The Golloth

[Just a stupid little story I wrote after watching a documentary on H.P. Lovecraft]


It must have been close to 4am when the fever overcame the last of my mortal defenses, and dragged me down into the cold sarcophagus of near-death. Not more than a foot away, stood the clock on my nightstand, yet, in my delirius state, I could not have seen it, nor understood what it told me, nor, indeed, harbored any consistent notion of time. I am told only, by those who were present, that it was some time before dawn that my face turned white as chalk, my eyes rolled back inside my head, and the sweat formed so copiously on my brow that it could scarcely be wiped dry before new beads began to well-up from the skin. This is what they saw, but now I will tell you what I myself encountered, in the far depths of my delirium.

I seemed to find myself surrounded by infinite darkness. Even the "ground" on which I stood appeared to be nothing; a kind of darkness. I had no consciousness of my illness, nor that my body was presently lying prone in a bed, in a well-lit room, populated by several doctors, nurses, and servants. No such lucidity occured. Still, there was something about the experience which did not resemble any dream or hallucination with which I had hitherto met. Rather, there was a versimilitude which defied explanation. I must confess that the realm in which I found myself, despite the fact that it contained no discernable shapes or sounds (not initially, anyway), seemed to me more real, --frighteningly more real, -- than the very world from which I'd been taken.

I cannot say how long I stood there in the darkness, struck by the simultaneous reality and unreality of the place, before the creature appeared before me. Nor can I attribute its appearance to any conscious thought or expectation which might have precipitated it. Whatever the reason for the encounter, I am certain only that what was not there one moment, was suddenly before me in the next moment.

You will have to forgive me, if I cannot convey to you the immense proportions and the hideousness of the thing, for it seemed to overfill my vision with its ugliness, and spill itself beyond the borders of periphery. At the same time, I could feel my perception adjust and expand, at lightning speed, as if to contain the phenomenon, -- though there always seemed some part of it still hidden in the pitch.

There before me ranged the most terrible, over-arching creature; neither lizard nor crustacean, yet, as though it were, some unholy offspring of the two. The abomination, which could only have sprung from the madness and filth of an ancient demiurgic evil, lurched suddenly, as if wretching, and curled forward with a kind of drunken, squirmy limp. I retraced my steps slowly, hoping not to provoke the monstrous juggernaut.

If only I had known...

Such things require no provocation, but if they do not give way to violence at once, it is only to relish for a moment the fear of their victim. I have since come to understand the nature of their malady. What fuels their unbounded contempt for mankind is simply an emotion akin to boredom, malaise, or ennui, yet far more sinister; having been nursed over countless oceans of time.

It is their very power, too incredible for human minds to conceive, which finally encumbers them; for they are hunters, whose first love was always the chase, and now they have nothing left to chase. Through aeons, they chased and grew strong; so strong, that a time came when nothing they encountered in the universe could pose the least challenge to their authority. They had become like vast whales, which had barely to open their mouths, in order to swallow up entire schools of planets. The universe held no real interest for them, and they were incapable of dying. Their only mild amusement consisted of this vicious toying with the other creatures.

At the time, though, I knew none of this, and only many subesquent years of occult research has convinced me of what it was I encountered that night.

All at once, the cloak of shadow fell away, and the body of the great monster came within full view. A shock tore through me as giant, greyish-pink appendages unfurled themselves to reveal undulating membranes, transluscent, and slick with oily discharge, and as the creature gave a deafening roar; a gutteral, rattling squeal, which seemed to rise, from a great distance, out of the very pit of Hell.

Such terror as I felt cannot be described or in any way set down. I hold it, or, rather, it holds me, still. I do not think it will ever let go.

It is always at this point in the story, whenever I tell it, that my listeners begin to chafe at the bit. "What happened, next?","Did the beast not attack?", "How is it that you are still alive?" And I must somehow find a way to explain what, to them, is almost impossible to comprehend.

The creature did attack, though he did nothing more than what has already been described, and I myself, while still biologically alive, am paralyzed in soul; a fate, in many ways, far worse than death. For the call of the beast, the vibration of it, passed through my being, and not only the cells of my physical body, but the noetic structure of my astral and etheric bodies were all equally thrown into disarray.

Now my psychic structure is as a tattered shirt, and the divergent winds of creation pass through me; all my thoughts are sputtering threads, pulled this way and that. I am a kind of ghost, yet even ghosts are not kept in physical bonds...

In my nightmares -- and all my waking hours have turned to nightmares -- I cannot throw off the image of that demonic thing, nor the sound which echoes through my brain and all it touches. I would take my life this very moment, were I not terrified that I might thereby make myself an altogether more attractive target for similar dark entities.

It would be a gross error to think that I escaped the clutches of death, when my fever broke the next moring. I have escaped nothing. The cruel stare of death never removes itself; it is always conscious of me, as I am of it; it is always waiting; and may always be immanent.