Hello and welcome to meet us pod. I'm your host de Mitas. For this episode, I'll be reading HP Lovecraft Dagon. HP Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Rhode Island. He was friends with Harry Houdini and he inspired Batman Black Sabbath and more. You can check out more about HP Lovecraft on his Wikipedia page, or you can go to hp lovecraft.com links in the show notes without further ado, day gone by HP Lovecraft.
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 my life and durable, I can bear the torture no longer. I shall cast myself from this Garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine, that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realize why it is that I must have
forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the Pacific that the packet of which I was super cargo fell a victim to a German sea Raider. The Great War was just then at its very beginning, and the enemy Navy had not reached its degree of ruthlessness so that our vessel was made legitimate prize. Whilst we have her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration do 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 a little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator. I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars, and I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew
nothing, and no Island or coastline 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 and my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change happened whilst I slept. It's details I shall never know. from my slumber, though troubled and dream invested, was
continuous. When at last I awake, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire, which extended about me in a monotonous undulations as far as I could see. And in which my boat Lake grounded some distance away. The 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 recruiting from the nasty mud of the unending plane. 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 sly And yet the very completeness and the stillness and homogeneity of the
landscape impressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun was blazing down from the 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 realized 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 up on its side and afforded me 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 traveling purposes in a short time. That night, I slept but little, and the next day, I made myself a bag containing food and water, preparatory to the overland journey in search of the
vanished sea, and possible rescue. On the third morning, I found soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odor of the fish was maddening. When I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight and evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day, I forged steadily westward, guided by a faraway hammock, which had rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night, I kept an eye on the
following day, still travelled towards the hammock. Though the object seems scarcely nearer than when I had first spotted. By the fourth evening, I attained to the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than hitted appeared from the distant and intervening Valley, setting it out in sharper relief and the general surface. To weary to ascend. I slept in the shadow of the hill. I know not why my dreams were so
wild that night. But before the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the Eastern Blaine, I was awake, and a cold perspiration. Determined to Sleep No More. Such visions as I have experienced were 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 bag, I started for the crest of the eminence. I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plane was a source of vague or to me. But I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and look down on 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 the
fathomless chaos of eternal night. Though my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan's hideous climb through the unfastened realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see the slopes of the Valley were not quite as perpendicular as I had imagined. The ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded
fairly easy footholds for the descent. Whilst after a drop of a few 100 feet, the declivity became very gradual urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on a gentler slope beneath, gazing into the stag in depths where no light had
penetrated. All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about 100 yards ahead of me, an object that claimed widely 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 are not altogether a work of nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with the sensation I cannot express.
For despite its enormous magnitude, and its location, and an abyss which had yond 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 was massive bulk had known the workmanship, and perhaps the worship, of living and thinking creatures, dazed and frightened. Yet not without a certain thrill on the scientists or archaeologists
delight, I examined my surrounding more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shown weirdly and vividly above the towering steep 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 hieroglyphs unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting for the most part of unconventional alized aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, mollusks, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented and marine things which were unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing
forms I had observed on the ocean risen plane. It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound, plainly visible across the intervening water, on account of it their enormous size, were an array of bass relief, whose
subjects would have excited the envy of adore. I think that these things were supposed to depict men, at least a certain sort of men, though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes and 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 of them makes me grow faint. grotesque, beyond the imagination of a poem, or a
bulwark. They were damnably human and general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shocking, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion with the scenic background, for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale
represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, on their grotesqueness, and strange size, but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing more seafaring tribe, some tribe whose last descendant had perished errors before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal man was born. awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into the past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing while the moon cast
Square reflections on the silent channel before me. Then, suddenly, I saw it. With only a slight churning to markets rise to the surface. The thing slid into view above the dark waters, vast, poly famous like and loathsome, and darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith. About what it's flung it's gigantic scaly arms and while it bowed, its hideous head and gave vent to a certain measured sound. I think I went mad then of my frantic ascent of the slope and Cliff, and my
delirious journey back to the stranded boat. I remember little I believe I sang a great deal. I laughed oddly, when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm sometime after I reached the boat. At any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other towns, which nature others only in her wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows, and was in a San Francisco hospital, brought together by the captain of the American ship, which had picked up my boat in the 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 that I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated indologist and amused him with a peculiar questions regarding an ancient Philistine Legend of Dagon, the fish God but soon perceiving that he was
hopelessly conventional, and did not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see that thing. I tried morphine, but the drug has given me only transient searcys and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I'm going to end matters, having written a full account of the information, or the contemptuous
amusement of my fellow man. Often, I asked myself, if it could not have all 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 asked myself, whatever does there come before me hideous, vivid vision and reply. I cannot think of a deep sea without shuttering at the nameless
things that may be at this very moment. Crawling and floundering and it slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water soaked granite. I dream of the day when they rise above the billows and drag down in their wreaking talons the remnants of puny, war exhausted mankind. A day when the land shall sink and the dark ocean floor shall a sin amidst universal pandemonium. The end is near. I hear the noise of the
door as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me God that hand the window the window thanks for listening to Dagon by HP Lovecraft our music is brought to us by od Sprite. You can check out more at odd sprite.com me just pause the production. Meet us media. All rights reserved unless otherwise specified. We'll see you next time folks. Have a good one.