ye that see in darkness ...

'' say, what have ye found?

''--we have seen strange atoms
in worlds of otherwhere.

'' we have seen the nightmares
of the succubi.

'' we have seen the crystal
by black, blood-swollen meres.

'' we have seen the satyrs
weighed down with evening's dew.

'' we have seen the darkness
on some sidereal way.

'' we have seen fair colours
pouring forth the night.''

clark ashton smith, nyctalops.

i: complete poem at the eldritch dark.
ii: bob moss sings nyctalops. a "charles schneider film" at youtube.

mountaineering in oriab

'' in the clear sunshine of morning carter began the long ascent, ... the slope was very precipitous and the whole thing rather dizzying. ... he found it best not to look around, and kept on climbing and climbing till the shrubs became very sparse and there was often nothing but the tough grass to cling to. ... finally there was nothing at all but the bare rock, and had it not been very rough and weathered, he could scarcely have ascended farther ...

'' once or twice carter dared to look around, and was almost stunned by the spread of landscape below ... as new country came into view below him he saw that it was bleaker and wilder than those seaward lands he had traversed ... at last in the fearsome iciness of upper space, he came round to the hidden side of ngranek ... poised in windy insequrity miles above earth, with only space and death on one side and only slippery walls of rock on the other ... if there were no way aloft the night would find him crouching there still, and the dawn would not find him at all. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dreamquest of unknown kadath.

by this symbol ...

'' at last, however they came to a somewhat open space before a tower even vaster than the rest; above whose colossal doorway was fixed a monstrous symbol in bas-relief which made one shudder without knowing its meaning. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dreamquest of unknown kadath.

artistic license

'' the unfinished pictures on easels or propped against the walls were as ghastly as the finished ones upstairs ... there was something very disturbing about the nauseous sketches and half-finished monstrosities that leered around from every side of the room, and when pickman suddenly unveiled a huge canvas on the side away from the light i could not for my life keep back a loud scream ...

'' it was a collossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in its bony claws a thing that had been a man, ... and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel ... as i am a living being i never elswhere saw the actual breath of life so fused into canvas. the monster was there-it glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared-and i knew that only a suspension of natures laws could ever let a man paint a thing like that without a model ...''

h.p.lovecraft, pickman's model.

i: toronto tunnel-ghoul.

parentalia

the facts concerning sir arthur jermyn and his family are these...

'' his great-great-great-grandfather, sir wade jermyn, was one of the earliest explorers of the congo region, in 1765 this fearless explorer had been placed in a madhouse at huntingdon ... madness was in all the jermyns, and people were glad there were not many of them ...

''the jermyns never seemed to look quite right--something was amiss ...certainly the madness began with sir wade, ... it showed in his collection of trophies ... and appeared strikingly in the oriental seclusion in which he kept his wife ... whom he had met in africa; ... she with an infant son born in africa; had accompanied him back from the second and longest of his trips, and had gone with him on the third and last, never returning. ...

'' wade jermyn's son philip was a highly peculiar person ... he married the daughter of his game keeper, a person said to be of gypsy extraction, but before his son was born joined the navy ... he was heard of as a sailor on a merchantman in the african trade, finally disappearing one night as his ship lay off the congo coast ...

''in the son of sir philip jermyn the family peculiarity took a strange and fatal turn ... robert jermyn began life as a scholar and investigator. it was he who first studied scientifically the vast collection of relics which his mad grandfather had brought from africa ... his second son nevil ... ran away with a vulgar dancer ... he came back a widower with an infant son, alfred who would one day be the father of arthur jermyn. ...

'' the explorer samuel seaton called at jermyn house with a manuscript of notes collected among the ongas ... when sir robert jermyn emerged from his library he left behind the strangled corpse of the explorer, and before he could be restrained, had put to an end to all three of his children, nevil jermyn died in the successful defence of his own two-year old son, ...

'' sir alfred jermyn was a baronet before his fourth birthday ... at twenty he had joined a band of music-hall performers, and at thirty-six had deserted his wife and child to travel with an itinerant american circus ... arthur jermyn was the son of sir alfred jermyn and a music hall singer ... and arthur jermyn went out on the moor and burned himself ... ''

h.p.lovecraft, arthur jermyn.

i: jermyn family portraits by alex castro via notcothulhu.

vision or nightmare

'' the place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that i trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years. it was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated with rotting stone. on every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, over the valley's rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapours that seemed to emanate from unheard of catacombs, ...

'' i could distinguish a repellant array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausolean facades; all crumbling, moss grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation ... dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth and bordered by moist walls encrusted with nitre ...

'' in the lone silence of that hoary and deserted city of the dead, my mind conceived the most ghastly phantasies and illusions; and the grotesque shrines and monoliths seemed to assume a hideous personality--a half-sentience. ...

'' amorphous shadows seemed to lurk in the darker recesses of the weed-choked hollow and to flit as in some blasphemous ceremonial procession past the portals of the mouldering tombs in the hilldside; shadows which could not have been cast by that pallid, peering crescent moon ...

'' around me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows; ... i sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and miasmal vapours, ... as i watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the statement of randolph carter.

i: a bike tour through some graveyards.

pilgrimage

'' and when he saw that crag he gasped and cried out aloud, and clutched at the jagged rock in awe; for the titan bulge had not stayed as earths dawn had shaped it, but gleamed red and stupendous in the sunset with the carved and polished features of a god ...

'' stern and terrible shone that face in the sunset lit with fire. how vast it was no mind can ever measure but carter knew at once that man could never have fashioned it. it was a god chiselled by hands of the gods, and it looked down haughtly and majestic upon the seeker ...

'' rumour had said it was strange and not to be mistaken, and carter saw that it was indeed so; for those long narrow eyes and long lobed ears and that thin nose and pointed chin, all spoke of a race that is not of man but of gods ...

'' he clung overawed in that lofty and perilous eyrie, even though it was this which he had expected and come to find; for there is in a gods face more of marvel than prediction can tell, and when that face is vaster than a great temple and seen looking downward at sunset in the scyptic silences of that upper world from whose dark lava it was devinely hewn of old, the marvel is so strong that none may escape it. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

i: leshan riverside giant.

doom without end

[i]'' who knows the end? what has risen many sink, and what has sunk may rise. loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of man ... [ii] i dream of a day when they may rise above the billows ... of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. the end is near ...''

h.p.lovecraft, [i]the call of cthulhu, [ii]dagon.

body of mythos

'' trembling in waves that golden whisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. ... it was a song, but not the song of any voice. night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space and nyarlathotep and the other gods were born. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dream quest of unknown kadath.

the face

''steadily i neared the great building. then all at once, something came round one of the huge buttresses of the house, and so into full view. it was a gigantic thing, and moved with a curious lope, going almost upright, after the manner of a man. it was quite unclothed, and had a remarkable, luminous appearance. yet it was the face that attracted and frightened me the most. it was the face of a swine.''

william hope hodgson, the house on the borderland.

a study in xenogamy

'' science, already opressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate extermiator of our species--if seperate species we be ... if we knew what we are, we should do as sir arthur jermyn did, ... arthur jermyn went out on the moor and burned himself after seeing the boxed object which had come from africa ...

'' the boxed object was delivered at jermyn house on the afternoon of august 3,1913, being conveyed immediately to the large chamber ... sir arthur jermyn dismissed everyone from the room before opening the box, though the instant sound of hammer and chisel showed that he did not delay the operation ... less than a quarter of an hour later that the horrible scream, undoubtedly in jermyn's voice; was heard ...

'' immediately afterward jermyn emerged from the room, rushing frantically toward the front of the house as if pursued by some hideous enemy ... finally disappearing down the stairs to the cellar. ... a smell of oil was all that came up from the regions below ... a stable boy saw arthur jermyn, glistening from head to foot with oil and redolant of that fluid, steal furtively out and vanish on the black moor, ... a spark appeared on the moor, a flame arose, and a pillar of human fire reached the the heavens. the house of jermyn no longer existed ...

'' the reason why arthur jermyn's charred fragments were not collected and buried lies in what was found afterward, principally the thing in the box ... it was clearly a mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any recorded variety, and infinitely nearer mankind--quite shockingly so ... members of the royal anthropological institute burned the thing ... and some of them do not admit that arthur jermyn ever existed.''

h.p.lovecraft, arthur jermyn.

i: ancestor worship at the upright ape.

something about cats

'' it is said in ulthar which lies beyond the river skai, no man may kill a cat, ... in ulthar, before ever the burgesses forbade the killing of cats, there dwelt an old cotter and his wife who delighted to trap and slay the cats of their neighbors. ... this old man and woman took pleasure in trapping and slaying every cat which came near to their hovel. ... but the villagers did not discuss such things with the old man and his wife; ... much as the owners of cats hated these odd folk, they feared them more ...




'' one day a caravan of strange wanders entered the narrow cobbled streets of ulthar. ... there was in the caravan a little boy with no father or mother, but only a tiny black kitten to cherish. ... on the third morning of the wanderers stay in ulthar, menes could not find his kitten, and as he sobbed in aloud in the market-place certain villagers told him of the old man and his wife, ... and when he heard these things his sobbing gave way to meditation, and finally to prayer. ...

'' that night the wanderers left ulthar, and were never seen again. and the housholders were troubled when they noticed that in all the village there was not a cat to be found ... the burgomaster, swore that the dark folk had taken the cats away in revenge for the killing of mene's kitten ... the lean notary, declared that the old cotter and his wife were more likely persons to suspect; ... so ulthar went to sleep in vain anger; and when the people awakened at dawn--behold! every cat was back ...

'' there was subsequently much talk among the burgesses of ulthar ... they talked of the old cotter and his wife, of the caravan of dark wanderers, of small menes and his kittten, of the prayer of menes and of the sky during that prayer, of the doings of the cats on the night the caravan left, and of what was later found in the cottage under the dark trees in the repellent yard. and in the end the burgesses passed that remarkable law ... that in ulthar no man may kill a cat.''

h.p.lovecraft, the cats of ulthar.


i: house-cats at apotropaios.
ii: a cat named annie at zefrank.
iii: toy cadaver at bj winslow.
iv: cat eats man at messybeast.