"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.

 

"Notebook Found In A Deserted House"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, May 1951

Poor Willie Osborn.  Orphaned at an early age and left in the care of an elderly grandmother out in the back-back-backwoods of New England (somewhere sort of near Arkham), he grew up hearing her spooky stories about creepy things that lived in the woods - especially what she calls them ones - mysterious and fearsome entities that live even farther back in the woods and hold weird ceremonies, especially at Halloween.

Well, granny up and shuffles off and Willie ends up living with his aunt and uncle who live ... even farther back in the woods - like, in them ones neighborhood.  

Aunt and Unc are nice enough, but Willie (who's a pretty smart kid) notices little details - like they lock the doors tight at night, and there's no animal life in the woods around their remote home.  One afternoon playing in those deserted woods, he hears something come stomping along, something that hangs around for a bit, allowing Willie, who's hiding and doesn't see it, to nonetheless smell it (bad!) and hear it chanting - something involving "Shub-Niggurath" and "shoggoth".  It leaves behind pools of slime and prints like giant hooves.  That night, Willie begins having dreams about the encounter in which he sees the creature as mass of ropy tentacles and mouths, shaped almost like a tree.

Aunt and Unc get a telegram via Cap, the mailman who comes up by horse and buggy once a week, saying that a cousin, Frank Osborne, is coming for a visit.  Lots of excitement.  But Unc rides into town ... and never comes back.  His horse and buggy eventually do, though.  The horse in a state of terror, the buggy empty.  Willie dreams of his Aunt being taken in the night by strange men.  The next morning, she's gone.

Frank shows up, all city-slicker condescension, and Willie soon spots him for an impostor.  And that he's trying to keep Willie from leaving.  Willie manages to escape with Cap, who believes what he's telling him and seems to know way more about the weird happenings in the wood than he's letting on.

Cap and Willie encounter a ropy gloop monster on the road, and the buggy gets turned over.  Cap and the horse get eaten.  Willie escapes into the woods and finds a clearing where cultists are sacrificing cattle, and people.  The ropy horror from his dreams is also in attendance.  Willie runs away, back to the cabin, barricades himself in, and starts writing down the whole experience.  But even as he's writing, he can hear "Cousin Frank" and others, some less-than-human sounding, talking outside and preparing to break in...

Woo hoo!  I've given old Bob Bloch a bit of a hard time about his early, amateurish Cthulhu'd tales, but his few later ones are pretty great.  Even Ramsey Campbell cited "Notebook" as one of the scariest Lovecraft-influenced tales and man, he is right.  I remember first reading it in daylight on a bright spring day, and read it today sitting on my front porch on a bright October day and it still packs the chill.

It works, I think, because like Davis Grubb' Night of the Hunter, or Alan Moore's "Kamara" stories in his 80's run on Swamp Thing, it is a child's nightmare.  Bloch remembers how scary the world is when you're a kid, and the nagging fear that the grown-ups may not be able to protect you - or worse - may be out to harm you themselves.  Being told straight from a young boy's P.O.V. and in his own words - but a young boy - not a stupid one - the language is simple enough that this could almost be a children's story.  A particularly sinister one.  

It's not perfect.  The next to last line is either a dumb joke (Bloch was prone to injecting humor into his stories), or is just dumb.  But its not enough to dispel the darkness of this one.  The very last line is one of those "the narrator writes out his last words just as the monster eats him" sort of moments but in this case I think Bloch (a) pulls it off and (b) it makes sense and is believable in the overall context of the story.  So we have a winner here.

"The Fane of the Black Pharoah"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, December 1937

Captain Cartaret is a retired military old boy don't you know who got bitten by the archaeology bug ... and the occult bug ... during his military years in Mesopotamia.  Said bug led him to Egypt, and the Necronomicon, and De Vermis Mysteriis.  

Of particular interest, the "black pharoah" Nephren-Ka, a worshipper of Nyarlathotep who ended up getting himself deposed and struck from the history books.  The reputable ones, anyway.

It seems on top of being in general a Nyarlathotep-worshipping scumbag, Neph had the gift of prophecy and is said to have painted a mural depicting centuries into (his) future on the walls of the tomb where he was buried alive.  Also there are said to be surviving cultists carrying on his legacy, even to modern times.

Well sir, some Egyptian fellow has shown up at Carteret's door tonight, offering to lead him to Neph's hidden tomb.  For free.  His reason: that Carteret's viewing the tomb is prophesied.  Cartertet thinks the whole thing's as fishy as the delivery dock of a Red Lobster restaurant but hell, he can't pass this up.  So he follows his visitor to the tomb, which is plenty creepy.  The mural is there, just as predicted.  And indeed it depicts a figure in Carteret's likeness viewing the tomb.  And it depicts the priest who led him there knifing him as a human sacrifice.  And lo and behold, that comes true, too.

No doubt Bloch had come a long way as a writer in a few short years when this one appeared.  Nevertheless, its ultimately and EC-type ironic shock ending tale with a touch of Lovecraftiness for seasoning.

"The Dunwich Horror"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published Weird Tales, April, 1929

Dunwich, MA is a little shithole full of inbred dopes, amongst them the Whateleys - Lavinia, an uneducated albino and her nutzoid pops, who's name is apparently "Old", and who is generally believed to be involved in black sorcery, Trump rallies not having been invented yet.

Things get weird when Lavinia up and has a baby, with no dad in sight.  Despite the fact that no dude in Dunwich (even) would touch her with a 10 foot pole, this is largely shrugged off.  Old makes some strange pronouncements about the mysteriously absent sperm donor while hanging around the cracker barrel.  

Old raises the offspring, innocuously named "Wilbur", in the Dark Arts, educating him out of some decrepit books and fragments of books he has collected (and we all know what those are, right kiddies?).  Meanwhile he and the kid embark on major renovation projects around their crummy farmhouse, and keep buying up cattle (which are never seen again).  Wilbur himself grows at an alarming rate - which is understating the case (he's basically adult-sized by age 10 or so) and is a less-than appealing character - with a face like a goat and a personality to match (actually goats are friendly but so what, it sounded good when I wrote it).

Old passes on, and Lavinia disappears (yeah, right) while Wilbur just keeps on growing.  He also keeps doing research to fill gaps in his knowledge from the battered and incomplete books Gramps left him.  Said researches take him on a trip to Miskatonic U library, where his attention to The Necronomicon creeps out head librarian Henry Armitage.  

Henry's even more creeped out by what happens next - Willie-boy breaks in one night to steal the Necro, and is killed by a watchdog, which, in the process of mauling him, rips off his clothes.  Armitage, and two colleagues, Profs Rice and Morgan, get a good gander at a nekkid Wilbur W, and it ain't pretty!  From the waist down he's a dinosaur-legged, eyeballed, built-in-tentacled-skirted nasty.  His bod conveniently melts into a pool of goo before disappearing, thus saving the janitor some particularly unpleasant work.

Now that Wille-boy's dead and gone, the invisible monster he's been keeping in the farmhouse (for such is the case), breaks out and goes running all over Dunwich stomping cattle and, eventually, people. Finally Armitage, Rice and Morgan arrive and use magic they've learned from the rare books collection to destroy the beastie, though not before revealing it as a tentacled multi-legged whatsit with an apparently humanoid face on it.  Now that's gone, Armitage drops the bomb - the monster was Wilbur's twin brother, and closer in nature to the dad than Wilbur was.

Here we have another of HPL's most celebrated tales.  And again, rightly so.  This was the first of his longer works I ever read, again, back in 7th grade, and I was pretty well blown away by it.  It still holds up for me after all this time.  Its one of HPL's most disciplined pieces of writing.  He'd shed most of his worst habits and the story is very tautly told.  Even the long intro, which is entirely about the background and history of Dunwich and the area is controlled, makes perfect sense, and enhances the story.  Everything works and every hair is in place.  The buildup is one long tower of mood in the making, the revelation of Wilbur's true nature still has as kick to it, and the monstrous finale doesn't hold back.  

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

 

by H.P. Lovecraft

originally published Visionary Press, 1936

Our Narrator, a hapless geek, decides to celebrate his "coming of age" by taking a sightseeing tour of New England  (I don't know about you but the sightseeing I did on my "coming of age" involved the bottom of a beer glass and the sight of the lovely G.O - but HPL had far more scruples than I).

After hearing some vague and unsavory legends about Innsmouth in Newburyport, his interest is piqued in Innsmouth (I told you this guy was a geek) and he starts nosing around, hearing some strange tales, mostly from a colorful old geezer at the train station, who enlightens him about a 2x a day bus to and from Innsmouth, which hardly anyone is willing to ride.  He soon finds out why cuz the driver and few passengers are icky-looking and smell like fish.  

After picking the brain of a disgruntled grocery boy, O.N. winds up plying ancient town drunk Zadok Allen with whiskey in order to get the backstory on Innsmouth.  Despite his thick phoneticized accent, Zadok is pretty sharp for a really old drunk (I suppose HPL never actually talked to too many decrepit alcoholics).  

Per Zadok, less than 100 years back, a merchant ship captain named Obed Marsh made contact with some South Sea islanders and adopted their debased religion, which centered around weird sea gods but was known to have some big advantages over Christianity, namely prayers were reliably answered.   Obed started up a church in the town which offered up human sacrifices in exchange for awesome fishing hauls and spectacular gold jewelry. 

This didn't sit all that well with the locals, who arrested Obed and his fellow cultists.  This led to retaliation from the cult's benefactors, a community of Deep Ones who raid the town, killing about half the inhabitants and subjugating the rest, forcing them to breed with Deep Ones, producing half-breed offspring who start life as fairly normal human, then gradually transform into Deep Ones.  What's more, the local Deepies have a long-range plan to dominate the rest of the surface world.  "Ever hear of a shoggoth?" Zadok asks.  But before he can explain, he shrieks that he's been seen and heard, and tells O.N. to get the heck out of Innsmouth ASAP.  Next thing you know, Zadok's gone - never to be seen again. 

O.N. tries to head for home, but the bus is broken down, and he has no choice but to stay at the local fleabag.  As he's trying to maybe grab some Z's, he hears somebodies trying to get into his room.  He flees through the hotel and a window, and makes his way through the streets, pursued by locals and later, he sees, hordes of Deep Ones swimming in from the sea.  He manages to make it to some railroad tracks leading outside of town.  Hiding in the brush, he gets a good look at the full-on Deep Ones and passes out.  

Apparently he hid successfully, because he wakes up unmolested and makes his way back to Arkham, where he reports the whole experience.  This leads to a hushed-up federal raid on Innsmouth which ends up with many of the half-breed citizenry incarcerated or killed, buildings being blown up, and something being torpedoed off the coast.  The press makes out it was over bootlegging but WE know different, heh heh heh...

O.N. goes back to school like a good boy and tries to pretend his little side trip never happened.  But, he soon discovers that he himself is descended from Innsmouth stock.  First he is horrified, but, as the story ends, he has come to embrace his unhuman heritage, and looks forward to joining his brethren...

Whoo!  This is one of HPL's most famous and celebrated stories and its easy to see why.  This is perhaps the third/fourth time I've read it over the last (shudder ... ) nearly 40 years and never fails to kick in, despite familiarity and the dilution of the premise through years of bad Innsmouth knock-offs (last time I looked there's what - at least three Innsmouth-based collections out there).  

It is not flawless.  HPL felt he couldn't write action sequences effectively, while deCamp claimed the chase scene at the end is effective.  I'm somewhere in between.  it is effective, but it also reads very clinically, as if the narrator were carefully and meticulously planning every move, describing every turn and detour with more detail than you can get out of a Google Maps trip planner.  Seriously, if you were trying to get outta town while a bunch of fish-people were after you, would you stop and consider everything so carefully.  P.S. yes I'm aware this is supposed to be the narrator describing his experiences long after the fact, but I still think a more terse description would have worked better.

He still hadn't quite gotten over a few other bad habits: it takes nearly four paragraphs of "Arrgghh! It was so horrible I can't describe it but I'll try!" before he finally breaks down and gives us a word-pic of the fully-developed Deep Ones.  On the other hand, said description is nice and straightforward and terse (by HPL) standards (I guess he figured fish-men were easier to visualize than the weirdies that would take up multiple paragraphs or pages later on).  

But the very very good outweighs the minimal bad.  This is a terrific, even gripping read, full of atmosphere (Derleth called it "brooding", and that fits) and doom.  The final paragraph, which could have been corny or silly in lesser hands, remains chilling.  It's always nice when you come across a classic that really is classic.

"The Testament of Atthamaus"

by Clark Ashton Smith 

originally published Weird Tales, October 1932

Atthamaus, the former executioner of the city of Commoriom, tells us how that city came to be abandoned by its citizens.

A particularly dangerous outlaw called Knygathin Zhaum has been menacing the countryside, leading a band of hairy Voormis in raids that involve not merely theft and murder but rape and "anthropophagism" (that's cannibalism to the uninitiated).  Even worse, its said that he is somehow related to the black god Tsathoggua.  Blech!

Anyway, Knygathin is captured and brought to the city.  He turns out to be completely hairless, but with patterned skin like a snake.  There's also a subtle sense of bonelessness or some such to his appearance, which Atthamaus finds particularly repulsive.

Well the big day comes and Atthamaus cuts off Kny's head - which spills not blood but a bit of black ooze, and reveals no normal bone structure.  Nevertheless he's dead.

Or is he?  The next morning, Kny is up and around town, and he eats a merchant whole for breakfast!  In front of witnesses!  

Well, Kny is promptly recaptured and the Hyperborean equivalent of double indemnity laws are set aside so he can get a second beheading.  He is buried again in a more extreme arrangement, but again the next AM he's back, eating one of the judges who sentenced him.

Realizing this is a bad scene, people start to leave town.  Kny is captured and beheaded again, his bod sealed in a sarcophagus and his head separated and placed under guard.  But that night a liquid gloop monster ("a dark, ever-swelling mass of incognizable matter, frothing as with the venomous foam of a million serpents, hissing as with the yeast of fermenting wine, and putting forth here and there great sooty-looking bubbles that were large as pig-bladders. Overturning several of the torches, it rolled in an inundating wave across the flagstones and we all sprang back in the most abominable fright and stupefaction to avoid it." - jeezus I'd have leaped back too!)

The gloop reunites with the head and Knygathin Zhaum is out of traction/back in action once again.  And he proceeds to eat some more people.  There's a mass exodus from the city and, realizing it is impossible to defeat Kny, Atthamaus joins the fleeing crowds...

Again, a synopsis doesn't quite do this justice.  You have to read Smith's acidicly flowery prose to really get the full experience.  The story is dark and suspenseful and gruesome - and also funny as hell.  Classic C.A. Smith.

"Ubbo-Sathla"

by Clark Ashton Smith
originally published Weird Tales, July 1933

Paul Tregardis, an anthropologist and amateur occultist, with a considerable grounding in The Necronomicon and The Book of Eibon, is killing some time in a musty little antiques shop when he comes across an odd crystal sphere. Unable to learn more about it ("The dealer gave an indescribable, simultaneous shrug of his shoulders and his eye-brows." - I do wish I could visualize that), and believing that it just might be a fabled crystal once in the possession of a Hyperborean sorcerer named Zon Mezzamalech, Tregardis gives in, buys the thing, takes it home, and stares into it (hey - they didn't have TV in `33).

He enters into a fugue state in which his consciousness becomes one with Zon Mezzamalech (what - you didn't expect that Tregardis was going to be correct in his surmise?  How many of these stories have you read?).  It seems Zon had sought some tablets inscribed by the eldest, lost gods of the universe, containing secrets powerful beyond imagining.  These tablets are hidden, guarded by the "idiotic demiurge" Ubbo-Sathla, and only the crystal can locate them.

Tregardis is unsettled by his visions and experiences from the crystal gazing, and vows not to do it again.  Ha!  Of course he goes right back to it.  He views/experiences past lives stretching back to Hyperborea, and beyond, even into pre-human times.  Finally, he comes face-to-face with ol' Ubbo hisself:

"Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. "

Now a formless, pre-human, pre-mammal, pre-dinosaur blob of glop, what once had been Zon Mezzamalech/Paul Tregardis crawls over the tablets, unable to read or do anything with them.  

Back in London, Tregardis is nowhere to be found....

Woo! What a tale.
Actually, for all my sarcasm, "Ubbo-Sathla" has always been something of a fave of mine.  A synopsis may make it sound very slight, and it has a lot in common with Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos", another fave.  But a synopsis doesn't give the purple poetic power of C.A. Smith it's due.  It had to be read to be appreciated.  Like all of Smith's best stuff, "Ubbo" casts an unearthly spell that's hard to dismiss.