The Man who Dreamed too Much

A story for the Cthulu mythos

     Down by the harbor, in a town called Anvil, lives a maddened old man who claims to walk in his dreams.  He ambles through town every day at noon with a mystified and anxious countenance.  Though some have laughed at this man with the long white beard who mumbles his incoherent thoughts to the world, many express detestation towards him.  Children are warned; beware of his delirious augur and his shack down near the harbor.  Shun his locutions and do not engage him during his daily gazing out into the open sea.

     It is beyond my knowledge then, why a young boy of thirteen would dare to knock upon the rotten wood door of the old man's shack as did William Dante on his way home from school.  Those who saw it claim the boy to be alone when it happened, and initially report hesitation on the part of the old man to respond to the request at his door.  The account of the event can be viewed at the town's archives and reads as follows:

     "My name is William Dante.  I live at 68 South Street in Anvil, Massachusetts and on the evening of December 21st, 1935 - for I cannot recall the reason why now - I knocked upon the crooked door of the old man's shack.  My original presumption was to be hastily shuffled into the hovel by an excited old man who was thrilled to finally have a visitor, but this was not so.  Warily, the decrepit shell of a once a strong man came to the entrance and stood in it as if he had known I was coming all the while.  He looked ghastly, and at once it could be seen that the small fraction of winter's sunlight that seeped through the partially open door caused him to shudder.  He said nothing, and gestured me into his abode, which was empty, save for a table without chairs and what looked like an incomplete sculpture of some unidentifiable apparition on it.  His mind seemed elsewhere and his pupils were preoccupied in trying to find mine.  The sounds of rats gnawing through the rotten wood that composed the structure were all that filled the void instead of spoken words for a long, indiscernible amount of time.  My thoughts raced to assemble any reason as to how a person could dwell in such a foul place until it occurred to me that whatever afflicted this man took control of every aspect of his life.  In this isolation of his cabin, his nightmare consumed him, and there was nothing else.  Captivated by fear and fascination, I listened to his story.  Hist story; which began so thunderously out of that silent vacuum and still enthralls me to this day.  He began inauspiciously, and spoke of his reoccurring dream with unwavering lucidity. 

     In his vision the old man caught glimpses of a long bygone city surrounded by dank, cyclopean walls.  Walls, he said, which could not be the work of any human architect, for they shifted and changed with every new vantage point.  Skeleton frames of burned out automobiles littered the interior of the city, capturing a picture of a time long faded away.

     The old man paused and his breathing escalated, for what he told me next chills my spine to this very day, as the realism of his oration was channeled into my blood.  The old man spoke of an ancient monster from another world.  A creature of gargantuan stature and the distinct presence of several different animal features.  In his terror, the old man fled from the beast as it relentlessly pursued him until he could not run any further.

     This seemed to be the end of his nightmare although his eyes looked as if they could not un-see the horror in his dream.  Without warning, the old man force me out into the street and slammed the twisted door behind.  That night whilst I was lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, I thought of the vision that plagued the old man every night in his mind.  

     The following day, I strolled by the shack down by the harbor to see if I could catch a glance of this anomaly of a man.  The being himself was absent, but what emerged before my eyes was the feeble old shack now boarded up and completely cut off from any possible communication.

     The townsfolk now speak of the occasional scream coming from the shack as the man who is most undoubtedly still alive awakens from his nightmare.  I would knock on the door of that house down by the harbor, but I fear for what I may find there."