THE RING THAT WAITS
A Lovecraftian Tale
March 12, 1925
Miskatonic University, Arkham
The fire in the Physics Laboratory has left more questions than ashes.
Dr. Morgan's notes—those few pages I salvaged from the wreckage before the janitorial staff could sweep them into oblivion—lie spread before me now, their edges still reeking of smoke and something subtler, like the ozone scent that lingers after a summer storm. I was fortunate to rescue his modified Zeiss microscope as well, smuggled beneath my coat while the administration busied themselves with platitudes for the local press. The university officials, in their infinite bureaucratic wisdom, have declared the incident a "tragic accident" and ordered all records sealed. But I knew Francis Morgan too well to believe his disappearance mere coincidence. The man was meticulous to a fault; he would no more mishandle a Bunsen burner than I would misplace a first-edition folio.
Our fifteen years of collaboration had taught me that much—from our first meeting at that disastrous Cambridge symposium where we alone defended the controversial Hyperborean chronology, to our midnight debates on non-Euclidean mathematics last autumn. Morgan was the only colleague who never mocked my "family predilections toward the fantastical," as Dean Hartwell so delicately phrases it.
And then there is the matter of the ring.
It rests upon my desk as I write, glinting dully in the lamplight. The greenish metal of its band—an alloy defying all known classifications—gleams with an inner light that seems to absorb rather than reflect the glow of my lamp. The oval signet measures roughly the width of my thumbnail, its face deeply incised with what appears at first glance to be a wave-like pattern but reveals itself, upon closer inspection, to be distinctly tentacular, surrounding a central geometric configuration of impossible angles. Sixteen years I carried it upon my person after retrieving it from that blasphemous vault near Smyrna, and never once did I suspect its true nature—not until Morgan begged to examine it last December. "There are properties here that defy known physics," he whispered that first evening in his lab, his spectacles catching the eerie glow of his modified Crookes tubes. "The alloy alone… Thaddeus, this metal should not exist."
Even as a child, I had heard whispers of my great-grandfather's "unfortunate obsession" with the coastal town of Innsmouth. The family library still houses his moldering monographs on what he called "the singing dead" of that decrepit port. How the ring might connect to that cursed lineage, I dare not contemplate.
I flip now to the third page of Morgan's notes, where his handwriting grows increasingly erratic:
"Specimen exhibits psycho-reactive resonance when exposed to subjects with prior exposure to 'anomalous phenomena' (cf. Ellis's 1909 expedition reports). Hypothesis: ring acts as a 'stabilizing agent' for dimensional membranes, but only when worn by a 'sensitized' individual. Disturbing corollary: what if the stabilization is not for our benefit? What if it merely renders the wearer… legible to forces beyond?"
The final line is crossed out so violently the pen tore the paper.
Outside my window, the mist thickens. The ring, I note absently, has grown warm to the touch—a phenomenon Morgan recorded occurring precisely at 9:47 PM during his trials. I check my pocket watch. The hour is 9:46.
How innocuous it looks, this little band of greenish metal. How easily it might be mistaken for some trinket from a Cairo bazaar. And yet I cannot forget the way Whitby screamed when we pried it from those skeletal fingers in the sepulchre—fingers too long, too jointed, curled as if in death they still sought to clutch some invisible thread. DeWitt laughed at our superstitions then. Poor DeWitt.
The watch ticks. 9:47.
The ring pulses faintly, like a frog's throat swelling with breath.
I must record this.
[The next page is stained with what appears to be coffee or brandy. The writing resumes below the stain.]
Morgan's last entry before the fire warrants transcription here, though my hand shakes recalling it:
"Ellis must never know the full truth. The ring isn't protecting him. It's preparing him. The calculations are irrefutable—every 'stabilized' event aligns with celestial cycles predating human civilization. This is no ward. It's an invitation. And when the stars are right—"
The rest is ash.
But I have the ring. And the ring, it seems, has intentions of its own.
I slip it back onto my finger. The metal settles against my skin as if it has grown accustomed to the shape of my bones. As it slides into place, I feel a momentary coolness, then a gentle warmth that spreads up my arm. The tentacular pattern seems to writhe microscopically, as if acknowledging its return to its rightful bearer.
Let the university bury Morgan's research. Let them whisper in the faculty lounge about my "eccentricities." I survived Smyrna. I will survive this.
Though as I extinguish the lamp and gaze at the ring's faint luminescence in the dark, I find myself wondering:
What, precisely, does survival entail?
March 19, 1925
3:17 AM
Dreams again of the Anatolian vault. Whitby's voice, slurred as if underwater:
"The walls are not stone, Thaddeus. They're teeth."
I awoke clutching the ring. It was vibrating.
Last night at dinner, Agatha Montgomery from the Anthropology Department mentioned my "startling family resemblance" to my great-grandfather's portrait in the university's heritage hall. "Something about the eyes," she said, "and that peculiar set of the jawline." She does not know that I avoid that portrait specifically because of the resemblance—and because of what became of him after his final trip to Innsmouth in 1851. The madness that took him is well-documented in family letters my father kept locked in his study. The ring thrummed against my finger as she spoke, as if in recognition.
[Rest of page blank]
March 27, 1925
Miskatonic University, Arkham
Weather: Rain, unrelenting and cold
I have spent the last three nights deciphering Morgan's private cipher—a fiendish alchemy of Greek shorthand and astronomical notation he learned during his Heidelberg years. The man was paranoid long before this business with the ring, it seems. His personal journal (bound in that peculiar blue leather he favored) was hidden inside a hollowed-out copy of Kelvin's Treatise on Thermodynamics in his office. The janitors, thank Providence, are not bibliophiles.
Morgan and I first encountered this cipher during our ill-fated expedition to the Nile Delta in 1919, where we discovered those troubling hieroglyphs in the unmarked tomb. He spent three feverish weeks translating while I nursed him through bouts of what the locals called "desert sickness." It was there, as he raved about "the angles between angles," that our bond transcended mere academic collegiality. I held his wrists as he thrashed against visions only he could see—visions I now suspect the ring allowed him to glimpse.
The decoded passages would chill a more credulous man to the marrow. I transcribe the most pertinent below with as much clinical detachment as I can muster:
"December 14, 1924
Ellis's ring reacts most strongly to those who have encountered what I must reluctantly term 'extra-dimensional phenomena.' This includes Ellis himself (see Case 1909-A: Smyrna Expedition) and, disturbingly, myself following the September experiments with the Luminiferous Aether apparatus. The effect is not merely psychological. Blood samples from exposed subjects show marked cellular degradation when placed near the ring—except Ellis's. His blood remains stable. No, more than stable: it improves. As though the ring recognizes its own.
Hypothesis: The ring does not block the influence of what lies Beyond. It filters it. Like a colander straining poison from wine, leaving only the intoxicant behind. Ellis drinks the vintage and calls it fortification. But what happens when the vintage decides the drinker is ready for the full draught?"
A later entry, dated mere hours before the fire:
"The calculations are complete. The ring's microscopic engravings are not decorative—they're a calendar. Each groove corresponds to an alignment of celestial bodies stretching back 12,000 years. The next convergence occurs on—
Here the cipher dissolves into frantic symbols even I cannot parse. But the implication is clear enough.
I close the journal and press my palms against my eyes. The rain drums against the window like impatient fingers.
Whitby knew. That final night in Anatolia, when he clawed at his own face and babbled of "the angles between stars," he was not mad. He was* precocious. *The ring had shown him the schedule.
And DeWitt—dear, rational DeWitt—what had the poor fool muttered as the fever took him? "Not a ward, Thaddeus. A lodestone."
The ring sits heavy on my finger as I write this. It has not grown warm since that first observed incident on the 12th, but I catch it sometimes pulsing in my peripheral vision, like a slow blink. Morgan's notes suggest it is waiting. For what?
For me to understand, perhaps.
For me to say yes.
April 3, 1925
2:43 AM
Dreamt again of the vault. This time, I stood before its entrance—only the door was not stone, but flesh, ribbed and glistening. It dilated.
From within, something whispered in Whitby's voice: "You're late."
I woke with the taste of salt and copper in my mouth. The ring was vibrating so violently my teeth ached.
It stopped the moment I reached for my journal.
Last evening, I found myself drawn to the Ellis family albums in the library. My ancestors' portraits reveal a disturbing pattern—a certain widening of the orbital ridge across generations, a subtle elongation of the fingers. My great-grandfather's final daguerreotype, taken months before his death, shows hands so spindly they appear almost aquatic. The ring grew cold as ice when I traced his features with my fingertip.
[Rest of page blank]
April 10, 1925
Miskatonic University Library, Special Collections
11:23 PM
I should not be here.
The library closed at nine o'clock, but old Carson, the night watchman, still turns a blind eye to faculty who linger—especially those bearing bottles of good Kentucky bourbon. He thinks me eccentric, hunched over arcane texts with the ring glinting in the lamplight. If only he knew.
Tonight, I sought confirmation of Morgan's celestial calculations. The Codex Stellarum from the restricted stacks held the key—a chart of astral alignments so ancient the constellations bear no resemblance to our own. As I traced the sigils with my finger (the ringed finger, always the ringed one), the ink began to swim.
At first I blamed fatigue. Then the lamplight dimmed, though the flame burned steady.
The walls breathed.
Not metaphorically, I assure you. The stonework itself expanded and contracted like a living diaphragm. The air grew thick with the scent of iodine and rotting kelp. Across the table, my shadow stretched and kept stretching, elongating until it pooled on the floor in a black, iridescent slick.
From its depths rose Whitby.
Not the broken wretch who died in Anatolia, but the man I'd known at Oxford—young, vibrant, his cravat perfectly tied. He smiled with all his teeth and spoke in a voice like a tide retreating over shingle:
"You always were the slow one, Thaddeus. DeWitt saw it in Smyrna. Morgan saw it last winter. Even the janitors whisper about you in the basement."
I reached for my revolver. Useless, of course, but the hand must move somewhere when the mind founders.
Whitby laughed. His teeth were no longer teeth.
"The ring doesn't protect you from Them. It protects Them from you—from your crude, chattering consciousness. Like oil on water, Thaddeus. Like a damper on a piano wire." He leaned forward. His breath smelled of deep ocean trenches. "Tell me, when you dream of drowning...do you ever wonder why you don't wake up gasping?"
The vision shattered when the ring burned me—a pain so acute it left no mark. I found myself slumped over the Codex, my forehead pressed to a diagram of Hyades. The library stood silent. My watch read 11:24.
One minute. One eternity.
The ring is cold now. Waiting.
I know what it wants.
April 15, 1925
Ellis Family Estate, Arkham
3:33 AM
All notes and correspondence regarding this matter have been sealed in the iron strongbox, to be opened only upon my death—or upon the occurrence of any "celestial convergence" matching Morgan's calculations.
The ring remains on my finger.
Let the record show I do this not out of courage, but for the oldest and most ignoble of reasons: I must know. DeWitt died screaming. Whitby dissolved into madness. Morgan was erased. But I—
I hear the sea in my dreams. And sometimes, when the ring pulses, I hum along.
April 17, 1925
Ellis Family Estate, Arkham
Eventide
The dreams grow more insistent. Last night, I found myself once more in that damned sepulchre outside Smyrna—not as the man I am now, but as the callow youth of 1909, lantern trembling in my hand. Memory or vision? The ring's warmth upon my finger suggests the latter holds disturbing weight.
Though the primary evidence rests sealed in iron, I find myself compelled to maintain these supplementary records. Should the strongbox ever be opened, let these addenda provide context for what follows. For posterity's sake (should these additional chronicles survive the coming years), I shall recount the full horror of that expedition. My colleagues are all dead. The world deserves to know why.
Flashback: October 14, 1909
Near Smyrna, Ottoman Anatolia
We discovered the hypogeum quite by accident. DeWitt's shovel struck the capstone while digging for Byzantine pottery shards. The locals refused to approach the site, crossing themselves and muttering about "djinn who hunger in the deep." Whitby, ever the rationalist, dismissed them as superstitious peasants.
How I wish he'd listened.
The vault's entrance was a perfect heptagon—an impossible geometry for any known ancient culture. The stone, though weathered by millennia, bore the same squamous carvings I now recognize in my ring's design. When we pried open the slab, the air that rushed forth smelled not of decay, but of low tide—that briny, fecund stench that clings to fishing nets left too long in the sun.
Whitby went first, of course. The man had no sense of self-preservation. I shall never forget how his lantern's glow slid over the walls, revealing bas-reliefs that...
[Here the ink blots, as if the pen had hesitated]
They depicted no gods or kings. They showed processes—humans being unmade and remade by things with too many limbs. The artistry was exquisite. Horrifying, but exquisite.
At the chamber's heart lay the skeleton—or what we mistook for a skeleton. Its bones were green-tinged, its skull elongated like a dolphin's. The fingers (God, those fingers—each joint triple-knuckled) clutched the brass case containing my ring. When Whitby pried it loose, the bones collapsed into a fine powder that stank of rancid shellfish.
DeWitt laughed nervously. "Well, Ellis? You're the folklorist. What do we call our friend here?"
I never answered. The ring was already in my pocket.
In that moment, I felt an ancestral recognition—a sense that this thing, this artifact, belonged in Ellis hands. Had my great-grandfather felt the same pull toward Innsmouth's secrets? Was this why my grandmother forbade mention of the sea at family gatherings?
Present Day: April 17, 1925
3:15 AM
I wake with DeWitt's words echoing. The ring pulses gently against my carotid as I write this.
Morgan's notes contained a sketch of the Anatolian skeleton's hand—the same grotesque proportions as the thing that once held this ring. He'd labeled it "Specimen T-9: Probable Hybrid."
Hybrid of what, Francis?
The answer, I suspect, is swimming in my dreams.
April 20, 1925
Miskatonic University, Arkham
After Midnight
Tonight, I performed the unthinkable using Morgan's salvaged microscope: I compared my own blood under examination to his slides of "post-exposure degradation."
The results would unman a lesser scholar.
Where Morgan's samples showed cellular collapse, mine exhibit deliberate reorganization—mitochondria aligning in fractal patterns matching the ring's engravings. This is no disease. It is instruction.
My great-grandfather's journals describe a similar phenomenon—"a transfiguration of the vital fluids"—following his third visit to Innsmouth. The family always attributed such ravings to tertiary syphilis. Now I wonder if something in that decrepit port called to something already dormant in our bloodline. The ring seems to quicken it, whatever "it" may be.
Whitby's ghost was right. The ring was never protecting me.
It was tuning me.
[The entry shows a sketch of cells forming non-Euclidean patterns, annotated with trembling handwriting: "Like recognizes like."]
April 22, 1925
Provost's Office, Miskatonic University
10:15 AM
The summons came on black-bordered stationery—a detail so melodramatic I might have laughed were my ribs not already clenched like a vice.
Provost Nathaniel Bishop sat behind his oak desk like a magistrate preparing a death sentence. To his left, Dean Abigail Hartwell's spectacles caught the morning light in such a way as to render her eyes invisible. The effect was likely intentional.
"Dr. Ellis," Bishop began, steepling his fingers, "we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of inquiring after Dr. Morgan's final days. You were, I understand, his primary collaborator in certain… esoteric research?"
Hartwell slid a folder across the desk. Within lay photographs of Morgan's burned lab—and one singularly damning image: my own ring, clearly visible in a glass specimen dish, glowing faintly despite the smoke.
I kept my voice measured. "Francis was investigating anomalous metallurgical properties. Hardly 'esoteric.'"
"Then why," Hartwell asked softly, "did his final journal entry describe 'an aperture in the air' above your artifact? Why did three janitors report hearing voices from the flames? Voices that, according to at least one witness, spoke of Innsmouth?"
The name of that benighted coastal town falling from her lips sent ice through my veins. The ring pulsed once—a sensation I felt rather than saw. Bishop's gaze flickered to my hand.
"More troubling still," Bishop continued, leaning forward, "is the striking similarity between your family's connection to that place and what we found in Morgan's private notes." He withdrew a paper from his desk drawer. "Tell me, Dr. Ellis, does the phrase 'the invitation awaits the right bloodline' hold any significance to you?"
The walls of that august office seemed suddenly too close, the ceiling too low. I sensed a trap—but whether it was Bishop's or something far older, I could not say. The ring throbbed against my skin like a second heart.
"Gentlemen of science," I said, rising, "do not traffic in hysterical maids' tales. If you've evidence of misconduct, present it. Otherwise, I've monographs to review."
The silence stretched. Somewhere in the walls, the steam pipes groaned like a dying man.
Hartwell closed the folder. "The Board has voted to suspend your access to the restricted collections. Pending review."
Bishop's smile never reached his eyes. "For your own protection, Thaddeus."
As I reached the door, Hartwell spoke again. "One last question, if you please. The ring you wear—I don't recall seeing it before this winter. A family heirloom, perhaps?"
I left without answering. But as I descended the administration building's steps, I could have sworn I heard Bishop chuckle and murmur, "Just like his great-grandfather."
April 25, 1925
Ellis Family Estate
Just Past Midnight
They think to cage me with bureaucracy. Fools.
The stars tonight hang low and bright as drilled pearls. The ring hums against my skin, its vibrations syncing with my pulse. I've deciphered Morgan's last encrypted note—not from his journal, but from the marginalia in his copy of De Vermis Mysteriis.
The convergence occurs on the summer solstice.
Two months hence.
I sit now at my great-grandfather's escritoire, the same mahogany monster where he penned his own mad treatise on "the singing dead" of Innsmouth. The irony is not lost on me. Before me lies a clean sheet of vellum and my father's old service revolver.
The choice is simple:
Burn the notes and bury the ring where no man—nor thing—will ever find it.
Or wait.
Listen.
Become.
The ring grows warmer as I write these words. Outside, the wind carries a scent that does not belong in landlocked Arkham—salt, and rotting kelp, and something older than both.
Whitby whispers from the shadows behind the wainscoting:
"You always knew you'd say yes."
I load the revolver.
And wait.
[Final Page]
[A single line, written in shaky script unlike Thaddeus' usual hand:]
"The walls are thinning."