Nyarlathotep

by H. P. Lovecraft

　　

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Nyarlathotep... the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell theaudient void...I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The generaltension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added astrange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a dangerwidespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the mostterrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with paleand worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one daredconsciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense ofmonstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the starsswept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was ademoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasonsthe autumn heat lingeredfearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passedfrom the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which wereunknown.And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none couldtell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahinknelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out ofthe blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages fromplaces not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep,swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass andmetal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of thesciencesof electricity and psychologyand gave exhibitions of power which senthis spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceedingmagnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And whereNyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screamsof nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a publicproblem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the smallhours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pityingmoon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeplescrumbling against a sickly sky.I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my citythe great, the old, theterrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of theimpelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned witheagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horribleand impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; and what was thrown on ascreen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep daredprophesy, and in the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that whichhad never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And I heard ithinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others sawnot.It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restlesscrowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairsinto the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidstruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And I saw theworld battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimatespace; whirling, churning, struggling around the dimming, cooling sun. Then thesparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up onend whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on theheads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled atrembling protest about imposture and static electricity, Nyarlathotep droveus 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 othersscreamed with me for solace. We swore to one another that the city was exactlythe same, and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade we cursedthe 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 webegan to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary marchingformations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think ofthem. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced bygrass, 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 itsside. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third tower by theriver, and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at thetop. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in adifferent direction. One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving onlythe 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 opencountry, and presently I felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for as westalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter ofevil snows. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only,where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemedvery thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind, forthe black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heardthe reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my powerto linger was slight. As if beckoned by those who had gone before, Ihalf-floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into thesightless vortex of the unimaginable.Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. Asickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirledblindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds withsores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make themflicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seencolumns of unsanctifled temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space andreach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And throughthis revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating ofdrums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable,unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereuntodance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate godstheblind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

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