"The Whippoorwills in the Hills"

 by August Derleth  

originally published Weird Tales, September 1948

Dan Harrop moves into the house of his cousin, Abel Harrop, a cranky recluse who has disappeared, Merie Celste-like, without a trace.  Dan feels the local constabulary have done a poor job investigating, and so intends to solve the mystery himself.  He finds the house in good order, even a book lying open on a desk in Abel's study.  

The house has no electricity, but it does have a party line, and soon UN finds himself listening in on conversations among the superstitious and ignorant locals, who seem fearful of Abel's return and past spooky events connected with him.  As an additional problem, whippoorwills sing in the tress outside the house all friggin' night long.  Loudly.  And they seem to be unusually large.  Then he receives an anonymous call telling him to scram.  He also listens in on more conversations, including about the birds, who, the local women seem to think, are trying to catch someone.  They see the birds as an omen of death.  And maybe something worse.

Dan takes some time to look at the books Abel had collected, and they are the usual titles from The Cthulhu Mythos Book Club (get 6 titles now and just sacrifice 2 more innocent souls in the next 12 months!).  He tries visiting the locals, who are mighty unfriendly.  One of them talks of Abel being taken away by "Them from outside".  When Dan is uncomprehending, the yokel tells him to forget the whole conversation and burn the books.

Dan takes a deep dive into the books and we get the Usual Derlethian Cthulhu Mythos Lecture.  While trying to sleep, he begins to hear unearthly chanting mixed with the cries of the birds.  He finds Abel's clothing in a chair, arranged in such a way that it looks as if Abel had been sucked out of them.  The bird cries start to really get to him and he runs into the night with a club, swinging madly at the birds.

Cattle starts getting killed in the area, mutilated and drained of blood.  Dan has strange dreams of alien lands and tentacled, shapeless beings who feast on one another's blood.  Someone sets the house on fire. Dan learns a bit more about Them from outside, and their ability to possess people.  The dreams and the chanting get worse.  Dan is found over the body of a local girl he has just mutilated and killed.  They arrest him and prepare to lock him up.  Don't they realize he's one of the Chosen Ones?

Despite a somewhat disappointingly prosaic ending, this is a well-above-average Derleth Mythos tale.  He avoids most (not all) of the clutzy cliches that mark so much of his Lovecraft-influenced work, and this story builds atmospherically quite well.  The dream sequences are especially effective.  

Part of what brings it down is that I read it (for the second time in ... 40 years or so) the day after reading "The House in the Valley", published five years later but basically a total rehash of this tale (and less effective) (similarly "The Sandwin Compact" is nearly a rewrite of "The Return of Hastur".  Poor Aug really was shameless sometimes).  One of my main concerns here is to review these tales as they stand, on their own merits, independent of context.  So while this is no classic by any means, it is a decent Lovecraft-influenced horror story.

"The House in the Valley"

by August Derleth 

originally published Weird Tales, July 1953

Jefferson Bates just wanted to go get away from it all and everyone else and paint, so he's all kindsa happy when his agent finds him an ultra-isolated house in a remote country valley not to far from Arkham and Dunwich.

The house is a dump; creepy-looking with furniture piled up around the outside like a barricade.  Plus Jeff gets the weird feeling there's someone there.  Also no electricity, running water, but the phone works.  It also has a bad rep.  The former tenant, Seth Bishop, was a creepazoid recluse who murdered one of his neighbors after being accused of killing local livestock.

Nevertheless, Jeff moves in.  He soon meets one of his neighbors, a dumbass youth named Bud Perkins who likes to spy on him. And hints of dark doings having been done in the house.  

That night Jeff is awakened by weird sounds seeming to come from beneath the earth.  He soon finds some old books, including a notebook kept by Seth with notes from the various usual sources. He soon learns that late in life Seth went on a self-improvement kick, reading everything he could get his hands on, and even visiting the Miskatonic U library.  

The dreams get weirder, including a giant gaseous Cthulhu head enveloping the house.  Jeff discovers a hidden tunnel in the cellars, clearly man-made, that seems pretty extensive.  Intrigued, he buys some tools and digs further.  

Bud comes around complaining about having lost a sheep.  Jeff finds evidence that he's been making nocturnal treks which he has no memory of.  He also finds some remains of the sheep in the tunnels. 

Jeff soon sometimes thinks of himself as a different person altogether, and is concerned about this painter from the city living in his house.  He absorbs himself in a diary of Seth's that he finds.  He learns of contacts with Deep Ones and information about the Feds raid on Innsmouth.  The local sheriff comes to question him.  He dreams vividly of R'lyeh, Cthulhu, and the Deep Ones.  

Bud Perkins and other locals now patrol the area, armed, keeping an eye on the house and Jeff.  One night, Jeff is awakened by the sounds of screaming coming from the tunnels.  A mob of townsfolk and a deputy sheriff turn up at his door demanding to search the house.  It seems a local boy has disappeared.

Not long after Jeff is again hearing rumblings in the earth, hearing strange music and chanting.  He finds himself caught up in adoration of Cthulhu.  He runs from the house and kills Bud Perkins.  The locals come after him.  They set the house on fire.  As Jeff is taken away, he thinks he sees Cthulhu and Deep Ones writhing in the flames.  He believes it was the spirit of Seth Bishop, possessing him, which committed the murders.

This is an above average tale for Derleth, with its focus on mental deterioration and madness, though he still indulges in the Standard Derleth Lecture on the Cthulhu Mythos.  Much is implied rather than shown, and the vision of Cthulhu in Jeff's second dream (not the gaseous head vision) is very effective.  The small moment where Jeff begins to think completely from Seth(?)'s POV is genuinely chilling.

"Ithaqua" aka "The Snow Thing"

 

by August Derleth

originally published Strange Stories, February 1941

Henry Lucas has disappeared and apparently a lot of folks think Constable James French of the Mounties has does a shitty job investigating.  Now French has disappeared, too.  But he left behind a missive.

It seems Henry Lucas walked out of his cabin one night and never returned.  But French knows a bit more about what happened to him.

It seems no one liked Lucas very much, probably because he was dishonest fuckhead.  It also seems the local injuns may be involved in the worship of Ithaqua, of whom they tell French "you are not to know."  Said worship is thought to be liked to mysterious bonfires in the wilderness, sudden "inexplicable" snowstorms, and disappearances.  

A local priest directs French to what he calls "altars", circles of stones in the woods.  The snow inside the circles is much softer than outside.  The rocks themselves are of an unknown type, and give off an electrical charge.  Also within the circle he finds booted footprints that almost have to be Lucas' (the local injuns don't wear shoes).  French also finds a site showing evidence of large fires. While poking around, French gets the sensation that he's being watched, and that danger threatens.  Soon he is accosted by what appears to be a mini-snowstorm of some kind.  Frightened, he runs, thinking he hears voices whispering for him to come back.

He makes it back to the priest, who tells him he has seen "tangible proof of a ghastly other world". He tells him a little about Ithaqua, and that he believes the local injuns still worship Ith and make human sacrifices to him.

 Lucas body suddenly turns up, wrapped in a gauze of snow and ice that appears "spun".  Lucas is alive, but only barely.  He mutters worshipful phrases to Hastur and Ithaqua.  Some careful questioning reveals that Lucas had stepped outside his cabin to investigate some unearthly music, and was seemingly drawn to the worship site, where a great cloud of smoke with eyes appeared, and he found himself taken away.  Far away.  Like even other planets far away.

French has written seeking authority to dynamite the worship area.  As he closes, he's about to follow and presumably interrupt some locals traipsing off to the altars.  But he never makes it, instead disappearing and turning up in the same condition as Lucas.

His superior, John Dalhousie, having received French's letter, carries out the task of blowing up the worship stones.  He intends to arrest and break up the local tribe, but then Dalhousie himself disappears, later to turn up, again, in the same condition as Lucas and French.  Authorities carry out the task of relocating the indians to various provinces, and declaring the forests where the worship took place to be off limits.

Now Augie Doggie has taken a pretty severe beating in the halls of Lovecraft fandom, and I've always defended him even though I knew his Cthulhu stuff was less-than-classic.  That's because I know what Derleth detractors don't - he was a fine writer - sometimes.  I've long wished that a Derleth Cthulhu tale would turn up that was the equal of such gems as "The Drifting Snow", "The Dark Boy", "The Lonesome Place" or "The Place in the Woods".

Well ... this tale isn't quite that.  But it is probably a near-miss.  It's genuinely effective (the scene of French realizing he's being stalked through the snow is damn good, even chilling.  The story takes itself seriously, devoid of the tongue-in-cheek nature of later Derleth/Cthulhu, and the in-jokes, and spares us the litany of mythos tomes and the lecture on the nature of the mythos.  It's a straight-up solid horror story with minimal mythos reference and all the better for it.

"The Thing That Walked on the Wind"

 by August Derleth 

originally published Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, January 1933

Capt. John Dalhousie of the Mounties is making his last word on the disappearance of Constable Robert Norris, who vanished from Navissa Camp 7 months ago and whose body just turned up in a snow bank many miles away.

Norris was investigating an apparently abandoned village named Stillwater.  He had reported some weird experiences, including a kind of black emptiness in the sky, blotting out the stars, which rushed at him, sending him scurrying for cover.  To his great surprise, three bodies came plummeting out of the emptiness, two men and a girl. They are identified as being James MacDonald, Allison Wentworth and Irene Masitte - all on the Stillwater missing persons list. Though the men are relatively unhurt, the girl is dead and frozen solid.

Wentworth babbles a lot about a Lord/God/Death-walker of the winds, and Lhassa and Leng, old ones and elementals.  The latter gets the attention of Norris' friend and host, Dr. Jamison. 

Its seems that the good folks of Stillwater worshiped a fearsome air elemental and, apparently, made human sacrifices to it.

Wentworth eventually becomes coherent enough for Norris to piece together a story.  He and MacDonald had stopped in Stillwater while travelling, and not been made very welcome.  They soon noticed the weirdness was pretty serious and, were planning to blow town, when Irene came to them, revealed she was about to be sacrificed to the air elemental, and asked them to help her escape.  However, they were set upon by a giant being from the sky which swooped down on the village environs, wailing, and scooped them up as well as the rest of the villagers.  

MacDonald dies while Wentworth continues to babble about things, including Cthulhu, Algernon Blackwood, etc.  He dies.  Dr. Jamison shows Norris some books by Algernon Blackwood and some "old magazines" containing stories by HPL.

Norris notes that previous investigators of the Stillwater vanishing found the tracks of two men and a woman, abruptly halted, and what appeared to be the tracks of some gigantic being with human-like, but webbed, feet.

Norris has also found such a print.

Soon after Norris files a report saying something that watches him from the sky is pursuing him.

When his corpse is found, he is in possession of an odd, ancient gold plaque, of two struggling beings.  It is noted that the plaque sometimes gives off the sound of the winds.  

This one was published during HPL's lifetime, and the inclusion of his stories seems to be an in-joke more than anything.  The real point of reference is Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo", which seems to have mightily impressed young Augie.  Judged on its own merits this is a competent enough "Wendigo"-riff but no more.

"The Sandwin Compact"

 by August Derleth

originally published Weird Tales, November 1940

Dave, our narrator, grew up summering at his uncle Asa's house along the Innsmouth Road not far from Arkham, playing in the coastal lands with his cousin Eldon.  Now growed up and working as a librarian as Miskatonic U, he gets a call from Eldon, asking him to come out to the house pronto.  "The owls are hooting", Eldon says, invoking a childhood pact they made to use the phrase whenever one needed desperate help.  (Very charming, but being as their conversation is private, why doesn't Eldon just say "hey man I really need your help!"? More dramatic this way anyhoo).  Off Dave goes.

Its seems Uncle Asa's gotten a little weird ("he's not himself", Eldon says).  So has the house.  Weird sounds at night, like spectral music, and footsteps, and ... wet door knobs!  Like someone with wet hands tried to turn them (you ever try to turn a knob with wet hands?) and having the whole house smell like fish.

Uncle Asa is indeed getting a little weird, responding oddly to the call of a sea-bird outside (Eldon tells Dave it was no bird - something out there is speaking to Asa).  PS Uncle Asa also looks like a frog!  That night, Dave has strange dreams of flying with the winds over strange parts of the world ... an isolated plateau, a black lake... he awakens exhausted to find the house smelling like fish,  phantom footsteps, weird vocal sounds, etc. He goes to Eldon, who's talking mythos names in his sleep, and wakes him up.  They go to Uncle Asa's room and, listening outside, get to hear him arguing with something that croaks in an unknown language.  Then they hear something in the room seemingly stomp off into the distance.  Upon entry they find the room dripping and wet everywhere.  Uncle Asa has confession to make.  It seems the Sandwin family's been selling off its oldest sons for a few generations to the Cthulhoid hordes in order to stay independently wealthy.  But Unc's having none of it, thus the baddies are after him. They're threatening to send the dreaded Lloigor (not the entities from Colin Wilson's story, btw).

All of this reminds Dave of the restricted collection of Mythos-y tomes at the Miskatonic U library, which he's already delved into and which, naturally, he now goes and delves into more.  Asa boards up the windows and battens down the hatches.

When Dave returns to the house "a fortnight later", all hell breaks loose.  Howling winds (but only inside the house), subterranean stomps, voices chanting "Ia! Ia! (insert name of mythos deity here).  After much rigamarole they bust into Uncle Asa's room and find he's basically been sucked, vacuum like, right out of his clothes!

This time out Aug is bouncing off himself as much as HPL, since half the plot is cribbed from his own "Return of Hastur".  Not a terrible story, but not a particularly great one either.

"The Seal of R'lyeh" aka "Seal of the Damned"

 by August Derleth

originally published Fantastic Universe, July 1957 

Marius Phillips grandfather ("whom I never saw except in a darkened room") always warned his parents to keep him away from the sea.  Which was odd to him since in fact he was drawn to the ocean as far back as he can remember.  Nevertheless his parents raised him landlocked environs.

By the time he's in college, both parents have shuffled off and so has an eccentric uncle who leaves him boatloads of money and two houses - one in Innsmouth, one on coastal hills above Innsmouth looking out onto the ocean.  Marius moves in to the latter.

Throughout the house, and especially embroidered into a great round rug that nearly fills a study, is a seal depicting an Aquarius-type figure surmounting what appears to be symbols of a city and an octopoid beastie.

He hires a young woman, Ada Marsh, from the town, to do some housekeeping for him.  She's not much of a housekeeper, as he keeps catching her snooping around, as if looking for something.  When he asks her what she's looking for, she behaves oddly, telling him (a notebook or diary or papers) but refusing to explain what for, telling him he's too young and stupid and an outsider to understand.

Inexplicably, Marius doesn't get rid of her and in fact finds the papers hidden behind the usual books.  Unc's diary includes the whole back-story of Innsmouth, the usual blah-blah about Elder Gods and Great Old Ones, maps of the Plateau of Leng and Kadath, and notes about Unc's attempts to find R'lyeh and Cthulhu himself.  This leads Marius into several paragraphs of speculation on the Mythos and comparative religion, references to the events of "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Whisperer in Darkness" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".  

However, when he presents what he's learned to Ada, she's unimpressed and insults him.  She also tells him to find his uncle's ring.

Which he promptly does.

The ring, when worn, makes him psychically aware and changes his perception of the world.  Using it, he finds a trap door in the study that leads to a huge, deep underground cavern that opens out to the sea.

Marius gets himself some diving gear and hops in. Once in the water, he finds an unknown force starting to draw him in deeper, risking his being too deep when his oxygen runs out.  He is rescued by Ada, who is able to swim effortlessly and to breathe underwater.  She frees him of his diving gear and he discovers he too can breathe underwater.  They swim out to Devil's Reef.

Ada now joins him in his quest for R'lyeh.  They charter a boat and make for Ponape.  From there they begin to visit the various cities of the Deep Ones, finding allies.  Finally they think they have found R'lyeh.  They charter a boat out there.  A great wave seems to wash them off the boat and into the sea.  They are never seen again. 

While I can't call this a great story its certainly one of Derleth's better attempts at a Lovecraftian tale.  Obviously, he's riffing heavily (and less effectively) off of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and the usual lecture on the nature of the mythos is just as painful as always.  But it is effective, breaks the mold of the straight Lovecraft rips at least a little bit, and is at times effectively spooky (I find the never-properly-seen Grandfather bit kind of eerie even though I knew instantly why he never got to get a good look at him).

"The Return of Hastur"

 

by August Derleth

originally published Weird Tales, March 1939

Our Mr. Haddon, who has the virtue of at least having a single name (a rare thing in these parts), is the legal executor of the estate of Amos Tuttle, a cranky old coot who lives out on the outskirts of Arkham in a big creepy old house with a family tomb on the grounds.  Seems Tuttle has some funky dying requests - important as he's about to snuff it and everyone knows so - he wants the house, and a certain shelful of books, destroyed, and never passed on to his heir, Paul Tuttle.

Well, snuff it Amos does and the next thing you know ol' Paul's threatening to contest the will if he doesn't get the house and the books.  Haddon, who isn't near as shameless as a proper lawyer should be, folds.  

All this despite the fact that, before Amos is buried, his corpse mutates into a fishy-froggy-alien-looking thing, and enormous, squishy stomps are heard seemingly coming from the earth below the house.  No big, right?  Paul moves in.

The next time Haddon sees Paul, he's gone deep on Amos' shelf of un-destroyed books, which includes all the usual suspect and some notes about paying $100K for one of them, in addition to a "promise".  Well, Paul's been digging and having immersed himself in the usual Cthuloid mess (including a copy of Weird Tales with HPL's "Call of Cthulhu"), he explains the Derleth version to Haddon (Elder Gods good, Old Ones bad, etc).  Paul has worked out that the "promise" was to provide a "haven" for Hastur, the big creepazoid.  Most likely in a series of sub-cellars dug under the house.  Oh, and the Squishy Foot Stomp is still happening.

Well, pretty soon Paul's having other ideas and things get weird(er).  Someone(?) busts open the family tomb, makes a mess, and takes Amos' old bod for a ride, dumping it in front of the house.  And Amos hasn't gotten any prettier since demising.  Paul now realizes what Amos was up to with his will.  It seems that promise was a big mistake.  He now insists that Haddon blow up the house and subcellars (charges already set) and make sure the books are destroyed.  Haddon, whose seen enough, is game and, after a detour to a Judge Wilton's place to do some chin-wagging about Paul in interrupted by a phone call from Paul demanding that Haddon get his ass over there and do it now before - aggggh!! Glug, glug! Ia! Hastur etc.  Convinced, Haddon heads on over and blows the place sky high, which collapses the subcellars. Something comes running out of the house, a boneless human shape that used to be Paul, wiggling its boneless arms (ewwww!) and glugging at him, before a shaft of light with lightning bolts shoots out of it grabs the former Paul and is away.

Well now, this, I think the first of Derleth's oh-ficial Cthulhu riffs, is no classic - but it isn't half bad either.  There's good buildup, good atmosphere, a genuinely icky final manifestation, and even though it does trot out some hoary Lovecraft-riff cliches, there's a certain freshness to it here - perhaps simply because Derleth hadn't done it 50,000 times previously at this point.  All in all this one is a decent read.

"Something in Wood"

 

by August Derleth

originally published Weird Tales, March 1948

Our narrator, a fellow named Pinckney, has a tale to tale re: his old buddy Jason Wecter, a famous(?!) and famously acerbic music and arts critic for a Boston newspaper.

Pinckney picks up a little gift for his buddy, who collects weird and primitive arts (including the sculptures of Clark Ashton Smith).  At an antique shop he finds a carving, in a strange, unidentified wood, of a tentacle-faced boogie.  Wecter thinks its great.

Things start getting weird though.  Wecter's columns are suddenly scathing about artists he once liked, and champion obscure, primitive artists and cultures no one's ever heard of.

Wecter tells Pinckney that even he doesn't know where these references came from, or ever remember writing the columns.  He's plagued every night by dreams of alien landscapes and cultures, and sometimes hallucinates that the wood carving has become gigantic, and alive.  He insists the carving is changing shape, gradually moving.

So it goes.  Wecter draws deeper into his weird inner (?) world, identifying the carving as being of Cthulhu (surprise!), and that a cult of Cthulhu is still active in the world. What's more, he likes what's happening to him, as it is opening new realities to him he never dreamt of.  Well anyway before long he up and vanishes without a trace.  

Per his will, Pinckney gets the carving back. Taking it with him out on a motor launch, he thinks he hears Wecter calling to him.  He sees that in one of the tentacles of the carving, there is now a carven image of Wecter, calling for help.  Pinckney throws the carving into the ocean.

Man ... WTF.  This actually is a half-way decent (though in no way great) story up until the last few paragraphs.  There's good atmospheric buildup, and for once we don't get a lecture on the Cthulhu Mythos or a reading list.  But then AD suddenly drops the whole ball with probably the most ludicrous ending he's ever thrown at us (and that is saying somethng)!  Boo!  

"Beyond the Threshold"

 by August Derleth 

originally published Weird Tales, September 1941

Our Narrator, who (thank Hastur the traditions are being kept!) hath no name, is an assistant librarian at the Miskatonic U library.  A job which was probably shitty even in 1941.  Regardless, he gets a letter from his cousin Frolin (presumably one of them had a father named Bilbin?) which he finds troubling.  It seems their grandfather Josiah, with whom Frolin lives, is "not himself" lately, and "a great deal of water has passed under various bridges, and the wind has blown about many changes" - phrases that trouble ON as much as phrases like "I actually really like this ring, so fuck you Gandalf" troubled the grey wanderer, albeit for less obvious reasons (said reasons not necessarily to become more obvious, but get in the van anyway).

Anyhoo, ON tramps off to the woods of north Wisconsin, where Grandpa Jo hangs out with Frolin and the Houghs, a couple of servants who've been with him since way back.  The house, built by a great uncle Leander,  is isolated and ugly, and partly built into the side of a hill.  Grandpa spends all his time in the study now, a room with book-lined walls and a hideous floor-to-ceiling landscape painted by Leander that apparently shows a bear ambling into a cave while "sad-looking" clouds look down upon the scene.  Gramps is so rooted in the study now that he's even moved his bed in there.  

Grandpa Jo seems pretty spry actually.  A former world traveller, he's onto some heavy stuff, including previously unknown continents and a lot of stuff about "the Wendigo", a dark spirit out of Native American folklore which is obviously important to him despite Gramps' continued attempts to deny it.  Impressed that ON knows something of the Wendigo, and in a most impressively shameless act of product placement, Grandpa whips out a copy of H.P. Lovecraft's The Outsider and Others (published only a couple years prior by Arkham House) and asks if ON's read it (which he has).  Gramps then speculates (or, really, pretty much says) that HPL's stories are not fiction.  He also has some old letters from great-uncle Leander, which Uncle L had ordered destroyed, but which some disrespectful relative decided to hang onto, which has more to say about names like Ithaqua, Hastur, and Lloigor.  P.S. apparently old Uncle Leander wasn't too well-liked around them parts, possibly because they say he looked like a frog (no portraits of him survive).  "Do you know what that means?" Gramps asks ON, before admitting "No, of course not."  

That night ON is wakened by the sound of strange but beautiful pipe music, the origin of which they can't determine, and the house is permeated first by a smell like swampy water, then by intense cold.  Gramps, however, takes all these phenomena in stride. 

The next night there's more fun.  Howling winds build up outside, so raging it seems like the house will be blown away (and indeed, the walls and hangings can be seen vibrating).  But - when Frolin and ON look outside, they note that none of the trees are even slightly disturbed.  Add to the cacophony of winds the sounds of the pipes again, and a sound like someone gigantic walking outside, approaching the house.

Grandpa is again unperturbed, and talks of a "threshold" which one is not meant to cross, but which he himself intends to find and do just that.  

Gramps sends the Houghs away for a vacation, while Frolin loses his mojo due to insomnia. He and ON spend more time going through Gramps' research without coming up with much.  That night the winds and flutes and stomping are back with a vengeance.  What's more, they look out the window and see a gigantic dark figure blocking out the sky, with glowing carmine (that's deep red, kiddies) "stars" where its eyes might be.  Now there's a lot of "Ia! Ia!" chanting going on, too.

Grandpa's locked in his study.  When they break in, one wall (the one built into the hill) has been blown open, revealing a cave (causing ON to realize that the painting depicted the hill before the house was built - and that same was the final threshold).  Gramps is gone - looks like he's been grabbed right outta his bed.  And there's snow and ice all over the room.

Well, somehow Frolin and ON explain all this away.  The letters and Grandpa's notebook turn up frozen in ice, in Canada, and Gramps himself turns up, frozen and dead, months later, in a desert on an island near Singapore, his pockets full of Cthulhu/Ithaqua-related goodies.

Well what to say, this is a very average Derleth piece that owes as much to Algernon Blackwood as to HPL, and doesn't hold a candle to either (check out Blackwood's treatment in "The Wendigo").  It's perfectly pleasant Weird Tales fare but doesn't pack any punch.