"Notebook Found In A Deserted House"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, May 1951

Poor Willie Osborn.  Orphaned at an early age and left in the care of an elderly grandmother out in the back-back-backwoods of New England (somewhere sort of near Arkham), he grew up hearing her spooky stories about creepy things that lived in the woods - especially what she calls them ones - mysterious and fearsome entities that live even farther back in the woods and hold weird ceremonies, especially at Halloween.

Well, granny up and shuffles off and Willie ends up living with his aunt and uncle who live ... even farther back in the woods - like, in them ones neighborhood.  

Aunt and Unc are nice enough, but Willie (who's a pretty smart kid) notices little details - like they lock the doors tight at night, and there's no animal life in the woods around their remote home.  One afternoon playing in those deserted woods, he hears something come stomping along, something that hangs around for a bit, allowing Willie, who's hiding and doesn't see it, to nonetheless smell it (bad!) and hear it chanting - something involving "Shub-Niggurath" and "shoggoth".  It leaves behind pools of slime and prints like giant hooves.  That night, Willie begins having dreams about the encounter in which he sees the creature as mass of ropy tentacles and mouths, shaped almost like a tree.

Aunt and Unc get a telegram via Cap, the mailman who comes up by horse and buggy once a week, saying that a cousin, Frank Osborne, is coming for a visit.  Lots of excitement.  But Unc rides into town ... and never comes back.  His horse and buggy eventually do, though.  The horse in a state of terror, the buggy empty.  Willie dreams of his Aunt being taken in the night by strange men.  The next morning, she's gone.

Frank shows up, all city-slicker condescension, and Willie soon spots him for an impostor.  And that he's trying to keep Willie from leaving.  Willie manages to escape with Cap, who believes what he's telling him and seems to know way more about the weird happenings in the wood than he's letting on.

Cap and Willie encounter a ropy gloop monster on the road, and the buggy gets turned over.  Cap and the horse get eaten.  Willie escapes into the woods and finds a clearing where cultists are sacrificing cattle, and people.  The ropy horror from his dreams is also in attendance.  Willie runs away, back to the cabin, barricades himself in, and starts writing down the whole experience.  But even as he's writing, he can hear "Cousin Frank" and others, some less-than-human sounding, talking outside and preparing to break in...

Woo hoo!  I've given old Bob Bloch a bit of a hard time about his early, amateurish Cthulhu'd tales, but his few later ones are pretty great.  Even Ramsey Campbell cited "Notebook" as one of the scariest Lovecraft-influenced tales and man, he is right.  I remember first reading it in daylight on a bright spring day, and read it today sitting on my front porch on a bright October day and it still packs the chill.

It works, I think, because like Davis Grubb' Night of the Hunter, or Alan Moore's "Kamara" stories in his 80's run on Swamp Thing, it is a child's nightmare.  Bloch remembers how scary the world is when you're a kid, and the nagging fear that the grown-ups may not be able to protect you - or worse - may be out to harm you themselves.  Being told straight from a young boy's P.O.V. and in his own words - but a young boy - not a stupid one - the language is simple enough that this could almost be a children's story.  A particularly sinister one.  

It's not perfect.  The next to last line is either a dumb joke (Bloch was prone to injecting humor into his stories), or is just dumb.  But its not enough to dispel the darkness of this one.  The very last line is one of those "the narrator writes out his last words just as the monster eats him" sort of moments but in this case I think Bloch (a) pulls it off and (b) it makes sense and is believable in the overall context of the story.  So we have a winner here.

"The Fane of the Black Pharoah"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, December 1937

Captain Cartaret is a retired military old boy don't you know who got bitten by the archaeology bug ... and the occult bug ... during his military years in Mesopotamia.  Said bug led him to Egypt, and the Necronomicon, and De Vermis Mysteriis.  

Of particular interest, the "black pharoah" Nephren-Ka, a worshipper of Nyarlathotep who ended up getting himself deposed and struck from the history books.  The reputable ones, anyway.

It seems on top of being in general a Nyarlathotep-worshipping scumbag, Neph had the gift of prophecy and is said to have painted a mural depicting centuries into (his) future on the walls of the tomb where he was buried alive.  Also there are said to be surviving cultists carrying on his legacy, even to modern times.

Well sir, some Egyptian fellow has shown up at Carteret's door tonight, offering to lead him to Neph's hidden tomb.  For free.  His reason: that Carteret's viewing the tomb is prophesied.  Cartertet thinks the whole thing's as fishy as the delivery dock of a Red Lobster restaurant but hell, he can't pass this up.  So he follows his visitor to the tomb, which is plenty creepy.  The mural is there, just as predicted.  And indeed it depicts a figure in Carteret's likeness viewing the tomb.  And it depicts the priest who led him there knifing him as a human sacrifice.  And lo and behold, that comes true, too.

No doubt Bloch had come a long way as a writer in a few short years when this one appeared.  Nevertheless, its ultimately and EC-type ironic shock ending tale with a touch of Lovecraftiness for seasoning.

"The Dunwich Horror"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published Weird Tales, April, 1929

Dunwich, MA is a little shithole full of inbred dopes, amongst them the Whateleys - Lavinia, an uneducated albino and her nutzoid pops, who's name is apparently "Old", and who is generally believed to be involved in black sorcery, Trump rallies not having been invented yet.

Things get weird when Lavinia up and has a baby, with no dad in sight.  Despite the fact that no dude in Dunwich (even) would touch her with a 10 foot pole, this is largely shrugged off.  Old makes some strange pronouncements about the mysteriously absent sperm donor while hanging around the cracker barrel.  

Old raises the offspring, innocuously named "Wilbur", in the Dark Arts, educating him out of some decrepit books and fragments of books he has collected (and we all know what those are, right kiddies?).  Meanwhile he and the kid embark on major renovation projects around their crummy farmhouse, and keep buying up cattle (which are never seen again).  Wilbur himself grows at an alarming rate - which is understating the case (he's basically adult-sized by age 10 or so) and is a less-than appealing character - with a face like a goat and a personality to match (actually goats are friendly but so what, it sounded good when I wrote it).

Old passes on, and Lavinia disappears (yeah, right) while Wilbur just keeps on growing.  He also keeps doing research to fill gaps in his knowledge from the battered and incomplete books Gramps left him.  Said researches take him on a trip to Miskatonic U library, where his attention to The Necronomicon creeps out head librarian Henry Armitage.  

Henry's even more creeped out by what happens next - Willie-boy breaks in one night to steal the Necro, and is killed by a watchdog, which, in the process of mauling him, rips off his clothes.  Armitage, and two colleagues, Profs Rice and Morgan, get a good gander at a nekkid Wilbur W, and it ain't pretty!  From the waist down he's a dinosaur-legged, eyeballed, built-in-tentacled-skirted nasty.  His bod conveniently melts into a pool of goo before disappearing, thus saving the janitor some particularly unpleasant work.

Now that Wille-boy's dead and gone, the invisible monster he's been keeping in the farmhouse (for such is the case), breaks out and goes running all over Dunwich stomping cattle and, eventually, people. Finally Armitage, Rice and Morgan arrive and use magic they've learned from the rare books collection to destroy the beastie, though not before revealing it as a tentacled multi-legged whatsit with an apparently humanoid face on it.  Now that's gone, Armitage drops the bomb - the monster was Wilbur's twin brother, and closer in nature to the dad than Wilbur was.

Here we have another of HPL's most celebrated tales.  And again, rightly so.  This was the first of his longer works I ever read, again, back in 7th grade, and I was pretty well blown away by it.  It still holds up for me after all this time.  Its one of HPL's most disciplined pieces of writing.  He'd shed most of his worst habits and the story is very tautly told.  Even the long intro, which is entirely about the background and history of Dunwich and the area is controlled, makes perfect sense, and enhances the story.  Everything works and every hair is in place.  The buildup is one long tower of mood in the making, the revelation of Wilbur's true nature still has as kick to it, and the monstrous finale doesn't hold back.  

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published Visionary Press, 1936

Our Narrator, a hapless geek, decides to celebrate his "coming of age" by taking a sightseeing tour of New England  (I don't know about you but the sightseeing I did on my "coming of age" involved the bottom of a beer glass and the sight of the lovely G.O - but HPL had far more scruples than I).

After hearing some vague and unsavory legends about Innsmouth in Newburyport, his interest is piqued in Innsmouth (I told you this guy was a geek) and he starts nosing around, hearing some strange tales, mostly from a colorful old geezer at the train station, who enlightens him about a 2x a day bus to and from Innsmouth, which hardly anyone is willing to ride.  He soon finds out why cuz the driver and few passengers are icky-looking and smell like fish.  

After picking the brain of a disgruntled grocery boy, O.N. winds up plying ancient town drunk Zadok Allen with whiskey in order to get the backstory on Innsmouth.  Despite his thick phoneticized accent, Zadok is pretty sharp for a really old drunk (I suppose HPL never actually talked to too many decrepit alcoholics).  

Per Zadok, less than 100 years back, a merchant ship captain named Obed Marsh made contact with some South Sea islanders and adopted their debased religion, which centered around weird sea gods but was known to have some big advantages over Christianity, namely prayers were reliably answered.   Obed started up a church in the town which offered up human sacrifices in exchange for awesome fishing hauls and spectacular gold jewelry. 

This didn't sit all that well with the locals, who arrested Obed and his fellow cultists.  This led to retaliation from the cult's benefactors, a community of Deep Ones who raid the town, killing about half the inhabitants and subjugating the rest, forcing them to breed with Deep Ones, producing half-breed offspring who start life as fairly normal human, then gradually transform into Deep Ones.  What's more, the local Deepies have a long-range plan to dominate the rest of the surface world.  "Ever hear of a shoggoth?" Zadok asks.  But before he can explain, he shrieks that he's been seen and heard, and tells O.N. to get the heck out of Innsmouth ASAP.  Next thing you know, Zadok's gone - never to be seen again. 

O.N. tries to head for home, but the bus is broken down, and he has no choice but to stay at the local fleabag.  As he's trying to maybe grab some Z's, he hears somebodies trying to get into his room.  He flees through the hotel and a window, and makes his way through the streets, pursued by locals and later, he sees, hordes of Deep Ones swimming in from the sea.  He manages to make it to some railroad tracks leading outside of town.  Hiding in the brush, he gets a good look at the full-on Deep Ones and passes out.  

Apparently he hid successfully, because he wakes up unmolested and makes his way back to Arkham, where he reports the whole experience.  This leads to a hushed-up federal raid on Innsmouth which ends up with many of the half-breed citizenry incarcerated or killed, buildings being blown up, and something being torpedoed off the coast.  The press makes out it was over bootlegging but WE know different, heh heh heh...

O.N. goes back to school like a good boy and tries to pretend his little side trip never happened.  But, he soon discovers that he himself is descended from Innsmouth stock.  First he is horrified, but, as the story ends, he has come to embrace his unhuman heritage, and looks forward to joining his brethren...

Whoo!  This is one of HPL's most famous and celebrated stories and its easy to see why.  This is perhaps the third/fourth time I've read it over the last (shudder ... ) nearly 40 years and never fails to kick in, despite familiarity and the dilution of the premise through years of bad Innsmouth knock-offs (last time I looked there's what - at least three Innsmouth-based collections out there).  

It is not flawless.  HPL felt he couldn't write action sequences effectively, while deCamp claimed the chase scene at the end is effective.  I'm somewhere in between.  it is effective, but it also reads very clinically, as if the narrator were carefully and meticulously planning every move, describing every turn and detour with more detail than you can get out of a Google Maps trip planner.  Seriously, if you were trying to get outta town while a bunch of fish-people were after you, would you stop and consider everything so carefully.  P.S. yes I'm aware this is supposed to be the narrator describing his experiences long after the fact, but I still think a more terse description would have worked better.

He still hadn't quite gotten over a few other bad habits: it takes nearly four paragraphs of "Arrgghh! It was so horrible I can't describe it but I'll try!" before he finally breaks down and gives us a word-pic of the fully-developed Deep Ones.  On the other hand, said description is nice and straightforward and terse (by HPL) standards (I guess he figured fish-men were easier to visualize than the weirdies that would take up multiple paragraphs or pages later on).  

But the very very good outweighs the minimal bad.  This is a terrific, even gripping read, full of atmosphere (Derleth called it "brooding", and that fits) and doom.  The final paragraph, which could have been corny or silly in lesser hands, remains chilling.  It's always nice when you come across a classic that really is classic.

"The Testament of Atthamaus"

by Clark Ashton Smith 

originally published Weird Tales, October 1932

Atthamaus, the former executioner of the city of Commoriom, tells us how that city came to be abandoned by its citizens.

A particularly dangerous outlaw called Knygathin Zhaum has been menacing the countryside, leading a band of hairy Voormis in raids that involve not merely theft and murder but rape and "anthropophagism" (that's cannibalism to the uninitiated).  Even worse, its said that he is somehow related to the black god Tsathoggua.  Blech!

Anyway, Knygathin is captured and brought to the city.  He turns out to be completely hairless, but with patterned skin like a snake.  There's also a subtle sense of bonelessness or some such to his appearance, which Atthamaus finds particularly repulsive.

Well the big day comes and Atthamaus cuts off Kny's head - which spills not blood but a bit of black ooze, and reveals no normal bone structure.  Nevertheless he's dead.

Or is he?  The next morning, Kny is up and around town, and he eats a merchant whole for breakfast!  In front of witnesses!  

Well, Kny is promptly recaptured and the Hyperborean equivalent of double indemnity laws are set aside so he can get a second beheading.  He is buried again in a more extreme arrangement, but again the next AM he's back, eating one of the judges who sentenced him.

Realizing this is a bad scene, people start to leave town.  Kny is captured and beheaded again, his bod sealed in a sarcophagus and his head separated and placed under guard.  But that night a liquid gloop monster ("a dark, ever-swelling mass of incognizable matter, frothing as with the venomous foam of a million serpents, hissing as with the yeast of fermenting wine, and putting forth here and there great sooty-looking bubbles that were large as pig-bladders. Overturning several of the torches, it rolled in an inundating wave across the flagstones and we all sprang back in the most abominable fright and stupefaction to avoid it." - jeezus I'd have leaped back too!)

The gloop reunites with the head and Knygathin Zhaum is out of traction/back in action once again.  And he proceeds to eat some more people.  There's a mass exodus from the city and, realizing it is impossible to defeat Kny, Atthamaus joins the fleeing crowds...

Again, a synopsis doesn't quite do this justice.  You have to read Smith's acidicly flowery prose to really get the full experience.  The story is dark and suspenseful and gruesome - and also funny as hell.  Classic C.A. Smith.

"Ubbo-Sathla"

by Clark Ashton Smith
originally published Weird Tales, July 1933

Paul Tregardis, an anthropologist and amateur occultist, with a considerable grounding in The Necronomicon and The Book of Eibon, is killing some time in a musty little antiques shop when he comes across an odd crystal sphere. Unable to learn more about it ("The dealer gave an indescribable, simultaneous shrug of his shoulders and his eye-brows." - I do wish I could visualize that), and believing that it just might be a fabled crystal once in the possession of a Hyperborean sorcerer named Zon Mezzamalech, Tregardis gives in, buys the thing, takes it home, and stares into it (hey - they didn't have TV in `33).

He enters into a fugue state in which his consciousness becomes one with Zon Mezzamalech (what - you didn't expect that Tregardis was going to be correct in his surmise?  How many of these stories have you read?).  It seems Zon had sought some tablets inscribed by the eldest, lost gods of the universe, containing secrets powerful beyond imagining.  These tablets are hidden, guarded by the "idiotic demiurge" Ubbo-Sathla, and only the crystal can locate them.

Tregardis is unsettled by his visions and experiences from the crystal gazing, and vows not to do it again.  Ha!  Of course he goes right back to it.  He views/experiences past lives stretching back to Hyperborea, and beyond, even into pre-human times.  Finally, he comes face-to-face with ol' Ubbo hisself:

"Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. "

Now a formless, pre-human, pre-mammal, pre-dinosaur blob of glop, what once had been Zon Mezzamalech/Paul Tregardis crawls over the tablets, unable to read or do anything with them.  

Back in London, Tregardis is nowhere to be found....

Woo! What a tale.
Actually, for all my sarcasm, "Ubbo-Sathla" has always been something of a fave of mine.  A synopsis may make it sound very slight, and it has a lot in common with Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos", another fave.  But a synopsis doesn't give the purple poetic power of C.A. Smith it's due.  It had to be read to be appreciated.  Like all of Smith's best stuff, "Ubbo" casts an unearthly spell that's hard to dismiss.

"The Last Supper"

by Donald R. Burleson aka Crispin Burnham 
originally published Eldritch Tales No. 7 1981

A bunch of ghouls can't wait to eat their master's corpse after he passes.  They open his coffin to find he's already eaten most of himself.

Amusing and atmospheric, but hardly a classic.

"The Unspeakable Betrothal"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9, 1949

Avis Long is a young woman, living in her childhood home which she inherited from the aunt and uncle who raised her.  Ever since she was a small child, Avis has been haunted by vivid dreams and an awareness of other worlds, and other entities which live in those worlds, which could reach out to her via a small round window above her bed.  She came to prefer these dreams to her everyday reality, and the entities to human contact.

Once, as a child, Avis was found more than halfway out the round window, onto the roof.  Her guardians had it boarded up, and after that, the dreams, visions, and voices stopped and Avis grew up into a normal life, even becoming engaged to the literal boy next door, Marvin Mason.

However, with the house now to herself, fiancee out of town, and aunt and uncle gone, Avis has unboarded the window, and now the voices, visions and dream are back, talking to her of this other world "beyond the sky", and Avis now wants to do nothing but lie around her bed in the dark, listening to them and watching, and begging them to take her away with them, something they say they can do, but only if they change her.  Avis is more than willing.

 Marvin and Avis' former guardian, Dr. Clegg, cluck-cluck over her situation and talk about locking her up.  Clegg urges Marvin to draw her out with love.  Marvin attempts to talk to her but when she informs him she isn't going to marry him, Marvin goes into a full fit of 1949-style manliness, informing her that she WILL marry him and she WILL live happily ever after whether she damn well likes it or not, and that he's going to close the round window while he's at it.  When he tries, Avis loses it and starts choking him.  Doc Clegg puts her out with a tranquilizer.

Clegg and Marvin agree to spend the night taking shifts keeping an eye on Avis.  Clegg also confesses that Avis did not sleepwalk out that window as a kid, as it was impossible.  It seems she was somehow levitated there.

Later, they hear breaking glass.  Doc and Marvin hightail it upstairs to find Avis' face still laying on her pillow, but her body gone.

I remember coming across this one in a Bloch collection, Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of, at 16 or so and being really surprised by the references to Yuggoth et al which make its Mythos-iness clear.  At the time time I wasn't that impressed by the tale but now I find it terrifically atmospheric and effective.  It also prefigures Ramsey Campbell stories such as "Napier Court" with their self-obsessed, neurotic protagonists.

All in all this odd, eerie little gem is one of Bloch's best, Lovecraft-influenced or otherwise.

"Terror in Cut-Throat Cove"

 by Robert Bloch

originally published Fantastic, June 1958

Howard Lane is a freelance writer and full-time drunk who's relocated to the Caribbean island of Santa Rita to live cheaply and escape/drown his sorrows over a failed romance.  One night he encounters a rarity - an American couple; Don Hanson, an overbearing jerk, and his "secretary" Dena Drake, a classic 50's-type blonde bombshell/fallen woman.  Howard thinks Don is an asshole but he's instantly smitten with Dena.

Don has a proposition.  It seems he's acquired an 18th century pirate's ship's log which tells of a fabulous treasure lost of the coast of Santa Rita - it seems the pirates sank a galleon carrying, among other things, a gold ark taken from some remote temple and carried intact.  Although the pirates attempted to retrieve the ark from the sunken ship, it seems all their efforts failed when men died and others became superstitiously afraid, and they were forced to abandon the wreck to its watery grave.  After determining the log is legit, Howard signs up to help pave the way to Don and a small crew diving for the treasure.

Things go bad fast.  The find the wrecked hull, but one of Don's divers, Roberto, floats up without his head.  The crew starts muttering about curses and such, but Don puts it down to a freak accident.

Don begins teaching Howard how to dive.  He takes the next dive himself and manages to explore the hull a bit more, but becomes alarmed by what he thinks are nitrogen narcosis caused hallucinations.  He suggests Howard dive himself for it next.

During his dive, Howard sees the ghoulish figure of a female pirate zombie, brandishing a cutlass, then a black boiling cloud that seems to emanate tentacles and faces, including Roberto's.  A panicked Howard heads for the surface, way too fast.  Don is still not dissuaded by Howard's experience, and plans for them both to dive tomorrow.

That night Howard dreams of a strange entity living in the wreck that absorbs the consciousness of its prey.  After the dream, his consciousness too begins to merge with the entity, which is, of course, entirely real.

They dive, find the ark, and Don is devoured by the creature in it.  Howard tries to explain everything to Dena, but she isn't buying it.  She tries to seduce Howard, but his interest in normal things is fading.  The crew tries to take the boat and flee, but Howard and Dena witness as the boat is seized by the increasingly-powerful creature from the ark.

Howard, now completely in thrall to the thing from the ark, sacrifices Dena to it.  He is captured by the local police and deemed hopelessly insane.  As the police commish is writing up his report, he hears Howard chanting from his cell, and sees a black, boiling shape begin to rise from the coastal waters...

Wow! Now this was a re-read worth re-reading.  

I recall first reading this one at about 16 or so, and being not-that impressed with it.  In my memory it was just a kind of search-for-sunken-treasure sorta crime thriller with some tentacles showing up at one point, and I didn't even get its Mythosiness, which proves I was either a dumb kid or not paying close enough attention.  I'm positive I read it a second time in college but again, my memory of it was as nothing special.

Well I was wrong, man.  This is first-rate 50's Bloch, with cliched but strongly-drawn characters, and an air of sleaze and noir-ish psychodrama that was Bloch's stock-in-trade by this time.  But as to the Lovecraftian elements - well, the nightmare creature stored in the ark in the wreck (it sounds a bit like a Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua, for all you CoC players) is depicted perfectly, especially its alien and malignany ability to absorb the minds and memories of its victims, and/or apparently invade the mind of those it even comes into contact with.  This is one of the scariest and most convincing monsters in all Cthulhu-land, and its perefectly-presented arrival in the midst of what looks like a conventional heist tale makes this a real gem.

"The Dark Demon"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, November 1936

Edgar Gordon, horror author extraordinaire, has died ... maybe.  

Our Narrator, a fellow horror-author, had corresponded with him and, finding he lived in the same town, become a personal friend of Gordon's.  

Gordon is a strange one who bases his stories on his vivid dreams, which often take him into alien worlds and involve strange alien beings.

Gordon's writings get stranger and stranger and so does he.  He begins to claim he's the the chosen messiah of The Dark One, aka Nyarlathotep, who is to carry Ny's message to the world.  

O.N. mostly avoids Gordon after that, but one night is drawn to Gordon's place where he finds Gordon has taken on a non-human form.  He shoots him.

This one has a lot of atmosphere and effectively conjures up some of the bizarre, space-horror of HPL and Clark Ashton Smith.  But its a bit thin dramatically and has a weak ending.

"The Faceless God"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, May, 1936

Dr. Stutgache is a scumbag and crook who's been cutting throats to line his pockets for years in the mideast.  Word gets back to him of a potentially priceless statue half-buried in the Egyptian desert that none of the locals will touch due to its taboo nature.  Having no such scruples, Stutgache tortures the location out of a poor schlob and gets himself an expedition together to go git it.

They find it, but bad news.  The local bearers and guides recognize it as an idol of Nyarlathotep, and won't have anything to do with it.  They run off in the night, leaving Stutgache to find his own way home.

He tries to make his way out, pursued in his increasingly-addled mind - and possibly physically as well - by Nyarlathotep...

Bloch was getting his sea legs here.  This is approaching a mature story, even though its more mood piece than plot, its effective and at times unsettling.  

"The Shambler from the Stars"

 by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales September 1935

Our Narrator wants to be a horror writer,  Real bad.  His stories suck but after awhile he manages to start selling stuff.  

Feeling inadequate, he starts corresponding with occultists and such, and begins to learn of the arcana of the Cthulhu Mythos i.e. many of the usual books.

His attempts to find these titles are fruitless until one day he manages to scarf up a copy of Mysteries of the Worm for $1 in a hole-in-the-wall used bookstore.  He can't wait to get it home but, alas, he doesn't know how to read Latin.  

No matter!  His closest correspondent, a "dreamer" and mystic in Providence, RI, does, and tells him to get his ass out there like now - and don't forget the book!

This goes righteously bad when Mr. Providence starts translating out loud, and soon finds himself hoisted mid-air and having his blood drained by an invisible something, which later semi-materializes into a chuckling gloop monster with sucker tentacles.  O.N. flees for his life, but he knows this thing will come for him one day.

Despite being pretty slight and silly this one has so much verve its impossible not to like.  The mystic's death in the invisible tentacles is a real thriller and the history of Ludvig Prinn is actually quite cool.  Minor stuff but a lot of fun.

"The Suicide in the Study"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales June 1935

James Allington, a modern-day wizard (well, by 1935 standards), lies dead in his library.  How come?  Well, it seems he was using self-hypnosis to isolate his evil side (ala Mr, Hyde) and further cause it to manifest in a physical form separate from Allington's own bod.  

Now I happen to know a fair bit about hypnosis, and that would be an impressive trick!

In any case, first Allington finds himself having shrunk to a significantly smaller size - AND there's now a huge ape-like thing running around in his library with him!  It seems his evil side was the bigger half of him!  Not seeing any other choice, Allington grabs a letter-opener to try to kill the monkey with.  

They find Allington dead, with the letter-opener buried in his chest.  But the prints on the handle are those of a great ape.

People thought apes were really scary in the 30's.  Seriously.

"The Secret in the Tomb"

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales May 1935

Our Narrator makes his way to a tomb where an ancestor is buried.  Said ancestor having been a sorceror.  It seems the family bequest is the secret of immortality.  He gets into the tomb, but his ancestor, a skeletal undead thing, attacks him.  It seems the secret of immortality only applies to the ancestor, who takes the life of those fool enough to seek him out in order to prolong his.  O.N. managed to fight Skeletor off and hoofs it out of there, having learned a lesson.

This is barely even a story. Mostly an atmospheric vignette in a pseudo-Lovecraftian style, and with less surreal imagination than HPL would've shown.  That being said it has a certain charm, because despite his self-deprecating remarks in the introduction to this tale in the collection Mysteries of the Worm, Bloch did have talent and even this, a first effort that's hardly an "A", still resonates with that, if only slightly.

"The Hound"

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published Weird Tales, February 1924

Our Narrator and his bff St. John are setting up housekeeping in a manner that would make the Addams family blanch - robbing graves to decorate their house full of skulls, bodies, sinister books, headstones, freakish art and weird-ass musical instruments that they make weird-ass music on (gawd, HPL woulda loved Harry Partch!).

St. John gets wind of the grave of a tomb raider, who is said to have stolen something "potent" which is presumably buried with him.  They travel to Holland and dig up the several-hiundred year-old corpse, not giving much thought to the sound of an unusually large hound baying in the distance.  

The coffin is strange and elaborate, and its occupant is torn up, as if by wild animals. There is a jade amulet they recognize from the Necronomicon around the corpse's neck.  They take the amulet and head for home.

Bad news, boy.  The baying of the hound follows them home.  Weird noises are heard inside the house.  Then St. John gets his ass torn to shreds by some kind of animal.  O.N. destroys all the creepy bric-a-brac and flees, intending to return the amulet to the grave they stole it from.  But someone steals it from him.  The next day he finds  a story in the morning paper about a band of thieves who've been dismembered by some unknown animal.

He goes to the Holland graveyard anyway, and finds the corpse is covered in caked blood and bits of flesh and hair.  It also has the amulet. And starts baying at him.  He flees and plans to kill himself.

This one always surprises me whenever I re-read it because its so over-the-top in almost every way.  The morbid home of St. John and the nameless narrator is so crazed its comical, and if I didn't know that HPL wasn't prone to humor I'd think it was meant to be funny.  

After the purplish intro this becomes something like a particularly crazed and surreal EC horror comics tale.  Its about as close as HPL ever got to "splatter".  

Not one of his greatest tales, but terrifically effective and great spooky horror fun!

"The Festival"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published Weird Tales, January 1925

For Xmas, instead of watching It's A Wonderful Life for the 1,000th time being as it wasn't invented in 1925, Our Narrator books out to Kingspor, MA, where his scattered familial remains, by tradition, gather once a century for some kind of festival "that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten."

The town seems like a relic of another time, and more than a bit surreal.  And all but deserted.  He finds his relatives' house - and they're even weirder than you might expect.  They sit him down and provide a copy of the Necronomicon for light reading.

At 11, he's led outside where cloaked and cowled folks pour into the streets.  He follows the crowd to a church on a hill in the center of the town.  From there its into a crypt, and from there into a tunnel below, eventually leading to an underground chamber lit by glowing fungus and containing an underground river.  Strange flute music fills the air.  A bunch of icky flying beasties arrive and people mount up.  O.N. is shown proof that he belongs there, but, freaking out, he jumps into the river.

He turns up in Kingsport Harbor and is taken to the hospital.  While recovering, he finds an unsettling passage in the Necronomicon suggesting his experience was no dream.

This is minor stuff but it gets by by being long on atmosphere and dreamy feel.  Some of Lovecraft's weaknesses still show (re: his description of the flying things by comparing them to practically everything under the sun), but it works more often than not, and the last line is chilling.

"Under the Pyramids" aka "Imprisoned With the Pharoahs"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published  (as by Harry Houdini), Weird Tales May-June-July, 1924

Harry Houdini - yes, that Harry Houdini - is poking around Cairo and gets himself kidnapped, tied up, taken to some distant spot and tossed in a pit.  

Well, what else would you do with Houdini?

Houdini hallucinates for awhile, then comes to, gets out of the ropes (he is Houdini, after all), and makes his way around in the dark, looking for an exit.  He finds himself even further underground, in a cavern where he witnesses a bunch of mummies with animal heads having a hoedown with the ancient pharoahs Khephren and Nitokris and a giant tentacled whatsit poking through a hole in the wall.  Houdini runs for it when he realizes the whatsit is only the paw of an enormous whatsit.  Later he decides the whole thing is a dream.

A lot of HPL criticists have named this a fave, but personally I wasn't that enthralled.  The first 2/3 or so read like a travel guide and I could practically hear a Nathional Geo narrator reading it.  The last portion has plenty of atmosphere but hey, the story doesn't really go anywhere - Houdini gets captured, sees something weird - runs away.  HPL wrote a few too many like this in the early days.

"The Thing on the Roof"

 

by Robert E. Howard

originally published Weird Tales, February 1932

Our Narrator tells of Tussman, a fellow archaeologist, rival, and enemy, who one day decides to make nice, because he needs help getting his hands on a copy of Unausprechlichen Kulten.  O.N indulges him and acquires such a copy.

Tussman takes a look, sez thanks, and hotfoots it off to Honduras, there to check out the hidden remains of a "lost" temple known as The Temple of the Toad, which contains the mummified remains of the high priest and, per Von Junzt, a great treasure.

Some time later, Tussman summons O.N. for a visit.  He finds Tusmann in possession of a carved gem amulet in the shape of a toad (spoken of in Von Junzt's book) and in a state of agitation.  Later that night a servant is alarmed by what sounds like a horse stamping on the roof.  Tussman heads upstairs and a terrible scream is heard.  They find him dead with the mark of a hoof on what's left of his face.

Pretty minor stuff.  Not much else I can say about this one.

"People of the Dark"

 

by Robert E. Howard

originally published Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, June 1932

John O'Brien goes to Dagon's Cave, a shunned and mysterious cavern said to be the ancestral home of "Little People" (see previous Howard-related posts), following his crush Eleanor Bland and his rival in love, Richard Brent.  His plan is to bump off Brent.

Making his way through the dark tunnels, he falls and conks his head, and the next thing you know, he's back in an earlier incarnation, a Gaelic reaver named Conan (no relation to REH's most famous character).

Back in ancient times, Conan's on a raid against the locals when he spies a hot little blonde and starts chasing her ("I would have treated her kindly," he muses).  She (her name, we learn, is Tamera), runs to her boyfriend Vertorix.  Conan and Vertorix duke it out for a bit, while Tamera runs for Dagon's Cave, where she's taken captive by the reptilian Little People.

Vertorix and Conan rescue her but the Little People are coming on strong.  The three make it to an exit, but its a ledge that ends in a deadly drop into the river below.  Conan urges the two to jump for it rather than end up prey for the Littlers.   As they jump off, he makes a last stand.

Back in his present form, O'Brien makes his way through the now clearly deserted caves, and finds Eleanor and Richard standing out on the ledge.  Eleanor tells Richard its him she loves.  O'Brien is about to slink off when he sees a vile-looking thingy - a descendant of the Little People, now even less human than its ancestors, slithering towards them.  With the gun he intended to use on Richard, O'Brien shoots the critter.

Mostly this is merely an average, though atmospheric and effective, action-horror tale with our heroes fighting vainly against the sinister Little People. The soap opera wraparound and the more-than-clear implication that O'Brien, Richard and Eleanor are the reincarnations of Conan, Vertorix and Tamera add an element of interest.

"Children of the Night"

 

by Robert E. Howard

originally published Weird Tales, April-May 1931

Six dorks are arguing arcane, obscure, and probably ludicrously wrong anthropological/archaeological theory.  They are John Conrad, Clemants, Professor Kirowan, Taverel, Ketrick and the narrator John O'Donnel.  They're all good anglo-saxons (no xenophobia here!) except Ketrick, who looks almost Asian and has a lisp - O'Donnell thinks he's icky.

To make a point, Conrad produces a flint mallet he found on an archaeolgical dig.  No, Conrad doesn't intend to make a point that way, but nonetheless Ketrick ends up clouting O'Donnel in the head and knocking him out.

O'Donnel awakes to find himself in an earlier incarnation, Aryara, an "Aryan" tribesmen in ancient Britain.  It seems he was part of a hunting party, left on watch, but the dumb fuck fell asleep and his five buddies were slaughtered by the reptilian "little people".  He manages to trace the murderous little shits back to their village and kills a bunch of them before being overwhelmed.

O'Donnel comes to but, recognizing Ketrick as a sub-human descendant of the Little People, he attacks him.  They pull him off, figuring he's just addled (getting clobbered with a flint mallet might do that to a fella), but O'Donnel silently resolves to himself that he'll just have to bump Ketrick off later.

Nothing racial going on here!  In any case this is pretty minor stuff with some spookery, some action, and a fairly dull intro.  It's more like the seed of a plot that could have been expanded into something more compelling.

"The Little People"

 by Robert E. Howard

originally published Coven 13, January 1970

Our Narrator is on a tour of Europe with his sister, Joan, who's 17 and full of herself - when we first meet her she's tossing a volume of Arthur Machen across the room cuz it's stupid.  She doesn't believe that the aboriginal "little people" still haunt ancient Britain - not even the megaliths in sight from the hotel they're staying at.

O.N. wakes from a nightmare involving the vision of a robed figure, goes to check on Joan and finds she went for a late-night stroll among the fens.  Going out looking for her, he finds her - just in time for a bunch of "the little people" to go after her, chasing her as she runs towards the megaliths.

Just as the little `uns are about to have their way with her, the spirit of a druid - the same robed figure that appeared in O.N.'s dream, appears and drives the little horrors off.

This is seriously slight, even silly, little trifle.  The only plus being Joan who's actually a lively character, and sketched quickly and effectively.

"The Statement of Randolph Carter"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published The Vagrant, May, 1920

It seems old Randolph Carter's in a spot of trouble.  They found him wandering around Big Cypress Swamp in a state of partial amnesia.  Sometime earlier he and his bff Harley Warren were seen tramping around the area, carrying a bunch of equipment.  But now ol' Harl has vanished and Randolph's answers are a little - out there.

It seems Harley had acquires an obscure book which led him to believe there are entrances to a demonic underworld, here on earth.  And he had determined that one such could be found in a nearly-abandoned graveyard bear Big Cypress Swamp.  So the two of them headed out there straightaway with picks and shovels and flashlights and a portable telephone rig.  

They open up a tomb, revealing a flight of stairs, and Warren makes his way down, telling Randy his nerves are too delicate for such a trip.

After awhile, Warren starts babbling in disbelief at the things he's seeing - first in awe, then in panic.  He finally starts yelling at Warren to get the hell out of there.  Randy keeps shouting into the phone for him.  Finally an inhuman voice comes on the line and informs if "You fool - Warren is dead!"

Hoo boy!  I remember reading this in 7th grade English class (we had taken a test and those who finished had some free time) and being blooown away!

Re-reading it today: still a fun story, with a lot of atmosphere (admittedly, said atmosphere is laid on with a trowel, but it still works).  Lovecraft's a much less experienced writer at this point.  You can see it in the slight, flimsy plot and almost EC-comical ending (c'mon, some beastie picks up the phone to tell him they killed his buddy??).  Then there's the paragraph-length list of adjectives he trots out in an attempt to describe the voice.

So, a bit silly, a bit amateurish - but still a lot of fun!

"Pickman's Model"

 by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published Weird Tales, October, 1927

Our unnamed narrator is apparently having drinks with a pal, and is just a wee bit defensive about the fact that he's nervous as hell and won't go down into subways or cellars ever again.

Much of his newfound nervousness seems to have something to do with local artists Richard Upton Pickman, a controversial guy who's managed to alienate most of the local art community with his paintings, which are considered brilliant, but whose subject matter - ghoulish creatures doing ghoulish things - has become untenable with the crowd.  There's also more than a few odd things about Pickman himself - accusations that he's somehow starting to resemble his own subject matter.  And now, it seems, Pickman has vanished, and Our Narrator neither knows, nor cares, what's happened to him.

It seems not long ago, Our Narrator had developed a friendship with Pickman, who one night invited him to his private studio, a broken-down hovel in a forgotten slum of Boston, where the houses date back to the town's founding.  Pickman talks of tunnels under the city and secret rooms and wells in the cellars of the old houses which lead to dark, occult secrets.

There, O.N. is shown paintings too disturbing in subject matter and execution, to ever be shown to the general public.  While looking at an especially nasty work-in-progress, Pickman steps away to deal with some odd noises coming out of a well in the cellar, which he claims are made by large rats.  To O.N.'s surprise, he pulls a revolver and apparently fires it at something in the well, possibly killing it.  They head back to Pickman's home.

Some time later, O.N. makes a discovery.  He pocketed a small, curled-up piece of paper that was tacked to the painting Pickman was working on in the cellar, which Pickman had alleged was a photograph of a part of the city he intended to use as a background for the painting.  Upon examining the paper, O.N. sees that it is no such thing - it is in fact a picture of the monster he has been painting - but not a photo of a drawing or portrait - an actual photograph of the living creature.

This was one of the first Lovecraft stories I ever read, not too long after seeing the adaptation on Night Gallery.  As a kid who loved art, the idea of a painter who depicted monsters with frighteningly realistic technique was exciting, and I think that part of what comes through in this tale is the very reason some us fall so hard for HPL, especially when we're teens, because, at root - HPL was a weird as we are!

What you can see him doing in this tale is struggling to define an aesthetic, if you will, of weird-fantasy-horror art - "Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or a Witches’ Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That’s because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear—the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness. I don’t have to tell you why a Fuseli really brings a shiver while a cheap ghost-story frontispiece merely makes us laugh. There’s something those fellows catch—beyond life—that they’re able to make us catch for a second. Doré had it. Sime has it. Angarola of Chicago has it..." the narrator tells us.

All of this is saying, Lovecraft imagined for himself, in Richard Upton Pickman, the greatest fantasy-horror artist of all time.  And if he'd been real, HPL would've hung his pics in his living room.

I love this story.  Always have and still do.  There's plenty of buildup, but, as in the best Lovecraft, its craftily orchestrated.  When Pickman rhapsodizes about the sinister, secret history of the old Boston neighborhood... " There’s hardly a month that you don’t read of workmen finding bricked-up arches and wells leading nowhere in this or that old place as it comes down ...There were witches and what their spells summoned; pirates and what they brought in from the sea..." you can feel the thrill of the chill running up your spine.

"The Dweller in Darkness"

 

by August Derleth

originally published Weird Tales, November 1944

Jack, our narrator (He has a NAME!  Stop the presses!) is asked by his bud Laird Dorgan to go on a little camping trip with him.  

It seems a few months ago, Laird took Prof. Upton Gardner out to this cabin in the woods around Rick's Lake, in cheese-and-beer-laden Wisc., there to ruminate on some old and creepy legends involving a half-man half-beast said to roam the woods.  Some recent events, including the finding of the all too-well preserved bod of a missionary who vanished in said woods 300 years ago, had led Gardner to figure there was something there worth checking out.  

During his time there, Gardner sent Laird three increasingly weird letters, first alluding to a weird, spooky atmosphere about the woods, then noting strange sounds at night, seemingly eerie music and singing in possibly non-human voices, requesting photocopies from the Necronomicon et al, and a copy of Lovecraft's The Outsider and Others ("published by Arkham House last year"  - I guess Auggie had no qualms re: product placement!); finally a frantic note saying that there really are creepie crawlies in the woods.  Then Gardner vanished.  The coppers have searched thoroughly, but Laird isn't satisfied and wants to find out what might have happened to the Prof.

So Jack and Laird trek out there and make themselves comfy, taking with them among other things a dictaphone and cylinders to record anything interesting that happens.  Interesting things happen fast.  First there's the sound of howling wind ... even though there's actually no wind blowing.  Then there's Gardner's notes, alluding to various mythos baddies and a slab or carving (also having been mentioned by a local drunk injun earlier).  A conversation with grumpy eccentric Prof. Partier, a rival of Gardner's reveals a bit more about mythos business and gives Aug an excuse to trot out another laundry list of deities, etc.  With a little firewater, Jack and Lair persuace the aforementioned local drunk injun to take them to the carved slab, something he's clearly afraid of, and which is revealed to be a big stone slab with weird figures carved on it.

Upon arriving back at the cabin, J&L discover a message has been recorded on it by --- Prof. Gardner!!  Gardner's message warns them of, waxes poetic about all the places he's been and seen since the Goo-Goo's took him (cue laundry list number two) and also leaves them a chant to invoke Cthugha, who somehow opposes Nyarlathotep, who is apparently prone to manifesting himself in the woods and having himself a gay old time, singing and chanting with some of his minions.

J&L decide to hang out at the slab that night and watch the proceedings, and are not disappointed when a woodwind-playing squiddly-diddley shows up.  That causes them to haul ass back to the cabin!

Shortly after, Prof. Gardner shows up - in the flesh - but with a mightily changed attitude - telling them the entire thing's been a hoax, taking credit for faking all the weird noises at night and chalking the squiddly up to hallucinogenic miasma.  Then he goes to bed.

The next morning Prof. G is gone, and so are the notes and copies from the rare books (he does leave behind The Outsider, and some copies of Weird Tales).  Laird isn't buying the Prof's story.  They hang for the music and chanting to start up again, then reproduce the Cthugha-summoning chant, which causes little sentient fires to pop up everywhere and go after the giant figure of Nyarlathotep which is stomping around the woods, basically destroying his stomping grounds, while J&L high-tail it home.

This is a modestly diverting tale but nothing special. The whole thing has a ludicrous obviousness and never goes anywhere particularly interesting.  There's a kind of hastibness to it, Derleth's failed to connect the dots or tie up the loose ends which leads me to suspect it was  bit dashed-off.  The product placement gave me a good laugh though!