H.P. Lovecraft. The Crawling Chaos
The Crawling Chaos
by H. P. Lovecraft and Elizabeth Berkeley
Written 1920/21
Published April 1921 in The United Co-operative, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 1-6.
Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written. The ecstasies
and horrors of De Quincey and the paradis artificiels of Baudelaire are
preserved and interpreted with an art which makes them immortal, and the
world knows well the beauty, the terror and the mystery of those obscure
realms into which the inspired dreamer is transported. But much as has
been told, no man has yet dared intimate the nature of the phantasms thus
unfolded to the mind, or hint at the direction of the unheard-of roads
along whose ornate and exotic course the partaker of the drug is so
irresistibly borne. De Quincey was drawn back into Asia, that teeming land
of nebulous shadows whose hideous antiquity is so impressive that "the
vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the
individual," but farther than that he dared not go. Those who have gone
farther seldom returned, and even when they have, they have been either
silent or quite mad. I took opium but once -- in the year of the plague,
when doctors sought to deaden the agonies they could not cure. There was
an overdose -- my physician was worn out with horror and exertion -- and I
travelled very far indeed. In the end I returned and lived, but my nights
are filled with strange memories, nor have I ever permitted a doctor to
give me opium again.
The pain and pounding in my head had been quite unendurable when the drug
was administered, Of the future I had no heed; to escape, whether by cure,
unconsciousness, or death, was all that concerned me. I was partly
delirious, so that it is hard to place the exact moment of transition, but
I think the effect must have begun shortly before the pounding ceased to
be painful. As I have said, there was an overdose; so my reactions were
probably far from normal. The sensation of falling, curiously dissociated
from the idea of gravity or direction, was paramount; though there was
subsidiary impression of unseen throngs in incalculable profusion, throngs
of infinitely di-verse nature, but all more or less related to me.
Sometimes it seemed less as though I were falling, than as though the
universe or the ages were falling past me. Suddenly my pain ceased, and I
began to associate the pounding with an external rather than internal
force. The falling had ceased also, giving place to a sensation of uneasy,
temporary rest; and when I listened closely, I fancied the pounding was
that of the vast, inscrutable sea as its sinister, colossal breakers
lacerated some desolate shore after a storm of titanic magnitude. Then I
opened my eyes.
For a moment my surroundings seemed confused, like a projected image
hopelessly out of focus, but gradually I realised my solitary presence in
a strange and beautiful room lighted by many windows. Of the exact nature
of the apartment I could form no idea, for my thoughts were still far from
settled, but I noticed van-coloured rugs and draperies, elaborately
fashioned tables, chairs, ottomans, and divans, and delicate vases and
ornaments which conveyed a suggestion of the exotic without being actually
alien. These things I noticed, yet they were not long uppermost in my
mind. Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness and rising
above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown; a fear
all the greater because I could not analyse it, and seeming to concern a
stealthily approaching menace; not death, but some nameless, unheard-of
thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.
Presently I realised that the direct symbol and excitant of my fear was
the hideous pounding whose incessant reverberations throbbed maddeningly
against my exhausted brain. It seemed to come from a point outside and
below the edifice in which I stood, and to associate itself with the most
terrifying mental images. I felt that some horrible scene or object lurked
beyond the silk-hung walls, and shrank from glancing through the arched,
latticed windows that opened so bewilderingly on every hand. Perceiving
shutters attached to these windows, I closed them all, averting my eyes
from the exterior as I did so. Then, employing a flint and steel which I
found on one of the small tables, I lit the many candles reposing about
the walls in arabesque sconces. The added sense of security brought by
closed shutters and artificial light calmed my nerves to some degree, but
I could not shut out the monotonous pounding. Now that I was calmer, the
sound became as fascinating as it was fearful, and I felt a contradictory
desire to seek out its source despite my still powerful shrinking. Opening
a portiere at the side of the room nearest the pounding, I beheld a small
and richly draped corridor ending in a cavern door and large oriel window.
To this window I was irresistibly drawn, though my ill-defined
apprehensions seemed almost equally bent on holding me back. As I
approached it I could see a chaotic whirl of waters in the distance. Then,
as I attained it and glanced out on all sides, the stupendous picture of
my surroundings burst upon me with full and devastating force.
I beheld such a sight as I had never beheld before, and which no living
person can have seen save in the delirium of fever or the inferno of
opium. The building stood on a narrow point of land -- or what was now a
narrow point of land -- fully three hundred feet above what must lately
have been a seething vortex of mad waters. On either side of the house
there fell a newly washed-out precipice of red earth, whilst ahead of me
the hideous waves were still rolling in frightfully, eating away the land
with ghastly monotony and deliberation. Out a mile or more there rose and
fell menacing breakers at least fifty feet in height, and on the far
horizon ghoulish black clouds of grotesque contour were resting and
brooding like unwholesome vultures. The waves were dark and purplish,
almost black, and clutched at the yielding red mud of the bank as if with
uncouth, greedy hands. I could not but feel that some noxious marine mind
had declared a war of extermination upon all the solid ground, perhaps
abetted by the angry sky.
Recovering at length from the stupor into which this unnatural spectacle
had thrown me, I realized that my actual physical danger was acute. Even
whilst I gazed, the bank had lost many feet, and it could not be long
before the house would fall undermined into the awful pit of lashing
waves. Accordingly I hastened to the opposite side of the edifice, and
finding a door, emerged at once, locking it after me with a curious key
which had hung inside. I now beheld more of the strange region about me,
and marked a singular division which seemed to exist in the hostile ocean
and firmament. On each side of the jutting promontory different conditions
held sway. At my left as I faced inland was a gently heaving sea with
great green waves rolling peacefully in under a brightly shining sun.
Something about that sun's nature and position made me shudder, but I
could not then tell, and cannot tell now, what it was. At my right also
was the sea, but it was blue, calm, and only gently undulating, while the
sky above it was darker and the washed-out bank more nearly white than
reddish.
I now turned my attention to the land, and found occasion for fresh
surprise; for the vegetation resembled nothing I had ever seen or read
about. It was apparently tropical or at least sub-tropical -- a conclusion
borne out by the intense heat of the air. Sometimes I thought I could
trace strange analogies with the flora of my native land, fancying that
the well-known plants and shrubs might assume such forms under a radical
change of climate; but the gigantic and omnipresent palm trees were
plainly foreign. The house I had just left was very small -- hardly more
than a cottage -- but its material was evidently marble, and its
architecture was weird and composite, involving a quaint fusion of Western
and Eastern forms. At the corners were Corinthian columns, but the red
tile roof was like that of a Chinese pagoda. From the door inland there
stretched a path of singularly white sand, about four feet wide, and lined
on either side with stately palms and unidentifiable flowering shrubs and
plants. It lay toward the side of the promontory where the sea was blue
and the bank rather whitish. Down this path I felt impelled to flee, as if
pursued by some malignant spirit from the pounding ocean. At first it was
slightly uphill, then I reached a gentle crest. Behind me I saw the scene
I had left; the entire point with the cottage and the black water, with
the green sea on one side and the blue sea on the other, and a curse
unnamed and unnamable lowering over all. I never saw it again, and often
wonder.... After this last look I strode ahead and surveyed the inland
panorama before me.
The path, as I have intimated, ran along the right-hand shore as one went
inland. Ahead and to the left I now viewed a magnificent valley comprising
thousands of acres, and covered with a swaying growth of tropical grass
higher than my head. Almost at the limit of vision was a colossal palm
tree which seemed to fascinate and beckon me. By this time wonder and'
escape from the imperilled peninsula had largely dissipated my fear, but
as I paused and sank fatigued to the path, idiy digging with my hands into
the warm, whitish-golden sand, a new and acute sense of danger seized me.
Some terror in the swishing tall grass seemed added to that of the
diabolically pounding sea, and I started up crying aloud and disjointedly,
"Tiger? Tiger? Is it Tiger? Beast? Beast? Is it a Beast that I am afraid
of?" My mind wandered back to an ancient and classical story of tigers
which I had read; I strove to recall the author, but had difficulty. Then
in the midst of my fear I remembered that the tale was by Rudyard Kipling;
nor did the grotesqueness of deeming him an ancient author occur to me; I
wished for the volume containing this story, and had almost started back
toward the doomed cottage to procure it when my better sense and the lure
of the palm prevented me.
Whether or not I could have resisted the backward beckoning without the
counter-fascination of the vast palm tree, I do not know. This attraction
was now dominant, and I left the path and crawled on hands and knees down
the valley's slope despite my fear of the grass and of the serpents it
might contain. I resolved to fight for life and reason as long as possible
against all menaces of sea or land, though I sometimes feared defeat as
the maddening swish of the uncanny grasses joined the still audible and
irritating pounding of the distant breakers. I would frequently pause and
put my hands to my ears for relief, but could never quite shut out the
detestable sound. It was, as it seemed to me, only after ages that I
finally dragged myself to the beckoning palm tree and lay quiet beneath
its protecting shade.
There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the
opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to
recall and dare not seek to interpret. No sooner had I crawled beneath the
overhanging foliage of the palm, than there dropped from its branches a
young child of such beauty as I never beheld before. Though ragged and
dusty, this being bore the features of a faun or demigod, and seemed
almost to diffuse a radiance in the dense shadow of the tree. It smiled
and extended its hand, but before I could arise and speak I heard in the
upper air the exquisite melody of singing; notes high and low blent with a
sublime and ethereal harmoniousness. The sun had by this time sunk below
the horizon, and in the twilight I saw an aureole of lambent light
encircled the child's head. Then in a tone of silver it addressed me: "It
is the end. They have come down through the gloaming from the stars. Now
all is over, and beyond the Arinurian streams we shall dwell blissfully in
Teloe." As the child spoke, I beheld a soft radiance through the leaves of
the palm tree, and rising, greeted a pair whom I knew to be the chief
singers among those I had heard. A god and goddess they must have been,
for such beauty is not mortal; and they took my hands, saying, "Come,
child, you have heard the voices, and all is well. In Teloe beyond the
Milky Way and the Arinurian streams are cities all of amber and
chalcedony. And upon their domes of many facets glisten the images of
strange and beautiful stars. Under the ivory bridges of Teloe flow rivers
of liquid gold bearing pleasure-barges bound for blossomy Cytharion of the
Seven Suns. And in Teloe and Cytharion abide only youth, beauty, and
pleasure, nor are any sounds heard, save of laughter, song, and the lute.
Only the gods dwell in Teloe of the golden rivers, but among them shalt
thou dwell."
As I listened, enchanted, I suddenly became aware of a change in my
surroundings. The palm tree, so lately overshadowing my exhausted form,
was now some distance to my left and considerably below me. I was
obviously floating in the atmosphere; companioned not only by the strange
child and the radiant pair, but by a constantly increasing throng of
half-luminous, vine-crowned youths and maidens with wind-blown hair and
joyful countenance. We slowly ascended together, as if borne on a fragrant
breeze which blew not from the earth but from the golden nebulae, and the
child whispered in my ear that I must look always upward to the pathways
of light, and never backward to the sphere I had just left. The youths and
maidens now chanted mellifluous choriambics to the accompaniment of lutes,
and I felt enveloped in a peace and happiness more profound than any I had
in life imagined, when the intrusion of a single sound altered my destiny
and shattered my soul. Through the ravishing strains of the singers and
the lutanists, as if in mocking, daemoniac concord, throbbed from gulfs
below the damnable, the detestable pounding of that hideous ocean. As
those black breakers beat their message into my ears I forgot the words of
the child and looked back, down upon the doomed scene from which I thought
I had escaped.
Down through the aether I saw the accursed earth slowly turning, ever
turning, with angry and tempestuous seas gnawing at wild desolate shores
and dashing foam against the tottering towers of deserted cities. And
under a ghastly moon there gleamed sights I can never describe, sights I
can never forget; deserts of corpselike clay and jungles of ruin and
decadence where once stretched the populous plains and villages of my
native land, and maelstroms of frothing ocean where once rose the mighty
temples of my forefathers. Mound the northern pole steamed a morass of
noisome growths and miasmal vapours, hissing before the onslaught of the
ever-mounting waves that curled and fretted from the shuddering deep. Then
a rending report dave the night, and athwart the desert of deserts
appeared a smoking rift. Still the black ocean foamed and gnawed, eating
away the desert on either side as the rift in the center widened and
widened.
There was now no land left but the desert, and still the fuming ocean ate
and ate. All at once I thought even the pounding sea seemed afraid of
something, afraid of dark gods of the inner earth that are greater than
the evil god of waters, but even if it was it could not turn back; and the
desert had suffered too much from those nightmare waves to help them now.
So the ocean ate the last of the land and poured into the smoking gulf,
thereby giving up all it had ever conquered. From the new-flooded lands it
flowed again, uncovering death and decay; and from its ancient and
immemorial bed it trickled loathsomely, uncovering nighted secrets of the
years when Time was young and the gods unborn. Above the waves rose weedy
remembered spires. The moon laid pale lilies of light on dead London, and
Paris stood up from its damp grave to be sanctified with star-dust. Then
rose spires and monoliths that were weedy but not remembered; terrible
spires and monoliths of lands that men never knew were lands.
There was not any pounding now, but only the unearthly roaring and hissing
of waters tumbling into the rift. The smoke of that rift had changed to
steam, and almost hid the world as it grew denser and denser. It seared my
face and hands, and when I looked to see how it affected my companions I
found they had all disappeared. Then very suddenly it ended, and I knew no
more till I awaked upon a bed of convalescence. As the cloud of steam from
the Plutonic gulf finally concealed the entire surface from my sight, all
the firmament shrieked at a sudden agony of mad reverberations which shook
the trembling aether. In one delirious flash and burst it happened; one
blinding, deafening holocaust of fire, smoke, and thunder that dissolved
the wan moon as it sped outward to the void.
And when the smoke cleared away, and I sought to look upon the earth, I
beheld against the background of cold, humorous stars only the dying sun
and the pale mournful planets searching for their sister.
