"The Dweller in the Tomb" is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by Lin Carter, originally published in the 1971 anthology Dark Things, by Arkham House. It is part of Carter's Xothic Legend Cycle.
Synopsis[]
The story consists of several entries from the diary of Prof. Harold Hadley Copeland, who becomes the last surviving member of his 1913 expedition to find the legendary tomb of the wizard Zanthu, who escaped the destruction of Mu and fled to central Asia, and the Zanthu Tablets he authored.
To find the tomb, Copeland and his men are forced to travel through the arid Plateau of Tsang, and Copeland narrates how the men keep deserting and/or dying one by one, although the Professor has his mind fixed upon completing the journey even if he has to go alone, which he ultimately does. Conditions on the plateau are extremely inhospitable. Water obtained from the snows appears to be contaminated and is utterly undrinkable, forcing Copeland to drink the blood of his own camels. Clawed marks on the stones provide evidence of some unseen creature responsible for dragging away some of the men, although Copeland remains convinced that the marks were faked to provide cover for the men's desertions and try to dissuade him from continuing.
Further into the plateau, Copeland encounters strange crustacean beings that the natives call Mi-Go. Although these Mi-Go are much larger than their American brethren (bigger than a grizzly bear, in fact), they seem to be inexplicably afraid of Copeland. At the height of desperation, the starved Copeland actually drinks the foetid green blood of a dead Mi-Go.
When he finally finds the tomb of Zanthu, uneased by a growing sensation of inexplicable familiarity, Copeland sees the mummified wizard, still recognizable as the spitting image of Copeland himself, presumably his descendant and/or reincarnation.