Having once more embraced my solemn October custom of perusing a tale from the dread pen of H.P. Lovecraft each day, I find myself startled by the discovery of narratives long buried within the murk of forgotten lore. Today’s chilling revelation, “The Transition of Juan Romero,” unveils a departure from Lovecraft’s familiar, shadow-haunted Rhode Island, evoking the muscular atmospheres of Robert E. Howard’s own fevered imaginings.
At one time I fancied I had gone mad—this was when, on wondering how our way was lighted in the absence of lamp or candle, I realised that the ancient ring on my finger was glowing with eerie radiance, diffusing a pallid lustre through the damp, heavy air around.
The tale recounts a mining expedition’s dreadful encounter with an abyss of unimaginable depth, whose yawning maw refuses to yield to the probing lines of mortal men. The very night following this accursed revelation, our narrator, along with the ill-fated Mexican miner, Juan Romero, are irresistibly drawn into the mine, lured by a grotesque and inhuman pulsation from beneath the earth. Romero, reaching the abyss first, is inexorably consumed by it. The narrator, peering over its lip, is confronted by a vision so eldritch, so terrible, that he dares not speak of what he witnessed, his reason faltering as he falls into unconsciousness.
Come morning, both Romero and the narrator are found lifeless in their bunks, untouched by any journey to the depths, while the chasm—oh, that unholy pit—has utterly vanished, as if it had never been. Other miners, in dread certainty, swear that neither man had stirred from their cabin that fateful night.