Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred Read Online Free

shatter the skull with a stone when first the corpse is exposed; having vanquished the troubling shade, the remaining viscera and organs may be handled and used without distraction.
    There is another type of spirit, common in the rocky hills, that resembles a large wingless bat, but possesses the hindquarters and legs of a wild dog. Its mouth is unnaturally large for its size and filled with curved white teeth, like the bones of a fish, and its forepaws hairless and slender, looking like nothing other than the graceful hands of a dancing girl, save that they are ebon, with elongated nails. These creatures, that in their own tongue call themselves chaklah’i , move with great rapidity at a loping run across the sands, and hunt in packs any living thing that they find alone and unprotected in the waste at night. Their method of attack is to surround their prey so closely that their insubstantial bodies replace the air itself, so that the uncomprehending prey slowly smothers to death. Only then can they consume its vital essences, for they eat the dead and cannot abide the essences of the living. They consume the spirit of the flesh, not the flesh itself, but after they have eaten, the flesh holds no nourishment for the living.
    A man possessed of the power of the second sight by consumption of the fungoidal spiders is able to make a pact with the chaklah’i, who much prefer to feed on corpses dead for several days than upon the bodies of the newly slain. These demons have not the physical force to move the ground protecting bodies that have been buried, but if a man shall move the stones and sand for them and allow them to feed unhindered, in exchange they will reveal secret places where treasures of various kinds lie hidden, or repeat knowledge long lost to the world. If it should chance that they seek to commit murder on the one with whom they have formed a pact, as commonly occurs, the utterance of the name of the guardian of the gates in the language of the Old Ones sends them scattering like dried leaves upon the wind. They pose no danger to the man who holds the power of this name, and may be useful as guides in the Empty Space.
    These things speak not as a man speaks, by striking the air with his breath, but inwardly, as a thought that echoes within the mind. Their intellect is weak, but they remember all they have ever seen or heard, and they endure far longer than a man. Light they cannot abide, nor the camps and habitations of our race. The human voice is painful to them, and they fly from the sound of laughter.
    With the faculty of the second sight, things that never possessed life of their own, but merely contained or conveyed life, may be clearly seen in the darkness across the sands. Caravan roads stand forth like ribbons of silver, and the domes and towers of towns long fallen to decay and forgotten rise against the starry horizon. These ghostly structures glow most bright under the energizing rays of the moon, but are dim when the moon is in her dark phase or not yet risen. They are most clear in distance but when approached waver and grow dim, until at last they fade utterly as the foot extends to cross their thresholds. By such shadows may be traced the wanderings of ancient races and their places of dwelling.
    Upon the open desert are gateways in the form of whirling columns of iridescent dust. In the day they resemble dancing pillars, and by night glowing spires. They may be opened only at certain times, when the rays of the wandering bodies of the heavens and the greater stars conspire to unlock them. Their opening is by means of phrases chanted in an inhuman tongue, the words of which have geometric forms in space possessing length, breadth, and height. The cbaklah’i know the words but do not understand their meaning or use. For a gift of blackened and putrefying flesh they may be induced to repeat them.
    Such are the several beauties of Roba el Khaliyeh, which is death to a man for so long as he