Nyarlathotep
By H. P. Lovecraft
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 daemoniac 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; that what was
thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied
things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy,
and that 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 drave 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 sware 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
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
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
unsanctified 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.
