ZUPAN (NYARLATHOTEP)

 
ZUPAN (NYARLATHOTEP)

"His companion, on the other hand, was sober, well-dressed, slender, and mustached. His dark hair had been parted precisely down the middle; 
indeed, everything about him was precise."

"Question forgotten, Marjorie gaped, heart pounding, to see Zupan standing atop a small pyramid that had not been on stage a moment before, dressed in the robe and headdress she’d thought she’d seen at the beginning of his act. The headdress was Egyptian, of the nemes-style made famous by Tutankhamun, except that Zupan’s looked to be of no real substance, comprised instead entirely of chryselephantine electricity. As were his robes, Marjorie realized, when as he began to descend the pyramid one bolt of crackling energy moved strangely, momentarily revealing a flash of flesh that left her blushing. She kept her eyes on his face after that. He was naked under the garment—

if garment it was."

Molly Tanzer, Mysterium Tremendum

From a story provided exclusively for an Illustro Obscurum collaboration

 

PECULIAR DOLPHIN

PECULIAR DOLPHIN

"Lieut. Klenze chafed under the strain, and was annoyed by the merest trifles—such as the school of dolphins which gathered about the U-29 in increasing numbers, and the growing intensity of that southward current which was not on our chart."
"We often cast a beam around the ship, but saw only dolphins, swimming parallel to our own drifting course. I was scientifically interested in those dolphins; for though the ordinary Delphinus delphis is a cetacean mammal, unable to subsist without air, I watched one of the swimmers closely for two hours, and did not see him alter his submerged condition."
"His mind was tired, but I am always a German, and was quick to notice two things; that the U-29 was standing the deep-sea pressure splendidly, and that the peculiar dolphins were still about us, even at a depth where the existence of high organisms is considered impossible by most naturalists."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Temple

"He saw a city of grand marble edifices, fathoms below the surface of the sea and immemorially ancient, and he saw that it was peopled by a shining dolphin-headed race, whose only profession seemed to be conducting the hierophantic rites of radiant god."

"At first, I thought it swam away and that it had merely been sun-madness that had earlier made me hear its voice, but then, after the fishermen had paddled out of sight, the dolphin surfaced with a bulging leather satchel clutched in its beak. It contained gold and jewels that my new friend told me were gathered from shipwrecks on the ocean floor, and that I should use this wealth to outfit myself as a gentleman and buy passage back to England. The creature's only caveat was that, upon my arrival, I must once again visit the sea and return to one of its kin the ivory head, as our tutor had not, as it turns out been given the object." 

Molly Tanzer, The Infernal History Of the Ivybridge Twins