The Image in Ice

(Fragment I)

Feb. 4th, 1936 b.c.e.

Tuesday

I remember it like a yesterday

brought around today

to be forgotten and lost tomorrow;

a day where I could be ahead

just for once.

The game is afoot…

⚶

The year was 1936,

is 1936,

and the expedition seemed lost,

yet our dear Captain Scott Alders assured us

that it was all part of the plan:

locate the legendary Kingdom of R’lyeh.

A place of myth by all accounts,

forgotten by all of history,

except for those dreamers

and those mad enough to dream.

“It’s quite simple,”

he told us in the days before we departed,

“for one does not find a lost empire by looking,

but rather, in getting lost,

the empire comes to them.”

I should have known

that this was a bad idea

the moment his words graced my ears,

but his coin was good,

and, let’s be honest here,

I had nothing else to do

in this dying town;

the people were too blind to see it,

but a shadow was coming,

and I wanted no part of it.

But that shadow,

that storm cloud upon the horizon of my life,

it was my destiny,

my fate —

I just didn’t know it at the time.

Maybe I should start

from the start,

begin this from the birth

and not the predicament

that is before us.

As I said, the captain,

well, he was a strange one,

but that’s never turned

a coin chaser away,

especially if it meant

going out to sea.

The sea, the sea,

O – we’ve been all around the world,

but the sea has always had

a hypnotic blue spell

cast over all of humanity,

must like the blue skies

are cast above us.

No matter how much land we explore,

the seas offer far more

then can be imagined,

or more precisely,

want to imagine.

The sea covered up the lands,

hid secrets not meant for mortals,

hid the secrets of the gods

from the gods themselves

for they, too,

did not dare learn the truths

of creation.

⚶

It was late December

as I recall, when the proposal

first fell onto my lap,

and Fortune teased a fortune

before me.

That old captain,

he had enough charisma

to take down entire empires

with a single smile,

but I must admit something here:

there was an air about him,

something just beneath the surface,

just beneath his breath,

in-between breathing and not breathing;

a kind of mystery

that wasn’t like an unsolved puzzle

or heinous crime,

but rather of something more,

something old and ancient,

but presently new and eternal;

a clandestine spirit

from worlds that no longer exist

here in the New World,

let alone elsewhere in the Old World,

yet here he was,

standing upon the docks

with his mighty beard

and massive coat,

a cliffside of determination

and pure will,

and just enough madness to pursue the ideas

that danced within his head —

this man has seen many things

that are of myth and legend,

and he knew them to be true.

But, as I said,

his coin was good,

and his charm paid the admission.

⚶

After a few days of planning and preparation,

the crew having been assembled

and assigned,

the captain gave everyone on board

one final chance to back out:

“This may be

the final time you see land

for a very long time,”

he proclaimed both proudly

and hauntingly;

like a foreboding darkness

upon the water’s edge

which had been hiding

upon the thin line of the horizon.

“This is your last chance

to give in to your impulses

and to remain with the familiar.”

His gaze glossed over the twenty men,

including myself,

and the three women:

curious additions, yet not one soul

seemed to have had an objection towards;

and two sea dogs,

mutts really,

abandoned and strayed,

yet seemed healthy enough for the journey.

It was at this time,

while the captain gave his speech,

that I stared at the strays,

Laika and Vanya we had named them,

that I began to wonder

if I should have taken the captain’s exit

and remained on land,

and those familiar shores

of knowing.

⚶

(Fragment II)

Feb. 6th, 1936 b.c.e.

Thursday

Our fateful voyage,

if you could call it that,

at the time there was very little faith

and one could say

that things weren’t exactly full,

or that fate was anywhere to be seen,

departed in mid-January.

Many of us questioned why

we had to depart in the midst

of winter,

but the captain —

O captain, our captain,

simply said that what we seek

was found easiest

during the harshest of conditions.

None of us really knew what he meant.

If only we knew now what we had then.

If only I knew now,

well, then maybe I wouldn’t be alone.

The seas were calm when we set sail,

the skies a vibrant blue

and the winds in our favor.

Despite being the middle

of the middle of winter,

the sun felt warm,

soothing,

comforting even.

The first few days of the second week

were as perfect

as any sea lover could wish for:

calm, smooth, lively, and boundless.

It was like a dream,

but like all dreams,

one must wake up eventually.

This would all change on the thirteenth day.

Our lookout spotted a storm

on the distant horizon,

a queer thing indeed,

not because the storm came as a surprise,

but for what the storm

was not: turbulent.

The waters remained tranquil,

even as the clouds passed us

overhead.

Lightning flashed,

yet no thunder could be heard.

Flash after flash,

but only the gently lapping

of the water against the ship’s hull

could be detected.

It didn’t take long

before everyone was on deck,

taking in this terribly

awe-filled phenomenon.

Still, the lightning flashed;

still, the thunder remained mute;

still, the waters lapped away;

still, we stood in the sounds of silence.

“Well, will you look at that,”

the captain bellowed behind us

followed by a horrific crack of thunder

which clapped through the air;

followed then by a hellish downpour

and boiling waves.

Needless to say,

we all jumped in fright

at the sudden calamity

which had made itself known.

Dumbfounded we all stood,

until the captain barked,

and snapped us out

of the hex we had been under.

“What are you all

just standing around for –

don’t you know there’s a storm upon us!?”

Another flash,

another crash,

and we all scattered to our stations.

⚶

Hours passed in this tempest,

though it never really roughed us up,

merely inconvenienced us.

Occasionally a wave would break

and crash up onto the main deck,

leaving those there in a torrent

of seawater and brine.

As I looked out upon our course,

I could swear I could see the

waters guiding us, leading us,

through this disturbance.

The unusual nature of the tempest

tossed about in the back of my mind,

but my task at hand

kept me well enough occupied.

After another hour,

the lookout up in the crow’s nest

rang out something every seaman dreads:

-FOG-.

The clouds above us

were one thing,

but having that white,

tangible darkness upon the water

brought down more fear

then the rain, which the clouds

continued to unload upon us.

The helmsman immediately moved

to evade the treacherous terrestrial clouds,

but Captain Scott Alders placed his heavy hand

upon the young man’s shoulder

and shook his head.

“Steady as she goes, helmsman,”

was all the captain said.

His voice was as grave and determined as ever.

The ship continued to wedge its way

through the seas

and soon pierced the dreadful fog,

before being swallowed up

and disappearing entirely

off the surface of the globe

that

was

our

⚶

(Fragment III)

Feb. 12th, 1936 b.c.e.

Wednesday

Days have gone by,

and we are still lost in this fog.

We can hear that tempest

thundering abound here and there,

but it cannot reach us.

This fog, it’s surreal;

unreal; liquid,

almost organic.

It sways and moves

like the grass of a hilltop

or the endless golden fields of wheat,

yet it parts away from our ship,

before we come into contact with it.

Above us,

though no one could really tell

how high;

in fact, all sense of direction,

of depth,

had been rendered lame

by this cloak of visible shadow;

thunder clapped

and lightning flashed,

though both were muted;

by distance or by the fog,

no one could say for certain.

Even the waters beneath us

was a queer mockery

of its former self.

The bow of our ship

never broke the surface;

no white-tipped ripples and waves;

no lapping sounds;

no movement beyond our own;

the ship simply glided

along the surface,

like an icicle

across the surface of a frozen lake.

⚶

When we departed,

the captain had us sail east

for some time,

then, in the middle of the night,

he awoke the helmsman,

along with myself

and a few others,

and told us to turn the ship north,

then due west for an hour,

north again,

and finally south after four total hours.

He would have us repeat this maneuver

for three days,

at the same dark hours

of the early morning.

On the last day,

we stayed south,

always south with the great sea

always beyond us.

Soon afterward we would encounter

this wretched mist.

⚶

It happened while most of us

were fast asleep.

Two lookouts were assigned

in three hour shifts:

one bow,

one aft;

both patrolling the port and starboard

sides of the ship.

Fritz Harkness, a deckhand,

and Ned Andrews, a cook;

they were the two assigned to the lookout

around 3 o’clock in the morning;

that dreadfully cursed hour;

the hour that demons come out to frolic;

the hour in which Hell was brought forth

and spilled unto Creation;

the hour of doomed despair.

Andrews heard it first,

said it was like someone

noisily slurping pasta,

only amplified a hundred times.

Said he heard it

coming from the aft side.

He called out for Harkness

but heard nothing in response.

He tried again but to no avail.

So on the sound continued,

annoyingly, disruptively,

disgustingly.

Just as he rounded the final corner

of the ship

and onto the aft walkway,

Andrews claimed he heard

a muffled scream

that was suddenly,

sickeningly cut short

as he raised his lantern

and beheld the tortured

and twisted remains of Harkness,

wrapped in oily appendages,

all convulsing and squirming;

some of which, Andrews claimed,

violated the poor form of Harkness,

inserting themselves

into various openings

and orifices,

contorting the deckhand’s body from within.

Andrews claimed

that he froze in sheer terror;

that his voice couldn’t come to any fruition.

He blinked,

and the twisted display

manipulated the deckhand’s body,

sundering it, cleaving it from within,

before reforming itself

into a distorted braid

of horrific inhumanity.

Andrews said he blinked again,

and everything went black.

When he blinked once more,

he found himself surrounded by the crew;

the monstrosity of Harkness, gone,

leaving behind nothing,

save for the babbling mess

that he was now.

⚶

The ship was searched;

Harkness could not be found.

Andrews has been kept in his quarters.

⚶

Andrews is DEAD.

Shot himself in the face.

⚶

What

the

hell

going

here

⚶

(Fragment IV)

Feb. 15th, 1936 b.c.e.

Saturday

This damned fog is still here.

Benignly menacing.

A horrific memory lost

in the corners of amnesia.

It’s strange to think that something

like fog, or mist,

could feel so heavy on the eyes;

so burdensome to the mind and soul;

clouds upon the surface of the earth

weighing down all who lay eyes

upon its tangible darkness.

All it does is impede our vision,

but clearly not our quest,

our journey —

our destination,

or maybe our fate.

There hasn’t been much talk

among the crew

since the incident involving Andrews

and Harkness.

Who could blame them really?

Whether a moment of madness,

of poor judgment,

of something else,

or just plain boredom –

none of it made sense.

No answers have come forth,

only questions.

Even our dear captain

had been shuddered into silence;

his charisma all, but drained

in this sea of white

and grey;

a messy and bleak environment,

it’s almost as if we were traveling

through the stony bedrock of the Earth,

or better yet,

through a cliff of ice

of unimaginable size

and age…

It’s absolutely terrifying in scope alone.

No one really understands the world

in which we live

until we take the time to examine it closely,

in those fragmented details,

those motes of knowledge

where we come to realize that we are less than nothing,

less than oblivion when compared

to the whole of it all.

Who are we to question anything?

⚶

The captain came to my quarters

after we all had lunch.

He told me that my idea for the patrols,

keeping everyone in pairs

and never alone,

had boosted the ship’s morale,

but something in his eyes,

in the corners of his mouth,

told me that he knew

it wouldn’t last for long.

It crept in like a patient vine,

weaving its way through the cracks

and crevices of time.

Unmistakable, yet easily missed:

something had wormed its way

into the minds of all of us.

We talked for some time,

discussing our current stock

of food and supplies,

until we came down to the item

I wanted to discuss the most.

‘Captain,’ I began,

‘We have been at sea for nearly a month,

and in this accursed fog

for the better portion of that time.

Tell me, honestly,

as one man to another:

Are we lost?‘

The captain leaned back in his chair,

placed his hands together,

interlocking his sausage-like fingers

across his barrel stomach,

and stared at me.

His massive beard

ebbed and flowed

with his steady breathing,

like the rise

and

fall

of a glacial tide.

But his eyes —

his eyes pierced the veils within me

that I didn’t even know

I had;

he just stared and stared,

until it felt like

it wasn’t even me he was looking at;

nor the bookshelf behind me;

nor the wall behind it,

or the upper decks and storage crates;

nor the clouds and fog,

but something far off

in the distance,

something he had seen

and has always seen;

something that has been there

long before we departed,

the destination and reason,

and purpose,

for this expedition.

Constant.

Infinite.

Eternal.

Unending.

Unyielding.

Inevitable.

So lost was I in his trance

that when he did answer me,

I gave a start of fright;

a small one, mind you,

yet I was still scared.

‘We are exactly where

we need to be,

my good lad.

Do not worry, I would never

lead a fine crew like this

astray,

especially no so far away

from home.’

I wanted to believe him;

I wanted to be

reassured,

yet something gnawed at me;

something screamed and bellowed

that not everything

was as it seems;

that something dreadful

was just waiting

upon the horizon,

upon the edge of the coming unknown,

something unspoken,

wordless,

speechless,

unspeakable.

There, just beyond tomorrow,

just beyond the coming tide,

was that thing of fate,

of destiny —

and when we finally get there,

it’ll all be too late.

⚶

(Fragment V)

Feb. 18th, 1936 b.c.e.

Tuesday

By the heavens,

the accursed fog finally broke,

but broke into what?

I had, in all my life,

never dreamed of such a sight.

Our clocks told us that

it was 11:34 in the morning,

yet the sky was as clear and dark

as the deepest of nights.

A perpetual blackness covered our sights

and yet the air was as invisible

as the hand of God.

The stars all hung above us,

like pinpricks within a black sheet,

yet no one could identify

any constellations;

Abner Peabodie, our doctor,

even claimed that he

saw the whole sky shift,

like the body of some vast, infinitely coiled,

celestial serpent;

a dragon made of stars;

or maybe more accurately,

a pool of oil spilled across the sky,

black as pitch and as mysterious as the unknowns it held.

We all checked, rechecked, and checked once again

all of our instruments,

tried to find where on our maps

we could have traveled to;

looking, searching, longing frantically

for some kind of sign,

some kind of landmark of familiarity,

but to no avail.

We were utterly lost in an environment we all knew

yet knew nothing about it.

The stark contrast from one’s home in the day

and in the middle of the night.

While no one would speak of it,

a slithery and oppressive fear

crawled into our veins that day.

Something rather unspeakable, but we all knew

we had it.

It wasn’t until one of the deckhand,

Joseph McClint I believe,

pointed out that the sun was rising

upon the horizon,

and that our clocks were indeed correct,

yet this did not comfort

the discomforting and bellowing

u n e a s i n e s s

which lay before us.

There, cradling the horizon,

was indeed the sun,

or I should say, a sun,

for it was not like the sun

we all knew

and loved in our memories,

no, this was an alien sun,

a wretched sun,

an ancient sun

not meant for the eyes of mortal

men and women –

this sun was distraughtfully beautiful.

A near-perfect sphere of white light,

purer than the most virginal snowfalls;

a sun which did not offer the warmth

of a summer day

but rather the chill

of the most frigid of winters;

smooth and sharp along its unending

edge,

like a circular blade,

steely, serrated,

sawing the horizon in half,

dissecting the heavens from the Earth;

the skies from the seas;

a horrific orb of purity,

nestled between a sea of ink

and a sky of unending night.

It sliced through the cosmos

with careless glee and ease

O – how I wish McClint

had not ment ioned that sun;

we were alre ady frightened,

now we w ere desperate,

crazed, sava ge, uncontrolled.

One man, Jaco bson, or Jackson,

I don’t quite recall,

screamed in madness

and ran towards the starboard side,

tossing him self overboard.

By the time the crew members made it

to where he was,

he was nowhere to be seen.

We all looked down into the midnight waters,

hoping to rescue him,

but there was not a single sign;

not even the disturbance

of white seafoam

to mark his disappearance;

he simply disappeared,

swallowed whole by maw

of the unknown depths which surrounded us.

Is this what the pagans meant by

“As above,

so below“?

To be honest,

I don’t even remember hearing

the poor man’s body

hitting the water;

just the scream,

followed by silence —

a soul-shattering silence.

⚶

The wind, it seemed,

was still in our sails,

but no wind could be felt,

heard, or sensed in any other fashion.

In fact, you could almost say

that if it weren’t for our sails,

no one would really know that

there was even wind at all,

or that we were still traveling for that matter.

⚶

Later that evening,

at least according to our clocks,

not much had changed in the sky

besides the position of the stars;

that setting sun

which now rested at our bow,

remained unchanged:

half sinking, half rising –

always unblinking,

like the eye of a fish,

or that of a man frightened to death;

frozen in terror and solitude.

This journey,

if it hadn’t already formed cracks

within our resolve,

has already begun to break us down

physically.

Mentally –

well, that’s another case altogether.

By the gods,

what fresh hell has the captain

chosen to take us to?

Towards the sun we continued to sail;

towards the sun we continued to go;

towards the sun we continued to descend

into a madness

that was more incomprehensible

then the last…

⚶

(Fragment VI)

Feb. 21st, 1936 b.c.e.

Friday

Like watching a beautiful sunset…

at noon.

In any other situation,

that line may come around

as profou ndly poetic,

the impossibility of such a thing

to describe the beauty and love

of someone else,

but this is not that situation;

there is nothing beautiful,

or poetic for that matter,

in the eternal sunset, we trekked towards.

That looming eye before us

with its cosmic black iris

and terrifyingly sublime white pupil;

who knew that such a simple contrast

upon something we all know

could instill such a blatant rape

upon all of nature?

Truly, this place we were in

was not created

by any of the gods we know about;

this place was formed

by the will of beings

that was outside of what we consider

to be gods,

there is no other way to put it.

⚶

must

confess

something:

have

not

been

able

sleep

much

during

this

whole

endeavor;

long

before

encountered

the

tempest

fog;

long

before

even

set

sail;

long

before

even

met

the

illustrious

Captain

Scott.

It’s

not

didn’t

want

sleep,

couldn’t

sleep,

no —

rather

feared

sleep,

for

when

slept,

dreamt,

and

when

dreamt,

O —

how

beheld

visions

nightmares

and

memories

that

was

clearly

not

own;

images

and

events;

fanciful

imaginings

long-dormant

truths —

couldn’t

tell

the

difference

anymore.

Truth

is,

joined

Captain

Scott

his

voyage

because

thought

could

escape

the

dreams

which

haunted

me.

Clearly,

have

never

been

wrong.

⚶

Even out here,

wherever HERE may be,

my dreams find me,

wherein this place,

that nothing else can be found,

they claim ownership

to the vessel that is my mind.

I had chosen not to speak

about my dreams out of fear,

but now, under these circumstances,

I doubt that such a thing

would even matter.

It always begins the same way:

I am briefly falling,

for maybe a moment or two,

before landing upon a flight of stairs,

as if I had just jumped or leaped

from the floor above.

I could barely make out the steps

themselves,

steeped in an ashen hue

of some sort of obsidian stone,

yet rather than the shiny sheen

common with the material,

it was muted, dull, worn away –

ancient…

The stairs go on above me

until they fade beyond my sight

and into the darkness

from which I came from;

the stairs go on below me

until they disappear beyond my vision

and into the shadows

from which I was borne from.

They simply went on eternally,

rising like the skies above

and sinking like an unfavorable truth.

Obviously, these stairs were part

of a structure or housing

of some kind, yet

I could see no other construct

to indicate such a reason or belief

as to why it should be.

Here in this darkness,

lay a flight of stairs

which went everywhere

and nowHERE all at once

was now HERE.

In my dream,

I always find myself doing

one of two things:

walking up,

or w

It doesn’t really matter which

I choose,

they both seem to lead

to the same conclusion

as far as I can tell;

the urge to explore such a thing

is not on my agenda,

and I pray to the gods

that it may never be.

I would walk for what seemed like hours,

passing hundreds of identical,

yet vastly different ashen steps,

leading to and away from myself;

and always, this feeling,

an ancient hollowness

of eons before time,

gnawed upon the back of my mind;

innumerable eyes watching from afar,

the very steps I took,

patiently waiting for the right moment

to make themselves known.

Suddenly, a rat-like creature,

the size of a dog would appear,

yet so far removed from either

of those Earthly beings;

its head was clean of any hair or fur,

and was shaped like a cuttlefish,

tentacle-like appendages and all,

and yet it had dozens of irregular

and asymmetrical eyes on either side

of its face,

as if the creator of such a thing

plastered lily pods upon their skulls,

using the holes for sockets,

and filled them with vile and alien eyes,

ones that were definitely not of this world.

Its body resembled the skin

that is most often associated

with the mummified remains

of ancient Xenos,

yet held a moist, almost oily nature

about it.

The strange creature also possessed a pair

of wings, which wrapped tightly

around its bloated belly,

not unlike those found

on common bats;

all of which concluded with a tail

that I could swear

was made up of the twisted entrails

of some other poor being.

As I focused upon this monstrosity,

I suddenly found myself surrounded

by these queer and ghastly creatures

of Eldritch machinations;

and yet they don’t seem to notice me;

they sniff the air;

they sniff one another,

peacefully going about in their nothingness

within this nothingness,

lost in the empty blackness

of an ink-stained name that is this room.

Then, without warning,

a wail of an echo

blasted through the murmurs of eternity

raced through the void,

sending the chimera abominations

into a wild frenzy;

squealing, shrieking,

clawing, biting, and tearing at one another;

tearing at themselves;

tearing at the stairs –

it was at this moment

that I knew I would surely die:

eaten alive, torn to shreds,

by these rejects of creation.

Their vocalizations seemed to be echoed;

or maybe answered,

or maybe they were the ones answering;

to the howling calamity,

the unsane noise from the void;

the lamentations of countless souls

sang through the pipes of hell

led by a piper of worlds far beyond

our meager understandings and imaginings.

This call

and answer

and call

and answer

and call

and the answer would go on and on

and on

and on,

until finally, mercifully, it would reach

its terrific and unholy apex;

a maddening note of auditory insanity

not meant for human ears.

My own voice soon joined

the catastrophic cacophony of a choir around me,

but not before an unknown force

wrapped itself around me

like a giant hand;

a sudden deathly cold

would descend upon my body,

forcing my eyes to shut

and my heart to freeze between beats,

nullifying everything within my senses,

only to allow a whispered bellow

from across the endlessly vast cosmos:

AZatHoTh WAkeS…

It is there that I would spring up

from my slumber,

drenched in the sweat

of a dozen people.

Always the same ending,

only this last occurrence,

that dreaded name, “AZATHOTH“

was carved into my arm,

and all about my quarters

lay a queer symbol,

drawn on various pieces of paper,

surfaces,

tables,

walls;

a symbol that resembled

the two-winged letter ‘V’s on top of one another,

and a straight vertical line at the top….

⚶

(Fragment VII)

Feb. 32nd(?), 1936 b.c.e.

Tuesday?

February 32nd?

What

the

hell?

⚶

We all went to sleep,

and everyone awoke

sensing that it was several days later.

The nightly patrols felt no ill change,

except as soon as they awoke,

they felt like the rest of us;

when one asked for the time,

we all, in a cultish unison,

replied “February 32nd.“

As queer as the occurrence was,

no one felt as it if was wrong,

though clearly, something was not right.

The unblinking sun remained at our bow;

the inky waters flowed beneath us

like the ichorous blood it always was;

the sky was filled with diamonds,

shining with a dreadful brilliance.

We tried our best to keep our wits together,

and for the most part, we succeeded,

occupying ourselves with mundane tasks,

cleaning, checking, and rechecking our supplies,

maintaining our equipment,

and so on and so forth.

It was during one of these check-ups,

that a middle-aged man by the name of

Flint Stevenstone, noticed

that none of the food in our storage rooms

had actually been touched

since our departure.

Not a single crate had been opened,

or a barrel of wine

relieved of its contents.

When the captain, myself, and several others

went

down

investigate,

found

that

Stevenstone

had

been

speaking

the

truth.

For

one

reason

another,

one

had

noticed,

bothered

realize,

that

one

onboard

the

ship

had

been

eating

even

had

the

bitter

bite

hunger

gnaw

their

bellies.

It was also during this time

that the two dogs we had brought along,

were found to be nowhere on board:

they simply vanished

without a trace or sound.

Even the food we had set aside

for the two animals

had disappeared.

Hungry, starving;

night, day;

awake, asleep;

dreaming, memories –

no one seemed to be able

to tell the difference anymore.

Yet our dear Captain Scott

held us together,

like so many coils of hemp rope

docking a ship to the shore;

the spell of who he was,

broke us through

even further on to his goal

and his objective,

and nobody objected

to the object of his desires,

for isn’t that why we joined

this outlandish journey?

⚶

Hours have passed,

I think.

No one can grant me

a concise answer,

yet no one seemed to care

about this at all.

⚶

All the clocks have disappeared.

Time no longer matters here.

If this is what it means

to be immortal,

then I’d rather die

a thousand times,

than suffer through this hell.

⚶

We’re fading with every passing day;

everyone feels like

they could be the next one;

should have been the last one,

whatever that all means.

Our eyes are filled with life,

yet there is nothing alive

behind them,

in fact there hasn’t been

any other forms of life

in this strange environment,

aside from ourselves.

The only other species we had known

evaporated into nothing some time ago.

This aqueous isolation;

this exile at sea

has begun to chip away

at all of our already weakened

mental armors,

leaving many to question

if we all had perished at sea long ago,

and this instead

was the fabled River Styx;

infinitely long and infinitely wide,

all leading through Limbo

and further down into the Underworld.

Yet something about this notion

just didn’t feel right.

Sure, odd ongoings have been happening,

but something deep down inside of me

felt like Death had not come for us,

yet…

⚶

Something happened to me,

something that only ever transpired

within the illogical and spellbound confines

of my dreams,

deep within the chambers of my mind.

That name, I spoke that name,

barely a whisper;

a whisper of a whisper,

not even the winds could detect

the delicate syllables as they left my lips,

those three sections of Eldritch linguistics,

seemingly forbidden by any mortal tongue,

the identification of a being so powerful,

that its name alone

rips the soul asunder;

cleaving reality into everything,

and everything else –

ÂʓąŦĦØţɧ…

As soon as the name was invoked,

everyone hated what they were doing,

looked towards the star spattered sky,

like a field of fleshy sunflowers,

and opened their mouths.

Nothing came at first.

Nothing came after.

But soon after,

a horrendous buzzing sound

erupted from the crew’s throats;

a noise like one would hear

from the tangled mess of electrical wires

you could see in cities like Riel

or Golan;

an uncomfortable monotony

of insect wings;

a hive the size of an island.

The continuous hum of static

went on for some time;

minutes or hours,

maybe even days,

I couldn’t really tell.

All I knew was that it eventually ceased,

with every mouth agape,

muttering that one name,

one statement,

from my countless dreams:

ÂʓąŦĦØţɧ ŵąʞèʅ…

⚶

(Fragment VIII)

March?

Sunday?

Maybe?

Some time has passed,

though I’m not sure how much.

We all sleep;

gaps in our memories form,

all as black and faded

like a bottomless well.

The captain has taken to spending

most of his time within his quarters,

only coming out from time to time

to issue some nonsensical command,

or bland motivational speech,

not that the crew,

or what remained of the crew,

really cared.

Though no one may be willing to admit it,

I think we’ve all come

to the same conclusion –

we are all damned.

⚶

The women have gone missing…

and so has all of the food.

⚶

What was it that Andrews had said?

“Blink,

and it all goes black;

v o i d,

nothing, filled with emptiness.

Blink again,

and it’s still black, yet somehow d a r k e r,

more sinister,

more ancient and eternally devoid

of everything.

Blink once more;

for a brief moment,

a lapse in unfathomable reasoning

takes place;

a place where logic and mayhem go to die;

here, it all returns to normal.

Blink a final time,

and it all returns

to the unfiltered horror

of the reality before you;

the inexplicable chaos

of organized madness.“

That was – is our destination,

what poor Andrews said

in one of his final rantings.

What he was saying

didn’t make any sense at all,

yet there isn’t a single doubt

in my heart, soul, and mind,

that what he said

was nothing, but the truth.

⚶

It’s not easy for those who died,

and it’s even harder for those who live;

for they are the ones left behind,

with memories for prisons.

⚶

I didn’t believe it at first,

the lookout up in the crow’s nest,

shouting madly about whales

off of the port bow.

Most of us simply assumed

that he had gone mad,

or madder,

compared to the rest of us,

and yet when we saw what he saw,

there was no doubt

that we had all gone mad:

off in the distance,

breaching out of the water,

were in fact whales,

the first signs of anything living

save for ourselves,

in this wretched land of endless oceans.

Whales, they were called,

but whales they clearly were not.

These creatures resembled

enormous oysters, shell-less globs

of ocean flesh,

some nearly the size of our own vessel,

breaking through the ink muck

of the sea below us.

We attempted to locate

any familiar anatomy

to these strange creatures,

but couldn’t even locate a mouth;

rather, they possessed dozens,

if not hundreds of suckers,

much like those found upon the arms

and tentacles of octopi and squids.

They littered the underbellies

of these pallid, eyeless beings;

some suckers were too small to see in detail

at our distance, while others

were clearly larger than a man in diameter.

One by one, the pod took turns

breaking out of the water,

before coming down in a marvelous spray

of sable water;

a stark contrast from their gelatinous

forms.

Alas, the festivities could not last.

Eventually, whatever had caused

the creatures to appear had gone away,

and with it, the whales went.

Graceful and peaceful they went;

terrifying and grotesque they were.

One thing is certain:

we are not alone here.

⚶

(Fragment IX)

April?

Something?

Some day?

I awoke with a sudden lurch,

there were various shoutings

saying that we had run aground,

or ran into something,

or something had run into us,

I couldn’t really tell at the time.

All that mattered

was that the ship was stuck.

The ground was dark,

black like tar,

yet held a slimy shine upon its surface;

mountains and cliffs rose up

from the ocean

at impossible angles

and dreadfully upsetting geometries.

There was no vegetation

that we could easily recognize,

just this endless sight

of barren ebon land,

which sat somewhere in the middle of an endlessly ebon sea,

beneath a stone sky

of infinite night.

The one thing that we all could be certain of

was the vile stench

which emanated from this weird land,

a stench that was not just of rot

and decay,

but rot and decay

that was hundreds,

thousands,

if not millions of years old;

something that had been long dead,

yet would just not die;

always decaying, decomposing,

breaking down only to be dredged up

from the deepest abyss

of the hells itself;

a smell of creation

before creation –

the afterbirth

of whatever came before

the gods.

⚶

The captain had been inside his cabin

since shortly after we made landfall.

He glanced at the ancient landscape

and sneered at it

as if it were some kind of mutt

that had just used his favorite chair

as a place to leave its mark.

“Tell the men to gather up

some supplies: torches,

rope, tents, and the like.

Don’t worry about the food,

it’s clear we won’t be needing any,“

he told me before staring back

at the eons-old terrain,

then, turning back in his quarters,

but not before issuing another statement.

“We are nearing our destination, lad.

Now would not be the time

to sow the seeds of doubt.”

He spoke firmly,

before closing the door behind himself,

effectively shutting out the rest of existence.

That was hours ago.

Strangely enough,

this new mountainous monument

had blocked our view

of that quizzical sun.

For the first time in a long time,

all we had was the veil of night

to cover our exploration.

⚶

While the captain was away,

I took it upon myself to gather up

several men and survey

the immediate area, to gain a foothold

as to where we were.

Three groups of five would set out,

traveling for twenty minutes

in one of three directions,

then returning with what they had found.

Basically, no one should be away

for more than an hour.

The first team back arrived

forty-five minutes after they left;

they had followed the coastline

to what would have been our East.

They claimed to have found

titanic skeletal remains,

not far from where we stood now;

skeletal structures which could

not only dwarf but engulf,

even the tallest spires of Riel.

The second team arrived a few minutes

later, saying they found the remains

of what may have been a town

or village carved right into an

enormous cliffside to our west.

There, they said to have heard noises

unlike anything else

any of them had ever experienced.

It wasn’t frightening, one of the men claimed,

yet elicited a sense of the unknown

just by the sheer alien

tones which they had received.

Soothing, yet unnerving;

familiar, yet distant;

haunting, yet so real.

The second team continued on

with all they had seen and heard

for quite some time.

So much so,

that no one had noticed

that the third team

was nearly forty minutes late.

Panic suddenly swept through the camp,

as we devised a plan,

a course of action to take,

yet before anything could be executed,

a lone member from the third team

was spotted:

disheveled and distraught,

he limped recklessly towards

where we had been settled.

A few men hurried out to meet the man,

and carried him back

to the relative safety

of the campfire

we had started.

The orange glow from the flames

danced along the lines of everyone’s faces

which gave everyone a disturbing visage,

like some kind of otherworldly

and savage warpaint smeared by conflict,

yet the first thing everyone noticed

was how pale this man’s skin was;

so white, that it was nearly transparent.

The second thing we noticed,

and this took a while longer to recognize,

but his eyes,

by the gods, his eyes

were not eyes:

they had become,

or been replaced,

by a set of polished black stones.

The poor soul kept rambling

about all sorts of mysterious things;

refusing to acknowledge,

let alone answer,

our inquiries into the other men,

what they had found,

or most importantly –

what happened.

He simply kept repeating

the same random glossolalia

of descriptions and words

which meant everything

and absolutely nothing at all

to the rest of us.

“The color, by the Light,

the color is alive;

no, no, no – so many eyes;

avoid the eyes – the ice!

The color lives in our ghosts;

the song hunts us,

it’ll find us;

look away – the ice!

Don’t stare at the eyes!

The color, it blinds all vision –

the color! The color!“

This went on

for nearly an hour.

I had nearly decided

to confine him to his quarters,

when he abruptly fell silent.

The only noise

was the gentle breeze

at our brows

and the softly lapping waters

from that accursed sea.

The tonal shift had been so great,

that everyone took a step away

the poor fellow.

He just sat on his legs

and stared out towards the mountains

he had gone to and returned from.

Then he spoke,

softly, as if speaking to a newborn,

“It’s here…“

He turned to face me,

dead in the eyes

with his stony mask of a face;

he opened his mouth

and unleashed a torrent of sound,

like an overwhelming swarm of hornets

accompanied by a monotonous

high pitched, steel on steel shriek.

Everyone covered their ears in fright,

but I was caught in the glare

of his endless song.

How I wish I hadn’t…

Something was creeping,

and creeping,

and waiting,

to be seen,

and felt,

and heard.

⚶

(Fragment X)

Eleven comes before twelve,

and by twelve they come…

I awoke some time ago.

I don’t know what happened,

I simply awoke face down

upon the ground as a light snow

(or maybe it’s ash?)

had begun to fall and carpeted the ground.

Everyone was gone, as far as I could tell,

save for that one man:

he was still where he was,

knelt on the ground,

hands and arms limp at his sides,

but from his shoulders,

I could see his head through the snowfall;

ruptured in

half at the jawline,

as if some unimaginable force

had ripped him asunder,

and maybe it had,

for from his exposed gullet

sprouted a monstrous and alien (creature?) plant.

Tendrils that resembled muscle and sinew

snaked skyward

as others crept along the ground,

twisting their way around his body

like so many ivy vines upon the walls

of the old academy in Riel.

At the pinnacle of this foreign haunt

of this mad biology,

sat a blooming plumage

of sickening purple petals

lined with human teeth,

whose surface resembled the rough flesh

of tongues.

This flower

appeared to be

no more than

a meter or two

in width,

but it still

beckoned

a terrible fear from deep inside of me;

as if this image in the falling snow

(ash?)

was not alien at all,

but rather something

much closer;

like a relative;

like kin;

like a sibling.

There were twelve petals in all,

all pointed their fang-like ends

out towards the horizon in every direction,

while a spiraling mass of sinewy vines

braided themselves into a spire aimed at the heavens;

like a beacon?

Like a shrine?

Like a memorial?

Like a culling.

I have been sitting here in the cold

for so long that I can barely feel my hands,

and yet all I can think to do

is staring longingly at this hellish abomination.

What had the captain brought us to?

This place,

this state of being,

this awakening none of us

ever wanted to have;

it is digging down into the last vestiges

of my sanity,

but I pray that I can keep those

locked away in the vaults of my mind

for just a little while longer.

⚶

The flower blinked!

⚶

All over its stem,

slits opened up,

revealing black obsidian eyes;

eyes that reflected what little light there still was;

eyes which I swear all looked at me,

and they blinked!

Black as the night around me,

yet these eyes were so bright,

so filled with an ebon illumination,

that they challenged the very laws

of light itself;

even the angels would shield themselves

from their dark brilliance.

Slowly at first,

then randomly from one another,

(erratically?)

flickering bats of eyelids,

like raindrops upon a lake,

until they all blinked at once.

The new-found horror of the thing

broke the paralysis of the previous horror

had over me,

as I leaped to my feet and ran.

What choice did I have?

(What choice do I have?)

I am alone here.

The

snow

crunched

beneath

boot,

yet

fluttered

back

into

the

night

air,

had

disturbed

sleeping

colony

butterflies.

Darkness

upon

darkness

was

all

that

could

see,

yet

ears

heard

songs

between

breaths;

hallowed

echoes

from

eons

past;

from

time

before

history,

when

all

was

not

now;

time

when

the

gods

were

still

young,

and

something

far,

far

older

ruled

over

creation,

unbridled

hunger,

which

sought

only

spread

its

all-consuming

nature.

Images and names flashed before me

in the shadows that I ran in

(or was it in my mind?);

names in tongues I dare not repeat;

sights so incomprehensible

that my mind refused to acknowledge them

with the privilege of memory.

The echoing reverberations

thundered through creation,

a singular essence so vastly beyond

all that had come before

and all that has yet to come –

an eater of gods.

On and on I ran,

and further still.

I prayed to be able to run forever,

just for the singular hope

that I may escape this wretched place,

but that was not to be.

It is here, I am certain,

in this accursed palace of unfavorable genesis,

where both space and time

formed dark alliances

with one another,

copulating in gross unions

which spawned children

that was never meant to be seen

by mortal eyes.

No, we are but monads

who cannot grasp

the vast schemes of greater things;

of ⨊ĻΔεŘ ŤɧiŊĝ₷;

motes upon the cogs of the machines

which brought forth the Universe itself.

The next thing I knew,

I was standing

upon the threshold

of an enormous gaping maw

of an icy cavern.

The wind howled like an Eldritch beast

between the frozen teeth

of the entrance.

A waiting predator

of epochs past.

Somewhere, deep within my soul,

a voice screamed in mute terror,

warning me that the air kills;

that the colors were alive,

sinister;

that the breath here was not of this world;

a breath that hunts and feeds,

only to hunger for more,

and yet it is merely a messenger

for something far more than it could ever be.

Before my fears could crystallize into action,

I entered the cavern

and allowed me to be swallowed whole,

for I knew that my salvation

lies within.

⚶

(Fragment XI)

April 25th, 1936 b.c.e.

Saturday

I have been wandering this cavern

for who knows how long.

I don’t sleep or eat,

so it could be a few hours

to a few days.

Not that it really matters.

All I know is that my dreams

have begun to creep out of my mind

and into my ears.

I can hear the song,

that dreaded hymn dedicated to IT

with that name I cannot mouth.

The ice within this cavern seems to be

in a constant state of melting

and freezing.

I can hear the droplets echoing

through all of the time.

Thunderous bombs of minuscule spheres

bombarding what remains of my senses.

I could scarcely imagine anything

being able to tolerate such racket,

but then again,

I am a stranger here.

⚶

I finally did it.

I can’t take it anymore!

I must rest.

I must make camp.

I must make a fire.

I must…

I must rest…

⚶

Hollow voices rang in my head

as I forced my eyes shut.

I covered my ears in an attempt

to cull the ethereal hauntings,

but it was all in vain.

How exactly does one silence the ghosts

inside of one’s own mind?

Maybe this was the sign

that I had truly gone mad;

the speaking evil;

the despicable drumming;

the terrible cosmic howl

which tore asunder

the stars themselves as it trekked

across the Universe.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling.

Drops of water dripped down upon my face

and everywhere else.

r D

i r D

p. o r D

p. i r D

p. o r

p. i

Such clamorous non-sense

from such benign sounds.

Dripping and

like the grains of sand in an hourglass.

I still

couldn’t shake

the image

of the

stalactites and stalagmites

f t t

o h e

r e e

m t

i h

of some enormous maw.

The moisture within,

acting like gruesome saliva,

did little to distract me from this.

The further I went,

the further I was

being consumed.

Slow, eternal digestion.

don’t

know

how

long

slept,

it’s not like it matters,

I had to keep moving,

for my own sanity’s sake.

At least that would give me body and mind

something to do.

The walls of the cavern were enormous,

more so than I had imagined before;

curling walls which turned over

and unto itself, almost like a pair of waves

frozen before crashing into one another.

Their height was dominating with age,

terrifying in its grandeur,

and yet beneath the slowly melting ice,

I found the patterns upon the stone

to be queerly organic.

I am admittedly no biologist,

but the patterns and shapes

were unmistakable:

muscle and sinew, tissue and flesh.

These were no mere fossils,

but rather the imprint of something

long forgotten;

the palimpsest of something incredibly old;

of a beast from eons past.

Down

the

portal

pestilence

continued

journey;

down

and

down

went,

until

realized

that

had

means

lighting

way.

must

have

left

lantern

back

makeshift

camp

some

time

ago.

It was then that I noticed the pale purple glow within the droplets and puddles of water. A soft, comforting light, and yet, there was a shade of something sinister within. It shimmered and vibrated within the puddles and pools of water, like any bacterium under a microscope. Such a strange and hypnotic dance; I felt like I couldn’t escape…

No —

that’s not entirely true:

I didn’t WANT to escape.

I just wanted to lay down

in that mysterious water and let the light

wash all over me,

into me, through me;

I wanted it to flow through my veins.

For the first time in a long time,

I felt safe within that color.

⁂⁛⁙⁑⁕⁕⁎⁕⁖⁘⁎⁝⁙⁑⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁎⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁕⁂⁕⁂⁖⁘⁎⁝⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁑⁕⁕⁎⁕⁖⁘⁎⁝⁙⁑⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁑⁕⁕⁎⁕⁖⁘⁎⁝⁙⁑⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁎⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁕⁂⁕⁂⁖⁘⁎⁝⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁑⁕⁕⁎⁕⁖⁘⁎⁝⁙⁑⁕⁎⁂⁛⁙⁙⁖⁘⁎⁝⁙⁕⁂⁛⁙⁎⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁕⁂⁕⁂⁖⁘⁎⁝⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁑⁕⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁎⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁛⁕⁂⁕⁂⁖⁘⁎⁝⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁑⁕⁕⁎⁕⁖⁘⁎⁝⁙⁑⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁎⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁛⁕⁂⁕⁂⁖⁘⁎⁝⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁝⁙⁑⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁎⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁕⁂⁕⁂⁖⁘⁎⁝⁕⁂⁕⁂⁛⁙⁑⁕⁕⁎⁕⁖⁂⁛⁙⁎⁂⁛⁙⁂⁕⁕⁎⁂⁕⁂⁛⁕⁂⁕⁂⁖⁘⁎⁝⁕⁂⁕⁂

Yet this was not to be.

For one unknown reason or another,

I snapped out of my enchantment

to find multiple tendrils of purple light

eerily wrapped around my body,

several of which had begun to violate

my being in indescribable perversions.

I threw my arms around

like a flailing fish flying through the air;

thrashing here and there,

all the while shouting at the top

of my lungs.

I turned back and stared

at the pools of purple.

Those appendages of light,

of violent violets reaching out to violate

anything that fell within their grasps.

I found myself enthralled once more

by the macabre dance,

yet this time I knew I had to break free.

THE COLOR IS ALIVE…

AVOID THE EYES — THE ICE!

DON’T STARE AT THE EYES (ICE)!

I blinked.

I focused.

I feared

what I would see.

The tendrils of purple pulsed

their

monstrous

movements

as dark sable eyes

floated within

their ludicrous

liquid limbs.

Is this

what the ill-fated sortie

had encountered?

Is this entity

the very thing

that mad-man

had tried to tell us about?

Gods

shield

from

the

fate

which

had

claimed

the

others.

The eyes — the ice;

it’s

all

beginning

make

sense

now,

save

for

the

reason,

all

had

come

here

the

first

place.

I ran

as fast

as I

could

away from

the living light

and pursued

the unknown goal

of my salvation

further down in the cavern.

There, at the center of it all,

I knew the answer to all of my trouble,

all of my hardships and woes would be eased, for until then, I would not be surviving; I would not be living; until I reach the end of all of this, what I am merely doing

is waiting to die….

⚶

(Fragment XII)

May 1st, 1936 b.c.e.

Friday

May the first be with me…

⚶

Ħow did I survive?

I don’t know.

Did I really survive?

Was my will to live

simply that great?

I have to return home.

Is this really surviving?

⚶

⩔oices chased me through the tunnels,

ethereal and disembodied voices

echoing dissonance and nonsense

upon all of my senses, through every fiber

of my being;

I could feel the ancient eldritch tones

crawling upon the symbols I had carved

into my own flesh;

when that had happened?

I don’t know anymore.

How did I survive?

How did I survive?

How did I survive?

Ŧhe shadows danced along the cavern walls

at strange and impossible angles,

all of which held an aura of that putrid purple;

that same cursed light

which had sought to extinguish my own.

My skin shrivels at the mere thought

of what it would have done to my body

had I not broken free of its spell.

On and on I went,

deeper and deeper into the stony abyss

I walked, not knowing where I was going

and yet somehow knew

where I needed to go all along.

The shadows continued to dance,

even tempting my own to join them,

yet never quite reaching;

always just out of touch.

The otherworldly songs of electricity

sang through the cracks

as the droplets of melting ice

bombarded the ground on which I tread.

Ŧhe voices of my crewmates still wandered the halls

of my memory

as my dreams slowly began

to infect my reality.

The sadistic symphony played on and on

with its outrageous opera

even as I felt my eyes bulge

from their sockets

and my brain sought to escape its ossified cage.

And then it all went quiet.

Even the shadows stood still.

The melting ice had stopped dripping it droplets;

only the sound own my own spastic breaths

could be heard.

All else had been cut short.

İ stared forward into the darkness.

I stared forward into the unknown.

I blinked;

nothing changed.

I blinked again;

that dreaded symbol

hung in the air and burned

with the fury of a thousand suns.

I blinked once more;

everything returned

as it was before.

I blinked a final time;

a stairwell of ebon stone

appeared before my feet,

descending deeper into the dark;

deeper into the abyss

and further towards my salvation.

I blinked a few more times,

and it wouldn’t go away.

ŋothing was real

save for that staircase;

those sable steps to Styx.

Ħave my dreams come true?

İ turned around and found myself cut off.

The entrance from which I came

had disappeared and I found myself alone

in an empty chamber without an exit,

except for that hole in the floor

which called out to something

buried deep within my essence,

something that has laid patiently dormant…

until now.

And so down I went.

ɱy footfalls echoed through the emptiness

of the hollow.

Somewhere, elsewhere,

I could hear a liquid dripping

from an unknown height.

Maybe it was the melting ice;

maybe it was something else entirely.

I also heard what sounded like

bare bones

which dragged along a stony surface

through a path of dried leaves,

and with it, an accompanying tapping

and a torturously long howl which reverberated

from nowhere and went nowhere;

just one long voice of anguish in a sustained note,

unrelenting and unending.

Ąn hour of descending passed,

possibly more;

I swear I could peer into

the vast infinite of the cosmos

within that shadowed realm;

witnessed congregations of stars

on scales both unimaginable and indescribable.

And then I beheld a great being,

a deity as far removed from all that we know

as the gods themselves are from us.

Maws which swallowed entire stars,

sometimes dozens at a time, with ease;

tendrils and appendages which squirmed

and quivered, tearing at the very fabric of reality,

as an innumerable landscape of eyes

gazed intently into the finite past

and hungrily at the infinite and undetermined future;

eyes which stared directly at me;

eyes which told me who this being was,

the name which I cannot say

and yet spoke anyway – – – – –

ąʑĀŦɦøʇĦ.

Ŧhe name slithered from my throat

and passed my lips;

the moment it was free of my tongue,

the beast before me bellowed

as the entire chamber shook.

Massive cracks appeared

within the single-width staircase,

and soon it collapsed

and I fell into the darkness.

I fell and fell and fell,

fell for so long that I wondered

if I was still falling,

or was I f l o a t i n g,

Everything was in motion,

but nothing appeared to move.

Rotating debris of stone

hung in the suspension of nothingness.

Suddenly it all stopped

and I came to a landing

that was slow and gentle;

a landing that was like taking another step.

The darkness receded from my sight

as an unmistakable purple glow

shone through yet another chamber,

except this one was made entirely of that insidious ice.

The walls were smooth, nearly glass-like,

and all curled upwards

like the inside of a bubble

frozen mid-burst,

or the impact of a meteor

upon striking a body of water.

Ąnd there,

across from where I stood,

was a wall of immeasurable ice,

thick and ancient like nothing I ever hoped to see;

eternal and so dreadfully immortal;

so terrifyingly old in age,

horrific in grandeur;

glimmering and shifting

with time trapped within

and everything else trapped within time.

All of this flooded my mind

and I knew right then and there,

that this place was from a time

before time was born into existence.

İ stared at that frozen wall,

stared at the distorted reflection of myself,

the image in ice, shrouded in that vexing purple,

and as I approached my own apparition,

a picture began to form;

silhouettes took shape.

then there were many.

Details began to emerge from the cold sheet,

coming to the surface

as if they were being uncovered from the earth

like fossils in stone.

Details focused;

details sharpened;

details revealed the secrets of the silhouettes:

it was the crew of the ship,

mutilated and recombined,

bodies melted, twisted, molded, and reshaped

into chaotic combinations

of what they once were,

front and center of it all,

was that unfathomable bastard,

Captain Scott.

ŋothing about him seemed to have been changed,

save for the tree-like appearance of his hands.

Every expression held the last expression

they made,

the face of absolute terror

at what had done this to them –

except for captain Scott.

His eyes and his eyes alone

stared at me,

stared with an intensity

which bore a hole

to the center of the Universe;

eyes so wide,

so clear,

so dark –

so lively?

Their ebon pupils reflected the darkness

I had encountered so many times before,

and yet they appeared to be alive.

. . .

And then he blinked…

And then the others blinked…

And then every eye in the ice blinked with them…

. . .

Ŧhe captain’s reflection suddenly stepped forward

and I immediately faltered backward

in a mad and frantic tumble.

The gut-wrenching sight

of the captain’s ghost tore away

from the rest of his wretched body.

My blood froze in my veins;

I told myself that this situation,

this monstrosity couldn’t get any worse,

and yet it did.

The reflection stepped forward,

and with my own two terrified eyes,

I saw it step out of the wall of indigo ice

and onto the black stone floor.

An echo of silence roared through the cavern,

snuffing out what little sound

there was left,

until all that remained

was the erratic gasps of my own breathing.

What I was witnessing,

the abomination,

the eldritch phantasm,

the terror, the evil –

how else could I explain it without going mad!?

Why must the horizon

always be out of reach?

⚶

ɘverything had gone dark.

I don’t know what happened.

I don’t know…

How did I survive,

or better yet:

how did I get here?

I awoke on a raft

under the bright yellow sun

just as a fishing boat came about

to see who I was.

The fishermen told me that they were from Sarigan,

and that we were somewhere

in the Scythian Islands;

half a world away from where I once was.

So far away from home.

How did I survive?

Why did I survive?

Did I survive?

I guess I just had to live;

I just had to return

and leave what we had stumbled upon

in my muddled memory,

where it belongs….

⚶

A Z A T H O T H

will never be a memory.

–fİŊ–

(Fragment I)

(Fragment II)

(Fragment III)

(Fragment IV)

(Fragment V)

(Fragment VI)

(Fragment VII)

(Fragment VIII)

(Fragment IX)

(Fragment X)

(Fragment XI)

(Fragment XII)

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