"The House in the Valley"

by August Derleth 

originally published Weird Tales, July 1953

Jefferson Bates just wanted to go get away from it all and everyone else and paint, so he's all kindsa happy when his agent finds him an ultra-isolated house in a remote country valley not to far from Arkham and Dunwich.

The house is a dump; creepy-looking with furniture piled up around the outside like a barricade.  Plus Jeff gets the weird feeling there's someone there.  Also no electricity, running water, but the phone works.  It also has a bad rep.  The former tenant, Seth Bishop, was a creepazoid recluse who murdered one of his neighbors after being accused of killing local livestock.

Nevertheless, Jeff moves in.  He soon meets one of his neighbors, a dumbass youth named Bud Perkins who likes to spy on him. And hints of dark doings having been done in the house.  

That night Jeff is awakened by weird sounds seeming to come from beneath the earth.  He soon finds some old books, including a notebook kept by Seth with notes from the various usual sources. He soon learns that late in life Seth went on a self-improvement kick, reading everything he could get his hands on, and even visiting the Miskatonic U library.  

The dreams get weirder, including a giant gaseous Cthulhu head enveloping the house.  Jeff discovers a hidden tunnel in the cellars, clearly man-made, that seems pretty extensive.  Intrigued, he buys some tools and digs further.  

Bud comes around complaining about having lost a sheep.  Jeff finds evidence that he's been making nocturnal treks which he has no memory of.  He also finds some remains of the sheep in the tunnels. 

Jeff soon sometimes thinks of himself as a different person altogether, and is concerned about this painter from the city living in his house.  He absorbs himself in a diary of Seth's that he finds.  He learns of contacts with Deep Ones and information about the Feds raid on Innsmouth.  The local sheriff comes to question him.  He dreams vividly of R'lyeh, Cthulhu, and the Deep Ones.  

Bud Perkins and other locals now patrol the area, armed, keeping an eye on the house and Jeff.  One night, Jeff is awakened by the sounds of screaming coming from the tunnels.  A mob of townsfolk and a deputy sheriff turn up at his door demanding to search the house.  It seems a local boy has disappeared.

Not long after Jeff is again hearing rumblings in the earth, hearing strange music and chanting.  He finds himself caught up in adoration of Cthulhu.  He runs from the house and kills Bud Perkins.  The locals come after him.  They set the house on fire.  As Jeff is taken away, he thinks he sees Cthulhu and Deep Ones writhing in the flames.  He believes it was the spirit of Seth Bishop, possessing him, which committed the murders.

This is an above average tale for Derleth, with its focus on mental deterioration and madness, though he still indulges in the Standard Derleth Lecture on the Cthulhu Mythos.  Much is implied rather than shown, and the vision of Cthulhu in Jeff's second dream (not the gaseous head vision) is very effective.  The small moment where Jeff begins to think completely from Seth(?)'s POV is genuinely chilling.

"The Seal of R'lyeh" aka "Seal of the Damned"

 by August Derleth

originally published Fantastic Universe, July 1957 

Marius Phillips grandfather ("whom I never saw except in a darkened room") always warned his parents to keep him away from the sea.  Which was odd to him since in fact he was drawn to the ocean as far back as he can remember.  Nevertheless his parents raised him landlocked environs.

By the time he's in college, both parents have shuffled off and so has an eccentric uncle who leaves him boatloads of money and two houses - one in Innsmouth, one on coastal hills above Innsmouth looking out onto the ocean.  Marius moves in to the latter.

Throughout the house, and especially embroidered into a great round rug that nearly fills a study, is a seal depicting an Aquarius-type figure surmounting what appears to be symbols of a city and an octopoid beastie.

He hires a young woman, Ada Marsh, from the town, to do some housekeeping for him.  She's not much of a housekeeper, as he keeps catching her snooping around, as if looking for something.  When he asks her what she's looking for, she behaves oddly, telling him (a notebook or diary or papers) but refusing to explain what for, telling him he's too young and stupid and an outsider to understand.

Inexplicably, Marius doesn't get rid of her and in fact finds the papers hidden behind the usual books.  Unc's diary includes the whole back-story of Innsmouth, the usual blah-blah about Elder Gods and Great Old Ones, maps of the Plateau of Leng and Kadath, and notes about Unc's attempts to find R'lyeh and Cthulhu himself.  This leads Marius into several paragraphs of speculation on the Mythos and comparative religion, references to the events of "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Whisperer in Darkness" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".  

However, when he presents what he's learned to Ada, she's unimpressed and insults him.  She also tells him to find his uncle's ring.

Which he promptly does.

The ring, when worn, makes him psychically aware and changes his perception of the world.  Using it, he finds a trap door in the study that leads to a huge, deep underground cavern that opens out to the sea.

Marius gets himself some diving gear and hops in. Once in the water, he finds an unknown force starting to draw him in deeper, risking his being too deep when his oxygen runs out.  He is rescued by Ada, who is able to swim effortlessly and to breathe underwater.  She frees him of his diving gear and he discovers he too can breathe underwater.  They swim out to Devil's Reef.

Ada now joins him in his quest for R'lyeh.  They charter a boat and make for Ponape.  From there they begin to visit the various cities of the Deep Ones, finding allies.  Finally they think they have found R'lyeh.  They charter a boat out there.  A great wave seems to wash them off the boat and into the sea.  They are never seen again. 

While I can't call this a great story its certainly one of Derleth's better attempts at a Lovecraftian tale.  Obviously, he's riffing heavily (and less effectively) off of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and the usual lecture on the nature of the mythos is just as painful as always.  But it is effective, breaks the mold of the straight Lovecraft rips at least a little bit, and is at times effectively spooky (I find the never-properly-seen Grandfather bit kind of eerie even though I knew instantly why he never got to get a good look at him).

"Notebook Found In A Deserted House"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, May 1951

Poor Willie Osborn.  Orphaned at an early age and left in the care of an elderly grandmother out in the back-back-backwoods of New England (somewhere sort of near Arkham), he grew up hearing her spooky stories about creepy things that lived in the woods - especially what she calls them ones - mysterious and fearsome entities that live even farther back in the woods and hold weird ceremonies, especially at Halloween.

Well, granny up and shuffles off and Willie ends up living with his aunt and uncle who live ... even farther back in the woods - like, in them ones neighborhood.  

Aunt and Unc are nice enough, but Willie (who's a pretty smart kid) notices little details - like they lock the doors tight at night, and there's no animal life in the woods around their remote home.  One afternoon playing in those deserted woods, he hears something come stomping along, something that hangs around for a bit, allowing Willie, who's hiding and doesn't see it, to nonetheless smell it (bad!) and hear it chanting - something involving "Shub-Niggurath" and "shoggoth".  It leaves behind pools of slime and prints like giant hooves.  That night, Willie begins having dreams about the encounter in which he sees the creature as mass of ropy tentacles and mouths, shaped almost like a tree.

Aunt and Unc get a telegram via Cap, the mailman who comes up by horse and buggy once a week, saying that a cousin, Frank Osborne, is coming for a visit.  Lots of excitement.  But Unc rides into town ... and never comes back.  His horse and buggy eventually do, though.  The horse in a state of terror, the buggy empty.  Willie dreams of his Aunt being taken in the night by strange men.  The next morning, she's gone.

Frank shows up, all city-slicker condescension, and Willie soon spots him for an impostor.  And that he's trying to keep Willie from leaving.  Willie manages to escape with Cap, who believes what he's telling him and seems to know way more about the weird happenings in the wood than he's letting on.

Cap and Willie encounter a ropy gloop monster on the road, and the buggy gets turned over.  Cap and the horse get eaten.  Willie escapes into the woods and finds a clearing where cultists are sacrificing cattle, and people.  The ropy horror from his dreams is also in attendance.  Willie runs away, back to the cabin, barricades himself in, and starts writing down the whole experience.  But even as he's writing, he can hear "Cousin Frank" and others, some less-than-human sounding, talking outside and preparing to break in...

Woo hoo!  I've given old Bob Bloch a bit of a hard time about his early, amateurish Cthulhu'd tales, but his few later ones are pretty great.  Even Ramsey Campbell cited "Notebook" as one of the scariest Lovecraft-influenced tales and man, he is right.  I remember first reading it in daylight on a bright spring day, and read it today sitting on my front porch on a bright October day and it still packs the chill.

It works, I think, because like Davis Grubb' Night of the Hunter, or Alan Moore's "Kamara" stories in his 80's run on Swamp Thing, it is a child's nightmare.  Bloch remembers how scary the world is when you're a kid, and the nagging fear that the grown-ups may not be able to protect you - or worse - may be out to harm you themselves.  Being told straight from a young boy's P.O.V. and in his own words - but a young boy - not a stupid one - the language is simple enough that this could almost be a children's story.  A particularly sinister one.  

It's not perfect.  The next to last line is either a dumb joke (Bloch was prone to injecting humor into his stories), or is just dumb.  But its not enough to dispel the darkness of this one.  The very last line is one of those "the narrator writes out his last words just as the monster eats him" sort of moments but in this case I think Bloch (a) pulls it off and (b) it makes sense and is believable in the overall context of the story.  So we have a winner here.

"Terror in Cut-Throat Cove"

 by Robert Bloch

originally published Fantastic, June 1958

Howard Lane is a freelance writer and full-time drunk who's relocated to the Caribbean island of Santa Rita to live cheaply and escape/drown his sorrows over a failed romance.  One night he encounters a rarity - an American couple; Don Hanson, an overbearing jerk, and his "secretary" Dena Drake, a classic 50's-type blonde bombshell/fallen woman.  Howard thinks Don is an asshole but he's instantly smitten with Dena.

Don has a proposition.  It seems he's acquired an 18th century pirate's ship's log which tells of a fabulous treasure lost of the coast of Santa Rita - it seems the pirates sank a galleon carrying, among other things, a gold ark taken from some remote temple and carried intact.  Although the pirates attempted to retrieve the ark from the sunken ship, it seems all their efforts failed when men died and others became superstitiously afraid, and they were forced to abandon the wreck to its watery grave.  After determining the log is legit, Howard signs up to help pave the way to Don and a small crew diving for the treasure.

Things go bad fast.  The find the wrecked hull, but one of Don's divers, Roberto, floats up without his head.  The crew starts muttering about curses and such, but Don puts it down to a freak accident.

Don begins teaching Howard how to dive.  He takes the next dive himself and manages to explore the hull a bit more, but becomes alarmed by what he thinks are nitrogen narcosis caused hallucinations.  He suggests Howard dive himself for it next.

During his dive, Howard sees the ghoulish figure of a female pirate zombie, brandishing a cutlass, then a black boiling cloud that seems to emanate tentacles and faces, including Roberto's.  A panicked Howard heads for the surface, way too fast.  Don is still not dissuaded by Howard's experience, and plans for them both to dive tomorrow.

That night Howard dreams of a strange entity living in the wreck that absorbs the consciousness of its prey.  After the dream, his consciousness too begins to merge with the entity, which is, of course, entirely real.

They dive, find the ark, and Don is devoured by the creature in it.  Howard tries to explain everything to Dena, but she isn't buying it.  She tries to seduce Howard, but his interest in normal things is fading.  The crew tries to take the boat and flee, but Howard and Dena witness as the boat is seized by the increasingly-powerful creature from the ark.

Howard, now completely in thrall to the thing from the ark, sacrifices Dena to it.  He is captured by the local police and deemed hopelessly insane.  As the police commish is writing up his report, he hears Howard chanting from his cell, and sees a black, boiling shape begin to rise from the coastal waters...

Wow! Now this was a re-read worth re-reading.  

I recall first reading this one at about 16 or so, and being not-that impressed with it.  In my memory it was just a kind of search-for-sunken-treasure sorta crime thriller with some tentacles showing up at one point, and I didn't even get its Mythosiness, which proves I was either a dumb kid or not paying close enough attention.  I'm positive I read it a second time in college but again, my memory of it was as nothing special.

Well I was wrong, man.  This is first-rate 50's Bloch, with cliched but strongly-drawn characters, and an air of sleaze and noir-ish psychodrama that was Bloch's stock-in-trade by this time.  But as to the Lovecraftian elements - well, the nightmare creature stored in the ark in the wreck (it sounds a bit like a Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua, for all you CoC players) is depicted perfectly, especially its alien and malignany ability to absorb the minds and memories of its victims, and/or apparently invade the mind of those it even comes into contact with.  This is one of the scariest and most convincing monsters in all Cthulhu-land, and its perefectly-presented arrival in the midst of what looks like a conventional heist tale makes this a real gem.

"The Black Island"

by August Derleth
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.

"The Keeper of the Key"

by August Derleth

originally published Weird Tales, May 1951

Nayland Colum is a young author in London who has published a novel entitled The Watchers on the Other Side, which he himself describes as "outre".  Outre or not the book has sold quite well and he's preparing to move out of Soho.  Partly because some "fishy" (he he he) people seem to be following him and watching him.  

One night who shows up but ol' Doc Shrewsbury himself, Roman nose and prognathous jaw in tow.  It seems he's read Watchers and believes Nayland to be hip to the jive.  Labs fills him in on the usual b.s. (Cthulhu is real and afoot blah blah blah) including two pages of name-dropping.  He explains that he's up to his neck in some serious shit and Nayland could be a big help to him if he doesn't mind risking life, limb and soul.  To prove his point he demonstrates that Deep Ones are prowling the apartment building and that, even though he can clearly see, he doesn't have any eyes.  Nayland, swayed by Doc Shrews all-knowing-ness and eyeless-ness, signs up.

So it's off they go to the Middle East, followed by Deep Ones swimming alongside their boat, and spying on them in the port cities.  They make their way into the trackless desert in search of Irem, the Nameless City, where Shrew hopes to find the manuscript of Al Azif.  Despite losing nearly half their men along the way to "saurians" (apparently survivors of the race that once inhabited Irem), their guides and porters stick with them until they are on the outskirts of the region thought to be home to Irem.

Irem is indeed found, and Labs and Nayland fart around with all of its spooky-nifty features, and Nayland is introduced to the suspended animation-ed bods of Andrew Phelan, Abel Kean, and Claiborne Boyd, all in stasis in Irem while their minds are on Celaeno (Auggie hadn't made that detail apparent before, and it feels slightly out of left field).  In order to find the ms, Shrew re-animates the remains of Abdul Alhazred himself, conveniently sarcophagied in the city (that public murder attributed to Alhazred's exit was merely an illusion to cover his tracks).  Alhazred graciously helps them out, as well as helping point them to where R'lyeh might be.  Nayland and Shrew make their way back to civilization, but, when an unnatural storm hits their ship back to Merrie Olde, they realize the jig is up and escape via Byakhee Airlines.  Newspaper report they were washed overboard in the storm.

4/5 of the way into Derleth's "Trail of Cthulhu" sequence, and there's signs of hope, as "Keeper" is a cut above its predecessor "The Gorge Beyond Salapunco" and way above its pre-predecessor, the outright bad "Watcher From the Sky".  This one isn't outright bad, nor completely pointless, since it does at least take the story somewhere.  The motivations are absurd - look, if a guy showed up with Shrewsbury's line at my place, showed me that fish people were in my apartment building, and turnd out to have no eyes but could see, I might believe him, but I'm still not sure I'd sign up to risk life/limb/soul with him.  Actually I'm pretty sure I'd go "gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!" and push him out a window.  But I guess Nayland is a risk-taker.  The casual "oh, ho-hum six of our men got carried off in the night by little dinosaur people" is borderline comical.  No it's not borderline, it is comical.  The stories saving grace is the resurrection of Abdul Alhazred, which, though it goes on a little too long, is damn effective because, after all, Derleth was a good writer (albeit one who sometimes made bad choices).  

"The Slitherer From The Slime"

by H.P. Lowcraft (aka Lin Carter and David Foley)
originally published Inside SF #3, September 1958

A traveler through Arkham on a dark and stormy night stops off at Castle Drumgool for shelter.  He is served drinks and invited to spend the night.  The owner has a strange library.  Upon being shown to his room, the narrator wigs out.

This is a completely silly but at least amusing little piece, laden with sophomoric but still smile-inducting humor (among the fearsome books owned by the castle's master are Winnie the Pooh and How To Win Friends And Influence People).  On the whole the joke is heavy-handed and even contemptuous.  Surprising since Carter was such a fanboy...

"Something From Out There"

by August Derleth
originally published Weird Tales, January 1951

Dr. William Currie of the coastal English town of Lynwold is woken in the night by the constable - he's brought Geoffrey Malver, scion of the local lord Malver, whom he found "out of his head" in the town.  Geoff is indeed checked out, clutching a star-shaped stone, and babbling about "something from out there"... The star-shaped stone has an inscription on it, written by no less than the Augusine, Bishop of Hippo (which is awesome because it means the English have an even sillier title than "Earl of Sandwich), which reads that it imprisons something "accursed in the sight of God, follower of Mad Cthulhu."  Woo hoo - pay dirt!.  

Currie can't get very far with Geoff, who was apparently farting around the skeleton of a ruined cathedral in the area, and a meeting with Lord Malvern yields little except that there was some scandal of some sort over at Oxford U, where Geoff has been a student, that led to the expulsion of two of Geoff's frat brothers, one Soames Hemery and one Duncan Vernon.  This line of investigation is temporarily curtailed when some local kids turn up - having been lost in some coastal caves which they found through a tunnel system they discovered in the ruins of the same aforementioned cathedral.  Said kids also came upon the corpse of a local fisherman, which is in a bad state being both crushed, and frozen!

After some persuading, Hemery and Vernon admit that their expulsion was the result of their studies and dablling in black magic (since apparently getting incoherently drunk and attempting to rape co-eds wasn't a thing yet).  Geoff, the least indoctrinated of them, had trucked out to the cathedral looking for proof or some such, and had apparently pried the star-stone off a sealed casket of some kind, thus releasing an Ick From Beyond which is presumably now couch-surfing in the caves while killing anyone unlucky enough to cross its path, thus making itself stronger.  The game's afoot, Currie!  The three of them rush off the the cathedral to save the world!

En route, they are intercepted by a farmer who's just watched one of his hands get mangled by a big moving shadow (Farmer Jonathan watched this happen through a pair of field glasses - apparently he lacked female neighbors).  In any case, the field hand is, like the fisherman, both crushed and frozen.  No matter - to the cathedral!

There our heroes confront the Thing, described as a shadowy, "greenish hulk" (no, not that greenish hulk!) with tentacles and three eyes, and engage in an allegedly epic battle (I say allegedly because Derleth actually just tosses it off in a couple sentences stating that the battle was lengthy and "endless") before forcing it back in its box and sealing it back up with the star-stone.  The world saved, our intrepid band heads off for the local pub, but Currie still wonders what other horrors might be sealed up, somewhere, waiting to be released...

This is obviously pretty Lovecraft-Lite stuff and no classic.  Yet it's also curiously buried, having not appeared in any of Derleth's collections of Cthulhu-ery - it's still a bit on the rare side, publication-wise.  This is kinda too bad since it is far from terrible and actually has some good points.  There's a reasonable bit of atmosphere, and, for a change, when Hemery and Vernon explain the Mythos, the whole thing is dashed off in a quick paragraph with fleeting references to the usual suspects, as opposed to the usual tiresome lecture and endless name-dropping and bibiliography Derleth usually indulges in at this point in his Lovecraft-type stories.  

The final portion is odd, and feels very rushed, as if Derleth somehow needed to shut down real fast.  The monster is only vaguely (and thus effectively) described, but the "epic" battle, as mentioned, is simply tossed off as an afterthought.  I was left wondering what a more action-oriented writer, such as Robert E. Howard, might have done with such a scene.  It feels like a missed opportunity that could have delivered a nice payoff after a solid buildup.  

By no means any classic, but still one of Auggie's better ventures into this territory.  It deserves greater availability.

"The Shadow From The Steeple"

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales, September 1950

Edmund Fiske, lifelong friend of the late Robert Blake (hapless protagonist of "The Shambler from the Stars" and "The Haunter of the Dark"), is not satisfied with the official explanation of Blake's sudden demise (the truth of which is recounted in "The Haunter of the Dark").  He begins an investigation.

Said investigation takes many years, as Fiske corresponds with many of those who had contact with Blake.  This includes no less than H.P.L. himself, who was also investigating, and published what he had learned and/or surmised as the aforementioned story "The Haunter of the Dark".

 His investigations continue to point to the riddle of Dr. Amrose Dexter, who tossed the Shining Trapezohedron, said to release the Haunter, into the Narragansset Bay.  Why there?  And why has a medical doctor, since the war, spent years apparently involved in atomic energy?  And why won't he answer any of Fiske's letters requesting a meeting?

After many failed attempts, Fiske arrives at Dexter's Providence home, and finds Dexter in residence.  He confronts Dexter about the Trapezohedron, Blake's death, and his apparent involvement in the development of nuclear weapons.  He quotes from Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, sonnet XXI: Nyarlathotep

And at the last from inner Egypt came
The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;
Silent and lean and cryptically proud,
And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.
Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,
But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;
While through the nations spread the awestruck word
That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.

...accusing Dexter of being no less than Nyarlathotep himself.  He pulls a gun, but at that moment Dexter switches out the light, revealing himself as a glowing, inhuman thing.  Fiske dies of a heart attack.

As Dexter's butler calls for the police, Dexter steps into his garden.  Two panthers, recently escaped from a zoo, enter the garden.  They fawn at his feet, licking his hands...

This tale, one of the last Lovecraftian stories that Bloch would ever publish, is one of his best.  By this time, Bloch had outgrown his HPLisms and had developed his own voice - straightforward, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but with an acidic tone that kicks in at the end and twists the knife.  The outcome may be a bit inevitable, but its richly satisfying all the same.

"The Lamp of Alhazred"

by August Derleth
originally published The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1957

Ward Phillips, a reclusive, sickly pulp writer, lives off the dwindling remains of his family's lost fortune.  From his long-disappeared grandfather, Whipple, he's inherited a host of old books and an antique lamp, decorated with figures.  When lit, the lamp produces visions of exotic, fantastic worlds.  These so inspire Phillips that composes a host of stories about them.

Years go by.  Phillips' health is failing.  One night, he burns the lamp again.  This time he sees visions of the Rhode Island of his childhood.  

A correspondent comes to visit Phillips, but finds him gone.  Phillips has vanished, never to be seen again...

This is a major departure among the Derleth "collaborations", and its excellent in part because of that.  Rather than ape HPL (poorly), Derleth has written a rather gentle fairy tale in tribute to his late friend.  And provided him an exit more in keeping with Lovecraft's tastes.  All in all, this is a moving little oddity.

 

"The Fisherman of Falcon Point"

by August Derleth
originally published The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House, 1959

 Enoch Conger is a grumpy local fisherman who no one likes very much.  He tends to hang out in a tavern near Innsmouth.  One night he tells a tale of fishing up a "mermaid" sort of thing off Devil's Reef.  The "mermaid" promised to save his life someday, if he would let her go.  This gets him laughed at.  After that, Conger doesn't come around much - mostly just keeps to himself, staring out at the ocean.

Conger is found injured.  He asks to be carried back to his tiny house at Falcon Point.  When a doc arrives, Conger is gone.  But webbed footprints are found outside.  Conger is never seen again - except local salts who sometimes report seeing him swimming with schools of Deep Ones, singing hymns to Dagon...

Obviously a very minor story.  Still I have always found this one entertaining and evocative in its slight way.

"The Ancestor"

by August Delreth
originally published

by August Derleth
originally published The Survivor and Others, Arkham House, 1957

Henry, our narrator, has a cousin named Ambrose Perry, a retired physician.  It seems Perry had some radical ideas, not accepted by the medical establishment.   He has retired to a remote house in Vermont to pursue his unorthodox research.  He offers Henry a job as his secretary.

Henry finds Ambrose in debilitated shape - gaunt and spooky.  It seems Ambrose has found a way, using drug-and-environmentally-induced trances - to revert his mind as far back as his birth, and before his birth, into the mental fields of his ancestors, thusly he can take a gander at the world before he was born, even back to prehistoric times.

Ambrose starts getting weird.  He has bad table manners and starts locking himself away in his lab for days on end.  He stops eating.  His normally well-behaved dog starts acting up.  Henry thinks he spots a large animal in the nearby woods.  The house starts smelling "musky".

Henry finally breaks down the outside door to the lab.  The dog gets free and runs off that way first, and Henry hears the sound of a vicious struggle.  Inside the lab, the equipment has been wrecked and papers strewn around, and the remains of several half-eaten woodland creatures can be found.  Henry finds the dog having just finished killing a "sub-human caricature of a man".  But it's wearing Ambrose's clothes.  Clearly Ambrose had succeeded in regressing more than his mind...

A perfectly average Derleth story, not especially Lovecraftian.  Its very similar to Leonard Cline's "The Dark Chamber", an obscure 1920's horror novel that Lovecraft was fond of (and I was not), and I suspect that was the true inspiration, and not anything in HPL's "Commonplace Book".

"Wentworth's Day"

by August Derleth
originally published The Survivor and Others, Arkham House, 1957

Fred Hadley, from Boston, is on his way through Dunwich, one summer night in 1927, when a storm hits.  He pulls into a rundown, empty barn and knocks on the door of the run-down house, which isn't so empty.  Amos Stark, a crazy old coot, lives there.  He's friendly enough to let Fred camp out till the storm runs out.  No big deal that he has a big book on black magic ("The Seventh Book of Moses") or that he keeps rattling on about someone named Wentworth, from whom he borrowed the book and, apparently, $5,000, and who's dead, but might be coming back for it.  And might have been murdered by Stark. Hadley is, needless to say, a little baffled.  But he curls up on the old sofa for a nap.  He's awoken by a knock on the door and Stark's screaming.  He finds Stark being strangled by the skeletal remains of (one assumes) Wentworth.  He passes out.

When he comes to, he rushes to check on Stark.  He finds he is indeed dead, and, to prove it wasn't a hallucination, there are still some finger bones lodged in Stark's neck.  The finger bones jump out of the neck and go dancing out the door, and Fred runs off screaming into the night.

Had Derleth been reading EC comics?  This reads more like something from that line than HPL.  Fun, funny story (incidentally, Creepy comics did do an adaptation in the 60's).  Nothing special though.

"The Shadow Out Of Space"

by August Derleth
originally published The Survivor and Others, Arkham House 1957

Nathaniel Corey, a shrink, is brought an unusual patient - one Amos Piper, an anthropologist.  Piper has had some kind of breakdown.  Some years back, for a period of time, he suddenly lost his ability to speak, his motor skills, and his personality.  He quickly recovered the first two.  He spent a fair bit of time travelling, and researching various outre things - including the usual Cthulhu-isms.  Three years later he returned to normal.  He is plagued by detailed dreams and visions of life on another world, in the body of the cone-shaped Great Race of Yith.

 Corey naturally figures this all to be psychological phenomenon.  Piper becomes paranoid, convinced the Great Race still have him under observation.  He sends Corey a rambling letter in which he vaguely speculates about the events related in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "At the Mountains of Madness".  Corey goes to see him, but, despite Piper's sister's claims of a relapse, Piper seems perfectly normal, and well-adjusted.  Well, except he seems ... too intelligent. 

Piper says he's headed off for the Arabian desert on an expedition.  Corey goes back to his office and finds all his notes about Piper's case stolen.  But  he made copies, smart fellow that he is!  He begins researching some of Piper's claims - and finds validity in them.  It turns out there's been a bunch of cases identical to Piper's.  And hey - that expedition?  All those victims of the identical cases are in on it!  And hey - guess what - the entire expedition is lost!

Corey begins to notice people following him.  His manuscript cuts off as someone approaches from across the street.  Dr. Corey and an unknown man are found in Corey's office trying to burn his manuscript.  They're having problems because they don't seem to know how to use their hands, and they can't speak....

A rather pointless re-hash of "The Shadow Out Of Time", even down to the name.  And a silly ending.  Derleth was really phoning it in with this one.

"The Shuttered Room"

by August Derleth
originally published The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House, 1959

Abner Whateley returns to Dunwich to claim the property left him by his grandfather, Luther - a cousin of Lavinia, the old wizard, and Wilbur W.  Luther was a little weird.  Years ago, he locked his daughter Sarah ("Aunt Sarey") up in a room over the mill attached to the house, and nailed the shutters over the windows.  He would not speak of her again.

Abner finds a letter from Luther instructing him to destroy the mill and the room above it, and kill anything he finds alive there.  He unlocks the mystery room, finding it with some spartan bedding, things thrown around, and smelling fishy.  He knocks out the shutters, accidentally breaking a window in the process.  He thinks he spots a frog or toad ducking into hiding, but ignores it.

In town, he meets grumpy storekeeper Tobias Whateley (who will reappear in "The Watchers Out Of Time").  Returning home, he finds his great uncle Zebulon and a young boy waiting for him.  Zebulon reveals that the Whateley family is cursed, and that "Aunt Sarey" was a Marsh, from Innsmouth.

Abner has trouble hiring workmen to demolish the mill.  And he finds wet, webbed footprints around the mill and the (formerly) shuttered room. Both outgoing and incoming.  And the incoming prints, though of the same type as the outgoing, are quite a bit larger. He finds a letter in Luther's papers concerning Innsmouth and the sordid tales of the Marsh family.  And some kind of animal has suddenly taken to killing cattle around the region - "just like that time before..."

Oh well, so what? thinks Abner, and returns to trying to find workmen to demolish the mill and poking through old Luther's papers.

Eventually he finds a rehash of the whole Deep Ones/Innsmouth thing (Zadok Allen gets a name-drop), finds that Sarah took part in some Deep One-ish rituals in Innsmouth, and came back preggers with her own cousin Ralsa's child (Ralsa, it seems, was a fishy character ... geddit?), which led to Luther locking her away in the shuttered room above the mill ... along with her offspring.

A journal in Luther's hand largely fills in the blanks - Sarah's offspring escaped and went around eating livestock and human (one of them was identified only by his remaining foot and shoe!), but was eventually lured back in and locked away, where it was kept fed on raw meat - just enough to keep it alive, but not enough to let it grow in size.  Apparently the critter didn't die, even when the food stopped.  It just shrank to small size.

The thing romps across Dunwich - one such rampage is recounted over the party line, as in "The Dunwich Horror", complete with "Oh gawd - that face!" exclamations.  Finally, Abner finds it back in the shuttered room, and nails it with a kerosene lamp (why would a wet creature burn?).  It dies screaming "Mamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" as Abner runs screaming into the night.

This is not a great story.  It has a nice buildup, but pretty soon you realize it's ultimately kind of a riff off "The Dunwich Horror" with some standard haunted house touches.  Derleth is good with atmosphere, and the story is engaging enough to be entertaining and fun if you're looking for a Lovecraftian fix, but the absence of HPL's originality and imagination means its nothing more than a fun read.

"The Peabody Heritage"

by August Derleth
originally published The Survivor and Others, Arkham House, 1957

Asaph Peabody dies in 1905 and leaves his run-down, 27-room house in the countryside of Wilbraham, MA, to his family.  Who don't want anything to do with it but also won't sell it.  So it sits.  Until after 1929, when the narrator, who's first name is never given but whom we will call "Peabody", cuz - decides to re-furbish it and move in.

Trouble starts pretty fast.  The locals are unfriendly.  The family mausoleum is opened, and Peabody find's Uncle Asaph is upside down in his broken-open coffin.  Peabody turns him over ("this act, which might have seemed grisly in other circumstances, seemed only wholly natural" he notes - um, yeah ... sure...).  A secret room is found in the house, with a burnt-looking desk, cabalistic symbols on the floor, and books of black magic.  And the narrator is plagued by dreams of uncle Asaph and a big black cat flying around at night.  And sometimes a "Black Man".  When some workmen break open the north wall of the strangely-angled room, they find bones and skulls - small ones.

Does Peabody do the obvious thing and call the cops?  No!  I guess he doesn't watch Law & Order or CSI.  Instead he hides the bones in the mausoleum  and goes off to research Asaph's life.

It seems the locals thought Asaph was a witch/warlock, and he was thought to have a big black cat as a familiar.  And children used to go missing all the time.  Oh, and he was buried upside down in his coffin, because superstition said that would keep him from rising from the dead and continuing his nocturnal nastiness.

Well, Peabody knows what to do - burn Asaph's remains!  But when he rushes to the tomb, he finds the body of a recently-gone-missing child in the coffin with Asaph (someone's in the coffin with Asaph...), and it seems Asaph's bones are starting to fill out.

Peabody sets the coffin afire and heads back to the house, where he's menaced by a great black cat.  He shoots it.  To no avail....

Here we have a pretty standard Derleth tale, seemingly inspired in part by the story of the Chase Family Vault, whatever notes there might have been of HPL's, and "Dreams in the Witch House", an interesting choice since Derleth didn't apparently hold "Dreams" in very high esteem, at least when he read it in manuscript form.

It's not a bad story by any means, despite some lapses in logic.  Derleth was an effective enough spook-writer, and there's some decent atmosphere. But clearly HPL did a lot more with the idea - in a story generally regarded as not among his best.

"The Gable Window"

by August Derleth
originally published Saturn, July 1957

art by John Coulthart

In 1924, The Unnamed Narrator moves into his cousin Wilbur's remote, strange old house in the wilds of Vermont after Wilbur kicks over.  The house has weird architecture, and its oddest feature is a great round window in the "gable" room.

After living in the house for awhile, UN begins to have strange thoughts and feelings about the room - in other words, it's got Bad Mojo.  And sometimes he hears what sounds like large animals rattling around outside the round window, trying to get in.

Eventually, UN finds a last letter from Wilbur, instructing him to destroy certain papers, donate certain books to Miskatonic U, and smash the round window - smash it I say!  The books turn out to be the usual Cthulhoogie Library Selections.  And even though UN can barely read them and doesn't understand them, he apparently absorbs quite a bit out of them, leading to a long name-dropping paragraph of the usual suspects.

He also finds a bunch of notes left by Wilbur, suggesting that he (Wilbur, that is), believed the glass in the window to be of  "Hyadean" origin, and that he was seeing visions in it -of various Mythos-y places and things, which he described and sometimes drew.  UN figures ol' Wilbur was tipped over.

But, eventually he figures out Wilbur's little ritual used to see visions in the glass, which involves a star-symbol chalked on the floor in front of the window.  And, of course, he has to try it out.

Well, first he sees the desert, then a cave, then some bats, then some "Sand Dwellers" (which also apparently see him), and then a tentacle-faced thingie that starts not only moving towards him in the glass but coming through the glass!

Fighting off fear, UN rubs out part of the chalk star and hurls a shoe at the glass, shattering it and ending the extra-dimensional invasion.  But a severed tentacle is left on the floor - a tentacle "no living savant could identify as belonging to any known creature, living or dead, on the face or in the subterranean depths of the earth!"

(One is left to wonder about the opinions of any dead savants...)

A very minor tale, with, as is not untypical of Derleth, a few atmospheric moments.

"The Survivor"

by August Derleth
Originally published Weird Tales, July 1954

Brace yourself, loyal readers (all zero of you), for we are about to enter the most treacherous waters of the whole Cthulhoid ocean, the dreaded and much-maligned world of the August Derleth/H.P. Lovecraft posthumous collaborations....

These are a series of sixteen tales written by August Derleth, based on, usually a couple of sentences found in HPL's notes - stories he thought about but never actually wrote.  

This is where the controversy comes in.  Because, you see, Derleth published these under the byline "H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth", suggesting that Lovecraft had a much bigger hand in them than he actually did.  

This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the various paperback editions collecting these stories generally carry a byline that reads H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth.

    
This makes fanboys absolutely insane, presumably because they fear others will make the grave mistake of picking up these collections, thinking they are true Lovecraftian works (a mistake, in fact, that many HPL fans have made early in their relationships with Mr. Providence - including yr. obedient blogger hisself).   Said fear further complicated by the fact that most of these stories aren't very good (and some are real bow-wows).  

Overzealous nerd Lovecraft fans like to foam at the mouth over the very existence of these works, and especially the continued use of the Lovecraft byline, and curse Derleth's ghost to all manner of hells for ever doing such a thing.  Of course, the main reason these collections get published with Lovecraft's name prominently on display is that Lovecraft sells books and Derleth doesn't.  

As to why Derleth allowed this to happen in the first place (versus the simple step of publishing them under his own name, with a note stating that the story was inspired by Lovecraft's notes), said fans have ascribed all manner of evil evilness to Derleth's motivations.  Myself - I don't have a clue, but I can only rule it a regrettable case of poor judgment on Derleth's part.  Derleth himself was hardly a bad writer (his supernatural stories are generally mediocre and his Lovecraft-inspired writings are among his worst, true - but his true metier was straight fiction - and several of his non-Lovecraft-based horror stories are excellent, even classic), nor a hack (he was an accomplished literary figure in his time, though never a best-seller nor a Great Man of Letters), and his admiration of Lovecraft seems unquestionably genuine, despite all the perfidies S.T. Joshi would have him guilty of. 

Frankly, reading through most of the "collaborations", one gets the impression Derleth didn't take them very seriously and was mostly just having a little fun.  This might not have been the best idea he ever had, but I imagine even Derleth never expected hungry Lovecraft fans would still be seeking them out in the 21st century.  

So, nevertheless, they are here, and we shall deal with them.  And so, without further ado, let us plunge into one of the earliest, "The Survivor"....

Our narrator (unnamed) is an antiquarian (which I think is only a career in Lovecraftian stories) who leases a mysterious, very old house in Providence known as the Charriere House, so named for the mysterious, very old surgeon who occupied it.  No one around seems to want much to do with the house, and no one seems to know much about it, or about Charriere.

The narrator's diggings into the history seems to point to Charriere having been alive from the 17th century up to his "death" in 1927.  In the library, the narrator finds books on reptiles and dinosaurs, and a few of the usual items.  And notes left by Charriere regarding the longevity of reptiles, and certain people he has studied who have reptilian/amphibian physical qualities.  

And did I mention the place smells like a reptile house?

One night, someone breaks into the laboratory and takes some of the journal notes.  This person trails water on the floor and leaves oddly-shaped, wet footprints.  The narrator surmises that someone must have decided to burglarize the place after having a swim --- cause that makes sense, right???  

Further researches seem to suggest that Charriere was researching the longevity of reptiles/amphibians and trying to somehow grant said longevity to humans by transforming them.  It appears he had hit on a way in which a human, mutated by surgery and perhaps a bit of sorcery, could prolong their life, hibernating for long periods then re-emerging, at the cost of becoming more and more reptilian.

The nocturnal visitor returns, and the narrator shoots him.  He follows the fleeing figure into some tunnels which lead to where Charriere is buried in the garden.  There the narrator finds the reptilian body of Charriere.

I warned you Derleth doesn't seem to have taken these stories very seriously.  Thus, the absurd moment in which the narrator decides someone would take a swim and then go break into someone's house.  "Hmm, I was just takin' a dip in the backyard pool and I suddenly thought - `Hey - why don't I go break into that spooky old house and steal some notes from the guy living there!'"  

And then the further absurdity that the narrator never thinks to call the cops on what he's trying to convince himself is a mundane burglar.

Wet footprints all over the lab floor, and the notes stolen are just the ones the narrator's been studying?  I'm thinking the cast of CSI or Law and Order: SVU would make short work of this one.  But oh well.

What we have here is a competent albeit dumb (okay, really dumb) story with some decent atmospheric touches that make it not a total waste of time.  But nothing more.   There will be better Derleth stories ... although (sigh) there will be worse ones, too...