Ibid

Once more, in this haunted season of October, I have resumed my ancient rite of reading one tale each night from the dread hand of H. P. Lovecraft. In this ritual I have stumbled upon forgotten works, strange and faint in their power, yet still whispering of outer gulfs and nameless terrors. Even the curious jest of “Ibid” carries a shadow of that unearthly genius which once dreamt beyond the veil.

“Ibid” is that grotesque and mirthful chronicle concerning Ibidus of Rome (486–587), a scholar whose dread opus, Op. Cit., sought to distill all the hidden tides of Graeco-Roman thought into one blasphemous perfection. Yet even death could not bind his influence. His skull—an object accursed, passed from the coronets of Charlemagne and William the Conqueror through shadowed centuries—moved at last across the seas to the fevered shores of the New World. Through the witch-haunted lanes of Salem and the dream-corrupted streets of Providence it journeyed, guided by unseen wills, until the relic found its obscene repose within a prairie dog hole beneath the forsaken earth of Milwaukee. Thus the laughter of eternity echoes faintly through decay. First published in that unhallowed journal O-Wash-Ta-Nong, January, 1938.