text: Hello guys, I am a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft and his work in general and being a hobby-ish writer he is also a big inspiration for me. I wrote this story a few weeks ago and I tried to keep it as similar to his style as possible. So, if you have some time to spare, feel free to read my story and share your thoughts. Moreover, english is not my first language, so if you find some grammatical- or spelling errors, let me know. Enjoy! \^\^ &#x200B; **The Estate** Free is the mind, that doesn‘t fear. Free is the mind that can go out at night, untouched by insidious rustling in the underbrush. Free is the spirit that knows no horror. These are well known facts and even if not fancied about occasionally, the sane mind will agree with me on these thoughts. A wise man once said: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.“ Since this one grim night on the fields east of the woods near Salem, this fear is my horrid companion. Hitherto I haven‘t found out what slaughtered the poor farmer‘s family and desecrated their humble farmstead. I haven‘t found out what lets the soldiers disappear from their patrol on the forest‘s edge. I only know that this thing, the murderer, is nothing the human mind could comprehend. The abomination that stalks those lands, that haunts my dreams every night, was birthed from the rotting organs of a dying world in pits so black, not the holiest of lights could fathom. As a private investigator I have dealt with many cases of ridiculous to grim nature and having solved the majority to the satisfaction of the employer I achieved a modest amount of fame in my ranks. Thus, I was called to a very remote region east of a great town called Salem. The village, in which I had to investigate what was described to me as a strange kind of serial killer, was so exiguous, it didn‘t even have a name. It was just commonly referred to as the Estate. This dwelling‘s position was well remote, for its only connection to civilization was a small road leading westwards to Salem through the blackest and thickest of forests I ever witnessed. The Estate had a rather sad expression, consisting mostly of rotting farmsteads, meadows and an abandoned town square with a building which seemed to formerly have been a town hall. I arrived at dawn and although it was harvest season, the fields were barren. The mayor, being my employer, greeted me and guided me to the latest crime scene: A small farm in the north-east of the Estate, where a family of six had been murdered in the most bestial of manners. On the way the mayor explained the real reason, why I had been called to this dark place. I had to investigate the horror that roamed this place. Apparently the poor family was the third in a series of brutal massacres which happened in the Estate, accompanied by missing children, farmers disappearing, as well as soldiers killed and mangled which were supposed to protect the village. This horror had been haunting the poor people for about one and a half year and over the rime more and more families emigrated through the woods to Salem, moving only at day, when no cloud was in sight lest nothing and no one could hide in the shadows cast by a veiled sun. At the time of my stay only four families, including the mayor‘s, remained, and I was their last hope. My task was to find the beast and free the people from their shackles of terror. Then we arrived at the scene*.* I had seen husbands killed by jealous mistresses, bloated bodies which were disposed in rivers, but never had I witnessed vistas so disgustingly horrifying as I did on that doomed Tuesday morning. No earthly creature, regardless of every mental state, would have been able to bear slaughtering the wretched family in the way it was done to them. They were mangled in ways I will never be able to forget. The sane mind would instantly have fainted or gone mad, even the insane mind would have turned at once and fled from this horror scene, but I was beyond that. My curiosity overwhelmed the fear in my heart and I kept investigating the crime scene. Afterwards I proceeded to gather information from the few residents. The Estate must have been a flourishing rural town until the incidents began, forcing the inhabitants to cower away in their houses, praying to whatever god was left in those unholy times. At first the people suspected enemy spies or highwaymen in the forest and soldiers kept patrolling and securing the town. The common suspicion of an enemy attack waned as the first family was murdered in a dark, late autumn thunderstorm at night. They were brutally slaughtered, along with their livestock, akin to the family I had beheld a few hours earlier. Since that, the superstition arose about a supernatural being, a demon or spirit, that haunts the forest and the Estate, hunting men and slaughtering families in its bestial manner. Supposedly one was able to hear voices and screams in the forest at night, along with a metallic sound, like an old metal bar being bend or ancient gears scraping into each other. There were many speculations about the appearance of the demon and every description seemed to differ from another. Some talked about a huge bear like beast, that lives in its den in the deepest and thickest parts of the forest, others fancied it to be a winged demon that darts through the sky at night, travelling with the thunder of midnight storms and finally a few described it as a possessed scarecrow of abnormal height, with claws as long as swords, that stands on the fields at night, just to be gone the next day. Though the visual descriptions all seemed very vague, everyone agreed on the sounds the beast uttered. The screams seemed to be *mockeries of its victims*, mimicking their last words like a parrot. The noble city folk dismissed these stories and reports as superstition, which will likely turn out to be a pack wolves or a group of very brutal bandits. But for me, after my traumatic experience in the farmstead and for me being keen on ghost stories and supernatural beings, there was most definitely a demon at large and although I was terrified to the bones, my curiosity won once more and I took precautions to find the beast that night. One man, living relatively near the house where the first massacre took place, had told me during my interrogations, that he heard the demonic voices to an increasing degree near that very house and this suspicion was confirmed by some of the folk. Hence, I planned on spending the night in the ruin to potentially observe the phantom. Equipped with a thick jacket, my camera and my trusty revolver, not that I believed in being able to kill or damage the thing, but it made me feel safer, I made my way down to the abandoned house as dusk fell. The house itself looked ghastly and the weather had taken its toll on the building. Broken windows gazing like black eyes, the former fencing half sunken into the ground like tombstones on a graveyard long forgotten and still claw marks and dried blood, recalling the suppressed memories of what had once happened here. I looked around in the few minutes of fading sunlight that I had left and discovered a rather fresh trail of prints leading from the house to a dim part of the adjacent forest. They were *nearly round* and conveyed the beast to be limping. Moreover, the track were accompanied by what seemed to be t*hree parallel lines*, drawn by a claw that‘s been dragged through the mud. Sometimes the lines vanished, just to reappear again. With the sunlight waned completely, I set up my lookout. I chose the hayloft, which was stationed on top of the barn, opposing the house and thus granting me an optimal view. It was a moonless and cold night and the wind blew mercilessly through the brittle barn. After around two hours of waiting, while I was getting tired in the freezing cold, I observed something quite unsettling, which had me wide awake ad an instant. Near the forest, behind the house, there stood a *scarecrow*. At first, I thought I would be hallucinating. Why would there be a scarecrow standing so close to the forest and far away from the next field, where it could fulfil its purpose? And why hadn‘t I noticed it, when I was previously examining the site? These two questions were occupying me while I kept staring at that nightmarish figure, swaying in the nocturnal gust. What happened afterwards is hard to remember. Somehow I must have drifted off with my thoughts and Hypnos must have taken me into his dormant embrace, for when I regained my consciousness, I found myself lying on the floor and my watch just striking midnight. I will never forget the sound that woke me, until I find final oblivion in the hands of death. The metal creaking, the cawing of crows and this voice, this doomed voice that echoes in my head every time the sun sets and the cold, cruel darkness takes over. “*IS SOMEONE THERE?“*, it sounded in a manner so unearthly, it is impossible for me to describe it in our puny language. “*HELP ME!“*, it whimpered childishly. It was directly underneath me at that time and the creaking became louder and the hell swarm of crows rose their laughter to a deafening level. That is where my memory gets clouded. The last thing I remember actively doing is looking out of the window, in this pandemonium I had found myself in, and finding the whole edge of the forest barren, except for *three straight lines*, originating from somewhere near the forest and leading into the barn right underneath me. That was the point where I must have gone mad. I remember the pitch black fields, the mud in my shoes, branches and thorns tearing my clothes and me running and screaming like a pig being butchered alive. I was found by soldiers on the skirts of the wood near Salem with a fractured ankle, multiple bruises and a few broken rips. Luckily the doctor believed my story. I told him that I was hunting in the forest, got attacked by some animal and had to flee, breaking my ankle by getting caught in a root. As soon as I got out of the hospital, I quit all my mandates at once, explaining my sudden unavailability with a rare disease that I had recently caught. I didn‘t dare to tell anyone about the terror of the Estate and I didn‘t contact my original employer either. There are some things the world needs to have unanswered and superstition is important to keep the human mind sane in the face of the horrors that emerge from the pits of hell. As I said, I didn‘t and will never tell anyone about the thing. I know too much and I can‘t live in the absence of light any more, let alone sleep at all. Every time I close my eyes I see that swaying scarecrow, the house, the claw marks. Every time I hear a crow, a shudder runs down my spine. At last, I lost every reason to stay in this abomination we call life. These are my last words to a broken world and let this be a warning to every curious person out there. There are things man is not supposed to dig up, for they are destined to dwell in the dark, gnawing on the decaying roots of our earth. Let this be a warning.