The Stairs in the Crypt

"The Stairs in the Crypt: The History of the Necromancer Avalzaunt" is a horror fantasy short story set in the Cthulhu Mythos, first published in the August 1976 issue of Fantastic. The story is considered a "posthumous collaboration" between Lin Carter and Clark Ashton Smith, written by the former after the latter's death, but incorporating material from Smith's unpublished story notes.
==Synopsis==
When the necromancer Avalzaunt dies, in ancient Hyperborea, his body is "preserved in a bath of bituminous natron" by his disciples, as per the deceased's own instructions, and interred in a crypt that he himself had designed. The eldest disciple, Mygon, inherits the tower in which his master lived.
A few years pass while Avalzaunt's mummified body gathers enough strength to revive itself. When he does so, he opens up a passage to the stairs that lead to the underground lairs of the canine Ghouls. In life, Avalzaunt was a friend of the Ghouls and a worshiper of their deity, Nyogtha, so when they finally enter the chamber, he asks them for some blood to drink. Offered a beverage made from a rotten corpse's fluids, the revived sorcerer finds that it does nothing to quench his thirst. Instead, he realises that he needs fresh warm human blood, straight from the veins of the living.
Avalzaunt and his Ghoul pack kill each of the sorcerer's former acolytes, starting with Mygon, and drink all their blood. The authorities inspect the necromancer's crypt, but conclude that it is unviolated and that Avalzaunt could't have escaped it, unaware of the hidden stairs that lead to the Ghouls' tunnels. Having ran out of acolytes, Avalzaunt moves on to other victims and continues to drink, becoming more and more swollen, as his mummified body is incapable of digesting the blood.
When Avalzaunt invades a monastery dedicated to Shimba and tries to attack a monk, the latter defends himself by stabbing the undead's stomach with a knife, causing litres upon litres of coagulated blood to pour out of the bloated body. Once Avalzaunt is drained, the other monks collect his remains and burn them, preventing him from ever rising from the grave again.
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Lin Carter works