"The Hounds of Tindalos" by Frank Belknap Long"

 originally published Weird Tales, March 1929  

Halpin Chalmers, occultist and author, invites his friend over for a weird little visit.  After arguing about metaphysical vs scientific concepts of time and space (which Frank dismisses as "rubbish"), Halpin reveals his plan.  He's gotten his hands on a rare drug from China called Liao, which will allow his mind to be freed of the illusion we call reality and allow his consciousness to roam time and space with impunity.  He wants Frank to watch and take notes of what happens and everything he says.  This is what people did in the 20's when they got high, being as Pink Floyd hadn't been invented yet.  In any case Frank agrees to play stenographer, forgiving Halpin for being so rude as to not offer him some of his high.  But he does so grudgingly, with repeated warnings that Mr. Ranger isn't gonna like it.

Frank trips away and begins to describe, in the purplest manner possible, all the things he's witnessing as time and space become simultaneous and he is tripping throughout human history and even pre-history like a coked-up deer (apparently experiencing multiple past lives, all at the same time).  Frank takes notes (he must have known short-hand given how verbose Halpin is) and begins to notice a nasty smell in the room.

Suddenly Halpin begins to wig out.  He's seen, and been seen, by some things he calls "The Hounds of Tindalos"; beyond good and evil, but living(?) repository of everything bad in the universe - and I do mean everything.  More importantly - they're dangerous as hell.  More importantly - they're after him!  

Frank's had enough and leaves Halpin babbling about angles and curves and The Hounds, declaring his intent to send his doctor over (which he apparently forgets to do when he gets home).

The next morning Halpin calls him up and demands he pick up a shitload of plaster of paris and bring it over to his place forthwith, fifthwith even.  Frank thinks nothing of this and complies, not even bothering to ask Halpin to reimburse him.  Back at Halpin's place, Halpin has him help pack the corners and angles of the room with plaster until they are rounded out, turning the room somewhat spherical.  Meantime he blathers on about the Hounds some more, insults Frank, apologizes, then proceeds to insult him again (Frank's mind is prosaic, he declares, while his own is superhuman!  Ah humiity...).  Finally having enough of Halpin's bullshit, Frank leaves again, again declaring his intent to send is doctor over (which he again apparently forgets to do).

That night the town is struck by an earth tremor.  Halpin is found dead in his apartment, in a perfect triangle of crumbled plaster, naked, decapitated, and covered in some kind of blue goo that turns out to be some kind of never-before-seen sort-of living matter.  Oh, and Halpin left a bunch of notes - mathematical forumlas, chants, mad scribblings and a final description of how he's being attacked by monsters, signed off with "aaaaah".  Yeah Long actually went there.

Okay, the things that jump out at me herein are that Long was really into physics and the intersection of physics and metaphysics - c.f. "The Horror from the Hills" for a deeper dive into that - but herein they are presented a lot more concisely and interestingly than in the Elephant story (and here I thought the marriage of eastern philosophy and quantum physics was a 70's thing!).  This all isn't so revelatory now but in 1929 it must have been a major mindfuck.

This story is techinically slight (barely even a story really), and the writing is purple pulp at its purplest and pulpiest - no one in the world ever talked like Halpin, especially when they're higher than a kite, and the whole scribbling a windy description of being attacked while being attacked by extra-dimensional monsters, even to the point of writing out "aaaah" is hilarious.  

BUT - as with "The Space Eaters" (which isn't as good as this one, but has some of the same guilty pleasure charms), I like this story.  It's fun, it's interesting, and I have to give kudos to Long for the Hounds - because he manages to make these things menacing and creepy while in fact telling us virtually nothing about them.  That's effective. 

"The White Ship" by H.P. Lovecraft

Originally published Weird Tales, March 1927  

Basil Elton, like his father before him (and his grandfather before him) is a working man and like his father before him that work is keeping a lighthouse.  Because Elton's aren't terribly ambitious types.  They didn't take rebel stands either - just shared weird stories about the sea and distant exotic lands.  Real exotic.  Like complete fairy-tale-froot-loop exotic.

(Actually I've always thought it would be cool to be a lighthouse keeper.  Just sit out there all night with a good book and the foghorn blowing and turn the thing on once in awhile. But we all know lighthouse keepers are all grizzled old salts with beards and I can't grow one to save my life, plus I'd miss out on friends, dates, etc so I guess it's not meant to be.  Sigh)

(Plus I'd be up late at night waiting for a dinosaur to pop out of the ocean and knock the place down, y'know.  Anyway I digress)

 So Basil keeps the light house and spends his time dreaming (it isn't entirely clear if this is a day-dream (well it happens at night) or a nocturnal one) about a white ship piloted by a bearded man in robes that sails in when the moon is full.  The cap'n invites Basil to board - which at first he declines but finally complies, (crossing the water on a bridge of moonbeams) and they sail off to explore a chain of islands not found in any atlas. 

And oh the places they go, including a "green land" where "dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten", the city of Thalarion where demons (we're never told anything about them except they're "frightful") live, the "Land of Pleasures Unattained" which appears to be not so pleasurable (it "reeks of plague" - not entirely sure what plague reeks like but, okay).  The whole time they're following an "azure celestial bird" which I guess is kinda like HPL's version of a dove.  

Anyway they end of in Sona Nyl, "Land of Fancy" where Elton spends "many aeons" fancying.  He hears of a place called "Cathuria" and just has to go there like now (I guess fancying had gotten dull) so he persuades ol' beard-and-robes to sail him out there, following the bird.  Except know one actually knows where Cathuria is.  But they sail west anyway - after all we all know The West is the Best, right? (Thanks Jim!)  Anyway it all turns out to be a bad plan since they reach the edge of the world and fall off.  

Just in time Basil starts awake and finds himself on the rocks outside the lighthouse, which he allowed to go out, and now a ship is crashing on the rocks big time.  Later on he finds a dead azure bird and bit of ship debris, pure white.  Poor Basil!

This is really early Lovecraft and it shows, since the whole thing is so sketchy its almost more like a summary of a story (with some evocative notes) than an actual story.  It's completely Dunsany-derivative but Lovecraft does add his own peculiar note of melancholy to the thing.  I think (pure spec here as I don't know that much about Dunsany as a person) that the big diff between Dunsany's fantasies and Lovecraft's attempts to imitate them is that Dunsany enjoyed playing with his worlds of imagination whereas at the time Lovecraft was doing his most Dunsany-dipped work, he was either undergoing or coming out of some kind of major depressive episode, and he really did want to leave the world he found so awful and run off to fairy-tale land.  That kind of feeling completely permeates this story like you would believe.  All in all its an interesting trifle with some sad subtext underneath.