Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred by Donald Tyson Read Free Book Online Page A

shapes, and sounds that can only be experienced in dreams, and is terrifying beyond endurance to the mind unprepared for its rigors. It is wise to fast for one full day before attempting any of the portals. Confusion and dizziness can lead to loss of control of the processes of the body as it waits for the return of the soul upon the dais. Although the mind is elsewhere during its flights, the body reacts with a kind of sympathetic resonance, so that what is done to the mind may express itself in the flesh; and herein lies a danger, for the death of the host into which the soul precipitates itself after passing through a portal will invariably cause the death of the soulless body of any except the most potent wizard, as the connection between soul and body, tenuous and weak though it seems, cannot be broken without grave consequences.
    Use of the starlit chamber for soul travel attracts the shades of those who in life walked on four limbs through the corridors of the past. They gather about the dais as moths flock to the flame of an oil lamp, restlessly circling and glaring with hate-filled eyes as though at an act of desecration. Their jaws work silently as they roar out their fury, but no sound reaches the ears, for they have been dead such a numberless span of aeons that their voices have faded to silence. Only if the white spiders of second vision are chewed can these pale shades be seen, yet even if the sight is not enhanced, a chill draft of air may be felt, stirred into motion by their flailing, clawed forelegs. The triangles interlocking on the dais restrain the shades, and prevent their claws and teeth from extending above the edge of the circular platform of stone, but it is to be doubted that they could cause harm to living flesh even where they are free to advance, so attenuated is their substance.
    It is yet another property of the triangles that the vermin in the city, those serpents, scorpions, and rats forever crawling the corridors, are kept at bay and rendered unable to bite or sting the traveler who sits enraptured on the green stone while his soul flies to distant lands. Even the flesh-eating bats cannot cross the boundary of the dais after it has been awakened by pressure upon one of its seven pins. In this the makers of the place demonstrated wisdom, for though the ghosts are impotent, the voracious vermin would devour a motionless and entranced man down to his very bones before his soul could return.
    It will be useful to provide a detailed account of the seven destinations entered from the domed chamber, and of their inhabitants and customs, for the instruction of future visitors beneath Irem.

n the distant lands to the east, beyond great mountains that strive so high to the heavens that air itself is fabled to be absent from their peaks, lies an elevated grassland surrounded by cliffs unclimbable save for a few narrow stairs cut into the rock. It is an uncanny region filled with mysteries, about which is it perhaps better not to write with unguarded words. The land is known in the local tongue as Leng. Its most numerous inhabitants are herders of beasts that resemble shaggy goats. These animals supply all their needs. Their meat is the main diet of the nomads, their dense coats the source of cloth for their garments and round tents. The nomads are short of stature but broad of body, with lungs adapted to the thin air, and sallow of face, with slitted black eyes and bristling black hair. Seldom do they walk, but move from place to place mounted on horses that are not as our own, but are so small that the feet of their riders brush the grass, with bushy manes that stand upright.
    Near the center of the plateau upon a slight eminence of ground stands a great monastery of black stones and red tile roofs that is the dwelling for a sect of monks said to worship incomprehensible gods and practice abominations so unnatural and repellent that the inhabitants of the plateau prefer not to speak of them, and even