"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.