"The Sect of the Idiot"

by Thomas Ligotti

Published Crypt of Cthulhu 1988

Thomas Ligotti is a Michigan-based horror fiction author who's gained quite a rep since the 80's for his Lovecraft-influenced fiction, and for espousing a "life-is-meaningless-shit" philosophy that seems to make the current crop of Lovecraft fanboys swoon. 

Unfortunately, Ligotti's stories often start with a nice build-up, impressive atmosphere - and no payoff.  I liked his first collection, Songs Of A Dead Dreamer pretty well, but the follow-ups Grimscribe and Noctuary left me cold. 

He is, nonetheless, an effective writer whose work does indeed evoke HPL, especially very early HPL pieces such as "The Festival" and "The Nameless City".  

A lot of Ligotti's stories have Lovecraft-influenced themes, settings and ideas, but a few of them explicitly reference Lovecraftian ideas.  This story (which kicks off with an epigram from The Necronomicon, about Azathoth) is the most oft-reprinted of them.

A nameless narrator is vacationing in an unknown city which he will not identify.  He is very fond of this city, and of the view from his rented room (surprising, since he hates his very existence).  One late afternoon, a stranger knocks on his door.  The stranger acts strangely, compliments the narrator on his view, and leaves.

That night, the narrator has a strange dream in which he enters a room in which a number of robed figures are seated.  The shapes of the bodies under the robes, and the way they move, suggests that these are not human beings.  Finally they reveal themselves to have, instead of hands, tentacled, talon-like appendages which they seem to communicate with.

The next day, the narrator is plagued by the feeling that some great terror or malignancy is hiding behind the city's pleasant facade.  After wandering around feeling antsy all day, he enters what appears to be a dilapidated, abandoned building.  There he finds the odd chairs that the robed figures sat in in his dream.  As he investigates the chairs, he finds them oddly-constructed and not right for human backs and buns.  In fact, instead of a seat, each chair contains a cube of strange water or liquid (may I be forgiven for thinking that these sound like toilets?).

The stranger from the previous day comes and takes the narrator's hand.  The narrator pulls away and flees.  On his way back to his rooms, people seem to react strangely to him.  He discovers that his hand has become a tentacled claw like those of the creatures in his dream.

As I said, this story is very evocative, stylistically, of Lovecraft's very early stories.  The dream sequence is quite vivid and effective.  In many ways, it's all mood.  It is not a great story (and I am not sold on Ligotti), but it is interesting and memorable.