H.P. Lovecraft. What the Moon Brings
What the Moon Brings
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 5 June 1922
Published May 1923 in The National Amateur, Vol. 45, No. 5, page 9
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.
It was in the spectral summer when the moon shone down on the old garden
where I wandered; the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas
of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams. And as I walked by
the shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow
light, as if those placid waters were drawn on in resistless currents to
strange oceans that are not in the world. Silent and sparkling, bright and
baleful, those moon-cursed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst from
the embowered banks white lotos-blossoms fluttered one by one in the
opiate night-wind and dropped despairingly into the stream, swirling away
horribly under the arched, carven bridge, and staring back with the
sinister resignation of calm, dead faces.
And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless feet
and maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the lure of the dead
faces, I saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for where by day
the walls were, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and paths,
flowers and shrubs, stone idols and pagodas, and bendings of the
yellow-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of
marble. And the lips of the dead lotos-faces whispered sadly, and bade me
follow, nor did I cease my steps till the stream became a river, and
joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and beaches of gleaming sand the
shore of a vast and nameless sea.
Upon that sea the hateful moon shone, and over its unvocal waves weird
perfumes breeded. And as I saw therein the lotos-faces vanish, I longed
for nets that I might capture them and learn from them the secrets which
the moon had brought upon the night. But when that moon went over to the
west and the still tide ebbed from the sullen shore, I saw in that light
old spires that the waves almost uncovered, and white columns gay with
festoons of green seaweed. And knowing that to this sunken place all the
dead had come, I trembled and did not wish again to speak with the
lotos-faces.
Yet when I saw afar out in the sea a black condor descend from the sky to
seek rest on a vast reef, I would fain have questioned him, and asked him
of those whom I had known when they were alive. This I would have asked
him had he not been so far away, but he was very far, and could not be
seen at all when he drew nigh that gigantic reef.
So I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming the
spires, the towers, and the roofs of that dead, dripping city. And as I
watched, my nostrils tried to close against the perfume-conquering stench
of the world's dead; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten spot had
all the flesh of the churchyards gathered for puffy sea-worms to gnaw and
glut upon.
Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low, but the puffy worms of
the sea need no moon to feed by. And as I watched the ripples that told of
the writhing of worms beneath, I felt a new chill from afar out whither
the condor had flown, as if my flesh had caught a horror before my eyes
had seen it.
Nor had my flesh trembled without cause, for when I raised my eyes I saw
that the waters had ebbed very low, shewing much of the vast reef whose
rim I had seen before. And when I saw that the reef was but the black
basalt crown of a shocking eikon whose monstrous forehead now shown in the
dim moonlight and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below,
I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden face rise above the waters, and
lest the hidden eyes look at me after the slinking away of that leering
and treacherous yellow moon.
And to escape this relentless thing I plunged gladly and unhesitantly into
the stinking shallows where amidst weedy walls and sunken streets fat
sea-worms feast upon the world's dead.
