From the recovered manuscript of Professor Emory Thorne, Miskatonic University
It is with trembling fingers and a mind still teetering on the cusp of lunacy that I commit this account to writing—an account that, by all sane reckonings, should not exist, lest it drag others into the spiraling abyss that now devours my soul. I speak of a being whose name should never have been known—Y'drath'khaal, the Yellow Jest, the Fanged Fool, the Purring Maw of Madness.
He appears in dreams, in the flickering shadows of dusk, in the discordant chime of broken laughter. And yet, He is no mere phantasm. I have seen Him. I have touched Him.
He is shaped, most obscenely, like a common feline—a yellow cat of grotesque proportions, both endearing and profane, cloaked in a jester's motley of twisted hues. Bells dangle from His limbs, but they toll only in silence. His face is fixed in a grin too wide, too knowing, and far too ancient. No eye should meet His—those twin spirals of infinite jest—without losing the very concept of order. Those who gaze upon Him are condemned to laugh. And laugh. And laugh, until their jaws shatter and their minds ooze from their ears in molten rivulets of shrieking mirth.
In the forbidden texts of the Pnakotic Codex, He is known as "Shez-h'rrul, the Jest Beyond All Reason". In crude tongue, that is Y'drath'khaal. He is older than Ulthar, older than the moonless voids beyond Leng. He was said to have slumbered beneath the howling cliffs of Alagh'brax, entombed in mirrored coffins made of sorrow, until a fool laughed too loud on the wrong starless night.
I was researching ancient cults in the ruined temples of the Marrow Wastes when I uncovered the idol—an innocuous figurine of a cat in bells, carved from jaundiced bone, its eyes two tiny sapphires that seemed to pulse. The villagers refused to speak of it, save in whispers: "Meowswers," they called Him, a name too childish to bear such weight. But when I uttered that name aloud within the confines of my study, something answered.
The walls twisted. The lights flickered to a sour hue not known in this world. And I heard the laughter.
Oh, gods, the laughter.
It was not mirthful, but mocking—a hollow, spiraling sound that peeled the layers of my sanity like old paint. And then He came, padding out from the corner of the room where there had been no door. The floor did not creak beneath His feet, but groaned, as though recoiling from His presence.
"Why so serioussssss, little man-thing?" He purred, in a voice that was not a voice but a grating discord of carnival tunes played backward.
I tried to scream, but my mouth only opened into a rictus of glee. My face contorted, against my will, into laughter so violent my ribs cracked. He danced, then—spinning and twirling with unearthly grace, each pirouette slicing open layers of reality itself, revealing behind the veil a dark comedy etched into the fabric of existence.
He is worshipped not by men, but by thoughts—the stray ones, the intrusive ones, the madness at the edge of clarity. His priests wear no robes, but walk naked in dreams, gibbering verses that unravel the soul. To see Him is to know that the universe is not a tale of grandeur or divine order, but a joke—a jest told too long, too loud, by a God who cannot stop laughing.
Now, He lives in me. Or perhaps I live in Him. Each night I wake with my face stretched in that hideous smile, the sound of phantom bells echoing in my ears.
Do not seek Him. Do not laugh too hard in the dark.
Do not speak the name Meowswers.
Call Him Y'drath'khaal only if you must. But never call twice.
For He always answers. And He always finds it funny.
"The world ends not in fire, nor in ice, but in a chuckle that never dies."
— Fragment from the Book of the Fool's Maw, page 666
"The Jester from Beyond the Stars"
(a poem of Y'drath'khaal, the Cat-Fool God)
In shadowed halls where reason fades,
Where time is bent and silence brays,
There pads a Thing in jester's guise—
With golden fur and spiral eyes.
No mortal mind can stand the sound
Of laughter oozing from the ground,
For every chuckle, every chime,
Unwinds the threads of space and time.
He dances where the dream-things crawl,
O Y'drath'khaal, O Lord of Gall!
His tail a whip, his grin a blade,
His gaze a joke the stars betrayed.
Beneath the moonless, twitching sky,
He sings a tune that makes gods cry;
A carnival of cosmic jest,
Where madness finds its truest rest.
The bells upon his ankles sing
Of children lost to unseen things,
Of scholars found with shattered teeth,
Still laughing, gasping underneath.
He mocks the laws, he mocks the flesh,
His punchlines break the soul afresh.
A yellow blur, a jester's paw—
The herald of unending Ha!
No rite can bind him, none restrain
The Fool who dances through the brain.
He slips through locks, through minds, through thought,
And leaves behind a mind unwrought.
Beware the giggle in the gloom,
The soft pat-pat within your room.
Do not jest beneath the pall—
Lest you be claimed by Y'drath'khaal.
"The smile you wear is not your own.
The laugh you give is just a loan."
— Inscription on the last mirror found in the Hollow Circus