Speculation

The Case of George Walker Bush

A cold wind bearing the faintest traces of the winds that sweep across the Wastes of Kadath, or the icy Plateau of Leng, whipped the city of Washington, as George W. Bush spoke the words that reverberated within my mind, and my soul. "We have a calling from beyond the stars," he said, "and America will always be faithful to that cause."

A calling from beyond the stars. The words chill the very essence of my being, even though I sit here in warmth and comfort in my study. My mind reels backwards in time. What is it that lies beyond the stars, what is it that calls to him?

Up from the depths of my memory creep some fragments of ancient knowledge, stumbled upon one summer in my careless youth. A curious – perhaps too curious - graduate student I was then, spending a semester prowling the stacks of the library at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. What a feast it was for one seeking for the deepest truths of our existence. For myriad are the ancient tomes stored there, weathered volumes which speak of things beyond the understanding of mortal man, rituals no longer spoken by the living, rites which promised to bring … something my mind could not comprehend. How well I remember the feelings that convulsed me as, for a time, days, I thought – or was it weeks - I hovered on the edge of some great secret, certain that if only I persevered, I would find the key that would answer all my wildest questionings. But no. At last, driven by some deep prompting, be it conscience, foreboding, or fear, I withdrew from that shadowed quest, I returned to my home and lived until this day, untouched – or so I believed - by the brush of those dark wings I heard at the very edge of my awareness.

Yet now to my mind come the words of another, who penetrated deeper beyond the veil of silence that turned my soul back: "Men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse."

And so it is. For now I remember the names of those who dwell beyond the stars, even that of the Unspeakable One. I know of those who, come among us from that place beyond time and space, slumber now in the earth or in the ocean depths. I know who it is that walked once in the unfathomable chaos that coils beyond the stars, and will do so again when the stars are right, who it is that calls from his deathless sleep in R’lyeh. And I shudder at the fate now come upon this planet, as one among the most powerful of men speaks openly and boldly of that which calls to him from that awful abyss.