In the shadow-haunted hours of October, I find myself steeped in the grim, forgotten pages of The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft. With an arrogance bred of years, I had foolishly believed I had traversed every eldritch corner of the master’s mind—had braved every unutterable horror he conjured from the abyss. Yet this collection, more vast than I had ever imagined, now reveals the depth of my error. Today, my trembling hands turned the pages of “Memory,” a strange tale that, to my disquiet, felt both new and familiar—as if dredged from some dim recess of my own shattered recollections, or perhaps a dream long forgotten.
I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, for it was like to that of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were called Man.
In the shadow-haunted vale of Nis, where ancient and nameless horrors sleep beneath the creeping foliage, monolithic ruins lie crumbled and forgotten, their stones now the abode of loathsome grey toads and slithering serpents. Towering trees, twisted and gnarled, stretch their limbs over the accursed landscape, while small, gibbering apes cavort through the decaying remnants of a civilization long lost to time’s relentless grip. Across this forsaken land, the foul and sluggish river Than winds its red and slimy course, a baleful reminder of untold eons past.
Amidst this bleak desolation unfolds the tale of “Memory,” wherein two eldritch beings, the Genie who haunts the moonbeams and the Daemon of the Valley, converse. The Genie, ethereal and luminous, inquires of the Daemon, who in that distant age erected the towering stones now in ruin. The Daemon, ancient and burdened by the weight of forgotten ages, replies with grim certainty: the creatures were called Man, remembered only because their name echoed that of the cursed river Than. Dimly, he recalls their form—resembling, in some monstrous fashion, the shrieking apes that now infest the ruins of their works.
As the Genie returns to his ethereal domain of moonlight, the Daemon, with eyes aglow with the dim embers of forgotten knowledge, watches silently as one of these pitiful apes scurries through the ruins—a grotesque echo of what once was.