"Dark Awakening"

 by Frank Belknap Long

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

Our unnamed narrator (one a' those again) has taken himself of to some New England beach resort for the summer.  One night in the hotel dining room he spots a hot number with two small kids and hope
s she doesn't have a husband back home.  The next day he scores by meeting her at the beach.  Her name is Helen Rathbourne, and she's a widow (score one for the narrator!).  And as it turns out, both her and the narrator have something in common - they both like to talk in bizarre pseudo-poetic dialog that sounds like nothing that would ever come out of a sane human mouth!  Example (Helen referring to her daughter): 

"Susan's quite different.  Most of her adventuring is done on `wings of bright imagining', as some poet must have phrased it some time in the past.  Perhaps far back in the Victorian Age.  I'm not good at making such lines up."

"I'm sure you're mistaken.  I read a great deal of poetry, both traditional and avant-garde, and I can't recall ever having encountered that particular line."

Uh-huh.

Well anyway while they're talking Johnny (Helen's son, who's about 8), gets bored and goes running off full-tilt boogie towards the washed-up, rotted wreckage of an old breakwater, neighbored by "swirling dark water" widening into a pool with a "deep, black, extremely ominous look".  He climbs up onto the dangerous pile while the unnamed narrator shouts ineffectively at him to come back down this instant.  The kid ignores the stuffy froot and instead seems to be mesmerized, staring off into the sea, until the boards give way and he falls into the pool.  U.N. heads in after him and fortunately finds him pretty quick.

Out on the sand Johnny recovers quite quickly and seems unharmed.  Except he's acting a little strange, explaining that he went out on the breakwater because something drew him out there - something he had to find, even though he didn't want to find it.  And whatever it is, he's got it clenched in his hand, so tightly that he actually can't even open his fist.

In any case, U.N. manages to get his hand open and retrieve the object, which turns out to be a pendant of some kind, an octopus with a grotesque human face.  U.N. is revolted but finds now he can't open his hand to throw it away.  His sense of reality starts to distort and he finds himself walking out into the sea, intoning "The Deep Ones await their followers ... the call has come (etc), and pronouncing some names familiar to all loyal Cthulhu Mythos fans.  

The next thing U.N. knows, he's waking up in a hospital bed.  Helen is there, talking to the attending physician, who not only share their bent for flowery speech, but is also very hip to the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.  It seems a few weeks ago a bunch of freakjobs with waist-long beards were wandering around the beach area.  They've since disappeared.  And a man was found horribly mutilated, perhaps after an encounter with a shark (the pool is believed big enough to hold one).  The pendant, which Johnny pried from U.N.'s hand just before he went under, must have belonged to those neckbeards.  "Just suppose," Helen wonders, "Lovecraft didn't put everything he knew or suspected into his stories."  

As U.N. drifts off into a seconal-induced sleep, he hears Helen comment on how her daughter Susan seems to love him already ... and she can understand how Susan feels.  But he feels as if he is sinking into deep water, an octopoid face approaching, remembering his own strange, trane-induced words...

This was one of Long's last Cthulhu-influenced stories, and one of his last, period.  He had changed a lot in the years since the Weird Tales days.  Like some other stories of his published around the same time, "Dark Awakening" is a hundred times less pulpy, but a bit pretentious, yet is also evocative and has a strange, dreamy, wistful quality about it.  It isn't a great story.  Despite the Lovecraft-y prose, it works fine for the narrative, and the Unnamed Narrator is actually very believable.  Until he opens his mouth.  His (and Helen's, and Susan's, and the doctor's) dialog is ludicrous and weird.  It's hard to say what to make of this slight story but it stayed with me all these years since I first read it back in the early 80's.  So I think Long did something right.

"The Summons of Nuguth-Yug"

by Gary Myers

originally published Weird Tales #3, Zebra Books, 1981

Snith, "student of the elder mysteries, practitioner of magic white and grey" scribbles out his tale, in his own blood, on the pages of one of the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan (Number Four to be exact!); being as he has no other ink or paper - heck he has to use "captured glowworms" for lighting!  And you thought you had it bad!

It seems Snith was just minding his own magical business (white or grey - not stated), when someone stats banging on his front door.  When he goes to answer, no one is there.  But a bat-winged, manlike figure is wheeling around in the sky above his place.  So Snith throws a candlestick at it, causing it to drop something and fly off.  Said something is a tube containing a letter, written in a language and hand familiar to Snith, and a particular blue ink used only in the Great Abyss, "that hidden country where the sun is unheard of and the moon and stars are considered mythical."  

Serious attention to detail, that Snith.

Said letter is from Nuguth-Yug, and old schoolmate from Hezethub U, pre-Hogwarts school of magic. Nuggy-poo got sent on an assignment long ago to enter the Great Abyss, and was never heard from again!  Now he's asking Snith to come to him in the Great Abyss and join forces in keeping back the Gugs, who have learned how to "violate the Sign of Koth" (exactly how they violate it is thankfully not described).  He's sent a nightgaunt - i.e. the batwinged postman encountered earlier, to help Snith get to the Great Abyss.  

So, since Snith has unfortunately chased off his ride, he makes his way towards the Great Abyss, via a tunnel conveniently located under his own house.  Lantern full of glowworms in hand, he makes his way down the tunnels past skeletions, creepy sculptures, more bones, disembodied voices that whisper and laugh, till he finally reaches Nuguth-Yug's pad, a "windowless black facade" with double doors of green bronze.  Inside is a pallet of straw, presumably Nuguth-Yug's bed, and a big statue Nodens (who is described as looking a lot like Cthulhu).  As he checks out the room, the doors close, trapping him inside.

An amusing Smith pastiche, but Myers has a better way with words than, for example, Carter or Lumley, giving this slight tale a fair share of charm.

"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.  

"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:

"Recrudescence"

 by Leonard Carpenter

originally published Amazing Stories, January 1988

Olin is a prof of paleontology at a California university.  One day he gets a call from Jean, a former student now working on an offshore oil drilling platform in the SoCal bay.  It seems they've found something that may interest him.  It seems the recently-divorced Olin has always had a thing for Jean,  So off he goes.  

The something turns out to be bizarre, hexagonal flat stones of uniform size and shape that the drill is digging up out of the ocean floor.  Puzzled and intrigued, Olin also thinks he sees a living trilobite while he's poking around in the water.

Later, Olin is drawn to a protest rally where he meets some unusual characters who wear some of those hexagonal stones as religious symbols.  They manage to get him on their bus, take him off to their remote lodge, and give him several earfulls of their weird, cultish beliefs.  To wit: the earth was inhabited, back in the dawn ages, by a race of alien refugees of indescribable technological, or perhaps flat-out magical, gifts.  They refer to this race as "The Shapers".  But The Shapers also had alien enemies, who unleashed a holocaust upon them, crushing them into the depths of the earth and then sealing them away (for The Shapers are immortal or semi-immortal [is that even possible?] by covering their civilization over - with the hex-shaped flat stones.  These stones form a barrier The Shapers cannot pass.  But they can send out psychic waves, which affect the dreams and meditations of those sensitive enough to receive them.  One such alleged sensitive is Emil Sturla, a wild-haired old whack job who emerges from seclusion to give the cultists a pep talk: The Shaper's are making their Big Comeback - tonight!

Realizing this is all a bit nutso, Olin makes his getaway and manages to get himself home.  Believing that the offshore oil platform will be targeted by the loonies, Olin first tries the authorities, then, when they blow him off, steals a boat and tries to make his way to the platform.

Something happens.  A massive - and I do mean massive - wave hits his boat and the next thing he knows, Olin is waking up battered and bruised on a rocky shore - a rocky shore that didn't used to be there.  It seems the ocean has receded - big time.  What's more, its now crawling with thought-to-be-extinct, paleozoic life forms.  

Spotting some of the cultists, he surreptitiously follows them, taking in the now-alien landscape, to the swamped ruins of the platform where they rendevous with some deep ones (or things very like deep ones), and then play host to what may be Cthulhu himself - something enormous and icky with "mouth feelers" - something which proceeds to start eating the cultists.  Having a flare gun with him, Olin decides to shoot the big blob - not such a bad idea since there's gallons of oil all around from the destruction of the platform, and the whole scene bursts into flames, with the big blob writhing in agony before an explosion sends Olin flying through the air and into unconsciousness.

When he comes too, not-so-badly injured, the world seems to have returned to normalcy and the seas risen once again.  Olin is rescued and returns to civilization, cared for by Jean who had the good fortune not to be on the platform that night.  No one believes his story and it is thought that what wiped out the platform and neighboring towns that night was some kind of vaguely-but-scientifically-defined natural disaster.  

But Olin knows...

Woo what a ride!

Now I just came across this sucker in the 1989 Year's Best Horror Stories XVII, edited by Karl Edward Wagner.  I became a devotee of this series in 1982 (Volume IX) and faithfully collected every volume as they came out, year-after-year, until the series ended with Wagner's untimely demise.  I've been in the process of slowly re-reading various stories this year.  But Volume XVII is a mystery to me - there's some pencil notes on the contents page in my handwriting, but I'm not sure what they mean.  I have no memory of ever reading any of the stories in this book, though it's been on my shelf for 30+ years, and certainly no memory of reading this one (and believe me I would have remembered it).  The YBH volumes reliably came out late in the year (Oct-Dec) and the last few months of 1989 was a seriously shitty period of my life, so its possible I never did actually sit down and read this volume.  In any case I've now read "Recrudescence" and boy did it give me a happy!

Here we have that rarity of rarities, a successful Lovecraftian tale that not only uses his ideas without naming them (though any self-respecting `thu fan would recognize the deep one and ol' tentacle-puss from a mile away), but also successfully uses classic Lovecraftian structure - a scholarly, lonely gent is slowly drawn into a revelation of cosmic horrors - first by an oddity, then by the uncovering of bits of knowledge that prove said oddity is odder and linked to odder still - an accumulation of information and dire portents, finally giving way to a full-blown explosion of cosmic horror goodness.  This is how its done, peoples!  Sure, Derleth and Lumley et al have tried imitating HPL's structure - not always unsuccessfully - but Carpenter does it with so much more panache.  A big part of this is that he makes zero attempt to imitate Lovecraft stylistically - the tale is written in a straightforward, modern style - almost breezy in the early portions.  Carpenter never once drops a single name*** (unlike, say, all of A. Derleth's characters, Olin apparently never once dropped by the Miskatonic U for a go through their restricted section), but there's zero doubt what these deep sea beasties are supposed to be.  And finally he delivers the goods and then some in the stories final pages which are exciting and gripping and scary all at once (I really wasn't expecting a [relatively] happy ending).  And through it all there's a strong sense of fun, as if Carpenter was having a good time playing in Lovecraft Land, and it shows.  

*** one could argue, if one were a dumbass, that the tale is questionably Lovecraft since not a single Lovecraftian name is dropped, no Necronomicon is mentioned, etc.  Nevertheless it is obvious that Carpenter is referencing Cthu and His Crew - and equally obvious that he's making no attempt to hide it.  However, if one needs some seal of approval please note that Robert M. Price included this tale in Chaosium's The Cthulhu Cycle, and while Price has been know to cast his trawl net pretty wide (I have it on good authority that Price had to be physically restrained by his publisher from including Erich Segal's Love Story in one of his Lovecraft anthologies because, y'know - it does have "Love" in the title, right?) that little factoid oughta give it some street cred with any tentacle-splitters out there.

 

"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 Color Out Of Time" by Michael Shea

Ernst Carlsberg and his buddy Gerald (our narrator) are a couple of fruity old profs who like to drink (a lot!) who decide to take a vacation at a "dam-created lake which I shall not name" in a "New England region" which is apparently quite the tourist spot.

Not long after arriving, they notice a strange glow, of an indescribable color, floating around the lake.  Not only is it weird, it gives off a palpable aura of evil.  What's even worse, it drains both physical strength and stamina, to the point where one can barely move, and one feels a crushing depression when in its presence.

More weirdness in the area: exploring the woods, E&G encounter such niceties as enormous mutated insects and spiders, and mutant, gnarled trees that seem to be able to move on their own. The park rangers seem to have been effected - one is sickly but seems to recover thanks to a shot of liquor.  The other is gruesomely afflicted and seems to have checked out mentally.

Soon after a neighboring vacation boat crashes, and Ernst and Gerald find the tourists have clearly been attacked and killed by -- something.  The ranger station goes next.  Ranger Hazzard Harms dies in the aftermath, admitting that he knew something about the weird color, and admonishing them to contact his sister, Sharon.  Nugent, the local beaureacratic whatsit, does a half-hearted job of warning people off the lake, before flipping out, going home and killing his kids before killing himself (accidentally?) in a traffic accident.

Sharon is an old woman with a bazillion cats.  She's also an artist, whose work depicts strange and Cthulhu-ish scenes, including some with an approximation of the mysterious color.  She knew the Simes family (the basis for HPL's story "The Colour Out Of Space" - more on that in a second), personally, and Danny Simes was her best friend. Guilty over Danny's fate, she vowed revenge against the thing from the meteorite, and has spent her life preparing for a confrontation with it.  To further E & G's education, she gives them paperback copies of Lovecraft's fiction.  It seems she also knew Lovecraft, whom she contacted after reading "The Colour Out Of Space" in Weird Tales in the 30's, and recognizing that the story was based on the real-life experiences of the Simes family.  She came to know HPL, who admitted to her that many of his stories were fictionalized accounts of real events, and disclosed to her that the Cthulhu Mythos was more a "discovery" than an invention of his. 

Decked out with weapons and survival equipment, our heroes return to the lake, ready for battle.  They have surmised that the entity has grown stronger and bolder, even taking physical form (a spider-like critter) to prey on humans.

Back at the lake, E&G&S try to warn people to clear out, but are defied by a turd named Jeffry Hargis, the embodiment of a modern-day Trump supporter, albeit 32 years early (today he'd be out protesting about being asked to wear a mask in public).  

The brave trio carries on, eventually having a minor shoot-out with Hargis and pals before same are eaten by the spidery monster, which Sharon drives of with a star-stone given to her by HPL hisself.  The thing hightails its way back to the well it originated from - which happens to be at the bottom of the lake, of course.  Ernst manages to toss his star-stone in after it, which kills it, but not before it erupts, killing everyone on or in the lake except Gerald and Sharon, who live happily ever after.

Obviously, this is a sequel to "The Colour Out Of Space" and, obviously, it doesn't even come close to the power of the original.  But it is a fun read.  It's more than a little tongue-in-cheek and Shea even writes it in a sort of slightly modernized but distinctly Lovecraft-ish style, which adds to the fun.  A lightweight but enjoyable yarn with some nice moments (especially Sharon's confrontation with the beastie).

"The Faces At Pine Dunes"

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

Michael lives with his parents in a "caravan", which is apparently what the Brits call a trailer.  He doesn't like his life very much and he doesn't like his parents much either - dad's an overbearing obese blob, and mom is doormat personified.  He does kinda like the trailer park they've moved into this time - by the sea, near some very dense woods.  He'd like to settle down here, never in his life having stayed in one place very long (it seems mom`n'dad live the gypsy life).  Mom doesn't like it though, and seems troubled that Michael does.

Mike tales a stroll through the dark woods, and seems to think something very large is stalking him through the trees.  He makes it into the village nearby and stops in a club.  A cute girl named June, who says she's tripping on acid, flirts with him.  Like any self-respecting 20 year-old, even one as socially challenged as Mike, he's happy about this.  June suggests he take a job at the club, which is advertising for a trainee barman.

Mike starts working at the club.  His parents are acting strange - going out late at night without explanation.  Dad seems to like the idea of Mike settling in with a job and a girl.  Mom doesn't.  

Mike learns that Pine Dunes has long been considered a hub of witchcraft activity.  And there have long been legends of something terrible, and big, lurking in the woods.  And of a pit full of gloopy monsters.  He finds that his parents have spent their lives following a kind of circuit of hubs of witchcraft activity, apparently starting, and now returning, to Pine Dunes.  He figures they must be witches.  He comes to believe his dad is drugging his mom to keep her submissive as they get up to some sinister activity.  

Determined that something is going down that night, Mike takes June deep into the woods, to a clearing he believes his parents will be doing their witchy deeds in.   Something large and dark seems to be stalking them through the woods.  In the clearing, they find a pit, and gloopy, expanding flesh-blobs that appear to be his parents, and voices telling them things about the spawn of the Great Old Ones, which Mike, apparently, is one...

This is a very, very effective story that implies a theme similar to "The Dunwich Horror" et al - of miscegnated human/Old One hybrid horrors - some who don't realize they are - until later.  As is typical with Campbell, much lies between the lines, and much is unclear, or subjective - exactly what Mike and June are experiencing/seeing at the end is uncertain - yet clearly terrible.  I find this one of Campbell's creepiest and most disturbing tales, and wholly successful.

"The Shadow on the Doorstep"

by James P. Blaylock 

originally published Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May, 1986

Our unnamed narrator is reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in front of a fire one night when he hears something shuffle around on his doorstep. He reminisces about tropical fish and tropical fish stores he has known.  And he imagines some gloopy, Deep One-y thing is on his doorstep.

Did I miss something here?  His writing is terrific, and I think it actually does convey the idea of an imaginative horror fan or author letting his imagination get carried away over an odd sound in the night.  I mean, every time I hear a cat or raccoon digging in the garbage outside my bedroom, I wonder to myself what I'd do if I pulled back the curtain and found, say, an alien standing there!

But what did the aquariums and tropical fish have to do with it.  Maybe I need to read it again.  Maybe I will.  Maybe.

Gets points for good writing though.

"The Adder"

by Fred Chappell

originally published Deathrealm, Summer 1989

Our nameless narrator is an antique book dealer.  And so is his uncle, Alvin.  One day Uncle Alvin calls him up, saying he wants to pay a visit.  He has something very rare, and he can't talk about it over the phone.

That very rare thing is a handwritten manuscript of Al Azif, aka The Necronomicon.  In Arabic.  He wants it stashed while he goes to the Library of Congress to make arrangements with them to get it into their collection.  But he warns NN - the manuscript is "like an adder - first it poisons, then it devours".  He advises him to store it well clear of anything of value.
NN stores it with some cheap knock-off editions of Milton.

Soon after, he makes an alarming discovery - Milton's words in the cheap knock-off edition are changing.  What's more, they're changing in all other editions - from classic poetry to doggerel.   What's more, the manuscript seems to be restoring itself - less faded, less aged, becoming like new.  Alarmed, NN lets Unc know, and tosses the ms into an otherwise empty safe.

Unc comes by and does a ritual involving another rare book - one that goes unnamed - but is apparently a kind of anti-Necronomicon, which restores Milton's poetry to its original state. But while they're talking, a fly lands on the damp ink of the ms, and flies off.

 This is actually an amusing and witty story.  It would take a real devotee of the written word to mark the decay of Milton's poetry as the first sign of apocalypse.  And, despite its obviously humorous intent, there are dark implications in the finale.  

"Shaft No. 247

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

Driscoll and Wainewright are security, watchmen in some vast underground installation - in which survives an entire civilization, possibly millions of people.  The watchmen sit for hours monitoring a large dashboard that detects movement or presence in the many shafts and tunnels of the installation.  Driscoll is a stolid, level-headed fellow but Wainewright seems wound a little too tight for his own good, overreacting to minor readings in the monitors.

Driscoll's superior hints that Driscoll should poke around and find out what's eating Wainewright.  Driscoll goes to visit Wainewright (a breach of protocol).  Wainewright tells him he's been in a weird state ever since his friend Deems went A.W.O.L., so to speak.

It seems Deems had noted an unusual amount of activity in one of the shafts (No. 247 - SURPRISE!), and, further, that the powers-that-be seemed to be aware of this, but were covering it up.  One night, Deems went and entered the shaft, and left through it, going "outside" (the surface world, one assumes?), and was never seen or heard from again.  He left behind a phony-looking note, urging Wainewright to come out there with him, and some glob of gray, icky-smelling stuff.

One night soon after, Wainewright loses it and also goes "outside".  Driscoll too finds a phony-looking note inviting him to come too.  And a glob of gray, icky-smelling stuff.

Driscoll becomes obsessed with Shaft 247.  One night he enters.  He is overwhelmed by what may be hallucinations: "Driscoll knew what had fascinated Wainwright and his friend Deems before him. The heady odour had something in it that reached back deep into his roots. He saw green fields; a blue sky; corn waving in the breeze.”  It becomes unclear whether Driscoll's experiences are hallucinations or somehow actual events.  Something outside, with Driscoll's help, is attempting to enter the shaft...

This is one weird story, and if it weren't published in a specifically Cthulooey collection, I might not even assume it to be such a beast.  Yet here it is.  And, if one reads closely enough, the Lovecrafty elements are very skillfully implemented.

In many ways, this recalls 50's science fiction, such as Lester del Rey's "Nerves", more than HPL.  The Dystopian, Orwellian subterranean society is unsettling, even moreso because its never clear where, or when this is happening.  Or how much these people even know of the world outside.  Or why they live in tunnels.

The story is intensely subtle and carefully crafted.  The nature of the society is revealed gradually, but unambiguously, over the space of several pages.  The ambiguities come in the end (what, exactly, is happening to Driscoll - and what is trying to get in), but are also clearly intentional.  And while the nature and intent of whatever is "outside" is not really known - it sure as hell doesn't feel right!

All in all this is way above Copper's usual level of quality, and while there are Cthulhu stories I've enjoyed more, its impossible not to admire his craft.

"Aliah Warden"

by Roger Johnson
originally published The Count Dracula Fan Club Annual, Vol. 5 No. 1 1985

Our narrator meets Aliah Warden in a solicitor's office in 1902.  Aliah is an old, retiring lawyer with a curious appearance - squat, bow-legged, wide-mouthed.  He lives in a village named Wrabley and shares the narrator's interest in witchcraft and devil worship (academically, of course).

He invites the narrator to come around his place, which is located in a marshy region near Essex.  Aliah has the usual titles in his library.  He reveals himself to be a deep one hybrid.

This story actually has a nice and effective build-up, and its a shame it shorts itself out with an abrupt and unfulfilling ending.

"The Spheres Beyond Sound (Threnody)"

by Stephen Mark Rainey
originally published Deathrealm No. 2, Summer, 1987

Our narrator decided to spend a vacation visiting his late grandfather's old house, in a remote part of the Appalachian called Copper Peak.  The place is old and run down but liveable, and among the things he finds there is a very old book called The Spheres Beyond Sound by Maurice Zann, which alleges that certain combinations of tunings and tones can open up gateways to other worlds.  The book intrigues him.  Later he finds a recording grandpa made with some local musicians, experiments with Zann's pieces to see if they would indeed open gates.  It seems like nothing happened.

The next day, while exploring a local graveyard, narrator gets spooked and starts to flee.  He sees a growing blackness behind him and hears sounds like things digging out and shuffling after him.  Back at the house, he's confronted by a group of zombies and a giant, shadowy spider-thing looming over the house.  He flees, and escapes, but continues to believe that one day he too will become a zombie in thrall to the creature.

This story actually made something of an impression, in part because it manages to play with Derleth/Lovecraft clichés and make them sorta fresh.  The EC-like ending isn't exactly Lovecraftian, but it is kind of effective.  It's very pulpy but a lot of fun.

"Vastarien"

 by Thomas Ligotti
originally published Crypt of Cthulhu No. 48, St. John's Eve, 1987

Victor Keirion is tormented by dreams of a strange and fabulous city.  He belongs to "that wretched sect of souls who believe that the only value of this world lies in its power -- to suggest another world."

He makes his way to a bookstore where the proprietor and customer act very strange.  They show him a very rare, ornate book, then tell him the cost is out of his range.  Then they tell him there's a mistake and quote him a price he can afford.

His dreams become more and more vivid.  He realizes that in some way, the book is not merely a book but some manifestation of the dream-city.  He returns to the bookstore to learn more about it, but gets little in the way of answers other than that the book was somehow meant for him.

He comes to believe that the other customer is somehow vampirizing his mind/soul in order to experience the dreams himself, which for some reason he is unable to do in any other way.  He tries to think of some way to stop this.

Victor is actually a resident of an insane asylum.  The book is completely blank, yet he sits studying it and becoming violent in the night.  Even though the book is taken away from him, it somehow reappears in his cell every night.

More Alfred Kubin or Kafka than Lovecraft.  As always, Ligotti is interesting and even impressive, but, as always, he leaves me a little cold.

"The Madness Out Of Space"

by Peter H. Cannon aka Crispin Burnham 

originally published Eldritch Tales No's 8 and 9, 1982, 1983

Our young narrator (E. Phillips Winsor)  is a student at Miskatonic U in 1928, where he befriends an eccentric fellow student named Howard Wentworth Anable, who is basically H.P. Lovecraft under another name.  It seems Anable has vanished, and our narrator knows how.

Anable has become absorbed in eccentric, occult studies, and likes our narrator because he thinks his friendship may help him stay grounded. He asks him to move into some rooms he's rented, next semester.

Winsor goes on vacation and has fun, while Anable writes increasingly weird letters about the discoveries he's making in his studies of old New England cults.  When Winsor returns, Anable takes him to a remote spot called Satan's Ledge, where occult rites were held, and there they meet a local squatter named Jay Harper who claims to have part of the original Old Ones cult that met there.

Anable gets deeper and deeper into it. The cult is revived and begins to meet again on Satan's Ledge.  Winsor interrupts Anable's initiation.  At first Anable is angry, then grateful.  He begins to recuperate, returns to his studies.  But then becomes secretive and strange again.  One night Winsor hears Anable chanting again, and busts down his door, but too late - Anable has been spirited away by something.

As he settles affairs and moves out, the landlady passes on a condescending letter from Anable, stating that Winsor wasn't worthy of transcending the mundane world anyway.

This is a relatively entertaining tale, despite being overloaded with Derleth/Lovecraft clichés.  I can't quite make up my mind if I find the climax underwhelming, or impressive just cause it doesn't close with a shootout with gloopy monsters.  In any case you could do a lot worse.

"The Howler in the Dark"

by Richard L. Tierney
originally published Crypt of Cthulhu No. 24, Lammas, 1984

Irving Hamilton, and American architect and antiquarian (surprise) and his Brit Clyde Mayfield are on foot in the highlands(I think), and come face-to-face with the ruins of Duncaster Abbey ("How delightfully gothic!" sez Irv).  It turns out the Abbey is occupied, by a couple of weird Americans no one likes very much.

At the local bookshop, Hamilton learns the history of the Abbey.  Built by Hugo de Taran in 12 century, with a nasty rep for playing host to pagan rites and human sacrifice. Eventually in the 17th century the church of Scotland descended and burned the witches.

People are going missing in the community, and the two American weirdos are prime suspects.  Irv and Clyde pay a visit to the two oddballs (named John Taggart and "Pitts" - no front name given).  The place is mostly in ruins, and the library contains the usual suspects (gimme an N!).  While visiting, they hear a weird howling, and Taggart `n' Pitts excuse themselves to deal with it.

The next day Hamilton reads of an outbreak of a strange disease called "screaming death" among American visitors to the UK.  

They decide to pay another visit to the Abbey.  They find Taggart/Pitt are out and decide to go exploring.  They find the local Constable in the dungeon in a bad state - a living head somehow kept alive ala Futurama.

This is actually a fun little tale and Tierney builds up some nice atmosphere, but its basically a rehash of Derleth/Lovecraft pastiches with a particularly silly ending which robs it of its punch.

"Saucers From Yaddith"

by Robert M. Price
originally published Etchings and Odysseys No.5, 1984

Narrator is part of a circle of artists and seekers.  He's giving an interview to a reporter from a tabloid, cuz only they are likely to print such a story.  They've tried meditations, occult.  Narrator wants to try hallucinogenics.  Interested in the work of a Dr. Martin Rhadamanthus, and a Dr. Phineas Whitmore.  Decides to dose himself.  He experiences bizarre visual and auditory hallucinations, and encounters a pair or insect-like entities.  He has a strange sense of something having been done to him physically.  When he visits a doctor not long after, he's surprised to learn that his blood type has somehow changed from O to A.

His researches lead him to Rhadamanthus, whose own researches have led him to a 17th century work on "organic transposition", which describes the same kind of hallucinations the narrator experienced uder the influence.  There is mention of another realm called "Yaddith".

He persuades the group to take mescaline with him.  When he comes out of it, he finds his buddies have been dismembered and sewn together into a human lattice structure.  He hacks it to pieces with an axe, then flees … knowing that the Yaddithians are still watching him...

Despite my resistance to Price continually publishing his own stories in his anthologies, I won't deny he's a capable writer.  Here he seems to be channeling Ligotti - which I'm sure a lot of contemporary HPL fans like.  Me, not so much.  It's an interesting tale but nothing special.

"The Statement of One John Gibson"

by Brian Lumley

originally published Crypt of Cthulhu No. 19, Candlemas, 1984

One John Gibson is a dork who lives with his parents, sort of.  His mother's in an insane asylum and his father passes away of "some creeping organic malfunction" whatever that is.  OJG's pops has been an occult researcher, but warned his young'un away from such things, instead forcing him into religious studies and encouraging him to become a priest.   He has kind of a weird history - born on Walpurgis Night, tormented by dreams of being trapped in dark places, of being under some kind of controlling spell, opf waking hallucinations in which there's a tentacle sticking of of his jammies where his arm oughta be.  Just to make life more interesting, the family lawyer calls to inform OJG has inherited the family money and property, but promptly crashes his car on the family front porch - nonetheless, the brave solicitor manages to crawl from the burning wreckage and croak out "glub - glub - the bureau … destroy it" before he kicks over.

Having been warned to destroy the bureau, or something in it, OJG heads straight for the bureau, where he finds papers and a medallion depicting an alien city and various GOOs. Although he does not know their meaning, he feels a sense of recognition upon seeing these figures, as though he should know them.

He also finds a passel of OLD BOOKS (cue Cthulhu Mythos Booklist) (this bunch includes the Ghorl Nigral!) annnnnnnnnnnnd, in an amusing touch, copies of HPL's Selected Letters, back issues of Weird Tales, and a copy of The Horror in the Museum for good measure!

His researches with these reveal some interesting things, including his relation to Alonzo Typer, he of "The Diary of Alonzo Typer", one of Lovecraft's more regrettable paid revisions (which is saying quite a lot!), done for a client named William Lumley (noooooooo relation according to ol' Brian).  It seems "The Diary" may not have been entirely fictional.  He also comes across a letter from his great uncle to pops, in which great-uncle (who, it seems, is the one who retrieved the amulet - from Yian-Ho) warning him to stay away from dark occult forces … then concluding that he'll probably delve into them anyway - "So be it - I would not keep a man from his destiny" signs off unc, rather uselessly.

Apparently, mom and pops headed out to the haunted house in Attica, NY, where Alonzo Typer met his doom, and encountered something there, under the house.  And did something with it, or tried to.  But exactly what is unclear.  But it appears it may have done something to the missus...

OJG heads off to nut-house where his mom lives, and confronts her with the facts of his parentage, before (apparently) murdering her by pouring poison down her throat till it comes out her nostrils, and leaves pools of black slime around the room somehow.  Nonetheless, OJG himself is nowhere to be found.

Except for its appealing sordidness, this is a less-than-great Lumley tale.  The sub-Derleth/Lovecraft tone of the writing strongly suggests that this was an early, rejected tale that Lum had lying around and kindly gave to this zine.  In any case it's rambling, confused, and frankly pretty silly.  Pass.

"Spaghetti"

by Brian Lumley

originally published Weirdbook, 21 Autumn, 1985

Our narrator has struck up a friendship, of sorts, with one Andrew Carter.  He doesn't entirely trust Carter (seems shady), and Carter seems to be scared of an old house that he's in the process of inheriting.

It seems that seven years ago, Andrew came to visit his old Uncle Arthur, a "queer old stick" who lived in a musty house full of old books and oddities.  It seems, too, he was alleged to have a fortune in gold stashed away in his place somewhere.  Oh, and he ate spaghetti all the time.

Anyway, Uncle up and disappeared seven years ago.  But Carter's been searching the house for the gold ever since.  He also has some obstacles, cause the house doesn't legally become his for two more weeks.  AND it's going to be demolished to make room for new construction.  He wants our narrator to help him tear the place up in search of gold, in exchange for which, he'll give him a cut.

Oh, and he still keeps finding strands of spaghetti around the place.  

So they go about tearing up the place, without a lot of luck.  The narrator does find a medallion with an octopoid figure on it, and a copy of the Dohl Chants, and tries figuring some of it out.  Particularly the part that appears to be a spell he thinks will help him locate the gold (which he intends to cheat Carter out of, natch). 

PS he too keeps finding strands of spaghetti around the house.

Long story short - narrator tries the spell with interesting results.  Unc's body turns up in a cisten in the attic, where Carter presumably dumped him. The strands of spaghetti were strips of his undead flesh (gross!!)  Unc comes back to life, EC-style. Narrator runs for it.

Ah, the Lum is at it again.  This little bon-bon is nothing special, but Lum's at his best when he's going for the gross and his tongue is planted in his cheek.  There's plenty of atmosphere and, while the "spaghetti" bit makes zero sense, there's a nice M.R. James-meets-EC comics feel to the conclusion.  It's light years beyond his early Mythos embarassments.