"The Horror from the Hills"

by Frank Belknap Long

originally published Weird Tales January-March, 1931 

Our tale begins with one Algernon Harris, curator of Archaeology at the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts. Few people believe this, however, because he's 26, wears loud ties, and behaves "like a college junior at a fraternity house jamboree".  Apparently such behavior consists of being real friendly with attendants and even calling them by their first names, as opposed to the binge drinking, vomiting, and taking advantage of passed-out coeds that such a description conjures up.  

Anyway even if most of his academic peer group et al don't take him seriously, his field workers are sure as hell devoted - being sent to the harshest, most remote corners of the globe, and some of them coming back missing, um, eyes, noses, arms. And some don't come back at all. That's loyalty I tell ya!

So right now Algie-boy is all kinds of excited, cuz one of his hapless fools crack field agents is back in town, with a new find!  That would be Clark Ulman, just back from the Plateau of Tsang, whence he's come bearing a statue reported as having been hidden in a remote cave, guarded by "yellow abnormalities", and which a score of previous explorers had died trying to retrieve.  Well, Ulman's done it, and the statue is on its way to the museum.  But Algie is taken aback when a choked-sounding Ulman calls and tells him to destroy the statue: "it has worked its malice on me - ME!" he emphasizes, "you'll understand when you see what - what I have become!" he explains dramatically.  

Algie is busy mulling over the whole business of Ulman's call and what might have happened to him - in fact he's apparently talking to himself - out loud - at length - when a package is delivered.  Said "package" (shouldn't it be more like a crate?) is a huge statue, the ugliest friggin' thing Algie has ever seen, a big gruesome creature sort of looking like an elephant (on a side note - based on Long's claims over the years and the way its described in the story, Chaugnar Faugn only vaguely resembles an elephant.  Nonetheless, he is consistently depicted as a kind of evil mutant elephant, like Ganesh's evil twin or something).  

Ulman shows up forthwith, his face concealed by a scarf wrapped all the way up to his eyes.  When Algie gives a good ol' boy pat on the shoulder, Ulman collapses, unable to breath.  He can't stand to be touched.  Ever sympathetic, Algie responds that he knows he must have had a rough trip, and he's sure he can get Ulman extended PTO.

Ulman explains how he journeyed across the Plateau of Tsang - alone, on foot.  He was reduced to drinking his own blood and eating dogshit to survive (uh-huh).  Eventually he found his way to the cave where Chaugnar Faugn's idol was guarded by those "yellow abnormalities", who took him prisoner and started to torture him, until the high priest, Chung Ga, came to his rescue.  Chung explained Chaugnar's true nature, as both the creator and, ultimately, destroyer of everything in the universe.  They gave Ulman plenty of food and drink and a straw mat in the cave to sleep on.  During the night, something terrible entered the cave and attacked him, feasting on Ulman's own blood.  Ulman soon comes to realize that the creature attacking him is Chaugnar Faugn, and that the statue is not merely a statue but an avatar of CF itself.  Chaug rewards Ulman's brilliant deduction by mauling him.  According to Chung Ga, this is all part of the plan.  He tells Ulman about Chaugnar's history - how he and five "brothers" began their time in what would become central Europe, in the Pyrenees, attended to by a race of beings Chaugnar created from toads.  Their servants were finally wiped out by the Romans.  Chaungar opted to leave his bros and head for "the primal continent", there to hide in the remote mountains until a white man came for him, warning his bros that when he devoured the world, he would devour them, too. It seems that, according to Chung Ga, Ulman is the white man of the prophecy, and they want him to take the idol to New York.

Ulman concludes his story by ranting - for two pages! - about Cuvier's theories and how ancient Chaugnar may really be, then, to prove his point, he yanks off the scarf to reveal his face horribly and weirdly mutilated - including his nose now elongated and his ears now enlarged - that's right kiddies - he's becoming an elephant man! Isn't Algie convinced now that he should destroy the idol?  Heck no! He figures the whole experience was done via "he hypnotic endowments of the Oriental":  "It's ghastly and unbelievable how much a Hindoo or a Tibetan can accomplish by simple suggestion."  To Ulman pointing out that his face was normal when he boarded ship back to America, Algie simply offers that the cultists did some plastic surgery on him in his sleep.  Suddenly, Ulman can't breathe and he collapses writhing to the floor and dies.  A coroner later rules his death due to heart failure, though he can't explain why the body decomposed so damn fast...

Algie meets with his boss, Dr. George Francis Scollard, to discuss the whole matter, with Algie still arguing for the mundane explanation - since to do otherwise would cause him to be labeled a whacko.  Scollard and Algie spend the next two pages discussing acromegaly.  But as they approach the museum, they see a crowd outside.  Including reporters.  And cops.  "Did you put the - the statue on exhibition?" Scollard exclaims.  Well of course Algie put it on exhibition.  And let reporters cover it as well.

Now it seems, another attendant, Mr. Cinney, has been murdered and mutilated right there in the museum.  (You might think the high fatality and injury rate of attendants reporting to Algie would get Scollard's attention, huh?).  In fact, Cinney's face is gone, and his body's drained of blood.  One possible witness, another attendant named Williams, has flipped out, screaming about "the worm from hell" and they can't get much more out of him.  The police are convinced the crime was committed by a "Hindoo" or a "Chinaman".  As evidence they've found a wooden bowl with the remnants of some rice, and blood, and chopsticks.  Plus there's blood all over the Chaugnar statue.  In the course of their talking to a police detective, a Chinese guy is turned up, hiding in the museum.  It seems a strange dream led him to go to the museum last night, and wait to be devoured by a god.  But instead the god devoured Cinney.  The cops are mystified by this conversation, but Scollard tells them he's certain the Asian guy is innocent, and warns them not to get rough with him.  Algie then points out something to Scollard - the trunk on the Chaugnar Statue seems to have moved...

Then he and Algie head off to see someone - a Dr. Henry Imbert F.R.S, F.A.G.S (if you can figure out what those are meant to stand for, there's a no-prize in it for you), specialist in ethnology (what we'd now call cultural anthropology, I suppose).  "When Imbert sees [a photo of the Chaugnr Faugn statue]", Algie mutters to himself (he apparently always thinks out loud), "he'll be the most disturbed ethnologist that this planet has harbored since the Pleistocene Age."  That's pretty impressive, given that the Pleistocene Age dates back 11,700 years and the earliest defined ethnologists showed up in the 18th century.  Of course he did say "this planet" so perhaps Algie's musings also encompassed ethnologists on other planets?)

Dr. Henry Imbert F.R.S,F.A.G.S. spends four pages getting to the point that he doesn't have anything intelligent to say about this icky statue, much less its moving.  So he suggests they see someone else - former brilliant criminal investigator now quack supernaturalist and recluse Roger Little. On the way over, they read in the papers of a similar massacre in the Pyrenees, leaving 14 people dead.  

Roger Little turns out to be a froot loop who talks exactly like H.P. Lovecraft in his letters.  He babbles on for five fucking pages about how boring murder is, his plans to write a horror novel, etc.  Algie is struck silent in awe by him, which gives us one more reason to think Algie might be a nitwit.  However, when someone mentions Chaugnar Faugn, Little finally stops his monologue in shock.

It seems last Halloween, Little had an incredibly detailed dream, in which he was L. Cualieus Rufus, a financial official in a Spanish province in the time of Republican Rome.  In this role, he was drawn into an investigation of a race of strange peoples, unlike any of the local races, who held inhumans rites in the hills involving drumming and chanting, and, conicidentally, said rites were linked to disappearances of nearby villagers, which always occurred on the night of the ceremonies.  Of even greater concern - the hillish folk seem to be in league with an creepier group called the "miri nigri", and a couple of these got into a scuffle in a nearby town not so long ago.  Now people haven't disappeared (as they usually do), and some fear a more dreadful retribution is at hand.

Rufus takes a band of stout men into the lands of the strange people, on the night on one of their rites. The sound of the drumming and chanting becomes overwhelming, and the Romans' horses freak out.  Their guide loses his shit and grabs a sword and impales himself.  The sky goes black as the stars are blotted out, and they are surrounded by cackling and leaping creatures in the shadows, things with "huge flaring ears and long waving trunks that howled and gibbered and pranced in the skyless night."  The Romans panic and flee in such terror that some are trampled to death, and the hills themselves seem to be moving, as Rufus screams and wakes up back as Roger Little.  

Told of the little Asian man's dream, Little is even more impressed ("Mongolians as a rule are extremely psychic" he muses), and more convinced that something big is going down re: Chaugnar Faugn (and his brothers).  He theorizes (for a couple pages) about what Chaugnar Faugn might be, in physics terms. Suddenly, there's a phone call, informing Algie that the Chaugnar statue is gone (though the pedestal remains).   Little tells the group he wants to show them something.

In his lab, Little has built a strange machine, described as made of spheres and crescents that move in directions difficult for the eye/mind to follow when the machine is running.  Little explains that the machine is an anti-entropy beam, which basically uncreates things by sending them back in time.  He then spends the next eight pages pontificating about physics, time, the nature of reality, etc., before getting back to his plan - track down Chaugnar Faugn and zap him with the anti-entropy ray.  All agree this is a fine idea, though not before Algie manages to vaporize one wall of Little's apartment - a fact which seems not to phase Little in the slightest.  Off they go in search of Chaugnar.

Following a trail of reported murders, they trace him to the Jersery shore and turn the ray on him, ultimately having to run after him, training the ray on him, since his ancientness means it takes a long time to "uncreate" him in time.  A turtle caught in the beam is not so lucky.  Buh-bye turtle!  Eventually Chaugner gets his fat ass caught in a mire and the team is able to finish the job, dissolving him into primordial slime while he bellows away, finally leaving only a terrifying, gigantic image of himself filling the sky, which grabs at them before fading away.  The five other Chaugnar kin also dissolve at the same time, giving Little the opportunity to drone on some more about their oneness, while speculating that Chaugnar might one day reappear, thousands of years in the future.  Thus the story ends.

(It would be nice to report that Scollard then turns the anti-entropy ray on Little, and Algie too for good measure, but no such luck).

Fuck I don't know what to say after that particular nutty ride and I'm not even sure how to rate, since I actually enjoy this little romp, even though  it embarrasses me.  It is, except for the long passages of pontification, fairly exciting, has genuinely interesting ideas, merging "modern" (1931) science with metaphysics, which won't become fashionable for another 60 years, and there are a couple good, powerfully scary passages involving Chaugnar Faugn, such as his first appearance as a blood-sucker in the cave:

Even before I opened my eyes I knew that something unspeakably malign was crouching squatting on the ground beside me.  I could hear it breathing in the darkness, and the stench of it strangled the breath in my throat ... I became aware of two blinking, fish-white eyes glaring truculently at me through the darkness."

And later in his death throes:

"For an instant it loomed thus terribly menacing, the sould of all malignancy and horror, a cncerous cyclops, oozing fetor."

The climax of the Roman dream is really potent - except Long didn't write it - or didn't write most of it.  The whole Roman dream was taken nearly verbatim from a letter by H.P. Lovecraft.  Long largely cut-and-pasted it into his story - though I have not compared the original letter to the story (that's okay - I'm sure S.T. Joshi has).

Despite these small strong points, the story can't overcome its major weakness: it's some of the worst writing Long ever turned out.  Now I've read a fair bit of Long, and though I wouldn't call him a literary giant, most of his writing is solid and serious and perfectly decent by any normal standards.  But occasionally he would lapse into purple pulpdom, with some of the most histrionic dialogue this side of a romance comic book.  And man oh man did he do it here.  In fact, Long's writing is so bad here it reads almost like a cornball parody of pulp horror writing.  The dialogue is patently absurd, with characters stammering and shouting as they articulate realizations about the cosmic horrors unfolding around them.  The characterization is nonexistent.  And pages and pages are given over to philosophical/quantum physical/ethnological dissertations which I guess Long found interesting, but if i wanted that I wouldn't be reading a pulp horror story.  To top it all off its racially insensitive as hell, if not outright racist.

I should note that "Hills" is one of those tales that became a Mythos story after the fact, whem HPL incorporated Chaugnar, tongue-in-cheekily, into one of his lists of mythos beasties.  There's nary a mention of the Necronomicon or aught else to be found within, though Chaugnar Faugn is a good fit for a Great Old One, to be sure.

Okay - the verdict: its kind of a fun read if you can overlook the bad writing.  But it is no classic.  Its tough to scare up these days and, interestingly, has yet to be reprinted in any Chaosium collections (odd!).  I definitely don't recommend throwing down $100+ for the Arkham original - look for one of the paperback reprints on Ebay - which will still set you back $20+.  But only if you're looking for some cosmic horror laffs.