Ba-Ba-Hee!

  (The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments is dedicated to purifying the Earth of 'unnecessary' organic life.  Under the impression that the scientists involved are in control of the institute, they have the severed head of an executed murderer, François Alcasan, which will be used for a supremely evil purpose. There is an elaborate mechanism that keeps the head alive, or so they think.  In actuality the head is for the physical embodiment of the Macrobes, aka the Dark Eldils, malevolent beings who lust for control of the Earth.  The Earth is known as the Silent Planet as it is alone and cut off from the community of God.  There is a barrier that doesn't permit direct supernatural action upon the Earth. But- by allowing entrance of the Macrobes unto the planet, they have also allowed the Other Side physical existence as well.  In the above 3 of the scientists pray before The Head, which drools oils and speaks via an air pump machine.  To the scientist's horror they will soon discover all this machinery is just window dressing, the Macrobes only need the Head and nothing else.  The skull of Alcasan has been opened to allow a hyper-trophied brain to reach full desired size.  The device in the background is a guillotine, and these fools are about to find out why the Head directed it's installation).

Straik and Filostrato were also still alive. They met in one of the cold, lighted passages, so far away from the dining-room that the noise of the carnage was but a faint murmur. Filostrato was hurt, his right arm badly mauled. They did not speak--both knew that the attempt would be useless--but walked on side by side. Filostrato was intending to get round to the garage by a back way: he thought that he might still be able to drive, in a fashion, at least as far as Sterk.

As they rounded a corner they both saw what they had often seen before but had expected never to see again--the Deputy Director, stooped, creaking, pacing, humming his tune. Filostrato did not want to go with him, but Wither, as if noticing his wounded condition, offered him an arm. Filostrato tried to decline it: nonsense syllables came from his mouth. Wither took his left arm firmly; Straik seized the other, the mauled arm. Squealing and shivering with pain, Filostrato accompanied them perforce. But worse awaited him. He was not an initiate, he knew nothing of the Dark Eldils. He believed that his skill had really kept Alcasan's brain alive. Hence, even in his pain, he cried out with horror when he found the other two drawing him through the ante-room of the Head and into the Head's presence without pausing for any of those antiseptic preparations which he had always imposed on his colleagues. He tried vainly to tell them that one moment of such carelessness might undo all his work. But this time it was in the room itself that his conductors began undressing. And this time they took off all their clothes.

They plucked off his, too. When the right sleeve, stiff with blood, would not move, Wither got a knife from the ante-room and ripped it. In the end, the three men stood naked before the Head--gaunt, big-boned Straik, Filostrato a wobbling mountain of fat, Wither an obscene senility. Then the high ridge of terror from which Filostrato was never again to descend, was reached; for what he thought impossible began to happen. No one had read the dials, adjusted the pressures, or turned on the air and the artificial saliva. Yet words came out of the dry gaping mouth of the dead man's head. "Adore!" it said.

Filostrato felt his companions forcing his body forwards, then up again, then forwards and downwards a second time. He was compelled to bob up and down in rhythmic obeisance, the others meanwhile doing the same. Almost the last thing he saw on earth was the skinny folds on Wither's neck shaking like the wattles of a turkey-cock. Almost the last thing he heard was Wither beginning to chant. Then Straik joined in. Then, horribly, he found he was singing himself--

"Ouroborindra!
Ouroborindra!
Ouroborindra ba-ba-hee!"

But not for long. "Another," said the voice, "give me another head." Filostrato knew at once why they were forcing him to a certain place in the wall. He had devised it all himself. In the wall that separated the Head's room from the ante-chamber there was a little shutter. When drawn back it revealed a window in the wall, and a sash to that window which could fall quickly and heavily. But the sash was a knife. The little guillotine had not been meant to be used like this! They were going to murder him uselessly, unscientifically! If he were doing it to one of them, all would have been different; everything would have been prepared weeks beforehand--the temperature of both rooms exactly right, the blade sterilised, the attachments all ready to be made almost before the head was severed. He had even calculated what changes the terror of the victim would probably make in his blood-pressure: the artificial blood-stream would be arranged accordingly, so as to take over its work with the least possible breach of continuity. His last thought was that he had underestimated the terror.

The two initiates, red from top to toe, gazed at each other, breathing heavily. Almost before the fat dead legs and buttocks of the Italian had ceased quivering, they were driven to begin the ritual again--

"Ouroborindra!
Ouroborindra!
Ouroborindra ba-ba-hee!"

The same thought struck both of them at one moment--"It will ask for another." And Straik remembered that Wither had that knife. 

 

Clive Staples Lewis, That Hideous Strength.  1945.