"Something From Out There"

by August Derleth
originally published Weird Tales, January 1951

Dr. William Currie of the coastal English town of Lynwold is woken in the night by the constable - he's brought Geoffrey Malver, scion of the local lord Malver, whom he found "out of his head" in the town.  Geoff is indeed checked out, clutching a star-shaped stone, and babbling about "something from out there"... The star-shaped stone has an inscription on it, written by no less than the Augusine, Bishop of Hippo (which is awesome because it means the English have an even sillier title than "Earl of Sandwich), which reads that it imprisons something "accursed in the sight of God, follower of Mad Cthulhu."  Woo hoo - pay dirt!.  

Currie can't get very far with Geoff, who was apparently farting around the skeleton of a ruined cathedral in the area, and a meeting with Lord Malvern yields little except that there was some scandal of some sort over at Oxford U, where Geoff has been a student, that led to the expulsion of two of Geoff's frat brothers, one Soames Hemery and one Duncan Vernon.  This line of investigation is temporarily curtailed when some local kids turn up - having been lost in some coastal caves which they found through a tunnel system they discovered in the ruins of the same aforementioned cathedral.  Said kids also came upon the corpse of a local fisherman, which is in a bad state being both crushed, and frozen!

After some persuading, Hemery and Vernon admit that their expulsion was the result of their studies and dablling in black magic (since apparently getting incoherently drunk and attempting to rape co-eds wasn't a thing yet).  Geoff, the least indoctrinated of them, had trucked out to the cathedral looking for proof or some such, and had apparently pried the star-stone off a sealed casket of some kind, thus releasing an Ick From Beyond which is presumably now couch-surfing in the caves while killing anyone unlucky enough to cross its path, thus making itself stronger.  The game's afoot, Currie!  The three of them rush off the the cathedral to save the world!

En route, they are intercepted by a farmer who's just watched one of his hands get mangled by a big moving shadow (Farmer Jonathan watched this happen through a pair of field glasses - apparently he lacked female neighbors).  In any case, the field hand is, like the fisherman, both crushed and frozen.  No matter - to the cathedral!

There our heroes confront the Thing, described as a shadowy, "greenish hulk" (no, not that greenish hulk!) with tentacles and three eyes, and engage in an allegedly epic battle (I say allegedly because Derleth actually just tosses it off in a couple sentences stating that the battle was lengthy and "endless") before forcing it back in its box and sealing it back up with the star-stone.  The world saved, our intrepid band heads off for the local pub, but Currie still wonders what other horrors might be sealed up, somewhere, waiting to be released...

This is obviously pretty Lovecraft-Lite stuff and no classic.  Yet it's also curiously buried, having not appeared in any of Derleth's collections of Cthulhu-ery - it's still a bit on the rare side, publication-wise.  This is kinda too bad since it is far from terrible and actually has some good points.  There's a reasonable bit of atmosphere, and, for a change, when Hemery and Vernon explain the Mythos, the whole thing is dashed off in a quick paragraph with fleeting references to the usual suspects, as opposed to the usual tiresome lecture and endless name-dropping and bibiliography Derleth usually indulges in at this point in his Lovecraft-type stories.  

The final portion is odd, and feels very rushed, as if Derleth somehow needed to shut down real fast.  The monster is only vaguely (and thus effectively) described, but the "epic" battle, as mentioned, is simply tossed off as an afterthought.  I was left wondering what a more action-oriented writer, such as Robert E. Howard, might have done with such a scene.  It feels like a missed opportunity that could have delivered a nice payoff after a solid buildup.  

By no means any classic, but still one of Auggie's better ventures into this territory.  It deserves greater availability.