"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.