| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: the locality. In our sensible age - since the Dunwich horror of
1928 was hushed up by those who had the town's and the world's
welfare at heart - people shun it without knowing exactly why.
Perhaps one reason - though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers
- is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone
far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England
backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with
the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and
inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low,
whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden
murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnameable violence and
The Dunwich Horror |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: When the ship's way is deadened in stays and all the hands
are aft at the main braces you will have a clear road to slip
out and get overboard through the open quarter-deck port.
I've had them both fastened up. Use a rope's end to lower
yourself into the water so as to avoid a splash--you know.
It could be heard and cause some beastly complication."
He kept silent for a while, then whispered, "I understand."
"I won't be there to see you go," I began with an effort.
"The rest . . . I only hope I have understood, too."
"You have. From first to last"--and for the first time there
seemed to be a faltering, something strained in his whisper.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: in Oslo. Sailing for London, I reembarked at once for the Norwegian
capital; and one autumn day landed at the trim wharves in the
shadow of the Egeberg. Johansen's address, I discovered, lay in
the Old Town of King Harold Haardrada, which kept alive the name
of Oslo during all the centuries that the greater city masqueraded
as "Christiana." I made the brief trip by taxicab, and knocked
with palpitant heart at the door of a neat and ancient building
with plastered front. A sad-faced woman in black answered my summons,
and I was stung th disappointment when she told me in halting
English that Gustaf Johansen was no more.
He had not long survived
Call of Cthulhu |
