Free THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations by Kent David Kelly

are he.”
    I was well satisfied.  I was worthy.  I was.  I would venture on, I would conquer the daemon Huwawa who guarded immortality.  I would have and rule my Eden-lost, my Kingdom of Nothing.  And so I compelled Adaya to rise, and I enfolded her.
    Yet Nasht did say to me, “To the Gates of Deeper Slumber, you alone may pass.  The Forest Enchanted and all the lands which lie beyond will welcome you.  But this bereaved one, this grieving maiden?  She cannot go forth with you.”
    And swallowing my rage, I asked, “Why not?”
    And Nasht replied, “Because she is not truly here, and you only dream of her.”
    Kaman-Thah did say, “She is with death.  She is lost to you.”
    And I said, “But this is the threshold to the Otherness of the Real.  Here, the impossible shall reign.  These are the Lands of Dream.”
    And Nasht replied, “So they are.  But this moment and this place are real in themselves, and in all of the realities, she is dead.  Adaya is not here of her own will, child, but rather solely of your own.”
    I gazed into the eyes of Adaya, and she did kiss me.  She did speak then in my dream, for the first and only time.  She said unto me, “Al-Azrad, ever do I love you.  Know this, remember this if nothing else upon your waking.  I beg of you, set me free.  Give me the peace of death.  Live your life, learn the secrets of the Abyss which you must know; and when the end of your time is nigh, release yourself, and so in eternity will you come to me.”
    And as I wept and touched the ringlets of her braided hair, Adaya faded from my embrace.
    I woke with the same tears upon my face which I had cried in the fiery cavern of Nasht and Kaman-Thah.  I cried out her name, yet I was upon the rooftop in benighted Sana’a, alone.
    The smoke of the earlier hours yet lingered, but the crystals of the violet frankincense were ashes.  Many a year would pass before I ever found such crystals to be my treasures once again.
    And never since that night have I dreamt of my Adaya again, despite my fervent wishes every night to do so.
     

 
     
    SCROLL XIII
    The Lament of the Dead
     
    Despite the lingering mercies of the heat and the aridity of high Sana’a, the body of my Adaya had begun to render itself unto the dust.  I extracted from her mouth one tooth, for that is the way of my people when the beloved must be buried.
    I wrapped her then in linens and I sealed her shroud with beast-glue of melted fat.  I stroked a veil of cinnabar over her hidden face, shaping it in the symbol of the moon.
    My love.
    Having done this, in deepest night, I left Sana’a with her enshrouded body.  I forsook the city at that time, wanting nothing more to do with it or its people; and I swore that my beloved’s body would forever remain untouched.  For to one such as myself who knew black secrets, there were tales whispered that those corpses which were buried in Al Adim—the canyon hollow, the grave-ravine beyond that city’s black western gate—were blasphemed by treasure hunters, by necromancers, and worse.
    For my Adaya to be untouched, inviolate, I would bury her in secret, and alone.
    And so it is that in the night I carried her to the Oasis of Zarzara, three leagues into the desert, sahra .  Striding through the chill and wind in solitude, arriving there just ere to sunrise, I prayed thus:  for my Adaya, the afterlife would not be the end of all, but rather a rebirth.
    Would then that I knew my destiny.  O Adaya, forgive me.
    ~
    With my spade and my own fingers I did bury her beneath the date palm which offered the sweetest shade, near to the waters of Zarzara.  Her shroud I did well anoint with amber and spice of myrrh, for I knew these sweet scents of eternity were offensive to the digging beasts of the sahra .  With layers of fronds and stones each set upon her, I did set her to rest.
    She was my beloved, a daughter of Judaea.  Although her ways were ever a mystery to my own, I sought desperately