"The Last Feast of Harlequin"

by Thomas Ligotti
originally published The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1990

Our narrator (in proper Lovecraft pastiche tradition, unnamed) is a social anthropologist  whos special area of study is clowns.  Or he just has a clown fetish.  I'm going with that one.  

Through a colleague, he hears of a remote town called Mirocaw, in an unnamed state, which hosts an annual festival which includes clowns.  So he rushes off to Mirocaw.  

In typical Liggotti fashion, the town is weird and the people are weirder, and unfriendly, and unhelpful.  But he does learn there is a festival being held in late December, and it does indeed involve clowns.

He also comes across an article with some details about the town and its festival traditions.  Written by one Dr. Raymond Thoss, our narrator's favorite teacher from college.  Who apparently sort of quietly disappeared some years ago.  What's more, UN realizes that an old man who ignored him in a particularly run-down part of Mirocaw appeared to be a greatly aged Dr. Thoss.

UN makes his way back to Mirocaw in time for fest.  He attempts again to communicate with Dr. Thoss, but instead finds himself intimidated by a horde of zombie-ish goons who surround the good doc, and he's forced to flee.  

He discovers that, yes, there are clowns roaming the streets, and the locals seem to be harassing and bullying them.  He soon learns this is part of the tradition.  He also learns there's more than one type of clown - fairly traditional ones in bright colors, and drab, scary clown-bums who apparently emerge from the ghetto section, and whom townsfolk seem to avoid.

In an attempt to learn more, UN dresses himself as a rundown clown and joins the ghetto bunch.  They are picked up by a series of trucks and driven outside of town.  Still milling with the throng, he finds himself in an underground chamber, and takes part in a sinister ceremony led by Dr. Thoss, who he has realized or decided is an incarnation of the Egyptian god Thoth.  As the ceremony continues, people keep dropping to the floor and transforming into giant worm-people.  Horrified, UN flees and makes his way back home.  But even there he realizes he is one of these people, and will one day return.

This was Liggotti's breakthrough, I think.  It's considered an important example of Liggotti-ism and has been republished more than once.  

I've noted elsewhere I'm not as besotted with Liggotti as a lot of HPL fans are.  I guess you could say I find him a bit suspect.  Here, as is usually the case with Liggotti, the atmosphere is terrific and, yes, very Lovecraftian, recalling both HPL's early, Poe-influenced stories (c.f. "The Festival", which may have helped inspire this) and his mature works.  The sense of unease, that our narrator is about to get himself into something very, very bad is there from word one and only builds as the story wends its leisurely way along.  

On the other hand, after awhile, the surrealism begins to pall.  Too many unexplained oddnesses.  Too much "is the world getting weird or is the narrator nuts?" business.  And the revelation that people are transforming themselves into worm-people seems more silly than shocking.  I often get the sense that Liggotti's pulling our legs.  Especially here.  

I realize writing this exactly what my prob is with Liggotti - he's Superman when it comes to atmosphere but stinks at plots and stories.  Thus his tales read more like someone's transcribed and embellished nightmare than any kind of logical narrative.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it not necessarily a really good one either.

"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.

"Nethescurial"

by Thomas Ligotti
originally published Weird Tales, Winter 1991/1992

A devotee of weird tales finds an obscure manuscript which relates such a tale - of an island-dwelling cult that discovered their deity was actually a thing of evil, and of how one member broke up their sacred idol and scattered it around the world, and how their island was renamed Nethescurial.

He is plagued by dreams about Nethescurial, and the cult, and their island, and their god.  And he comes to realize these are not just dreams.

Ligotti again.  If, like many horror fans, you think he's the cat's pajamas, then this tale may make you swoon.  If, like me, you think he's talented, an evocative and effective writer, but a bit of a one-note johnny, it may not do much for you.

"The Sect of the Idiot"

by Thomas Ligotti

Published Crypt of Cthulhu 1988

Thomas Ligotti is a Michigan-based horror fiction author who's gained quite a rep since the 80's for his Lovecraft-influenced fiction, and for espousing a "life-is-meaningless-shit" philosophy that seems to make the current crop of Lovecraft fanboys swoon. 

Unfortunately, Ligotti's stories often start with a nice build-up, impressive atmosphere - and no payoff.  I liked his first collection, Songs Of A Dead Dreamer pretty well, but the follow-ups Grimscribe and Noctuary left me cold. 

He is, nonetheless, an effective writer whose work does indeed evoke HPL, especially very early HPL pieces such as "The Festival" and "The Nameless City".  

A lot of Ligotti's stories have Lovecraft-influenced themes, settings and ideas, but a few of them explicitly reference Lovecraftian ideas.  This story (which kicks off with an epigram from The Necronomicon, about Azathoth) is the most oft-reprinted of them.

A nameless narrator is vacationing in an unknown city which he will not identify.  He is very fond of this city, and of the view from his rented room (surprising, since he hates his very existence).  One late afternoon, a stranger knocks on his door.  The stranger acts strangely, compliments the narrator on his view, and leaves.

That night, the narrator has a strange dream in which he enters a room in which a number of robed figures are seated.  The shapes of the bodies under the robes, and the way they move, suggests that these are not human beings.  Finally they reveal themselves to have, instead of hands, tentacled, talon-like appendages which they seem to communicate with.

The next day, the narrator is plagued by the feeling that some great terror or malignancy is hiding behind the city's pleasant facade.  After wandering around feeling antsy all day, he enters what appears to be a dilapidated, abandoned building.  There he finds the odd chairs that the robed figures sat in in his dream.  As he investigates the chairs, he finds them oddly-constructed and not right for human backs and buns.  In fact, instead of a seat, each chair contains a cube of strange water or liquid (may I be forgiven for thinking that these sound like toilets?).

The stranger from the previous day comes and takes the narrator's hand.  The narrator pulls away and flees.  On his way back to his rooms, people seem to react strangely to him.  He discovers that his hand has become a tentacled claw like those of the creatures in his dream.

As I said, this story is very evocative, stylistically, of Lovecraft's very early stories.  The dream sequence is quite vivid and effective.  In many ways, it's all mood.  It is not a great story (and I am not sold on Ligotti), but it is interesting and memorable.