The Nameless Offspring

"Many, and multiform are the dim horrors of earth, infesting her ways from the prime. They sleep beneath the unturned stone; they rise with the tree from its root; they move beneath the sea and in subterranean places; they dwell in the inmost adyta; they emerge betimes from these shutting sepulchers of haughty bronze in the low grave that is sealed with clay. There be some that are long known to man, and others as yet unknown that abide the terrible latter days of their revealing. Those which are the most dreadful and the lowliest of all haply still to be declared. But among those that have revealed themselves afore time and have made manifest their veritable presence, there is one which may not openly be named for its exceeding foulness. It is that spawn which the hidden dweller in the vaults has begotten upon mortality." From the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred Thus opens "The Nameless Offspring" a frightening short story by Clark Ashton Smith published in Strange Tales of Mystery and