HP Lovecraft tale
Unhappy is he to whom his memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretch who looks back lonely hours in clubs and dingy enclosures and amazing brown shade rows of ancient volumes, or to dreadful vigils in the shade of huge trees, grotesque, full of vines, silently waving on high their branches twisted . This is what the gods I was assigned ... to me, the dazed, the disappointed, the barren, ruined; however, I feel strangely satisfied and I desperately cling to faded memories every time my mind is threatening to go further, to the other.
do not know where I was born, except that the castle was infinitely horrible, full of dark corridors and high ceilings where the eye was only cobwebs and shadows.
the cracked stones were always hideously damp corridors and everywhere damn smell was perceived as piles of corpses of dead generations. I had never light, so I used light candles and stared at them intently for relief, nor sun shining outside, since those terrible woods rose above the highest tower. One, a black tower, surpassing the branches and out to the open and unknown, but was almost in ruins and could only ascend to it by a steep wall almost impossible to climb.
years I have lived there, but I can not measure time. Living beings should have attended to my needs, but I can not recall any person except myself, nor any living thing except rats, bats and spiders, silent all. I guess that whoever has taken care of me, must have been amazingly old, since my first mental representation of a living person was something like me, but twisted blighted and deteriorated as the castle. For me there was nothing grotesque skeletons bones and scattered stone crypts dug into the depths of the foundation. In my imagination these things associated with daily events and was more real than the color figures of living creatures that looked in many books moldy. In these books I learned everything I know. Any teacher urged or guided me me, and do not remember hearing all those years ... human voices, even mine, and that although he had read about the spoken word never occurred to me to speak aloud. My appearance was also a matter outside my mind because there were no mirrors in the castle and me limited, instinctively, to see me as a fellow of the youth she saw figures drawn or painted on the books. He was conscious of youth because of how little I remembered.
Outside, lying on the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I used to spend hours on end dreaming what he had read in books among people longed to see me happy, sunny world beyond the endless forest. I once tried to escape the forest, but as I walked away the shadows of the castle became more dense and the air impregnated with fears growing, so I started to run frantically down the road traveled, not to get lost in a maze of gloomy silence.
So through endless twilights I dreamed and hoped, even though he did not know why. Until my black solitude, the desire for light grew so frantic that I could not remain idle and my supplicating hands went up to that one tower in ruins above the trees, sinking in the sky outside and unknown. And finally decided to climb the tower, but I fell, and that it was better glimpse of a moment the sky and perish, than to live without having ever seen the day. The wet
twilight climbed the ancient stone steps up to the level where they were interrupted, and thereafter, climbing small incoming where barely fit one foot, I continued my ascent dangerous. Horrible and dreadful was that rock cylinder, inert and without steps, black, ruinous and lonely, sinister with startled bats fluttering mute. But even more horrifying was the slowness of my progress, because for more than climbing, the darkness that enveloped me not dissipated and cold again, as venerable and bewitched mold, I was overwhelmed. Shivering wondering why not come to clarity, and, having dared, would have looked down. It struck me that the night had suddenly fallen on me in vain with his free hand groping in search of a window sill which spy out and up and calculate how high I was.
Suddenly, after a long and terrifying ascent blind by that concave and desperate precipice, I felt the head touched something solid, and I knew then that should have won the terrace or at least, some kind of flat. I raised my hand free and, in the darkness, felt an obstacle, finding out it was stone and immovable. Then came a deadly detour to the tower, clinging to any support that the slimy wall could give, until finally my hand, feeling always found a spot where the fence was down and continued to walk up, pushing the slab or door with head, as used both hands on my cautious progress. Did not show any light up, and as my hands went higher and higher, I knew that my ascent time was over, as the door opened to an opening leading to a stone surface of greater circumference than lower tower, no doubt the floor of a high and spacious observation chamber. I crept stealthily across the room trying to get the heavy stone not to return to their place, but I failed in my attempt. As he lay exhausted on the stone floor, I heard the amazing echo of its fall, but still I hoped to raise it again when necessary. Believing
already a prodigious height, far over the hated branches of the forest, I sat and felt the wall wearily seeking a window to let me look first heaven and the moon and those stars on which he had read. But both hands disappointed me because everything I found were large marble shelves covered with oblong boxes abhorrent disturbing dimension. More reflection and I wondered what strange secret that could accommodate high enclosure built at such an immense distance from the castle behind. Suddenly my hands encountered unexpectedly with a door frame, which hung a stone slab with a rough surface because of the strange cuts that covered. The door was closed, but making a supreme effort to overcome all obstacles and opened inward. That done, I felt pure ecstasy ever known, through an ornate iron gate, and at the end of a short stone staircase rising from the newly discovered door, shining peacefully in all its glory was the full moon to which he had never seen before except in dreams and in vague visions I dared not call memories.
Security now that he had reached the top of the castle, quickly climbed the few steps that separated me from the gate, but that a cloud covered the moon making me stumble, and in the dark I had to move more slowly. It was still dark when I reached the gate, I found open after careful consideration but did not want to rush for fear transposed from the incredible heights he had achieved. Then the moon came out again.
Of all conceivable impacts, none is as demonic as the unfathomable and grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing could compare to endure before the terror of what was now seeing, of the extraordinary wonders that the show implied. The picture itself was as simple as amazing as it was merely this: instead of an impressive view of treetops seen from a height impressive, stretched around me, at the same level of the gate, no less than the mainland, separated into different compartments by marble slabs and columns, and shaded by an old stone church whose spire glowed eerily devastated the moonlight. Middle
unconscious, I opened the gate and walked swaying the white gravel path that stretched in two directions. By dazed and my mind was chaotic, she persisted in this frantic desire of light, not even the amazing discovery of times before I could stop. I did not know, nor did I care if my experience was insanity, alienation or magic, but was determined to pursue brightness and happiness at all costs. I did not know who or what I was, or what could be my field and my circumstances, but continued as stumbling my way, it was hinted to me a kind of timid latent memory that made my progress not wholly fortuitous aimlessly fixed open field, one moment without losing sight of the road, others drop to penetrate, full of curiosity, meadows where only occasional ruins have revealed the presence, in ancient times, a path forgotten. At one point I had to swim across a fast river, the remains of masonry cracked and moldy talking about a bridge disappeared long ago.
had passed more than two hours when I arrived at what appeared to be my goal: a venerable ivy-covered castle, nestled in a park of dense grove of familiarity amazing to me, and yet full of intriguing novelties. I saw that the moat had been filled and that several of the towers that I knew well were demolished, while new wings stood confused the viewer. But what I observed with great interest and delight were the open windows, flooded with splendid clarity and they send back echoes of the happiest of revelry. Forward towards them, I looked inside and saw a group of strangers dressed, they chatted among themselves with great revelry. As I had never heard the human voice could barely guess what they said vaguely. Some faces were expressions remotest memories awoke in me, others were quite beyond me.
I jumped out the window and I got into the room, brightly lit, while my mind jumped the only moment of hope to the most black of discouragement. The nightmare was not long in coming, since we entered, there was one of the most frightening reactions that could have conceived. No sooner had crossed the threshold when spread among all present an unexpected and sudden dread, horrible intensity, distorting their faces and throats started of all the most frightful shrieks. The general was disbanded, and amid the screaming and panic several fainted, being dragged by the fleeing wildly. Many covered their eyes with his hands and ran blindly taking all before him, knocking the furniture and giving the walls in a desperate attempt to win one of the many doors.
Solo and groggy in the bright room, listening to the echoes increasingly bloodcurdling screams off of those, I began to shiver thinking what could be lurking that I though I saw it. At first glance the place seemed empty, but when I went to one of the alcoves I thought I detected a presence ... a hint of movement across the golden arches that led into another room, similar to the first. As I approached the arch I began to perceive the presence more clearly, and then, with the first and last sound ever emitted a horrible scream that revolted me almost as much as his cause morbid, I looked horrible in all its intensity the inconceivable, indescribable, unspeakable monster, by nature of its mere appearance, had become a lively meeting in a herd of delirious fugitives.
I can not even tell about what it was like, being a composed of all that is unclean, scary, unwanted, abnormal, and detestable. It was an eerie shade of decay, decrepitude and desolation, the putrid and damaging image of the viscous, the bareness of something terrible that the merciful earth should hide forever. God knows that was not of this world, or at least had ceased to be, "and yet, with great horror on my part, I could see in his features eaten with bones that are glimpsed, a distant and repulsive ways reminiscent of human, and its rusted and torn clothes, an indescribable quality that thrilled me even more.
was almost paralyzed, but not enough to not make a feeble effort to salvation: a trip back could not break the spell that imprisoned the monster I had no voice, no name. My eyes, haunted by those disgusting glassy eyes that stared at him, refused to close, while the terrible object, after the initial impact, was now more confused. I tried to raise his hand and dispel the vision, but I was so stunned that the arm did not respond completely to my will. However, the effort was enough to alter my balance and swaying, I took a few steps forward to keep from falling. In doing so suddenly acquired the distressing notion of the proximity of the thing, whose foul breath was almost seems hearing. Nothing short of crazy, but I could not pass a hand to stop the offensive image, closer and closer, when suddenly my fingers touched the tip of the monster lay rotting under the golden arches.
not screamed, but all satanic vampires who ride the night wind you did for me, while they dropped in my mind numbing flood of memories.
I knew right then what had happened, I remembered to beyond the scary castle and trees, I recognized the building in which I was, I recognized, most terrible, the unholy abomination that stood before me, looking sideways while away from their own my fingers stained.
But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and the balm of forgetfulness. In the supreme horror of that moment I forgot what I was scared and the outbreak of memories vanished in a chaos of repeated images. As in dreams, I left that building and defied ghost and ran swiftly and silently in the moonlight. When I returned to the mausoleum of marble and descended the stairs, I found I could not move the stone trap, but I was not sorry because he had come to hate the old castle and trees. Now I ride with ghosts, mocking and friendly, the night wind, and during the day game between the catacombs of nephro-Ka, the obscure and unknown Hadoth valley on the banks of the Nile I know that light is not for me, except the light of moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor is my joy, except Nitokris unnamed parties under the Great Pyramid, and yet, in my new freedom thanks almost savage bitterness of alienation. For though
oblivion calm has given me, not that I do not know that I am a foreigner, a stranger to this world and all who are still men. This is what I've known since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination that emerged in that great gilded frame; since I stretched my fingers and touched the cold and inexorable mirror-polished surface.
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