"The Last Feast of Harlequin"

by Thomas Ligotti
originally published The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1990

Our narrator (in proper Lovecraft pastiche tradition, unnamed) is a social anthropologist  whos special area of study is clowns.  Or he just has a clown fetish.  I'm going with that one.  

Through a colleague, he hears of a remote town called Mirocaw, in an unnamed state, which hosts an annual festival which includes clowns.  So he rushes off to Mirocaw.  

In typical Liggotti fashion, the town is weird and the people are weirder, and unfriendly, and unhelpful.  But he does learn there is a festival being held in late December, and it does indeed involve clowns.

He also comes across an article with some details about the town and its festival traditions.  Written by one Dr. Raymond Thoss, our narrator's favorite teacher from college.  Who apparently sort of quietly disappeared some years ago.  What's more, UN realizes that an old man who ignored him in a particularly run-down part of Mirocaw appeared to be a greatly aged Dr. Thoss.

UN makes his way back to Mirocaw in time for fest.  He attempts again to communicate with Dr. Thoss, but instead finds himself intimidated by a horde of zombie-ish goons who surround the good doc, and he's forced to flee.  

He discovers that, yes, there are clowns roaming the streets, and the locals seem to be harassing and bullying them.  He soon learns this is part of the tradition.  He also learns there's more than one type of clown - fairly traditional ones in bright colors, and drab, scary clown-bums who apparently emerge from the ghetto section, and whom townsfolk seem to avoid.

In an attempt to learn more, UN dresses himself as a rundown clown and joins the ghetto bunch.  They are picked up by a series of trucks and driven outside of town.  Still milling with the throng, he finds himself in an underground chamber, and takes part in a sinister ceremony led by Dr. Thoss, who he has realized or decided is an incarnation of the Egyptian god Thoth.  As the ceremony continues, people keep dropping to the floor and transforming into giant worm-people.  Horrified, UN flees and makes his way back home.  But even there he realizes he is one of these people, and will one day return.

This was Liggotti's breakthrough, I think.  It's considered an important example of Liggotti-ism and has been republished more than once.  

I've noted elsewhere I'm not as besotted with Liggotti as a lot of HPL fans are.  I guess you could say I find him a bit suspect.  Here, as is usually the case with Liggotti, the atmosphere is terrific and, yes, very Lovecraftian, recalling both HPL's early, Poe-influenced stories (c.f. "The Festival", which may have helped inspire this) and his mature works.  The sense of unease, that our narrator is about to get himself into something very, very bad is there from word one and only builds as the story wends its leisurely way along.  

On the other hand, after awhile, the surrealism begins to pall.  Too many unexplained oddnesses.  Too much "is the world getting weird or is the narrator nuts?" business.  And the revelation that people are transforming themselves into worm-people seems more silly than shocking.  I often get the sense that Liggotti's pulling our legs.  Especially here.  

I realize writing this exactly what my prob is with Liggotti - he's Superman when it comes to atmosphere but stinks at plots and stories.  Thus his tales read more like someone's transcribed and embellished nightmare than any kind of logical narrative.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it not necessarily a really good one either.

"Love's Eldritch Ichor"

by Esther M. Friesner
originally published World Fantasy Convention 1990: An H.P. Lovecraft Centenary Celebration, Weird Tales Ltd., 1990

Robin Pennyworth works for Columbine Press, a cheap-ass publisher that makes a habit of ripping off its authors.  His boss, editor-in-chief, Marybeth Conran, hands him new author Sarah Pickman as an assignment.  Sarah has written - or discovered, a manuscript - Fires On the Sea - by a deceased distant relative, one H.P. Lovecraft.  It tells the story of the relationship between Captain Uriah Whateley and his exotic South Seas bride.  Conran dispatches Robin to Sarah's home in Arkham to make sure the naïve author doesn't discover she's being robbed blind. 

Upon meeting Sarah - bulging-eyed and batrachian, Robin - who apparently has strange tastes - falls instantly in love.  He returns to NYC, determined to make sure Sarah gets her fair due.  Sarah follows, accompanied by her chaperones - Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth.  Robin soon finds himself the new editor-in-chief of Columbine Press.

As stated elsewhere, I'm often not a fan of attempts at Lovecraft humor, but this sucker is funny as hell!  That's cause Friesner writes well and is genuinely witty: "Robin had never seen a gambrel roof before, especially not one with a Garfield wind sock hanging from the eaves".  Probably one of the funniest Cthulhu-jokes I've come across.

"H.P.L."

by Gahan Wilson

originally published Lovecraft's Legacy, Tor 1990

Edward Haines Vernon, obscure fantasy-horror author, is invited to visit H.P. Lovecraft in Providence.  c. 1990!

It seems HPL is nearly 100 years old now, and has become a very wealthy man.  He's bought up, refurbished, and expanded his grandfather's old home on Angell St.  Complete with secret rooms and passages.  He's got a Rolls, and a strangely familiar chauffeur/housekeeper - with a creepy skin condition.

Edwardius, as HPL refers to him, is given a tour of the home and a fine room, where he experiences strange, Lovecraftian dreams.  He realizes that the chauffeur/housekeeper is familiar because he is, in fact, Clark Ashton Smith.  This is all a bit confusing being as CAS apparently died some time ago.  Smith explains the HPL brought him back from the dead, because he was lonely and Smith was one of his few peers.  Lovecraft lets on to Edwardius that they want him to assist them in some ongoing project, for which they consider him uniquely qualified.  He takes him to his library and shows him an actual copy of De Vermiis Mysteris.  When Edwardius states incredulously that it was his belief that DVM was a fictional invention of HPL and Robert Bloch, HPL explains.

As he lay dying in 1937, HPL discovered that the Great Old Ones were quite real, and that he could open gateways to them by sheer will and concentration alone.  He allowed Shub-Nuggurath to cure him of cancer, carried on with his career, became a rich and famous author.  He also discovered that the characters and events of his fiction were manifesting in the real world.  He and his fellow authors had not imagined the Lovecraftian world, they had discovered it.

With his newfound wealth and freedom, and with the dark magic of his fiction now quite efficacious, HPL resurrected Clark Ashton Smith ala "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" for company, and carried on, gradually working to open the way for the Great Old Ones. Part of this carrying on involved making human sacrifices - usually literary critics and authors who wrote bad pastiches of HPL's fiction.

Edwardius and HPL trek out to a grove of standing stones HPL has had imported from the real-life equivalent of Dunwich, and HPL opens the gate to a cosmic gloopy.  As he attempts to introduce Edwardius as a friend and not a sacrifice, the gloopy scoops HPL up, calling him "father", and vanishes off to its own dimension.

Back in Providence, Edwardius and Clark Ashton Smith carry on...

Attemps at Lovecraftian humor generally don't do much for me, but this one does.  It's a True Fan's love letter to Lovecraft, its genuinely funny and genuinely well-done (the depiction of HPL and CAS as a bickering old couple is especially good, and funny) and it manages to make something of the whole "Lovecraft wasn't writing fiction" trope.  And what HPL fan can't smile at the thought of a latter-day HPL reaping the financial rewards of his latter-day success?  All in all, this one's a fave.

"Pickman's Modem"

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

originally published Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February, 1992

George Polushkin hangs out on message boards, wasting way too much of his time.  Another frequent flyer is Henry Pickman, an inarticulate schlub without much of a life.

Pickman drops off for a bit due to technical difficulties, but returns once he acquires a new 2400 baud (!!!!!) modem - an off-brand, second-hand made by Miskatonic Data Systems, serial number RILYEH.

Strangely, after acquiring this modem, Pickman's postings suddenly become eloquent and sophisticated.  He also gets into endless flamewars which he dominates with his verbal acuity.

George drops in on Pickman and finds him just as dumb and hopeless as always, and can't figure why his posts have become so intelligently-written.

Then Pickman drops off again.  One night, George gets an e-mail from Pickman, this time with his usual lack of grammar and bad spelling.  Pickman complains that his modem - which he has unplugged (he's using a borrowed one) is angry with him, and watching him!  Soon after a fire wipes out Pickman, his apartment, and the evil modem.

I'm sorry but this is just plain a silly tale, competently told but pointless.

"His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood"

by Poppy Z. Brite
originally published Borderlands, Maclay and Associates, 1990

Louis and his unnamed buddy hang out in Louis' inherited Louisiana plantation mansion (crumbling of course) and live an idle life of forbidden pleasures including but not limited to Goth music, heavy drinking, heavy drug use, sex with anything and everything that moves, grave-robbing and dabbling in black magic.

One night Louis leads them to a graveyard where they dig up a corpse with a curious amulet around its neck.  They take the amulet.  

By the next night, a dried-out, mummified corpse of a young woman has turned up.  Louis and his bud meet a particularly fascinating young androgyne at a nightclub and take him home.  The next morning, our narrator awakes to find Louis now a mummified corpse.  And he knows their one-night-stand, and the amulet, had something to do with it.

This is obviously a blatant re-write of HPL's "The Hound".  Whether its a ripoff or a "reimagining" depends on your taste for it.  My own is a bit mixed.  Brite writes well - a wedding of Clark Ashton Smith and Anne Rice, that, in less skillful hands, could have been embarrassing.  Still, the way this thing sprays around Goth/Anne Rice clichés borders on comical - ooooh - hallucinogenics! Gay sex! Straight sex! Bestiality!  S&M! Dark nightclubs with booming Goth music and heavily made-up demimonde!  Shit, the instigator's even named Louis!

Brite pulls it off - but just barely.

"The Barrens"

by F. Paul Wilson
originally published Lovecraft's Legacy, Tor, 1990

Kathy McElston, aka "Mac" (at least the narrator isn't nameless for a change) is born and raised in the ultra-rural, ultra-redneck Pine Barrens of NJ, but ends up graduating from Rutgers and starting up her own accounting firm.  She's left that world behind her until one day, her one-time college boyfriend, Jon Creighton calls her out of the blue.

Jon, a drifter, seeker, and all-around flake, wants her help.  It seems he ended up at Miskatonic U., and now he has several grants to write a book tracing the origins of certain Amurrican folk legends, including the Jersey Devil.  He wants Mac to be his guide and liaison to the Pineys.  Divorced and at loose ends, she agrees.

Mac and Jon make their way into the Barrens in a fully-outfitted Wrangler, where they first meet Jasper Mulliner, a distant relative of Mac's, who sends them on to Gus Sooy, a moonshiner who lives in an intensely remote part of the Barrens.

Sooy is helpful at first, but when Jon asks too many questions about the "pine lights" - will-o-wisp-like apparitions known to the locals, Sooy turns hostile.  Things get more complicated when Mac and Jon get lost trying to get back to civilization, and their jeep gets stuck in a sand pit.  That night, a bizarre encounter with the "pine lights" leaves Jon with a badly burned arm.  But its also clear that Jon knows more than he's letting on and has a hidden agenda.

The next morning a band of deformed, inbred pineys helps free the jeep, and shows Jon their ghastly village.  More importantly, they show him "the place where nothing grows", a barren patch of sand in the middle of the woods, with no vegetation and no sign of animal presence.  Jon is enraptured.

Back in civilization, Mac does her best to avoid Jon.  But when a state trooper comes looking for him, and it turns out he's stolen something from the MU "restricted" collection, and that there are no grants, Mac goes looking for him.

She finds him holed up in a motel and looking sick.  She also learns that Mac has been researching "nexus points", places where, at the equinoxes, the veil between our illusory reality and the true reality is thinned, and where seekers may be able to look behind the curtain into the true nature of reality.

And it's just about time for the fall equinox. 

Mac arrives in time to find Jon in the middle of the barren patch, slowly transforming into a tentacled potato-thing.  She has a glimpse of the true reality before he shoves her off into the woods.

Creighton is gone.  Mac returns home, shoots her answering machine, loses all interest in her business and makes plans to visit the nexus point next equinox.

This is overall a superior story, with very effective atmosphere and buildup.  It's a truly Lovecraftian story that doesn't read anything like HPL, yet clearly follows his ideas about structure and orchestration.  And very successfully so.

On the downside, I found Mac's final confrontation with Jon to be distinctly unimaginative and a letdown. Perhaps an author with a more surreal imagination could have come up with something more potent.

A very good story with a superb buildup, but a slightly disappointing climax.

Maureen Birnbaum at the Looming Awfulness

by George Alec Effinger
originally published Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson, Guild America Books, 1993

Maureen Birnbaum is a J.A.P. from a Connecticut prep school who one day manages to find herself teleported to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom, where she fights some tharks and such and meets a smoking hot Martian guy.  Temporarily back on earth, she soon learns she can transport herself at well.  Only she keeps missing Mars, instead finding herself in Pellucidar, Lagash (the setting of Isaac Asimov's classic "Nightfall"), the post-apocalyptic world of Robert Adams' Horseclans series, and other fictional worlds.  Eventually her travels lead her to Yale University - in March 1966.  

She soon finds herself reacquainted with Rod Marquand, an adventurer she had previously encountered in Pellucidar - now a student at Yale.  Soon she discovers that someone is tormenting Rod by leaving photocopied pages from The Necronomicon.  Then his roommate Sandy is abducted during the night by something slimy, and taken to Harkness Tower on the Yale campus.  Their Maureen does battle with a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, and later encounters a wizened, aged Sandy surrounded by flying ethereal whatsiss which Maureen refers to as "paisleys".  Maureen saves the day by getting Sandy to remember who he is ("Above all, think Yale!").  All is well and Maureen is off to her next adventure.

This, like the other "Maureen" stories, is an amusing trifle.  Effinger is smart and a fine writer, but honestly I never found this or any of the other pieces laugh-out-loud funny.  

"Lights! Camera! Shub-Niggurath!"

by Richard A, Lupoff 

originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer, 1996

On a planet-sized space station called Starret, the entertainment industry is #1.  Far future.  They decide to make a film version of "The Dunwich Horror".  They do so.  It's a big hit all over the known universe.

I really had to struggle to get through this one.  It's not funny and it's not fun.

"The Keeper of the Flame"

by Gary Myers

originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer, 1996

On the plain of Shand stands the Temple of Kish.  The high priest is a very old man.  People come to commune with the god Kish, but the priest never lets them.  One day a proud young man named Nod shows up and demands entrance.  After some considerable debate, the priest allows him in.  He vanishes in a glowing cloud of fog.

A typical Myers Smith-Lovecraft Dreamlands vignette.  But Myters writes well and his stories are always evocative.

"The Black Mirror"

by John Glasby
originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer 1996

Philip Ashmore Smith is dead - burned alive.  He left behind a diary.  PAS was heavily into the occult and supernatural, haunting the bookshops in search of rare occult tomes.  And a Dr. Alexander Morton has taken an ornamental black mirror from Smith's room, without permission of the cops, and tossed it down a mine shaft.    Independently wealthy, world-travelling student of the occult, pursuing the usual suspects.  Collected occult tomes and built himself a little astronomical observatory in an outbuilding on his isolated property.

Mainly he's in pursuit of info from The Zegrembi Manuscript,  a passage of which mentions Cthugha, his minions the jinnee, a black mirror which can be used to summon them, but, if used wrongly, will pull in Cthugha himself, and certain astronomical conditions which will allow Cthugha to return to earth (I guess).

Smith is searching for that black mirror and how to use it.

In Exeter, Smith's investigations lead to an encounter with a mysterious bookshop owner who gives him a parchment that allows him to translate the necessary information.  He is troubled by dreams of dark voids and fiery spheres (effective).

Apparently Zegrembi (wizard) caused the Great Fire of London in 1666 by screwing up use of the black mirror.  Dr. Morton starts to worry about Smith's appearance and well-being.  Smith comes to believe the black mirror is somewhere near his home.  The bookshop owner seems to be stalking him.  Or is that a hallucination?

Surprise! Zegrembi used to live in that farmhouse!  And he caused a lot of trouble (people fleeing screaming across the moors, being pursued by flaming demons, weird sounds from the earth, etc.  Eventually the folks stormed the house and burned all his papers.  But of Zegrembi they found no trace.  Smith finds a drawing of Zegrembi stuck between two pages of a book, and realizes he looks just like the shopkeeper.  In the attic (a well-described scene) he finds to the location of the black mirror.  He finds it buried in the woods.

The poor bastard summons up a jinnee and gets toasted by it.

Very traditional, and very derivative, particularly of the Derleth/Lovecraft collabs.  And still, maybe because it's so traditional and predictable, I enjoyed it.  Glasby manages to echo Lovecraft while still retaining his own cool, British style.  Certainly nothing great, but a fun read all the same.

"The Keeper of Dark Point"

by John Glasby
originally published The New Lovecraft Circle, Fedogan and Bremer, 1996

It's the summer of 1936 and Stephen Delmore Ashton has disappeared.  And Martin, our narrator, has some ideas as to where.

Stephen came from an ancient British family, who owned a crumbling ancestral manor, not far from an abandoned lighthouse on the Cornish coast.   Martin met Ashton in college, where they shared an interest in "pre-human civilizations" (these dudes must have been popular!).  They remained in touch as Martin became a historian/auhor and Stephen traveled the world in search of rare and odd things.

One night Stephen turns up at Martin's place, not looking so well.  He is on the hunt for a certain rare book, and wants Martin to translate it for him.  They head out to the family manor for some spooky atmosphere, some creepy hints about Stephen's family history, and another long-winded explanation of the Cthulhu Mythos.  He also has a bad habit of staring off into the horizon, and Martin notices lights in the night sky, in the vicinity of the abandoned lighthouse.

The family manor is in ruins, having been burned down 10 years ago by neighbors freaked out about the Ashton's occult hobbies.  A trapdoor in the ruins leads to some underground chambers, where they find an ancient book, and a note from Stephen's mom.  It seems Steph's parents weren't mere followers but actual minions of the GOO.  "Do not fear what lives beneath the manor" it admonishes.  The letter points them to two rituals in the book (one is needlessly hidden) which need to be performed under certain celestial conditions.  

They head out to the lighthouse, which is also in bad shape.  Encountering some hideous wailing coming from behind a locked door, they open it, catching a glimpse of "something scaly and of a hideous green" before they haul ass out of there.

Stephen performs the ritual, which closes an extra-dimensional gate.  Many bizarre sights are seen, and Stephen himself is sucked away.  Martin admits that the critter in the lighthouse, which lived in a tunnel connecting the lighthouse to the manor, had the head of Stephen's mother.

Despite its somewhat goofy reveal, this isn't altogether half-bad.  It's a Lovecraft pastiche that heavily apes HPL's structural storytelling - a series of vaguely or un- related facts and incidents slowly coming together to reveal a supernatural terror.  The writing is somewhat Lovecraftian in style, too, though the adjectiveitis is under control, and Glasby doesn't have HPL's feverish passion.  He writes a cool, very British, old-fashioned spook story line.

All in all, hardly a great story but a very decent, traditional Lovecraft pastiche.

"Where I Go, Mi-Go"

by Lois H. Gresh
originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

16 year-old Mirabella lives with her ancient aunt in a cabin somewhere along the Miskatonic.  And apparently she never wears shoes.  She has limited education, I guess, yet seems to be fully literate and even familiar with obscure classical music.  For a good time she makes out with her cousin Thaddeus, who's long-haired, studly, and going off to college.

One day, Auntie gives her a weird letter from Walter Gilman-Smith, Prof of Neurobiology at Miskatonic U.  It babbles incoherently about Mirabella being the last Wendigo, and Thaddeus being the last Derby, and bringing the Spawn of the Winds, and drops the usual names.  Mirabella doesn't get it and Auntie, who seemingly gets it, can't be bothered to explain it.  With nothing better to do, she goes off and gets hot`n'heavy with Thaddeus, who wants her to come away with him to Boston.  Thad has some kind of seizure, babbling the usual "ia! ia!s" and various names.  Auntie snuffs it and Mirabella falls ill with fever.  Thaddeus takes care of her and the two of them head off to Arkham, with Thaddeus blabbing about the Mi-Go coming from the Milky Way.

At Arkham, they find the neurobiology building has Cthulhu statues outside.  Mirabella (who still hasn't bothered to put on shoes or socks) has some kind of freak-out.  She wakes up on a couch in Dr. Gilman-Derby's office.  Thad now has short grey hair and is a middle-aged man.  Gilman-Derby has some kind of weird-ass machine with which he's trying to do ... something involving gold nuclei.  There's more nonsensical babbling about Mi-Go and quantum physics and the Crawling Chaos.  Gilman-Smith tells Mirabella she's pregnant with the spawn of the Mi-Go, and will give birth to creatures who will bring about the end of the world.  Gilman-Smith tries to kill Thaddeus, but Mirabella stops him.  She thinks she's giving birth.  Thaddeus starts to de-age back to his normal self.  Mirabella decides to have her child, and that she and Thaddeus will go back to their cabin and raise it.

What .... the .... fuck?

Y'know, when I was 18, I wanted to be a horror writer.  And I remember writing this absurd story that was completely plotless, a kind of stream-of-consciousness blast of surrealism, that I momentarily thought was really brilliant.  Then I re-read it and realized it didn't make a damn bit of sense and I mercifully destroyed it.  

This story is better than my miscarriage - but only a bit.  A bunch of senseless surreal vignettes vaguely held together by an obscure plotline.  Are these things happening, or not happening?  I get Thaddeus turning into an old man via the life-force being sucked out of him by the "Spawn" - but how did he get a haircut in the process?  Why is Mirabella still bopping around barefoot on the streets of Arkham, till her feet bleed?  Why is any of it happening?  

And, as bad as my youthful fictioneering was, even I was able to avoid sub comic-book dialog like "That's all very cool, doctor man, but what does it have to do with me being old and Mirabella being attacked by hellspawn?" and "Have you ever wondered, my dear, what exists between the cell nucleus and the neutron star?" and my favorite, when Mirabella's had enough of Gilman-Derby's quantum physics babble: "Stop already! Stop with the scientific crap!"  You go, Mirabella.

My god this is a terrible story.  Gresh has published quite a bit, though most of it seems to be in the professional fan fiction type mode (books based on games, etc).  I hope this was an early and not representative effort.  Gag!

"Subway Accident"

by Gregory Nicoll

originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Gentry is a down-on-his-luck homeless guy in Atlanta who used to work on the subway.  He runs into an old friend, Smedley, who's even more down-on-his-luck.  Smedley freaks out when he sees a handbill advertising an exhibit of Richard Upton Pickman paintings, which includes a photo of Pickman's painting "Subway Accident".

Hearing of some new tunnel work being done, Genty heads out to the site to see if he can talk the foreman into hiring him.  He finds the ground torn up but the equipment abandoned.  Something big tunnels up out of the ground.  Gentry escapes with his life but loses his legs in the process.

Nice try, but this is little more than a vignette and doesn't go anywhere.

"The High Rollers"

by Benjamin Adams and James Robert Smith
originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Donald Trump - I'm sorry, Anthony King, has purchased some coastal land in Innsmouth and is building a big casino there.  Too bad he's having all kinds of problems, what with workers up and quitting cause they don't want to deal with Innsmouth or its people, and his one friend in the world, Robert Steinberg, who runs a rare book dealership in the refurbished retail regions, is giving him ominous warnings based on things he's read in some of those old, rare books of his.

To top it all off, some of those icky Innsmouthers are pestering him to buy back the land, being as they say they have prior claim to it.

Well, the reps from "The Newquay and Raleigh Company" finally get to him and get him to bargain away the land in exchange for power and knowledge beyond anything he's dreamed.  Thus, King vanishes into vistas of cosmic otherwhatsiness.  Seven years later his body turns up.

Pretty well written, and a decent enough "Twilight Zone"-ish story.  It's hard to read something with such an obvious portrayal of a pre-presidential Donald Trump (it couldn't be more obvious) as the protagonist without snickering - this was written c. 1997. though, so I can't blame the authors for that.  It's nothing special though.

"Not To Force the Rhymes"

by Benjamin Adams

originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Poor Davey Bremner.  He's got a crappy job working at Oakdeene Sanatorium, a snake pit full of loonies.  Plus it's 1976, and his damn neighbor keeps cranking Abba (Davey's tastes run to the Sex Pistols, Stranglers, Eater and The Damned - that makes him cool, right?).  And his boss is an asshole and he's stuck with this jerkoff buddy who calls himself (or is called?) Potato-Man, and Irish drunk and rowdy who Davey clings to in his further attempts to make himself cool.

One day, Davey's asshole boss Dr. Jones summons him.  It seems that a catatonic patient, Baker, has suddenly come to.  And he's talking.  About strange dreams and such.  Jones demands Davey's assurance that he will not speak of Baker's sudden revivification to anyone.  So naturally, Davey and Potato-Man go out and have a few pints and Davey spills his guts.  P-Man suggests that Davey, rather than quit, should figure out what it is that Jones doesn't want getting out, and use it against him.

Back at Oakdeene, Davey goes poking around in Jones' office, and discovers that, decades ago, Jones deliberately gave patient Martin Spellman an overdose of psychoactive drugs in order to render him permanently catatonic.  Blackmail material!

That night back at the pub, Potato-Man gets on the wrong side of some teddy boys and gets badly beaten up.  Now he's in big trouble.  Davey decides to help him get out of Scotland and wash his hands of him.  But first, back to Oakdeene to pick up some medical supplies.

Oops!  Caught by Dr. Jones.  Having little choice, Davey tells him what he knows.  This causes Jones to tell what he knows:  Baker is Jack the Ripper - yes, that Jack the Ripper.  It seems he's the gestalt of all human evil, a being that comes into existence every few millenia (yes, there's a gestalt of all human good, too).  Having Said Too Much, Jones attacks Davey with a scalpel, wounding him.  But Potato-Man leaps in and kills Jones.  Then some black thing leaps out of Baker's body and into Potato-Man's mouth before Davey passes out.

Twenty years later.  Davey is now the head of Oakdeene.  He's given up on punk rock (one assumes he's now an Abba fan?) He's made the place more humane.  But he wonders what that "gestalt of evil" is up to .... all those serial killers over the years.

This is a minor, pulpy tale, brought down by Adams' mistake of phoneticizing Davey and Potato-Man's accents all through the story - Davey's spoken dialog is littered with "ye" and "hae" and all such.  Bad move, Ben.  It looks amateurish.  I don't see the point in name-dropping British punk bands unless its for the author to let everyone know he has cool taste in music.

"The Reliable Vacuum Company"

by James Robert Smith

originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Jimmy and Maye Welk are a couple of rednecks who live in their double-wide on four acres in North Carolina.  One day they get a call from a vacuum cleaner salesman, and, since gettin' a new vacuum seems like a good idea, they asks him to come on down.  So's they gets a visit from Mr. Jeng ("from Leng") who seems like a nice enuff sort even tho he is oriental and all.  Before having him show `em his vacuum, they have a few drinks of Jim's homebrew'd likker.  Mr. Jeng passes out.  So's Jimmy opens up the box and takes out this weird machine with no plug - just a cylinder with a wheel on one end and a dick-like hose on t'other.  And some instructions they can't make hide ner hair outta `cept there's somethin' about "Ithaqua" - ain't that in New York? They turns it on and the next thing you knows, they's suckin' up the furniture and the curtains an' all.  Well, finally they manages to shet the durn thing down (meanwhile, there's a big storm brewin' outsides) an' call the company to come git there weirdass vacuum cleaner an' they don' know what happened to Mr. Jeng `cept it appears like he got sucked in, too!  So's some more orientals comes down from the company an' they take away the vacuum an' somethin' red an' frozen they find up in some power lines an' it seems they's trees all rooted up and lines all torn down an' Jimmy realizes he's standin' in some giant footprints is what he is!  So's he an' Maye decide to just stick to brooms and dustpans from nows on.

Christ, I knew when I saw the title this was gonna be a stupid story and it managed to be even dumber than I expected!

"Shudder Wyrm"

by Stephen Mark Rainey
originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Alec Lang is the big cheese of a high-priced architectural firm, and he's hired by Dr. Willard Vickers to design and building a student housing facility at tiny Beckham College.  Alec thinks this is a little strange, since he charges big-ass prices for such things, but so be it.  Even if he thinks Doc Vickers' designs (including a very deep moat and a lot of five-pointed stars - dah DAH!!) are weird.

But it's not long after the digging has started that Alec finds a neighbor kid poking at something he calls a "direful wirrum" - cuz, yeah, American kids talk like that all the time.  The "direful wirrum" is sorta like a Cthonian, but it has lots of legs, and mandibles.  And eyes!  It definitely has the Cthonian telepathic ability.  The neighbor kid hears the words "shudder meal" being screamed in his head.  Alec captures the worm and takes it to Beckham college.  Soon after, he catches another of the little fuckers in his office.

Meanwhile down at the college, hot prof Alicia Sykes spills her whole guts to Alec about Cthonians, the fact that her institute is dedicated to fighting the Cthulhu baddies, etc.  And she shows him the worm he captured, which is now very much bigger and all kindsa pissed off.

Eventually it tries to break free, and a free-for-all results in (a) hot Prof. Sykes being killed along with several others (b) the cthonian get watered to death, along with several other such baddies that are making their way up and (c) Alec making some upgrades to his house, including a five-pointed start terrace and a deep moat.

This is a well-written and entertaining tale but nothing special.  Like many of the stories I've come across in themed Cthulhu collections, I find myself thinking its merely a rehash of ideas that were better executed elsewhere.  On the big debit side, I've always found the concept of organizations devoted to battling the minions of Cthu a bad idea.  But what really aggravates me about this one is the author's pointless reimagining of the Cthonians.  It's obvious he's familiar with these beasties, and thus it can be assumed he's read Lumley's treatment of them or, failing that, at least the entry in the Call of Cthulhu rules, which makes his complete alteration of them even more baffling.  This isn't just nerdly demand for consistency/canon/continuity on my part (that's not to say it isn't, only that it isn't just) - the Cthonians are far and away the most interesting and best-realized alien race in the Mythosa that weren't invented by HPL, and they were quite unsettling in their appearance.  The addition of beaks, eyes and legs makes them visually silly, more than it does creepy - but presumably the author would not agree.  Anyway, he shoulda left well enough alone. PS - yes, hot Prof. Sykes does at some point make a vague statement that these are only "one variety" of Cthonian, but fails to elucidate in any meaningful way, so I'm not letting this subject off the hook on that one.

Also, no kid anywhere in the United States ever described anything as a "direful wirrum", no matter how weird or nerdy he was! Not even me!

"The Temple of Yig"

by Donald R. Burleson
originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Carlos and his cousin Paco are having a bored night in their little New Mexico burg, and decided to go see a carnival that's recently set up in town.  Seems there's some weird rumors about this carnival - among them that it originated in Britain but the entire troupe was forced to leave the country.  Now they're going around the US of A, leaving behind a trail of sinister rumors.

The carnival appears to be not too much different from any other, except for an attraction called The Tomb of the Old Ones and, therein, something called The Temple of Yig.  Carlos goes in to check it out. 

Inside he find statuary of the expected type.  The barker talks of the Old Ones in the usual spiel, and of Yig, the oldest of all.  He calls up a shadowy figure who glares out at the audience.  As it doe so, the figure sends telepathic information to (some?)(all?)(just Carlos?) about the whole Cthulhu mess, ancient mysteries, alien races, blah blah blah.

Carlos, a changed man, leaves and goes out alone into the desert and stares into the night.  Snakes gather around him.

This tale is evocative, though somewhat minor.  The mysterious figure in the carnival tent actually has some punch to it.

"In His Daughter's Darkling Womb"

by Tina L. Jens
originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Dr. Katherine Collum, head of an expedition financed by Arkham Industries, has captured a gigantic (50+ feet) ocotpoid critter.  Held in a tank on an enormous tanker, she and her team study the beastie, which they humorously name Cthylla.

Dr. Collum isn't particularly well-liked, mainly cause she's a humorless, workaholic, unfriendly bitch (to be fair, she's a widow and has had a bunch of miscarriages).  But she is friendly with fellow researcher Helen.  And tolerates David Gaughan, representative of a marine animal rights organization, authorized by Arkham Industries to ensure no one mistreats Cthylla.  He's also prone to reading the Cthaat Aquadingen (dah-dah-dah-DAH!!).  

Cthylla turns out to have some surprising abilities - she's seemingly very intelligent, has variable number of tentacles at any given time, and is voraciously hungry - 100 pounds of fish and crustaceans a day - but the bitch still up and eats the ship's cat!  She also tends to shriek during the night.

The teams concocts a bizarre way to impregnate her, involving a giant squid-monster robot, and soon, she's makin' eggs.  Meanwhile, Katherine is getting weirder and more depressed.  She even ends up banging David.  And soon, she's got a bun in the oven, too!  For bad news, Cthylla up and eats Helen!

Kat isn't too worked up about this, being as she's never been able to carry a child to term before.  Cthylla hatches one surviving egg.  They name the offspring Cthyni.  It too seems way too intelligent.  Kat starts having weird dreams about giving birth to a half-squid-half-human infant. 

Something weird happens to Cthyni and something weird happens to Katherine.  She's taken off the ship and confined to bedrest.  She gives birth.  During the process she hallucinates giving birth to a squid-thing.  But later, she is presented with a normal, healthy child.

This is a well-written and professional tale, but ... hang on ... what exactly is going on here?  It's clear that Cthylla is no ordinary cephalopod, and that there's some link to Cthulhu-ism, that David may, in fact, be some kind of cultist, and that there's some parallel between Cthylla's pregnancy and Katherine's - but what?  Did she, in fact, give birth to a squid-thing?  And if so, to what end?  Was it then squirelled away and a normal kid substituted?  From where? And again, why?  Maybe I'm dumb but I don't get it!

"A Forty Share in Innsmouth"

by C.J. Henderson

originally published Singers of Strange Songs, Chaosium, 1997

Marvin Richards is the host of a reality type show that investigates paranormal phenomena.  Tonight he's broadcasting from Fenway Park, a 40,000 seat baseball park in Boston, in a show about the sudden disappearance of three men in London in the 1960's, all three of whom were up to some nefarious occult doings - specifically summoning the entity Bugg-Shash.  Now they will try to re-create the dark ritual, right here on live television, and see what happens.

What happens is the ritual comes off all too well, and soon Bugg-Sassh is floating above Fenway, a big dark cloud of cosmic gloopiness.  People freak out.

Unfortunately for poor Bugg, the combined consciousness not only of the folks in Fenway but also millions upon millions of viewers worldwide (this is an uncommonly popular paranormal show!) is too much for him, and he freaks out and flees.  But, as any player of Call of Cthulhu knows, the effects of Bugg linger long after he has bugged out.

An entertaining little trifle with some good characterization.  Still, the idea that a paranormal reality show could be one of the most popular shows on TV stretches credulity almost as much as the idea of conjuring a giant cosmic glooperoo in the skies over Fenway Park. Almost.