A Mountain Walked Read online

  As for Stanley C. Sargent’s “Black Brat of Dunwich,” I can only echo what Rudyard Kipling once said after reading a tale by Lord Dunsany: “I am not thinking for the minute of anything except the audacity of it.” I have frequently criticized mediocre Mythos writers who seem content to do nothing more than rewrite one of Lovecraft’s own tales; but what Sargent has done here is to take a celebrated but (to my mind) seriously flawed Lovecraftian narrative and turn it upon its head, thereby resolving a number of its more problematical features. Audacity is the least of this story’s virtues, but the boldness of Sargent’s conception carries the story forward in a manner that is just on this side of parody.

  Lovecraft’s Mythos tales were written at a point in his career when he had largely abandoned the nebulous prose-poetry of his earlier work for the clinical precision of his later, scientifically driven narratives. One way to revitalize neo-Lovecraftian writing is to hark back to that earlier style, and that is something that W. H. Pugmire accomplishes in “The Phantom of Beguilement,” a delicate story of Kingsport—a town first created in “The Terrible Old Man” (1920) and identified with Marblehead, Massachusetts, in “The Festival” (1923), but that otherwise does not play a central role in Lovecraft’s later Mythos tales. Pugmire is perhaps the leading prose-poet of contemporary weird fiction, and the delicacy and pathos of his writing is on full display here. A very different type of prose-poetry is evident in Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.’s “… Hungry … Rats.” Here again, the story, which uses “The Rats in the Walls” as its springboard, can hardly be said to be a Mythos tale in the strictest sense, unless Lovecraft’s almost casual and unexplained mention of Nyarlathotep toward the end of his narrative somehow renders “The Rats in the Walls” a Mythos tale ex post facto. Some of the scenes in Pulver’s impressionistic work might have given Lovecraft apoplexy, but it shows how even hard-boiled crime and erotica can be grafted onto a Lovecraftian subtext.

  Caitlín R. Kiernan has distinguished herself as perhaps the finest prose stylist in contemporary weird fiction, and her “John Four” is as brooding a vignette as one is likely to find—but at its core is the Lovecraftian topos of entire worlds of terror and wonder lurking on the underside of life. Neil Gaiman’s “Only the End of the World Again” takes “The Shadow over Innsmouth” as a springboard for a scintillating and complex tale of werewolves, Deep Ones, and much else besides. Another great novella by Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness, has been the springboard for a number of splendid tales in recent years, and Michael Shea’s “Beneath the Beardmore” carries on the tradition of Antarctic horror in a compelling manner.

  Science remains the essence of the Lovecraftian worldview, and two recent writers—Lois H. Gresh in “Mandelbröt Moldrot” and Rhys Hughes in “Sigma Octantis”—use various elements of science (chemistry and astronomy, respectively) for their imaginative extrapolations on the Mythos. Gemma Files’s richly textured novella “[Anasazi]” utilizes anthropology for its searching examination of humanity’s fragile sinecure on this planet.

  Donald Tyson, author of the splendid historical novel Alhazred (2006), has chosen to write a lengthy and substantial narrative based on one of the last entries in Lovecraft’s commonplace book. The entry—which is largely a quotation from a 1935 article in the New York Times—is cited in the story itself, and Tyson’s first-hand knowledge of the Nova Scotia setting of his tale is evident from first to last. August Derleth embarrassed himself and tarnished Lovecraft by writing incompetent “posthumous collaborations” based on Lovecraft’s commonplace-book entries, but Tyson shows that the job can not only be done creditably but result in a tale whose fundamental originality is evident.

  Cody Goodfellow’s “In the Shadow of Swords” updates the Lovecraftian idiom in a striking manner, using the Iraq War as a grim backdrop for a tale as cosmic as anything in Lovecraft’s own work. The malleability of Lovecraft’s core images and conceptions is clearly on display here, and augurs well for future writings that can allow any number of contemporary social, political, cultural, and military events to be re-envisioned through a Lovecraftian prism.

  Jonathan Thomas’s “Mobymart After Midnight” wryly satirical tale takes potshots at the Walmart culture but gradually and insidiously turns to horror as it progresses. Jason V Brock’s “The Man with the Horn” deliberately plays on T. E. D. Klein’s now-classic story but veers in a very different direction, concluding in dreamlike prose poetry of the sort that Lovecraft repeatedly sought in his more ethereal tales.

  Contemporary mainstream writers, as well as writers of the “New Weird” or “New Gothic,” have also fallen under the sway of Lovecraft’s siren song, and in this volume we present a scintillating original tale by Patrick McGrath that draws upon Lovecraftian themes in a narrative that in some senses seems very far from the standard Lovecraftian pastiche, but whose undercurrent of weirdness is unmistakable.

  What this anthology—which I will not hesitate to declare contains many of my favorite Mythos tales of the past and the present—seeks to establish is the continuing relevance of Lovecraft’s work and thought for today’s supernatural writing. So much is now known of Lovecraft’s own motivations for his tales that there is no longer any reason to engage in the unimaginative mimicry of August Derleth and Brian Lumley. H. P. Lovecraft’s work stands as a monument in the literature of supernatural horror; but it can continue to nurture future work so long as writers seek to borrow or adapt the central essence of the Lovecraftian vision rather than its occasionally flamboyant, and by now overused, externals. That the writers in this volume do just that is, I trust, evident; that much more work of this creative and dynamic sort can be expected in the future is my fervent hope.

  —S. T. Joshi

  Seattle, Washington

  THE HOUSE OF THE WORM

  MEARLE PROUT

  But see, amid the mimic rout

  A crawling shape intrude!

  A blood-red thing that writhes from out

  The scenic solitude!

  It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

  The mimes become its food

  And the angels sob at vermin fangs

  In human gore imbued.

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  For hours I had sat at my study table, trying in vain to feel and transmit to paper the sensations of a criminal in the death-house. You know how one may strive for hours—even days—to attain a desired effect, and then feel a sudden swift rhythm, and know he has found it? But how often, as though Fate herself intervened, does interruption come and mar, if not cover completely, the road which for a moment gleamed straight and white! So it was with me.

  Scarcely had I lifted my hands to the keys when my fellow-roomer, who had long been bent quietly over a magazine, said, quietly enough, “That moon—I wonder if even it really exists!”

  I turned sharply. Fred was standing at the window, looking with a singularly rapt attention into the darkness.

  Curious, I rose and went to him, and followed his gaze into the night. There was the moon, a little past its full, but still nearly round, standing like a great red shield close above the tree-tops, real enough.…

  Something in the strangeness of my friend’s behavior prevented the irritation which his unfortunate interruption would ordinarily have caused.

  “Just why did you say that?” I asked, after a moment’s hesitation.

  Shamefacedly he laughed, half apologetic. “I’m sorry I spoke aloud,” he said. “I was only thinking of a bizarre theory I ran across in a story.”

  “About the moon?”

  “No. Just an ordinary ghost story of the type you write. While Pan Walks is its name, and there was nothing in it about the moon.”

  He looked again at the ruddy globe, now lighting the darkened street below with a pale, tenuous light. Then he spoke: “You know, Art, that idea has taken hold of me; perhaps there is something to it after all.…”

  Theories of the bizarre have always enthralled Fred, as they always hold a rom
antic appeal for me. And so, while he revolved his latest fancy in his mind, I waited expectantly.

  “Art,” he began at last, “do you believe that old story about thoughts becoming realities? I mean, thoughts of men having a physical manifestation?”

  I reflected a moment, before giving way to a slight chuckle. “Once,” I answered, “a young man said to Carlyle that he had decided to accept the material world as a reality; to which the older man only replied, ‘Egad, you'd better!’ … Yes,” I continued, “I’ve often run across the theory, but—”

  “You’ve missed the point,” was the quick rejoinder. “Accept your physical world, and what do you have?—Something that was created by God! And how do we know that all creation has stopped? Perhaps even we—”

  He moved to a book-shelf, and in a moment returned, dusting off a thick old leather-bound volume.

  “I first encountered the idea here,” he said, as he thumbed the yellowed pages, “but it was not until that bit of fiction pressed it into my mind that I thought of it seriously. Listen:

  “‘The Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” From what did He create it? Obviously, it was created by thought, imagery, force of will if you please. The Bible further says: “So God created man in His own image.” Does this not mean that man has all the attributes of the Almighty, only upon a smaller scale? Surely, then, if the mind of God in its omnipotence could create the entire universe, the mind of man, being made in the image of God, and being his counterpart on earth, could in the same way, if infinitely smaller in degree, create things of its own will.

  “‘For example, the old gods of the dawn-world. Who can say that they did not exist in reality, being created by man? And, once created, how can we tell whether they will not develop into something to harass and destroy, beyond all control of their creators? If this be true, then the only way to destroy them is to cease to believe. Thus it is that the old gods died when man’s faith turned from them to Christianity.’”

  He was silent a moment, watching me as I stood musing.

  “Strange where such thoughts can lead a person,” I said. “How are we to know which things are real and which are fancies—racial fantasies, I mean, common in all of us. I think I see what you mean when you wondered if the moon were real.”

  “But imagine,” said my companion, “a group of people, a cult, all thinking the same thoughts, worshipping the same imaginary figure. What might not happen, if their fanaticism were such that they thought and felt deeply? A physical manifestation, alien to those of us who did not believe …”

  And so the discussion continued. And when at last we finally slept, the moon which prompted it all was hovering near the zenith, sending its cold rays upon a world of hard physical reality.

  Next morning we both arose early—Fred to go back to his prosaic work as a bank clerk, I to place myself belatedly before my typewriter. After the diversion of the night before, I found that I was able to work out the bothersome scene with little difficulty, and that evening I mailed the finished and revised manuscript.

  When my friend came in he spoke calmly of our conversation the night before, even admitting that he had come to consider the theory a rank bit of metaphysics.

  Not quite so calmly did he speak of the hunting-trip which he suggested. Romantic fellow that he was, his job at the bank was sheer drudgery, and any escape was rare good fortune. I, too, with my work out of the way and my mind clear, was doubly delighted at the prospect.

  “I’d like to shoot some squirrels,” I agreed. “And I know a good place. Can you leave tomorrow?”

  “Yes, tomorrow; my vacation starts then,” he replied. “But for a long time I’ve wanted to go back to my old stamping-grounds. It’s not so very far—only a little over a hundred miles, and”—he looked at me in apology for differing with my plans—“in Sacrament Wood there are more squirrels than you ever saw.”

  And so it was agreed.

  Sacrament Wood is an anomaly. Three or four miles wide and twice as long, it fills the whole of a peculiar valley, a rift, as it were, in the rugged topography of the higher Ozarks. No stream flows through it, there is nothing to suggest a normal valley; it is merely there, by sheer physical presence defying all questions. Grim, tree-flecked mountains hem it in on every side, as though seeking by their own ruggedness to compensate this spot of gentleness and serenity. And here lies the peculiarity: though the mountains around here are all inhabited—sparsely, of course, through necessity—the valley of the wood, with every indication of a wonderful fertility, has never felt the plow; and the tall, smooth forest of scented oak has never known the ax of the woodman.

  I too had known Sacrament Wood; it was generally recognized as a sportsman’s paradise, and twice, long before, I had hunted there. But that was so long ago that I had all but forgotten, and now I was truly grateful to have been reminded of it again. For if there is a single place in the world where squirrels grow faster than they can be shot, it is Sacrament Wood.

  It was midafternoon when we finally wound up the last mountain trail to stop at last in a small clearing. A tiny shanty with clapboard roof stood as ornament beside the road, and behind it a bent figure in faded overalls was chopping the withered stalks of cotton.

  “That would be old Zeke,” confided my companion, his eyes shining with even this reminder of childhood. “Hallo!” he shouted, stepping to the ground.

  The old mountaineer straightened, and wrinkled his face in recognition. He stood thus a moment, until my companion inquired as to the hunting; then his eyes grew dull again. He shook his head dumbly.

  “Ain’t no hunting now, boys. Everything is dead. Sacrament Wood is dead.”

  “Dead!” I cried. “Impossible! Why is it dead?”

  I knew in a moment that I had spoken without tact. The mountaineer has no information to give one who expresses a desire for it—much less an outlander who shows incredulity.

  The old man turned back to his work. “Ain’t no hunting now,” he repeated, and furiously attacked a stalk of cotton.

  So obviously dismissed, we could not remain longer. “Old Zeke has lived too long alone,” confided Fred as we moved away. “All mountaineers get that way sooner or later.”

  But I could see that his trip was already half spoiled, and even fancied he was nettled with me for my unfortunate interruption. Still, he said nothing, except to note that Sacrament Wood was our next valley.

  We continued. The road stretched ahead for some distance along the level top. And then, as we started the rough descent, Sacrament Wood burst full upon our view, clothed as I had never before seen it. Bright red, yellow, and brown mingled together in splashes of beauty as the massive trees put on their autumnal dress. Almost miniature it appeared to us from our lookout, shimmering like a mountain lake in the dry heat of early fall. Why, as we gazed for a moment silently, did a vague thought of uncleanness make a shudder pass through my body? Was I sensitive to the ominous words of the old mountaineer? Or did my heart tell me what my mind could not—that the season was yet too early to destroy every trace of greenery, and replace it with the colors of death? Or was it something else?—something not appealing to the senses, nor yet to the intellect, but yet sending a message too strong to be dismissed?

  But I did not choose to dwell long upon the subject. The human mind, I have long known, in striving to present a logical sequence of events, often strains the fabric of fact for the sake of smoothness. Perhaps I really felt nothing, and my present conceptions have been altered by subsequent events. At any rate, Fred, although unnaturally pale, said nothing, and we continued the descent in silence.

  Night comes early in the deep valley of Sacrament Wood. The sun was just resting on the high peak in the west as we entered the forest and made camp. But long after comparative darkness had come over us, the mountain down which we had come was illuminated a soft gold.

  We sat over our pipes in the gathering dusk. It was deeply peaceful, there in the darkening
wood, and yet Fred and I were unnaturally silent, perhaps having the same thoughts. Why were the massive trees so early shorn of leaves? Why had the birds ceased to sing? Whence came the faint, yet unmistakable odor of rottenness?

  A cheery fire soon dispelled our fears. We were again the two hunters, rejoicing in our freedom and our anticipation. At least, I was. Fred, however, somewhat overcame my feeling of security.

  “Art, whatever the cause, we must admit that Sacrament Wood is dead. Why, man, those trees are not getting ready for dormance; they are dead. Why haven’t we heard birds? Bluejays used to keep this place in a continual uproar. And where did I get the feeling I had as we entered here? Art, I am sensitive to these things. I can feel a graveyard in the darkest night; and that is how I felt as I came here—as if I was entering a graveyard. I know, I tell you!”

  “I felt it, too,” I answered, “and the odor, too.… But all that is gone now. The fire changes things.”

  “Yes, the fire changes things. Hear that moaning in the trees? You think that is the wind? Well, you’re wrong, I tell you. That is not the wind. Something not human is suffering; maybe the fire hurts it.”

  I laughed, uncomfortably enough. “Come,” I said, “you’ll be giving me the jimmies, too. I felt the same way you did; I even smelt an odor, but the old man just had us upset. That’s all. The fire has changed things. It’s all right now.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s all right now.”

  For all his nervousness, Fred was the first to sleep that night. We heaped the fire high before turning in, and I lay for a long while and watched the leaping flames. And I thought about the fire.

  “Fire is clean,” I said to myself, as though directed from without. “Fire is clean; fire is life. The very life of our bodies is preserved by oxidation. Yes, without fire there would be no cleanness in the world.”