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I. The Tenebrous Box
“As for insomnia, insanity alone could depict that particular goddess; and insanity has not the art.”
At first, Randolph Carter had thought nothing about it. It was to be expected that having escaped from the Dreamlands in a most desperate and dramatic fashion, his dreams would be unmemorable. Consider a man that has nearly died in a fire. Would he not choose the dimmest of flames to light his way, for fear that such a conflagration could occur again? And so Carter woke each morning with a clear head and the lack of any lingering visions to muse upon. If it was a poor reward after the visions he had seen, the relief he felt upon seeing his fair city each morning in its sunlit beauty was a just recompense.
But soon he realized that something was wrong. For a man cannot go too long without dreaming before his waking world is affected as well. Carter found himself struggling over simple texts, even the pablum of daily goings-on becoming incomprehensible. Words were as symbols on a page, foreign objects he tried to decipher before giving up in deep frustration. His head pounded constantly, his tongue felt clumsy, and before long, even friends, concerned upon seeing his changed state, stopped calling as his temper drove even the most loyal away.
Each day, his sleep grew more and more shallow until he could close his eyes and know that he would open them again but minutes later. In desperation, he tried soporifics prescribed by less savory individuals, but all proved to be useless, and he would wake, his mind as unrested as ever. No amount of prescribed techniques from strange books could soothe his savage brain in the healing balm of sleep.
This might have gone until he was truly mad – one of those lost raving souls wandering the streets in the darkness, eyes wide and dazed, but there was a respite to his suffering. One day, upon opening his daily mail, he came across a small square package, neatly wrapped in brown paper and twine. The return address was quite illegible – a scrawl of blurred ink – but the postage was local.
Upon opening the package, his bleary eyes were confronted with a queer black box, smooth to the touch, that glistened with some sort of odd iridescence in the light. It seemed fashioned out of some rock and it was curiously warm to the touch when he felt along its sides. It had no visible seams, no clear opening, but it made a rattling when he set it down as if something was contained within.
It was a mystery of the strangest sort and his feverish mind seized upon as if it were a dog clamping down upon a bone. He spent the rest of the day, examining it intently, until the light grew dim and he resigned himself to another night of insomnia.
But sleep did come that night, dark and deep, and though he could not remember the particulars of his dreams, his impression was that of a black void, encompassing him entirely, and he awoke with the sense of a hot wind, filled with rare spices.
Seven days he spent studying the box and the package it came in, with little result, and seven nights he spent sleeping and dreaming of darkness, waking each morning, his mind filled with clarity and his soul feeling a queer sense of elation. It felt like he was waiting for something, but for what, he could not say?
His library proved to be of little help; whatever tomes he had obtained throughout the years in a variety of dubious ways were ineffective, for none spoke of such a box, let alone how one might open it. He could not even blame his ignorance upon his previous muddled state, for he regained his wits to the sharpest of clarity, and yet against this box, they made not a scratch.
And it seemed to him that he had seen such a stone before, perhaps in a dream, but the gates were shut to him now. One might venture that a key could unlock such gates, but even if Carter were to possess one, the presence barring the way was not one that could be deterred by a flimsy trinket of silver.
At wits end, he took it to his old alma mater, those studied and immemorial halls of Miskatonic University, and gave it to an old friend in the Geology Department, hoping that the learned man might have some answers. Three days later, he received a call and made his way back.
“I cannot tell you what it is,” said Dr. Dyer, frowning vigorously. “It is not obsidian nor onyx nor jet. It is of no material I have ever seen before. None of my colleagues have.”
“But surely there must be something you can tell me?” Carter said. "I cannot believe that a department as renowned as this one can offer me no assistance."
"I can only tell you that something such as this should not exist. It is alien to everyone I have consulted. Were you to tell me you found it on the moon I would believe you as readily as if you said it came from some ancient tomb. We cannot even chip a piece off to send it off to analyze under a microscope, for it resists all attempts to damage it. Most disquietingly, it produces its own heat without any visible signs. This is impossible, my friends in our Physics department tell me. Logically, it should be getting colder. Instead, the heat is intensifying.”
And indeed it was, for when Carter took it home, it was so blazing to the touch that he could only handle it with gloves. He feared to set it down anywhere in his home lest it set his books and papers ablaze. He settled for storing it on top of a cool marble table and gazing at it.
He might have done this for an hour. He might have done it for a week. He had no concept as to the passage of time.
But it seemed as he stared at it that he could see strange symbols forming. He shook his head, but the vision still remained. There were markings engraved upon it that he wondered how Dyer could have missed them, for they seemed as clear as day to him. Then, as he peered further, they became words resonating into his head with a horrifying intensity.
His mouth opened to speak, compelled by a force he could not understand or stop. And he said the words that were echoing in the void and they became terrible things upon his tongue.
The void, when he fell into it, seemed endless.
And then he beheld the darkness all around him. There was heat below him and a a grainy surface that scratched against his pajama-clad legs and Carter could smell the spices, thick and rich against his nose.
It felt familiar to him, a memory that made its way unwelcome into its mind and he tried to fight the growing sense of dread in his soul.
“Randolph Carter,” a mellifluous voice said, “Though you escaped the clutches of the daemon sultan, it seems you have fallen directly into mine.”
II. The Starless Way
“Usually the sweet deceiving lasts only the dream."
It was with great satisfaction and a twisted sense of delight that Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos beheld his visitor's look of horrified recognition. It is hard to fathom the complex entanglement of plots and plans that goes into such an ineffable being, but one must assume that he felt the same glee as an architect seeing his building completed, or a writer upon his story's publication.
But perhaps, even less comprehensible except to those Gods well-versed in such pleasures, one might say that it was one of a lover upon attaining their desire, through an arduous yet not entirely unpleasant courtship. Indeed, there was the initial recognition of a kindred spirit, the flattering words, and a token bestowed upon the beloved, to which the giver hoped would be esteemed greatly.
“I have been most contented that you accepted my gift, and even more that you recognized its invitation and came upon my bidding. Though it is not the fair climes and glorious countryside of your home nor the lofty spires and starlit seas that one finds in the Dreamlands, this place is one dear to me that I wished you to see.” His smile was gently mocking, and he was pleased to see Carter's shivers. There would be no escape for this soul now, no night-gaunt to whisk him away.
“And because you came most willingly, devoted to my call, I shall give you an answer to a simple question. The box is made of a stone not dissimilar to onyx, but whereas your scientists may flail for identification and make their ignorance plain, my knowledge is far more vast. It is the stone found in unknown Kadath, in a cold waste beyond gardens and woods and all things delightful to dreamers. It is not the chill of death, but the heat of that which keeps it at bay. And I have given it to you, and for a very fair price. Do you not wish to know what it might be?”
Nyarlathotep let one star burn in the sky, a great red one that suffused the void with a malevolent crimson, bathing both he and the trembling dreamer in its bloody glow. And in this glow, he let Carter see him in the form he was most familiar with, the pharaoh who had alternately taunted and tempted him with visions of his sunset city. This he let Carter gaze upon, and looked upon him serenely in turn.
“But perhaps you think not to pay it, to wake back in your room and send the box hurtling towards the depths of the ocean floor. You have done it once before, triumphed against the mad forces of doom and chaos and returned to your beloved city. 'You need only turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood.,'” he said, and saw the horrible truth dawn in Carter's eyes. He let himself walk closer to the man, looming above him, the beautiful young face of the pharoah, eyes twinkling like the stars not permitted to the hellish sky above.
There was much to loathe about Carter as there was about humanity. The weakness, the frailty, the utter malleability of them that made them so easily corruptible. It would have been comparatively simple to crush him like an insect, but ah! There would be the loss. For Nyarlathotep enjoyed the game, and a good opponent was one to be held onto until it could provide no more entertainment. If Carter realized too late how the cat lets the mouse live so it can chase it another day, then it was a sweeter victory than to let the infinity take him whole.
Most surely, was not a man who allowed him to find those pitiful gods of earth in their sunset city and take them back from their paradise to the cold wastes owed a favor? How better to reward him than to torment him to the point of insanity and then saving him? And how long could Carter last, madness creeping in on the edges of his soul, before he let himself break? What would such a man, who had thwarted moon-beasts and the Men of Leng and the daemon sultan, what would he become?
Truly, it would be a sight to rival all the wonders of the worlds.
So it was that Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, bent down and whispered into Carter's ear with poisonous sweetness the price that he must pay. He laid a soothing hand upon the man's head and stroked it until Carter had quieted into a blank stillness before laying a smiling kiss upon his forehead and sending him back to the world of men.
III. The Answer and the Question
"We say, We think; but it would be nearer the truth to say, We are thought into."
Randolph Carter awoke in his bed, clothing drenched as if it were a hot summer night, and not the icy cold of a New England November, when the winds blow with a particular fierceness that bites to the bone.
All too well, he remembered his dream and shuddered, the dampness of his clothes chilling him further and he laid in his bed for some time, bundled in blankets and wishing that perhaps this was still the dream, and that he would wake again, with the knowledge as fleeting as the dream itself.
But the question was engraved into his brain with horrible certainty, and though he thought to escape it at first by the very way that Nyarlathotep had mocked, he knew it would be futile for the very touch of his fingertips to the box left them weak and unable to move it from its position. And he knew that should another attempt to move it, they would suffer the same fate, if they were as fortunate as he.
And if they were not? He could not damn anyone else to the horror he had brought upon himself.
He had already alienated his friends; now he deliberately pushed anyone he may have known in his life. Publications ceased receiving his submissions, dealers of antiquities found their solicitations returned without answer, and the scientists at Miskatonic, eager to study the strange object further, were rebuffed at the door, sight unseen.
November turned into December and still the box remained, a dark presence and reminder of an unanswered question. His dreams were the blackness of the void, empty of even the wind and spices that once occupied them. Nyarlathotep did not call upon them either. At first, Carter wondered if perhaps the god had grown disinterested, and felt a curious sense of disappointment.
But he soon discovered that even if the dark figure did not appear to taunt him, he was still felt in the shadowy corners of Carter's mind. It was a lurking presence, patiently waiting, a calm malice that waited with the serenity of someone who knows the answer is ineluctable. But for now, it did nothing.
Carter grew restless with longing, though the last barrier to his sane mind refused to let him admit what he desired.
The shadows crept in a little further each day. Carter woke one December morning to find a three-lobed burning eye scrawled on all of his walls, staring back at him, and his fingers stained with ink. Another morning found him scribbling madly in a journal, his hands cramping, with piles of books beside him that he had no recollection reading. Whereas when he had no dreams, his mind fell into dullness and torpor, his brain now was a whirling storm that would not abate. Again, the drugs had no effect and he cast them aside.
The third week of December found him scrubbing his bloody hands in a basin. He had no injuries upon him and no memory of the last two days. There was dirt upon the soles of his shoes.
The same night, he dreamt of a darkness that was tendrils sliding around him, inside him, until he could no longer say which was Carter and which was the darkness. He let out a scream to cry and there was a name upon his tongue and a hint of spice. He woke up screaming, but no neighbor came to knock on his door.
Two nights later, when the darkness came again, he welcomed it and let the ecstasy of it take him whole. He was not surprised to find when he awoke that he had spent the last two days in dream. Or was it now reality? He found he no longer cared if there was a difference.
On the last day of the year, Randolph Carter warmed by the heat of the box and now acquiescing to the inevitability of fate and a god's will, closed his eyes and said, “Yes.”
The top of the box unfolded like a delicate flower. Inside was a silver ring with the same symbol now watching him from every corner of his house.
He put the ring on and felt the brush of a hand upon his nape. He leaned into it, letting the fingers trace along his neck, taking possession of it.
“We shall see such glories together,” Nyarlathotep said.