I grew up in rural Massachusetts. My mother was an English professor at Cambridge and my father was an archeologist whose focus was on the obscure religious beliefs of the ancient Babylonians. He was part of the team that discovered and retrieved one of the few remaining copies of the book Al Azif by Abdul Alhazred.
I did my pre-med at Stanford University and my medical school at Miskatonic. Shortly before my graduation, my mother fell ill and within a few short weeks, died of a mysterious illness.
My father, obviously, had some difficulties dealing with her death and slipped into severe depression. The more I attempted to help him, the more it appeared to cause more harm. There were days when he wouldn’t leave the bedroom and as the weeks wore on I chose to seek help for him from outside resources.
I came back one day with Lynn, a psychiatrist that I had worked with at the hospital. She and I had worked together quite often and had gotten quite close so I trusted that she could understand my father’s plight and be able assist in his turnaround. When we got to the house, we found it empty, with no sign of my father.
As we wandered the house looking for him, I heard a scream and a thump. I rushed toward the source of the sound and found Lynn collapsed on the floor or my father’s bedroom. The entire room was empty except for a ring, drawn on the floor with chalk, an open book, and a pair of shoes.
I rushed over to Lynn; she was alive and appeared just to have fainted. I looked again around the room and found nothing new. I decided to take a closer look at the book, an ancient tome that appeared to be bound in leather. The pages contained writing that was unfamiliar to me. On the open page was an illustration of some creature that looked like an amoeba made of tar with glowing eyes floating on the surface. I looked closer at the opposite page and found a depiction of the circle that was drawn on the floor.
I started to get the chills, place the book on the floor and turned to grab Lynn. As I turned, something above me caught my eye and I peered skyward. What was once the solid ceiling of my father’s bedroom was now open night sky, well, different than night sky, almost as though it was open into space itself. This was as much as I could handle, I grabbed Lynn and ran from the room. As I ran there came sound of cracking wood and then a sound that to this day still haunts me. With a shrill voice, but with some familiarity, a voice started repeating "Tekeli-li".
I ran to the car, placed Lynn in the passenger seat and quickly drove down the drive. As I pulled away I could see the house starting to collapse. As I reached the end of the drive I looked back and the house was gone. Not just collapsed, but completely gone as though it never existed. I drove Lynn back to the hospital, they took her into emergency and she lay for six weeks in a coma.
Eventually, Lynn recovered. She didn’t remember anything of that day. I got an offer with the Newport Physician’s group in southern California and made the move. I never went back to where the house was, never found out what happened to my father and never learned what placed Lynn into that coma. I suppose there are some truths better not to be uncovered.
