Hello and welcome to meet us pod. I'm your host de Mitas. For
this episode, I'll be reading HP Lovecraft Dagon. HP Lovecraft
was born in 1890 in Rhode Island. He was friends with
Harry Houdini and he inspired Batman Black Sabbath and more.
You can check out more about HP Lovecraft on his Wikipedia page,
or you can go to hp lovecraft.com links in the show
notes without further ado, day gone by HP Lovecraft.
I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since
by tonight, I shall be no more penniless, and at the end of my
supply of the drug which alone makes my life and durable, I can
bear the torture no longer. I shall cast myself from this
Garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from
my slavery to morphine, that I am a weakling or a degenerate.
When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess,
though never fully realize why it is that I must have
forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and
least frequented parts of the Pacific that the packet of which
I was super cargo fell a victim to a German sea Raider. The
Great War was just then at its very beginning, and the enemy
Navy had not reached its degree of ruthlessness so that our
vessel was made legitimate prize. Whilst we have her crew
were treated with all the fairness and consideration do us
as naval prisoners. So liberal indeed, was the discipline of
our captors. That five days after we were taken, I managed
to escape alone in a small boat, with water and provisions for a
good length of time. When I finally found myself adrift and
free, I had a little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent
navigator. I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars,
and I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew
nothing, and no Island or coastline was in sight. The
weather kept fair, and for uncounted days, I drifted
aimlessly beneath the scorching sun, waiting either for some
passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable
land. But neither ship nor land appeared. And I began to despair
and my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The
change happened whilst I slept. It's details I shall never know.
from my slumber, though troubled and dream invested, was
continuous. When at last I awake, it was to discover myself
half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire, which
extended about me in a monotonous undulations as far as
I could see. And in which my boat Lake grounded some distance
away. The one might well imagine that my first sensation would be
of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of
scenery. I was in reality more horrified than astonished, for
there was in the air, and in the rotting soil a sinister quality
which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with
the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable
things which I saw recruiting from the nasty mud of the
unending plane. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words
the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence
and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing and
nothing in sight. Save a vast reach of black sly And yet the
very completeness and the stillness and homogeneity of the
landscape impressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun was
blazing down from the sky, which seemed to me almost black, in
its cloudless cruelty, as though reflecting the inky Marsh
beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat, I
realized that only one theory could explain my position.
Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval. A portion of
the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing
regions which for innumerable millions of years, had lain
hidden under unfathomable watery depths.
So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath
me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging
ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea
fowl to prey upon the dead things. For several hours I sat
thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay up on its side
and afforded me a slight shade as the sun moved across the
heavens. as the day progressed, the ground lost some of its
stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for traveling
purposes in a short time. That night, I slept but little, and
the next day, I made myself a bag containing food and water,
preparatory to the overland journey in search of the
vanished sea, and possible rescue. On the third morning, I
found soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odor of the
fish was maddening. When I was too much concerned with graver
things to mind so slight and evil, and set out boldly for an
unknown goal. All day, I forged steadily westward, guided by a
faraway hammock, which had rose higher than any other elevation
on the rolling desert. That night, I kept an eye on the
following day, still travelled towards the hammock. Though the
object seems scarcely nearer than when I had first spotted.
By the fourth evening, I attained to the base of the
mound, which turned out to be much higher than hitted appeared
from the distant and intervening Valley, setting it out in
sharper relief and the general surface. To weary to ascend. I
slept in the shadow of the hill. I know not why my dreams were so
wild that night. But before the waning and fantastically gibbous
moon had risen far above the Eastern Blaine, I was awake, and
a cold perspiration. Determined to Sleep No More. Such visions
as I have experienced were too much for me to endure again. And
in the glow of the moon, I saw how unwise I had been to travel
by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would
have cost me less energy, indeed. I now felt quite able to
perform the ascent, which had deterred me at sunset, picking
up my bag, I started for the crest of the eminence. I have
said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plane was a
source of vague or to me. But I think my horror was greater when
I gained the summit of the mound and look down on the other side
into an immeasurable pit or Canyon, whose black recesses the
moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine I felt myself
on the edge of the world, peering over the rim into the
fathomless chaos of eternal night. Though my terror ran
curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan's
hideous climb through the unfastened realms of darkness.
As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see the
slopes of the Valley were not quite as perpendicular as I had
imagined. The ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded
fairly easy footholds for the descent. Whilst after a drop of
a few 100 feet, the declivity became very gradual urged on by
an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze, I scrambled
with difficulty down the rocks and stood on a gentler slope
beneath, gazing into the stag in depths where no light had
penetrated. All at once my attention was captured by a vast
and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose
steeply about 100 yards ahead of me, an object that claimed
widely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon, that
it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself
but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its
contour and position are not altogether a work of nature.
A closer scrutiny filled me with the sensation I cannot express.
For despite its enormous magnitude, and its location, and
an abyss which had yond at the bottom of the sea, since the
world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange
object was a well shaped monolith was massive bulk had
known the workmanship, and perhaps the worship, of living
and thinking creatures, dazed and frightened. Yet not without
a certain thrill on the scientists or archaeologists
delight, I examined my surrounding more closely. The
moon, now near the zenith, shown weirdly and vividly above the
towering steep that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact
that a far flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding
out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I
stood on the slope. across the chasm, the wavelets washed the
base of the Cyclopean monolith on whose surface I could now
trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing
was in a system of hieroglyphs unknown to me, and unlike
anything I had ever seen in books, consisting for the most
part of unconventional alized aquatic symbols such as fishes,
eels, octopi, crustaceans, mollusks, whales, and the like.
Several characters obviously represented and marine things
which were unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing
forms I had observed on the ocean risen plane. It was the
pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound,
plainly visible across the intervening water, on account of
it their enormous size, were an array of bass relief, whose
subjects would have excited the envy of adore. I think that
these things were supposed to depict men, at least a certain
sort of men, though the creatures were shown disporting
like fishes and waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage
at some monolithic Shrine, which appeared to be under the waves
as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in
detail, for the mere remembrance of them makes me grow faint.
grotesque, beyond the imagination of a poem, or a
bulwark. They were damnably human and general outline
despite webbed hands and feet, shocking, shockingly wide and
flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less
pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been
chiseled badly out of proportion with the scenic background, for
one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale
represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I
say, on their grotesqueness, and strange size, but in a moment
decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some
primitive fishing more seafaring tribe, some tribe whose last
descendant had perished errors before the first ancestor of the
Piltdown or Neanderthal man was born. awestruck at this
unexpected glimpse into the past beyond the conception of the
most daring anthropologist, I stood musing while the moon cast
Square reflections on the silent channel before me. Then,
suddenly, I saw it. With only a slight churning to markets rise
to the surface. The thing slid into view above the dark waters,
vast, poly famous like and loathsome, and darted like a
stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith. About what it's
flung it's gigantic scaly arms and while it bowed, its hideous
head and gave vent to a certain measured sound. I think I went
mad then
of my frantic ascent of the slope and Cliff, and my
delirious journey back to the stranded boat. I remember little
I believe I sang a great deal. I laughed oddly, when I was unable
to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm
sometime after I reached the boat. At any rate, I know that I
heard peals of thunder and other towns, which nature others only
in her wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows, and was
in a San Francisco hospital, brought together by the captain
of the American ship, which had picked up my boat in the mid
ocean. In my delirium, I had said much, but found that my
words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval
in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing. Nor did I deem it
necessary to insist upon a thing that I knew they could not
believe. Once I sought out a celebrated indologist and amused
him with a peculiar questions regarding an ancient Philistine
Legend of Dagon, the fish God but soon perceiving that he was
hopelessly conventional, and did not press my inquiries. It is at
night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I
see that thing. I tried morphine, but the drug has given
me only transient searcys and has drawn me into its clutches
as a hopeless slave. So now I'm going to end matters, having
written a full account of the information, or the contemptuous
amusement of my fellow man. Often, I asked myself, if it
could not have all been a pure Phantasm a mere freak of fever
as I lay Sun stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape
from the German man of war. This I asked myself, whatever does
there come before me hideous, vivid vision and reply. I cannot
think of a deep sea without shuttering at the nameless
things that may be at this very moment. Crawling and floundering
and it slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and
carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks
of water soaked granite. I dream of the day when they rise above
the billows and drag down in their wreaking talons the
remnants of puny, war exhausted mankind. A day when the land
shall sink and the dark ocean floor shall a sin amidst
universal pandemonium. The end is near. I hear the noise of the
door as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It
shall not find me God that hand the window the window
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