It was, I remember clearly, on a rainy evening in November when I found wedged and thus hidden behind a formidable row of tomes devoted to theological disquisitions, a secret book which, even as I had half-guessed, half-hoped, I had previously overlooked. It was none other than a copy of that abhorrent and frightful Necronomicon, another copy of which you so imprudently purchased this very day, young Williams. I had read shudder-some references to Alhazred's book in other volumes which reposed on these very shelves—in the infamous Cultes des Goules of Comte d'Erlecte, the Unaussprechlichen Kultes of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn’s hellish De Vermis Mysteriis—but never heretofore had I chanced to encounter a copy. Bound in rotting leather it was, and locked with clasps of rusty iron which I prised open with my pen-knife. The pages were crumbling with age and foxed with mildew, and a palpable reek of decay rose to assail my nostrils as I opened the volume and began to peruse its pages.
Unlike the printed copy you now hold, the book I had found concealed behind the shelves was a holograph manuscript, to which many different hands had contributed, as was patently evident from the different kinds of parchment, vellum, or paper upon which it was inscribed, and the variegated handwriting, and which of my ancestors had compiled the manuscript and had caused it to be bound in leather I could scarce conjecture. Indeed, it was not until I began to notice the occasional marginal gloss inscribed with fresher ink and by a more recent hand than the redactors of the pages themselves, that I gained cognizance of his identity: for it was in the unmistakable hand of my great-great-grandfather, the sixteenth baron of my ancient line—he who had so narrowly escaped the assizes and the consequent gallows in the last days of the maniacal witchcraft persecutions.
The copy of the Necronomicon was immensely long, well over one thousand pages, and for the following week I merely leafed through it, my febrile imagination seizing here and there upon an individual passage or phrase which titillated my fancy with hints of Gateways that opened to other worlds than these, to the abysses of anterior cycles of time, and to unimaginable regions beyond the bourne of space and time. At length it occurred to me that there might be other books or papers secreted behind that stolid row of interminable theological puerilities, and thus it was that I found a recessed latch sunk into the ancient mahogany of the bookcase. In pressing it, a groan as of the creaking of rusty hinges thrilled my senses, and in the next moment one entire section of shelving slid slowly and ponderously open, revealing a dark and dusty passageway and a flight of steep stairs leading upwards into the impenetrable gloom, all swathed and festooned with the ghostly webs of untold generations of spiders.
The great library of Northam Keep was on the topmost storey and I well knew that there was nothing above the room, save for an ancient stone tower whose casement windows had been tightly shuttered from within and whose only entrance had been sealed with brickwork long before I was born. Therefore, the mystery of where that steep and hidden stair might lead intrigued my curiosity immensely. Pausing only to prop the concealed doorway open with a heavy tome and to snatch up from the library table an oil lamp, I entered the dusty alcove and began to ascend the stair with a mingled feeling of cautiousness, trepidation, and adventurous expectancy which is hardly describable in mere prosaic words. The steps of the stair were of wood, thick with generations or centuries of dust and mouldering with neglect. At the top I found a trapdoor which I forced open with a squeal of protest from rust-gnawed hinges.
I discovered a queer, octagonal room almost completely bare of furnishings. My lamp disclosed nothing more than a table of heavy wood and a great carved oaken chair of Jacobean or, perhaps, Tudor craftsmanship, which reposed in the very center of the chamber. Upon the table there lay the stub of a candle in a brass holder, a dusty inkwell which contained the dark scum of long-dried ink. and several quills, arranged neatly beside a folio into which was thrust a sheaf of parchment written all over in a spidery hand. The only oddity which the tower chamber housed beyond these ordinary articles of furniture was a huge, ancient bell of age-blackened silver which was suspended from the rafters directly above the chair. It was the size of a church bell and stamped or otherwise incised about its rim was a series of angular characters which I vaguely recognised from my extensive readings in the occult as the "Nug-Soth runes", concerning which I knew little more than the name itself. The clapper of the bell was in the shape of an inverted trident, and it was tied by a length of tarry twine to a curious clockwork mechanism of coiled springs, heavily coated with some oily lubricant. The obvious purpose of this quaint mechanism was to enable the bell to be rung without the need of human hands to swing it.
As I could make nothing of the utility of this, I went at once to the table in the centre of the room, placed my lamp upon the dusty surface, and seated myself and began to examine the sheaf of manuscript, which was in the unmistakable hand of my great-great-grandsire—that Ruthven, Lord Northam, of which so many dubious legends are still whispered hereabouts, and whose age-dimmed oil portrait, with its heavy brow ridges and jutting cheekbones, harsh, angular jaw and severely aquiline nose, repeat the identical features which heredity has graven on the visages of every member of my line since the days of our remotest ancestor. The entries were dated in the seventeen hundreds and seemed to be the records of a series of experiments, but, alas, these were set down in some cypher which employed letters and numerals according to some code or system which I could nor at once unravel. Leafing impatiently through the manuscript I found at length a certain passage towards the end which was written in plain English, and which read:
Even as ye Brachmans of Hindoostan employ’d the repetitive ring'g of small Bells as an adjunct to their Meditations, so doe ye Shamans of Tartary and ye Red Priests of Thibet, for a similar Purpose, that is, to benumb ye Rational Minde and purify ye Senses so as to apperceive ye Higher Planes. See Abdool Al-Hazred his III Booke, chap.viii.
Thereupon followed certain instructions concerning the winding of the clockwork mechanism, the rhythm and timing of the ringing of the bell, and the duration deemed most advisable for the experiment.
At this point I began to notice that my head was aching and my heart pounding rapidly, to the point where it seemed likely I would swoon like a woman if I remained any longer in this enclosed space and continued to breathe the stifling and stale and vitiated air of the tower chamber. The wooden shutters which sealed the long windows resisted my efforts to open them; indeed, they were locked and barred so stoutly that it would take a crowbar to open them and admit the fresh air of open day. I took my lamp and the folio and descended the steep and narrow stair again to the library, and turned at once to perusal of the Necronomicon. I found without difficulty the passage to which my ancestor had alluded; it was in the third book of the Necronomicon, which bore the title "The Book of the Gates", and it read thusly: