“All right,” I said. “I’m ready. Open her up.”
“First, let me tell you a little bit about what I think we have here,” he said. “Because when you see it, you’re going to be disappointed. Its appearance is not prepossessing.”
“All right.”
“In the first place, it’s in Arabic. It’s handwritten in a little diary in ordinary badly faded ink and it’s incomplete. Since I don’t read Arabic, I don’t know what’s missing. I only know that it’s too short to be the full version. This copy came to me from the widow of a classics professor at the University of South Carolina, an Egyptologist who disappeared on a field excursion some thirty years ago. His wife kept his library all this time, hoping for his return. Then, last year, she offered up the whole lot. That’s how I happen to be in possession of this copy of Al Azif.”
“I never heard of it,” I said, trying not to show the minor disappointment I felt.
“It’s the work of a medieval poet thought to have been insane,” Uncle Alvin said, “but there is debate as to how crazy he actually was. His name was Abdul Alhazred and he lived in Yemen. Shortly after composing Al Azif he met a violent and grisly death—which is all we know about it because even the eyewitnesses dispute the manner of his dying.”
“Abdul Alhazred. Isn’t that—?”
“Yes indeed,” he said. “The work is more recognizable under the title of its Greek translation, The Necronomicon. And the most widely known text—if any of them can really be said to be widely known—is the thirteenth-century Latin translation of Olaus Wormius. It has always been surmised that the original Arabic text perished long ago, since every powerful government and respected religious organization has tried to destroy the work in all its forms. And they have largely succeeded in doing so.”
“But how do you know what it is, if you don’t read Arabic?”
“I have a friend,” he said proudly. “Dr. Abu-Saba. I asked him to look at it and to give me a general idea of the contents. When I handed it to him and he translated the title, I stopped him short. Better not to go on with that. You know the reputation of The Necronomicon.”
“I do indeed,” I said, “and I don’t care to know what’s in it in any detail. In fact, I’m not really overjoyed at finding myself in such close company.”
“Oh, we should be safe enough. As long as we keep our mouths closed so that certain unsavory groups of cultists don’t hear that we’ve got it.”
“If you’re offering it to me for sale—” I began.
“No, no,” he said hastily. “I’m trying to arrange to deposit it in the Library of Congress. That’s why I’m going to Washington. I wouldn’t put my favorite nephew in jeopardy—or not for long, anyway. All I would like is for you to keep it for a week while I’m negotiating. I’m asking as a personal favor.”
I considered. “I’ll be happy to keep it for you,” I said. “To tell the truth, I’m more concerned about the security of the book than about my own safety. I can take care of myself. But the book is a dangerous article, and an extremely valuable one.”
“Like an atomic weapon,” Uncle Alvin said. “Too dangerous to keep and too dangerous to dispose of. But the Library of Congress will know what to do. This can’t be the first time they’ve encountered this problem.”
“You think they already have a Necronomicon?”
“I’d bet money,” he said cheerfully, “except that I wouldn’t know how to collect. You don’t expect them to list it in the catalogue, do you?”
“They’d deny possession, of course.”
“But there’s a good chance they won’t have an Arabic version. Only one is known to have reached America, and it was thought to have been destroyed in San Francisco around the turn of the century. This volume is probably a copy of that version.”
“So what do I do with it?” I asked.
“Put it in a safe place. In your lockbox at the bank.”
“I don’t have one of those,” I said. “I have a little old dinky safe in my office in back, but if anyone came to find it, that’s the first place they’d look.”
“Do you have a cellar in this shop?”
“Not that I’d trust the book to. Why don’t we take a hint from Edgar Allan Poe?”
He frowned a moment, then brightened. “A purloined letter, you mean?”
“Sure. I’ve got all sorts of books scattered about in cardboard boxes. I haven’t sorted them yet to shelve. It would take weeks for someone to hunt it out even if he knew it was here.”
“It might work,” Uncle Alvin said, wrinkling his nose and rubbing his pink ear with a brisk forefinger. “But there’s a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“You may wish to disregard it because of its legendary nature. I wouldn’t. In the case of Al Azif, it’s best to take every precaution.”
“All right,” I said. “What’s the legend?”
“Among certain bookmen, The Necronomicon is sometimes known as The Adder. Because first it poisons, then it devours.”
I gave him a look that I intended to mean: not another one of your little jokes, Uncle Alvin. “You don’t really expect me to believe that we’ve got a book here that eats people.”
“Oh no.” He shook his head. “It only eats its own kind.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just make sure,” he said, “that when you place it in a box with other books, none of them is important.”
“I get it,” I said. “Damaged cheap editions. To draw attention away from its true value.”
He gave me a long, mild stare, then nodded placidly. “Something like that,” he replied at last.
“Okay,” I agreed, “I’ll do exactly that. Now let’s have a look at this ominous rarity. I’ve heard about The Necronomicon ever since I became interested in books. I’m all aflutter.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” Uncle Alvin said. “Some copies of this forbidden text are quite remarkable, but this one—” He twitched his nose again and rubbed it with the palm of his hand.
“Now don’t be a naughty tease, Uncle Alvin,” I said.
He unlocked the metal box and took out a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. He peeled away the paper to reveal a rather thin octavo diary with a worn morocco cover that had faded from what would have been a striking red to a pale brick color, almost pinkish. Noticing the expression on my face, he said, “See? I told you it would be a disappointment.”
“No, not at all,” I said, but my tone was so obviously subdued that he handed it to me to examine without my asking.
There was little to see. The pinkish worn binding felt smooth. The spine was hubbed and stamped Diary in gold, but the gold, too, had almost worn away. I opened it at random and looked at incomprehensible Arabic script so badly faded that it was impossible to say what color the ink had been. Black or purple or maybe even dark green—but now all the colors had become a pale uniform gray. I leafed through almost to the end but found nothing in the least remarkable.
“Well, I do hope this is the genuine article,” I said. “Are you sure your friend, Dr. Hoodoo—”
“Abu-Saba,” said Uncle Alvin primly. “Dr. Fuad Abu-Saba. His knowledge of his native tongue is impeccable, his integrity unassailable.”
“Okay, if you say so,” I said. “But what we have here doesn’t look like much.”
“I’m not trying to sell it. Its nondescript appearance is in our favor. The more undistinguished it looks, the safer we are.”
“That makes sense,” I admitted, handing it back to him.
He glanced at me shrewdly as he returned it to the cashbox, obviously thinking that I was merely humoring him—as to a certain extent I was. “Robert,” he said sternly, “you’re my favorite nephew, one of my most favorite persons. I want you to follow my instructions seriously. I want you to take the strongest precautions and keep on your guard. This is a dangerous passage for both of us.”
I sobered. “All right, Uncle Alvi
n. You know best.”
He wrapped the volume in the brown paper and restored it to the scarred box and carried it with him as we repaired to Tony’s Ristorante Venezia to indulge copiously in lasagne and a full-bodied Chianti. After lunch he dropped me back at Alternate Histories and, taking Al Azif out of the metal box, gave it over to my safekeeping with a single word of admonition. “Remember,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I remember.”
In the shop I examined the book in a more leisurely and comprehensive fashion. But it hadn’t changed; it was only one more dusty, faded, stained diary like thousands of others, and its sole distinction to the unlearned eye was that it was in handwritten Arabic script. A mysterious gang of sinister thieves would have to know a great deal about it merely in order to know for what to search.
I decided not to trust it to a jumble of books in a maze of cardboard boxes. I took it into my little backroom office, shoved some valueless books out of the way, and laid it flat on a lower shelf of a ramshackle bookcase there that was cluttered with every sort of pamphlet, odd periodical, and assorted volume from broken sets of Maupassant, Balzac, and William McFee. I turned it so that the gilt edge faced outward and the word Diary was hidden. Then I deliberated for a minute or two about what to stack on top of it.
I thought of Uncle Alvin’s warning that no important books were to be placed with Al Azif, and I determined to heed it. What’s the point in having a favorite uncle, wise and experienced in his trade, if you don’t listen to him? And besides that, the dark reputation of the book was an urgent warning in itself.
I picked up an ordinary and utterly undistinguished copy of Milton’s poems—Herndon House, New York, 1924. No introduction and a few sketchy notes by an anonymous editor, notes no doubt reduced from a solid scholarly edition. It was a warped copy and showed significant water damage. I opened to the beginning of Paradise Lost and read the first twenty-six lines, then searched to find my favorite Miltonic sonnet, number XIX, “On His Blindness.”
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide…
Well, you know how it goes.
It’s a poem of which I never tire, one of those poems that has faithfully befriended me in periods happy and unhappy since the years of my majority. Milton’s customary stately music is there, and a heartfelt personal outcry not often to be found in his work. Then there comes the sternly contented resolution of the final lines. Milton requires, of course, no recommendation from me, and his sonnet no encomium. I only desire to make it clear that this poet is important to me and the sonnet on his blindness particularly dear.
But not every copy, or every edition, of Milton is important. I have personal copies of fully annotated and beautifully illustrated editions. The one I held in my hand was only a cheap mass edition, designed in all probability to be sold at railway bookstalls. I placed it on top of the Arabic treasure and then piled over both books a stack of papers from my desk, which is always overflowing with such papers: catalogues, book lists, sale announcements, and invoices. Of this latter item especially there is an eternal surplus.
Then I forgot about it.
No, I didn’t.
I didn’t in the least forget that I almost certainly had in my possession Al Azif, one of the rarest documents in bibliographic annals, one of the enduring titles of history and legend—and one of the deadliest. We don’t need to rehearse the discomfiting and unsanitary demises alleged of so many former owners of the book. They all came to bad ends, and messy ones. Uncle Alvin had the right idea, getting the volume into the hands of those prepared to care for it. My mission was merely a holding action—to keep it safe for a week. That being so, I resolved not to go near it, not even to look at it until my uncle returned the following Saturday.
And I was able to keep to my resolution until Tuesday, the day after I’d made it.
The manuscript in its diary format had changed when I looked. I noticed right away that the morocco covers had lost their pinkish cast and taken on a bright red. The stamped word Diary shone more brightly, too, and when I opened the volume and leafed through it, I saw that the pages had whitened, losing most of the signs of age, and that the inked script stood forth more boldly. It was now possible to discern, in fact, that the writing actually was clothed in different colors of ink: black, emerald green, royal purple, Persian rose.
The Necronomicon, in whatever version, is a remarkable book. All the world knows something of its reputation, and I might have been more surprised if my encounter with it had been uneventful than if something unusual transpired. Its history is too long, and a knowledgeable scholar does not respond to mysterious happenings in the presence of the book by smiting his breast and exclaiming, “Can such things be?”
But a change in the physical makeup of the book itself was something I had not expected and for which I could not account. Not knowing yet what to think, I replaced it just as it had been, beneath the random papers and the copy of Milton, and went on with my ordinary tasks.
There was, however, no denying the fact of the changes. My senses did not belie me. Each time I examined it on Tuesday and Wednesday—I must have picked it up a dozen times all told—our Al Azif had grown stronger.
Stronger: as silly as that word seems in this context, it is still accurate.
The script was becoming more vivid, the pages gleamed like fresh snowbanks, the staunch morocco covers glowed bloodred.
It took me too long to understand that this manuscript had found something to feed upon. It had discovered a form of nourishment that caused it to thrive and grow stout. And I am embarrassed to admit that more hours elapsed before I guessed the source of the volume’s food—which had to be the copy of Milton’s poems I had placed on top of it.
Quickly then I snatched up the Milton and began to examine it for changes. At first I could discover no anomalies. The print seemed perhaps a little grayer, but it had already been rather faded. Perhaps, too, the pages were more brittle and musty than I’d thought—but, after all, it was a cheap book some sixty-odd years old. When I turned to the opening of Paradise Lost, all seemed well enough; the great organ tones were as resonant as ever:
Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste—
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe…
And I thought, Well, I needn’t have worried. This poetry is immune to the ravages of time and of all circumstance.
So it was in anticipation of a fleeting pleasure that I turned idly to glance at sonnet XIX:
When I consider how my loot is spent
On Happy Daze, a fifth of darling wine…
But the familiar opening of the sonnet had lost much of its savor; I was missing something of that intimate stateliness to which I was accustomed. I set down my pallid reaction to tiredness and excited nerves. Anxiety about Uncle Alvin’s treasure was beginning to tell on me, I thought.
I shook my head as if to clear it, closed my eyes and rubbed them with both hands, then looked once more into the volume of Milton open on the counter, sonnet XIX:
When I consider how my lute is bent
On harpy fates in this dork woolly-wold,
And that dung-yellow witches’ breath doth glide,
Lobster and toothless…
No use—I was too confused to make sense of the lines at all. It’s only nerves, I thought again, and thought, too, how glad I would be for my uncle’s return on Sunday.
I laid the copy of Al Azif down and determined to put the puzzle out of my mind.
I couldn’t do that, of course. The idea had occurred that our particular copy of Abdul Alhazred’s forbidden work was changing the nature of Milton’s lines. What wa
s it Uncle Alvin had compared it to? An adder, was it? First it poisons, he’d said, then it devours. Was it indeed poisoning the lines of the great seventeenth-century poet? I took up the Milton again and opened to the beginning of his immortal religious epic:
Of Man’s First Dish of Beetles, and the Fat
Of that Forboding Fay, whom Myrtle Trent
Brought fresh into the World, and Hollywood…
The words made no sense to me, none at all—but I couldn’t remember them any differently than how they appeared on the page. I couldn’t tell whether the fault lay in the book or in myself.
A sudden thought inspired me to go to my poetry shelves and find another edition of Milton’s poems so that I could cross-check the strange-seeming verses. If Al Azif truly was changing the words in the other, then a book untouched by the diary would render up only the purest Milton. I went round to the front and took down three copies of Milton’s poems in different editions and used my favorite sonnet as touchstone. The first one I examined was Sir Hubert Portingale’s Oxbridge edition of 1957. It gave me these lines:
When I consider to whom my Spode is lent,
Ear-halves and jays on this dark girlie slide…
It seemed incorrect somehow. I looked at the poem in Professor Y. Y. Miranda’s Big Apple State University Press volume of 1974:
“Winnie’s Corn Cider, how my lust is burnt!”
That line was wrong, I felt it in my bones. I turned to the more informal edition edited by the contemporary poet Richmond Burford:
When I consider how a lighter splint
Cthulhu 2000 Page 14
