object:1f.lovecraft - What the Moon Brings
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
I hate the moonI am afraid of itfor when it shines on certain scenes
familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.
It was in the spectral summer when the moon shone down on the old
garden where I wandered; the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and
humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams. And as
I walked by the shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped
with yellow light, as if those placid waters were drawn on in
resistless currents to strange oceans that are not in the world. Silent
and sparkling, bright and baleful, those moon-cursed waters hurried I
knew not whither; whilst from the embowered banks white lotos blossoms
fluttered one by one in the opiate night-wind and dropped despairingly
into the stream, swirling away horribly under the arched, carven
bridge, and staring back with the sinister resignation of calm, dead
faces.
And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless
feet and maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the lure of
the dead faces, I saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for
where by day the walls were, there stretched now only new vistas of
trees and paths, flowers and shrubs, stone idols and pagodas, and
bendings of the yellow-litten stream past grassy banks and under
grotesque bridges of marble. And the lips of the dead lotos-faces
whispered sadly, and bade me follow, nor did I cease my steps till the
stream became a river, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and
beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a vast and nameless sea.
Upon that sea the hateful moon shone, and over its unvocal waves weird
perfumes brooded. And as I saw therein the lotos-faces vanish, I longed
for nets that I might capture them and learn from them the secrets
which the moon had brought upon the night. But when the moon went over
to the west and the still tide ebbed from the sullen shore, I saw in
that light old spires that the waves almost uncovered, and white
columns gay with festoons of green seaweed. And knowing that to this
sunken place all the dead had come, I trembled and did not wish again
to speak with the lotos-faces.
Yet when I saw afar out in the sea a black condor descend from the sky
to seek rest on a vast reef, I would fain have questioned him, and
asked him of those whom I had known when they were alive. This I would
have asked him had he not been so far away, but he was very far, and
could not be seen at all when he drew nigh that gigantic reef.
So I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming
the spires, the towers, and the roofs of that dead, dripping city. And
as I watched, my nostrils tried to close against the perfume-conquering
stench of the worlds dead; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten
spot had all the flesh of the churchyards gathered for puffy sea-worms
to gnaw and glut upon.
Over those horrors the evil moon now hung very low, but the puffy worms
of the sea need no moon to feed by. And as I watched the ripples that
told of the writhing of worms beneath, I felt a new chill from afar out
whither the condor had flown, as if my flesh had caught a horror before
my eyes had seen it.
Nor had my flesh trembled without cause, for when I raised my eyes I
saw that the waters had ebbed very low, shewing much of the vast reef
whose rim I had seen before. And when I saw that this reef was but the
black basalt crown of a shocking eikon whose monstrous forehead now
shone in the dim moonlight and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish
ooze miles below, I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden face rise
above the waters, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after the
slinking away of that leering and treacherous yellow moon.
And to escape this relentless thing I plunged gladly and unhesitatingly
into the stinking shallows where amidst weedy walls and sunken streets
fat sea-worms feast upon the worlds dead.
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