Nyarlathotep by H.P. Lovecraft
Nyarlathotep by H.P. Lovecraft Written early Dec 1920
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.