Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (4 page)

The life of the desert is an endless quest for water that renders other quests meaningless. When the paling of the east announces the dawn, dig a hollow in the sand and cover your body, or huddle in a cleft between rocks that is forever in shadow. Lie as one dead, and sleep out the day.

Seek the deepest depths between the rocks in the low places of the land where the sands have fallen inward, for there will be found moisture. Even when it is too attenuated to serve the needs of life directly, it may be had by sucking the juice of crawling things that concentrate the dampness within their shells. Corpses newly buried along the caravan roads are fat with water. The brain remains wet for weeks, as does the marrow of the bones. The blood of a hunter hawk is good, but the blood of a carrion bird may carry disease that cripples or kills the unwary. More wholesome is the flesh of serpents and worms, sweet to the taste and a glut to the belly.

In the deepest pits where water drips and pools, there flourishes a certain fungus that may be known by its color, for it is the green mingled with yellow of the pus from a newly lanced boil. This growth emanates a faint radiance that seems bright to eyes accustomed to the blackness of caves. It is of the length of half a forefinger, but from it emerge longer stalks containing pods of spores that break open with a faint sound, like the crackle of brush in a fire, when disturbed. Among this living carpet that covers the rocks and walls and roofs of caverns live small spiders of the purest white. As they move among the stalks, they brush them with their legs and cause them to open and spread their seed upon the damp air, so that in the silence deep beneath the earth there is an endless soft crackle that resembles stifled laughter.

To consume three of the white spiders transforms the power of sight, allowing demons and shades of the dead that wander the desert after the setting of the sun to be seen clearly with eyes, though these wraiths pass otherwise unseen. Three spiders, and three alone, must be eaten. Two is insufficient; four causes vomiting and sickness that persists for several days. Three yields merely a lightness and spinning in the head that is not so severe as to inhibit walking. It is the spores from the pods fallen upon the spiders that produce the second type of sight. By themselves the spores have no power, but when mingled with the secretions on the back and legs of the spiders they acquire this potency.

To sight fortified by this strange meat, the shades of the desert stand forth from the rocks and dunes with the whiteness of candle wax. Near the burial sites of Bedouin caravans may be seen
lares
who retain their human form, though they go naked after death. These are mindless vessels that stand or stagger upon the earth above their graves, moving in circles and arcs but never venturing more than a dozen paces from the mound where their putrefying flesh lies buried. They have one use alone: to identify the place of burial when the desert nomads have attempted to conceal the place from ghouls and tomb robbers. No matter how well concealed the surface of the grave, the
lar
of the corpse stands watch above it.

When a grave is opened, the shade that is bound to it strives to slay the violator by seeking his throat or heart with its fingernails, or sometimes with its teeth, all the while emitting a faint keening cry that is easily mistaken for the sigh of the night breeze. Since these
lares
lack material force, they may be ignored without harm. They vanish the moment the brain, heart, or liver is removed from the corpse, though the cutting of the dead flesh and the removal of smaller portions of the body is not sufficient to dispel their presence. It is best to shatter the skull with a stone when first the corpse is exposed; having vanquished the troubling shade, the remaining viscera and organs may be handled and used without distraction.

There is another type of spirit, common in the rocky hills, that resembles a large wingless bat, but possesses the hindquarters and legs of a wild dog. Its mouth is unnaturally large for its size and filled with curved white teeth, like the bones of a fish, and its forepaws hairless and slender, looking like nothing other than the graceful hands of a dancing girl, save that they are ebon, with elongated nails. These creatures, that in their own tongue call themselves
chaklah’i
, move with great rapidity at a loping run across the sands, and hunt in packs any living thing that they find alone and unprotected in the waste at night. Their method of attack is to surround their prey so closely that their insubstantial bodies replace the air itself, so that the uncomprehending prey slowly smothers to death. Only then can they consume its vital essences, for they eat the dead and cannot abide the essences of the living. They consume the spirit of the flesh, not the flesh itself, but after they have eaten, the flesh holds no nourishment for the living.

A man possessed of the power of the second sight by consumption of the fungoidal spiders is able to make a pact with the
chaklah’i,
who much prefer to feed on corpses dead for several days than upon the bodies of the newly slain. These demons have not the physical force to move the ground protecting bodies that have been buried, but if a man shall move the stones and sand for them and allow them to feed unhindered, in exchange they will reveal secret places where treasures of various kinds lie hidden, or repeat knowledge long lost to the world. If it should chance that they seek to commit murder on the one with whom they have formed a pact, as commonly occurs, the utterance of the name of the guardian of the gates in the language of the Old Ones sends them scattering like dried leaves upon the wind. They pose no danger to the man who holds the power of this name, and may be useful as guides in the Empty Space.

These things speak not as a man speaks, by striking the air with his breath, but inwardly, as a thought that echoes within the mind. Their intellect is weak, but they remember all they have ever seen or heard, and they endure far longer than a man. Light they cannot abide, nor the camps and habitations of our race. The human voice is painful to them, and they fly from the sound of laughter.

With the faculty of the second sight, things that never possessed life of their own, but merely contained or conveyed life, may be clearly seen in the darkness across the sands. Caravan roads stand forth like ribbons of silver, and the domes and towers of towns long fallen to decay and forgotten rise against the starry horizon. These ghostly structures glow most bright under the energizing rays of the moon, but are dim when the moon is in her dark phase or not yet risen. They are most clear in distance but when approached waver and grow dim, until at last they fade utterly as the foot extends to cross their thresholds. By such shadows may be traced the wanderings of ancient races and their places of dwelling.

Upon the open desert are gateways in the form of whirling columns of iridescent dust. In the day they resemble dancing pillars, and by night glowing spires. They may be opened only at certain times, when the rays of the wandering bodies of the heavens and the greater stars conspire to unlock them. Their opening is by means of phrases chanted in an inhuman tongue, the words of which have geometric forms in space possessing length, breadth, and height. The
cbaklah’i
know the words but do not understand their meaning or use. For a gift of blackened and putrefying flesh they may be induced to repeat them.

Such are the several beauties of
Roba el Khaliyeh,
which is death to a man for so long as he remains alive, but once he has become as the dead, emulating the ways of the dead, it is as nurturing as a young mother toward her first child. Nor is it possible to dwell in the wasteland without learning its ways, for knowledge is rewarded but ignorance severely punished, and those who survive instruction become wise.

hen the winds blow soft across the sands, they carry the murmur of seduction kissed with promises of pleasure, but when they quicken, their howl of murderous fury will not be placated. The winds foreshadow the coming of demons that are borne alone in whirling cones of dust from other planes of existence. Both kinds are impelled by the same hunger, and seek to nourish themselves on the emotions of man, but the first is fed upon the sensation of arousal and the desire for carnal consummation, while the second fattens on fear. The second kind is more dangerous since fear is the stronger emotion.

The lover of the winds is beautiful to behold. She comes in dreams with her white arms extended and her long and glossy hair rising about her head, her smile sweet with orange blossoms, and her eyes deep wells of reflected starlight. A gown of the finest transparent silk adorns her slender body. Her fingers, neck, and wrists are bejeweled. What man whole in body can resist her allurements? She induces the nocturnal emission of semen during sleep, and feeds upon the odor and heat of the seed, bearing away a portion of its vitality with which to engender monsters in her womb, for these become her servants, and since they are possessed of a portion of material vitality, they are capable of tangible acts. When she visits the sleeper, they gibber and caper around his bed, pulling upon the hair and beard of their father and howling with glee.

Night after night she returns to her dreaming lover, who welcomes her embrace without complaint, his mind lulled by pleasure, until she has drawn out all he has to give and his heart ceases to beat. She is like the tar of the poppy that brings unfailing delight even when it causes death. Only a man such as those who guard the harem of the monarch, and have had their manhood removed by the edge of a knife, or have suffered a similar loss through violent misfortune, can resist the allures of this temptress. Since they have no seed to give, she is frustrated in her attempt and flies away, wailing and gnashing her teeth.

The howling demon comes with violence and seizes the mind of the sleeper, shaking it as a dog shakes a rat, transforming dream to nightmare. It has as many forms as the foes that inhabit the imagination, but is quick to seek out and discover the shape that is most feared. This becomes its vessel, or better to say its mask, for it has no identity of its own, only a hunger that must be appeased. When images alone fail to terrify, it causes cuts and welts upon the skin of the sleeper, which are discovered with the rising of the sun, but only for the purpose of eliciting terror, as pain alone offers it no nourishment.

Its purpose is to interrupt sleep so many times that the man who is its prey begins to dream while awake, and then it is able to come and go within his mind at will, and take whatever it finds there of value. The common consequence of the nightly visits of this demon is madness and suicide. Only by death can its torments be avoided. He alone is safe who has learned to embrace his fears as a lover, rejoicing in their multiplicity and power. Such a man welcomes the angry demons of the wasteland as his friends, and finds amusement and diversion in their change of masks. Recognizing at last the futility of the attempt, this demon departs in sullen silence, its fury stilled, and the wanderer in the desert sleeps and dreams without molestation.

By the seals of the gods from the stars, these two forms of night demon can be commanded and sent to vex others who travel across the Empty Space, and even those who dwell within distant cities, as a potent form of attack especially suited to the exacting of vengeance. The seductress and mother of monsters is obedient to the authority of the seal of Shub-Niggurath, the prolific goat; the angry demon obeys the seal of great Cthulhu, quick to fury.