Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (2 page)

Theodorus, who was called the Wise for his devotion to arcane learning, tells that he made translation of the work from the single copy in the Arab script that survived the worms; to me came much richer fare, for I have had the good fortune during my lifetime to have pass through my hands three manuscripts of the Greek text, and of the truest of these paid to have a fair copy made, which I compared in every detail with the original. From this Greek copy the present Latin wording was derived with all due care, and it is my promise to you who read these words that nothing of the original text was excised, nor anything added to it by way of gloss; for it is often the case that those who copy are not content but must comment on the work, and for this reason many of the manuscripts of this book are corrupted by the words of other men unknown to the composer.

Reports having spread throughout Constantinople of the nature of this book, which was never seen in Christendom prior to its rendering into Greek, raised such a hue and cry against the worthy Theodorus by the clergy and the population of the city that he was forced to stand on the steps of the great church and denounce the work of his own hands as devilish, and to publicly beg forgiveness of Christ for his sins, and then to burn the parchment bearing his translation. For this act of contrition, the people of Constantinople were mollified, and ceased to call for his death; yet his book did not die, for other copies had been made, and these spread abroad and multiplied under numerous pens, for the lust to possess so rare and strange a work was great, be it never so damning to the soul, and so it continues to this day.

The fate of Theodorus is well-known—how he lost his wealth and lands; forfeited his honors in the emperor’s court; saw his wife and three sons taken by plague in the space of a single season; and succumbed to that most horrible of afflictions, the disease of lice. It is writ by pious scribes of the Church that as punishment for rendering the
Necronomicon
into the Greek tongue he was forsaken by God and the angels, and knew no day that did not bring misfortune, so great is the power of this book over the souls of the sinful; for only the godly may read it and remain whole in body and spirit.

A perfect century of years after the work of Theodorus Philetas was brought forth into the world, Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, commanded that all known copies of the book should be gathered together in one place and burned for the greater glory of Christ Jesus. This was in the year of our Lord 1050. No Arab text could be found, but Greek copies to the number of one hundred and three score and eleven were piled and burned on the same steps where Theodorus had made his act of public contrition.

In this place I make no argument as to the wisdom of causing to be more prolific a book that an honored father of the holy Church sought to expunge from the earth. My conscience is in harmony with the love of our Lord. Only this much I will say: that knowledge once lost is lost forever, and who may judge that one teaching shall be useful in time of need, and another shall bear no value to men forevermore? May there not come a time when secret knowledge is sorely needed to fight the armies of darkness? Yet if all the books that teach it are burned, let men search in vain for the instrument of their salvation.

Keep you all copies made of this Latin text chained and locked. Let no man who reads it speak of its contents, and let no man who knows of it reveal its existence to the ignorant, who are unfit to carry so grave a burden. Before God and his angels, may the soul be damned of him who seeks to practice what is written in these leaves, for he has damned himself by the mere temptation to so horrible an act of defilement. Better his eyes were put out with glowing coals from the fire and his lips sewn tight with flaxen thread than he should read aloud the words in this book written in the forgotten tongue that was never meant to be spoken by the sons of Adam, but only by the others who have no mouths, and who dwell in the shadows between the stars.

The maker of this book, to which I give the Greek title Νεκρονμlκον, as more descriptive of its content than its old styling, was born into a humble house in the city of Sana’a, in the land of Yemen. His family name has been lost, but he is universally known by the title Abdul Alhazred, signifying in the Arabian tongue the Servant of the Devourer. Nor is the date of his birth known, but his death is said to have occurred in the year of our Lord 738, when he was in the extremity of old age.

In early youth he found renown both for piety, as a faithful follower of the teachings of the prophet Mohammed, and for poetic invention. He is reported to have been handsome in face, with uncommonly white skin and green eyes that caused wonder at his birth, seeing that his father was dark in both face and eye. Talk arose that his mother had lain with a jinn while crossing the desert by caravan on her way to be wed, but her extreme godliness confounded this rumor. Alhazred possessed a body tall and straight, with grace of movement likened to that of a fine horse. Most remarkable was his voice. When he recited the words of the Prophet, the birds paused in their singing to listen, and desert foxes came forth from their dens and sat upon mounds to hear the teachings of God.

Learning of this child wonder within the bounds of his kingdom, the ruler of Yemen summoned Alhazred to his court when the boy was in his twelfth year. He was so taken with the beauty of the youth, he made offer to Alhazred’s father to keep the boy with him and have him educated by the same palace tutors who instructed his own sons. In this way Alhazred was raised as a prince of the royal court, and had the love of the king as a second father. The only price expected of him was the composition of poetic verses, which he sang for the enjoyment of the king and his counselors.

In his eighteenth year Alhazred began to love one of the daughters of the king. Had he controlled his passion, it is likely that the king might have been persuaded to give his daughter to the young man in marriage, but love knows no boundaries in its reckless course, and Alhazred took his pleasure with the girl, who conceived a child. The discovery of the affair roused the fury of the king, who had the infant strangled at birth. For his act of betrayal, the poet was punished by mutilation. His virile member, nose, and ears were cut off, and his cheeks scarred. Alhazred was compelled to watch the unholy fruit of his union with the princess roasted over embers on a spit, and was made to eat portions of the flesh of the infant corpse. The king hired desert nomads to carry him eastward into the depths of the
Roba el Khaliyeh,
the Empty Space as it was known to the ancients, where he was left without water to die.

The ordeal cost Alhazred his reason. The king had ordered all who traversed that desolation to shun him and refuse him aid, in the expectation that he would soon perish, yet he clung to wretched life. For an unrecorded span of time he wandered the desert, scorpions and carrion hawks his companions by day, and by night the demons who dwell only in such barren and hateful lands. These spirits of darkness taught him necromancy and led him to discover forgotten caves and wells that run deep beneath the surface of the earth. He renounced his faith and began to worship antediluvian titans adored by the desert spirits who were his guides and teachers.

He embarked on a mad quest to restore the mutilated and excised members of his body, so that he might return to Yemen in triumph and claim the princess as his bride. With magic he disguised his face so that it appeared that of a normal man, and abandoned the wasteland to scour the world for arcane wisdom. In Giza, in the land of Egypt, he learned from a secret cult of pagan priests with shaven heads the way of restoring life to corpses and commanding them to do his bidding; in Chaldea he acquired perfection in the arts of astrology; from the Hebrews at Alexandria he acquired the knowledge of forgotten tongues, and the use of the voice for the utterance of barbarous words of evocation, for though all his other graces had been stolen away from him by the malice of the king, the beauty and power of his voice remained.

After roaming the wide world in search of some magic that would restore his manhood, in bitterness of heart he was made to accept his repellent condition, since it could not be mended by any potion or spell or object of power discovered in the course of his wandering. From his maturity until the end of his life Alhazred lived within the walls of Damascus in great luxury, freely pursuing his necromantic experiments but shunned and abhorred by the inhabitants of the city, who regarded him as an evil wizard.

It was during his residence at Damascus that he composed the work he titled, in a fit of mad humor,
Al Azif,
the chittering of insects, or by another interpretation, the drone of beetles; yet because of its contents, the book was familiarly known as the howling of demons, seeing that the night sounds of the desert are mistaken for the cries of spirits by the common peoples of that place. The work was penned during his final decade at Damascus, around the year of our Lord 730.

The manner of his death is strange, and scarce to be believed, save that it is no more unlikely than the story of his life. It is reported that one day while buying wine in the market square, Alhazred was caught up into the air by some invisible creature of great size and strength, and his head, arms, and legs were ripped from his torso and devoured, so that all his body vanished from sight in pieces, leaving only splashes of blood upon the sands. So his own flesh became the final tribute to the dark gods he worshipped.

In rendering this work into the Greek tongue, I have remained faithful to the words of Alhazred. The task has been difficult, since in places the meaning is obscure even when the words themselves are plain, but whether this is due to the lingering madness of the writer or to the strangeness of the matter he expounds I am unable to resolve. It suffices that enough of this work may be understood after careful study to supply the seeker of hidden wisdom rumination for a lifetime.

On certain of the leaves of the Arab manuscript are to be observed cunning symbols invisible beneath the light of the sun. These pale and silvery tracings, which are only plainly to be seen when lit by the rays of the full moon, are overwritten by black script to disguise, as I believe, the existence of these designs from the careless gaze of the curious. By what mysterious concoction of ink they are painted onto the parchment, I know not, and so could not reproduce them in my own book as they exist in the older book; yet have I made careful copy of each design and inscribed them in common dragon’s blood for all to behold, either by sun or moon.

My work is done. I care nothing about its censure, for my thoughts are at one with the will of my Master, the ruler of this earthly realm, who commands the high and low places, and moves both within the stars and in the wastes that lie between. As a tribute to my Lord, I offer this book to true seekers after wisdom who remain steadfast of mind and courageous of heart. Here are found keys to power beyond reckoning and knowledge yet unspoken by human lips. The wise will use it with circumspection and fools will be consumed. It is sufficient that this book continue to exist in the places of men, so that when the stars coincide it shall make itself known for the use of one destined to wield its potency. Farewell.