innsmouth bijou

''in the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design which had apparently been worn around the sleepers neck. it was the oddly conventionalised figure of a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi canine face, ... around the base was an inscription in characters which neither st.john nor i could identify; and on the bottom like a maker's seal was graven a grotesque and formidable skull ... we recognized it as the thing hinted at in the forbidden necronomicon of the mad arab abdul alhazred;'' h.p.lovecraft, the hound.