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object:1f.lovecraft - The Crawling Chaos
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter


with Winifred V. Jackson
Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written. The
ecstasies and horrors of De Quincey and the paradis artificiels of
Baudelaire are preserved and interpreted with an art which makes them
immortal, and the world knows well the beauty, the terror, and the
mystery of those obscure realms into which the inspired dreamer is
transported. But much as has been told, no man has yet dared intimate
the nature of the phantasms thus unfolded to the mind, or hint at the
direction of the unheard-of roads along whose ornate and exotic course
the partaker of the drug is so irresistibly borne. De Quincey was drawn
back into Asia, that teeming land of nebulous shadows whose hideous
antiquity is so impressive that “the vast age of the race and name
overpowers the sense of youth in the individual”, but farther than that
he dared not go. Those who have gone farther seldom returned; and even
when they have, they have been either silent or quite mad. I took opium
but once—in the year of the plague, when doctors sought to deaden the
agonies they could not cure. There was an overdose—my physician was
worn out with horror and exertion—and I travelled very far indeed. In
the end I returned and lived, but my nights are filled with strange
memories, nor have I ever permitted a doctor to give me opium again.
The pain and pounding in my head had been quite unendurable when the
drug was administered. Of the future I had no heed; to escape, whether
by cure, unconsciousness, or death, was all that concerned me. I was
partly delirious, so that it is hard to place the exact moment of
transition, but I think the effect must have begun shortly before the
pounding ceased to be painful. As I have said, there was an overdose;
so my reactions were probably far from normal. The sensation of
falling, curiously dissociated from the idea of gravity or direction,
was paramount; though there was a subsidiary impression of unseen
throngs in incalculable profusion, throngs of infinitely diverse
nature, but all more or less related to me. Sometimes it seemed less as
though I were falling, than as though the universe or the ages were
falling past me. Suddenly my pain ceased, and I began to associate the
pounding with an external rather than internal force. The falling had
ceased also, giving place to a sensation of uneasy, temporary rest; and
when I listened closely, I fancied the pounding was that of the vast,
inscrutable sea as its sinister, colossal breakers lacerated some
desolate shore after a storm of titanic magnitude. Then I opened my
eyes.
For a moment my surroundings seemed confused, like a projected image
hopelessly out of focus, but gradually I realised my solitary presence
in a strange and beautiful room lighted by many windows. Of the exact
nature of the apartment I could form no idea, for my thoughts were
still far from settled; but I noticed vari-coloured rugs and draperies,
elaborately fashioned tables, chairs, ottomans, and divans, and
delicate vases and ornaments which conveyed a suggestion of the exotic
without being actually alien. These things I noticed, yet they were not
long uppermost in my mind. Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my
consciousness, and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying
fear of the unknown; a fear all the greater because I could not analyse
it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace—not death,
but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and
abhorrent.
Presently I realised that the direct symbol and excitant of my fear was
the hideous pounding whose incessant reverberations throbbed
maddeningly against my exhausted brain. It seemed to come from a point
outside and below the edifice in which I stood, and to associate itself
with the most terrifying mental images. I felt that some horrible scene
or object lurked beyond the silk-hung walls, and shrank from glancing
through the arched, latticed windows that opened so bewilderingly on
every hand. Perceiving shutters attached to these windows, I closed
them all, averting my eyes from the exterior as I did so. Then,
employing a flint and steel which I found on one of the small tables, I
lit the many candles reposing about the walls in Arabesque sconces. The
added sense of security brought by closed shutters and artificial light
calmed my nerves to some degree, but I could not shut out the
monotonous pounding. Now that I was calmer, the sound became as
fascinating as it was fearful, and I felt a contradictory desire to
seek out its source despite my still powerful shrinking. Opening a
portiere at the side of the room nearest the pounding, I beheld a small
and richly draped corridor ending in a carven door and large oriel
window. To this window I was irresistibly drawn, though my ill-defined
apprehensions seemed almost equally bent on holding me back. As I
approached it I could see a chaotic whirl of waters in the distance.
Then, as I attained it and glanced out on all sides, the stupendous
picture of my surroundings burst upon me with full and devastating
force.
I beheld such a sight as I had never beheld before, and which no living
person can have seen save in the delirium of fever or the inferno of
opium. The building stood on a narrow point of land—or what was now a
narrow point of land—fully 300 feet above what must lately have been a
seething vortex of mad waters. On either side of the house there fell a
newly washed-out precipice of red earth, whilst ahead of me the hideous
waves were still rolling in frightfully, eating away the land with
ghastly monotony and deliberation. Out a mile or more there rose and
fell menacing breakers at least fifty feet in height, and on the far
horizon ghoulish black clouds of grotesque contour were resting and
brooding like unwholesome vultures. The waves were dark and purplish,
almost black, and clutched at the yielding red mud of the bank as if
with uncouth, greedy hands. I could not but feel that some noxious
marine mind had declared a war of extermination upon all the solid
ground, perhaps abetted by the angry sky.
Recovering at length from the stupor into which this unnatural
spectacle had thrown me, I realised that my actual physical danger was
acute. Even whilst I gazed the bank had lost many feet, and it could
not be long before the house would fall undermined into the awful pit
of lashing waves. Accordingly I hastened to the opposite side of the
edifice, and finding a door, emerged at once, locking it after me with
a curious key which had hung inside. I now beheld more of the strange
region about me, and marked a singular division which seemed to exist
in the hostile ocean and firmament. On each side of the jutting
promontory different conditions held sway. At my left as I faced inland
was a gently heaving sea with great green waves rolling peacefully in
under a brightly shining sun. Something about that sun’s nature and
position made me shudder, but I could not then tell, and cannot tell
now, what it was. At my right also was the sea, but it was blue, calm,
and only gently undulating, while the sky above it was darker and the
washed-out bank more nearly white than reddish.
I now turned my attention to the land, and found occasion for fresh
surprise; for the vegetation resembled nothing I had ever seen or read
about. It was apparently tropical or at least sub-tropical—a conclusion
borne out by the intense heat of the air. Sometimes I thought I could
trace strange analogies with the flora of my native land, fancying that
the well-known plants and shrubs might assume such forms under a
radical change of climate; but the gigantic and omnipresent palm trees
were plainly foreign. The house I had just left was very small—hardly
more than a cottage—but its material was evidently marble, and its
architecture was weird and composite, involving a quaint fusion of
Western and Eastern forms. At the corners were Corinthian columns, but
the red tile roof was like that of a Chinese pagoda. From the door
inland there stretched a path of singularly white sand, about four feet
wide, and lined on either side with stately palms and unidentifiable
flowering shrubs and plants. It lay toward the side of the promontory
where the sea was blue and the bank rather whitish. Down this path I
felt impelled to flee, as if pursued by some malignant spirit from the
pounding ocean. At first it was slightly uphill, then I reached a
gentle crest. Behind me I saw the scene I had left; the entire point
with the cottage and the black water, with the green sea on one side
and the blue sea on the other, and a curse unnamed and unnamable
lowering over all. I never saw it again, and often wonder. . . . After
this last look I strode ahead and surveyed the inland panorama before
me.
The path, as I have intimated, ran along the right-hand shore as one
went inland. Ahead and to the left I now viewed a magnificent valley
comprising thousands of acres, and covered with a swaying growth of
tropical grass higher than my head. Almost at the limit of vision was a
colossal palm tree which seemed to fascinate and beckon me. By this
time wonder and escape from the imperilled peninsula had largely
dissipated my fear, but as I paused and sank fatigued to the path, idly
digging with my hands into the warm, whitish-golden sand, a new and
acute sense of danger seized me. Some terror in the swishing tall grass
seemed added to that of the diabolically pounding sea, and I started up
crying aloud and disjointedly, “Tiger? Tiger? Is it Tiger? Beast?
Beast? Is it a Beast that I am afraid of?” My mind wandered back to an
ancient and classical story of tigers which I had read; I strove to
recall the author, but had difficulty. Then in the midst of my fear I
remembered that the tale was by Rudyard Kipling; nor did the
grotesqueness of deeming him an ancient author occur to me. I wished
for the volume containing this story, and had almost started back
toward the doomed cottage to procure it when my better sense and the
lure of the palm prevented me.
Whether or not I could have resisted the backward beckoning without the
counter-fascination of the vast palm tree, I do not know. This
attraction was now dominant, and I left the path and crawled on hands
and knees down the valley’s slope despite my fear of the grass and of
the serpents it might contain. I resolved to fight for life and reason
as long as possible against all menaces of sea or land, though I
sometimes feared defeat as the maddening swish of the uncanny grasses
joined the still audible and irritating pounding of the distant
breakers. I would frequently pause and put my hands to my ears for
relief, but could never quite shut out the detestable sound. It was, as
it seemed to me, only after ages that I finally dragged myself to the
beckoning palm tree and lay quiet beneath its protecting shade.
There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the
opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to
recall and dare not seek to interpret. No sooner had I crawled beneath
the overhanging foliage of the palm, than there dropped from its
branches a young child of such beauty as I never beheld before. Though
ragged and dusty, this being bore the features of a faun or demigod,
and seemed almost to diffuse a radiance in the dense shadow of the
tree. It smiled and extended its hand, but before I could arise and
speak I heard in the upper air the exquisite melody of singing; notes
high and low blent with a sublime and ethereal harmoniousness. The sun
had by this time sunk below the horizon, and in the twilight I saw that
an aureola of lambent light encircled the child’s head. Then in a tone
of silver it addressed me: “It is the end. They have come down through
the gloaming from the stars. Now all is over, and beyond the Arinurian
streams we shall dwell blissfully in Teloe.” As the child spoke, I
beheld a soft radiance through the leaves of the palm tree, and rising
greeted a pair whom I knew to be the chief singers among those I had
heard. A god and goddess they must have been, for such beauty is not
mortal; and they took my hands, saying, “Come, child, you have heard
the voices, and all is well. In Teloe beyond the Milky Way and the
Arinurian streams are cities all of amber and chalcedony. And upon
their domes of many facets glisten the images of strange and beautiful
stars. Under the ivory bridges of Teloe flow rivers of liquid gold
bearing pleasure-barges bound for blossomy Cytharion of the Seven Suns.
And in Teloe and Cytharion abide only youth, beauty, and pleasure, nor
are any sounds heard, save of laughter, song, and the lute. Only the
gods dwell in Teloe of the golden rivers, but among them shalt thou
dwell.”
As I listened, enchanted, I suddenly became aware of a change in my
surroundings. The palm tree, so lately overshadowing my exhausted form,
was now some distance to my left and considerably below me. I was
obviously floating in the atmosphere; companioned not only by the
strange child and the radiant pair, but by a constantly increasing
throng of half-luminous, vine-crowned youths and maidens with
wind-blown hair and joyful countenance. We slowly ascended together, as
if borne on a fragrant breeze which blew not from the earth but from
the golden nebulae, and the child whispered in my ear that I must look
always upward to the pathways of light, and never backward to the
sphere I had just left. The youths and maidens now chaunted mellifluous
choriambics to the accompaniment of lutes, and I felt enveloped in a
peace and happiness more profound than any I had in life imagined, when
the intrusion of a single sound altered my destiny and shattered my
soul. Through the ravishing strains of the singers and the lutanists,
as if in mocking, daemoniac concord, throbbed from gulfs below the
damnable, the detestable pounding of that hideous ocean. And as those
black breakers beat their message into my ears I forgot the words of
the child and looked back, down upon the doomed scene from which I
thought I had escaped.
Down through the aether I saw the accursed earth turning, ever turning,
with angry and tempestuous seas gnawing at wild desolate shores and
dashing foam against the tottering towers of deserted cities. And under
a ghastly moon there gleamed sights I can never describe, sights I can
never forget; deserts of corpse-like clay and jungles of ruin and
decadence where once stretched the populous plains and villages of my
native land, and maelstroms of frothing ocean where once rose the
mighty temples of my forefathers. Around the northern pole steamed a
morass of noisome growths and miasmal vapours, hissing before the
onslaught of the ever-mounting waves that curled and fretted from the
shuddering deep. Then a rending report clave the night, and athwart the
desert of deserts appeared a smoking rift. Still the black ocean foamed
and gnawed, eating away the desert on either side as the rift in the
centre widened and widened.
There was now no land left but the desert, and still the fuming ocean
ate and ate. All at once I thought even the pounding sea seemed afraid
of something, afraid of dark gods of the inner earth that are greater
than the evil god of waters, but even if it was it could not turn back;
and the desert had suffered too much from those nightmare waves to help
them now. So the ocean ate the last of the land and poured into the
smoking gulf, thereby giving up all it had ever conquered. From the
new-flooded lands it flowed again, uncovering death and decay; and from
its ancient and immemorial bed it trickled loathsomely, uncovering
nighted secrets of the years when Time was young and the gods unborn.
Above the waves rose weedy, remembered spires. The moon laid pale
lilies of light on dead London, and Paris stood up from its damp grave
to be sanctified with star-dust. Then rose spires and monoliths that
were weedy but not remembered; terrible spires and monoliths of lands
that men never knew were lands.
There was not any pounding now, but only the unearthly roaring and
hissing of waters tumbling into the rift. The smoke of that rift had
changed to steam, and almost hid the world as it grew denser and
denser. It seared my face and hands, and when I looked to see how it
affected my companions I found they had all disappeared. Then very
suddenly it ended, and I knew no more till I awaked upon a bed of
convalescence. As the cloud of steam from the Plutonic gulf finally
concealed the entire surface from my sight, all the firmament shrieked
at a sudden agony of mad reverberations which shook the trembling
aether. In one delirious flash and burst it happened; one blinding,
deafening holocaust of fire, smoke, and thunder that dissolved the wan
moon as it sped outward to the void.
And when the smoke cleared away, and I sought to look upon the earth, I
beheld against the background of cold, humorous stars only the dying
sun and the pale mournful planets searching for their sister.
Return to “The Crawling Chaos”


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