"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.