THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (30 page)

I forced her to swallow this, covering her mouth as she tried to scream.  I know well that the Lord in Ebon did eradicate her mind with his wondrous visions, so that she would become the empty vessel.  But still, there was much to do.

Baring her flesh until she fell asleep, and then baring my own, I began the ritual of the rising.

SCROLL XLVII

The Canting

By Which I Brought Forth the Beloved,

Adaya, from the Land of the Wandering Dead

This is the song of necromancy and possession, which bringeth the dead into another vessel, which is called by the unenlightened the miracle of reincarnation.

As the Ghul-crone Anata and Nyarlathotep himself made very clear to me, there is no one spell to enact this ritual, for this is an incantation born of love.  Only the beloved may so be brought forth, for it is the ardor of the chanter which giveth power to the entreaty of the restless soul’s enslavement within the second flesh.

To cast a spell of thine own, you would require at the very least a further verse of incantation, at the juncture which I shall illustrate in my own.  There you must pay obeisance by name to whichever of the many illusive gods of resurrection which you sincerely believe in with all your heart.  Whether that god truly exists or not is nothing; your faith is what drives the most primal among the words of power.  Naming that god focuses your belief and your desire to see the beloved and the dead one manifesting herself in the emptied flesh that lies beneath you.

Although here in my own canting I have changed the names which I learned in my explorations—Cthulhu, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Yeb and the Nameless, the Things worshipped by the viper-striders and all the rest—I here have named the human gods of many cultures, those whom I once in my childhood did believe to be real and holy.

This is because I was casting the spell to resurrect a
mortal
woman, and not a creature of darker ken.  My words were further informed by the inscriptions upon the orichalcum funereal discs of Anar’kai from the vaults far beneath the Nameless City.

Be it known that you must create your own canting, and believe in it with the spirit of your youth, for the necromantic possession to take hold in the flesh which lies beneath you.  The mere aping of my words without conviction or comprehension will bring you nothing.

Nevertheless, these are the words I sang in Babylon, through which I returned the restless spirit of Adaya unto life, incarnate in the body of the whore:

~

O Enki, greatest of all the gods,

Enthroned beneath the scarlet star

In the
Abzu
-temple of Eridu,

You who slay and who passeth judgment

Upon ungrateful man and fallen god,

O
Bel Belim
, lord of lords,

Keeper of the earth-gates

Which divideth the
Abzu
and
Kulullu

From the Kingdom of Men,

I beg of you:

Turn away from my prayers!

Close thine eyes, veil thy face,

Bereave me of my adorations

For the blasphemy I am to bring to life.

~

In the name of love eternal,

Allow me to choose my own oblivion

And to twist the Kingdom of the Dead

To embrace my beloved once more!

As you are
Muballit Mite
, the reviver of the dead,

As you have in love used the very power that I ask,

Pray grant me your blindness of mine act!

I beg of you, abandon me,

Hear not my invocation.

In your blindness, in silence,

Allow the truths of nature to be broken!

~

(The name and entreaty of thine own god of the resurrection and entreaty to him or her would be included here, as I have spoken of before.  The spell is nothing without the necromancer’s own conviction.)

~

In the wake of Enki’s flight,

Inanna, goddess of victory,

Huntress of all desire,

Give me the strength

To call Adaya forth into this flesh,

For I do love her, and she

Was ever the warder of all my sorrows.

When I was a child,

She alone did care for me;

When I was chained

Drowning in the nightmare of R’lyeh,

She alone did comfort me;

When I longed to die,

She alone did saveth me in tears.

And so, I now beg of you:

Grant me the gift of sacrifice,

That I might fulfill

The sacred debt I owe to her.

Let her rise before me,

Let her brave her own descending from eternity.

Bind her adorations to this earth.

~

And to your sister the eyeless,

Enrobed in veils of serpent-skin:

O Ereshkigal, queen of the dead,

Placate the plague-lord Nergal

With the blood of your kisses,

On my behalf beseech him

To unshackle this one soul.

If he demandeth vengeance,

May he claim in death in years hereafter

Myself as his basest servant, forevermore.

Give me this one life with my Adaya!

~

Kings and Queens among the gods,

Leave me to my blasphemies.

Adaya, arise

From the pleasure garden of the Kur,

Swim from the pool of poison seeds,

Strideth over the serpent,

Fade and rise between the scorpions,

Thieve the black key of Nergal

And tear open the seven gates

Of the netherworld,

And so ascend to me!

~

And to you, whore and sacrifice,

Wasted thing who now lies beneath me:

Soul of the carnal vessel,

Unworthy prisoner in the flesh,

I cast you into exile.

Ia
, to madness you are free!

Let the essence of my beloved

Pass into this body,

The forsaken.  Daemonion,

Hear my cry!  Enslave this lesser spirit

Of the unworthy as thy sacrifice!

Pazuzu, storm-bearer, black-wing,

Seize this soul as thine own feast!

And too, swallow the scraps before you,

Take these sweetmeats as thine offering!

~

(To the daemons who are unseen, the Jinn, you must offer three of the fingers of the vessel.  Sever these with a dagger, as I did, and array them upon the floor-silks.  You will behold the invisible mouth swallowing the body’s leavings, and lapping the blood up from the silks.)

~

The scraps of the vessel are devoured,

The soul of the harridan annihilated.

And now, my beloved comes!

My beloved Adaya cries out for me!

Let her reborn desire be subsumed

Into the body of the vessel, and so reclaimed!

~

(A piece of the deceased’s corpse, such as a fingerbone, a tooth, or preferably the brain, must be forced into the vessel’s mouth and swallowed.  I did use a tooth, which I had extracted from Adaya’s corpse ere to burying her at Zarzara as a keepsake of my beloved, as is the tradition of the tribe of the Shepherdess.)

~

With my kiss, possession:

I bring this vessel a greater life.

O Naram-gal, Anata,

Fatima and Aharon,

I vow to you if this rite should fail,

This vessel shall be abandoned

As a husk of madness

To the wasteland, to your hunger,

For no longer human shall it be.

But if I should conquer,

By the lash of the Lord in Ebon,

Nyarlathotep,

Let this flesh be now fulfilled,

Become the vessel of my bride!

Rise unto the breath of life!

Let thy chaos mingle in fertility!

Let the blood run forth anew!

Awaken!

Ia, Shub-Niggurath!

~

(The vessel wakes.  To complete the ritual, begin to fornicate with the mindless body, so that the generative essence of life passes into it.  When you fill the vessel with your seed, the eyes which open in the body will be those of the beloved.  A kiss, swallow her screaming within thy mouth. So is the dead one chained and made a child, a black miracle of Nyarlat, a possession of and locked within the second flesh.)

SCROLL XLVIII

The Rapture

The rite brought forth the rapture.

As I held down the constricting and mindless vessel beneath me, all breath left her.  The flesh of the vessel chilled and paled, and she clawed out against the silks and against my cheek.  In collapsing she tore down one of the wall-silks over her breast and face, and then she did lay still.

Nothing more.

Had I killed her?  Had the dose of the cobra venom, the droplet from the amber phial, been too much for her?

I called the whore’s name, “Hadjara?”  And nothing still.

Then I touched her heart.  The beat fluttered beneath my fingertips, as if a songbird had been caged beneath her breastbone.  Then the blood surged through her and her pallid flesh coursed with color and heat.  Gooseflesh crawled up her belly and her forearms, and she twisted out from under me.  The body fell to the floor in seizure and lay taut, the muscles quivering.

She tried to cry out, and found that she could not.  And the silk clung to her face.  She was not breathing.

I stood, I lifted her to the pillows once more and knelt over her, fearing to lift the silk away from her face.  As I lifted my fingers toward her throat, the silk hollowed with a rush as she took in a ragged and gasping breath.

I was petrified with fear.  By whose name should I call her?  Was she Hadjara, the mindless and the dying?  Was the spirit of my Adaya instilled therein, coiling and making a prison of her mind?  Or had my Adaya not come at all?  Had a daemon possessed this mindless vessel where it lay?

Another gasping breath shook the body.  The body arched, her arms tangled over her head, contorting in a wild spasm.  A moist and guttural sound twisted out of her, the most anguished and despairing cry which I have ever heard.

And then, a sigh … of pleasure?  Of death?  She fell back once more, drifting back into the pillows.  The hues of life flushed her legs and belly, bringing the rose of youth and fire once again into the cinnamon of her skin.

Denying the fear which lorded over me, I softly pulled the tangled silk away from her face.  I exhaled a silent prayer in wonder.  The whore Hadjara, her hair had been kinked and sand-hued in its tresses, shorn to accentuate her cheekbones.  But this, this breathing body’s hair was lush and raven, cascading back over her shoulders as had the locks of my beloved Adaya in her youth.

Her eyes fluttered open, but they had rolled up into her skull.  Only the bloodshot whites did glisten wide.  Their orbs darted back and forth and her eyelids flitted, feverish and fragile.

I massaged her cheeks.  She groaned, but her eyes did not descend.  The tears fell from her ducts, her hands clenched and gathered up knots of silk.  She began to thrash and I stood, to pressure her down and keep her from falling once again.  She resisted me with an unholy surge of strength, and threw me back.  I struggled to stand, and her fists beat against the wall.

As I rushed to her, she clutched at me with both her hands.  I cried out: 
“Adaya!”

Nothing.

“Adaya!  Is it you?”

Her eyes rolled down at last, and the sight of her took my breath away.  For these were not the sea-green eyes of the whore Hadjara, no.  They were the black and depthless eyes of my Adaya, flecked with their radiance of gold.

As I knelt once more and gazed upon her in wonder, powerless, she pushed against me and cried out, “Akram? 
Akram, help me!”

At first I did not comprehend.  But then I knew:  she was reliving the moment when she had been murdered, when our child-friend Akram had been there beside her.

She shrieked, “He is killing me!  Where is Abd?  Yahweh,
help me!”

I shouted, shaking her, “I am here!  I am here!”

And she writhed, but she blinked and did seem to see me.  Fresh tears ran from her eyes as she placed her shaking fingers against my cheeks.

“Abd!  Oh, Abd, I love you.  What is happening?  I cannot … help me, I cannot see ...”

I lowered my face, inches before her own.  “Look at me, Adaya.  Look at me!”

But she was blind.  “These eyes, these are … who …
who am I?”

And I murmured in despair, “O, my love.  O, my love …”

Adaya, blind and anguished, gasped and collapsed beneath me.

“Abd, my love, please, the pain.  The
agony
.  I cannot …”

“Stay with me,” I whispered.  “I have walked the worlds, the very ages for you, I cannot lose you again.  I cannot bear this!”

“I … no. 
He
.  The dream!”  Her mouth formed in an ‘O,’ as she struggled to scream.  Instead, rapid breaths escaped her and she began to twist as one who is bleeding and dying of a wound most terrible.  “My mind!” she cried.  “My mind is opened!  I am … I am two, entwined!  Help me!  Cth—
ftaghn!  Ph’nglui mglw’nafh
…”

And Adaya at last could see me.  Her eyes were become her own,
life
.  She did look upon me in horror and amazement, and whispered to me, “Abd, Al-Azrad my beloved, release me I beg you.”  Then screaming:  “Let me go, set me free,
I beg thee!”

“I cannot.  Adaya, I cannot let you!  I need you, I—”

“I cannot bear this!  Not like this, this body, this
pain
…”

“Forgive me!  All I have done, I have done for you in vain.  I cared only for what I longed for.  I did not know what could come of this.  Please!  Forgive me!”

And she whispered, so quietly that I could scarcely hear her in the stillness:  “O Abd, I can see! 
He
sees through me.  He … He is coming now.  He. 
Death
.  O, Abd, through my rising, death comes for thee …”