57. door,] door A, C
58. bail] pail A; handle B [revised by HPL], C
59. Mernie] Merwin A, B [revised by HPL], C
60. and felt] om. A, B [revised by HPL], C
61. on] in A
62. comfortable,] confortable, A
63. on] of C
64. livestock.] live-/stock. A; live-stock. C
65. this] the A, B [revised by HPL], C
66. to] of A
67. corner] corners A
68. heaven! . . .] Heaven!— A, B [revised by HPL to Heaven! . . .], C
69. alike!] alike. A, B [revised by HPL], C
70. buggy-wheel] buggywheel C
71. not] om. A [see below]; no C
72. Most . . . 1730.] Most of it built before 1700. A
73. force,] forces, A, B [revised by HPL], C
74. he] He A, B, C
75. o’] of C
76. Mernie] Merwin A, B [revised by HPL], C
77. a’] o’ A
78. gits] gets C
79. comin’,] comin’ C
80. ’tain’t] tain’t C
81. senct] om. A
82. senct] sence A; sense C
83. getting’] gittin’ A, C
84. horse] horses A, B [revised by HPL], C
85. horse] horses A, B [revised by HPL], C
86. livestock.] live-/stock. A; live-stock. C
87. disappeared.] dissappeared. A
88. smaller] small C
89. handholds] hand-holds A, B, C
90. livestock] live-stock C
91. persons] person A
92. analyse] analyze C
93. shewed] showed A, B, C
94. aërolite] aerolite A, B [revised by HPL], C
95. daemoniac] demoniac A, B, C
96. on] in A
97. on] on, A, B [revised by HPL], C
98. the] om. A
99. alien] allied A, B [revised by HPL], C
100. that treetop] the treetop A; that tree / top C
101. unhallowed] unhalloed A
102. came] come A, B [revised by HPL], C
103. recognise] recognize B, C
104. men] men, A, B [revised by HPL], C
105. out,] out; A, C
106. a] om. C
107. bee-hives] beehives A
108. realised] realized A, B, C
109. greys] grays A
110. here,”] here.” A
111. stone . . .] stone— A, B [revised by HPL], C
112. thar . . .] thar— A, B [revised by HPL], C
113. livin’ . . .] livin’— A, B [revised by HPL], C
114. body . . .] body— A, B [revised by HPL], C
115. Mernie,] Merwin, A, B [revised by HPL], C
116. Nabby . . .] Nabby— A, B [revised by HPL], C
117. last . . .] last— A, B [revised by HPL], C
118. water . . .] water— A, B [revised by HPL], C
119. ’em . . .] ’em— A, B [revised by HPL], C
120. here . . .] here— A, B [revised by HPL], C
121. home. . . .”] home—” A, B [revised by HPL], C
122. sitting-room] sitting room A, B, C
123. and the . . . carpet,] where the rag carpet left it bare, A
124. shewed] showed A, B, C
125. heaven] Heaven A, B, C
126. barn,] barn A, B, C
127. unrecognisable] unrecognizable A, B, C
128. feverish,] feverish A, B [revised by HPL], C
129. realised] realized A, B, C
130. shew] show A, B, C
131. nighted,] blighted, A, B [revised by HPL], C
132. for ever] forever B, C
133. recognised] recognized A, B, C
134. over half a century] forty-four years A, B [revised by HPL], C
135. heath”.] heath.” A, B, C
136. analyse] analyze A, B, C
137. ever] om. C
138. neighbouring] neighboring A, B [revised by HPL], C
139. too. Numbers] too; numbers A, B [revised by HPL], C
140. stores] stories A, B [revised by HPL], C
141. traveller] traveler A, B [revised by HPL], C
142. spirit] spirits A, B [revised by HPL], C
143. an] om. A
144. aërolite] aerolite A, B [revised by HPL], C
145. that] the C
146. daemon] demon A, B, C
147. obeyed] obeyed the C
148. away . . .] away— A, B [revised by HPL], C
149. ye . . .] ye— A, B [revised by HPL], C
150. comin’,] comin’ C
151. ’tain’t] tain’t C
152. use. . . .”] use—” A, B [revised by HPL], C
The Descendant
In London there is a man who screams when the church bells ring. He lives all alone with his streaked cat in Gray’s Inn, and people call him harmlessly mad. His room is filled with books of the tamest and most puerile kind, and hour after hour he tries to lose himself in their feeble pages. All he seeks from life is not to think. For some reason thought is very horrible to him, and anything which stirs the imagination he flees as a plague. He is very thin and grey and wrinkled, but there are those who declare he is not nearly so old as he looks. Fear has its grisly claws upon him, and a sound will make him start with staring eyes and sweat-beaded forehead. Friends and companions he shuns, for he wishes to answer no questions. Those who once knew him as scholar and aesthete say it is very pitiful to see him now. He dropped them all years ago, and no one feels sure whether he left the country or merely sank from sight in some hidden byway. It is a decade now since he moved into Gray’s Inn, and of where he had been he would say nothing till the night young Williams bought the “Necronomicon”.[1]
Williams was a dreamer, and only twenty-three, and when he moved into the ancient house he felt a strangeness and a breath of cosmic wind about the grey wizened man in the next room. He forced his friendship where old friends dared not force theirs, and marvelled at the fright that sat upon this gaunt, haggard watcher and listener. For that the man always watched and listened no one could doubt. He watched and listened with his mind more than with his eyes and ears, and strove every moment to drown something in his ceaseless poring[2] over gay, insipid novels. And when the church bells rang he would stop his ears and scream, and the grey cat that dwelt with him would howl in unison till the last peal died reverberantly away.
But try as Williams would, he could not make his neighbour speak of anything profound or hidden. The old man would not live up to his aspect and manner, but would feign a smile and a light tone and prattle feverishly and frantically of cheerful trifles; his voice every moment rising and thickening till at last it would split in a piping and incoherent falsetto. That his learning was deep and thorough, his most trivial remarks made abundantly clear; and Williams was not surprised to hear that he had been to Harrow and Oxford. Later it developed that he was none other than Lord Northam, of whose ancient hereditary castle on the Yorkshire coast so many odd things were told; but when Williams tried to talk of the castle, and of its reputed Roman origin, he refused to admit that there was anything unusual about it. He even tittered shrilly when the subject of the supposed under crypts, hewn[3] out of the solid crag that frowns on the North Sea, was brought up.
So matters went till that night when Williams brought home the infamous “Necronomicon”[4] of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. He had known of the dreaded volume since his sixteenth year, when his dawning love of the bizarre had led him to ask queer questions of a bent old bookseller in Chandos Street; and he had always wondered why men paled when they spoke of it. The old bookseller had told him that only five copies were known to have survived the shocked edicts of the priests and lawgivers against it and that all of these[5] were locked up with frightened care by custodians who had ventured to begin a reading of the hateful black-letter. But now, at last, he had not only found an accessible copy but had made it his own at a ludicrously[6] low figure. It was at a Jew??
?s shop in the squalid precincts of Clare Market, where he had often bought strange things before, and he almost fancied the gnarled old Levite smiled amidst tangles of beard as the great discovery was made. The bulky leather cover with the brass clasp had been so prominently visible, and the price was so absurdly slight.
The one glimpse he had had of the title was enough to send him into transports, and some of the diagrams set in the vague Latin text excited the tensest and most disquieting recollections in his brain. He felt it was highly necessary to get the ponderous thing home and begin deciphering it, and bore it out of the shop with such precipitate haste that the old Jew chuckled disturbingly behind him. But when at last it was safe in his room he found the combination of black-letter and debased idiom too much for his powers as a linguist, and reluctantly called on his strange,[7] frightened friend for help with the twisted, mediaeval Latin. Lord Northam was simpering inanities to his streaked cat, and started violently when the young man entered. Then he saw the volume and shuddered wildly, and fainted altogether when Williams uttered the title. It was when he regained his senses that he told his story; told his fantastic figment of madness in frantic whispers,[8] lest his friend be not quick to burn the accursed book and give wide scattering to its ashes.
***
[9]
There must, Lord Northam whispered, have been something wrong at the start; but it would never have come to a head if he had not explored too far. He was the nineteenth Baron of a line whose beginnings went uncomfortably far back into the past—unbelievably far, if vague tradition could be heeded, for there were family tales of a descent from pre-Saxon times, when a certain Cnaeus[10] Gabinius Capito, military tribune in the Third Augustan Legion then stationed at Lindum in Roman Britain, had been summarily expelled from his command for participation in certain rites unconnected with any known religion. Gabinius had, the rumour ran, come upon a[11] cliffside cavern where strange folk met together and made the Elder Sign in the dark; strange folk whom the Britons knew not save in fear, and who were the last to survive from a great land in the west that had sunk,[12] leaving only the islands with the raths[13] and circles and shrines of which Stonehenge was the greatest. There was no certainty, of course, in the legend that Gabinius had built an impregnable fortress over the forbidden cave and founded a line which Pict and Saxon, Dane and Norman were powerless to obliterate; or in the tacit assumption that from this line sprang the bold companion and lieutenant of the Black Prince whom Edward Third created Baron of Northam. These things were not certain, yet they were often told; and in truth the stonework of Northam Keep did look alarmingly like the masonry of Hadrian’s Wall. As a child Lord Northam had had peculiar dreams when sleeping in the older parts of the castle, and had acquired a constant habit of looking back through his memory for half-amorphous scenes and patterns and impressions which formed no part of his waking experience. He became a dreamer who found life tame and unsatisfying; a searcher for strange realms and relationships once familiar, yet lying nowhere in the visible regions of earth.[14]
Filled with a feeling that our tangible world is only an atom in a fabric vast and ominous, and that unknown demesnes press on and permeate the sphere of the known at every point, Northam in youth and young manhood drained in turn the founts of formal religion and occult mystery. Nowhere, however, could he find ease and content; and as he grew older the staleness and limitations of life became more and more maddening to him. During the ’nineties he dabbled in Satanism, and at all times he devoured avidly any doctrine or theory which seemed to promise escape from the close vistas of science and the dully unvarying laws of Nature. Books like Ignatius Donnelly’s chimerical account of Atlantis he absorbed with zest, and a dozen obscure precursors of Charles Fort enthralled him with their vagaries. He would travel leagues to follow up a furtive village tale of abnormal wonder, and once went into the desert of Araby to seek a Nameless City of faint report, which no man has ever beheld. There rose within him the tantalising faith that somewhere an easy gate existed, which if one found would admit him freely to those outer deeps whose echoes rattled so dimly at the back of his memory. It might be in the visible world, yet it might be only in his mind and soul. Perhaps he held within his own half-explored brain that cryptic link which would awaken him to elder[15] and future lives in forgotten dimensions; which would bind him to the stars, and to the infinities and eternities beyond them.
Notes
Editor’s Note: HPL’s A.Ms. survives and was the basis of the first appearance, in Leaves (1938). At the bottom of the first page of the A.Ms., upside down, is the following sentence: “Writing on what the doctor tells me is my deathbed, my most hideous fear is that the man is wrong. I suppose I shall seem to be buried next week, but [. . .]” It is now my belief that this is either an incomplete initial draft of the current fragment or (more likely) an altogether unrelated fragment. It has been crossed out in the A.Ms.; the indication “(foregoing deleted)” is presented in Leaves but not in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales.
A = A.Ms. (JHL); B = Leaves 2 (1938): 107–10; C = Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Arkham House, 1965), 336–39. Copy-text: A.
1. “Necronomicon”.] Necronomicon. A, B; Necronomicon. C
2. poring] pouring B
3. under crypts, hewn] under-crypts, hwen B; under-crypts, hewn C
4. “Necronomicon”] Necronomicon A, B; Necronomicon C
5. these] them B, C
6. ludicrously] ridiculously B, C
7. strange,] strange B, C
8. whispers,] whispers B, C
9. ***] om. C
10. Cnaeus] Luneus B, C
11. a] the C
12. sunk,] sunken, A, B, C
13. raths] roths B, C
14. of earth.] of Earth. B; of the Earth. C
15. elder] Elder B, C
History of the “Necronomicon”
Original title “Al Azif”[1]—azif [2] being the word used by the Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed[3] to be the howling of daemons.
Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá,[4] in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa A.D. 700.[5] He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space” of the ancients—and[6] “Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs,[7] which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus, where the “Necronomicon” (“Al Azif”)[8] was written, and of his final death or disappearance (A.D. 738)[9] many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th century biographer[10]) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen the fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town[11] the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind.[12] He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities[13] whom he called Yog-Sothoth[14] and Cthulhu.[15]
In A.D.[16] 950 the “Azif”,[17] which had gained a considerable though[18] surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title “Necronomicon”.[19] For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice—once in the fifteenth[20] century in black-letter[21] (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (probably Spanish);[22] both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work, both Latin and
Greek,[23] was banned by Pope Gregory IX.[24] in 1232,[25] shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory[26] note;* [27] and no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in Italy between[28] 1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692. A translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed,[29] and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript.[30] Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th century[31]) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another (17th century[32]) is in the Bibliothèque[33] Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth-century[34] edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and in the library at[35] Miskatonic University at Arkham; also[36] in the library of the University of Buenos Aires.[37] Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century[38] one is persistently rumoured[39] to form part[40] of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour[41] credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century[42] Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R. U. Pickman, who disappeared early[43] in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised[44] ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from rumours[45] of this book (of which relatively few of the general public know) that R. W.[46] Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel “The King in Yellow”.[47]
———————
Chronology
“Al Azif”[48] written circa A.D. 730[49] at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred[50]
Tr. to[51] Greek A.D. 950 as “Necronomicon”[52] by Theodorus Philetas
Burnt[53] by Patriarch Michael 1050 (i.e.,[54] Greek text).[55] Arabic text now lost.[56]
Olaus[57] translates Greek[58] to[59] Latin 1228[60]
1232—Latin ed. (and Greek)[61] suppressed[62] by Pope[63] Gregory IX.[64]
14…[65] Black-letter printed edition (Germany)[66]
15…[67] Greek text printed in Italy[68]