From Between

"From Between" is a short story by British-born author William Meikle.
==Synopsis==
In post-World War I Britain, the narrator responds to a request for help from his old university friend, who bids him to travel to his ancestral home. There, he finds his friend in a terrible state, his experiences in the trenches having impacted him tremendously.
The friend has discovered a chamber beneath his manor which is inscribed with strange and seemingly-indecipherable runes, which he requires aid in translating. The narrator quickly determines them to be musical notes and as he plays, the two are swept off into the incomprehensible universe of a sleeping god. Although the narrator manages to bring himself back, his friend does not, remaining drifting in the other realm with all thoughts of the War happily forgotten.
==Characters==
*The Unnamed Narrator, a learned scholar.
*Roger, the narrator's close friend.
==Publication History==
"From Between" was published in the collection Home From the Sea: Tales of Lovecraftian Terror in April 2017.
==Trivia==
*Although not explicitly referencing either the works of H. P. Lovecraft or the Cthulhu Mythos, Meikle's inclusion of "From Between" in Home From the Sea: Tales of Lovecraftian Terror indicates that he believes it to be in the spirit of these works. Additionally, the premise of the story, that of an ancient sleeping god from outside of our reality whose dreams call to us, is very much Lovecraftian in nature.
*The story is very similar to another of Meikle's works, "Carnacki: The Larkhill Barrow"; indeed, one short passage describing the carven chamber is almost word-for-word identical. This leads to the question of whether the less-developed "From Between" was an original draft of the Carnacki story.
Category:William Meikle works
Category:Mythos-Inspired Works