I Summoned An Eldritch Horror (Without Even Trying!) by Derek Paterson

Dottie glanced at the mantel clock. 02:22. She’d been at this for almost three hours. Sighing, she gave up—the spell wasn’t working. Deep down, she’d known it would never work. Not for her, anyway.
She slammed shut the leather-bound spell book—an eighteen-birthday gift from her great aunt—and blew out the black candles.
As her eyes became used to the dark, the precisely measured chalk circles and arcane symbols on her living room floor looked pathetic. Why had she thought she could do this? What a waste of time. Dottie was a disgrace to her family, the first failure in a hereditary line of witches that stretched back to Olde England.
It was time for bed. In the morning, Dottie would scrub the chalk off the floor and roll the old rug back into place. She had a biology class first thing, worse luck, as she wasn’t making good progress with that, either. Putting the book back in its space on the shelf, she went to brush her teeth.
While brushing, she closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at the face of failure in the bathroom mirror. She moved the brush slowly, so the bristles had time to invade every little nook. Toothpaste slipped down her throat and she gagged. She leaned over the sink and coughed it up.
When she straightened and looked in the mirror, a menacing figure was standing behind her.
Dottie knew that her mind sometimes played tricks. She had just been bending over, inviting a rush of blood to her brain. Perhaps she’d straightened too quickly, causing a bout of dizziness. She waited for the shadowy figure to vanish. When it did not, Dottie sucked in a deep breath. Not that she couldn’t see it. It was just that she couldn’t quite make her eyes perceive it as something solid. The door frame was visible through it, and likewise the towels hanging from hooks behind the door.
All evidence pointed to its being a spirit, a shade, a ghost. Or so she might have thought, if not for its unusual shape, that kept moving... undulating, in the wobbly sense... instead of standing still. Dottie received an impression of too many limbs, reminding her of statues of Indian and Asian deities. And there was the single eyeball, as big as her head, pulsing red, as if her visitor was made of flames.
She didn’t want to turn around and face it, but she didn’t like having it behind her, so she turned, gripping her toothbrush tightly. If it made one wrong move then so help her, she’d poke its goddamn eye.
Dottie leaned back against the sink, glad it was there because otherwise her legs might have given way so she ended up sitting on the floor like an idiot.
The mirror had lied, it wasn’t a shadow. Its reflection had been... diluted, somehow. It seemed much more solid now that Dottie was looking directly at it.
Dottie knew about the ancient beings who’d once ruled Earth, who’d thrown up vast pyramid cities and temples and worked cosmic magic beyond the ken of contemporary sorcerers. But as the planet’s climate had changed over millions of years, becoming cooler and wetter, they had wriggled on to other worlds that suited their physiology better, leaving Earth to the big lizards and, much later, the smaller apes who had dropped out of the trees and learned to walk upright.
Words from her spell book came to her, from one of the chapters dealing with netherworldly things. Which, until this moment, she hadn’t truly believed in.
“Yes, can I help you?” As if this was something normal that happened all the time. Nothing happened, so she tried again: “Be ye spirit or be ye demon?” This was the netherworldly equivalent of “Hello, there!” according to the personal notes her great aunt had left in the margin in beautiful, looping handwriting.
The quivering jelly altered its appearance. A gash opened beneath the Cyclopean eye, almost as if a sharp knife had slashed the flesh. Ew. The edges of the gash rounded, forming soft lips, which was kind of weird. Behind the lips, teeth formed, and further back, a pink tongue. An entire mouth. Whispers, dozens of them, seemed to swim in the air before finally coming together into a wet voice that issued from the mouth. “Ah, I am familiar with thy language.”
The mouth smiled a wide, pleasant smile. The teeth were spotless, white and pointed. The tip of the pink tongue ran over the lips as if moistening them prior to a kiss.
Great Gaia, what was she even thinking? That was just bizarre.
“Was it thee who opened the portal?” he asked. She had no idea why she now thought of this creature as a “he.” But the voice lay in a range that she associated with maleness.. And it was no longer wet-sounding, but pleasant and throaty.
Thoughts whirled in Dottie’s head like a thousand windmills on a stormy day. Opened the portal? Oh! Her great aunt’s spell book. The failed spell.
To Peek into Other Realms—It had seemed harmless enough to try. Peeking implied you could see in, but no one else could see out, right? So that was what she’d cast. Only... this had happened.
“Aye, ’twas me,” she said, surprised that she could still speak. “I am sorry if I have caused any confusion. I didn’t think anyone would... you know.” She waved a hand, hoping he’d understand.
Dottie wanted to squeeze past him and return to the living room. Were the circles and the symbols she’d drawn now glowing with elemental power? Was the portal still open? Could other netherworldly beings also come through? That could be rather inconvenient.
He tilted his large, bulbous head and regarded her with what she took to be curiosity. Hopefully not hunger. That, too, would be rather inconvenient. Was there a giant beak somewhere in among his inhuman mass?
“Dost thou have a name?”
“Sure, I have a name. I’m Dorothy. My friends call me Dottie.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Dottie. I am Kthuv'xilvish.”
She hadn’t expected the name to be even remotely pronounceable and was pleasantly surprised. She sounded it out in her head, Kuh-thoov-zil-vish, so she would remember. It sounded pleasant, almost musical.
“So did you... come here for a reason, Kthuv'xilvish?” Dottie hoped he wouldn’t say anything that involved death, destruction, or the extinction of the human race.
The really cute head tilt, again. “Did you not wish to meet me? I assumed that is why you opened the portal.”
How to tell him she’d just been testing a spell, following the directions—as she had done many times before—hoping against all hope that something would dang well work. She was overjoyed that it had, but it put her in an awkward situation.
“Well, yes, although—” She cut herself off before he realized it was a big stupid accident and she was a klutz when it came to magic. Quick, change the subject. “I must say, Kthuv'xilvish, I love how you formed a mouth just so you could talk to me. That was very nice of you.”
He waved an airy tentacle. “Not at all. It took no great effort. I could continue to transform if this would make you less nervous.”
Well of course he’d realized she was nervous. He must have otherworldly senses that perceived stuff in spectrums that were way beyond her human senses. Like a mantis shrimp with sixteen color-receptive cones, compared with the paltry three in human eyes. Yay biology class.
“I wouldn’t want to put you to any inconvenience, Kthuv'xilvish. I’m getting used to you just as you are.”
Kthuv'xilvish closed his big eye and pursed his lips as if he were concentrating. His body narrowed and elongated. It was fascinating to see him change his shape into something resembling a human male’s torso and hips. His lower tentacles twined together to take on the shape of legs while his upper tentacles became arms. It made her feel less nervous, even though his head remained a cephalopod, bulbous with a frill of little tentacles around what might be his chin.
“Oh, my, that is just amazing.” Dottie meant it. “Thank you so much. I’m just sorry I can’t reciprocate the favor and change into something that would please you.”
Again a little tentacle wave, as if it didn’t matter. “My eye finds you pleasing enough. What do you do for fun?”
Dottie blinked, caught by surprise. “Fun?”
“I noted the skulls decorating your lair. Do you engage in battle? Do you revel in slaughtering your enemies and drinking their blood?”
Oh God, the skulls. She’d picked them up at the flea market, thinking they looked cool. They were plastic, but she’d stuck candles on their crowns and they helped get her in the mood. “I’m trying to cut down on the slaughtering. I like to read. And watch movies. I’m still in college, so there’s lots of studying. What about you?”
“Sometimes I gaze at the eternal night sky and watch new stars forming. Or swim in the ocean depths, or bathe in hot volcanic vents. But I have found... I have found such activities can be lonely, if there is no one to share them with. So I thought... well, you know. Why not reach out and see if there is some entity out there for me?” He lowered his head. “A foolish thought.”
The truth struck Dottie like a bolt of lightning. He’d come looking for a date. What had she done, conjured a portal to some kind of dating service?
A bell rang, not a chime, but a great sonorous church bell, vibrating through the apartment. Dottie’s stomach flipped.
Her visitor tilted his bulbous head. He’d heard it too. “I must leave. Time passes too swiftly in this realm. It is unfair.”
He turned away—reluctantly, she thought—and stalked awkwardly into the living room. Dottie followed, her mind whirling.
A star blazed above her conjuring circle, filling the room with light. Its unearthly beauty transfixed her. Wow, had she really made this? Its glow reflected off his face. There was unmistakable sadness in his eye when he gazed at her.
“Farewell, Dottie. It was....” He hesitated. “It was nice meeting you.” As if this was something an otherworldly being wasn’t supposed to say. He stepped toward the blazing light.
“Not so fast.” Dottie grabbed his tentacle-arm and turned him around. She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips.
His eye widened with surprise.
“Next time, we’ll try to figure out how to keep it open longer,” she said. “If you want there to be a next time.”
He pondered for a moment, then nodded. “That would please me greatly.”
He shambled into the light, which shrunk until it was just a teeny spark. Then it winked out. Huh. She’d never seen a portal close before. The mechanics interested her.
She studied the symbols at her feet. This group would control the aperture destination, most likely. What aspects did the other groups influence?
After she made sure nothing was on fire, or likely to ignite when she wasn’t paying attention, she grabbed her spell book and headed to bed. She had some more reading to do. The next portal she opened would stay open until she said otherwise. Time passes too swiftly in this realm, Kthuv'xilvish had said. Well, she’d fix that, too.
Thinking about it, biology wasn’t the only subject available to her. Maybe some physics and geometry classes wouldn’t go amiss. There was a big cosmos out there; it was time she got to know it better.