"The Salem Horror"

 by Henry Kuttner  

originally published Weird Tales, May 1937

"Carson" (for once our hero has at least a partial name ... albeit this time he's not the narrator) rents an isolated, creepy old house in Salem, Mass. (not Arkham??) in order to have peace and quiet to finish his latest novel (he is an author of "light romances" - which in the 30's meant more like a humorous adventure story with some kissing, kiddies - not a Harlequin special).  

Now the creepy old house comes complete with a creepy old reputation, involving a creepy old woman named Abigail Prinn who was mobbed and hanged back in the 1690's, allegedly for being a creepy old witch.  Well anyone who rents the place never stays long and they always complain about the rats, but Carson ain't buying any of that superstitious silliness so he moves in.  

Turns out the place has rats alright - big ones!  Also at least one, curiously, doesn't seem to like the sign of the cross.  

While puzzling that mystery in the basement, Carson discovers a secret chamber, with a mosaic stone floor and an iron disk press-fit smack dab in the middle of the floor.  Not only does he think this is very cool, he also thinks its a perfect workspace (???  Kuttner must have been a little weird).  So he moves his writing setup in.

He gets a visit from occultist Michael Leigh, who asks a lot of presumptuous questions (which Carson answers anyway) and to see the secret room (which Carson lets him do), then, even more presumptuously, asks Carson if he'll get the hell out of the house or at least work in another part of it. Carson tells him no to both a lot more politely than most people would, and even agrees to contact him if he has any strange dreams that night.

Which, of course, he does.

He can't remember the dream, but it wakes him up. So he takes a wee-hours stroll and ends up passing the burial yard, where he sees a dead guy propped up against the iron rail fence, staring up at the sky with an expression of terror.

Later Leigh tells him someone opened Abigail Prinn's grave and stole her bod. Leigh offers him big bucks to clear out, going on about Abby's black magic worship, and what's under the iron disk in the secret chamber, and The Necronomicon.  Carson thinks he's a froot loop, and ejects him a lot later than most people would have.  While he's watching Leigh depart, a neighbor accosts him, saying she saw "t'e brown thing" enter his house last night.

Carson falls asleep in the secret chamber and has weird dreams, involving black liquid, amoeboid shapes zooming through the Salem streets.  He wakes up, unable to move, to find a brown, mummified creature joining him through another hitherto secret entrance.

The mummy starts incanting, and the iron disk rises, a really foul odor rising from below, followed by a bit of black liquidy gloop.  Just then Leigh rushes in with a counter-incantation, and some magic stuff in a glass vial which he throws into the emerging gloop monster.  It grabs the mummy and goes back in its hole, slamming the iron disk behind it.

Carson never finishes his book, instead writing a novel called Black God of Madness which no one will publish.  Those he tells of the experience think of it as a dream.  But he knows it wasn't.  The mummy left one of its hands behind.

This isn't a bad story, and has some genuinely eerie moments which I had forgotten (actually I'd pretty much forgotten everything about it except the entity Nyogtha being a big liquid black blob that pops up out of somewhere. It is, as others have noted, kind of a rehash of HPL's "Dreams in the Witch House" but in some ways a bit tighter and more stripped down.  Still I prefer the Lovecraft even if "Dreams" isn't his best.  Kuttner was good and solid at pulp horror, but his terrors don't cut to the quick the way HPL's do.  Once banished, his baddies are done, where HPL's lingered, rattling your back teeth for years to come. A fun read though.

"The Space Eaters"

 by Frank Belknap Long  

originally published Weird Tales, July 1928

Howard (a thinly-disguised - well, actually I hope in a lot of ways he's a thickly-disguised) HPL is buds with Frank, Our Narrator who, for a change, has a friggin' name!  Howard apparently writes supernatural stories - real good ones, per Frank.  But he's having a bad night.  He's frustrated because he can't articulate or describe what he wants to articulate and describe (he then goes on to articulate and describe them - which is basically icky monsters from outer space who have colors and shapes and appearances that don't correspond to anything on our world.  Obviously you can't say something looks kinda like a cross between a lobster and a wallaby if, in fact, it not only doesn't look anything like a lobster or a wallaby - in fact it looks like some other planets equivalent to lobsters and wallabies - except said other planet doesn't have anything equivalent to lobsters and wallabies or anything equivalent to anything we've ever seen before so ... fuck this is even making my head hurt so I kinda don't blame Howard for being a little pissy.  A little pissy mind you - he's being such an ass about Frank's "prosaic" brain that I'm left wondering a little bit why Frank even pals around with the guy.  At least now we know the original inspirations for Titus Crow/Henri De Marigny.

Anyway, there's a knock on the door and its Frank's neighbor/friend Henry Wells, who drives a delivery carriage and ain't too bright, I guess.  But he's had a weird night.  He was out on the road in this terrible fog (did I mention its a really foggy, damp night? Well it is so keep track!) riding through some woods he's always thought were kinda creepy, when something fell in his lap and then jumped in his face - something wet and spongy and gross.  And then he saw something slither rapidly down a tree ... long and white and kind of like a snake - or an arm!  With a hand!  Or maybe not.  He's not sure.  Then he felt a terrible cold or pain (or both) in his head which lasted about 10 minutes.  When he got home, he looked at his temple and he had this nice clean hole there, the size of a bullet hole, going all the way into his brain!

Howard, as if he weren't enough of an asshole, starts shouting at Henry (whom he considers a "yokel") that he's obviously been shot, he's drunk, stupid, voted for Bush twice, etc.  Henry doesn't take too well to this and besides, he's got another headache, so he runs out of the house.  Next thing you know Frank and Howard can hear him screaming in terror or agony.  Frank and Howard proceed to do the natural thing: have a big argument and debate while they change into rain gear - and then go see if they can help him!  OH I forgot to mention there's now a loud droning sound in the woods...

They find him and get him back to the house, where he goes nuts and attacks Howard (which may not be a symptom of insanity, when you get down to it).  A Dr. Smith (oh the pain!) is called.  He operates on Henry while babbling a lot of flowery weirdness (actually Jonathan Harris would have fit the part well) before saying there's nothing more he can do and running away.  He seems to know something ("they have laid there mark on him"), too.  

Frank and Howard flee on Frank's launch, noting a huge shape forming in the sky over the woods, which are now aflame, which they dare not get a good look at.  They make the sign of the cross at it a bunch of times with some burning cotton waste, and it loses definition and vanishes.  Yay!

Back in Brooklyn, Howard gets to writing about the experience, and now he's got what he was looking for - a way to describe "cosmic" horrors beyond the ken of "prosaic" brains (mind you - his big "cosmic" horror is basically semi-visible brain-eating gloop monsters from outer space, as seen in many a 50's sci-fi movie [inevitably starring John Agar], but let's not pop Howie's balloon just yet - he had a rough week).

Frank reads his MS and thinks its brilliant but too horrible for words, and tells him to knock off his seeking after untold horrors.  They have a big philosophical argument until and Frank stomps off, finally tired of Howard's assholery.

That night Howard calls him - the droning's started again!  Frank rushes over (idiot).  He finds Howard writhing on floor yelling about "crawling chaos" while a dark shape beams brilliant lights into Howard's head and pages of his story fly around the room.

Frank manages to make the sign of the cross again, while covering his eyes in horror, and the dark thing bails.  Too late to save ol' Howie though.

Now let me tell you, I've been really looking forward to re-reading "The Space Eaters" for a long time, because I remembered it as being one of the best of the best.  I also remembered F.B. Long as being a genuine literary talent, having been entranced by his collection The Early Long, wherein I first read this at 14 or so, being at that time strung out on all things Lovecraft and desperately trying to find more works by his "circle".  

Well more recent encounters have learnt me that Long was no literary genius (his ideas were imaginative and his prose could be striking, but other times...).  Still I expected great things from "The Space Eaters".

Well...

Okay, let's establish this - "Space Eaters" isn't bad ... just taken down to bare plot, its not so removed from a lot of much-maligned Derleth things.  I won't go into the whole business of the cross (vs. the Elder Sign) because it seems reasonable that a powerful mystic symbol might work against some cosmic beasties even if it isn't the mystic symbol.  Its more imaginative than Derleth would have been (grosser, too).  And at times its just plain hysterical.  Howard is such a complete asshole that either Long was going over the top or he'd had a hatful of HPL at the time he wrote it ... or HPL was really that insufferable (I hope not!).  I'll say again: his concept of an indescribable cosmic horror is the plot of a movie that would now be pure MST3K fodder.  I had to snicker.  Brain-eating monsters from space??? The dialogue gets so portentous and corny that even Stan Lee wouldn't have put his name on it, especially the doctor's monologue while operating.  And the "Omigod!  Henry's screaming! He must be in trouble!  Let's go help him after we finish arguing and change clothes!" belongs in a Monty Python sketch.

But ... but ... I like Long.  I like him because at his best, his writing is really potent and evocative even if it is pulpy.  This tale begins:

"The horror came to Partridgeville in the fog."

Simple, unadorned, unquestionably pulpy and yet it works, it resonates.  To a pulp horror fan, it sets you up that something special is going to come.  Later, Henry's monologue about what he sees in the woods,  a white, snaky ... arm?  With a hand?  Or not?  may be way too poetic for a yoke, but it also recalls the unrealistic but poetic dialogue characters in Ray Bradbury stories often utter.  Long is no Bradury, but it does appear they sipped from the same cup a time or two.

All in all, not near the classic I remembered it as being, but still a fun spooky read.

"Black Man With A Horn"

 by T.E.D. Klein  

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

Our narrator (in keeping with Lovecraftian tradition, he is yet another Unnamed Narrator) is man in his late 70's, a native New Yorker now whiling away his last days in his late sister's Florida bungalow.  He's a once-respected now nearly forgotten horror story author, and was a personal friend of HPL himself.

On a plane flight some time earlier, UN encountered a strange, garrulous fellow named Mortimer who's wearing an obviously phony beard and says he's on the run from enemies.  Formerly a missionary in Malaysia, he apparently ran afoul of the "chauchaus" - a degenerate inland tribe, who kidnapped and killed his colleague ("they grew something in him").  UN doesn't take the fellow very seriously, but later he surreptitiously sees Mortimer freak at the sight of a John Coltrane album cover depicting Coltrane blowing his horn, silhouetted against a tropical sun.

Sometime later, taking his grand-nephew on a tour of the NYC Natural History Museum, he spots a ceremonial robe from Malaysia depicting several human figures running, apparently in terror, from a gigantic figure that seems to be blowing a horn.  The image reminds him of the album cover, and of Mortimer's reaction to it.  More digging reveals that this figure is "Shoo Goron" or "Shugoran", a herald of death or disaster.  Or perhaps a figure of death itself.

He learns that Mortimer, who had contact with UN's sister, has disappeared in Miami, and Malaysian man is sought for questioning.  There is a picture in the paper, and UN recognizes him as a man he saw on the same flight on which he met Mortimer.  The Malaysian fellow had a package of what UN took to be Asian food, which dribbled glop and produced a "treacly" smell which UN also detected at the museum.  UN goes to Miami to visit his sister and continues his investigations.  At the hotel where the mysterious Malaysian stays, he learns that the mystery man apparently had a small black child staying with him.  A young restaurant worked is found dead, his lungs inexplicably drawn up into his throat and mouth.

UN returns to NYC.  His sister moves inland from her Miami home after the place is vandalized, long claw-like marks running from roof to ground.  She passes not too long after.  UN goes to her place but can't bring himself to move on.  There are a spate of burglaries in the neighborhood.  One night a woman reports seeing a huge black man wearing scuba gear peering in her window.  Tracks like the marks of scuba flippers are found outside her home.  UN knows that this entity is coming for him.  And getting closer...

Oh man is this a great horror story.  Words fail me.  

In the classic HPL tradition, Klein builds the tale up, fact by fact, detail by detail, incident by incident.  Things that at first seem inconsequential or even amusing (the first part of the story - after the doomy intro - which is doomy but not silly - is lighthearted [and slightly gross]) soon becomes very consequential, and disturbing.   The most chilling moment, for me, comes when UN reads the transcript of a lost documentary on Malaysia, wherein a boy who has just drawn Shugoran becomes terrified even talking about it.  The concept so often repeated in the Mythos: it's dangerous to even know about it. 

Even though it has (yet another) UN, the character Klein draws here (expertly) is a real character.  Sad, lonely, and yet intelligent and sympathetic.  A synopsis does not do justice to Our Narrator (supposedly based on Frank Belknap Long).  You can see even yourself drawn into this web of darkness, seemingly instigated by nothing more than a chance encounter on a plane.  

And therein lies the saddest, and most unsettling part.  It was, seemingly, only a chance encounter on a plane.  But Our Narrator, like Mortimer, simply comes to Know Too Much.  Too much for the very real threats he faces to let him live.  These Tcho Tcho's - not the pulpy pygmies of Derleth's tales, but rather a genuinely sinister tribal cult, are clearly very smart, and very skilled, stalkers.  Incidentally - has anyone figured out why the Chaosium folks consider Shugoran to be an avatar of Nyarlathotep?  I see no clue to such a conclusion in the tale.

Another fine touch is the other characters attempts to rationalize the bizarre things they encounter.  We know (or soon realize) that Mortimer is no crank, that the winged hide hanging on the wall is no catfish,  most of all that the figure seen outside the window is not a tall black man in a scuba outfit.  

"Discovery of the Ghooric Zone"

 by Richard Lupoff  

originally published Chrysalis, August 1977

It's March 15 2337 and the starship Khons with its crew of nymphomaniac cyborgs is bouncing around Pluto when they discover Yuggoth and its satellite/neighbors Thog and Thok, Lovecraft's "Ghooric Zone".  The date is significant, being the day of HPL's death.  One crewmen is versed in Lovecraftian and wonders how HPL could have known of these planets in his time.  They make a landing on Thog.  There they find terrifying cyclopean ruins straight out of "At the Mountains of Madness".  To their dismay, they also find shoggoths...

This is a pretty friggin' weird story, written in a cinematic style that abruptly cuts from scenes of the main tale to scenes from the history of earth in future centuries to the moment of Lovecraft's demise and its place in history.  The endless descriptions of the cyborg crew get tiresome and silly, end even moreso their sexual antics, which seem like 70's era attempts at shock now.  That being said the exploration of Thog, which accounts for the final couple pages, are pretty damn evocative but I wish the two dozen that preceded it had been as interesting.  

"The Return of the Lloigor"

 by Colin Wilson 

originally published Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House, 1969

Out story starts out in a very typical Cthulhuoid fashion.  Our narrator starts to tell us about the events he's going to relate.  But wait!  There's a big difference!! This narrator actually has a name!!!  

He is Paul Lang, a University of Virginia Literature Prof and Poe scholar.  And he's 72 years old, just so's ya know, and he doesn't give a shoggoth's ass what he's colleagues think about him now, so here goes his tale...

After meeting a colleague in Moscow, Lang becomes interested in The Voynich Manuscript, a medieval text attributed to Roger Bacon, which is either a treatise on magic, or impossibly advanced science for the 13th century (in which it was supposedly wrought), or both - since it's all written in code or cipher.

Lang gets his hands on the book - it gives off an unpleasant aura of "nastiness" that only Lang seems to experience.  He has photostats made, then high definition photos which allow him to translate the book - which is not in cipher but simply Arabic characters which had faded over time - so it's written in both Greek and Latin using Arabic script!

After a lot of work and probably downing many Excedrin, Lang is able to translate the book, which is indeed a complete scientific account of the universe, its origin, history, geography…mathematical structure and hidden depths.  He also learns that the book has a name:  Necronomicon.

It ain't too long before Paul finds out about the fiction of Mssr. H.P. Lovecraft, and starts binge-reading.  He also catches references from Arthur Machen's work in HPL that tie in with reference in the Necronomicon.  He makes a trip out to Machen country (that's Wales, kiddies), which turn out to be one dreary place.  A few well-placed questions guide him to one Col. Urquart, who has no chin but knows a lot about Welsh legends and the mythic lost continent of Mu.  Among the things he knows is that Wales and Providence, RI are the best places to pick up Muvian artifacts (Ebay having not been invented yet). Urquart shows him a relic or two and talks to him of Ghatanothoa, chief god of Mu, and its rulers, an alien race called the Lloigor, who held the Muvians as slaves.  The Lloigor, though driven underground and deep into the ocaen by the earth's subatomic processes - all tied in with the concept of optism vs pessimism - i.e. man's eternal striving for hope vs the Lloigor's inability to even understand such a concept.  The Lloigor also have a hard-on against humans, and occasionally have struck back - c.f. the sinkings of Mu and Atlantis.

Urquart further points to the high rate of violent crime, insanity, and human perversion around this part of Wales, as proof of Lloigor infestation. A little research demonstrartes that Lang is probably onto something.  Lang also finds himself nearly sucked into some kind of robbery scam by a lecherous hotel maid and an unsettling encounter with a local inbred youth. Urquart takes a bad fall in his cellar, and blames it on the Lloigor.  He also warns Lang about Chickno, a local gypsy and head of a clan of inbred turds suspected of any number of icky crimes.

Lang soons spots Chickno in town and decides to take the bull by the horns - by taking him to a pub and getting him drunk.  Chickno warns him that "they" are only really interested in Urquart, and tells him he should get his ass back to America.  Chickno keeps blabbing about how powerful "they" are until he drinks himself into a stupor.  

The next day a mysterious explosion blows up Chickno and his whole gypsy camp.  Afterwards, the entire nearby village, and Lang and Urq, feel worn-out and under-the-weather.  They surmise that (a) the Lloigor killed Chickno for talking too much and (b) the Lloigor draw their energy, vampire-like, from handy nearby humans.

Urq and Lang head to London.  Further research suggests the Lloigor are active worldwide, and causing natural disasters and mass outbreaks of unnatural behavior.  They try to alert the scientific community, but are jeered at. They try to bring their message to the US, and catch the attention of the Secretary of Defense, but their flight to Washington disappears without a trace.

A final note in the story is an epilogue written by Lang's nephew, who outlines his conviction that Urquart was a charlatan and a phony who either conned Lang, or that the two of them were working together on an elaborate hoax.

A wild ride that recalls Wilson's fascinating books on the occult.  Structurally, its very similar to The Philiosopher's Stone in that not so much action actually takes place.  The narrator learns things ... and then learns more things.  Until a disturbing picture emerges...

For such an intellectual sort of tale, Lloigor is gripping all the way and the various references - am ix of fact, fiction, and fictionalized fact - are enough to send a curious soul off on a research binge of his own.  

Not only is it gripping, its also scary.  The last portion is an exercise in paranoia. The Lloigor, who, lets face it, are never established as other than a theoretical opponent, are definitely dangerous.  You're not supposed to even know about them.  And even their alleged allies are subject to elimination if they reveal much of anything.  Unnerving stuff.  

The legend goes that Wilson came to write this story after Aug Derleth challenged him to write an effective Lovecraftian tale (following some less-than-flattering remarks Wilson had made re: HPL's literary talents).  I'd say ol' Colin rose to the challenge.

"The Voice of the Beach"

 by Ramsey Campbell 

originally published Fantasy Tales #10, Summer 1982

Our Unnamed Narrator (Arrrrgghhh!! Another one!!!) is an author who lives alone, without a phone, in a bungalow along some English beach.  In summer, he invites a friend, Neal, to come for an extended stay.  It seems Neal has recently gotten divorced and had some kind of unspecified breakdown.  UN seems to suffer from migraines or some such as well.

The beach isn't actually all that pleasant and no one seems to go there, but Neal and UN poke around.  They find some odd little shells that should be too small to produce "seashell resonance" (yes there's actually an official name for that phenomena.  Please note before you go thinking "Wow! This Aycorn guy is really smart!" that I had to look that one up) - but as it happens they do.  Or something like it.  By the time they get back UN is feeling like crapola, but Neal wants to explore the beach further.  He's also got wind from some place about an abandoned village nearby that he'd like to check out.  They decide to do so tomorrow.  UN notices, disconcertingly, that beach seems glow, flickeringly, at night.  And that this flickering glow produces the effect of odd figures moving or dancing jerkily in the light.

They find the ruins of the village - now nothing more than big chunks of slate that form a kind of maze-like structure rising out of the sand.  In what might have been a cellar or basement, Neal finds an aged, fungus-y notebook.  The incoherent writings within make reference to the beach, the flickering lights, dancing, moving sands, the beach making you go places or sucking you in, etc.  UN dismisses it as mad ravings but Neal is fascinated and keeps studying it.  He spends more and more time exploring the beach and environs while UN spends more and more time suffering from sunstroke or heat exhaustion or just in general being unfortunate enough to be the main protagonist in a Campbell story - which anyone who's read enough Campbell knows is not really a good thing to be.

Somewhere, Neal learns that the abandoned town was called Strand, and that they seemed to be fleeing the beach for reasons they wouldn't discuss.  He claims to hear chanting in the sounds from the shells.  Neal gets weirder and more hostile and spends less and less time at the bungalow.  He talks about "patterns" ("when the pattern's ready it can come back") and the beach being some kind or alternate reality that was temporarily displaced by our reality, but is now reasserting itself and taking over.

The weirdness continues and UN can barely function.  Neal is supposed to call a doctor but doesn't (or does one come?).  UN sees what looks like him dancing on the flickering beach at night, buried up to his knees in sand.

Neal completely loses it and deafening, alien sounds come out of his mouth that sound like the odd sounds from the shells, only at massive volumes, then runs off into the night.  UN finally manages to follow him out, and finds himself walking among debris and pieces of Neal's clothes.  He realizes that the beach seems to be moving under him, the sand forming shapes (the debris are apparently not real but just shapes formed from sand - maybe), the weird sounds start up again.  He flees back to the bungalow. 

Inexplicably, he cannot bring himself to leave.  He dreams (or are they dreams) of Neal's face coming out of the wall, making the weird sounds again.  He starts to take long walks on the beach.  One day he sees the sands form themselves into what looks like Neal's face.  He too begins to contemplate "the pattern".  He realizes that the beach, or the entity he thinks of as the beach, is expanding.  One day it will encompass the world.

This is a difficult story to assess in my usual sarcastic terms. Campbell's intention was to tell a Lovecraftian tale without the usual name-dropping.  And he certainly has achieved that here.  The notebook and the abandoned village and its sketchy and unnerving history all echo Lovecraft tropes, and certainly this is as "cosmic" as "cosmic horror" gets.  One could also note that the beach entity has a certain resemblance to critters like Abhoth and Ubbo-Sathla.  

Campbell also cites it as the most successful of his Lovecraftian stories (c. 1982 anyway).  And I guess that depends on what you consider success to be in this case.

The story is difficult because Campbell is difficult.  Originally a devotee of HPL, he soon fell under the spell of other writers, especially Robert Aickman, a fine and celebrated writer of "strange stories", many of which could be rightly considered horror (but none of them even remotely Lovecraft-influenced).  From Aickman Campbell learned implication and runaway surrealism.  In Aickman's stories, bizarre events occur without explanation, and often the point of the story must be read between the lines.  The best of them are remarkable; the worst merely weird and obtuse.

Campbell can have the same joy and the same problem.  His characters, as Stephen King has noted, seem to walk around in a perpetual hallucinogenic trip, and everything is observed with weird and unpleasant metaphors - which may not be just metaphors.  Towards the end of "Beach" UN sees a discarded baby buggy ( or "pram", to our English cousins) with a pile of sand on its roof.  He sees the pile of sand open a sort of mouth shape at him.  He thinks this is an illusion.  But then again in the same scene he describes the debris turning out to be nothing but phony shapes made by the sand.  So what was hallucination and what was real?  

Moments like that make skimming a story like this impractical.  You need to read it.  And you need to read between the lines.  And sometimes the answers still won't be there.  At its best this can be entertaining - at is worst, infuriating.  The most chilling moment in a Campbell story is in a tale he now semi-repudiates called "Trick Or Treat".  A girl is haunted by a nightmare she had as a child of a grotesque, monkey-like face peering in her bedroom window at her.  Years later, she and another girl find themselves in a pit of horrors while searching for her friend's lost dog.  The monkey-like figure appears, and the girl's friend screams because she also recognizes it ("Oh no! The Monkey!").  Nothing more is said but the meaning is clear to us and the girl - the face at her window was not a dream.

Unfortunately, in Campbell's lesser stories and, too often, his novels, the neurotic protagonists continual bizarre interior monologues, the what-was-it, was-it-real and what-the-fuck-is-going-on tend to get tiresome.

There is one paragraph towards the end of the story, that for me articulates the nature of Lovecraft's greater stories very simply:

I was fleeing the knowledge, deep-rooted and undeniable, that what I perceived blotting out the sky was nothing but an acceptable metaphor.  Appalling though the presence was, it was only my mind's version of what was there - a way of letting me glimpse it without going mad at once.

Which is what HPL was saying as far back as "The Call of Cthulhu" after all. 

So in that sense, I suppose it is very successful as a Lovecraftian story.

On the other hand, I've read "Beach" twice sine the mid-80's and couldn't remember much about it.  Just a couple guys living on the beach and one goes nutso (which is essentially correct).  There are other Campbell stories that have stuck with me more and which I enjoy reading more, even if they are less "successful."  Something of a compromise score here, but:

"Herbert West: Reanimator"

 by H.P. Lovecraft   

originally published Home Brew, February-July, 1922  

Our Unnamed Narrator recounts his days at med school (Miskatonic U, of course), where he hooked up with his idol, one Herbert West, a froot loop extraordinaire who's big scientific goal was reanimate dead bodies.  Just cuz.  

The two have a lot of wholesome boys adventures, including stealing supplies from the U, grave robbing, stealing corpses from morgues, experimenting on said corpses (with varying levels of success), creating screaming zombies, burning down their secret lab, turning  the dean of the medical school (who has forbidden West access to cadavers since his experiments and theories are, after all, nuttier than a Planter's factory) - into a crazed, flesh-eating zombie serial killer (during a typhoid outbreak, no less!) (PS - despite the above West gets his medical license), helping cover up the accidental death of a boxer, reviving said boxer (who also becomes a flesh-eating zombie serial killer!), murdering a travelling salesman (yep, he gets experimented on, too), serving in WWI as a medic (not for patriotic or humanitarian reasons - just cuz it gives him more free bods to experiment on) re-animating body parts independent of their original owner (not least of which the head of an army major), and probably some other fun things I'm missing.

Eventually all of this catches up with West when a bunch of his old experiments show up one night, tear up his house and disembowel him.  Nontheless there's no evidence of same, and the police ain't buying UN's story...

Christ ... y'know a lot of people cite this p.o.s. as a fave but I can't see it.  True, it does have a hilarious "storyline" and the ludicrous gruesomeness of the whole thing is entertaining in its hysteria and cheerful buckets o' blood insanity.  Unfortunately, its barely even a story at all - more like a series of vignettes regarding the career of one very mad mad scientist.  I might add that the segment with the boxer ("Six Shots by Moonlight") contains some of the most disgusting racist crap HPL ever spun - far worse than the usually cited offender, "Horror At Red Hook" in this reader's unhumble opinion.  I can usually handle Lovecraft's gruesome racial views, however distasteful, but this one goes too far.  Stick with the Stuart Gordon movie.

"The Strange High House in the Mist"

 by H.P. Lovecraft  

originally published Weird Tales, October 1931

Thomas Olney is a "philosopher", which I guess is Lovecraft-ese for "consultant", or "unemployed unrecognized genius", who lives in creepy ol' Kingsport with his wife and kids.  

High on a cliff overlooking the town and the ocean is a strange house which the locals fear and whisper odd things about.  It's been there for generations.  Olney decides to investigate, and climbs the mountain to poke around.  

The house is small, almost medieval in construction, and does actually have an occupant.  It is also impossibly placed on the cliff edge.

The resident is a strange character, a young man with ancient eyes, who speaks of strange and ancient places and things - Atlantis, Poseidonis, gods older than "The Elder Ones".  Things get weird as Olney sees shadowed shapes around the windows.  There's a knock on the door.  Who shows up but the gods Neptune and Nodens, ancient sea deities.  Nodens takes Olney up on his shell-chariot and off they go.  They fly over Kingsport during a storm.

Olney comes back but seems more prosaic after his encounters.  He has lost interest in the mysteries of life and the universe, but seems content.

An odd little story, very Dunsany-influenced, but HPL's writing style is borderline obtuse here, and I'm not sure if he knew where he wanted to go with this one himself.  Atmospheric though.

"The Moon Bog"

 by H.P. Lovecraft  

originally published Weird Tales, June 1926

Denys Barry, a friend to our Unnamed Narrator, has made some scratch in Americay and returned to the Old Sod to rebuild his family's old castle, thus pleasing the locals by creating jobs and taking care of an eyesore.  But after awhile something scares `em off, and Denys has to bring in servants and workers from other parts.  He writes his old buddy UN and asks him to come visit, being as he's lonely out there in that not-so-crumbling-anymore Irish castle.

UN arrives to be told by the locals that the land has become accursed.  He finds on the property a bog, and an islet therein, where sits "a strange olden ruin" that "glistens spectrally".  

It seems Denys lost the workers when he decided to drain the bog, seeing it as nothing but wasted land.  But the locals believed a spirit lived in the ruin, and: "There were tales of dancing lights in the dark of the moon, and of chill winds when the night was warm; of wraiths in white hovering over the waters, and of an imagined city of stone deep down below the swampy surface. But foremost among the weird fancies, and alone in its absolute unanimity, was that of the curse awaiting him who should dare to touch or drain the vast reddish morass."

Denys laughed off their concerns, which isn't the sort of thing that will endear you to folks, let's face it. 

UN thinks it's all pretty silly, too.  Until he's awakened in the night by weird piping, and observes wispy, glowing figures dancing around the ruin in the moonlight, and a great glow coming from the ruin.  And the hired workers are joining in.

Not sure if it was a dream or what, UN is filled with dread the next day, increasing as he watches Denys prepare to drain the bog.  

That night he falls asleep and is awakened by a repeat of the previous night's supernatural partying, and something in their rites is bringing doom upon the nearby town.  UN does what anyone would do in such a situation - start praying to Graeco-Roman deities!! Next thing you know icy winds are howling in the windows, and he can hear Denys screaming.  He loses his shit and runs through the castle and outside and is eventually found wandering in the town.  

He recalls seeing, as he ran, that the formerly-devoid-of-life bog was now full of big frogs, "which piped shrilly and incessantly in tones strangely out of keeping with their size" (whatever that's supposed to mean).  A particularly big and ugly frog glances up, and UN follows its gaze to see what appears to be a shadowy figure, resembling Denys, writhing in terror or agony as it is drawn up towards the moon. "And now I shudder when I hear the frogs piping in swamps, or see the moon in lonely places."

This story is fun and long on atmosphere, but slight in content, and Lovecraft's worst stylistic excesses hurt it - I'm kind of a smart guy, but I had to re-read several lines to be clear what it was he was trying to say was going on.  Not to mention some pure silliness (yeah, I know when I'm scared shitless praying to Artemis is the first thing that comes to mind!).  Nonetheless, and story with big frogs as harbingers of doom, bogs, and moonlit faerie dances can't be all bad.