The carriage had rattled over the old, overgrown mud track, as steam rose off the shiny black coats of the horses pulling it.

The drizzle had waned, and now I could see the halo of purple light that hung in the sky over the old monastery, giving its crumbling walls an eerie glow.

Exactly the same purple light that had descended on the RMS Earlswood on the journey here from New York.

The unholy light that had preceded the near sinking of the ship, myself, and the Necronomicon I was bringing to the professor in Edinburgh.

I had not slept soundly since that night. The image, now burnt into my brain, of the gargantuan silhouette I had seen lit up against the lightning had oozed into my every dream from that day to this.

Bigger than the massive buildings that had started clawing into the sky in the city I had departed, the black shape that had violated the horizon was no more an hallucination than the collapsed monastery in front of me now.

The immense, rain-shrouded colossus simply wasn't possible.

Then the ship had listed so dramatically that I had been sure that that night was to have been my last.

Yet we'd arrived in Southampton alive enough. But I couldn't shake the sick feeling of seeing the impossible, unexplainable, great dent in the steel of the hull.

We came to a stop a good distance from the monastery.

“I say, driver, why have we stopped?” I enquired.

“Tis the horse's Dr. Maxwell; they'll go no further.”

The whinnying of the agitated horses confirmed the driver's conviction. “There's an ill feel in the wind, sir, an ill feel indeed.”

The driver was correct again, for as I stepped from the carriage and shrugged on my long stockman's coat, I felt the static in the air. There was an uneasy charge building in the atmosphere.

Could the professor, mad as he undoubtedly was, have spoken a version of the truth?

Did the nonsense of the Necronomicon actually hold power in this place?

We were in a new world of science and order, but nothing could explain the events of the last few months.

But books of ancient magic passed down from the Gods before time? Surely not.

In what mind could the notions of dark Gods and magic incantations hold sway?

But then I remembered all I'd seen, and the way my dreams had twisted my sense of reality. I wondered if my mind was even my own anymore in the first case.

Before the professor had disappeared, he'd spoken of this very place. An ancient monastery built on top of a much older religious site, all the way out here on the northernmost coast of Scotland.

He'd asserted that the first time the site had been used for worship, it was when men still shot arrows with flint tips.

In his excavations, he had found flint tools and mammoth bones that suggest the area was settled more than twenty thousand years ago as a place of deep magic and worship to an ancient deity he named as "C’thulu".

But an interesting archaeological theory had been completely corrupted by his madness.

Over dinner he had raved about the transformation of the inhabitants, the reforming of flesh to better call on their Old Gods. A perversion of nature that let one communicate with ‘The Old Ones’.

The professor had dedicated his life to research that would back up his wild assertions.

Research that had eventually led to my employment to sail to the Americas and acquire the partial manuscript he called the Necronomicon.

I had travelled to Mexico to obtain it and returned via the Miskatonic University in Arkham to verify its authenticity. The professors of that place had been astounded by my find. Of the five known copies in existence, all were in the Greek translation. Never before had one found a copy, partial or not, in Latin. So to find one in South America, of all places, suggested a long and storied history.

From there I had never again felt secure, or indeed in full control of my mental faculties.

I had felt followed and hunted, even before the attack in New York and the fraught journey home across the Atlantic.

I had been glad of my experience in the second Afghanistan war and the part I played in the fierce fighting against Ayub Khan’s rebellion, for if I had not known what it was to fight for one's life, to kill or be killed, I doubt it I would have survived the ambush in the alleys of New York.

But no training or experience had prepared me for the subtler attack on the ship.

When your enemy comes in the shape of a raven-haired, golden-skinned temptress in a plunging gown, man's defences are rounded.

I remember seeing her board, and even though veiled and surrounded my attendees, her ethereal grace had captivated me.

It wasn't until the night of the captain's dinner had I seen her again.

An oncoming storm had unsettled the ocean. Six of us had been invited to dine with the captain.

Every man in the room had been struck dumb as she had sat at the captain's table.

Unusually tall for a woman, easily matching my own six feet, she had a dark, middle eastern complexion scarred by blood red lips and studded with eyes the colour of desert sands.

Never in my travels had I seen eyes comparable to her light yellow iris. One found oneself staring for too long into her eyes as they seemed to swirl and roil, as if a sandstorm raged through them.

The night passed as if in a dream. Wine flowed, food was brought, and I can remember being in deep conversation with her, but can remember nothing of what was said. Looking back I can't be sure if the others even spoke at all.

We were outside my cabin; I did not know how we had arrived from one place to another, yet soon she was pushing me roughly onto my bunk.

She wrestled inside my trousers and took my manhood in her hands, and I remember it to be the most amazing sensation of my life as she worked me to full mast. Her every touch burnt like a desert wind as she explored my body.

Somewhere her elegant gown had been removed, and she knelt astride me naked and unashamed. Her body flowed like a dunescape.

The dark mounds of her breasts swept down to a soft, curved sweep of abdomen, and the silk skin of her thighs felt scorchingly hot, trapping me.

Her own hips rolled rhythmically and grinded my erection against my abdomen, the wetness of her quenching the thirst of my desire.

She pulled me into her in a cascade of ecstasy.

One would expect sounds of her pleasure, but they took the form of soft incantations in a language I hadn't recognised.

When I finally opened my eyes, it was as if we lay in a bedouin tent. The rattle of the rain on the porthole was replaced by the howling of a sandstorm.

Colours swirled in my head as she bucked and writhed atop me; the usually pleasurable feeling of sex was a perversion that felt as if it drained life from me. And still she mumbled her pleasure in a repetitive murmur.

My addled brain could not have been able to comprehend the strangeness of it, and I must have passed out, for I awoke on the bunk alone.

A feeling of suspicion gripped me, and a search revealed the Necronomicon to be missing.It was then that the commotion caused by the strange light had excited the ship, and I'd dressed quickly and ran to the deck, trailing sand from my hair.

After I had sighted the impossible titan off the starboard bough, we had, all of us, been fighting for our lives upon the tossing ship.

It was then I spied my lover on the prow and fought my way to her.

She had held the Necronomicon, and she shouted unintelligibly into the screaming storm.

I managed to snatch it from her, and in our brief struggle for the manuscript, she had fallen overboard and slipped silently into the fury of the Atlantic, leaving the book in my possession still.

She visited me in my dreams still. She spoke to me in the desert. She whispered seductions and promises. She foretold great earth-shaking prophecies; she danced in the desert wind and told me of her plans, yet upon waking, the memories of them fell from my mind as grains of sand through my fingers.

I had delivered the manuscript, without further delays, to the professor's Edinburgh residence. And not a week later, he was missing. As was the Necronomicon.

All these events had led me to the foot of this antique ruin. I ran my hands over the wet rock, and if my imagination didn't deceive me, then I felt them vibrate under my touch.

I followed the wall until I located what must be the entrance, a large oak door that stood ajar. The rain ran off my waxed coat and pooled at my feet as I stepped inside.

The sound of the rain was deadened by the centuries old blocks, and now all I could hear was echoing chanting reverberating around the walls.

I tried to pin point the direction and headed, in the pitch black darkness, towards the source.

As the noise grew louder, I began to hear the words of it. It was not a language I knew, but I felt I was on the precipice of understanding the words of it.

My ears led me to a chamber, lit by tens of tall candles. I crept in the shadows and witnessed the bizarre sight inside.

An ornate altar stood in the centre of a large circular chamber. I recognised the Necronomicon resting on a gilt book stand off to the side. The roof was no longer in place, yet no rain fell to extinguish the light cast by the candles.

Three black hooded shapes knelt before it, and a tall, hooded, and white robed figure stood upon it, arms outstretched and voice cast towards the open sky.

I crept behind a collapsed wall and watched, transfixed, as the lead figure dropped her hood and turned to face her small congregation.

There was no mistaking the dark skinned, yellow eyed priestess that now led the chants of her disciples.

Often she would pause and the three would chant, in what I could only guess with my limited Latin, something like;

“Hail the queen to come, hail the ancient ones, and become whole.”

How had she survived the freezing Atlantic?

I had seen her slip beneath the waves with my own eyes, yet now those same eyes saw her here.

I stood dumbstruck as she let the robe slip from her shoulders. It rippled to the floor, revealing her nakedness.

On the ship, I had seen mere flashes of her body in the dim lamplight of my cabin, but here, in the well lit chamber, her true beauty was unmatched.

Her fine brown legs, long and smooth, rose to round full hips, tapering to the hourglass of her waist.

Her long black hair lay in curtains that covered her breasts, but I could remember well their pert round shape.

She sat along the length of the altar, facing my position, legs together, and arms behind her, supporting her weight.

I watched on as she let her knees fall apart, her ankles still together, exposing the darkness of her pubic hair and the pink slit within.

All the while maintaining her chant, she beckoned her three disciples to join her.

The first pulled down his hood and dropped his head to her lap, his attention making her squirm. A man stood either side of the altar, robes open, exposing their hardness.

The priestess moved her head to one and took his erection into her mouth. As she did, the man took over the chanting, as if her voice vibrated from his penis, through his body, and out of his mouth.

She released him from between her lips; her chanting resumed as his chanting stopped.

The man at her fancy stood and positioned his straining erection between her thighs. As I watched he pushed inside her, rocking her as she searched out the other man. She found him as he removed his hood, and shrugged from his robe.

It was the professor. The white, pointy beard was unmistakable. As before, he took over the chanting as she moved her mouth up and down his small, hard, white member.

Why would the professor spend so many resources locating and obtaining the book only to give it to the very woman who tried stealing it?

Their intonation became more frantic as the sex became more intense.

She shrugged the men off, stood, and laid the professor down on his back across the altar.

She climbed on top of him, and I could see her lower herself onto his hardness. Another of the disciples stood behind her, and I can only assume, from my position, he violated her unnaturally.

All three men were being pleasured by her now, and I could not look away.

The periphery of my vision began to squirm; either the candlelight played tricks with my senses or the dimensions of the room began to collapse and fold in on themselves.

The foursome were now a crescendo of noise as each member joined the incantation. I could tell the man currently in her mouth arrived in full vigour as he held her head and ejaculated into her mouth. He fell back and sat against a wall, insensible, unmoving, and spent.

The body language of each man in turn stiffened and released on climax as they filled her in turn.

I felt the room shake beneath my feet. The first man to finish, who sat against the wall, began to twist and move unnaturally. His joints popped with audible snaps as elbows and knees bent unnaturally, his spine twisting, his neck extending.

I looked around myself. All of space had folded and twisted beyond the usual four dimensions. All three men silently began to writhe and bend in horrific shapes that stretched my already thin grip on reality. Their sudden screams echoed around the ever-changing space.

As I watched, every person of the orgy, bar the priestess, had deformed in the air. Now unrecognisable as human shaped, they began flowing like liquid, like the strings of their own ejaculations they stretched and flowed towards her, all screams fading to echoes around the chamber.

All colour drained and shape discarded, the white viscous-looking liquid seeped through the air towards the priestess. It covered her in great streaks, wrapping and flowing around her, eventually oozing inside each of her holes. I saw it part and stretch her as the essence of these men filled her.

For the first time since my arrival, the chanting ceased as what was once the professor's fluid gushed into her open mouth, her tongue out to accept him.

Incredulously, I gazed aghast at the spectacle. My sanity had fled now. I made peace with my madness as everything bar the priestess pulsed and rippled in space.

She spun around and sat on the edge of the altar.

“Come here, Dr. Maxwell. I need the fourth,” she said. "I need you to complete the call and bring forth the ancient ones and herald a new age of man.”

She knew I was here.

Just as I wondered about the professor, I now wondered about the independence of my own actions in bringing me to this place.

I moved unthinkingly towards the naked goddess. Her whole eyes were now entirely a pure swirling sandstorm.

Where had my clothes gone? I looked down and I was as naked as she.

She reached for my neck, gripped me, and pulled me in.

I felt the head of me pushing at her wetness, and an irresistible urge forced me to slide further inside her until I was fully consumed by her hot womanhood.

"Give me your essence, Doctor; fuck me and fill my soul with yours. Become part of your new queen.”

With my last grasps of sanity, I knew to let go now would be death. Or worse.

I fought with my every fibre to deny my physical reflexes as my body thrust into her over and over again.

“Cum Doctor, cum inside me. I need it. Let go. Release yourself inside me, Doctor, now! Now before it's too late! It must be your essence or mine!”

Her pleas were increasingly desperate as she tightened herself around me, bucking and grinding in desperation. Her sandstorm eyes blazed as if the sand ran from them and into the air.

Her body began to change as her disciples’ had. Her shoulders dislocated, and her neck snapped into an unnatural angle. The entire chamber, walls, floor, and sky all collapsed in on us. She began to scream...

And that's where they found me. Naked and alone on the floor of the monastery.

I remember nothing more.

Nothing more than I write here, on the walls of my cell.

I know that the last of my sensible thoughts will disperse with the finishing of this story etched into the concrete, and I welcome the abyss of madness that awaits me.