With apologies to HP Lovecraft
1
After dinner, we had retired to the drawing room – or rather that part of Williamsons tiny apartment that included the most seating. Chilled bottles of lager in hand, and plump from the pepperoni meat feast pizza so recently consumed, we sat down on his eclectic mix of thrift shop and Scandinavian superstore furniture to chat. Present with me were my two greatest friends; Danvers, my co-conspirator in tonight’s arrangement, and the subject of our concerns, Williamson. Williamson had, over the preceding several weeks, given an air of distracted morbidity and attained a previously uncharacteristic plumpness which had greatly concerned both Danvers and myself, such that we felt the old chap needed to be ‘brought out of himself’; thus we had eagerly acceded to his request to visit with him in his bed-sit for an evenings' beer and pizza extravaganza.
We had all been at college together, and were now enjoying a long aimless drift through graduate life; I had been fortunate to secure myself a place on a relatively unchallenging post-graduate course, Danvers was involved in something technological and vaguely promising, and Williamson had swiftly taken up a position at a major bookstore outlet, primarily for the staff discount. However, despite his initial joy at being surrounded by bibliophillic delights five days a week, he had soon dimmed, a general malaise we had put down to the previously un-experienced joys of working life combined with an unexpected demand to operate as a cut-price barista. Our confidence in the diagnosis was shaken considerably as the gloom was joined by an increasingly twitchy distraction, wild of hair and eye; it was Danvers who had initially noticed the pressure on Williamsons girth, and my initial response was an uncommonly visceral chill for which I still cannot deduce the origin. Simultaneously, Williamson had started making unaccompanied and unexplained sojourns on his days off, racking up the miles on his aging Nissan Micra in a most concerning fashion. Thus we had invited ourselves to his bedsit, to seek out the cause of his malady.
We sat for a few moments in increasingly awkward silence, mostly hiding behind fizzy slurps and green glass, observing the warping of light through the rectilinear curves of its brewery hieroglyphics. Danvers and I exchanged furtive glances, while Williamson merely stared glassily over the top of his stubby. Danvers cracked first.
“I say Williamson old man, why have you been such a gloomy old cove of late.” Williamson reacted with surprise, not least because of Danvers uncharacteristic Woosterian terminology from his otherwise Estuary mouth. Carpe Diem, I leapt in.
“Yes. You have to admit, you’ve been out of sorts for a while. What ails thee? Is it work?”
Williamson dragged his bemused gaze from Danvers to me to take in the face that had emitted words of a dangerously Shakespearian angle, and then back again. He sighed, and took a slurp from his bottle in a most pregnant and preparatory manner.
“Yes. Well, it started at work. But what I have to tell you goes no further than these four walls, for it is a dark and terrible tale.” He paused as we nodded enthusiastic assent. “At first, all was wonderful. I had the pick of new publications, an opportunity to submit recommendations, fifteen percent staff discount and up to three skinny mochacinos a day. As was my wont, I mostly skirted around the lower slopes of humour, fantasy fiction and the occasional dip into history. However, one wet Tuesday morning last October, a colleague phoned in sick, and thus I found myself in wholly unknown territory between the high burgeoning shelves of cookery and food writing. Most of the spines offered no boon, but soon I had succumbed to siren calls. Oh, the strange and terrible things I learnt in that place. Secrets of spicing, and of rare and delicate herbs. Ancient truths about cuts of meat, and the obscure origins of vegetables. The deepest and most antediluvian knowledge of the kitchen. I metaphorically devoured each and every recipe, all those culinary delights, and all without setting foot once in a real kitchen, save to boil a kettle or toast some sliced white. But still I wanted more. I started to seek out obscure and out of print tomes. I scoured the back shelves of charity shops, and travelled to far off second-hand bookshops. But there remained, seemingly out of reach for ever, the one great book. The key to unknown, terrible and secret catering truths.”
Danvers eyes, grown wide as Williamson had progressed through his tale, snapped to me. I swallowed some beer, too quickly so that it became solid and choking as it went down, and I knew that sooner or later I would be forced to burp. “Cookery,” I croaked, “why?”
Williamson snorted. “Why not? Haven’t you ever felt that your college bought knowledge of the world is too narrow, that there are things that lay unrevealed to you? How there are two types of Artichoke, utterly unrelated? How nutmeg can be used for both sweet and savoury purposes? How the smallest amount of ancient Egyptian knowledge can improve your home and cooking? I have discovered and read the rarest of foodie tomes. Learnt dark and chocolatey secrets of Italian deserts from the Panacottic Manuscripts. Discovered lost sausage flavourings from the Unausprechlichten Wursten, and seen enticing yet threatening things written about cappucino’d sauces in the Book of Froth. I have even delved between the unspoken covers of Ainsleys Big Barbeque Book.”
I stared at my friend, for he seemed now possessed of a wholly alien light and energy.
“You mentioned a key, “Danvers interrupted. Williamson nodded, then paced to the window, his back to us, and his voicing taking on a distorting tone from its reflection from the poorly fitted secondary glazing.
“There exists a book that is the greatest of all culinary writings. It is ancient in its origins, shunned by all but the most obscure academics and celebrity chefs. It contains knowledge that only the most prepared can handle, and is exceedingly rare. I had travelled to just about every second hand bookshop within sixty miles of here, but never came across more than frightened whispers of it. Then, one day in February I managed to get a long weekend, and travelled to the mist-laden and mystic town of Hay on Wye, where it is rumoured all books are available, and the shelves alone make ancient Alexandria pale in comparison. Travelling through the night, I was into my first shop as the bent and misshapen owner unlocked the door at the crack of 9:43. I spent seemingly endless hours, trailing from shop to shop, head cocked to one side and scouring the darkened corners of the shelving. Then, after a liberal application of liniment to my neck muscles on the lunchtime of the third day, I ambled into a shop I had not noticed before, tucked away down a short alley leading off from a public house. I was the only patron, and I felt strangely drawn to the shaded and dusty air of the establishment. As my eyes alighted on the leathery spine of a book set back slightly from its neighbours, I felt an electric jolt as I read the name I had been searching for. The Lepranomichaun, by the mad Irishman Ardal O’Hazzard.”
Danvers coughed on his beer. I gasped. Williamson turned back towards us, his face twisted by a hideous leer. So shocking were his subsequent words, I cannot recall them with the clarity of his earlier recitation. He told us of how he had purchased the book from a strange and misshapen clerk. How he had tried to find the store again after rushing off to skim it over a pint, but had failed utterly. How he had driven back at foolish speed, eager to study his new acquisition. And then, he started to tell us of the contents of this hideous and damned volume. It ranged over far more than mashed potatoes and poached salmon. The first few chapters were concerned with nutritional health and well-being, but to a greater depth and with far more reliance on ingredients than any book he had previously read. Then, it moved on to discussions of spiritual and supernatural cooking, and unspeakable, un-nameable ingredients. As Danvers paled, and my lurking burp transmogrified itself into a creeping nausea, Williamson told us unbelievable tales; of the half-man, half-oyster Shallow Ones, and the psychotic and formless Yoghurt-Sothoths. He told of the great tentacled Yoohoo, the huge and slightly camp herald of sinister and ancient Gods from strange dimensions, and how one could summon them to enhance pastry crispness and revive collapsing soufflés. Most terrifyingly of all, how all these creatures remained in our world, sleeping fitfully in their dark and ancient City, high in the Tuscan hills, watched over by the greatest of their number, the horrific and shapeless thing named Huarg F’Hatooey. Of this, he gave such detail as I never would have thanked him for. It’s appearance, as a great clammy oysterish thing. It’s ability to slip between the crevices of our knowledge, making cosmic mouse-holes in the wainscoting of the dimensions. It’s ability to come unbidden from the realm of dream, to possess men and drive them mad. But most of all, he told of its intimate association with food past its sell-by date, and how it played with those risk takers at the edge of comestibility, offering both great rewards and great stomach cramps.
When he had finished, I quickly rescued more beer from the kitchenette fridge, an offering greatly appreciated by Danvers who snatched the bottle from me and half-drained it at the first gulp.
“This is incredible,” I said, sipping distractedly from my own vessel. “The things you tell us are so strange, so horrifying. One must almost attribute them to the ravings of a madman; that there lurks in our world an ancient and alien thing embodying the effects of poorly chosen groceries. Surely now you must consider working in an outdoor clothing shop, or perhaps something to do with bicycles?”
“Ha!” Danvers had let out a short, snippy chortle. He laughed some more, a little too maniacally for my tastes, and after quickly swigging more beer, allowed his face to settle into a cynical twist. “He’s having us on, the bastard. He’s probably just moping about a girl – that stacked redhead in the chemists next to his bookshop probably. This tale is too outlandish. Hay on Wye? In that crappy Micra? I don’t think!”
Williamsons face grew stony. I looked on him with a face I hoped conveyed the slight doubt of a confused, yet caring friend, and asked “Is it the redhead? She’s fit.”
Williamson said nothing, but merely reached inside his battered moleskin jacket, and brought out a windowed, brown envelope, which he handed to me. Tremulously, I opened it has Danvers gazed on in growing horror. Inside, a single piece of paper, headed with the insignia of the Herefordshire Speed Reduction Partnership, showed a fuzzy monochrome picture clearly that of Williamsons battered Japanese hatchback, and labelled, with blood chilling clarity, February 17th, A438 nr Hay on Wye.
“This proves nothing. Nothing!” wailed Danvers, desperately snatching at the legal missive. Williamson calmly took it from him, and re-pocketed it. “I told you,“ he said, slowly, “that the Lepranomichaun unlocked great secrets of mastery of the power from Huarg F’Hatooey, powers associated with the borderlands between saleable products and those not fit for human consumption. I also told you how I had devoured much of the writings without setting forth to a kitchen save for light refreshment. But this is not all. Once the Lepranomichaun came into my possession, I no longer possessed the excuse of inadequate culinary skills, for I had moved to a world of prepared meals and TV dinners where no such skills were required. Mayhaps you have noticed I have put on a little weight, for my diet is now exceedingly exquisite and bargain priced, consisting as it does of prepared foods rescued from the edge of the abyss. Prepared foods that are on the verge of being discarded by the supermarket. Prepared foods such as...Pizza!”
2
I don’t remember clearly when either Danvers or I left. Danvers left first, certainly, and not long after the horrifying revelation of Williamsons’ capture by a one-eyed electric traffic cop had confirmed his earlier narrative. I believe I had hung on for at least another beer, in almost total silence. After I returned home, I dug my emergency Sherry from the back of the bathroom cabinet, and helped myself to a good half pint. It is to that final fortification, and the excessively cheesy and aged pizza from earlier that night, that I would have attributed the strange dreams that befell me when I finally slumped into unconsciousness, were it not for the sudden horror of the following morning.
My slumbers were a torment of strange and eldritch visions. I dreamt of weirdly towering desserts, running thickly with chocolate, and of broad-brimmed quiches cut into strange and unnatural slices. Endless drifts of mixed spice deserts and oceans of thin and watery gravy. Finally, a sensation of falling through a strangely cramped and lightless void, to a crawlingly chaotic kitchen seemingly outside of time and space as we know them with our limited senses. There at the centre of the kitchen, oddly hidden from my sight, was some shapeless shadow, and as I strove to identify it, I noticed the dancing figures that quickly resolved themselves to be that most terrifying of best-before comestibles, the mixed seafood cocktail.
This last and terrible sight jerked me from my sleep, afore I could close eye upon that shapeless chef in his horrifying and madness-inducing lair. My mouth was dry, and my stomach felt uncomfortably like it had been viciously kicked. I stumbled, blear-eyed and shuffle-footed into the bathroom seeking a glass of water, but had barely laid a step on that odd and fragmentary piece of carpet before the toilet, when I was seized by the most powerful and cloying choking sensation I had ever experienced outside of a bouncers inducement for me to leave his establishment. Nausea gripped me, as my thoughts were suddenly cast back to Williamsons terrifying revelation of the source of our evenings repast, and lifting the toilet seat I succumbed to a cramp and bent my head forward, before letting loose that cry which finally dispatched my senses for the rest of the weekend.
"Huarg! F’Hatooey!"
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