The Final Letter of James Dunwoody

I am writing this letter to anyone in my family willing to read it, as I hope that at least one person can read what really happen to my friend, Adhiarja, on that night in the alleyway, as I knew if I told what really happened, nobody would believe me, more than they don’t believe me now.

Me and Adhiarja, my closest friend in the university, and we both taught academic writing, were walking home from a German-themed pub a few blocks away from where I lived. We both knew that we were in no condition to drive after the hours of drinking and secret psychedelic drug-taking we did, which was a shame to Adhiarja since he lived much farther from me, so I decided to let him stay at my house for the night. We didn’t feel comfortable walking beside the busy road at the late hours, especially since the sidewalk was being demolished to make the street wider, so we decided to take an alleyway near where we were that could serve as a shortcut. Even with that fact, the alleyway still felt very long, something I would think even if I wasn’t under the influence of drugs and alcohol, as it felt like we walked on for hours in there. Entering the alleyway felt like entering another world, as it had much more than what you would expect from the typical alleyway I’d come to expect. The two-story houses with stretched-out balconies that were all cramped together and nearly touching each other from either side of the alley because of how close they were, and many vines growing from plant pots on the balcony that all stretched downwards far from their roots that gave the impression of tendrils that were reaching down from unseen heights to grab any unsuspecting passerby. There were a few little restaurants and stores where some men staying up late sat cross-legged on a handmade bench from two planks of wood tied to a utility pole as they were immersed in their game and locked from the outside world, on the porched sat either elders having their late-night routine of smoking or young mothers breastfeeding after an inability to sleep peacefully, and even some middle-aged housewives sweeping the fronts of their houses before turning in for the night, which I thought was a peculiar thing to do at this hour. Some of the locals gave me odd stares as we walked by, but I was unbothered by it as a foreigner who received those looks every day.

The thing that surprised me the most during the walk through the alley was the small cement bridge with cheap rusted railings that seemed as though they would fall off the moment you touched them that went over a particularly wide river, wider than I thought an alley like this would have. The bridge was the only area in the alley where the cramped houses and stretching balconies did not cover up the sky, so the air felt changed as I walked into what was probably the only open area in the alley. The banks of the river beneath me were filled with trash of all kinds of plastic, and the ones unlucky enough to not be stuck on the shore continued to be carried away by the brown waters of the Jakarta rivers to where the eye could no longer see, and someone like me standing on this small cement bridge could only wonder about its fate. I do not know why I was suddenly so fascinated by these simple things, as I am not someone who is easily captivated, and these things are particularly common in this city, but something about it all being in a bigger-than-expected alleyway seemed to interest my exhausted drug and alcohol-induced mind.

I looked back in the direction we came from and could no longer see the street from which we entered as if it was forgotten by the winding paths of the alleyway. I suddenly saw the locals look up a little worriedly in the direction that me and Adhiarja were headed, and decided to all go back into their homes, even the ones on the other side of the bridge. Me and Adhiarja continued walking and got to the other side of the bridge, where the path became even more winding, as it seemed to frequently go up and down and even split into even smaller paths at some points, which did not help our already less than favourable states.

Suddenly, rain began to pour, and the sky above us was completely exposed, and me and my friend were defenseless against the descending water. We first tried to move faster and get out of the alley before the rain got worse, but within two minutes the rain crashed down on the both of us and turned into a furious thunderstorm. Me and my friend knew that we won’t be able to make it through the pouring rain, and had to find shelter immediately. Unfortunately, none of the houses on this side of the alley had any roofs or balconies to take shelter under, so we had to take refuge in one of the houses, which I left to Adhiarja as he was more skilled at speaking with strangers than I am. We approached the only house we could see that had the light on its door on, which was a relatively small one-story house painted white and green, and Adhiarja knocked continuously asking for the person inside.

The person who came to the door surprised me, it was an old ustad who wore sunglasses, which told me he was blind, sporting a large white turban and robes and an equally white long beard growing from his chin. My friend explained the situation to the old man, who quite immediately let us in afterward, and offered us a place to sit in his living room, which was the biggest room in his small house which I noticed had four other doors leading away from this room. Even though I didn’t get a good look at the other houses in the alley, I could tell this was one of the cleaner and well-kept houses around here, as everything, in the living room at least, was well polished and almost hadn’t a speck of dust. We both sat down roughly on two of the three chairs set around a wood and glass table, and the Ustad didn’t seem to mind our infavorable behaviour resulting from our drunkenness.

As we had nothing to do so far other than stay awake to wait for the storm to stop, my friend decided to strike up a conversation with the elderly ustad, while I mostly kept to myself and tried to just check my phone, but I was too tipsy and there was no connection from where we were sitting, so I decided to take a look at some of the books set on the table before me, which I grabbed after the ustad allowed me to read them. The largest book on the table was a very strange one, it had nothing but a strange symbol on the cover, and seemed to be very ancient, so much so that it’s a wonder someone in these parts could own anything like it. Adhiarja, being the friendly conversation striker he was, decided to ask the ustad about his work, which seemed to gain a smile from the elderly blind man, as he seemed to try to point to the book I held from the way he was speaking.

He explained to the both of us how he was an ustad for forty years and has studied the religion of Islam all his life, taught when he was little by his father. But two years prior, something happened that changed his life when he emigrated to Saudi Arabia. After Hijrah, he and a friend of his flew to Sana’a, Yemen for a few days to visit someone his friend knew. During his momentary stay there, he visited some of the more shadowy and more ancient parts of the city that barely anybody save a few naive or shady individuals visit, and came across a bookstore, run by an equally ancient man who he knew had a long lineage and knowledge of the past brought down by his ancestors. In the store, he found a book that was far more ancient than any of the other books in the store, which to even spark the interest of the old bookkeeper. He explained to the ustad that the book he found was a long-forgotten book and strictly prohibited, to the point he had to hide it many times out of fear of ‘close-minded’ people not taking kindly to it being around. The book was written by a long-forgotten scholar erased from history known as Abdul al-Hazred, who mysteriously disappeared and even those who know of his existence were baffled by it. The Ustad learned the book was called the Kitab al-Azif, and when he read its contents, he first couldn’t believe it, but he soon learned that the book’s knowledge was beyond anything he could imagine. It changed his life and faith, moving on from the Qur’an and now making the Azif his source of knowledge and faith, even modifying his practices to suit the knowledge of the book as he hoped it might help his followers see the light easier than what he has practiced since birth.

My Indonesian friend was captivated and confused by the ustad’s story, while I began to feel uncomfortable as it felt like every word that came out of his mouth lingered all around us and filled the room with dread. I decided to take a look inside the ustad’s book to see what exactly was this great knowledge he spoke of that changed his life and now preached to his followers, but what I saw inside terrified me beyond all belief. In the book were descriptions of unimaginable things that were far beyond human imagination and seemed to predate the earth itself. Places and powers beyond our reach that were as old as the stars themselves, and that human faith could never touch. I also read of abominable beings that were of no description and have existed before any of Earth’s gods. I read of the flora goddess Vnfrapthoa, the bringer of death M’rag, the spawn of Darkness; M’lauruth, the nightmarish Violet King, dim Carcosa, the foreboding peak of Hatheg-Kla, the great dreamer Cthulhu, ‘Umr at-Tawil, the Plateau of Leng, the city of Kadath, all-knowing Yog-Sothoth, slumbering Azathoth, the Shining Trapezohedron, the Haunter of the Dark, and other less knowable things that no sane person should ever have the misfortune of learning about.

I shut the book after my mind could take no more, and I looked to the ustad who was smiling madly at the sound of my panicked closing, and at Adhiarja who was still pulled in by the old man’s words. He spoke sinisterly of how the knowledge shall change everything that humankind thought they knew by seeking knowledge from faith or science, and that he shall create a new religion where we accept the coming of the real rulers of the universe and original rulers of the Earth, and we let go of our plain human sight, as the truth he discovered doesn’t need eyes to see. As he said that, what happened next I knew not if it was a dream or not, for when he removed his sunglasses revealing empty eye sockets where the alien-coloured light of rotting dimensions and decaying universes of primordial darkness shined through like a dark and emptying beacon to our eyes. I shut my eyes immediately, not daring to see any more of what those windows of the head had to offer, but my friend was not so lucky as he was caught in the old man’s gaze. I attempted to flee out the door, but when I opened it, I did not see the rainy alleyway I expected to find, there was nothing, nothing at all. Before me lied that no living creature was ever supposed to gaze upon, as it has existed before life, the swirling and stirring primordial chaos pit, the grave of the known universe, with lights that were not really lights, dimming isolated stars and crumbling planets sent to die here at the jaws of the stygian blackness with the rotting bones of uncountable aeons that stood before me. I backed away in panic, falling back to my chair, as I saw my friend, lifted up by the eldritch gaze of the old man and levitated out the door, his eyes dead frozen on an emotionless face as he was thrown out to the black pit beyond. I could not see very clearly from the window I peeked out of, but now I am glad I couldn’t, for my friend did not scream at that moment, but the unholy abominations that have been before dimensioned time, and will continue to be after, shrieked for him. I did not know what happened after that, for I passed out, but I do know my friend was no more.

The next day, I was found passed out on the sidewalk near the bar I was at last night. I tried asking and telling the owners of the bar and the police about my friend, but they had no clue of who I spoke of, saying I was reportedly alone last night. I even tried to show the police the alleyway me and Adhiarja walked through last night, but I could not find it, and even they did not know anything about an alley in that area. I felt like I was going mad, and could not sleep for days, and locked myself in my room out of fear of what could happen on the streets. After a while, I managed the courage to go outside to buy some food, but on my walk, I saw something that chilled me to the core. On a utility pole was a religious promotional poster, common in the lesser streets of Jakarta, but on the picture was the ustad I saw that night, wearing the same clothes and sunglasses that I saw. I could not bear the implication of what that meant, I’ve become too frightened to go on, as I have finished writing this letter, I shall no longer be in this world, I shall have cast myself out my window and down to the ground below. The police said that my friend might’ve been kidnapped or that I was simply delusional from my drug and alcohol consumption, but I knew what really happened on the night we entered that cursed malevolent alleyway, and what it shall bring to the rest of the world, and I will not see myself be a part of it.

7748998
This story works well - the prose is a bit more simple than that of the big HPL, but the wide descriptions of varied minor details fits very well, like the trash in the river. The added twist of the friend seemingly disappearing from human memory adds a neat layer of mystery, and of course the dark implications for the future is a wonderful Lovecraftian staple. Good job with this.

7749220
Thank you very much, glad to hear it.