"Saucers From Yaddith"

by Robert M. Price
originally published Etchings and Odysseys No.5, 1984

Narrator is part of a circle of artists and seekers.  He's giving an interview to a reporter from a tabloid, cuz only they are likely to print such a story.  They've tried meditations, occult.  Narrator wants to try hallucinogenics.  Interested in the work of a Dr. Martin Rhadamanthus, and a Dr. Phineas Whitmore.  Decides to dose himself.  He experiences bizarre visual and auditory hallucinations, and encounters a pair or insect-like entities.  He has a strange sense of something having been done to him physically.  When he visits a doctor not long after, he's surprised to learn that his blood type has somehow changed from O to A.

His researches lead him to Rhadamanthus, whose own researches have led him to a 17th century work on "organic transposition", which describes the same kind of hallucinations the narrator experienced uder the influence.  There is mention of another realm called "Yaddith".

He persuades the group to take mescaline with him.  When he comes out of it, he finds his buddies have been dismembered and sewn together into a human lattice structure.  He hacks it to pieces with an axe, then flees … knowing that the Yaddithians are still watching him...

Despite my resistance to Price continually publishing his own stories in his anthologies, I won't deny he's a capable writer.  Here he seems to be channeling Ligotti - which I'm sure a lot of contemporary HPL fans like.  Me, not so much.  It's an interesting tale but nothing special.

"The Keeper of the Flame"

by Gary Myers

originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer, 1996

On the plain of Shand stands the Temple of Kish.  The high priest is a very old man.  People come to commune with the god Kish, but the priest never lets them.  One day a proud young man named Nod shows up and demands entrance.  After some considerable debate, the priest allows him in.  He vanishes in a glowing cloud of fog.

A typical Myers Smith-Lovecraft Dreamlands vignette.  But Myters writes well and his stories are always evocative.

"The Black Mirror"

by John Glasby
originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer 1996

Philip Ashmore Smith is dead - burned alive.  He left behind a diary.  PAS was heavily into the occult and supernatural, haunting the bookshops in search of rare occult tomes.  And a Dr. Alexander Morton has taken an ornamental black mirror from Smith's room, without permission of the cops, and tossed it down a mine shaft.    Independently wealthy, world-travelling student of the occult, pursuing the usual suspects.  Collected occult tomes and built himself a little astronomical observatory in an outbuilding on his isolated property.

Mainly he's in pursuit of info from The Zegrembi Manuscript,  a passage of which mentions Cthugha, his minions the jinnee, a black mirror which can be used to summon them, but, if used wrongly, will pull in Cthugha himself, and certain astronomical conditions which will allow Cthugha to return to earth (I guess).

Smith is searching for that black mirror and how to use it.

In Exeter, Smith's investigations lead to an encounter with a mysterious bookshop owner who gives him a parchment that allows him to translate the necessary information.  He is troubled by dreams of dark voids and fiery spheres (effective).

Apparently Zegrembi (wizard) caused the Great Fire of London in 1666 by screwing up use of the black mirror.  Dr. Morton starts to worry about Smith's appearance and well-being.  Smith comes to believe the black mirror is somewhere near his home.  The bookshop owner seems to be stalking him.  Or is that a hallucination?

Surprise! Zegrembi used to live in that farmhouse!  And he caused a lot of trouble (people fleeing screaming across the moors, being pursued by flaming demons, weird sounds from the earth, etc.  Eventually the folks stormed the house and burned all his papers.  But of Zegrembi they found no trace.  Smith finds a drawing of Zegrembi stuck between two pages of a book, and realizes he looks just like the shopkeeper.  In the attic (a well-described scene) he finds to the location of the black mirror.  He finds it buried in the woods.

The poor bastard summons up a jinnee and gets toasted by it.

Very traditional, and very derivative, particularly of the Derleth/Lovecraft collabs.  And still, maybe because it's so traditional and predictable, I enjoyed it.  Glasby manages to echo Lovecraft while still retaining his own cool, British style.  Certainly nothing great, but a fun read all the same.

"The Doom of Yakthoob"

by Lin Carter

originally published The Arkham Collector #10, September 1971

Abdul Alhazred tells us of his youth when he was apprenticed to a Saracen wizard named Yakthoob.  His best bud was a fellow apprentice, Ibn Gazoul.  They complain to Yakthoob because he's not letting them summon the biggest, most powerful demons.  Yakthoob tells them this will require the sacrifice of a soul - or the use of a rare elixir which can be purchased in Babylon.  He sends them there.

Ibn and Abdul return from Babylon with the potion.  Yakthoob summons the demon.  But it eats him.  It seems Ibn spent the money he gave them to buy the potion on booze and whores, and had subbed red wine for the elixir.

A humorous Clark Ashton Smith riff, and a complete throwaway.

"The Kiss of Bugg-Shash"

by Brian Lumley
originally published Cthulhu 3: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Spectre Press, 1978

Ray Nuttall and Bart Alan, the protagonists of "Demoniacal", run off to find an occultist to help them get rid of The Black One, which they accidentally conjured up in the earlier story.  They get stuck with Thomas Millwright, and apparently third-rate expert with a questionable rep (mercifully, Titus Crow and Henri Laurent DeDoormat are still MIA since Crow's house got blown away, so we are at least spared Crow's insufferable presence).

Millwright educates da boyz that The Black One is Bugg-Shash, another Great Old One and, needless to say, bad news all around.  And he won't leaver until he gets someone to slobber slime all over and thus kill, an attack known as his "kiss".

Millwright spends some time researching in The Usual Books and then the three flit back to Ray's flat to do an exorcism.  Which apparently works.  But, while leaving, Millwright warns them that the banishment is only "unto death", but fails to explain what that might mean....

Ray and Bart return to their normal lives, until one night, Bart shows up with the news that Millwright has been killed in an accident.  What was that thing about "unto death"?  They soon find out as Millwright, now a zombie under control of Bugg-Shash, shows up, and 
Buggsy finally gets his kiss.

For whatever reason, Lumley's was hugely inspired by Sutton's "Demoniacal" and felt compelled to write this sequel.  "Demoniacal" was an okay story and so is this one, and the ending has an amusing E.C. comics feel to it (which is really Lumley's strong point anyway).  Nothing special here but nothing awful either.

"The Slitherer From The Slime"

by H.P. Lowcraft (aka Lin Carter and David Foley)
originally published Inside SF #3, September 1958

A traveler through Arkham on a dark and stormy night stops off at Castle Drumgool for shelter.  He is served drinks and invited to spend the night.  The owner has a strange library.  Upon being shown to his room, the narrator wigs out.

This is a completely silly but at least amusing little piece, laden with sophomoric but still smile-inducting humor (among the fearsome books owned by the castle's master are Winnie the Pooh and How To Win Friends And Influence People).  On the whole the joke is heavy-handed and even contemptuous.  Surprising since Carter was such a fanboy...

"Demoniacal"

by David Sutton

originally published New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural Vol. 2, Sphere, 1972

Bart Alan and Ray Nuttall are sitting around the pub, having a few pints, and debating a new rock album by prog-rock band Fried Spiders, which happens to include on one of it's tracks an actual invocation of demonic forces, drawn from an actual tome of black sorcery.  Ray thinks this is pretentious shit, which he would know since he seems to be pretentious shit himself.

So, Ray suggests they go back to his place and play the album.  And, back at his place, Ray, being a pretentious shit, produces a copy of the very actual tome of black sorcery the Spiders used on their song.  Except that this invocation is actually complete.  Ray suggests that he and Bart give it a whirl.

The whirl actually works and Ray and Bart end up slimed by a many-tentacled and many-mouthed gloop monster called The Black One, which they manage to get away from - but then Ray realizes that he forgot to draw a pentagram to contain the beastie - meaning its running around loose!

What makes a mythos story?  Well, there's about ten bazillion different opinions about that and all of them are wrong.  That includes mine.  I would say this isn't - yes it's clearly Lovecraft-influenced, but there's nothing particularly linking it to anything Lovecraftian - hate to break this to ya, but the whole concept of dummies fooling around with black magic and accidentally summoning some baddie did not originate with HPL.

One unique aspect of the Mythos as it were is that some stories have become part of it after the fact; that is, some part of a story not originally intended as part of the Lovecraft scene have been incorporated into later stories that most assuredly were - Lovecraft himself did this a bunch - thus, effectively, conscripting (or perhaps press-ganging) them into the Mythos.

So it is with this obscurity, which so impressed Brian Lumley that he wrote a direct sequel - "The Kiss of Bugg-Shash".  And in case any of you are wondering, yes I'll be reviewing "Kiss" forthwith, fifthwith even, so keep yer socks on.

As to "Demoniacal", all I can say is its an amusing, tongue-in-cheekish bit with nothing really for or against it.  Not sure why Lumley found it so inspiring but nonetheless, he did.