We had always been known to overlook Kirk's eccentricies, especially after his last expedition to Brazil. Though he'd never had a resurgance of the bout of malaria he'd caught in the rainforest basin, he'd never been quite the same afterward. Since that brush with death, his attitude had become cavalier and somewhat lurid, even to the point it had driven Jill to break off their engagement.
Between the far-off hunts for bits of pottery or shards of ancient texts he took up for that odd University at Miskatonic, Kirk filled most of his days in town drinking at eating at the local pub or wandering the streets to harrass the young ladies as they made their ways to their dormitories. At the pub he would keep to himself, his nose deep in some dog-eared book from the university's archives (how he managed to sneak said books from their protected grasp I know not). Yet when he idled along the university's green he was an aimable chap, with a ruddy glee in his eye that seemed at odd with his quiet moments.
Because of his tenor, the univeristy tolerated him, and I alone was left to attend to him - both to attend to our old friendship as much as keep a leash on him at the board's request. I had laboured through his bouts to help him right himself, and though he never talked of it, he showed his appreciation for my assistance as best he could. He always seemed on the verge of sharing some deep, buried secret with me about these bouts, but could never bring himself to voice his mind. And at times there were moments that Kirk, in the midst of a bout of his eccentricity, would freeze like a statue, only to reanimate a short time later. He would not speak of what brought this on, and I did not ask, though I espected it was some form of epilepsy. But it was one otherwise fine day in August - after nearly two weeks of unusually warm weather - that the nature of our friendship was to forever change.
I should have known something was up that day for he'd not been seen in the local pub that day, and he'd not made his rounds near the lady's dormatories either. He'd instead left me a queer note, sent by a student from his house, written in a shaky hand biding me to come to his house for supper that evening.
I shall not say whether that my delaying accepting his invitation would have changed our encounter for better or worse. It was not until I had finished my lectures and properly planned tomorrow's schedule that I took my pack and made way to Kirk's family house. The sun was setting as I made my way up the overgrown pavement to the brick structure. Uncharacteristically, the heavy oak front door was slightly ajar and inside I could clearly hear Kirk, chuckling to himself. It was clear from the sound he had been drinking heavily.
As I have many times before, I opened the door and made my way in, expecting to find Kirk - bottle in hand, splayed half-dressed mumbling over some aged text he'd located from the university stores. However, this time I found him sitting at the kitchen table and in the half-light I could see he was twirling something black upon it's well-worn surface. Several empty bottles were visible nearby, at least two of them that had fallen from the table to spill their dark, bloody contents onto the tile underneath.
Seeing me in the doorway, Kirk motioned me over with a languid gesture. Clearly, he'd been drinking mightily, but the terrible gleam in his eye seemed to indicate he had more control over himself that I had seen in years. Carefully, my eyes still on the object slowly spinning on the table, I made my way over towards him - only to stop a few feet away in the dying light as I realized the spinning object was a loaded revolver.
"Where did you-" I started, but Kirk neatly cut me off, unwilling to waste time.
"Never mind," his voice dragged, but yet held unusual power and wile. "I don't have much time before it's back."
I cocked my head slightly, and hoping to draw the revolver away from him, took a step closer. "Before what's back?"
Kirk placed his middle finger to his temple and tapped his skull, slightly wincing. "It sleeps, for now." He mumbled, then his eyes flew wide open.
"Have your heard about the Pemberly sisters?" He suddenly asked, moving his hand from his temple to stop the slowly spinning revolver.
"Why, yes," I stated, pulling up to the table and carefully eyeing the snub-nosed pistol glistening on the table. "They went missing a few months ago, down by the river."
"Not missing," Kirk stated, shaking his head, "dead. Drowned in the river, and set adrift."
I stood there, dumbfounded. "How- are you sure?" I asked.
"Very," Kirk nodded, placing his hands to cover his face, as if oppressed by a great pain. As he did, I placed my own hand on the pistol, and silently pulled it away from him to me.
"There's too much to tell you, but not enough time to explain it," Kirk stated, his hands dropping. Seeing the pistol under my hand, he smiled kindly at me. It was a smile I'd only seen once before, when I'd come to console him after Jane had said her final goodbye to him.
I dreaded to ask, but could not stop the question from escaping my lips. "Tell me what?"
Kirk held forth his hands, drenched in sweat and slick from spilled drink. "These hands, they have betrayed me." As I looked at him in askance, an ire grew on his face. "They killed the Pemberly sisters."
"What?" I nearly screamed at him. In my dread at his statement, I had pulled the revolver from the table, beyond his reach. Yet his posture told me he would make no move for it.
"I-I didn't want to do it," Kirk stated, as he began to fidget in his chair. "It...it crawled into my mind," he recoiled, walking his fingers through his hair to his ear, "Slunk inside - like a worm," he stated, drawing his own finger into his ear. "Called itself the Zuonth. And it won't come out. It - it makes my...hands, my body - do things I don't want to do," he stated, as if pleaing.
"Kirk," I started uneasily, "you're not well-"
Kirk slammed his fist into the table. "No, I am not," he seethed in a torrid whisper. "It's in my head," he began to babble, "at first it tried to pay for my ignorance with - with elation. It fed on my wants, my desires. It kept me from wanting to get rid of it, even as it planned to take my body away." His eyes seemed to plead with me for understanding. "Food, drugs - sex, even," I recoiled at the last "Anything I want, it steered me to such pleasures." Kirk's foul smile at the memories suddenly faded. "Then, it began to ask for things in return. At first, it just wanted knowledge. A few books for me to read. Then trips - trips to strange places that no man should visit. Then - then recovering ... things - blaspmeous things. And then," he paused, as true madness seemed to edge around him and he sensed it. "then it wanted lives. The lives of the things that had made me happy."
He suddenly sat back. "Now it wants yours."
I suddenly held up the pistol, aiming it directly at him. Again, he smiled. "The drink makes it sleep some. Not for very long though." He nodded at the pistol in my shaking hand. "You'll have to use it before it awakens. It's too strong then."
"You're mad," I stated.
"No, if I let it destroy you," Kirk stated in askance, "then I am mad."
Then, as so many times in the past, Kirk seemed to suddenly freeze, his hands flat on the table, his wide eyes unfocused and staring past me. I wondered if he were coming out of his maddening dream and slowly lowered the gun, leaning forward to examine him. Perhaps this madness would pass, or perhaps it was time to truly seek for him professional help.
I was nearly close enough to smell his liquor-weighted breath when he suddenly stirred. His eyes moved first, and upon spotting the pistol in my hand, he suddenly stood erect, casting the chair he was seated in whirling back away from the table. He clenched the heavy table with both hands in an iron grip as the myriad bottles on the table trembled from his grip.
I brought up the gun to the ready as I could see rage darken his face. In the last dying embers of twilight, his mad eyes seemed glow with a burning inner light. "So," Kirk snarled in a gurgling voice that sounded nothing like his own. "He's warned you."
I said nothing, but tried my best to hold the pistol steady. There was an air of the supernatural about Kirk now, and I could not deny that the voice I heard was not his own. Whether he was truly lost to madness or something dark was inside him as he stated earlier, I could not say. But even a long-time friend, I would not let him harm me now.
With a motion so quick I nearly missed it, Kirk brought up one of his hands, siezed a bottle and attempted to bat the pistol from my hand. I was so spooked by the act that I reflexively squeezed the trigger.
In the small kitchen, the gun sounded like thunder. The bright flash illuminated Kirk's sweat-laden features for but a moment, and then it seemed the room was painted in bright red as the bullet pierced his forehead. Yet, even after the thunder died away, Kirk still stood, bottle in hand, though once again he was a rigid as a statue. But the walls, floor and ceiling behind him were dressed with far too much splatter from that of a single bullet. As I too, stood frozen in terror a pair of what appeared to be boneless fingers wrapped around the side of Kirk's head from behind. It were as if someone, who had been inside of Kirk's head, were pulling themselves free of its confines. There was an ear-splintering crack as bone parted and a moment later, to my horrified eyes, Kirk's head split neatly in two as bubbling black rot seemed to boil up from his very neck.
This time I fired deliberately and repeatibly until the gun clicked empty. Still, the rot boiled upward from Kirk's seemingly frozen body, and as it oozed outward it seemed to boil away into a thick black mist that began to gather like a cloud of gnats around Kirk's ruined body. The remaining flesh seemed to putrify and expand as if it could no longer hold the corruption within.
I turned, and ran from the house and I did not stop. I did not return to my own home, nor did I cease my flight until my town was far behind me. Perhaps it was for the best. For later I had read that I had been charged with the grisly murder of Kirk - though it was better for me than for Kirk, for in his house they found evidence of the murder of at least six other young women who been unaccounted for some months.
I've backtracked what I could of what Kirk had told me. It has led me to learn of Zuonth - a little known Toltec god known as the crawler. And of some of the stranger quests Kirk undertook to visit sites known for the strange or supernatural - or ancient trinkets known only to a few aboriginal natives of the american midwest. I suspect Kirk picked ...it... up back in his trip to Brazil. I confess I cannot fanthom its purpose or why it seeks these sites or items. But I've also learned of other cases similar to Kirk's eccentricity after a trip to the same deep jungle area Kirk visited. And I do not think Zuoth is alone.
