by Greig Beck
Albadi led them further inside to a room a little less cluttered and with a single large wooden table. He called for refreshments. Hartogg and Berry conferred with Abrams for a few seconds and then both disappeared. Albadi frowned as they left the room, and looked to the major.
Abrams shrugged. “Forgive the intrusion and rudeness, Doctor, but security is critical. You understand.”
Albadi seemed to think about it for a second or two and then waved it away. “Of course, of course; these are the times we live in…and why you are here.”
Matt walked to a shelf laid out with books. “This is some collection, Doctor.” He turned one huge book towards him, its leather cover heavily carved and also inscribed with gold gilt and other still-vibrant colors. His eyebrows shot up. “Holy wow. This is a copy of the Tarikh Dimashiq. And a very good one.”
Albadi grinned and came closer. “You know this book, Professor Kearns?”
“Oh yeah.” Matt nodded. “The first ever history of Damascus, written by Ibn Asakir in 1170. I’ve read a later copy, or volume one, anyway…though nothing like this one.”
Albadi glowed. “Yes, yes. The Tarikh Dimashiq is in seventy-two volumes and is one of most important books about the Islamic history of Syria. Asakir tried to collect everything about our city, its important people, and even their conversations. It is also one of the biggest collections of ancient Arabic poems gathered in one book.”
“Beautiful.” Matt ran his fingers lightly over the cover. “It’s been around for nearly nine hundred years. Magnificent copy.”
Albadi shrugged. “Magnificent, yes; a copy, no. This is the original Tarikh Dimashiq.”
Matt’s mouth fell open. “Then it’s priceless.” He pulled his hands back. “What is it doing here?”
Albadi opened his arms and turned slowly, taking in the stacks of books, papers and material around the room. “The Kitab al-zuhd and Kitab al-fada’il, written in 840, the al-Jam bayn al-gharibayn of 1010, the Gharib al-hadith by Ibn Qutaybah al-Dinawari of 889 – they’re all here.” He walked along a row of books, trailing his fingers lightly across the top of some as though they were jewels. “Remember Libya, Iraq, or Afghanistan? After their formal governments were toppled, one of the first acts of barbarism was the looting or destruction of the contents of the museums and libraries.” He shook his head. “It is said some of the theft was carried out to order.”
“Collectors with shopping lists.” Tania Kovitz spat the words. “Bastards.”
Albadi frowned at the harshness of her words, but then nodded. “And none have yet been found. Syrian treasures, which had taken centuries to find and amass, vanished within hours of the uprising.”
He looked up at the group, his smile weak. “Syria is an unstable place right now. The Az-Zahiriyah Library of Damascus is our oldest, established in 1277. It has books and manuscripts dating back to the first millennium – over twenty-two thousand of them.” He held up a fist. “I will not see its treasures whisked away to end up in a rich man’s private collection or destroyed in some sort of stone-age religious purification.” He waved an arm and sighed. “Here, I can keep them safe, until things…settle down.”
The tea and coffee arrived and they gathered around a low table. Tania was straining to keep herself under control as a servant poured the drinks. She declined some dates and honeyed pistachio, and then couldn’t hold back any more. “Doctor Albadi, you found something among your ancient books and manuscripts? Something that gives you some clue as to what is going on with the birds, the disappearances, the earth-drops and their growing size?”
“And the vermin that precede them…the roaches.” Albadi held up a hand. He waited until the servant had finished his task and left the room. He shrugged apologetically. “We must be watchful. Not everyone will be happy with what we will do and say here.” He sat back and interlocked fingers on his stomach.
“Roaches?” Matt asked.
“There were roaches in the Iowa drop,” Andy said. “Didn’t think anything of it then…should I have?”
“Have you seen anything else in the depths of these pits?” Albadi tried to seem indifferent, but his eyes were alert as he watched them.
“I thought I…” Andy grimaced. “Maybe. I don’t know what I saw.”
Matt saw how keenly Major Abrams watched the young geologist. There was something hidden there. Albadi also seemed to notice the major’s focus.
“Major Abrams, perhaps you have seen something too?”
Abrams looked away and slowly shook his head. “We registered some anomalies, but we’re still analyzing the data. Nothing conclusive enough to share at this point.”
“Anomalies? Yes, anomalies is a term for them. But perhaps abominations is a better one.” Albadi’s fingers were still clasped over his stomach. “I believe what we are dealing with is something beyond ancient, beyond mankind, beyond the beasts, and perhaps even beyond the primordial ooze we all crawled from.” He looked at Matt. “But perhaps we have sensed it. Maybe the gifted have sensed it more keenly than the rest. And other creatures with even greater senses than our own – surely they have.”
“Like the birds,” Tania said. “And now you’re saying the roaches do too.”
Albadi shrugged. “The roach is probably one of the most ancient creatures living on our world. They were here before even the great saurians, and have been on this planet for three hundred and fifty millions years longer than humankind. The world was young then, raw, and they have seen things that we could not imagine. They have seen what has come before, and perhaps they can see what is to come again. I think maybe they share an infinity with, um…” He sat back, seeming to search for the right words.
“With what?” Veins stood out on Tania’s throat. “What do you know about what’s going on? You predicted the earth-drops, their time, and even where they were going to occur. We’re in a race, doctor, and we don’t have time to talk about roach philosophy. Tell us what you know, please.”
“I know but a little.” Albadi stared for a second or two and then sighed heavily as he got to his feet. He searched a shelf, pulled free a roll of tattered paper, and laid it on the table, unrolling it flat. It was the crisscrossed map of North America.
“The ley lines,” Matt said.
Albadi turned to Matt, toasting him with his small ornate cup. “You have an extensive knowledge, Professor.” He left the map on the table, looking at each of them. “I have seen one of the sinkholes. I have read scraps of a manuscript that was beyond fantastical.” He stared hard at them. “I believe we have all seen things that defy explanation. Little pieces of the same puzzle. We see a hint here and there – a glimpse, a scrap, or a fragment.” He held up his hands. “It seems we all know a little, but none of us knows all.” He put his cup down carefully. “Have any of you heard of the Andhgajanyāyah?”
Matt said, “The parable of the blind men and the elephant; we probably all have.”
Albadi nodded. “There are many different versions, but the message is primarily the same. It is an old parable dating back to Jainism, the obscure fifth-century BC Indian religion. In essence, it is the tale of a group of six blind men in a deep forest who come upon an elephant for the very first time. They wanted to determine what it looked like, so each approached the beast, feeling different parts of the elephant’s body. The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; another, the tail and says it is like rope. The trunk is like a tree branch, the ear is a fan, and the belly is a wall, says three more. The final blind man feels the tusk, and announces it is a pipe of stone.
“None of them could agree on what the huge creature was actually like. It was just then that a sighted man walks by and sees the entire elephant all at once, and tells them. They are shocked, but then realize that the lesson is that while one’s subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth.”
Matt nodded. “In another version, the men also learn for the first time that they are blind.”
“And have perhaps never really seen anything as it truly is,” Albadi finished. “And that, my friends, is perhaps what we are like here. Each of us has information about what we are experiencing, but none of us knows exactly what it is we are actually dealing with…and even if we did, would not see things as they truly are.”
“Because none of us has seen the entire picture…including you,” Major Abrams said. “So, has anyone seen the entire picture, Doctor?”
Albadi bobbed his head from side to side. “Yes, I believe there have been a few. But only one recorded what he had seen.” He turned with his lips pursed to look at Matt, and he nodded, perhaps coming to a decision.
“What do you know of the Al Azif?”
“The Book…the Book?” Matt’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously?”
Albadi nodded solemnly.
“The Al Azif, AKA The Necronomicon, AKA The Book of the Dead?” Matt shook his head. “Yeah, I know a lot. It’s a fictional – what? Grimoire? – created by H.P. Lovecraft. It doesn’t exist. It was first mentioned around 1924 in a short story called ‘The Hound’. The author of the Al Azif was supposedly a man named Abdul Alhazred, known as the Mad Arab.”
“Yes, the famous English writer, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He had a copy, and found out very early that the Beast and its army would return. He was another who had seen…all of the elephant. He tried to warn us the only way he knew how – through his literary works. For all his brilliance, and his prodigious writings, he died penniless and in great pain.” He looked up at Matt. “He was ruined financially, mentally and finally, physically. It seemed powerful forces tired of his expositions.”
Albadi waved his arm around taking in the stacks of ancient tomes. “As for the Book; where better place for clues to be found than in one of the world’s most ancient libraries?” He chortled. “The Mad Arab – some would say we’re all mad, yes? I assure you, Professor, he, like the book, was, real. Alhazred was a poet from Sanaá, in Yemen, who lived during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, around 700 AD. He roamed the Middle East, visiting the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of the great southern deserts of Arabia – the Roba El Khaliyeh, the vast empty space of the ancients. He also transversed the ad-Dahna or Crimson Desert of the Saudi Arabians, which is held to be protected by evil spirits and monsters of death.”
Albadi crossed to a small, heavy wooden door set into the wall. He unlocked it, and from the space behind brought forth something wrapped in an oilcloth. He set it on the table before them. He placed one hand on it, fingers steepled.
“In his last years of his life, Alhazred lived in Damascus, and in 738, he wrote a book of pure horror and mad prophecy in Syriac, Arabic, and multiple other languages, some that could not be read. He called it the Al Azif.”
“And you have it?” Tania’s eyes burned.
“No.” Albadi smiled, and turned from her, back towards Matt. “In 950, the Book was translated into Ancient Greek and called The Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas, a scholar from Constantinople. This version was later outlawed, and then burned in 1050 by Patriarch Michael. However, not before it was translated from Greek into Latin by Olaus Wormius in 1228. In 1232, Pope Gregory IX banned all editions of the work, calling it ‘a blasphemous script of ultimate evil’.”
“Now that’s a book review you won’t see on Amazon,” Andy said, grinning.
“But the book did survive.” Albadi turned his back on the geologist. “A Greek edition was found in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century, and supposedly translated into English. But this edition has never been seen, other than as fakes turning up for sale, even today on the internet.”
Albadi sipped at his coffee again and then smiled. “Time is the enemy of history, my friends: sometimes it erases it. By 1050, when the Greek version of the Al Azif was created, the original version had already long disappeared.” He shrugged. “And with all translations, the new versions lost much along the way – much of the meaning, much of the power, and also anything written in the strange languages that refused to be translated by the best scholars of antiquity.” He turned back. “The original has never been found, and even a location for it remained a mystery.”
“The language refused to be translated?” Matt asked. “What does that mean? Was it not an Arabic or Syriac dialect or form?”
Albadi shook his head. “I do not know: other than a symbol here and there, I have never really seen it, and no one else living has either. But they became known as the forbidden passages, and it is said they were not in any human language. It is perhaps nothing but the scribbling of a madman, or…” he looked levelly into Matt’s eyes “…Enochian, true Enochian.”
“Enochian?” Matt snorted softly. “I must see it.”
Tania said, “Oh, please. That’s bullshit.”
Abrams stepped closer, glaring at Tania. “I think we need to know everything; then we can decide what’s bullshit. I agree with the Doctor; these are all pieces of the puzzle, and we need to hear them all.”
“Enochian.” Matt rubbed his chin. “Well, no one is even sure if it’s real. It’s supposed to be the language of the angels as recorded in the private journals of the Englishman John Dee in the 1500s.”
“Matt.” Tania shook her head. “Historians and linguists have studied the Enochian symbol strings, and not one of them can decide if it’s a real language or something just made up by Dee as a joke.”
“They can’t decide…but they never ruled it out.” Matt shrugged. “Over the years, I’ve seen enough to know that some legends are real. It sort of fits; according to the story, Dee’s journal was actually a transcript of an earlier work…much, much earlier – maybe it was drawn from the translated Al Azif. Enochian is also called Celestial Speech, taught to Adam by God himself.”
“Language taught to the first man, by God.” Albadi nodded. “But now the question is, which God, hmm, Professor Kearns?” He rubbed his hands together as if washing them of any traces of the Book. “And whether it is Enochian or the fevered scribbling of a madman is yet to be seen.” He grinned. “But ‘The earth shall fall’ is a fairly accurate prediction for a madman to make, yes, Professor?”
“‘And the earth shall fall’,” Matt repeated, startled. The phrase had occurred to him as soon as he read about the sinkholes. “I know that quote. From an old Arabic saying, or so I always thought.”
Albadi smiled broadened. “The words of the Al Azif are everywhere, we just don’t realize it.” He looked from Matt to Abrams. “And now to another piece of the elephant, hmm?”
Major Abrams scowled impatiently, and Tania folded her arms tightly across her chest.
“The Al Azif – I do not have the original, but I believe I have located fragments of the first ever copy made. A copy in native Syriac and Arabic, and far more descriptive than the one the American author, Mr Lovecraft, possessed.”
“And you’ve read it?” Tania asked.
“Yes, and I think it is mostly safe to read. But a copy is nothing like the original. According to notes in the text, the simple act of even reading the original work is dangerous. The author, Alhazred, vanished without a trace. Some said he met with a terrible end. The man claimed in his tome to have discovered the secrets of a race far older than mankind, and far older than life as we know it on this planet. He had found the path to the Old One, Cthulhu, and their servants, the loathsome Shoggoths – and I believe it was one of these creatures that took him.”
“Cthulhu, the Old One,” Tania said, folding her arms, her brow now deeply furrowed.
Albadi nodded. “In the Al Azif, Alhazred talks of a time when our world was nothing but a boiling vision of Hell, with a black sky above, devoid of any light or hope – there was no moon, no light, no life. These great beasts brought all the hate and lust of a newborn universe with them, creating more of their kind, budding off pieces of themselves to raise as slaves and soldiers, and perhaps just to be more beasts for them to torture, maim and kill.”
“Ther
e’s nothing in the fossil record to confirm that at all, Doctor,” Andy said.
“I know, and there wouldn’t be.” Albadi drew in a deep breath. “These leviathans knew dark magic, and knew how to defeat death itself. They are not dead, my friends.” He stared into the distance. “The Old Ones, the First Ones, the Elder beings – bad dreams, or things of mad fantasy, we thought. But perhaps that’s what they, and others, wanted us to believe.”
Tania threw her hands up and turned to Abrams. “Boss, come on – dark magic now? This is turning from bullshit to ludicrous bullshit.”
“It certainly is,” Abrams said. “But so is what’s happening around the world.” His expression hardened. “Do you need to wait outside, Captain?”
Tania’s face blazed momentarily. “No, sir.” She snorted. “But…”
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Matt half smiled at Tania. “Be patient; Dr Albadi is risking a lot by even talking to us.”
Albadi tilted his head. “Who said that, Professor Kearns. Was it a Persian philosopher?”
“Not quite.” Matt grinned. “Sherlock Holmes…another great philosopher.”
Albadi chortled. “Very good.” He moved his hand to hover over the cloth cover. “And you are correct: there are mortal risks, and not just for me. I have found there are real cults of Cthulhu, whose members do not consider themselves bound by any of the rules of the human race. We must be on guard.” He sucked in a breath and pulled the oilcloth back, displaying a moldering pile of pages.
“Written in 800 BC, less than a hundred years after the original – its value is in its proximity in time to that first manuscript. The more you follow the book back in time, the more of its core meaning is revealed.” He hesitated for a moment, and then quickly lifted the leather cover. There came a knock on the door, and one of his servants entered. Albadi quickly flipped the cloth back over the book, and shooed the man away. “Shukran idrukni, idrukni.”
