The Crumbled Hut

Grayson lived in a small stone hut in the wood in spite of the warnings from the other villagers that strange things lived in those woods. Being full of the hubris of youth, he paid their cautionary words no mind and built his home with stones he found scattered about the forest. Unfortunately, Grayson had a terrible sense of direction, and what he thought were scattered stones were in fact carefully arranged to create a containment ward against something old, something terrifying and hungry. In collecting them for his home, he had broken the bindings and set the ancient evil free.

Returning home along his carefully marked trail, he felt confused to find nothing but gravel piled there in small heaps where walls should be. He thought perhaps something had taken his home rock by rock at first. And yet, there were no footprints coming or going, or at least nothing he could identify as footprints. The walls also couldn’t have been crushed to gravel or there would be some sign of what had done it, wouldn’t there? And yet he couldn’t be lost, for his trail had led him directly there.

That’s when he noticed the strange tunnel of withered undergrowth, he knew he had found the trail of the thing that had destroyed his home. Once more overcome by the self-assurance that can only lead to folly, Grayson crawled into the tunnel after it. As he moved, he found the dirt becoming grittier, sandier. The branches surrounding him became far more brittle. Something was leaching not only the life but the… togetherness? out of everything, crumbling all around him plants and rocks into dust.

The tunnel opened into a large ash-gray pit and there in the center sat a grotesque creature with putrid yellow leathery skin covered in knots and writhing tentacles, and where each landed, the matter around it became even more brittle, crumbling to near nothingness. The thing noticed him and sent its tendrils out to catch the interloper, and Grayson only barely managed to dodge in time to save his life. Taking a nearby branch, he swing wildly at the thing, only to have the stick crumble to dust in the wind upon striking its unholy hide.

He could not fight, he now knew. He could only run. Darting for the tunnel, he made the best escape he could. The thing managed to whip at his leg, withering it to a uselessness he would suffer from for the remainder of his days, but he survived and was able to make the long trek back to the village elders to warn them of what had been set loose.

The elders did as they had done long ago and replaced the binding stones, but they could not help but worry. People believed in magic and monsters less and less each year, and year after year, the elders’ words fell on increasingly deaf ears. What would happen when the day finally came that there was no one who believed enough to learn the binding magics? What would happen when the elders died and the young and foolish wandered into the forest again and disturbed the carefully placed binding stones? What would happen when the thing got out? Would anything ever sate its strange hunger for that which holds the universe together? Were we already doomed?

- Originally mailed to W.A. in Mississippi