The Order of Chaos

I am not sure when it started, but it was months ago. The general tenseness was dreadful. A weird and brooding fear of horrible bodily danger was added to a season of political and social upheaval; a danger broad and all-encompassing, such as can be conceived only in the most terrifying phantasms of the night.

I recall people walking around with pale and anxious faces, whispering warnings and predictions that no one dared to consciously repeat or admit to himself that he had heard.

There was a sensation of enormous shame on the country, and icy currents flowed out of the abysses between the stars, making men shudder in dark and lonely places.

The seasons had changed demoniacally—the autumn heat lingered fearfully, and everyone believed that the earth, if not the cosmos, had moved from the dominion of recognized gods or forces to that of unknown gods or forces.

And it was at that point when Dakross emerged from Saudi Arabia. Nobody knew who he was, but he appeared to be a tall man with horns dressed in crimson and black gothic clothing. When they saw him, the fellahin knelt, but he could not explain why. He claimed to have awoken from the darkness of twenty-seven millennia and to have received communications from locations other than Earth.

Dakross, swarthy, slim, and menacing, came into the countries of civilisation, always buying odd instruments of glass and metal and merging them into even weirder instruments. He spoke a lot about science—electricity and psychology—and performed power shows that left his audience dumbfounded but boosted his renown to new heights.

Men trembled as they encouraged one another to see Dakross. And whither Dakross went, rest departed; for the tiny hours were ripped with nightmarish cries.

Never had nightmare screams been such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, so that the shrieks of cities would less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.

I recall Dakross's visit to my city—the big, old, dreadful metropolis of untold atrocities. My buddy had told me about him, and of the compelling attraction and attractiveness of his disclosures, and I was enthralled by the prospect of delving into his deepest mysteries.

My friend said they were horrifying and impressive beyond my wildest imaginations; that what was projected on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things that only Dakross dared to prophesy, and that in the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that had never been taken before but which shewed only in the eyes.

And I had heard it mentioned somewhere that people who knew Dakross saw things that others did not.

I walked through the night with the restless masses to watch Dakross in the scorching fall, through the suffocating night and up the interminable stairs into the choking chamber. And I saw hooded figures amidst ruins and yellow demonic faces peeking from beneath fallen monuments on a screen.

And I saw the Earth striving against blackness, against the waves of devastation from ultimate space, swirling, churning, struggling around the dwindling, cooling sun.

Then the sparks danced about the viewers' heads, and hair sprang on end as shadows more hideous than I can describe appeared and squatted on their heads.

When I, who was colder and more scientific than the others, murmured a quivering protest about "imposture" and "static electricity," Dakross dragged us all down the dizzy stairs into the wet, steamy, empty midnight streets.

I yelled aloud that I was not frightened, that I could never be afraid, and others screamed with me for comfort. We swore to one another that the city was the same and yet alive, and as the electric lights began to dim, we blamed the company and laughed at the strange looks we made.

I suppose we sensed something coming down from the greenish moon, since as we started relying on its light, we drifted into strange spontaneous shapes and appeared to know our destinations even though we dared not think of them.

When we glanced at the pavement, we noticed that the blocks were loose and displaced by grass, with only a thin line of rusty metal indicating where the tramways had gone. We came to another tramcar, this time alone, windowless, decrepit, and practically on its side. We could not see the third tower near the river and observed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the top as we looked around the horizon.

Then we were divided into thin columns, each of which appeared to be drawn in a different direction. One vanished down a tiny alleyway to the left, leaving just the sound of a horrifying groan. Another swarmed down a weed-infested subway entrance, roaring with maniacal glee.

My own column was dragged into the open country, and I soon felt a cold that was not of the hot autumn, because as we stalked out on the black moor, we saw the hellish moon-glitter of wicked snows all around us. Trackless, incomprehensible snows ripped asunder in one direction alone, revealing an abyss all the blacker for its gleaming walls.

The column appeared to be extremely thin as it plodded dreamily into the abyss. I remained behind because the dark hole in the green-littered snow was terrifying, and I believed I heard the echoes of a disturbing scream as my friends departed; but my ability to linger was limited.

I partially floated between the giant snowdrifts, trembling and terrified, towards the sightless vortex of the inconceivable, as if called by those who had gone before.

Only the gods who can determine if they were screamingly sentient or dumbly insane. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, driven blindly across horrible midnights of decaying creation, carcasses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that touch the pale stars and cause them to flicker low.

Beyond the planets, half-seen columns of unsanctified temples lie on nameless rocks under space and stretch up to dizzy vacuum above the spheres of light and darkness.

And through this revolting graveyard of the universe, the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping to which the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Dakross—dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly.