Servile

"Servile" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by American author Jeffrey Thomas. It was published in the Lammas 1997 edition of the Robert M. Price-edited fanzine Cthulhu Codex by Necronomicon Press.
==Synopsis==
Gabrielle Rumsey returns to work for her old employer Dianna Wallace, a former explorer and researcher who was crippled several years previously during an attack by unknown assassins in Tibet. She finds her old friend has changed a great deal in the years since their last acquaintance and now, rather than physically searching for the occult truths which she once sought, now travels through dreams to achieve the same result. She is aided in this by a mysterious new servant, an ebony mute named Smith.
Over the following days, Gaby comes to learn that Dianna has become involved in the worship of an ancient, slumbering deity by the name of Tsathoggua. When Dianna orders her husband killed at the hands of Smith, who is in actuality a Formless Spawn masquerading as a man, Gaby flees the house, later learning that her old friend died of an apparent heart attack that very same night, with no trace ever found of the murdered man or Smith.
Although suffering from horribly vivid dreams in which she has knowledge of things which she should not possess, these eventually fade, and Gaby is eventually able to return to something approaching a normal life, but forever wonders if Dianna has perhaps sold her soul to a god which she did not fully understand.
==Publication History==
Since it’s first appearance, "Servile" has also been included in the collections Unholy Dimensions (2005) and Geschichten aus dem Cthulhu-Mythos (2012, German translation).
Category:Jeffrey Thomas works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works