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WARNING! These reviews all contain SPOILERS!!!!

Sunday, August 25, 2019

"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.










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