Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival

  • of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms

  • long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and

  • legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings

  • of all sorts and kinds. . . .”

  • Part 1: The Horror in Clay.

  • The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate

  • all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of

  • infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in

  • its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together

  • of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful

  • position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly

  • light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

  •       Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein

  • our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms

  • which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them

  • that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of it and

  • maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed

  • out from an accidental piecing together of separated thingsin this case an old newspaper

  • item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this

  • piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous

  • a chain. I think that the professor, too, intended to keep silent regarding the part

  • he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.

  •       My knowledge of the thing began in the winter of 1926–27 with the death

  • of my grand-uncle George Gammell Angell, Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages in Brown University,

  • Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Angell was widely known as an authority on ancient

  • inscriptions, and had frequently been resorted to by the heads of prominent museums; so that

  • his passing at the age of ninety-two may be recalled by many. Locally, interest was intensified

  • by the obscurity of the cause of death. The professor had been stricken whilst returning

  • from the Newport boat; falling suddenly, as witnesses said, after having been jostled

  • by a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous

  • hillside which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased’s home in Williams

  • Street. Physicians were unable to find any visible disorder, but concluded after perplexed

  • debate that some obscure lesion of the heart, induced by the brisk ascent of so steep a

  • hill by so elderly a man, was responsible for the end. At the time I saw no reason to

  • dissent from this dictum, but latterly I am inclined to wonderand more than wonder.

  •       As my grand-uncle’s heir and executor, for he died a childless widower,

  • I was expected to go over his papers with some thoroughness; and for that purpose moved

  • his entire set of files and boxes to my quarters in Boston. Much of the material which I correlated

  • will be later published by the American Archaeological Society, but there was one box which I found

  • exceedingly puzzling, and which I felt much averse from shewing to other eyes. It had

  • been locked, and I did not find the key till it occurred to me to examine the personal

  • ring which the professor carried always in his pocket. Then indeed I succeeded in opening

  • it, but when I did so seemed only to be confronted by a greater and more closely locked barrier.

  • For what could be the meaning of the queer clay bas-relief and the disjointed jottings,

  • ramblings, and cuttings which I found? Had my uncle, in his latter years, become credulous

  • of the most superficial impostures? I resolved to search out the eccentric sculptor responsible

  • for this apparent disturbance of an old man’s peace of mind.

  •       The bas-relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by

  • six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. Its designs, however, were far from modern

  • in atmosphere and suggestion; for although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many

  • and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric

  • writing. And writing of some kind the bulk of these designs seemed certainly to be; though

  • my memory, despite much familiarity with the papers and collections of my uncle, failed

  • in any way to identify this particular species, or even to hint at its remotest affiliations.

  •       Above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evidently pictorial intent,

  • though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed

  • to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased

  • fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous

  • pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the

  • spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with

  • rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly

  • frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural background.

  •       The writing accompanying this oddity was, aside from a stack of press cuttings,

  • in Professor Angell’s most recent hand; and made no pretence to literary style. What

  • seemed to be the main document was headedCTHULHU CULTin characters painstakingly

  • printed to avoid the erroneous reading of a word so unheard-of. The manuscript was divided

  • into two sections, the first of which was headed “1925—Dream and Dream Work of H.

  • A. Wilcox, 7 Thomas St., Providence, R.I.”, and the second, “Narrative of Inspector

  • John R. Legrasse, 121 Bienville St., New Orleans, La., at 1908 A. A. S. Mtg.—Notes on Same,

  • & Prof. Webb’s Acct.” The other manuscript papers were all brief notes, some of them

  • accounts of the queer dreams of different persons, some of them citations from theosophical

  • books and magazines (notably W. Scott-Elliot’s Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria), and the rest

  • comments on long-surviving secret societies and hidden cults, with references to passages

  • in such mythological and anthropological source-books as Frazer’s Golden Bough and Miss Murray’s

  • Witch-Cult in Western Europe. The cuttings largely alluded to outré mental illnesses

  • and outbreaks of group folly or mania in the spring of 1925.

  •       The first half of the principal manuscript told a very peculiar tale. It appears

  • that on March 1st, 1925, a thin, dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect had called

  • upon Professor Angell bearing the singular clay bas-relief, which was then exceedingly

  • damp and fresh. His card bore the name of Henry Anthony Wilcox, and my uncle had recognised

  • him as the youngest son of an excellent family slightly known to him, who had latterly been

  • studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and living alone at the Fleur-de-Lys

  • Building near that institution. Wilcox was a precocious youth of known genius but great

  • eccentricity, and had from childhood excited attention through the strange stories and

  • odd dreams he was in the habit of relating. He called himselfpsychically hypersensitive”,

  • but the staid folk of the ancient commercial city dismissed him as merelyqueer”.

  • Never mingling much with his kind, he had dropped gradually from social visibility,

  • and was now known only to a small group of aesthetes from other towns. Even the Providence

  • Art Club, anxious to preserve its conservatism, had found him quite hopeless.

  •       On the occasion of the visit, ran the professor’s manuscript, the sculptor

  • abruptly asked for the benefit of his host’s archaeological knowledge in identifying the

  • hieroglyphics on the bas-relief. He spoke in a dreamy, stilted manner which suggested

  • pose and alienated sympathy; and my uncle shewed some sharpness in replying, for the

  • conspicuous freshness of the tablet implied kinship with anything but archaeology. Young

  • Wilcox’s rejoinder, which impressed my uncle enough to make him recall and record it verbatim,

  • was of a fantastically poetic cast which must have typified his whole conversation, and

  • which I have since found highly characteristic of him. He said, “It is new, indeed, for

  • I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding

  • Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”

  •       It was then that he began that rambling tale which suddenly played upon a

  • sleeping memory and won the fevered interest of my uncle. There had been a slight earthquake

  • tremor the night before, the most considerable felt in New England for some years; and Wilcox’s

  • imagination had been keenly affected. Upon retiring, he had had an unprecedented dream

  • of great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with

  • green ooze and sinister with latent horror. Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars,

  • and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic

  • sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render

  • by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

  •       This verbal jumble was the key to the recollection which excited and disturbed

  • Professor Angell. He questioned the sculptor with scientific minuteness; and studied with

  • almost frantic intensity the bas-relief on which the youth had found himself working,

  • chilled and clad only in his night-clothes, when waking had stolen bewilderingly over

  • him. My uncle blamed his old age, Wilcox afterward said, for his slowness in recognising both

  • hieroglyphics and pictorial design. Many of his questions seemed highly out-of-place to

  • his visitor, especially those which tried to connect the latter with strange cults or

  • societies; and Wilcox could not understand the repeated promises of silence which he

  • was offered in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or

  • paganly religious body. When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed

  • ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands

  • for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript

  • records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal

  • imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone,

  • with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts

  • uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered

  • by the lettersCthulhuand “R’lyeh”.       On March 23d, the manuscript continued,

  • Wilcox failed to appear; and inquiries at his quarters revealed that he had been stricken

  • with an obscure sort of fever and taken to the home of his family in Waterman Street.

  • He had cried out in the night, arousing several other artists in the building, and had manifested

  • since then only alternations of unconsciousness and delirium. My uncle at once telephoned

  • the family, and from that time forward kept close watch of the case; calling often at

  • the Thayer Street office of Dr. Tobey, whom he learned to be in charge. The youth’s

  • febrile mind, apparently, was dwelling on strange things; and the doctor shuddered now

  • and then as he spoke of them. They included not only a repetition of what he had formerly

  • dreamed, but touched wildly on a gigantic thingmiles highwhich walked or lumbered

  • about. He at no time fully described this object, but occasional frantic words, as repeated

  • by Dr. Tobey, convinced the professor that it must be identical with the nameless monstrosity

  • he had sought to depict in his dream-sculpture. Reference to this object, the doctor added,

  • was invariably a prelude to the young man’s subsidence into lethargy. His temperature,

  • oddly enough, was not greatly above normal; but his whole condition was otherwise such

  • as to suggest true fever rather than mental disorder.

  •       On April 2nd at about 3 p.m. every trace of Wilcox’s malady suddenly ceased.

  • He sat upright in bed, astonished to find himself at home and completely ignorant of

  • what had happened in dream or reality since the night of March 22nd. Pronounced well by

  • his physician, he returned to his quarters in three days; but to Professor Angell he

  • was of no further assistance. All traces of strange dreaming had vanished with his recovery,

  • and my uncle kept no record of his night-thoughts after a week of pointless and irrelevant accounts

  • of thoroughly usual visions.       Here the first part of the manuscript

  • ended, but references to certain of the scattered notes gave me much material for thoughtso

  • much, in fact, that only the ingrained scepticism then forming my philosophy can account for

  • my continued distrust of the artist. The notes in question were those descriptive of the

  • dreams of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had

  • his strange visitations. My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung

  • body of inquiries amongst nearly all the friends whom he could question without impertinence,

  • asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some

  • time past. The reception of his request seems to have been varied; but he must, at the very

  • least, have received more responses than any ordinary man could have handled without a

  • secretary. This original correspondence was not preserved, but his notes formed a thorough

  • and really significant digest. Average people in society and businessNew England’s

  • traditionalsalt of the earth”—gave an almost completely negative result, though

  • scattered cases of uneasy but formless nocturnal impressions appear here and there, always

  • between March 23d and April 2ndthe period of young Wilcox’s delirium. Scientific men

  • were little more affected, though four cases of vague description suggest fugitive glimpses

  • of strange landscapes, and in one case there is mentioned a dread of something abnormal.

  •       It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know

  • that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. As it was, lacking

  • their original letters, I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions,

  • or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved

  • to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognisant of the old data

  • which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses

  • from aesthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion

  • of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being immeasurably

  • the stronger during the period of the sculptor’s delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported

  • anything, reported scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described;

  • and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible toward

  • the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The subject,

  • a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane

  • on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant

  • screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases

  • by name instead of merely by number, I should have attempted some corroboration and personal

  • investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a few. All of these,

  • however, bore out the notes in full. I have often wondered if all the objects of the professor’s

  • questioning felt as puzzled as did this fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever

  • reach them.       The press cuttings, as I have

  • intimated, touched on cases of panic, mania, and eccentricity during the given period.

  • Professor Angell must have employed a cutting bureau, for the number of extracts was tremendous

  • and the sources scattered throughout the globe. Here was a nocturnal suicide in London, where

  • a lone sleeper had leaped from a window after a shocking cry. Here likewise a rambling letter

  • to the editor of a paper in South America, where a fanatic deduces a dire future from

  • visions he has seen. A despatch from California describes a theosophist colony as donning

  • white robes en masse for someglorious fulfilmentwhich never arrives, whilst

  • items from India speak guardedly of serious native unrest toward the end of March. Voodoo

  • orgies multiply in Hayti, and African outposts report ominous mutterings. American officers

  • in the Philippines find certain tribes bothersome about this time, and New York policemen are

  • mobbed by hysterical Levantines on the night of March 22–23. The west of Ireland, too,

  • is full of wild rumour and legendry, and a fantastic painter named Ardois-Bonnot hangs

  • a blasphemousDream Landscapein the Paris spring salon of 1926. And so numerous

  • are the recorded troubles in insane asylums, that only a miracle can have stopped the medical

  • fraternity from noting strange parallelisms and drawing mystified conclusions. A weird

  • bunch of cuttings, all told; and I can at this date scarcely envisage the callous rationalism

  • with which I set them aside. But I was then convinced that young Wilcox had known of the

  • older matters mentioned by the professor. Part 2:

  • The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.

  • The older matters which had made the sculptor’s dream and bas-relief so significant to my

  • uncle formed the subject of the second half of his long manuscript. Once before, it appears,

  • Professor Angell had seen the hellish outlines of the nameless monstrosity, puzzled over

  • the unknown hieroglyphics, and heard the ominous syllables which can be rendered only asCthulhu”;

  • and all this in so stirring and horrible a connexion that it is small wonder he pursued

  • young Wilcox with queries and demands for data.

  •       The earlier experience had come in 1908, seventeen years before, when the

  • American Archaeological Society held its annual meeting in St. Louis. Professor Angell, as

  • befitted one of his authority and attainments, had had a prominent part in all the deliberations;

  • and was one of the first to be approached by the several outsiders who took advantage

  • of the convocation to offer questions for correct answering and problems for expert

  • solution.       The chief of these outsiders,

  • and in a short time the focus of interest for the entire meeting, was a commonplace-looking

  • middle-aged man who had travelled all the way from New Orleans for certain special information

  • unobtainable from any local source. His name was John Raymond Legrasse, and he was by profession

  • an Inspector of Police. With him he bore the subject of his visit, a grotesque, repulsive,

  • and apparently very ancient stone statuette whose origin he was at a loss to determine.

  • It must not be fancied that Inspector Legrasse had the least interest in archaeology. On

  • the contrary, his wish for enlightenment was prompted by purely professional considerations.

  • The statuette, idol, fetish, or whatever it was, had been captured some months before

  • in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed voodoo meeting;

  • and so singular and hideous were the rites connected with it, that the police could not

  • but realise that they had stumbled on a dark cult totally unknown to them, and infinitely

  • more diabolic than even the blackest of the African voodoo circles. Of its origin, apart

  • from the erratic and unbelievable tales extorted from the captured members, absolutely nothing

  • was to be discovered; hence the anxiety of the police for any antiquarian lore which

  • might help them to place the frightful symbol, and through it track down the cult to its

  • fountain-head.       Inspector Legrasse was scarcely

  • prepared for the sensation which his offering created. One sight of the thing had been enough

  • to throw the assembled men of science into a state of tense excitement, and they lost

  • no time in crowding around him to gaze at the diminutive figure whose utter strangeness

  • and air of genuinely abysmal antiquity hinted so potently at unopened and archaic vistas.

  • No recognised school of sculpture had animated this terrible object, yet centuries and even

  • thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and greenish surface of unplaceable stone.

  •       The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and

  • careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic

  • workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like

  • head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on

  • hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct

  • with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and

  • squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters.

  • The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre,

  • whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge

  • and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod

  • head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge

  • fore paws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally

  • life-like, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast,

  • awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it shew with any known

  • type of art belonging to civilisation’s youthor indeed to any other time. Totally

  • separate and apart, its very material was a mystery; for the soapy, greenish-black stone

  • with its golden or iridescent flecks and striations resembled nothing familiar to geology or mineralogy.

  • The characters along the base were equally baffling; and no member present, despite a

  • representation of half the world’s expert learning in this field, could form the least

  • notion of even their remotest linguistic kinship. They, like the subject and material, belonged

  • to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it; something frightfully

  • suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions

  • have no part.       And yet, as the members severally

  • shook their heads and confessed defeat at the Inspector’s problem, there was one man

  • in that gathering who suspected a touch of bizarre familiarity in the monstrous shape

  • and writing, and who presently told with some diffidence of the odd trifle he knew. This

  • person was the late William Channing Webb, Professor of Anthropology in Princeton University,

  • and an explorer of no slight note. Professor Webb had been engaged, forty-eight years before,

  • in a tour of Greenland and Iceland in search of some Runic inscriptions which he failed

  • to unearth; and whilst high up on the West Greenland coast had encountered a singular

  • tribe or cult of degenerate Esquimaux whose religion, a curious form of devil-worship,

  • chilled him with its deliberate bloodthirstiness and repulsiveness. It was a faith of which

  • other Esquimaux knew little, and which they mentioned only with shudders, saying that

  • it had come down from horribly ancient aeons before ever the world was made. Besides nameless

  • rites and human sacrifices there were certain queer hereditary rituals addressed to a supreme

  • elder devil or tornasuk; and of this Professor Webb had taken a careful phonetic copy from

  • an aged angekok or wizard-priest, expressing the sounds in Roman letters as best he knew

  • how. But just now of prime significance was the fetish which this cult had cherished,

  • and around which they danced when the aurora leaped high over the ice cliffs. It was, the

  • professor stated, a very crude bas-relief of stone, comprising a hideous picture and

  • some cryptic writing. And so far as he could tell, it was a rough parallel in all essential

  • features of the bestial thing now lying before the meeting.

  •       This data, received with suspense and astonishment by the assembled members,

  • proved doubly exciting to Inspector Legrasse; and he began at once to ply his informant

  • with questions. Having noted and copied an oral ritual among the swamp cult-worshippers

  • his men had arrested, he besought the professor to remember as best he might the syllables

  • taken down amongst the diabolist Esquimaux. There then followed an exhaustive comparison

  • of details, and a moment of really awed silence when both detective and scientist agreed on

  • the virtual identity of the phrase common to two hellish rituals so many worlds of distance

  • apart. What, in substance, both the Esquimau wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had

  • chanted to their kindred idols was something very like thisthe word-divisions being

  • guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud:

  •       “Phnglui mglwnafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgahnagl fhtagn.”

  •       Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel

  • prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text,

  • as given, ran something like this:       “In his house at R’lyeh dead

  • Cthulhu waits dreaming.”       And now, in response to a general

  • and urgent demand, Inspector Legrasse related as fully as possible his experience with the

  • swamp worshippers; telling a story to which I could see my uncle attached profound significance.

  • It savoured of the wildest dreams of myth-maker and theosophist, and disclosed an astonishing

  • degree of cosmic imagination among such half-castes and pariahs as might be least expected to

  • possess it.       On November 1st, 1907, there had

  • come to the New Orleans police a frantic summons from the swamp and lagoon country to the south.

  • The squatters there, mostly primitive but good-natured descendants of Lafitte’s men,

  • were in the grip of stark terror from an unknown thing which had stolen upon them in the night.

  • It was voodoo, apparently, but voodoo of a more terrible sort than they had ever known;

  • and some of their women and children had disappeared since the malevolent tom-tom had begun its

  • incessant beating far within the black haunted woods where no dweller ventured. There were

  • insane shouts and harrowing screams, soul-chilling chants and dancing devil-flames; and, the

  • frightened messenger added, the people could stand it no more.

  •       So a body of twenty police, filling two carriages and an automobile, had set out

  • in the late afternoon with the shivering squatter as a guide. At the end of the passable road

  • they alighted, and for miles splashed on in silence through the terrible cypress woods

  • where day never came. Ugly roots and malignant hanging nooses of Spanish moss beset them,

  • and now and then a pile of dank stones or fragment of a rotting wall intensified by

  • its hint of morbid habitation a depression which every malformed tree and every fungous

  • islet combined to create. At length the squatter settlement, a miserable huddle of huts, hove

  • in sight; and hysterical dwellers ran out to cluster around the group of bobbing lanterns.

  • The muffled beat of tom-toms was now faintly audible far, far ahead; and a curdling shriek

  • came at infrequent intervals when the wind shifted. A reddish glare, too, seemed to filter

  • through the pale undergrowth beyond endless avenues of forest night. Reluctant even to

  • be left alone again, each one of the cowed squatters refused point-blank to advance another

  • inch toward the scene of unholy worship, so Inspector Legrasse and his nineteen colleagues

  • plunged on unguided into black arcades of horror that none of them had ever trod before.

  •       The region now entered by the police was one of traditionally evil repute,

  • substantially unknown and untraversed by white men. There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed

  • by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, formless white polypous thing with luminous eyes; and

  • squatters whispered that bat-winged devils flew up out of caverns in inner earth to worship

  • it at midnight. They said it had been there before D’Iberville, before La Salle, before

  • the Indians, and before even the wholesome beasts and birds of the woods. It was nightmare

  • itself, and to see it was to die. But it made men dream, and so they knew enough to keep

  • away. The present voodoo orgy was, indeed, on the merest fringe of this abhorred area,

  • but that location was bad enough; hence perhaps the very place of the worship had terrified

  • the squatters more than the shocking sounds and incidents.

  •       Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises heard by Legrasse’s

  • men as they ploughed on through the black morass toward the red glare and the muffled

  • tom-toms. There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts;

  • and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other. Animal fury

  • and orgiastic licence here whipped themselves to daemoniac heights by howls and squawking

  • ecstasies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential tempests

  • from the gulfs of hell. Now and then the less organised ululation would cease, and from

  • what seemed a well-drilled chorus of hoarse voices would rise in sing-song chant that

  • hideous phrase or ritual:       “Phnglui mglwnafh Cthulhu

  • R’lyeh wgahnagl fhtagn.” Then the men, having reached a spot where

  • the trees were thinner, came suddenly in sight of the spectacle itself. Four of them reeled,

  • one fainted, and two were shaken into a frantic cry which the mad cacophony of the orgy fortunately

  • deadened. Legrasse dashed swamp water on the face of the fainting man, and all stood trembling

  • and nearly hypnotised with horror.       In a natural glade of the swamp

  • stood a grassy island of perhaps an acre’s extent, clear of trees and tolerably dry.

  • On this now leaped and twisted a more indescribable horde of human abnormality than any but a

  • Sime or an Angarola could paint. Void of clothing, this hybrid spawn were braying, bellowing,

  • and writhing about a monstrous ring-shaped bonfire; in the centre of which, revealed

  • by occasional rifts in the curtain of flame, stood a great granite monolith some eight

  • feet in height; on top of which, incongruous with its diminutiveness, rested the noxious

  • carven statuette. From a wide circle of ten scaffolds set up at regular intervals with

  • the flame-girt monolith as a centre hung, head downward, the oddly marred bodies of

  • the helpless squatters who had disappeared. It was inside this circle that the ring of

  • worshippers jumped and roared, the general direction of the mass motion being from left

  • to right in endless Bacchanal between the ring of bodies and the ring of fire.

  •       It may have been only imagination and it may have been only echoes which induced

  • one of the men, an excitable Spaniard, to fancy he heard antiphonal responses to the

  • ritual from some far and unillumined spot deeper within the wood of ancient legendry

  • and horror. This man, Joseph D. Galvez, I later met and questioned; and he proved distractingly

  • imaginative. He indeed went so far as to hint of the faint beating of great wings, and of

  • a glimpse of shining eyes and a mountainous white bulk beyond the remotest treesbut

  • I suppose he had been hearing too much native superstition.

  •       Actually, the horrified pause of the men was of comparatively brief duration.

  • Duty came first; and although there must have been nearly a hundred mongrel celebrants in

  • the throng, the police relied on their firearms and plunged determinedly into the nauseous

  • rout. For five minutes the resultant din and chaos were beyond description. Wild blows

  • were struck, shots were fired, and escapes were made; but in the end Legrasse was able

  • to count some forty-seven sullen prisoners, whom he forced to dress in haste and fall

  • into line between two rows of policemen. Five of the worshippers lay dead, and two severely

  • wounded ones were carried away on improvised stretchers by their fellow-prisoners. The

  • image on the monolith, of course, was carefully removed and carried back by Legrasse.

  •       Examined at headquarters after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the

  • prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type.

  • Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava

  • Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a colouring of voodooism to the heterogeneous

  • cult. But before many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far deeper

  • and older than negro fetichism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures

  • held with surprising consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith.

  •       They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there

  • were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now,

  • inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams

  • to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the

  • prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and

  • dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark

  • house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth

  • again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret

  • cult would always be waiting to liberate him.       Meanwhile no more must be told.

  • There was a secret which even torture could not extract. Mankind was not absolutely alone

  • among the conscious things of earth, for shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful

  • few. But these were not the Great Old Ones. No man had ever seen the Old Ones. The carven

  • idol was great Cthulhu, but none might say whether or not the others were precisely like

  • him. No one could read the old writing now, but things were told by word of mouth. The

  • chanted ritual was not the secretthat was never spoken aloud, only whispered. The chant

  • meant only this: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

  •       Only two of the prisoners were found sane enough to be hanged, and the rest

  • were committed to various institutions. All denied a part in the ritual murders, and averred

  • that the killing had been done by Black Winged Ones which had come to them from their immemorial

  • meeting-place in the haunted wood. But of those mysterious allies no coherent account

  • could ever be gained. What the police did extract, came mainly from an immensely aged

  • mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying

  • leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.       Old Castro remembered bits of

  • hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world

  • seem recent and transient indeed. There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the

  • earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had

  • told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all

  • died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them

  • when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity.

  • They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.

  •       These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and

  • blood. They had shapefor did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made

  • of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the

  • sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived,

  • They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh,

  • preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars

  • and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside

  • must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented

  • Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think

  • whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the

  • universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs.

  • When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the

  • sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the

  • fleshly minds of mammals.       Then, whispered Castro, those

  • first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought

  • in dim aeras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again,

  • and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume

  • His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become

  • as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown

  • aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones

  • would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the

  • earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate

  • rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy

  • of their return.       In the elder time chosen men had

  • talked with the entombed Old Ones in dreams, but then something had happened. The great

  • stone city R’lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves; and

  • the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass, had

  • cut off the spectral intercourse. But memory never died, and high-priests said that the

  • city would rise again when the stars were right. Then came out of the earth the black

  • spirits of earth, mouldy and shadowy, and full of dim rumours picked up in caverns beneath

  • forgotten sea-bottoms. But of them old Castro dared not speak much. He cut himself off hurriedly,

  • and no amount of persuasion or subtlety could elicit more in this direction. The size of

  • the Old Ones, too, he curiously declined to mention. Of the cult, he said that he thought

  • the centre lay amid the pathless deserts of Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars, dreams

  • hidden and untouched. It was not allied to the European witch-cult, and was virtually

  • unknown beyond its members. No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless

  • Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul

  • Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much-discussed

  • couplet:  

  • That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”

  •       Legrasse, deeply impressed and not a little bewildered, had inquired in vain

  • concerning the historic affiliations of the cult. Castro, apparently, had told the truth

  • when he said that it was wholly secret. The authorities at Tulane University could shed

  • no light upon either cult or image, and now the detective had come to the highest authorities

  • in the country and met with no more than the Greenland tale of Professor Webb.

  •       The feverish interest aroused at the meeting by Legrasse’s tale, corroborated

  • as it was by the statuette, is echoed in the subsequent correspondence of those who attended;

  • although scant mention occurs in the formal publications of the society. Caution is the

  • first care of those accustomed to face occasional charlatanry and imposture. Legrasse for some

  • time lent the image to Professor Webb, but at the latter’s death it was returned to

  • him and remains in his possession, where I viewed it not long ago. It is truly a terrible

  • thing, and unmistakably akin to the dream-sculpture of young Wilcox.

  •       That my uncle was excited by the tale of the sculptor I did not wonder, for

  • what thoughts must arise upon hearing, after a knowledge of what Legrasse had learned of

  • the cult, of a sensitive young man who had dreamed not only the figure and exact hieroglyphics

  • of the swamp-found image and the Greenland devil tablet, but had come in his dreams upon

  • at least three of the precise words of the formula uttered alike by Esquimau diabolists

  • and mongrel Louisianans? Professor Angell’s instant start on an investigation of the utmost

  • thoroughness was eminently natural; though privately I suspected young Wilcox of having

  • heard of the cult in some indirect way, and of having invented a series of dreams to heighten

  • and continue the mystery at my uncle’s expense. The dream-narratives and cuttings collected

  • by the professor were, of course, strong corroboration; but the rationalism of my mind and the extravagance

  • of the whole subject led me to adopt what I thought the most sensible conclusions. So,

  • after thoroughly studying the manuscript again and correlating the theosophical and anthropological

  • notes with the cult narrative of Legrasse, I made a trip to Providence to see the sculptor

  • and give him the rebuke I thought proper for so boldly imposing upon a learned and aged

  • man.       Wilcox still lived alone in the

  • Fleur-de-Lys Building in Thomas Street, a hideous Victorian imitation of seventeenth-century

  • Breton architecture which flaunts its stuccoed front amidst the lovely colonial houses on

  • the ancient hill, and under the very shadow of the finest Georgian steeple in America.

  • I found him at work in his rooms, and at once conceded from the specimens scattered about

  • that his genius is indeed profound and authentic. He will, I believe, some time be heard from

  • as one of the great decadents; for he has crystallised in clay and will one day mirror

  • in marble those nightmares and phantasies which Arthur Machen evokes in prose, and Clark

  • Ashton Smith makes visible in verse and in painting.

  •       Dark, frail, and somewhat unkempt in aspect, he turned languidly at my knock

  • and asked me my business without rising. When I told him who I was, he displayed some interest;

  • for my uncle had excited his curiosity in probing his strange dreams, yet had never

  • explained the reason for the study. I did not enlarge his knowledge in this regard,

  • but sought with some subtlety to draw him out. In a short time I became convinced of

  • his absolute sincerity, for he spoke of the dreams in a manner none could mistake. They

  • and their subconscious residuum had influenced his art profoundly, and he shewed me a morbid

  • statue whose contours almost made me shake with the potency of its black suggestion.

  • He could not recall having seen the original of this thing except in his own dream bas-relief,

  • but the outlines had formed themselves insensibly under his hands. It was, no doubt, the giant

  • shape he had raved of in delirium. That he really knew nothing of the hidden cult, save

  • from what my uncle’s relentless catechism had let fall, he soon made clear; and again

  • I strove to think of some way in which he could possibly have received the weird impressions.

  •       He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible

  • vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stonewhose geometry, he oddly said,

  • was all wrongand hear with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground:

  • Cthulhu fhtagn”, “Cthulhu fhtagn”. These words had formed part of that dread

  • ritual which told of dead Cthulhu’s dream-vigil in his stone vault at R’lyeh, and I felt

  • deeply moved despite my rational beliefs. Wilcox, I was sure, had heard of the cult

  • in some casual way, and had soon forgotten it amidst the mass of his equally weird reading

  • and imagining. Later, by virtue of its sheer impressiveness, it had found subconscious

  • expression in dreams, in the bas-relief, and in the terrible statue I now beheld; so that

  • his imposture upon my uncle had been a very innocent one. The youth was of a type, at

  • once slightly affected and slightly ill-mannered, which I could never like; but I was willing

  • enough now to admit both his genius and his honesty. I took leave of him amicably, and

  • wish him all the success his talent promises.       The matter of the cult still remained

  • to fascinate me, and at times I had visions of personal fame from researches into its

  • origin and connexions. I visited New Orleans, talked with Legrasse and others of that old-time

  • raiding-party, saw the frightful image, and even questioned such of the mongrel prisoners

  • as still survived. Old Castro, unfortunately, had been dead for some years. What I now heard

  • so graphically at first-hand, though it was really no more than a detailed confirmation

  • of what my uncle had written, excited me afresh; for I felt sure that I was on the track of

  • a very real, very secret, and very ancient religion whose discovery would make me an

  • anthropologist of note. My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, as I wish it

  • still were, and I discounted with almost inexplicable perversity the coincidence of the dream notes

  • and odd cuttings collected by Professor Angell.       One thing I began to suspect,

  • and which I now fear I know, is that my uncle’s death was far from natural. He fell on a narrow

  • hill street leading up from an ancient waterfront swarming with foreign mongrels, after a careless

  • push from a negro sailor. I did not forget the mixed blood and marine pursuits of the

  • cult-members in Louisiana, and would not be surprised to learn of secret methods and poison

  • needles as ruthless and as anciently known as the cryptic rites and beliefs. Legrasse

  • and his men, it is true, have been let alone; but in Norway a certain seaman who saw things

  • is dead. Might not the deeper inquiries of my uncle after encountering the sculptor’s

  • data have come to sinister ears? I think Professor Angell died because he knew too much, or because

  • he was likely to learn too much. Whether I shall go as he did remains to be seen, for

  • I have learned much now. Part 3:

  • The Madness from the Sea.

  • If heaven ever wishes to grant me a boon, it will be a total effacing of the results

  • of a mere chance which fixed my eye on a certain stray piece of shelf-paper. It was nothing

  • on which I would naturally have stumbled in the course of my daily round, for it was an

  • old number of an Australian journal, the Sydney Bulletin for April 18, 1925. It had escaped

  • even the cutting bureau which had at the time of its issuance been avidly collecting material

  • for my uncle’s research.       I had largely given over my inquiries

  • into what Professor Angell called theCthulhu Cult”, and was visiting a learned friend

  • in Paterson, New Jersey; the curator of a local museum and a mineralogist of note. Examining

  • one day the reserve specimens roughly set on the storage shelves in a rear room of the

  • museum, my eye was caught by an odd picture in one of the old papers spread beneath the

  • stones. It was the Sydney Bulletin I have mentioned, for my friend has wide affiliations

  • in all conceivable foreign parts; and the picture was a half-tone cut of a hideous stone

  • image almost identical with that which Legrasse had found in the swamp.

  •       Eagerly clearing the sheet of its precious contents, I scanned the item

  • in detail; and was disappointed to find it of only moderate length. What it suggested,

  • however, was of portentous significance to my flagging quest; and I carefully tore it

  • out for immediate action. It read as follows: MYSTERY DERELICT FOUND AT SEA

  • Vigilant Arrives With Helpless Armed New Zealand Yacht in Tow.

  • One Survivor and Dead Man Found Aboard. Tale of

  • Desperate Battle and Deaths at Sea. Rescued Seaman Refuses

  • Particulars of Strange Experience. Odd Idol Found in His Possession. Inquiry

  • to Follow.

  • The Morrison Co.’s freighter Vigilant, bound from Valparaiso, arrived this morning at its

  • wharf in Darling Harbour, having in tow the battled and disabled but heavily armed steam

  • yacht Alert of Dunedin, N. Z., which was sighted April 12th in S. Latitude 34° 21', W. Longitude

  • 152° 17' with one living and one dead man aboard.

  •       The Vigilant left Valparaiso March 25th, and on April 2nd was driven considerably

  • south of her course by exceptionally heavy storms and monster waves. On April 12th the

  • derelict was sighted; and though apparently deserted, was found upon boarding to contain

  • one survivor in a half-delirious condition and one man who had evidently been dead for

  • more than a week. The living man was clutching a horrible stone idol of unknown origin, about

  • a foot in height, regarding whose nature authorities at Sydney University, the Royal Society, and

  • the Museum in College Street all profess complete bafflement, and which the survivor says he

  • found in the cabin of the yacht, in a small carved shrine of common pattern.

  •       This man, after recovering his senses, told an exceedingly strange story

  • of piracy and slaughter. He is Gustaf Johansen, a Norwegian of some intelligence, and had

  • been second mate of the two-masted schooner Emma of Auckland, which sailed for Callao

  • February 20th with a complement of eleven men. The Emma, he says, was delayed and thrown

  • widely south of her course by the great storm of March 1st, and on March 22nd, in S. Latitude

  • 49° 51', W. Longitude 128° 34', encountered the Alert, manned by a queer and evil-looking

  • crew of Kanakas and half-castes. Being ordered peremptorily to turn back, Capt. Collins refused;

  • whereupon the strange crew began to fire savagely and without warning upon the schooner with

  • a peculiarly heavy battery of brass cannon forming part of the yacht’s equipment. The

  • Emma’s men shewed fight, says the survivor, and though the schooner began to sink from

  • shots beneath the waterline they managed to heave alongside their enemy and board her,

  • grappling with the savage crew on the yacht’s deck, and being forced to kill them all, the

  • number being slightly superior, because of their particularly abhorrent and desperate

  • though rather clumsy mode of fighting.       Three of the Emma’s men, including

  • Capt. Collins and First Mate Green, were killed; and the remaining eight under Second Mate

  • Johansen proceeded to navigate the captured yacht, going ahead in their original direction

  • to see if any reason for their ordering back had existed. The next day, it appears, they

  • raised and landed on a small island, although none is known to exist in that part of the

  • ocean; and six of the men somehow died ashore, though Johansen is queerly reticent about

  • this part of his story, and speaks only of their falling into a rock chasm. Later, it

  • seems, he and one companion boarded the yacht and tried to manage her, but were beaten about

  • by the storm of April 2nd. From that time till his rescue on the 12th the man remembers

  • little, and he does not even recall when William Briden, his companion, died. Briden’s death

  • reveals no apparent cause, and was probably due to excitement or exposure. Cable advices

  • from Dunedin report that the Alert was well known there as an island trader, and bore

  • an evil reputation along the waterfront. It was owned by a curious group of half-castes

  • whose frequent meetings and night trips to the woods attracted no little curiosity; and

  • it had set sail in great haste just after the storm and earth tremors of March 1st.

  • Our Auckland correspondent gives the Emma and her crew an excellent reputation, and

  • Johansen is described as a sober and worthy man. The admiralty will institute an inquiry

  • on the whole matter beginning tomorrow, at which every effort will be made to induce

  • Johansen to speak more freely than he has done hitherto.

  •       This was all, together with the picture of the hellish image; but what a train

  • of ideas it started in my mind! Here were new treasuries of data on the Cthulhu Cult,

  • and evidence that it had strange interests at sea as well as on land. What motive prompted

  • the hybrid crew to order back the Emma as they sailed about with their hideous idol?

  • What was the unknown island on which six of the Emma’s crew had died, and about which

  • the mate Johansen was so secretive? What had the vice-admiralty’s investigation brought

  • out, and what was known of the noxious cult in Dunedin? And most marvellous of all, what

  • deep and more than natural linkage of dates was this which gave a malign and now undeniable

  • significance to the various turns of events so carefully noted by my uncle?

  •       March 1stour February 28th according to the International Date Linethe

  • earthquake and storm had come. From Dunedin the Alert and her noisome crew had darted

  • eagerly forth as if imperiously summoned, and on the other side of the earth poets and

  • artists had begun to dream of a strange, dank Cyclopean city whilst a young sculptor had

  • moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu. March 23d the crew of the Emma landed

  • on an unknown island and left six men dead; and on that date the dreams of sensitive men

  • assumed a heightened vividness and darkened with dread of a giant monster’s malign pursuit,

  • whilst an architect had gone mad and a sculptor had lapsed suddenly into delirium! And what

  • of this storm of April 2ndthe date on which all dreams of the dank city ceased, and Wilcox

  • emerged unharmed from the bondage of strange fever? What of all thisand of those hints

  • of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful

  • cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s

  • power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second

  • of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s

  • soul.       That evening, after a day of hurried

  • cabling and arranging, I bade my host adieu and took a train for San Francisco. In less

  • than a month I was in Dunedin; where, however, I found that little was known of the strange

  • cult-members who had lingered in the old sea-taverns. Waterfront scum was far too common for special

  • mention; though there was vague talk about one inland trip these mongrels had made, during

  • which faint drumming and red flame were noted on the distant hills. In Auckland I learned

  • that Johansen had returned with yellow hair turned white after a perfunctory and inconclusive

  • questioning at Sydney, and had thereafter sold his cottage in West Street and sailed

  • with his wife to his old home in Oslo. Of his stirring experience he would tell his

  • friends no more than he had told the admiralty officials, and all they could do was to give

  • me his Oslo address.       After that I went to Sydney and

  • talked profitlessly with seamen and members of the vice-admiralty court. I saw the Alert,

  • now sold and in commercial use, at Circular Quay in Sydney Cove, but gained nothing from

  • its non-committal bulk. The crouching image with its cuttlefish head, dragon body, scaly

  • wings, and hieroglyphed pedestal, was preserved in the Museum at Hyde Park; and I studied

  • it long and well, finding it a thing of balefully exquisite workmanship, and with the same utter

  • mystery, terrible antiquity, and unearthly strangeness of material which I had noted

  • in Legrasse’s smaller specimen. Geologists, the curator told me, had found it a monstrous

  • puzzle; for they vowed that the world held no rock like it. Then I thought with a shudder

  • of what old Castro had told Legrasse about the primal Great Ones: “They had come from

  • the stars, and had brought Their images with Them.”

  •       Shaken with such a mental revolution as I had never before known, I now resolved

  • to visit Mate Johansen in Oslo. Sailing for London, I reëmbarked at once for the Norwegian

  • capital; and one autumn day landed at the trim wharves in the shadow of the Egeberg.

  • Johansen’s address, I discovered, lay in the Old Town of King Harold Haardrada, which

  • kept alive the name of Oslo during all the centuries that the greater city masqueraded

  • asChristiana”. I made the brief trip by taxicab, and knocked with palpitant heart

  • at the door of a neat and ancient building with plastered front. A sad-faced woman in

  • black answered my summons, and I was stung with disappointment when she told me in halting

  • English that Gustaf Johansen was no more.       He had not survived his return,

  • said his wife, for the doings at sea in 1925 had broken him. He had told her no more than

  • he had told the public, but had left a long manuscriptoftechnical mattersas

  • he saidwritten in English, evidently in order to safeguard her from the peril of casual

  • perusal. During a walk through a narrow lane near the Gothenburg dock, a bundle of papers

  • falling from an attic window had knocked him down. Two Lascar sailors at once helped him

  • to his feet, but before the ambulance could reach him he was dead. Physicians found no

  • adequate cause for the end, and laid it to heart trouble and a weakened constitution.

  •       I now felt gnawing at my vitals that dark terror which will never leave me

  • till I, too, am at rest; “accidentallyor otherwise. Persuading the widow that my

  • connexion with her husband’s “technical matterswas sufficient to entitle me to

  • his manuscript, I bore the document away and began to read it on the London boat. It was

  • a simple, rambling thing—a naive sailor’s effort at a post-facto diaryand strove

  • to recall day by day that last awful voyage. I cannot attempt to transcribe it verbatim

  • in all its cloudiness and redundance, but I will tell its gist enough to shew why the

  • sound of the water against the vessel’s sides became so unendurable to me that I stopped

  • my ears with cotton.       Johansen, thank God, did not know

  • quite all, even though he saw the city and the Thing, but I shall never sleep calmly

  • again when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in space,

  • and of those unhallowed blasphemies from elder stars which dream beneath the sea, known and

  • favoured by a nightmare cult ready and eager to loose them on the world whenever another

  • earthquake shall heave their monstrous stone city again to the sun and air.

  •       Johansen’s voyage had begun just as he told it to the vice-admiralty.

  • The Emma, in ballast, had cleared Auckland on February 20th, and had felt the full force

  • of that earthquake-born tempest which must have heaved up from the sea-bottom the horrors

  • that filled men’s dreams. Once more under control, the ship was making good progress

  • when held up by the Alert on March 22nd, and I could feel the mate’s regret as he wrote

  • of her bombardment and sinking. Of the swarthy cult-fiends on the Alert he speaks with significant

  • horror. There was some peculiarly abominable quality about them which made their destruction

  • seem almost a duty, and Johansen shews ingenuous wonder at the charge of ruthlessness brought

  • against his party during the proceedings of the court of inquiry. Then, driven ahead by

  • curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men sight a great stone pillar

  • sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47° 9', W. Longitude 126° 43' come upon

  • a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less

  • than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terrorthe nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh,

  • that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that

  • seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green

  • slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread

  • fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage

  • of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but God knows he soon saw

  • enough!       I suppose that only a single mountain-top,

  • the hideous monolith-crowned citadel whereon great Cthulhu was buried, actually emerged

  • from the waters. When I think of the extent of all that may be brooding down there I almost

  • wish to kill myself forthwith. Johansen and his men were awed by the cosmic majesty of

  • this dripping Babylon of elder daemons, and must have guessed without guidance that it

  • was nothing of this or of any sane planet. Awe at the unbelievable size of the greenish

  • stone blocks, at the dizzying height of the great carven monolith, and at the stupefying

  • identity of the colossal statues and bas-reliefs with the queer image found in the shrine on

  • the Alert, is poignantly visible in every line of the mate’s frightened description.

  •       Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very

  • close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure

  • or building, he dwells only on broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfacessurfaces

  • too great to belong to any thing right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible

  • images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something

  • Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place

  • he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from

  • ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality.

  •       Johansen and his men landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis,

  • and clambered slipperily up over titan oozy blocks which could have been no mortal staircase.

  • The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling

  • out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those

  • crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the

  • first shewed convexity.       Something very like fright had

  • come over all the explorers before anything more definite than rock and ooze and weed

  • was seen. Each would have fled had he not feared the scorn of the others, and it was

  • only half-heartedly that they searchedvainly, as it provedfor some portable souvenir

  • to bear away.       It was Rodriguez the Portuguese

  • who climbed up the foot of the monolith and shouted of what he had found. The rest followed

  • him, and looked curiously at the immense carved door with the now familiar squid-dragon bas-relief.

  • It was, Johansen said, like a great barn-door; and they all felt that it was a door because

  • of the ornate lintel, threshold, and jambs around it, though they could not decide whether

  • it lay flat like a trap-door or slantwise like an outside cellar-door. As Wilcox would

  • have said, the geometry of the place was all wrong. One could not be sure that the sea

  • and the ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of everything else seemed

  • phantasmally variable.       Briden pushed at the stone in

  • several places without result. Then Donovan felt over it delicately around the edge, pressing

  • each point separately as he went. He climbed interminably along the grotesque stone mouldingthat

  • is, one would call it climbing if the thing was not after all horizontaland the men

  • wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast. Then, very softly and slowly,

  • the acre-great panel began to give inward at the top; and they saw that it was balanced.

  • Donovan slid or somehow propelled himself down or along the jamb and rejoined his fellows,

  • and everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this phantasy

  • of prismatic distortion it moved anomalously in a diagonal way, so that all the rules of

  • matter and perspective seemed upset.       The aperture was black with a

  • darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it obscured

  • such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed, and actually burst forth

  • like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away

  • into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membraneous wings. The odour arising from

  • the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quick-eared Hawkins thought

  • he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening

  • still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green

  • immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of

  • madness.       Poor Johansen’s handwriting

  • almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he

  • thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing cannot be describedthere

  • is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions

  • of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder

  • that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that

  • telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had

  • awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed

  • to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions

  • of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.

  •       Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest

  • them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Ångstrom.

  • Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted

  • rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which

  • shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse.

  • So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the

  • mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge

  • of the water.       Steam had not been suffered to

  • go down entirely, despite the departure of all hands for the shore; and it was the work

  • of only a few moments of feverish rushing up and down between wheel and engines to get

  • the Alert under way. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, she began

  • to churn the lethal waters; whilst on the masonry of that charnel shore that was not

  • of earth the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing

  • ship of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into

  • the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back

  • and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found

  • him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously.

  •       But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake

  • the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine

  • for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty

  • eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher

  • the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above

  • the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing

  • feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly.

  • There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish,

  • a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put

  • on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and

  • then there was only a venomous seething astern; whereGod in heaven!—the scattered plasticity

  • of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form,

  • whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting

  • steam.       That was all. After that Johansen

  • only brooded over the idol in the cabin and attended to a few matters of food for himself

  • and the laughing maniac by his side. He did not try to navigate after the first bold flight,

  • for the reaction had taken something out of his soul. Then came the storm of April 2nd,

  • and a gathering of the clouds about his consciousness. There is a sense of spectral whirling through

  • liquid gulfs of infinity, of dizzying rides through reeling universes on a comet’s tail,

  • and of hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the moon back again to the

  • pit, all livened by a cachinnating chorus of the distorted, hilarious elder gods and

  • the green, bat-winged mocking imps of Tartarus.       Out of that dream came rescuethe

  • Vigilant, the vice-admiralty court, the streets of Dunedin, and the long voyage back home

  • to the old house by the Egeberg. He could not tellthey would think him mad. He would

  • write of what he knew before death came, but his wife must not guess. Death would be a

  • boon if only it could blot out the memories.       That was the document I read,

  • and now I have placed it in the tin box beside the bas-relief and the papers of Professor

  • Angell. With it shall go this record of minethis test of my own sanity, wherein is pieced together

  • that which I hope may never be pieced together again. I have looked upon all that the universe

  • has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever

  • afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as

  • poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.

  •       Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded

  • him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant

  • sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and

  • prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped

  • by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming

  • with fright and frenzy. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk

  • may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering

  • cities of men. A time will comebut I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if

  • I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that

  • it meets no other eye.

Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it