ELDRITCH HORRORS: DARK TALES

The Return of Zoth-Ommog

by Leigh Blackmore

(Excerpt pp. 253-254, Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales)

It was a star-spawned abomination, a monumental cosmic horror from a universe beyond imagining. The thing lumbered towards me, its great faceted eyes protruding, its membranous and semi-transparent squamous flesh quivering, slime dripping from its ravening maw. It was a god awakened from slumber, a being of hideously appalling size and terrifying vastness. It crashed across the temple’s rock platforms, its cone-shaped body dwarfing the gigantic eel whose size had shocked me before this even more massive creature had appeared.

“Zatomaga! Zatomaga!” chanted the Pohnpeians, massed to witness the spectacle in their ritual temple.

The abominable creature slowed in its lumbering tracks and extended hideous appendages which sucked and chewed at the air, writhing blindly as they sought prey. The thing was behemoth, positively Brobdingnagian. Extending one of its appendages to the nearest chained Pohnpeian, it ripped the head cleanly off the screaming man. Blood spurted ten feet through the air, splashing me on the chest. The remains of the man’s body slumped to the ground. The gargantuan thing had four broad, flat, starfish-like arms with suckers, but it seemed to prefer to use its head-tentacles to clutch and grapple. It was a god, an incredible mutation, sheer muscle and killing power.

Zatomaga! Yes, and Zoth-Ommog—for despite the native name for the creature, I knew this was the Dweller in the Depths, the One referred to in the Ponape Scriptures. Dozens of feet above us, Zoth-Ommog brandished the man’s head in its tentacle, dozens of feet above us—a revolting trophy, dripping blood.

I backed against the temple’s cold stone wall. The natives brandished their weapons, giving full vent to their fury. In hellish ecstasies of adoration they howled their god’s name. “Zatomaga!” Zatomaga! Zatomaga!” Their god, the one they had worshipped for generations, was making a rare, if shocking visitation. It was the time of the Red Haze, and Zoth-Ommog had come again!

My name is Jack Leyton. It is ten years since the events of which I will write. I am not overly imaginative. At least I was not, until unexpected adventure befell me. Now, my dreams are shockingly haunted, and I intend to seek in death a peace I can find in no other way.

I am without heirs or relations. I leave this diary account of my Ponape adventure for whoever may find it, for I am almost maddened by glimpses of forbidden œons, of shattering truths that flashed out at me in that fated year of 1863.

(...)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Paul S. Kemp:
One Thousand and One Words

W. H. Pugmire
Recompense of Sorrow (brand-new Sesqua Valley!)

Ron Shiflet
Out of the Frying Pan

Don Webb
The Jest of Yig

Gary Hill
Rest in Peace, Jeremy Randall

Simon Bleaken
Ashanna's Whispers

Leigh Blackmore
The Return of Zoth-Ommog

Thomas Strømsholt
Devouring Darkness Hovers

Benjamin Szumskyj
A Haunting From Beyond

Linda Navroth
The Specimen

Dan Clore
The Dying God

Blake Wilson
The Door to Nowhere

Paul Mackintosh
The People of the Island

Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
The Bibliophile