the call of cthulu by HP Lovecraft 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survival a survival of a hugely remote period when Consciousness was manifested perhaps in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing Humanity forms of which poetry and Legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them Gods monsters mythical beings of all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 alanon Blackwood chapter 1 the horror and Clay the most merciful thing in the world I think is the inabi
lity 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 someday 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 light into the peace and safety o
f 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 Bland optimism but it is not from them that there came the glimpse of forbidden aons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it that Glimpse like all dead glimpses of Truth flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated th
ings in 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 great uncle George gaml Angel professor emiritus of Se
mitic languages at Brown University Providence Rhode Island professor Angel 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 92 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 shortcut from the Waterfront to the deceased home in William Street positions were unable to find any visible disorder but concluded after perplexed debate that some obscure ReliOn 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 descent from this dictum but latterly I'm inclined to wonder and more than Wonder as my great
uncle's Heir and executive 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 showing 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 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 bar 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 piece of mind the bar relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about 5x 6 in 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 of the papers and collections of my un
cle failed in any way to identify this particular species or even hint at its remotest affiliations above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evident 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 by 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 cyclopian architectural background the writing accompanying this odity was aside from a stack of press cuttings and Professor Angel's most recent hand and made no pretense to literary style what seemed to be the main document was h
eaded cthulu cult and characters painstakingly printed to avoid the erroneous reading of a word so unheard of this manuscript was divided into two sections the first of which was headed 1925 dream and DreamWork of ha Wilcox 7 Thomas Street Providence Rhode Island and the second Narrative of Inspector John R lass 121 beanville Street New Orleans Louisiana at 1908 AAS meeting notes on same and Professor web's account the other manuscript papers were brief notes some of them accounts of the queer d
reams of different persons some of them citations from theosophical books and magazines notably W Scott Elliot's Atlantis and the lost Lura and the rest comments on Long surviving secret societies and hidden Cults with references to passages in such mythological and anthropological Source books as Fraser's golden bow and Miss Murray's witch cult in Western Europe the cuting largely alluded to utre mental illness and outbreaks of group folly or Mania in the spring of 1925 the first half of the pr
incipal manuscript told a very particular tale it appears that on March 1st 1925 a thin dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect had called upon Professor Angel bearing the singular clay bar relief which was then exceedingly damp and fresh his card bore the name of Henry Anthony Wilcox and my uncle had recognized him as the youngest son of an excellent family slightly known to him who had latly been studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and living alone at the flly buildin
g 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 himself psychically hypers sensitive but the state folk of the ancient commercial City dismissed him as merely queer never mingling much with his kind he dropped gradually from social visibility and was now known only to a small group of aets from other towns even the Providence A
rt 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 of the bar relief he spoke in a dreamy stilted manner which suggested pose and alienated sympathy and my uncle showed some sharpness in replying for the conspicuous freshness of the tablet implied kinship with anything but archaeology young wi Cox'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 the dream of strange cities and dream were older than brooding Tire or the contemplative Sphinx or garden girle 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 stright 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 cyclopedia 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 c
haotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronouncable jumble of letters cthulu Fagen this verbal jumble was the key to the recollection which excited and Disturbed Professor Angel he questioned the sculpture with scientific minuteness and studied with frantic intensity that bar 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 bl
amed his old age Wilcox afterward said for his slowness in recognizing both hieroglyphics and pictorial design many of his questions seemed highly out of place to his visitor ESP 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 Pagan religious body when Professor Angel became convinced that the sculptor w
as indeed ignorant of any cult or system of crypto lore he beseeched 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 imaginary whose burden was always some terrible cyclopian Vista of dark and dripping stone with a subter voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense impacts uninscribed save as gibberish the tw
o sounds frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters cthulu and Ria on March 23rd the manuscript continued Wilcox failed to appear and inquiries at his quarters revealed that he'd been stricken with an obscure sort of fever and take him 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 tha
t time forward kept close watch of the case calling often at the te Street office of Dr Toby whom he learned to be in charge the youth's febal 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 formerly dreamed but touched wildly on a gigantic thing Miles High which walked or lumbered about he at no time fully described this object but occasional frantic words as repeated by Dr Toby convinced the
professor that it must be identical with the nameless monstr it he sought to depict in his stream sculpture reference to this object the doctor added was invariably a prel to the young man's subsidence into lethargy his temperature oddly enough was not greatly above normal but the whole condition was otherwise such as to suggest true fever rather than mental disorder on April 2nd at about 300 p.m. every trace of B Cox's malady suddenly ceased he sat upright in bed astonished to find himself at
home and completely ignorant of what had happened happened in dream or reality since the night of March 22nd pronounced well by his physician he returned to his quarters in 3 days but to Professor Angel he was of no further resistance 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 th
e scattered notes gave me much material for thought so much in fact that only the ingrained skepticism then forming My Philosophy can account for my continued distrust of the artist the notes in question were those descriptive of the dream of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Willock had had a strange visitations my uncle it seems had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung body of inquiries amongst nearly all of the friends whom he could question without impert
inence asking for nightly reports of their dreams and the the dates of any notable Visions for some time past the reception of his request seems to have 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 business New England's traditional salt of the earth gave an almost completely ne
gative result though scattered cases of uneasy but formless nocturnal Impressions appear here and there always between March 23rd and April 2nd the period of young wilcox's delirium scientific men were little more affected though four cases of vague descriptions suggest fugative 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 bee
n 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 cognizant of the old data which my uncle had possessed had been imposing on the veteran scientist these responses from aets told disturbing Tales from February 28th to April second a large proportion of them had dreamed ver
y 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 described and some of the dreamers confessed aute 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 ins
ane on the date of young wilcox's seizure and expired several months later after incessant screaming to be saved from some Escape denisen 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 the this fraction i
t is well that no explanation shall ever reach them the press cuting as I have intimated touched on cases of panic Mania and eccentricity during the given period Professor angel 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 window after a shocking cry here likewise a rambling letter to the editor of a paper in South America where a fa
natic deduces a dire future from Visions he has seen a dispatch from California describes a theosophist colony as Dawning white robes on mass for some glorious fulfillment which never arrives whilst items from India speed guardedly of serious native unrest toward the end of March 22nd 23rd the west of Ireland too is full of wild rumor and legendary and a fantastic painter named arduno hangs a Blasphemous dream landscape in the Paris spring Salon of 1926 and so numerous are the recorded troubles
and insane asylums that only a miracle can have stopped the medical fraternity from noting strange parallelisms and drawing mystified conclusions a weird bunch of cuting all told and I can at this state scarcely envisage the callous rationalism with which I set them aside but I was then convinced that young buox had known of the older matters mentioned by the professor chapter 2 the tale of Inspector lass the older matters which had made the sculptor's dream and bar relief so significant to my u
ncle formed the subject of the second half of his long manuscript once before it appears Professor angel had seen the hellish outlines of the nameless monstrosity puzzled over the unknown hieroglyphics and heard the omin syllables which can be rendered only as cthulu and all this and so stirring and horrible a connection that at a small wonder he pursue young Wilcox with queries and demands for data this earlier experience had come in 1908 17 years before when the American archaeological Society
held its annual meeting in St Louis Professor Angel 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 traveled all the way from
New Orleans for certain special information unobtainable from any local Source his name was John Raymond lass 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 was not to be fancied that inspector lass had the least interest in archaeology on the contrary his wish for enlightenment was prompted by purely professional considerations the statuette
idle fetish or whatever it was had been captured some months before in the wooded swamp south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed Voodoo meeting and so singular and hideous were the rights connected with it that the police could not but realize 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 absolute
ly nothing was to be discovered hence the anxiety of the police for any antiquarian lore which might help them place the fightful symbol and through it Tracked Down The Cult to its Fountain Head inspector lass was scarcely prepared for the sensation which his offering created one sight of the think 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 recognized School of sculpture had animated this terrible object yet centuries and even thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and Greener surface of unplaceable stone the figure which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study was between seven and 8 in 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 for 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 evily 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 center whilst the long curved claws of the doubled up crouching hind legs gripped t
he front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal the sopot head was bent forward so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasp the crouchers elevated knees the aspect of the hole was abnormally lifelike and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown it's vast awesome and incalculable age was unmistakable yet not one link did it show with any known type of Art belonging to civilization's youth or
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 flex and strian resembled nothing familiar to geology or minerology 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 of even their remotest linguistic kinship they like the subject and material belong to something horrib
ly 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 severly shook their heads and confessed de feat at the inspector's problem there was one man in that Gathering who suspected a touch of bizarre familiarity in the monsterous shape and writing and who presently told with some Defence of the art trifle he knew this person was the late William Channing web
professor of anthropology in Princeton University and an Explorer of no slight note Professor Webb had been engaged 48 years before in a tour of Greenland at 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 Eskimos whose religion a curious form of devil worship chilled him with its deliberate bloodthirstiness and repulsiveness it was a faith of which other Eskimos knew lit
tle and which they mentioned only with shutters saying that it had come down from horribly ancient aons before ever the world was made besides nameless rights and human sacrifices there were certain queer hereditary rituals addressed to a supreme Elder devil or tasok and of this professor web had taken a careful phonetic copy from an aged an or wizard priest expressing The Sounds in Roman letters as best he knew how but just now of prime significance was the fetish which the scult had cherished
and around which they had danced when the Aurora leaped High over the ice Cliffs it was the professor stated a very crude bar 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 fual thing now lying before the meeting this data received with suspense and astonishment by the assembled members proved doubly exciting to inspector lass and he began at once to apply his informant with questions havi
ng 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 diabolis eskimos there Then followed an exhaustive comparison of details and a moment of really odd silence when both detective and scientists agreed on the virtual identity of the phrase common to two hellish rituals so many worlds of distance apart what in substance both the Eskimo Wizards and the Louisiana swamp pr
iests had chanted to their Kindred Idols was something very like this the word division is being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase is chanted aloud the grass had one point in advance the professor web 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 Ria dead cthulu Waits dreaming and now in response to a general and Urgent demand inspector lass 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 savored of the wildest dreams of mythmaker and theosophist and disclosed an astonishing degree of cosmic imagination among such half casts and Paras 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-na
tured descendants of leitz 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 TomTom 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 mes
senger added the people could stand it no no more so a body of 20 police filling two carriages and an automobile had set out in the late afternoon with a shivering squatter as a guide at the end of the passable Road they alighted and from 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 it it hint of morbid habi
tation a depression which every malform tree and every fungus eyelid combined to create at length the squatter settlement a miserable huddle of Huts hve in sight and hysterical dwellers ran out to Cluster around the group of bobbing lanterns the muffled beat of tomtom's was now faintly audible far far ahead and a curdling shriek came at infrequent intervals when the wind shift a reddish glare too seemed to filter through pale undergrowth beyond the endless Avenues of forest night reluctant even
to be left alone again each one of the count squatters refused point blank to advance another inch toward the scene of Unholy worship so inspector L grass and his 19 colleagues plunged on and guided into black arcades of horror that none of them had ever Trot 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 ungs by mortal sight in which dwelt a huge formless white popus thing wi
th luminous eyes and squatters whispered that batwing Devils flew up out of caverns and inner earth to worship it at midnight they said it had been there before Diberville before Lal 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 rudu Ori was indeed On The meest Fringe of this abhor area but that location was bad enough hence perhaps the very pla
ce 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 the grass's men as they plowed on through the black morass toward the red glare and muffled TomTom 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 orgastic license here whipped themselves to demoniac Heights by howls and squ
awking ecstasies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential Tempest from the Gulfs of hell now and then the less organized ululation would cease and from what seemed a well- drilled chorus of horse voices would rise and sing song chant That Hideous phrase or Ritual from [Music] Glory 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 whi
ch the M cacophony of the orgy fortunately deadened the grass dashed swamp water on the face of the fainting man and all stood trembling and nearly hypnotized with horror in a natural Glade of the swamp stood a grassy island of perhaps an acr's extent clear of trees and tolerably dry on this now leaped and twisted a more Indescribable horde of human abnormal it than any but a s or an angarola could paint void of clothing this hybrid spawn were braying bellowing and writhing about a monstrous rin
g-shaped bonfire in the center of which revealed by occasional Rifts in the curtain of flame stood a great Granite monolith some 8 ft in height on top of which in congruous in its diminutiveness rested the noxious carvon statuette from a wide circle of 10 scaffolds set up at regular intervals with the flame Girt monolith as a center hung head downward the oddly marred bodies of the helpless squatters who had disappeared it was inside this circle that the rink of worshippers jumped and roared the
general direction of the mass motion being from left to right an endless back andol between the Ring of bodies and the ring of fire it may have been only the imagination that it may have been only Echoes which induced one of the men an excitable Spaniard to fancy her antifonal responses to the Ritual from some far and unilluminated spot deeper within the wood of ancient legendary and horror this man Joseph d galves i later met and questioned and he proved distractingly imaginative he indeed wen
t so far as to hint of the faint beating of great wings and of a glimpse of shining eyes in a mountainous white bulk beyond the remotest trees but I suppose he'd 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 Mongol celebrants in the throng the police relied on their firearms and plunged determinedly into the nauseous route for five minutes the resulting den a
nd Chaos were Beyond description wild blows were struck shots were fired and escapes were made but in the end L grass was able to count some 47 sellon 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 stretches by their fellow Prisoners the image on the monolith of course was carefully removed and carried back by the grass 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 aberant type most were seamen and a sprinkling of negroes and molat largely West Indians or Bravo Portuguese from the cape Berde Islands gave a coloring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult but before many questions were asked it became manifest that something far deeper and older than negro fetishism was involved degraded and ignorant as they were the creatures held with surprising cons
istency to the central idea of their loome faith they worshiped 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 and dreams to the first men who formed a cult which had never died this was that cult and the prison ERS said it had always existed and always would exist hidden in distant wastes and Dark Places all over th
e world until the time when the great priest cthulu from his dark house in the mighty city of Ria under the waters should rise and bring the Earth again beneath his sway someday 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 thes
e were not the great old ones no man had ever seen the old ones the caran idol was great cthulu 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 secret that was never spoken aloud only whispered the chant meant only this in his house at Ria dead cthulu Waits dreaming only two of the prisoners were found sane enough to be hanged and the rest were committed to various inst
itutions all denied a part in the ritual murder had AED 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 but the police did extract came mainly from the immensely aged myso named Castro who claimed to have sailed in strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend t
hat ped the specul ulations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed there had been aons when other things ruled on the earth and they had had great cities remains of them he said the deathless chinen had told him were still to be found as cyclopian stones on islands in the Pacific they all died vast epics of time before men came but there were Arts which could revive them when the stars had come around 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 shape for did not the 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 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 gr
eat city of Ria preserved by the Spells of Mighty cthu 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 initials 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 for 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 molding their dreams for only thus could their language reach the fleshly mind of mammals then whispered Castro those first men formed the cult around tall Idols which the great ones showed them Idols brought in dim eras from dark stars that cult would never die till the stars came right again and the secret priests would take great cthulu from hi
s tomb to revive his subjects and resume his rule of Earth the time would be easy to know for then man mind 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 reveling in Joy then the liberated old ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and rebel and enjoy themselves and all the Earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom meanwhile the cult by appropriate rights must keep al
ive the memory of the those ancient ways and Shadow forth the prophecy of their return in the Elder times chosen men had talked with the inomed old ones and dreams but then something happened the great Stone City Ria with its monoliths and sepulchers 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 the high priest said that the city would rise again when the stars w
ere right then came out of the Earth the black spirits of Earth moldy and shadowy and full of dim rumors 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 curious ly declined to mention of the cult he said that he thought the center lay amid the pathless desert of Arabia where ERM the city of pillars dreams hidden an
d untouched it was not alive to the European which cult them was virtually unknown Beyond its members no book had ever really hinted of it though the deathless said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul alhazred which the initiate might read as they chose especially the much discussed couplet that is not dead which can Eternal lie and with strange aons even death may die the grass 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 pain 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 web the feverish interest aroused at the meeting by L grass's tale corroborated as it was by the statuette is echoed in the subsequent correspondence of those who attended altho
ugh scant mention occurs in the formal publications of the society caution is the first care of those accustomed to face occasional charlatan reand imposture the grass for some time let 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 can to the dream sculpture of young Wilcox that my uncle was excited by the tale of the sculpt I did not Wonder for what thoughts
must arise upon hearing after a knowledge of what the grass had learned of the cult of a sensitive young man who 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 Eskimo diabolists and Mongrel Louisiana Professor anel's instant start on an investigation of the utmost thoroughness was eminently natural though privately I suspected young Wilc
ox 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 cuting collected by the professor were of course strong cooperation 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 cu
lt Narrative of the grass 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 Flur Lee building in Tom Street a hideous Victorian imitation of 17th century Britain architecture which fls its stucked front imits 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 specimen scattered about that his genius is indeed profound and authentic he will I believe sometime be heard from as one of the great decadant for he is crystallized in clay and will one day mirror in Marble those nightmares and Fantasies which Arthur Mak evokes in pros 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 matter none could mistake they and their subconscious residuum had influenced his art profoundly and he showed 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 bar relief but the outlines had formed themselves insensibly under his hands it was no doubt the giant shape he'd 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 str
angely poetic fashion making me see with terrible vividness The Damp cyclop and city of slimy green stone whose geometry he oddly said was all wrong and here with frightened expectancy the ceaseless half mental calling from underground cthulu Fagen cthulu Fagen these words had formed part of that dread ritual which told of De cthulu's dream vigil in his Stone vault at Ria 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 f
orgotten 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 bar 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 with 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 wished
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 researchers into its origin and connections I visited New Orleans talked with lass and others of that oldtime raiding party saw the frightful image and even question much of the mongrel prisoners as still survived old Castro unfortunately had been dead for some years what I now heard so graphically at firsthand though it was really no more than a detaile
d confirmation of what my uncle had written excited me aresh 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 the odd cuttings collected by Professor Angel one thing I began to suspect and which now I fear I know is that my uncle's de
ath was far from natural he fell on a narrow Hill Street leading up from an ancient Waterfront swarming with foreign mongr after a careless push from a negro sailor I did not forget the explod the Marine Pursuits of the cult members in Louisiana and would not be surprised to learn of secret methods and rights and beliefs lass 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 Angel died because he knew too much or because he was like likely to learn too much whether I shall go as he did remains to be seen for I have learned much now chapter 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 i
t was an old number of Australian journal the Sydney bulletin for April 18th 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 Angel called The cthulu Cult and was visiting a learned friend in Patterson New Jersey the curator of a local Museum and a monologist of note examining one day the reserved specimens roughly set on the storage shelves in a rear
room of the museum Museum my eye was caught by an art picture in one of the old papers spread beneath the stones it was the Sydney bulletin I have mentioned for my friend had white affiliations in all conceivable foreign parts and the picture was a haltone cut of a hideous Stone image almost identical with that which L grass 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 sugg
ested however was a pretentious 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 and toe 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 company's freighter Vigilant bound from valpariso arrived this morning
at his WARF in darling Harbor having in tow the battled and disabled but heavily armed steam yard alert of denen New Zealand which was cited April 12th and south latitude 34° 21 minutes west longitude 152° 17 minutes with one living and one dead man aboard the Vigilant left Bel parizo March 25th and on April 2nd was driven considerably south of her course by exceptionally heavy storms and moner waves on April 12th the derelict was cited 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 societ society and the museum and 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 a
n exceedingly strange story of piracy and Slaughter he is Gustaf Johansson a Norwegian of some intelligence and had been second mate of the two mastered Schooner Emma of Auckland which sailed for CAO February 20th with a compliment of 11 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 south latitude 49° 51 minutes west longitude 128° 34 minutes and countered the alert manned by a queer and evil looking crew of kakas and
half casts being ordered peremptorily to turn back Captain Collins refused whereupon the strange crew began to Fire savagely and without warning upon the the Schooner with a peculiarly heavy battery of brass Cannon forming part of the yacht's equipment the Emma's men showed fights as 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 ki
ll them all the number being slightly Superior because of their particularly upor and desperate though rather clumsy mode of fighting three of the Emma's men including Captain Colin and first mate green were killed and the remaining eight under second mate Johansson 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 exis
t in that part of the ocean and six of the men somehow died to shore though yanson is cerly reticent about this part of the 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 Brighton His companion died Brighton's death reveals no apparent cause and was proba
bly due to excitement or exposure cable advices from theen report that the alert was well known there as an island Traer and bore an evil reputation along the water front it was owned by a curious group of half casts 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 Johansson is described as a so
ber and worthy man the admiralty will institute an inquiry on the whole matter beginning tomorrow at which every effort will be made to induce Johansson to speak more freely than he has done hither to this was all together with a picture of the hellish image but what a train of ideas it started in my mind here were new treasuries of data on the culu 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 Johansson was so secretive what had the vice admiral he's investigation brought out and what was known of the noxious Colton Denon and most marvelous of all what deep and more than natural linkage of dates was this which gave him a line and now undeniable significance to the various turns of events so carefully noted by my uncle March 1st or February 28th according to the
International Dateline the earthquake and storm had come from deden 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 dang cyclopian City whilst a young sculptor had molded in his sleep the form of the dreaded cthulu March 23rd 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 dar
kened with Dread of a giant Monster's malign Pursuit whilst an AR had gone mad and a sculptor had lapsed suddenly into delirium and what is this strange storm of April 2nd the date on which all dreams of the Dank City ceased and wiox emerged unharmed from the bondage of strange fever what of all this and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken starborn 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 or 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 at year and took a train for San Francisco in less than a month I was in denen where however I found that little was known of the strange cult members who had lingered in the old sea taverns Waterfront scuml was far too common for special mention tho
ugh there was vague talk about one Inland trip those mongrels had made during which faint druming and red flame were noted on the distant Hills in Auckland I learned that Johansson had returned with yellow hair turned white after a profun 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 Admiral to officials and all they could
do was to give me his Oslo address after that I went to Sydney and taught profitless with seamen and members of the vice admiral de Court I saw the alert now sold and in commercial use at circular key in Sydney Cove but gained nothing from its non-committal bulk the crouching image with its cuttlefish head dragon body scaly wings and hieroglyph pedestal was preserved in the museum at Hyde Park and I studied at 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 on the grass's smaller specimen geologists the curator told me had founded a monstrous puzzle for they vowed that the world held no Rock like it and I thought with a shudder of what old Castro had told the grass about the old ones they had come from the stars and had brought their images with them shaken with such a mental resolution as I had never before known I now resolved to visit mate Johansson and Oslo
sailing for London I reembarked at once for the Norwegian capital and one autumn day landed at the trim wars in the shadow of the eberg Johansson's address I discovered lay in the old town of King Harold hardrada which kept alive the name of Oso during all the centuries that the greater city masqueraded as Christiana I made the brief trip by taxi cab 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 an
d I was stung with disappointment when she told me in halting English that Gustaf Johansson was no more he had not long survived his return said his wife for the doings that c in 1925 had broken him he had told her no more than he told the public but had left a long man manuscript of technical matters as he said written in English evidently in order to guard her from the Peril of casual perusal during a walk through a narrow Lane near the gothamberg dock a bundle of papers falling from an attic
window had knocked him down two lastcar Sailors at once helped him to his feet but before the ambulance could reach him he was dead Physicians found no adequate cause of the end and laid it to heart trouble and a weaken Constitution I now felt gnawing at my vitals that dark Terror which will never leave me till I too am at rest accidentally or otherwise persuading the Widow that my connection with her husband's technical matters was 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 and naive sailor's effort at a postao diary and strove to recall day by day that last awful Voyage I cannot attempt to transcribe it verbatim and all its cloudiness and redundance but I will tell its just enough to show why the sound of water against the vessel sides became so unendurable to me that I stopped my ears with cotton Johansson thank God did not know quite all even though he saw the city and the thing but I sh
all never sleep calmly again when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life and time M and space and of those unhallowed blasphemies from Elder Stars which dream Beneath the Sea known and favored by Nightmare cult ready and eager to loose them upon the world whenever another earthquake shall heave their monstrous Stone City again to the Sun and air johanson's Voyage had begun just as he told it to the vice admiralty the Emma in balast had cleared Auckland on February 20th and had
felt the full force of that earthquake Quake 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 maid's regret as he wrote of her bombardment and sinking of the sthy 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 Joha
nsson shows in genu was Wonder at the charge of ruthlessness brought against his party during the proceedings of the court of inquiry then driven ahead by curiosity and their captured yacht under Johansson's command the men sight a great Stone pillar sticking out of the sea and in south latitude 47° 9 Minutes west longitude 123° 43 minutes come upon a coastline of mingled mud ooze and weedy cyclopian masonry which can be nothing less than in the tangible substance of Earth's Supreme Terror the n
ightmare corpse city of Ria that was built in measureless aons behind history by the vast loathsome shapes that seep down from the dark stars there lay great cthulu and his hordes hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last after cycles and calculable the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperious 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 Mountaintop the Hideous monolith Crown Citadel whereon great cthulu 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 forth with Johansson and his men were OD by The Cosmic Majesty of this dripping Babylon of Elder demons and must have guessed without guidance that it was nothing of this or of any sane Planet awe at the unbelievable size of The Greener stone blocks at the dizzying height of the grea
t carbon monolith and the Stupify identity of the Colossal statues and bar reliefs with the queer image found in the shrine on the alert is poignantly visible in every line of the frightened description without knowing what futurism is like Johansson 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 Surfaces surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper
for this Earth and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs I mentioned this talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams he said that the geometry of the dream place he saw was abnormal non- idian and loome rolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours now an unlettered Seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality Johanson and his men landed on a sloping mud Bank on this monstrous Acropolis and clambered slippery up over Tita
n uzy blocks which could have been no mortal staircase the very Son Of Heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarizing myasthma Welling out from the sea soaked perion and twisted Menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a Second Glance showed concavity after the first showed 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 searched vainly as it proved for some portable souvenir to bear away it was Rodriguez the Portuguese who climbed up the foot of the monolith and shouted of what he'd found the rest followed him and looked curiously at the immense carved door with the now familiar squid Dragon bar relief that was Johansson said like a great barn door and they all felt that it was a door because of the ornate lentil threshold and jams arou
nd it although they could not decide whether it lay flat like a trapo or slat wise 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 fantasm variable brighten pushed at the stone in several places without result then Donan felt over it delicately around the edge pressing each point separately as he went he climbed interminably along t
he grotesque Stone molding that is one would call it climbing if the thing was not after all horizontal and the men wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast then very softly and slowly the acre great linol began to give inward at the top and they saw that it was balanced Donovan slid or somehow propelled himself down or along the jam and rejoined his fellows and everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carvon portal in this fantasy of Prismatic Distortion it moved an
omalously 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 tenous was indeed a positive poity for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed and actually burst forth like smoke from its Aon long imprisonment visibly darkening the Sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbus sky on flapping membranous wings the odor rising 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 slobbering 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 Johansson'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 canno
t be described there is no language for such abysm of shriek in and immemorial lunacy such eldrich 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 awake to claim his own the stars were right again and what an a old cult had failed to do by design a band of innocent Sailors had
done by accident after vigent illions of years great cthulu 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 anstrom Parker slipped as the other three were plunging fly over endless vistas of green crusted Rock to the boat and Johansson swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there an angle which was acute but behaved as i
f it were obtuse so only brighten and Johansson 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 underway slowly amidst the distorted horrors of that Indescribable scene
she began to churn the lethal Waters whilst on the masonry of that carnal Shore that was not of Earth the Titan thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like poy cursing the fleeing ship of odyss then Bolder than the story Cyclops great cthulu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave raising Strokes of cosmic potency Brighton looked back and went mad laughing shril as he kept all laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johanson was wande
ring deliriously but Johansson 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 wressle head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon gallion
the awful Squid head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yach but Johansson drove on relentlessly there was a bursting as of an exploding bladder and slushy nastiness as of a cloven Sunfish a stench as of a thousand open Graves and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper for an instant the ship was befouled by an acrm blinding Green Cloud and then there was only a venomous seething dist turn where God in heaven the scattered plasticity of that nameless S
kys spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form whilst its distance widened every second as the alert gained impetus from its mounting Steam and that was all after that Johansson only bruted 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 Tred 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 furling through liquid Gulfs of Infinity of dizzying rides through reeling universes on 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 catenating Chorus of the distorted hilarious Elder gods and the green Batwing mocking imps of Tartarus out of that dream came rescue the Vigilant the vice admiralty court the streets of deden and the long Voyage back home to the old house by th
e eberg he could not tell they 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 now I have placed it in the tin box beside the bar relief and the papers of Professor angel with it shall go this record of mine this test of my own sanity wherein is piece together that which I hope may never be pieced together again I have looked upon all that the Univers
e has to hold of horror and even the Skies of spring and the flowers of Summer must ever afterward be poisoned to me but I do not think my life will be long as my uncle went as poor Johansson went so shall I go I know too much and the cult still lives cthulu still lives too I suppose again in that Chasm of stone which has shielded him since the son was young his the cursed city is sunken once more for the vigilance sailed over the spot after the April storm but his ministers on Earth still Bello
w and prank and slay around idle cap monoliths and 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 come but I must not and cannot think let me pray that if I do not survive this manuscript my executors may put caution bef
ore audacity and see that it meets no other eye end of the call of cthulu by HP Lovecraft
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