A Mountain Walked Read online

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “The Franklyn Paragraphs,” by Ramsey Campbell, © 1973 by Ramsey Campbell, for Demons by Daylight. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Where Yidhra Walks,” by Walter C. DeBill, Jr., © 1976 by Edward P. Berglund, for The Disciples of Cthulhu. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Black Man with a Horn,” by T. E. D. Klein, © 1980 by Arkham House Publishers, Inc., for New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by Ramsey Campbell; copyright © 1985 by T. E. D. Klein, for Dark Gods. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.

  “The Last Feast of Harlequin,” by Thomas Ligotti, © 1990 by Thomas Ligotti, for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (April 1990). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Only the End of the World Again,” by Neil Gaiman, © 1994 by Neil Gaiman, for Shadows over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent.

  “Mandelbrot Moldrot,” by Lois H. Gresh, © 1996 by Lois H. Gresh, for Miskatonic University, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Weinberg. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Black Brat of Dunwich,” by Stanley C. Sargent, © 1997, 2002 by Stanley C. Sargent, for The Taint of Lovecraft. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Phantom of Beguilement,” by W. H. Pugmire, © 2006 by W. H. Pugmire, for The Fungal Stain. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Man with the Horn,” by Jason V Brock, © 2014 by Jason V Brock, for Black Wings III, edited by S. T. Joshi. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “… Hungry … Rats,” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., © 2014 by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Virgin’s Island,” by Donald Tyson, © 2014 by Donald Tyson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “In the Shadow of Swords,” by Cody Goodfellow, © 2014 by Cody Goodfellow. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Mobymart After Midnight,” by Jonathan Thomas, © 2014 by Jonathan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Beneath the Beardmore,” by Michael Shea, © 2014 by Michael Shea. Reprinted by permission of the author’s widow, Linda Shea.

  “A Gentleman from Mexico,” by Mark Samuels, © 2014 by Mark Samuels. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “John Four,” by Caitlín R. Kiernan, © 2014 by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Sigma Octantis,” by Rhys Hughes, © 2014 by Rhys Hughes. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “[Anasazi],” by Gemma Files, © 2014 by Gemma Files. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Wreck of the Aurora,” by Patrick McGrath, © 2014 by Patrick McGrath. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  TRADE EBOOK EDITION

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by S. T. Joshi

  The House of the Worm© 1933 Mearle Prout

  Far Below © 1939 Robert Barbour Johnson

  Spawn of the Green Abyss © 1946 C. Hall Thompson

  The Deep Ones © 1969 James Wade

  The Franklyn Paragraphs © 1973 by Ramsey Campbell.

  Where Yidhra Walks © 1976 Walter C. DeBill, Jr.

  Black Man with a Horn © 1980 T. E. D. Klein.

  The Last Feast of Harlequin © 1990 Thomas Ligotti.

  Only the End of the World Again © 1994 Neil Gaiman.

  Mandelbrot Moldrot © 1996 Lois H. Gresh.

  The Black Brat of Dunwich © 1997, 2002 Stanley C. Sargent.

  The Phantom of Beguilement © 2006 W. H. Pugmire.

  The Man with the Horn © 2014 Jason V Brock.

  … Hungry … Rats © 2014 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  Virgin’s Island © 2014 Donald Tyson.

  In the Shadow of Swords © 2014 Cody Goodfellow.

  Mobymart After Midnight © 2014 Jonathan Thomas.

  Beneath the Beardmore © 2014 Michael Shea.

  A Gentleman from Mexico © 2014 Mark Samuels.

  John Four © 2014 Caitlín R. Kiernan.

  Sigma Octantis © 2014 Rhys Hughes.

  [Anasazi] © 2014 Gemma Files.

  The Wreck of the Aurora © 2014 Patrick McGrath.

  "Beneath the Beardmore © 2014 Michael Shea

  Editor: S. T. Joshi

  Cover and interior illustrations: David Ho

  Cover design: Irina Summer

  Interior Design by Cyrus Wraith Walker

  ISBN: 978-1-62641-115-9

  Publisher: Chris Morey

  Dark Regions Press, LLC

  6635 N. Baltimore Ave. Ste. 245

  Portland, OR 97203

  www.darkregions.com

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by S. T. Joshi

  The House of the Worm by Mearle Prout

  Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson

  Spawn of the Green Abyss by C. Hall Thompson

  The Deep Ones by James Wade

  The Franklyn Paragraphs by Ramsey Campbell

  Where Yidhra Walks by Walter C. DeBill, Jr.

  Black Man with a Horn by T. E. D. Klein

  The Last Feast of Harlequin by Thomas Ligotti

  Only the End of the World Again by Neil Gaiman

  Mandelbröt Moldrot by Lois H. Gresh

  The Black Brat of Dunwich by Stanley C. Sargent

  The Phantom of Beguilement by W. H. Pugmire

  … Hungry … Rats by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  Virgin’s Island by Donald Tyson

  In the Shadow of Swords by Cody Goodfellow

  Mobymart After Midnight by Jonathan Thomas

  A Gentleman from Mexico by Mark Samuels

  The Man with the Horn by Jason V Brock

  John Four by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  Sigma Octantis by Rhys Hughes

  [Anasazi] by Gemma Files

  The Wreck of the Aurora by Patrick McGrath

  Beneath the Beardmore by Michael Shea

  Notes on Contributors

  INTRODUCTION

  The publication of my Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (2008) has had several unintended consequences, the most noteworthy of which is that I have plunged into contemporary Mythos writing far more deeply than I ever imagined I would. It would be unfair to say that in my book I came to bury the Cthulhu Mythos and not to praise it; any careful reader will have discovered that I end up praising a substantial number of works, early and late, that have elaborated upon Lovecraft’s pseudomythology, and I am confident that we may well be entering upon a period of revitalized Mythos writing—chiefly the result of the widespread dissemination of more accurate views of Lovecraft’s own goals and purposes in the writing of mythopoeic fiction, and a vigorous cadre of younger writers who refuse to engage in mere imitation but instead use Lovecraft’s themes, imagery, and conceptions as a springboard for the expression of their own ideas.

  The extent to which, even in Lovecraft’s own day, some writers quite dissociated from Lovecraft himself used his work as a trigger for their own conceptions is illustrated by the curious item we know as “The House of the Worm” by Mearle Prout, published in Weird Tales for October 1933. Almost nothing is known of this author, aside from the fact that he published three other stories in later issues of Weird Tales, none of which is Lovecraftian in any regard. Prout published no books and, apparently, no work outside of these four stories in Weird Tales. (One scholar of science fiction maintains that Prout is a woman, but I doubt that this is the case.) In any case, this strange little specimen not only unintentionally echoes the title of a novel that Lovecraft purp
ortedly conceived (but probably did not even begin) in 1920, but contains some patent borrowings of phraseology from both “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Dunwich Horror,” and perhaps also from “The Colour out of Space.” Lovecraft took note of the story when it appeared, writing to Clark Ashton Smith: “This latter [Prout] is a newcomer, but to me his story seems to have a singularly authentic quality despite certain touches of naiveté. It has a certain atmosphere and sense of brooding evil—things which most pulp contributors lack.” Incredibly, this passage does not suggest that Lovecraft was even aware of Prout’s patent borrowings from his own stories; but I find it hard to imagine that he was not. And yet, the critical issue about “The House of the Worm” is not that it lifts passages from Lovecraft’s stories but that it is, indeed, a largely original tale in no way weakened by its Lovecraftian touches. It may in fact be an exaggeration to classify it as a “Cthulhu Mythos” story, or even a Lovecraftian story in the strictest sense; but that it reveals a deep and creative reading of Lovecraft’s work and is an effective and thought-provoking tale in its own right can hardly be denied.

  Contrary to popular belief, I have never maintained that post-Lovecraftian Mythos writing is obliged to adopt his cosmic perspective to be powerful or legitimate. It may well be that cosmicism is the single most distinguishing feature of Lovecraft’s own work as a whole (not just his “Mythos” tales), but that very fact makes any attempt to duplicate it a hazardous venture. Indeed, one of the ways in which neo-Lovecraftian authors can carve out a place for themselves, aesthetically speaking, is to use Lovecraftian elements in stories of a very different sort. Lovecraft was, it is widely admitted, not very strong on characterization, and his attempts to portray domestic conflict (as in, say, “The Thing on the Doorstep”) are not markedly successful. Here, then, is an area where writers can establish their own viability, and we have examples of that in two very different tales, Robert Barbour Johnson’s “Far Below” (Weird Tales, June/July 1939) and C. Hall Thompson’s “Spawn of the Green Abyss” (Weird Tales, November 1946).

  “Far Below” has oftentimes been referred to, somewhat flamboyantly, as the greatest story ever published in Weird Tales—an honor that might well be challenged by Lovecraft’s own “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Whisperer in Darkness,” or several other tales. But that it is a triumph in every way is manifest. It is assumed that this harrowing account of the horrors that can be found in the New York subways is a take-off of the hints of similar horrors in the Boston subways in Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model” (Weird Tales, October 1927), and probably this is the case; but that Johnson was well aware of much of the rest of the Lovecraft corpus is plain. The pregnant phrase “the charnel horrors of this mad Nyarlathotep-world far underneath” is extraordinarily potent; and the climactic revelation suggests that Johnson had read “The Shadow over Innsmouth” with care. This story in particular embodies exactly the kind of “imitation” that Lovecraft himself endorsed when, in a letter to August Derleth, he wrote: “The more these synthetic daemons [Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth] are mutually written up by different authors, the better they become as general background-material! I like to have others use my Azathoths & Nyarlathoteps—& in return I shall use Klarkash-Ton’s Tsathoggua, your monk Clithanus, & Howard’s Bran.” The key phrase here is background-material—and that is exactly how Johnson treats Lovecraft’s Mythos, with that veiled and ultimately inexplicable dropping of the cryptic name Nyarlathotep. Johnson’s suggestion that Nyarlathotep is associated with darkness, and perhaps with chaos and entropy, is not only an accurate reading of Lovecraft’s own view of his enigmatic Egyptian god but a means by which he can draw upon Lovecraft’s legacy without in any way compromising the originality and vitality of his own tale.

  As for Thompson’s “Spawn of the Green Abyss,” this able novella succeeds in vivifying a genuine emotional conflict, involving the physician James Arkwright and the woman he marries, Cassandra Heath, the daughter of the recluse Lazarus Heath; Cassandra finds herself torn between love for her husband and the call of her dubious ancestry. It may be true that Thompson’s invented New Jersey town of Kalesmouth—meant to signal, no doubt, the tale’s borrowings from “The Shadow over Innsmouth”—is not a very felicitous coinage; but the tale as a whole is richly textured and emotionally resonant in a way that few of Lovecraft’s own are, and to this degree Thompson has carved out a genuine niche for himself. It is not surprising that August Derleth apparently badgered Thompson to give up the idea of any further pastiches—not because Thompson had failed and was somehow tainting Lovecraft’s reputation, but precisely because he had succeeded, and succeeded far better than Derleth himself in any of his own Lovecraftian imitations.

  The work of Lovecraft’s own late colleagues, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber, certainly deserves commendation, but their Lovecraftian tales are sufficiently well known that they do not need to be included here. It took another generation or so for vital Mythos writing to get underway, but by the late 1960s some signs of life were evident. Ramsey Campbell, now perhaps the leading author of supernatural fiction in the world, got the ball rolling—not by the juvenile tales in The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (1964), but by those narratives that he wrote in the years and decades following that early volume. The landmark story “Cold Print” (1967) has now become celebrated because of its inclusion in August Derleth’s Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1969), but another story written at about the same time, “The Franklyn Paragraphs”—which did not see print until its inclusion in Campbell’s revolutionary second collection, Demons by Daylight (1973)—is far less known than it should be. This tale perhaps embodies the use of the “documentary style” about as well as anything in Lovecraft, including as it does letters by the enigmatic Errol Undercliffe to Campbell himself, a review from the Times Literary Supplement, and even a British National Bibliography catalogue entry for Roland Franklyn’s We Pass from View, one of the many “forbidden books” in the neo-Lovecraftian library. Just as in “Cold Print,” although in an antipodally different manner, Campbell has revitalized the very notion of the “forbidden book”—a conception that had already become hackneyed and stereotyped in Lovecraft’s own lifetime.

  James Wade’s “The Deep Ones” also had the honor of appearing in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, but to my mind Arkham House’s James Turner erred in omitting it from the revised edition of the volume (1990) and including any number of inferior tales (even if some were by such noted writers as Stephen King and Philip José Farmer) in its stead. There may be a certain callowness in Wade’s deployment of “hippies” in this updating of “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” but the richness of the tale’s California setting—a setting that Henry Kuttner had tried but failed to use effectively in his early Lovecraft pastiches—and its incorporation of other contemporary social elements make it a noble effort, and I am glad to bring it back into print.

  Another means of engendering novelty in neo-Lovecraftian writing is the choice of setting. Campbell had attempted, in his Inhabitant of the Lake tales, to establish a British parallel to Lovecraft’s imaginary New England towns (Arkham, Innsmouth, Dunwich, etc.), with such locales as Severnford, Brichester, Goatswood, and the like; but the general tenor of these tales was not significantly different from Lovecraft’s own. But we are certainly in a very different environment in Walter C. DeBill, Jr.’s “Where Yidhra Walks,” which brings the American Southwest—touched upon by Lovecraft only in the ghostwritten stories “The Curse of Yig” and “The Mound,” and then only from second-hand information, since he had never visited that locale—within the framework of the Cthulhu Mythos. As with Thompson, Campbell, and others, DeBill has rendered his characters crisply and vividly in a manner that is poles apart from Lovecraft’s own array of sober professors and half-crazed “searchers after horror,” and it is precisely through the vitality of this characterization that Lovecraftian cosmicism can insidiously enter in.

  Lovecraft, even in his own lifetime, became something of a
n icon, even a kind of fictional character, at least among his colleagues. No one needs to be reminded that Frank Belknap Long (“The Space-Eaters”) and Robert Bloch (“The Shambler from the Stars”) made patent use of Lovecraft-like characters in their tales; and the pattern has continued up to the present day, culminating perhaps in such works as Peter Cannon’s The Lovecraft Chronicles (2004) and Richard A. Lupoff’s Marblehead (2007). T. E. D. Klein’s “Black Man with a Horn” may not exactly place Lovecraft himself on stage, but his first-person protagonist, manifestly based on Frank Belknap Long, comes to realize that he has spent much of his life in Lovecraft’s shadow and, as this richly textured novella progresses, finds that he has apparently fallen into one of Lovecraft’s own stories. Some of the horrific touches in Klein’s tale constitute the very acme of subtlety in the display of the supernatural; and this tale becomes a triumphant success not merely as a Lovecraftian imitation but as a modern horror tale in its own right. Even some of Lovecraft’s lesser colleagues have now become viable figures in fiction: Mark Samuels ingeniously uses R. H. Barlow’s work as a Mexican anthropologist for the basis of his tale, “A Gentleman from Mexico.”

  Among contemporary writers, few have captured the essence of a certain type of Lovecraftian narrative than Thomas Ligotti. “The Last Feast of Harlequin,” although not published until 1990, is an early work that set the standard for Lovecraftian pastiche—in this case, a pastiche of both “The Festival” and its more expansive rewrite, “The Shadow over Innsmouth”—so high that few can meet it; it would, indeed, be an insult to refer to this tale (now enshrined in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales) as a mere pastiche, for it reveals Ligotti’s distinctive vision of a world gone mad.