Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  I continued to talk in this way, pressing gently against her skull, for ten minutes or so, until I was certain by the pupils of her eyes that she had fallen into the trance I sought to induce. After repeating that the pain in her head was no more, and that she felt strong and good, I told her she would rest for a few minutes and then feel refreshed, with no pain at all. I took my fingers away from her head and left her sitting, staring into the distance with unfocused eyes and blinking slowly. After a few minutes she roused herself and smiled in amazement.

  “How did you do that? The pain is gone.”

  “A trick I learned at Sana’a from a court physician. It is nothing of importance.”

  She laughed and spoke to the boatman, who watched us curiously. An expression of fear shadowed the hollows of his face.

  “I told him you are a great necromancer.”

  “You should not have said that. Look at him—he is afraid of me.”

  “As he should be,” she said more darkly.

  Her words angered me. I turned my back on her to pull on my boots, then watched the docks of Memphis approach. The boatman took my dirhams in nervous hands, all of his smiling good nature banished by the careless remark of Martala. He helped us out of the boat and immediately left us to spend the silver coins on one of the whores in scarlet surwals who lounged in the doorways of the storehouses and inns that lined the dock, and periodically raised the hems of their dresses to flash their brightly colored undergarments. We could see them from where we stood on the stone quay, surrounded by piles of cargo being loaded or unloaded from a dozen large ships by a hoard of nearly naked laborers, who ran shouting in all directions like ants, their sun-browned backs and limbs gleaming with sweat. The air hung heavy with the stink of fish, and river birds wheeled and screamed in the sky, attracted by the odor.

  “Do you know a safe inn that is clean?” I asked her above the racket of the docks.

  “I know everything in Memphis.”

  Once we passed through the fish market, I discovered the paved streets of the city clean and the houses well kept. Whereas Bubastis had presented an appearance of slow but inevitable decay, Memphis bustled with an intensity of life that is a sure sign of health. Beggars mingled on the streets with merchants and nobles in their sedan cars, all in constant motion. I wondered where they were going with such frantic purpose.

  The sound of drums and flutes stayed the crowd and opened a way down the center of the street. We pressed our backs against the stone front of a building along with the rest to allow passage of the strange procession that wound into view like an undulating dragon composed of dancing human bodies. Costumed in bright colors, and wearing the masks of cats of all imaginable colors and shapes, they spun and leapt into the air to the sound of the drums, shouting chants at the watching crowd, who laughed at them in good humor. The dancers were equally divided between men and women. All at once, the women lined themselves up and with a great shout, raised the hems of their dresses and spread their knees to display their hairy vulvas to the applauding onlookers, who far from being outraged at the spectacle, appeared delighted.

  We waited until the procession was fully passed before continuing along the street in the opposite direction.

  “Who were the dancers?” I asked Martala, since the girl gave no indication that she intended to explain what we had just seen.

  “They worship Bast. Didn’t you see the cat masks? The Goddess is strong in Memphis.”

  “Why did the women expose themselves?”

  She laughed.

  “Sometimes we say we do it to annoy the Christians, but really it is to celebrate the source of life.”

  “Is some great festival in progress?”

  “No, it is only the rite of the full moon. The festival is not until the spring. If this were the festival, we would not be able to find a vacant room in any inn in the city, and we could not move through the streets, they would be so filled with people.”

  The inn she led me to was located in the heart of the city, and seemed to be of considerable age, although it was of no great size and had few guests. I took a small room on the second level that overlooked the street, or more properly the window of the house opposite, for it would have been possible to reach out the window, and by stretching the arm, touch the open screens of the house on the other side, so narrow was the street, and so projecting the second stories of the buildings.

  The slender matron who showed us the room, dressed all in black and with a severe expression on her long face, looked from me to the girl with disapproval but held her tongue, which must have been difficult for her. Later, I heard her shouting at her cook, and it was evident that she did not hold her tongue often. I noticed that her fingernails were not pointed, but were cut straight across and close to the quick. She must be Christian. After she left the room, I spoke my thought to Martala.

  “She thinks you brought me here to steal my virginity,” the girl said, throwing herself back across the feather mattress on the bed with her arms spread wide.

  I slung my water skin over a peg on the door.

  “If she saw between my legs, she would have no such concern.”

  “If she saw between your legs, she would run screaming.”

  “Are all Christians so sour and unhappy with life?”

  “Most of them. Those who are not fanatics about converting others to their faith.”

  Sitting on the only chair in the room, I pulled off my boots to relax my toes. They were beginning to take the shape of my feet, but I was still unaccustomed to wearing anything heavier than slippers or sandals. It felt warm in the room, though the sun was setting. The evening breeze between the open screens would soon cool the air.

  “Have you ever danced in the festival of Bast?”

  “Of course. It was great fun.” She smiled at the memory. “My aunt helped me make my costume.”

  I stood from the chair and looked down into the street from the window. In the room across the way, a slender young woman in a faded blue dress bent to fold laundry upon a bed. Her white head scarf hung open, revealing an uncommonly attractive face. She did not bother to glance at me. Living where she did, I suppose she was accustomed to have strangers stare through her window. The men and women moving along the narrow street did not look up, and no beggars lounged in the doorways. It was probably too soon to worry about Farri or his band of cutthroats, since even if he had followed us to Memphis, he could not have arrived ahead of our boat, but the evident lack of interest paid to the inn by those who passed made me feel more relaxed.

  “If Farri is the leader of lawless men, why does he pose as a fortuneteller in the marketplace?” I asked the girl.

  “That isn’t a pose, that is what he does. He has always been a teller of fortunes, as was his father before him.”

  “What else does he do?”

  She rolled her eyes at the whitewashed ceiling beams and considered the matter.

  “He hires children to cut purses and steal from wagons. He prostitutes young girls. He sells property that his men steal from houses. He extorts money from traders by threatening to maim them and burn their ships. He kidnaps the children of wealthy Christians. He does many things, but telling fortunes is his profession.”

  “Do you think he will follow us?”

  “I am certain he will.”

  “Does he believe I carry that much wealth, to make such a trip worth the effort?”

  Her voice was drowsy.

  “Even if he thought you had nothing, he would follow us. I betrayed him, and you escaped. He won’t stop until he kills us both.”

  “Then I will have to kill him.”

  “Yes,” she murmured. “I will help you.”

  I let her sleep on the bed. There seemed little reason to disturb her, since the air was cooler beneath the open window. Moving
the chair to clear a space for myself, I lay upon the floor and watched the stars come out one by one in the darkening sky. They were oddly dimmed, as though obscured by a film of dust or soot. It was only when I was on the point of sleep that I realized it must be the smoke from the city, rising above the houses. To my surprise, I found myself wishing that I lay upon the open sand beneath the bright stars of the desert, far away from the cries of beggars and the smell of rotting fish.

  In my dream, I stood at night on an elevated plain with great sloping mountains of stone blocks rising from the sands. I recognized the artificial mountains of stone as the pyramids of Egypt, although I had never seen them in a drawing but had only read their descriptions. The dark man stood beside me, silent and unmoving save for the hem of his cloak that undulated in the evening breeze.

  “Why do you visit my dreams?”

  “Would you rather I came while you were awake?” he said with a hint of sardonic amusement in his dry voice.

  “I would rather you did not come at all.”

  Ignoring my words, he raised his long arm and pointed across the plain.

  “Do you see that man?”

  I looked where he indicated, and noticed a man robed in black creeping along a path. He carried a large gray jar under his arm, and gazed around furtively as though afraid of being observed. His pale face shone like a mirror in the moonlight, accentuating thick eyebrows and dark eyes. The lack of adornment on his hooded robe lent him a monkish appearance not unlike that of the dark man.

  “He is my servant. Follow him.”

  I started after the creeping figure with the dark man walking beside me like a tall shadow. At first I stayed some distance behind my quarry, but when he gave no sign of noticing my footfalls on the stones of the path, I moved nearer. He made haste toward a hulking statue of some monster that squatted on its haunches, partly obscured by dunes of sand. It was much weathered, and larger than any statue I had ever seen. Though its body was that of a cat or lion, its head was human. I thought my quarry intended to approach it between its extended forepaws, but he moved around its side toward its hindquarters.

  “Draw near and watch closely,” the dark man said, making no effort to hush his voice.

  The skulker with the jar did not turn his head.

  “Why does he not hear us?” I whispered.

  “You are dreaming, Alhazred. How shall he hear you, when you are not even flesh?”

  I considered this as I quickened my steps so that I walked close behind the man.

  “Are you flesh?” I asked Nyarlathotep.

  “When I wish it.”

  The man with the jar, only a few years my senior, paused beneath the tail of the great statue and set his burden with care between his feet, as though fearful some djinn might run off with it. He pulled back his hood, and taking a black silk scarf from his pocket, wrapped it over his face so that it concealed his features completely, then lifted his hood back into place. His veiled aspect perfectly imitated that of the dark man. Having had a good look at his face in the moonlight, I knew I would recognize him were I ever to encounter it again, and I wondered why he chose to conceal his features.

  He muttered three words and made a gesture with his right hand, then bent and clutched the jar to his chest as though it were a holy object. The air before the hindquarters of the statue wavered and melted to reveal a featureless door of stone. The hooded man touched a projection on the frame of the door. It opened inward soundlessly. From the interior flickered the red glow of a torch that flamed in a bracket on the wall. Without hesitation, the man passed through the door. It swung shut behind him, then disappeared as the air shimmered over its surface and concealed it. I marveled at the perfection of the glamour. No one would ever know a door existed.

  “Shall we follow him?” I asked my dark companion.

  “I cannot enter, unless I am invoked within.”

  Making the gesture I had seen the other man make in the air before the stone, I spoke the words he had spoken. Nothing happened.

  “Remember what you have seen,” the man in black said, his voice echoing strangely.

  Chapter 18

  I woke with the babble of voices from the street in my ears, had I possessed ears, and the smell of cooking oils in my nose, had I owned a nose. On a flutter of soft wings, a white dove flew past my window. Blinking the dryness away, I sat up and looked over the sill. The bird had a perch on the ledge below the window, where it walked back and forth like a sentry on a city gate, preening its ivory wing feathers with its blunt beak, unconcerned by my presence.

  Martala sat on the side of the bed, watching me.

  “You talk in your sleep, Alhazred.”

  “What do I say?”

  “This morning, you said that you would remember. Remember what?”

  At once the dream came back to my mind in all its details. In my vanity, I had begun to believe that the god of chaos had lost my footprints in the desert, and had ceased to stalk my dreams, but his absence had only been a respite. What did he want from me? He treated me as his servant, yet he gave me no duties to fulfill.

  “Have you ever seen a great statue of a cat on the plateau of the pyramids?”

  She stared at me as though I had made a foolish jest.

  “You mean the Sphinx?”

  The moment she spoke the name, I remembered reading about the statue in the book of the Greek historian, Herodotus. I had not recognized it in my dream only because I had never seen it depicted.

  We ate our morning meal of fresh bread and steaming mutton stew in the dining hall with the other guests of the inn, then set off through the crowded, narrow streets of the city, Martala leading the way. I was anxious to find the tomb of the great necromancer she promised to reveal, and she claimed to know where we could hire horses in good health for little money. How much the beasts might cost was of no concern to me, but I did not wish the girl to realize that I possessed wealth.

  On the way we passed an open door that exhaled the most extraordinary mix of scents. I recognized cassia and myrrh and oil of cedar, but there were a dozen other rich odors strange to me. I grabbed the girl by the shoulder and pulled her back to the door.

  “What is this place?”

  She looked into the opening and wrinkled her nose. The delightful perfumes that so attracted me had on her the opposite effect.

  “A house of the dead. It is full of corpses. Let us go, Alhazred, it is bad luck to enter here.”

  The odors were nothing like the stench of corpses, which I knew as well as any man. My curiosity made me draw her inside after me, even though she squirmed in my hand like a small child. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw several bodies on stone tables, partially wrapped in strips of white linen. In a basin beside the corpse of a woman lay a human heart, liver, and other organs. It was a tribute to the power of the incense that hung in the air that no trace of decay could be detected.

  A smiling man with a bald head, naked to his thick waist and wearing only a simple white skirt and sandals on his feet, approached when he saw us loitering in the entranceway. As he passed a table, he picked up a cloth and wiped his hands, then dropped the cloth on another table.

  “How may I help you, good sir?” he inquired in flawless Greek.

  “What is this place?”

  He seemed mildly surprised by my question, but he spread his arms in an affable manner to welcome me in.

  “This is a house of embalming, as you can readily see. Here we prepare the bodies of the dead in the old way that was used by our forefathers.”

  What I had read in the texts of the Greeks concerning the preservation of the dead in this land arose in my memory, and I understood the purpose of the place. I stared around with renewed fascination. It was the custom of the ancients of Egypt to preserve their dead for eternity, so that they w
ould never decay. This they achieved by means of a complex preparation and the treatment of the corpse with numerous costly spices and other substances that defied putrefaction.

  “I am new to this land,” I explained. “I thought the Christians had abolished these rites long ago.”

  A shadow of anger crossed his face. With an effort he forced his smile to return.

  “It is true, some Christians disapprove, but they do not possess the authority to forbid the old ways, and many of our wealthy and powerful citizens prefer to have their family members made imperishable.”

  “There are only two places like this in Memphis,” Martala remarked, edging with distaste toward the open door.

  “Yes, your young friend is quite right,” the portly embalmer agreed. “In the past, houses of the dead such as this were to be found throughout the city, but only two remain. Ours does the superior work, and employs the better materials, which are increasingly difficult to procure. If you are seeking a price for our services . . .”

  “No,” I said with a smile. “Not yet.”

  He hid his disappointment.

  “I hope I have been able to satisfy your curiosity,” he said more briskly, glancing back at the table he had vacated to talk with us.

  “You have been very kind. Please, return to your work.”

  The girl breathed a sigh of relief when we emerged into the sunlight, as though escaping from a den of horror. I left the delightful scents with regret. I had not smelled such rare spices since my days in the palace at Sana’a. Corpses, in whatever condition, did not move me other than to quicken my appetite. I realized it had been some time since I had eaten human flesh, and discovered that I missed the savor.

  The street opened into a plaza with an elevated well at its center. It was a pleasant place to rest. Wild flowers of the brightest purple grew up a rough stone wall on slender climbing vines. A pair of well-clothed children chased each other around the well, their laughter like the babble of a brook. Three old men with long white beards sat at a stone bench, deep in conversation. Martala leaned against the raised stone platform around the well and pulled off her left shoe from the fine leather kuff boot that sheathed her foot and shin, then turned the shoe upside down and beat it against the side of the stones as though trying to shake out a pebble.