"Stay Off The Moon" by Raymond F. Jones

 

originally published Amazing Stories, December, 1962

Tidbit: back in the Spring of `83, Twilight Zone magazine ran a two-part article called "The Fantasy Five-Foot Bookshelf", a collection of annotated lists of significant works of horror and fantasy, put together by Thomas M. Disch, Karl Edward Wagner, and some dude named R.S. Hadji who no one ever heard of before or since - some have speculated that he might not even have been a real person but a pseudonym of some famously type, or even of Wagner/Disch or editor T.E.D. Klein himself.  The lists were interesting as hell and have revealed themselves over the years to be mostly complete bullshit (Wagner particularly used this as an opportunity to plug some okay-to-outright losuy obscurities that he himself dug).  Also tacked onto this list were a couple from T.E.D. Klein including the "13 Scariest Stories Ever" (or some such).  Most of those were well-known to me even at the time and now, having read all of them (and lots more) I would say that if Klein's choices weren't necessarily THE 13 scariest, they were all good, scary stories.  One that eluded me, however, was "Stay Off The Moon" by Raymond F. Jones, which, it seems, has never been collected in anthology or collection of Jones' stories, for reasons unknown.  It has recently been reprinted in Black Cat magazine, and in a print-on-demand you can get from Amazon, or if you're just a cheap bastard like me you can get it on Gutenberg or Internet Archive, so Jones' story is no longer difficult to find - yay!

Now let's talk about what it's doing here, because I do try really hard to keep content on this blog explicitly linked to HPL and his milieu, and avoid things that are simply thematically simpatico with all things Lovecraftian.  But I also allow myself to break my own rules, being as its my f'ing blog and I'll post about what I please, and anyway while "Stay Off" contains no Lovecraftian tropes or anything of the kind, it is more than thematically simpatico with all things Lovecraftian.  It's totally Lovecraftian, intentionally or not, regardless of whether Raymond F. Jones, who was mostly known for fairly hard SF/space opera, ever even heard of The Necromomicon or gave a damn if he did.  This sits cheek by tentacle with Cthulhu stories as surely as hot dogs sit next to Italian sausage, even if they do get stocked in separate parts of the grocery store, and once you read the story (or if you're a lazy pig, this totally spoiler-full synopsis, you will agree.

(And if, anyone out there chooses to disagree, in the spirit of being contrary, you can drown yourself in a swimming pool full of deep ones for all I care because this is my blog and therefore I am right about everything, at all times!)

Okay, so here we are and it's 1962, and James Cochran, super-brilliant chemist now working on the Apollo program at NASA has himself and awesome new toy - a robotic portable laboratory/probe that's been landed on the moon which, controlled from earth, can drill up samples of moon stuff and send chemical analysis back to Earth.  Cool huh?  Oh and it's called The Prospector.

Also BTW, James' brother-in-law is Allan Wright, who is now an astronaut slated to be one of the first men to land on the moon and boy is Allan ever excited.  Also BTW James has a boss named Hennesy who happens to be a mega-dick and expects James to produce results that only support the glorious moon project which will make the Universe Safe For Truth, Justice, and the Amurrican Way, goddamit, so he better not undermine any of the plans with any namby-pamby pinko commie scientific stuff, get it?

So Jim scoops up some samples of moon crud and runs analyses on them, and ... hmmm ... those analyses don't make sense.  Moon crud seems to be calcium, sodium, and silica.  But it's  not - not exactly.  WTF?  And what does this mean? Well it means "the moon has come from somewhere else, from a region of space where atoms and electrons are not even the same as atoms and electrons here ... somewhere so far away its beyond the edge of space as we know it!" - as Jim explains in a late-night call to his friend.

Much debate ensues as to who to tell, and what about the possibility that moondust may be toxic, lethal.  VERY toxic and lethal?  Well, NASA ain't too happy about his findings, but they can find a way that will probably protect astronauts from getting contamined by extra-toxic moondust.  As to the idea that the moon comes from "somewhere else" ... well that really doesn't sit too well, even though Jim's data is solid enough to make it tough to label him a  crackpot.

Meanwhile, Jim keeps drilling into the moon.  And next he comes up with evidence of ... life.  Something alive, five hundred feet below the surface of the moon.  Again, Jim questions his findings, tests his findings, and his finding is that his findings are accurate.  Unquestionable. What he's drilled up is living tissue.  He tries moving the Prospector 100 feet away and drilling again.  And hits an even larger concentration of tissue.  And when he makes a reading of that, what he gets back bears an uncanny resemblance to an EEG reading .... brain-wave patterns.

Time to call in his old college buddy, Tom Banning, who just happens to be a scientist studying the human brain, and an expert in EEG's.  Tom concurs - it looks like an EEG.  Jim has another idea.  It seems Tom has been able to take the EEG waves of one person and apply them to the brain of another, allowing the receiver to understand some of the thoughts of the individual from whom the EEG waves were taken.  Tom's game, so they try it, on Jim:

Like a fearful, billowing blackness rising out of the depths of Hell itself, it washed over him.  It sucked at his very soul, corroding, destroying, a wind of darkness where the very concept of light was unknown ... He sensed that out of some far reach of space, where time and dimension were not the same, the thing had acquired an eternal nature of a kind that knew no birth and could experience no death in the dimensions of man.  He sensed that its nature and purpose were pure destruction, of life in any form ... life and it could not exist in the same universe.

Umm, yeah.  Bottom line - there's something on the moon, that's alive, and it's fucked up. 

Jim decides to make one more try, another 100 feet away.  He also tries to communicate with the heads of NASA, who won't give him the time of day.  He gets a look via the Prospector's cameras at a black shape that he recognizes all too well, and crashes the Prospector, causing Hennesy to fire him.

Jim goes to the newsmen he's come to know through the program and convinces them of his findings, stating that the moon project must be shut down.  Whatever it is that's on the moon - and for all intents and purposes, is the moon, is something that's been dormant for ages, eons, but is now awake.  And not happy.  And it can come here.  And Earth has no weapon that could stop it.  They believe him, but the powers-that-be kill the story, and Jim is officially labeled a crackpot.  His brother-in-law Allan, pissed that Jim might screw up his big chance to be the first man on the moon, tells him never to contact him again.

Jim and his wife move to the Canadian wilderness and try to make a new life off the grid.  They listen to the radio broadcast of the moon landing, and get to hear Allan killed.  The President tells the world it was an accident.  Jim follows scientific reports of changes to the moon. He konws the thing on the moon is coming....

Like a lot of 50's/early 60's sci-fi, this story is mainly about ideas rather than incidents.  There's no action or running around, characterization is kept to a minimum (but still present and effectively done).  The only real incidents are Jim digging up some samples and analyzing them, and the real story is what he thinks and learns from his findings.  In that sense it's not so different from, say, "The Call of Cthulhu", which is also mostly about the protagonist learning things and collecting dots, and its those things he learns and connects that are the scary part.  Jones story is drier - Lovecraft was canny enough to throw in a scene with some depraved cultists in a swamp and a face-to-face with old tentacle puss hisself, but Jones is playing a more subtle game.  

I dunno if it's one of the scariest stories ever but its definitely a creepy one and a successful merger of typical hard 50's sci-fi with Lovecraftian creepella.  And although as I said I have no idea how familiar Jones might have been with HPL, this story sure makes me think such a merger was exactly what he intended - Jim's vision while beein EEG'd seems like it could have come straight from "The Music of Erich Zann".  Anyhoo this one's well worth seeking out.

"The Moon Lens" -

By Ramsey Campbell

Originally published The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, Arkham House, 1964 

Dr. James Linwood is farting around his Mercy Hill Hospital office at midnight, apparently not quite sure what to do with himself, since he clearly has no life.  He decides it will be fun to work on the speech he's going to be giving at a convention soon, advocating for what we now call "physician-assissted suicide", when there's a knock at the door.

His visitor is bundled-up like The Elephant Man and has a simple request - he wants Doc Linwood to kill him.  Well, needless to say the Doc isn't so keen on that idea and insteads triest to talk to him.  

Well, it seems his visitor aka Roy Leakey had a bad experience not long ago.  He got caught in Goatswood, a shithole town in the middle of nowhere, when the next train out was cancelled.  So he took a room at a hotel for the night.  He didn't like the town much - everyone wore baggy clothes and gloves and had faces like goats.  Not to mention his hotel room had a framed photo of a weird-ass monster in it!  Oh and there's a weird pylon in the center of town with a lens and mirrors on the top which no one would explain to him.

Anyway as the sun went down, townsfolk started milling around in the street, and Leakey found himself locked in his room, while a voice from the other side of the locked door lectured him on goat-related arcana.  The folks in the street started chanting and generally weirding out, and finally a beam of moonlight from the lens to a nearby hill caused a door to open in said hill, and a weird-ass monster - yes, the same one as in the photo, emerged and started heading straight for the hotel!  Leakey tried to escape but fell right into the weirdie's "grasp", and carried into the hillside, whence he managed to make his escape.  And it changed him.  In some way he can't describe.  But Doc Linwood's seen it all, and urges Leakey to let him examine him.  

Wel, oops!  Cuz moments later a colleague comes to chat with him, just in time to see someone fleeing the room - someone with a birdlike claw instead of a hand - and finds Doc Linwood insane and screaming on the floor.

This pretty minor, pulpy Campbell and the abrupt shift into flashback is jarring and doesn't really come off.  But like most of the stories in this collection there are hints of the writer Campbell will become, here in particular in the sinister town who's unfriendly and plain weird inhabitants are delineated by the narrator's small observations.  

"The Render of the Veils"

by Ramsey Campbell

Originally published The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, Arkham House, 1964 

Kevin Gillson is catching a cab to Brichester on a dark and stormy night when another passenger shows up, and Gillson offers to share his ride.

Gillson pulls out a paperback he just picked up about witchcraft, so the extra passenger, who turns out to be Henry Fisher, and it seems Mssr Fisher has some experience witch witchcraft.  Real witchcraft, not these silly kids running around naked in pentagrams.  Oh yeah, sez Gillson?  It turns out he's looked through The Necronomicon, but Fisher sez fuck that shit, The Revelations of Glaaki is the Real Deal.  And y'know, he's gonna do a ritual tonight that will reveal the True Nature of Reality, something they've also been discussing, and would Gillson like to accompany him?

Well, like a proper practical, clear-headed modern guy, Gillson sez Hell Yeah!  and the next thing they're off to Fisher's place.

One wonders what the cab driver made of that whole conversation...

Back at Fisher's place he's got a weird-ass sculpture in the middle of the room that Gillman can't quite wrap his head around; it seems to even change shape and size at random.  Fisher explains that it's an image of Daoloth, The Render of the Veils, who they'll be inviting over this very night to show them the True Nature of Reality.  Should be a fun evening!

So they do the ritual (recorded on an audio tape for good measure).  And it works - perhaps too well - after becoming aware of presences in the room (one of them draws blood from Gillson's mouth - blech!), things get truly weird.  And when the lights go out, things get weird.  And apparently weirder when they go back on.  The coppers find Gillson murdered and Fisher having tossed himself out a window to his death.

 This isn't any great work but it does have some areas of interest, particularly in that it's Campbell's fisrt published attempt to stop imitating Lovecraft and find his own voice.  It's written in clear, straightforward unadorned prose with some hints of Campbell's later style sprinkled in.  It also pushes a more metaphysical slant than your typical Lovecraft pastiche - the seeking of mystical knowledge verus the usual Lovecraftian motivations.  Even if the end circles back to standard pulp horror.

 

"The Nameless Offspring"

by Clark Ashton Smith

 originally published Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, June 1932 

30 years ago Lady Agatha Tremoth pulled a Madeline Usher.  It seems she suffered from catalepsy but this time she was really a goner.  So her hubby John stuck her in the family tomb.  Oops!  A short time later she was wide awake and screaming.  And somehow had gotten the heavy coffin lid off of her, a neat trick since she was skinny and frail ... hmmm.  Anyway she kept claiming to have woken up to find something white and inhuman staring her in the face.  Well no one takes that too seriously.  But nine months later she dies giving birth to something distinctly not human.  And Sir John, so the story goes, locked it away in an iron-barred room in his manor and became a complete recluse.

Lo these 30 years later Henry Chaldane, son of Arthur, an old school friend of Sir John's, is making a motorcycle tour through England and gets caught in a pea-soup fog.  Stopping for directions and/or help, he comes across - surprise!  Tremoth Manor.  Henry is welcomed by Harper, Sir John's one remaining servant, and Sir John himself, who insists he spend the night, even though he must forgive the inhospitable nature of his house.  While being led to his room, Henry passes the infamous locked door, and hears something inside cut loose with a horrible scream. 

Henry spends a pretty sleepless night, listening to the thing in the locked room clawing at the walls.  He's also troubled by the fact that he saw Harper carrying what appeared to be putrescent meat up to feed it.  And by Sir John letting out with a loud groan during the wee hours.

Well Harper wakes Henry up late the next morning.  It seems Sir John snuffed it during the night.  He left some very specific instructions that he be cremated on a funeral pyre on the estate.  And Harper is to watch over him until that time.  So Henry volunteers to head into town and scare up some help for tomorrow.

Back at the manor, Harper asks Henry to sit up with him next to Sir John's corpse, to which he reluctanrly agrees.  But that thing is clawing at the wall again and before you can say "Abdul Alhzared" it's torn its way in - he gets only a glimpse of something white with canine fangs and clawed hands that goes on all fours - and then it's on Sir John, getting shot in the process and knocking over candles, thus starting a blaze.  So Henry gets Harper out and the two follow the clawed footprints from the house to the family crypt, wherein they lost track of whatever it was.

Man this thing's gothic with a capital "G".  And a lot of fun.  A very dark old house Poe mystery with a does of Lovecraftian ghoul-grue thrown in for good measure.  Hardly a classic but like I said, a lot of fun.

"Bells of Horror"

by Henry Kuttner 

Originally published  Strange Stories, April 1939  

Ross is the secretary of the California Historical Society, and he gets an excited call one day from the society prez, Arthur Todd.  It seems they've found the long-missing bells of Mission San Xavier stuffed away in a cave.  

But these bells have a funky backstory.  It seems they were cast with the help of some native american magic, courtesy of the Mutsune tribe, and it is warned if the bells are rung it will bring "the terror of the night".  Well, fuck these native superstitions.  And fuck the fact that the local Mexicans won't get get the third bell out of the cave.   Will Ross come and help?  Sure!

But Ross finds a local Mexican kid who will give him directions but not guide him.  The kid's scared.  So Ross has to hike most of the way.  Along the trail he encounters a big toad that's somehow managed to knock one of its own eyes out on a rock.  Suddenly Ross is rubbing his own burning eyes way too hard.  

Ross arrives at the cabin just in time for a workman who's apparently gouged out his own eyes to come running out screaming and die in front of Arthur and Denton, Arthur's #2 guy.  It seems everyone's having trouble with their eyes burning so bad it's driving them insane.  They've also found a cylinder with a parchement inside.  It's a signed account by Junipero Serra requestin the bells be sent to Rome, noting that when they were rung, a demon called Zu-che-quon was released and caused all kinds of trouble.  They head out to the cave only to find Sarto, the guy they left in charge has hung the bells by a rope from some trees.  Startled by their arrival he drops the rope and gets his head bashed in by one of the falling bells.

Back in civilization the bells are scheduled to be hung.  Denton has found some correspondences to the bell legends in The Book of Iod.  But c'mon, no one believes this superstitious crap, right?  All the same, its getting really cold out.  And there's an earthquake.  But none of this will stop the bells being hung at San Xavier!

The bells are rung - and everything plunges into darkness.  And another quake.  Everyone starts to freak out.  Denton leads Ross into the museum, but a voice in his head is urging him to put out his eyes and the burning sensation is overwhelming.  Then Denton's trying to put his eyes out.  Suddenly the shaking lessens and the darkness begins to lift.  One of the bells has been silenced.

But, the curse of Zu-Che-Quon is not so easily dismissed.  Not long after, Denton is found dead with his eyes gouged out.

This is an average pulp horror story with some decidedly unpleasant elements.  Nothing special but by now Kuttner had left imitation behind and had his own voice and interests.

"The Room in the Castle"

by Ramsey Campbell     

Originally published The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, Arkham House, 1964

Parry is on a mission of mercy for his Buddy Scott, to look up some totally boring historical info at the British Museum.  Since he has to wait for his books and Harry Potter hasn't been invented yet, he decides to kill some time browsing their copy of The Necronomicon.

Well after freaking himself out a bit, he gets the books he came there for and starts making his notes.  But he begins to notice some stuff in the local legends that recalls some of the things he'd been reading earlier.  Specifically a centuries-old account of a haunted area of the woods near Brichester, where weird drumming and cries and roars are heard, and one local yokel apparently fell under the spell of a one-eyed puple people eater.  Allegedly a Sir Gilbert Morley, who was prone to "dark practices" came and took purple people eater away.

Along the way to Scott's place, he discovers a lot of the yokels still believe in something called "The Toad of Berkley", an evil thingie which was kept at bay by star-shaped symbols - not The Cross.  How very odd!

 Well back at Scott's he talks about how he'd like to check out Morley's castle, which is supposed to be in the vicinity.  Scott encourages him not to do so, saying that these old legends are not to be so easily dismissed and there is something up there.  Parry rudely ridicules him and the next day he's off to the castle, to which Scott has begrudgingly given him directions.

Most of its crumbled but he does find his way into the dungeons, where he finds a cube covered in black crud, which he wipes off to discover a bunch of symbols like the ones he found in The Necronomicon.  

But oops!  By picking up that cube he broke the enchantment keeping the thing Morley trapped in the dungeons - Byatis - the serpent-bearded (so named cuz he's got a face full of tentacles), who starts poking out his tentacles trying to grab Parry, who wisely gets his ass out of there, realizing that Morley had stuck Byatis under the castle wherein he/it had grown so huge he couldn't get out!

Pretty slight stuff from Campbell, an amalgam of Lovecraft pastiche, "The Shunned House" and a bit of M.R. James thrown in for good measure.  The James touch is the best part of it and what just slightly elevates this one above the completely banal.  Campbell was an amateur who would become a professional and Derleth saw that.  Nonetheless this is probably the least of the stories in this early Campbell collection.

"The Hunt"

By Henry Kuttner

 Originally published Strange Stories, June 1939  

Alvin Doyle, a crooked little creep, has sought out his cousin Will Benson, with the intent of bumping him off.  It seems Benson is heir to a fortune, and Alvin is the next in line.  If Benson goes...

Well fortunately (sorta) Will Benson is a froot loop who lives in an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere and spends all his time studying creepy old occult books and trying to conjure up spooks.  And Alvin arrives, with a gun in his pants, just in time to help out Will in the process of calling up Iod, Hunter of Souls.

Well they go through the process until Alvin sees an opportunity and shoots Will, steals a bunch of stuff, messes things up so it looks like burglars broke in, and takes off, dreaming of his big fat inheritance to come.

Buuut, he gets so tired he pulls over and falls asleep in his car.  And dreams he's back in the cabin, having just killed Will, and a glowing green shape and some black, ropy thing are coming toward him.

He tries to run away and finds himself in an alien world, of crystalline shapes, and then another, a forest of living plants, and then a coliseum full of monsters, then a planet of black goop, then a planet of hard earth, then ice or glass, and finally an alien city full of monstrosities.  All the time pursued by the glowing shape.

He wakes up in his car.  Momentarily relieved, unti he sees the glow is still after him, and now he's definitely not dreaming.  He gets a good look at the glowing shape, which is so horrible it takes Kuttner three adjective-laden paragraphs to not actually describe it.  In any case it sucks Alvin's soul out, which leaves his body lifeless but his consciousness still in it.  Which means he gets to experience being found, pronounced dead, and buried.

Well, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

This isn't a bad story but its a bit slight.  It's as much as crime story as it is supernatural horror, and written as such, which makes it kind of an odd and interesting hybrid.  There's not a lot to it and Kuttner was still finding his legs with handling some of the more Lovecraft-y touches, but it's a fun read.