Crow gasped. The Mysteries of the Worm! He had seen a copy in Carstairs’ library, had even handled it. Old Ludwig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis!
Seeing his look, Sedgewick said: “Oh? Have I said something right?”
“Prinn.” Crow’s agitation was obvious. “He was Flemish, wasn’t he?”
“Correct! A sorcerer, alchemist and necromancer. He was burned in Brussels. He wrote his book in prison shortly before his execution, and the manuscript found its way to Cologne where it was posthumously published.”
“Do you have a copy in English?”
Sedgewick smiled and shook his head. “I believe there is such a copy—circa 1820, the work of one Charles Leggett, who translated it from the German black-letter—but we don’t have it. I can let you see a black-letter, if you like.”
Crow shook his head. “No, it gives me a headache just thinking of it. My knowledge of antique German simply wouldn’t run to it. What about the Latin?”
“We have half of it. Very fragile. You can see but you can’t touch.”
“Can’t touch? Sir—I want to borrow it!”
“Out of the question, old chap. Worth my job.”
“The black-letter, then.” Crow was desperate. “Can I have a good long look at it? Here? Privately?”
The other, pursed his lips and thought it over for a moment or two, and finally smiled. “Oh, I daresay so. And I suppose you’d like some paper and a pen, too, eh? Come on, then.”
A few minutes later, seated at a table in a tiny private room, Crow opened the black-letter—and from the start he knew he was in for a bad time, that the task was near hopeless. Nonetheless he struggled on, and two hours later Sedgewick looked in to find him deep in concentration, poring over the decorative but difficult pages. Hearing the master librarian enter, Crow looked up.
“This could be exactly what I’m looking for,” he said. “I think it’s here—in the chapter called ‘Saracenic Rituals.’”
”Ah, the Dark Rites of the Saracens, eh?” said Sedgewick. “Well, why didn’t you say so? We have the ‘Rituals’ in a translation!”
“In English?” Crow jumped to his feet.
Sedgewick nodded. “The work is anonymous, I’m afraid—by Clergyman X, or some such, and of course I can’t guarantee its reliability—but if you want it—”
“I do!” said Crow.
Sedgewick’s face grew serious. “Listen, we’re closing up shop soon. If I get it for you—that is if I let you take it with you—I must have your word that you’ll take infinite care of it. I mean, my heart will quite literally be in my mouth until it’s returned.”
“You know you have my word,” Crow answered at once.
Ten minutes later Sedgewick saw him out of the building. Along the way Crow asked him, “Now how do you suppose Prinn, a native of Brussels, knew so much about the practice of black magic among the Syria-Arabian nomads?”
Sedgewick opened his encyclopedic mind. “I’ve read something about that somewhere,” he said. “He was a much-traveled man, Prinn, and lived for many years among an order of Syrian wizards in the Jebel el Ansariye. That’s where he would have learned his stuff. Disguised as beggars or holy men, he and others of the order would make pilgrimages to the world’s most evil places, which were said to be conducive to the study of demonology. I remember one such focal point of evil struck me as singularly unusual, being as it was situated on the shore of Galilee! Old Prinn lived in the ruins there for some time. Indeed, he names it somewhere in his book.” Sedgewick frowned. “Now, what was the place called…?”
“Chorazin!” said Crow flatly, cold fingers clutching at his heart.
“Yes, that’s right,” answered the other, favoring Crow with an appraising glance. “You know, sometimes I think you’re after my job! Now, do look after that pamphlet, won’t you?”
• • •
That night, through Saturday and all of Sunday, Crow spent his time engrossed in the “Saracenic Rituals” reduced to the early nineteenth-century English of Clergyman X, and though he studied the pamphlet minutely still it remained a disappointment. Indeed, it seemed that he might learn more from the lengthy preface than from the text itself. Clergyman X (whoever he had been) had obviously spent a good deal of time researching Ludwig Prinn, but not so very much on the actual translation.
In the preface the author went into various dissertations on Prinn’s origins, his lifestyle, travels, sources and sorceries—referring often and tantalizingly to other chapters in De Vermis Mysteriis, such as those on familiars, on the demons of the Cthulhu Myth Cycle, on divination, necromancy, elementals and vampires—but when it came to actually getting a few of Prinn’s blasphemies down on paper, here he seemed at a loss. Or perhaps his religious background had deterred him.
Again and again Crow would find himself led on by the writer, on the verge of some horrific revelation, only to be let down by the reluctance of X to divulge Prinn’s actual words. As an example, there was the following passage with its interesting extract from Alhazred’s Al Azif, which in turn gave credit to an even older work by Ibn Schacabao:
And great Wisdom was in Alhazred, who had seen the Work of the Worm and knew it well. His Words were ever cryptic, but never less than here, where he discusses the Crypts of the Worm-Wizards of olden Irem, and something of their Sorceries:
“The nethermost Caverns,” (said he) “are not for the fathoming of Eyes that see; for their Marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the Ground where dead Thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the Mind that is held by no Head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the Town whose Wizards are all Ashes. For it is of old Rumor, that the Soul of the Devil-bought hastes not from his charnel Clay, but fats and instructs
the very Worm that gnaws,
till out of corruption horrid Life springs, and the dull Scavengers of Earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great Holes secretly are digged where Earth’s Pores ought to suffice, and Things have learned to walk that ought to crawl…”
In Syria, with my own Eyes, I Ludwig Prinn saw one Wizard of Years without Number transfer himself to the Person of a younger man, whose Number he had divined; when at the appointed Hour he spoke the Words of the Worm. And this is what I saw…” [Editor’s note: Prinn’s description of the dissolution of the wizard and the investment of himself into his host is considered too horrific and monstrous to permit of any merely casual or unacquainted perusal—X]
Crow’s frustration upon reading such as this was enormous; but in the end it was this very passage which lent him his first real clue to the mystery, and to Carstairs’ motive; though at the time, even had he guessed the whole truth, still he could not have believed it. The clue lay in the references to the wizard knowing the younger man’s number—and on rereading that particular line Crow’s mind went back to his first meeting with Carstairs, when the man had so abruptly inquired about his date of birth. Crow had lied, adding four whole years to his span and setting the date at 2 December 1912. Now, for the first time, he considered that date from the numerologists’ point of view, in which he was expert.
According to the orthodox system, the date 2 December 1912 would add up thus:
2
12
1
9
1
2
= 27 and 2 +7 = 9
Or: 27 = Triple 9
Nine could be considered as being either the Death Number or the number of great spiritual and mental achievement. And of course the finding would be reinforced by the fact that there were nine letters in Crow’s name—if that were the true date of his birth, which it was not.