The Mountains Of Madness
CHAPTER XI (Part 1)

Still another time I came to a place where it was very difficult to continue. I had to be hardened at this stage; but there were some experiences and intimacy that hurt too deeply to allow healing, and left only an additional sensitivity so that the memory resurrected all the original horrors. We saw, as I said, a certain barrier on the polished floor ahead; and I can add that our nostrils were attacked almost simultaneously by a very strange intensification of the strange floor, he said, it is now quite clearly mixed with the nameless smell of others who have gone before us. The light of the second torch left no doubt about what the barrier was, and we dared to approach them just because we could see, even from a distance, that they were enough to pass through all the detrimental forces as did six similar specimens dug from the grave of the terrible star-blown in the impoverished Lake camp.

They are, indeed, less complete like most of us that we have dug — despite growing plain from a thick pond, the dark green gathered around them that their incompleteness was of a much greater repetition. There seem to be only four, whereas the Lake bulletin would suggest no less than eight as forming a group that precedes us. Finding them in this state is completely unexpected, and we wonder what kind of struggle has been going on here in the dark.

The penguins, who were attacked in the body, retaliated viciously with their beaks; and our ears now confirm the existence of a splash far beyond. Did the others disturb such a place and stir up a killing pursuit? The obstacle did not indicate that, as the penguin's beak against the hard tissue Lake dissected could hardly explain the terrible damage we were beginning to see. In addition, the large blind birds we saw seemed very peaceful.

So, is there a struggle among the others, and are the four absentees responsible? If yes, where are they? Are they close and might threaten us soon? We glanced anxiously at some smooth lateral parts as we continued our slow and reluctant approach. Whatever the conflict, it's obviously what scares penguins into unusual nomads. And so, it must have appeared near that a fainter echo was faintly heard in the innumerable bays outside, for there was no sign that birds normally lived here. Perhaps, we contemplate, there is a terrible running battle, with the weaker side trying to get back to the cached sled when their pursuers finish it. One could imagine the daemonic commotion between the monstrous nameless entities as it surged out from the black abyss with a huge cloud of panicked penguins roaming and rushing in front.

I said that we approached that vast and incomplete barrier slowly and reluctantly. Going to heaven we never approached them at all, but ran back at high speed out of that blasphemous tunnel with a very smooth floor and disparaging murals, imitating and mocking the things they have replaced — run back, before we see what we did see, ' he said, and before our minds are burned with something that will never let us breathe so easily again!

I have come only to echo his own cries; for I have seen those basic sculptures also, and admiringly admiring the way the nameless artist posited that the terrible slime layer found on certain Old Ones — those wearing the fearsome shoggoth had been characteristically killed and sucked into headless head in the great war of reconquest. They are famous, nightmare statues even when telling ancient things that have passed; because shoggoths and their work should not be seen by humans or depicted by any creature. The crazy writer Necronomicon nervously tries to swear that no one is bred on the planet, and that only drugged dreamers ever contain them. Shapeless protoplasm is able to mock and reflect all shapes and organs as well as the viscous — agglutination process of bubbling cells — fifteen foot high rubber spheroid made of plastic and ductile infinity — slave suggestions, city builder — the more pouty, more and smarter, more and smarter, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative — Dear God! What insanity would even make those blasphemous Old Men willing to use and carve such things?

And now, now, when Danforth and I looked at the newly sparkling and reflective black mucus that was tightly attached to that headless body and smelled indecent with a new, unknown scent that could only be imagined by diseased delusion — clings to those bodies and increasingly does not shine on a smooth part of the wall haphazardly re-hewn in a series of grouped points — we understand the quality of fear cosmic to the deepest depths. Not afraid the four people lost the other — because too good we suspect they will not harm again. The poor devil! After all, they were not the kind of evil of their kind. They are people of another age and another order of beings. Nature has toyed with them — as has happened to any other person, madness, cruelty, he said, or human cruelty can further be dragged into the dead polar garbage or sleep — and this is their tragic return.