Nyarlathotep

[00:00:11] Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos

[00:00:14] I am the last. I will tell the Audian void.

[00:00:21] I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago.

[00:00:25] The general tension was horrible.

[00:00:28] To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger.

[00:00:35] A danger widespread and all-embracing.

[00:00:38] Such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night.

[00:00:44] I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces,

[00:00:47] and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat,

[00:00:52] or acknowledge to himself that he had heard.

[00:00:55] A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land,

[00:00:58] and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places.

[00:01:07] There was a demoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons.

[00:01:11] The autumn heap lingered fearsomely,

[00:01:13] and everyone felt that the world, and perhaps the universe,

[00:01:16] had passed from the control of known gods, or forces,

[00:01:20] to that of gods or forces, which were unknown.

[00:01:26] And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt.

[00:01:30] Who he was, none could tell,

[00:01:32] but he was of the old native blood and looked like a pharaoh.

[00:01:36] The fellaheen knelt when they saw him,

[00:01:38] yet could not say why.

[00:01:41] He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries,

[00:01:45] and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet.

[00:01:49] Into the lands of civilisations came Nyarlathotep,

[00:01:53] swarthy, slender, and sinister,

[00:01:55] always buying strange instruments of glass and metal,

[00:01:58] and combining them into instruments yet stranger.

[00:02:02] He spoke much of the sciences,

[00:02:04] of electricity and psychology,

[00:02:06] and gave exhibitions of power

[00:02:09] which sent his spectators away speechless,

[00:02:12] at which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude.

[00:02:16] Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep,

[00:02:19] and shuddered.

[00:02:21] And where Nyarlathotep went,

[00:02:23] rest vanished,

[00:02:24] for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.

[00:02:29] Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public problem.

[00:02:33] Now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours,

[00:02:38] that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale,

[00:02:42] pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges,

[00:02:47] and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.

[00:02:52] I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city,

[00:02:56] the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes.

[00:03:01] My friend had told me of him,

[00:03:03] and of the impelling fascination and allurements of his revelations,

[00:03:07] and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries.

[00:03:11] My friend said they were horrible,

[00:03:13] and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings,

[00:03:16] that what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room

[00:03:20] prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy.

[00:03:24] And that, in the sputter of his sparks,

[00:03:28] there was taken from men that which had never been taken before,

[00:03:31] yet which showed only in the eyes.

[00:03:35] And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep

[00:03:39] looked on sights which others saw not.

[00:03:43] It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds

[00:03:50] to see Nyarlathotep.

[00:03:52] Through the siphling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room,

[00:03:57] and shattered on a screen,

[00:03:59] I saw hooded forms amongst ruins

[00:04:01] and yellow, evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments.

[00:04:06] And I saw the world battling against darkness,

[00:04:09] against the waves of destruction from alternate space,

[00:04:12] whirling, churning, struggling around the dimmed, cooling sun.

[00:04:17] Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators,

[00:04:21] and hair stood up on end,

[00:04:23] whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell

[00:04:26] came out and squatted on the heads.

[00:04:29] And when I,

[00:04:31] who was colder and more scientific than the rest,

[00:04:34] mumbled a trembling protest about imposture

[00:04:37] and static electricity,

[00:04:40] Nyarlathotep drove us all out.

[00:04:42] Down the dizzy stairs into the damp,

[00:04:45] hot, deserted midnight streets,

[00:04:47] I screamed aloud that I was not afraid,

[00:04:50] that I could never be afraid,

[00:04:52] and others screamed with me for solace.

[00:04:54] We swore to one another that the city was exactly the same,

[00:04:58] and still alive,

[00:05:00] and when the electric lights began to fade,

[00:05:03] we cursed the company over and over again,

[00:05:06] and laughed at the queer faces we made.

[00:05:09] I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon,

[00:05:13] for when we began to depend on its light,

[00:05:16] we drifted into curious involuntary formations,

[00:05:19] and seemed to know our destinations,

[00:05:21] though we dared not think of them.

[00:05:23] Once we looked at the pavement

[00:05:24] and found the blocks loose and displaced by grass,

[00:05:27] with scarce a line of rusted metal to show

[00:05:30] where the tramways had run.

[00:05:32] And again we saw a tram car,

[00:05:34] alone, windowless and dilapidated,

[00:05:36] and almost on its side.

[00:05:39] When we gazed around the horizon,

[00:05:41] we could not find the third tower by the river,

[00:05:44] and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower

[00:05:48] was ragged at the top.

[00:05:50] Then we split into narrow columns,

[00:05:52] each of which seemed drawn in a different direction.

[00:05:56] One disappeared into a narrow alley to the left,

[00:05:59] leaving only the echo of a shocking moan.

[00:06:02] Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance,

[00:06:05] howling with a laughter that was mad.

[00:06:08] My own column was sucked toward the open country,

[00:06:11] and presently felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn,

[00:06:15] for as we stalked out on the dark moor,

[00:06:18] we beheld around us the hellish moon glitter of evil snows.

[00:06:23] Tractless, inexplicable snows swept asunder in one direction only,

[00:06:28] where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls.

[00:06:32] The column sinned very thin indeed

[00:06:34] as it plodded dreamily into the gulf.

[00:06:37] I lingered behind,

[00:06:39] for the black rift in the green-litened snow was frightful,

[00:06:43] and I thought I heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail,

[00:06:47] as my companions vanished.

[00:06:49] But my power to linger was slight,

[00:06:52] as if beckoned by those who had gone before,

[00:06:55] I half-floated between the titanic snowdrifts,

[00:06:58] quivering and frayed,

[00:07:00] into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.

[00:07:04] Screamingly sentient,

[00:07:06] dumbly delirious,

[00:07:07] only the gods that were can tell.

[00:07:09] A second, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands,

[00:07:15] and world blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation.

[00:07:20] Corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities,

[00:07:23] carnal winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low.

[00:07:27] Beyond the world's vague ghosts of monstrous things,

[00:07:31] half-seen columns of unsanctified temples

[00:07:34] that rest on nameless rocks between space and reach up to diseased vacua,

[00:07:39] above the spheres of light and darkness.

[00:07:41] And through this revolting graveyard of the universe,

[00:07:45] the muffled, maddening beating of drums

[00:07:48] and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes

[00:07:52] from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time.

[00:07:56] The detestable pounding and piping

[00:07:59] wet onto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly

[00:08:05] the gigantic, tinnibous, ultimate gods,

[00:08:09] the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles

[00:08:13] whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

[00:08:23] Nyarlathotep was created and written by H.P. Lovecraft.

[00:08:28] It was presented to you tonight

[00:08:29] by the Society of Virtuous Pagans

[00:08:32] and narrated by August Brotherton.

[00:08:36] Our sound production was done by Creative Minds Audio.

[00:08:40] Our music producer is Gwynevere McGregor.

[00:08:44] Our logo was developed by Man's Face.

[00:08:48] The Helios Radio was designed and developed by Kieran Byrne.

[00:08:53] All contents of this broadcast

[00:08:55] have been treated with the Nagoya Mimetic.

[00:08:59] Have faith.

[00:09:01] We know.