Acolytes of Cthulhu

THE LAST WORK OF PIETRO DE OPONO

BY STEFFAN B. ALETTI

I ARRIVED LAST SPRING, FULL OF HOPE FOR THE EARLY AND triumphant completion of my doctorate in Italian Renaissance studies. Padua, Perugia, Ravenna, Firenze! All names that practically shivered me with delight. Here I was, in the very seat of the Renaissance, that bright green and gold arousing of mankind from his long, shaggy medieval sleep. It was through these sumptuous hills that Petrarch wandered, singing of Laura, and Dante of Beatrice. It was here that Landini lent his name to that cadence that would color music until the baroque, and it was under these bright Tuscan trees and skies that Leonardo and Michelangelo both strove to make men into angels.

But my quarry was more elusive than these giants; I was seeking a man who had been swallowed up in one of those tragic, dark pockets that even the Renaissance contained. Pietro, or Peter, of Apono had been born in 1250 in, logically, Apono, a little hamlet not far from Padua. He had been a great man; a philosopher, writer, poet, mathematician, and astrologer. Following the practice of his time, he turned these various skills over to the study of medicine, and his fame as a physician was renowned even as far as the great walled city of Paris, where his cures had been nothing short of miraculous. When he returned to Italy a famous man, he got into a silly squabble with a neighbor, over the use of a spring on the man’s property. The man, apparently an ill-tempered lout, finally forbad Pietro to use the spring, and within a few days, the well mysteriously dried up. It was then rumored about the neighborhood that old Pietro was a sorcerer, and that it was he who, out of spite, caused the well to dry.

From this germ of nonsense, a great host of stories and accusations spread and fell upon Pietro’s head; he was finally brought to the attention of the Inquisition.

The inquisitors took hold of the kindly old man and burned his flesh, broke his bones, and stretched him out of shape; still, Pietro would not admit to being driven by demons, or in consort with the devil himself. But his body was not as strong as his will, and the old man died painfully, yet free in spirit.

Of course the inquisitors were furious at being cheated out of an execution, so, only a few days after the luckless Pietro had been buried, a group of pious priests were sent to exhume his body and burn it in the public square. To their horror, the body had disappeared—risen it was assumed—and the inquisitors fled back to Padua with a tale that soon dissolved into legend.

Needless to say, the explanation was much less cosmic than that. One of Pietro’s friends and benefactors, one Girolamo da Padova, had the body exhumed and re-interred in his own crypt, to save his old friend’s spirit from the indignities that the Inquisition had intended. I alone of living men knew this, for I had found a collection of old letters, including one that Girolamo had sent a trusted friend to explain the “resurrection.” In the letter Girolamo states that he took all of Pietro’s books for himself, except the one that he had been translating at the time of his arrest. He adds:

It was in Maestro Pietro’s province to bring all things to light, no matter how loathsome. He believed that the light of reason would make everything beautiful and holy, but I tell thee, my good Ludovico, this book from Paris is the devil’s work. Cursed from remotest antiquity, this parchment hath caused the ruin of all who deal with it, and, as thou seest, Pietro himself was the last of their line. He tried, as was his wont, to turn the cursed thing to good, to use its blasphemies for healing and helping, but its grotesque blood rites and hymns to desecration shocked even good Pietro. He had decided that the work was too blasphemous and too degrading to ever be turned towards good, and he was resolved to destroy it and his own partial translation. But the Holy Inquisition caught him before he could accomplish this.

Fortunately, he had hidden both behind one of the books in his cabinet before the inquisition came through the door. I have taken both; his translation is now buried with him in my own family’s crypt in the Church of San Giueseppe, and the parchment itself, unfit for holy ground, hath been buried outside the city walls. I pray that my own handling of it hath not endangered mine own soul.

So I, a lowly student, was about to find the bones and last work of the legendary Pietro of Apono.

II

THE BUSINESS OF THE BOOK HAD EXCITED ME. WHAT HAD IT been? Could it have been one of the early Latin translations of the Necronomicon? Or possibly the now-fabled Delancre translation of the horrid Mnemabic Fragments? Or was it some heretofore uncovered masterpiece of ancient or gothic imagination? I immediately envisioned my doctoral thesis as an edition of this newly discovered work; its first edition in 700 years.

Girolamo’s family had died out in the plague that sent Boccaccio fleeing to the hills of Florence to give us the Decameron. Therefore, the crypt in the cellar of the San Giueseppe church was untended, and of only minor archaeological interest. My request, consequently, to spend the night studying the badly worn monuments and inscriptions was granted by the monks without undue trouble.

Alone, finally, and not a little nervous at being surrounded by the long dead, I began to poke my way about the ruins of the vaults. The cement binding the slabs to the coffins themselves had long since crumbled, so lifting off the covers was simply a matter of judicious use of a crowbar and a strong back.

Relative after relative, I studied—Antonello, Giorgio, Tonio, Lucia, etc. All I encountered in these beautifully decorated marble coffins was moulded skulls and various bones; mostly the bones no longer adhered to each other, so that all semblance of a body or human form was lost. They were just piles of bones and mounds of shredded, wormy velvet and silk. For some reason, I’m glad to say, it had not occurred to me that I was desecrating the dead. Scholars are well known to get carried away by their work, and so with me that night. I am not a particularly brave man, and I would not even walk alone through a graveyard at night without qualms; but that fearful night I was alone, because I did not want to have to share my discovery with anyone. There I was, marauding through a crypt at night, rummaging through bones and cloth, without any thought other than honest, if selfish, scholarship.

It must have been that black hour prior to dawn, that I opened the tomb next to Girolamo’s. In it lay a surprisingly well preserved body, but it lay horribly twisted and broken, and on its legs and arms were the remnants of linen bandages. The skull lay at an odd angle from the body, and its lipless and crag-toothed mouth was open wide in what still, after 700 years, looked like a howl of pain. My fortitude was gone, in an instant. Here, unquestionably, was Pietro, still bearing traces of the horror of the Inquisition. I sickened and began to gasp for air as the foetid odor leapt at me from the long-shut tomb. I fled to the stairway and sped up it in an instant.

The church itself now seemed populated by millions of rustling, whispering things that were lent shape by my now rampant imagination. I imagined it to be visited by the shade of every lost man, woman and child who had ever sat within its walls. Terrified, I fell to my knees at the thought and, before I lost consciousness, I thought I saw coming up the dreadfully dark nave, a procession of decayed clergy, grinning, and swinging incense which smoked red and gave off the same horrid odor that met me when I lifted the slab of Pietro’s tomb. I collapsed against a pew; at the same time my hand came to rest upon a cross carved in relief on its side.

Dawn had already begun to spread its silver to the inside of the church when I awoke to its vast, empty hall.

III

STILL BATHED IN SWEAT, I STOOD UP FROM THE POSITION INTO which I had crumbled a few hours earlier. I walked to the back of the church and climbed back down the stairs, each step presenting me an opportunity to exert every ounce of will power I contained.

Once in the crypt, I was faced with the choice of either replacing the slab and leaving the job to bolder men, or thoroughly searching the sarcophagus for the scroll. To my everlasting damnation, I girded up my loins and chose the latter course.

I brought the lamp close to the corpse, and looked at it. It had not changed in any aspect from the previous night; I was happy and relieved to see that. It rather convinced me that the only thing that had chased me up the stairs and down the nave was my own fevered and overwrought mind. And I was overcome with pity for poor Pietro. While I was thus sentimentally occupied, I noticed a still bright red ribbon lying by the crushed right hand.

My heart stopped; the ribbon encircled a scroll of parchment. I grabbed it, and, with effort—I found that I was considerably weaker than I had been the previous night—replaced the slab. I quickly gathered up my tools and lights and left the church.

Even the musty odor that hung about my hands and shirt did not drive away the incomparable smell of an Italian early summer morning. Everything was as bright as gold and glory, and, by the time I had reached my lodging, my night’s terror had dissolved under the mantel of drowsiness. I slept, undreaming, until I awakened of my own accord, at dusk.

With the darkness, I was wide awake, and once more a bit jittery. I dressed and took the scroll. It was almost a foot long and rather thick with folds—apparently Pietro had done quite a bit of translating before his fate had overtaken him.

I unrolled it, and it still seemed surprisingly pliant and firm after such a very long time. It was a treasure! Not only did it contain translations, but what amounted to editorial comments in the vernacular by Pietro. I do not know from what language the original had been translated, but it was now in Latin, and its title stood out in disconcerting relief—Gloriae Cruoris; in English, roughly, the glories of blood or bloodshed. And the author’s name was Serpencis—whether the author’s true name or a latinization, I do not know. Pietro’s opening comments are cautious and circumspect—the agony of a man trying to make something of value out of a blasphemous thing.

“Let us analyze,” he writes, “the properties of blood as the learned Serpencis relates them. First, blood is the liquid of life, as the body is the vessel of life.”

He then quotes Serpencis as saying that blood is the primal life force; that without it man will die, and with it, no matter whose, man can extend his life beyond its normal bounds. Serpencis concludes that:

After one has committed the necessary desecrations, and has immured himself to the smell and touch of the dead, he can commune with them, liberating their souls and putting them to his own use and service. Man’s power is measured by the number of souls he commands, and a great number can be attained by the twin sanctities of murder and the drinking of blood.

I sat there aghast, as Pietro must have done so many centuries ago.

“Gloriae” was the work of a vampire and necrophile who, at some remote time, either medieval or ancient, must have terrorized his neighborhood and possibly had been the leader of some foul and monstrous cult. This was not going to be easy to turn into the kind of benign and dignified research with which one gains a doctor’s degree.

Still, I read on. I was too bound up in modern life to turn away from the book in fear, the way Pietro had done; as I read its gruesome pages I was battling nausea and disgust rather than terror. The margin of the manuscript contained Pietro’s notes on how he combated the evil spells he felt influencing him; he used various incantations and equally efficacious spells of white magic to dispel the aura of evil. I, of course, did not; I merely read on through the jumble of medieval Latin and Italian, and descended, spiritually, to a depth of degradation and inhumanity which I had never imagined possible. Serpencis had been a master ghoul who would have made the monstrous and infamous Gilles de Retz look like an effeminate weakling.

At length I was near the end of the scroll. The last section contained what was apparently the first of a series of spells performed so that one can give one’s self over to the demons who presided over vampiric activity. More a fool than ever, I decided to perform the rite.

Once the pentagram was chalked on the floor, I lit two candles and began to chant aloud from the manuscript. I was quite thrilled at reproducing a sound that had been unheard for centuries; it was in this spirit of re-enacting a play, that I first became aware of subtle changes within the room itself.

The darkness had closed in more around the candles, so that their glow spread only about six inches or so, leaving nearly the entire room and me in total darkness. Heretofore, the walls and bookcases had been dimly present, but they were now gone, and the candle closest to me illuminated the manuscript, my hand, and no more. And with this spreading blackness came now a stench that seemed to be some frightful amalgam of the twin odors of the sewer and the grave, an odor terribly similar to that in the church less than twenty-four hours earlier.

At this point I was all for stopping, for I realized that I had indeed succeeded in crossing that delicate line between the real and unreal, between the natural and the supernatural. And I was terribly frightened. But I also realized now that I was no longer in complete control over what was happening. I couldn’t stop; cursing myself, I continued the daemonic chanting.

Suddenly there was a blast of foul wind, and the room glowed with a kind of ruby-red light that spread evenly from corner to corner without any seeming point of origin. There now appeared to be something forming right next to me, within the pentagram. It whirled together, like a motion picture of something flying apart that is run backwards on the projector. And as I stood there, within arm’s length of it, it began to assume a horrifying, humanoid shape. I say humanoid, because, when it was formed, its dimensions were roughly human, but not close enough to be mistaken for anything other than what it was—a blasphemy from the malignant depths of hell, and the darkest corners of the human soul. Its quivering red face was turned toward me, and I could see, as I stared into it, not merely that sweating, featureless red jelly, but I could see, somehow, a vast complex of forests, rivers, mountains, a primordial land that suggested to me the vast land of Gaul when Paris was an undiscovered island, a land that would have to wait aeons for Caesar to be born to conquer it.

My terror was now too strong for whatever possessed me; I shrieked and dropped the manuscript into the whirling darkness. As the red melted quickly into a huge blackness, I saw the creature reach towards me. I felt faint, and my last memory was of being encircled in a slightly luminous and damp fog, which though itself impalpable, carried within it a solid network of bones, which I could feel around my waist.

I do not think that I remained unconscious for more than a few minutes; when I awoke I could tell, without opening my eyes, that the room was still dark. Too frightened to move or even open my eyes, I remained sprawled in the position in which I fell, until I was sure that sunlight had filled the room.

IV

THIS TIME THE DAWN DID NOT BRING WITH IT THE JOY OF LIFE, that strength that allowed me to renew my efforts at the church. I got up and searched the room, making sure that it was empty. It was, but it was also a mess. That whirling wind had torn everything loose; papers, books, utensils, even dishes, were scattered, ripped and broken. I had feverishly hoped that I would, on waking, be able to attribute the whole thing to an overactive imagination. No, I had not dreamed.

Before I hid Pietro’s monstrous work, I read his last comments on the rite I had almost completed:

This thing is too strong for me! I cannot fight its magic—it has at its command the legions of hell, its servants, human and not human. Despite my knowledge of magic and alchemy, I barely escaped the last rite with my soul still mine and God’s. I will not go on with this work and imperil my soul and salvation. God save thee, O reader, from the knowledge this book contains. Unless thou art stronger than I, attempt not even those things that are written here. Certainly seek not the book in its entirety. In the name of God, I mean to see that my copy of Gloriae Cruoris is destroyed…

Here the manuscript breaks off, in mid-sentence. It was here, I suppose, that Pietro hurriedly hid the parchment and the manuscript, and was taken off to his doom at the hands of the Inquisition.

And I had attempted to materialize the blasphemy without the slightest knowledge of magic, white or black.

V

IT HAS NOW BEEN NEARLY A WEEK SINCE THAT HORRIBLE night; I have neither worked nor slept. When I close my eyes my senses are instantly bombarded with images of red corpses and ever-present pools and fountains of blood. I have thoroughly lost my appetite, but the thought of blood makes me swell with a sensation that is closer to hunger than anything else that I can think of. When I pass a butcher shop, I gaze at the various animals hung upside down, their throats slit and dripping blood; my own throat grows thick and my mind begins to haze with anticipation. I have to keep myself from running into the shop to do God knows what horrible and loathsome thing.

Whatever has my soul does not have it all; I can still feel, think, and function normally, but I feel myself growing less and less coherent, and the need for blood now and again fills me to the exclusion of every other thought or sensation. I cannot even seek help, as there are no longer men who are versed in the practice of white magic and magical curing; and any doctor would attribute the whole thing to some sort of fabulous psychosis, and put me in a madhouse.

Thank God there is enough of my soul and mind left at my own command so that I was able to burn the last work of Pietro of Apono. I hope that the place in which Girolamo chose to bury the original parchment will forever remain undiscovered.

Though I had unwittingly committed the first required acts of desecration, and had unwittingly undergone a sort of indecent communion with the dead spirits that apparently abound in San Giueseppe church, I had not completed the first rite. My only hope now is to die while the good in me can still overpower the steadily growing evil influence that is corrupting my mind and body like a leprosy. I have lost all that I was and all that I could have been; but my will to good is greater than my will to evil, and thus I hope to salvage my soul while I still can.

To any readers that this may have, I ask that they pray for my soul, and not exhibit curiosity of unwholesome things. Civilized man has lost the knowledge and ability necessary to combat this kind of evil. If some unwitting fool like me should find the entire Gloriae Cruoris, listen to me, the latest man to be destroyed by it; do not experiment with it, do not even read it. Burn it, or God help you and humanity.

I shall now take poison, and go out into the Italian sunshine and look once more at the lovely poplar trees, which I shall miss dearly.