confirm the ghastly horror that gave them being. If they existed, it meant that the whole evil legend was real; that Nephren-Ka, Black Pharaoh of Egypt, had indeed sacrificed to the dread dark gods, and that they had answered his prayer. Captain Cartaret did not greatly wish to believe in such utterly blasphemous abominations as Nyarlathotep.
He sparred for time.
“Where is the tomb of Nephren-Ka himself?” he asked. “Where are the treasure and the ancient books?”
The guide extended a lean forefinger.
“At the end of this hall,” he exclaimed.
Peering down the infinity of lighted walls, Cartaret indeed fancied that his eyes could detect a dark blur of objects in the dim distance.
“Let us go there,” he said.
The guide shrugged. He turned, and his feet moved over the velvet dust.
Cartaret followed, as if drugged.
“The walls,” he thought. “I must not look at the walls. The Walls of Truth. The Black Pharaoh sold his soul to Nyarlathotep and received the gift of prophecy. Before he died here he wrote the future of Egypt on the walls. I must not look, lest I believe. I must not know.”
Red lights glittered on either side. Step after step, light after light. Glare, gloom, glare, gloom, glare.
The lights beckoned, enticed, attracted. “Look at us,” they commanded. “See, dare to see all.”
Cartaret followed his silent conductor.
“Look!” flashed the lights.
Cartaret’s eyes grew glassy. His head throbbed. The gleaming of the lights was mesmeric; they hypnotized with their allure.
“Look!”
Would this great hall never end? No; there were thousands of feet to go.
“Look!” challenged the leaping lights.
Red serpent eyes in the underground dark; eyes of tempters, bringers of black knowledge.
“Look! Wisdom! Know!” winked the lights.
They flamed in Cartaret’s brain. Why not look — it was so easy? Why fear?
Why? His dazed mind repeated the question. Each following flare of fire weakened the question.
At last, Cartaret looked.
Mad minutes passed before he was able to speak. Then he mumbled in a voice audible only to himself.
“True,” he whispered. “All true.”
He stared at the towering wall to his left, limned in red radiance.
It was an interminable Bayeux tapestry carved in stone. The drawing was crude, in black and white, but it frightened. This was no ordinary Egyptian picture-writing; it was not in the fantastic, symbolical style of ordinary hieroglyphics. That was the terrible part: Nephren-Ka was a realist. His men looked like men, his buildings were buildings. There was nothing here but a representation of stark reality, and it was dreadful to see.
For at the point where Cartaret first summoned sufficient courage to gaze he stared at an unmistakable tableau involving Crusaders and Saracens.
Crusaders of the Thirteenth Century — yet Nephren-Ka had then been dust for nearly two thousand years!
The pictures were small, yet vivid and distinct; they seemed to flow along quite effortlessly on the wall, one scene blending into another as though they had been drawn in unbroken continuity. It was as though the artist had not stopped once during his work; as though he had untiringly proceeded to cover this gigantic hall in a single supernatural effort.
That was it — a single supernatural effort!
Cartaret could not doubt. Rationalize all he would, it was impossible to believe that these drawings were trumped up by any group of artists. It was one man’s work. And the unerring horrid consistency of it; the calculated picturization of the most vital and important phases of Egyptian history could have been set down in such accurate order only by a historical authority or a prophet. Nephren-Ka had been given the gift of prophecy. And so…
As he ruminated in growing dread, Cartaret and his guide proceeded. Now that he had looked, a Medusian fascination held the man’s eyes to the wall. He walked with history tonight; history and red nightmare. Flaming figures leered from every side.
He saw the rise of the Mameluke Empire, looked on the despots and the tyrants of the East. Not all of what he saw was familiar to Cartaret, for history has its forgotten pages. Besides, the scenes changed and varied at almost every step, and it was quite confusing. There was one picture interspersed with an Alexandrian court motif which depicted a catacomb evidently in some vaults beneath the city.
Here were gathered a number of men in robes which bore a curious similarity to those of Cartaret’s present guide. They were conversing with a tall, white-bearded man whose crudely drawn figure seemed to exude an uncanny aura of black and baleful power.
“Ludvig Prinn,” said the guide, softly, noting Cartaret’s stare. “He mingled with our priests, you know.”
For some reason the depiction of this almost legendary seer stirred Cartaret more deeply than any other hitherto revealed terror. The casual inclusion of the infamous sorcerer in the procession of actual history hinted at dire things; it was as though Cartaret had read a prosaic biography of Satan in Who’s Who.
Nevertheless, with a sort of heartsick craving his eyes continued to search the walls as they walked onward to the still indeterminate end of the long red-illumined chamber in which Nephren-Ka was interred. The guide — priest, now, for Cartaret no longer doubted — proceeded softly, but stole covert glances at the white man as he led the way.
Captain Cartaret walked through a dream. Only the walls were real now: the Walls of Truth. He saw the Ottomans rise and flourish, looked on forgotten battles and unremembered kings. Often there recurred in the sequence a scene depicting the priests of Nephren-Ka’s own furtive cult. They were shown amidst the disquieting surroundings of catacombs and tombs, engaged in unsavory occupations and revolting pleasures. The camera-film of time rolled on; Captain Cartaret and his companion walked on. Still the walls told their story.
There was one small division of the wall which portrayed the priests conducting a man in Elizabethan costume through what seemed to be a pyramid. It was eery to see the gallant in his finery pictured amidst the ruins of ancient Egypt, and it was very dreadful indeed to almost watch, like an unseen observer, when a stealthy priest knifed the Englishman in the back as he bent over a mummy-case.
What now impressed Cartaret was the infinitude of detail in each pictured fragment. The features of all the men were almost photographically exact; the drawing, while crude, was life-like and realistic. Even the furniture and background of every scene were correct.
There was no doubting the authenticity of it all, and no doubting of the veracity thereby implied. But — what was worse — there was no doubting that this work could not have been done by any normal artist, however learned, unless he had seen it all.
Nephren-Ka had seen it all in prophetic vision, after his sacrifice to Nyarlathotep.
Cartaret was looking at truths inspired by a demon….
On and on, to the flaming fane of worship and death at the end of the hall. History progressed as he walked. Now he was looking at a period of Egyptian lore that was almost contemporary. The figure of Napoleon appeared.
The battle of Aboukir… the massacre of the pyramids… the downfall of the Mameluke horsemen… the entrance to Cairo…
Once again, a catacomb with priests. And three figures, white men, in French military regalia of the period. The priests were leading them into a red room. The Frenchmen were surprised, overcome, slaughtered.
It was vaguely familiar. Cartaret was recalling what he knew of Napoleon’s commission; he had appointed savants and scientists to investigate the tombs and pyramids of the land. The Rosetta stone had been discovered, and other things. Quite likely the three men shown had blundered onto a mystery the priests of Nephren-Ka had not wanted to have unveiled. Hence they had been lured to death as the walls showed. It was quite familiar — but there was another familiarity which Cartaret could not place.
They moved on, and the years rushed by in panorama. The Turks, the English, Gordon, the plundering of the
