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Literature Text
And with Strange Aeons even Death may Die!
“Faceless. Voiceless.”
Those two words, repeated over and over by the patient in his cell, confounded every one of the nurses and medical personnel who tried conversing with him. Were it not for the IV drip in his arm and the fact that he blacked out at random intervals and thus gained a modicum of sleep, he would surely be dead. Even now the strange man was running on borrowed time. He should have been healthy but his vital signs were being ravaged by some unknown malady.
No one knew his name, only that he had been dropped off by an unknown person or persons one blustery night at Blackmore Asylum in Providence, Rhode Island. But it would be an inaccuracy to think that this man was completely insane or gone. His eyes betrayed a sinister, hunted sort of intelligence, a sensation like he knew he was being stalked.
And then there was that logbook the man had held in his possession. The staff weren’t quite sure what to make of it, once they had managed to decode it anyway. What was certain was that if it's contents were erroneous then his mind was completely lost, and that if the information in it could be taken at face value, that their lives were likely forfeit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 19, 2014
“Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, horned, and slender, with membranous wings,
They come in legions on the north wind's swell
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare's well.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foul lake
Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But ho! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found! “
- H. P. Lovecraft, “Night-Gaunts”
Heh. A lovely poem, analyzed in English classes the world over and a favourite for many a basement-dwelling horror/sci-fi nerd. And the Night-Gaunts themselves! Those strange creatures that form its subject, such a fantastic invention of a genius scarcely known in his time. But they are not fiction. How Lovecraft learned of these enigmatic creatures is beyond me, and there are several explanations that come to mind but all are equally horrible in implication.
One is that Lovecraft learned about them in some long-forgotten and probably erroneous bestiary, perchance without realizing the truth of what he had just read, and was inspired to write the poem as a sort of third-hand account. Boring. Let’s move on to possibility number two.
Now, what I have not ruled out is that Lovecraft somehow “invented” the Night-Gaunts merely by writing about them. Perhaps they come from the conscious space between dreams and reality. Lovecraft often said the monsters he described in his stories were taken directly from his dreams.
And there is another possibility, more terrible by point of fact. H. P. Lovecraft might have intended the poem as an actual literal description of something which actually occurred to him on a semi-recurrent basis. I can picture the man, stolen into the depths of primordial nightmare, unsure if he was awake or dreaming or even alive or dead. Of course, this theory doesn’t explain how he survived the ordeal but I’m not just ruling it out as of yet.
As for how I know of the existence of these things, I need only remind myself that I have never touched drug or drink in my life and can thus be very sure of what I saw. Ever since I holed up in this cabin in Lovecraft’s very own Providence, I have seen them nesting along the banks of the nearby Rook Lake.
I discovered this quite by accident. I originally moved out here for the purposes of focusing on my writing, unhindered by the modern world. It has gone well, to say the least. In fact it has gone so well that I found my evening walks were being pushed all the way into late at night.
And that’s when I saw them, the flittering, alien spectres called the Night-Gaunts. It’s funny in a way; although Lovecraft was sparing in his description of them I instantly recognized them for what they were. In the coming nights I became more brazen, stalking ever-closer to their corpse-skinned frames. Their moonlit rituals intrigue me the most. I do not know their purpose, but these creatures are weirdly beautiful for a writer like me to behold.
To Hell with it all, I’ve had enough of writing about the things. I need to actually see more of them. Tomorrow I will see where they vanish to every night, when the moon makes its descent from the starry throne.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 20, 2014, I think.
Well, that didn’t go well. At all.
I really should have known better. I suppose in retrospect the poem makes it clear that the Night-Gaunts make common practice of taking people to…I don’t even know what this place is. Let me start from the beginning.
They must have some degree of telepathy, because on the night I intended to observe them more closely I was confronted by one. At that point I decided it would be better to head back to the cabin, but before I could, I was overcome with a phosphorescent sort of mist which dulled my mind and senses. After that my memories are a blur. I remember being hoisted up and dropped from a short height into the center of the lake. Instead of chill water greeting me and snapping me back to my senses, there was a sort of swirling miasma of untangled emotion. I fell through it, and fell, and fell. I don’t know for how long but it seemed to occupy a great deal of time.
Next I remember being in the taloned clutches of one of their member again, as it soared on currents of ethereal energy, within a labyrinth of what seemed to my eyes like blue Swarovski crystal fused with bone into fibrous spires. At last it flew upwards in a spiralling ascent around one of the larger towers, and…this is going to sound funny, but bear in mind I was still dazed. At that moment it finally clicked in my head that something about all this was very wrong. I screamed.
The Night-Gaunt made no notice of me.
By now I was almost fully cognizant, but I made no move to struggle. After all, I had no desire to drop to the bottom of whatever we were flying over, if there would even be a bottom and not some endless abyss. After that it navigated a shifting passage of voids and chambers which seemed both too small to contain us and impossibly large. I can’t explain it all that well, the best way I can describe it is if you went to a dimension where one plus one didn’t just equal two, but it also equaled negative two and every number in between. Picture trying to wrap your head around a math problem in a dimension like that, and that’s what spacial constraints are like in this universe. Finally it deposited me in a cylindrical room. As it did so the fringes of the room’s crystal opening it had dropped me through expanded to seal me inside.
And so here I am, writing by the unnatural light that the bone this room was made (or grown?) out of glows like an organic candle. It’s a wonder I can still write at all, but I’m remarkably calm. I’m trying to convince myself this is all a dream, one I’ll be able to write many stories about when I wake up.
I suppose I know better.
I suppose that in a way they granted me my desire to bear witness of where they disappear to.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The date…I really don’t know what date it is.
It wrote something on the crystal partition. One of the Night-Gaunts wrote something. Heh. It must have written it backwards, because I can see it plainly on my side. How considerate.
help us
we were human
we will send you back
it will only delay the inevitable
you will become one of us as well
you need to warn others
stay away from Providence
Kaw-T’ashad, Attendant to the Unwritten Scroll lies buried
his tomb must never be disturbed
you need to warn them
we were human
help us
“Faceless. Voiceless.”
Those two words, repeated over and over by the patient in his cell, confounded every one of the nurses and medical personnel who tried conversing with him. Were it not for the IV drip in his arm and the fact that he blacked out at random intervals and thus gained a modicum of sleep, he would surely be dead. Even now the strange man was running on borrowed time. He should have been healthy but his vital signs were being ravaged by some unknown malady.
No one knew his name, only that he had been dropped off by an unknown person or persons one blustery night at Blackmore Asylum in Providence, Rhode Island. But it would be an inaccuracy to think that this man was completely insane or gone. His eyes betrayed a sinister, hunted sort of intelligence, a sensation like he knew he was being stalked.
And then there was that logbook the man had held in his possession. The staff weren’t quite sure what to make of it, once they had managed to decode it anyway. What was certain was that if it's contents were erroneous then his mind was completely lost, and that if the information in it could be taken at face value, that their lives were likely forfeit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 19, 2014
“Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, horned, and slender, with membranous wings,
They come in legions on the north wind's swell
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare's well.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foul lake
Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But ho! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found! “
- H. P. Lovecraft, “Night-Gaunts”
Heh. A lovely poem, analyzed in English classes the world over and a favourite for many a basement-dwelling horror/sci-fi nerd. And the Night-Gaunts themselves! Those strange creatures that form its subject, such a fantastic invention of a genius scarcely known in his time. But they are not fiction. How Lovecraft learned of these enigmatic creatures is beyond me, and there are several explanations that come to mind but all are equally horrible in implication.
One is that Lovecraft learned about them in some long-forgotten and probably erroneous bestiary, perchance without realizing the truth of what he had just read, and was inspired to write the poem as a sort of third-hand account. Boring. Let’s move on to possibility number two.
Now, what I have not ruled out is that Lovecraft somehow “invented” the Night-Gaunts merely by writing about them. Perhaps they come from the conscious space between dreams and reality. Lovecraft often said the monsters he described in his stories were taken directly from his dreams.
And there is another possibility, more terrible by point of fact. H. P. Lovecraft might have intended the poem as an actual literal description of something which actually occurred to him on a semi-recurrent basis. I can picture the man, stolen into the depths of primordial nightmare, unsure if he was awake or dreaming or even alive or dead. Of course, this theory doesn’t explain how he survived the ordeal but I’m not just ruling it out as of yet.
As for how I know of the existence of these things, I need only remind myself that I have never touched drug or drink in my life and can thus be very sure of what I saw. Ever since I holed up in this cabin in Lovecraft’s very own Providence, I have seen them nesting along the banks of the nearby Rook Lake.
I discovered this quite by accident. I originally moved out here for the purposes of focusing on my writing, unhindered by the modern world. It has gone well, to say the least. In fact it has gone so well that I found my evening walks were being pushed all the way into late at night.
And that’s when I saw them, the flittering, alien spectres called the Night-Gaunts. It’s funny in a way; although Lovecraft was sparing in his description of them I instantly recognized them for what they were. In the coming nights I became more brazen, stalking ever-closer to their corpse-skinned frames. Their moonlit rituals intrigue me the most. I do not know their purpose, but these creatures are weirdly beautiful for a writer like me to behold.
To Hell with it all, I’ve had enough of writing about the things. I need to actually see more of them. Tomorrow I will see where they vanish to every night, when the moon makes its descent from the starry throne.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 20, 2014, I think.
Well, that didn’t go well. At all.
I really should have known better. I suppose in retrospect the poem makes it clear that the Night-Gaunts make common practice of taking people to…I don’t even know what this place is. Let me start from the beginning.
They must have some degree of telepathy, because on the night I intended to observe them more closely I was confronted by one. At that point I decided it would be better to head back to the cabin, but before I could, I was overcome with a phosphorescent sort of mist which dulled my mind and senses. After that my memories are a blur. I remember being hoisted up and dropped from a short height into the center of the lake. Instead of chill water greeting me and snapping me back to my senses, there was a sort of swirling miasma of untangled emotion. I fell through it, and fell, and fell. I don’t know for how long but it seemed to occupy a great deal of time.
Next I remember being in the taloned clutches of one of their member again, as it soared on currents of ethereal energy, within a labyrinth of what seemed to my eyes like blue Swarovski crystal fused with bone into fibrous spires. At last it flew upwards in a spiralling ascent around one of the larger towers, and…this is going to sound funny, but bear in mind I was still dazed. At that moment it finally clicked in my head that something about all this was very wrong. I screamed.
The Night-Gaunt made no notice of me.
By now I was almost fully cognizant, but I made no move to struggle. After all, I had no desire to drop to the bottom of whatever we were flying over, if there would even be a bottom and not some endless abyss. After that it navigated a shifting passage of voids and chambers which seemed both too small to contain us and impossibly large. I can’t explain it all that well, the best way I can describe it is if you went to a dimension where one plus one didn’t just equal two, but it also equaled negative two and every number in between. Picture trying to wrap your head around a math problem in a dimension like that, and that’s what spacial constraints are like in this universe. Finally it deposited me in a cylindrical room. As it did so the fringes of the room’s crystal opening it had dropped me through expanded to seal me inside.
And so here I am, writing by the unnatural light that the bone this room was made (or grown?) out of glows like an organic candle. It’s a wonder I can still write at all, but I’m remarkably calm. I’m trying to convince myself this is all a dream, one I’ll be able to write many stories about when I wake up.
I suppose I know better.
I suppose that in a way they granted me my desire to bear witness of where they disappear to.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The date…I really don’t know what date it is.
It wrote something on the crystal partition. One of the Night-Gaunts wrote something. Heh. It must have written it backwards, because I can see it plainly on my side. How considerate.
help us
we were human
we will send you back
it will only delay the inevitable
you will become one of us as well
you need to warn others
stay away from Providence
Kaw-T’ashad, Attendant to the Unwritten Scroll lies buried
his tomb must never be disturbed
you need to warn them
we were human
help us
Literature
Creepypasta - Where The Unknown Hides
I recently moved into my first house and I was really excited about it. This will be my first time living alone. I won’t have to worry about waking my parents up at night with loud rock music, I can eat what I want at anytime, and won’t have to listen to my mother’s babbling about how dirty and messy my room is.
It’s a small house, with two bedrooms, a small kitchen with two low drawers, the living room where I keep my guitars and drums, a small basement, and last but not least a narrow attic. It’s only me living in that old but comfy house after all, I don’t need very much space.
I tried to get to know m
Literature
Creepypasta OC template
Make sure to take all he italicized words out~
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Pasta name (not their actual name, what people know them as):
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Age:
Species:
Currently living:
•family•
Mother:
Father:
Brother:
Sister:
other family members:
•physical features•
Height:
Weight:
Tattoo(s):
Scar(s):
Other noticeable mark(s):
Physical strength(s):
Physical weakness(es):
•about him/her•
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Like:
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Back story:
How(s)he kills:
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Here it is, my first attempt at Lovecraftian horror. I thought I'd go for a touch of meta in this one. Lemme know how you think I did. ^^
© 2014 - 2024 KomradApex
Comments8
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Very interesting. I see how it's horror, but it's really more intriguing. I like the narration and the ramblings of the character, as well as the concept of it.