[Kalimac]

Diamond - that was FANTASTIC! (sound of thunderous applause) [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. I almost had a flashback to when I was trudging through "Frankenstein" in high school...oh lord...

Another effort (this one's a little long too).

LORD OF THE RINGS, by H.P. Lovecraft (surely people still remember him?)

THE HOBBITON HORROR

When a traveller in the West Farthing takes the wrong fork in the path at Crickhollow, just beyond the Village of Bree, he comes upon a lonely a curious country. Scattered, sparse and lonely houses built beneath the earth are the sole mark of living habitation in this desolate place, and somehow the traveller hesitates to ask directions of the surly and seldom-seen figures who populate this dreary landscape. Gnarled and small they are, with an abundance of a coarse, degenerate hair, and smaller than other men, and furtive and skilled at disappearing. Fields are many, but signs of health and cultivation are few. It is always with a sensation of relief that the traveller finds the signpost marking the end of the region and returns to friendlier haunts. Sometimes, afterwards, he learns that he has been to Hobbiton.

Outsiders now seldom visit Hobbiton. Since a certain season of horror all talk of Hobbiton has been whispered, all signs pointing in its direction have been taken down. Men and Elves alike shun it without knowing wherefore they do so. In the Third Age, when legend was not mocked, reasons were customarily given for this, but in our sensible age they can only say that they do not wish to go to so evil-seeming a place, a blasted shell of a village whose natives have become little better than degenerates.

*******************************

It was at 5 AM on the morning of 27th February, sixty years ago now, that Frodo Baggins was born. This date was remembered because at the hour of his birth, all the dogs began howling throughout the Four Farthings, and several alarums were sounded, though none could discover their source. His mother was Primula Brandybuck, a strange and, some said, little better than an idiot. Her husband was Drogo Baggins, a stranger to his wife's native Brandy Hall, and from whence he came none could say.

Their child proved prodigiously clever, and indeed took great delight in all that was cruel and malicious. It is said that he early - early! - discovered that Book which his half-mad hermit of an uncle, Old Bilbo Baggins, kept hidden fearfully - the Necronomicon, that grim collection of writings by the mad Arab Abdul Al-Sauron. Little doubt there is that the young Frodo - an unattractive, pale, and lumpish boy - studied keenly the ravings of the mad Al-Sauron, and soon learned many secrets of which we yet know nothing. No doubt there is that Drogo and Primula Baggins died by water before their precocious child's twelfth birthday. Now he was taken to live with Old Bilbo, shunned and feared by the town of Hobbiton, and could study the secrets of the Necronomicon to his heart's fullness.

All this was known. And yet it was whispered that stranger things still were concealed by the dark hole of Bag End in which Old Baggins and his silent, dull-eyed nephew lived. Whispers grew of a - thing - an object of some kind, so men say - which they found by the vile sorceries of Al-Sauron, and which they worshiped with a fear only matched by their burning delight in subsuming their souls to the workings of Al-Sauron. None knew what this would be, but rumor spread slowly that this thing was called "Precious."