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.
