Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (13 page)

he isle of Albion lies beyond the Pillars of Hercules in the northern part of the western ocean, yet so near to shore that it may be seen across the strait that separates it from the mainland. It is edged by high cliffs in color as white as the whitest bone bleached in the sun, and from this extraordinary feature it derives its name, for
albus
signified the color white to the Romans, who conquered the land and subjected its barbarous inhabitants to their rule. Beyond the white cliffs extend flat grasslands. They were once the home of a cunning race wise in the secrets of the earth, who constructed many sacred monuments to their gods. The race departed long before the coming of the Romans, leaving only their curious constructions of earth and stone to continue upon the land, scarcely altered by the passage of myriads of years.

The greatest of these ancient monuments is a temple of monoliths arranged in a circle so that they resemble rough-hewn pillars that are squared rather than rounded. A massive series of lintel stones joins the ring and provided support for a roof of great beams that has fallen inward, prey to the corruption of the passing of years, so that only vestiges of it remain. Within the ring are even larger stones, as great in size as any erected by the arts of the Egyptians, though not so massive as the stones of R’lyeh, which indeed it would not have been possible to move by the efforts of human beings. One of these great interior stones lies flat and served as an altar to the primary god of the ancients of the white isle, Yog-Sothoth; indeed, it is said that the rounded shapes of all the temples of this race were in imitation of the shape of Yog-Sothoth, who is seen as a conflux of spheres or circles of many colors.

Upon the surface of the earth, and beneath it, are certain places where the barriers between worlds are thin, so that realities distant in space, or time, or in other ways that cannot be measured draw near and touch. The primordial ancestors of our race, who dwelt in harmony with the changing of the seasons and the movements of the stars, and who communicated with the Old Ones in their dreams, felt the power of these exceptional intersections of invisible lines of force and marked their locations with monuments, markings etched in the earth, mounds, temples, and other sacred forms. Of all these gateways to distant realms, the temple of monoliths on the isle of Albion is the greatest, the mother to whom all others are dependent children.

It has been written by our holy scribes that the
al’kabar
in the great mosque at Mecca is the center of the world, but here is the confutation of this conceit, which is not blasphemous, for truth cannot blaspheme—that the center of our world lies in Albion, and the circle that is a doorway from which many lines radiate across the land is the temple of monoliths upon the grassy plain. Read it and be wise, yet in your wisdom seal your lips to the ears of other men, for to speak it before fools is to court death at their hands. Many truths are known that are not to be spoken, and many truths have been lost to the silence of ages.

The barbarians who dwell presently on Albion have forgotten the beginnings of the temple. The Romans believed the local fable that it was the work of the druids, a priest caste that flourished in the forests of the northlands and on the white isle before the time of the prophet of the Christians, but even this lie has been forgotten by those whose mud and wattle huts are now erected near the temple; yet in their ignorance they cannot deny its power, and a forbidden cult makes sacrifice of human souls at certain angles around the perimeter of the stone circle on appropriate days of the year, when the sun aligns with the stars and the gates are unlocked. For these offerings to Yog-Sothoth, whose true name they do not speak, criminals condemned to death are used, and the form of sacrifice is to strike off their heads with swords as they kneel within their shallow graves, which they have dug beforehand with picks.

By their blood, the lines of the earth that radiate from the temple, as the strands of a spider’s web from its center, are quickened and their vital forces constrained in balance for the continuing fruitfulness of the soil; for if these lines become weak or entangled together, blights, upheavals, and quakings of the earth result not only on the isle of the temple but in distant lands in the far places of our world. The cult of the temple regards itself as the safekeepers of our world, and should its numbers fail, great catastrophes would surely follow. All its work is the harmonizing of the lines, and the use of the gateways to reach other worlds has been forgotten, save to a few man who gained it in the deep places from things more ancient than our race.

A recent soul traveler to the round temple of Albion chanced to find himself inhabiting the body of the high priest of the mysteries of its cult at the moment of sacrifice in their most sacred ritual, which occurs at dawn on the shortest day of the year. Since he possessed no knowledge of the proper litany, he stood as one dazed with the broad sacrificial blade upraised in his doubled hands, staring down at the naked youth bound with his face to the sky upon the altar. The lesser priests began to murmur uneasily among themselves. Their leader came forward and demanded in the language of Albion that the high priest complete the correct recitation of verses. The traveler knew the language, but not the verses.

Thinking to escape his predicament, he feigned illness and, swaying as though sick, caught himself upon the corner of the altar stone. The surprise of the surrounding throng drained the blood from their faces, so that in their white linen robes they resembled a host of specters in the pale light of winter dawn. After a moment of stillness, the lesser priests cried out, sprang upon their leader, thrust him in the place of the bewildered youth upon the altar, and drove the sacred blade through his heart. Only his great skill in necromancy allowed him to survive the death of his host and thus record this amusing tale as a warning to future users of the soul portals.

It is to best advantage that the traveler to the temple of monoliths go there in his human vessel alone in the darkness when the waning moon has three nights remaining to complete her term, and await within the temple the moment when the moon is centered above the solitary standing stone that lies beyond the doorless entrance to the temple. He must have his human vessel chew continually the leaves of the

herb known as cinquefoil, so that its juice is ever on his tongue. When the moon has attained the standing stone, certain hieroglyphics will appear upon the surface of the recumbent stone. Mark their shapes well in the mind, and at the first opportunity inscribe them on parchment, for they have great utility in dealings with the Old Ones and those things that serve them.

One who has read this book with care, and understood its words, may find these hieroglyphics elsewhere, if he has wit to seek them beneath the rays of the moon; for the sun is the moon’s mate, and what is writ bold to his full face is whispered to her turned cheek.

Gloss of Theodorus Philetas:
The strange markings copied here I found painted beneath the black script of the Arabic text on a parchment leaf of the book of Alhazred; they were not to be seen by day, or by lamplight, but only under the rays of the quarter moon in her waning phase, which I happened upon by accident of a night when the breeze from my window extinguished the glow of my oil lamp. By what art they were made I can find no enlightenment. Led by this chance, I made investigation, and discovered other images and writings beneath the penned words of the manuscript, some visible to the rays of the full moon, others at its waxing or waning phase, which I have copied on to the pages of this book for all to see where they appeared in the places of the original.

n the sacred text titled Bereshit, signifying the beginning of things in the tongue of the Jews, we are taught that the Holy One created the world in six days, and on the seventh rested from his travail. Before he began there was nothing, and when he completed his work, all that we know was perfected—all stars of the heavens, all forms of plant and beast, all seas and mountains and plains, and that most noble pattern, Adam, the first man, more beautiful than the angels since his face mirrors the face of God. Our race was formed at the end of the sixth day, the final thing made by the creator to be the lord and ruler of every lesser creature and of the spaces of this world.