Wendell Willis is a character created by American author Ron Shiflet for his short story "When in Leng...".
History[]
The last scion of a wealthy family with a sprawling estate outside Tenoka, Texas, Willis was a fantastic cook who had a lifelong fascination with the occult.
In his middle years, he undertook an expedition to the Plateau of Leng where, after having been driven quite mad by the tribe of Tcho-Tcho people who took him in, returned to the United States and fed human flesh to his horrified friend Robert Ballard. After Ballard fled the house, Willis came to the realisation that he would soon be in the sights of the local police (EXP: "When in Leng…").
Fleeing to the backwoods Louisiana shack of another of his old friends Tobias Jackson who happened to be a priest in service to the Great Old One Yig, he killed Jackson and tried to steal his magical knowledge, but fell foul of a trap laid by the wily cultist. Trapped by serpent servants of Yig with no obvious means of escape, his fate appeared to have been sealed (EXP: "Seven Serpents Waiting").
Somehow surviving the deadly trap, Willis later found himself incarcerated in the Hillsdale Asylum, an institution for the criminally insane. Obtaining the assistance of the minor deity Chor-Tal, he managed to escape, but immediately found himself in the sights of a gun-toting jealous husband (EXP: "A God's Eye View").
Behind the Mythos[]
Wendell Willis is a character with no linear storytelling: the order in which his stories appear may not even be his in-universe chronological timeline. Creator Shiflet has put him in a number of seemingly-impossible to escape situations which Willis has consistently found his way out of, always off-camera with no explanation of the means involved.
Appearances[]
- "When in Leng..." (1998)
- "Seven Serpents Waiting" (2000)
- "A God's Eye View" (2008)