It is said when they left a carbon image on the face of the mountain, which they called Negronik. But now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peak where two to flee at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and where once they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come, or coming to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath, in the cold waste, else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.

Sometimes, when the earth’s gods are homesick, they visit in the still night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of the gods and white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain, and have heard the sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn winds of Lirian. In cloudships the gods are wont to travel, and wise coders have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night, when it is cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old.

In Ulthar, which lies beyond the river sky, once dwelt an old man avid to behold the gods of earth. A man deeply learned in the seven cryptical books of Azan, and familiar with the necotic manuscripts of distant and frozen Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and the villagers tell of how he went up a mountain on the night of the strange eclipse. Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god himself.

It was he who wisely advised the burgesses of Ulthar when they passed their remarkable law against the slaying of cats, and who first told the young priest at all where it is that black cats go at midnight on St. John’s Eve. Barzai was learned in the lore of earth’s gods, and had gained the desire to look upon their faces. He believed that his great secret knowledge of gods could shield him from their wrath, so resolved to go up to the gods would be there. Hathag’kla is far in the stony desert beyond Hathag, for which it is named, and rises like a rock statue in a silent temple.

Around its peak the mists play, always mournfully, for mists are the memories of the gods, and the gods loved Hathag’kla when they dwelt upon it in the old days. Often the gods of earth visit Hathag’kla and their ships of cloud, casting pale vapours over the slopes as they dance reminiscently on the summit under a clear moon. The villagers of Hathag’kla say it is ill to climb Hathag’kla at any time, and deadly to climb it by night when pale vapours hide the summit and the moon. But Barzai heeded them not when he came from neighbouring Ulthar with the young priest Atal, who was his disciple.

Atal was the only son of an innkeeper, and was sometimes afraid, but Barzai’s father had been a land grave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no common superstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful coders. Barzai and Atal went out of Hathag’kla into the stony desert, despite the prayers of peasants and talked of earth’s gods by their campfires at night. Many days they travelled, and from afar saw lofty Hathag’kla with his aureole of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reached the mountain’s lonely base, and Atal spoke of his fears.

But Barzai was old and learned and had no fears, so led the way boldly up the slope that no man had scaled since the time of Sansu, who was written of with fright in the mouldy, necotic manuscripts. The way was rocky and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling stones. Later it grew cold and snowy, and Barzai and Atal often slipped and fell as they hewed and plodded upward with staves and axes. Finally the air grew thin and the sky changed colour, and the climbers found it hard to breathe, but still they toiled up and up, marvelling at the strangeness of the scene and thrilling at the thought of what would happen on the summit when the moon was out and the pale vapours spread around.

For three days they climbed higher, higher and higher toward the roof of the world. Then they camped to wait for the clouding of the moon. For four nights no cloud came, and the moon shone down cold through the thin mournful mists around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifth night, which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some dense clouds far to the north and stayed up with Atal to watch them draw near. Thick and majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward ranging themselves round the peak high above the watchers and hiding the moon and the summit from view.

For a long hour the watchers gazed, while the vapours swirled and the screen of clouds grew thicker and more restless. Barzai was wise in the lore of earth’s gods and listened hard for certain sounds, but Atal felt the chill of the vapours and the awe of the night and feared much. And when Barzai began to claim higher and beckon eagerly, it was long before Atal would follow. So thick were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atal followed on at last, he could scarce see the grey shape of Barzai on the dim slope above in the clouded moonlight.

Barzai forged very far ahead and seemed, despite his age, to climb more easily than Atal, fearing not the steepness that began to grow too great for any save-a-strong and dauntless man, nor pausing at wide black chasms that Atal’s scarce could leap. And so they went up wildly over rocks and gulfs slipping and stumbling and sometimes awed at the vastness and horrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute granite steeps. Very suddenly Barzai went out of Atal’s sight, scaling a hideous cliff that seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber, not inspired of earth’s gods.

Atal was far below and planning what he should do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed that the light had grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlit meeting-place of the gods were very near. And as he scrambled on toward the bulging cliff and lit in sky, he felt fears more shocking than any he had known before. Then through the high mists he heard the voice of unseen Barzai, shouting wildly in delight, I have heard the gods, I have heard earth’s gods singing in revelry on hath egg claw.

The voices of earth’s gods are known to Barzai the prophet, the mists are thin and the moon is bright and I shall see the gods dancing wildly on hath egg claw that they loved in youth. The wisdom of Barzai hath made him greater than earth’s gods and against his will their spells and barriers are as naught. Barzai will behold the gods, the proud gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn the sight of men. Atal could not hear the voices Barzai heard, but he was now close to the bulging cliff and scanning it for footholds.

Then he heard Barzai’s voice grow shriller. Then he heard Barzai’s voice grow shriller and louder. The mists are very thin and the moon casts shadows on the slope. The voices of earth’s gods are high and wild and they fear the coming of Barzai the wise, who is greater than they. The moon’s light flickers as earth’s gods dance against it. I shall see the dancing forms of the gods that leap and howl in the moonlight. The light is dimmer and the gods are afraid. Wilt Barzai was shouting these things. Atal felt a spectral change in the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws.

For though the way was steeper than ever, the upward path was now grown fearsomely easy and the bulging cliff proved scarce an obstacle when he reached it and slid perilously up its convex face. The light of the moon had strangely failed and as Atal plunged upward through the mists, he heard Barzai the wise shrieking in the shadows. The moon is dark. The gods dance in the night. There is terror in the sky for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth’s gods. There is an unknown magic on Hoth egg claw for the screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter and the slopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am plunging.

Hey, hey, at last in the dim light I behold the gods of earth. And now Atal, slipping dizzily up over inconceivable steeps, heard in the dark a loathsome laughing, mixed with such a cry as no man else ever heard, save in the phlegothon of unrelatable nightmares. A cry wherein reverberated the horror and anguish of a haunted lifetime, packed into one atrocious moment. The other gods, the other gods, the gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth, look away, go back, do not see, do not see the vengeance of the infinite abysses that cursed that damnable pit, merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky.

And as Atal shut his eyes and stopped his ears and tried to jump downward against the frightful pull from unknown heights, they resounded on Hoth egg claw that terrible peel of thunder, which awake the good coders of the plains, and the honest burgesses of Hoth egg and near and Ulfar, and caused them to behold through the clouds that strange eclipse of the moon that no book ever predicted. And when the moon came out at last, Atal was safe on the lower snows of the mountain. Without sight of earth’s gods, or of the other gods.

Now it is told in the moldy necotic manuscripts that Sansu found not but wordless ice and rock when he climbed Hoth egg claw in the youth of the world. Yet when the men of Ulfar and near and Hoth egg crushed their fears, and scaled that haunted steep by day in search of Barzai the Wise, they found graven in the naked stone of the summit, a curious and cyclopean symbol fifty cubits wide, as if the rock had been riven by some titanic chisel, and the symbol was like to one that learned men have discerned in those frightful parts of the necotic manuscripts which are too ancient to be read.

This they found. Barzai the Wise was never found, nor could the holy priest Atal ever be persuaded to pray for his souls repose. Moreover, to this day, the people of Ulfar and near and Hoth egg fear eclipses, and pray by night when pale vapors hide the mountaintop in the moon. And above the mists on Hoth egg claw, earth’s gods sometimes dance reminiscently, for they know they are safe, and love to come from unknown Kadoth in ships of cloud, and play in the olden ways, as they did when earth was new, and men not given to the climbing of inaccessible places.

What a beautiful one. What a strong one. This one really reminds me of Alistair Crowley, and the kind of horrible images that people have made about him at his death, this terrible fear that overtakes him, which I don’t think is true. But it’s definitely part of the narrative. It also calls to mind, you know, the Simon Necronomicon, the Necronomicon that you get at Barnes and Noble. It was ghost written by this fellow, Peter Lavenda. And Peter Lavenda is something of a student of Kenneth Grant, who is one of Alistair Crowley’s old secretaries.

And he goes about this work of corresponding Lovecraft’s gods and Lovecraft’s stories to Alistair Crowley’s occultism. You know, he believed that there was a legitimate sympathy between them, that Lovecraft was doing real occultism. I find that really brilliantly fascinating. And I do think that this story, this story in particular, is one of his most accurate. You may have heard this phrase, the God of the gaps, that, you know, once upon a time God was the mind. And then we discovered the mind, understood the mind, and then God was something else. You know, God is always going past where science stops.

You know, wherever science is unable to understand something, that’s God to at least foolish religious people, foolish religious people, want God to be unknowable. When, of course, God is all of these things, and all that is known and all that is unknown, God cannot be reduced scientifically, it can be understood, but it cannot be reduced. And the God of the gaps, I think, is a shameful phenomena. But this speaks well to the need of the gods to be hidden. The gods would not be very powerful if we could see them in their nakedness.

So, of course, they have to climb higher and higher and higher. Now, I don’t mean this in the way of understanding. Like, I think that thunder and lightning are still a product of Zeus, simply that there is not a bearded figure anymore. That has gone away. That has gone to some higher part. Still accessible in dreams, but far from the consciousness, far from our senses. So, what was once accessible to more primitive civilizations, the vision of gods in the material, has, you know, now changed forms to something like aliens, which we are wont to believe because they’re scientific.

So, the God of the gaps fills itself with things that are believable. Anyway, I love this story and I hope that you’ve been enjoying scream analysis on this lovely month of October. Lots of exciting news is coming very soon, so stay tuned and I hope you enjoyed this story. And as always, screams matter. [tr:trw].