The Xothic Legend Cycle

Behind the Mask by Lin Carter

IN July of 1928, the library of Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, received a rare and unusual gift. It arrived as part of the Tuttle bequest, one of a number of suppressed works of occultism and demonology. The book to which I refer was known as the R'lyeh Text.

Dr. Cyrus Llanfer, the director of the library at that time, looked over the collection in a cursory manner before handing the volumes over to one of the junior librarians, a young man named Bryant Hoskins, for cataloguing. Some of the books were in printed form, such as the sinister De Vermis Mysteriis of Ludvig Prinn and von Junzt's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, while others were manuscript copies, often in fragmentary condition, such as the obscure Book of Eibon, the mysterious Pnakotic Manuscripts, and the R'lyeh Text itself.

Most of these rare works were known to Dr. Llanfer, if only by reputation. He was fully cognizant of the extraordinary rarity and priceless value of the bequest and he privately resolved to write personally to the nephew of the late Amos Tuttle, who had given his uncle’s superb collection to the library. Admonishing his assistant to handle the precious volumes with care, he saw them safely stowed away.

Young Hoskins was less familiar with these little-known works than was Llanfer, but as a librarian by profession and a collector in a small way, rumors of some of these fabulous titles had filtered into his knowledge. The R'lyeh Text in particular interested him. He knew the curious old book had never been published in any language, having been circulated in manuscript form for generations, perhaps for centuries, among certain secret sects of occultists and devil-worshipers.

Despite his interest, he found the very appearance of the book oddly repugnant. Opening it, he was appalled at the reek of decay which arose from its crumbling pages. Mastering his repugnance, he examined it gingerly and found that, while the codex was written in English characters, the actual language was unfamiliar to him and bore little if any resemblance to the several tongues, ancient and modern, with which he was acquainted. It was inscribed in faded inks upon thick leaves of yellowed parchment which were flaking and crumbling, as if from curious morbidity. Here along the Atlantic coast, he knew, the damp salt air breeds mildew and mold which often attacks books and papers: the condition of the R'lyeh Text, however, stemmed from some other kind of decay which he could not at once identify.

While the odor of the disintegrating pages was bad enough, Hoskins found the binding repellent in the extreme. It was a tan or brownish leather whose soft, finely grained texture had an unwholesome resemblance to that of human skin. Some of the witch cults of the Dark Ages, he knew, had bound their hellish testaments and grimoires in the tanned skin of human sacrifices ... but, surely, this could not be the case with the Text ....

Everything about the queer old book repelled the young librarian and aroused a squeamish revulsion within him. Its aura of unnatural ancientry and inexplicable decay, the very odor which exuded from the rotting pages, the shuddersome feel of the soft, smooth binding, aroused a certain revulsion within the young man which he could neither deny nor quite explain.

It was as if some uncanny, seldom-awakened sense within his innermost being detected a frightful danger within the ancient book ... and was trying to warn him to leave it alone.

But this was sheer nonsense, of course.

DURING the following weeks, Bryant Hoskins discovered quite a bit about the history of the R’lyeh Text and the other queer old volumes contained in the Tuttle bequest. The book in question had been purchased by the library’s benefactor, Amos Tuttle, for a reputedly enormous price. He had got it somewhere from the dark interior of Asia, obtained from a Chinese priest or shaman in inner Tibet. There was some scandal or other connected with Amos Tuttle’s acquisition of the R’lyeh Text: The less reputable newspapers of the time were full of rumors concerning queer and fearful things which had, supposedly, recently occurred in the old Tuttle house on Aylesbury Road near the Innsmouth Turnpike. There were hints of a ghastly sequence of events surrounding the death of Amos Tuttle, things too starkly dreadful not to be hushed up and quickly forgotten ....

To all such furtive and whispered horrors, Hoskins turned a deaf ear. He was a scientist first and foremost: a scholar, known for his lucid and rational intelligence, a man not given to poking into weird legends and stories based on flimsy or insubstantial evidence. Queer things were happening among the ancient, crumbling seaports of coastal Massachusetts these days which might have given him pause, had he bothered to listen much to the tales going about. Only a few months before, during the hard winter of 1927-1928, there had been mysterious goings-on in the neighboring town of Innsmouth. Agents of the federal government had apparently been conducting a strange and secret investigation of some sort in that vicinity, as a result of which a surprisingly large number of raids and arrests had been made in February of 1928, and certain blocks of crumbling tenements along the abandoned waterfront had been burned and dynamited. There were even stories that a U.S. naval submarine had discharged explosive torpedoes down into the marine chasms off Devil Reef, although sober and sensible local citizens dismissed this wild tale as mere rumor, or, this being the era of Prohibition, as part of the continuing battle against liquor smuggling.

To none of these fanciful stories did Bryant Hoskins bother listening. Doubtless, the government knew what it was doing, he reasoned. Equally certain, whatever events had actually taken place in Innsmouth had been expanded by whispered rumor entirely out of all proportion to the facts.

What fascinated him about the old book was the mysterious language in which it had been originally written, and the reason why the redactor of this particular copy had rendered the strange tongue into English characters. The only conceivable reason was so that it might be read or chanted aloud by persons or cults to whom the original glyphs or characters would otherwise have been illegible.

Among the letters and papers of the late Amos Tuttle were references to a portion of central Asia known as Leng. Whether or not Leng was part of inner Tibet was unknown to Hoskins, nor could he find reference to it in any of the standard atlases or geographical works to hand. One of his former teachers at Miskatonic, however, had heard of Leng in one or another shadowy old Asian mythology.

"Yes, of course, the so-called 'shunned and forbidden’ Plateau of Leng, where the Ancient Ones supposedly ruled long before the first men evolved; you will find information concerning it in Alhazred," his teacher friend remarked. Alhazred, Hoskins vaguely knew, was the author of a work called the Necronomicon, and the Necronomicon was another of the old, little-known books which the Miskatonic Library possessed. It was, in fact, one of the library’s chief treasures.

“Who were these Ancient Ones?” he inquired interestedly. “Some pantheon of Asiatic gods?”

"Demons, rather, I should say," commenced the other. "In Alhazred they are called the 'Old Ones', or the ‘Great Old Ones’, in contrast to the leaders of their minions, whom Alhazred names as the ‘Lesser Old Ones’— Dagon and Hydra. Dokrug, Rlim Shaikorth, and so on."

These names meant nothing to Hoskins at the time, of course.

AMONG the copies of Turtle’s letters, Hoskins found several addressed to the Gupchong Lamasery on the fringes of northern Tibet. These letters entreated that a sealed document be carried by hand through the mountain passes into Tcho-Tcho country and delivered, if possible, to someone or something called “the Tcho-Tcho lama.” Hoskins’ informant, an enthusiastic amateur anthropologist and student of folklore, had information about this item, too.

"The Tcho-Tcho people are a tribe in Burma," he explained. “Some authorities consider them purely legendary; supposedly, their cultus is centered in the ruins of Alaozar in the Sung Plateau region ... nobody knows what’s there, I’m afraid. Only the Hawks Expedition got that far, and you know what happened to it"

"But Burma is not beyond the mountain passes of northern Tibet, but entirely in another direction," argued Hoskins. His informant nodded.

"I said the Tcho-Tcho people were centered in the Sung Plateau country. Actually, they are a religion, or at least a cult, found scattered through the mystic heart of Asia. Since they worship the Great Old Ones, it’s not surprising to find a Tcho-Tcho lama in the Plateau of Leng. All that country was under the dark dominion of the Old Ones ... in the Alhazredic mythology, that is."

"What kind of a place is Leng?" Hoskins asked.

His friend shook his head. "Cold; barren; dead—sterile. Nothing lives there. Nothing could live there. The place is under the eternal curse of the Elder Gods, that is, the beneficent divinities opposed to the evil demons called the Old Ones."

"If nothing lives there, how do the Tcho-Tcho survive?" Hoskins persisted. He could tell that, for some reason, his colleague was uneasy at continuing this conversation. He couldn't guess why.

"I meant that nothing human lives there, or could live there," his friend said in oddly hushed tones. "I never said the Tcho-Tcho were human." With that strange comment, Wilmarth abruptly terminated the discussion. He left Hoskins puzzled and unsatisfied, and more intrigued than ever.

Nothing human ....

HOSKINS succeeded in identifying the original language of the book as "R’lyehian." This proved to be a mythical tongue spoken only in R'lyeh itself, which was a lost city sunken under the sea like Atlantis. But R'lyeh was believed to have been submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean, not the Atlantic, and this in itself was a curious item of information, since at the time Hoskins now thought the Text to have been transliterated into English letters, the first explorers had yet to reach the Pacific.

Following Wilmarth's advice, he consulted the Necronomicon. To his surprise, he found therein a sentence or versicle directly quoted from the R'lyeh Text; it was as much a jumble of unpronounceable consonants and vowels as the rest of the Text, but with a certain difference.

The line read: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.

The difference lay in the fact that in Alhazred the sentence was actually translated. It meant: In his house in R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

This very line Hoskins found in the Text, very near the beginning. In fact, it was on the third page of the bound manuscript. What seemed important about this to Hoskins was that, obviously, the R'lyehian language was, or had been, known and understood, or otherwise neither Alhazred nor anybody else could possibly have translated it. But the language had no direct connection to any Arabic or Arabic-related language whatsoever; this Hoskins learned by consulting a linguist in the Eastern Languages Department of the university.

What most excited Hoskins about this point was that Tuttle himself had scribbled a marginal note on the third page where the line appeared. In a crabbed hand, he had written what appeared to be his own translation of the cryptic sentences: "His minions preparing the way, and he no longer dreaming?" The marginal gloss was followed by other scribbled notations whose meaning so eluded Hoskins that he dismissed them.

The implications of the marginal entry were astounding. It could only mean that Amos Tuttle himself knew, or could at least partially decipher, the mysterious language of ancient and legendary R'lyeh. That meant that somewhere among Turtle's papers, Hoskins might conceivably find a glossary or dictionary of R'lyehian, with whose aid Hoskins himself could read the strange old book.

At this point it becomes obvious that the young librarian had developed an unhealthy fixation on the mysterious volume and yearned to penetrate its hidden lore. Had his superior. Dr. Llanfer, been aware of this development, he doubtless would have swiftly put an end to Hoskins' work with the R'lyeh Text. Busied with other matters, however, he unfortunately remained oblivious to the strange fascination which the old book exerted on the young scholar.

A search through the Tuttle papers proved fruitless, further perusal of the Necronimicon, however, provided Hoskins with a remarkable discovery. The passage which contained the information read as follows, in the Elizabethan English version by Dr. John Dee, the notorious British wizard and astrologer, and comprised the entirety of Chapter xvi of Book III, the "Book of the Ciares":

Of Leng and the Mysteries Thereof: Concerning this Leng, ‘tis said by some to lie in Earth's dreamlands to be thus only visited in sleep by power of the Sign of Korh, but I have heard yet others tell that it lieth afar off in the frozen wastes of the anti-boreal Pole, and there be those that hint of Leng that it may be found within the black and secret heart of Asia. But, while many differ on the place thereof, I have heard no man say aught of Leng that is wholesome to the ears of men.

Now of this Leng, ‘tis written that in that dark and frigid land many worlds meet, for it is coterminous with dimensions alternate to our own; and amidst those bleak, untrodden Sands, and frozen hills, and black and horror-haunted peaks, there be strange Portals to Beyond; and Things from Outside that sometimes stray through the Gates to stalk through earthly snows, returning thence to Their unknown and nameless Spheres, glutted on horrid feasts whereof I dread to think upon. So they say; but, as for myself, I believe me well that cold and frightful Leng as much be part of other worlds as part of this, and representeth but a halt-world, as it were, a bridge between the worlds.

They say of old ventured Ilathos there, a wizard of Lomar, beyond the Bnazic Desert and through the Vale of Pnor, taking great care to avoid the dreadful Vaults thereof, and that in time he came upon a crude stone tower amidst the Waste wherein there dwelt from of old a certain Priest whose unseen visage went ever veiled behind a mask of yellow silk. It is written upon the Cylinder of Kadatheron that long they conversed together there in that lonely and ill-rumored tower, the Lomarian mage and Him they call the Elder Hierophant, but of that which was spoken all record has been expunged therefrom, and the Cylinders of Kadatheron are blank, and no man knoweth why.

But I have not seen Leng in all my wanderings or travels, save only in my dreams, and but repeat here the idle tales which others have hinted at within my hearing. He who would know the secret of Leng, he who would plumb the mysteries of Leng, he who would walk the bleak and lonely paths of Leng, let him venture thereunto if he knoweth the Way.

Hoskins stared at the page of the Necronomicon filled with a strange, tremulous excitement that he could neither name nor explain. That night he had the first of many dreams ....

IT was in the early days of September that Bryant Hoskins at last found that for which he had searched so assiduously. Amos Tuttle had, after all, compiled or perhaps copied from some other source a "R'lyehian Key" (as he had entitled the document); the reason why Hoskins had not found it before was that the glossary had been bound toward the end of a volume of miscellaneous pieces which bore the overall title Celueno Fragments.

As it was not permitted to remove volumes from the "locked files" of the library, Hoskins rashly purloined the book, concealing it among the papers in his valise. Later that night in his rooms in Darley Street, he studied the Key with trembling hands. He had long ago copied out extended portions from the Text; now he compared the unknown words to Tuttle’s glossary. In particular, he compared those lines upon the third page of the codex which began with the enigmatic phrase which earlier had caught his attention.

The entire passage contained only seven lines divided into three verses. Hoskins recopied them upon a blank sheet of writing paper, leaving a space between each line, and laboriously attempted a full translation with the use of Tuttle's "R'lyehian Key."

When he was finished some hours later, the page read as follows:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh fhtagn.

(In His House at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.)

Y'ai 'ng'ngah cf'ayak shugg-yaah Cthulhu nafl fhtagn.

(But in the Hour which cometh when Cthulhu no longer waits dreaming,)

N'yba-naaab ‘vygh glag'ng aargb-cf'ayah y’baa mgl'gn.

(Then let the world beware the coming-hence of its Master.)

Ygnaiih! Ygnaiih! S'sathagua dy'uth aiih-cf'ayagh!

(I rise! I rise! Up from the depths I come!)

Mgw-ygna! Mgw-ygna! S'sathagua mglw'nafh ph' R'lyeh!

(He rises! He rises! Up from His House in R'lyeh!)

Mgw-cf'ayak! G'ngah mglw' aargh-cf'ayah n'gh yafl.

(He cometh! The Hour of His coming-hence is at hand.)

Ygnaiih! Aiih-cf'ayagh-ngwa! Uaaah ‘nygh sh'uggua mng mgl'gn.

(I rise! I come forth! Let the world tremble before its Master.)

Hoskins scared at the result of his labors, curiously rapt with a fascination such as he had never felt before. It seemed to him that he was on the brink of recovering an incredible trove of wisdom lost for centuries or ages.

To his surprise, he noticed that it was dawn. He had coiled all night over the "R’lychian Key", not even noticing the hours as they raced by. No wonder he was shaking with fatigue and exhaustion!

That day he did nor report to work at the library, pleading a temporary indisposition. Instead, he slept the deep sleep of physical and nervous exhaustion.

And again there were dreams ...

ON previous such occasions, the dreams of Hoskins had been filled with dark desert landscapes framed with sharp-fanged peaks whereon untrodden snows gleamed palely beneath the cold eye of the peering moon. His dreams were tumultuous with glimpses of crumbling slopes of awesomely ancient stone, the parched and wrinkled floors of prehistoric seas—grim and frightful vistas which reeked of bleak desolation, barrenness, utter sterility and absence of life.

Now during his day-long slumber, Hoskins dreamed of a squat, ugly turret or tower crudely cut from dark porous stone, which stood alone in a frightful waste. Darkness hung over this scene, nor could even the curious eye of the inquisitive moon penetrate the sky, obscured as it was with a film of lowering vapors ... but, now and again, rifts appeared in the clouded firmament, wherethrough glittered icily stars.

Not the known, familiar stars and constellations that Hoskins knew from his childhood: No, these weird stars were formed into constellations unknown to him yet strangely meaningful, as if they shaped enormous symbols vaguely familiar to his dreaming intellect. The sensation was one of unearthly strangeness; yet it was also hugely portentous, as if vast realms of knowledge were contained in those starry symbols which he could—almost—discern.

Of the stone tower amid the desolation he could make out few details, so gloomy was the umbrage which shrouded its rearing bulk and so obscure and fitful the wan luminance shed by those unknown constellations. There radiated from the uncouth angles of that squat, misshapen tower a cold and timeless malignancy ... an implacable and cunning hatred of ... of what? Of living things? Of life itself, perhaps?

In an upper, circular window of the turret-like tower, a ruddy light came and went, like unto the revolving beam of a lighthouse. There drifted through the dreaming brain of Bryant Hoskins a cryptic phrase he had come across in the mad pages of the—

The Elder Pharos ...

Odd, how in dreams the mind picks up wisps and shards of scattered memories and fits them together into a new pattern whose significance, upon awakening, we dismiss.

He woke in twilight, pervaded with a curious languor, as if made weary by his own dream-venturings.

DURING the weeks that followed. Bryant Hoskins paid scant attention to his duties at the library, devoting as many of his waking moments as he could possibly do to translating the whole of the R'lyeh Text. Turtle's glossary proved flawed and many of the meanings Tuttle had recorded Hoskins replaced with more correct definitions ... although how he came by them even he could not have said. Intuition, perhaps.

Gradually, however, the pattern of meaning buried in the mysterious language began to emerge into view. The Text was a melange of chants and prayers, litanies and incantations to several divinities which bore names like Cthulhu, Idh-yaa, Zoth-Ommog, Ubb, Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha, Dagon, Hydra, and Yeb. These were all, it appeared from the context, elemental spirits of the waters of the earth, demon-godlings of the sea. They were, he deduced, severally imprisoned at various sites along the ocean’s floor— Cthulhu in the sunken stone city of R'lych, his son Ythogtha at Yhe, Zoth-Ommog in a submarine abyss near the "Island of the Stone Cities" (a term which, for some reason, again perhaps intuition, reminded Hoskins of the island of Ponape, with its colossal ruins of Nan-Matal), and Ghatanothoa in a sealed crypt atop the submerged mountain of Yaddith-Gho.

Each of these sea demons was served by tribes of minions. Cthulhu by the deep ones whose leaders were “Father Dagon and Mother Hydra"—names, of course, familiar to Hoskins from earlier reading. For example, Dagon was the sea god of the Philistines and Hydra a monster-goddess from Greek mythology. Ythogtha and Zoth-Ommog, on the other hand, were served by a race called the Yuggs, whose leader was Ubb, "Father of Worms”; and Ghatanothoa had the dark ones as his servitors, under their leader, Yeb.

These last three, it seems, were the sons (or "spawn,” as the R'lyeh Text phrased it) of Cthulhu himself, sons which he had begotten in forgotten aeons upon the final member of this grim pantheon, Idh-yaa. According to what Hoskins was slowly piecing together from these rituals and incantations, these entities had all descended to this earth from the stars when the world was newly made, long ages before the rise of humankind. All of them, apparently, except for Idh-yaa the Mighty Mother, who abided yet upon a distant star or world Called "Xoth", which was her natal place, as Cthulhu himself had been spawned upon another world called “Vhoorl.”

It was difficult to know exactly what to make of this weird mythology, which dealt with such advanced cosmological notions as distant galaxies and travel through the dimensions. Indeed, it sounded like the scientific romances of H. G. Wells which Hoskins had devoured in his 'teens, or like some of the stories he had glanced at in the pages of a pulp fiction magazine called Amazing Stories, which had begun appearing on the newsstands only two years before.

And there was another mystery.

Not every night, to be sure, but often enough for their frequency to become vaguely frightening, Hoskins in his dreams returned again and again to those bleak and gloom-shrouded vistas of a frigid, desolate wasteland he hail come to think of as Leng. And to within sight of that misshapen and lonely tower, that squat and crudely carven turret, which brooded on the plain, ever casting its flicker of ruddy luminance from the upmost circular window ....

What could this dead plateau have to do with the tombs of imprisoned gods upon the floor of the Pacific? Why did his sleeping brain—as apparently it did—draw a connection between a frozen and lifeless plateau and the black sea-bottoms? Was it only because of his knowledge that Amos Tuttle had bought the old book from the dark and cryptic heart of Asia, through the medium of a Chinese priest in a lamasery on the northern borders of Tibet?

The "Tcho-Tcho lama" ... was he one and the same as the “Elder Hierophant" mentioned in the Necronomicon in the chapter on Leng ... the nameless one whose face was forever hidden behind a mask or veil of yellow silk?

One possible connection between Leng and the Pacific which had already occurred to Hoskins had been casually mentioned early on by his former literature instructor at Miskatonic, the amateur folklorist and anthropologist, Professor Wilmarth.

The shunned and forbidden Plateau of Leng, where the Ancient Ones supposedly ruled long before the first men evolved .... Wilmarth’s very words echoed unforgotten in Hoskins’ memory.

The "Ancient Ones" were the same as "the Great Old Ones", and Cthulhu and his spawn were great powers among the Great Old Ones, he knew from his research in the pages of Alhazred. If they came down from the stars so long ago that the first men (or first mammals!) had not even evolved, perhaps the plateau or desert of Leng had been then submerged beneath the primal seas of that age ... and, also perhaps, Cthulhu and his spawn and their minions had ruled the prehistoric world from Leng, before the seas drained away and the dry land emerged, whereupon they migrated to the vast Pacific—well, it wasn't much of a theory, but it did satisfy Hoskins in that it answered the problems and contradictions which baffled him, and which robbed him of his rest.

Something else was robbing Hoskins of his rest during those last weeks of September and early October, 1928. His dreams ...

Ever, the same recurring dream ... that blank and desolate expanse of sterile, frozen waste ... that squat and ugly stone tower thrusting against the weirdly deformed constellations ... that circling, bloody beam of light that flashed and flashed and ever and again flashed from the topmost circular window.

In his dreams, night after night, Hoskins floated bodiless across the plateau ... and always, when the dream-spell broke and he awoke, shaking like a leaf and drenched in icy perspiration, he had come ever nearer to the portal of the tower.

What might happen when the dream-sequence ended he could not guess, but he feared it mightily. For something within the tower aroused in him a primal sense of fear ... an inarticulate and dreadful loathing.

Desperate to find surcease of dreams, Hoskins purchased opiates from pharmacies in his neighborhood, and even consulted a physician, Dr Ephraim Sprague, who came highly recommended. Dr. Sprague listened to Hoskins' rambling account of his nightly excursion into dreamland without comment, his expression wryly skeptical, and prescribed a sleeping powder which proved as ineffective as the opiates Hoskins had already tried.

The doctor must have told Hoskins' superior at the library something of his condition, because the next morning Cyrus Llanfer called the young man into his office, inquired sympathetically about his health, and suggested a brief vacation.

"I've noticed you seem drawn and haggard recently, as if you weren't getting enough rest, Hoskins," he said. "You seem run down, as if your nerves were bothering you. These New England winters can be dangerous for someone with as little resistance as you seem to have, so ... what do you say? A few weeks in a warmer climate, eh? Do you a world of good!”

Hoskins left Dr. Llanfer's office, trembling uncontrollably. He couldn't recall just what he had said by way of counter-argument, and on the whole he rather feared he had become belligerent, almost hysterical, and certainly rather incoherent. But—the very thought of breaking off his work at this point filled him with a cold and depthless horror... he was so close co the Ultimate Secret which he knew was concealed within the R’lyeh Text, that to break his concentration by accepting a vacation now would be disastrous.

He hoped that he had neither insulted nor affronted Dr. Llanfer, but—couldn't the senile old idiot see that the world needed the wisdom he would soon be able to bestow upon the multitudes of hapless mankind?

If needful, he would steal the Text itself as he had already stolen the "R'lyehian Key", and flee from Arkham and from the interference of others. There was a cabin in the woods that had belonged to his father, and where the family had vacationed during the long summers of his boyhood ... it would provide a perfect refuge in which he could complete his work without being pestered by meddling outsiders ....

If only he could find surcease from those terrible dreams as easily!

DURING the late fall of 1928, Bryant Hoskins fell into a serious decline. The nervous affliction which he suffered from soon became blatantly obvious to everyone. His features were drawn and haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his form wasted as from some debilitating disease.

In part, this was assigned to the insomnia which, it was believed, he suffered from. In actuality, of course, it was Hoskins himself who strove to refrain from sleeping ... because of those ghastly dreams which now preyed upon him almost nightly ... chose dreams in which he floated stealthily nearer and nearer to that horrible stone tower which brooded enigmatically amid the wastes of frozen Leng.

When neither the panaceas available at the pharmacy nor the medicines prescribed by Dr. Ephraim Sprague availed him in his struggle to cease dreaming, Hoskins turned to certain furtive folk who lurked in disreputable dives along the rotting waterfront of Arkham—dark, foreign men who purveyed obscure narcotics from squalid bars and fetid alleyways.

These drugs, indeed, kept him from dreaming, but at a grisly price. For his strength declined even as his mind lost its wonted lucidity, and his health began to crumble. Cognizant of Hoskins' rapid decline, Dr. Llanfer finally insisted that he take the undesired vacation he had earlier offered. Hoskins could only accept, but he stole the Rtyab Text and vanished into the thick woodlands to the north of Arkham.

The New England winters were hard and cruel in chose parts, and backwoods farmers were often snowed in for months. Hoskins brought with him, therefore, sufficient supplies of food and coffee and kerosene for the stove, together with clean clothing, blankets, and writing paper. That very night, his first in the little cabin in the woods, the snow fell heavily; when he awoke from a dreamless sleep at dawn, it was to find himself completely isolated, surrounded on all sides with a smooch field of unbroken snow.

The isolation, however, was exactly what he most desired. Not Dr. Llanfer nor any other could pester him here ... here he could accomplish his great work, which was to translate the whole of the R'lyeh Text, and to reveal its secrets to the ignorant and unsuspecting world.

One thing, however, Bryant Hoskins had forgotten in his haste. The narcotics he had purchased from the furtive, foreign men in the crumbling dives along the waterfront would soon be exhausted ....

ON the night of November 11, 1928, lacking the drugs which alone could protect him from his dreams, Bryant Hoskins fell at last into an exhausted slumber toward dawn. No longer able to resist the urge to sleep, he took the precautions of putting a tablet and a pencil by his bedside, so that he could, upon awakening, record the substance of his dreams—a practice into which he had fallen.

The note found later by his bedside, scribbled by a hand so palsied as to be virtually illegible, reads as follows:

Again, the dreary waste, the opaque skies, the uncanny stars! Nearer than ever have I drifted, unto the very portal of the stone tower. The doorway looms before me, the lintel thereof inscribed with signs carved into the crumbling stone ... signs which I cannot read, but which I have seen in the frightful pages of the Necronomicon.

The door itself is a massive slab of stone through which I pass unopposed, and unwilling, as if helplessly borne along by some invisible current of force. Unresistingly, I enter a dark chamber whose gaunt, bare walls are hung with woven tapestries depicting hideous shapes lording it over groveling naked human slaves.

Against the further wall of this chamber (which is frigid as the Pole, and pervaded by an unclean stench of indescribable foetor) a Being sits, or squats, or lolls, in an ancient chair of carved black wood. Larger and more corpulent than the common run of humankind, its curiously misshapen limbs and torso are swathed in robes of lustrous silk. Behind these garments I sense a body oddly deformed, perhaps with more limbs than are normal, or with limbs of multiple jointage.

The face of the being is entirely hidden behind a veil or mask of yellow silk, through which nothing of the visage thus concealed can be discerned. But I notice, even in the paralysis of ultimate horror which freezes my mind and will, that the silken mask twitches oddly, and bulges in the wrong places. ...

I do not wish to know what the face of the Tcho-Tcho lama looks like. But, against my numb and frozen will, the hands of my dream sell reach out to pluck the mask aside—

Those were the last words written by Bryant Hoskins.

BY mid-November, it was discovered that the R’lyeh Text had been purloined from the locked shelves of the Miskacunic Library, and that another volume from the Tuttle bequest, one known as the Celaeno Fragments, was also missing, In light of the fascination these two books had exerted on Hoskins, it did not take Dr. Cyrus Llanfer very long to deduce who had appropriated the two books. Hoskins' landlady, Mrs. Mullins, quickly divulged the location of his cabin in the woods; as the priceless volumes were the lawful possessions of the Library, Dr. Llanfer had no other recourse but to inform the local authorities of the theft.

Two constables were dispatched to recover the stolen property. They found the country roads nearly impassable due to the heavy snows, but managed to reach the cabin.

What they found within was then immured in the County Sanitarium, safely locked up in a padded cell. It laughs and howls and sometimes weeps, but when it speaks, which is seldom, it only repeats the same phrases over and over.

"... The face! the face! ... Those putrid holes where eyes are wont to be! ... that pink and squirming tentacle-like proboscis, where a face should have a nose and mouth and chin ... and the laughter, the mocking and malignant, gurgling laughter ... God! God! How can a thing laugh without a mouth?"

The thing in the cell died raving the following spring, in early March of 1929. The stolen books were returned to the locked shelves of the Miskatortic University Library, and very, very seldom does Dr. Llanfer permit even established scholars to consult them.

In explanation of this, he says, quite simply, "There are some things man is not meant to know, and some books man is not meant to read." Perhaps he is right, after all.