I stood there looking on in awe at the complete and utter destruction of the room that went all the way up to the roof of the house and most likely the blocked off room upstairs.

With this thought bouncing around in my head I hurriedly shut the door, and as I turned to leave heard something behind me break. I didn't take the time to see what it was but hurried up the stairs instead to check on my theory and as I reached the end of the hallway I started frantically moving boxes and pushing furniture out of the way in my haste to reach the interior door. Again I was not surprised that when the door was finally exposed there was yet another plague hanging by the door frame.

I tried the handle again but like the door downstairs it was locked. There was no way I was going to make the same mistake I had made upstairs so I picked up a heavy box and threw it at the door.

With a loud crash the door flew open, smashed against the interior wall, knocking the plaque to the floor, and in the distance I heard the box splash in the water far below.

I moved slowly forward and peered into the room to discover it was as I had thought.

Things had moved well out of my sphere of understanding and as I stood there staring down through the missing floor into the ocean I was overcome with a feeling of dread.

When suddenly from the ocean below, great bubbles started to rise and burst upon the surface and the groaning noises I had heard earlier outside started all over again and increased in intensity as more and more bubbles burst upon the ocean's surface.

I stood there transfixed watching the bubbles grow larger, and appear more frequently, when fear took control of me and I was slamming the door shut and running outside in terror into the sunshine.

Breathing heavily I stood outside in the sun light, letting it envelope me and chase away the chills, as I tried desperately to figure out what it was that I had just seen and heard.

Unfortunately, I finally realized, the only way I was going to get any answers was to head back into the house and start going through my Uncle's personal effects. This of course meant getting by the closet downstairs and back up to the bedroom where most of his belongings seemed to be.

With determination etched upon my face, I took a deep breath, gathered my courage, and headed back inside. I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings so when I tried to pass the room in a rush I ended up slipping and falling.

Momentarily dazed from smacking my head on the floor I sat up to see what I had slipped in and almost fainted on the spot.

I lay there in a puddle of a gel like substance that was bubbling and oozing out from under the doorway. The gel was nowhere else, just in the immediate area of the blocked off room.

Trying to ignore the smells of the ocean that seemed to be enveloping the house again, I slowly and quietly, rose from the ground and snuck the rest of the way upstairs to the bedroom.

I had left the oil lamps burning earlier and for that I was grateful because the sun was now on the opposite side of the house and the room was already staring to fall into deep shadows.

I closed the door behind me and made my way over to my Uncle's desk with the sole purpose of going through everything in it until I had answers to at least some of my questions.

As I went to sit down my eyes inadvertently strayed to look at the sculpture. At the time I did not know if it was the stress of the day or if what I saw was real but to me the statue had seemed to have transformed and increased in size.

That was it. I jumped up, grabbed a shirt, threw it over the top of the statue and promptly deposited it in the empty room across from mine. With that done I went back inside my room, closed the door and settled in for a long night.

After many long hours of searching and cross referencing through paperwork, photos, charts, maps and examining some of the objects my Uncle had found I was finally able to piece together some of the mysteries surrounding the house and what my Uncle believed was happening.

He had created a complex series of charts and graphs to help him chronicle his own personal sightings. He also had made several trips into nearby cities and searched through the local newspapers checking for anything out of the ordinary that fit into his findings.

By traveling to these cities and doing such thorough research he was able to determine there territory, how far out it reached and even able to determine certain bits of there behavior.

In other words, on his chart on sunken ships he theorized , because a large number of them ere grouped in a small area, the creatures attacked and sank them because they were coming to close to something important to them such as there home or nesting grounds.

My Uncle was also able to determine that the creatures were there for longer than we had been just by dating the ship wreaks dates.

He also determined that they were mostly nocturnal not only because that was when he only saw them, but that was when nearly sixty percent of the ship wreaks took place.

Further more he goes on to say that they are more than likely carnivorous because not only were there never any bodies found after a ship wreak, and there were a lot of missing bodies, but also there were cases of people disappearing that lived close to the beach front.

Then through some more of the archaic books he had studied he discovered the meaning of the statue and all the weird discs he had placed all around the house. Unfortunately he never did disclose what they meant or where he acquired them from.

This was all to strange for me and as I was starting to have some doubts about my Uncles sanity, and as I turned to stand up, my elbow accidentally bumped a stack of papers I had yet to go through and a note addressed to me fell to the floor.

It reads as follows,

Nathanial,

There are places in this world, lost and forgotten, unholy sites in which the devil allows his spawn to burst forth from hell so they can dance and celebrate there freedom on our mortal plane.

They remain hidden from common men but on a rare occasion, such as with what happened to myself, you can find clues to there existence opening your eyes to things you could never see before.

I wish now in my loneliness and solitude I had never followed the path that is sure to lead to my demise or worse yet, transformation.

It all started with that damn statue. If only I had never found it washed up on shore then I am sure I would have remained blissfully ignorant of all that is unholy which surrounds this house and lands.

Dear nephew I have no one left to entrust this with but you and for that I am deeply sorry. But I need you to somehow find a way to close there passage into our world.

Follow the clues I have left and they will reveal to you what I know. From there it is your task to seal the door so no more of these foul beasts may enter our world.

Remember these two very important things. First watch the waters in the early hours of the morrow and how the statue becomes affected. They work as a form of warning against impending danger.

Secondly and most importantly make sure the seals stay in place. They are the only things protecting you as of now.

Once again dear nephew, I am sorry to have to put you into this position but I had nowhere else to turn. I just hope you can believe in what I have said and may the grace of God watch over you in the task set before you!

I remain your Uncle Holland.

I was overcome with a feeling of impending doom because even if I wished not to believe what my Uncle had said, the proof of what I had seen lead me to believe something strange was indeed going on.

What could he have meant by telling me to watch the statue? Obviously he meant the one I had put down in the other room and as for the seals I was at a complete loss. My head felt like it was going to explode from trying to process all that I had read and all the things that had been happening.

I sat there for a few moments rubbing my temples and decided that there was really nothing else I could do except follow this through until I had some answers.

I got up and made my way over to the door ready to retrieve the statue from the other room so I could examine it further.

I picked up the lamp that was on a table and opened the door and was instantly assaulted with the same noxious smells from the night before. Taking shallow breaths I fought back the bile rising in my throat and as I walked across the hall I heard a strange sucking noise coming from the room at the end of the hallway.

I quickly opened the door and retreated inside and almost dropped the lamp from my now violently shaking hands.

The statue still sat in the middle of the room where I had placed it but the shirt I had placed over it had been removed and discarded into the corner of the room but that was not the worst of it. In the course of the few hours since I had placed the statue in here it had more than doubled in size and completely transformed.

Its body was tall and muscular, vaguely anthropoid in form, yet bent over upon itself as if it could not support its own weight.

The face was ghastly, with a multitude of octopus like feelers reaching down to the floor, all seeming to have a life of there own.

Above these sat two beady black eyes and at the crown of its head were thicker, more powerful octopus like feelers, reaching out in all directions as if searching for pray.

On its back were two large leathery wings with a ridge of spiked bone running down its spine. These bony protrusions were also present on its arms and legs but not as pronounced.

As for the arms they extended in two prodigious claws on both the hind and front feet that looked like they could tear a man in half.

I slowly approached the statue in disbelief while the whole time I kept hearing the squelching noises for outside the room growing louder.

In my shock at seeing the statue I had not shut the door to the room and I was exposed to whatever had just made that sounds in the hall.

Quickly I dosed the lamp and crawled into the farthest, darkest corner of the room never once taking my eyes off the hallway.

Then from either in the hallway or the room at the end of the hallway the suction noises grew increasingly louder and it was now followed by a wet slapping sound.

Suddenly the hallway was alive with dozens of monstrous tentacles reaching out and then dragging themselves forward.

Then as if being escorted forward, surrounded by the tentacles, came two nightmarish creatures, half hopping and half shambling, into view. They stood there framed in the doorway, illuminated by the light coming from the room across the hall but partially blocked from view by the tentacles.

There the creatures stopped with one peering into the bedroom and the other into the room I sat cowering.

The creatures had to be at least seven feet tall and they stood slumped over with webbed, clawed hands dragging on the floor. There form was somewhat human in shape but that were the similarities ended.

The head was oval with large round bumps and knots all over it and set high upon it were two overly large eyes that seemed to work independently of one another.

Located just behind these were a series of slashes in the side of the head which I assumed were gills because they quivered and made a strange whistling noise periodically in rhythm with there chest.

The skin was a slimy, dark, grayish green color and the stomach was the same but only a few shades lighter and as it swayed to and fro I noticed that there backs were covered in thick overlapping scales.

Suddenly, the monstrosity outside the room I sat cowering in, struck out with an elongated clawed hand and in the next moment erupted in an ear piercing wail, of what I preserved to be excruciating pain, as it retracted its hand immediately and held it out and stared at it as if unable to comprehend what had happened.

While on the opposite side of the hall, its companion seemed to mirror its exact movements and reactions as it attempted to enter the other room.

The one difference I had noticed between the two had nothing to do with the creatures themselves but with the plaque hanging over the bedroom door.

As the creature had reached forward the plaque that had been fastened above the door frame seemed to erupt into a brilliant green light the instant the creature tried to cross the threshold of the room.

The two creatures turned to face one another and started to rapidly wave there arms about while simultaneously making a series of deep gurgling, croaking sounds.

Then without any warning they turned and started walking once again to the staircase that led downstairs.

As I sat there shaking in terror I could hear them trying to traverse the narrow steps, which I could only imagine was a difficult task considering there oddly proportioned bodies.

My suspicions were soon confirmed when I heard a loud squeal and then several large bumps and crashes and I assumed that one of the creatures had indeed lost its footing and had fallen down the stairs.

I laughed, most likely because of the fear I felt, threatened to burst from my lips but before it did the downstairs erupted in the sounds of pure animalistic fury.

It sounded as though the house was being torn apart by a multitude of these beast and not just the two that had past. From my corner of the room I could hear wood cracking and breaking and many other objects being destroyed under there unrelenting onslaught. This continued for several moments when finally, with its fury spent, the noises stopped.

I continued to stay huddled in my darkened corner for the night. Silently watching as more of the creatures would come and go doing God know what.

Meanwhile, the entire upstairs hallway stayed alive with the large rubbery tentacles slithering about and I imagined there were more in the gutted room upstairs as well as down.

Unbridled terror and shock finally consumed me and mercifully, my mind and body in order to preserve my sanity, allowed me to finally pass out.

I must have been out for quite some time because when at last I did regain consciousness I could just make out the feeble rays of the morning sun creeping in through my bedroom window from across the hall.

As I slowly woke, I saw rows of the creatures filing past the door, heading back into the room in which they had gained access to the house. Lastly the giant tentacles started recoiling and collapsed back upon themselves until I eventually heard a loud splash as they sank back into the ocean.

But still I did not move, and I decided that I would not move until the sun had completely risen and the statue had resumed its original form.

I waited for what seemed like hours when finally, with the statue back in its original ghastly form and the smell, which I have now come to associate with the arrival of the creatures, had dispersed, then and only then did I decide to get up.

The shock of the evening's events started to sink in and I started to shake uncontrollably. Stiff and cramped I gingerly gained my footing and peered outside the room, looking down the hallway in both directions, to make sure the way was clear.

Once I had convinced myself, and that was no easy task, that it was I crossed the hallway into my room to get a fresh pair of pants and then headed downstairs.

As I walked down the staircase I was forced to use the handrails, or at least what was left of them, because the house was sprayed everywhere with the gelatinous substance that had been dripping from under the closet the day before.

The downstairs was in complete ruins. There were holes in the floors and walls and the furniture was upturned and broken. There was no place left untouched by the creatures.

I made my way through the wreckage of my new home in stunned silence and stumbled out into the cleansing warmth of the sun. I stood there several moments letting the rays wash over me trying to shake off the remnants of shock.

I sat heavily down in the dirt and rubbed my hands in the grass trying to remove the gel that had gotten on me. But for some reason, no matter how hard I rubbed, the stuff would not come off.

Just one more oddity to add to the list I thought as I took a good look at the house.

Apparently the creatures were not content with just destroying the interior of the house and at some point during the night they had come out here as well.

The front of the house looked as if it had barely survived a fierce storm. Most of the windows were broken out, whole sections of brick work was either cracked or broken or completely crushed. This was especially true on the corners where it looked as if something tried to pick up, or squeeze, the entire house.

The upper left hand corner of the roof had a monstrous hole in it and other parts had either been pealed back or completely striped of shingles.

Huge trees had been felled and uprooted and carelessly tossed aside and, I cannot even begin to wonder, what had happened to the outhouse, and all over the place, either in the yard or on the house were more of the dark circular patches and drag marks which I now knew were marks left by the enormous octopus tentacles.

In all, the place was no longer livable. I slowly picked myself off the ground, absently rubbing my hands on my pants to get the persistent goo off and marched resolutely back into the house to figure out what to do next.

Two things at least had been made clear to me during the course of the attack last night. I now knew what my Uncle meant when he told me to watch the statue and to keep the seals in place. I didn't know how either of them worked or where they came from but after last night, I was glad I had them.

But what I didn't understand was if the plaques were there to protect me how come the creatures were able to enter the house? I asked myself this question over and over until I found myself outside the room upstairs that they had entered through.

Truly my Uncle hadn't expected the boxes and furniture he had stacked in front of the door to keep these creatures out.

So looking around at the debris in the hallway I was left to scratch my head in bewilderment until, scattered among the boxes, I saw the broken pieces of a plaque.

Well that answered my question but I was left with an even bigger one, was this the only door missing its plaque?

I started going through the house again room by room and looked at every door, window or access point into the house. In my search I found only two more broken plaques and they were for the room downstairs that had been previously barricaded.

I went back into the living room and stood there staring off into space, completely numb from shock. Where was I going to find three more plaques to help protect me and keep the creatures out?

I stood there amongst the wreckage of what was to become my new life but now was only a shattered dream and felt like breaking down and crying.