The Mountains Of Madness
Part 3

Another thought inspired by the rise of the cave is the possibility of losing our pursuers to the focus of these bewildering great galleries. There are some blind albino penguins in the open space, and it seems clear that their fear of impending entities is so extreme that it cannot be accounted for. If at that moment we dim our torches to the lowest limits of travel necessity, keeping them tight in front of us, the movements of the great frightened birds in the mist might dampen our footsteps, sift through our true path, and somehow set it up a false lead. In the midst of the swirling mist, the floor spirals were scattered and noiseless beyond this point, as it was different from other unhealthy polished holes, it can hardly form very different features; in fact, as far as we can guess, it is, because those senses show special senses that make Old People partially detached from imperfect light in an emergency. Actually, we were a bit worried just in case we didn't get lost in our busyness. For we, of course, decided to go straight to the dead city; for the consequences of losing the honeycomb in the unknown leg would be unthinkable.

The fact that we survived and emerged is sufficient evidence that the thing took the wrong gallery while we found the right one. Penguins alone cannot save us, but along with the fog they seem to have done so. Only a benign fate keeps the curved vapors thick enough at the right moment, as they keep shifting and threaten to vanish. Indeed, they lifted for a brief moment before we emerged from the nausea-regenerated tunnel into the cave; so we actually caught the first glimpse and only half-a-glance of the coming entity as we cast the last glance, he said, that is very scary backwards before dimming the torch and hanging out with the penguins in hopes of avoiding the chase. If the fate that filters us is harmless, what gives us a glimpse is the opposite; for that semi-vision flash can be traced to half of the horror that has haunted us.

Our precise motive in turning back may be nothing more than the eternal instinct of the pursuit to measure the nature and path of its pursuer; or perhaps it is an automatic attempt to answer a subconscious question posed by one of our senses. In the middle of our flight, with all our faculty centered on the problem of escapism, we were not in a condition to observe and analyze details; nevertheless our latent brain cells must be wondering at the messages carried by our nostrils. After that we realized what — was that our escape from the frothy slime layer on that headless barrier, and the fortuitous approach of the pursuing entity, was, it does not give us the exchange of foul odors that logic calls for. In the neighborhood of places of prostration, the recent new and inexplicable floor is completely dominant; but by this time it should have largely given place to the nameless odors associated with the others. This is not done — because on the contrary, the newer and more irresistible aroma is now almost unpolluted, and the longer it is getting toxic.

So we glanced back at — simultaneously, it would appear; although no doubt the new movement so from one pushed the clone from the other. As we did so, we lit both torches in full force on the thinning fog for a moment; both from primitive restlessness solely to seeing all we could, to seeing all we could, or in a less primitive but equally unconscious attempt to dazzle the entity before we dim our light and dodge among the penguins from the center of the labyrinth ahead. Unhappy deeds! Not Orpheus himself, or Lot's wife, paid much more for the backward view. And once again comes a surprising piping, wide range— “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

“South Station Down — Washington Down — Park Street Down — Kendall — Center — Harvard. . . " The poor man shouted the familiar station of the Boston-Cambridge tunnel that buried our peaceful native land thousands of miles away in New England, but for me the ritual has no mistakes or feelings at home. It was just horror, because I knew the terrible and evil analogy that suggested it. We hope, after looking back, to see a terrible and highly mobile entity if the fog is thin enough; but from that entity we have formed a clear idea. What we saw — because the mist was indeed too thin — was something completely different, and much more horrible and disgusting. It was a fully and objective embodiment of 'things a fantastic novel writer should not do'; and the closest analogue that can be understood is the vast and fast-moving subway as one sees from the station platform — the huge black front soars very far from the infinite distance that infinite, connected with strangely colored lights and filling the tremendous burrow when the piston fills the cylinder.

But we're not on the station platform. We were on course ahead when a plastic nightmare column of the foetid black color flowed powerfully through the fifteen-foot sinuses; he said; gathering unholy speed and driving before him a pale-vapor thickening spiral cloud. It was a terrible, indescribably wider thing than any subway — a collection of formless protoplasmic bubbles, faintly glowing themselves, and with millions of eyes temporarily formed and out of shape like pustules of greenish light all over the front of the tunnel that divides us, the penguin shatters in panic and creeps on the glistening floor so he and his kind have swept so evilly free of all trash. Still come the eldritch, mocking cries— “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" And finally we remember that shoggoth daemoniak — provides life, thought, and pattern of plastic organs solely by Old People, the, and having no language other than what the dot — groups express also has no sound other than the accents emulated from their former masters.