HP Lovecraft: "Under the Pyramids"

Perhaps not everyone knows that, in 1924, the young writer HP Lovecraft was commissioned to write a story by the famous "magician" Harry Houdini. The latter told Jacob C. Henneberger, editor of the magazine Weird tales to which Lovecraft was selling his work at the time, a story that he claimed really happened to him. The well-known illusionist said that during his trip to Australia he had stopped in Cairo, where he was kidnapped by two Bedouins and locked inside a pharaonic crypt. From here, he was only able to escape after passing a "horrible experience" that he could not reveal.

Β«My taskΒ» Lovecraft wrote to a friend, who are "it will be to invent this episode and color it with the most macabre shades. At the moment I don't know how far I will be able to go, because judging from a story by Houdini that Henneberger sent me as a champion, I see that the magician tries to pass these adventures worthy of a MΓΌnchausen as lived events. One glance is enough to realize that he is an extremely full-bodied man. In any case, I think I can come up with something pretty hellish ...Β».

The drafting of the story was full of unexpected events: the first draft was lost and it was necessary for HPL to write the manuscript all over again during the wedding night! In an autobiographical document, the writer thus recalls the very complicated birth ofΒ Under the Pyramids:

Β«Guys, that Houdini story! He put me on the edge and I didn't finish it until we got back from Philadelphia. In the first part I pushed descriptive realism to the maximum; then, when I dived into the part that takes place under the pyramids, I unleashed myself and brought out some of the most arcane, treacherous and unmentionable horrors that have ever trod, with the forked foot, the dark necrophagous abysses of the first night. To make sure that the story could adapt to the character of the popular showman I watered everything down with the formula "it was all a dream": we'll see what Houdie thinks about it.Β».

houdiniburied.jpg


HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT

Under the Pyramids

Β 

I.

The mystery calls the mystery. Ever since I achieved stardom as a "magician", since I was able to do things beyond the normal, I have been given to encounter strange events and strange cases that have caused people to consider related to my interests and to my actions in relation to my business. Some were neither important nor completely relevant, others truly dramatic and compelling, while still others had given me strange and dangerous experiences; finally some had been such as to push me to carry out scientific and historical research of far-reaching scope. I have already narrated many of these cases, and I will continue to narrate them: but there is one which I do not like to talk about and which I now report only following the insistence of the editors of this magazine, who have heard vague hints about it from others members of my family.

This story, which so far has remained secret, is about a visit I made to Egypt fourteen years ago for no professional reasons, and I have never talked about it for several reasons. First of all, it is not in my nature to exploit certain situations and certain events that are absolutely real, but obviously unknown to the amount of tourists who crowd the pyramids, and rigorously concealed by the Cairo authorities, authorities who cannot be unaware of them. Also, I don't really like to tell an episode in which my fantasy and my imagination must have surely played a preponderant part. What I saw, or what I thought I saw, did not really occur, and must rather be considered as the result of my reading of various texts on Egyptology and of hypotheses pertinent to this theme, obviously suggested by the context in where I was. These impulses of my imagination, magnified by the emotion due to an event in itself already terrible enough, must have given rise to the abysmal horror of that night so far in time.

In January 1910 I had just finished a job in England and had signed a contract to tour Australian theaters. Since I had a lot of time for the trip, I decided to take advantage of it in the way I found most interesting; therefore, accompanied by my wife, I crossed the whole continent and embarked in Marseilles on the Malwa ship, bound for Port Said. From there I planned to visit the main historical sites of Lower Egypt before leaving for Australia.

The trip was very pleasant, studded with many curious episodes as they usually happen to a "magician" even outside his work. To travel quietly, I had decided to remain incognito: but then I betrayed myself because of a colleague, since his intent to amaze passengers with rather cheap tricks made me work hard to reproduce and overcome his "performances ". I'm only talking about it to explain what the effect was, which, however, I should have foreseen before making my identity known to a large group of tourists about to disperse in the Nile Valley: wherever I went, they already knew who I was, and this did yes. that my wife and I could not enjoy the tranquility we had hoped for. I, who had left in search of curiosity, often became a curiosity for others!

We had gone to Egypt in search of exotic things and sensations, but we did not find many, when the ship anchored in Port Said and made the passengers take land by means of small boats. Low sand dunes, buoys floating in the shallow water and a desolate city with a European footprint where there was nothing of interest, except the great monument to De Lesseps, prompted us to look for some more worthy of attention. After discussing it, we decided to continue to Cairo and the pyramids, and then go to Alexandria, where we would see the Greco-Roman antiquities of that city and then take the ship to Australia.

The train ride was not the worst, and lasted only four and a half hours. We walked along a good stretch of the Suez Canal, as the railway runs alongside it to Ismailya, and further on we encountered the first offshoots of Ancient Egypt, when we came across a canal dug in the times of the Middle Kingdom and later refitted and made walkable. Then, finally Cairo, sparkling with lights in the glory of twilight: it looked like a shining constellation, which became dazzling as we got off at the central station.

However, we were disappointed, since everything that appeared before our eyes was of a European style, except for the customs and the people. A modern underpass led us to a square full of carriages, taxis and trams, the tall buildings of which were lit by electric lamps. The theater, in which I declined the invitation to perform and where I instead attended after a performance as a simple spectator, had recently changed its name, and was now called The American Cosmograph. With a taxi that traveled at high speed along spacious and well-marked roads, we reached Shepherd's Hotel, and there, partly for the irreproachable service offered by the restaurant, partly for the efficiency of the elevators and the presence of ease and comfort. of typical Anglo-American mold, the mysterious East and the ancient past seemed enormously distant to us.

But the following day instead catapulted us, to our great pleasure, into an atmosphere worthy of the Thousand and One Nights: in the winding alleys and exotic views of Cairo it seemed that Harun el-Rashid's Baghdad was coming back to life. Our Baedeker had guided us east, past the Ezbekiyeh gardens, along the Mouski, to show us the indigenous quarter, and after a while we ended up in the clutches of a chirping guide who, despite the things that happened thereafter, no doubt he knew his trade well. It was only later that I realized that it had been a mistake not to ask the hotel for an authorized guide.

Our guide, a bearded-faced, low-voiced, and overall acceptably clean fellow, looked like a pharaoh and called himself "Abdul Reis el Drogman," and seemed to exert a particular influence on his colleagues. These, however, to questions later addressed to them by the police replied that they did not know him, and explained that the term reis generically designates an important person, and that Drogman is simply a derivation of the word dragoman used in oriental languages ​​to indicate tourist guides. Abdul showed us wonders that until then we had only seen in his books and dreams. The old part of Cairo is an inexhaustible source of fables and myths: labyrinthine alleys guardian of fragrant secrets; verandas and Arabian bay windows that almost seem to join together on the cobbled streets; typically oriental road congestions, roaring with incomprehensible screams, creaking of wheels, lashing of whips, clanging of coins and braying of donkeys; visual assaults of veils, dresses, turbans and tarbushes of kaleidoscopic colors; water sellers and dervishes, cats and dogs, wizards and barbers. And, above all, the chants of blind beggars who sit on street corners and the modulated call of the muezzins that comes from the tops of the minarets, whose contours stand out against the vivid blue of a sky that never changes.

The covered bazaars also had a similar charm, but these were more silent. Spices, essences, aromas, incense, carpets, silks and brass objects: in the midst of the various bottles and bottles, cross-legged, old Mahmoud Suleiman was sitting and, in the meantime, young apprentices were pounding the mustard in the hollow of the capital of an ancient Roman Corinthian column which, in all probability, must have come from nearby Heliopolis, where three Egyptian legions had been sent by Augustus. Antiquity and exoticism began to merge. And the mosques ... and the museum ... nothing escaped our visit, but we did not allow our curiosity for Arab culture to fade in the face of the occult spell exercised on us by the Egypt of the pharaohs, which exercised its charm through the priceless treasures kept in the museum. We reserved for the end of the visit the pleasure of that moment: for now we were satisfied to contemplate the medieval Saracen splendors of the caliphs whose splendid tombs are hidden in the reverberating and legendary necropolis on the border with the desert.

Passing through the Sharia Mohammed Ali, Abdul finally guided us to the ancient mosque of Hassan to the door called Babel Azab. On the sides of this two towers rise, and beyond it begins the passage that leads to the fortified citadel that Saladin had erected using the stone of some abandoned pyramids. When we reached the top, passing around the modern mosque of Mohammed Ali, it was sunset, and in its light, looking from the balustrade, we could contemplate the mystical city of Cairo, whose golden domes and slender minarets all glittered, embellished with a kaleidoscope of reddish flowers in the gardens. Over the whole city, the great dome of the new museum could be seen in the distance and, even further on, beyond the mysterious yellow Nile, father of the centuries and of the pharaonic dynasties, the evil sands of the Libyan desert stretched; supple, iridescent, full of ancient and perfidious mysteries. The red sun went down, and then the merciless cold of the Egyptian night rose, and in that instant, as the fiery globe hovered over the edge of the world as if it were the god of Heliopolis himself, RΖ’-Harakhte, in its red light -blood we saw the very ancient tombs of the pyramids of Gizah appear black, already a thousand years old when the young Tut-Ankh-Amen ascended the golden throne of the distant Thebes. It was at that moment that the Saracen city lost its interest for us, and we began to foretell the most arcane mysteries of Ancient Egypt ... the black Kem of RΖ’ and of Amon, of Isis and of Osiris.

The next morning we prepared everything for the visit to the pyramids. We first crossed the island of Chizereh with its towering lebbakh trees in a Victoria and passed under the English bridge that leads to the west bank, then went down the riverside, slipping among the lebbakhs, passing the huge zoo and heading to the suburb of Gizah where, at a later time, a new bridge was erected to get directly to the center of Cairo. After crossing the hinterland following the Sharia el-Haram, we found ourselves in an area full of clear canals and simple indigenous villages; then, finally, we glimpsed the majestic profile of the monuments of our research which cut through the morning fog and reflected themselves upside down in the small rivers that dotted the road. As Napoleon had told his soldiers, forty centuries of history were watching us.

Suddenly the road became steep until our tram reached the stop, from where we were supposed to go to the β€œMena House Hotel”. Abdul Reis, who had bought the tickets for us, did very well in defending us from the assaults of the Bedouins who lived in a miserable village of clay huts nearby and who used to attack all the travelers screaming. In fact, he managed to get from them two excellent camels and a donkey for his personal use, and hired men and boys, more expensive than useful, to lead our animals. The distance to cover, in reality, was so short that the use of camels was completely superfluous, but it was nice to collect a new experience traveling on the "ships of the desert".

The pyramids are located on a high rocky plateau and, going from south to north, constitute the penultimate group of royal and princely tombs built around Memphis, the ancient capital that flourished between 3400 and 2000 BC, built on the same bank of the Nile slightly south of Gizah. It was Cheops, or Khufu, who had the major pyramid built around 2800 BC, which exceeds 150 meters in height and is also the closest to the modern road. Continuing to go south-west, we then find the Second Pyramid, built by Khephren a generation later; although it is smaller than the previous one, it seems larger as it is erected on a higher hillock. Finally, we find the Third Pyramid, much more modest in size and built around 2700 BC by Mycerino. On the edge of the rocky plateau, east of the Second Pyramid, with facial features altered to create a majestic face of Khephren, the pharaoh who revived his cult, grins the hideous Sphinx ... mute, mocking, mistress of wisdom older than man and memory.

Other, but smaller, pyramids can be found in several places, both intact and in ruins, and the entire plateau is dotted with tombs belonging to dignitaries of non-royal rank. Originally the mounds of the latter were distinguished by means of stone structures resembling benches and called mastaba that were erected above the deep funerary wells. Several examples can be found in other cemeteries of Memphis, and one of these is represented by the Tomb of Perneb in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. The mastabas of Gizah, however, have been erased by time and by raids: as evidence of their past existence, only the wells dug into the rock, saturated with sand or brought to light by archaeologists remain. A small temple was built next to each tomb, and there the priests and relatives offered food and prayers to the winged kΖ’, the life principle of the deceased. The temples of the minor tombs were housed inside the stone mastaba, while the funerary chapels of the pyramids in which the pharaohs rested were real temples, which were all oriented to the east of the respective pyramid and connected through a passage to a very heavy portal that overlooked the edge of the rocky plateau.

The small temple that leads to the Second Pyramid, practically almost buried by the continuous movements of the sands, extends underground to the south-east of the Sphinx. A custom still in existence gives it the name of "Temple of the Sphinx", and perhaps the name is appropriate, if the Sphinx is indeed an effigy of Khephren, the builder of the Second Pyramid. Horrible stories are handed down about the Sphinx before the advent of Khephren: but, whatever the features of his face were originally, the pharaoh ordered that they be replaced with his own features so that men could look at the immense figure without fear. The life-size diorite statue of Khephren, currently kept in the Cairo museum, was found in that very temple: a statue that I admired with awe and awe. I'm not sure if today they have unearthed the entire temple, but in 1910 the building was still mostly buried and, at night, the entrance was blocked by very strong bars. The Germans were working on it, but it was probably the war that distracted them from their intentions. What would I not give, given my experience and certain stories whispered by the Bedouins and refuted or ignored by the Cairo authorities, to know what was discovered about a certain well located in a transversal gallery where statues of Pharaohs were found placed, in enigmatic juxtaposition, in front of baboon statues!

READ MOREΒ  End Chronicles: From Machen's "Terror" to Lovecraft's "Colour".

The path we took that morning on the back of a camel drew a sharp curve as we passed the wooden buildings of the police, post office, shop and shops, located to the left, and then winding south and east, climbing on the plateau and position yourself exactly in front of the desert, under the Great Pyramid. We followed the road along the majestic construction along the eastern side: in front of us, a valley dotted with small pyramids, and further on the eternal Nile that shone in the East and the endless desert that shone in the West. The three major pyramids stood very close: the largest, being devoid of the external covering, exhibited its structure in enormous blocks of stone; the other two, on the other hand, still had a good part of the covering that originally gave them smoothness and turning.

Then we went down to the Sphinx: fascinated by those hollow yet terrible eyes, we fell silent. On his huge stone chest, we saw the emblem of RΖ’-Harakhte, the god of whom the Sphinx was believed to be the image in the time of a late dynasty, and although the sand hid the stele that the beast carried among the his powerful paws, we remembered the inscription Thutmosis the fourth had placed on it and the dream he had when he was still a prince. At that moment the smile of the Sphinx irritated us vaguely, making us rethink the legends that circulated on the passages that existed under his monstrous body ... passages that led down, lower and lower, descending to depths that no one dared to mention, connected to more ancient mysteries Dynasties and menacingly related to the darkest animal-headed deities of the Egyptian pantheon. And at that moment I formulated a vague question to myself, the hideous meaning of which would only be revealed to me several hours later.

More tourists arrived at the site, and our group got closer to the Temple of the Sphinx by traveling about fifty meters to the south-east. As I have already said, there is the large portal semi-suffocated by the sands that opens onto the walkway that leads to the temple of the Second Pyramid, on the plateau. Much of the building was still buried, and I got the impression that even though we had walked up and down a modern passage that led to the alabaster corridor and columned hall, Abdul and the German caretaker did not. showed just everything there was to see. Then we made the usual tour of the plateau and contemplated the Second Pyramid and the strange ruins of its temple. Continuing east, we observed the Third Pyramid, its temple and the small satellite tombs: both those of the fourth and fifth dynasty, dug into the rocks, and the famous Campbell Tomb, whose dark well reaches perpendicularly, from seventeen meters, to a disturbing sarcophagus. One of our camel drivers freed the latter from the sand after dangerously descending into the well by holding on to a rope.

Cries came from the Great Pyramid: the Bedouins were proposing to tourists to run up and down the huge structure for them for a fair fee. They say the record is seven minutes, but many locals claim they can improve it if suitably motivated by a lavish bakshich. Our group did not provide them with the encouragement they had hoped for, but agreed that Abdul lead us to the summit. From up there we could contemplate a panorama of incredible beauty, which offered us not only the view of Cairo, shimmering in the distance with the background of the Citadel and its lilac and golden hills, but also that of the pyramids built around Memphis, starting from Abu Roash in the north to Dashur in the south. The stepped pyramid of Saqqara, moment of transition from the mastaba to the real pyramid, shone with all its magic among the distant dunes. It was near this monument that the legendary tomb of Perneb was discovered… more than six hundred kilometers north of the Theban valley where Tut-Ankh-Amen rested. Reverential admiration made me mute again. Just thinking about such an antiquity, and the secrets that those monuments seemed to seriously contain, inspired me with a sacred respect and a sense of immensity that nothing else in the world has given me anymore.

Fatigued by the climb and annoyed by the invasion of the Bedouins, who were going beyond every rule of good taste, we decided to forgo the visit of the narrow corridors of the pyramids, even though we saw many of the bravest tourists ready to enter the claustrophobic corridors of the mighty funeral monument of Cheops. When we greeted our local bodyguards with lavish tips and prepared to return to Cairo in the afternoon sun with Abdul Reis, we vaguely regretted having given up on that visit. Very intriguing stories circulated on the lower corridors of the pyramids, not reported in tourist guides: corridors whose entrances had been hastily blocked by certain not very talkative archaeologists, those who had discovered them and began their exploration. Obviously these were rumors without a serious foundation: but the common warning issued by all was not to go to the pyramids at night and not to go down the walkways and the deepest tomb of the Great Pyramid. Probably, in the latter case, the visitor was warned of the psychological effects exerted by a descent into an oppressive underground world of massive stone whose only access is a narrow passage in which one must crawl on all fours and in which it could exist. the danger of being blocked by a landslide or by a treacherous accident. The visit seemed so extravagant and fascinating that we decided to return to the plateau at the first opportunity. An opportunity that presented itself to me much earlier than I thought.

That evening, seeing that the others in the group had become excessively tired after such a busy day, I went out alone for a walk in the picturesque Arab quarter with Abdul Reis' guidance. I had already visited it during the day, but I wanted to observe its alleys and bazaars in the evening lights, when the shadows and the soft glow of the lamps would give them a further mystery and a dreamlike atmosphere. The locals were starting to go home, but many natives could still be seen crowding the streets chattering, when we met a group of Bedouins cheerfully chattering in the Suken-Nahhasin, the coppersmiths' bazaar. We were immediately scrutinized by their leader, an arrogant, vulgar-faced young man who wore the tarbush tilted proudly on his head, who evidently recognized my guide, but with little effusion, probably from the man's haughty and contemptuous demeanor. Perhaps, it occurred to me, he was irritated by the curious imitation of the enigmatic smile of the Sphinx which I had often seen appear on his lips with an amused sense of annoyance; or perhaps the eerie sound of Abdul's voice was unpleasant. The fact is that they began to exchange some rather offensive jokes, and in short Ali Ziz, this was the name of the young boss when he was not called by more insulting titles, began to tug at Abdul's robe. The latter did the same, giving rise to an animated scuffle in which both lost the sacred headdress and during which they would have done even worse if it were not for my intervention, which divided them by force.

Thanks to my intervention, which initially opposed both, in the end it was possible to reach a truce. With a twisted face, the two contenders reassembled and rearranged their clothes then, with a suddenly solemn air, made a strange pact of honor according to a very ancient tradition of Cairo, as I was explained: they both undertook to put an end at the quarrel by solving it with fists, in a fight to be fought at night on the top of the Great Pyramid when the last tourist in pursuit of moonlight would be gone. Both had to find godparents, so the match would start at midnight, and then continue in classic rounds. Several aspects of it seemed to me quite interesting. If the boxing match was already configured as an exceptional spectacle, imagine the fascination that those monuments of incalculable antiquity of the Gizah plateau would have emanated in the light of the waning moon in the middle of the night! When I proposed it to him, Abdul gladly accepted my offer to be his godfather. We then spent most of the evening wandering around the most infamous neighborhoods of the city, located mainly to the north-east of Ezibekiyeh, where he collected an acolyte of slaughters from prison that would have witnessed his boxing stunt.

When nine o'clock struck, the group thus formed, riding donkeys with the royal or commendable names of famous tourists such as "Ramses", "Mark Twain", "JP Morgan" and "Minnehaha", made their way through a maze of alleys, he crossed the muddy Nile encumbered by a kind of forest of ship masts, passed the Bronze Lions Bridge and, in all tranquility, trotted among the lebbakhs of the road to Gizah. It took us more than two hours on the way and, when we were close enough to our destination, we met the other tourists returning home, we said goodbye to the last tram returning to the terminus and in the end we were left alone, with the night, the past and the ghostly moon.

At the end of the route we then glimpsed the cyclopean pyramids, and they inspired me with an atavistic threat that I had not perceived at all, in the light of day. Even the smallest was surrounded by a horrifying aura… wasn't that where Queen Nitocris of the Sixth Dynasty had been buried alive? The ruthless Queen Nitocris, who had the cunning idea of ​​gathering all her enemies in a party held in a temple on the Nile and then drowning them by causing her locks to open? It occurred to me that strange rumors were circulating about Nitocris, and that the Arabs carefully avoided the Third Pyramid during certain phases of the moon. Undoubtedly it was to her that Thomas Moore was referring when he wrote what the boatmen of Memphis murmur:

The dwelling underground nymph
between lightless gems and hidden splendor,
The Lady of the Pyramid!

Although we had arrived early, we had been preceded by Ali Ziz and his cronies, as we noticed when we glimpsed the outline of their donkeys against the desert plateau of Kafrel-Harem. Our group, on the other hand, avoiding the usual route leading to the β€œMena House Hotel” for fear of being stopped by sleepy and tired policemen, had diverted to the sad Arab town located near the Sphinx. Once we got there, where the graves of Khephren's dignitaries had been degraded to stables for the camels and donkeys of filthy Bedouins, they led us first up the rocky slope, then across the sands, to the Great Pyramid. The Arabs scrambled with extreme agility on his time-worn flanks: I refused Abdul Reis's help.

As most travelers know very well, the top of the pyramid has been worn for centuries, and is now reduced to a kind of smooth platform measuring approximately twelve square meters. The men formed a circle on that bizarre pinnacle and, two seconds later, the mocking desert moon sardonic witnessed a boxing match which, had it not been for the shouts of bystanders, would not have been unlike a regular sports competition. any small American club. As I watched, I reflected that the two contenders knew very well some of our less praiseworthy tricks: to my not entirely inexperienced eyes, in fact, every attack, every feint, every dodge, clearly appeared as a ploy to buy time. The meeting did not last long, and even if I did not feel like praising the half-men employed, I felt vaguely proud when it was Abdul Reis who was proclaimed the winner. Pace was made with incredible speed, with choruses and drinks from both sides, so much so that it seemed impossible that the two men had a fight just before. Curiously enough, now I had become the center of interest of the two men: by virtue of some Arabic knowledge, I understood that they were talking about my work, my shows and how I managed to free myself from handcuffs, boxes and trunks. And not only were they perfectly aware of my performances, but they were even wary and incredulous about my "escapes". Slowly I realized that the ancient magic of Egypt had left its marks upon its disappearance, and that the fellahin still retained fragments of a bizarre secret tradition and certain ritual practices, for which the exploits of a foreign magician, of a hahwi , they were looked upon with hostility and suspicion. Then it occurred to me that my guide, Abdul Reis, bore a menacing resemblance to an ancient Egyptian priest or a Pharaoh, or even the grinning Sphinx… and I was baffled.

Suddenly something happened that instantly justified my uneasiness by making me curse the stupidity that had prevented me from recognizing in the events of that night the diabolical trap that they were. Unexpectedly, and certainly in response to a sign from Abdul, the horde of Bedouins jumped on me, then, taking large ropes, tied me as tightly as ever, neither on stage nor off. At first I tried to free myself, but then I realized that a single man could not possibly win against twenty brawny savages. They had tied my hands behind my back, forcing me to bend my knees as much as possible. After stopping me from screaming by stuffing an obnoxious gag into my mouth, they also covered my eyes with a very tight bandage. As the Arabs took me sideways on the shoulders and began to descend the pyramid with nimble strides, I heard my former guide, Abdul, making fun of me by mocking me with his mournful voice and telling me that my "magical powers" would be soon subjected to a test that would have immediately deflated the arrogance I acquired after the successes achieved in America and Europe. He reminded me that Egypt was very ancient and full of mysteries and atavistic powers, inconceivable to modern experts who had failed me, trying to imprison me with their sophisticated methods.

I cannot say where and for how long they carried me on my shoulder, because in those circumstances it was impossible for me to determine it. I know with certainty, however, that the distance must have been short as, despite my tormentors walking at the pass, we arrived incredibly early. Yet it is precisely this speed that crawls my skin every time I think back to Gizah and its plateau: there are many rumors that circulate, in fact, about the proximity between today's tourist routes and what once existed and still must exist.

The disturbing strangeness I am alluding to did not immediately reveal itself to me. My tormentors laid me down on what seemed to me sand, rather than rock, then they secured a rope around my chest and with it they dragged me for a few meters to an irregular opening in the ground, and from there they lowered me down without excessive kindness. For a period of time that seemed interminable to me, I continually bumped into the walls of a narrow well which I assumed was one of the many entrances to the tombs of the plateau. But then its incredible and frightening depth prevented me from formulating any hypothesis.

Each interminable moment amplified the horror of that experience. It seemed impossible that such a deep descent along the massive rock could not reach the very heart of the Earth, or that a man-made rope could be long enough to lower me to those visceral depths: it was easier for me to doubt it than to accept my own. sensory impressions. I am certain, however, that until that moment logic had not abandoned me ... that I was not adding the ghosts of the imagination to a painting that in its reality was already in itself gruesome and can only be explained as a very different mental illusion from hallucination.

But it was not these reflections that caused my first fainting, because the horror gradually revealed itself to me. Instead, it was an imperceptible acceleration in the speed of the descent that initiated my subsequent terrors. Now they were lowering that endless rope more frantically, slamming me violently against the rough, narrow walls of the shaft as I descended steeply. By now my clothes were torn, and blood dripped all over my body; I felt that the pains increased excruciatingly. An unclassifiable nauseating smell of mold and dampness, in which a strange aroma of spices and incense was perceived, was attacking my nostrils moreover.

Then my mental breakdown occurred: hideous, atrocious, indescribable in words, it happened exclusively in my spirit, and in a vague way. It was the very essence of the nightmare, the synthesis of evil. It was apocalyptic and infernal in its suddenness ... Among a thousand pangs of pain, I was falling into that narrow well that was tearing me apart with millions of teeth when, a moment later, I had the distinct sensation of circling on bat's wings over the bowels of hell, swaying free for miles and miles of boundless space and putrid with mold, soaring myself towards immeasurable peaks of icy aether and then gliding breathlessly on gurgling nadirs of hungry and abominable voids ... Thanks be to God, who wished mercifully to erase the claws from my mind of conscience that rushed on my faculties to tear my soul apart like Furies! Even that brief rest of the spirit, gave me the strength and the lucidity not to give in to the refined horrors that awaited me at the passage on the still long road.

READ MOREΒ  In the beginning was the Word: Philip K. Dick's fanta-gnosis in "Ubik"

II.

After that hallucinating flight through the infernal ether I slowly regained consciousness. The return of the senses was inexpressibly painful and interspersed with absurd dreams in which my condition as an impotent, bound and gagged victim was repeated, with various variations. As I lived them, the nature of those dreams became very clear but, as they ended, their memory became confused and therefore was almost erased by the frightening events that followed, whether they were real or illusory. I dreamed of finding myself in the clutches of a giant and repulsive leg, yellow, hairy, equipped with five claws and coming out of the earth to crush and swallow me. When I tried to figure out what that paw was, it felt like Egypt. In the dream, I thought back to the events of the last few weeks, and I had the sudden sensation of being lured and then trapped slowly, with perfidious mastery, by some diabolical spirit from the underworld evoked by the most ancient witchcraft of the Nile; some spirit that, having existed in Egypt before the coming of man, would have continued to exist in that land when man would have disappeared from it.

I saw the horror and malignant antiquity of Egypt and its indissoluble and gloomy bond with the tombs and temples of the dead. I saw phantasmagorical processions of bull-headed, hawk, cat, and ibis-headed priests endlessly marching in underground mazes and avenues with titanic colonnades in comparison with which men looked like flies, and offering repugnant sacrifices to gods that transcend all description. Stone giants strode through the endless night, leading herds of grinning androsphinxes to the mighty banks of murky rivers of pitch. And, behind this scene, I saw the unspeakable wickedness of primordial necromancy, dark and shapeless, which stretched its blind tentacles into the darkness, in search of me, to crush the spirit that had dared rashly mock it by mimicking it. In my sleeping mind a tragicomic image of sinister hatred and persecution took shape, and I saw the black spirit of Egypt that recognized me and attracted me to itself with imperceptible whispers: it attracted and kidnapped me, enticing me with the sparkle and the wonder of a landscape Saracen. Instead, he dragged me more and more towards the crazy catacombs and the horrors of his Pharaonic heart, deep and dead.

At that moment, the faces I saw in the dream took on human traits, and I saw my guide, Abdul Reis, dressed like a king, grinning like the Sphinx. And I understood that his was the face of Khephren the Great, the Pharaoh who had the Second Pyramid built, sculpted in his image and likeness the face of the winged monster and erected the immense temple of which archaeologists presume to have brought to light, freeing them from sands and silent rock, tunnels and passages. And I looked at Khephren's long, bony, stiff fingered hand, which was exactly the same as that of the diorite statue I had seen in the Cairo museum ... and wondered why I didn't scream when I saw it in Abdul again. Reis ... That hand? With a repulsive chill, he was crushing me. It was the cold of the sarcophagus ... the cold and suffocation of a primordial Egypt ... It was the same Egypt of the necropolis ... that yellow paw ... And what stories are told about Khephren ...

At that moment, however, my brain began to awaken, or at least, I would say, to reach a condition different from that of the previous sleep. The memory of the boxing match that took place on the top of the pyramid returned, of the vile and mean aggression of the Bedouins, of the horrendous descent into the interminable depths of the rock, of the swaying and the absurd plunging into an icy abyss exhaling an aromatic rot. I realized that I was now lying on a damp rocky surface and that the ties still sawed through my flesh. It was very cold, and I had the impression of being crossed by a light current of air. My whole body was sore from the bruises and cuts caused by the bumps against the walls of the well, and that faint air exacerbated my pains agonizingly. I tried to roll on myself, resulting in excruciating pain. As I performed this simple operation, I felt the rope being pulled from above, and therefore deduced that it was still connected to the surface. I did not know if the Arabs were continuing to tighten the rope, nor could I calculate how deep I was. I knew I was immersed in total darkness, or almost, since my blindfold did not let the light of the moon leak out: but I could not take as proof that I was at an extreme depth the sensation of interminable descent that I had had, since I did not trust completely out of my senses.

Since at least I knew, however, that I was in a large space, connected directly to the surface by an opening in the ground, I put forward the hypothesis of being a prisoner in the buried temple of the old Khephren, the Temple of the Sphinx ... perhaps in a tunnel interior that the guides had not shown me that morning and from which I would be able to get out easily if only I had found the way to get to the locked door. I would have been forced to wander in that labyrinth, but I had not lacked similar experiences in the past. First I had to untie myself from the ropes, the gag and the bandage that bound me: and in this I would not have had great difficulties, given the punctual failures of much more refined experts than those Arabs in preventing the famous "escapes" of my long career But then I thought it was possible that the Arabs would be waiting for me at the entrance to attack me as soon as they had proof that I had managed to free myself from their ropes, which would have been if they had heard the tug of the rope which they probably still held. Obviously in this hypothesis I took it for granted that I was really a prisoner in the Temple of the Sphinx. Wherever it was, the opening in the ground from which I had been lowered could not be very far from the modern entrance, which was located near the Sphinx ... always assuming that the two different entrances were at such a distance, since tourists are only allowed to visit a very limited area of ​​the overall area. In my visit that morning, I had not noticed any such opening; I knew, however, that it was very easy to get confused with the sand. Immersed in those reflections, hunched over and bound on the rock floor, I almost forgot the horrendous descent into the abyss and the oscillations that had darkened my brain a little earlier. The only concern I had at the time was how to outwit the Arabs; so I decided to untie myself at maximum speed, avoiding yanking the rope so as not to make them understand that I was trying to free myself, succeeding or not.

But it was easier said than done. Certain initial tentative attempts revealed to me that with delicacy I would have succeeded in very little, and I was not surprised when, after having struggled hard, I felt coils of rope swooping both around and on me, falling on each other. It was clear, I thought, that the Bedouins had let go of the rope after hearing my movements, and I had no doubt: they had rushed to the normal entrance to attack me mercilessly. The prospect didn't smile at me much, but I had bravely faced even worse situations, and I wasn't going to tremble right now. First I had to untie myself, then devise an ingenious way to escape the temple safely. The strange thing was that I had ended up convincing myself that I was in the ancient temple of Khephren, near the Sphinx, a few meters below the ground.

To dispel that conviction and to bring me back to the terrors of an abysmal depth and a hellish mystery, it was a circumstance whose horrendous meaning I understood as I devised my cunning plan. I said that the rope, falling on me, collected itself in concentric coils: I realized at that moment that it continued to pile up as a rope of normal length could not do! By acquiring greater inertia, it turned into a veritable avalanche of hemp that poured on me violently, tangling itself in coils on the floor. Very soon I found myself completely submerged and, suffocated by all that weight, I began to have difficulty breathing. I was on the verge of losing consciousness again, and fought in vain against a fatal threat. In addition to being cruelly tortured beyond human endurance, as well as feeling that they were slowly sucking my breath and life ... I had the certainty of what that crazy length of rope meant, the knowledge of being surrounded by unknown depths and huge, down there, in the depths of the Earth. Then the interminable descent and flight into the spectral ether must have been real, and I was helpless towards the center of the planet, in the bowels of the abyss.

When I talk about oblivion, I don't mean that I wasn't assaulted by dreams. Indeed, my catatonic state was tormented by visions of indescribable horror. Oh God, how I wished I hadn't read all those Egyptology texts before leaving for that country, the receptacle of every shadow and every terror! During the second faint, my slumbering brain was overwhelmed by a new and horrifying consciousness of that land and its primal secrets and, by a damned chance, I began to dream of the ancient populations of the dead and their existence, both physical and spiritual. , in addition to the enigmatic tombs, more resembling homes than tombs, in which they rested. I saw in the dream, under aspects that fortunately now I do not remember, the particular and complex structure of the Egyptian tombs, and I was reminded of the mysterious and horrifying cults which inspired their construction.

The Egyptians were obsessed with death and the dead. Believing in the complete resurrection of the body, they mummified it with extreme care, and kept its vital organs in canopic jars which they placed next to the deceased. They also believed in the existence of two further entities: the soul which, after being weighed and accepted by Orisis, entered the land of the blessed forever, and the dark and powerful kΖ’, the life principle, which wandered horribly in the higher worlds and lower and occasionally returned to the mummified body to feed on the offerings left in the temple by the priests and devoted relatives. And according to certain rumors, the kΖ’ sometimes re-possessed his own body or entered the wooden "double" buried with it and then wandered around the world to perform unspeakably evil deeds.

When not visited by the kΖ’, the bodies rested for thousands of years, protected by their sumptuous coffins, glassy eyes turned to the sky, awaiting the day when Osiris, awakening the stiffened legions of the dead from the underground abodes of sleep, would restore them both the kΖ’ and the soul. A wonderful rebirth: but not all souls were accepted and not all tombs remained inviolate ... therefore certain bizarre errors and certain demonic anomalies could occur. another world, to which only the invisible winged kΖ’ and soulless mummies can attend and return unharmed.

Perhaps the most hallucinating stories are those that circulate about certain macabre perversions carried out by the decadent priestly class ... composite mummies obtained by artificially combining human trunks and limbs with animal heads to reproduce the appearance of the ancient gods. Sacred animals, bulls, cats, ibises, crocodiles were mummified in all phases of Egyptian history, so that they could one day rise to greater glory. Only in the period of decadence the Egyptians had composed man and animal in the same mummy ... only in the decadence, when they no longer understood, that is, the rights and prerogatives of the kΖ’ and the soul. At least at the official level, it has not been explained what happened to those composite mummies, and it is certain that one has never been found by any Egyptologist. The rumors that circulate among the Arabs are vague and unlikely, and allude to the still existence of the old Khephren, the ruler of the Sphinx, the Second Pyramid and the Temple, in the depths of the earth with his consort, the perfidious queen Nitocris, as Lord. mummies that are neither man nor animal.

And I dreamed of Khephren, of his wife and of the mad legions of composite dead: for this I thank God with all my heart for not remembering the exact dream images I saw anymore. My worst vision concerned the vague question I had asked myself the day before when, as I contemplated the great riddle carved in the desert, I had wondered what dark depths the nearby temple might be connected to. The question, which at that moment had been so idle and innocent, in the dream took on a meaning of delusional and hysterical madness… what gigantic and hideous abnormality did the Sphinx originally depict?

My second awakening, if you can define it that way, was a moment of absolute horror that nothing in my life will ever be able to match, except for what happened next: yet the intensity and adventurousness of my life far exceeds the normal lives of ordinary people. I repeat that I was unconscious, buried by an avalanche of rope whose length revealed the absurd depth of where I was. When I regained consciousness, I felt that the weight of the rope had disappeared and, as I rolled around, I realized that, while remaining bound, gagged and blindfolded, something had removed the oppressive cascade of hemp that was suffocating me. Of course, I only gradually understood what it meant, but I am sure I would have passed out again if I had not in the meantime reached an emotional state that would remain indifferent to any new horror. I was just ... with what?

But before I tortured my brain with new reflections, before I tried again to untie myself, another fact revealed itself to me. Pain that I had not previously felt, now tore my arms and legs apart, and I had the feeling of being covered with a film of dried blood, which could not have come out of the cuts and bruises that I had gotten. It seemed to me that my chest was also pierced by a hundred wounds, as if it had pierced the beak of a gigantic and treacherous ibis. Undoubtedly the entity that had removed the rope was malignant, and had begun to hurt me cruelly when something had apparently forced it to give up. Strangely, my feelings were completely different from what one might expect. Instead of abandoning myself to an abysmal despair, I felt that a new courage and an irrepressible impulse to act was born in me: because now I knew that hostile forces were physical entities, and a fearless man could face them as an equal.

Reanimated by this thought, using all my experience, as I had done so many times under the limelight and the applause of the audience, I tried again to free myself. I concentrated intensely on the details of my usual techniques, and now that the rope was gone, I was about to convince myself that the supreme horrors were nothing more than hallucinations and that the terrifying pit, the immeasurable abyss of the endless rope, had never existed. . Was I really in the temple of Khephren, near the Sphinx, and the sinister Arabs had sneaked in there to torture me as I lay bound and helpless? Whatever the case, I had to free myself from the bonds. Once loosened, on my feet, my mouth free, my eyes open and ready to perceive every little glimmer of light, I could face my evil and treacherous enemies almost with joy! I can't say exactly how long it took me to untie myself. It certainly took me longer than I usually do in my shows, considering that I was hurt, weakened and shaken by the experiences I had just had.

When I finally managed to free myself, and eagerly sucked in the cold, unhealthy air impregnated with the smell of nauseating spices, even more disgusting now that I was breathing it without the filter of gags, I realized that I was too exhausted and stiff to act immediately. So I lay there relaxing my numb limbs for a period of time that I couldn't determine, and I sharpened my eyes to catch at least one ray of light that would help me understand where I was. I slowly regained my strength and reactivated my muscles, but I could see absolutely nothing. As I staggered up, I peered intently in every direction, but found nothing but an inky black darkness, exactly like the one that blinded me while blindfolded. Trying to move my legs, all covered with blood clotted under the tattered trousers, I found that I could walk: but which way to go? Obviously I could not move at random, thus risking to move away from the exit I was looking for, so I tried to establish the origin of the icy and salty air current that continued to hit me.

READ MOREΒ  HP Lovecraft, the New Babel and the advent of the New Dark Age

Deciding that the point from which it came had to be a possible exit from those black depths, I struggled not to lose the reference and headed in that direction. I had brought with me a box of matches and even a small flashlight: it was obvious, however, that all objects of a certain weight had fallen out of the pockets of my tattered clothes. As I cautiously advanced in the dark, the current of air became more violent and more stagnant, and I concluded that it must have been the escape from some opening of a fetid vapor, like the smoke of the Genius that in oriental tales comes out of the fisherman's lantern. The East ... Egypt ... the dark cradle of civilization, was truly an everlasting source of horrors and unfathomable mysteries! After a brief reflection, I decided not to go back. If I had strayed from the current, I would have lost my only point of reference, because the rocky floor, roughly flat, had no telltale features. Instead, following the mysterious current, I would undoubtedly have arrived at an opening, and from this I could have skirted the walls and managed to get to the opposite side of that titanic tunnel. I was perfectly aware that I could fail in the attempt. I sensed that I was not in an area of ​​the temple open to tourists, and I was struck by the thought that perhaps the gallery was not even known to archaeologists, and that it could have been discovered by pure chance by the intriguing and perfidious Arabs who had locked me there. . If this hypothesis was true, was there an exit leading to tourist areas or to the open air?

What evidence did I have, after all, that I was really in the temple of Khephren? For an instant I was terrified again by all the most terrifying conjectures, and thought that the vivid jumble of sensation, the descent, the flight into space, the rope, the wounds and the visions were but dreams. Had my life come to an end? And if I had truly come to the end of my days, would it have been a merciful end? I couldn't answer any of those questions, and those questions continued to swirl in my head until, for the third time, fate dropped me back into oblivion. This time I was not assailed by dreams, because the speed of the accident shocked my mind to the point of annihilating all my thoughts, both conscious and subconscious. At a point where the putrid current acquired a strength that enabled it to resist me physically, I tripped over an unsuspected step and plummeted down a dark staircase of massive stone steps to a chasm of unstoppable horror.

If I returned to breathe, it was only thanks to the vital instinct of a healthy human body. I often think back to that night, and I see a certain humor in those repeated fainting: their succession makes me think only of the naive melodramas of the cinema of those years. Of course, it is possible that my trance never occurred, and that in reality all the details of my underground nightmare were part of a chain of dreams of a single, long coma, which began with the trauma of descending into the abyss and ended with the reviving balm of the open air and the dawn sun, which found me lying on the dunes of Gizah, in front of the mocking face of the Sphinx burning with light. It is this last explanation that I prefer to believe, as far as I can ... This is why I was delighted when the police told me that the bars that closed off the access to the temple of Khephren had been removed and that a large opening had been found in a corner of the still buried area. I also felt relieved when the doctors determined that I had caused those injuries in the assault, in the descent, in an attempt to free myself, in a fall (probably in a depression in the internal corridor of the temple), in dragging myself to the exit and so on. : a reassuring diagnosis. But I know there must be more behind the surface. I remember that descent too vividly to be considered merely a figment of the imagination ... and I find it bizarre that no one was ever able to find the man who matched my description of Abdul Reis el-Drogman, the man with the mournful voice who resembled Pharaoh Khephren and smiled like him.

For a moment I abandoned the chronological sequence of the story, hoping in vain, perhaps, to avoid the narration of the last event: the incident which I believe is the closest to hallucination of all. I have promised, however, to tell it, and I never fail in my promises. When I came to my senses, or so I thought, after falling down the stone steps, I found myself alone and in the deep darkness, just as before. The stench raised by the current, which had previously been quite nauseating, was now deadly: but by now I was used to it, and was able to tolerate it stoically. Still dazed, I tried to crawl away from the point of origin of that infernal vapor and, with bloodied hands, I touched the gigantic slabs of a colossal pavement. For a moment I bumped my head against something hard and, when I felt the object, I realized that it was the base of a column of a crazy width, covered with huge hieroglyphs carved on the surface that were perfectly recognizable to the touch. Continuing my creeping advance, I found other enormous columns, placed at indecipherable distances; then, suddenly, something that my subconscious hearing must have perceived long before I consciously registered it caught my attention. . By a kind of intuition, I knew that they were very ancient, evidently rituals, and my readings on Egyptian musicology suggested the flute, the fife, the sistrum and the tympanum to me. In that pipillary, tinkling and rolling, I felt a terror greater than any terror known on Earth, but curiously detached from the fear of the individual, and which took the form of a kind of detached commiseration for our world; because in its recesses it contained the horrors capable of arousing those crazy cacophonies. As the sounds increased, I realized they were getting closer. Then - may the gods of all the pantheons protect me in order to spare my ears in the future that hideous din - I perceived, distant and faint, the millennial and infernal rumble of the things that were marching.

It was terrifying that beings with such different steps could follow such a perfect rhythmic cadence! Long, impious millennia of wicked marches had to guide that advance of underground monstrosities, which hopping, scrabbling, whistling, crawling, pawing ... following the absurd rhythm of those nefarious instruments. And then - I invoke the Lord to remove from my memory the memory of those legends whispered among the Arabs - the soulless mummies ... the receptacles of the wandering kΖ’ ... the legions of pharaonic dead cursed by demons and multiplied for forty centuries ... the composite mummies, led across the black onyx abysses by the pharaoh Khephren and the cunning queen Nitocris ...

The trampling became closer ... may God save me and free me from the trampling of those feet, those paws, those hooves and those claws, which by now I was beginning to distinguish! At the bottom of the pavement, which stretched an immeasurable distance into the sunless darkness, a glimmer of light glimmered from afar, in the fetid ether, and I ran to hide behind one of those titanic columns, not to see the horror that came. in my direction with its millions of feet, advancing in the gigantic gallery full of inhuman terrors and suffocating antiquity. Flashes of light followed one another, and the patter and dissonant rhythm amplified with a stomach upset intensity. A chilling scene condensed in the uncertain orange light, and a moan of genuine disbelief came out of my mouth, overcoming even my terror and my nausea. Pedestals of columns that I could not even half see, with my human sight ... bases of buildings that would have made the Eiffel Tower microscopic, compared to them ... hieroglyphs carved by unimaginable hands in dark caverns where the sunlight was only a distant legend… Not I would have looked the marching creatures: this was the desperate resolution I made when, above the eerie music and the macabre scuffling, I heard their joints creak and their breath panting. What a salvation that they did not speak! God, however…! The torchlight began to cast grotesque shadows on the surface of the gigantic columns. Hippos shouldn't have human hands, they shouldn't carry torches ... men shouldn't have crocodile heads ...

I tried to turn around, but I was surrounded by the shadows, the noises and the stench. Then I was reminded of a habit I had as a child when I had semi-conscious nightmares, and I began to repeat to myself: β€œIt's just a dream! A dream!". But it was a vain expedient, and all I had to do was close my eyes and murmur a prayer ... at least this is what I think I did, since visions are never completely certain ... and I'm sure it must have been a vision ! I wondered if I would return to the world again and, at times, I half closed my eyes to see if there was even a single detail, apart from the air impregnated with miasmatic fumes, the cyclopean columns and the absurd and theriomorphic shadows of those abominable monstrosities. , which allowed me to understand something more of the place where I was. The hundreds of torches now glowed vividly, and unless this satanic place was entirely devoid of walls, I would soon be able to see its boundaries or locate a precise point of reference. Instead I was forced to close my eyes again, when I realized the crazy number of creatures that were gathering ... and when I caught a glimpse of a particular shape that walked majestically, at a regular rhythm ... absolutely devoid of body above the point of the waist.

Then an infernal howl, guttural and ghostly, tore the air ... that air saturated with poisonous fumes of naphtha and bitumen ... in a bewitched chorus of a thousand swearing throats in unison. My eyes opened, and a scene was imprinted for an instant that would shock any human being with panic, terror and exhaustion. The creatures, following the direction of the current miasmatic, were arranged in a ritual line, and the light of the torches illuminated the contours of their bowed heads ... or rather, of those that had a head. They waited adoringly in front of a kind of black abyss, from which a murky putrescence splashed in whiffs and then rose up and almost vanished. I noticed that from its sides, at right angles, two titanic stairways branched off, the top of which disappeared into the darkness. I was sure I had fallen from one of the two.

The chasm had the same dimensions as the columns: a normal house would have disappeared, compared to it, and an entire public building would have entered it without any difficulty. It occupied such an immense space, that only by looking up it was possible to delimit its contours ... it was so immense, so hideously black, so disgustingly soothing ... And in that cave worthy of Polyphemus, the creatures were throwing things, presumably gifts or offerings propitiatory, according to their gestural mimicry. In front of all was Khephren: the grinning pharaoh Khephren, or my guide Abdul Reis, surrounded by the golden pshent, who dictated very long formulas with the gloomy voice of the dead. Kneeling next to him I saw the beautiful Nitocris, who I glimpsed for a brief moment in profile and then realized that the entire right side of her face had been gnawed by mice or ghouls, eating corpses. And when I saw clearly what the creatures were throwing into the hideous chasm, probably as an offering to the divinity who lived there, I closed my eyes again.

Being a rather elaborate ritual, I argued that the Lord of the Abyss must be quite important. Was it Osiris, or Isis, or perhaps Horus, or Anubis, or some unknown god of the dead, more ancient and exalted than them? A legend tells that, long before the birth of the cults of the known gods, nefarious altars and obscene colossal statues were erected in honor of a Dark Being ... Then, while I was trying to resist the macabre sight of the sepulchral apparitions of those creatures without a name, I suddenly learned that there was a possibility of escape. The walkway I was in was poorly lit, and dense shadows were cast from the huge columns. Considering that all those abominable monsters were swooning from the ecstasy of the ritual, perhaps I could crawl unseen to one of the stairways and stealthily scramble to freedom, praying to Fate and relying on my skills. I did not know where I was, nor did I want to know… and for a moment I smiled amused at the idea of ​​organizing an escape from what was certainly a dream. Was I really in a buried and unknown area of ​​the basement of the Temple of Khephren, that temple that has been called the Temple of the Sphinx for generations? Even though I had no certain element to conjecture, I was absolutely determined to go back to life and reality, as long as my strength and brain assisted me.

On all fours, I began to crawl, with my heart in my throat, towards the stairway that seemed to me more accessible, that is, the one on the left. If you ask me to describe what I felt in those minutes, I confess I can't do it, but it's easy to imagine: just think that, for fear of being discovered, I was obliged never to take my eyes off that horrid scene illuminated by the torches blowing in the wind. I have already explained that the base of the staircase was very distant and dark, since it had to climb without a curve to the balustrade erected above the chasm. Consequently, the last part of my advance took place quite far from the roaring crowd, although the view terrified me all the same. Finally I reached the steps and began to climb, still close to the wall, and on this I observed some revolting drawings. To slip away, I relied on the ecstatic rapture with which those obscenities stared at the chasm that spewed putrid air and the unclean foods thrown by themselves near the opening on the ground. The steps of the colossal staircase were huge blocks of porphyry, fit for the feet of a giant, and their ascent seemed endless.

The effort that that climb cost me, which had also relieved my pains, combined with the terror of being discovered, made me live a real hell. As soon as I reached the balustrade, I had resolved to complete the ascent of the remaining steps, if there were any, vowing not to turn around to look for the last time at the blasphemous horde pawing and bowing adoringly thirty meters below. And instead, a sudden rise of that chorus of mournful whistles as I was about to reach the top, a clear sign that no one had noticed my escape, prompted me to stop and peek from the balustrade.

The aberrant creatures were screaming in exaltation at something that had come out of the fetid chasm to snatch their revolting offerings. It was something mammoth and massive, even from the top of my position, something yellowish and woolly, with a kind of continuous movement. It may have looked like a large hippo, but it was very oddly made. Apparently it was neckless, but it was endowed with five hairy heads that stretched out in a row from the roughly cylindrical trunk: the first, tiny; the second, rather large; the third and fourth, of equal size, larger than all; the fifth, slightly larger than the first. Curiously stiff tentacles protruded from the five heads, and with these the Being snatched up the revolting food that had piled up near the mouth of the chasm. Sometimes he jumped out, sometimes he drew back in the den bizarrely: a way of moving that was so absurd it irritated me. So I stood staring at him, hoping that he would come out more of his cave.

And then went out… He went out and, in front of that sight, I ran away up the dark staircase. Semi-conscious, I went up senselessly, without understanding or seeing, myriads of steps and inclined planes, along which neither sight nor reason guided me, and which I believe I must leave in the dream world, as there was no rational evidence ... It must have been a dream : how could I, if not, to find myself at dawn, breathless, on the dunes of Gizah, in front of the mocking and sun-scorched face of the Great Sphinx?

The Great Sphinx! My God ... the vague question I asked myself the previous morning, blessed by the sun ... what immense and hideous monstrosity the Sphinx originally represented? Cursed the moment when, dream or not dream, the supreme horror revealed itself to my eyes: the Dark God of the Dead who gulps his abnormal morsels into the endless abysses, macabre sated with impious foods of soulless monstrosities that do not exist . The five-headed obscenity that emerged ... the five-headed obscenity the size of a hippo ... the five-headed obscenity ... and what of which It is just a foreleg...

But I survived, and I know it was just a dream.

(under the pyramids,Β February-March 1924)

3 comments on β€œHP Lovecraft: "Under the Pyramids""

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *