H.P. Lovecraft.

by H.P. Lovecraft. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare worrying and flapping and a faint distant bang as of some

gigantic hound.

It is not dream.

It is not, I fear fear even madness for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts

Shingen is a mangled corpse. I alone know why. And such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my

brains for fear I shall be mangled in the same way. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of Eldridge fantasy sweeps the black shapeless nemesis that drives me to self-annilation.

May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous of fate.

Wearied with the commonplaces of a prosaic world, where even the joys of romance and adventures soon grow stale.

Shingen and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating

on me. The enigmas of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the pre-Raphaelites

all were ours in their time, but each new mood was drained too soon of its diverting novelty and appeal.

Only the somber philosophy of the decadence could hold us, and this we found potent only

by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations.

Baudelaire and Hoyesmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and

timidity that hideous extremity of human outrage the aboard practice of grave robbing.

I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expeditions or catalog even partly the worst of the trophies adorning the nameless museum we prepared in the great stone house where we jointly dw, alone and servantless.

Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place,

where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuose,

we had assembled a universe of terror and decay to excite our jaded

sensibilities.

...