Immediately afterward an utterly unbearable fetor welled forth from
the unseen heights, choking and sickening the trembling watchers,
and almost prostrating those in the square. At the same time the
air trembled with a vibration as of flapping wings, and a sudden
east-blowing wind more violent than any previous blast snatched off the
hats and wrenched the dripping umbrellas of the crowd. Nothing definite
could be seen in the candleless night, though some upward-looking
spectators thought they glimpsed a great spreading blur of denser
blackness against the inky sky--something like a formless cloud of
smoke that shot with meteor-like speed toward the east. That was all. The watchers were half numbed with fright, awe, and
discomfort, and scarcely knew what to do, or whether to do anything at
all. Not knowing what had happened, they did not relax their vigil;
and a moment later they sent up a prayer as a sharp flash of belated
lightning, followed by an ear-splitting crash of sound, rent the
flooded heavens. Half an hour later the rain stopped, and in fifteen
minutes more the street lights sprang on again, sending the weary,
bedraggled watchers relievedly back to their homes. *       *       *       *       *

The next day's papers gave these matters minor mention in connection
with the general storm reports. It seems that the great lightning flash
and deafening explosion which followed the Federal Hill occurrence
were even more tremendous farther east, where a burst of the singular
fetor was likewise noticed. The phenomenon was most marked over College
Hill, where the crash awaked all the sleeping inhabitants and led to a
bewildered round of speculations. Of those who were already awake only
a few saw the anomalous blaze of light near the top of the hill, or
noticed the inexplicable upward rush of air which almost stripped the
leaves from the trees and blasted the plants in the gardens. It was
agreed that the lone, sudden lightning-bolt must have struck somewhere
in this neighborhood, though no trace of its striking could afterward
be found. A youth in the Tau Omega fraternity house thought he saw a
grotesque and hideous mass of smoke in the air just as the preliminary
flash burst, but his observation has not been verified. All of the few
observers, however, agree as to the violent gust from the west and the
flood of intolerable stench which preceded the belated stroke; whilst
evidence concerning the momentary burned odor after the stroke is
equally general. These points were discussed very carefully because of their probable
connection with the death of Robert Blake. Students in the Psi Delta
house, whose upper rear windows looked into Blake's study, noticed the
blurred white face at the westward window on the morning of the 9th,
and wondered what was wrong with the expression. When they saw the same
face in the same position that evening, they felt worried, and watched
for the lights to come up in his apartment. Later they rang the bell of
the darkened flat, and finally had a policeman force the door. The rigid body sat bolt upright at the desk by the window, and when
the intruders saw the glassy, bulging eyes, and the marks of stark,
convulsive fright on the twisted features, they turned away in sickened
dismay. Shortly afterward the coroner's physician made an examination,
and despite the unbroken window reported electrical shock, or nervous
tension induced by an electrical discharge, as the cause of death. The hideous expression he ignored altogether, deeming it a not
improbable result of the profound shock as experienced by a person of
such abnormal imagination and unbalanced emotions. He deduced these
latter qualities from the books, paintings, and manuscripts found in
the apartment, and from the blindly scrawled entries in the diary on
the desk. Blake had prolonged his frenzied jottings to the last, and
the broken-pointed pencil was found clutched in his spasmodically
contracted right hand. *       *       *       *       *

The entries after the failure of the lights were highly disjointed,
and legible only in part. From them certain investigators have
drawn conclusions differing greatly from the materialistic official
verdict, but such speculations have little chance for belief among
the conservative. The case of these imaginative theorists has not
been helped by the action of superstitious Doctor Dexter, who threw
the curious box and angled stone--an object certainly self-luminous
as seen in the black windowless steeple where it was found--into
the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay. Excessive imagination and
neurotic unbalance on Blake's part, aggravated by knowledge of the evil
bygone cult whose startling traces he had uncovered, form the dominant
interpretation given those final frenzied jottings. These are the
entries--or all that can be made of them. "Lights still out--must be five minutes now. Everything depends on
lightning. Yaddith grant it will keep up!... Some influence seems
beating through it.... Rain and thunder and wind deafen.... The thing
is taking hold of my mind....

"Trouble with memory. I see things I never knew before. Other worlds
and other galaxies.... Dark.... The lightning seems dark and the
darkness seems light....

"It cannot be the real hill and church that I see in the
pitch-darkness. Must be retinal impression left by flashes. Heaven
grant the Italians are out with their candles if the lightning stops! "What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in
antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man? I remember Yuggoth,
and more distant Shaggai, and the ultimate void of the black planets....

"The long, winging flight through the void ... cannot cross the
universe of light ... re-created by the thoughts caught in the Shining
Trapezohedron ... send it through the horrible abysses of radiance....

"My name is Blake--Robert Harrison Blake of 620 East Knapp Street,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.... I am on this planet....

"Azathoth have mercy!--the lightning no longer flashes--horrible--I can
see everything with a monstrous sense that is not sight--light is dark
and dark is light ... those people on the hill ... guard ... candles
and charms ... their priests....

"Sense of distance gone--far is near and near is far. No light--no
glass--see that steeple--that tower--window--can hear--Roderick
Usher--am mad or going mad--the thing is stirring and fumbling in the
tower--I am it and it is I--I want to get out ... must get out and
unify the forces.... It knows where I am....

"I am Robert Blake, but I see the tower in the dark. There is a
monstrous odor ... senses transfigured ... boarding at that tower
window cracking and giving way.... Iä ... ngai ... ygg....

"I see it--coming here--hell-wind--titan blur--black wings--Yog-Sothoth