The Council of Bensin

The following letter was found in an empty home by a squatter on July 10th 1995 and was given to the NOPD the following month. 
Harriet, if you are reading this then I am already gone. To an eternal sleep away from this life and away from my growing despair. Forgive me for what I have done. Taking the coward’s way out with my grandfather’s pistol. In the same home where we made love for the first time. I remember how my family shunned me for calling my brother a weak coward when he jumped off the freeway into his own doom but here I am about to commit the same sin. My mind echoes with the memories that our love has brought me. All my dreams for us: marriage, a family, and a peaceful retirement are now fading away, replaced with the darkest of truths.
Harriet, I love you. Always have and always will. You made me feel a sense of warmth that I have never felt before. This is why I am writing to you not just to say goodbye but to ask that no one looks too deeply into the circumstances surrounding my death for the consequences could be fatal for anyone who does. I will explain why that is while omitting the most dangerous information that could put you at risk. Brace yourself because what I will say in my last will and testament shall be unfathomable. I would not have bought into any of it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. For In the darkest of alleys,in the most ancient of tombs, and hidden behind countless locked doors there are forbidden dimensions we dare not discover less we wish to remain sane. I have crossed into one such dimension and I live in fear for what these otherworldly fiends will do to me. The Council of Bensin will decide my fate tonight.
Accepting that job offer was the biggest regret of my life. I constantly find myself wishing and praying that I could have a chance to undo it, Harriet. I would have been poorer and may have had to move but I would be alive. I mentioned it to you briefly before: the night security job at highland cemetery. Minimum wage for shooing away tourists and teenagers who fooled around around the above ground Tombs. For the most part it was a silent time where I would listen to my radio and enjoy the calmness of the night.
Oh how I wish I could just fly off into the moonlighted skyscape like a bird without a care in the world but here I am cornered in this hell all because of my god damn idiocy. My descent into madness began on a fateful night barely a week into the job. Around midnight I noticed in the corner of my eye a dark figure near one of the tombs.The streetlights gave it a shadow as it moved out of sight. Figuring it to perhaps be the bum that I shooed away the previous evening I walked towards it taser ready. What happened next I did not remember at least not at first. Those memories were initially a hazy blur of darkness and strange tunnels. What little I managed to piece together shows that I found one of the vaults open and quickly entered into hell itself.
The next day I was found by the morning-shift. He offered to drive me to the hospital when he found me but I declined since I was not seriously hurt. I fooled myself into thinking that perhaps I was knocked out by some crazy vagrant. Irregardless I went about my day as if nothing was wrong blissfully unaware about what was to come.
Soon the dreams began and of all nights it began on the night of your birthday party just to add insult to injury. I would have gotten you the most expensive of gifts that day had I known my days were numbered. After a joyful night of friends and liquor I drifted off in the realm of sleep. Unlike past dreams which were a randomized yet harmless mess of thoughts and feels these dreams were different. These were of a much more lucid and bizarre quality. I found myself in this barren green-tinted wasteland with dual-moons haunting the landscape overhead. Night by night I wandered around endlessly and hopelessly in this godless unmerciful world. Feelings of isolation and emptiness were unavoidable but thoughts of you motivated me to pull me through these times, Harriet.
Hundreds of miles of walking became bearable when I thought of your warm touch, your heartwarming laughs, and your smile that could light up the darkest depths of space. For this I am deeply grateful to you. These dreams went on and on for days until one night in the wasteland I found something. In the distance I saw it and rushed towards it in utter disbelief. An ordinary wooden door right in the middle of this extraordinary land. One that you’d find in any given home. Thinking of it as an escape I went through it. Little did I know I had gone from the frying pan into the fire.
Dear god It was like I traveled through time, Harriet! I would have wrongly believed this to be the case had not for the night-sky clearly belonged to a different galaxy entirely. So vividly I remember that city. Centuries old street lights towered over these stone roads and the connected buildings that went as far as the eye could see.The best way I can describe the design of the city was that it was close yet not completely the same as to the Gothic and Victorian designs that flourished in the United Kingdom hundreds of years ago. It is here standing in shock and awe of this place when that monster came to greet me.
“Ah, the mortal. We have been expecting you.” These words caused my hair to stand up on the back of my neck. He spoke perfect English yes but his voice was devoid of any real human quality. Uncanny valley being invoked in me in the worst ways possible. The robed figure then gestured at me to follow him. Fearful of what disobedience could mean I complied, the glowing red eyes on his mask pulling at me in ways I have no words for. If only I had the will-power to run away from this beast but I honestly doubt that even the strongest of men could be able to overcome this kind of dread. We entered a nearby building and as soon as the door closed behind us there was a blinding white flash that struck me by surprise. For a brief second I hoped I was waking up but I would not be so lucky. When my vision returned to me I saw that I was now surrounded by more of these fiends. Ten of them stood around me in a perfect menacing circle. The only light in this black void were a handful of impossible green torches hanging disembodied in the air. Tears went down my face and I fell back onto my knees completely at the mercy of these unknown entities. I prayed to any god who might listen that I would wake up in the comfort of my own bed. If there is a god he wasn’t there, Harriet.
All the while I was paralyzed by fear I failed to notice the low but present vibrations echoing throughout the room. This had to be some sort of verbal communication for their species or at least an aftereffect of it. Soon one of them finally spoke. “The Council of Bensin needs more time to debate, Mortal. We are uncertain if you have seen too much or remember too much. You may go back to your habitat for the time being. We shall see you out of The City of the Dead.” It is here I woke up not in my bed but in the cold damp bushes of a nearby park. Slowly I walked back home. When I got back the reality of my situation finally sunk in and I sat in silence for the next few hours scarcely doing a single thing.
Perhaps all this could have been the end of it, Harriet. Perhaps I could have gone along with the rest of my short pitiful life thinking that it was all a night terror. But oh god it wasn’t, Harriet! My own mind betrayed me! I started to remember what I saw in the tomb that night! Whatever this council is, they have to be some form of historian or scholar. I descended into the underground base that terrible night into things no man should know. I honestly don’t know what beckoned me to go further into its depths. Stupidity? Some higher-power calling me in? Natural human curiosity? I have no answers to these questions.
After going through tunnel after tunnel I made my way until what appeared to be their version of a library. A vast chamber lined with shelves upon shelves of books written in strange alien languages. Oh god why did I not stop there?!? Why must curiosity kill the cat?!?!? At the end of this chamber is where I saw the video feeds they had set-up. It told me the ugly history of all life in the universe. Dear lord It's all coming back to me! I weep for our pathetic race and our weak planet! I learned about inter-galactic wars that spanned across vast periods of time. I learned about higher planes of reality above and beyond our own! I saw prehistoric gods slumbering in the core of the earth waiting to be awakened by their followers. As mind-shattering as this all was it is not what broke the camel’s back.
The Council of Bensin and their unthinkable activities did. Their records showed me all I needed to know about them. They showed me what happened to all previous mortals who stumbled upon them and risked revealing their presence to the world. They wiped these people out of existence, Harriet! From school children to the elderly, from esteemed scientists to homeless beggars they all were erased from this timeline never to be thought of again by anyone outside of the council. As if they were never even born. I will not let myself be gone, Harriet. I will hide this letter in the crawlspace and hope the council misses it. I will take my own life and be remembered instead of the council removing all trace of me from hearts and minds. I'm so scared, Harriet. Please to god don’t forget me, my love.
According to investigators, this was found in an apartment that sat unused for more than half a decade. District management currently has no answers as to why a housing unit in an otherwise populated building sat empty and ignored for so long.
Category:Appealed Stories
Category:Diary/Journal
Category:Lovecraftian