Tales of a Fourth Grade Shoggoth
(by beloved children’s author H.P. Lovecraft,
the author of Are You There, Azathoth? It’s Me, Margaret.
as transcribed from the handwritten original
by Kevin Wetmore)
I WON C’THULHU at Harley Warren’s birthday party. Everyone else got a goldfish, and at first I felt bad that I didn’t get one, but I guessed the correct number of pseudopods on the thing in the basement (it was seventeen!) and so Mrs. Warren announced, “Randall Pickman Whateley came closest to the actual number of pseudopods and so he wins the grand prize,” and then handed me a small glass bowl with a tiny castle inside with strange non-Euclidean geometry. Inside the castle I could see two eyes and some tentacles.
“It’s an evil baby octopus!” she cooed. All the other guys in my fourth-grade class were jealous, and looked at their goldfish like it was no longer anything special. For a moment I knew what it was like to be one of the cool kids in school. But I knew it wasn’t going to last. My little brother would probably do something to ruin it.
My little brother’s name is Wilbur Ezekiel Whateley IV, but only my mother calls him that and only when she’s mad at him. Everybody else just calls him Fhtagn because it’s easier to pronounce, especially for him. Everybody knows my father, Old “Wizard” Whateley. He’s really well-known in town and everybody either likes him or is afraid of him. Sometimes I think he’s disappointed that I’m his son. I liked it when it was just me, my mom, and my dad, but then they had to give me a little brother.
My mom is crazy. I know everybody thinks their mom is crazy, but mine really is. Sometimes she stares off into space and sometimes she shrieks a lot or looks at Fhtagn and starts to giggle and weep at the same time. Like when he brings home half a dog carcass and just leaves it in the front hall. I mean she always tells us to clean up after ourselves and she’s always talking about keeping the house neat, but sometimes Fhtagn just leaves carcasses around and it drives her crazy.
At a neighborhood Walpurgisnacht party a few years back, while the bonfire was being lit, I heard a neighbor tell another neighbor that my mom was actually my father’s daughter, but that is crazy. Why would she be my mom if she was also his kid and why would my father want to marry his daughter and why would she want to marry her dad? I knew it didn’t make any sense. Still, last year in third grade they told us we had to make a family tree, but when I went home and asked my mom, she just locked me in the basement for a week and I heard her crying a lot. So like I said, my mom is crazy.
I don’t think my mom is disappointed in me like my father is, but she also spends a lot more time taking care of Fhtagn than she does with me. I mean, I know he’s only two and it’s not that I need my mom to take care of me. I’m already ten, and although I’m not as tall or big as Fhtagn, I’m not a baby like he is. I can’t help that I’m afraid of swimming. I just don’t like it. I must be the only kid in Innsmouth who doesn’t like the water. Every year, my father rows us out to Devil’s Reef and pushes us in the water and every year I scream until my mother says, “Oh, Wilbur, can’t you see he’s not ready yet?” and pulls me out. Last year, for the first time, he pushed Fhtagn in. Fhtagn, of course, just floundered around in circles for a minute and then moved his pseudopods so that he dove deep and then began moving toward the land, singing and giggling the whole way. I hated him. My father was so proud. “Look at him,” he said to my mom. “Fhtagn is already swimming like a Marsh!” And he rowed furiously to keep up with my stupid brother.
Having a little brother is one of the most stupid, annoying, horrific, eldritch things that can happen to a kid. Fhtagn is always ruining my life. But now I won something. I named the evil baby octopus C’thulhu and brought him home. I didn’t want to show him to my parents, who can be funny about pets, or to Fhtagn, who tries to eat them, so I hid the bowl under my cloak when I came in through the back door.
“Randy, is that you?” my mother called.
“Yeah,” I yelled.
“How was the party?”
“Okay, I guess. We played some games—I really liked ‘Pin the Tail on the Dimensional Shambler’; they’re not as scary in the game as the pictures daddy has—and we buried this one kid, and ate cake.”
“Well I hope you haven’t spoiled your dinner. There’s something on the stove that smells of offal and fish and your father wants us to eat it before sundown.”
“Okay, I’m just going to get washed up,” I yelled, moving down the hall to get to my room before she could ask more questions or say she wanted to see me.
I ran up the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I looked around. “Fhtagn, you better not be in here!” Sometimes he’s invisible, although at six feet tall and with three trunk-like legs it is hard for him to hide. He just goes invisible, then you run into him and he giggles. He thinks it’s the funniest thing. I hate him.
I took the bowl out from under my cloak and showed C’thulhu my room. “This is where you live now,” I told him. “Here is my bed, and my desk, and my grimoire, and here is my poster of John Dee, and this was my great-grandfather’s skin, and here is my collection of bottle caps. You’re going to live here,” I announced, and I put him on top of my dresser, next to the skull.
Then the door flew open, despite the fact that I had closed and locked it, and Fhtagn came into my room. He can’t say my name right but just calls me Tekeli-li, which doesn’t even sound like my real name.
“Tekeli-li okay?” he gurgled. He was standing there in his three-legged footy pajamas, holding on to his favorite stuffed nightgaunt. My grandma gave it to him and it’s a good thing it didn’t have a face because he chews in his sleep and the thing was already missing an ear and my mom has had to sew the neck closed several times from when he really gets going with the chewing.
“Get out of my room, Fhtagn, or I’ll tell mom,” I warned him. He was already leaving a pool of slime in the doorway that I was going to have to clean up. My mom says that because Fhtagn is special we have to take care of him, but I don’t know why I should have to clean it up when he leaves a trail of loathsome slime in my room. It’s not fair!
“What Tekeli-li got?” Fhtagn asked, pointing a hand-like tentacle at the bowl on the dresser.
“Nothing, Fhtagn! Go away!” I yelled, putting myself between C’thulhu and Fhtagn.
“Fhtagn play?”
“NO, Fhtagn! MOOOOMMMM, FHTAGN’S IN MY ROOOOM!” I sang over his shoulder, down the stairs.
“You boys play nice!” Then she began to giggle quietly and I heard a thumping noise. Usually that noise means she is banging her head on the wall or floor. When she does that, I know she isn’t coming. Fhtagn knows it, too.
“Fhtagn play with Tekeli-li and bowl?”
“No, Fhtagn. Let’s go to your room and play ‘Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young and Indians.’” He loved that game. He liked pretending he was an Indian.
“Okay, Tekeli-li!” We ran to his room and immediately I began the chant and waving my arms like they were tentacles. Fhtagn picked up his headdress and bow and arrow and began stalking me. We then jumped up and down on the pile of rags he slept on until our father came in.
“If’n ya caynt keep quiet whilst I’m reading, I’ll sacrifice ya both, next new moon!” he said sternly. He can be angry when he gets home from work. Or when he’s reading. Or talking to our mother. Or talking to anyone. Or any other time. We know he probably won’t sacrifice us, but when he tells us to be quiet, we are very quiet.
The next day I went to school and when I came home, my bedroom door had been smashed open again and there was slime everywhere. I was gonna kill Fhtagn until I looked at my dresser and saw the bowl was empty. And a bite had been taken out of one of the drawers as well.
“Dagonit, Fhtagn,” I screamed, so angry I didn’t care that I might get in trouble for swearing. “Did you eat C’thulhu?”
Mother came tentatively up the stairs. “Now, Randy, stop yelling. What’s wrong?”
“Fhtagn ate C’thulhu! And one of my drawers. I think he might have gotten some of my socks. But C’thulhu was mine! Why did he have to eat my pet?”
“He ate your what?” I forgot she didn’t know about the baby evil octopus.
“I won a stupid baby evil octopus at Harley Warren’s birthday party and it was in my room and it was mine and stupid Fhtagn came in here and ate it while I was at school!” I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but I could feel the hot tears forming. I wanted to be a big boy but I was so tired of Fhtagn ruining my life and eating my stuff.
“Now, Randy, don’t call your brother stupid.”
“He is stupid, and selfish, and I hate him!”
“Don’t say that!” She looked around nervously. “Your brother might hear you.”
She didn’t have to say because he might be invisible in the room with us just then.
“Good. I hope he does. He should know he is stupid and selfish and I hate him.”
“Son,” she said, “I know you are unhappy with your brother right now but you do not hate him. He’s your brother and he is special and we need to give him some extra kindness because he is so special.”
“I’m so tired of being told how special Fhtagn is. Nobody else has to put up with a six-foot-tall little brother who destroys all his stuff and eats his pets. I liked it better when it was just you, dad, and me. Why did you have to have him?”
She got that look in her eye again and started to giggle. “Well, Randy, sometimes you don’t plan to have . . . sometimes someone chants the wrong thing while inside you . . . and when the doctor tells you about the pseudopods on the sonogram and then you feel it kicking inside you . . . and we love your brother, he is so special . . . Excuse me, please, I need to check dinner.”
And with that she walked out of my room and down the stairs and a minute later I heard the banging again. It sounded like the living room floor.
I cleaned up the slime and threw away the bowl. Just as well, I thought. The strange non-Euclidean geometry of the castle in the fishbowl had given me nightmares last night, and had also made it difficult to find the door when I had to go to the bathroom. Still, Fhtagn had no right!
I saw him later in his room as I walked by on my way to dinner.
“Tekeli-li mad?”
“I’m not talking to you, Fhtagn,” I told him and kept walking. I could hear him twittering and crying for much of the night, but it served him right.
The next day, I was at school and during recess we were all outside playing. I’m not great at kickball, but they let me play and I usually get to kick the ball once. Then some kid started screaming, followed by more.
I saw the kids starting to run and then I realized why. A dimensional shambler had manifested on the playground. It had picked up one of the Marsh girls, Emily I think, and was draining her blood. You could tell because even though it was kinda invisible her blood was flowing through what looked like air as she dangled ten feet up. Everyone else was screaming and running, but a dimensional shambler was not as scary as my dad when he was really angry.
My dad had gotten me this book for Candlemas last year, My First Unaussprechlichen Kulten. The pictures were really disturbing and gave me nightmares, and my father was disappointed in me again, but I remembered some of the spells from it.
The dimensional shambler dropped the now-desiccated remains of Emily Marsh and began lumbering toward a group of second graders pushing their way back into the school. I ran and jumped in front of it. Making strange gestures in the air, I said the Zoan Chant. The dimensional shambler shrieked, and vanished. The second graders kept screaming and it took Mr. Alhazred, the principal, ten full minutes to restore order.
“Mr. Whateley, you are responsible for this?” he said, looking down his nose at me.
“No sir. A dimensional shambler manifested in an invisible form on the playground. I banished it, sir.”
“Be that as it may, Mr. Whateley, we still have to call your parents.”
I waited patiently for an hour on the bench outside Mr. Alhazred’s office for my mother to show up. The door finally opened and my father strode in.
I knew I was in the deepest trouble I had ever been in. My dad didn’t even look at me. He just walked straight into Mr. Alhazred’s office and shut the door. I could hear their voices through the door, low and dangerous. Finally, my dad emerged and, without looking at me, said, “C’mon.”
We got in the car and I waited for him to start yelling at me and threatening me with death, sacrifice, or being grounded. Instead, he said quietly, “Mr. Alhazred sez there was a dimensional shambler on the playground and you got ridda it.”
“Yes, sir.” Not knowing his mood, I dared not say any more than that.
“How’n ya do that?”
“I did a Zoan Chant like in the book you got me.”
Dad’s head snapped to look at me closely, as if he were seeing me for the first time. “Zoan Chant canna banish nothin’!”
“No, sir. But dimensional shamblers don’t just show up. So I figured this one was sent by someone. And a Zoan Chant would send the malevolent beast back to the caster that summoned it.”
He smiled at that. “Yeah! A Zoan Chant would send that beast straight on to the one what called it! Whoever sent the fearsome brute afta the young’uns would be drained dry as a matchstick. How’d ya think to do that, lad?”
“Well . . . it was in the book you gave me for Candlemas last year. And I’ve watched you do the Zoan Chant sometimes, like when you figured out Dr. Muñoz was trying to curse you, and you made him rapidly decompose. So I figured somebody was trying to kill kids with the dimensional shambler and if I sent it back to the one who summoned it, it would drain him and maybe kill his family.”
My father slammed on the brakes, then pulled to the side of the road and gave me the biggest hug he’s ever given me. “My son is a Whateley after all! I’d given up hope on ya, boy! But you can cast spells and get terrible revenge on folks what try’n harm ya! You’re like your old man, after all! This calls for celebration. We gotta eat dinner out!”
“Will we go home and get mom and Fhtagn?” I asked.
“Nope. Yer mother has locked herself in her room agin, bangin’ her head on the floor. Tonight is just about the Whateley wizards, right?”
And he took me out to eat at the Crab Shack. He let me get anything I wanted off the grown-up menu. When we got home, he told my mother what I had done and she smiled at me in between screams.
Even Fhtagn was proud of me. “Tekeli-li a wizard, just like daddy!” and hugged me with all his pseudopods. “Tekeli-li the best big brother ever!”
That night, when I went to bed, I didn’t mind having a little brother, or an angry father. Because I knew that, like them, I was a Whateley, and I had power. I was going to start tomorrow by bringing little C’thulhu back from the dead. And someday, when I was big, I was going to make them all pay. Fifth grade was going to be great!