I've been unable to find a wireless connection for some time since I last wrote in my blog. Any of you reading this might have feared that my pursuers had overtaken me. While I'm safe for the moment, I fear that I've drawn too much attention to myself already -- I'm certain that members of the Cthulhu Cult are following me, which is why I've fled my home in Michigan as I search for the truth about the Cult and Barack Obama's connection to it.
I have beat around Obama's connection to the Cult for too long. I should also tell you what book I've come to be in possession of, the source of my nightmares. The book is an abridged copy of the Necronomicon, donated to the University of Northern Michigan by the family of a recently late gentleman from Moshintun in Keweenaw county. The deceased's kin believed the man to be an amateur scholar of Native American culture and religion, and presented some of his books and papers as covering this matter. As a graduate student in history working for the summer at the University, I was charged with cataloging these materials. I immediately recognized that they were mis-characterized. The English items contained chants and rituals that were terrifying, unwholsome, and not at all like the naturalist religion of the Native Americans. The illustrations and woodblock prints were not of animal spirits, but wholly unearthly figures whose origins I could not even being to hypothesize on.
After an unsuccessful week of searching our library for any context for these documents, I decided to go to the town of Moshintun to see if there was anyone who could explain to me the interests of the dead man and help me make sense of these items. To understand my experience, one must first know that to call the town remote is an exercise in the most drastic understatement. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is generally poorly served by highways, and the rural northernmost communities are worst off. After a few hours of bad, winding roads through marshy undergrowth populated by various wading birds, I arrived at the old library in Moshintun.
My appointment with the chief reference librarian started off with a hearty, amicable greeting. She told me that since the old mine had gone under a decade and a half ago, there had been less and less interest in academics in this community, as well as little interest in the community by academics. She was extremely excited to be assisting in research like this into her town and its inhabitants. Thus encouraged and expecting a productive day's search, we dug in.
"You were right that this is unusual writing -- I don't think I've ever seen anything like it," she told me after I had spread out the books and papers I had received on the table. "You said it came from someone in this town?"
I told her the name of the man it had come from, as well as what little his family had been able to tell me about his studies. She considered for a few moments, and said "I wonder if it has anything to do with that new church or lodge of whatever that formed in town a couple of years ago, the Order of the Goran." She explained to me that after the mine closed, the economy of the town totally fell apart. All that was left now was a little bit of shipping, and even that industry had been largely dependent on materials going to and from the mine. The boats would leave on Lake Superior, and head for ports up and down North America and Central America loaded down with zinc and nickel.
"Anyway, a few years ago, one of the boat owners came back with stories about natives somewhere down Mexico, up in the mountains. They practiced this Goran religion, and he swore up and down that it put them in touch with the Earth in such a way that it actually helped them find new veins of gold and other precious stones in their old mines. He said that it was time we started looking into new ways of thinking about our lives and our spirituality, or else our town would go under." She went on to explain that he brought back literature about the faith, and eventually a church was started in town with a small but growing following. She thought it stood at about two dozen parishioners today.
At the end of our afternoon of discussion, I shook hands with the kindly woman and bid her adieu. It seemed like I was on the right track with this Order of the Goran, and she said she'd get whatever materials she could from the church and forward it on to me. True to her word, I received a package at the University five days later from Moshintun. It had pamphlets, service programs, a sort of hymnal, and best of all a small volume that represented about a quarter the pages of my tome (that I now know to be the Necronomicon). With the translated version to use to understand the strange hieroglyphs in the book, I was able to make much headway uncovering the rest of the book. Horrible rituals honoring strange creatures from the stars that came to Earth when it was still forming; prophecies that told of these Elder Ones raising from the ancient sunken cities where they sleep; descriptions of the same that turned my stomach and haunt my dreams. I painstakingly translated the volume that become more horrifying with each page.
Proper nouns were the most difficult to work out. Names like Cthulhu that were translated into English from the heathen tongue were all I had to go on, and slow going it was. Slowly I built phonemes for the hieroglyphs, and was able to come up with rough English approximations for the names and personages described (though many still were translated to a jumble of unpronounceable syllables). Eventually I was left only with the author's name and title. The title I got first: Abd al-Hazred, Arabic for "Servant of the Devourer," a reference to Cthulhu who will drive all mankind mad and then consume them. The name was difficult, but I eventually got it. When I realized what it said, I immediately double- and triple-checked my work. Confident that everything was correct, the story of the mad old Hawaiian fisherman came rushing back to me.
The keeper of the Necronomicon for the Cult of Cthulhu, and some if its related cults is the intellectual leader of the movement, who uses the title Servant of the Devourer. He is always a learned and passionate follower. The current al-Hazred had signed the book that I had, which turned out to date only to the late nineties -- a recent edition. The hieroglyphs read "Bar'ak Ob[a]ma." Barack Obama, Junior Senator from Illinois. Leader of the Cult of Cthulhu.
It was only after I learned this that I learned something else -- that word of my studies had gotten out. I saw the same two burly, working class gentlemen following me around Marquette for two days, and became more and more nervous. On the third day, I came into my office and noticed that some of my effects had been disturbed. It had clearly been searched -- and some of the materials from the late gentleman's bequest turned up missing. Thankfully, I had kept the Necronomicon with me. I immediately packed my things and fled. I'm now on the lam, looking for the truth about this ancient evil and the man who will in a likelihood be our next President, unless light can be shined on the horrible secrets he's been keeping from America.
