“(Anthony) on the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
which some did die to look on;”
But should that story be widely known, it may be that what drove the blaspheming Arab mad may well drive honest men sane. And so I transcribe below, shorn of as much of its incoherent madness as possible, and cleansed of the filth that besmirched every thought that bubbled from the cesspit of Alhazred’s obscene mind, a correct version of the last chapter of the Necronomicon.
* * * *
There was One Other. The Great One. Great Father and Great Mother in One. Greater than Great Cthulhu, than Hastur his brother, than Shub-Niggurath the Goat with a Thousand Young, than Tsathoggua, than great Yog-Sothoth himself—for They are but Ones Spawn. One was once of the Great Old Ones, near the mightiest, for One challenged the supremacy of Azathoth Himself, the blind idiot, Lord of All. Nay, his children have told me—but this I may not believe—that One (who is too great to be Named) was indeed Lord of All! So great was One that They-Who-Are-Not-To-Be-Thought-Of, fearing lest Evil become supreme, hurled him from his awful throne and chained him with chains of flesh that he might not break to this, the Planet of the Damned. And as he fell he spawned Yog-Sothoth, who only is less than Azathoth. So says great Cthulhu, first of the Great Abominations which One formed from his own flesh to be his servants and the masters of the planet.
Mighty was the Great One, loathsome the body They had bound him in—yet he gloried in its horror, and moulded it with his own will into a Thing to describe which would strike death into the craven soul of mortal men. The Faceless Nyarlathotep, messenger of the Great Old Ones, could not endure the foulness that was One, where he lay in a pool of his own slimy exhalations in the cavern in the mountains, lay and ruled the world with the terror of himself and the gods he had spawned. Had but I, Abdul Alhazred, been alive then to worship him! Great his Children, diligently have I served them and well have they paid me, with ecstasies the name of which would draw shrieks of horror from those white-livered children-in-men’s-shapes who talk so loud of their puerile torturings with knives and fire and water. But the Great One—to serve him would have been—would have been—Curse the Roman! May the Hounds of Tindalos hunt his shrieking soul through the ends of space for a million million times a million eons! How could he do that which he did! Great Cthulhu I asked and he shrank and would not reply. Tsathoggua I asked, and Tsathoggua would not tell me. Yog-Sothoth I asked, greatest of the Spawn, and Yog-Sothoth would not tell me. Yea, by my Art did I call on Nyarlathotep, the faceless howler in the darkness, commanding the messenger of the Great Old Ones as never man had dared before, and Nyarlathotep ceased his eternal howling and would not reply, though he feared me as he fears only Cthugha, the Eternal Fiery One, who when the Time comes shall consume him utterly.
Was it a machination of Azathoth? One’s children say Azathoth, even mighty as he was, would never have dared to plot against the Great One. Yet surely it was only by some hostile guidance that this man, this incredible man, was driven with his rabble of soldiers into the mountains where lay the cavern of the Great One. Perhaps the Elder Gods—but they had only wanted to exile the Great One, not destroy him.
However it was, the Roman came. Marcus Antonius, a big brawling lecherous brute who boasted he feared god nor devil. A foolish boast, which many have made to me—and fled shrieking if they but smelt the week-old effluvium left from one of Cthulhu’s visits. But Marcus Antonius—how could there be such a man? Man he was, who fought and loved like a man, and died foolishly as a man will through stupid devotion to a trollop. Could such a one be greater than the Great Ones to whom I have given so much worship? That I have damned myself to all eternity for—for—NO!
* * * *
I must tell it. It must be recorded. This Antonius and his soldiers were lost. Starving. They drank the urine of the horses. They killed the horses and ate them—and went on through the bare mountains. Antonius was their leader. He boasted of his strength and endurance and would not eat of the horse-flesh, leaving it for the others. On they went, and they came to a valley—a gloomy cleft in the hills. But water ran crystal clear down a rocky bed and scrubby pines grew around. They drank the water and made a huge fire of the trees—but the hunger was still there. And Marcus Antonius was hungriest of all.
At the head of the cleft was a cave. Caves are often inhabited by animals. Animals can be eaten. Marcus Antonius led the way to the mouth of the cave, but there all stopped. For from the cave came such a stench as would petrify a man’s soul within his living body, and more evil than that. None could advance further but Antonius, who called them cowards and went on, went down into the dreadful gloom of that cavern. Went alone.…
Silence. A long silence. Then suddenly, horribly, the reverberating uproar of a furious combat in some vast hollow below. Part of the noise the bellows of fighting-mad Marcus Antonius—part of such a nature that many who heard fled screaming from the accursed spot. They were the lucky ones. Those who remained, white-faced, frozen with terror, heard the noises continue, and draw nearer. Abruptly the cavern belched forth a writhing mass, the maniacally fighting Antonius smeared from head to foot with a mixture of his own blood and revolting slime from that which he fought. That which he had dragged out into the light of day, where never had it been seen before. That which his javelin could not slay, his sword not wound. That abomination at the sight of which the watchers dropped dead, the very souls blasted out of their bodies.
It called for help, and twilight shrouded the sun, and the strong shapes of the Wind Walkers, Ithaqua and Iloigor and Zhar and great Hastur himself came howling down. And Antonius saw and laughed unafraid, and called upon Jupiter, whom the Greeks called Zeus, the Lord of Heaven and master of storms, called asking for aid as from an equal. And lo, on the Walkers and on Hastur, on Cthulhu hurtling from the sea and on Yog-Sothoth gathering formlessly from everywhere and nowhere, on all the hastening spawn of One, Jupiter hurled his thunderbolts, and his laughter crashed and bellowed and split the skies as he lashed back the children of One with the multi-thonged lashes of the lightning.
And under that madness of light and noise Marcus Antonius, with strength beyond the compute of mortal man, raised the Great One and hurled him onto the mighty fire his men had kindled. Horribly, the One screamed and writhed amongst the glowing embers, and Antonius laughed and threw on more wood, and in the heart of the flames the One screamed abominably until little but blacked charcoal was left of his frightful body. And then Marcus Antonius, a man amongst men, who feared nor god nor devil, but who was very hungry, smashed the charred shell and inside found nothing but a single steaming piece of rank flesh, loathsome of shape and color and odor. But it was flesh, and he ate.
Yes, he ate it, the brutish Roman dolt, he ate it, the yet-living heart of the Great One! And so he destroyed for ever the Great One! And if One could himself be thus destroyed by brute courage and appetite, what of his children? Have I given my life and more than my life to the service of those who have no more power over a brave man than the beasts of the field?
* * * *
The rest is madness.
CAER SIDHI, by George T. Wetzel
Originally published in Dark Mind, Dark Heart (1962).
Documents in the case of the Shoal Light
I. O’Malley’s Journal
November 6, 1799.
Awoke this morning from another nightmare. Neal also had such disturbed slumber. He has unusual views regarding them—describes them as accompanied by a “whirling around without motion”—which seems to me pure Celtic superstition. But the real cause of the dreams is probably not his imagination—he seems to think some baneful influence is at work!—but rather the difficulty we have been having with the villagers. It is this concern that gives us both bad dreams. He disagrees.
This forenoon several of the village fishermen rowed out to our
lighthouse to remonstrate with us. The Shoal Light “took God’s grace away” from them, they claimed. What blasphemy!—to think that shipwrecks and the drowning of poor sailors are a special mark of God’s favor to gain them the spoils of salvage! They are as bad as the Cornishmen who have lured ships to their doom with false lights!
November 7, 1799.
Brian Mackenzie rowed out unobtrusively this morning with a letter left for us at the Turk’s Head Tavern by the post rider. It had been sent by the Trinity House of Navigation to tell us an inspector is on his way, no doubt to check our logbook, for this Light has been reported unfavorably by several ship captains, who claim its beacon operated oddly when sighted. Neal and I have been very attentive to our watches. It seems very strange that such reports should have been made, and neither of us can understand it.
Mackenzie warned us of trouble—perhaps this evening. The fishermen are speaking against the Light and met last night at the Turk’s Head, where they roused themselves to fury against the Light. We primed and loaded our fowling piece and our three pistols. Neither of us is alarmed, but we cannot help being uneasy, and being sleep-weary does not help. Sleep last night was full of illogical nightmares—of confused ideas, alien visions, a dreadful sense of vertigo. I did not rest much and I have been tired all day, yet I will need sharp ears and eyes which are already heavy with fatigue. Neal is in the same condition, having had worse dreams than I. His recurrent dream came back—the anomalous nightmare of a “whirling around without motion,” which, he thinks, must have some connection—however obscure—with our Light.
Evening—The attack came just after dusk. Neal has an ugly head wound as a result of it. Two boats attempted to land on the rocks, unseen, but Neal heard their oars creak and challenged them. One man stood up in his boat, shook his fist, and cursed us. Then two others fired at Neal, one shot wounding him. I returned their fire before they could reload. They retreated, not without some wounded, I believe.
November 8, 1799.
Awake all last night. No new attack. The strain of watching shoreward constantly is taking its toll—my head swims with dizziness. If only I could snatch a few hours sleep! But I dare not. Neal needs a doctor’s care, but it would be disastrous to leave the Light unguarded for the fishermen would surely demolish it. Neal is too irrational to be of any help, and certainly cannot resume his watch.
In his delirium, Neal’s nightmares and superstitions seem to be taking conscious form—at least, to him. I found him at dawn with his ear pressed to the stone floor. He was listening to the sound of the sea, he said. He explained that both sea shells and lighthouses were hollow spirals and thus both subject to the same acoustical phenomena. He babbled somewhat incoherently about the architectural similarity of our lighthouse to the Caer Sidhi—the “spiral castle” of Celtic myth.
The fishermen left us alone all day. Perhaps they are waiting for the dark of the moon to try again.
November 9, 1799.
My third night of sleeplessness. Every time I close my eyes I seem to plunge into hallucination or nightmare. Sometimes I feel that I am asleep despite my open eyes and general awareness of my surroundings.
Neal’s muttering about the Caer Sidhi stirred my memories of something I had forgotten long ago. An old farmer I once knew accidentally plowed into a raised knoll in his grain-field—one which had never been planted to grain—and opened a passageway; a local clergyman, an amateur antiquarian, crawled in, and found it an ancient chambered mound whose walls were carved with the Celtic spiral of immortality.
The relics were not Britanno-Roman, he said, and talked a great deal of symbols found before graves in Goidelic legends, of cromlechs, and of obscure philological-mythic relations between the Welsh Sidhi and the Aes Sidhe of Erin, and of Towinoiont and Catair Cu Roi. There was something else about Caer Sidhi of some significance, but my mind is so fatigued that memory of it will not return to me.
I sat on the parapet outside for a long while last night with a lantern. As the clock work mechanism revolved it, I felt the rhythm of the Light winking out in one quadrant and darkness that rushed in to fill the resulting vacuum. Perhaps this is where Neal gets his strange nightmare of a “whirling around without motion”—nothing more than the revolving beacon on top of our stationary lighthouse. And yet…
November 10, 1799.
A smoke-squall has now raged for hours—one of the kind the Norwegians call a Roegflage breeding in the ocean between Norway and the Orkneys. It is in a way a Godsend, for the hostile fishermen will never put out from shore in such weather to attack the Light. So I have been able to sleep and rest.
We had the first hint of it at dawn. The clouds took on a water-green tint. Afterwards I saw an unbroken black line far out to sea; this crept, hardly perceptibly, toward shore.
In an hour it was near enough to study in detail with my glass. It was a black wall of water, fathoms high—the herald of a fearful storm to follow. I saw a ship, too. Did its captain not see our warning beacon in the grey dawn? If he came closer, the monstrous waves would pound him on our reef.
The aqueous wall grew to awesome heights, reaching almost to the waning stars and thrusting its crown through the lower levels of the clouds there. It seemed to me that this monstrous wave would surely roll over and swallow up the earth in its maw—yet it was still leagues away, and growing larger, wearing the aspect of doom.
I took Neal down into the tower and lashed him, and then myself, to the beams, while the wall of water came rushing on like the sound of the last judgment. The roaring of water steadily increased—I thought for hours, but it must have been only minutes—until all existence was one tremendous crescendo of wind and water. It struck at last, and the tower shook as if beset by a cyclopean earthquake. Tons of water crashed into the tower through the lantern and through fissures between the stone blocks, drenching and almost drowning us. Lesser structures would have been torn up into the air and scattered, but our tower was built to withstand the enormous tidal surges and the incredibly high seas that rise from winds and storms blowing across the entire Atlantic without impediment—forces vastly more destructive than anything known to nature.
Then it passed. I untied Neal and myself, and, struggling through the water—some still pouring in—made my way to the top of the tower. A few dead fish and some seaweed littered the interior of the smashed lantern—debris spewed up by the ocean. But outside the world still existed. The force of the wave was still being thrown back by the shore’s mass. Out on the sea a water-logged hulk drifted, with several unfortunate seamen clinging to its masts. The rebounding swell shook the tower and passed on toward the foundering ship. I could not watch the end.
November 11, 1799.
The storm diminishing today, though the wind drives sheets of water still above the boiling sea. Visibility very low.
Evening—I repaired the lantern as best I could and got it into working order. I could not repair the shattered windows, and now the wind whistles eerily within the tower—like a single bass pipe in a church organ, or that sound a boy makes by blowing over the lip of an empty bottle. Several feet of water still stand below.
Neal is much worse. He raves now and then, but is in a kind of torpor, almost comatose. I cannot understand most of what he says, but it is disquieting if not frightening to listen to him babble about the Caer Sidhi, coupling it with such other-worldly places as Annwfn and Pedryvan all the more so since the significance of Caer Sidhi occurs to me now, and I remember enough of my boyhood in Erin—of the Celtic lore—to know that the Caer Sidhi was much feared and believed in by the older fishermen—that its name in the Gaelic, meaning “spiral castle,” was well chosen (an ominous symbol of death!)—that it revolved or spiraled at night so that none coming to its base could find its entrance—and more I cannot or would rather not recall…
In many ways—its watery isolation, the spiral stai
rs, the revolving light—this tower is akin to the Caer Sidhi. Lighthouse geometry and architecture might be precarious!
November 12, 1799.
Someone on shore attempted signal communication today, but the wind is too violent and the atmosphere too full of sea-spray—the Roegflage—to permit reading the signals. Perhaps they saw Neal from the shore…
Last night I put Neal on the parapet outside the tower. I would be more Christian, but I have a horror of him now. I cannot put him into the sea. In any event, they will think that I am mad. Perhaps I am. What I have noticed these past few nights inclines me to doubt my own reason, though I have tried to keep this record sane and balanced. That is the blurring of the view outside the tower, particularly at night—like a landscape glimpsed through a flawed window pane. No natural explanation offers itself for it—if it is an actual phenomenon and not the hallucination of decayed reason.
Another thing—one utterly outré—threatens my sanity. Can the residuum of one man’s nightmares be left over for another’s dreams? I awoke trembling last night from visions like those Neal had, those that cursed his last nights and haunted his days. I seem to recall its beginning in a megalithic place where I wandered among cromlechs, dolman stones and menhirs like fantastically high walls making a maze of spiral design. I was in a roofless, gigantic tower, down which shone a million stars out of heavens virtually alive with those circumpolar stars ever to be seen, heavens in which Draco writhed evilly about that forgotten axis of the skies where once it reigned aeons ago, coiling and twisting around Polaris.
But what drew me in that alien place was the great nebula of Andromeda, that majestic whirlpool of light whose irresolvable depths held a fascination I could not escape. There was a curious association of ideas dominating all things—that vast nebula—the watery vortex of the maelstrom at the bottom of which the monster Kraken is rumored to lurk—and the endless ascending stairs of a tower that reached up out of blackness and ascended to darkness above.
The Second Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK® Page 40