"The Nature of Faith"

by Oscar Rios
originally published Cthulhu's Dark Cults, Chaosium, 2010

Malcolm Drake, archaeologist and professor at Columbia, is presented a most unusual find by a student:  a coin of obvious ancient Celtic origin, in remarkable condition, depicting a Celt and a Native American, with the Native American presenting the Celt with a turkey.

This coin is important. It clearly indicates the presence of Celts in North America centuries prior to the arrival of the Norsemen, a theory Drake holds but most consider crackpot.  The student informs him the coin came from Dunwish, MA.  Drake decides to spend his spring break in Dunwich, investigating. 

Upon arriving in Dunwich, he promptly wrecks his car.  He's taken to the general store by a friendly local, and there he meets Gerdy Pope, a strange, semi-albino local girl, who's known to have "the gift" - a definite psychic power.  Gerdy takes him to the Tanner's place (a local couple she's rooming with), puts him up, and offers to help him find more coins.  But before she can start, Gerdy is summoned by Mother Bishop, head honcho of the local pagan cult, who warns her that the prof must be dealt with, lest he reveal their secrets.

Gerdy leads him into some woods where, with some help from her pyschic gifts, he finds a coin.  She is troubled by visions of a past in some magical/technological city, where apparently she and the prof were, in previous incarnations, lovers.  

Gerdy leads him into some swamps, where he finds the head of an impossibly ancient statue.  A Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath rises out of the water, and Gerdy makes a prayer of sacrifice to it as it kills and devours the prof.

This is a relatively effective story that is marred by some rather weak writing on Rios' part.  He doesn't have a lot of style, and, in more powerful hands, this could have been evocative.  Bummer.

"Quarter To Three"

by Kim Newman
Originally published Fear #2, 1988

A college student from Miskatonic U. works at an all-night bar and grill in Innsmouth.  One night a cute, but very pregnant, teen girl comes in.  He makes her a fish-burger and manages to get him to spike a couple ginger ales for her, while complaining about the baby's father.  The father shows up.  He is, of course, a Deep One.

This whole thing reminds me of those little "black-outs" they used to do on Night Gallery. Remember those? Anyway, it's amusing enough.

"Old Ghost"

by Peter A Worthy 

originally published Cthulhu's Dark Cults, Chaosium, 2010

Father Thomas moves to Shanghai in 1926, escaping a painful past.  The captain of the ship that takes him in, Williamsen, sets him up with a place to live, an interpreter named Li, and shows him a word in Chinese, which, though the Father can't read it, Williamsen warns him to recognize, and, if he should see it anywhere, to stay away, stating that it is the sign of a cult that practices murder.  He also mentions the name Ho Fong, a local importer who apparently was affiliated with the cult.   It seems Ho Fong recently survived an attempt on his life by some foreigners, all of whom were subsequently killed by his associates.

The cult seems to encroach on Thomas.  He notices the mysterious word tattoed on his housekeeper.  Williamsen is lost at sea.  Serafinowicz, the first mate from Williamsen's the journey that brought Thomas to Shanghai, makes contact.  He introduces Thomas to Medeved, a Russian sailor who also knows a bit too much about the cult, which is known as The Cult of the Bloated Woman.  He gives Thomas two scrolls somehow important to the cult.  Thomas gives them to Li, expecting that the cult will find him and bump him off.  Apparently, they do.

This is a fairly effective story and (for once in the Cthulhu's Dark Cults collection), you don't need to know that Ho Fong and the Cult of the Bloated Woman come from Chaosium's Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign to get something out of it.

On the downside, the unclear ending undercuts the story's strength, and it doesn't quite generate the sense of paranoia it needs to to really pack a punch.  

"Only the End of the World Again"

By Neil Gaiman

originally published Shadows Over Innsmouth 1994

Lawrence Talbot is a claims adjuster.  And a werewolf (get the joke?).  Being a long-time drifter, he's found himself this winter in the run-down town of Innsmouth.  Where everyone seems to know he's a werewolf.  One afternoon, he finds a fat, odd mad sitting in his office.  The man mutters some of the usual "return of the Great Old Ones" stuff Lawrence is used to hearing from the townsfolk, then leaves.  

Lawrence has a strange encounter with the fortune teller in the office opposite his, and then finds himself led by a bartender to a cliffside overlooking the ocean, where the townsfolk are cavorting in some kind of ritual abandon in the surf.  There the bartender, the fat man, and the fortune teller prepare to sacrifice him to the Great Old Ones, telling him that while his wolf-form is murderous, his human form is innocent.

Despite their claims that he will not be able to, Lawrence turns into his wolf form and attacks the fortune teller.  In a dream-like state, he has a vision of himself under the sea, battling a feminine creature with a face "like the stuff you don't want to eat in a sushi counter; all suckers and spines and drifting anemone fronds."  

He returns to consciousness to find he's killed the fortune teller.  The bartender tries to charge him with a ritual dagger, but misses and falls to his death off the cliff.  The fat man shrugs the whole thing off, saying "it's over for now."  He walks away.  Lawrence goes off hunting.  In the morning he awakes naked in the snow, with the remains of a deer he killed last night beside him.  A hawk flies over and drops a small dead squid at Lawrence's feet.  He takes this as some kind of omen, but its meaning is unclear to him.

Neil Gaiman is fine writer, creator of the award-winning Sandman comics series, the book Coraline and many other excellent works.  He's also Lovecraft fan and has a finely-tuned sense of humor and whimsy.  "Only" is an amusing, well-told, but ultimately not-very meaty tale, full of in-jokes. Perhaps its best part is the depiction of a modern but still completely seedy and decaying Innsmouth.  Fun, but hardly essential stuff.  It was later adapted into a graphic novel.

"Covenant of Darkness"

by William Jones
originally published Cthulhu's Dark Cults, Chaosium, 2010

Det. Matthew Leahy and Prof. Rudolph Pearson are hanging in Pearson's NYC apartment in 1923, waiting for some expected and unpleasant guests.  It seems Pearson has attracted the unwanted attentions of a cult of ghouls living in the hidden places in NYC.

A knock at the door brings Jordan Gabriel, an anthropologist who works cataloging specimens at the Museum of Natural Science.  She has a bag of bones that are decidedly unnatural.

Jordan begins to display and explain the bones when, lo and behold, a ghoul appears at the window.  Jordan is only moderately non-plussed by this.

After several bits of business, the ghoul breaks into the apartment.  It demands the bones.  Finally they decide to hand them over.  Prof. Pearson lives with the knowledge that the ghouls live in secret in the Big Apple, and prey on derelicts and throwaways.

A fairly slight story, and the writing, though quite good, suggests Jones' tongue is in his cheek.  The ghoul cult (drawn from Chaosium's Secrets of New York gaming supplement for Call of Cthulhu) is eerie, and recalls Whitley Streiber's interesting The Wolfen.  I think it will come to some use in my own (still upcoming) Call of Cthulhu campaign.  But in general, while entertaining, this tale is too slight to make much of an impression.

"In the Vaults Beneath"

by Brian Lumley
originally published The Caller of the Black, Arkham House, 1971

Simon Guest and Arthur Jeffries hook up with Prof. Gordon Walmsley, an archaeologist embracing some radical ideas based on Sir Amerry Wendy-Smith's writings.  They follow Walmsley to a dig site in some remote (and not identified) part of England.  Their digging leads them to a city of the Elder Things.  After several misadventures, including starting up a kind of gyroscopic machine (cuz, why not?)they discover what Walmsley believes to be "living Shoggoth tissue" sealed away.  They head out, carting off a bunch of artifacts for study.

The artifacts include several items of written material, a tiny, hollowed-out figurine of an Elder Thing, and a roll of metallic "cloth".  Much theorizing is done and study related, while Walmsley starts to muse about getting rich on their finds.

Walmsley comes to believe that the site is an outpost of the Elder Things, that some of them still alive, and that they will soon "reclaim" it - destroying everything, as they did the city found by the Miskatonic Expedition (cf. "At the Mountains of Madness").  They must get back to the site ASAP!

Guest and Jeffries are supposed to meet Walmsley in the morning.  That particular day, Guest wakes up late and notices the Elder Thing figurine "vibrating".  He puts it on the end of his finger (cuz, why not?), and suddenly, the figurine vanishes - along with most of his finger!  After calling for an ambulance, he and Jeffries make their way down to Walmsley's office.  Bad stuff. You see, it seems the gyroscopic machine was a teleportation device that teleported back to the Elder Things anything taken from their outpost - and anything in contact with them - such as Guest's finger.  And Walmsley, it seems, was about to model for his apprentices a suit he had made of the mystery cloth.  He was wearing it at just the moment the Elder Things "reclaimed" their outpost....

Umm, yeah, okay...

I have to think Lumley kinda had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote this one...

"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.