The Moon Pool
1919
When Dr. Walter Goodwin arrives on the island of Ponape, he finds his friend David Throckmartin shattered by tragedy: Throckmartin's wife Edith and their associate have vanished into the ancient ruins of Nan-Matal, drawn toward something called the Moon Pool. What began as a botanical expedition has become a descent into madness and mystery, marked by strange marks on Throckmartin's body and whispers of a subterranean world that defies explanation. Goodwin must venture back into those ruins, where he will discover an underground civilization of impossible wonders and awaken something far older and more terrible than any of them understood. The Dweller stirs in the deep, and its awakening threatens not just these isolated islands but the world above. Merritt blends scientific curiosity with supernatural dread in this foundational lost-world tale, crafting atmospheric horror that predates and influenced the cosmic terrors that would follow. For readers who crave adventure that breathes, who want their jungles rain-soaked and their ancient cities humming with wrongness, who understand that the most frightening thing is not what's in front of you but what lies beneath everything you thought you knew.
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“If you're in love, love to the limit; and if you hate, why hate like the devil and if it's a fight you're in, get where it's hottest and fight like hell - if you don't life's not worth the living.””
— Abraham Merritt
“From the first she showed a curious sensitivity to what, I suppose, may be called the 'influences' of the place. She said it 'smelled' of ghosts and warlocks.””
— Abraham Merritt
“I realize, of course, that it is not true logic to argue--"The world is not as we think it is--therefore everything we think impossible is possible in it." Even if it be different, it is governed by law. The truly impossible is that which is outside law, and as nothing can be outside law, the impossible cannot exist.””
— Abraham Merritt
“A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of people passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell--of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold the devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread!””
— Abraham Merritt
