Corrado "NightGaunt" Giustozzi
www.nightgaunt.org
Suddenly, without a warning sound in the dark, Carter felt his curved
scimitar drawn stealthily out of his belt by some unseen hand.
Then he heard it clatter down over the rocks below.
And between him and the Milky Way he thought he saw a very terrible
outline of something noxiously thin and horned and tailed and bat-winged.
(...)
Then a sort of cold rubbery arm seized his neck and something else seized
his feet, and he was lifted inconsiderately up and swung about in space.
Another minute and the stars were gone, and Carter knew that the
Night-Gaunts had got him.
(...)
They made no sound at all themselves, and even their membranous wings
were silent. They were frightfully cold and damp and slippery, and their paws kneaded one detestably.
(...)
But Carter preferred to look down than at his captors, which were indeed
shocking and uncouth black things with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces,
unpleasant horns that curved inward toward each other, bat wings whose
beating made no sound, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed
needlessly and disquietingly.
And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled because
they had no face at all to smile with, but only a suggestive blankness
where a face ought to be.
All they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of
Night-Gaunts.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
"The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath"
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