Donald Raymond Smith (The Sage of Nuneaton) was a notable but reclusive British fan, noted for being one of the first fans to write fanfiction in the contemporary sense—i.e., original amateur fiction featuring fictional characters created by and for fans. Before the 1940s, “fan fiction” was simply fiction written by fans, as opposed to professional writers, and didn’t necessarily reuse the characters or settings of other writers. While there are some examples of this sort of thing in the 1930s in ‘zines like The Fantasy Fan, Smith had a knack for it.

One of his most notable efforts is “Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad,” first published in The Nekronomikon #3 (Autumn 1950), now a very scarce fanzines; and very rarely republished, last appearing in The Second Cthulhu Mythos Megapack (2016).

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Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad

by D. R. Smith

The fabulous Necronomicon was never finished. This is well-known to all advanced students of the occult, whether or not they have had the courage and good fortune to peruse a copy. A well-known—in spite of the fact that few who have delved into the soul-blasting secrets of that loathsome mixture of revolting instruction and blasphemous history have managed to preserve their sanity to read that final chapter, which begins with the mutterings of one in a frenzy and dies away in the hideous ravings of mania. Abdul Alhazred—may his name be accursed forever—remained devilishly sane during the acquisition and recording of that abominable knowledge which few throughout the centuries have dared to acquire, even in part. It was the story he attempted to tell in that last frenzied chapter that shattered his black mind and sent his spirit gibbering with horror out of his diseased body into the gleeful embraces of the torturers of the damned.

And no one has ever dared to make that story known. Indeed, the most diligent search has failed to trace any mention of the terrible message by any student of the occult. Yet it was known to be sublime genius, and the crux of it published to the world in words still spoke on the public stage:

“(Anthony) . . . . . . on the Alps

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh

Which some did die to look on;”

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

. . . . . .

There was One Other. The Great One. Great Father and Great Mother in One. Greater than Great Cthulhu, than Hastur his brother, than Shub-Niggurath the Goat with a Thousand Young, than Tsathoggua, than great Yog-Sothoth himself—for They are but 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. May, 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 within chains of flesh that he might not break to this, the Planet of the Damedn. And as he fell he spawned Yog-Sothoth, who only is less than Azathoth. Sos says great Cthulhu, first of the Great Abominations which One formed from his own flesh to be his servants and the masters of the planet.

Mighty was the Great One. Loathsome the body They had bound him in—yet he gloried in its horror, and moulded it with his own will into a Thing to describe which would strike death into the craven soul of mortal men. The Faceess Nyarlathotep, messenger of the Great Old Ones, could not endure the foulness that was One, where he lay in a pool of his own slimy exhalations in the cavern in the mountains, lay and ruled the world with the terror of himself and the gods he had spawned. Had but I, Abdul Alhazred, been alive then to worship him! Great his Children, diligently have I served them and well have they paid me, with ecstasies the name of which should 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 not tell me. Yog-Sothoth I asked, greatest of the Spawn, and Yog-Sothoth would not tell me. Yea, by my Art did I call on Nyarlathotep, the faceless howler in the darkness, commanding thee 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 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 nor 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 eat of the horse-flesh, leaving it for others. On they went, and they came to a valley—a gloomy cleft in the hills. But water ran crystal clear down a rocky bed and scrubby pines grew around. They drank the water and made a huge fire of the trees—but the hunger was still there. And Marcus Antonius was 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 petrify 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 foot with 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 is javelin could not slay, his sword not wound. That abomination at the sight of which the watchers dropped dead, the very souls lasted 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-thonged 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 blacked charcoal was left of his fightful body. And then Marcus Antonius, a man amongst men, who feared nor God nor devil, but who was very hungry, smashed the charred shell and inside found nothing but a single steaming piece of rank flesh, loathsome of shape and color and odor. But it was flesh, and he ate.

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

. . . . . . . .

The rest is madness.

THE END

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Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsèd. On the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on. And all this—
It wounds thine honor that I speak it now—
Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
So much as lanked not.
—William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 4

This is a notable mid-century Mythos pastiche; it is very firmly drawing on the later Derlethian conception of the Mythos, not so much in the elemental schema as the very casual name-dropping of Cthugha and the like, the emphasis on a hierarchy among the eldritch entities, etc. The crowning joke of the piece is that Shakespeare reference, which is one of those obscure points like Tolkien’s Cats of Queen Berúthiel, which is not explained, but hints at something unspoken.

In that final jest, there is a rebuke of the Lovecraftian premise. Reminiscent of whenever Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian encountered an eldritch entity. It represents, in a literary way, the kneejerk response to the fannish devotion that the very look at such-and-such an entity will drive you mad, or that such a creature as Cthulhu is incomprehensible, by responding “Squid guy.”

Basically, Smith was playing the game but subverting the expectation. Yet he plays it straight at the end; how would a dedicated cultist, who has given their life and committed innumerable acts in worship of these alien entities, react when it turns out that these entities aren’t all-knowing or all-powerful, and might, in fact, taste good with a bit of garum?

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Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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