"Not he ... not he," he whispered hoarsely. "But That which he serves ..."
His voice shook a little on these words, as if struggling to suppress some powerful emotion. Sensing my patient's perturbation, I changed the subject at this point and began to question him about his childhood experiences, seeking a possible trauma.
Our interview terminated not long thereafter.
2. Extract from the Notes of Uriah Horby
Thues, the 17th. Young Doctor Curtis is a likable fellow and keen enough on his work, but a blind, stubbornly ignorant fool nonetheless. As they all are. When my book is published, perhaps then the scientific community will recognize the value of my discovery and the dimensions of the enormous peril awaiting mankind in the near future.
Summer will soon be upon us, and the frogs will begin their hellish nightly serenade; I must strive to organize my notes, for the Hour Appointed cometh nigh and time is running out for me ... perhaps young Curtis will prove useful in at least one sense: he seems fascinated by my "case" and exhibits a pitiful eagerness to gain my confidence. Possibly I can persuade him to assist me in locating the complete text of the Zoan chant; if it is not to be found in Prinn or in von Junzt, perhaps it is in the CuItes des Goules, although Diedrich swears it is not. If only my father's Necronomicon had been complete! Well, I have long ago tried all of the nine formulae between the Ngg and the Hnnrr, and the Zhooric sign is obviously of no avail against them. What remains, but the Chian Pentagram and the Xao games? And if they fail, I have yet to employ the thirteen formulae between the Yaa and the Ghhgg ....
But time is running out for me, as the end of the Cycle nears. Running out for me?—it is running out for all mankind!
3. From the Statement of Charles Winslow Curtis
IT was not long before I learned that Uriah Horby was an enthusiastic lifelong student of archaeology and quite a talented, though an amateur, scholar in that field. It was this fascination which the ancient past held for him, it seemed, that had some connection to his present condition.
“I found my first clue in Alhazred, of course,” he remarked during the course of one of our early conversations together. "In chapter iii of Book IV ... I am quoting from memory, of course, but my memory is most precise on certain subjects ... ‘In the fullness of time a prophet arose among the men of Sarnarh, by name Kish: even that one we remember as the Elder Prophet, for that They Who Reign From Betelgeuse made revelation unto him, saying, Beware the Ib-folk, O men of Sarnath! for that they were come down to this earth from certain cavernous places in the Moon, ere man rose out of the slime, and the Water-thing they worship in foul ways is Other than ye think, and the name Bokrug is but a mask, behind the which there lurketh an Elder Horror' ... now, following this clue, I delved into the pages of von Junzt—"
“Von Junzt?” I interposed. He brushed my query aside with a prim yet brusque gesture.
“Friedrich-Wilhelm von Junzt, the German occultist, author of the Unaussprechlichen Kulten,” he said a trifle impatiently. "You should be able to find him in most of the standard biographical reference works. If you ever bother to check up on any of the things I tell you, Dr. Curtis, you will discover that I am inventing nothing: All of these data are valid and authentic, and may be found in print.”
I forced a laugh. “It’s just that these ancient mythologies seem to have little, if any, relevance to our own time!"
Uriah Horby fixed me with a clear, piercing gaze. His voice was firm and reasonable as he spoke.
“Things happened here on earth long ago. They are still happening ... why did the federal government destroy blocks of seemingly abandoned tenements in Innsmouth, Massachusetts during the winter of 1927-’28? Why did a naval submarine discharge torpedoes into Devil’s Reef in the harbor? What really happened in the old Tuttle house on the Aylesbury Road near the Innsmouth Turnpike? What events actually took place at Navissa Camp in Manitoba in late 1931 ... or, for that matter, what is the real story of what happened at Rick’s Lake in north central Wisconsin in 1940? Why has the explorer Marsh never disclosed what happened to the ill-fated Hawks Expedition on the Sung Plateau region of mountainous Burma, after they reached the ruins of Alaozar?”
I looked at him nonplused; there was nothing that I could say. Some of the mysterious events he referred to hail been noised abroad in the newspapers, and even I had hazy recollections of the matters to which he made reference.
With a slight shrug of his shoulders he moved on.
"But, to continue: Quoting from the Cylinders of Kadatheron and the Ilarnek Papyrus, which were Alhazred’s principle sources for the Sarnarh legend, von Junzt speculates most intriguingly on the lunar origin of Bokrug and of the creatures he commands, which are the Thunn’ha. It seems that when Alhazred transcribed from these very ancient sources, he was working from an apparently incomplete copy of the texts. Expanding on the hint given in the passage from the Necronomicon which I have already quoted to you, von Junzt postulates an extragalactic origin for Bokrug and his minions. In brief, he suggests that they came hither with the Great Old Ones through the star-spaces, or the dimensions which lie between them. But none of the ancient scriptures at our disposal mention Bokrug in the context of the Old Ones, which is odd, although the books which I have consulted are sadly fragmentary and are lacking many pages and even entire sections."
“I gather that these Great Old Ones are the demonic or godlike alien intelligences which Alhazred theorizes were the original inhabitants of our planet," I said. He smiled.
“That is precisely correct. Dr. Curtis."
Just at this interesting juncture, and most unfortunately, a male nurse interrupted our conversation, for one of my other patients was having a seizure. I was forced to bid a hasty adieu to Uriah Horby, postponing the remainder of our talk until some later time.
Interestingly enough, while I was striving to draw the man out with leading questions, I was not entirely ignorant of the matters which occupied him. For I remembered that I had indeed heard of this Necronomicon he quoted from and mentioned so frequently: When I had been an undergraduate at Miskatonic University there had been quite a bit written up about the ancient book in the local papers in connection with some bizarre murder or suicide. I forget the details of the case, but it seemed that my old alma mater had a copy of the incredibly rare book under lock and key, and was one of the few institutions of higher learning in this country to possess a copy. Odd that the title of the Arabic book had slipped my mind.
Later that afternoon, while recording my notes of the talk with Horby, I remembered what he had said about my checking his data. Within twenty minutes I found a capsule biography of the German scholar he had mentioned, whose pretensions to scholarship seemed authentic enough from the list of degrees recorded after his name in the entry.
Horby, it appeared, was not making it all up. He had stumbled upon some obscure, horrible mythology and had been drawn into it by his scholarly fascination with the ancient world, until at last it occupied the center of his interests.
The case was growing more intriguing all the time.
4. Extract from the Notes of Uriah Horby