And alsoe ther remaineth yet Another Mode by whiche ye may at least perceive That which lieth beyond ye strictures of ye Natural I Worlde, withouten daring ye Riskes attendant upon yr entry thereinto in ye Bodie; a means whereby ye may thrust aside ye Veil and peer into those oth’r Realms of Beinge the whiche pervade and inter-penetrate with our owne Plane, yet whiche remaine invisible and imperceptible to mortall Men, and by them Unknowne. Ye Ritual of ye Bell this mode is call’d, and it employeth a certaine Bell of Silver inscrib’d about ye Rim thereof with ye IX Spatial Key, the whiche shouldst be writ accordingly either in ye Runnes of Ye Nugge-Sothe or in ye antient Aklo letters. Yet be wary that ye not over-doe yr usage of this Mode; for him who sees Beyonde, he may betimes alsoe be seene by Them that make of that Realm the Place of Their abiding.
I read this passage over and over, possessed with a feverish sense of excitement and discovery which you may easily imagine. From the antique form of the writing, spelling, and grammar, I hazarded the guess that this was a transcription from Dr. Dee's own English translation of Alhazred’s book, of which I had often read in my studies; at least, the form of the language seemed as old as the reign of that Tudor queen in which Dee had flourished.
In my great-great-grandsire's hand there was scribbled a marginal gloss to this passage which sent a thrill through my inner being. He had written—
It worketh well.
MY impatience to attempt the Ritual of the Bell would brook no delay, so I began the experiment that very evening. According to the notes of my ancestor, a certain potion must be imbibed in preparation, the recipe for which was given in those portions of his papers which were not encoded. The formula involved certain drugs and poisonous alkaloids such as belladonna and aconite, but as I had sampled these and other potent narcotics earlier while striving to systematically derange my senses, I fortunately had liberal supplies of such chemicals on hand.
With some little labour I managed to open the shutters which effectively sealed the casement windows, permitting a cold wind from the tossing waves of the sea to clear the stale air from the tower chamber; then, setting the mechanisms according to the instructions, and imbibing the elixir, I seated myself directly beneath the bell of age-tarnished silver and the Ritual commenced. The slow tolling of the bell was deep-toned and mellow, and as the ringing continued I became aware of a drowsy numbness stealing over my senses, but whether this was due to the drugs I had taken or to the monotonous music of the bell was difficult to say with any precision.
Through the open casement I could see the houses of the old town below the Keep and the low hills beyond, and the crags which affronted upon the waves which glittered in the luminance of the rising moon. Gradually—imperceptibly—an uncanny change began to take place, transforming the scenery which lay below me. At first, the outlines of the old houses blurred and became indistinct; in time they faded away altogether and were replaced by another and very different set of images which seemed to have been superimposed upon them as if by some mysterious enchantment. The ancient houses, most of which dared from the day of Elizabeth, and which were crumbling with age and long neglect, became new and fresh, as if rejuvenated; the street of glistening cobblestones was gradually replaced by a meandering path that seemed strewn with glittering mica, and the rounded hills and rugged crags beyond the town of Northam were changed, by slow and minute gradations, into a fang-like row of stone spires, as harsh and unweathered by the ages of wind and rain as must be the mountains of the moon themselves.
Beyond the needle-like spires of naked stone now drove no longer the billows of the sea; in their place, a seething and viscous black vapour boiled and smoked, seemingly heavier than the air itself, and irisated with fugitive glints of strange and unfamiliar hues to which I could assign no name. The moon had long since faded from the firmament, which had changed from depthless black to a peculiar shade of fulgurant purple, upon which now floated moon after moon of luminous nacre and pallid opal. By the shifting rays of the many moons I perceived that the mica-strewn street or path, which had been empty, was now thronged with a strange and shadowy company who wore the habiliments of many lands and distant ages. Here strode a soldier in the brazen greaves and breastplate of a Roman legionary, and by his side a portly figure in the sober broadcloth and peaked hat of a Puritan divine; a shuffling Oriental in mandarin robes of shimmering silk went accompanied by Saxon peasants in coarse smocks of homespun, with shocks of straw-yellow hair and thong-bound cloth leggings; swarthy-visaged individuals paced the glittering path in turbans and tarboosh, their lower limbs clothed in voluminous pantaloons, scimitars thrust through sash and cummerbund.
As I gazed enthralled upon this fantastic promenade drawn, it seemed, from every nation and epoch, I became gradually aware that Others more shadowy and indistinct accompanied them—strange gaunt naked figures with beaked heads and folded membranous wings like Chinese fans. But there was some curious quality about these Others that made it exceedingly difficult for my vision to ascertain the details of their alienage, as if the very matter of which their bodies were composed defied the light of the many opalescent moons, or as if my organs of sight were too gross co discern their lineaments with clarity.
This uncanny multitude seemed bound for a common destination, as if embarked upon some nameless pilgrimage whose nature I could not name, but ere long I became uneasily aware that the goal of their pilgrimage was no other than the very castle in whose tower chamber I sat enthroned—or whatever bizarre and unguessable edifice occupied its same position in this alternate reality or weird, unearthly dimension. It was only then that I bethought me of those eldritch crypts rumoured to exist far below the bottommost cellars of Northam Keep, that cavern hewn by unknown hands before mundane history began, for some arcane and hidden purpose unknown to me. The mood of disquietude which came over me at this juncture I could not account for, but it sufficed to disturb my tranquility to such a degree that the vision blurred and faded, and the strangely new houses and the mica-dusted paths and sharp spires of naked rock were replaced by their known and familiar counterparts on this plane. And I awoke from my trance-like state, the tolling of the great bell having ceased, to a numbed and drowsy awareness of my surroundings, uncertain as to whether I had been awake all the while, or deep in drug-induced dreams.
Nightly thereafter I repeated the experience, each time discovering to my delight and marvel something previously unglimpsed in the unearthly landscape. Where gnarled and ancient oaks grew beyond the village, the dream-world of my visions sprouted monstrous and ichthyphallic fungoid growths with obscene, nodding bulbous heads all striped or splotched or mottled with surly crimson, febrile nacarat-orange, sinister purples, virulent and venomous greens; beyond the fungi grove I perceived curious, twisted trees whose serpentine and rugous trunks writhed with unwholesome vitality like undulating vipers, as if striving to reach the pale and leprous moons that drifted across the purpureal skies where strange stars flared and flickered in odd alignments, very alien to the constellations of our earthly skies. And once I glimpsed, far off across that ultra-telluric sea of coiling vapours, a stately ship with sails of lambent luxurious tapestry, so different from any vessel that ever plied our earthly seas as to hint at ports of origin beyond the moon, as if it had floated here across the unguessable abysses of space itself.