originally published Weird Tales, January 1952
Horvath Blaybe is an archeologist studying ancient ruins in the Pacific. While in "the most famous bar in the world" in Singapore, he spots Dr. Laban Shrewsbury and his fall guys from previous adventures, sitting around a table presumably discussing Cthulhu stuff. Something draws him in and he joins them. Doc Shrew challenges him on various points relating to the usual "look all these ancient civilizations knew about Cthulhu" jazz and they carry on a tiresome back-and-forth that goes on for nearly the first third of the friggin' story. After that, Horvath is S.O.L.D. and signs up to help Shrew and Crew find "The Black Island", R'lyeh, which they have reason to think has recently surfaced again, have a fair ide of the location of, and have some apparently big plans for.
The gang sets out for Ponape, aka Pohnpei, stalked by Deep Ones. Horvath dreams of being a Deep One sloshing around in Y'hanthlei … ya see, Horvath's got a dirty little secret - his given name isn't Blayne but Waite, and he's the child of Innsmouthers (albeit apparently reluctant ones). He's in possession of a diary and some papers which make obtuse allusions to the Federal bombing of Innsmouth in 1928. None of this goes anywhere of course.
On Ponape/Pohnpei, Shrew and Company hook up with a couple scuzzy sailors, one of whom claims to have seen the risen R'lyeh and gives its approx. location, and a US admiral with a destroyer at his command, who's straight out of central casting. The admiral makes obscure reference to "the weapon" but no explanation is offered to Blayne.
They make their way out there, find R'lyeh. Cthulhu pops out and waves his tentacles around, and the Shrewsbury Gang detonates a shitload of explosives all over the place, which blows Cthu apart for as long as it takes his bits and pieces to flow back together and reform themselves, even more gloopy than before. So the admiral, pronouncing the whole thing "horrible, horrible", agrees its time to use "the weapon". Which turns out to be an A-bomb. Boom. The destroyer chugs away while everyone watched the mushroom cloud. That took care of that, right?
Nah. Horvath goes back to his business but still dreams. He finally figures out his full heritage, and at night he can hear Deep Ones calling him. He learns that Abel Keane just drowned in Massachusetts, and he knows R'lyeh and Cthulhu came through just fine. And the Deep Ones are a-comin' for him.
And that brings us to the end of the "Trail of Cthulhu" sequence, with a rather pointless wet squib of a climax. The whole thing is so lifeless and pointless that I'm left thinking that Derleth had lost interest in the whole affair and simply wanted to end it. So he did. In a decidedly unsatisfying manner. This isn't an out-and-out terrible story, but its full of bonehead moves - the endless debate and exchange that takes up the first third of the story - the comical comic-book level dialog with the admiral ("must it be the weapon?"). And the otherwise limp quality of everything. The four luckless dudes Shrew has recruited through the previous stories never utter a word or do anything, just follow along. How much of a loss can Abel Keane be at the end when he barely existed in the story. The encounter with the R'lyeh-shocked sailor serves only as exposition and is without atmosphere, Blayne's dreams are a touch better but still below Derleth's ability, and the encounter with Cthulhu is one big anti-climax - all he does is puff himself up and wave tentacles around. Blayne's being of Deep One stock could have made an interesting wrinkle, but doesn't add anything to the story in any way. And its hard to believe the all-knowledgeable Doc Shrew wouldn't know or figure Blayne's heritage out. In the end, this just managed to fill out the last 5th of the collected "Trail" and nothing more.
Looking back on "Trail" as a collected body of work, its pretty much minor stuff. A couple decent if flawed stories, one outright turkey and two empties. Even if you're desperate for a Cthulhu fix, there's better choices out there.
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