This is a short story I wrote, as my first attempt at Cosmic Horror.

The afternoon was warm and bright. There was a slight sea breeze wafting salty air off the ocean. The waves lapped lazily against the golden sand, and Charles Chickle was happy to be outside for once. Life as an insurance agent was quite mundane, and offered little opportunity for exposure to nature. So Charles walked along that pleasant beach, picking up the odd stone or shell that took his fancy. He was just enjoying some time outside.

It was getting later in the afternoon and Charles decided to head back. He meandered his way back from where he had walked previously. As he did so, something caught his eye. It was a strange twisting stone, rather larger than the rest that had been washing up on the shore. It was smooth and onyx black. It spiraled up to a point, and looked rather like the arm of a cephalopod. 

Charles examined the piece curiously. This was no stone, but a relic of some kind. It must’ve been from some shipwreck or lost civilization from under the waves. Charles let his mind wander on these fanciful fantasies. He knew that Occam’s Razor would say it was probably some ornament from a modern day yacht or some other similarly boring  object. Without the context of the entirety of the thing, it was impossible for the layman to tell. So Charles pocketed the object and returned home. He set it on the nightstand next to his bed, and went about his business.

After a few weeks, Charles forgot about the strange smooth stone, and continued living his rather dull life. He woke up with the stone on his nightstand, went to work, came home, and repeated the process, never acknowledging the object’s presence. 

Eventually, Charles started to feel anxious at home. He couldn’t figure out why. It must’ve been added stress at work following him home. His boss was on his case lately. Maybe it was that. What about that sense of being watched though? Where did that come from? Perhaps it was his penchant for late night horror movies. They never bothered him before, but combined with the work worries, maybe it was giving him nerves. So he stopped watching horror movies late at night.

A few more weeks passed, and the feelings of anxiety and fear never abated. Charles had to call out of work several times, as his nerves were so bad he could not bring himself to leave the house. He even swore that he witnessed a dark shadow looming over his bed late at night. No, that was just a nightmare. Ghosts aren’t real, and he had never encountered anything strange in his house before. His nerves were on edge, however. He couldn’t seem to calm down.

He decided he needed to seek a professional, but what would he tell them? He’s been feeling watched? Paranoid? They’d think he was mad and send him off to the asylum. He’d lose his job and his house. That wasn’t the solution. He just had to get a handle on this. So he resolved to try and ignore the feelings all together. He went back to work, and for a few weeks, things seemed to go back to normal. The gnawing feeling of being watched never left his mind though, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

One evening, as he was eating dinner and watching T.V, he heard a strange noise coming from somewhere in another room. A loud banging noise, as if something heavy was falling onto the floor. He couldn’t quite think of what could make such a noise, so he set down his plate on the coffee table and cautiously got up to investigate. He picked up a wooden baseball bat he kept near the couch, for fear of intruders. After a thorough investigation of his house, he found nothing. He sat back down on the couch and resumed eating. A short time later, the noise returned. This time he jumped up and rushed into his bedroom, from where he thought the noise was originating. Nothing. The room was still and everything appeared to be in order. He checked several other rooms before returning to the living room. 

He sat wearily down on the couch. This was definitely nerves. He was hearing phantom sounds now. Maybe he should see a psychiatrist or doctor. He retired to bed thereafter and that is when the dreams started. They were hideous nightmares. He would wake up in a cold sweat with his heart pounding. He could never quite remember the dreams themselves. Only the raw emotions left behind from whatever unspeakable horrors he witnessed in his mind’s eye. 

Each night was the same, until at last, he could bear it no longer. He attempted to avoid sleep as much as he could. He began to look worn down and haggard. People at work started to ask him if he was okay. He eventually had to take all of his vacation days, and stopped going to work. He was still reluctant to see a doctor though, as he knew he could overcome this strange affliction through sheer force of will alone. Besides, he didn’t want his friends and family to worry. As far as they were concerned, he was off on a vacation to the Caribbean. He chuckled dryly to himself. Maybe he should have really gone on that vacation.

The first night of his time away from work was when he finally remembered the nightmare. Well, a part of the nightmare. He was alone, on a cold stone floor, and above him loomed a large, thin, black figure, with a curling pointed hat. It had no features save for a large wide mouth, grinning with sharp white teeth. He screamed as the figure spiraled toward him, smoke-like. He sat up in bed, drenched in sweat and shivering. He was breathing heavy and rubbing his eyes. He looked up into the darkness of the room, and turned pale. He thought he saw movement in the hall beyond the doorway. Then he heard something clatter against the wall. He reached over and turned the bedside lamp on. That twisted smooth stone he had found nearly two months ago was laying on the ground by the door. Charles stayed still for a moment. He could hear some sort of grinding, crunching noise. He dared not move for several more minutes until the noise stopped. Then, with a surge of courage drawn up from deep within him, he jumped up and rushed for the bathroom. He turned on the tap and began splashing cold water on his face. In between splashes, for a split second, he saw, with abject horror, the figure of the tall thin grinning shadow in the mirror. Its twisted form was standing behind him. He turned around, but nothing was there. 

Charles took a deep breath and gathered his wits. He was still half dreaming. That was it. It was just the leftovers from the nightmare plaguing his sleep addled mind.

Charles returned to his room, and  grabbed the stone from the floor. He looked it over in his hand and noted how it appeared to have a similar shape to the grotesque and terrifying entity from his dream.  It was then, in the small hours of a Wednesday morning, he realized. All of these strange things had begun shortly after he brought the stone home. His nervousness, anxiety, the strange nightmares… All must be connected to this stone. He resolved to return the cursed thing to the shore the next day.

He stayed up the rest of that night, waiting for the sun to come up. He was too terrified of the nightmares to go back to sleep. In the morning, he loaded the stone into his sedan and drove to the beach. He then threw the wretched thing into the sea. The rest of the day he spent on the shore trying to calm his nerves. 

When he finally returned home, shortly after sunset, he was exhausted. A thick storm had rolled in from over the ocean, but the thunder and lightning couldn’t keep Charles awake.He laid down in his bed and shut off the light. He fell asleep almost instantly , and as the lightning flashed and thunder boomed, the dark thin figure loomed over his bed, smiling with its stark white teeth.