Lost Worlds, page 3
Thereafter the shambling herd roamed by night far afield in dire obedience to the mummy’s will. And so it came to pass that the former disciples of the necromancer had cause to regret the negligent and overhasty burial of their mentor. For it was upon the acolytes of the dead necromancer that the Ghoul horde preyed. And the first of their victims was that unregenerate and niggardly Mygon who still dwelt in the sea-affronting tower which once had been the demesne of the necromancer. When, with the diurnal light, his servants came to rouse him from his slumbers, they found a blanched and oddly shrunken corpse amid the disorder of the bedclothes, which were tom and trampled and besmirched with black mire and grave-mold. Naught of the nature of the nocturnal visitants could Mygon’s horror-stricken servants discern from the fixed staring of his glazed and sightless eyes; but from the drained veins of the corpse, and its preternatural pallor, they guessed that he had fallen victim to some prowling vampire in the night.
Again and again thereafter the Ghoul herd went forth by the secret stairs within the crypt of Avalzaunt, down to those deeps far beneath the crust of the earth where they and their brethren had anciently tunneled out a warren of fetid passageways connecting tomb and burial ground and the vaults beneath castle, temple, tower and town. After nine such grisly atrocities had befallen, some vague intimation of the truth dawned upon the ecclesiarchs of Zanzonga, for it became increasingly obvious that only the former apprentices of the dead necromancer, Avalzaunt, suffered from the depredations of the unknown vampire creatures. In time the priests of Zanzonga ventured forth to scrutinize the crypt of the deceased enchanter, but found it still sealed, its door of heavy lead intact, and the Pnakotic pentagram affixed thereto undisturbed and unbroken. The night-prowling monsters who drained their hapless victims dry of blood, whoever or whatever they might prove to be, had naught to do with Avalzaunt, surely; for the necromancer, they said, slept still within his sealed crypt. This pronunciamento given forth, they returned to the temple of Ymboth, in Zanzonga, satisfied with themselves for the swift and thorough fulfillment of their mission. Not one of them so much as suspected the existence of the stairs in the crypt, whereby Avalzaunt and his Ghouls emerged in the gloaming to hunt down the unwary and abominably to feast.
Add from this vile nocturnal feasting the mummy lost its gauntness, and it waxed sleek and plump and swollen, for that it now gorged heavily each night on rich, bubbling gore; and, as is well known to those of the unsqueamish who ponder such morbidities, the undead neither digest nor eliminate the foul sustenance whereon they feed.
Erelong the now bloated and corpulent lich had exhausted the list of its former apprentices, for not one remained unvisited by the shamblers from the Pit Then it was that the insatiable Avalzaunt thought of the monks of Camorba whose abbey lay close by, nigh unto the very burial ground wherein it was supposed he slept. These monks were of an order which worshipped Shimba, god of the shepherds, and this drowsy, rustic little godling demanded but little of his celebrants; wherefore they were an idle, fat, complacent lot much given to the fleshly pleasures. Twas said they feasted on the princeliest of viands, drank naught but the richest of vintages and dined hugely on the juiciest and most succulent haunches of rare, dripping meat; by reason thereof they were rosy and rotund and brimming with hot blood. At the very thought of the fat, bubbling fluid that went rivering through their soft, lusty flesh, the undead necromancer grew faint and famished, and be vowed that very night to lead his loping tomb hounds against the abbey of Camorba.
Night fell, thick with turgid vapors. A gibbous moon floated above the vernal hills of Uthnor. Thirlain, abbot of Camorba, was closeted with the abbey accounts, seated behind a desk lavishly inlaid with carven plaques of mastodonic ivory, as the moon ascended toward the zenith. Rumor had not exaggerated his corpulence, for, of all the monks of Camorba, the abbot was the most round and rosy; hence it was from the fat jugular that pulsed in his soft throat that the necromancer had sworn to slake his thirst.
In one plump hand Thirlain held a sheaf of documents appertaining to the accounts of the abbey, the which were scribed upon crisp papyrus made from catamites; the pudgy fingers of the other hand- toyed idly with a silver paper knife which had been a gift from die high priest of Shimba in Zanzonga, and which was sanctified with the blessings of that patriarch.
Thus it was that, when the long curtained windows behind the desk burst asunder before the whining pack of hungry Ghouls, and the hideously Moated figure of the mad-eyed cadaver which led the tomb hounds came lurching toward the abbot where he sat, Thirlain, shrieking with fear, impulsively thurst that small blunt silver knife into the distended paunch of the corpse as it flung itself upon him. What occurred after that ordinarily ineffectual blow is still a matter of theological debate among the ecclesiarchs of Zanzonga, who no longer sleep so smugly in their beds.
For the bloated and swollen paunch of the walking corpse burst open like an immense rotten fruit, spewing forth such stupendous quantities of black and putrid blood that the silken robes of the abbot were drenched in an instant In sooth, so voluminous was the deluge of gore that the thick carpets were saturated with stinking fluids, which sprayed and squirted in all directions as the stricken cadaver staggered about in its throes. The vile liquid splashed hither and yon in such floods that even the damask wall coverings were saturated, and, in no time at all, die entire chamber was awash with putrescent gore to such an extent that the very floor was become a lake of foulness. The liquescent vileness poured out into the hallways and the corridors beyond when at length the other monks, roused by the shriekings of their horror stricken abbot, rose from cot and pallet and came bursting in to behold the ghastly abbatial chamber and Thirlain himself crouched pale and gibbering atop his ivory desk, pointing one palsied hand at the leathery rind of desiccated flesh that was all that remained of Avalzaunt the necromancer, once the vile fluids his mummy retained had burst forth and drained him dry.
This horrendous episode was hushed up and only distorted rumors ever leaked beyond the abbey walls. But the burghers of Zanzonga marveled for a season over the swift and inexplicable resignation from his cozy sinecure of the pleasure-loving Thirlain, who departed that very dawn on a barefoot pilgrimage to the remotest of holy shrines far-famed for its wonder-working relics, which was situated amid the most hostile and inaccessible of wildernesses. Thereafter the chastened abbot entered a dour monastic order of stern flagellants, famed for their strict adherence to a grim code of the utmost severity, whereby the austerities of the newly zealous Thirlain, together with his over-rigorous chastisements of the flesh, made him an object of amazement among even the most obdurate of his brethren. No longer plump and soft and self-indulgent, he grew lean and sallow from a bleak diet of moldy crusts and stale water, and died not long thereafter in the odor of sanctity and was promptly declared venerable and beautific by the Grand Patriarch of Commoriom, and his relics now command excessive prices from the dealers in such ecclesiastical memorabilia. As for the remains of the Necromancer, they were burnt on the hearth of the abbey at Camorba and were reduced to a pinch of bitter ash which was hastily scattered to the winds. And it is said of the spirit of the unfortunate Avalzaunt that at last it found rest, in whatever far and fabulous bourn is the final haven of perturbed and restless spirits.
MU
Mu was invented in the 1920’s by a British-born eo-centric and oddball named James Churchward (or “Colonel” James Churchward, as he liked to call himself), and it is more or less identical with the Lemuria of the Theosophists; that is, it was a lost continent in the Pacific just like Lemuria. Churchward wrote of it in a series of marvelously wacky works of pseudo-non-fiction with titles like Cosmic Forces of Mu and Sacred Symbols of Mu, and so on. They are a lot of fun to read if you don’t try to take them seriously.
In 1933, Weird Tales published a charming story by Hazel Heald called “Out of the Eons,” which was laid in Mu. It was actually one of H. P. Lovecraft’s ghostwriting jobs and Miss Heald had little to do with it.
I always enjoyed that story, with its fancy, high-falutin' prose; so I paid it the compliment of imitation in the yam which follows next. (At least, I hope it’s a compliment)
This story has never been published before.
THE THING IN THE PIT
The following narrative from the shocking and chaotic Zanthu Tablets is an excerpt from a fragmentary and conjectural translation which their discoverer, Harold Hadley
Copeland the archaeologist, made some years before his death in an insane asylum in San Francisco in 1926.
I
The innumerable iniquities of Yaa-Thobboth, hierophant of Ghatanothoa the Monster on the Mount, I, Zanthu, wizard and last priest of Ythogtha the Abomination in the Abyss, had endured with uncomplaining fortitude, but this ultimate affront I could not let pass in silence.
For uncountable millennia the fortunes of my cult had been on the wane, even as, during the same ages, the rise to victory of those who worshipped the Monstrosity that dwelt ever atop the heights of Yaddith-Gho had been an unbroken succession of triumphs. It was now many millennia since that Year of the Red Moon* when the overbold Tyog, high priest of the worship of Shub-Niggurath, sought to break asunder the power of Ghatanothoa forever, and came to so unthinkable an end that even that dread chronicle, the Ghorl Nigräl, dares not whisper a single hint of his fate.
*Von lunzt, in his
Kuiten (XXI, 307) estimates this date as B.C. 173,148.—Translator.
Seizing, upon the moment, the infamous Imash-Mo, who was high priest of Ghatanothoa in bis day, proclaimed to all the Nine Kingdoms that his loathsome and noxious divinity was thus proven supreme over all the thousand gods of primordial and everlasting Mu. And, alas, Imash-Mo had long since gained ascendancy over the weak and easily swayed Thabou, king of the province of K’naa, wherein rose the demon-possessed mountain of Yaddith-Gho; and King Thabou hastened to ratify the supremacy of Ghatanothoa even over the might of Cthulhu, the Lord of R’lyeh, himself.
Lustrum by lustrum, cycle by cycle, the wealth, power and following of the cult of Ythogtha declined thereafter, even as did all of the other of the thousand cults of primal Mu. In vain did my priestly predecessors warn that the vengeance of the affronted gods would someday smite the Nine Kingdoms of Mu, and mayhap trample all of the mighty continent beneath the seething waves of ocean, as ancient prophecies reiterated was to be our eventual doom. But naught could avert or even retard the remorseless decline of the worship of Ythogtha.
II
When I, in my turn, assumed the scarlet pontificals and the brazen rod of my office in the Year of the Whispering Shadow*, I swore by the Gray Ritual of Khif, by the Vooric Sign, by the Weedy Monolith, and by the might and glory of terrible Ythogtha, that my god should achieve his triumph and his revenge during my pontificate.
*Evidence in the Ponape Scripture (particularly the astronomical data in Versicle 9759) suggests this date may be equivalent to roughly B.C. 161,844; von Junzt does not include any reference to this period, as his commentary breaks off several milennia earlier.—Translator.
Alas, I had reckoned without the cunning and the ambition of Yaa-Thobboth! For no sooner had the brazen rod been set into my grasp and the Thirty-One Secret Rituals of Yhe been given over to my keeping than the villainous high priest of Ghatanothoa let pass the ultimate affront against the dignity of my office and the splendor of my god.
For this Yaa-Thobboth had at length prevailed upon the palsied and enfeebled Shommog, monarch over K’naa, and a writ was proclaimed banning any other form of worship of the Great Old Ones than that approved by the followers of Ghatanothoa. The copper gates of the temple of Shub-Nig-gurath were sealed; the greenly lit adyta of Cthulhu were deserted; and, temple by temple, across the breadth of the Nine Kingdoms, the supreme power of Ghatanothoa the Monster on the Mount was proclaimed.
Now King Shommog was regnant over the province of K’naa while I and my few acolytes dwelt in the land of G’thuu to the north, beyond the River of Worms and the Carven Basalt Cliffs and the Catacombs of Thul. But great had the authority of K’naa grown in the eleven thousand years since the reign of King Thabou and the hierophancy of Imash-Mo, and in these moon-dim, latter days, the power of my land of G’thuu was shrunken and seldom did mine own monarch, the degenerate Nuggog-ying, dare oppose the will or whim of the King of K’naa. Thus it seemed inevitable that the last vestige of reverence for the Abomination in the Abyss should gutter and die, and in the very pontificate of one who had sworn to restore Him to the heights of His former tremendous might
III
In despair, I withdrew to the crumbling ruins of my palace which stood of old upon the very brink of that profound and shadowy chasm, the Abyss of Yhe, wherein the victorious Elder Gods had hurled the great Ythogtha and had sealed him therein forever under the potency of the Elder Sign and wherein to this day unbreakable bonds of psychic force imprison him, even as foul Ghatanothoa is prisoned in that immemorial and cyclopean citadel atop Mount Yaddith-Gho, and Great Cthulhu slumbers in his Sunken City on the ocean-whelmed and eon-lost Black Island, and terrible Zoth-Ommog lies chained amid the Deep beyond the Isle of the Sacred Stone Cities. 3
*The cryptic Ponape Scripture says that Ghatanofhoa, Ythogtha, and Zoth-Ommog, are, “the Sons of the mighty Cthulhu, Lord of the Watery Abyss and dread and awful Potentate of drowned R’lyeh.” While neither the Scripture nor any other text of Elder Lore known to me records the planet wherefrom Cthulhu descended to this world, the Scripture says of the origin of his three sons: “the Spawn of Cthulhu came down from remote and ultra-telluric Xoth, the dim green double sun that glitters like a demonic eye in the blacknesses beyond Abbith, to whelm and reign over the steaming fens and bubbling slime pits of the dawn eons of this Earth, and it was in primordial and shadowy Mu that They were great” Von lunzt (XXI, 29-a) cannot identify Xoth save to say that it lies in the same star cluster as Zaoth, Abbith and Ymar. The above reference to the “Isle of the Sacred Stone Cities” and the Deep that lies off its shores, together with geographical data hinted at earlier in the Zanthu Tablets, enables me to identify tentatively the place whereat Zoth-Ommog the Dweller in the Deeps lies imprisoned1 as a submarine chasm off Ponape. —Translator,
Even in the uttermost nadir of my despair, it were unwise for me to neglect the awful duties of my sacerdotal office and thus I turned from a dreary contemplation of this most dire of all the thousand iniquities of the infamous Yaa-Thob-both to that scrutiny of the Thirty-One Rituals demanded of my office. This precious document, of which the Earth affords no single other copy*, and which dates from the most extreme antiquity, was indited by the hand of Niggoum-Zbog, the First Prophet, himself, in the dim eons before the Old Ones had yet dreamed of creating man. The Secret Rituals themselves were inscribed in fiery and metallic inks upon leaves of parchment fashioned from pthagon membrane and bound betwixt twin carven and gem-studded plates of rare, precious lagh metal brought from dark Yuggoth where it rolls upon the Rim in the most remote of terrestrial eons by the shadowy Elder Ones. My seething brain a chaos of incoherent images, I perused one by one the Thirty-One Secret Rituals of Yhe, and in the last, most potent and terrific of them all, I found the answer to my dilemma.
*The hierophant Zanthu is in error here, for the surviving fragments of the Susran myth cycle list a copy The Yhe Rituals from Elder Mu as among ‘the necromantic tomes in the library of the great magician Malygris, according to the inventory recorded by the sorcerer Nygron, and an incredibly ancient copy of the Rituals was in the possession of the Saracen wizard Yakthoob, AJhazred’s mentor, according to the Irem chapter of the Necronomicon (Narrative II). A copy, perhaps the same Yakthoobic redaction, is rumored to have been found in a sealed tomb in Egypt about 1903.—Translator.
For that Thirty-First Ritual contained the formula which is called ’The Key That Openeth The Door To Yhe,” and which the primal and elder Prophet warns is not to be spoken aloud save in the final extremity of ultimate Doom.
Therein, in my madness and desperation, I found the answer for which I sought—aii, n’ghaa xuthoggon R’lyeht Iä
Ythogtha! A million generations yet unborn shall curse my name!
IV
And thus was I resolved to open the Door to Yhe, by which term is meant to render null the strictures of the Elder Sign and to release the Primal One, the Abomination in the Abyss, from the chains of psychic force which have imprisoned him in the depths of the great Chasm for innumerable eons.
To set free Ythogtha from his Abyss would be at a single stroke to render him the most awesomely powerful of all the thousand gods of antique Mu, and thus to elevate myself, as His hierophant and prophet, to the supreme and most potent priest in all of the Nine Kingdoms.
The ambitions of Yaa-Thobboth would thus be ground into dust; the too easily dominated King Shommog would in a breath be divested of all authority, to the elevation of mine own monarch, Nuggog-ying; the wealth and might of the province of K’naa would drain away like shallow mud before the sucking tides, and mine own realm of G’thuu would achieve ultimate prominence over the kingdoms of Mu. What man dares condemn me if, in the last extremity of my need, I set my hand against the decree of the Elder Gods themselves!
