I read on. Brown-Farley had eventually found Abu Ben Reis and had plied him with liquor and opium until finally he managed to do that which the proper authorities had found impossible. The old Arab gave up his secret - though the book hinted that this knowledge had not been all that easy to extract - and the next morning Brown-Farley had taken a little-used camel-track into the wastes beyond those pyramids wherein lay Nitocris' first burial place.
But from here on there were great gaps in the writing - whole pages having been torn out or obliterated with thick, black strokes, as though the writer had realized that too much was revealed by what he had written - and there were rambling, incoherent paragraphs on the mysteries of death and the lands beyond the grave. Had I not known the explorer to have been such a fanatical antiquarian (his auctioned collection had been unbelievably varied) and were I not aware that he had delved, prior to his search for Nitocris' second tomb, into many eldritch places and outre settings, I might have believed the writer mad from the contents of the diary's last pages. Even in this knowledge I half believed him mad anyway.
Obviously he had found the last resting- place of Nitocris - the scribbled hints and suggestions were all too plain - but it seemed there had been nothing left worth removing. Abu Ben Reis had long since plundered all but the fabled mirror, and it was after Brown-Farley had taken that last item from the ghoul-haunted tomb that the first of his real troubles began. From what I could make out from the now-garbled narrative, he had begun to develop a morbid fixation about the mirror, so that by night he kept it constantly draped!
But it was no good; before I could continue my perusal of the diary I had to get down my copy of Feery's Notes on the Necronomicon. There was something tickling me, there at the back of my mind, a memory, something I should know, something which Alhazred had known and written about. As I took down Feery's book from my shelves I came face to face with the mirror. The light in my study was bright and the night was quite warm —with that oppressive heaviness of air which is ever the prelude to violent thunderstorms — yet I shuddered strangely as I saw my face reflected in that glass. Just for a moment it had seemed to leer at me.
I shrugged off the feeling of dread which immediately sprang up in my inner-self and started to look up the section concerning the mirror. A great clock chimed out the hour of eleven somewhere in the night and distant lightning lit up the sky to the west beyond the windows of my room. One hour to midnight.
Still, my study is the most disconcerting place. What with those eldritch books on my shelves, their aged leather and ivory spines dully agleam with the reflection of my study light; and the thing I use as a paper-weight, which has no parallel in any sane or ordered universe; and now with the mirror and diary, I was rapidly developing an attack of the fidgets unlike any I had ever known before. It was a shock for me to realize that I was just a little uneasy!
I thumbed through Feery's often fanciful reconstruction of the Necronomicon until I found the relevant passage. The odds were that Feery had not altered this section at all; except, perhaps, to somewhat modernize the 'mad' Arab's old-world phraseology Certainly it read like genuine Alhazred. Yes, there it was And there, yet again, was that recurring hint of happenings at midnight
‘... for while the Surface of the Glass is still — even as the Crystal Pool of Yith-Shesh, even as the Lake of Hall when the Swimmers are not at the Frothing — and while its Gates are locked in all the Hours of Day; yet, at the Witching Hour, One who knows — even One who guesses — may see in it all the Shades and Shapes of Night and the Pit, wearing the Visage of Those who saw before. And though the Glass may lie forgotten forever its Power may not die, and it should be known:
That is not dead which can forever lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die . . ;’
For many moments I pondered that weird passage and the even weirder couplet which terminated it; and the minutes ticked by in a solemn silence hitherto outside my experience at The Aspens.
It was the distant chime of the half-hour which roused me from my reverie-to continue my reading of BrownFarley's diary I purposely put my, face away from the mirror and leaned back in my chair, thoughtfully scanning the pages. But there were only one or, two pages left to read, and as best I can remember the remainder of that disjointed narrative rambled on in this manner
'10th. The nightmares on the London — all the way out from Alexandria to Liverpool — Christ knows I wish I'd flown. Not a single night's sleep. Appears the so-called "legends" are not so fanciful as they seemed. Either that or my nerves are going! Possibly it's just the echo of a guilty conscience. If that old fool Abu hadn't been so damned close-mouthed — if he'd been satisfied with the opium and brandy instead of demanding money — and for what, I ask? There was no need for all that rough-stuff. And his poxy waffle about "only wanting to protect me". Rubbish! The old beggar'd long since cleaned the place out except for the mirror ... That damned mirror! Have to get a grip on myself. What state must my nerves be in that I need to cover the thing up at night? Perhaps I've read too much from the Necronomicon! I wouldn't be the first fool to fall for that blasted book's hocus-pocus. Alhazred must have been as mad as Nitocris herself. Yet I suppose it's possible that it's all just imagination; there are drugs that can give the same effects, I'm sure. Could it be that the mirror has a hidden mechanism somewhere which- releases some toxic powder or other at intervals? But what kind of mechanism would still be working so perfectly after the centuries that glass must have seen? And why always at midnight? Damned funny! And those dreams! There is one sure way to settle it, of course. I'll give it a few more days and if things get no better, well — we'll have to wait and see.
'13th. That's it, then. Tonight we'll have it out in the open. I mean, what good's a bloody psychiatrist who insists I'm perfectly well when I know I'm ill? That mirror's behind it all! "Face your problems," the fool said, "and if you do they cease to bother you That's what I'll do, then, tonight.
'13th. Night. There, I've sat myself down and it's eleven already I'll wait 'til the stroke of midnight and then I'll take the cover off the glass and we'll see what we'll see. God! That a man like me should twitch like this! Who'd believe that only a few months ago I was steady as a rock? And all for a bloody mirror. I' just have a smoke and a glass. That's better. Twenty minutes to go; good — soon be over now — p'raps tonight I'll get a bit of sleep for a change! The way the place goes suddenly quiet, as though the whole house were waiting for something to happen. I'm damned glad I sent Johnson home. It'd be no good to let him see me looking like this. What a God-awful state to get oneself into! Five minutes to go. I'm tempted to take the cover off the mirror right now! There — midnight! Now we'll have it!'
And that was all there was!
I read it through again, slowly, wondering what there was in it which so alarmed me. And what a coincidence, I thought, reading that last line for the second time; for even as I did so the distant clock, muffled somewhere by the city's mists, chimed out the hour of twelve.
I thank God, now, that he sent that far-off chime to my ears. I am sure it could only have been an act of Providence which caused me to glance round upon hearing it. For that still glass — that mirror which is quiet as the crystal pool of Yith-Shesh all the hours of day — was still no longer!