The Djinn - Graham Masterton, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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It began with a curious investigation of an ancient Arabian jar and the strange legends of sorcery it symbolised. Then legend and logic demand that the jar be opened - the secret of the djinn must be exposed to the light of reality.'It swirled in the smoke and seemed to melt and shift. Out of the fog of poppy incense loomed a black, bulky thing like a monstrous leech, with blind eyes and a pale, disgusting maw. Anna lifted up her silver crescent again, and spoke some clear, ringing words in Arabic. As quickly as it had transmogrified itself into the leech-beast, the djinn twisted and turned in the smoke and started turning itself into something else.'We saw a dim shape like a huge rat, but then Anna spoke the words again, and again the djinn changed. Soon she was chanting the words continuously, and before us, in the gloom, we saw the whole terrifying and revolting range of Thieves that Ali-Bahah had imprisoned in his jar. There were things that shuffled and crept; things that had mouths of ragged teeth; things that twisted and coiled; things that ran on hairy legs. Like a horrible hallucination, the mythical terrors of an age that was lost and forgotten more than a thousand years ago were brought to life in front of our eyes . . .'THE DJINNA Star Original'Max's death had something to do with that old Arabian jar," Marjorie said. 'Max said it had strange properties, that it made singing noises. He took all our portraits down, he said we shouldn't have any in the house. He even took the labels off the groceries and burnt them if they had pictures of people on them. He was always going on about that jar. When I threatened to smash it he locked it away in the turret.''I think old Max was imagining things,' I said.'But the way he died,' she said simply, 'it wasn't very nice. I woke up last Thursday night and found he wasn't there. I heard people talking in the kitchen downstairs. At least I imagined I did. Then I heard terrible screeching. I can't tell you how awful it was. It went on and on for about three or four minutes, perhaps longer. I went downstairs. I don't know how I had the courage to do it. I thought he was all right at first, because he was turned away from me. Then I realised what he'd done. He had taken out the carving knife and cut off his face. His nose, his cheeks, even his eyes. And he had done it himself.'It is sometimes said that travelers on the road to Bagdad were beguiled at night by strange voices. The voices were said to sound variously like the wind, or like seductive women, or at times like animals of a kind which no man had ever seen. The wise men of the time said these were the voices of jinni, or djinns, and that hearing them, a traveler should hurry onward for the sake of his sanity and his life.-Abdul Hazw'halla The Book of MagicPrologue"It is said by many that when the days of the N'zwaa were almost at an end, they gathered in the temple where they had once worshiped, and with ritual and song, they stored away in scrolls, in sarcophagi, and in jars the dreadful secrets that had given them sway for so many centuries. It is also said that he who discovers the secret of Nazwah the Unthinkable ma) become the most powerful man in the known world and beyond; yet that he must be prepared to pay the price. For as the courtesan exacts a levy for her carnal services, so does the magical apparition of Nazwah the Unthinkable demand its fee, and for many that fee may be well beyond their means."-Legends of the Persian Sorcerers, Volume IV, Chapter IIL"Archeologists working on the site of an ancient temple at Naswa, Iran, are now convinced that 'a careful selection' of the priceless artifacts that were once buried there have already been removed by thieves."The temple was supposed to have been the site of a savage cult of genie worshipers who, according to legend, were all-powerful in the region for at most three centuries. Their rites involved the invocation of demons and human sacrifice, and as Professor W. F. Collins of the British Archeological Fellowship recently remarked: 'They were, on the whole, a rather unpleasant bunch.'"But what is worrying the fifteen-man team on the site of the dig is that many of the most precious jars and scrolls they could have hoped to have found have already been expertly stolen-possibly as long ago as the 1930s. The thefts considerably reduce the archeological interest of the dig, and Professor Collins fears that many of the items may have been destroyed or exported to other countries." 'We know that many of the artifacts were actually there,' he said in Isfahan yesterday. 'The temple was almost completely buried in a landslide of eroded mud about forty or fifty years after the genie worshipers abandoned it, and one can still see today the impressions made by many of the pieces when the mud dried around them. In particular we are missing what appeared to be a complete set of scrolls, a selection of ritual knives and swords, and two jars-one a small incense pot and the other a very large jar with decorated sides.'"What particularly puzzles the archeologists is that many very valuable items have been left untouched. These include the discovery of a woman's body, mummified by the mud so that her skin and hair remain preserved. So far Professor Collins has been reticent about this find, and would make no further comment until he had seen the results of carbon-dating tests and physiological studies."-The London Sunday Times, October 12,1968Kensington, LondonMay, 1969Dear Inspector Kashan,I promised to let you have the results of the tests on the cadaver found at Nazwa as soon as possible, and here they are. You will probably be relieved to hear that you do not have a recent homicide on your hands, although there are some facets of the woman's death which would make an unusual (if rather grisly) investigation.The body is contemporary to the abandoning of the N'zwaa temple and is therefore at least twenty-five centuries old. It is the mummified cadaver of a young woman of about nineteen or twenty years old-not a particularly beautiful young woman if the preserved skin is anything to go by, but judging from her jewelry and hair, she was the daughter of quite a respectable family.It is the way in which she met her untimely end that we find most extraordinary, and we cannot find any record of similar deaths anywhere in our historical texts or libraries. She died as the result of the introduction into her private parts of an object of enormous size, which compressed her internal organs into her rib cage and probably led to instantaneous death. What the object actually was, we cannot guess. It was introduced with sufficient force to separate the pelvic girdle into two halves and push the entire visceral content of the body into a quarter of its usual displacement.Perhaps by looking through your own historical records you might find some similar death recorded, but my colleagues and I are resigned at the moment to leaving the poor woman's death an unsolved mystery.Yours sincerely,L. Pope"It is truly said that truth is often found in bottles; but it is even more truly said that out of old bottles come old truths."-Persian Dialects, p. 833.THE DJINNChapter 1It was a sweltering hot day in mid-August, and we all gathered at Restful Lawns Cemetery in our heavy black suits and stiff collars, looking like a party of overdressed lobsters. In movies, funerals are invariably held in a steady downpour, with black umbrellas and tears mingling with the rain. If there were any tears at this gathering-which I didn't notice-they were thoroughly mingled with unsentimental sweat.The deceased was probably the most comfortable person there. He lay in an expensive casket of polished light oak with rather attractive shell-pattern handles, its lid laden with lilies and roses and orchids. It was more like a dismal flower show than a funeral, and regardless of our somber faces, all anybody could think about was getting our late friend buried and going back for a cool can of beer.The priest stood over the open grave and said his bit. The widow dabbed her eyes with a little lace handkerchief. Then the coffin was lowered into the hard-baked soil, and we all self-consciously threw lumps of mud on the lid. I didn't like to throw mine too hard, in case it disturbed him. He was better off where he was.We walked away through the gleaming white forest of immobile angels and marble headstones. There was a strange hot stillness that made me feel we were all going to suffocate. The black limousines were waiting for us, with discreet purple drapes at their windows; we climbed in and sat facing each other, trying not to smile.We drove at a sedate speed along the Array Highway and on to Cape Cod. It was just past eleven when we arrived at Winter Sails, the deceased's rambling white wooden house on the deserted south shore. The limousines rolled up the weedy gravel driveway, and we all got out and stood in the mild sea breeze, waiting for the widow to invite us inside.I was surprised to see how dilapidated Winter Sails had become. It was a Colonial-style house, built around 1800, with an elegant pillared verandah all the way around. Sometime in the early part of the twentieth century, the owners had added a Gothic turret overlooking the grassy beach and topped it with a weathervane in the shape of a scimitar; it squeaked mournfully every time the wind changed, which was often. The house was screened from the Hyannisport road by a row of twisted trees, all leaning away from the sea like a gaggle of frightened old ladies. But the ...
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