Forms on the Other Side of Silence

(note: all lyrics taken near-verbatim from the Stephen King short story "Crouch End" from his Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection)

[Three dots indicates part of the phrase from the story is omitted in the song, and CAPS indicates italics in the King text]

The blood of sunset had been replaced by the cool gray ashes of twilight. The deserted, decaying shops had given way to deserted, decaying warehouses. Her voice did not echo, but her footfalls seemed to. Overhead the sky was now purple. It might have been some distorting effect of the twilight, or her own exhaustion, but the warehouses seemed to lean hungrily over the road. The windows, caked with the dirt of decades---of centuries, perhaps---seemed to be staring at her. And the names on the signboards became progressively stranger, even lunatic, at the very least, unpronounceable. The vowels were in the wrong places, and the consonants had been strung together in a way that would make it impossible for any human tongue to get around them. "CTHULHU KRYON," read one. "YOGSOGGOTH" read another. "R'YELEH;" "NYARLAHOTEP."

She was in the grip of a terrible, bone-rattling fear, a fear so great she would not have believed a human being could endure it without going mad or dropping dead. It was impossible for her to articulate her fear except in one way, and even this, she said, only began to bridge the gulf which had opened her mind and heart. She said it was as if she were no longer on earth but on a different planet, a place so alien that the human mind could not even begin to comprehend it. The ANGLES seemed different, she said. The COLORS seemed different. The....but it was hopeless.

The stars were out, but they were not HER stars...these were crazed stars and lunatic constellations...

The street began to move then. The cobbles began to undulate like a carpet. They rose and fell, rose and fell. The tram tracks came loose and flew into the air---and then the cobbles themselves began to come loose, one by one at first, then in bunches. They just flew off into the darkness. There was a tearing sound when they came loose, a grinding, tearing sound....the way an earthquake must sound. And---something started to COME THROUGH....

Tentacles....and there were pink things like suckers...except sometimes they looked like faces....and all of them were in agony. Below them, in the darkness underneath the street---in the darkness BENEATH---there was something else. Something like EYES...