Today marks the penultimate day of my resurrected ritual—an immersion in the macabre, wherein I partake daily of a tale from that towering harbinger of cosmic dread, H. P. Lovecraft. This humble blogger ensnared within the many toils of earthly existence, found a rare mercy in today’s selection, “What the Moon Brings,” for this potent prose-poem of eldritch insight proved mercifully brief. Yet, despite its brevity, it reverberates with that peculiar chill, leaving an indelible mark upon the soul—a whisper of ancient fears that lingers, unseen and yet unshakable.
I hate the moon—I am afraid of it—for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.
In that twilight realm of dreams beyond mortal understanding, an unnamed soul, trembling yet drawn forth, wanders through a garden of spectral beauty, veiled in pallid moonlight and the haze of unreal visions. Like specters frozen in eternal dread, eerie stone idols loom from the shadows, silent custodians of a forgotten age. From a meandering stream he ventures forth, compelled toward an endless, unnatural river whose ghastly shores beckon with a horror veiled in darkness.
As he nears the river’s dismal banks, the outline of a city—ruins borne of unutterable antiquity—emerges from the mist. Here lies a city of the dead, its crumbling towers and skeletal archways faintly visible beneath the oppressive cloak of the heavens. A sensation of something titanic and grotesque stirs within the abyssal depths, an abominable watcher whose presence seeps into the marrow with chilling certainty. The murky waters heave with slow ripples, the vile and eldritch writhing of creatures unseen—sea worms, he suspects, though they bear a loathsome implication beyond mortal comprehension.
Terror mounts, yet his mind, on the precipice of madness, perceives this monstrous sight as a portal to a fate more dreadful than death itself. In a final, fevered surge of defiance, he chooses oblivion, preferring the cold embrace of the depths to the inexorable dread that looms above. Casting himself toward the submerged ruins, his fate hangs in shadow, uncertain and terrible—a whispered legend lost to the blackened tide.