I, Ghoul or The Changeling

Forgive me…I do not know how to preface this entry. The email I received was so utterly shocking and disturbing; I considered deleting the unholy and perverse text from my inbox. Even now my hands shake so badly, I can barely type. I pray that the electronic missive I received was a hoax, created by some unwell, perverted prankster.

However, I believe you realize how important it is to me by now to probe the strange phenomenon which is occurring in this region. Against all raison d'être, I am going to place this entry in my web log. I placed a photograph I took of the small memorial park dedicated to Kahlil Gibran, off Massachusetts Ave in Northwest D.C., which our writer mentions. I have no more to say, other than this is what I woke up to one unfortunate morning recently, making the blood in my veins congeal. I present it to you now, unedited and in its original diseased format.

Hello,

By the time you read this, I will be no more…I think. Even now, I’m having trouble typing due to only having the ability to type with my stiffened fingers. My mind, my mind feels as if a noxious fog has descended upon it and enveloped it, strangling my thoughts. My labile emotions rotate between utter ennui and white hot rage. At least I’m still capable of human feeling…for the time being. We have never met but we are both haunted by dreams of that bizarre plateau of Leng, where mold encrusted humanoid creatures gesture to me, urging me to follow, while uttering excited gibbering. However, that is for later; allow me to begin my narrative earlier.

I grew up in Washington, D.C., never knowing my parents. As a baby, my father, according to my adopted parents, a degenerate alcoholic, murdered my mother in an alcohol fueled rage one night, before being shot and killed by DC police. I was told that had the police not arrived in time, I too would have been buried with my mother. My adopted parents, an older professional couple who had been childless, took me in and raised me as their son. They are both deceased now but my lingering memories of them are fond and happy ones.

I had every advantage growing up as a son to an upper middle class, educated couple in Northwest D.C. I attended school at Sidwell, then undergraduate at Georgetown and finally Dentistry College at NYU. Eventually, I took over my adopted father’s dental clinic in Adams Morgan. It was a lucrative practice which allowed me to travel around the globe and indulge in my hobby of collecting strange and fascinating objects of ancient fetish practices.

While on a visit to Southeast Asia, I purchased a most amazing ceremonial mask at a roadside stall. The mask, when I saw it, captured my attention immediately. I purchased it without delay, probably overpaying the villager who seemed all too happy to get rid of it and couldn’t tell much about it other than it was used by an extinct tribe. A tribe I believed he called the Tcho-Tcho?

The mask was humanlike but the nose was broader, almost flat, the mouth with its strange lips was permanently transfixed into a smile, revealing large canine like teeth. The mask even had ears which were strangely pointed. I placed the mask on the wall above my bed, soon after the nightmares began. At first, I could not remember them, only waking up with my heart hammering in my chest, griped by some unknown terror.

My wife, an ER physician, prescribed a mild sedative for me and I tried to put the night terrors out of mind. Yes…my wife, I have not mentioned her before now, have I? Elisa and I met while at NYU several years ago. She followed me back here to D.C., completing her residency at Washington General, where she spent her nights in the ER, stitching up gunshot wounds and fixing the broken bones of abused children from Southeast DC. She later transferred to Sibley where she practiced until her death.

Yes, her death, I can think about it now without falling to pieces. Is it because of my lost humanity? She was driving back to our rowhouse on Massachusetts Avenue, near Embassy Row. After a long shift, she must have been tired and it was raining so hard that night. The policeman who informed me of her death claimed that when she swerved into the truck, her death was very sudden, he said…I was in shock for days afterward, my partner at the office took over seeing my patients, later I would sell him my half of the practice altogether.

I shut myself off from the world in my townhouse, only leaving to take long walks at night (the night was a comfort for me), where I would routinely drink copious amounts of brandy from an old hip flask I had been given by Elisa, at the little park dedicated to Khalil Gibran by the avenue. Elisa was so beautiful and full life. I was later told by one of her co-workers that she had been four weeks pregnant at the time of her death, she was going to surprise me with this joyful news.

One night, as I walked north from the park, I heard strange noises coming from the cemetery near Rock Creek Park. The cemetery, Oak Hill is small but well kept and is where my lovely wife is or rather was interred. I knew that no one had any business to be there at 1 a.m. and decided in my drunken, grief stricken state to investigate the peculiar uttering I heard from the grounds of the cemetery. I climbed over the steel gates, which caused little trouble, being a lean and limber able bodied fellow. As I moved across the cemetery, I found it odd that I was fascinated and not in anyway repulsed from the throaty, frenzied voices I heard, for the sounds were neither man nor animal in origin.

However, to my horror, I discovered the exact location of the uncanny and eerie whispers. The grave of my late wife, who had been laid to rest just a few weeks ago, was now the source of those horrible voices. I was filled with self-righteous rage and sprinted towards her burial site. The grave had been disturbed a large pile of dirt was visible near the headstone, that was the least disturbing image though. Two ‘creatures’ (no other term could describe theses rubbery skinned, slouched, six feet tall humanoids) were fighting over the remains of a corpse which had been bisected at the chest, a corpse of a slim, dark haired woman…my Elisa. I howled at the top of my lungs, a howl that communicated my ire and despair and yet seemed to be an actual language, my GOD I thought…I’m speaking to them in their ‘language.’ The creatures turned their long dog like faces towards me (the heads of these creatures appeared so familiar). One of them spoke to me, yes, I actually understood it.

“Our hunting grounds, little one, find your own…when you have fully matured.” It hissed in an atrocious tone at me and I think…laughed. The second, around my height and weight and with a similar brow (but hairless) as my own, simply gawked at me.

“Get away from her, you…you freaks!” I croaked and prepared to fight them both over the dissected remains of Elisa. Something struck me from behind (probably a hidden confederate of theirs) and darkness closed around me. When I awoke I was surrounded by half dozen police officers and being accused of grave robbing. I began to scream and babble and assuming I had gone mad from grief, I was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. I was released a few days later. Since the grave had been empty (and my home was searched for pieces of the corpse and none were found) and I was the grieving widow, the District decided not to bring charges but I was warned never to return to the cemetery under any circumstances.

When I returned home, my nerves were still badly shaken; even after the benzodiazepines I was prescribed. As I stumbled into the bedroom, my eyes looked up, the mask! The mask was a facsimile of the faces of the two creatures from the cemetery! My head swam with alien thoughts and suppositions. Even before conscious thought was evoked, I voiced the word ‘ghoul’ out loud. As a child, I had heard stories of these graveyard haunted beings who fed upon the recently deceased and kidnapped children from their beds (usually naughty ones). My head throbbed with an all consuming migraine, hideous childhood fantasy blended with cold adult reality. I had witnessed the feeding ritual of a gang (?) of ghouls, clearly there had been more than two. I sat on the edge of my bed and drank some water, as my mind calmed, I wondered aloud why they did not kill me or kidnap me. I knew I had to do more research but I was so tired from the last few days and the benzos took effect, I fell into a deep but restless slumber.

In my dreams, I was in a strange land, at night, running across open fields with semi-cloven feet. I stopped by a large tree, a putrid stench entered my nose and my long gray tongue ran over my sharp, jagged teeth. I raised my hairless head and inhaled deeply what to me was a heady, delectable perfume. My claw like fingers gouged the thick black earth near the tree, knocking over some sort of religious marker, I did not care. Raw hunger drove me and my hands dug deeper, until I find the swaddle rags and I pulled the round bundle from the ground. A raw, gleeful crackle escaped from my rough throat. My long hard, bony claws tore the cloth apart. The empty eye sockets of the dead baby stared back at me in innocence. I scraped the maggots away from the black distended flesh. I cracked and tore the plump left arm from its small shoulder socket like a fetid turkey leg. My mouth widened as I moved the arm to my watering mouth…I woke up screaming but the words which come out of my mouth are not the English language.

In the morning, I met with my dental partner and his lawyer, we sign the necessary papers for him to take over the business. I have enough money from the sale, my savings and Elisa’s life insurance policy that I will never have to work. I am determined to spend my ‘retirement’ investigating and researching these repellent man-beasts.

I turned to the internet for my initial research but the information I located was fruitless, useless speculation only. However, I do locate a strange antique book seller in Dupont Circle, he sold me a copy of a book, written in English but transcribed from a much older text originally written in Latin and rumored to have been authored by the ancient English alchemist John Dee himself. It was a warm day when I purchased the book and decided to read it at that little memorial park dedicated to Gibran, where all this began.

The accursed text is a horrid thing and can only be described as blasphemous to all that is natural and commonsensical. Various strange spells and incantations are described which I will not go into detail, in order to shield your sanity. Towards the end of the text though I find what I have been searching for since this horror began, a history of the ghoul in the western society. These creatures were described as eaters of the dead (ravaging local burial sites for their repast) and are drawn to areas of ancient influence and magick, for the ghoul is a harbinger of worse horrors to come, the vanguard of a ghastly inhuman invasion. The ghouls have a tendency to precede various disasters, both nature and otherwise. According to that vile text, their keen dog-like senses can smell impending horror. In physical description the ghouls are listed as exactly as I have witnessed.

As disgusting as these passages were to read, it was the final passage that filled me with despair and dread. According to Dee’s accursed translated text, ghouls could breed but not very fruitfully and a human could transform and become a ghoul. A human, who ate of dead flesh and lived in very close proximity of a clan of ghouls would, over time, transform and take on the physical and eventually the psychological characteristics of a ghoul. In order to increase their numbers, ghouls were known to kidnap newborn human infants and place their own ghoul infants in the stolen child’s crib. An infant ghoul is indistinguishable from a human infant. The human infant will be raised by the ghoul clan eventually turning into one. The ghoul child will grow to be an adult and once he or she reaches a certain age will began a hideous metamorphosis.

I slammed the book shut and looked down at my hands. Since Elisa’s death my fingers had begun to feel arthritic, the bones curling and painful, my fingernails were hard and yellow, impossible to clip so I just gave up. My general lack of hygiene was becoming appalling but those few friends who still visited me assumed I was still in a state of severe bereavement. However, even they began to visit me less and less and would gasp whenever I would open my front door to greet them. No…no…I am imagining things. I need to walk and collect myself; I gathered the book and my uneaten snack into my leather messenger bag and began walking. I walked all the way to the Dupont Circle metro station and boarded it. Not really knowing why, I found myself on the orange line to Rosslyn and then the Blue line towards the Pentagon. I exited at the Arlington Cemetery station and strolled into the vast burial place.

My pace began to quicken and I picked up a pungent scent that increased as I weaved my way around various tombstones of service members and government dignitaries. Suddenly, I stopped and fell to my knees. An odor I can only describe as the most delicious scent to ever invade my nostrils was upon me and I found its origin. Before me, lay a pile of dirt. A freshly interred soldier, killed in Afghanistan, placed in his final resting spot a few days before. I wept, those passing by assumed I was a bereaved friend or relative. However, I mourned for something far different, I mourned for my lost humanity, at the foot of that grave,that I wanted to so badly desecrate.

The next few months saw me become a recluse. I burned that accursed book in my fireplace but that act was borne out of frustration than anything else. I knew nothing could stop the transformation. Although I had a receding hairline for a few years, I quickly lost all of it, including my body hair. The mail carrier spotted me one day and said how sorry he was that I had cancer, after that I shut myself off from the world completely. As I write this my face has undergone a hideous alteration, my teeth are sharp and wicked in appearance, my skin like pliant leather. At night, I hear their call, the voices… chattering…nails scraping on my windowsill. I find myself looking at recent obituaries and contemplating the most noxious acts imaginable. I sleep all day and only awake at night, prowling around my rowhouse, from the outside, miles away; luscious fragrances enter my deformed flat nose and tempt me, even in my self-imposed prison. It won’t be long now. I can’t fight my birthright much longer. I know now why my “father” drank so much and why he felt the need to destroy his family, some how he knew. He knew I was not really his son, born of his flesh, he knew I was a changeling and what I would eventually become…it no longer matters, my memories fade as the hunger begins to overtake me completely…

(End of Message).

A few other lines were written as well, they appeared to be ramblings of this very poor deluded fellow, something along the lines of: Ia! Subb-niggarath? Should I receive anymore emails from this highly disturbed fellow in the future, I shall delete them without reading them. May God have mercy on his soul.