Diary of William T. Harrow – Recovered from the burned ruins of the Harrow Estate near Dunwich, Massachusetts. All entries postmarked March 3–10, 2023. Journal ends abruptly.
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March 3, 2023
I arrived in Dunwich this morning to settle my late uncle's affairs. The house is in poor condition, overgrown and quiet. But it's not just neglect that haunts this place—there's a pressure in the air. The locals won't look me in the eye when I mention the property. Carter, an old colleague from Miskatonic, met me here to assist with the geological survey. He's more interested in the strange sinkholes than the will.
They warned us not to go near the ridge behind the estate. "The earth ain't right there," one man mumbled. I laughed it off.
But when I stood at the edge of that gaping hole behind the house, laughter died in my throat. It was a wound, not a hole. The stones around the lip were deliberate, etched with markings I can't decipher—but they hum when I stare too long.
Carter says the air coming out of the sinkhole is warm.
Upward wind.
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March 4, 2023
I dreamed of winged shadows. Faceless, tall, sinuous things that hovered over me, whispering in no tongue I understand. I drew one upon waking. I wish I hadn't. Their blank faces, their rubbery skin... I remember the illustrations in the Necronomicon. Nightgaunts.
God help me.
We descended into the pit today. Only the first hundred feet—just a preliminary survey. The walls are warm, pulsing subtly. Fungi line the walls in intricate spirals and glow when touched. The light isn't natural. It feels... reactive.
There's something down there.
Carter says the rock isn't any known composition. It reflects heat, but not light. I touched a stone and it whispered in my bones.
I've started hearing a low hum, even aboveground. It's not tinnitus.
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March 5, 2023
We went deeper today—much deeper. We found a massive subterranean chamber, too vast to exist naturally. The air is still. The silence—too silent. As though sound itself fears to linger.
At its center was a monolith. Black. Seamless. Covered in spirals and runes. I cannot read them, yet I understand them. The language is not for mouths. It is for minds.
Carter touched it. He should not have. The hum began to grow louder, until it was inside my skull. I collapsed. When I rose, Carter was screaming, stiff as a corpse, jerking like a puppet.
And then they came.
The Nightgaunts.
Three of them, descending like shadows that fell in reverse. Winged, faceless, gliding. Their fingers are long and patient.
I ran.
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March 6, 2023
I made it out.
I don't remember how. The last thing I remember is falling into a crack in the stone. I woke covered in blood and moss near the edge of the pit. The house was in the distance. It was night.
There were no stars.
Not cloud cover. No stars. The sky was not black—it was absent. Hollow. Something moved above me, blotting out what should have been constellations. A silhouette that spanned the heavens. Its wings spread across the curve of the sky. A Nightgaunt larger than thought.
And it was watching.
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March 7, 2023
The dreams won't stop.
Each night, I descend again—not as myself, but as a passenger. I see others, strangers from distant places, standing at the monolith, trembling. They are marked. Chosen.
I see the monolith unfold. It opens not with hinges, but like a blooming wound—revealing a staircase of unbeing. A spiral that descends beyond time.
The Nightgaunts are not servants. They are not tools of Nyarlathotep or Nodens. They are ushers. They ferry souls, not to hell, but to absence. To a place where no gods dwell, and no light ever was.
A sky beneath the world.
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March 8, 2023
I fled Dunwich today. Took the car, drove for hours. But the road curved back to the house.
I know now that the pit is no longer behind the house. It is beneath me, wherever I go. I see spirals in broken glass, in puddles, in my coffee. I see faceless shapes among crowds, unmoving as the world flows around them.
They are everywhere.
They wait.
One stood on my roof last night. Its wings didn't flap. Its tail curled slowly like a question mark. I didn't sleep. I didn't move.
I think it breathed for me while I sat paralyzed.
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March 9, 2023
It's not madness.
Madness would have been easier. This is something else. Something colder. Clarity.
I see the spirals now in everything—branches, clouds, teeth, time. The Nightgaunts are not creatures. They are symptoms. Symptoms of something deeper than nightmares.
A warning.
Or a welcome.
My dreams are no longer dreams. They are lessons. I understand the staircase now. I know what waits below. It isn't death. It's silence.
Not peace. Just... the end of being.
They won't kill me. They will carry me.
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March 10, 2023
If you find this journal, if you read this—burn it.
Do not come to Dunwich.
Do not seek the pit.
Do not follow the humming.
Do not study spirals. Do not look into black stone. And whatever you do
Don't look up.
The stars are missing for a reason.
The sky is already gone.
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[End of Journal]
All that remained at the site was a spiral scorched into the floor of the study. No trace of William T. Harrow was ever found. The nearby town of Dunwich has since experienced numerous disappearances, with witnesses reporting black-winged figures gliding silently in the sky at night.
End?
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I was rereading some lovecraft stories and thought the Nightgaunts were awesome.