“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
The voyage had begun with the crew of “The Revenge of the Filthy Whore” carried forward by the full force of an earthquake-born tempest heaved up from the sea-bottom and the horrors that filled men’s dreams. Driven ahead by the will of Cthulhu under Captain Mutt’s command, the men sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and come upon a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults calling out at last to the forgotten crew of “The Revenge of the Filthy Whore” to spread fear as they sail on a mission of destruction and restoration.
The ship landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis, and clambered slipperily up over titan oozy blocks which could have been no mortal staircase. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock. It was here they spotted an immense carved door with the familiar squid-dragon bas-relief and knew they had arrived. The stars were right again, and the age-old heralds of Cthulhu had been transformed to the band known as “X Undead”. After many years great Cthulhu had set them loose again, and they were laughing with delight. Then came the storm, and a gathering of the clouds about the sea. There was a sense of spectral whirling through liquid gulfs of infinity, of dizzying rides through reeling universes on a comet’s tail, and of hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the moon back again as the green, bat-winged one commanded X Undead to play their first chords.
Cthulhu still lives in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more; Vigilant, the X Undead sailed over the spot after the storm. Now as Cthulhu’s ministers on earth they bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths on stages around the globe. Burned into their minds is the image of Great Cthulhu sinking as he raises his thumb in approval whilst his band of chaos sings the refrain to “The Infernal Abyss”. Soon the world will be screaming with fright and frenzy as the X Undead play their songs into the void. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Decay will spread over the tottering cities of men. The time has come and there shall be no quarter.
