bit mad. I refused to admit to myself that what I had seen happen had ever happened at all! To admit that was to admit lunacy! But it’s real all right… It did happen— and will again !
Heaven only knows what’s been wrong with my seismograph but the damn thing’s let me down in the worst possible way! Oh, they would have got me eventually, but I might at least have had time to prepare a proper warning… I ask you to think, Paul… Think of what has happened at the cottage… I can write of it as though it had already happened ; because I know it must ! It will! It is Shudde-M’ell, come for his spheres… Paul, look at the manner of my death, for if you are reading this then I am either dead or disappeared—which means the same thing. Read the enclosed notes carefully, I beg you. I haven’t the time to be more explicit but these old notes of mine should be of some help… If you are only half so enquiring as I believe you to be, you will surely soon come to recognize a fantastic horror which, I repeat, the whole world must be made to believe in… The ground is really shaking now but, knowing it is the end, I am steady in my horror… Not that I expect my present calm state of mind to last… I think that by the time they actually come for me my mind will have snapped completely. I can imagine it now…The floor splintering, erupting, to admit them. Why! Even thinking of it my senses recoil at the terror of the thought… There will be a hideous smell, a slime, a chanting and gigantic writhing and… And then…
Unable to escape, I await the thing… I am trapped by the same hypnotic power that claimed the others at G’harne. What monstrous memories! How I awoke to see my friends and companions sucked dry of their life’s blood by wormy, vampirish things from the cesspools of time! Gods of alien dimensions… I was hypnotized then by this same terrible force, unable to move to the aid of my friends or even to save myself! Miraculously, with the passing of the moon behind some wisps of cloud, the hypnotic effect was broken. Then, screaming and sobbing, temporarily out of my mind, I fled; hearing behind me the vile and slobbering sucking sounds and the droning, demoniac chanting of Shudde-M’ell and his hordes.
Not knowing that I did it, in my mindlessness I carried with me those hell-spheres… Last night I dreamed of them. And in my dreams I saw again the inscriptions on that stone box. Moreover, I could read them! All the fears and ambitions of those hellish things were there to be read as clearly as the headlines in a daily newspaper! “Gods” they may or may not be but one thing is sure; the greatest setback to their plans for conquest of the Earth is their terribly long and complicated reproductory cycle !Only a handful of young are born every thousand years; but, considering how long they have been here, the time must be drawing ever nearer when their numbers will be sufficient ! Naturally, this tedious build up of their numbers makes them loath to lose even a single member of their hideous spawn. And that is why they have tunnelled these many thousands of miles, even under deep oceans, to retrieve the spheres ! I had wondered why they could be following me—and now I know. I also know how . Can you not guess how they know where I am, Paul, or why they are coming? Those spheres are like a beacon to them; a siren voice calling. And just as any other parent—though more out of awful ambition, I fear, than any type of emotion we could understand—they are merely answering the call of their young!
But they are too late! A few minutes ago, just before I began this letter, the things hatched … Who would have guessed that they were eggs —or that the container they were in was an incubator ? I can’t blame myself for not knowing it. I even tried to have the spheres X-rayed once, damn them, but they reflected the rays! And the shells were so thick ! Yet at the time of hatching they just splintered into
Heaven only knows what’s been wrong with my seismograph but the damn thing’s let me down in the worst possible way! Oh, they would have got me eventually, but I might at least have had time to prepare a proper warning… I ask you to think, Paul… Think of what has happened at the cottage… I can write of it as though it had already happened ; because I know it must ! It will! It is Shudde-M’ell, come for his spheres… Paul, look at the manner of my death, for if you are reading this then I am either dead or disappeared—which means the same thing. Read the enclosed notes carefully, I beg you. I haven’t the time to be more explicit but these old notes of mine should be of some help… If you are only half so enquiring as I believe you to be, you will surely soon come to recognize a fantastic horror which, I repeat, the whole world must be made to believe in… The ground is really shaking now but, knowing it is the end, I am steady in my horror… Not that I expect my present calm state of mind to last… I think that by the time they actually come for me my mind will have snapped completely. I can imagine it now…The floor splintering, erupting, to admit them. Why! Even thinking of it my senses recoil at the terror of the thought… There will be a hideous smell, a slime, a chanting and gigantic writhing and… And then…
Unable to escape, I await the thing… I am trapped by the same hypnotic power that claimed the others at G’harne. What monstrous memories! How I awoke to see my friends and companions sucked dry of their life’s blood by wormy, vampirish things from the cesspools of time! Gods of alien dimensions… I was hypnotized then by this same terrible force, unable to move to the aid of my friends or even to save myself! Miraculously, with the passing of the moon behind some wisps of cloud, the hypnotic effect was broken. Then, screaming and sobbing, temporarily out of my mind, I fled; hearing behind me the vile and slobbering sucking sounds and the droning, demoniac chanting of Shudde-M’ell and his hordes.
Not knowing that I did it, in my mindlessness I carried with me those hell-spheres… Last night I dreamed of them. And in my dreams I saw again the inscriptions on that stone box. Moreover, I could read them! All the fears and ambitions of those hellish things were there to be read as clearly as the headlines in a daily newspaper! “Gods” they may or may not be but one thing is sure; the greatest setback to their plans for conquest of the Earth is their terribly long and complicated reproductory cycle !Only a handful of young are born every thousand years; but, considering how long they have been here, the time must be drawing ever nearer when their numbers will be sufficient ! Naturally, this tedious build up of their numbers makes them loath to lose even a single member of their hideous spawn. And that is why they have tunnelled these many thousands of miles, even under deep oceans, to retrieve the spheres ! I had wondered why they could be following me—and now I know. I also know how . Can you not guess how they know where I am, Paul, or why they are coming? Those spheres are like a beacon to them; a siren voice calling. And just as any other parent—though more out of awful ambition, I fear, than any type of emotion we could understand—they are merely answering the call of their young!
But they are too late! A few minutes ago, just before I began this letter, the things hatched … Who would have guessed that they were eggs —or that the container they were in was an incubator ? I can’t blame myself for not knowing it. I even tried to have the spheres X-rayed once, damn them, but they reflected the rays! And the shells were so thick ! Yet at the time of hatching they just splintered into
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