Cthulhu (Original)

	"Mature Content"; This character has mature themes and concepts, thus those of young age are ill-advised to look through these.
Cthulhu
Origin
Origin	Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu"
Creator	H. P. Lovecraft
First Appearance	Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu"
Actor	N/A
Characteristics
Species	Great Old One
Gender	Genderless
Pronouns	He/Him
Sexuality	Unknown
Age	Incalculable
Birthday	Unknown
Height	Unknown
Weight	Unknown
Ethnicity	N/A
Status	Other
Alignment	True Neutral
Archetype	Monster/Horror Villain Archetype
Occupation	None
Time Period	1925
Language	Unknown Language
Homeworld	Earth
Relationships
Affiliations	The Great Old Ones, Cthulhu Cultists
Enemies	Gustaf Johansen

	"WARNING"
	This profile is based off a story created by a man known as Howard Phillips Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft) and due to this it holds many bigoted and racist sentimentality within the story. The profile itself is purely indexing the character of Cthulhu from the story and in no way condones anything said about other races/ethnicities.

Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic being introduced by H. P. Lovecraft in his 1928 short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in Weird Tales, apart of the wider Cthulhu Mythos. Portrayed as a powerful, octopus-like Great Old One, Cthulhu is said to dwell in a death-like sleep within the sunken city of R'lyeh beneath the Pacific Ocean. As the central figure and namesake of the Cthulhu Mythos, he has become one of Lovecraft’s most iconic creations, later appearing in various works by other authors and becoming a prominent figure in popular culture.

Cthulhu’s physical form is most frequently described through depictions found in statues and idols. One such sculpture, created by the artist Henry Anthony Wilcox following a series of disturbing dreams, portrayed the being as a hybrid of octopus, dragon, and man, with a bulbous, tentacled head, a grotesque, scaly torso, and small, wing-like appendages. Another idol, discovered during a police raid on a cult, depicted a vaguely humanoid figure with an octopus-like head, a rubbery, scaled body, sharp claws, and narrow wings.

Cultists of Cthulhu and his kind—referred to as the Great Old Ones—believe that their power is tied to the positions of the stars. When the stars are aligned correctly, these entities are said to awaken and spread across the cosmos. When the stars are misaligned, they lie dormant, not dead but suspended in a deathless slumber maintained by Cthulhu’s powerful spells.

The only direct account of Cthulhu’s living form comes from the sailor Gustaf Johansen, a survivor of an expedition that briefly encountered the risen city of R’lyeh in 1925. He describes Cthulhu as a towering, gelatinous green mass with immense flabby claws, a cephalopod-like head, and writhing facial tendrils. The creature’s sheer scale led Johansen to remark that it was as though “a mountain walked or stumbled.” His account is echoed by Wilcox’s dreams, which spoke of a “gigantic thing” miles tall, lumbering across alien landscapes.

Johansen recalls that two of his crew died from sheer terror upon seeing the monster, while others were physically seized by its enormous claws. One man vanished within an impossible architectural anomaly of R’lyeh, described as a non-Euclidean angle. The ordeal ended with the death of William Briden, who lost his mind after witnessing Cthulhu chasing their ship and succumbed to madness soon after.

Background

This dropdown contains the synopsis of Cthulhu's story. Read at your own risk as you may be spoiled otherwise!
Cthulhu is described as an alien entity who arrived on Earth during the Paleozoic era, accompanied by his Star-Spawn. The classification of Cthulhu within the mythos varies between sources. In one quote from the Necronomicon, he is referred to as a "cousin" to the Old Ones, though he is said to perceive them only faintly. In this context, "Old Ones" refers specifically to beings of Yog-Sothoth’s kind, suggesting a familial connection but a clear difference in nature. The Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game reflects this distinction by listing Cthulhu as a Great Old One, while Yog-Sothoth is classified as an Outer God. In At the Mountains of Madness, explorers in Antarctica discover the ruins of a city built by the Elder Things, crinoid-like beings who once waged war with Cthulhu and his spawn. Notably, these Elder Things are the ones referred to as "Old Ones" or "Great Old Ones" in this narrative. The explorers decipher a visual history from carvings, revealing that Cthulhu's race came from the stars and initially forced the Elder Things into the sea. A truce was eventually reached, allowing Cthulhu's kind to inhabit newly formed landmasses, while the Elder Things retained dominion over the oceans. However, when the Pacific landmasses later sank, they took the city of R’lyeh and Cthulhu’s spawn with them, allowing the Elder Things to reestablish their supremacy. One of the expedition members, William Dyer, remarks on the Star-Spawn’s strange and unfamiliar matter, which differs even more from known earthly substances than that of the Elder Things. He observes that Cthulhu’s kind were capable of undergoing transformations that their enemies could not, implying that they originated from even farther regions of the cosmos. Dyer also speculates that the Elder Things may have devised a cosmic mythology to explain their occasional defeats, though this framework appears in the narratives of their enemies as well. Other sources hint at two mythic cycles—the Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu traditions—predating humanity’s arrival on Earth. (HPL: The Whisperer in Darkness) In this tale, the alien Mi-Go are said to revere Cthulhu and possibly share a similar unknown material composition with his spawn. The narrative also links Cthulhu’s arrival to the appearance of certain historical supernovae—or possibly metaphorical "stars", such as influential individuals—stating: "I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth." Some humans are said to call the Mi-Go "the old ones", adding further confusion to the terminology. Investigations into the Esoteric Order of Dagon in Innsmouth revealed that the Deep Ones also worship Cthulhu. Although a 1928 government raid suppressed their activity, Robert Olmstead believed they would eventually return to continue offering sacrifices to Cthulhu, claiming that the next uprising would involve a city even greater than Innsmouth. (HPL: The Shadow Over Innsmouth) A possible earlier incarnation of Cthulhu appears in Robert E. Howard’s Skull-Face under the name Kathulos, a sorcerer from Atlantis. Lovecraft affirmed that Kathulos and Cthulhu were the same entity. (HPL: Selected Letters 3.421, The Whisperer in Darkness) In the story, Kathulos is portrayed as a "Son of the Ocean" who possesses hypnotic powers and commands a worldwide network of followers. The term "tentacles" is often used metaphorically to describe the reach of his influence.

Appearance

General Description:

Cthulhu is depicted as a squat, monstrous being with a grotesque, vaguely humanoid form. Its posture is hunched, and it appears perched or seated atop a stone pedestal etched with strange runes.

Facial Features:

The creature has a bulbous, octopus-like head with numerous thick tentacles hanging from its lower face, obscuring its mouth. Its eyes are wide and dark, conveying an unblinking, alien stare.

Clothing/Outfit:

None. The creature is entirely nude, its body covered in rough, scaled textures.

Special Features:

Cthulhu’s most distinctive features include its cephalopod-like head, its draconic wings protruding from its back, and clawed limbs. The sketch includes non-human text or symbols carved into the base beneath it, implying arcane or alien origins.

Personality

Apathetic and Alien: Cthulhu exists beyond the comprehension of mortals, its mind alien and detached from human concepts of morality or civilization. It is indifferent to human suffering or welfare, viewing humanity as a fleeting curiosity or as tools to further its own return.

Harbinger of Anarchy and Madness: Cthulhu embodies a vision of cosmic anarchy, where the structures of human morality and law dissolve into primal chaos. Its presence encourages the shedding of conventional ethics, inviting madness and violence in a delirious celebration of existence free from constraint.

Catalyst of Liberation: While monstrous, Cthulhu’s influence promises a kind of freedom—albeit one that is savage and unrestrained. In the age of its return, humanity would cast aside inhibitions and embrace a wild, lawless ecstasy.

Worshipped but Indifferent: Though revered by cultists who echo its ancient ways and prophecies, Cthulhu does not reciprocate devotion. Worshippers are mere echoes of its distant, timeless power, keeping alive the promise of its return without any true understanding of its motives.

Embodiment of Cosmic Freedom: Ultimately, Cthulhu personifies a freedom unbound by human limitation—a freedom that strips away reason and sanity in favor of primal instinct and boundless, joyous violence.

Goals

Be freed and turn all of mankind into Great Old Ones (Failed).

Relationships

Cthulhu's Cult

The size and structure of Cthulhu’s cult are not clearly known, though it is widely spread, with numerous cells operating across the globe. Its members are known for repeating an iconic chant: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," translated as "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." A common shortened form, "Cthulhu fhtagn," is often interpreted to mean "Cthulhu waits," "Cthulhu dreams," or "Cthulhu waits dreaming." This phrase is believed to be in R’lyehian, a language said to have been brought to Earth by Cthulhu’s Star-Spawn.

The cult of Cthulhu is described as having a global presence, with central activity in Arabia and additional followers in remote places such as Greenland and Louisiana. Reports also mention immortal leaders dwelling in the mountains of China. Within the faith, Cthulhu is referred to as the high priest of the Great Old Ones—ancient entities that arrived on Earth from the cosmos before the existence of humankind.

Worship of Cthulhu does not exclude devotion to other cosmic beings. The famed occultist Abdul Alhazred, for instance, is said to have venerated both Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. Cultists believe that when Cthulhu and his kin return, humanity will be transformed into beings like them—rejecting order and morality in favor of chaotic celebration and violence. They anticipate being taught new ways to indulge in ecstatic destruction, ultimately leading to a planet consumed by frenzied freedom.

The cult has been implicated in ritual sacrifices, although some detained members have claimed the actual acts were carried out by entities referred to as the Black Winged Ones. These beings are distinct from the Star-Spawn, and little is known about their true nature or their connection to Cthulhu.

In addition to human worshippers, the aquatic beings known as the Deep Ones also venerate Cthulhu. Like their human counterparts, they are known to perform sacrificial rites in his name. While they also revere Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, the nature of these figures’ relationship to Cthulhu is unclear. Some later interpretations, such as those by Lin Carter, suggest Dagon and Hydra may serve Cthulhu.

The K’n-yanian species, a subterranean humanoid race, also revere Cthulhu—whom they call Tulu—alongside the deity Yig. According to their traditions, Cthulhu transported them to Earth from the stars. They also venerate a substance known as Tulu-metal, a mysterious alien material believed to have been brought by Cthulhu.

Other alien species in the Mythos are associated with Cthulhu as well. The Mi-Go, along with their human followers, are recorded as invoking "Great Cthulhu" in religious ceremonies. Another race, the Fishers from Outside, may also have ties to Cthulhu (referred to as Clulu) and the deity Tsathoggua, as suggested by relics found in the African wilderness.

General Information

Name: Cthulhu^[1]

Origin: Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu"

Overall Series: Lovecraft Myth Cycle

Greater Franchise: Cthulhu Mythos

First Appearance: Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu"

Creator: H. P. Lovecraft

Gender: Genderless

Sexuality: Unknown

Pronouns: He/Him

Handedness: Unknown

Age: Incalcuable (Even statues of Cthulhu are noted to be of incalculable age, predating civilization's youth^[2]. The Great Old Ones are noted to have lived ages before there were any men^[3])

Birthday: Unknown

Time Period: 1925 (During Call of Cthulhu)

Timeline: Lovecraft Myth Cycle Continuity

Homeworld: Earth^[4]

Residence: City of R'lyeh^[5]

Story Role: Hidden Monster, Cosmic Horror^[6]

Legacy: Local Legacy (Cthulhu is well known from its cultist that worship and work to revive him)

Influence: World-Changing Influence if revived (If the Great Old Ones are freed, mankind will become Great Old Ones, beyond good and evil, with laws and mortals thrown aside where they will shout, kill, and revel in joy, with the Old Ones teaching them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, where all of earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom^[7])

Language: Unknown Language

Ethnicity: N/A

Religion: Is the God of its own religion

Classification: Cthulhu, Alien Diety, Cosmic Majesty^[8]

Species: Great Old Ones^[9]

State of Being: Regular

Physiology: Great Old One Physiology

In-Universe Creator: Nug (Cthulhu is shown within the family tree to descend from Nub)

Occupation: None

Affiliations: The Great Old Ones, Cthulhu Cultists

Enemies: Gustaf Johansen

Height: Unknown (Cthulhu is treated as a mountain that walked or stumbled^[10])

Weight: Unknown (Cthulhu is treated as a mountain that walked or stumbled^[11])

Status: Other (The Great Old Ones are beings that are between death and life dreaming^[12], this is further explained by the cult, where they explain the Great Old Ones lived before but were long gone now, though with their dead bodies they have told secrets in dreams to the first men to form a cult which had never died^[13])

Date of Death: Vast epochs of time before man came^[14]

Alignment: True Neutral (The Great Old ones are free and wild, beyond good and evil, with laws and mortals thrown aside where they will teach humans new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would be ecstasy and freedom^[15])

Threat Level: Global Threat (If the Great Old Ones are freed, mankind will become Great Old Ones, beyond good and evil, with laws and mortals thrown aside where they will shout, kill, and revel in joy, with the Old Ones teaching them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, where all of earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom^[16])

Potential

Type of Potential: Limitless Potential
Level of Potential: Limitless Potenital
Description: The Great Old Ones are beings with powers that defy cosmic order.
Limitations: Nothing notable.

Archetype: Monster/Horror Villain Archetype

Codex Statistics

Grade: A

Tier: Unknown-B

Cardinality: Unknown

Dimensionality: 3-D

Power Source: Unknown

Attack Potency: Unknown: Powerful level (Cthulhu's is an indescribable being, where it's noted that his being contradicts all matter, force, and cosmic order, being treated as a mountain that walked or stumbled^[17])

Durability: Unknown: True level (Cthulhu's body cannot take things such as a boat ramming into it, thus it's difficult to gauge its durability^[18]). His physiology makes him very difficult to kill (Cthulhu's body is able to easily explode from a ship ramming into it though it will quickly reform due to Cthulhu's physiology^[19])

Striking Strength: Unknown: Powerful Class

Lifting Strength: Unknown: Powerful Class

Travel Speed: Unknown: True level. Faster Than Light with Spaceflight (The Great Old Ones are noted to have come from the stars and brought their images with them^[20])

Attack Speed: Unknown: True level

Reaction Speed: Unknown: True level

Stamina: Limitless

Range: Unknown through sheer size (Cthulhu's is an indescribable being, where it's noted that his being contradicts all matter, force, and cosmic order, being treated as a mountain that walked or stumbled^[21]). At least Planetary with Telepathy (Cthulhu communicated through its dead body to spread the cult across the world^[22]), Universal with Cosmic Awareness (The Great Old Ones even while preserved and unable to move were able to know all that was occurring in the universe^[23])

Intelligence: Cosmic Intelligence (The Great Old Ones even while preserved and unable to move were able to know all that was occurring in the universe^[24])

Knowledge: Cosmic level

Powers and Techniques

Resistance to

Equipment

Nothing notable.

Notable Techniques

Regeneration

After Johansen rammed the Alert into Cthulhu, the creature's body ruptured like an "exploding bladder" and turned into a "blinding green cloud," which soon began to reform itself.

Shapeshifting

In At the Mountains of Madness, the artwork of the Antarctic Elder Things shows that the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu (and presumably Cthulhu himself) are composed of a type of matter unlike anything on Earth. This matter allows them "to undergo transformations and reintegrations" that are impossible for life forms made of traditional matter, such as the Elder Things.

Psychic Abilities

Castro, a Cthulhu cultist, reports that the Great Old Ones are telepathic and "knew all that was occurring in the universe." They communicated with the first humans by "moulding their dreams," thereby establishing the Cthulhu Cult. After R'lyeh sank beneath the waves, "the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass," cut off this spectral communication.

It is important to note that the "Great Old Ones" Castro refers to correspond only to the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, not to other entities called Great Old Ones elsewhere in the Mythos. This is supported by Castro's claim that "They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh." In the story, Cthulhu is also identified as the "priest" of the Great Old Ones.

When a portion of R'lyeh, believed to be Cthulhu's citadel, briefly surfaced in 1925, Cthulhu's influence was felt worldwide by psychically sensitive individuals. Artists and asylum patients were particularly affected. Globally, there were "cases of panic, mania, and eccentricity," including suicides.

Death-like State

Most sources agree that Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn currently exist in a death-like dormant state, possibly akin to suspended animation, aestivation, or hibernation. They cannot awaken without external assistance from their cultists. Rituals to release them may involve opening dimensional gateways, as suggested in The Trail of Cthulhu series. It is often assumed they can only return to life when "the stars are right."

This state between life and death is reflected in Lovecraft's statement that "dead Cthulhu waits dreaming," and poetically expressed in the couplet by Abdul Alhazred:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die."

Other

Standard Tactics: Cthulhu speaks to people in their dreams to convert them within its cult to have them prepare the ceremony of resurrecting him.

Upon being removed from this state, Cthulhu goes around attacking with his claws, his mere existence can also send madness and fear that results in death in beings that cannot grasp his form.

Weaknesses

Great Old One Weaknesses: If the Stars in the sky are wrong then they cannot live within the conventional sense^[65]. The Great Old Ones due to being under a preservation spell prevents them from making an initial move and they can only lie awake in the dark and think^[66].

Family Tree

Azathoth

Nyarlathotep
(The ancient patrician gens Viburnia of Haec RESPVLICA.ROMANA)

The Nameless Mist

Darkness

Yog-Sothoth

Shub-Niggurath

L. Viburnius Marco

Nug

Yeb

P. Viburnius Marco
Legatus of Legio 11.,
station'd at Isca Silurum,
in Britannia Secunda
in A.D. 103

Cthulhu*

Tsathoggua*

Shaurash-ho

Yabou

Yogash the Ghoul

Nush the Eternal

K'baa the Serpent

Gilles Grenier,
Lord of Averoigne

Ghoth the Burrower
(one of the Little People)

Viburnia
** This union was an hellish and nameless tragedy.

Llunwy of Wales
ancestor of
Owen Gwynedd
and of H.P.L.

Hippolyte Le Sorcier,
ancestor of
Clark Ashton Smith

First of their respective lines to inhabit this planet.

Gallery

Cthulhu, by Josh P. Crockett
Lovecraft's drawing
The front view of Cthulhu
The back view of Cthulhu
Cthulhu (Underwater)
Cthulhu (Call of Cthulhu, French version)
Cthulhu, by Michael Komark
Cthulhu, by Bojan Vukic
Cthulhu battling US Navy (Cthulhu Unbound 3)
Cthulhu, by Andrée Wallin
Cthulhu, by Andrée Wallin
Avatar of Cthulhu (Dust 1947)
Cthulhu, by Richard Luong
Cthulhu, by Richard Luong
Cthulhu, by Richard Luong
Cthulhu (Fantasy Flight Games)
Cthulhu (Cthulhu Wars)
Cthulhu (Cthulhu Wars)
Cthulhu (Rise of Cthulhu)
Cthulhu, by James Ryman
Cthulhu (Dynamite Entertainment)
Cthulhu (Pathfinder)
Cthulhu with his avatars and minions, by Loïc Muzy (Malleus Monstrorum)
Cthulhu (Megami Tensei)
Cthulhu, as it appears in Russell's Guide to Interdimensional Entities
Cthulhu, by Michael Bukowski
Cthulhu (Providence)
Cthulhu (Providence)
Cthulhu (Neonomicon)
Stephen Hickman's sculpture of Cthulhu
Cthulhu, by gomro
Cthulhu, by Cyan Yurikago
Cthulhu (Moon Knight)
Cthulhu-possessed Black Widow (Marvel Avengers Academy)
Cthulhu (Devil Maker: Tokyo)
Cthulhu, as depicted by SOTA Toys' Nightmares of Lovecraft figure (Monster Island Buddies)
Cthulhu (A Certain Magical Index)
The Gigantic Horror, Avatar of Cthulhu (Fate/Zero)
Cthulhu, as Katsushika Hokusai (Fate/Grand Order)
Cthulhu, as Katsushika Hokusai (Fate/Grand Order)
Cthulhu, as Katsushika Hokusai (Fate/Grand Order)
Cthulhu, as Katsushika Hokusai (Fate/Grand Order)
Cthulhu (Demonbane)
Cthulhu (Demonbane)
Kurumi Kuruya, Avatar of Cthulhu (D.Y.N. Freaks)
Cthulhu (Tower of Saviors)
Cthulhu (Tower of Saviors)
Cthulhu (Tower of Saviors)
Cthulhu (Tower of Saviors)
Cthulhu (Afterlife with Archie)
Cthulhu (South Park)
Cthulhu (The Simpsons)
Cthulhu (The Simpsons)
Cthulhu (Dungeons & Dragons)
Cthulhu (The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy)
Cthulhu (Fall of Cthulhu)
Cthulhu (Smite)
Cthulhu (Smite, in-game model)
Cthulhu (Broken Moon)
Ryuga Boumera's interpretation of Cthulhu
MrMeowser's drawing of Cthulhu
Cthulhu (Pop Team Epic)
Cthulhu (Pop Team Epic)
Cthulhu (Weird n' Wild Creatures)
Cthulhu, by Nick Smith
Cthulhu (Howard Lovecraft and the Kingdom of Madness)
Cthulhu (Robot Chicken)
Cthulhu (The Real Ghostbusters)
Cthulhu (Kamihime Project)
Cthulhu (Kamihime Project)
Cthulhu (Guns Girl Z)
Cthulhu (Sky Galleon of the Blue Sky)
Cthulhu (Fantasica)
Cthulhu (Valkyrie Crusade)
Cthulhu (Sid Story)
Cthulhu (Crash Fever)
Cthulhu (Crash Fever)
Cthulhu (Ark Order)
Cthulhu (Ark Order)
Cthulhu (Godzilla vs. Cthulhu: A Death May Die Story)
Cthulhu, by Willi Roberts (Innsmouth: The Stolen Child)
Cthulhu (The Challenger to Great Old Ones)
Cthulhu (Twilight of the Gods: Elder Gods)
Cthulhu (Monster Strike)
Cthulhu (Monster Strike)
Cthulhu (Monster Warlord)
Cthulhu (Monster Legends)
Cthulhu (Monster Legends)
Cthulhu (Monster Legends)
The Great Cthulhu (Monster Legends)
The Great Cthulhu (Monster Legends)
Cthulhu (Myriad Colors Phantom World)
Cthulhu (Myriad Colors Phantom World)
Cthulhu (Franken Fran)
A statue of Cthulhu, at the Roger Williams Park Zoo
A figure of Cthulhu, by Bandai
A figure of Cthulhu, by Y-MSF
Great Cthulhu, by Kevin O'Neill (The Game of Extraordinary Gentlemen)
Cthulhu (Puzzle & Dragons)
Cthulhu (King of Tokyo)
Cthulhu (Gate Ruler)
Cthulhu (Futurama Comics)
Cthulhu (Bettie Page: Unbound)

Gallery of Cthulhu Inspired or Cthulhu Similar Characters

Eldritch or demonic entities with tentacles who bear a resemblance to Cthulhu, or have similar stories—such as being trapped in another dimension or in a submerged island city, and having cultists or monstrous beings working to free them.

Chthon (Marvel)
Slorioth (Marvel)
Quoggoth (Marvel)
Icthultu (Justice League)
Xitalu (iZombie)
Dweller in Darkness (Marvel)
Night God (The Brave and the Bold)
Syththunu, an Elder God (DC Comics)
N'Zoth (Warcraft)
Illyria, an Old One (Buffy)
Marit Lage (Magic: The Gathering)
Dagon (Ben 10)
Vilgax (Ben 10)
Illithid, aka Mind Flayer (Forgotten Realms)
Moridun (Marvel)
Octomus the Master (Power Rangers)
Karkull (Superman)
Uluath (Marvel)
Gatanothor (Ultraman Tiga)
Lord of the Deep (Palladium Books)
Sadu-Hem (Hellboy)
The Dweller (Transformers)
The D-Void (Transformers)
The Demon (Happy Tree Friends)
The Evil Entity (Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated)
Char Gar Gothakon (Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated)
God-demon (Godzilla in Hell)
Scylla (MonsterVerse)
The Kraken (Skull Island)
Khalk'ru (Dwellers in the Mirage)
Vorn the Unspeakable (Freakazoid!)
Pf'legmwad ("The Call of C'rruso")
Kulalu (Ape X Mecha Ape: New World Order)
Hedorah (Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons II - Sons of Giants issue #2)
Ktu-Rufu (World of Horror)
The Kur (Dandadan)
The Necro Monster (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
Dagomon (Digimon)
Coppelius (Malifaux)
Coppelius (Malifaux)
Alien species from Predator: The Last Hunt (artwork by Francesco Manna)
Alien species from Predator: The Last Hunt (artwork by Francesco Manna)
Dagon (Jujutsu Kaisen)
Cthulhy Squele (Monster Girl Doctor)

Trivia

Despite the name of the mythos, Cthulhu is not the main cosmic entity within it and it is actually one of the lower hierarchy as can be seen within the family tree.

Incorrect Understanding from Lovecraft

Lovecraft's idea of Non-Euclidean Geometry

Lovecraft attempts to describe the city of R'lyeh as non-euclidean as a way to describe the undescribable horror^[67], despite the fact that the Earth falls into models of non-Euclidean geometry due to being a sphere. This makes sense as he apparently had too delicate of a constitution for math.

Battle Records

0 - 1 - 0

None.

Johansen - Fight^[68]
- Conditions: Johansen was running away on his ship, the Alert with several other men.
- Location: S. Latitude 47° 9', W. Longitude 126° 43'

None.

References

Expand here.
↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh"." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"What of all this—and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones showed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Johansen and his men were awed by the cosmic majesty of this dripping Babylon of elder demons, and must have guessed without guidance that it was nothing of this or of any sane planet." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"What, in substance, both the Eskimo wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this—the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud: "Ph’nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh, wgah’nagl fhtagn.” Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this: "In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”" ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones showed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones showed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu": ""Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds. . . ." —Algernon Blackwood." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"What, in substance, both the Eskimo wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this—the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud: "Ph’nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh, wgah’nagl fhtagn.” Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this: "In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”" ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on the broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"What of all this—and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Then, driven ahead by curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47° 9', W. Longitude 126° 43' come upon a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but God knows he soon saw enough!" ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on the broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Donovan slid or somehow propelled himself down or along the jamb and rejoined his fellows, and everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this fantasy of prismatic distortion it moved anomalously in a diagonal way, so that all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally lifelike, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally lifelike, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally lifelike, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"It was then that he began that rambling tale which suddenly played upon a sleeping memory and won the fevered interest of my uncle. There had been a slight earthquake tremor the night before, the most considerable felt in New England for some years; and Wilcox's imagination had been keenly affected. ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"Young Wilcox’s rejoinder, which impressed my uncle enough to make him recall and record it verbatim, was of a fantastically poetic cast which must have typified his whole conversation, and which I have since found highly characteristic of him. He said, "It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"Upon retiring, he had had an unprecedented dream of great Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror. Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars, and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, "Cthulhu fhtagn". This verbal jumble was the key to the recollection which excited and disturbed Professor Angell. He questioned the sculptor with scientific minuteness; and studied with almost frantic intensity the bas-relief on which the youth had found himself working, chilled and clad only in his nightclothes, when waking had stolen bewilderingly over him. My uncle blamed his old age, Wilcox afterward said, for his slowness in recognizing both hieroglyphics and pictorial design. Many of his questions seemed highly out of place to his visitor, especially those which tried to connect the latter with strange cults or societies; and Wilcox could not understand the repeated promises of silence which he was offered in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or paganly religious body. When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh"." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh"." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay: "The notes in question were those descriptive of the dreams of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had his strange visitations. My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung body of inquiries amongst nearly all the friends whom he could question without impertinence, asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time past. The reception of his request seems to have been varied; but he must, at the very least, have received more responses than any ordinary man could have handled without a secretary. This original correspondence was not preserved, but his notes formed a thorough and really significant digest. Average people in society and business—New England’s traditional “salt of the earth”—gave an almost completely negative result, though scattered cases of uneasy but formless nocturnal impressions appear here and there, always between March 23rd and April 2nd—the period of young Wilcox’s delirium. Scientific men were little more affected, though four cases of vague description suggest fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, and in one case there is mentioned a dread of something abnormal. It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognizant of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses from esthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculptor’s delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described; and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible toward the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases by name instead of merely by number, I should have attempted some corroboration and personal investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a few. All of these, however, bore out the notes in full. I have often wondered if all the objects of the professor’s questioning felt as puzzled as did this fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever reach them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"On March 23rd, the manuscript continued, Wilcox failed to appear; and inquiries at his quarters revealed that he had been stricken with an obscure sort of fever and taken to the home of his family in Waterman Street. He had cried out in the night, arousing several other artists in the building, and had manifested since then only alternations of unconsciousness and delirium. My uncle at once telephoned the family, and from that time forward kept close watch of the case; calling often at the Thayer Street office of Dr. Tobey, whom he learned to be in charge. The youth's febrile mind, apparently, was dwelling on strange things; and the doctor shuddered now and then as he spoke of them. They included not only a repetition of what he had formerly dreamed, but touched wildly on a gigantic thing "miles high" which walked or lumbered about. He at no time fully described this object, but occasional frantic words, as repeated by Dr. Tobey, convinced the professor that it must be identical with the nameless monstrosity he had sought to depict in his dream-sculpture. Reference to this object, the doctor added, was invariably a prelude to the young man’s subsidence into lethargy. His temperature, oddly enough, was not greatly above normal; but the whole condition was otherwise such as to suggest true fever rather than mental disorder. On April 2nd at about 3 p. m. every trace of Wilcox’s malady suddenly ceased. He sat upright in bed, astonished to find himself at home and completely ignorant of what had happened in dream or reality since the night of March 22nd. Pronounced well by his physician, he returned to his quarters in three days; but to Professor Angell he was of no further assistance. All traces of strange dreaming had vanished with his recovery, and my uncle kept no record of his night-thoughts after a week of pointless and irrelevant accounts of thoroughly usual visions." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay: "The notes in question were those descriptive of the dreams of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had his strange visitations. My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung body of inquiries amongst nearly all the friends whom he could question without impertinence, asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time past. The reception of his request seems to have been varied; but he must, at the very least, have received more responses than any ordinary man could have handled without a secretary. This original correspondence was not preserved, but his notes formed a thorough and really significant digest. Average people in society and business—New England’s traditional “salt of the earth”—gave an almost completely negative result, though scattered cases of uneasy but formless nocturnal impressions appear here and there, always between March 23rd and April 2nd—the period of young Wilcox’s delirium. Scientific men were little more affected, though four cases of vague description suggest fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, and in one case there is mentioned a dread of something abnormal. It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognizant of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses from esthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculptor’s delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described; and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible toward the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases by name instead of merely by number, I should have attempted some corroboration and personal investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a few. All of these, however, bore out the notes in full. I have often wondered if all the objects of the professor’s questioning felt as puzzled as did this fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever reach them." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on the broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality." ↑ Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"The aperture was black with a darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from its eon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membranous wings. The odor arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quickeared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water. Steam had not been suffered to go down entirely, despite the departure of all hands for the shore; and it was the work of only a few moments of feverish rushing up and down between wheels and engines to get the Alert under way. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, she began to churn the lethal waters; whilst on the masonry of that charnel shore that was not of earth the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously. But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam. That was all."

Versus Threads

None.

[1] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh"."

[2] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time."

[3] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[4] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[5] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[6] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"What of all this—and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul."

[7] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones showed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."

[8] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Johansen and his men were awed by the cosmic majesty of this dripping Babylon of elder demons, and must have guessed without guidance that it was nothing of this or of any sane planet."

[9] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[10] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water."

[11] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water."

[12] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"What, in substance, both the Eskimo wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this—the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud:
"Ph’nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh, wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this:
"In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”"

[13] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[14] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[15] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones showed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."

[16] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones showed them; idols brought in dim eras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."

[17] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water."

[18] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly.
There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam."

[19] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly.
There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam."

[20] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[21] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water."

[22] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[23] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[24] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[25] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu": ""Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds. . . ."
—Algernon Blackwood."

[26] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[27] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time."

[28] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[29] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[30] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[31] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[32] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[33] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[34] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[35] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"What, in substance, both the Eskimo wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this—the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud:
"Ph’nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh, wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this:
"In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”"

[36] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first man, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him."

[37] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[38] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on the broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality."

[39] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly.
There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam."

[40] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[41] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[42] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[43] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[44] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"What of all this—and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul."

[45] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Then, driven ahead by curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47° 9', W. Longitude 126° 43' come upon a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but God knows he soon saw enough!"

[46] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on the broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality."

[47] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Donovan slid or somehow propelled himself down or along the jamb and rejoined his fellows, and everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this fantasy of prismatic distortion it moved anomalously in a diagonal way, so that all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset."

[48] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[49] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been eons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them."

[50] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[51] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally lifelike, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time."

[52] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water."

[53] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water."

[54] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously."

[55] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally lifelike, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time."

[56] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse.:"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally lifelike, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art belonging to civilization’s youth—or indeed to any other time."

[57] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"It was then that he began that rambling tale which suddenly played upon a sleeping memory and won the fevered interest of my uncle. There had been a slight earthquake tremor the night before, the most considerable felt in New England for some years; and Wilcox's imagination had been keenly affected.

[58] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"Young Wilcox’s rejoinder, which impressed my uncle enough to make him recall and record it verbatim, was of a fantastically poetic cast which must have typified his whole conversation, and which I have since found highly characteristic of him. He said, "It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon."

[59] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"Upon retiring, he had had an unprecedented dream of great Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror. Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars, and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, "Cthulhu fhtagn".
This verbal jumble was the key to the recollection which excited and disturbed Professor Angell. He questioned the sculptor with scientific minuteness; and studied with almost frantic intensity the bas-relief on which the youth had found himself working, chilled and clad only in his nightclothes, when waking had stolen bewilderingly over him. My uncle blamed his old age, Wilcox afterward said, for his slowness in recognizing both hieroglyphics and pictorial design. Many of his questions seemed highly out of place to his visitor, especially those which tried to connect the latter with strange cults or societies; and Wilcox could not understand the repeated promises of silence which he was offered in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or paganly religious body. When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh"."

[60] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit, for after the first interview the manuscript records daily calls of the young man, during which he related startling fragments of nocturnal imagery whose burden was always some terrible Cyclopean vista of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish. The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh"."

[61] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay: "The notes in question were those descriptive of the dreams of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had his strange visitations. My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung body of inquiries amongst nearly all the friends whom he could question without impertinence, asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time past. The reception of his request seems to have been varied; but he must, at the very least, have received more responses than any ordinary man could have handled without a secretary. This original correspondence was not preserved, but his notes formed a thorough and really significant digest. Average people in society and business—New England’s traditional “salt of the earth”—gave an almost completely negative result, though scattered cases of uneasy but formless nocturnal impressions appear here and there, always between March 23rd and April 2nd—the period of young Wilcox’s delirium. Scientific men were little more affected, though four cases of vague description suggest fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, and in one case there is mentioned a dread of something abnormal.
It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognizant of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses from esthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculptor’s delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described; and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible toward the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases by name instead of merely by number, I should have attempted some corroboration and personal investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a few. All of these, however, bore out the notes in full. I have often wondered if all the objects of the professor’s questioning felt as puzzled as did this fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever reach them."

[62] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"On March 23rd, the manuscript continued, Wilcox failed to appear; and inquiries at his quarters revealed that he had been stricken with an obscure sort of fever and taken to the home of his family in Waterman Street. He had cried out in the night, arousing several other artists in the building, and had manifested since then only alternations of unconsciousness and delirium. My uncle at once telephoned the family, and from that time forward kept close watch of the case; calling often at the Thayer Street office of Dr. Tobey, whom he learned to be in charge. The youth's febrile mind, apparently, was dwelling on strange things; and the doctor shuddered now and then as he spoke of them. They included not only a repetition of what he had formerly dreamed, but touched wildly on a gigantic thing "miles high" which walked or lumbered about. He at no time fully described this object, but occasional frantic words, as repeated by Dr. Tobey, convinced the professor that it must be identical with the nameless monstrosity he had sought to depict in his dream-sculpture. Reference to this object, the doctor added, was invariably a prelude to the young man’s subsidence into lethargy. His temperature, oddly enough, was not greatly above normal; but the whole condition was otherwise such as to suggest true fever rather than mental disorder.
On April 2nd at about 3 p. m. every trace of Wilcox’s malady suddenly ceased. He sat upright in bed, astonished to find himself at home and completely ignorant of what had happened in dream or reality since the night of March 22nd. Pronounced well by his physician, he returned to his quarters in three days; but to Professor Angell he was of no further assistance. All traces of strange dreaming had vanished with his recovery, and my uncle kept no record of his night-thoughts after a week of pointless and irrelevant accounts of thoroughly usual visions."

[63] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay: "The notes in question were those descriptive of the dreams of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had his strange visitations. My uncle, it seems, had quickly instituted a prodigiously far-flung body of inquiries amongst nearly all the friends whom he could question without impertinence, asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time past. The reception of his request seems to have been varied; but he must, at the very least, have received more responses than any ordinary man could have handled without a secretary. This original correspondence was not preserved, but his notes formed a thorough and really significant digest. Average people in society and business—New England’s traditional “salt of the earth”—gave an almost completely negative result, though scattered cases of uneasy but formless nocturnal impressions appear here and there, always between March 23rd and April 2nd—the period of young Wilcox’s delirium. Scientific men were little more affected, though four cases of vague description suggest fugitive glimpses of strange landscapes, and in one case there is mentioned a dread of something abnormal.
It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognizant of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses from esthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a large proportion of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of the dreams being immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculptor’s delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported scenes and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described; and some of the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible toward the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very sad. The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases by name instead of merely by number, I should have attempted some corroboration and personal investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a few. All of these, however, bore out the notes in full. I have often wondered if all the objects of the professor’s questioning felt as puzzled as did this fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever reach them."

[64] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously."

[65] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[66] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 1. The Horror in Clay:"These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape—for did not this star-fashioned image prove it?—but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by molding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals."

[67] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on the broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality."

[68] Weird Tales Volume 11 Issue 2 "The Call of Cthulhu" Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea.:"The aperture was black with a darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from its eon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membranous wings. The odor arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quickeared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing can not be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated floundering at the edge of the water.
Steam had not been suffered to go down entirely, despite the departure of all hands for the shore; and it was the work of only a few moments of feverish rushing up and down between wheels and engines to get the Alert under way. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, she began to churn the lethal waters; whilst on the masonry of that charnel shore that was not of earth the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously.
But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a demon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly.
There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.
That was all."

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Cthulhu (Original)

Contents

Background

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