Now there was no distinction
between boy and man. There was only the entity Randolph Carter, with a
certain store of images which had lost all connection with terrestrial
scenes and circumstances of acquisition. A moment before, there had
been an inner cave with vague suggestions of a monstrous arch and
gigantic sculptured hand on the farther wall. Now there was neither
cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was
only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst
which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or
registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear
consciousness of the way in which he received them. By the time the rite was over, Carter knew that he was in no region
whose place could be told by Earth's geographers, and in no age whose
date history could fix; for the nature of what was happening was not
wholly unfamiliar to him. There were hints of it in the cryptical
Pnakotic fragments, and a whole chapter in the forbidden _Necronomicon_
of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, had taken on significance when he
had deciphered the designs graven on the silver key. A gate had been
unlocked--not, indeed, the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from Earth
and time to that extension of Earth which is outside time, and from
which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the
Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter. There would be a Guide--and a very terrible one; a Guide who had been
an entity of Earth millions of years before, when man was undreamed of,
and when forgotten shapes moved on a steaming planet building strange
cities among whose last, crumbling ruins the first mammals were to
play. Carter remembered what the monstrous _Necronomicon_ had vaguely
and disconcertingly adumbrated concerning that Guide:

"_And while there are those_," the mad Arab had written, "_who have
dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept HIM as guide,
they would have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM;
for it is written in the Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of
a single glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the
vastnesses transcending our world are shapes of darkness that seize
and bind. The Affair that shambleth about in the night, the evil that
defieth the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at the secret portal
each tomb is known to have, and that thrive on that which groweth out
of the tenants thereof:--all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE WHO
guardeth the Gateway: HE WHO will guide the rash one beyond all the
worlds into the Abyss of unnamable devourers. For HE is 'UMR AT-TAWIL,
the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF
LIFE._"

Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines
amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and
imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these
things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable
and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself
into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of Earth
may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs
outside time and the dimensions we know. There floated before Carter a cloudy pageantry of shapes and scenes
which he somehow linked with Earth's primal, eon-forgotten past. Monstrous living things moved deliberately through vistas of fantastic
handiwork that no sane dream ever held, and landscapes bore incredible
vegetation and cliffs and mountains and masonry of no human pattern. There were cities under the sea, and denizens thereof; and towers in
great deserts where globes and cylinders and nameless winged entities
shot off into space, or hurtled down out of space. All this Carter
grasped, though the images bore no fixed relation to one another or to
him. He himself had no stable form or position, but only such shifting
hints of form and position as his whirling fancy supplied. He had wished to find the enchanted regions of his boyhood dreams,
where galleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of
Thran, and elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled,
beyond forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns that sleep lovely
and unbroken under the moon. Now, intoxicated with wider visions, he
scarcely knew what he sought. Thoughts of infinite and blasphemous
daring rose in his mind, and he knew he would face the dreaded Guide
without fear, asking monstrous and terrible things of him. All at once the pageant of impressions seemed to achieve a vague kind
of stabilization. There were great masses of towering stone, carven
into alien and incomprehensible designs and disposed according to
the laws of some unknown, inverse geometry. Light filtered down from
a sky of no assignable color in baffling, contradictory directions,
and played almost sentiently over what seemed to be a curved line of
gigantic hieroglyphed pedestals more hexagonal than otherwise, and
surmounted by cloaked, ill-defined shapes. There was another shape, too, which occupied no pedestal, but which
seemed to glide or float over the cloudy, floor-like lower level. It
was not exactly permanent in outline, but held transient suggestions of
something remotely preceding or paralleling the human form, though half
as large again as an ordinary man. It seemed to be heavily cloaked,
like the shapes on the pedestals, with some neutral-colored fabric;
and Carter could not detect any eye-holes through which it might gaze. Probably it did not need to gaze, for it seemed to belong to an order
of beings far outside the merely physical in organization and faculties. A moment later Carter knew that this was so, for the Shape had spoken
to his mind without sound or language. And though the name it uttered
was a dreaded and terrible one, Randolph Carter did not flinch in fear. Instead, he spoke back, equally without sound or language, and made
those obeisances which the hideous _Necronomicon_ had taught him to
make. For this shape was nothing less than that which all the world has
feared since Lomar rose out of the sea, and the Children of the Fire
Mist came to Earth to teach the Elder Lore to man. It was indeed the
frightful Guide and Guardian of the Gate--'UMR AT-TAWIL, the ancient
one, which the scribe rendereth the PROLONGED OF LIFE. The Guide knew, as he knew all things, of Carter's quest and coming,
and that this seeker of dreams and secrets stood before him unafraid. There was no horror or malignity in what he radiated, and Carter
wondered for a moment whether the mad Arab's terrific blasphemous hints
came from envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done. Or perhaps the Guide reserved his horror and malignity for those who
feared. As the radiations continued, Carter eventually interpreted them
in the form of words.