The Call of Cthulhu / Зов Ктулху

As Wilcox said, the geometry of the place was all wrong. One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, because the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.

Briden pushed at the stone in several places without result. Then Donovan[97 - Donovan – Донован] studied the edge, pressing each point separately. He climbed along the grotesque stone moulding – and the men wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast. Then, very softly and slowly, the acre-great lintel began to go down; and they saw that it was balanced.

Everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this prismatic distortion it moved in a diagonal way.

The aperture was black. The odour rising from the newly opened depths was intolerable. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It appeared and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.

Of the six men who never reached the ship, two died immediately. The Thing cannot be described – there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder[98 - what wonder – что же удивляться] that across the Earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own[99 - to claim his own – заявить свои права].

The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After millions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.

Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe.

They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Angstrom[100 - Donovan, Guerrera, and Angstrom – Донован, Геррера и Ангстром]. Parker slipped as the other three were running to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by masonry. When Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert, the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and was floundering at the edge of the water.