One of the many challenges in rekindling my ancient October tradition—immersing myself daily in the eldritch works of that master of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft—is finding time amidst the modern world’s ceaseless demands. Yet, fortune smiles upon me, for most of his dread-laden tales are mercifully brief. On this particular Monday, burdened as I was by earthly obligations, I was grateful that today’s selection, “Ex Oblivione,” was the shortest of his works I have yet encountered, requiring but a scant three minutes to absorb its haunting prose.
Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples.
In “Ex Oblivione,” our nameless narrator speaks of a man nearing death, who, in his dreams, treads through a desolate valley and arrives before a vine-clad wall where a bronze gate stands, locked and impenetrable. Obsessed with the mystery of what lies beyond, he seeks answers within the dream-city of Zakarion. There, the dream-sages offer cryptic, contradictory whispers: some tell of beauty and wonder, while others foretell only horror and despair. Yet, the man, driven by an insatiable longing, takes a fateful drug, unlocking the gate. Upon stepping through, he finds both promises fulfilled—freedom from earthly suffering and the ultimate, chilling revelation: beyond lies only the infinite void of oblivion, the final solace of death.