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And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of
the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could
not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he
had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came
Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and
metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences of
electricity and psychology and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away
speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see
Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours
were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a
public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, that
the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on
green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.
H. P. Lovecraft, from Nyarlathotep |
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