The Abyss

The Abyss

1.


Will we recognize Its smile
when It comes to us,
Its dark gaping maw
filled with soundless mirth
of fresh turned earth.


2.





3.



"I stared into the Abyss,' he told the Doctor, "and the Abyss stared back."

The old Doctor nodded in sympathy.

"Nietzsche, eh? So you are a philosophy student then. It explains much."

"But how?" cried the student. "Others have not been...afflicted...in such a terrible fashion..."

The wise and gentle man who was his only hope of salvation smiled kindly.

"The answer, my sad friend, is quite...simple."

With a dreadful solemnity, he put away his pen and notebook.

"May God help you, young man, I cannot,” said the old Doctor, sighing.

“You see, It noticed you. Yes. And, worse still, you blinked. You blinked when It slyly grinned back."


4.


“If I stop running I’ll die,” the man cried.

“You won’t die,” said his friend. “Stop running.”

“I can’t. If I don’t reach my destination first I’ll die.”

“You won’t die,” said his friend who was running with him. “I promise you.”

“But how can you be sure? If I stop—“

“If you stop nothing will happen. You are exhausted. Stop and rest for awhile…and then we’ll continue.”

“If you’re sure—“ his friend said.

“Absolutely sure. Just stop and rest.”

The man was tired and his friend’s assurances emboldened him. He stopped running.

And at once collapsed to the ground writhing like a snake, moaning in horrible pain.

“I’m dying!” he cried.

“Of course you are,” said his friend. “You stopped running before you reached your destination.”

“You lied—“

“I was tired of running,” said his friend. “That’s all.”


5.


It was the merest blotch on my bedroom ceiling, a water stain from a treacherous roof. Surely nothing more. But it grew...and changed. And over many months it seemed to exert an unhealthy influence on my imagination. I had begun to perceive aspects, certain troubling aspects into this accidental and freakish Rorschach that seemed to draw my eyes, almost without conscious intent, each night as I lay in my bed. It had begun to interfere with my solitary habits such as reading or merely indulging harmless bits of fancy before finally turning out the light and embracing blessed sleep. It had, in my imagination, begun to resemble a face. Not merely the ordinary distorted fancy of a face the human mind inevitably reads into such accidental things, but a monstrous and distorted visage of inexpressible vileness, a mask of a terrible and exquisite malignity. Night after night it leered down at me, until finally even sleep was but a fond memory. My imagination had memorized this taint in some terrible fashion and now even in utter darkness it tormented me. The very awareness of its physical existence maddened me. Finally, I could endure no more and I rushed to my cellar, only to return with the tools necessary to obliterate it forever. I succeeded; and the face, so horrible and unforgiving, was no more. Only fresh paint greeted my gaze.
But It troubles me still. The paint removed; but did not silence. The mad laughter ceased after some weeks, but now--far worse!--the ghastly whispers, gentle but stern; the unyielding croaking admonishments ...demanding me to justify my actions.
When will it be silent?


6.


They come unannounced into your home, your apartment, your place of business ( even hospital beds or prison cells are not deterrents to their unwelcome presence), and these 'visitors' may stay for hours or mere minutes or they may stay for days. Does anyone know what they seek? No, nor the nature of the information they collect (for their soft whirring and clicking reveals activity and perhaps even purpose). Their unheralded appearance—which is not always without consequence-- seems incongruous with the benevolence the authorities claim in so many of their propaganda broadcasts. The media is controlled by them or forces sympathetic to them; for even the President is never photographed without one of these presences at his side. The leaders of other nations, the heads of the great corporations, the most charismatic religious figures, all travel with such companions in tow. Their physical forms are repulsive, the faces of the long dead scrubbed clean of individuation, reptilian flesh covered by a second skin, a translucent sheath that somehow makes their appearance even more ghastly. Neither human nor machine, even if certain qualities indicate creatures of an organic nature while others hint at monstrous mechanical genesis.
Their origins are shrouded in mystery and contradictory conjecture. Some say they appeared centuries ago, visitors from a far world while others claim with equal conviction that their appearance was no more than a few generations in the past.
People disappear. There is randomness to it more terrifying than a malign intent. Some may visit and observe (if that is what they are doing) for seconds and depart. The next day that person observed is gone forever, expunged from all legal records as if he or she had never existed. Other 'visitors' may stay for days and the only consequences for their unwilling hosts are annoyance and trepidation, intense fear and anger. They have destroyed all our books (so it is believed) all our electronic data and replaced them with new content we find incomprehensible, symbols that mean nothing to us, and sounds appalling to the human ear.

They can be killed. I killed one once and sliced it open only to find a foul-smelling black jelly, a few incomprehensible electronic components, and clumps of writhing white worms inside. There are no consequences to such acts of violence. There never are. I dragged its foul body onto the lawn and by morning it was gone. It had been collected.
But perhaps the worst is the suspicion the Old Doctor whispered to me. “They’re changing us,” he once said as we smoked and stared into the vast blackness of night. “I don’t understand how or in what way but I believe there is a subtle change in our nature and they are responsible.”
I found his remarks depressing, surprisingly so since I had shared the very same suspicion.

When he left that night I felt a tremendous sense of hopelessness. I was exhausted beyond belief. I drew my head into my chest cavity and retracted my arms and in moments was asleep.


7.



A terrible thing, to be haunted by a face. A face of such exquisite evil and unspeakable vileness that it torments your dreams for months or even years. And the certainty that under certain conditions, conditions I could only guess at, I would, sooner or later, encounter that horrible visage. Would it leer from a crowd or reveal Itself behind a slowly opening door or (in the merest of seconds, like a fiend removing a mask) replace the face of a once beloved friend? Unbearable, nameless dread! Despite my own tendencies towards cruel excess, the bestiality of the face was appalling. It drove me to take certain precautions, avoid certain specific milieus where I felt circumstances might be favorable for such a Thing to manifest itself. My preparations were rigorous, complete; after many years I knew a relative freedom from the Fear of what I once viewed as inevitable!. Fool! I had never conceived of how fully dreadful that fated encounter would be. I now believe certain horrors are inescapable...how otherwise to explain what shattered an already fragile balance of sanity?
One night, with a mind untroubled by the approach of any such event, lulled into a state of false security by the severe and complete precautions I had so assiduously taken and maintained, I entered my own familiar bedroom (after a long night of my customary dissipation and cruelty) and, in a thoughtless and casual glance, born of years of youthful habit, I turned in the direction of the old mirror, the mirror that now so mockingly adorned the bedroom wall, and a fixture for all the years I had spent in that ancient house of my father's father...and I saw It...and all, all was as It was Destined to be...I saw It, a Thing of madness and mindless depravity, vile, bestial and muttering... I saw It in the center of that cursed mirror! And the leering, mocking Thing was speaking--Oh, ghastly sight!-- and though surely no human ear could hear words spoken from a mirror, I knew them, instinctively, for the foulest mouthings a mind could conceive. And I shrieked, shrieked mindlessly at this consummation of madness and fate. In one instant, all sanity destroyed. My precautions? All rendered useless. Why?
I had removed the mirror's glass long years ago....





June, 1950.