ANONYMOUS, by George T. Wetzel
Originally published in The Gothic Horror and Other Weird Tales.
Tobacco farmers there still speak, with dread and dislike, of ancient covered bridges, certain Palladian-windowed houses, and even of an occasional unsociable and reclusive family; but when asked the basis of their ill feeling, they can answer only that their forebears in this Tidewater region also felt thusly.
I was on an antiquarian quest through a tidal swamp of Southern Maryland, searching for the weedy site of a particular, now long extinct, Potomac River town—a region rich with such inherited superstitious beliefs—when the twilight sky filled with rain squalls. Swamp oaks are not always the best shelter, so I looked anxiously for other means of weathering the squall.
I had heard the local gossipers at the rotting, abandoned steamboat landing speak with dislike and vague fear of a ruined seventeenth century Maryland manor-house that stood in the general vicinity where I was exploring; so I began to climb up a tree to see if it was very near me. It was; and I ran to its questionable shelter.
Rain dripped off me and puddled around me on the mouldy flooring of its dilapidated hall.
The place reeked with damp and soon had me wishing I had instead remained in the leaf-fragrant shelter of the woods. Behind me the appearance of the hall was impossible of discernment due to the deep gloom cast by the rain which was now descending in a blind cloud, driven almost into a mist or spray by the gales of wind. When one of the few lulls of a squall came, I ventured to peep out of the door and see what sort of manor-house it was, seeing as how such a view had not been possible when I raced up before because the driving clouds of rain reduced vision to but a few yards. Now however I was able to note in surprise that the roof over me was an incredible twin to the former Bond manor-house of Calvert County.
The ancient Bond manor was also an early house, built in the seventeenth century, but it was pulled down a few years ago to make room for an ugly farm building. And here was a place bearing remarkably resemblant features to that house, which was unique and almost the only known example of a cross-house with a Medieval overhang in the Old South—until I stumbled into this one. A sudden intensity in the downpour drove me back from the door and broke up my jubilation at this architectural find. By the uncertain light I made my way into one of the cruciform’s arms and into the great hall that had open beam ceilings and an enormous fireplace. Gothic molding was carved on the mantelpiece and a faded and indistinct mural painting decorated the overmantle. There were traces of Jacobean style here as well as on the outside of the relic, I perceived, as the flickering light of a fire I started up illumined the room.
A couple pieces of rude furniture were revealed then, and I started with surprise. Why would anyone attempt to live in such a dampish ruin as this? From a glance I noted that such occupancy must have been not long ago—as the furniture was not antique stuff but the rough items you would expect a countryman to own—but that it was now vacant seemed evidenced by the dust on everything.
Near the fireplace, on the floor, I picked up a notebook of damp, discolored pages, written in a rectilinear hand.
It was a curious manuscript, full of the experimental results of engulfed drugs such as Lobelia and Mandrake, and references to Herrick’s Materia Medica, Paracelsus’ Herbarious and that elusive book of Michael Zittle’s on Die Heimlich Wissenschaft; while one page contained obscure remarks about a dark anodyne once used in the legendary drowned city of Ys. And on another leaf I found puzzling references to Egyptian balms and oils. Occasionally there were significant passages that would suggest the writer was a metaphysicist and alchemist. One such passage that intrigued me was his experiments’ basic hypothesis of using a drug-cauldron, the simultaneous imbibition of several drugs. This was extraordinary in a way, as I do not think modern science ever attempted this kind of experiment. What this alchemist hoped to accomplish was not definitely stated, but he did seem enthralled by the idea that, since each drug had its only individual effect on the senses, a drug-cauldron of different combinations would give him all the separate effects of the separate drugs in his cauldron but acting upon his senses simultaneously. Nevertheless, this fantastic, almost science-fictional idea of his has a strange fascination about it.
I had heard of the bizarre effect on the time sense that Hashish has; of another drug that telescopes time; the drug phantasies that DeQuincy experienced and recorded and drug dreams similarly described by Baudelaire; how Lobelia causes fantasms to evolve because of its effect on the optic nerve, and another drug that imposed on the aural centers musical aberrations that could equal the haunted mysticism of a Cesar Franck; of laudanum which gave Poe nightmares and which he told of; even H. P. Lovecraft had once essayed anent the eerie result of a certain drug which brought the user to the rim of the Outside, beyond which no light exists. If this alchemist could encompass this staggering multitude of sensual and spiritual effects all at once upon himself, I wondered if his or any other mind could stand the shock without disorientation of self and a resultant madness.
The experiment would prove dangerous.
I was not surprised when I read a couple of pages later of his dawning belief in the dream-soul superstition that is current in all primitive mythologies. To me this was a symptom of decaying reason when so brilliant an experimenter—and I must confess there were flashes of near-genius—degenerated into consideration of superstition. Whoever this man was, his researches verged on the astounding; from a repetition of text phrases, couched in a sort of cipher, and in conjunction with certain chemical formulas for his drug-cauldron, I began to perceive that he had solved one of the most puzzling mysteries in organic chemistry. The ethyl radical, that is frequent in drugs with a hypnotic effect, has long caused speculations among some chemists. My anonymous experimenter went further than mere speculation; he apparently solved this molecular arrangement and knew something of its valence characteristics not guessed by chemists, for I found scattered throughout his notes peculiar but workable structural formulas. And as my admiration for the man would mount, I then would encounter textual notes on superstitious beliefs—like his extrapolations on the dream-soul ideas of the primitives and their insistence that the dream-soul wandered from the body in dream and drugged slumber.
The manuscript dragged on almost pedantically with preposterous accounts of what the drug camphor allegedly did when added to that monstrous drug-cauldron (its causing of sensual aberrations that continue over into the waking state are too well known to remark upon). Then there was the fear of the writer of being mistaken for dead when deep in drugged slumber. A basis for this fear did exist, as I recalled that respiratory depressants like certain barbiturate compounds have a physiological effect that closely resembles a death state; and this man was using a number of them simultaneously.
No wonder he feared lest someone find him during the drugged state of one of his experiments and commit him to premature burial.
The outlandish experiences he had while in the drugged state were horrendous fantasies worthy of a Lovecraft with their adumbrations of entities encountered in nightmarish settings, of surrealistic perceptions of utterly unbelievable transgressions of natural law—perspective effects inverted, distortions in the time sense. My mind reeled from just contemplating his accounts—and he had lived through them! The exotic drugged visions of DeQuincy were inane babblings beside this journey into the kaleidoscope of cosmic evil and Outsidedness.
The calligraphy upon the remaining pages was different, as if made by the same original hand now hindered by some physical anomaly that caused it to careen and fumble the lettering.
It was the last entry:
April 29. Just returned to consciousness. Must decrease the Lobelia in formula as it has an increasing tendency to keep me under too long. The Camphor in formula seems about right as I still retain distinct memory of just past vision. Will record
it here while Camphor effect enables vision to still remain in brain.
Took usual precautions (leaving this notebook in prominent place; antidote by couch, etc.), then drank the present mixture. Usual preliminary symptoms manifested themselves.
Then the ensuing anomalous state of exotic and ephemeral sense fantasms. Once across this abyss the disordered neural messages stabilized and perception was again possible.
I hovered above a valley in which cacti abounded…a colossal stone city sprawled there through which a chain of great lakes ran; across the lakes stretched causeways akin to those of Tenochtitlan of the Aztecs; the feathered serpent motif appeared in fresco on temples before which the serpent column, of the Toltec culture, supported the portal openings; tlaxtli-courts and plazas were scattered in the tangle of buildings; truncated pyramids. I saw one structure that was the twin of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan; its façade of embryonic panels and serpent sculpture was more than the twin—it was the Teotihuacan temple.
The colossal city was a pristine Teotihuacan, the religious center of the mysterious Toltecs, not the debris and rubble clustered group of ruins known to 20th century eyes. I was gazing on a sight that existed countless centuries ago.
A magnetism pulled at me and I struggled against it when I saw where it was dragging me: the central pyramid to which all the city’s causeways and streets and buildings were oriented. An atmosphere of evil hung about this axial pyramid, yet I marveled at the same time at the aspect of dark grandeur it had. My feeble struggles against the force were useless for now I saw the top of it leap up and then my impalpable body sank through the stone into a mindless limbo. A graying of the utter black soon took place and I was in a small room. I had no doubt it was the chambered interior of the pyramid. Only once before has anything like it been known to me—the vault found in the temple of the High Priest in the ruins at Chichen Itza.
The walls of this chamber had not a single blank spot on them, being carved with the feathered serpent motif but in a rectilinear style exactly like the temple façade of Xochicalco; in between the undulating coils of the carved serpents were glyphs and the stepped scroll ornament called “xicalcoliuhqui.” The ceiling was held up by serpent columns. The entrance was a blackened maw which must have been one of the giant edifice’s subterranean drainage tubes discovered by Dr. Gamio in our time.
Seated within a glyph design on the floor, beside a flaming brazier in which both fire and copal incense burned, was a man who seemed to have come to life out of the Troano Codex. He traced the glyphs of Kan, Muluc, Ix, and Cauac at the four corners of his protective talisman, then began to address me. By necromancy he had summoned me out of the future to answer his questions as the Olin-Tonatiah.
“Why do you desire this knowledge,” I asked him. Puzzlement spread over his face; and, ignoring my question, he intoned a guttural phrase, made a sign in the air, and demanded I tell him what he wanted to know. A force indescribable beat around me but curiously had no effect upon my resistance. In some inexplicable manner my psyche was not completely under his control. He was vastly surprised, he said, as the things he called up had always been subservient to him; was I, he asked, some entity from the world’s twilight who had such extraordinary powers though defunct—a sorcerer in Mu once encountered such, he had heard. I shook my head. Still puzzled, he consented to explaining why he wanted such knowledge. By necromancy he conjured up those from ages anterior to his and from the dim future, in a quest to delve into the secrets, the history, and the world disasters of succeeding sun-eras; and this wealth of esoteric and arcane knowledge was set down in codices and in part of the Calendrical stones, so seekers after knowledge in bilateral eons could consult it for a certain price.
A dead mind from Paleogean mists told the Toltec priest of the end brought about by animal, the Ocelotl-era, which seemed to have been the Age of Dinosaurs. He conversed with an outlandish being, that had lived in airless interstellar space, concerning the Ehecatl-era, when a tremendous wind, funneling down from the stars, devastated the globe; and engulfed in its vortex this space-beast, hurling it to its death in the troposphere of earth; and there was the entity who whispered of the Quiahuitlera, when a strange rain of fire covered the planet. A drowned Rmoahl, conjured up, related of the Atl-era (the last one) when a world wide flood came and submerged the ancient continent of Mu in the Pacific.
Many more shadows of coining events and past history were thus found by this Toltec. In all ancient chronicles of the Incas, the Mayas and the Mexicans, the coming of the Spaniards was well known; and they are but copies of this Toltec’s prophecy; for he summoned a dead Conquistador who confessed the infamy of Cortes and Pizarro.
What this Toltec desired of me was to know if the Olin-era, the time an earthquake is to destroy the world, had begun in my age. As I replied negatively, a chilling apprehension filled me as I recalled ominous speculations of scientists concerning what nuclear bombs might do to the earth’s axial stability—the scheduled underwater A-bomb test at Bikini was never carried out because of such fears.
A ghost of a Ruvoduum from the future had witnessed part of the Olin-Tonatiah, which was prefaced by a giant air battle over the frozen ocean and part of his city, lost in the polar wastes. For ages his people had lived inviolate in their icy fortress; and were a mixture of Norse and indigenous Eskimo blood, the Norse being the remnants of 12th century Greenland colonists who fled a weird doom and sought sanctuary in the arctic. But the war in the skies ended the Ruvoduum idyll. Fearful detonations—unquestionably Hydrogen and Cobalt bombs—tore up the ice cap and melted it into great seas; in the polar heavens strange auras glowed. But this was not the worst. Ground forces of both sides began a contest over polar terrain and set off an increasing number of nuclear weapons against each other’s armies. The result was inescapable. The earth’s axial rotation, disturbed in its most vulnerable spot, wobbled—and planet-wide seismic shocks began. I screamed at the Toltec to stop, to reveal no more.
What partial power he held over me seemed to vanish when my despair caused me to cry out. The whole chamber twisted and spiraled, blurred and was gone in a twinkling; and I returned to a mindless oblivion. Eventually I crept up through a graying void and awoke. The usual nausea, debility of the limbs, and deadened senses were at once experienced. This Teotihuacan adventure frightens me in many ways; and there is a new physical sensation I now feel that I have never before had as an after-effect. Must cut down the cauldron’s strength—but I have a terrible presentiment it may be due to another reason…”
* * * *
The crazy, over-large script began to falter near its termination and at the end of the last sentence it expired into an ominous illegibility, with a smudge or claw-like mark at the bottom that exuded a faint and unpleasant fetidness.
When I reached this part of the book—there was no more writing in it—and smelled the faint fetid reek on its page, I became aware that similar fetidness was in the room and had been there when I first entered the building, but the mouldy timbers had fooled me into thinking it part of their odour of decay. The fetid smell grew stronger near the doorway into the blackened hallway and I tracked it to a stronger place near the door into the opposite wing. Against murky lighted windows of that room was silhouetted chemical apparatus and along the walls the dull glint of glassware. A scuffling movement came from a darkened corner and I watched it, thinking a rodent would emerge. But at my height I saw a pair of watery eyes shine and the fetid reek grew overwhelming. The inhabitant of the gloom stumbled forward in the lesser dark.
It was a horrible travesty of the human form yet I knew at once what had happened—the notebook gave me the clue—and felt a compassion for this presence. But as it shambled closer, revulsion overpowered me and I backed out and shrank along the hall passageway, still too shocked to run. But it still groped closer and I stepped out into the driving rain. Whatever motive impelled the thing, I
do not know, but it had no knowledge of what the rain would do to its already precarious hold on life, if such animation can be called life. The driving rain pelted and tore at its substance, unmercifully revealing white bones and washing the blotches of rot from its form. I could not watch the terrible sight any longer but turned and hid my face…Who knows what crumbling, fleshy abode may await the dream-soul of a living sleeper when that soul has tarried elsewhere, too long and too far?
WHY ABDUL ALHAZRED WENT MAD, by D.R. Smith
Originally published in The Nekromantikon #3, 1950.
The fabulous Necronomicon was never finished. This is well-known to all advanced students of the occult, whether or not they have had the courage and good fortune to peruse a copy. Well-known—in spite of the fact that few who have delved into the soul-blasting secrets of that loathsome mixture of revolting instruction and blasphemous history have managed to preserve their sanity to read that final chapter, which begins with the mutterings of one in a frenzy and dies away in the hideous ravings of mania—Abdul Alhazred—may his name be accursed forever—remained devilishly sane during the acquisition and recording of that abominable knowledge which few throughout the centuries have dared to acquire, even in part. It was the story he attempted to tell in that last frenzied chapter that shattered his black mind and sent his spirit gibbering with horror out of his diseased body into the gleeful embraces of the torturers of the damned.
And no one has ever dared to make that story known. Indeed, the most diligent search has failed to trace any mention of the terrible message by any student of the occult. Yet it was known to one sublime genius, and the crux of it published to the world in words still spoken on the public stage:
The Second Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK® Page 39
