My First Necronomicon

By the age of ten, I had somehow managed to view both Alien and The Shining. These formed the blueprint of what I understood of the “horror” genre, which I’ve loved ever since. I often bought issues of Fangoria and GoreZone in junior high, because I was intrigued by the pictures’ ability to sicken me, and amazed that magazines existed in stores that were nothing more than full-color gross-out photos. The work of technical-effects masters like Rick Baker, Tom Savini and Kevin Yagher was lovingly displayed like bloody Playboy centerfolds.

This was manna from hell for a prepubescent boy. The publishers must have spent a fortune on red ink. You could gross out the girls with it, and it kept you abreast of all the flicks that might make you barf in a bucket. Scenes like Johnny Depp’s death in the first Nightmare On Elm Street and David Naughton’s transformation in An American Werewolf In London were feted as the modern grand guignol they are. Here and there, I’d see mentions of a particular pair of films, in hushed whispers, which indicated something worth investigating.

Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.

I saw Evil Dead II first, in the middle of the night, at fourteen, in someone else’s basement. To put it mildly, it scared the absolute living dog shit out of me. I had to stay up for the rest of the night thinking happy thoughts, and I had horrific nightmares the next time I slept.

I was in love.

I love horror movies that combine proper mystery and raw scares. I am a sucker for sheer-terror atmosphere. I’ll forgive all manner of flaws if a film gives me one real jolt or more; I still recommend the technically-terrible Event Horizon to people. (It is scary as fuck.) Horror movies, when they work, define “so-bad-it’s-good”. Like fried ice cream, or a nice bloody steak.

Since this is the Internet, I’ll assume that you’ve seen Evil Dead II, and you know that it involves a book bound in human flesh called the Necronomicon.

Technically, it’s the “Necronomicon Ex Mortis”, but that’s like saying “The Book Of The Dead Of The Dead”. Needless to say, I was intrigued by the idea of this book, particularly after seeing “Ray’s Occult Books” in Ghostbusters 2. Permit me a brief aside:

If you think that any aspect of Paul Feig’s all-girl Ghostbusters will resonate over thirty years later like that, I truly feel sorry for you.

Anyway, I inquired around school about the Necronomicon, and it went about as well as you’d think. I knew a girl with a Satanic Bible, which she would coyly place on her desk, and I had to top that. This is ironically the reason I read Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which wound up being the first post-modern novel I really enjoyed. If it weren’t for the fatwa and Puritan attitudes, it would’ve been adapted as a film by now.

In my research at libraries around North Jersey, I learned about H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. As you’d presume, I got obsessed with it all, and I’m far from alone; Lovecraft references infest Batman’s Gotham City. “Arkham Asylum” even figures into several best-selling videogames, not to mention the massively popular Christopher Nolan trilogy, and Lovecraft begat Arkham. He was an intriguing and brilliant persona, with strong occult ties, so of course social media calls him a racist. Regardless, the Necronomicon, Cthulhu, the Elder Gods- all that stuff came from H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft created the fictional Miskatonic University, on the Miskatonic River; that’s mis-chthonic, or against Cthulhu. One more time for the world; “Cthulhu” is pronounced KUTULU. That’s how Lovecraft, GWAR, and Simon’s Necronomicon pronounce it. (The penis of GWAR’s lead scumdog Oderus Urungus was called the Cuttlefish of Cthulhu.)

(One more brief tangent; after the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, HBO made a similar movie called Cast A Deadly Spell. It starred Fred Ward as a fictional private eye named “H. Phillip Lovecraft”, investigating supernatural phenomena and demons in an alternate 1940s where such things existed. It had the obligatory woman-singing-in-a-bar padding, and despite how interesting I might make it sound, it is not very good.)

A friend at school told me the local Barnes & Noble carried the Necronomicon. I couldn’t believe this; I had to find out for myself. I was too shy to ask a clerk, so I hunted it down myself, which took some time. It looked different than I’d pictured. Smaller.

Of course it’s hooey, but it’s well-researched hooey. Here was where I first learned of Marduk, and Ishtar, Pazuzu and Shub-Niggurath. The prefaces filled in the details about Lovecraft, Aleister Crowley, and the rats that supposedly beset the typesetters. Editor “Simon” claimed the book was the work of a “mad Arab” from the eighth century:

I couldn’t believe I could purchase such a powerful tome in Barnes & Noble. There was a chant that claimed to win you the love of a woman, which my pimply teen self was fool enough to attempt. The Book of Fifty Names was included, complete with seals, and a guide to invocating gates and demons.

One snowy December night, I wandered out into my suburban town with a friend and the Necronomicon. I had a couple of invocations dog-eared that “looked easy”, as far as I could tell. I found a secluded spot, drew a circle in the snow (the extent of my preparations), and began reciting.

The first invocation I read promised to open a terrifying portal, and since it didn’t happen, I figured I must’ve mispronounced “Ninnghizhidda”. Rookie mistake. For my next trick, I attempted the “Invocation of the Southern Gate”.

Nothin’.

My friend and I turned to go home, and the silence of the air was cut by a freight train, slowly passing in the darkness between us and our respective homes. It seemed endless, and there was no way to cross the tracks until it passed. We suddenly became aware of the freezing temperature, and with no idea of the hour, time was glacial. Boxcar after boxcar rolled by. Would we ever get to cross and go home?

Searching for light, my eyes found the letters on the side of every boxcar.

SOUTHERN PACIFIC

“Oh my god,” I gulped, my stomach plummeting. Finally, the train passed into the void.