Shub-Niggurath in the Television Age

More about Shub-Niggurath in the Television Age

He appeared on the screen the way old gods test their disguises—wrapped in a plaid suit, the pattern shifting in the static, a polite smile stretched over something that had never known politeness. The studio lights softened his face, but the grain of the broadcast could not hide the truth: each dot of light was a pore into a deeper darkness, each pixel a seed from which a stranger forest might bloom.

He spoke calmly, almost soothingly, as if he were just another guest on a mid-afternoon talk show. The audience laughed and clapped at the right cues. None of them heard the faint bleating beneath his voice, or noticed how the air around him seemed to ripple like an udder brushed by invisible hands.

The producers thought he was selling a self-help philosophy.
He was, in a way.

Every time he adjusted his tie, the knot tightened into a spiral that pulled the viewers inward. Every time he blinked, his pupils dilated into branching root systems. His sunglasses hid eyes that were not eyes, but apertures through which the woods of an older world peered back.

Across the nation, people sat closer to their televisions. Something in his tone suggested safety. Something in the flicker suggested surrender. And in countless living rooms, beneath the hum of cathode tubes, a warm fog seemed to gather—soft, fertile, almost sweet.

Those who watched longest began to hear the chant.
Not spoken. Not broadcast.
Something the mind supplied.

The Black Goat with a Thousand Young…
The Lord of the Open Grove…
Come, come, the pasture is ready…

By the time the show cut to commercial, the wallpaper in half the homes watching had sprouted faint circular patterns—tiny spores of static blooming into organic geometry. Babies cried. Pets hid. A few people smiled without knowing why.

He leaned forward just before the fade-out, as if giving a final, personal message to each viewer:

“Growth,” he said, “is inevitable. You need only open yourself.”

And the screen went black.

Inside that blankness, something continued growing.