SCAB

SCAB

"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab hasn't.

Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas Iscariot sold his savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The modern strikebreaker sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children, and his fellow men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer, trust, or corporation

Solidarity wins"
Jack London, Ode To A Scab

SUCCUBA

SUCCUBA

"In an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at once into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away in quest of the sound—goat, satyr, and aegipan, incubus, succuba, and lemur, twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and silent strutter in darkness—all led by the abominable naked phosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne, and that now strode insolently bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed corpse of the corpulent old man."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror At Red Hook

"Succubus. A devil in female form, the succubus specializes in seducing men. Although feminine in meaning, in form this medieval Latin word, succubus, is masculine (because demons were supposedly sexless); the feminine form succuba (strumpet) is occasionally found."
Rossell Hope Robbins, Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology

INSECTOID BEAST

INSECTOID BEAST
"He could see, miles below the surface, a large stone slab, rough and stained. The bodies of children were splattering against it, and crouched down in that darkness was a creature, a large black beast with stiff limbs, each long and bent but quick. The creature's elongated, twitching head danced atop its insectiod torso as it skittered from one end of the slab to the other, gathering the broken bodies of the children as fast as they were falling, enwrapping them, keeping them alive, keeping them for its own sake."
Philip Fracassi, Altar

INCUBUS

INCUBUS

"In an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at once into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away in quest of the sound—goat, satyr, and aegipan, incubus, succuba, and lemur, twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and silent strutter in darkness—all led by the abominable naked phosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne, and that now strode insolently bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed corpse of the corpulent old man."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror At Red Hook

"According to many Church Fathers, an incubus is an angel who fell because of lust for wemen. Essentially the incubus is a lewd demon or goblin which seeks sexual intercourse with women. The corresponding devil who appears to men is the succubus."

Rossel Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology

INTERDIMENSIONAL SPIRIT

INTERDIMENSIONAL SPIRIT
"It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things."

"I saw it through a veil that hung before my eyes like the gauze drop-curtain used at the back of a theater—hazily a little. It was neither a human figure nor an animal. To me it gave the strange impression of being as large as several animals grouped together, like horses, two or three, moving slowly."

"They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes -- immense, bronze-coloured, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees.  They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost -- rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins."

"For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island."   

'"Their mark!" I heard my companion mutter under his breath. "Their awful mark!"'

Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

TOME DEMON

TOME DEMON

"At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy."

"There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin — what can I call it? — shallow, like a beast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them — intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man."

M.R. James, Canon Alberic's Scrapbook

THE UNNAMABLE

THE UNNAMABLE

'"Don’t think I was a fool—you ought to have seen that skull. It had four-inch horns, but a face and jaw something like yours and mine.”'

"I was not so seriously hurt, but was covered with welts and contusions of the most bewildering character, including the print of a split hoof."

'“No—it wasn’t that way at all. It was everywhere—a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes—and a blemish. It was the pit—the maelstrom—the ultimate abomination. Carter, it was the unnamable!”'

H.P. Lovecraft, The Unnamable

FUNGUS PERSON

FUNGUS PERSON

"126- Castaways on island eat unknown vegetation and become strangely transformed."

H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

"Yet, as we drew near to it, I became gradually aware that here the vile fungus, which had driven us from the ship, was growing riot. In places it rose into horrible, fantastic mounds, which seemed almost to quiver, as with a quiet life, when the wind blew across them."

It was on the thumb of her right hand, that the growth first showed. It was only a small circular spot, much like a little grey mole. My god! how the fear leapt to my heart when she showed me the place. We cleansed it, between us, washing it with carbolic and water. In the morning of the following day she showed her hand to me again. The grey warty thing had returned."

"Abruptly, as I stared, the thought came to me that the thing had a grotesque resemblance to the figure of a distorted human creature. Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening of noise of tearing, and I saw that one of the branch-like arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses and coming towards me.

William Hope Hodgson, The Voice In the Night

UNWELCOME BOY

UNWELCOME BOY

"As Terry and Thatcher reach the field, they see the dancing figures were once Better Boys. Once, because their bodies are slack, heads flopping loose on the necks, legs and arms limp, as if their skeletons were stolen, hijacked to help the stalks rising out of their jaws, stretched inhumanely wide. The glistening,mauve tendrils reflect the moonlight, and their weak glow illuminates the slow dance. Filaments from the thickest stalk’s bulbous head extend down to the boy’s wrists and shins, moving them like a marionette on its strings."

"Thatcher’s gasping a litany of swears. Terry’s reminded of the rare hothouse orchids at the Toledo Botanical Garden. “Look at them,” he says, as Thatcher pulls him back. They’re almost beautiful."

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"

The Unwelcome Boys start waving their stalks toward the both of them.The nearest lift their host’s legs, a bow-legged shuffle, to come closer. Terry reaches out to it, and a tendril, long and supple wraps around his hand, a slick,warm festoon between tucker and that which had been tucked away."

Free of its burdensome host, the Unwelcome embraces Terry with all its sprigs and shoots, then startles Thatcher when it wraps around him for an instant. As it leaps away, to bound across the field, toward the distant treeline, toward the river. Thatcher is trying to perform CPR on still Goshen."

Steve Berman, The Unwelcome Boys

TAURAN

TAURAN

“He had two arms and two legs, but his waist was so small you could encompass it with both hands. Under the tiny waist was a large horseshoe-shaped pelvic structure nearly a meter wide, from which dangled two long skinny legs with no apparent knee joint. Above that waist his body swelled out again, to a chest no smaller than the huge pelvis. His arms looked surprisingly human, except that they were too long and undermuscled. There were too many fingers on his hands. Shoulderless, neckless. His head was a nightmarish growth that swelled like a goiter from his massive chest. Two eyes that looked like clusters of fish eggs, a bundle of tassles instead of a nose, and a rigidly open hole that might have been a mouth sitting low down where his adam’s apple should have been. Evidently the soap bubble contained an amenable environment, as he was wearing absolutely nothing except his ridged hide, that looked like skin submerged too long in hot water, then dyed a pale orange. “He” had no external genitalia, but nothing that might hint of mammary glands. So we opted for the male pronoun by default. ”

“Well, yes; I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures. About all they don’t show is the texture of the skin. It’s pebbly and wrinkled like a lizard’s, but pale orange.”

Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

HEAVENIAN SHARK

 

HEAVENIAN SHARK

“He was twelve meters of flexible muscle with a razor-sharp tail at one end and a collection of arm-length fangs at the other.  His eyes, big yellow globes, were set on stalks more than a meter out from his head.  His mouth was so wide that, open, a man could comfortably stand in it.  Make an impressive photo for his heirs.”

Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

CHARONIAN

CHARONIAN

“They were not quite as tall as humans, but wider in girth. They were covered with dark green, almost black, fur — white curls where the laser had singed. They appeared to have three legs and an arm. The only ornament to their shaggy heads was a mouth, wet black orifice filled with flat black teeth. They were thoroughly repulsive, but their worst feature was not a difference from human beings, but a similarity….”

“Nothing in that fucken head but a mouth and ten centimeters of skull. To protect nothing, not a fucken thing.”

“The creature sat back on its haunches, leaning forward on the one front leg. Big green bear with a withered arm.

Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

SNOW SERPENT

 

SNOW SERPENT

“Without more warning than that, a long snowbank between that step and the next above reared up its nearest white end a dozen feet and hissed fearsomely, showing it to be a huge serpent with head a big as an elk’s, all covered with shaggy snow-white fur. Its great violet eyes glared like those of a mad horse and its jaw gaped to show slashing-teeth like a shark’s and two great fangs jetting a mist of pale ichor.The furred serpent hesitated for two sways between the nearer, taller man with flashing ax and the farther, smaller one with thick black stick.

The Mouser’s attention was fixed on a fur-wisped violet eye as big as a girl’s fist.

Hrissa looked down the monster’s gaping dark red gullet rimmed by slaver-swimming ivory knives and the two ichor-jetting fangs.

Fafhrd said, “A hot-blooded serpent, a snake with fur—it goes against experience. My father never spoke of such; I doubt he ever met ‘em.”

Fritz Leiber, Swords Against Wizardry

BEAST

BEAST

“The human within him woke, catching his reflection. Instead of skin and clothes, he beheld mangy, tangled fur, alien eyes, fangs, and a blunt snout. Horns protruding from his head. A lolling tongue.”

“He sees himself in the blue mirror of the old man’s eye, in all his terrible glory. He sees a vicious thing, neither dog nor weasel, but somehow both. A long snake-like body, with four legs that end in razor-sharp claws. A muzzle that slavers, full of serrated teeth. All of this murderous-impulse-made-flesh enrobed in matted golden fur, full of bristles.”

“They were like hands, and not like hands at all. The bone structure o a hand-like thing was there, but it was covered in golden fur, and each ‘finger’ was tipped with long, claw-like nails.”

“A creature stared back at him. It had a tapered south with fangs that glittered evilly when the mouth was open. It walked on four legs, and each foot ended in cruel claws. Rams’ curled horns sprouted from its awful head. The body of the beast was long, rather like a weasel’s body. This body was covered in thick, blond fur. Keith ram nor weasel nor lynx — it was all three. A monster. An abomination.”

Craig Laurance Gidney, Fur And Gold

MAN-SIZED POPPET

 

MAN-SIZED POPPET

“So Fox went down to the swamp, where a pool of hot black tar bubbled. He mixed the tar with a crude figure he made of sticks and bones he’d dug up from graves. He gave the tar-thing glass eyes stolen from a little girl’s doll, a maggoty potato for a nose, and a slice of watermelon fro lips. A gator’s over-ripe heart, bout with wire was placed in the thing’s gloppy chest. Fox knew some Hoo-doo, so he put the whammy on the thing and Presto! Blammo! It lurched behind him, a man-sized poppet.”

Craig Laurance Gidney, Beneath the Briar Patch

ACHTI

ACHTI

"An achti, perhaps. Some of those were the right size though they had three times as many teeth as I did and a real love of using them."

"I put the achti's long, warm body over my shoulder—glad that some of the weight I'd gained was muscle—and took it to the kitchen."

"T'Gatoi might want one, I told myself, for the tough, heavily furred hide of the achti."

Octavia Butler, Blood Child

TLIC

TLIC

"T'Gatoi whipped her three meters of body off her couch, toward the door, and out at full speed. She had bones—ribs, a long spine, a skull, four sets of limb bones per segment. But when she moved that way, twisting, hurling herself into controlled falls, landing running, she seemed not only boneless, but aquatic—something swimming through the air as though it were water. I loved watching her move."

"Except for the final few, all her limbs were dextrous."

"Ignoring the knife I offered her, she extended claws from several of her limbs and slit the achti from throat to anus. She looked at me, her yellow yes intent."

"I stared at her, outlined in the moonlight—coiled, graceful body."

"I felt the familiar sting, narcotic, mildly pleasant. Then the blind probing of her ovipositor."

Octavia Butler, Bloodchild

SHARK-WERE

SHARK-WERE

“Rusk noticed a new recruit, close-wrapped in layers of rags, whose looks disturbed him on some level far beyond mere instinct: squat but hunched, his eight grey-skinned fingers webbed and nailless, pallid skin visibly touched with chill. He did his work clumsily, forever turning a too-thick neck to train first one wide-spaced, lidless-seeming flat black eye on the task to hand, then the other; even what little the currently sinking sun was left appeared to pain him, making him bare a double-jarful of serrated teeth in a an aggressive sort of wince, as though he wanted to take a bite out of it and bring on a far more comfortable flood of dark.”

“The man barely seemed aware he was being spoke to, prompting Rusk to peer closer, checking whether his ears were over-muffled, slit — or even there, to begin with.”

Gemma Files, Two Captains

NOTH-YIDIK

NOTH-YIDIK

“Fool! Spawn of Noth-Yidik and effluvium of K’thun! Son of the dogs that howl in the maelstrom of Azathoth! You would have been sacred and immortal, and now you are betraying It and Its priest!"

H.P. Lovecraft & Hazel Heald, The Horror In the Museum

"Aye, I speak of the very Hounds Of Tindalos themselves, those Hunters From Beyond that be the Spawn of Noth-Yidik and the effluvium of K'thun, and that howl forever in the maelstrom that is dread and fearsome Azathoth; aye, They be none other than the very minions and servitors of the Daemon-Sultan, under Their ghastly sire and dam, Noth-Yidik and terrible K'thun."

Lin Carter, The Madness Out Of Time

ZHAR

ZHAR

"Lloigor, Zhar and Ithaqua shall ride the spaces among the stars and shall ennoble those who are their followers, who are the Tcho-Tcho; Cthugha shall encompass his dominion from Fomalhaut; Tzathoggua shall come from N'kai..."

H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

"For the thing that crouched in the weird green dusk was a living mass of shuddering horror, as ghastly mountain of sensate, quivering flesh, whose tentacles, far-flung in the dim reaches of the subterranean cavern, emitted a strange humming sound, while from the depths of the creature's body came a weird and horrific ululation. Then I fell back into Fo-Lan's arms. my mouth opened to cry out, but I felt the doctor's firm hand clapped across my lips, and from a great distance I seemed to hear his voice.
"That is Lloigor!"'
August Dertleth & Mark Schorer, The Lair Of the Star Spawn

OORN

OORN

"Oorn, though a creature of extremely doubtful nature, was the virtual ruler of Zeth. It obviously belonged somewhere in the outer abyss, but had blundered into Zeth one night and suffered capture by the shamith priests. The coincidence of Its excessively bizarre aspect and Its innate gift of mimicry had impressed the sacred brothers as offering vast possibilities, hence in the end they had set It up as a god and an oracle, organising a new brotherhood to serve It—and incidentally to suggest the edicts it should utter and the replies It should give."

"For a moment—as the ritual prescribed—he stayed in this abased position, and when he arose the dais was no longer empty. Unconcernedly munching something the priests had given It was a large pudgy creature very hard to describe, and covered with short grey fur. Whence It had come in so brief a time only the priests might tell, but the suppliant knew that It was Oorn."

"Having tidily finished Its food, Oorn raised three small reddish eyes to Yalden and uttered certain words in a tone of vast decisiveness: “Gumay ere hfotuol leheht teg.” After this It vanished suddenly in a cloud of pink smoke which seemed to issue from behind the curtain where the acolytes were."

H.P. Lovecraft & R.H. Barlow, The Hoard Of the Wizard-Beast

LLOIGOR

LLOIGOR
"Lloigor, Zhar and Ithaqua shall ride the spaces among the stars and shall ennoble those who are their followers, who are the Tcho-Tcho; Cthugha shall encompass his dominion from Fomalhaut; Tzathoggua shall come from N'kai..."
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

"For the thing that crouched in the weird green dusk was a living mass of shuddering horror, as ghastly mountain of sensate, quivering flesh, whose tentacles, far-flung in the dim reaches of the subterranean cavern, emitted a strange humming sound, while from the depths of the creature's body came a weird and horrific ululation. Then I fell back into Fo-Lan's arms. my mouth opened to cry out, but I felt the doctor's firm hand clapped across my lips, and from a great distance I seemed to hear his voice.
"That is Lloigor!"'
August Dertleth & Mark Schorer, The Lair Of the Star Spawn

NUG 

"The ceremonies of Nug and Yeb sickened him especially—so much, indeed, that he refrained from describing them in his manuscript."
H.P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop, The Mound

"I talked in Yemen with an old man who had come back alive from the Crimson Desert—he had seen Irem, the City of Pillars, and had worshipped at the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb—Iä! Shub-Niggurath!"
H.P. Lovecraft & Adolphe de Castro, The Last Test

"In the end he felt sure that the gods friendly to man could be arrayed against the hostile gods, and believed that Shub-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb, as well as Yig the Serpent-god, were ready to take sides with man against the tyranny and presumption of Ghatanothoa."
H.P. Lovecraft & Hazel Heald, Out Of the Aeons

YEB

 YEB

"The ceremonies of Nug and Yeb sickened him especially—so much, indeed, that he refrained from describing them in his manuscript."

H.P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop, The Mound

"I talked in Yemen with an old man who had come back alive from the Crimson Desert—he had seen Irem, the City of Pillars, and had worshipped at the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb—Iä! Shub-Niggurath!"
H.P. Lovecraft & Adolphe de Castro, The Last Test

In the end he felt sure that the gods friendly to man could be arrayed against the hostile gods, and believed that Shub-Niggurath, Nug, and Yeb, as well as Yig the Serpent-god, were ready to take sides with man against the tyranny and presumption of Ghatanothoa.
H.P. Lovecraft & Hazel Heald, Out Of the Aeons

GHATANOTHOA

GHATANOTHOA

"Sight of the god, or its image, as all the legends of the Yuggoth-spawn agreed, meant paralysis and petrifaction of a singularly shocking sort, in which the victim was turned to stone and leather on the outside, while the brain within remained perpetually alive—horribly fixed and prisoned through the ages, and maddeningly conscious of the passage of interminable epochs of helpless inaction till chance and time might complete the decay of the petrified shell and leave it exposed to die."

"Oozing and surging up out of that yawning trap-door in the Cyclopean crypt I had glimpsed such an unbelievable behemothic monstrosity that I could not doubt the power of its original to kill with its mere sight. Even now I cannot begin to suggest it with any words at my command. I might call it gigantic—tentacled—proboscidian—octopus-eyed—semi-amorphous—plastic—partly squamous and partly rugose—ugh! But nothing I could say could even adumbrate the loathsome, unholy, non-human, extra-galactic horror and hatefulness and unutterable evil of that forbidden spawn of black chaos and illimitable night. As I write these words the associated mental image causes me to lean back faint and nauseated."

H.P. Lovecraft & Hazel Heald, Out Of the Aeons

BOKRUG

BOKRUG

"However this may be, it is certain that they worshipped a sea-green stone idol chiselled in the likeness of Bokrug, the great water-lizard; before which they danced horribly when the moon was gibbous."

"Here was done the very secret and ancient rite in detestation of Bokrug, the water-lizard, and here rested the altar of chrysolite which bore the DOOM-scrawl of Taran-Ish."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Doom That Came To Sarnath

BYATIS

BYATIS
"When I press'd him that I must be arm'd against such Daemons by full Knowledge, he said that it had but one Eye like the Cyclops, and had Claws like unto a Crab. He said also that it had a Nose like the Elephants that 'tis said can be seen in Africa, and great Serpent-like Growths which hung from its Face like a Beard, in the Fashion of some Sea Monster."

"A few Minutes after then, they heard a Sound of Wings, like the Flapping of a great Bat, which died away in the Distance."

"The being was supposedly Byatis, a pre-human being which was worshipped as a deity."

"Apparently the terrifying Berkeley Toad was the same being as the deity Byatis; indeed, though the being has only one eye, it does, when its proboscis is retracted occasionally, resemble the general shape of the toad."
Ramsey Campbell, The Room In the Castle

THE SHADOW FROM THE LAND OF THE THREE SUNS

THE SHADOW FROM THE LAND OF THE THREE SUNS

"I went nearer the stone temple, and a huge doorway loomed in front of me. Within that portal were swirling shadows that seemed to dart and leer and try to snatch me inside that awful darkness. I thought I saw three flaming eyes in the shifting void of a doorway, and I screamed with mortal fear. In that noisome depth, I knew, lurked utter destruction—a living hell even worse than death. I screamed again. The vision faded."

 “So in the year of the Black Goat there came unto Nath a shadow that should not be on Earth, and that had no form known to the eyes of Earth. And it fed on the souls of men; they that it gnawed being lured and blinded with dreams till the horror and the endless night lay upon them. Nor did they see that which gnawed them; for the shadow took false shapes that men know or dream of, and only freedom seemed waiting in the Land of the Three Suns. But it was told by priests of the Old Book that he who could see the shadow’s true shape, and live after the seeing, might shun its doom and send it back to the starless gulf of its spawning. This none could do save through the Gem; wherefore did Ka-Nefer the High-Priest keep that gem sacred in the temple. And when it was lost with Phrenes, he who braved the horror and was never seen more, there was weeping in Nath. Yet did the Shadow depart sated at last, nor shall it hunger again till the cycles roll back to the year of the Black Goat.”

 "Where I had, in the landscape itself, seen the twisted, half-sentient tree, there was here visible only a gnarled, terrible hand or talon with fingers or feelers shockingly distended and evidently groping toward something on the ground or in the spectator’s direction."

H.P. Lovecraft & Duane W. Rimel, The Tree On the Hill

CREATURE OF THE MONOLITH

CREATURE OF THE MONOLITH

"I opened my mouth to scream my horror and loathing, but only a dry  rattle sounded; a huge monstrous toad-like thing squatted on the top of the monolith!"

"I saw its bloated, repulsive and unstable outline against the moonlight, and set in what would have been the face of a natural creature, its huge, blinking eyes which reflected all the lust, abysmal  greed,  obscene  cruelty  and  monstrous  evil  that  has  stalked the sons of men since their ancestors mowed blind and hairless  in  the  tree-tops.  In  those  grisly  eyes  were  mirrored  all   the  unholy  things  and  vile  secrets  that  sleep  in  the  cities under the sea, and that skulk from the light of day in the blackness of primordial caverns. And so that ghastly thing that the unhallowed ritual of cruelty and sadism and blood had evoked from  the  silence  of  the  hills,  leered  and  blinked  down  on  its  bestial  worshippers,  who  groveled  in  abhorrent  abasement  before it."

"Now  the  beast-masked  priest  lifted  the  bound  and  weakly  writhing girl in his brutish hands and held her up toward that horror on the monolith. And as that monstrosity sucked in its breath,  lustfully  and  slobberingly,  something  snapped  in  my  brain and I fell into a merciful faint."

Robert E. Howard, The Black Stone

MASHATAAN

MASHATAAN
"There was nothing remotely human about the Mashataan. Their bodies consisted of writhing swarms of tendrils that pulsed with undiluted mchawi. They possessed no other limbs. From the midst of each clump of tendrils rose a head dissimilar in shape to that of anything ever spawned in Nyumbani. Eyes were the only familiar feature on those nightmarish heads — yes that were multitudinous orbs of bright green light, each on refelecting cold, dispassionate involvement in the struggle against the Erriten...the recalcitrant, pathetic and insignificant Erriten...
Charles R. Saunders, Imaro IV

GIANT WALKER

GIANT WALKER
“Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

DISTORTED RABBIT

DISTORTED RABBIT
"Nahum himself gave the most definite statement of anyone when he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow. They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be. Ammi listened without interest to this talk until one night when he drove past Nahum’s house in his sleigh on the way back from Clark’s Corners. There had been a moon, and a rabbit had run across the road, and the leaps of that rabbit were longer than either Ammi or his horse liked."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

GROTESQUE WOODCHUCK

GROTESQUE WOODCHUCK
"In February the McGregor boys from Meadow Hill were out shooting woodchucks, and not far from the Gardner place bagged a very peculiar specimen. The proportions of its body seemed slightly altered in a queer way impossible to describe, while its face had taken on an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before. The boys were genuinely frightened, and threw the thing away at once, so that only their grotesque tales of it ever reached the people of the countryside."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

DISTORTED SQUIRREL

DISTORTED SQUIRREL

"They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be.

"H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

DISTORTED FOX

DISTORTED FOX
"They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

"'It must be somethin’ from away off in the sky like the men from the college last year says the meteor stone was. The way it’s made an’ the way it works ain’t like no way o’ God’s world. It’s some’at from beyond.'"

"It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well—seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognisable chromaticism."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

HAIRLESS PIG-THING

HAIRLESS PIG-THING

“The thing had to be at least a yard high, no ‘coon or ‘possum, too big even for a feral dog. And all weird white hairless. Was it a hog maybe?”

“Still others crouched on all fours like hairless dogs…or pigs.”

Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

FLOPPER

FLOPPER
“Some were little more than humping globs.”

“Not Storch or his mother, but things that crept and crawled and could not speak. Floppers. Some came and went and passed him by but others hung and hugged him like lonely lost children, what arms they bore wrapped round his legs or waist. They were clammy and soft and stunk of trash fires and mold…and when they touched him they shared their thoughts, or at least their sight.”

“They bobbed and quivered as if pumped with anticipation. Some lacked a limb or two while others bore more than could be normal or good.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

FLAPPER

FLAPPER

“Two herons. Three. What the….? When he saw the third he saw the truth. Not herons. Not birds at all. Bigger, bigger than herons even, with lacy rippling wings like a bats, cheese hued membranes with Swiss cheese holes, lumpy bodies and twisting stalks stuck out for necks to end in equine heads with goggle eyes. How could he ever have thought they were birds? And that was all he had time to register before the first was almost on him.”

 “Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“The flapper next began to wind its snaky neck round Donny’s own neck and head, each twist bringing that ugly horse head closer.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

SPIDER-LEGGED FLOPPER

SPIDER-LEGGED FLOPPER

“Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others.”

“Others were whole clumps of heads and limbs a few resembled huge stumpy spiders.”

Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

WALKER

WALKER
“Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“He saw several one armed things that met the description, but was Cousin Whatever still here, the one from the Parkway?”

“—Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe