Not for centuries had any man recalled its vital substance or known where to find it, but this book was very old indeed. It was a key- a guide- to certain gateways and transitions of which mystics have dreamed and whispered since the race was young, and which lead to freedoms and discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter that we know. There was a formula- a sort of list of things to say and do- which I recognized as something black and forbidden something which I had read of before in furtive paragraphs of mixed abhorrence and fascination penned by those strange ancient delvers into the universe's guarded secrets whose decaying texts I loved to absorb. I never learned its title, for the early pages were missing but it fell open toward the end and gave me a glimpse of something which sent my senses reeling. There were, besides, great formless heaps of books on the floor and in crude bins and it was in one of these heaps that I found the thing. That place was very old, and the ceiling-high shelves full of rotting volumes reached back endlessly through windowless inner rooms and alcoves. I remember when I found it- in a dimly lighted place near the black, oily river where the mists always swirl. These cycles of experience, of course, all stem from that worm-riddled book. I seem to have suffered a great shock- perhaps from some utterly monstrous outgrowth of my cycles of unique, incredible experience. My identity, too, is bewilderingly cloudy. While I know I am speaking, I have a vague impression that some strange and perhaps terrible mediation will be needed to bear what I say to the points where I wish to be heard. I am not even certain how I am communicating this message. There is even much doubt as to where they begin for at times I feel appalling vistas of years stretching behind me, while at other times it seems as if the present moment were an isolated point in a grey, formless infinity. Excerpted from The Book (short story) on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was first published in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death.

Lovecraft, believed to have been written in late 1933. The Book is an unfinished short story by American horror fiction writer H. See other editions or works with similar titles.

Miskatonic books gateway through stone