Opening Statement:
Dear Melmoth:–
…So you are busy delving into the shady past of that insufferable young Asiatic Varius Avitus Bassianus? Ugh! There are few persons I loathe more than that cursed little Syrian rat!What in Brown Jenkin's Name..?
I have myself been carried back to Roman times by my recent perusal of James Rhoades’ Æneid, a translation never before read by me, and more faithful to P. Maro than any other versified version I have ever seen—including that of my late uncle Dr. Clark, which did not attain publication. This Virgilian diversion, together with the spectral thoughts incident to All Hallows’ Eve with its Witch-Sabbaths on the hills, produced in me last Monday night a Roman dream of such supernal clearness and vividness, and such titanic adumbrations of hidden horror, that I verily believe I shall some day employ it in fiction.
Roman army versus the unknown.Synopsis:
A dream is described: A Roman official arrives at Pompelo, drawn there with Roman army forces by concerns with the alien “very old folk” who live in the mountains. The approach the camp of the mountain people intending to halt their pagan ritual. The Roman legion is attacked by unseen forces and eradicated.Essential Saltes:
It was from the tethered horses—they had screamed, not neighed, but screamed… and there was no light down there, nor the sound of any human thing, to shew why they had done so. At the same moment bonfires blazed out on all the peaks ahead, so that terror seemed to lurk equally well before and behind us. Looking for the youth Vercellius, our guide, we found only a crumpled heap weltering in a pool of blood.From Dr. Armitage's Notes:
- This brief fable is kind of a throwback to Lovecraft's "Iranon" days.
- The text is Lovecraft's full letter to Donald Wandrei, where he credits the story to a dream.
The Horrible Conclusion:
And then I waked. It was the most vivid dream in years, drawing upon wells of the subconscious long untouched and forgotten. Of the fate of that cohort no record exists, but the town at least was saved—for encyclopædias tell of the survival of Pompelo to this day, under the modern Spanish name of Pompelona…
Yrs for Gothick Supremacy—
C · IVLIVS · VERVS · MAXIMINVS
