“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

-H.P. Lovecraft, 1921

 

CHAPTER ONE

The alarm clock was on the ceiling…again.

Titus glared at the small, rat-like creature holding the clock from the light fixture. It giggled evilly.

It's not going to— The creature launched the alarm clock at Titus. He rolled sideways off the bed just in time to avoid the flying timepiece.

He sighed before reaching over and unplugging the device from the wall behind his bed. He didn't want to get out of bed—not that he had a choice. It was the third day in a row that he had nearly been clocked. At least this time, the hob waited until he was awake before throwing the alarm.

He stood, stretching his ungainly body toward the ceiling. He didn't want to go to school, but he didn't have much of a choice there either. Going to school was what normal kids did, and he was normal.

He reminded himself of this fact as he stepped over the circle drawn in thick chalk around his bed. It gave the slightest resistance as he crossed, like stepping through a wave of static electricity. A protection circle seemed a bit strange in a bedroom, but without it, for all Titus knew, he would have woken up on the ceiling instead of his alarm clock.

His room was a mess. He gave up on cleaning after the first week in the old mansion. No matter how clean he got it, the hobs destroyed it the second he left. He guessed, on some level, it looked like a normal teenage boy's room. They had messy rooms, didn’t they?

Most normal boys probably had clothes scattered from their closets, like a giant mouth had belched them out, thrown from their proper place into piles on the floor.

His walls were sparsely decorated, for a teenager’s, though in his defense, he had only had a few months to try to figure out what he liked. Posters from his favorite show still hung where they had the night before. Titus figured that was a plus. Though he wasn’t sure how long they would stay after the hobs found out their favorite character died.

His beanbag chair was in the opposite corner from the night before, but at least it wasn't cracked like the wooden chair he had had before; that was now being used as firewood. Amorphous furniture lasted longer than traditional furniture did, he realized.

Next to the beanbag was his bedside table, which wasn't by his bedside. Instead, it was upside down next to his desk.

Because, that's where it belongs, apparently, he reasoned as he grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with a Nintendo controller design on it.

Currently, the bed was the only thing that remained unmoved, thanks, in no small part, to the chalk barrier around it. The flawless chalk circle extended partially up the wall. It had been hard to draw because of the difficulty of the ninety-degree angles. Ancient runes, strange symbols, and even some common numbers lined the interior and exterior of the circle. It was his only untouched haven in the room. His bedside table had been partially outside of the circle, and the hobs had been quick to relocate it.

The gremlin-like hobs didn't particularly care for him. He made his way to the door warily, avoiding the tacks the hobs had left on the floor.

Titus wondered if locks would be able to keep the hobs out of his desk. They had started using his school supplies as makeshift weapons. He decided they would change the locks on him. The hobs excelled with mechanical devices.

Maybe he would have to break down and chalk his desk as well. It would take a lot of work, so he tried to think of alternatives as he left the room, but none came to mind.

The Fogg's estate contained a furnace, but Uncle Phineas was too old to ferry wood down to the basement, and Titus didn't trust the old house enough to go into its bowels on a regular basis, which left the place cold most mornings, especially in the fall and winter. Titus lucked out today—while the house was chilly, it wasn't freezing.

He walked down the hall, avoiding the semi-transparent shifting bodies of the Lesser Dresh, giant creatures as big as a house that drifted through different universes. They were transparent like panes of clouded glass. They couldn't feel him, but the sensation of passing through one of them had always disgusted Titus. It was similar to having a tingling you couldn't get to leave. Titus wondered what other universes this Dresh’s body was in.

Titus entered the bathroom. He went to the tub and reached over the brass sides to the knob for hot water, held aloft by a set of pipes. He banged twice on the exposed brass piping. The shower sputtered, then started as he took off his pajamas.

He turned on the overhead light. At first the light passed right through him, illuminating him normally, but leaving no shadow. But then, a crisp shadow grew out of the base of his feet until it almost mimicked his shape. His shadow held for a moment under the glare of the light, then stretched and grumbled.

“Great Old Ones, why do I have to wake up every morning and see you naked?” Titus's unwanted companion babbled.

Titus mumbled, “You’re welcome to leave if you can,” but it didn’t come out in English but one of the foreign languages Shade favored.

“Don't blame me, you're ugly, kid. I've seen some attractive people in my day, and you're definitely not one of them. I mean look at you… You're scrawny, bare bones, with freakishly big hands and feet for someone your age, I mean—”

Titus dipped his head under the water, drowning out the creature. He snapped his head back immediately. The water was freezing. He let out an involuntary gasp, as he was fully awake now. His heart hammered at the cold water dripped down his face and back.

“—like that blonde from the book store. I bet she—”

He didn't even want to try thinking about what Shade had been talking about.

“Shut up, Shade, or I'll go find a flashlight and we’ll see whether your voice or the batteries run out first.”

The noisy shadow didn't buy the bluff for a second. “You wouldn't. You're too obsessed with trying to blend in to let that happen.”

Titus wiped the water out of his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror. He refused to look himself in the eyes. Instead, he inspected the bags under his eyes, which were worse than normal. He brushed his short hair forward and straightened.

Shade was right. Titus hated everything about Shade, but most of all, he hated when he was right. The shadow laughed deeply at the fact. Titus shook his head in frustration.

After showering and changing his clothes, Titus exited the bathroom and headed downstairs.

He stepped out of the way of a group of hobs meandering down the hall after their morning bath, scrap rags wrapped around their

...Continue Reading