THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (18 page)

But while their outer husks are brittle, the Ghuls are not weak.  They crouch, and paw the ground as do the great cats when on the hunt.  At rest, their bodies slump in ways that a mortal’s would if only their bones were broken.  And while Ghuls can walk on two legs and even go forth enrobed and imitate the gliding gait of man, they run far more quickly on all fours.

Their hands are clawed and somewhat like paws, although withered and scabbed with age.  These hands, or forefeet, can be used either to run or to delicately hold and manipulate coins, pages, relics, even keys.  But many Ghuls shun weapons more complex than a club of bone.  Do not take this to mean that they are incapable of wielding scimitars or even war-bows, for I have seen them do this and bear the scars as proof.  They shun weapons often, but this is more a matter of ritual and pride than one of weakness.

In other ways, they are different from mortal mien.  The ears are pointed, the noses sometimes flat, the lips may drool with slaver or with pus.  Being hairless, Ghuls have no need for clothing.  They are caked with sand and grave-mold.  Some may have their bodies riddled with parasites, such as scarabs, larvae, ants or even scorpions.  Few speak of this, but from what I understand such a condition is not a disease, but rather some form of “symbiosis”—a mutually gainful existence, in which the parasites feast on the Ghul’s regenerating flesh, while the Ghul is in some way cleansed by the presence of the crawling ones.

Riddled or whole, the skin of Ghuls is mottled and brownish-gray, the color of decaying flesh.  As they age, the elders among their kind become greenish, and the mold becomes part of their skin.  Their faces are gray and
moist
, sheened with the decay of festering meat.  The bones of the skull do not protrude, but are so near to the surface that the effect is as if moist silk had been stretched across naked bone.  The nose may be missing, or a brief snout of canine cast.  There are crystalline fangs and the tongue may be pointed, or holed through with rot or beetle lairs, or missing entirely.

~

Ghuls are very strong, ungainly yet agile, and they can leap very far.  They are excellent climbers all, and some craft ladders of rope or vine to clothe entire cliff-sides or even the sheerest walls of death-pits.  They run on all fours, as I have told; when they rest, they squat.  A Ghul may tire, yet is never breathless.  They do not lie down unless to “sleep.”  I have never known a Ghul to dream, but their desire to do so is so great that their entire existence is an ever-shifting commingling of Dream and the Real.  And so, they dwelleth not only in tombs but in the Empire of the Blackened Mind, and shift from one into the other in
trances
rather than fits of sleep.

They can experience nightmares, and although they hear not the incessant sense-impacts of Cthulhu’s screams from beneath the waves, they
can
know fear.  It is my understanding that a Ghul does not feel pain, but they are rarely rash in battle, for they are not indestructible.  More than blades and bludgeons, they fear fire.

~

But it would be a mistake to regard the Ghuls as walking corpses.  They are not dead, and their skin is not decaying, but thick and rubbery.  They preserve and even bathe themselves.  There are wondrous and arcane alchemical salts which they distill and crystallize deep within their lairs, rendering down human fat and boiling blood with essential salts, natron, sugar, tar, and balsam resin.  As I will tell of my time in Egypt, the art of embalming is at the very heart of the mystery of the Ghul.

The Ghuls who know these arts are the
elders
.

The eldest among them have eyes so bloodshot that they are near to scarlet.  Ancient Ghuls have longer and bonier claws, which may be blunted with overuse.  As they age they lose their noses, and their hind-feet harden into near-hooves.  Ghuls grow throughout their existence, and the oldest among them are immense indeed.

The minds of Ghuls are partial and their reflections corroded.  The creation and birth of Ghuls is an aspect of lore which they jealously veil from even their most trusted thralls, and I still do not understand the ways in which Ghuls are “born.”

The first of their kind were likely created through the funereal rites of ancient Khom, beneath the Pyramids.  Too, they create Ghuls from willing mortals by tearing them apart, feasting upon the bellies of the changelings while infusing them with salts and arcane jellies.  But do they fornicate?  Are spawn born of their women, or is the impossibility of such the reason they steal the infants and children of mortal women?  I will not say that
none
know of these mysteries; but I myself do not.

I speak of this because it vexes the formulation of my own wonder:  do Ghuls have private and unique memories of their own mortal existence?  Were all once human, or are some
born
as Ghuls and so remain as such until they are destroyed?  I do know that many Ghuls were once men, women, and especially our children.  But whether this is true of all, who can say?

Whatever the answer to this riddle, there are hints of mortal memory in all.  Some Ghuls retain the power of language, others have their own meeping and gibbering tongue, while the most bestial among them can only howl and cry in rage.  It is said that those who most wish they were still human retain the strongest memories, and so are the gentlest and most loving of their kind; while those who embrace their new existence entirely and revel in bloodthirst are the most mindless and savage.

~

However strong or weak their individual ties to mortal ways, all Ghuls worship.  They revel and dance beneath the moon.  For their rituals they prefer graveyards, ruins and charnel pits, perhaps paying their obeisance to the links between mortal life and death and decay which such places forever signify.

But such accursed places, although frequented by Ghuls, are not their lairs, and are only rarely their hunting grounds.  And so, from whence do they come?  Where do they stalk?

As I tell in my tales within these scrolls, most Ghuls favor the open wasteland.  Many seem to prefer the fragile places in the desert where mortals come and fade, but do not linger.  In such places, the Ghuls can observe the guileless men and decide if they wish to feast upon them; destroy them; entreat of them to become one with the Cabal; make Ghuls of them; ignore them; or steal their children.  Thus, graveyards which are
in use
and where bodies are still deposited are favored by them, as are oases and the edges of paths made by the lesser caravans.

~

Their lairs are found deep beneath the desert.  You may find such, especially as you delve into the undercroft of temple and tomb; but know this well:  to enter a Ghul lair unbidden is an abomination to their honor, and such foolish delvers are set upon by all and torn apart.

The lairs will only be known to those who are honored with the secret of the Cabal, and who earn the trust of the elders.  The rims of such places are easy to find, should one wander into the nothingness of sand.  The Ghuls throw skulls and bones once the marrow and the brains have been sucked out, leaving them in shattered piles.  These are the marks of territorial boundaries.  Such scenes are not only horrifying to mortals and repel them, but are also observed by Ghuls of other tribes.  In this way do rival Ghul tribes speak to one another of their clans, their numbers and their might when on the hunt.

A Ghul lair is known as a
habrud
, or stench-filled pit, in the lost language of Sumeru.  From the central pit radiate honeycombs of burrows and warrens.  A
habrud
can also be the nexus of a crypt or buried temple, with the stones of walls removed and the burrows between carved by their gnashing claws through the naked stone.

~

All of this is well to know, but still there is the most delicate and precarious lore of all:  even when one finds the Ghuls and honors them, how doth one deal with them and live to embrace their wisdom?  The answer to such is ever contingent upon the nature of their elders.

Ghuls are led by pack-masters if they are savage, or elder chieftains if they are elegiac and fond of the ways of mortal kind.  Many are tribal, some are even holy.  Beneath the temples of Thebes and Memphis, the sanctuaries of Sais and Bubastis, there are Ghul-priests as well.  One who delves into the
habrud
must be quick to learn of their unique ways, and to honor them with the strictest of humility.

Remember well that the eldest Ghul is ever the largest, and therefore the master of them all.  It is he you must win over, and the others are likely—but not certain—to follow his own lead.  And too, a dire warning:  the genders of Ghuls are difficult for us to tell, for the breasts wither away and the genitalia are receded into their flesh.  Many are women.  There is no divide between the male and female as there is in the Kingdom of Men, and there is a goodly chance that the leader of a Ghul pack may be a
woman
of their kind.  Keep this well in mind, lest you insult the elder.  Should a Ghul elder honor you with his or her name, it may tell you much:  not only their gender, but the culture in which they lived in centuries past.

If the elder cannot be appeased, you must flee.

~

If all is well, you will find yourself surrounded by the curious pack as they struggle to accept the strangeness of your ways.  The weak are curious and will submit to the guidance of the strong.  Do not threaten violence even to the weakest, but neither should you cower.  Do not
imply
violence either, and never show your weakness.  Do offer food if you are carrying it.  To offer the fruits and grains and the meats preferred by mortals is an insult.  Offer flesh,
human
, the more rotted the better.  Beast-flesh will do if you carry nothing else, for otherwise you are telling the pack that you are keeping an unfair share of sustenance for yourself.  The sweet rotted flesh of a child is the greatest of gifts.

Should you come to be accepted into a
habrud
and you have no feast to offer, you are offering yourself.

~

Ghuls who do embrace you will be eager to share their texts with you, and any questions you may have of the elder world in all its glories.  The greatest honor a Ghul can offer you is to ask you to feast with them, of which I will speak in another scroll.

SCROLL XXVIII

The Conflicting Tales of Uncreation

Which Are Spoken by the Elders

Among the Deathless Ones

The origins of the Ghuls are a matter beyond mortal understanding.  This is curious, yet a matter of reason:  for while the Ghuls are the loremasters of mortality and the keepers of the memories of the fallen and eradicated kingdoms, they were not always such.  The
primordial
Ghuls, when they were newborn and few, were creatures of utmost secrecy.  They were hunted by mortals as an abomination, and even those who first experienced the revelation of the Deathless were not in totality fanatical to their own convictions.

For to desire immortality is one matter, and to
experience
it is quite another.  I am told there is a cosmic horror which overwhelms the mind when one comes to understand that one will live for thousands of years, an exile, outsider, incapable of being loved by mortal kith, fated to watch kingdoms rise and fall and the world itself be stripped away until the netherworld is all.

For these reasons, they are several tales amongst the Ghuls of their own creation and the first among their kind.  These Tales of Uncreation, revealed to me by Anata, Hetshepsu and Klocha, I will share without being so fool as to attempt their unification as an understanding of one truth.  The truth is lost.

~

The First Tale

~

The first thirteen Ghuls were born beneath the Pyramids, in a sacramental deviation from the Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth.  For those who know little of the mummification rites as they were practiced in ancient Khom, this ritual involved chiseling open the fresh mummy’s mouth with the adze of Horus, freeing the trinity-soul to leave the corpse and soar as Akh, Ba and Ka into the paradisaic netherworld Amen-ti, Dreamland of the fourteen amber and emerald hills.

There were among the priests of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten, a cult of defilers (whom the Ghuls call the Ones Enlightened).  The royal priest-cult of Akhenaten worshipped Aten, the un-god, the horror which is said to rule over the gods as the gods rule over men.  Such beliefs have long since been stricken from the monuments by the horrified Khomites who lived in the centuries after Akhenaten’s fall, yet much of the truth remains in inscriptions upon the walls which line the labyrinths far beneath the mighty Sphinx.

The Ones Enlightened worshipped the black reflection of the void left by Aten’s glory, a sentient hollow among the veils which they named
Nyarlat
.  And the Lord in Ebon, now known to the venerated among us as the Crawling One from Chaos,
Nyarlathotep
, did in answer to their prayers come to rise before them.  As it was with Queen Nitocris and the emboldened Nephren-Ka, so too it was for the Ones Enlightened who entreated the Lord in Ebon for the secrets of immortality.

Much lore was given to the Ones Enlightened in the language of nightmare.  In sharing their dying minds, they did create a ritual which was the reversal of the Opening of the Mouth, which is called the Weaving of the Prison.  In this ritual, the soul is still brought forth to live after death, but the mouth is sewn shut instead of chiseled open.  This causes the lingering last essence of the soul to remain in the body while still alive and to regenerate itself sevenfold, causing the “dead” one to return to life as a Deathless One, a Ghul.

Of the thirteen Ones Enlightened, two perished in horror, and were embraced by the Lord in Ebon and so blessed with oblivion.  Eleven endured, of which four signed with their souls the Blackened Codex of Azathoth.  The other seven defied their deathless existence once they experienced it; some were destroyed by Nyarlathotep or the four, but of the fate of them all, I have never been told.