The Necronomicon - The Doom of Yakthoob by Lin Carter

THE NECRONOMICON:
I. THE BOOK OF EPISODES

THE FIRST NARRATIVE: THE
DOOM OF YAKTHOOB
by LIN CARTER
The Doom Of Yakthoob: From The Necronomicon, by Lin Carter

(Most editions of The Necronomicon omit for some reason which I
shudder to conjecture, the little-known "First Narrative", going
straight from the so-called "Introitus"--the opening paragraph which,
in Dee, reads: "The Book of the Laws of the Dead, which was written
by the poet Abdul Alhazred of Sanaa, in Damascus, the Year of the
Hejira 113, so that all Mankind might know of the Horrors of the
Tomb and of those greater Horrors which await Beyond"--to the
famous "Second Narrative," that of the Thing under Memphis. My
own copy of Alhazred--a virtually priceless manuscript in Dee's own
hand---luckily contains this rare episode, which I have transcribed
here for the use of the serious student.)
As a youth I was apprenticed to the notorious Saracen wizard,
Yakthoob, among many others, of whom the languid and dissolute
Ibn Ghazoul became my closest friend, despite his voluptuous and
immoral habits. At the behest of the Master we learned the
summoning-up of Evil Things and conversed with ghouls in the rock
tombs of Neb and even partook of the unnamed Feasts of Nitocris in
loathsome crypts beneath the Great Pyramid. We went down the
Secret Stair to worship That which dwelleth in the black catacombs
below the crumbling ruins of elder and ghoulhaunted Memphis, and
in the noxious caverns of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown
Valley of Hadoth by the Nile we performed such Blasphemous Rites
that even now my soul shuddereth to contemplate.
Ever we begged of the Master that he instruct us in the calling up of
the Great Princes of the Pit, the which he was fearful to do, saying
that the Lesser Demons be easily satisfied with the Red Offering
alone, having a horrid thirst for the Blood of Men, but that the Great
Ones demand naught less than the offering up of a Living Soul, save
that ye have a certain Elixir, compounded according to the Forbidden
Books from the ichor of holy angels, the secret of which is known but
to a certain great Necromancer who dwelleth amongst the dead tombs
of accursed and immemorial Babylon.
For a time the Master sated our lust for daemonic knowledge with
Rites and Horrors terrible to think upon, but ever and again we did
beseech for that Great Secret whereof I have spoken, and at length he
was persuaded and dispatched the youth Ibn Ghazoul to crumbling
and antique Babylon with much gold to purchase from the
Necromancer the terrible Elixir. In time the youth returned therefrom
and bore with him, in a flask of precious orichalc from dead Atlantis,
the Elixir, and we thus repaired to sealed and hidden Hadoth where
the Master did That of which I dare not speak, and Lo! a great Thing
rose up tall and terrible against the stars. Scarlet and wet and
glistening was It, like a flayed tormented thing, with eyes like Black
Stars. About it hovered a burning cold like the dark wind that blows
between the Stars, and it stunk of the foetor of the Pit.
In a slobbering voice the Abomination demanded its price, and bore
the flacon of orichalc to its snout in one scarlet Claw, and snuffled
thereat, and then to our immeasurable Horror howled forth a braying
Laughter and hurled the Flask from it, and caught up the Master in
one Claw of horrible cold and plucked and tore at him, all the while
making the Night hideous with terrible laughter. For a time the
hapless Yakthoob squealed and flopped in the clutches of the Claw,
but then lay still, and dangled therefrom, black and shrivelled, as the
laughing Thing ripped at it until it raped forth the Spirit of Yakthoob,
which it Devoured in a Certain Manner which made my dreams
hideous with Nightmares for twenty years . . .
We screamed and fled from the accursed gloom of Hadoth where a
Scarlet Thing howled and fed abominably under the shuddering stars,
all but the vile and horrid Ibn Ghazoul, that wretched voluptuary,
who had squandered the Master's gold on the lusts of his flesh during
his travels to Babylon, and had substituted naught but wine in place
of the rare Ichor . . . Him we saw never again, and to this day I quake
with nameless terror at the thought of summoning forth the Great
Ones from the Pit, mindful of the horrible Doom of the wizard
Yakthoob.

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THE NECRONOMICON:

I. THE BOOK OF EPISODES

The Doom Of Yakthoob: From The Necronomicon, by Lin Carter

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