Warning

WARNING! These reviews all contain SPOILERS!!!!

Sunday, November 6, 2022

"The Secret of Sebek"

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales November 1937

Our Narrator this time is a writer - albeit it not a successful one - who's gone to New Orleans either for inspiration or partying while trying to write stories about ancient Egypt. He decides to go hang with the partyers (it being Mardi Gras time, of course), and finds himself inexplicably surprised to run into a dude dressed as an ancient Egyptian priest.  It turns out said dude knows ON's writings and immediately invites him to his place where he's giving a party - there'll be some real occultists there...

Since this is the sort of Lovecraftian character who'd be more drawn to a party with "real occultists" than "real hot and horny chicks", he of course accepts.  

Most of the partygoers are just partygoers, but the priest-dressed fellow introduces ON to his real guests, a bunch of dedicated occultists (including one Etienne De Marigny, who is also name-dropped in Lovecraft/Price's "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" and later becomes the (proud?) papa of Henri-Laurent De Marigny, who will grow up to be a full-time doormat for insufferable occult hero Titus Crow before marrying the Queen of the Forest and going off to live happily ever after in some Disneyesque paradise. Pretty good for a character who never speaks, does anything, or has any discernible personality!).  


Among the things they have to share with ON is a copy of Mysteries of the Worm, and a mummy case containing the mummy of a priest of Sebek, a nasty Egyptian crocodile god.

It seems Sebek's priests mummies were said to be guarded by monsters with the bodies of men and the heads of crocodiles, and indeed, ON has seen someone dressed in Egyptian garb and a croc mask at the party.  Said croc-masked dude now shows up and bites out the host's neck.  ON flees the scene when he realizes croc-head isn't wearing a mask.

Very minor Bloch without much HPL in it.

"The Mannikin"

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales May 1937

Our narrator is yet another head case under professional care who has a wild tale to tell us about how he got driven nutso.

It seems he's a college professor and as big fan of fishing, and went on a little trip to a lake resort near a village called Bridgetown.   There he runs into a former student - Simon Maglore - who was brilliant and rich, but also a weirdo who studied the occult and drew pictures and made sculptures of demons and witches - oh and he's a hunchback.  Needless to say, brilliant and rich he mighta been but BMOC he weren't.  Anyway, Maglore seems to be in poor health - his hump's doubled in size!  And says he's writing a monograph about (surprise!) witches.

Taking pity on poor old Simon, our narrator noses around town, discovering the Maglore family is disliked and always has been - for the usual reasons - and Simon especially so - for the obvious reasons.  He decides to drop by and suggest that Simon Lay off his witchcrafty studies for awhile.  While visiting - he thinks he sees the hump move.

Our narrator visits the local doc the next day, repeating what he's seen and Simon's crazy-ass talk about witches and familiars the night before, and the doc readily concludes that Simon should be locked up for his own good (gotta love 30's pulp fiction psychiatric practices!).  They hotfoot it over to Simon's pad only to find him dead in a pool of blood.  Which is bad.  Even worse is that he's shirtless, and that was no hump on his back - no - it's a parasitic twin!  Which has bitten old Simon to death (and therefore killed itself - stupid parasitic twin!)

Notes left behind by Simon (this is the best part!) explain that the twin had been growing since his college days and needed human blood to survive - which Simon had been providing, thus solving several local unsolved murders.  But it kept growing, and wanting more more more, and taking over poor Simon's mind.  Gak!

This is a nothing-special story, but it is highlighted by the truly hilarious excerpts from Simon's diary, in which he argues with the twin, even to the point of telling it "No! Stop! Get your hands --" thus committing the Greatest of All Lovecraftian Sins, the old "write down your dying words even as a gloop monster is devouring you bit".  

Now Bloch was known in later years for the black humor he injected into many of his tales, so its possible he meant this one to be tongue-in-cheek.  Possible.  And as much as I like Bloch and want to give him the benefit of the doubt, this one's hard to take seriously or find funny.











"The Faceless God"


by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales May 1936

Dr. Stugatche (which I assume you pronounce "stew-gatch-ee") is an ugly little turd who deals in black market archaeological antiquities, and nasty little son of a bitch.  When we first meet him, he's torturing an old desert nomad in order to find out the location of an extra-rare find - a statue buried in the sand of the desert in the middle of nowhere.

Stuggy puts together an expedition and heads out to the spot, where they find the statue sticking mostly buried in the sand - a perfectly preserved, like-new ancient Egyptian statue of a god - with no facial features.  Unfortunately, Stuggy's gang sez hell no, they're not touching that thing!  Mainly cuz its a statue of Nyarlathotep, whose back story is elaborated forthwith.  Stuggy persuades them - at gunpoint.  But in the morning finds they've re-buried the statue and taken off - with all the supplies and everything.  Stuggy's left with his gun, his statue, and whatever water is left in his canteen.  Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, right?

Well, Stuggy sets off on his own in search of the nearest oasis and forcing himself to be optimistic. Things don't work out.  As he makes his way, he finds himself going in circles.  What's more, he feels like an evil presence is stalking him.  He begins to hallucinate (or does he?) visions of Nyarlathotep and of cyclopean shapes in the sand.  The sands engulf and he dies whispering the name "Nyarlathotep".

This early bit of Bloch shows him starting to move a little out of the Lovecraft imitation territory.  It's almost EC-like ... except EC comics wouldn't exist for another 16 or 17 years ... and probably owed influence to Bloch.  

Like a typical EC, it gives us a hateful central character who comes to a bad end.  The buildup is routine but turns suspenseful after the history lesson on Ny-baby, and Stuggy's nightmarish visions of a Nyarlathotep-ian apocalypse are 100% effective "cosmic" horror.  Slightly on the minor side, but with some very effective moments.





Saturday, October 22, 2022

"A Night in the Lonesome October"

 


by Roger Zelazny

originally published AvoNova/William Morrow, 1993

In Victorian London, a dog named Snuff (who happens to have Jack the Ripper as a master) pads around town, mixing it up socially with other "familiar" animals - cat, bat, snake, rat, etc, owned by unusual characters and possessed of human-level intelligence.  

It seems the various pet owners are all caught up in "The Great Game", a once-every-few-decades ceremony, held on 10/31, in which the gates to the earth can be opened to Great Old Ones.  "Players" in this game are either trying to open those gates, or keep them shut.  Other familiar-parents or players in this tale are thinly, or not-so-thinly veiled Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, Rasputin, Burke and Hare, a werewolf named Larry Talbot, a witch and an evil vicar.

Basically Snuff wanders around watching and learning as the various "players" form alliances, make deals, or interfere with one another. There's a brief side-trip where Snuff and a cat named Graymalk trip through HPL's Dreamlands.

In any case after much observing, speculating, and deducing, the big night comes.  The good guys come to the rescue and Snuff saves the day.

If that's a somewhat curt summary, its because this novel isn't too easy to summarize without getting lost in the weeds.  90% of it Snuff and Graymalk learning about "the Great Game", who the players are, what side they may be on, and how they will play. Along the way there are snippets of action, involving some Cthuloid beasties Jack keeps magically imprisoned in his house, the aforementioned trip to The Dreamlands, et al.  Then it wraps up - all rather anticlimactically.

I first read this about 20 years ago and I remember feeling a bit let down then.  It was kind of cute and I wanted to like it, and I decided to hang onto it and give it another chance someday.  Someday happened to come about 20 years later.  By which time I'd pretty well forgotten everything about it except that it was set in Victorian London and had a bunch of notable literary and/or historical characters in it.

Unfortunately I have to confess to being disappointed again.  The book didn't grab me and I only kept with it out of a sense of obligation - once I remembered it was a Cthulhu tales I needed to finish it so I could review it here.  I'm such a doof!

One prob to be honest is Zelazny.  I've liked some Zelazny books (Lord of Light, the Amber books) pretty well.  But even there I find his writing rather flat.  His style could be described as a total lack of style.  And I'm not advocating for purple pretentiousness here.  Its just that his writing rarely draws me in.  He was very imaginative, but his flat descriptions make the wondrous things that happen seem so much less wondrous.  It's like watching Disney's Fantasia in black and white on a 5" screen.

Another problem comes from the characters.  Snuff narrates the book, but at no point does he ever sound like a dog.  His narrative voice is that of a detached, intellectual human.  Only occasional references to bones his lack of hands remind us that this is supposed to be a dog speaking.  Likewise the other animals are never very like their animal selves in their dialogue - and yes, I get that these are magical animals, imbued with a much higher intelligence.  Still if you're going to write a story from a dog's POV (even a magically intelligent one), it should always seem like this is a dog narrating.  Its not so tough.  A dozen children's book authors have done it, plus Richard Adams, et al.

The non-animal characters fare little better.  I love whole idea of a hoedown of fictional and historic characters (c.f. Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but Zelazny does very little with it.  Jack (the Ripper) seems to have nothing to do with the historic Ripper.  He's just a guy with some otherworldly critters in his house.  He could be anyone.  Similarly, there's nothing particularly Draculonic about The Count, Larry Talbot's werewolfism is merely a plot point, etc.  Even Sherlock Holmes (who spends most of the book in disguise, and in drag) has nothing very Holmes-ian about him.  He too could be almost anyone.  This seems like a lost opportunity.

Problem # 3 is that, not much really happens in this book.  Snuff and Graymalk walk around and learn things about the game and who the players are. That's about it. So unless you're utterly enthralled by Zelazny's concept of "The Game" above all else, I don't think this book has much to offer.

In all fairness though, Zelazny fans on GoodReads love this book (it averages a four-star rating).  So maybe I just don't get it.











Saturday, September 3, 2022

"The Horror from the Hills"


by Frank Belknap Long

originally published Weird Tales January-March, 1931 

Our tale begins with one Algernon Harris, curator of Archaeology at the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts. Few people believe this, however, because he's 26, wears loud ties, and behaves "like a college junior at a fraternity house jamboree".  Apparently such behavior consists of being real friendly with attendants and even calling them by their first names, as opposed to the binge drinking, vomiting, and taking advantage of passed-out coeds that such a description conjures up.  

Anyway even if most of his academic peer group et al don't take him seriously, his field workers are sure as hell devoted - being sent to the harshest, most remote corners of the globe, and some of them coming back missing, um, eyes, noses, arms. And some don't come back at all. That's loyalty I tell ya!

So right now Algie-boy is all kinds of excited, cuz one of his hapless fools crack field agents is back in town, with a new find!  That would be Clark Ulman, just back from the Plateau of Tsang, whence he's come bearing a statue reported as having been hidden in a remote cave, guarded by "yellow abnormalities", and which a score of previous explorers had died trying to retrieve.  Well, Ulman's done it, and the statue is on its way to the museum.  But Algie is taken aback when a choked-sounding Ulman calls and tells him to destroy the statue: "it has worked its malice on me - ME!" he emphasizes, "you'll understand when you see what - what I have become!" he explains dramatically.  

Algie is busy mulling over the whole business of Ulman's call and what might have happened to him - in fact he's apparently talking to himself - out loud - at length - when a package is delivered.  Said "package" (shouldn't it be more like a crate?) is a huge statue, the ugliest friggin' thing Algie has ever seen, a big gruesome creature sort of looking like an elephant (on a side note - based on Long's claims over the years and the way its described in the story, Chaugnar Faugn only vaguely resembles an elephant.  Nonetheless, he is consistently depicted as a kind of evil mutant elephant, like Ganesh's evil twin or something).  

Ulman shows up forthwith, his face concealed by a scarf wrapped all the way up to his eyes.  When Algie gives a good ol' boy pat on the shoulder, Ulman collapses, unable to breath.  He can't stand to be touched.  Ever sympathetic, Algie responds that he knows he must have had a rough trip, and he's sure he can get Ulman extended PTO.

Ulman explains how he journeyed across the Plateau of Tsang - alone, on foot.  He was reduced to drinking his own blood and eating dogshit to survive (uh-huh).  Eventually he found his way to the cave where Chaugnar Faugn's idol was guarded by those "yellow abnormalities", who took him prisoner and started to torture him, until the high priest, Chung Ga, came to his rescue.  Chung explained Chaugnar's true nature, as both the creator and, ultimately, destroyer of everything in the universe.  They gave Ulman plenty of food and drink and a straw mat in the cave to sleep on.  During the night, something terrible entered the cave and attacked him, feasting on Ulman's own blood.  Ulman soon comes to realize that the creature attacking him is Chaugnar Faugn, and that the statue is not merely a statue but an avatar of CF itself.  Chaug rewards Ulman's brilliant deduction by mauling him.  According to Chung Ga, this is all part of the plan.  He tells Ulman about Chaugnar's history - how he and five "brothers" began their time in what would become central Europe, in the Pyrenees, attended to by a race of beings Chaugnar created from toads.  Their servants were finally wiped out by the Romans.  Chaungar opted to leave his bros and head for "the primal continent", there to hide in the remote mountains until a white man came for him, warning his bros that when he devoured the world, he would devour them, too. It seems that, according to Chung Ga, Ulman is the white man of the prophecy, and they want him to take the idol to New York.

Ulman concludes his story by ranting - for two pages! - about Cuvier's theories and how ancient Chaugnar may really be, then, to prove his point, he yanks off the scarf to reveal his face horribly and weirdly mutilated - including his nose now elongated and his ears now enlarged - that's right kiddies - he's becoming an elephant man! Isn't Algie convinced now that he should destroy the idol?  Heck no! He figures the whole experience was done via "he hypnotic endowments of the Oriental":  "It's ghastly and unbelievable how much a Hindoo or a Tibetan can accomplish by simple suggestion."  To Ulman pointing out that his face was normal when he boarded ship back to America, Algie simply offers that the cultists did some plastic surgery on him in his sleep.  Suddenly, Ulman can't breathe and he collapses writhing to the floor and dies.  A coroner later rules his death due to heart failure, though he can't explain why the body decomposed so damn fast...

Algie meets with his boss, Dr. George Francis Scollard, to discuss the whole matter, with Algie still arguing for the mundane explanation - since to do otherwise would cause him to be labeled a whacko.  Scollard and Algie spend the next two pages discussing acromegaly.  But as they approach the museum, they see a crowd outside.  Including reporters.  And cops.  "Did you put the - the statue on exhibition?" Scollard exclaims.  Well of course Algie put it on exhibition.  And let reporters cover it as well.

Now it seems, another attendant, Mr. Cinney, has been murdered and mutilated right there in the museum.  (You might think the high fatality and injury rate of attendants reporting to Algie would get Scollard's attention, huh?).  In fact, Cinney's face is gone, and his body's drained of blood.  One possible witness, another attendant named Williams, has flipped out, screaming about "the worm from hell" and they can't get much more out of him.  The police are convinced the crime was committed by a "Hindoo" or a "Chinaman".  As evidence they've found a wooden bowl with the remnants of some rice, and blood, and chopsticks.  Plus there's blood all over the Chaugnar statue.  In the course of their talking to a police detective, a Chinese guy is turned up, hiding in the museum.  It seems a strange dream led him to go to the museum last night, and wait to be devoured by a god.  But instead the god devoured Cinney.  The cops are mystified by this conversation, but Scollard tells them he's certain the Asian guy is innocent, and warns them not to get rough with him.  Algie then points out something to Scollard - the trunk on the Chaugnar Statue seems to have moved...

Then he and Algie head off to see someone - a Dr. Henry Imbert F.R.S, F.A.G.S (if you can figure out what those are meant to stand for, there's a no-prize in it for you), specialist in ethnology (what we'd now call cultural anthropology, I suppose).  "When Imbert sees [a photo of the Chaugnr Faugn statue]", Algie mutters to himself (he apparently always thinks out loud), "he'll be the most disturbed ethnologist that this planet has harbored since the Pleistocene Age."  That's pretty impressive, given that the Pleistocene Age dates back 11,700 years and the earliest defined ethnologists showed up in the 18th century.  Of course he did say "this planet" so perhaps Algie's musings also encompassed ethnologists on other planets?)

Dr. Henry Imbert F.R.S,F.A.G.S. spends four pages getting to the point that he doesn't have anything intelligent to say about this icky statue, much less its moving.  So he suggests they see someone else - former brilliant criminal investigator now quack supernaturalist and recluse Roger Little. On the way over, they read in the papers of a similar massacre in the Pyrenees, leaving 14 people dead.  

Roger Little turns out to be a froot loop who talks exactly like H.P. Lovecraft in his letters.  He babbles on for five fucking pages about how boring murder is, his plans to write a horror novel, etc.  Algie is struck silent in awe by him, which gives us one more reason to think Algie might be a nitwit.  However, when someone mentions Chaugnar Faugn, Little finally stops his monologue in shock.

It seems last Halloween, Little had an incredibly detailed dream, in which he was L. Cualieus Rufus, a financial official in a Spanish province in the time of Republican Rome.  In this role, he was drawn into an investigation of a race of strange peoples, unlike any of the local races, who held inhumans rites in the hills involving drumming and chanting, and, conicidentally, said rites were linked to disappearances of nearby villagers, which always occurred on the night of the ceremonies.  Of even greater concern - the hillish folk seem to be in league with an creepier group called the "miri nigri", and a couple of these got into a scuffle in a nearby town not so long ago.  Now people haven't disappeared (as they usually do), and some fear a more dreadful retribution is at hand.

Rufus takes a band of stout men into the lands of the strange people, on the night on one of their rites. The sound of the drumming and chanting becomes overwhelming, and the Romans' horses freak out.  Their guide loses his shit and grabs a sword and impales himself.  The sky goes black as the stars are blotted out, and they are surrounded by cackling and leaping creatures in the shadows, things with "huge flaring ears and long waving trunks that howled and gibbered and pranced in the skyless night."  The Romans panic and flee in such terror that some are trampled to death, and the hills themselves seem to be moving, as Rufus screams and wakes up back as Roger Little.  

Told of the little Asian man's dream, Little is even more impressed ("Mongolians as a rule are extremely psychic" he muses), and more convinced that something big is going down re: Chaugnar Faugn (and his brothers).  He theorizes (for a couple pages) about what Chaugnar Faugn might be, in physics terms. Suddenly, there's a phone call, informing Algie that the Chaugnar statue is gone (though the pedestal remains).   Little tells the group he wants to show them something.

In his lab, Little has built a strange machine, described as made of spheres and crescents that move in directions difficult for the eye/mind to follow when the machine is running.  Little explains that the machine is an anti-entropy beam, which basically uncreates things by sending them back in time.  He then spends the next eight pages pontificating about physics, time, the nature of reality, etc., before getting back to his plan - track down Chaugnar Faugn and zap him with the anti-entropy ray.  All agree this is a fine idea, though not before Algie manages to vaporize one wall of Little's apartment - a fact which seems not to phase Little in the slightest.  Off they go in search of Chaugnar.

Following a trail of reported murders, they trace him to the Jersery shore and turn the ray on him, ultimately having to run after him, training the ray on him, since his ancientness means it takes a long time to "uncreate" him in time.  A turtle caught in the beam is not so lucky.  Buh-bye turtle!  Eventually Chaugner gets his fat ass caught in a mire and the team is able to finish the job, dissolving him into primordial slime while he bellows away, finally leaving only a terrifying, gigantic image of himself filling the sky, which grabs at them before fading away.  The five other Chaugnar kin also dissolve at the same time, giving Little the opportunity to drone on some more about their oneness, while speculating that Chaugnar might one day reappear, thousands of years in the future.  Thus the story ends.

(It would be nice to report that Scollard then turns the anti-entropy ray on Little, and Algie too for good measure, but no such luck).

Fuck I don't know what to say after that particular nutty ride and I'm not even sure how to rate, since I actually enjoy this little romp, even though  it embarrasses me.  It is, except for the long passages of pontification, fairly exciting, has genuinely interesting ideas, merging "modern" (1931) science with metaphysics, which won't become fashionable for another 60 years, and there are a couple good, powerfully scary passages involving Chaugnar Faugn, such as his first appearance as a blood-sucker in the cave:

Even before I opened my eyes I knew that something unspeakably malign was crouching squatting on the ground beside me.  I could hear it breathing in the darkness, and the stench of it strangled the breath in my throat ... I became aware of two blinking, fish-white eyes glaring truculently at me through the darkness."

And later in his death throes:

"For an instant it loomed thus terribly menacing, the sould of all malignancy and horror, a cncerous cyclops, oozing fetor."

The climax of the Roman dream is really potent - except Long didn't write it - or didn't write most of it.  The whole Roman dream was taken nearly verbatim from a letter by H.P. Lovecraft.  Long largely cut-and-pasted it into his story - though I have not compared the original letter to the story (that's okay - I'm sure S.T. Joshi has).

Despite these small strong points, the story can't overcome its major weakness: it's some of the worst writing Long ever turned out.  Now I've read a fair bit of Long, and though I wouldn't call him a literary giant, most of his writing is solid and serious and perfectly decent by any normal standards.  But occasionally he would lapse into purple pulpdom, with some of the most histrionic dialogue this side of a romance comic book.  And man oh man did he do it here.  In fact, Long's writing is so bad here it reads almost like a cornball parody of pulp horror writing.  The dialogue is patently absurd, with characters stammering and shouting as they articulate realizations about the cosmic horrors unfolding around them.  The characterization is nonexistent.  And pages and pages are given over to philosophical/quantum physical/ethnological dissertations which I guess Long found interesting, but if i wanted that I wouldn't be reading a pulp horror story.  To top it all off its racially insensitive as hell, if not outright racist.

I should note that "Hills" is one of those tales that became a Mythos story after the fact, whem HPL incorporated Chaugnar, tongue-in-cheekily, into one of his lists of mythos beasties.  There's nary a mention of the Necronomicon or aught else to be found within, though Chaugnar Faugn is a good fit for a Great Old One, to be sure.

Okay - the verdict: its kind of a fun read if you can overlook the bad writing.  But it is no classic.  Its tough to scare up these days and, interestingly, has yet to be reprinted in any Chaosium collections (odd!).  I definitely don't recommend throwing down $100+ for the Arkham original - look for one of the paperback reprints on Ebay - which will still set you back $20+.  But only if you're looking for some cosmic horror laffs.







Saturday, August 27, 2022

"The Seven Geases"

 by Clark Ashton Smith 


originally published Weird Tales, October 1934

Lord Rabilar Vooz is a magistrate, cousin to the king hisself, in prehistoric Hyperborea.  One day he sets out with a band of retainers to the forbidding Eiglophian Mountains, a volcaninc range dominated by one Mount Voormithadreth, home of the hairy man-ape race called "voormis", which he intends to hunt.  The mountain is a spooky place, and it is said that many horrible things lurk in the caves under the mountains, including the bat-toad god Tsathoggua; but Rabilar, being a modern man, dismisses all that as mere superstition.

Rabilar, like the arrogant fuckwit he is, gets a bit lost in the mountains.  He also gets a bit of a surprise when he sees smoke rising from behind some tall rocks - as if someone were making a fire.  He follows the smoke and comes upon a nasty-looking old dude in a nasty-looking robe holding some kind of ceremony around a fire.

Mr. Nasty is a wizard named Ezdagor, and he's pretty put-out about Rabilar interrupting his ceremony.  So he puts Rab under a "geas", a spell which compels him to complete a task as ordered.  The task is to go into the bowels of the earth under the mountain, via the caves of the voormis, and offer himself as a sacrifice to Tsathoggua.  Rab tries to laugh this off but finds he can't laugh.  Or speak.  Or do anything other than make his way to his destination, guided by Raphthotis, Ezdagor's faithful archaeopteryx familiar.

Rab goes through the caves, harried by the voormis who manage to do only minor injury to him thanks to his armor, and makes his way down to Tsathoggua, who just ate and isn't interested.  So Tsath-o puts a new geas on him, sending him to Atlach-Nacha, who's too lazy to peel him out of hisd armor, and so geases him to go to visit the sorceror Haon-Dor, who also has no use for him and thus geases him to go see the Serpent People.  They too can't find a use for him, and geas him on to the Cavern of the Archetypes, where he is eaten several times by astral/mist-formed dinosaurs, before the archetypes, the original, evolved form of men (misty energy beings) insult him and geas him to go see Abhoth, who they consider all kinds of gross and therefore the only place for a turd like Rab.

Abhoth, a big slimy pool that breeds gross little monsters incessantly, also can't think of what to do with Rab.  So he puts on him the worst geas he can think of - sending him back to the surface world (well it's awful to Abhoth).

Rab starts his way back but falls through Atlach-Nacha's web and into a possibly bottomless gulf.  Poor Rab!

This is a rather tongue-in-cheek story, kind of a cross between a dark, surreal fairy-tale, and an EC comics story, had EC ever ventured into such territory.  You can almost hear The Old Witch or The Crypt-Keeper cackling away at the end.  Its kind of like a grim bedtime story you might read to your kid - if you had the Weirdest Kid in the World.  I know I would have dug it.  I leave it to you to speculate on what that says about me.

For all its tongue-in-cheek-ness, Smith's acidic prose and endless invention make this charming and a fun read.  And it its the one and only full appearance of Tsathoggua and Atlach-Nacha, both of whom I've always had a soft spot for.  I mean, come on - you can't beat a lazy toad-bat god!







Tuesday, August 23, 2022

"The Beast of Averoigne"

By Clark Ashton Smith

Originally published Weird Tales May 1933

Brother Gerome, "the humblest monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Pergion" happens upon an unusual sight late one evening - a red comet dropping off an unpleasant extraterrestrial passenger in the medieval French province of Averoigne.  It stands man-height, moves like a great snake, with glowing red eyes and bat-like teeth.  

Well this sets the abbey into a tizzy, but lots of praying and sprinkling of holy water avails them not, as first forest animals, then cattle, then people start turning up mutilated and drained of marrow.  Brother Theophile picks up the narrative, telling us of the extreme methods the monks go to (exorcism, mortification, taking their cell phones away) to stave off the monster - all to no avail either, as pretty soon its killing monks in their sleep right in the abbey!

Having no other viable options, the abbey turns to Luc le Chaudronnier, a sorcerer, who narrates the final third of the story.  Luc has a plan - to invoke the aid of demon that is imprisoned in a ring once the property of Eibon of Hyperborea -which among Smith-ian sorcerers would be the equivalent of bed sheets stolen from the Beatles hotel rooms.  He makes a deal with the demon that he'll free it, if it'll get out of Earth and take the Beast with it.  So the big night comes, the Beast creeps into the abbey, Luc smashes the ring, and out pops the demon which promptly hauls the snaky beast off to parts unknown - like real unknown.  Oh - but it leaves behind the body of Brother Theophile, who, it seems, it had possessed and was hiding in this whole time.  Poor Theo!

Woo this was a ride!  Very much a bit of Weird Tales fodder, it's Smith's purple prose that takes this pretty straightforward monster romp to a higher level, loading it with real atmosphere and dread, and Smith's trademark weird imagination.






 






Tuesday, August 9, 2022

"Dark Awakening"

 by Frank Belknap Long

originally published New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House, 1980

Our unnamed narrator (one a' those again) has taken himself of to some New England beach resort for the summer.  One night in the hotel dining room he spots a hot number with two small kids and hope
s she doesn't have a husband back home.  The next day he scores by meeting her at the beach.  Her name is Helen Rathbourne, and she's a widow (score one for the narrator!).  And as it turns out, both her and the narrator have something in common - they both like to talk in bizarre pseudo-poetic dialog that sounds like nothing that would ever come out of a sane human mouth!  Example (Helen referring to her daughter): 

"Susan's quite different.  Most of her adventuring is done on `wings of bright imagining', as some poet must have phrased it some time in the past.  Perhaps far back in the Victorian Age.  I'm not good at making such lines up."

"I'm sure you're mistaken.  I read a great deal of poetry, both traditional and avant-garde, and I can't recall ever having encountered that particular line."

Uh-huh.

Well anyway while they're talking Johnny (Helen's son, who's about 8), gets bored and goes running off full-tilt boogie towards the washed-up, rotted wreckage of an old breakwater, neighbored by "swirling dark water" widening into a pool with a "deep, black, extremely ominous look".  He climbs up onto the dangerous pile while the unnamed narrator shouts ineffectively at him to come back down this instant.  The kid ignores the stuffy froot and instead seems to be mesmerized, staring off into the sea, until the boards give way and he falls into the pool.  U.N. heads in after him and fortunately finds him pretty quick.

Out on the sand Johnny recovers quite quickly and seems unharmed.  Except he's acting a little strange, explaining that he went out on the breakwater because something drew him out there - something he had to find, even though he didn't want to find it.  And whatever it is, he's got it clenched in his hand, so tightly that he actually can't even open his fist.

In any case, U.N. manages to get his hand open and retrieve the object, which turns out to be a pendant of some kind, an octopus with a grotesque human face.  U.N. is revolted but finds now he can't open his hand to throw it away.  His sense of reality starts to distort and he finds himself walking out into the sea, intoning "The Deep Ones await their followers ... the call has come (etc), and pronouncing some names familiar to all loyal Cthulhu Mythos fans.  

The next thing U.N. knows, he's waking up in a hospital bed.  Helen is there, talking to the attending physician, who not only share their bent for flowery speech, but is also very hip to the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.  It seems a few weeks ago a bunch of freakjobs with waist-long beards were wandering around the beach area.  They've since disappeared.  And a man was found horribly mutilated, perhaps after an encounter with a shark (the pool is believed big enough to hold one).  The pendant, which Johnny pried from U.N.'s hand just before he went under, must have belonged to those neckbeards.  "Just suppose," Helen wonders, "Lovecraft didn't put everything he knew or suspected into his stories."  

As U.N. drifts off into a seconal-induced sleep, he hears Helen comment on how her daughter Susan seems to love him already ... and she can understand how Susan feels.  But he feels as if he is sinking into deep water, an octopoid face approaching, remembering his own strange, trane-induced words...

This was one of Long's last Cthulhu-influenced stories, and one of his last, period.  He had changed a lot in the years since the Weird Tales days.  Like some other stories of his published around the same time, "Dark Awakening" is a hundred times less pulpy, but a bit pretentious, yet is also evocative and has a strange, dreamy, wistful quality about it.  It isn't a great story.  Despite the Lovecraft-y prose, it works fine for the narrative, and the Unnamed Narrator is actually very believable.  Until he opens his mouth.  His (and Helen's, and Susan's, and the doctor's) dialog is ludicrous and weird.  It's hard to say what to make of this slight story but it stayed with me all these years since I first read it back in the early 80's.  So I think Long did something right.






Tuesday, July 19, 2022

"The Summons of Nuguth-Yug"

by Gary Myers

originally published Weird Tales #3, Zebra Books, 1981

Snith, "student of the elder mysteries, practitioner of magic white and grey" scribbles out his tale, in his own blood, on the pages of one of the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan (Number Four to be exact!); being as he has no other ink or paper - heck he has to use "captured glowworms" for lighting!  And you thought you had it bad!

It seems Snith was just minding his own magical business (white or grey - not stated), when someone stats banging on his front door.  When he goes to answer, no one is there.  But a bat-winged, manlike figure is wheeling around in the sky above his place.  So Snith throws a candlestick at it, causing it to drop something and fly off.  Said something is a tube containing a letter, written in a language and hand familiar to Snith, and a particular blue ink used only in the Great Abyss, "that hidden country where the sun is unheard of and the moon and stars are considered mythical."  

Serious attention to detail, that Snith.

Said letter is from Nuguth-Yug, and old schoolmate from Hezethub U, pre-Hogwarts school of magic. Nuggy-poo got sent on an assignment long ago to enter the Great Abyss, and was never heard from again!  Now he's asking Snith to come to him in the Great Abyss and join forces in keeping back the Gugs, who have learned how to "violate the Sign of Koth" (exactly how they violate it is thankfully not described).  He's sent a nightgaunt - i.e. the batwinged postman encountered earlier, to help Snith get to the Great Abyss.  

So, since Snith has unfortunately chased off his ride, he makes his way towards the Great Abyss, via a tunnel conveniently located under his own house.  Lantern full of glowworms in hand, he makes his way down the tunnels past skeletions, creepy sculptures, more bones, disembodied voices that whisper and laugh, till he finally reaches Nuguth-Yug's pad, a "windowless black facade" with double doors of green bronze.  Inside is a pallet of straw, presumably Nuguth-Yug's bed, and a big statue Nodens (who is described as looking a lot like Cthulhu).  As he checks out the room, the doors close, trapping him inside.

An amusing Smith pastiche, but Myers has a better way with words than, for example, Carter or Lumley, giving this slight tale a fair share of charm.