Free Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

ready.”
    “If we do find something.” Keith glanced out of the cabin porthole, watching the sunset rays striating the smooth surface of the water with multicolored flames. “You know, I never dreamed it would be so peaceful. Hard to believe there’s anything out there that could possibly harm us, let alone what Lovecraft warned about.”
    It was not until the morning of the fifth day out that Keith’s calm was shattered.
    When Abbott pounded on the stateroom door and roused him to come out on deck, the sight that greeted his eyes rendered him speechless.
    Shuddering, he stared at what lay off the starboard bow. It was horrifyingly familiar, and for a moment he thought he was experiencing déjà vu. Then he realized that he was gazing at what Lovecraft had so vividly and accurately described in his story—the tip of a single muddy peak upthrust from the ocean depths, atop of which towered a mountainous mass of masonry rising to a monolith formed by gigantic blocks of slime-green stone.
    It was R’lyeh, and it was real.
    The swarthy crew members jabbered and pointed beside him on the deck. Captain Sato appeared from the bridge, scowling and squinting against the sun at the incredible immensity of the structure rearing above the oozing surface on which it rested and reared in dizzying, distorted angles that defied gravity and sanity alike.
    Now at last Keith could believe it all, for here before him was the ultimate proof—proof in a form more frightening than anything hinted at in words or the imagery of nightmare.
    Staring at this horror from the depths he knew its power—the power to make its presence known in the dreams of men halfway around the world. It was in dreams that Lovecraft had seen it long ago, and wakened to set down his warning.
    And the cult was real, too; the cult whose prayers and invocations had willed the coming of the quake—the long-awaited eruption that had once again raised dark R’lyeh from the vast deep where Great Cthulhu slept deathless and eternal, sending forth his commands.
    Commands. Keith was vaguely aware of Abbott beside him, snapping orders at Captain Sato. The launch was to be lowered at once.
    “Make sure to take along a couple of charges,” Keith said. “If we can get that door open to drop them in—”
    Abbott nodded quickly, then relayed instructions to Sato.
    During the ensuing activity Keith continued to stare at the cyclopean citadel, which gradually took comprehensible shape; at the huge, crazily angled stone staircase that was not meant or fashioned for mortal tread, and the great acre-wide door to which it led. Even at this distance he could see the carvings of strange shapes crawling across its surface—tentacled, twisted, and utterly terrifying. And behind that door—beyond and below—was the reality they represented.
    “Are you all right?” Abbott was shaking him by the shoulder.
    Keith nodded; glancing down he saw that the launch was now bobbing beside the ship, manned and ready.
    “Come on, then.” Abbott clambered down the rope-ladder and Keith followed clumsily until he reached the safety of the boat below. Then they cast off, with Sato at the tiller.
    Once again Keith’s eyes returned to the mud-caked, weed-festooned mountain looming ahead, and the massive stone monstrosity that crowned its crest. “Look,” he said. “He wasn’t lying—the way those stones are set all askew, like something from another dimension, and yet they fit.”
    Abbott nodded impatiently. “No time for geometry lessons. Let’s get astern.”
    The launch was already slowing before the sloping base of the emergent peak. Captain Sato shouted orders and anchor lines went out. Keith noted that the chattering crewmen showed no fear—but then they did not know what lay ahead, hidden and waiting in the darkness behind the great door above the oddly slanted stairs. And that was just as well.
    Keith slipped and stumbled up the slope behind Abbott. The crew, he knew, would be