THE LAST CHAPTER OF THE

NECRONOMICON
EDITED by ALLEN MACKEY

Editor's Note: This document is purported to the last chapter of the

Necronomicon, and is excerpted from D. R. Smith's 1950 article
called "Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad," which was published by
Manly Bannister in his small press magazine Nekromantikon,
volume one, number three. Like Smith's original title states, this is
supposedly the account of why Alhazred became known as the "mad
Arab." Is it authentic? Is this really the last chapter of the
Necronomicon? There's no way to know. Until a COMPLETE
edition of the Necronomicon is found by researchers, we can only
guess. I personally believe it to be a fraud. I present it here merely
for the sake of curiosity, nothing more. [Smith's two paragraph
introduction has been omitted; it can be found in its entirety in The
Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the
Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab, edited by Robert M. Price,
Chaosium.]

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 One's
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
servants and the masters of this 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 ecstacies the name of which would draw
shrieks of horror from those white-livered children-in-men's-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 ot 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 machination of Azathoth? One's children say Azathoth,

even mighty as he was, would never have dared to plot against the
Great One. Yet surely it was only 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 Cthulhu's
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 ahuge fire of the
trees--but the hunger was still there. And Marcus Antonius was
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 man's 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 bellows 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 from head to footvwith a
mixture of his own blood and revolting slime from That which he
fought. That which he had 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, called asking 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 of 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 amongst the glowing embers,
and Antonius laughed and threw on more wood, and in the heart of
the flames One screamed abominably until little but blackened
charcoal was left of his frightful body. And then Marcus Antonius, a
man amongst men, who feared not 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.

* * *