—Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation
Monroe gets reports from his extraction team. Angell is nowhere to be found. Neither is the Book. Miller's body is discovered and he appears to have been shot by a round fired from Angell's weapon. That's the story, anyway. He will replace the ballistics report with one that matches Angell's nine millimeter, the one in Aubrey's possession. It gives Monroe the option of labeling Angell a murderer and a traitor, which would give him the authority to track him down anywhere in the world. It's an option he will remember.
Aubrey believed Angell to be dead, his body to be discovered eventually somewhere in the tunnel complex. Then Adnan's body is recovered. Oddly, his parents receive a letter from him that was mailed after his body was discovered. It was mailed from Hong Kong. Everyone is confused, except Aubrey. He makes inquiries in Hong Kong, but Angell is long gone by then. He hopes Angell is smiling somewhere.
The missing JSOC team is eventually recovered. They were drugged by some noxious herb in a burning censer carried by an old Tibetan man in the tunnels. There was no ventilation, and they succumbed immediately and were out for twelve hours. No one thought to bring gas masks.
The Cthulhu Cult continued to organize and attempt to resurrect their High Priest, their connection to the alien forces they believe will save them. But without the Book, they are handicapped. They will try again, however. They always do.
Angell never returns to his apartment in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. He is alone in a remote area of the world—Mongolia—following a hunch that one of the Seven Towers is located there, near the Singing Sands of the southern Gobi Desert. He has found a rock with an inscription. Something about strange aeons and the death of ... death. But he really is pondering his next move. He has the Book safely hidden. His atheism has been shaken to its core by the things he has seen and done. He has witnessed what can only be described as the paranormal. But that doesn't mean he has to believe in God and the Devil. After all, the old shaman didn't. And he saw no evidence of God in the cavern.
He thinks the spirituality of the world is not based on God and the Devil, but on a struggle between what it means to be human and those alien forces that care nothing for humans except as beasts of burden or food, if they even care at all. They say that the Devil's deepest wile is to persuade us that he does not exist. Angell thinks that Cthulhu's deepest wile is to persuade us that the Gods we worship are really on our side; he knows that those Gods are used as masks by a deeper, darker Evil than we can ever imagine for it demands our destruction even as it demands our obedience and our love.
He hopes—ironically, he prays—that he is wrong. That he's got it all wrong, and that his new belief system is the product of the diseased mind of that Thing in the Tomb, calling out to him, seducing him with its thoughts. The Call of Cthulhu.
There is only one tool to stop this force from gaining power the next time a Gate is about to open. And Angell has it. And is never letting it go.
The Book. The Black Book.
The Necronomicon.
Gregory Angell and the Book will return in Dunwich.
Acknowledgments
First, I would like to thank Bill Corsa, my long-suffering agent who tried for more than a decade to sell this property because he believed in it (or, rather, did not believe that anyone would not want to publish it). So this is a culmination of all those book proposals—so many book proposals to so many publishers—over all those years. The book has changed considerably in that amount of time, not least because the political situation in the world changed so fundamentally and so quickly, requiring extensive rewrites and re-imaginings. Thanks for all the yeoman's work you've put into this project, Bill. You can relax now. It's done!
Next, many thanks and genuflections go to Yvonne Paglia. Although I have published considerable amounts of non-fiction with Ibis Press and Nicolas Hays, Inc. in the last few years, this is my first published work of book-length fiction. She is taking a chance, and for that I will be forever grateful.
Stuart Weinberg of Seven Stars Bookstore in Boston. His voice forcefully was raised in support of this project as well. Like Bill Corsa, he didn't understand why someone would not want to publish a book about Lovecraft and the Necronomicon, international terrorism, devil worshipping cults, intelligence agencies, necromancy, necrophilia and all the other necros, as well as the breakdown of human civilization generally. I mean, come on. What's not to like?
Donald Weiser. For his good humor and patience, with my projects and with me especially.
James Wasserman. (Sigh.) I tried to keep the Crowley material to a minimum, man, but you know ... well ... it's not easy. Jim also was a major supporter of this project and urged Yvonne to publish it. He has been a designer of my books for a long time, and a friend for even longer. I am grateful to him, Stuart, and Bill for their unwavering moral support.
(Also, having a book contract meant I actually had to finish writing the damned thing.)
To Whitley Strieber and Christopher Farnsworth, both busy and successful writers who very generously took time out of their schedules to read an early version of the novel and comment on it. Many thanks!
To good friends (if they're still speaking to me) Maya Gabrieli, Sophie Kaye, Adrian Anderson, Nina Rojas, and Captain Bates, to name a few: all people I have been avoiding the past year because writing is a solitary practice that does not permit of much socializing. There are others, mostly family, who are not mentioned here by name for their security in case everything I've written about in this book turns out to be true!
And thanks to all of you, dear readers. You have supported my efforts through the years to investigate and reveal the hidden structures of our world through my non-fiction works. This book is an attempt to do the same, only using fiction as a medium instead of the heavily-footnoted, bibliographed books I normally write. Consider this as me, after a particularly hairy overseas trip, hanging out with you, thinking aloud in an unedited way about the cosmic implications of things I've read and seen: the kind of conversations I have in my own head all the time.
And for those of you who don't understand how I can write about Nazis one day and about Tantra or Alchemy or Religion the next, I hope this book ties it all together for you.
A wise man (probably a lawyer) once wrote that some truths can only be expressed in fiction. This is my attempt to do just that.
Enjoy!
About the Author
Peter Levenda is a well-known author of many published works on esoteric subjects. His Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult bears a foreword by Norman Mailer and has been translated into six foreign languages. Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests, and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler broke new ground when it revealed the Far East segment of the Nazi escape routes after the fall of Germany. His Hitler Legacy: The Nazi Cult in Diaspora: How it was Organized, How it was Funded, and Why it Remains a Threat to Global Security in the Age of Terrorism explores the pernicious Nazi influence on the modern interpretation of Jihad. Levenda is also the author of the three-volume study of the influence of esoterica on American politics, Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraf. His Ibis Press book Dark Lord: H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic explores many of the esoteric themes exposed in this novel.
ALSO FROM PETER LEVENDA
The Dark Lord
H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic
PETER LEVENDA
One of the most famous—yet least understood—manifestations of Thelemic thought has been the works of Kenneth Grant, the British occultist and one-time intimate of Aleister Crowley, who discovered a hidden world within the primary source materials of Crowley's Aeon of Horus. Using complementary texts from such disparate authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Jack Parsons, Austin Osman Spare, and Charles Stansfeld Jones (“Frater Achad”), Grant formulated a system of magic that expanded upon that delineated in the rituals of the OTO: a
system that included elements of Tantra, of Voudon, and in particular that of the Schlangekraft recension of the Necronomicon, all woven together in a dark tapestry of power and illumination.
The Dark Lord follows the themes in the writings of Kenneth Grant, H.P. Lovecraft, and the Necronomicon, uncovering further meanings of the concepts of the famous writers of the Left Hand Path. It is for Thelemites, as well as lovers of the Lovecraft Mythos in all its forms, and for those who find the rituals of classical ceremonial magic inadequate for the New Aeon. Traveling through the worlds of religion, literature, and the occult, Peter Levenda takes his readers on a deeply fascinating exploration on magic, evil, and The Dark Lord as he investigates one of the most neglected theses in the history of modern occultism: the nature of the Typhonian Current and its relationship to Aleister Crowley's Thelema and H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon.
AND FROM IBIS PRESS
The Necronomicon
31st Anniversary Edition of the Schlangekraft Recension
EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY SIMON
In the past decades, much ink—actual and virtual—has been spilled on the subject of the Necronomicon (also called the “Simonomicon”). Some have derided it as a hoax; others have praised it as a powerful grimoire. Despite the controversy, it has never been out of print for one day since 1977.
The Necronomicon has been found to contain formulae for spiritual transformation that are consistent with some of the most ancient mystical processes in the world—processes that involve communion with the stars.
In 2008, the original designer of the 1977 edition and the original editor joined forces to present a new, deluxe hardcover edition of the most feared, most reviled, and most desired book on the planet. With a new preface by Simon, this 31st Anniversary edition from Ibis Press is available in two versions. The first is a high quality hardcover bound in fine cloth with a ribbon marker. The second is a strictly limited, leatherbound edition, personally signed and numbered by Simon. A small number of leatherbound copies are still available.
POPULAR HARDCOVER, BOUND IN HIGH QUALITY CLOTH
ISBN: 978-0-89254-146-1 • 288 pages • Printed on acid-free art paper • 7¼ x 10¼ • Ribbon marker • Sold everywhere
NUMBERED & SIGNED, DELUXE LEATHERBOUND EDITION
Strictly limited to 220 numbered books, signed by Simon.
ISBN: 978-0-89254-147-8 • Three sided silver-gilding • Special binding boards • Deluxe endpapers
Signed edition available exclusively from www.studio31.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER LEVENDA is the author of many published works on esoteric and historical subjects. His Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult bears a foreword by Norman Mailer and has been translated into six foreign languages. Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests, and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler broke new ground when it revealed the Far East segment of the Nazi escape routes. The Hitler Legacy: The Nazi Cult in Diaspora explores the pernicious Nazi influence on the modern interpretation of Jihad. Levenda is also the author of the three-volume study of the influence of esoterica on American politics, Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraf. His Ibis Press title Dark Lord: H. P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic explores many of the esoteric themes exposed in this novel.
Jacket art and design by Konnie Cintron
The Lovecraft Code Page 44