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Horror Fantasy Season#1

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Horror Fantasy Season#1

Dagon

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be

no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes

life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this

garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to

******** that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these

hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I

must have forgetfulness or death.

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific

that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider.

The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun

had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a

legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and

consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of

our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a

small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my

surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the

sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew

nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for

uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for

some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither

ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving

vastnesses of unbroken blue.

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my

slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I

awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish

black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could

see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at

so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more

horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister

quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the

carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw

protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope

to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in

sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness

and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its

cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I

crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my

position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean

floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for

innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery

depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that

I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I

might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.

For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side

and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day

progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry

sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little,

and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water,

preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible

rescue.

On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The

The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver

things to mind so slightly and evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day

I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher

than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the

The following day I still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed

scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained

the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared

from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the

general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill.

I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but here the waning and

fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in

a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had

experience was too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon

I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching

sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to

perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I

started for the crest of the eminence. I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of

vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit

of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or

canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to

illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a

fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences

of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms

of darkness.

As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the

The valley was not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and

outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a

drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an

impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the

rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps

where no light had yet penetrated.

All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the

opposite slope, which rose steeply about an hundred yards ahead of me; an

object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon.

That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was

conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not

altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I

cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss

which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I

perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith

whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of

living and thinking creatures.

Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or

archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon,

now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that

hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water

flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping

my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base

of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions

and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to

me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books; consisting for the most part of

conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans,

molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I

had observed on the ocean-risen plain.

It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound.

Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size,

were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a

Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain

sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in the waters

of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which

appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak

in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the

imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline

despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging

eyes, and other features are less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to

have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for

one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but

little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange

size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some

primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had

perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was

born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of

the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer

reflections on the silent channel before me.

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the

surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus - like,

and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the

monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, while it bowed its

hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to

the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed

oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm

some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of

thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.

When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought

thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid

ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given

scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing;

nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with

peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish

God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my

inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the

thing. I tried ********; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has

drew me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having

written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my

fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a

mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my

escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there

come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea

without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be