Haydon Atwood Prescott was without a doubt a remarkable man who certainly had a colourful career as poet, scholar, explorer, artist, novelist, and, some would say, raving lunatic! It's true that he died in strange circumstances in the Roundway Mental Institution, at Devizes, Wiltshire, apparently driven to madness by his experiences during his Cambodian Expedition of 1943, but he left behind a body of work which, despite it's bizarre subject matter, is compelling reading for connoisseurs of the weird and macabre.

Many of the sonnets are taken from his two slim volumes of verse published in the late 1920's by Charnel House of London. Whispers From the Void (1926) and Strange Songs From the Stars (1927) were the culmination of a three month period of fevered writing undertaken by the nineteen year old Prescott in 1925. He accredited the sudden and intense burst of inspiration which produced this outré and uncanny verse to a vivid dream he experienced on March 23rd of that year. In this dream, he said, a cyclopean underwater city rose from the waves of the Pacific. The frothy waters teemed with weird aquatic, humanoid life, which he named as 'Deep Ones' and he said these creatures were the minions of mighty Cthulhu who had "seeped down from the stars" and for "strange aeons" would dream, imprisoned in the sunken city of R'lyeh. But there would come a time when the stars were right and Cthulhu would rise from the ocean's depths to rule the Earth once more!

This dream was a turning point in Haydon Atwood Prescott's life (and it's this incident, say sceptics, that marks the first manifestation of his unstable mental condition).

He developed an interest in archaeology, anthropology and the occult and began to build what would become an extensive library of rare and esoteric books (now in the collection of the British Museum). Many of these books concerned the ocean's depths, particularly the Pacific, while others were suppressed volumes of arcane and supernatural lore. He also developed an interest in fantasy and horror fiction and subscribed to the pulp magazine Weird Tales, which featured stories by his favourite writer Howard Philips Lovecraft. He avowed that Lovecraft's tales of the 'Cthulhu Mythos' were not in fiction at all, but hard fact thinly disguised as pulp tales!

For the remaining years of his life, Prescott immersed himself in the world of the weird. He corresponded with many like minded individuals, including the author and artist Robert Blake, the explorer Frederic Seddon Plowright and the poets Edward Pickman Derby and Ariel Prescott (no relation). He began to make a name for himself in the field of Pacific archaeology and in March 1936 he undertook the first of his two fateful expeditions to the Pacific.

On his return from his expedition to the Pacific islands in August 1937 he immediately began work on his anthropological volume Down Amongst The Deep Ones: The Cthulhu Legend Cycle in the Pacific (Williams & Wilson, London 1939) which effectively destroyed any burgeoning career he might have had in the field of anthropology.

Following this Prescott turned to fiction to get his views across and penned his epic novel The Behemoth From Below which remained unpublished at his death but which saw print in 1952. Disillusioned by his failure to get this work published Prescott embarked on another expedition, this time into the depths of unexplored Malaysia and Borneo. He was the only survivor of this ill fated venture. What happened to his companions will never be known as Prescott returned to civilisation with his mind shattered, mumbling almost incoherently about "eyes that suck and scream".

Haydon Atwood Prescott died on November 16th in his security cell at Roundway Mental Institution. The manner of his death baffled both doctors and police. Strange sounds were heard emanating from his room in the small hours of the night, followed by frenzied screams and cries for assistance. When the locked and bolted door was finally thrown open they found Prescott dead on his mattress. His body was pallid and damp, his hair wet and his face, strangely contorted in death, bore strange circular marks like splayed fingerprints. Autopsy showed that Prescott's death was by drowning and that his lungs were filled with salt water! 

Steve Lines, Wiltshire, United Kingdom. 

NOTE:

In preparing these sonnets for publication, I have chosen the best from each of his two Charnel House volumes and added many more hitherto unpublished works. They are published here in a sequence I have chosen after consulting Prescott's papers and examining the internal evidence of the poems themselves. The title of this volume was suggested by Prescott's notes; apparently Dreams of a Diseased Mind was to be the title of a proposed third volume of his poetry to be published by Charnel House which, for reasons unknown, never saw the light of day. Prescott was well aware that many considered him insane and chose his title accordingly. Over seventy years have passed since those two slim editions were published and none of his work has seen print since. These poems may indeed be the product of a diseased mind, but their dark brilliance cannot be denied. It has been a pleasure to illustrate and edit this collection and, with the help, generosity and enthusiasm of John B. Ford and B. J. M. Press bring the work of Haydon Atwood Prescott to a new (and hopefully more receptive) audience.

Copies of DREAMS OF A DISEASED MIND are still available at £3.50 from BJM Press, 95 Compass Crescent, Old Whittington, Chesterfield, S41 9LX.

DREAMS OF A DISEASED MIND

I THE GATHERING

In a glade of whispering alders, with the full moon
Blazing over the twisted trees of Goatacre Wood,
The thirteen members of the Ashwick Coven stood.
It is your time!" My father said. "My son, you'll soon
Become a man. For in her deep and secret bower
The Earth Mother awaits your innocent embrace."
Naked and confused I was led to a secret place
Within the tangled woods, a site of ancient power.
The thirteen stood about me, concealed by cloak
And cowl, while I was chained to a slab of stone.
I looked to my Father and I knew that he had known
This initiation. A chill ran down my spine as he spoke:
"The Black Goat is lustful and her unholy desires
Burn with the passion of a thousand funeral pyres!"

II THE COMPTONBURY HORROR

At first I thought the gossip just embellished tales;
Local legends distorted beyond true fact,
But I know that old man Gingell sat and hacked
At his wrists to the sound of a new born baby's wails.
The child was stillborn, Elizabeth Gingell said,
And buried with her husband two months ago today,
But it is the Gingell child or so the villagers say,
Which stalks the Compton churchyard feeding on the dead.
Last night beneath a swollen moon I heard demonic wails,
As from my place of concealment I stared into the gloom
And saw the loathsome creature break into a tomb!
What juices flow beneath Comptonbury's vales
Where bloated orchards are fed by thirsting root
And swollen wombs deliver such strange and twisted fruit?

III THE GHOUL

I saw the ghoul squatting on a broken tomb
Amid the charnel filth of a grave defiled,
And I knew this blasphemy was no mortal child
(Although it grew and ripened in a human womb).
From silent, nighted crypts this creature crawled,
Out into the pallid moonlight and began to feed
On hunks of putrid flesh, with an unholy greed
Blasphemous and vile. I could only watch appalled.
This ghastly uncouth creature that ravened on the dead,
Cavorted in outrageous acts unpleasant and obscene,
And howled at the rotting moon as I remained unseen
In my place of concealment. Then it turned its head!
Lambent eyes caught mine as towards me it slowly came
And with a smile that haunts me still it whispered my name!

IV THE FEASTER IN THE TOMB

None would guess what inhuman horrors hide
beneath the rolling Wiltshire hills but there
are catacombs and ancient burial vaults where
a sick and depraved creature, a ghoul, does abide.
I have seen it feasting 'neath the pale moon
and howling at the night in necrophilic lust.
I knew then that I had no choice, that I must
find and kill this foul feaster in the tomb.
I descended into the darkness and mortuary remains
of the tombs and mausoleums and searched until
I found that abomination which I had come to kill.
Then I emptied my pistol into the creature's rotted brains.
But as I ran blindly from those nitrous crypts of death
I heard the ghoul cry "father..." with it's dying breath!

V MONOLITH

The autumn light slanted between the trees
And bathed the monolith in amber and gold.
As I placed my hand upon the stone, cold
As winter's frozen heart I felt a breeze
Caress my face. The crimson evening sky
Faded into a sweeping, star-filled dome
Above a sterile plain of bleached crushed bone.
That's when I first heard the demon's cry!
A shapeless mass, blacker than the night
Descended swiftly from the swirling starry skies
With beating devil's wings and shrilling cries.
I raised my head and screamed at the unearthly sight
of the creature squatting atop the alien stone:
It wore a face that I knew well - my own!

VI THE SEVERNFORD SEALS

I found it in an old bookstore while walking home
One dark and rainy afternoon. It was by chance
That I picked it up, but after just a casual glance
I knew it for a rare and precious tome.
It was a slim volume; a note book of modest size,
Leather bound and of indeterminate age.
Hand written by Lionel Phipps, every page
Held secrets from which I could not avert my eyes.
There are ancient horrors sleeping beneath the vales
Of the Severn Valley, dreaming as they wait
For the breaking of the Seals which will open up the Gate
And let Daoloth stride forth and tear aside the veils
To expose the awesome truth that this abhorrent book reveals.
I will free the Old Ones and smash the Elder Seals!

VII BLACK FLAME

I have gazed upon forbidden tomes
In dank and dusty library rooms.
And in ghoul-haunted catacombs
I've searched amid strange, twisted bones,
Found scattered deep in nighted crypts,
For secrets of the mythic prime,
Un-memoried and lost in time,
But preserved in ancient manuscripts!
This thirst for hidden knowledge rages
Like a black flame burning in my brain;
A searing fire in every vein.
I seek secrets of the Elder Ages
As I search beneath Earth's rotted crust.
Not because I wish to, but because I must!

VIII THE MAD POET

My life was tainted and cursed from the first
day I dared read Alhazred's abhorrent book.
His depraved writings fascinated and shook
me to the utmost depths of my soul. It was a thirst
I could not quench - His blasphemous visions flowered
in my mind like those bloated fungi blooms
which feed on decaying corpses 'neath strange moons.
His ancient starry wisdom I hungrily devoured....
Mad! They called him mad! But Alhazred knew!
He knew the Old Ones wait Beyond and inbetween
the mundane spaces numbered, known and seen:
waiting for Their Day, when They shall break through!
To the faithful down the ages he passed his secrets on
In the forbidden pages of his Necronomicon

IX BEYOND

This mortal world is but a tiny mote
adrift in the dark ocean of infinity,
and it was not meant that one should see
or travel far beyond horizons remote
and dim. And if by some chance one had
a glimpse into 'Beyond' through the veil
of illusion, one would, no doubt, surely fail
to comprehend the truth - or else go mad!
I have voyaged far upon that nightmare sea
and seen beyond infinity's shadowy deep.
No more will those horrors their secrets keep
for I know of them and They know of me!
I see inchoate forms swirling about my head
I must tear my eyes from their fleshy bed!

X STRANGE AEONS

From undimensioned spheres The Old Ones swept
Down to primal Earth and beneath Their mighty tread
All creation bowed. In Their multitudes They bred
And spawned abominations, which flew or flopped or crept
Into Earth's every pore. Wantonly They trod dark ways
Cavorting in the steaming fens of the new-made land,
Until all the planet had known the touch of the Old Ones' hand.
But upon Their wickedness the Elder Gods did gaze.
Across the ravaged Earth these ancient Gods waged war
And The Old Ones were imprisoned or locked, deathless dream,
Not in the spaces known to men but in the angles inbetween.
But Earth has known them once and will know of them once more.
Now they lie sleeping in their tombs but when constellations turn,
With the passing of strange aeons; the Old Ones shall return!

XI THE TIND’LOSI HOUNDS

Beyond the seas of Time foul Tind'losi stands
With it's dark corkscrew turrets which rise
And twist madly toward undimensioned skies.
I saw the city as I stood upon the silent strands
Of a black abyss. I had travelled the streams
And currents back through the river of Time:
But I went too far - I crossed beyond the line.
That's when I first heard their snarling, hungry screams.
Through strange angled planes they came, eyes red
with ravenous desire. That lean and hungry pack
had scented me in Time. At my heels they snapped as back
through the vague and disremembered years I fled.
Now I can hear their baying beyond dimension's door
The Tindlosi Hounds are coming.......

XII THE BLACK PHARAOH

The Pyramids will shatter into billowing dust,
And temples crumble on the shifting sands.
Famine and pestilence will stalk the lands
When the dark stars change, as change they must.
Sunken cities from beneath the sea will rise
And beasts will speak with the tongues of men,
As the tombs and temples of lost Irem
pour fourth their dead 'neath the desert skies
For these are the Last Days when Chaos will rage
and destruction will roll down on the citadels
of man, and, as the Mad Prophet foretells,
we shall witness the dawn of a brave new age.
By these and other signs it will be learned
that The Black Pharaoh has at last returned!

XIII NCTOSA AND NCTOLHU

Nctosa and Nctolhu, imprisoned in the eye
of mighty Gordrimator hear our incantation.
The Maidens of Sorrow kneel in supplication:
We shall bring The Storm sweeping from the sky.
We shall free You, Twins of Hate, and You will devour
the Elder Signs and Seals for these You do not fear,
but feed upon their potency. Your time is almost here!
We have the Silver Key! We have the Book of Power!
As this century lies dying in the arms of the next,
The storm-clouds will gather, every knee will bend
Twins of Hate come to us, hear these words we send
from the mighty Mganadishi our ancient Holy text
And as you devour the Seals and break the ties that bind
We shall rejoice in the damnation of all mankind!

XIV DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA

I gazed upon those vast nightmare spires
Lighted by the pallid boreal sun,
Which stand as sentinels to forbidden secrets, and run
Far into remote spheres of dream: where frozen fires
Burn and visions of cyclopean towers confound the eye.
Into subterranean depths I descended, far beneath
Brooding monoliths and ramparts fretted like demons teeth,
Where the mournful polar wind is but a distant cry.
Through aeon dead passageways, whose strange angled planes
Twisted my gaze, I journeyed ever deeper
Traversing sunken catacombs like some dreaming sleeper,
Wandering within the planet's living veins.
At length I came upon a vast gulf and the shores of a sunless sea,
A black abyss of darkness where the Shoggoths call to me.

XV THE BLACK STONE

It was warm to the touch and strange on the skin,
The ebon stone which fell from the sky
And was as dark and hard as a demon's eye.
It came from worlds out on the rim,
Down from Yuggoth on the midnight wind.
And when I picked it up it sang to me
In ethereal whispers; a strange melody
Which conjured alien vistas as my vision dimmed.
In shadows I sit and shun the light of the day,
Caressing the black stone as it sings
To me and I wait for the nightmare things
To come and carry me away
I yearn for the stars and my ancient home
As I sing the song of the Black Stone.

XVI PICKMAN’S PAINTING

I gazed in stunned horror at the canvas on the wall
And held out my brandy glass as my host began to pour
Me yet another drink, my hand shaking and unsure.
Never had I seen such work which at once appalled
And fascinated with an unholy, nameless dread.
It was Copp's Hill Burying Ground and from broken tombs
Canine creatures crawled from unknown catacombs.
They were ghouls feeding, he said,
The faces, oh those faces, etched with sardonic glee,
Leered from the canvas as they gnawed decaying bones
And performed obscene blasphemies amid the rotting stones.
But it wasn't Pickman's painting which really unsettled me
No, it was as I left his room, shaken and unsure
I thought I glimpsed beneath his sleeve a brown-furred canine paw!

XVII INNSMOUTH JEWELLERY

It was found by Obed Marsh on some nameless isle
And brought back to Innsmouth, where in time
It came to me; a broach of weird and strange design,
Which corresponded to no earthly style.
There were carven figures cut into the gold,
With fish like eyes and contorted limbs;
Twisting, writhing nightmare things
Which no sane artisan would mould
Now at night my sleep is haunted by dreams
Of sunken monoliths lost beneath the foamy brine,
And from the mists of memory it seems
This broach has been and always will be mine.
In nightmares I hear the Deep Ones as they beckon me;
Soon I shall join them, in R'lyeh beneath the sea

XVIII THE DELIRIUM OF NISH

Sweet dark vapours to the ceiling coiled
In languid twists, hypnotic in their dance,
As Nish of Commoriom muttered in his trance
At the visions which seethed and boiled
In the cauldron of his fevered brain.
A Black Lotus bloomed in his tortured dream,
It's thick lips kissed his mouth with a touch so obscene,
That his swollen lust burned like an unholy flame.
Nish moaned in his slumber, consumed by his fire
As hot, creeping tendrils began to explore
His soft yielding flesh like the tongue of a whore.
He screamed out at the climax of fevered desire
And, released from his passion lay still in his bed,
Never more to awaken, for the Dreamer was dead!

XIX FLOWER WOMAN

I'm tired and languid, vicious and mean
And my green lips seductively yawn
As I open my petals to the dawn.
My hooded blossoms fawn and lean
Above venom tipped clustering spines,
And my dripping sacs, hypnotically sway;
Thirsting for blood with the coming of day
As they hang from their twisting vines
Coiled Hydra heads whisper and hiss,
As slowly towards me with shuffling feet,
Comes a mortal man, enslaved by my sweet,
Voluptuous songs, yearning for my lamia kiss.
I tremble with pleasure from stem to shoot
As I suck out his juices with my thirsting root!

XX DREAMHOUND

Beneath star-haunted skies, aswirl with spinning moons,
My spirit body journeyed upon narcotic wings of dream.
Above a black abyss, unfathomed and unseen,
Where slinking shadows whispered from dark lagoons,
I saw the starving demon hound with eyes of lambent flame.
A nameless wind caressed his coarse and matted hide
And his snout was all aquiver with the scent of humankind.
He turned his eyes towards me and snarling, screamed my name!
A fear gripped my soul and as my spirit body fled
It seemed as if the aether did moan and howl and shriek
With the barking of that loathsome hound. I was tired and weak
When, from fevered delirium, I awakened in my bed.
You say it was a nightmare but can't you hear the sound,
Out there in the twilight, the faint baying of a hound?

XXI THE NIGHTMARES OF NEBB

Yartheg lies at the rim of dimensioned space,
A dark litten planet where the shadows breed,
And where countless realities twist and bleed
Into one another. But the Elder Race
Set upon it Their Seal and closed the Gate
Behind which Nebb screams in never-ending pain,
Trapped between a million worlds; insane
With agony and burning with a boundless hate.
His tendrils suck juices from the planet's flesh
Giving life to his vast bulk where He nestles deep
Within Yartheg's core. His visions of madness seep
Out into the void; dreams and realities mesh
In a maelstrom of creation, a cosmic flow and ebb
Which spawns black abominations: the Nightmares of Nebb

XXII SHUL’NAR THAK

The Solar System sings with voices of sadness so pure
That their melodies would melt the hearts of men.
These are the songs of Shul'nar Thak's lost children,
And none can comprehend the agony they must endure.
Like moths to the flame, they ride the solar tides,
Trapped and dreaming in their worlds of frozen snow,
Their feathered tails burning with a frail hypnotic glow,
Slowly fading as they sail to the rim where Yuggoth hides.
In her tomb of flames and molten rock near the fiery sun,
Shul'nar Thak writhes in torment, wracked by the pain
And beauty of their songs as they softly call her name.
But what the Elder Gods have wrought, time will see undone.
Shul'nar Thak will break her shackles, her children she will free
And they will feed upon the planets spinning in the starry sea.

XXIII THE SILENT SEA

Where the seaweed chokes the ocean
In a stagnant silent shroud,
And the rotting hulks of derelicts abound,
The waves roll in sluggish motion
beneath the shapeless, cloying mass
of the stinking, Sargasso weed.
I know what obscene creatures breed
below this fetid brown morass.
Underneath this dreary waste, lies lost
Y'nath'ghlo, the ancient city of the Deep
Ones. They have sent me visions in sleep
and in troubled dreams I have crossed
the cold Atlantic ocean to that Silent Sea.
Y'nath'ghlo I hear you, I will come to thee!

XXIV R’LYEH RISING

Mightily it rose up through the raging sea,
As livid lightnings about it crashed
And towering waves heaved and smashed
Upon black piles of tumbled masonry.
Towering cathedrals, minarets and domes,
all barnacle encrusted and seaweed entangled;
And Cyclopean slabs of confused, strange angled
planes, rotted and eaten as charnel house bones.
This nightmare corpse city of sunken R'lyeh;
This monstrous acropolis of elder daemons;
This ooze covered Babylon of time lost aeons
rises up through the waves, up through the spray,
as down from the stars the Old Ones are falling.
R'lyeh is rising Cthulhu is calling!

XXV WHEN THEY RETURN

They lie awake in the unending night
Whilst uncounted epochs slowly unfold
And, talking in their tombs, They mould
Mankind's dreams. When stars come right
Thresholds will crumble, torn asunder.
They will be free, who were once chained.
As Seals will crack, their power drained,
The skies will split with rolling thunder.
Dark light will spill from the shattered sun
And planets scream in mad confusion,
As They fall to Earth in wild profusion
A strange New Aeon will have begun.
I will laugh as mankind's cities burn
And greet the Old Gods when They return!

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