Roger’s sleep was haunted by dreams where he was chased by shoggoths that seemed to mock him by matching his speed and keeping within reach of their tentacles that flicked at the back of his neck and his flailing hands. Their cries echoed in his ears and when one finally gripped his wrist and spun him to face his pursuer the raw panic woke him from this nightmare.
After assuring himself that no real danger was imminent, he consciously steadied his breathing and formulated his plan for getting back to the tunnel leading to Dunwich. Rather than chance a sprint back to where he believed it was, he decided on the painstaking but “safe” option of stopping at each tunnel and waiting for a shoggoth to activate the “shoggoth exclusion principle” before proceeding to the next step. And he congratulated himself. And not just mentally. His calm had been so thoroughly cracked that he found himself muttering his thoughts out loud, “That’s smart Roger, that’s right, that’s how we’ll do it!”
So, employing this smeagolian dialectic technique he steeled himself for the return trek. And after a few minutes a protective shoggoth appeared and as soon as it exited the open circle Roger stepped into the open and tensed for his dash. And barely avoided running into the side of a shoggoth emerging from his destination. The screeching monster shot past him heading to his left. Roger froze and held his breath. Unsurprisingly there was no hint of annoyance at the collapse of his exclusion principle theory. But fifty feet beyond him the living nightmare stopped its forward motion and let out a new sound, a rumbling roar that split the air. It spun around. Shivering from head to toe, Roger swallowed his fear and took off as fast as his legs would carry him to where he imagined the Dunwich tunnel opened. He could hear the shoggoth bellow again but all he could do was aim for the tunnel entrance and pump his legs. Maybe it took fifteen seconds. Roger reached the entrance and made the turn. And what he saw was a window. He had guessed wrong. This wasn’t the Dunwich tunnel. What he could see was dying red light and mountain walls. He hesitated at the brink. But just then the shoggoth slammed into the tunnel behind him and Roger leaped through the looking glass. He rolled onto sandy ground and started running again as fast as his heart and lungs could provide. And right behind him came the shoggoth trumpeting its chase. It was only a few feet behind Roger when it shot out a tentacle and snagged his wrist. As in his dream he was spun around by the pull on his arm and crashed to the suddenly hard ground facing his pursuer. He felt none of the pain in his back from the crash but stared in horror as the monster formed a gaping mouth full of teeth. He heard the triumphant bellow of the creature. But then he heard another bellow. It was familiar but he couldn’t place it in the desperate scene he currently inhabited but it got steadily louder. And then he remembered. It was an air horn. The tractor-trailer hit the shoggoth broad side at about eighty-five miles an hour. The driver hadn’t seen the creature because an outcrop of Nevadan red rock obstructed his view at a curve of the road. His truck was filled with a shipment of refrigerated beef and the vehicle punched a pretty convincing hole right through the gelatinous protoplasm of the unsuspecting hell-spawn. On impact, the tentacle holding Roger released him so he was still facing the mouth of the shoggoth but it seemed to have lost interest in him after its evisceration. And as he watched, the flesh of the beast began to steam in the air and evaporate before his eyes. It was sunset and, in the distance, he could see the lights of Las Vegas brightening an otherwise darkening sky. He staggered away from the blacktop of the highway and slowly trudged toward the now stopped truck.
He could hear himself saying, “Now, how am I going to explain all this?” And then he started laughing hysterically.
I…I…thought i’d take…a li-little…walk…ha ha..hahahahahaha………