Howard Philips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is known mostly for the work
published under his own name, but as with many prolific writers he
indulged in many collaborations. More, it seems, than have previously
been suspected.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again: that Cyclopean
house of no architecture known to man or to human imagination, with
vast aggregations of night-black masonry embodying monstrous
perversions of geometrical laws and attaining the most grotesque
extremes of sinister bizarrerie.
Mundane families are all alike; every cultist family is cultish in its
own way.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single scholar in
possession of an ancient tome, must be in want of a sacrifice. However
little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first
entering a university, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the
surrounding professors, that he is considered the rightful property of
some one or other of their deities.
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main
entrance the words “Central Arkham Hatchery and Conditioning Centre”
and, in a shield, the World State's Motto: “Iä, Cthulhu Fhthagn”.
The way I came to miss the end of the world—well, the end of the world
I had known for close on thirty years—was sheer accident: like a lot
of survival, when you come to think of it. In the nature of things a
good many somebodies are always in a mental hospital, and the law of
averages had picked on me to be one of them a week or so before. It
might just as easily have been the week before that—in which case I'd
not be writing now: I'd not be here at all. But chance played it not
only that I should be in a mental hospital at that particular time,
but that my conscious mind, and indeed my whole psyche, should be
drowned in drugs—and that's why I have to be grateful to whoever
orders these averages.
Cthulhu, light of my life, fire of my brain. My sin, my soul.
C-thul-hu: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the
palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. C. Thul. Hu.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead,
fleshless monstrosity.
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