Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad

by D.R. Smith
The fabulous Necronomicon was never finished. This is well known to all advanced students
of the occult, whether or no they have had the courage and good fortune to peruse a copy.
Well known - in spite of the fact that few who have delved into the soul-blasting secrets of
that loathsome mixture of revolting instruction and blasphemous history have managed to
preserve their sanity to read that final chapter, which begins with the mutterings of one in a
frenzy and dies away in the hideous ravings of mania. Abdul Al Hazred may his name be
accursed forever remained devilishly sane during the acquisition and recording of that
abominable knowledge which few throughout the centuries have dared to acquire, even in
part. It was the story he attempted to tell in that last frenzied chapter that shattered his black
mind and sent his spirit gibbering with horror out of his diseased body and into the gleeful
embrace of the torturers of the damned.
No one has ever dared to make that story known. Indeed, the most diligent search has failed
to trace any mention of the terrible message by any student of the occult. Yet it was known
to one sublime genius, and the crux of it published to the world in words still spoken on the
public stage:
(Anthony) on the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on

But should that story be widely known, it may be that what drove the blaspheming Arab mad
may well drive honest men sane. And so I transcribe below, shorn of as much of its
incoherent madness as possible, and cleansed of the filth that besmirched every thought that
bubbled from the cess-pit of Alhazreds obscene mind, a correct version of the last chapter of
the Necronomicon.
***

There was One Other. The Great One. Great Father and Great Mother in One. Greater than
Great Cthulhu, than Hastur his brother, than Shub-Niggurath the Goat with a Thousand
Young, than Tsathoggua, than Great Yog-Sothoth himself for They are but Ones Spawn.
One was once of the Great Old Ones, near the mightiest, for One challenged the supremacy
of Azathoth Himself, the blind idiot, Lord of All. Nay, his children have told me but this I
may not believe that One (who is too great to be Named) was indeed Lord of All! So great
was One that They-Who-Are-Not-To-Be-Thought-Of, fearing lest evil become supreme,
hurled him from his awful throne and chained him with chains of flesh that he might not
break to this, the Planet of the Damned. As he fell he spawned Yog-Sothoth, who only is less
than Azathoth. So says great Cthulhu, first of the Great Abominations which One formed
from his own flesh to be his servant and the masters of the planet.
Mighty was the Great One. Loathsome the body They had bound him in yet he gloried in
its horror, and moulded it with his own will into a Thing to describe which would strike
death into the craven soul of mortal men. The Faceless Nyarlathotep, messenger of the Great
Old Ones, could not endure the foulness that was One, where he lay in a pool of his own
slimy exhalations in the cavern in the mountains, lay and ruled the world with the terror of
himself and the gods he had spawned. Had but I, Abdul Alhazred, been alive then to worship
him! Great his Children, diligently have I served them and well have they paid me, with
ecstasies the name of which would draw shrieks of horror from those white-livered children-
in-mens-shapes who talk so loud of their puerile torturings with knives and fire and water.
But the Great One to serve him would have been would have been

Curse the Roman! May the Hounds of Tindalos hunt his shrieking soul through the ends of
space for a million million times a million eons! How could he do that which he did! Great
Cthulhu I asked and he shrank and would not reply. Tsathoggua I asked, and Tsathoggua
would not tell me. Yog-Sothoth I asked, greatest of the Spawn, and Yog-Sothoth would not
tell me. Yea, by my Art did I call on Nyarlathotep, the faceless howler in the darkness,
commanding the messenger of the Great Old Ones as never man had dared before, and
Nyarlathotep ceased his eternal howling and would not reply, though he feared me as he fears
only Cthugha, the Eternal Fiery One, who when the Time comes shall consume him utterly.

Was it a machination of Azahtoth? Ones children say Azathoth, even mighty as he was,
would never have dared to plot against the Great One. Yet surely it was by some hostile
guidance that this man, this incredible man, was driven with his rabble of soldiers into the
mountains where lay the cavern of the Great One. Perhaps the Elder Gods but they had
only wanted to exile the Great One, not destroy him.

However it was, the Roman came. Marcus Antonius, a big brawling lecherous brute who
boasted he feared not god nor devil. A foolish boast, which many have made to me and
fled shrieking if they but smelt the week-old effluvium left from one of Cthulhus visits. But
Marcus Antonius how could there be such a man? Man he was, who fought and loved like
a man, and died foolishly as a man will through stupid devotion to a trollop. Could such a
one be greater than the Great Ones to whom I have given so much worship? That I have
damned myself to all eternity for for NO!

I must tell it. It must be recorded. This Antonius and his soldiers were lost. Starving. They
drank the urine of the horses. They killed the horses and ate them and went on through the
bare mountains. Antonius was their leader. He boasted of his strength and endurance and
would not eat of the horse-flesh, leaving it for the others. On they went, and they came to a
valley a gloomy cleft in the hills. But water ran crystal clear down a rocky bed and
scrubby pines grew around. They drank the water and made a huge fire of the trees but the
hunger was still there. And Marcus Antonius was the hungriest of all.
At the head of the cleft was a cave. Caves are often inhabited by animals. Animals can be
eaten. Marcus Antonius led the way to the mouth of the cave, but there all stopped. For
from the cave came such a stench as would putrefy a mans soul within his living body, and
more evil than that. None could advance further but Antonius, who called them cowards and
went on, went down into the dreadful gloom of that cavern. Went alone

Silence. A long silence. Then suddenly, horribly, the reverberating uproar of a furious
combat in some vast hollow below. Part of the noise the bellow of fighting mad Marcus
Antonius part of such a nature that many who heard fled screaming from the accursed spot.
They were the lucky ones. Those who remained, white-faced, frozen with terror, heard the
noises continue, and draw nearer. Abruptly the cavern belched forth a writhing mass, the
maniacally fighting Antonius smeared head to foot with a mixture of his own blood and
revolting slime from That which he fought. That which he dragged out into the light of day,
where never had it been seen before. That which his javelin could not slay, his sword not
wound. That abomination at the sight of which the watchers dropped dead, the very souls
blasted out of their bodies.

It called for help, and twilight shrouded the sun, and the strong shapes of the Wind Walkers,
Ithaqua and Lloigor and Zhar and great Hastur himself, came howling down. And Antonius
saw and laughed unafraid, and called upon Jupiter, whom the Greeks called Zeus, the lord of
Heaven and master of storms, calling for aid as from an equal. And lo, on the walkers and on
Hastur, on Cthulhu hurtling from the sea and on Yog-Sothoth gathering formlessly from
everywhere and nowhere, on all the hastening spawn of One, Jupiter hurled his thunderbolts,
and his laughter crashed and bellowed and split the skies as he lashed back the children of
One with the multi-thronged lashes the lightning.

And under that madness of light and noise Marcus Antonius, with strength beyond the
compute of mortal man, raised the Great One and hurled him onto the mighty fire his men
had kindled. Horribly One screamed and writhed among the glowing embers, and Antonius
laughed and threw on more wood, and in the heart of the flames One screamed abominably
until little but blacked charcoal was left of his frightful body. And then Marcus Antonius, a
man amongst men, who feared nor god nor devil, but who was very hungry, smashed the
charred shell and inside found nothing but a single steaming piece of rank flesh, loathsome
of shape and color and odor. But it was flesh, and he ate.

Yes, he ate it! The brutish Roman dolt, he ate it, the yet-living heart of the Great One! And
so he destroyed for ever the Great One. And if One could himself be thus destroyed by brute
courage and appetite, what of his children? Have I given my life and more than my life to
the service of those who have no more power over a brave man than the beasts of the field?

***

The rest is madness.