Until this moment I never believed that there was any shadow of reality behind the mythology I created for my work. Letter writers inquiring about the history of the Necronomicon are inevitably disappointed to find that I invented it entirely out of my own head. The “Mythos” is simply a tool that I used in my quest to escape the bonds of time and space we must endure in a deterministic universe.

But I have always been plagued by uncannily vivid nightmares, many of which have inspired my stories. Since the death of my dear friend Bob Howard they have steadily grown in intensity. And now I stand before the alien shore that I beheld in the worst of those dreams.

Am I simply going mad, as my father before me? Yet even my most vivid dreams never bore this awful stamp of reality. It would seem that after striving for many years to transcend time and space in art, I have done so in life. And I feel a certain exultation mixed with mortal terror as I behold the vast and terrible form rising from the waters.