Excerpt: Portshire's Doom (Working Title)

“So sorry, Mr. Lorry. I do tend to meander so in my conversations. Please, have another drink,” he signaled again to the bartender, “and tell me what interest you have in this book?”

“A customer of mine,” I began, “came looking for it. I don’t get a lot of requests for rare or antique books, but when I do, I am usually able to find them pretty quickly. I thought it was pretty odd at the time that I couldn’t find any reference to this book in particular, but now that I see the thing, I get it. I know the title said it was a diary, but I didn’t expect it to be an actual diary.”

“Oh, it is most assuredly a diary, Mr. Lorry. A diary of the most wretched kind. For in this book, Mr. Portshire documented his own experiences with the denizens of a certain village, a very nasty group of people. A folk who’s dark and tarnished history caused them to be slaughtered by their neighbors as they slept, for fear of their coming to power.”

“Very nasty, huh? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Evil. The most despicable, deplorable kind imaginable. An ancient force once held sway over these people – this dark sect of depraved souls – a force no man could truly comprehend. And try they did to comprehend, try they did. Mr. Portshire was one of many, flocking to the unknown, hoping to uncover the mystery. If you were to read this book, Mr. Lorry, you would understand that Portshire did indeed lose his mind in his search for answers.

“You see, Mr. Lorry, these people of whom Portshire wrote worshiped the darkness that controlled them. They made sacrifices to some unseen god, and prayed for nothing but the coming destruction of our world. The accords are not precisely clear, but they seem to indicate that they were not far from their goal when they were eradicated.”