ll be adding these subsequent posts later. – KO

The old man laughed a dry, hideous laugh. “Thought you could git ‘em didn’t ya? Thought tweren’t nobody around! Well you was wrong… weren’t ‘cha?”

From the corner of our eyes, Tom and I glanced at each other. Neither of us seemed to know what to say so we stood motionless, silent prisoners of the spidery claws that held us as a captive audience of their toothless master.

Then Cob turned and looked me directly in the eye, bending forward he peered deeply. I almost felt as if something wicked and malicious was picking about my brain and soul. His eyes were glassy and clouded, but he was obviously not blind. As he leaned closer I could smell the stench of dried sweat on his body and cheap fruity liquor on his breath. The reek was overpowering and I gagged.

Cob grinned an evil, tight grin and his hooked nose twitched with terrible delight at my dismay.

“Ol’ Cob knows ye girlie,” he chided. “Oh yes, I knows ye well. Yer Mama and yer Gran too I do. Dey come to Cob long time ago lookin’ for secrets too dey did. Cob fixed ‘em good.”

I cannot tell you how grateful I was when Cob turned his attention away from me. I saw how Tom squirmed like a bug caught in a web and pitied him so. Somehow I knew I too had appeared the same when I was the old man’s focus. Tears began to fill my eyes as I thought how this simple prank had suddenly turned so wrong.

Cob leaned in close to Tom and I could hear him whisper something. My ears strained to hear the words, but my mind recoiled from them. I shall not repeat them here nor anywhere; they shall burn in the secret recesses of my mind to the grave. Tom burst into sobbing immediately and I knew we were doomed.

The old man began to hum an ageless tune as he left the one room hut. I could hear him singing words that had no meaning as he moved about the woods around the shanty. At first the words sounded like “at latch nacho .” Atlach-Nacha

I tried to get Tom’s attention. I tried to get him to stop crying. I thought this was our chance to devise some means of escape.

But Tom wouldn’t stop his sobbing. My heart ached for him. I had heard what Cob had whispered and it was terrible. It all seemed so wrong. I wanted it to stop, wanted someone to come find us, wanted Mat and his friends to be playing a trick on us. But the terror was only beginning.

I turned my attention to the bonds that held us. They appeared at first to be bony hands with elongated digits. But no bones made these skeletal mockeries of hands, rather they looked to be fashioned of the legs of spiders… very large spiders indeed. The backs of what would be described as the hands held a myriad of lifeless insectoid eyes, far too many to be of a natural spider. And what appeared to be a mouth was lined inside with what can only be described as spikes or stingers. Those mouths slowly opened and closed as if the hands either labored to breathe or drew pleasure in seeing the fear of viewing their spike-filled maw. My skin began to crawl as I realized that these things that held us were creatures, they were alive somehow.

Had I known now what horrors these creatures were capable and the unnatural way in which they were brought to this world, I would have screamed myself to the grave. But that terrible knowledge wasn’t to be revealed just yet. As a result of my ignorance, I found myself analyzing the creatures in a clinical detachment that only science could provide. But science in all its marvels could not describe these unholy things.

The spidery hands had no attachment to any firm device or footing, but try though I might, they could not be moved from the very space in which they occupied. Each attempt to pull myself free only resulted in the grip increasing. Soon my fingers tingled and burned and I knew blood-flow was being overly restricted to my own digits. A new fear gripped me as I wondered how long one can go without the free exchange of oxygen and blood to one’s tissue before necrosis begins to set-in.

My mind raced back to try to understand how we had become trapped in their grasp. I remembered the books on the table; the candles and the golden figurines too. The figures were shapes worn by time and repeated handling. They once may have been intricately wrought shapes that would marvel the eye. Now they were but a shadow of some former glory. But they still held enough form to elude to their original castings; lurid, provocative, and suggestive shapes that, though no prude, made me blush upon first glance. They had previously been covered in a layer of dust and a spate of cobwebs so thick that Tom and I hesitated in trying to grab them.

We had only wanted to hide the figures somewhere in the swamp as a prank. Mat and the others had dared us to do it. How I wished now we’d never been so foolish and had never come to this shack.

But come we did. We were kids and childish concerns made us.

Touch the figures we did. And that’s when the cobwebs transformed into the grasping hands that held us there.

Oh I know, you think I’m making it all up. Do you think me mad? Think I’ve lost touch with reality? You probably believe, like that doctor who visits and asks me questions all the time, that my own mind is playing tricks on me. He thinks that something terrible but all too natural happened to Tom and me in that old man’s home and that this story helps me deal with it. He’s a fool… we all are.

But I don’t really care what you think to be honest. Why should I?

I can still feel them on my flesh you know. Not some lingering feeling you get when something grabs you strongly. No, there’s that too. But I can still feel how they hold my arms still. I can feel them move up and down, feel them push against the hairs on my wrist and forearm. At times I can still feel them grip me tighter, or loosen their grasp upon me. But they never leave, they’re still there on my arms. You cannot see them I know, but I know they’re still there.

Why Cob released me after so long I’ll never know. The days are but a blur of memory punctuated with terrors beyond describing. I know now that even death won’t release me from their grasp. I remember the screaming, and the sickening smells. I remember it all. Every second is burned in my brain and as sure as I feel them on my skin, the visions will never leave me.

The doctors tell me that perhaps in time my hands will recover if I would just use them, but I know they’re lying to me.

Father says he and some friends have been looking for Cob in the woods, but they’ll never find him. He has friends from the other side. They’ll keep him safe.

Pastor says that God will punish Cob. I know better.

Mat brought me a newspaper telling the story of a fire in the woods. Apparently they burned the shack to the ground.

They tell me that some of Cob’s items survived the fire and are at the University Museum being cataloged as curious relics.

Mother never speaks about it, but I see her rubbing her arms as if something is still there. Her eyes bear a haunted, knowing look that I see now in pictures of Gran too. Perhaps my eyes show the same.

Don’t ask me what became of Tom. I already told them. You won’t find him or his bones. He’s dust now. Dust and cobwebs. You see they eat the flesh and spin webs of dust. When they sleep, they sleep as cobwebs… Ha! cobwebs… Cob webs… Cob’s Webs…

I’m still trapped there. I’m still that bug in the web… Ol’ Cob’s Web.

It’s the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. And it’s coming soon.

Forget the Long Count and the Popol Vuh declaring that creation will end on December 20, 2012. (An interesting number in its own right: 12/20/2012 => 12202012)

But October 10th, 2010 is 10/10/10 or 101010 which in binary (2+8+32) is 42.

I think you can all see where this is headed.

So the other night I had the opportunity to sit in on a gaming session. There were only three of us at the table, so I figured the game would be really in-depth and cater to those of us on the player’s side of the screen. Boy was I wrong… at first.

See, the other two players (Jes and Luc) are much better at playing these games. They’ve got a lot of history between them and they know how to roleplay like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve got a standing invitation at their games, but things seem to keep me from really getting involved with their campaings as much as I might like. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Cause while Jes might like to treat me as an equal, he’s quite obviously a much better player than I, and though he lets me do whatever I want without judging me, I’m constantly feeling like something I did (or will do) got his guy killed. Luc, on the other hand, can make really detailed and tempting settings but doesn’t understand that games are supposed to be non-adversarial and tends to want to railroad the game for his own enjoyment. So, feeling wholly inadequate for the task, I bowed out of the GM seat decision.

Now Jes is a great GM who will really let you flourish, but when someone else wants the reigns he freely steps back to let them do as they will. As a gamer he’s almost always playing a Lawful Good Paladin or Cleric or something like that. It never seems to matter what system we choose, he always knows the game better than anyone else I’ve ever met, and by limiting his choices, he’s really limiting his skills. But it makes him happy to do so. So I’m not judging.

But that choice left us with Luc running the show. Luc is a jerk, pure and simple. He’s the kind of guy you all sit around and try to figure why you invite him. And then next gaming night he’s right there at the table again. Sure, he does promise to let us be really powerful if we just turn the game over to him. His promises are so sweet that we forget he’s made them repeatedly in the past… and never followed through. But Luc can sure roleplay. It’s almost like he knows your innermost desires as a player and can craft a really compelling game to draw you in. And what’s more, he really can change gears on a role fast. That guy’s got the whole “playing a role” down pat. But he’s a jerk and we all know it… why we decided that this time would be different is beyond me. But Jes and I headed over to Luc’s house in the hopes of something cool hapening none-the-less.

Since the two are so diametrically opposed in their way of running a game, and are related in some way (I’ve never really gotten to the bottom of how) I was interested in seeing them interact. So I sat back in a smaller role with the intention of just watching them play it out. I decided to play the role of a simple warrior – a role Luc clearly thought was beneath me so he gave me some cool powers to toy with. Jes wanted to play a small town holy man and we all agreed to use these homebrew rule ideas for converts and the like.  Even though Luc wanted more, it looked like initially the game was going to be real small scale and deep in character interaction… at least that’s how it started out.

But Luc never liked the small stuff, he’s a powergamer on both sides of the screen. So it wasn’t long before we found ourselves powered up to uber-epic levels and challenging the gods; which is a common theme in all of Luc’s games. You might almost say he’s fixated on that very theme.

Jes and I took it all in stride but it really started to look like Luc was fudging rolls and just making stuff up on the fly in an attempt to beat us. See that’s Luc’s real style – he’s a railroading antagonist as a GM… and a jerk. Or did I already mention that? Luc was doing everything he could to really change the nature of the game by putting Jes’ character in every possible moral dilemma in the hopes of turning his simple holy man into a fallen warrior. But Jes wasn’t taking the bait, and that made Luc madder and madder.

Me? I wanted to stay out of the center of the story. But Luc had other plans when it became apparent that I was somehow the key to bringing forth some terrible chaos-bourne horror from beyone the scope of reality. But for some bizarre reason Luc felt that the story needed to hinge on Jes’ character’s inability to prevent this thing from bursting through to reality. Cue the spotlight, it’s the center of the story for my character I guess.

Well soon Luc was throwing everything he could at Jes, but man can that guy roll a save! While the entire game system was turned on its head and every modifier was tabulated (or invented on the fly) Jes just remained calm and rolled saves.

Things finally came to a head when at last Luc found a way to kill off Jes’ character and thereby beat us. Luc grinned as he got ready to roll a single save for reality against the horrors of ultimate chaos. The entire multiverse and our game came down to a single die roll. And the guy doing the rolling was an obvious fudger who wanted to railroad the game into oblivion.

Luc rolled and it was easily apparent that he hadn’t even looked at the result. Right before Luc could narrate the final scene where chaos finally overthrew reality and how we’d failed to prevent it from happening, Jes got a call from his Dad and had to go home.

But before he left for the night he slipped Luc a note, smiled at me, and headed for home.

Luc,

Remember that I have the homebrew feat “Martyred for the Cause.” So if I’m killed, the next save automatically succeeds and I’m resurrected. See you next week.

His eyes bore a deep and painful, haunting look that pierced my very soul. He was obviously burdened by some great remorse that I could not yet fathom. But in time I understood. In time I knew.

I met him in the most peculiar way that is not important to this tale, rather the mere fact that we met is enough for you to know. That he died by his own hand is not in dispute. He wanted it to end. He demanded it end… and so he extracted from me a promise. Oh that I had kept my word.

The promise he required from me was a simple task. One which he claimed he would reward me handsomely for. He asked that I simply find a way to disassemble or destroy a small device he had acquired somewhere in his travels. Barring that, I was to secret the item away and never let it see the light of day. We were poor and I, a loving husband and a devoted father, was eager to do as he asked. The money he would provide far exceeded my current needs and I jumped at the chance to increase my family’s meager estate.

He made arrangements in his will that the device should fall into my possession once he had passed. It was a simple task since he had no other heirs. Thinking him a fool and a bit odd at first, I agreed without question. Surely he wasn’t right in the head. But agreeing seemed to calm some deep fear that resided within him.

You ask now why I considered him odd? Simply this. He often spoke of things imagined as if they were real, things he remembered that could not possibly be. Why at times he claimed to be a father and a husband himself, but no kin to him were ever discovered. At other times he purported to be from another time or some such. His vast wealth he claimed to have gained from investments in companies that, as far as I could discern, did not exist. What folly he spoke. At least that’s what I believed. If only I had heeded his warnings, so too might I have realized the truth.

The device in question did not come into my possession for some time. The courts squabbled about his sanity and the state of his mind when the will was authored. Eventually parts of it won out, others did not. The monies I never saw; perhaps that was what led me down that foolish path. Alas, that I had kept my promise. So simple it seems now, so impossible to go back.

It was a small item with a maddeningly vast array of dials and switches. Each seemed to change the configuration of the device in ways my eyes could not easily follow. Like some puzzle or lock, the thing seemed to hint at secrets stored away behind its simple exterior. Each turn of a dial or flip of a switch would cause the thing to rearrange itself in a new configuration. I marveled at the thing, never knowing what hellish fate it held in store for me. What hands that made such a thing could not have been human, and I shudder to think of how long it has performed its wicked and terrible actions, at what horrors it has brought to men. Had I known then that men of science had solved Einstein’s equations and discovered that each interaction could spawn multiple outcomes that perhaps created alternate realities, then perhaps I would have guessed the device’s true nature. Or perhaps not. But it matters little now.

Operating the thing was a simple as falling asleep in its presence. Nothing more is required to make the thing work. One merely needed to reconfigure the device and when slumber was upon him, the result would be realized. This discovery was unintentional, the result of my first acquisition of the artifact. Unbeknownst to me, I had set the thing in motion by playing with the dials and switches upon first receiving it from the courts. Had I only done what was asked of me.

I see now you look upon me with the same disbelief I once held when told of such tales. You question my sanity do you not? You wonder what yarns I spin. But listen further. And believe me you must.

The next mornings things were always no longer as I remembered them from the nights before. The changes were subtle, yes, always subtle at first. The device had a way of making you want to change things. At first a distant friend or relative was taken and erased from reality, nothing bold. Most changes I was ignorant to, or could explain away by faulty memory. I had imagined something different perhaps, nothing more.

But as I continued to try to discern the meanings of the dials and switches, the changes escalated. Soon the unraveling was too blatant to ignore. One morning I discovered my youngest child, who was hale and fit the night before, was, in this new world, sickly and dying. How could this be? What manner of change had occured? Every other individual remembered the child to always be sickly, but I did not. My child had been well the night before. And now, she was not.

The next morning the child was no longer sickly. She had died two years prior. But I remembered her hale and full of life only two nights ago. And she had only, in my frame of reference, been ill but a single night. Now I learned that she had died long before I remembered her being well. The insanity of the paradox was maddening. I could not accept it at first. But looking back at the changes and correlating them with my studies on the device led me to the most horrific of understandings. There could be no other culprit for these changes than the artifact itself. It had the power to change the fabric of reality.

It was with this realization that I chose to do what I should not have done. When a wise man gambles and loses, he stops playing. But I was resolved to find my way back. This reality was not my own, I wanted my child. I wanted my life. I wished I had never set eyes on the terrible artifact, had never befriended that horrible poor man. But I made a plan to be more careful. I would no longer simply change the device randomly. Perhaps I could find the right combination to get me back.

But next the youngest child had never been, though I recalled her perfectly. Then my eldest fell prey to the changes the device made while unravelling my life. And finally I had never met my wife… did she ever exist? I cannot know. I must not know. To know would be too heartbreaking. And I am not a strong man anymore.

My plan was simple, but thwarted at every turn. I resolved to make one change at a time to the device. Should it not lead me back to a happier life, I would change it back. But the thing is too complex. Changing one makes it all but impossible to return. Perhaps now I understand that the unraveling is permanent. Perhaps it is the nature of chaos to disallow a happier change.

The door does not swing both ways you see. Each change leads you further into the abyss. Do not look away from me! Do not pity me! I need none of it. I need you to listen…to understand. Perhaps my understanding will lead to some good. It is all I have left to hold onto. I thought of leaving the device somewhere remote, or sealing it away, but it must not be allowed to fall into hand unsuspecting. This evil must end.

And now you ask why I am so clear in what it does? Why I’m willing to speak of it so clearly? Because it must not stand. It must not be allowed to continue to destroy men’s lives. My final change has led me here. Do not pity me. Death is welcome now. I cannot bear the memories of so happy a time when all about me is in ruin. But I ask a promise of you. The thread of your life must not be unraveled as mine; you must promise me that when it falls into your hands, you will do as I could, or did, not. You must find a way to destroy this thing. Promise me you will find a way. Destroy it. Lest your eyes be as haunted as mine…

Hallows Eve has gone once more
Left to sail to the timeless shore.

But he’ll be back again next year
Back to bring us terror and fear.

If you but keen beyond the pale
Too you shall hear that mournful wail.

But not the sounds of horror you hear
Alas those are children who shed a tear.

For Old Hallow knows how to bring them pain
Another year until free candy shall come again.

–Kevin