One John Gibson is a dork who lives with his parents, sort of. His mother's in an insane asylum and his father passes away of "some creeping organic malfunction" whatever that is. OJG's pops has been an occult researcher, but warned his young'un away from such things, instead forcing him into religious studies and encouraging him to become a priest. He has kind of a weird history - born on Walpurgis Night, tormented by dreams of being trapped in dark places, of being under some kind of controlling spell, opf waking hallucinations in which there's a tentacle sticking of of his jammies where his arm oughta be. Just to make life more interesting, the family lawyer calls to inform OJG has inherited the family money and property, but promptly crashes his car on the family front porch - nonetheless, the brave solicitor manages to crawl from the burning wreckage and croak out "glub - glub - the bureau … destroy it" before he kicks over.
Having been warned to destroy the bureau, or something in it, OJG heads straight for the bureau, where he finds papers and a medallion depicting an alien city and various GOOs. Although he does not know their meaning, he feels a sense of recognition upon seeing these figures, as though he should know them.
He also finds a passel of OLD BOOKS (cue Cthulhu Mythos Booklist) (this bunch includes the Ghorl Nigral!) annnnnnnnnnnnd, in an amusing touch, copies of HPL's Selected Letters, back issues of Weird Tales, and a copy of The Horror in the Museum for good measure!
His researches with these reveal some interesting things, including his relation to Alonzo Typer, he of "The Diary of Alonzo Typer", one of Lovecraft's more regrettable paid revisions (which is saying quite a lot!), done for a client named William Lumley (noooooooo relation according to ol' Brian). It seems "The Diary" may not have been entirely fictional. He also comes across a letter from his great uncle to pops, in which great-uncle (who, it seems, is the one who retrieved the amulet - from Yian-Ho) warning him to stay away from dark occult forces … then concluding that he'll probably delve into them anyway - "So be it - I would not keep a man from his destiny" signs off unc, rather uselessly.
Apparently, mom and pops headed out to the haunted house in Attica, NY, where Alonzo Typer met his doom, and encountered something there, under the house. And did something with it, or tried to. But exactly what is unclear. But it appears it may have done something to the missus...
OJG heads off to nut-house where his mom lives, and confronts her with the facts of his parentage, before (apparently) murdering her by pouring poison down her throat till it comes out her nostrils, and leaves pools of black slime around the room somehow. Nonetheless, OJG himself is nowhere to be found.
Except for its appealing sordidness, this is a less-than-great Lumley tale. The sub-Derleth/Lovecraft tone of the writing strongly suggests that this was an early, rejected tale that Lum had lying around and kindly gave to this zine. In any case it's rambling, confused, and frankly pretty silly. Pass.
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