Nyarlathotep...
the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell the audient void...
I do
not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general
tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was
added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a
danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only
in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went
about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies
which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he
had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the
abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in
dark and lonely places. There was a demoniac alteration in the sequence
of the seasons the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that
the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known
gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
And
it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could
tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The
fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had
risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had
heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation
came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange
instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet
stranger. He spoke much of the sciences of electricity and psychology and
gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet
which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another
to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished,
for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before
had the screams of nightmare been such a public problem; now the wise men
almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, that the shrieks
of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered
on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against
a sickly sky.
I remember
when Nyarlathotep came to my city the great, the old, the terrible city
of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling
fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness
to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and
impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; and what was thrown on a
screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared
prophesy, and in the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that
which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And
I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights
which others saw not.
It was
in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds
to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs
into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst
ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And
I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction
from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the dimming,
cooling sun. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators,
and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell
came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more
scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about imposture and
static electricity, Nyarlathotep drove us all out, down the dizzy stairs
into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. I screamed aloud that I
was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with
me for solace. We swore to one another that the city was exactly the same,
and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade we cursed the
company over and over again, and laughed at the queer faces we made.
I believe
we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when we began
to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary marching formations
and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of them.
Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced
by grass, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the tramways
had run. And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and
almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find
the third tower by the river, and noticed that the silhouette of the second
tower was ragged at the top. Then we split up into narrow columns, each
of which seemed drawn in a different direction. One disappeared in a narrow
alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan. Another
filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a laughter that
was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open country, and presently
I felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for as we stalked out on
the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows.
Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where
lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed
very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind,
for the black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought
I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished;
but my power to linger was slight. As if beckoned by those who had gone
before, I half-floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid,
into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.
Screamingly
sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened,
sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly
past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with
sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make
them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen
columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space
and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And
through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening
beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from
inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding
and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic,
tenebrous ultimate gods the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose
soul is Nyarlathotep.
