| “ | Vast and lonely is the ocean, and even as all things came from it, so shall they return thereto. In the shrouded depths of time none shall reign upon the earth, nor shall any motion be, save in the eternal waters. And these shall beat on dark shores in thunderous foam, though none shall remain in that dying world to watch the cold light of the enfeebled moon playing on the swirling tides and coarse-grained sand. On the deep’s margin shall rest only a stagnant foam, gathering about the shells and bones of perished shapes that dwelt within the waters. Silent, flabby things will toss and roll along empty shores, their sluggish life extinct. Then all shall be dark, for at last even the white moon on the distant waves shall wink out. Nothing shall be left, neither above nor below the sombre waters. And until that last millennium, as after it, the sea will thunder and toss throughout the dismal night. | „ | |
| ~ final paragraph of The Night Ocean |
The Night Ocean by R. H. Barlow with H. P. Lovecraft is a short story first published in The Californian vol. 4, no. 3 (Winter 1936).
Possibly able to be considered a prose poem rather than a conventional short story, this very short tale is about a man who spends most of a year at a small coastal town. A series of deaths occurs, disappearances of swimmers including those strong and skilled enough for such deaths to be most unlikely. During a mighty storm the unnamed narrator see humanoid but inhuman figures emerging on the deserted beach. After the storm, when the beach has been cleansed by the waves, he finds a decaying human hand and realises that the sea creatures, ghosts, sea ghouls or whatever they may be- are indeed destroying swimmers.
With a progressive melancholy the narrator watches the seasons pass until on the night of a preternatural full moon he sees the strange figures emerge again and is unsure if they are dogs, humans or diseased fish- but they are inhuman.
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