NOTE: This is the infamous Second Narrative from the Necronomicon; it directly follows "The Doom of Yakthoob" and is itself followed by "The City of Pillars". More than a few scholars have noticed how this collection of first-person narratives (evidently drawn from Alhazred's own career as a sorcerer and necromancer) seems closely modeled upon the "Episodes of Eibon of Mhu Thulan", the second book of the Livre d'lvonis. In both of these compilations of hellish lore they seem to serve the identical purpose, i.e., as precautionary tales designed to alert the student of sorcery to the numerous perils attendant upon such studies.

--- L. C.

Innumerable and noxious are those secrets still surviving from this planet's unmemoried and mythic Prime; and in malodorous gulphs beneath earth's crust, where seethe the mephitic vapours of the Vault and Sepulchre, there yet lurk on into our day, suspended betwixt sleep and death, a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres; and rash indeed is he who would dare arouse them from their deserved rest. [1]

Alas, the greedy lust which ever goadeth such as we to ferret out forbidden wisdom from the adyts of the Past, to pry into the profoundest and most fearful arcana of cycles anterior to our own, to search for secrets better left deep-buried and unknown, and to awaken from this sleeping death That which even the endless ages have forgot and which were by men also best left alone and unremembered.

All this is dreadful truth, as well did I, Alhazred, know; and yet I could not yield to the inevitable defeat of my desires, which the demise and doom of Yakthoob forced upon me; and in the fullness of Time it became my firmest resolve to pursue withouten guide nor mentor the secrets of those Mysteries concealed from men for aeons in the subterranean abyss and in the darksome and unwholesome places of the Elder World.

And thus it eventuated that, at length, I rose up and went forth from the sealed and hidden Vale of Hadoth amidst the sombre, stony hills of Neb, which rise anear the crawling floods of the immemorial and mystic Nile, together with those few who followed me and who, with me, had learnt the Elder Lore from the lips of the Saracen wizard, our aforetime Master.

Erelong our journey led us to that desolate and lonely waste of shifting sands which stretched under the cold mockery of the leering Moon, not far from the immense and antique wreckage of riven shards and sundered stone by men called Memphis. Here of old the pshent-crowned Pharaohs reigned and reveled, the same that now sleep long, slow ages by, soaked in bitter natron and wound in spiced winding-sheets, in secret crypts burrowed beneath the tall cliffs of the Valley of the Kings.

And here, amidst the desert sands, there croucheth that elder eidolon of shapen stone fashioned by our forefathers into the likeness of a Crouching Beast. And when my followers beheld the fearful thing they faltered and fell back; hence, disdaining to bemock the folly of their fear, I forward went alone, with but the boldest of my fellows at my heels, a valiant youth called Ibraheem.

And thus it was that we went through that Secret Door that lieth between the out-stretched paws of the mighty Sphinx, that sinister and brooding thing of stone that hath from of old made of the bleak and barren waste its lair, and which looks ever into the visage of Eternity with unblinking and with cryptic gaze, smiling its slight, its knowing, and its sardonic smile.

Through the portal we passed, and by the Hidden Stair that leadeth down and down to profound and nighted crypts that lie long-hid beneath the vast necropolis of Memphis. But once before, in years long antecedent to this, had the learned Yakthoob led us hither by this gloomy way, to grovel before That which may by subtle craft be summoned to the Pits below time-ruined Memphis from dark realms contiguous to its own. And thus at length came Ibraheem and I into a vast and high-roofed Vault, where by the feeble luminance of flickering tapers did we draw twin Circles on the pave thereof, both the Circle of Protection where amidst we twain would stand, and the Circle of Protection that should hold ye Thing (and these Two be needful, lest ye Thing be untimely loos'd and come Ravening against us), and touched to malodorous fumes certain Suffumigations as were requisite, and howled the Words and the Name. Thus did we dare invoke Great Tsathoggua, who was old when the very stars were young, and who came down from remote, trans-cosmic gulfs when this earth was but newly-formed and bore as yet no life, save for the formless and mewling efts of the Prime.

Black and plastic was the quivering Bulk thereof, befurred, swag-bellied and obscene, and in His awful visage there were blent the salient characteristics of Bat and Toad and Sloth; and He squatted there in the centre of the Circle and in a deep and sleepy Voice bade us speak wherefor we had call'd Him from His age-old slumbers. Now, Ibraheem was palsied with terror and sick with loathing of the Stench, but I, who was made of sterner stuff, made bold to speak the desire that seethed within my heart. Wherefore the Black Thing taught us the Mao Games and the wording of the Uthgoa Chant, and spake of the Secret Parable of Byagoona the Faceless, and of very much more. [2] Aye, 'twas from the very Lips of Tsathoggua that I learnt those formulae by which ye may command the demons; all of the formulae between the Yr and the Nhhngr became thus mine, and great Power thereby, for those Demons dwell in spheres apart from this, upon the far side of Kadath Itself. [3]

All of these secrets and many more I mastered in the darkness of that malodorous and mephitic Vault 'neath the ancient city, but when it came to pass that I had gained all of the Knowledge that I sought, and that my over-wearied brain could learn no more, and I uttered aloud the Rites of Banishment, the toad-like and squatting Thing only grinned, and licked its lips with a long tongue like a slimy white Worm, and stirred not from its coign, neither did it vanish.

Then it was, in very truth, that fear gnawed at my vitals and my companion gazed at me with terror in his eyes, for we both perceived that the Thing which we had summoned hither with such ease was not with such ease sent back to the place of Its abiding. Wherefore have I aforetime said, and here repeat again, Do not call up Any that you cannot put down. [4]

Now we had summoned hither Dread Tsathoggua by means of the Voola Ritual [5] which summoneth up from the nighted caverns under earth That which lurketh far beneath the crust, and the Banishment we had in vain performed was as pertaineth to that Ritual. Howsomever, as it seemed notably lacking in efficacy, did I strive with every rite of Banishment and Dismissal known to me to send the Black Thing back to lightless N'kai: but it did not seem within my Knowledge or my Power to effect that which I so devoutly wished.

And all the while mine acolyte stared at me with eyes wide with terror in a face as pale as whey. . . .

At length I resolved, in the uttermost extremity of my Fear and Peril, upon a desperate recourse. Seizing up the slight form of my disciple, the hapless and affrighted Ibraheem, I flung him squalling from the precincts of the Circle of Protection and in such a wise that he fell prone and helpless upon the pave betwixt the toadlike feet of the squatting Thing (the which bent Its loathsome Head to investigate this unexpected Offering, which mewled and slithered 'neath the questing Tongue thereof, and the drooling Lips; and, as the Screaming commenced and I saw that Tsathoggua was otherwise occupied, I then prudently took to my heels and fled from those accursed and noisome Vaults, and up the Secret Stair, and henceforth into the clean air and wholesome light of dawning, and departed forthwith from that place with my Followers at my heels, and we betook ourselves by slow and easy progress towards the deserts of Arabia Felix and that City of the Pillars, even ill-rumored Irem, the which lieth thereamidst.

THE NOTES

Title. Lovecraft refers to "that Dark Thing below Memphis" in his novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

[1] Lovecraft employs this phrase "a madness out of time and a horror from beyond the spheres" in Charles Dexter Ward, although without identifying it as a quotation from Alhazred.  [Return]

[2] "The Mao Games" were first mentioned by Arthur Machen in one of his fine stories; the "Uthgos Chant" is referred to by Ramsey Campbell in his tale "The Render of the Veils"; the only mention I have seen of the "Secret Parable of Byagoona the Faceless" was in Robert Block's story "The Grinning Ghoul".  [Return]

[3] According to Lovecraft (in "The Dunwich Horror"), the Yr and the Nhhngr are formulae, but in The Lurker at the Threshold, Derleth mentions them as places beyond Kadath where certain demons dwell. My clearer reading of the disputed passage, given above, seemingly reconciles the apparent discrepancy.  [Return]

[4] This phrase appears in Charles Dexter Ward, although not as a quotation from Alhazred.  [Return]

[5] The Voola Ritual is employed in this same manner in Ramsey Campbell's story, "The Mine on Yuggoth".  [Return]

--- Lin Carter