"The Black Mirror"

by John Glasby
originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer 1996

Philip Ashmore Smith is dead - burned alive.  He left behind a diary.  PAS was heavily into the occult and supernatural, haunting the bookshops in search of rare occult tomes.  And a Dr. Alexander Morton has taken an ornamental black mirror from Smith's room, without permission of the cops, and tossed it down a mine shaft.    Independently wealthy, world-travelling student of the occult, pursuing the usual suspects.  Collected occult tomes and built himself a little astronomical observatory in an outbuilding on his isolated property.

Mainly he's in pursuit of info from The Zegrembi Manuscript,  a passage of which mentions Cthugha, his minions the jinnee, a black mirror which can be used to summon them, but, if used wrongly, will pull in Cthugha himself, and certain astronomical conditions which will allow Cthugha to return to earth (I guess).

Smith is searching for that black mirror and how to use it.

In Exeter, Smith's investigations lead to an encounter with a mysterious bookshop owner who gives him a parchment that allows him to translate the necessary information.  He is troubled by dreams of dark voids and fiery spheres (effective).

Apparently Zegrembi (wizard) caused the Great Fire of London in 1666 by screwing up use of the black mirror.  Dr. Morton starts to worry about Smith's appearance and well-being.  Smith comes to believe the black mirror is somewhere near his home.  The bookshop owner seems to be stalking him.  Or is that a hallucination?

Surprise! Zegrembi used to live in that farmhouse!  And he caused a lot of trouble (people fleeing screaming across the moors, being pursued by flaming demons, weird sounds from the earth, etc.  Eventually the folks stormed the house and burned all his papers.  But of Zegrembi they found no trace.  Smith finds a drawing of Zegrembi stuck between two pages of a book, and realizes he looks just like the shopkeeper.  In the attic (a well-described scene) he finds to the location of the black mirror.  He finds it buried in the woods.

The poor bastard summons up a jinnee and gets toasted by it.

Very traditional, and very derivative, particularly of the Derleth/Lovecraft collabs.  And still, maybe because it's so traditional and predictable, I enjoyed it.  Glasby manages to echo Lovecraft while still retaining his own cool, British style.  Certainly nothing great, but a fun read all the same.

"The Keeper of Dark Point"

by John Glasby
originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer, 1996

It's the summer of 1936 and Stephen Delmore Ashton has disappeared.  And Martin, our narrator, has some ideas as to where.

Stephen came from an ancient British family, who owned a crumbling ancestral manor, not far from an abandoned lighthouse on the Cornish coast.   Martin met Ashton in college, where they shared an interest in "pre-human civilizations" (these dudes must have been popular!).  They remained in touch as Martin became a historian/auhor and Stephen traveled the world in search of rare and odd things.

One night Stephen turns up at Martin's place, not looking so well.  He is on the hunt for a certain rare book, and wants Martin to translate it for him.  They head out to the family manor for some spooky atmosphere, some creepy hints about Stephen's family history, and another long-winded explanation of the Cthulhu Mythos.  He also has a bad habit of staring off into the horizon, and Martin notices lights in the night sky, in the vicinity of the abandoned lighthouse.

The family manor is in ruins, having been burned down 10 years ago by neighbors freaked out about the Ashton's occult hobbies.  A trapdoor in the ruins leads to some underground chambers, where they find an ancient book, and a note from Stephen's mom.  It seems Steph's parents weren't mere followers but actual minions of the GOO.  "Do not fear what lives beneath the manor" it admonishes.  The letter points them to two rituals in the book (one is needlessly hidden) which need to be performed under certain celestial conditions.  

They head out to the lighthouse, which is also in bad shape.  Encountering some hideous wailing coming from behind a locked door, they open it, catching a glimpse of "something scaly and of a hideous green" before they haul ass out of there.

Stephen performs the ritual, which closes an extra-dimensional gate.  Many bizarre sights are seen, and Stephen himself is sucked away.  Martin admits that the critter in the lighthouse, which lived in a tunnel connecting the lighthouse to the manor, had the head of Stephen's mother.

Despite its somewhat goofy reveal, this isn't altogether half-bad.  It's a Lovecraft pastiche that heavily apes HPL's structural storytelling - a series of vaguely or un- related facts and incidents slowly coming together to reveal a supernatural terror.  The writing is somewhat Lovecraftian in style, too, though the adjectiveitis is under control, and Glasby doesn't have HPL's feverish passion.  He writes a cool, very British, old-fashioned spook story line.

All in all, hardly a great story but a very decent, traditional Lovecraft pastiche.