Down in Limbo

"Down in Limbo" is a short story by American theologian and author Robert M. Price which is set in H. P. Lovecraft's fictional Cthulhu Mythos.
==Synopsis==
The story follows young university lecturer Larry Stanton who is finishing his dissertation on a translation of the scroll known as The R'lyeh Text, aided by the recent discovery of a set of undersea carvings dubbed the Bimini Glyphs.
Stanton and his girlfriend Barb later visit a past-life regression channeler, where Barb is regressed using lines from the original script of The R'lyeh Text and remembers an existence in a world which she does not recognise.
In the meantime, Stanton completes his translation and passes it on to his mentor Professor Maitland who has dedicated his life to attempting to decipher the runes, and then leaves to speak to the past-life channeler, Dr. Waite. After Stanton leaves, Maitland reads the translation and, terrified by what he sees there, burns all records of it (including the original parchment) and takes his own life.
When Stanton speaks to Waite, the man channels a creature from the future, who recounts his people's efforts to regress themselves in order to recover the translation which has been lost in their time. With that, the entity tells him that Stanton's own session is over, and he awakens in an alien body under a ruined sky. As his body chants the translated texts, a chasm opens beneath him and something begins to awaken.
==Characters==
*Larry Stanton, a university lecturer at the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Antiquities whose focus is undersea archaeology. He is later revealed to be some kind of creature from a ruined future Earth.
*Barbara Gilbert, Stanton's girlfriend, and a student of Marine Biology. She is possibly of the same future species as him, and may have been an Atlantean priestess in a past life.
*Professor Maitland, Stanton's mentor and a senior faculty member at the Sanbourne Institute.
*Dr. Waite, an occult channeler.
==Publication History==
"Down in Limbo" was first published in Deathrealm #24 in June 1995. It was later included in a collection of Price's own works, Blasphemies & Revelations in November 2011, and again in the eBook anthology The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack by Wildside Press in 2012.
== Mythos Connections==
*Several entities from the Cthulhu Mythos are mentioned in the story, including Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha and Mother Hydra. A line which refers to the "Dead King of the Old Ones" is likely intended to mean Cthulhu.
*The Mythos locations R'lyeh, Mu, Atlantis and the Bimini Islands are all referenced.
*In addition, the occult sources The R'lyeh Text, The Unter Zee Kulten and the Cthäat Aquadingen are all stated to have been read by Larry Stanton.
Category:Robert M. Price works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works