Lovecraft Conspiracy

Damian Lovecraft sat alone in his dimly lit apartment, the glow of his laptop illuminating the stacks of old books and newspaper clippings scattered across his desk. He had spent the last couple of months piecing together the stories, trying to connect the horrifying tales his grandmother had told him with real historical events.

Damian was in debt because of a series of reckless financial decisions. It started with a failed investment in a tech startup that promised high returns but collapsed before he could pull out his money. Desperate to recover his losses, he turned to underground gambling, convinced that one lucky break could fix everything. Instead, he sank deeper into debt, borrowing from the wrong people; dangerous people.

The Vincelli Syndicate, a notorious crime family in Chicago, had lent him the money, expecting repayment with steep interest. When he couldn’t pay, they sent enforcers to remind him; broken fingers, slashed tires, a dead bird left on his doorstep. He was running out of time, out of options. The threats escalated, and he knew that if he didn’t find a way to clear his debt soon, he wouldn’t live to see another day. That was when he turned to the legends of his bloodline, to the one thing that might save him.

The skull, the cursed relic of his ancestor’s dark deeds.

He first dismissed the tales as nothing more than a bedtime horror story to scare children into obedience. But the more he dug, the more he uncovered a terrifying pattern; entire villages vanishing without a trace, eerie similarities across centuries. The disappearances always left behind a strange, sulfuric residue, and those who searched for answers either went missing or died under mysterious circumstances.

Damian had found something chilling in his research: a handwritten letter from 1591, allegedly written by one of the last survivors of the Roanoke colony before it disappeared. The letter spoke of a man, a Lovecraft ancestor, who had taken a skull, steeped it in blood, carved it with forbidden symbols, and chanted an incantation that brought forth a demon knight; an unstoppable force of vengeance that devoured enemies whole, leaving no trace.

And now, Damian was desperate enough to consider the unthinkable.

He had made too many mistakes, and angered the wrong people. A debt he couldn't repay had placed a target on his back. He had nowhere left to run. The only way out was through; through the darkness of his family’s past, through the horrors he had sworn were nothing more than legend.

At midnight, Damian stood in the center of his living room. The room smelled of copper, thick with the iron scent of freshly drawn blood. Before him sat an old, decayed skull; one he had procured through methods best left unspoken. The symbols had been carefully etched into the yellowed bone, just as the ancient texts had described.

With shaking hands, he spoke the words aloud, his voice cracking with uncertainty:

“From darkness, rise,
Through blood, arise,
By death, consume,
The foes of mine demise.”

The temperature in the room plummeted. Shadows curled and stretched along the floor, twisting like living tendrils. The air grew thick, suffocating, as if the room itself was holding its breath. The skull trembled, then slowly lifted into the air, its hollow eye sockets filling with a sickly, green glow.

A whisper of laughter; deep, guttural, and inhuman rippled through the darkness.

Then, the floor beneath him cracked open, revealing an abyss darker than the void of space. From within, the skull floated upward, suspended in the air like a marionette without strings. The runes carved into its surface burned with unholy fire.

And then it moved.

The skull shot forward, a streak of shadow and malevolence, phasing through walls like mist. It did not search; it knew where Damian’s enemies were.

The first death was instant. A man, seated in his car just outside Damian’s apartment, waiting for his signal to strike. His mouth opened in a silent scream as his body twisted unnaturally, folding inward until there was nothing left but dust and echoes.

One by one, the skull hunted them down. A gang enforcer in a bar, his beer glass shattering just as the green glow enveloped him. A loan shark asleep in his bed, his last breath stolen as the skull hovered inches above his face. No alarms, no witnesses; just silence and vanished souls.

By dawn, it was over.

Damian sat in the aftermath, his skin ice cold, his mind reeling. The skull now lay motionless on the floor, its glow extinguished. The abyss had closed, and the unnatural chill in the air had lifted.

For the first time in months, he was free.

But as the relief washed over him, something shifted. The skull twitched, then turned ever so slightly, as if regarding him.

And then, in the whispering voice of the abyss, it spoke:

"The debt is paid...but the hunger remains."

Damian barely had time to scream before the floor split open once more.

From the chasm, black tendrils coiled around his legs, dragging him downward. He clawed at the wooden floor, splinters digging into his fingertips as the abyss pulled him in. The skull rose before him, its hollow sockets now swirling with infinite darkness.

"You summoned me," it whispered, voice layered with a thousand tormented souls. "Now you must feed me."

Damian gasped as his body was wrenched downward, the shadows wrapping around him like liquid chains. His mind filled with visions of the countless souls devoured before him; men, women, entire villages lost to time.

The darkness had seeped into his bones, coiling within him like a living parasite. His eyes, once a dull hazel, now gleamed with an unnatural glow, the same sickly green that once burned within the skull. His skin, paler than death, pulsed with an eerie energy, and a hunger gnawed at the edges of his mind; a hunger that wasn’t his own.

The skull had bound itself to him. He was no longer merely its summoner; he was its vessel, its herald, its executioner.

When the hunger became too great, it took control. The cursed relic would rise from the depths of the abyss and affix itself to his head, fusing with his flesh. In that moment, Damian ceased to be human. The skull’s power coursed through him, his body becoming an indestructible force of malevolence.

He was no longer a man. He was a predator.

And so, he fed.

Through shadowed streets and nameless alleys, he hunted. The skull whispered to him, guiding him toward souls ripe for consumption. Criminals, the wicked, those who thought themselves untouchable; they were his prey. When the skull latched onto him, he became an unstoppable force, a being no blade or bullet could harm. He walked through gunfire as though it were smoke. He tore through flesh as though it were paper. And with each soul devoured, the hunger only grew.

But the more he fed, the more he began to fear.

He thought about the villages that had vanished without a trace. He wondered if their destruction was not merely the skull’s doing, but the fate of every summoner before him. Had they, too, become like him? Bound to the hunger, consuming until there was nothing left?

And going by what had happened to those places...it was only a matter of time before Chicago ended up the same way.

Damian had become a legend whispered among those who lurked in the underbelly of society. A nameless horror that struck in the dead of night, leaving nothing but empty streets and cold fear in his wake.

But as the bodies vanished and the whispers spread, he began to wonder; was he still Damian Lovecraft? Or was he merely a hollow shell, a servant to the eternal hunger of the abyss?

And worse still...would there ever come a time when the skull would release him?


Word Count: 1323

Notes ▼

PROMPT: (“skull” [Image by Shane Foreman from Pixabay])
WORD COUNT: 500-2000 words "Horror Writing Contest"