Nyarlathotep by H.P. Lovecraft
Nyarlathotep
by H.P. Lovecraft
Written early Dec 1920 
Published November 1920 in The United Amateur, Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 19-21. 
Nyarlathotep... the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell the audient 
void... 
I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general 
tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a 
strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger 
widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most 
terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale 
and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared 
consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of 
monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars 
swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a 
demoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered 
fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed 
from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were 
unknown. 
And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could 
tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin 
knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of 
the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from 
places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, 
swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and 
metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the 
sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power which sent 
his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding 
magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where 
Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams 
of nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public 
problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small 
hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying 
moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples 
crumbling against a sickly sky. 
I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city—the great, the old, the terrible 
city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling 
fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to 
explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and 
impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; and what was thrown on a screen in 
the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and in 
the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that which had never been 
taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad 
that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not. 
It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds 
to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into 
the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and 
yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And I saw the world 
battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate 
space; whirling, churning, struggling around the dimming, cooling sun. Then the 
sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on 
end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the 
heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a 
trembling protest about “imposture” and “static electricity,” Nyarlathotep drove 
us all out, down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. 
I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others 
screamed with me for solace. We swore to one another that the city was exactly 
the same, and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade we cursed 
the company over and over again, and laughed at the queer faces we made. 
I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when we 
began to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary marching 
formations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of 
them. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced by 
grass, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the tramways had run. 
And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its 
side. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third tower by the 
river, and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the 
top. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a 
different direction. One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only 
the echo of a shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, 
howling with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open 
country, and presently I felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for as we 
stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of 
evil snows. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, 
where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed 
very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind, for 
the black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard 
the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my power 
to linger was slight. As if beckoned by those who had gone before, I 
half-floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the 
sightless vortex of the unimaginable. 
Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A 
sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled 
blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with 
sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them 
flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen 
columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and 
reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through 
this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of 
drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, 
unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto 
dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the 
blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep. 




© 1998-1999 William Johns
Last modified: 12/18/1999 18:44:40
