Last week I was accosted by Albert Wilmarth, a nut who teaches some kind of intersectional studies nonsense at Miskatonic University. I was heading back from a walk in Dunwich Forest when this wild-eyed kook rushes up to me and warns me that the Mi-go have removed Henry Akeley’s brain and were going to take it into outer space. Well, this story seemed ridiculous on its face because anyone who has met Akeley knows he has no brain.
So, I tried to calm Wilmarth down by slapping him repeatedly in the face. After about thirty slaps my hand got tired so I stopped. I asked him to give me the details of these Mi-go. He said that Akeley had described them as large, pink, fungoid, crustacean-like entities the size of a man, that have a “convoluted ellipsoid” composed of pyramidal, fleshy rings and covered in antennae in the place that where a head should be. So, I started slapping him with my left hand. This time I got up to up to forty slaps. At that point Wilmarth seemed less eager to continue the conversation and asked me to promise to stop slapping him.
Well, how could I refuse? He’d been such a good sport up until this point. I told him to relate Akeley’s story but keep it reasonable. Wilmarth related a tale of how Akeley had corresponded by letter with him. The letters related Akeley’s discovery of a drowned Mi-go at the fords of the Miskatonic river and how the living Mi-go then lay siege to Akeley’s farmhouse whispering in their buzzing voices about how they would remove his brain and take it along on their journeys to Pluto and beyond. He further related how only his rifle and his dozen or so ferocious German shepherds had been responsible for keeping these mushroom lobsters from capturing him. But he told me that the Mi-go were taking a terrible toll and every day he had to replace four or five of his dogs that were killed in the war.
I asked him, if Akeley was besieged how it was possible for him to procure more dogs and in fact how was he able to post these letters. Wilmarth supposed that during the day the Mi-go went back home to their underground lair under the domed hills that they inhabit. So I asked him why Akeley didn’t call in the police to witness this nightly battle. Wilmarth seemed a little confused by this line of questioning and implored me not to start slapping him again.
So, I let that problem go for the time being and asked him to continue with his tale. Then Wilmarth related how suddenly last week Akeley’s letters changed their tone. And handwriting style too. Akeley said that he had come to terms with the Mi-go and they were actually really nice guys and some were even Shriners. And he told Wilmarth to come visit him at his farmhouse and Akeley would tell him amazing secrets of the interstellar travels of the Mi-go. Wilmarth related how he visited Akeley who sat in a chair in a dark room covered in a blanket and how his face was unmoving and his speech was a muffled buzzing which somewhat resembled the noises that lobsters make when they’re thrown in a pot of boiling water. And that the sandwiches and coffee he provided were awful but he ate them anyway. And after retiring to Akeley’s guest bedroom for the night Wilmarth heard strange buzzing noises downstairs and when he got back to the dark room, he found Akeley missing but among the blankets on his chair he found a mask-like face and human hand-like shapes that looked like Akeley’s hands and face. So, he ran out of the house screaming like a little girl.
Then Wilmarth started screaming like a little girl. I had promised not to slap him so I kneed him in the groin. That stopped the screaming. After he was able to get up off the ground, he convinced me to go to Akeley’s farmhouse. When we got there Wilmarth refused to go in so, armed with a fallen tree limb that was on the lawn I walked into Akeley’s house of horrors. I found the darkened room that smelled pretty bad and the chair with the blankets but instead of the severed hands and face of Henry Akeley, I found one of those Michael Myers masks and those latex monster hands that they used to sell around Halloween. Suddenly someone behind me shouted so I swung my makeshift club and laid my opponent low. After finding the light switch, I realized that I had done the impossible. I had brained a man without a brain. There was Henry Akeley, with hands and face intact except for a large bump on his forehead where I had clonked him.
After he started to come to, I caught him up on why I was there. He sheepishly admitted that he owed Wilmarth a bunch of money and had hoped that if he believed the whole story about being shanghaied to Pluto by lobster fungus, he could string him along forever and never pay him. I felt bad for playing baseball with his skull so I told him that I wouldn’t rat him out to Wilmarth. He offered me some sandwiches and coffee but I told him I’d pass. That house smelled really funky.
When I rejoined Wilmarth out front I informed him that Wilmarth had been replaced by a Mi-go that had been surgically altered to exactly resemble Akeley. I told him I escaped by using advanced martial arts that I had learned while studying in a Tibetan monastery. I advised him never to go near Akeley’s house again and if he ever saw him walking around town to avoid him for fear of having his brain removed and sent to Pluto.
I really need a better class of neighbors.