"The Faces At Pine Dunes"

by Ramsey Campbell
originally published New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House, 1980

Michael lives with his parents in a "caravan", which is apparently what the Brits call a trailer.  He doesn't like his life very much and he doesn't like his parents much either - dad's an overbearing obese blob, and mom is doormat personified.  He does kinda like the trailer park they've moved into this time - by the sea, near some very dense woods.  He'd like to settle down here, never in his life having stayed in one place very long (it seems mom`n'dad live the gypsy life).  Mom doesn't like it though, and seems troubled that Michael does.

Mike tales a stroll through the dark woods, and seems to think something very large is stalking him through the trees.  He makes it into the village nearby and stops in a club.  A cute girl named June, who says she's tripping on acid, flirts with him.  Like any self-respecting 20 year-old, even one as socially challenged as Mike, he's happy about this.  June suggests he take a job at the club, which is advertising for a trainee barman.

Mike starts working at the club.  His parents are acting strange - going out late at night without explanation.  Dad seems to like the idea of Mike settling in with a job and a girl.  Mom doesn't.  

Mike learns that Pine Dunes has long been considered a hub of witchcraft activity.  And there have long been legends of something terrible, and big, lurking in the woods.  And of a pit full of gloopy monsters.  He finds that his parents have spent their lives following a kind of circuit of hubs of witchcraft activity, apparently starting, and now returning, to Pine Dunes.  He figures they must be witches.  He comes to believe his dad is drugging his mom to keep her submissive as they get up to some sinister activity.  

Determined that something is going down that night, Mike takes June deep into the woods, to a clearing he believes his parents will be doing their witchy deeds in.   Something large and dark seems to be stalking them through the woods.  In the clearing, they find a pit, and gloopy, expanding flesh-blobs that appear to be his parents, and voices telling them things about the spawn of the Great Old Ones, which Mike, apparently, is one...

This is a very, very effective story that implies a theme similar to "The Dunwich Horror" et al - of miscegnated human/Old One hybrid horrors - some who don't realize they are - until later.  As is typical with Campbell, much lies between the lines, and much is unclear, or subjective - exactly what Mike and June are experiencing/seeing at the end is uncertain - yet clearly terrible.  I find this one of Campbell's creepiest and most disturbing tales, and wholly successful.

"The Shadow on the Doorstep"

by James P. Blaylock 

originally published Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May, 1986

Our unnamed narrator is reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in front of a fire one night when he hears something shuffle around on his doorstep. He reminisces about tropical fish and tropical fish stores he has known.  And he imagines some gloopy, Deep One-y thing is on his doorstep.

Did I miss something here?  His writing is terrific, and I think it actually does convey the idea of an imaginative horror fan or author letting his imagination get carried away over an odd sound in the night.  I mean, every time I hear a cat or raccoon digging in the garbage outside my bedroom, I wonder to myself what I'd do if I pulled back the curtain and found, say, an alien standing there!

But what did the aquariums and tropical fish have to do with it.  Maybe I need to read it again.  Maybe I will.  Maybe.

Gets points for good writing though.

"The Last Feast of Harlequin"

by Thomas Ligotti
originally published The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1990

Our narrator (in proper Lovecraft pastiche tradition, unnamed) is a social anthropologist  whos special area of study is clowns.  Or he just has a clown fetish.  I'm going with that one.  

Through a colleague, he hears of a remote town called Mirocaw, in an unnamed state, which hosts an annual festival which includes clowns.  So he rushes off to Mirocaw.  

In typical Liggotti fashion, the town is weird and the people are weirder, and unfriendly, and unhelpful.  But he does learn there is a festival being held in late December, and it does indeed involve clowns.

He also comes across an article with some details about the town and its festival traditions.  Written by one Dr. Raymond Thoss, our narrator's favorite teacher from college.  Who apparently sort of quietly disappeared some years ago.  What's more, UN realizes that an old man who ignored him in a particularly run-down part of Mirocaw appeared to be a greatly aged Dr. Thoss.

UN makes his way back to Mirocaw in time for fest.  He attempts again to communicate with Dr. Thoss, but instead finds himself intimidated by a horde of zombie-ish goons who surround the good doc, and he's forced to flee.  

He discovers that, yes, there are clowns roaming the streets, and the locals seem to be harassing and bullying them.  He soon learns this is part of the tradition.  He also learns there's more than one type of clown - fairly traditional ones in bright colors, and drab, scary clown-bums who apparently emerge from the ghetto section, and whom townsfolk seem to avoid.

In an attempt to learn more, UN dresses himself as a rundown clown and joins the ghetto bunch.  They are picked up by a series of trucks and driven outside of town.  Still milling with the throng, he finds himself in an underground chamber, and takes part in a sinister ceremony led by Dr. Thoss, who he has realized or decided is an incarnation of the Egyptian god Thoth.  As the ceremony continues, people keep dropping to the floor and transforming into giant worm-people.  Horrified, UN flees and makes his way back home.  But even there he realizes he is one of these people, and will one day return.

This was Liggotti's breakthrough, I think.  It's considered an important example of Liggotti-ism and has been republished more than once.  

I've noted elsewhere I'm not as besotted with Liggotti as a lot of HPL fans are.  I guess you could say I find him a bit suspect.  Here, as is usually the case with Liggotti, the atmosphere is terrific and, yes, very Lovecraftian, recalling both HPL's early, Poe-influenced stories (c.f. "The Festival", which may have helped inspire this) and his mature works.  The sense of unease, that our narrator is about to get himself into something very, very bad is there from word one and only builds as the story wends its leisurely way along.  

On the other hand, after awhile, the surrealism begins to pall.  Too many unexplained oddnesses.  Too much "is the world getting weird or is the narrator nuts?" business.  And the revelation that people are transforming themselves into worm-people seems more silly than shocking.  I often get the sense that Liggotti's pulling our legs.  Especially here.  

I realize writing this exactly what my prob is with Liggotti - he's Superman when it comes to atmosphere but stinks at plots and stories.  Thus his tales read more like someone's transcribed and embellished nightmare than any kind of logical narrative.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it not necessarily a really good one either.

"Love's Eldritch Ichor"

by Esther M. Friesner
originally published World Fantasy Convention 1990: An H.P. Lovecraft Centenary Celebration, Weird Tales Ltd., 1990

Robin Pennyworth works for Columbine Press, a cheap-ass publisher that makes a habit of ripping off its authors.  His boss, editor-in-chief, Marybeth Conran, hands him new author Sarah Pickman as an assignment.  Sarah has written - or discovered, a manuscript - Fires On the Sea - by a deceased distant relative, one H.P. Lovecraft.  It tells the story of the relationship between Captain Uriah Whateley and his exotic South Seas bride.  Conran dispatches Robin to Sarah's home in Arkham to make sure the naïve author doesn't discover she's being robbed blind. 

Upon meeting Sarah - bulging-eyed and batrachian, Robin - who apparently has strange tastes - falls instantly in love.  He returns to NYC, determined to make sure Sarah gets her fair due.  Sarah follows, accompanied by her chaperones - Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth.  Robin soon finds himself the new editor-in-chief of Columbine Press.

As stated elsewhere, I'm often not a fan of attempts at Lovecraft humor, but this sucker is funny as hell!  That's cause Friesner writes well and is genuinely witty: "Robin had never seen a gambrel roof before, especially not one with a Garfield wind sock hanging from the eaves".  Probably one of the funniest Cthulhu-jokes I've come across.

"H.P.L."

by Gahan Wilson

originally published Lovecraft's Legacy, Tor 1990

Edward Haines Vernon, obscure fantasy-horror author, is invited to visit H.P. Lovecraft in Providence.  c. 1990!

It seems HPL is nearly 100 years old now, and has become a very wealthy man.  He's bought up, refurbished, and expanded his grandfather's old home on Angell St.  Complete with secret rooms and passages.  He's got a Rolls, and a strangely familiar chauffeur/housekeeper - with a creepy skin condition.

Edwardius, as HPL refers to him, is given a tour of the home and a fine room, where he experiences strange, Lovecraftian dreams.  He realizes that the chauffeur/housekeeper is familiar because he is, in fact, Clark Ashton Smith.  This is all a bit confusing being as CAS apparently died some time ago.  Smith explains the HPL brought him back from the dead, because he was lonely and Smith was one of his few peers.  Lovecraft lets on to Edwardius that they want him to assist them in some ongoing project, for which they consider him uniquely qualified.  He takes him to his library and shows him an actual copy of De Vermiis Mysteris.  When Edwardius states incredulously that it was his belief that DVM was a fictional invention of HPL and Robert Bloch, HPL explains.

As he lay dying in 1937, HPL discovered that the Great Old Ones were quite real, and that he could open gateways to them by sheer will and concentration alone.  He allowed Shub-Nuggurath to cure him of cancer, carried on with his career, became a rich and famous author.  He also discovered that the characters and events of his fiction were manifesting in the real world.  He and his fellow authors had not imagined the Lovecraftian world, they had discovered it.

With his newfound wealth and freedom, and with the dark magic of his fiction now quite efficacious, HPL resurrected Clark Ashton Smith ala "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" for company, and carried on, gradually working to open the way for the Great Old Ones. Part of this carrying on involved making human sacrifices - usually literary critics and authors who wrote bad pastiches of HPL's fiction.

Edwardius and HPL trek out to a grove of standing stones HPL has had imported from the real-life equivalent of Dunwich, and HPL opens the gate to a cosmic gloopy.  As he attempts to introduce Edwardius as a friend and not a sacrifice, the gloopy scoops HPL up, calling him "father", and vanishes off to its own dimension.

Back in Providence, Edwardius and Clark Ashton Smith carry on...

Attemps at Lovecraftian humor generally don't do much for me, but this one does.  It's a True Fan's love letter to Lovecraft, its genuinely funny and genuinely well-done (the depiction of HPL and CAS as a bickering old couple is especially good, and funny) and it manages to make something of the whole "Lovecraft wasn't writing fiction" trope.  And what HPL fan can't smile at the thought of a latter-day HPL reaping the financial rewards of his latter-day success?  All in all, this one's a fave.

"I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket ... But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life!"

by Joanna Russ

originally published The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1964

Irvin Rubin is a schlub who works for a small press publisher and hates his life. One day he starts hitting up his co-worker, June Kramer, for tips and help with his romantic life.  It seems he's met a girl.  A mysterious, beautiful, fashionable girl, who walks her dachsunds and shares Irv's belief that HPL is the greatest author that's ever been. 

He pulls June out of her bridge game to come to his boarding house room and make it look like he has a social life, cuz the mystery girl's on her way over.  She doesn't show.  And doesn't show.  And as June is finally making her way home, Irv running after her begging her to stay, mystery girl does show.  But something about her frightens June off.

Irv returns to work and says he and the mystery girl are getting married.  Soon after another co-worker sees them walking in the park. Soon after Irv turns up dead.   One day the mystery girl is seen out walking her dogs again.  This time she's carrying a copy of Ovid's poems.

Very well written but … HUH?

"The Adder"

by Fred Chappell

originally published Deathrealm, Summer 1989

Our nameless narrator is an antique book dealer.  And so is his uncle, Alvin.  One day Uncle Alvin calls him up, saying he wants to pay a visit.  He has something very rare, and he can't talk about it over the phone.

That very rare thing is a handwritten manuscript of Al Azif, aka The Necronomicon.  In Arabic.  He wants it stashed while he goes to the Library of Congress to make arrangements with them to get it into their collection.  But he warns NN - the manuscript is "like an adder - first it poisons, then it devours".  He advises him to store it well clear of anything of value.
NN stores it with some cheap knock-off editions of Milton.

Soon after, he makes an alarming discovery - Milton's words in the cheap knock-off edition are changing.  What's more, they're changing in all other editions - from classic poetry to doggerel.   What's more, the manuscript seems to be restoring itself - less faded, less aged, becoming like new.  Alarmed, NN lets Unc know, and tosses the ms into an otherwise empty safe.

Unc comes by and does a ritual involving another rare book - one that goes unnamed - but is apparently a kind of anti-Necronomicon, which restores Milton's poetry to its original state. But while they're talking, a fly lands on the damp ink of the ms, and flies off.

 This is actually an amusing and witty story.  It would take a real devotee of the written word to mark the decay of Milton's poetry as the first sign of apocalypse.  And, despite its obviously humorous intent, there are dark implications in the finale.