When Ithaqua Awakes or The Man in the Snow

As many who read this web log must know, the Mid Atlantic experienced an implausible whiteout recently. Here in the Washington, D.C. area, it was the worst snowstorm in recent living memory. Many theories have been speculated as to the causes of this antagonistic snowstorm, most of them having to do with pressure systems from the west. However, to my utter dread, yesterday, I learned the real answer…terrifying and alarming me beyond reason. It did not come from the west, it came from the east, from that accursed plateau I sometimes dream, where the unnamed sovereign in yellow robe and silken mask mocks all humanity in psychotic glee. However, I’m moving ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning…

The snow began falling on Friday, I had just come home from my office in Northwest D.C. and was preparing to shut myself indoors at home all weekend. I had planned on spending my weekend completing a document review for a case and possibly consuming a hot toddy or two. As the snow began falling Friday and into Saturday, the gently falling snow was ghastly in its banality. The world from my window sill became nothing more than large mounds and lumps of white. The various news programs droned on and on about the historical significance of what was happening outside my home. Happily, the document review kept my mind occupied until Sunday morning.

When I awoke Sunday morning, I was overcome with cabin fever. My wife was out of town and with nothing more to keep me company than television and a few unruly cats, I decided to venture outside with my camera and record this historic event. After suiting up appropriately for the weather, I decided to take the metro subway into Northwest D.C. and survey the snow and its resulting damage around the locale of my office building. The metro train trip was uneventful. I was surprised at how efficient and rapid the commute was considering how unreliable the archaic and inept metro system is on a good day.

As I walked around the area of New Hampshire Avenue and 17th Street, watching the weather shocked crowds amble along the snow packed streets, I discerned something odd. Near the sidewalk which bordered the northeastern portion of the International Temple of the Order Eastern Star lay the crumpled body of a well dressed man…laying directly in a large snow bank, as if placed there by some unseen hand, in a fetal position. In the District it is not unusual to see many unfortunate homeless souls sleeping wherever they can find a space where they won’t be bothered. However, this particular man lay directly in the snow without even a single blanket to protect him from the severe elements. Just as shocking, the man was dressed in a business suit, as if he had just left some corporate office.

It was then that I heard him whimper and detected his chest rise and fall. My God! The man was still alive! It was only twenty-five degrees outside, why is he not dead of hypothermia! I put my camera away and ran to assist the gentleman.

“Sir, are you all right? May I get you some help?” I cried aloud as I ran forward. Damn! I thought, I left my cell phone back at the townhouse. He turned his head and stared at me, his eyes abnormally dilated. He must have consumed some type of drug, it would certainly explain his bizarre behavior. I reached out my hand and grasped his arm to pull him up. He neither helped me nor fought me, he appeared in almost a trance like state. I eased him on to his feet, his head turned towards mine, his face was clean shaven, smooth with few lines or the hardness of chiseled features. I estimated his age at around thirty years. His eyes were very blue and his light blondish hair was already receding dramatically. Inexplicably, he was quite warm to the touch, as if he had just come out of a very hot bathe but not wet at all. Clearly, this man had been out all night, gotten high on something and while wondering around probably trying to find home, he fell asleep in the snow. Still, his preternatural body heat actually gave me the chills. I reasoned that his aberrant warmness was a side effect of the drug he had consumed.

Since I had no cell phone and I myself was becoming rather chilled from the cold. I decided to walk him to a nearby café and ply him with coffee (to sober him and warm myself) and call the police. I draped his right arm across my shoulder and grabbed his waist with my left arm and we marched towards the café a few blocks away. Once again, he neither assisted nor resisted me. Luckily, he was light and we were only going a few blocks. His legs seemed to move automatically like an automaton after lurching the first few feet, as if he forgotten then suddenly remembered how to walk. As we walked, I tried to engage him in civilized conversation.

“Are you trying to find your way home, Sir? What is your name? Is there anyone I can call for you?” I interrogated him mercilessly for those few blocks we ambulated. For his part, he only stared idiotically straight ahead and only uttered one word.

“Ithaqua” he slowly pronounced the word as if he had to will his vocal cords back to life. Thankfully, we made it to the café without incident and the place was practically deserted. I found a table and a couple of chairs in a back corner, near a heater. I placed him in the chair. As I lowered him in the chair, I noticed that his body was no longer radiating such intense heat. Perhaps the drug was wearing off? I walked to the front of the café and ordered two coffees. I walked back to the man and placed the coffees on the table. The well dressed gentleman was still staring ahead but was…crying. I was about to ask him what was wrong, when he found his voice completely, turned his pale blue eyes upon me and began his ghastly tale.

“Monday, three weeks ago, began like any other day. I arrived early at the International Temple to continue my cataloguing of recently discovered documents in the lower crypt. Most of the documents were biographies of various OES brethren from the 19th century. Prosaic stuff mostly.” As he spoke, his eyes cleared somewhat and he addressed me directly.

“Please continue,” I implored as I slowly slipped my coffee and prepared myself for the tale to come.

“I discovered an ancient, battered leather folder among the papers. No one could explain where it had been located, not really unusual, considering the brethren never really had a very efficient bureaucracy set-up for the vast amount of information collected over the years. As I opened the slim folder, I pulled out a few ancient sheaves of parchment, written in some strange ink with quill. The handwriting was small and neat. The text was written in Latin and I confess it has been some years since I have had to translate more than an axiom. I brought the items to the Right Worthy Grand Secretary, who was much more versed in Latin than I. He frowned while reading the parchment and when he had finished, he looked at me and gave a simple command: ‘This is just blasphemous gibberish, Mr. Sloane. I want you to destroy them at the first opportunity and DO NOT catalogue these items.’ Since he was the Grand Secretary and I am bound by oath to obey him, I advised him that I would do this."

“Still, I was intrigued and my life is sorely lacking in intrigue. On my lunch break, I scanned the items and emailed them to a professor of classics acquaintance of mine at Catholic University and asked him to email me back an English translation. My friend did as asked and his corresponding email back was very tongue in cheek, he felt as if I was playing a joke on him and making fun of his Catholic faith. It turns out the parchment was a sort of summoning spell. The spell was supposed to call forth an ancient Sumerian deity, specifically an air elemental. The name of the deity is...”

“Ithaqua,” I simply stated. Mr. Sloane visibly began to shake violently at the name. I also noticed that his skin appeared paler than before and his lips had a bluish tinge, strange, since I felt quite balmy with the heater near us.

“Yes…that is what it was called by the Sumerians…but truth be told…it had no name…or at least one which could be produced by our primitive tongues. God Help me! I became obsessed with that spell. It was so simple, yet so seductively…enthralling. What would happen if one could call forth such a creature?! What could such a creature teach me?!” Sloan’s eyes were wide with fanaticism and he had grabbed me by my shoulders, his hands ice cold…I could feel the cold penetrate all three layers of my clothing. I suddenly sat back in my chair, breaking contact with his icy touch. Sloan’s hands fell into his lap and his head dropped forward on his chest, in an almost defeated gesture. He continued his tale, his voice monotone, without eye contact.

“As I stated before…this ‘calling’ spell was simple. It simply demanded a creditable sacrifice, some symbols written in the blood of the sacrifice and the words read aloud in a specific order and cadence. I decided to try my hand in calling forth this elemental. Course, a human sacrifice was out of the question. Instead, I purchased a rabbit to use in place of a person, assuming that this would not have any kind of consequence…how wrong I was.

“I gathered all the required materials on Thursday night of this past week.” Sloane appeared to wobble at the thought of the recent memory. “I won’t go into detail of the ceremony I performed. I assumed it was a failure, nothing happened. I stood in the middle of my apartment with a dead, bloodied rabbit in one hand and bloody scribbles all over my wooden floor, feeling ridiculous. I felt my obsession to summon an air elemental had been nothing more than a form of ‘temporary insanity.’ I cleaned up my apartment and prepared myself for work the following day.” I noticed his voice had begun to weaken at this point and he seemed to struggle, as if moving his lips had become a Herculean task.

“While at work the following day, I was completing some minor tasks when I heard a weather report about the upcoming blizzard. The predication of the accumulated snow and high winds was dire indeed. From what little research material I had previously located, I knew that when Ithaqua comes, it is always surrounded by a maelstrom of snow and wind. Could this be the result of my summoning him? I put it out mind and continued my work, snowstorms happen all the time without ethereal intervention.

Most of us who work at the temple normally leave around 6 p.m. On this day, the majority of the staff, who live outside the city, decided to leave early due to the coming snow. Since I live nearby in Northwest D.C. I advised the Most Worthy Patron that I would stay behind and lock up the temple. By 2 p.m. I was the last person in the building. Although the snow and wind were picking up outside, I decided to stay just a few more hours to complete my assignments. I did not realize what a mistake this would be…” Sloane’s features were become more acutely bluish pale and I was tempted to interrupt him but I was too enthralled by his story, he continued.

“When I exited the temple at 5:30 p.m., the streets were covered in snow and deserted. The wind started to howl, as if my presence suddenly excited it. The darkness outside was frighteningly malevolent in appearance. I wanted to run to the safety of the underground metro. I had only advanced a few steps when some sort of…whirlwind captured me from behind, I tried to yell but the howling wind became stronger and my voice was lost within its primordial roar. I…I was lifted upwards…into the sky…my body flailing maddeningly. The more I struggled…the more the wind pulled at my limbs, stretching my joints to excruciating pain. Below me I could see several blocks of the city, covered in virgin whiteness. I stopped struggling at one point, due to utter exhaustion and the winds which held me in bondage, also relaxed in response.” At this point, I was snapped out of my mesmerized state and became aware of Sloane’s complete lack of body moment, only his lips moved but his voice had become almost a whisper. I had to lean forward to hear him and he radiated a complete dearth of warmth.

“I saw it then, as it carried me around the city and the suburbs, in the sky, with the swiftly stirring winds. It wanted me to witness what I had wrought in summoning it. It whispered to me in my mind, telling me how it had come from that horrible plateau of Leng, where it slept. It had been angered by my meager sacrifice. It had no real form, in this dimension at least, other than two star like eyes which bore into my mind…my body…I felt it alter…it…” Sloane stopped; he had become immobile as a statue. Dreadfully, I reached out my hand and placed it on his shoulder, his body was as hard as marble, even with his head down, I could observe his petrified eyes to be open and he had been weeping when his body became suddenly inert.

I looked around the café, no one else was inside any longer, except for the propitiator who was busy making preparations behind the counter and not within easy eyesight of our table. I stole one last glance at the frozen statute that was Sloane; nothing could be done for him anymore, he had become Ithaqua’s human sacrifice. I crept out of the café through a back door and never looked back. I pray that Sloane had the good sense to destroy the summoning spell. I fear that if Ithaqua were summoned with an actual human sacrifice the consequences would be truly dire. Before returning home I took some pictures of the damage in the area from the ‘blizzard’, as well as the International Temple of the Order of the Eastern Star, an organization affiliated with the Freemasons. More information can be found at this website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Temple

Stay warm and do not look upon the sky during a snowfall, you may not like what you see.