"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" by Clark Ashton Smith

While it may seem initially that the 'o' in Vombis should have more of an 'ah' sound as in 'father' (it did to me anyways), the leading 'yoh' sound makes it surprisingly awkward to give the 'o' in Vombis that sound. At least, the structure of my mouth doesn't want to do that. Vombis would just end up sounding much too close to 'vomit' at that point, which is no good...

sanies: a thin blood-tinged seropurulent discharge from ulcers or infected wounds

There is shockingly little agreement on the pronunciation of Deimos. Is there indeed more than one accepted pronunciation of it? Doesn't seem like there should be. *sigh*

12 to 14 inches in diameter = 30.5 to 35.5 cm

vitiated: spoiled

cinerary: containing or used for ashes of the cremated dead

tumescence: swollenness

turgescent: becoming or seeming swollen or distended

filiate: I think Smith used a wrong word here... the normal definition of this would be "to determine judicially the paternity of", such as a child born out of wedlock. Clearly that can't be the meaning here. If we look at the word 'filiation', we can get meanings like 'descent from; derivation', or 'the forming of a new brach', which may vaguely be viable meanings here. But that is also a different word, even if it ultimately comes from the same root (the Latin word 'filius'). But I can't find a definition that is a better fit. Wonder how Smith came to choose this word? Hmmm...

poddy: potbellied

stertorous: (of breathing) noisy and labored

tetanic: relating to or characteristic of tetanus, especially in connection with tonic muscle spasm

a dozen feet = 3.66 meters

The follow along: https://archive.org/stream/XiccarphClarkAshtonSmithLennySAMouse/Xiccarph%20-%20Clark%20Ashton%20Smith%20%28LennyS-aMouse%29_djvu.txt

Whatever OCR software they used for that was pretty terrible (e.g. the word 'the' in my text is often 'die' in the above link... How you get a 'di' from a 'th' I cannot begin to fathom, but that's how bad it is!), but the alternative link (http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/231/the-vaults-of-yoh-vombis) is to the magazine edition of the story which has too many alterations and restructurings to follow along with.

Now how was that story for nightmare fuel? *shudder*