"Cement Surroundings"

by Brian Lumley

published Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, 1969

Sir Amery Wendy-Smith has a problem.  A big problem.  He's holed up in his cottage with an ultra-sensitive seismograph, which he hovers over like Gomez Addams used to his ticker tape machine.  And he mutters to himself all the time.  About weird shit.

It seems Sir Amery, an archaeologist, is the only survivor of an expedition into deepest, darkest Africa in search of the ruins of a legendary, possibly mythical, city called G'harne.  Things apparently didn't go well.  Sir Amery stumbled out of the jungle into a tribe of savages, who decided not to pop him in the stew being as he was nuts and had come from an area they considered "taboo".  Instead, said savages got him back to civilization (exactly how is not explained - but you know those savages - tricky blighters!)  As to the fate of his fellows, he will say only that they were killed in an earthquake.  He also wants to be surrounded by cement.  The English countryside has too much grass and soil!

Well, his nephew Paul isn't too keen on his unc's weird behavior, nor his obsession with two large pearl-like things he brought back from Africa, nor his library which is now full of (cue Cthulhu Reading List).  He doesn't like Unc's ranting and chanting, either.  Nor the notes he leaves laying around referring to various earthquakes and funky happenings all over the British Isles.

He likes it even less when Unc reveals (somewhat indirectly, since he's raving at the time) that, in fact, his fellow archaeologist were not killed in an earthquake, but killed by some things that ripped up out of the ground in the ruins of G'harne and slaughtered them.   

He likes it even less less when some kind of weird quake hits Unc's cottage while Paul's out.  Sir Amery is never seen again.  The cottage is collapsed, but there's a huge hole in the earth and the floor that clearly was made when something pushed up through it.

Shortly after, some final papers of Unc's are delivered.  In it is a letter, in which Sir Amery makes it clear - the "pearls" were actually eggs, offspring of the whatevers they encountered in G'harne.  They hatched.  He killed the hatchlings, but the parents, who could sense the presence of their larvae, were coming for them all along.

This story is where Lumley first introduces his own additions to the Cthulhu Reading List, the G'harne Fragments, partially translated from pre-Triassic (that makes `em around 200 million years old) tablets or shards which tell of the creepy Chthonians, also introduced (but not named) here.

"Cement Surroundings" is pure HPL pastiche all the way.  I should add that it's relatively effective as such, too.  Lumley manages a Lovecraft-like voice, while steering clear of outright mimicry.  He's made his own additions to the Mythos Accoutrements, and came up with an original monster race to boot (though it will be several years before he fleshes them out or even names them).

In some ways this is a weakness.  There are a lot of ominous references to the G'harne monsters, but in the end, we really don't learn anything substantial about them.  It's missing a strong punchline.

"Cement" isn't any masterpiece, but it's an enjoyable Lovecraft pastiche with a touch of originality and muscle all its own.