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I met the old man while I was in college, a very confusing time of my life. How many times I climbed the rickety steps to his apartment I cannot really say, for my memories are clouded. Many things he told me on those nights long ago, some from dreams, some from experience, some from where I cannot fathom. Mostly I listened silently, absorbing his words and watching the stars move in the night sky outside his windows. Now, I sometimes see him in my dreams and he reminds me of something I had forgotten. He tells me to write it down now, and to share it with you.
Sit down, my friend! Tea? Yes, Earl Grey, my favorite. A tea to fend off dreams! Let me tell you of my youth, young sir, of the dreams of Spartan babies left in the wilderness for the wolf. My earliest memories now, from the time before knowledge, before awareness. Let me tell you of the Horror.
Poe knew it. He told a bit of it in “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Lovecraft saw it, his dreamer’s eyes were preternaturally sharp. My eyes were never so good; I have known the nightgaunts, but never seen them. Let me tell you what I remember.
The blackness is deep, palpable; it licks and caresses your skin. Gigantic forms of indeterminate shape move quietly in the great volume of black. They serve it. They bind you. Sharp, odd angles of metallic gleaming show briefly in the gloom, then vanish before you can look at them. Great serpentine forms slide noiselessly past bleached skulls, just beyond the edge of sight.
You are naked. You are always naked when it comes for you.
The preparations are complete, the gigantic beings are gone. Silence is absolute now, and there is only the abyss. How can there be so much blackness, so much space in the Universe? You stare into it, and it stares back. It is the abyss; the abyss and one other.
Far, far away, farther than you can see, farther than you can imagine, something pale moves, some tiny thing… pulses. Almost imperceptibly at first, it begins to grow, whiter than before. It is coming nearer. It has teeth. It is teeth.
Small sharp teeth gnash rhythmically. Dark eyes and a malevolent intelligence hide behind the gleaming teeth. It seems so distant and so small. A vole, sharp teeth seeking flesh? No, perhaps a mouse. A rat, incisors clicking hungrily? Now a fox’s jaws, now a large cat’s, it grows as it approaches. Now it is a wolf’s slavering fangs, now a bear’s maw. It is bigger than all of them together, bigger than any living thing. It is a circle of razor teeth, great jaws so large its body is hidden behind them, they clash together before your riveted eyes, again and again, always closer. They close over you in a moment of white fear beyond fear and you think you must go mad. But that is not the end.
No, all is deep blackness again. The tiny teeth in the abyss click together, and it begins anew. Again and again that great maw approaches and engulfs you, and each time your horror is greater, each time the fear is greater than the last, and each time you hope for death or madness or oblivion, certain that this time the horror is truly beyond the ability of the human mind to bear. But there is no merciful end.
Each time the teeth tear away a little bit of you, a little bit of your mind. But you will never know what you have lost. You cannot count the times it has devoured you. It always returns. It will never end.
But my friend, you are shaking so! Is this all a bit too much for you to grasp right now? That doesn’t matter you know. It will be back. Always.
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