The Elder Gods ain’t just whistling Dixie. First of all, they don’t whistle. Second, they exist, whether you believe in them or not (more on that later). Third, you do NOT want to notice them, or have them notice you.
I know that now.
They’re coming.
H.P Lovecraft was a high-school dropout and a racist. Trying to fit in gave him repeated nervous breakdowns. He got his start by writing whiny letters to the pulps complaining about the quality of other writers’ work. He was never able to support himself with his stories and poems, and lived off family money. When that ran out he married, and his wife supported him. He was a mama’s boy, a shrinking violet, an also-ran.
But he had a great name, and a pretty good imagination. Maybe too good. He imagined things that took root in the minds of others, fired their dreams, and spread and spread. People read his stories and saw the world in a new way. It was like a virus; like a plague; like an invasion of body snatchers.
It had power. You see, some things exist: you can eat them, burn them, or put them in the trunk of your car. In the great dichotomy of Is and Isn’t, they Is. Reality as we know it.
But, you say, some things are real but not tangible. They can be felt, but not seen or measured. Things like Hope, Freedom, God. Things Worth Capitalizing.
You’re right, they do exist. They exist because because we believe, we think, we created them. God began when we imagined them, called out to them for help, and blamed them for tragedy. Hope was created the first time someone thought that life could be better than mud, spoiled food, and disease. They were wrong, but we still hope.
Our world changed when God began, and when Hope began, and all those other capitalizable intangibles. We can measure their effects, if not the things themselves. So they must be real, even though they have no shape, no bodies, no pustulent appendages, no ichor-smeared talons reaching, always reaching.
Not here at least. But they Is, somewhere. They have to be. Their bodies are just beyond our ability to perceive them.
I know that now.
They’re coming.
Scoff all you like, it’s a free country. Don’t believe me. The less you believe in a thing, the less of it there is. But don’t think about it too much. Because thought has the same kind of generative energy as belief. We talk about “jinxing” something: creating failure by thinking or talking about it. It happens, you know it does. Remember that one time? Or more than one, in my case.
Lovecraft didn’t believe in Cthulhu. Not at the beginning. But he did do a lot of thinking about the first and greatest, the deepest and darkest, the god who allows humanity to exist through ignorance, not benevolence. Wisps became threads; threads became sinews; sinews became - you know the rest. I don’t have to do the whole knee bone, thigh bone thing.
So now, Cthulhu exists. Ask anyone. Probably more people believe in Cthulhu than believe in Jesus - who also must exist, by the way, and for the same reasons. And people think he’s cool. Cthulhu, I mean. But listen again. They EXIST. not as a concept, or a joke, or in “finger quotes.” They became real when we made them real, BECAUSE we made them real.
I know that now.
They’re coming.
The folks at the front desk said this story needs to be a personal experience, and that the narrator needs to be frightened. Not a tangential essay on the instantiation of Socratic archetypes. OK, OK, I’ll comply, don’t tase me bro. It happened to me, personally, and I am frightened. More than that, I’m a thing that’s in the same direction as frightened, but way past it. A new kind of fear that I am creating now, by thinking about it too much. See how that works?
Because, you see, I SAW. And they saw me back. I was horrified. I soiled myself. They were mildly annoyed. But when you are dealing with a thing that has eyes the size of Jupiter, and too many of them to count, even annoyance is a bad thing. Now they’re aware of us, in the dust of the corner of the room they never use. And They are thinking about sweeping up.
I know that now.
They’re coming.
So what makes me the Harbinger of Doom? How did I spill coffee on the Thing That Ends All Things, and bring down its wrath - final, fiery, and indifferent? Hell if I know. I’m nobody special. But I’ve been told I overthink things. Which, in light of recent discussions, makes me a wizard of some sort.
I started digging into Lovecraft and his pet monsters as research for a story I was writing - this one in fact, though everything changed when the tale grew a tail. Interest becomes hobby, becomes obsession, becomes clickbait, becomes conspiracy theory. Yeah, knee bone, thigh bone. People who used to enjoy my company for cool Cthulhu trivia now avoided eye contact for the same reason. Somehow I generated enough thought-and-belief wattage to create a tiny spark. There were other sparks, separated by time, space, and levels of belief. But there were just enough kooks in my corner of the astral plane to weaken the veil, to Nudge Open The Eternal Door, to pop the buttons on the buttflap of the long johns of the universe.
In a moment, I saw. For a moment, I saw. Darkness and light. Fire and freezing. The visceral understanding of a thing too big to comprehend and impossible to ignore. Imagine those eyeballs, each the size of Jupiter, as they all turn toward you and focus on your insignificant ass. Everyone wants to be noticed. But not like this. Not like this.
We don’t know how we came into this world, or how we’ll leave. In the same way, I don’t know what took me into their immeasurable presence, or how I withdrew. Maybe I was there for longer than I realized, but my brain was unable to hold anything beyond that first Gaze. When I became aware of myself again, I only knew a few things. I already mentioned the soiling, let’s move on. I didn’t know names, or motives, or timetables. But I was sure that those Things from The Other Place were now aware of us, and might want to peer into our corner. It could happen soon. Or never. Maybe I’m crazy. I hope I am.
Because if I’m not, I have somehow brought about the Great Reckoning, the End Of All Things, the Ultimate Capitalization.
Do me a favor: when you’re done reading this, shrug and keep scrolling. Don’t believe me, and for God’s sake don’t think about it later. Because thinking has consequences. Keep it light, have a laugh, smoke some weed.
I know that now.
They’re coming.
I’m sorry.