By Dennis Detwiller, © 2012
Something is wrong with Indian Hill, Vermont. It’s been wrong a long, long time. The Indians knew it. The Pennacook cursed the land and told people not to settle there, even after they were treated as squatters in their own country. They called the one bald peak “Gizos ndeb” in the Abernaki tongue — “Moon Head” and it was so feared a man could gain his innocence from tribal judgment by spending a night alone on it.
There are old stones on the top of it, though even the Indians don’t know where they came from. Huge standing stones cut from the Earth nearby and erected in a rough circle, like giant, rotten teeth. No one talks about who made them.
For years, the kids of Stoveton Vermont have called it the “Stoner’s Garden”. They drank, fucked, slept and did drugs in startling amounts up there. It was a paradise, far enough from town for the local Sheriff not to bother with the long ride up and comfortable enough for a fire and a party.
There have been incidents up there. Fights, a knifing. Worse. In 1981 there was a murder. No one seemed too surprised. These things happen, after all. After the death, the stones were isolated behind a cheap fence with razor wire. They remain up there, waiting for those who might go see them.
The kids still do, you see. In the night, near the New Moon.
The Gizos Ndeb “The Moon Head”
The horror living within Indian Hill fell to Earth before the first man walked the mountains. It burrowed in like an enormous tick, using its giant, transparent ropy limbs to attach to living creatures — and through them — explore the land. It used the beasts and later men as proxies to work the mountain. It enclosed itself in the stone and dirt, hiding from the burning sun, and left only a few orifices for its feelers to reach the world. But creatures such as this live, sleep and feed in vast cycles. The last time it woke and sated itself, the British were marching to war and Canadians held the American capital.
This brief sleep was arrested in 1971, and it began to truly stir in 1981. Its rise to consciousness has been slow and long, but now it is fully awake, and it is hungry.
Methods and Structure
The Moon Head is a huge creature approximately the size of a Blue Whale, which exists within a hollowed out cavity near the peak of Indian Hill, in the center of the worship stones. It is a gelatinous, completely alien thing with thousands of transparent tentacles that have a huge reach — some as many as 80 yards outside the mountain — which can attach and control living things like a puppet. This insinuation into a creature grants the Moon Head complete access to memories, language and culture of the creature so infected. This infection is always fatal, if the tentacle is detached. The Moon Head’s intellect is beyond human measurement, and it is extremely clever and will outthink all but the most prepared investigator.
Attached creatures are effectively immortal, kept alive by the alien chemistry of the Moon Head as it injects a substance into their bodies through the appendage. It already possesses hundreds of attached “servants”, including several members of the Pennacook tribe from the 1700′s, American settlers from the 1800′s and even a British soldier or two. Attached beings are kept in a state of artificial happiness, being fed repetitive memories designed to keep them docile while the Moon Head controls them. When they do rise to consciousness, most are concerned only with destroying themselves — but such self-realization is rare. Most simply drown in the diet of happy memories.
Note that creatures connected to the Moon Head will seem capable of odd feats of leaping (in actuality, the transparent tentacle lifts and moves them as a child might pick up and move a toy). They are also extremely resilient and capable of suffering grave damage before finally dying. When an attached creature is killed, the corpse is dragged back to the Moon Head and consumed.
The Moon Head will be very interested in the changes in human history during its nap. In particular, it will be concerned that humans seem to have advanced to the point where they might threaten its power — something not previously possible. As such, it will be far more proactive in its actions, first gaining control of the local authorities, and finally, exhibiting its will remotely from the mountain.
Unless it is stopped, of course.
