Necronomicon

by H.P. Lovecraft

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Science Fiction

Synopsis

The only audio edition of Necronomicon authorized by the H. P. Lovecraft Estate!

Originally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s, H. P. Lovecraft’s astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when first published. This tome brings together all of Lovecraft’s harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were when first released. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft’s fiction, as well as attract those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive volume.

Stories include:

1. Dagon
2. Herbert West – Reanimator
3. The Lurking Fear
4. The Rats in the Walls
5. The Whisperer in the Darkness
6. Cool Air
7. In the Vault
8. The Call of Cthulu
9. The Color Out of Space
10. The Horror at Red Hook
11. The Music of Erich Zann
12. The Shadow Out of Time
13. The Dunwich Horror
14. The Haunter of the Dark
15. The Outsider
16. The Shunned House
17. The Unnameable
18. The Thing on the Doorstep
19. Under the Pyramids

Release date: September 18, 2008

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 896

Sample

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is probably the most important and influential author of supernatural fiction of the twentieth century. A lifelong resident of Providence, Rhode Island, many of his tales are set in the fear-haunted towns of an imaginary area of Massachusetts, or in the cosmic vistas that exist beyond space and time. Since his untimely death, Lovecraft has become acknowledged as a master of fantasy fiction and a mainstream American writer second only to Edgar Allan Poe, while his relatively small body of work has influenced countless imitators and formed the basis of a worldwide industry of books, games and movies based on his concepts.

    H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror and science fiction and are as powerful today as they were when they initially appeared. For the first time ever in a single volume, this definitive collection gathers together in chronological order all of Lovecraft’s major stories and short novels, including the complete ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ cycle, just as they were originally published more than half a century ago.

‘Lovecraft opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me’

Stephen King

‘H.P. Lovecraft built the stage on which most of the last century’s horror fiction was performed. As doomed as any of his protagonists, he put a worldview into words that has spread to infect the world. You need to read him – he’s where the darkness starts’

Neil Gaiman

‘As a writer he stands among the best in the world’

August Derleth

‘H.P. Lovecraft is not only the essential link between Edgar Allen Poe and the present day, he has become an almost unimaginably influential force throughout the whole of our popular culture’

Peter Straub

‘H.P. Lovecraft is the most important single writer of the weird … his achievement lies not so much in his influence as in the enduring qualities of his finest work’

Ramsey Campbell

‘In his case the highest literary genius was allied to the most brilliant and most endearing personal qualities’

Clark Ashton Smith

‘It’s hard to name a single modern writer of weird fiction who hasn’t to some extent, often profoundly, felt the influence of Howard Phillips Lovecraft … It’s possible that I personally would never have written anything if I hadn’t first read H.P. Lovecraft. And I fancy I’m but one of many’

Brian Lumley

‘The thing that particularly drew me to Lovecraft as a young and innocent child was the way his stories and the concepts in them would – in a genuinely eerie way – activate the creative machinery in my head’

Gahan Wilson

‘One of the twentieth century’s most original writers’

Arthur C. Clarke

‘He’s an American original, whose influence on subsequent writers in the field is all-pervasive’

Joyce Carol Oates

‘In a genre blessed with many great stylists, H.P. Lovecraft’s baroque imagination and outrageous use of language still manages to stand head and shoulders above the rest. A timeless master of the macabre and the true connoisseur of dread’

Michael Marshall Smith

‘There will never be another like him’

Edmond Hamilton

The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag (1923)

The Shunned House (1928)

The Battle That Ended the Century [with R.H. Barlow] (1934)

The Cats of Ulthar (1935)

Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936)

H.P.L. (1937)

The Notes and Commonplace Book (1938)

The Outside and Others (1939)

Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943)

The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories of the Supernatural (1944)

Marginalia (1944)

The Dunwich Horror and Other Weird Tales (1945)

Supernatural Horror in Literature (1945)

Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (1945)

The Lurker at the Threshold [with August Derleth] (1945)

The Dunwich Horror (1945)

The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (1947)

Something About Cats and Other Pieces (1949)

The Haunter of the Dark and Other Tales of Horror (1951)

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1951)

The Challenge from Beyond [with C.L. Moore, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long] (1954)

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (1955)

The Survivor and Others [with August Derleth] 1957

Cry Horror! (1958)

The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces [& Divers Hands] (1959)

The Shunned House (1961)

Dreams and Fancies (1962)

The Dunwich Horror and Others: Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (1963)

Collected Poems (1963)

Autobiography of a Nonentity (1963)

The Dunwich Horror and Others (1963)

The Colour Out of Space (1964)

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1964)

The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (1964)

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1965)

Selected Letters I: 1911-1924 (1965)

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (1966)

The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces [& Divers Hands] (1966)

3 Tales of Horror (1967)

The Shadow Out of Time and Other Tales of Horror [with August Derleth] (1968)

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (1968)

Selected Letters II: 1925-1929 (1968)

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1969)

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos [and Others] (1969)

The Tomb and Other Tales (1970)

The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror (1970)

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1970)

The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1970)

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (1971)

The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (1970)

The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1971)

Fungi from Yuggoth and Other Poems (1971)

Nine Stories from the Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1971)

The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories of Horror (1971)

The Shuttered Room and Other Stories (1971)

Selected Letters III: 1929–1931 (1971)

The Watchers Out of Time and Others [with August Derleth] (1974)

Lovecraft at Last [with Willis Conover] (1975)

The Horror in the Museum and Other Tales (1975)

The Horror in the Burying Ground and Other Tales (1975)

Selected Letters IV: 1932-1934 (1976)

Selected Letters V: 1932-1937 (1976)

The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1982)

The Dunwich Horror and Others (1984)

At the Mountains of Madness (1985)

Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1986)

The Horror in the Museum (1989)

H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 1: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (1985)

The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 2: Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1985)

The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 3: The Haunter of the Dark and Other Tales (1985)

Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1987)

The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1989)

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos: Golden Anniversary Anthology [& Divers Hands] (1990)

At the Mountains of Madness (1990)

Crawling Chaos: Selected Works 1920-1935 (1993)

Miscellaneous Writings (1995)

Dreams of Terror and Death (1995)

The Road to Madness (1996)

Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (1997)

The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft (1997)

More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft (1999)

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (1999)

Black Seas of Infinity: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft (2001)

The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft (2001)

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (2001)

At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (2002)

Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei (2002)

Waking Up Screaming (2003)

Graphic Classics 4: H.P. Lovecraft (2003)

The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (2004)

Letter from New York (2004)

Lovecraft: Tales (2005)

At the Mountains of Madness (2005)

Shadows of Death (2005)

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following individuals, whose ground-breaking work was consulted (and in some cases quoted from) in the compilation of this volume: H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, L. Sprague De Camp, E. Hoffman Price, Lin Carter, Willis Conover, Peter Cannon, Mike Ashley, Sheldon Jaffery, Dorothy M. Grobe Litersky, Robert Bloch, Hazel Heald, Zealia B. Bishop, W. Paul Cook, Donald Wandrei, Ramsey Campbell, Leo Margulies, S.T. Joshi, Farnsworth Wright, T.G. Cockcroft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Joseph Payne Brennan, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Kenneth Sterling, Brian Lumley, Basil Copper, Colin Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik, Mark Owings and Jack L. Chalker, Ed Naha, Darrell C. Richardson, Rheinhart Kleiner, Peter Ruber, Tim Stout, Paul Walker and Gahan Wilson.

Special thanks also go to my editor Jo Fletcher, Malcolm Edwards, Gillian Redfearn and Val and Les Edwards, for all their help and support.

‘Night-Gaunts’, originally published in The Phantagraph, 1936.

‘Dagon’, originally published in The Vagrant No.11, November 1919.

‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’, originally published in The Vagrant No.13, May 1920.

‘The Doom That Came to Sarnath’, originally published in The Scot No.44, June 1920.

‘The Cats of Ulthar’, originally published in The Tryout Vol.6, No.11, November 1920.

‘The Nameless City’, originally published in The Wolverine No.11, November 1921.

‘Herbert West – Reanimator’, originally published under the title ‘Grewsome Tales’ in Home Brew Vol.1, Nos.1-6, February-July, 1922.

‘The Music of Erich Zann’, originally published in The National Amateur, Vol.44, No.4, March 1922.

‘The Lurking Fear’, originally published in Home Brew Vol.2, No.6-Vol.3, No.3, January-April 1923.

‘The Hound’, originally published in Weird Tales, February 1924.

‘The Rats in the Walls’, originally published in Weird Tales, March 1924.

‘Under the Pyramids’, originally published (as by Harry Houdini) under the title ‘Imprisoned with the Pharaohs’ in Weird Tales, May-July 1924.

‘The Unnamable’, originally published in Weird Tales, July 1925.

‘In the Vault’, originally published in The Tryout Vol.10, No.6, November 1925.

‘The Outsider’, originally published in Weird Tales, April 1926.

‘The Horror at Red Hook’, originally published in Weird Tales, January 1927.

‘The Colour Out of Space’, originally published in Amazing Stories, September 1927.

‘Pickman’s Model’, originally published in Weird Tales, October 1927.

‘The Call of Cthulhu’, originally published in Weird Tales, February 1928.

‘Cool Air’, originally published in Tales of Magic and Mystery, March 1928.

‘The Shunned House’, originally published in The Shunned House (The Recluse Press, 1928).

‘The Silver Key’, originally published in Weird Tales, January 1929.

‘The Dunwich Horror’, originally published in Weird Tales, April 1929.

‘The Whisperer in Darkness’, originally published in Weird Tales, August 1931.

The Strange High House in the Mist’, originally published in Weird Tales, October 1931.

‘The Dreams in the Witch-House’, originally published in Weird Tales, July 1933.

‘From Beyond’, originally published in The Fantasy Fan Vol.1, No.10, June 1934.

‘Through the Gates of the Silver Key’, originally published in Weird Tales, July 1934.

‘At the Mountains of Madness’, originally published in Astounding Stories, February-April 1936.

‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, originally published in The Shadow Over Innsmouth (Visionary Publishing Co., 1936).

‘The Shadow Out of Time’, originally published in Astounding Stories, June 1936.

‘The Haunter of the Dark’, originally published in Weird Tales, December 1936.

‘The Thing on the Doorstep’, originally published in Weird Tales, January 1937.

‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward’, originally published in Weird Tales, May-July 1941.

‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’, originally published in Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Arkham House, 1943).

‘To a Dreamer’, originally published in The Coyote, January 1921.

‘Afterword: A Gentleman of Providence’ copyright © Stephen Jones 2008.

All rights reserved.



I AM WRITING THIS under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue.

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.

For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue.

On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill.

I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence.

I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness.

As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy footholds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.

All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about a hundred yards ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.

Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith, on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain.

It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size was an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men – at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesquesness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me.

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.

When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm – a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind – of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!





I REPEAT TO YOU, gentlemen, that your inquisition is fruitless. Detain me here forever if you will; confine or execute me if you must have a victim to propitiate the illusion you call justice; but I can say no more than I have said already. Everything that I can remember, I have told you with perfect candour. Nothing has been distorted or conceded, and if anything remains vague, it is only because of the dark cloud which has come over my mind – that cloud and the nebulous nature of the horrors which brought it upon me.

Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren, though I think – almost hope he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown. I will not deny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yours may have seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville pike, walking toward Big Cypress Swamp, at half past 11 on that awful night. That we bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with attached instruments, I will even affirm; for these things all played a part in the single hideous scene which remains burned into my shaken recollection. But of what followed, and of the reason I was found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, I must insist that I know nothing save what I have told you over and over again. You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form the setting of that frightful episode. I reply that I knew nothing beyond what I saw. Vision or nightmare it may have been – vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was – yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after we left the sight of men. And why Harley Warren did not return, he or his shade – or some nameless thing I cannot describe – alone can tell.

As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were well known to me, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the languages of which I am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages I cannot understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired book which brought on the end – the book which he carried in his pocket out of the world – was written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere. Warren would never tell me just what was in that book. As to the nature of our studies – must I say again that I no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rather merciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual inclination. Warren always dominated me, and sometimes I feared him. I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years. But I do not fear him now, for I suspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear for him.

Once more I say that I have no clear idea of our object on that night. Certainly, it had much to do with something in the book which Warren carried with him – that ancient book in undecipherable characters which had come to him from India a month before – but I swear I do not know what it was that we expected to find. Your witness says he saw us at half past 11 on the Gainsville pike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp. This is probably true, but I have no distinct memory of it. The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens.

The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years. It was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone. On every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I seemed haunted by the notion that Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a lethal silence of centuries. Over the valley’s rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapours that seemed to emanate from unheard of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausoleum facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation.

My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolis concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half-obliterated sepulchre and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have been carrying. I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades, whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephone outfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth