Joseph Aleo

In this accursed month of October, I have embarked upon a dread and solitary journey, wherein I shall immerse myself, each day, in the abominable works of the master of cosmic terror, H.P. Lovecraft. Today’s offering to the void is that eldritch tale of unspeakable horrors, “Dagon.”

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!

In this ghastly testament of a broken soul, a man ravaged by morphine recounts a nightmarish incident during his time as an officer in World War I. After his cargo ship is seized by a German raider in the desolate Pacific, he escapes in a lifeboat, drifting aimlessly until he lands upon a loathsome black mire. This hellish wasteland, strewn with decaying sea creatures, seems to be the ocean’s floor, upheaved by some cosmic force from unfathomable depths.

For days, he traverses this foul expanse, finally arriving at a monstrous chasm, where a great white monolith stands. Carved with indecipherable aquatic hieroglyphs and grotesque sculptures, the stone hints at an ancient, aquatic civilization. As he gazes in horror, a nightmarish creature rises from the depths—its form too ghastly to comprehend.

In terror, the mariner flees back to his boat, losing consciousness in a storm, only to awaken later in a San Francisco hospital. There, no one believes his story of the unearthly Pacific upheaval. Even his inquiries into the ancient Philistine god Dagon are dismissed.

Plagued by haunting visions, especially during the gibbous moon, and with his narcotic escape fading, the narrator prepares to end his life. As he writes, he hears a terrifying sound outside—something immense and slick pressing against the door. His final cry, filled with madness, invokes the horror of a monstrous hand at the window before the narrative ends in unspeakable terror.