er, I found, had heard Norden's voice after he had joined Colby in the supposed hypnotic stage. So, it was as I thought: Dureen's power had blanked out the sound of Norden's voice for them completely. Nor did they recall seeing any object in Norden's hand.
But, in less than a week, even these memories had faded from them. They fully believed that Norden had died in an accident after an unsuccessful attempt on the part of Dureen to hypnotize Colby. Prior to this, their explanation had been that Dureen had killed Norden, for reasons unknown, and that we had been his unwitting accomplices. The hypnotic experiment had been a blind to gather us all together and provide a means of disposing of the body. That Dureen had been able to hypnotize us, they did not doubt then. The illusion of the abyss, they said, was just a cruel joke. . . .
It is no use telling them what I
learned a few days later, what I
learned from Norden's notes which
explain Dureen's arrival. Or to quote
sections from the Song of Yste to
them. Yet, I must set these things
down. In that accursed book is a
section dealing with an utterly alien
race of entities known as the adumbrali.
". . . And these be none other than the adumbrali, the living shadows, beings of incredible power and malignancy, which dwell without the veils of space and time such as we know it. Their sport it is to import into their realm the inhabitants of other dimensions, upon whom they practice horrid pranks and manifold illusions. . ."
". . . But more dreadful than these are the seekers which they send out into other worlds and dimensions, beings of incredible power which they themselves have created and, guised in the form of those who dwell 'within whatever dimension, or upon whichever worlds where these seekers be sent. . ."
". . . These seekers can be detected only by the adept, to whose trained eyes their too-perfectness of form and movement, their strangeness, and aura of alienage and power is a sure sign. . ."
". . . The sage, Jhalkanaan, tells of one of these seekers who deluded seven priests of Nyaghoggua into challenging it to a duel of the hypnotic arts. He further tells how two of these were trapped and delivered to the adumbrali, their bodies being returned when the shadow-things had done with them. . ."
". . . Most curious of all was the condition of the corpses, being entirely drained of all fluid, yet showing no trace of a wound, even the most slight. But the crowning horror was the eyes, which could not be closed, appearing to stare restlessly outward, beyond the observer, and the strangely-luminous markings on the dead flesh, curious designs which appeared to move and change form before the eyes of the beholder. . . ."
