Notes

>ACCORDING TO THE DATA YOU SENT, THE JELLY SUBSTANCE IS 58% WATER AND 17% ECTOPLASM. THE REMAINING MATTER IS NOT NATIVE TO THE PLANET AND CANNOT BE ANALYZED.

>HAS THERE EVER BEEN A CASE OF SIMILAR MATTER BEING DISCOVERED BEFORE?

> YES. THIS CENTURY, SIMILAR MATTER WAS DISCOVERED IN A MAYAN TEMPLE AND IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

> WHAT IS ITS WEAK POINT?

> I CANNOT MAKE A HYPOTHESIS DUE TO INSUFFICIENT DATA. HOWEVER, THE MATTER DISCOVERED UNDER A RELIEF IN THE MAYAN TEMPLE WAS REPORTED TO HAVE EVAPORATED WHEN IT CAME IN CONTACT WITH MERCURIC SULFIDE-BASED PAINT.

> MERCURIC SULFIDE? YOU MEAN A MIXTURE OF MERCURY AND SULFUR. BUT I DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO FIND SOMETHING LIKE THAT. TELL ME HOW TO DEAL WITH HIM NOW!

There'd been much talk in the letters about crossroads, and for a long time he'd taken the image literally, thinking that in Omaha he was probably at that crossroads, and that knowledge of the Art would come to him there.

But once out of the city, and away, he saw the error of such literalism.

When the writers had spoken of crossroads they hadn't meant one highway intersecting with another. They'd meant places where states of being crossed, where the human system met the alien, and both moved on, changed. In the flow and flurry of such places there was hope of finding revelation.

Barker, Clive
The Great and Secret Show
PART ONE: THE MESSENGER

Some mirrors like to play with the pendulum. You swing the pendulum near the mirror, you will come back in a couple of hours - and it swings and swings, with no less swing.

If you put two such mirrors opposite each other, then one of them will soon crack, and the reflections in the second will begin to differ slightly from the originals.

If you repeat the procedure with the surviving mirror and it will survive again, the effect will increase.

They say that there are mirrors that have survived in many hundreds of similar confrontations, but it is better not to look into them under any circumstances.

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence - whether much that is glorious - whether all that is profound - does not spring from disease of thought - from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi."

In the city, where angels fear to hover and devils come to croon, the sex of the night lets down her black narcotic hair under a yellow opium moon. Her a shadow of shadow, an earth bound ghost shivers, not from oktober chill, but in erotic pain. He says to his dear lover, "We should never have come here, with flesh so soft and herts so unwise, but like tigers in tall tall grass, like Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, we sucked in our fear and we came here". Now all of atrocities are replayed, like a late late show, "We came here but we never should have stayed. Though we had inertia and radius and depth, we took the last train with velocity, and passed our own deaths".

So, the Crow spirals down through a collapsed dream and the only sound he makes is ...

... LIKE CONCEVE SCREAM

"Nor is it to be thought," ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it, "that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Ia! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."