Lights still out – must be five minutes now. Everything depends on lightning. Yaddith grant it will keep up! ...Some influence seems beating through it ...Rain and thunder and wind deafen ...The thing is taking hold of my mind....
Trouble with memory. I see things I never knew before. Other worlds and other galaxies ...Dark ...The lightning seems dark and the darkness seems light....
It cannot be the real hill and church that I see in the pitch-darkness. Must be retinal impression left by flashes. Heaven grant the Italians are out with their candles if the lightning stops!
What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man? I remember Yuggoth, and more distant Shaggai, and the ultimate void of the black planets....
The long, winging flight through the void ...cannot cross the universe of light ...re-created by the thoughts caught in the Shining Trapezohedron ...send it through the horrible abysses of radiance....
My name is Blake – Robert Harrison Blake of 620 East Knapp Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin ...I am on this planet....
Azathoth have mercy! – the lightning no longer flashes – horrible – I can see everything with a monstrous sense that is not sight – light is dark and dark is light ...those people on the hill ...guard ...candles and charms ...their priests....
Sense of distance gone – far is near and near is far. No light – no glass – see that steeple – that tower – window – can hear – Roderick Usher – am mad or going mad – the thing is stirring and fumbling in the tower.
I am it and it is I – I want to get out ...must get out and unify the forces ...it knows where I am ...
I am Robert Blake, but I see the tower in the dark. There is a monstrous odour ...senses transfigured ...boarding at that tower window cracking and giving way ...Iä ...ngai ...ygg....
I see it – coming here – hell-wind – titan blur – black wing – Yog Sothoth save me – the three-lobed burning eye....
Biographies & Sources
H.P. Lovecraft
Master of weird fiction Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Featuring unknown, extra-terrestrial and otherworldly creatures, gods and beings, his stories were one of the first to mix science fiction with horror. His inspiration came predominantly from mythology, astronomy and the supernatural and gothic writings of such authors as Edgar Allan Poe. Plagued by nightmares from an early age, he was inspired to write his dark and strange fantasy tales; and the isolation he must have experienced from suffering frequent illnesses, can be felt as a prominent theme in his work. Lovecraft inspired many other authors, and his most famous story ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ has gone on to influence many aspects of popular culture.
S.T. Joshi
Foreword: Lovecraft Short Stories
S.T. Joshi is a leading authority on H.P. Lovecraft and is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012). His award-winning biography H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996) was later expanded as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010). He has prepared editions of the work of Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, Clark Ashton Smith, and other classic authors of weird fiction, as well as the anthology American Supernatural Tales (2007).
Further contributions by the following contemporaries of H.P. Lovecraft:
Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch (1917–94) was born in Chicago, Illinois. At 16 years old he wrote a fan letter to H.P. Lovecraft, whose encouraging response led Bloch to become a prolific author in his own right. Bloch’s earlier stories mirror the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, whom he greatly admired; though he later turned to writing more in the psychological horror and crime genres. He is perhaps most famous for writing the book Psycho, which Hitchcock’s movie is based on. Lovecraft’s ‘The Haunter of the Dark’, which he dedicated to Bloch, is a sequel to Bloch’s story ‘The Shambler from the Stars’. Bloch then wrote another piece called ‘The Shadow from the Steeple’ which carries on from the end of Lovecraft’s tale.
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard (1906–36) was born in Peaster, Texas. An intellectual and athletic man, Howard wrote within the genres of westerns, historical and horror fiction, and is credited with having formed the subgenre within fantasy known as ‘Sword and Sorcery’. Like Lovecraft, Howard’s work is strongly associated with the pulp magazine Weird Tales, in which he published many horror and fantasy stories, including those featuring the character Conan the Cimmerian. Howard and Lovecraft corresponded for many years, and Howard even contributed to the Cthulhu Mythos through some of his own stories.
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) was born in Long Valley, California. He is well regarded as both a poet and a writer of horror, fantasy and science fiction stories. Along with H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, both of whom he corresponded with frequently, he was a prolific contributor to the magazine Weird Tales. His weird fiction is full of dark and imaginative creations, and glimpses into the worlds beyond. Lovecraft’s occult tome The Necronomicon appears in works by Smith, whilst Smith’s own invention The Book of Eibon features in a number of Lovecraft stories, including ‘The Dreams in the Witch House’ and The Shadow Out of Time.
Many of these stories appeared in the wave of pulp magazines that dominated the explosion of science fiction, fantasy and horror shorts in the Golden Age of Pulps from the 1920s to early 1940s. They created the foundation of modern speculative fiction, blockbuster movies and TV series.
The Tomb
Written in June 1917
Originally published in The Vagrant, March 1922
Dagon
Written in July 1917
Originally published in The Vagrant, November 1919
Polaris
Written in 1918
Originally published in The Philosopher, December 1920
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Written in 1919
Originally published in Pine Cones, October 1919
The White Ship
Written in November 1919
Originally published in The United Amateur, November 1919
The Doom that Came to Sarnath
Written in December 1919
Originally published in The Scot, June 1920
The Statement of Randolph Carter
Written in December 1919
Originally published in The Vagrant, May 1920
The Cats of Ulthar
Written in June 1920
Originally published in The Tryout, November 1920
The Temple
Written in 1920
Originally published in Weird Tales, September 1925
From Beyond
Written in November 1920
Originally published in The Fantasy Fan, June 1934
Nyarlathotep
Written in late 1920
Originally published in The United Amateur, November 1920
The Picture in the House
Written in December 1920
Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1924
The Nameless City
Written in January 1921
Originally published in The Wolverine, November 1921
The Outsider
Written in 1921
Originally published in Weird Tales, April 1926
The Other Gods
Written in August 1921
Originally published in The Fantasy Fan, November 1933
The Music of Erich Zann
Written in December 1921
Originally published in The National Amateur, March 1922
The Hound
Written in September 1922
Origina
lly published in Weird Tales, February 1924
The Lurking Fear
Written in November 1922
Originally published in Home Brew, January–April 1923
The Rats in the Walls
Written in August–September 1923
Originally published in Weird Tales, March 1924
The Unnamable
Written in September 1923
Originally published in Weird Tales, July 1925
The Festival
Written in October 1923
Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1925
The Shunned House
Written in October 1924
Originally published by Recluse Press, 1928
Cool Air
Written in March 1926
Originally published in Tales of Magic and Mystery, March 1928
The Call of Cthulhu
Written in Summer 1926
Originally published in Weird Tales, February 1928
Pickman’s Model
Written in 1926
Originally published in Weird Tales, October 1927
The Strange High House in the Mist
Written in November 1926
Originally published in Weird Tales, October 1931
The Colour Out of Space
Written in March 1927
Originally published in Amazing Stories, September 1927
The Dunwich Horror
Written in Summer 1928
Originally published in Weird Tales, April 1929
The Whisperer in Darkness
Written in February–September 1930
Originally published in Weird Tales, August 1931
The Black Stone
Robert E. Howard
Written in late 1930
Originally published in Weird Tales, November 1931
The Thing on the Roof
Robert E. Howard
Written in late 1930
Originally published in Weird Tales, February 1932
At the Mountains of Madness
Written in February–March 1931
Originally published in Astounding Stories, February–April 1936
The Hunters from Beyond
Clark Ashton Smith
Published with permission of CASiana Enterprises, the Literary Estate of Clark Ashton Smith.
Written in April 1931
Originally published in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, October 1932
The Shadow over Innsmouth
Written in late 1931
Originally published by Visionary Publishing Company, 1936
The Dreams in the Witch House
Written in January–February 1932
Originally published in Weird Tales, July 1933
The Thing on the Doorstep
Written in August 1933
Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1937
The Shadow out of Time
Written in November 1934–March 1935
Originally published in Astounding Stories, June 1936
The Shambler from the Stars
Robert Bloch
All Rights Reserved. © Robert Bloch 1935.
Written in Spring 1935
Originally published in Weird Tales, September 1935
The Haunter of the Dark
Written in November 1935
Originally published in Weird Tales, December 1936
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Lovecraft Short Stories Page 85
