"The Black Island"

by August Derleth
originally published Weird Tales, January 1952

Horvath Blaybe is an archeologist studying ancient ruins in the Pacific.  While in "the most famous bar in the world" in Singapore, he spots Dr. Laban Shrewsbury and his fall guys from previous adventures, sitting around a table presumably discussing Cthulhu stuff.  Something draws him in and he joins them.  Doc Shrew challenges him on various points relating to the usual "look all these ancient civilizations knew about Cthulhu" jazz and they carry on a tiresome back-and-forth that goes on for nearly the first third of the friggin' story.  After that, Horvath is S.O.L.D. and signs up to help Shrew and Crew find "The Black Island", R'lyeh, which they have reason to think has recently surfaced again, have a fair ide of the location of, and have some apparently big plans for.

The gang sets out for Ponape, aka Pohnpei, stalked by Deep Ones.  Horvath dreams of being a Deep One sloshing around in Y'hanthlei … ya see, Horvath's got a dirty little secret - his given name isn't Blayne but Waite, and he's the child of Innsmouthers (albeit apparently reluctant ones).  He's in possession of a diary and some papers which make obtuse allusions to the Federal bombing of Innsmouth in 1928.  None of this goes anywhere of course.

On Ponape/Pohnpei, Shrew and Company hook up with a couple scuzzy sailors, one of whom claims to have seen the risen R'lyeh and gives its approx. location, and a US admiral with a destroyer at his command, who's straight out of central casting.  The admiral makes obscure reference to "the weapon" but no explanation is offered to Blayne.  

They make their way out there, find R'lyeh.  Cthulhu pops out and waves his tentacles around, and the Shrewsbury Gang detonates a shitload of explosives all over the place, which blows Cthu apart for as long as it takes his bits and pieces to flow back together and reform themselves, even more gloopy than before.  So the admiral, pronouncing the whole thing "horrible, horrible", agrees its time to use "the weapon".  Which turns out to be an A-bomb.  Boom.  The destroyer chugs away while everyone watched the mushroom cloud.  That took care of that, right?

Nah.  Horvath goes back to his business but still dreams.  He finally figures out his full heritage, and at night he can hear Deep Ones calling him.  He learns that Abel Keane just drowned in Massachusetts, and he knows R'lyeh and Cthulhu came through just fine.  And the Deep Ones are a-comin' for him.

And that brings us to the end of the "Trail of Cthulhu" sequence, with a rather pointless wet squib of a climax.  The whole thing is so lifeless and pointless that I'm left thinking that Derleth had lost interest in the whole affair and simply wanted to end it.  So he did.  In a decidedly unsatisfying manner.  This isn't an out-and-out terrible story, but its full of bonehead moves - the endless debate and exchange that takes up the first third of the story - the comical comic-book level dialog with the admiral ("must it be the weapon?").  And the otherwise limp quality of everything.  The four luckless dudes Shrew has recruited through the previous stories never utter a word or do anything, just follow along.  How much of a loss can Abel Keane be at the end when he barely existed in the story.  The encounter with the R'lyeh-shocked sailor serves only as exposition and is without atmosphere, Blayne's dreams are a touch better but still below Derleth's ability, and the encounter with Cthulhu is one big anti-climax - all he does is puff himself up and wave tentacles around.  Blayne's being of Deep One stock could have made an interesting wrinkle, but doesn't add anything to the story in any way.  And its hard to believe the all-knowledgeable Doc Shrew wouldn't know or figure Blayne's heritage out.  In the end, this just managed to fill out the last 5th of the collected "Trail" and nothing more.

Looking back on "Trail" as a collected body of work, its pretty much minor stuff.  A couple decent if flawed stories, one outright turkey and two empties.  Even if you're desperate for a Cthulhu fix, there's better choices out there.

"The Keeper of the Key"

by August Derleth

originally published Weird Tales, May 1951

Nayland Colum is a young author in London who has published a novel entitled The Watchers on the Other Side, which he himself describes as "outre".  Outre or not the book has sold quite well and he's preparing to move out of Soho.  Partly because some "fishy" (he he he) people seem to be following him and watching him.  

One night who shows up but ol' Doc Shrewsbury himself, Roman nose and prognathous jaw in tow.  It seems he's read Watchers and believes Nayland to be hip to the jive.  Labs fills him in on the usual b.s. (Cthulhu is real and afoot blah blah blah) including two pages of name-dropping.  He explains that he's up to his neck in some serious shit and Nayland could be a big help to him if he doesn't mind risking life, limb and soul.  To prove his point he demonstrates that Deep Ones are prowling the apartment building and that, even though he can clearly see, he doesn't have any eyes.  Nayland, swayed by Doc Shrews all-knowing-ness and eyeless-ness, signs up.

So it's off they go to the Middle East, followed by Deep Ones swimming alongside their boat, and spying on them in the port cities.  They make their way into the trackless desert in search of Irem, the Nameless City, where Shrew hopes to find the manuscript of Al Azif.  Despite losing nearly half their men along the way to "saurians" (apparently survivors of the race that once inhabited Irem), their guides and porters stick with them until they are on the outskirts of the region thought to be home to Irem.

Irem is indeed found, and Labs and Nayland fart around with all of its spooky-nifty features, and Nayland is introduced to the suspended animation-ed bods of Andrew Phelan, Abel Kean, and Claiborne Boyd, all in stasis in Irem while their minds are on Celaeno (Auggie hadn't made that detail apparent before, and it feels slightly out of left field).  In order to find the ms, Shrew re-animates the remains of Abdul Alhazred himself, conveniently sarcophagied in the city (that public murder attributed to Alhazred's exit was merely an illusion to cover his tracks).  Alhazred graciously helps them out, as well as helping point them to where R'lyeh might be.  Nayland and Shrew make their way back to civilization, but, when an unnatural storm hits their ship back to Merrie Olde, they realize the jig is up and escape via Byakhee Airlines.  Newspaper report they were washed overboard in the storm.

4/5 of the way into Derleth's "Trail of Cthulhu" sequence, and there's signs of hope, as "Keeper" is a cut above its predecessor "The Gorge Beyond Salapunco" and way above its pre-predecessor, the outright bad "Watcher From the Sky".  This one isn't outright bad, nor completely pointless, since it does at least take the story somewhere.  The motivations are absurd - look, if a guy showed up with Shrewsbury's line at my place, showed me that fish people were in my apartment building, and turnd out to have no eyes but could see, I might believe him, but I'm still not sure I'd sign up to risk life/limb/soul with him.  Actually I'm pretty sure I'd go "gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!" and push him out a window.  But I guess Nayland is a risk-taker.  The casual "oh, ho-hum six of our men got carried off in the night by little dinosaur people" is borderline comical.  No it's not borderline, it is comical.  The stories saving grace is the resurrection of Abdul Alhazred, which, though it goes on a little too long, is damn effective because, after all, Derleth was a good writer (albeit one who sometimes made bad choices).  

"The Testament of Claiborne Boyd" aka "The Gorge Beyond Salapunco"

by August Derleth
originally published Weird Tales, March 1949

Claiborne Boyd is the scion of an old money New Orleans family, and a scholar studying Creole culture.   The only other member of his family who's not a redneck doofoid is his great uncle Asaph Gilman, a former prof of nuclear physics who retired to Miskatonic U for awhile and then became a recluse who, it seems spent his time doing what reclusive scholars always do in these Derleth "Trail" stories - discovered and studied the connections between ancient pagan worship and the Cthulhu Mythos hooha!

Asaph snuffs it, under possibly suspicious circumstances, kilt in a riot among "lascars" or "dacoits" on the Limehouse docks.  He leaves Claiborne two steamer trunks full of papers and artifacts from his studies, including a statue of ol' Cthu hisself.  Amongst them is a handwritten account of a shipwreck and the surviving sailors encounter with what's apparently R'lyeh, risen from the sea.

Claiborne, for whatever reason, decides this shit is all really interesting and dives into Unc's research, leading him to make the same conclusions - the cult survives, and the gloopy monsters might be real!

Soon after alla this, Claiborne has a vivid dream about a creepy old dude named Japhet Smith shuffling into his Unc's lawyers offices and requesting Unc's papers.  They helpfully give the creep Claiborne's name and address.  

The next morning, Clai calls the lawyer's offices and finds out that, yes indeed, this event actually did take place and, yes indeed, they did give Smith Clai's name and address (shee-it - were things really that different in the 40's??).  Needless to say Clai ain't all that happy about this.

To make him even unhappier, he realizes he's being followed and spied on by literally fishy-looking people.  And he has another dream - this time featuring a white-haired, roman-nosed, prognathous-jawed, shades-wearing dude - yes, if you've been following kiddies, that's Dr. Laban Shrewsbury hisself!  Standing in a vast temple somewhere.  This time Clai gets a visual of a post office in Natchez where a letter from Unc Asaph intended for him has fallen down behind some shelves.  The next day Clai books out to that same Natchez post office and, after leaning on some unusually cooperative post office employees, finds the letter, right where he dreamed it would be!  The letter turns out to be a final missive from Unc, warning him that the Cthulhu bizness is real, he's in a lot of danger, and he should get off to Peru and meet with Prof. Andros, and work to do in the leader of a Cthulhu cult in South America.  Naturally, off he goes.

Prof. Andros points him to a saintly missionary named Fr. Andrada who works converting the Indians in a remote region near Macchu Picchu, which Unc had helpfully provided a hand-drawn map to and of.

That night in his hotel, Clai dreams about Dr. Shrew again, and this time is told (a)  he has to kill the leader of the cult and (b) he's going to be given a vial of the Magic Mead, a star-stone, and a whistle to summon a byakhee which can get him around.  Clai wakes up in time to see a young man drop off these items in his room and then hop on a byakhee and fly off.

Making his way out to the Peruvian boonies, Clai is given a letter that Fr. Andrada wrote, warning of the rise of a sinister, worse than Satanic cult among the Indians.  But something is up with Andrada, and he may have changed.  Or been replaced by an impostor.  That night, Clai again dreams of Doc Shrew, who confirms his suspicions about Andrada and tells him to wipe out the temple which Doc directs him to.  

The next day Clai finds the temple, spies on a ceremony, where a giant gloop rises from the black pool in the center of the room, shoots Andrada - who transforms into a gloop himself - and dynamites the temple.  Fleeing (and basically telling his guides they're on their own, buddy), he soon disappears, leaving behind only the now-empty Magic Mead vial.

Okay, the third tale in the "Trail of Cthulhu" cycle.  Story one was better than I expected.  Story two was a turkey that left me dreading this one.  Fortunately, sort of, story three is a slight improvement.  But it isn't very good.  It's a mediocre and slightly pointless piece that doesn't really move the overall story arch that "Trail" is trying to build anywhere, and mostly just rehashes elements of the two earlier tales.

Unfortunately Derleth pulls a really big boner in the first third of the tale by blatantly rehashing HPL's own "The Call of Cthulhu" almost note for note!  Reclusive scholar narrator - check.  Whacky uncle pursuing Cthulhu stuff gets kilt by some slimy non-white Cthulhu-lover - check.  Sends all his papers AND a Cthulhu statue to nephew - check.  Nephew gets caught up in it - check.  Important clue is the manuscript of a sailor who had an encounter with a risen R'lyeh - check.  

Why in the hell Derleth did this I'll never know.  The real shame of it is - the sailor's narrative, which, fortunately, does not simply rehash the Johansen Narrative from "Call", is actually a very, very effective little piece of spookery.  Derleth could have easily broken that piece out and expanded it into a memorable short story.

All in all this isn't dreck, but its without purpose.  A waste.

"The Watcher From the Sky"

by August Derleth 
 originally published Weird Tales, July 1945

Abel Keane is a divinity student in Boston in 1940.  One day he returns to his rented room to find some dude in a Hare Krishna outfit taking a snooze on his bed!

Now, you or me would probably call the cops, right?  But being as this is a Cthulhu story, Abel just sits down and decides to use hypnosis(!) to pry some information out of his uninvited guest (obviously Auggie didn't know jack about hypnosis!).

This causes his guest, who is asleep but aware, to start communicating with him.  It seems this is no other than Andy Phelan, last seen flying away on the back of a batwinged hamburger snatcher at the end of Auggie's previous story, "The House On Curwen Street".

Actually, Andy not only communicates - he pretty much spills his guts.  He's been on Celaeno.  He needed to stop off and rest and this room, having been his digs a couple years before, is his "point of contact".  He's mixed up in some serious shit that he can't talk about.  He needs to  lie low and not be seen, or have anyone told that he's around. And can he borrow one of Abe's suits?

Abe enthusiastically says yes to everything(!).  He also is possessed of an overwhelming urge to get involved (!!).  He tries to stop Andy from leaving, again, via hypnosis.  Instead, Andy, using powers he must have acquired on Celaeno, overwhelms his mind with cosmic visions and leaves him on the bed, where Abe has dreams about Andy being stalked through the streets of Innsmouth.

The next day Andy wakes him, confirms that the dream is true, and wants to take another nap on his bed.  As usual, Abel says no prob.  Now, having nothing better to do, he does what any of us would naturally do -- go to Miskatonic U library and look up Celaeno!  And anything on Andy Phelan!! He pokes through the Necronomicon and Shrewsbury's papers, then does the other thing any of would naturally do - takes the bus to Innsmouth to check things out there!  Along the way, and in the town, he's given the whole Innsmouth backstory.  Also that another Marsh, Ahab, has come out of somewhere since the town was bombed-out by the feds in the 20's, and is running the show there and up to no good.

Abel gets back to his rooms where Andy says "no no no you don't want to go getting involved in this and you don't want to know any more about it" - then proceeds to tell him all about it.  In detail.  Tiresome detail.  It seems he and Shrewbury have been hiding out on Celaeno from the Cthulhoogies after running around destroying gates for them to enter Earth, but these new activities, presumably involving Ahab Marsh (boo! hiss!) have brought them back to Terra Firma.  Abel begs, Andy sez "no! never!" Abel begs some more, Andy sez, "I don't think so".  Abel begs, Andy sez "Okay!  First thing - we make ourselves up to look like Innsmouthers!" Then they go back to Innsmouth to spy on Ahab Marsh.  Who turns out to be even creepier than they expected.

After some dull business farting around The Esoteric Order of Dagon and some more lengthy discourse with the shop owner who'd previously given Abel an earful of Innsmouth gossip, Andy pulls out his master plan.  Making sure Ahab's home alone, they put star-stones at all the exits and then torch the place (nice!).  Ahab, trying to make a break for it, can't leave because he can't pass the star-stones.  As his clothes burn off it becomes obvious why: he's a full-on Deep One, not merely a hybrid.  In case we missed that point, it is made blatantly clear - with italics and exclamation points.

Andy hands off a byakhee-summoning whistle and some pills made from the Magic Mead.  And tells him if he gets in pinch he can summon them to fly him to Celaeno.  Good luck old chum!  Andy takes off on one of the said Byakhee, leaving Abel to fend for himself.  Andy drops out of divinity school and spends his days hanging out at the Miskatonic U library and being stalked by Innsmouthers.  One night he hears something stomping around deep in the earth below his place, so it's off on Byakhee Airlines he goes...

Now, lets be straight here; Derleth's whole "Trail of Cthulhu" sequence (of which this is Installment Two) is hardly the most loved of all Lovecraftian riffs.  In fact, most folks on the Lovecraft-related forum and groups stick their fingers down their throats at the mere mention of it.  I too must confess disappointment, experienced both when I read the sequence in its semi-novel collected form back in high school, and the time revisited since.  BUT - I'm trying to fairly and honestly assess these stories, and I think Auggie's gotten a somewhat unfairly bad rep in recent eons, so I'm trying to approach these in as objective and unbiased a mindset as possible.  And, in so doing, I found the previous story, "The House On Curwen Street" (or "The Trail of Cthulhu") to be not too bad.

This one on the other hand started stinking from page one.

While "Trail" was written in a slightly Lovecraftian, but mannered and measured prose style, here Derleth comes on in full purple fever and never lets go.  And while "Trail" had some lapses in logic and rather questionable behavior and choices being made by characters, here Abel's actions and re-actions are just too ludicrous to be believable.  I mean, C'MON!

I have to add there's an amusing (because its unintentional and innocent) thread of homoerotica here … Abel marvels at Andy's fit body, and, by the third night, is sleeping next to him in the bed!  Gotta wonder what led Derleth to include that!  Maybe he thought all divinity students were froots?  

In any case, this is a ludicrously written, pointless, and dumb story.  D-U-M-B.  This one's an embarrassment.

"The Trail of Cthulhu" aka "The House On Curwen Street"

by August Derleth

originally published Weird Tales, March 1944

It's 1938, and Andrew Phelan of Boston has up and disappeared - "made away with himself, sez the Boston Herald.

It seems a while back Andrew responded to a want ad, offering employment to a young feller with brains, brawn, and a "limited imagination".  Not the most enticing job listing but maybe Andy was hard up.  

In any case, Andy made his way down to nearby Arkham and showed up at an old house on Curwen Street that looked like all the other houses except its "almost sinster appearance."  Like all good pulp horror heroes, Andy soldiers ahead anyway and is met by Dr, Laban Shrewsbury, one of the least-loved of all Cthulhu fiction characters.  Doc Shrew is an elderly gent with long white hair, a "prognathous jaw" and a "roman nose", who effects a pair of shielded dark glasses (think Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, 1933).  The Doc interviews Andy, explaining that he needs to be intelligent, needs some muscle because he might have to play bodyguard to the Doc once in a blue moon, and needs a limited imagination because otherwise "a too imaginative companion might well be able to grasp enough of the fundamentals to suspect the cosmic revelations which might come of my work."  Isn't that kind of a highfalutin' way of saying "if you actually understood what I was doing you'd freak the fuck out and run back to Boston"?   I dunno.  Me if someone said that to me in a job interview I'd tell `em to shred my resume, but Andy has no such scruples, and the Doc offers him top dollar to take the job and move into an upstairs room - immediately!  Oh, and he has company coming and wants Andy to hide in a semi-hidden room, eavesdrop, and transcribe the entire conversation.

His visitor shows up seconds later - interestingly, Doc seems to know he's at the door even before he knocks.  Said visitor is a South American sailor named Fernandez, who tells of how, while wandering near the ruins of Machu Picchu one night, he follows some weird music and finds a half-buried cavern beyond some rocks forming a doorway, and a bunch of Indians engaged in some kind of ritual around a black lake.  And there's something in the lake - a whistling, gurgling thing "as  big as a hill … like jelly."

Doc asks him several questions that seem way above Fernandez' pay grade, then, suddenly reacting to something, tells Fernandez he has to get the heck out of there, and make sure no one sees him on his way back to Innsmouth.  Fernandez leaves, and the Doc tells Andy that soon there will be another visitor, looking for Fernandez.  He's to tell said visitor that he doesn't know Fernandez and that he hasn't been there.  Moments later a "batrachian" fellow shows up a the door as predicted.  Andy dutifully sends him away.

Over the next few days Doc sort of obtusely explains that his work involves drawing comparisons between "mainstream" pagan mythologies and the Cthulhu bizness, and his belief that dangerous cults devoted to the Cthuloogies still exist.  As if to prove his point, Fernandez is apparently murdered in Innsmouth a short time later.  Meanwhile, Doc introduces Andy to a golden-yellow mead that he hordes carefully, and it's real good shit.

Andy begins having a series of strange dreams.  In the first, Doc shows up in his bedroom, gets him up, calls forth some bat-winged whoozits from out of the night sky, who fly Andy and Doc off to some remote location, basically matching Fernandez mysterious cavern.  There the Doc has Andy transcribe his every conjecture as he examines the place.  In the morning when he wakes up, he finds his shoes gone - the Doc sez he sent them out to be cleaned.  Andy finds this merely eccentric.

Andy is sent to translate some passages from the Necronomicon et al suggesting that (a) there are portals around the world through which the Great Old Ones can enter and (b) us peoples can destroy those portals, thus preventing their entry.  While in the library, he meets an old codger who tells how Doc basically disappeared one day 23 years ago, then just as mysteriously re-appeared, 3 years back.  And no one knows where he went or what happened to him.  Andy does a little checking and discovers this is true.

Back home, Andy finds Doc engaged in making explosives.  Since this is pre-9/11, he doesn't think "terrorist" and since this is a Lovecraft pastiche, he doesn't think or do anything else about it either.  That night Doc sez he is not to be disturbed, but, when Andy hears some shutters banging in a storm, he enters Doc's room only to find him MIA.  He also finds a glass with a tiny drop of the mead in it, and, having no impulse control, he drinks it (rude!).  Soon after his sleep is disturbed by the same batwinged whoozit-summoning chants he heard in his dream, and the sounds of explosions and crashing rocks, though he can't figure where these are coming from.  The next day Doc has him file a clipping from a wire service about a hill collapsing into an underground reservoir, and the death of several Indians in the collapse.  Doc seems amused.

Doc finishes dictating his latest MS, which he ends with an admonition to pit the various Great Old Ones and their minions against one another as a way of keeping them at bay.  He also talks of running around destroying those portals previously mentioned.   Doc gets excited about a story in the London Times about an illiterate dockworker named Massie who went missing for months, then turned up, speaking no known language.  That night, Andy dreams that he and Doc fly off on the whoozits again to London, where they meet with Massie's doctor, who tells them the not-too-bright Massie now seems to have a powerful and educated mind, but that the poor saps dying, apparently from exposure to harsh elements during his long absence.  Doc identifies the unknown language as R'lyehan, and gets Massie to recount as visit to R'lyeh, risen from the deeps, courtesy of some Deep One who snatched him off the Thames.

Dreams and reality begin to blur for Andy, and he's not sure what's happening anymore.  He has a third dream - this time, he and Doc flap off to what is apparently R'lyeh; there Doc sets up explosives around a portal - while being stalked by Deep Ones, held at bay by a five-pointed star-stone, and blows the door just Cthulhu is trying to ooze through it.  This dream sends Andy to a shrink - who writes it off as anxiety and is unconcerned that Andy woke up with slime and mud all over his shoes (from the mucky ground of R'lyeh) and a current copy of the London Times in his pocket!

When Andy gets back, Doc is all wigged out.  He's got a ton of papers he wants donated to Miskatonic U.  Andy starts asking some hard questions and Doc admits that he's been sealing up portals of the Great Old Ones, with Andy's help - i.e. - the dreams are all true.  The mead is a potion that allows for travel via batwinger.  Doc was on Celaeno all those years he was missing.  And now a rumbling, sloshing sound - as if something gigantic is moving through the waters under the earth, fills the house.  Doc confesses that the minions of Cthulhu are coming for him, and they both have to run for it.  He gives Andy some mead, a whistle used to summon the batwingers (along with the chant, which Andy has memorized), and the star-stone.  In his agitation, he accidentally knocks off his shades - lo and behold, Doc has no eyes!  This last causes Andy to run screaming from the house - the ungrateful wimp!

Doc's house burns down, and he's presumed killed in the fire, though no bones are found.  Andy drifts around, hiding out from the minions.  One night he hears the underground noises.  He summons the batwings in order to escape.

Thus we embark on the first of five stories in a series Derleth eventually published via Arkham House as The Trail of Cthulhu.  One of the most maligned of all Lovecraft pastiches (after the "posthumous collaborations, of course).  How bad is it?  Well....

Not bad at all, really.  I've read this tale at least twice before.  It's certainly no classic.  But it is a decent read and I did in fact find myself getting caught up in this time through, despite my considerable cynicism about it.  The plot is reasonably well-and-carefully thought out, excepting the idiotic behaviors of Andy and his shrink (albeit I've known some real-life shrinks who could be just as dim as this fellow).  And occasionally the monsters (why did they snatch Massie, after all?) Sure, its pulp Lovecraft.  And the expository bits, where Doc yammers on about his theories, are tiresome laundry lists of the usual clichés.  

But, there's compensating glories, too.  Mainly when it comes to atmosphere.  Fernandez' story is actually spooky.  Even more so is Doc and Andy's visit to R'lyeh … planting bombs while Deep Ones et al slither towards them out of the ruins.  That scene is particularly evocative.  

Although I remembered finding Doc an irritating character, here I found him sympathetic.  He actually comes off as a somewhat believable figure - an old guy who's probably a little nuts, who's been through indescribable experiences (travel to an alien planet, where, apparently, he underwent torture - an implied explanation for his missing peepers which I missed on previous reads), knows too much about things he doesn't really understand as well as he hopes/thinks, and dragging some poor schlob into his mess to boot.  He means well, but doesn't actually know what he's doing.  I actually think this is good characterization on Auggie's part.  Okay, this story is no classic.  But its no bow-wow either.