The Call of CthuPooh

Jan 18, 2022

Twitter is always good fun (assuming you curate your feed and block the arseholes with abandon.) A while back Laura Keating posted this:

Winnie the Pooh is in the public domain.
The entire Lovecraft canon is in the public domain.

Do what you will with that information.

The responses to it were wonderful. Of course, I couldn’t resist that. My first response was this:

Winnie the Pooh and H P Lovecraft are now both in the public domain. Epic mashup opportunity.

The Hundred Aeon Wood
A Shadow Over Christopher Robin
The Honey Out of Space
The Call of Cthupooh
NyarlathoTigg
The Piglets in the Wall
The Dunwich Eeyore

(Help me I can’t stop)

But then I got a bit carried away and write a whole thing. So I’ve transcribed it here for safekeeping. Click through and read on Twitter or scroll down to read it here.

Christopher Robin will never tell anyone what we saw that night. But me? Oh bother. I am a Very Honest Bear.

Of course, it started well before that night, as so many things do. Start before they end, I mean. And end before they begin. Like Piglet says, “Time is a flat circle.”

If only we could have known the things we toyed with, Piglet and Tigger and Kanga and Roo and me. But they toyed with us too, didn’t they?

If Christopher Robin hadn’t found us that fateful twilight, who knows what might have occurred. But we paid the price didn’t we?

Eeyore. I haven’t mentioned him, but I should. He was there, wasn’t he? My Very Small Brain struggles to hold everything together. He’s gone now, like he never was. But he was, wasn’t he?

When we found the strange symbols carved into the trees in the deepest darkest parts of the Hundred Acre Wood, we copied them down. That was our error.

Eeyore didn’t like them. He warned us. Told us not to. But we did.

We should have listened. Roo cried every time he saw a symbol, Eeyore nodded as though Roo’s tears were a Very True Thing.

We should have listened.

Children see True Things beyond the Gossamer Veil of Lies.

Long ago we built Eeyore a house at Pooh Corner, where the wind doesn’t blow. The icy breeze through those sticks should have warned us.

Roo cried. We should have listened.

“Don’t write down the symbols,” said Eeyore. “At least not in my house.” The icy wind grew.

Roo cried. We should have listened.

For fun we wrote those symbols in a circle around Eeyore while he begged us to stop. Something outside of us drove us to torment him so.

And the sun began to set, that icy breeze grew. Where Eeyore’s roof should have been, something deep and ancient opened.

Roo cried. We should have listened. But it was too late by then.

Something both There and Not There reached from the deepest swirling galaxies beyond, wrapping around Eeyore as he screamed.

Kanga grabbed Roo and bounded away. Tigger tried the The Whoopty-Dooper-Loopty-Looper-Alley-Ooper bounce while tears of blood streamed from his eyes. But Eeyore screamed on.

Piglet ran in circles begging me to do something but I am just a Very Simple Bear. I could not undo what we had wrought.

That multitude of night began reaching all around, snatching at all of us. Then, thankfully, Christopher Robin appeared.

Eyes wide, mouth frothing, he tore apart the sticks of the House of Pooh Corner. He shunned them. He grabbed me and Piglet and Tigger and ran.

“Don’t look, don’t look!” cried Christopher Robin. “Don’t give it the power of your observation!”

But I looked. And it burned.

Kanga and Roo were running away through the Hundred Acre Wood and as far as I know they are running there still.

“Never speak of it!” cries Christopher Robin if ever we mention it. I hear him sometimes, sobbing in the night.

He goes deep into the Hundred Acre Wood and takes an axe to chop down the trees marred by those nightmare sigils. He searches for them all the time.

Piglet permanently shakes as though he’s cold. Tigger doesn’t bounce any more.

And Eeyore. I should mention him, because he was there, wasn’t he? Or am I imagining him? A donkey? Now I say it aloud it seems so unlikely.

Christopher Robin will never speak of that night, but I am a Very Honest Bear, so I’ve written it down. For who? I don’t know.

Honey isn’t sweet any more. I wish my brain were smaller still. But I remember. I think. I don’t know.

Stay out of the woods and if you see a symbol, turn away. Trust me. It’s a Very Bad Thing.

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