doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss

of identity. Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion; but to be

aware of existence and yet to know that one is no longer a definite being

distinguished from other beings - that one no longer has a self - that is

the nameless summit of agony and dread.

He knew that there had been a Randolph Carter of Boston, yet could not be

sure whether he - the fragment or facet of an entity beyond the Ultimate

Gate - had been that one or some other. His self had been annihilated; and

yet he - if indeed there could, in view of that utter nullity of

individual existence, be such a thing as he - was equally aware of being

in some inconceivable way a legion of selves. It was as though his body

had been suddenly transformed into one of those many-limbed and

many-headed effigies sculptured in Indian temples, and he contemplated the

aggregation in a bewildered attempt to discern which was the original and

which the additions - if indeed (supremely monstrous thought!) there were

any original as distinguished from other embodiments.

Then, in the midst of these devastating reflections, Carter's

beyond-the-gate fragment was hurled from what had seemed the nadir of

horror to black, clutching pits of a horror still more profound. This time

it was largely external - a force of personality which at once confronted

and surrounded and pervaded him, and which in addition to its local

presence, seemed also to be a part of himself, and likewise to be