What the Moon Brings

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips

Published: 1922
Categorie(s): Fiction, Short Stories
Source: http://en.wikisource.org

About Lovecraft:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of fantasy, horror
and science fiction. He is notable for blending elements of science fiction
and horror; and for popularizing "cosmic horror": the notion that some
concepts, entities or experiences are barely comprehensible to human
minds, and those who delve into such risk their sanity. Lovecraft has become a cult figure in the horror genre and is noted as creator of the
"Cthulhu Mythos," a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a
"pantheon" of nonhuman creatures, as well as the famed Necronomicon,
a grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works typically had a
tone of "cosmic pessimism," regarding mankind as insignificant and
powerless in the universe. Lovecraft's readership was limited during his
life, and his works, particularly early in his career, have been criticized as
occasionally ponderous, and for their uneven quality. Nevertheless,
Lovecrafts reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he
is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers
of the 20th Century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though often indirect. Source: Wikipedia

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.

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