Lovecraft's Bones

[Published in Terror Tales #4]

I kind of half-expected them to supernaturally reassemble before my eyes, to create an inhuman skeletal figure, somewhat reminiscent of the beings that so often appeared in the man's macabre fictitious works. That didn't happen, and I was disappointed, for I somehow expected more after digging up and stealing Lovecraft's bones.
A night wind began to howl outside the motel room, and a strange chill prevailed around me. The room itself was sparse and unfeeling, as I sat before my laptop with only the light of an unconvincing lamp for company. It was one of those weird motels that one encounters along such vast stretches of highway. No psychos to be found here -- at least I hoped not. I daren't risk taking a shower though, just in case, so I was compelled to resort to a thorough wash in the cracked basin. I needed it, as my hands were caked in fresh clay -- clay that had served to surround the dead.
The lamp flickered as night traffic passed nearby, presumably truckers fleeing eternally from state to confounded state, and I heard a scraping sound. I shuddered, and thought -- rats in the walls! Then I realised how ridiculous was that particular notion -- or was it?
The bones lay upon a battered and dirtied tarpaulin sheet on the bed. I marvelled at the eerie sight. I had scrubbed and scrubbed but had been unsuccessful in cleaning away all of the slime and filth, gathered and accumulated over the last few decades. Therefore a small coating of brownness covered each item, giving the collection a strange off-brown colour, mingled with off-white.
I consulted my wristwatch -- it was two fifteen in the morning. And I still hadn't started my story.
Some writers will do anything for inspiration, hence my eccentric idea to unearth the gifted fellow's remains. Bones are bones, you might think, but these were special.
I sniffed the air, and caught the intense odour of human decay -- or at least what remained of such a smell. My fingers were itching to begin striking those keys, but unfortunately no words entered my head.
I arose and approached the window, and turned back the curtain. Dazzling lights greeted me, some moving, some still. The sound of tyres on tarmac. Then an apparition. An apparition! Oh my God!
It was horrible, a grotesque and repugnant monster, there outside the window, grinning and revealing crooked and rotting molars, with several holes punched for more.
Then suddenly it was gone, and I thought how fabulous and gruesome was that creature. It was simply uncanny, yet I wondered -- could it possibly resemble -- that photograph from life?
I strolled over to the bed and with a shaking hand lifted one of the bones. It was light and brittle, and I believed it was about to crumble in front of me, to turn to dust before my eyes. It began to rain, and a deafening thunderclap seemed to split the very turning of time, followed by a lightning bolt that threatened to crack open the earth. I laid the bone upon the sheet -- and the rain ceased, and there was stillness.
I returned to the laptop, and thought of his works, the wondrous tales I had read over and over and over, the vivid imagination that gentleman had possessed. How I wished I could at least become maybe a quarter of the genius he was -- but alas, at that moment I had begun to suffer horrendously from writer's block. No words appeared in my mind, no phrases formed within there, no sentences were constructed. Oh, what an unnerving quandary I found myself in, trapped within the confines of that terrible motel room.
I began to shiver, overcome by a sudden fever. Perspiration covered my whole being. My teeth chattered. I glanced at the outlandish pile of bones -- Lovecraft's bones. Did they possess a certain evil? Were they surreptitiously casting a fatal spell on me, punishing me for my wicked deed? Were they horribly alive and dragging me down into those nefarious pits that lurked in the netherworld?
I struggled to compose myself, settling back into the wooden chair, striving to regain a certain degree of comfort. I stared at that keyboard, and contemplated giving up my attempts to create a work of fiction that would perhaps resemble Lovecraft's to at least a small degree. But then...
My hands uncontrollably lifted from my sides, as if commandeered by some giant puppeteer. My fingers caressed the keyboard, merely stroking it at first, until after a few seconds they tapped out words -- words that appeared not from my own imagination! With astonishment I observed the title that the remarkable force had created... THE NECRONOMICON.
I screamed in horror -- loud piercing cries that obliterated the howling wind outside that room. Then with chilled bones and veins filled with curdled blood my fingers strangely continued hitting those keys, and the hours that followed seemed like minutes as that phenomenal force compelled me to invent an astounding work of fiction, endless pages of magical text the like of which had not been created for close on sixty years.
Afterwards I relaxed exhausted in that chair, and I looked once more towards the bed, and further screaming left my lips, for the bones had vanished! The tarpaulin contained mere flakes of clay and crumbs of dirt.
I was unable to cry out a third time, for I was then overwhelmed by a freakish movement within my body. It was as though my very insides were moving around and reconstructing, and I closed my eyes in pain, squeezing them tightly as I experienced the strange happenings. Upon opening them again I noticed the lamp flickering intermittently, and an obscure entity forced me to race into the bathroom. Once there I studied my countenance in the mirror, and I discovered that I could scream again, and with good reason... ...for my body had become a mere skeleton, a walking mass of bones -- the colour a mixture of off-brown, and off-white.