Roy Leakey

Roy Leakey was a character who appeared in the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Cthulhu Mythos.

Overview
Once a bookish man who enjoyed antiquarian pursuits, Roy Leakey had heard that there were many second-hand shops in the town of Exham in the Severn Valley, which he had never visited. One day he decided to take the train to Exham, although he had to do so via a very contrived route, as the town had only a single line which made its journey infrequently.

Upon reaching Exham, Leakey was tricked into thinking that there were no trips back out until the next day and so decided to spend the night in a local hotel. The hotel had only a single room on the second floor, one which overlooked an unusual hill fronted by a strange device resembling a tall, pylon-mounted lens.

Later that evening, whilst locked in his room by the hotel manager - a cultist of the Black Goat of the Woods, Shub-Niggurath - he saw an enormous monstrosity emerge from what Leakey saw was a door in the hillside. He was then offered the chance to become one of Shub-Niggurath's servants. However, he saw an opportunity to escape, and shimmied down the outside wall whilst the townsfolk were prostrated in front of the aperture.

Not counting on the speed and agility of the portal's caretaker, Leakey found himself trapped by the creature's tentacles and jelly-like flesh. Accompanied by Shub-Niggurath's High Priest, he was drawn down into the depths of the temple.

Once there, Leakey was released and, having control of his body again, punched the High Priest in the throat and ran through the realms of the Goat searching for a way out, eventually finding it, but the poor soul was forever changed by the experience, both physically and mentally.

Years later, after discovering that his mind had adapted to be capable of processing the horrors he had witnessed in Shub-Niggurath's domain, and that his body could endure any form of self-termination that he could conceive, Leakey visited a physician in the hope that the man could help relieve him of his torment through assisted suicide. One good look at his cosmically-altered form drove the physician mad, and the last that anybody saw of the unfortunate Roy Leakey was a pathetic cloaked figure running from the scene whose hand looked like the talon of a bird, but made from obsidian. "It didn't look like a human's hand at all," said the only witness.

Appearances

 * Roy Leakey made his only appearance in The Moon-Lens (1964) by Ramsey Campbell.