Keziah Mason
Keziah Mason, also known by her 'secret name' Nahab, is a centuries-old witch and worshipper of Nyarlathotep who lived during the 1600s.
Description[]
She is depicted as being a witch who studied the secrets of inter-dimensional travel and is described as having a "bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin" and has a "croaking voice".
History[]
Background[]
During the Salem witch trials of 1692, an old woman by the name of Keziah Mason was arrested for her suspicious behavior and seeming insight into other worlds. In her testimony to Judge John Hathorne, she confessed to having signed her name in the Book of Azathoth under the influence of the Black Man, and to taking her secret name of Nahab.
During her trial she spoke of "lines and curves that could be made to point out directions leading through the walls of space to other spaces beyond...." and when she later disappeared mysteriously from Salem gaol "curves and angles (were) smeared on the grey stone walls with some red, sticky fluid" that were inexplicable even to Cotton Mather. It was eventually found that by signing the Book of Azathoth she was able to enter a higher dimension to gain knowledge and serve Nyarlathotep.
Student physicist Walter Gilman believed that Mason--"a mediocre old woman of the Seventeenth Century"—had developed "an insight into mathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein, and De Sitter." When he took a room in her house she revealed to him that same knowledge in the hopes of taking his soul.
Personality[]
Fundamentally, Keziah Mason is a parasite that drains the life of others to sustain herself. Her homecoming after years away from the family is not due to familial affection but a desperate shot at survival while dying of a terminal illness. She arrives with an odd, ominous tree—a straight conduit to her black magic—and immediately sets a systematic process of sucking life, energy, and power from those around her. Her first target is Walter Gilman, on whom she practices evil witchcraft, not due to any inherent savagery, but as a means of "healing" herself, distinguishing herself as a being who is unswervingly fixated on her own survival, regardless of the destructive cost of those around her, showcasing her self-absorbed and ruthless nature. She is also willing to terrorize the town of Arkham by kidnapping 17 children to forcibly drain them of their souls .
Keziah is shown to have a deceptive and conniving demeanor, avoiding overt displays of power or physical force until the sheer necessity of it, instead taking a subtle yet malicious approach. Her takeover of Gilman is one that occurs slowly, an insidious vine of control that silently wraps around him and then tightens. Her ability to manipulate is shown with Alex, the family's young son, threatening to kill his parents if he does not obey her. That act proves her understanding of human weakness as much as her skill at employing familial bonds and naked innocence to serve her malevolent purposes.