"The House of the Temple"

by Brian Lumley

Published Weird Tales #3 1981

It's time I said something about Brian Lumley.  C'mon - you knew it was coming!  I mean, Lumley was the keeper of the Cthuflame for so long.  When everyone else had forgotten, it was the Lum who cranked out rote Cthulery for the loyal fanzes.

Okay, I'm being really facetious here.  In point of fact Lumley, like Aug Derleth, has taken an awful lot of heat from the fandom communicable for his various sins.  In fact, Lumley, like Derleth, is a good writer.  In double fact, Lumley, like Derleth, is usually at his worst when playing in Lovecraftville.

Outside of that, Lumley has written scores of horror stories - some of them corny, some memorable, and occasionally, a real gem.  In the mid-80's he hit sales gold with the Necroscope series, a wild ride of espionage, adventure, ESP and vampire monsters - and I don't mean Anne Rice-type vamps - we're talking tentacled blobs that take over the bodies of the dead and turn them into bloodthirsty fang faces - Draculas with tudes.  The books are loaded with action, enough sex to make Sidney Sheldon blush, and more gore than dozen Italian zombie movies.  Hardly great literature, but thoroughly fun and enjoyable reads.

I must also mention his short story "The Viaduct", a non-supernatural suspense thriller about two schoolboys and a bit of boyish daring that goes horribly wrong.  The story is one the most brutal, nail-biting things I've ever read.  

But, we're not talking about his best stuff.  Nah - today we're talking about Cthulhu-land.

John McGilchrist lives in NYC with his painter friend Carl, having been dumped by his fiancee.  But he's originally from Scotland.  And one fine day, he's contacted by a Scottish law firm, informing him that his uncle Gavin has died (heeeeeere weeeee goooooooo), leaving him an estate and a big ol' isolated house.

So, off go John and Carl to shack up in the house for awhile.  Well, sure enough the house is isolated, big, a little run-down, and spooky - especially a small man-made lake (referred to as The Pool) surrounded by columns that sits on the property.  

John is given Uncle Gavin's (in an at least slight variation, John actually knew and liked Uncle Gavin, who was hale and hearty and an adventurer, not a creepy recluse) last will, a letter, and a notebook.  The letter is friendly but a little strange.  It seems Unc died somewhat mysteriously, was in good health at the time ("that terrible, pleading look in his wide eyes" sez the lawyer), and was expecting it.  He has some explicit but odd instructions for John - destroy the house in no less than 90 days (even that's pushing it).  He's helpfully provided enough dynamite to do the trick.

Oh, and did I mention there's muttering about a family curse?

Well, problems start quick.  While Carl runs off to stock up the fridge, John sits around looking into Unc's notebook, and letter, and his well-stocked library of rare old books (heeeeeere weeeee goooooooo), which contains such bestsellers as Unter-Zee Kulten, Feery's Notes on the Necronomicon, Gaston le Fe's Dwellers in the Depths, De Vermis Mysteriis, a copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten (which John, of course, knows is "hideously disquieting" by reputation) and something called Cthaat Aquadingen.

John's evening's entertainment is interrupted when Carl comes back with groceries, wondering where the "gypsy music" is coming from.  What gypsy music?  John doesn't know - he's been reading those nutty books all this time!  And the radio doesn't work!  Uh-oh!

Well, before you can say Cthaat Aquadingen three times fast, Carl, who just loves the place and can't imagine why John would want to blow it to smithereens, has started a new painting - of a bunch of mysterious revellers dancing in flames around The Pool...

Ruh-roh.

So, the days go on, the weather's hot hot hot, Carl (who, we come to learn, is descended from Hungarians from Stregoicavar) keeps on painting and John keeps on reading those notebooks.  John learns that the house was once the site of a temple founded by some Romanian expats in the 16th century.  It was eventually destroyed, and the worshipers exterminated, apparently by local townsfolk.

Soon, the painting has taken on more detail - the dancers are now leering figures and now have been joined by a "familiar" - a lumpy grey "leprous" tentacled thingie.  And Unc's notebook reveals his researches - that the worshipers had a "familiar", that it lived in The Pool; a vampiric gloop-monster that ate the souls of its victims....

Finally, as John sits putting all the twos-and-twos together (actually, Unc pretty much spells it out for him), he sees something rise out of The Pool.  Grey, "leprous", tentacled, etc.  The gloop-monster heads into the house (John watches in horror) and makes straight for Carl's room.  John gets there just in time to see it eat Carl's face.  Quite literally, as Carl's face, as well as Uncle Gavin's and those of previous victims manifest themself in the beasty's gloop-form, before John drives it off by ... turning on the light!

So, John loads Carl's bod into the car, dynamites the house, and drives away.  Now he's writing the whole thing from Oakdeene Sanitarium.  And he still hears the gypsy music.  And is haunted by the fact that Carl painted his own face on the familiar in the painting.

Okay, let's get straight.  This isn't awful.  I mean, I actually enjoyed it in a pile-on-the-cliches sort of way.  But it's nothing special either.  And pile on the cliches it does.  Deceased Uncle.  Family secrets.  Biggest chunk of the story the narrator poring over some notebook full of Cthulhu-isms and name-dropping and vague hints.  

This story was published in `81, may have been written earlier.  By this time Lumley was close to retiring from the army and becoming a full-time author; and also his largely moving on from writing Lovecraft-Derleth pastiches.  One gets the sense even reading this that the Lum himself is getting a little bored.  He starts down all-too-familiar slopes such as a bunch of random, Cthulhu-name-dropping-notes that serve no purpose to the story - then stops and moves on.  It's got a payoff (albeit an underwhelming one), and Lumley does enjoy his monsters.  He has his own voice, and all this elevates him above Carter Country.  But only a little.