“The Picture” (1939) by Robert D. Harris

What was the first Canadian Cthulhu Mythos story?

Well-read weird fiction aficionados might point to Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” (1910), though that story was essentially grandfathered into the Mythos when August Derleth identified his creation Ithaqua with Blackwood’s wendigo in “The Thing That Walked on the Wind” (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror Jan 1933). But as far as the first story written as a Mythos story, written and set in Canada…well, weren’t there Canadian fans? During the interwar period U. S. pulps were sold on both sides of the border, and even after wartime paper restrictions prevented such traffic, from 1942-1951 Canada produced its own localized edition of Weird Tales. Canadian fans like Nils Frome were well-known. So where is the Canadian Mythos fanfiction?

Sasha Dumontier discovered “The Picture” (1939) by Robert D. Harris in the online newspaper archive of The McGill Daily, which is the daily college newspaper of McGill University in Montreal. The short story ran in the 24 November 1939 issue; Dumontier also found Harris published at least two other stories (“Pen and Ink,” 8 Feb 1939 and “Winter Twilight,” 20 Dec 1939) and a few poems and letters to the editor in The McGill Daily. Both stories are short and straightforward weirds, though neither has any Mythos elements.

Robert Dresser Harris was born in 1920 in Island Pond, Vermont; the 1920 U.S. Federal census records both his parents as born in Canada. The family shortly moved to Asbestos, Quebec (now known as Val-des-Sources). Harris attended McGill University and graduated in 1940. After graduation, Harris worked as a cordite chemist supporting the wartime industries, but in 1942 he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. A card at McGill University sketches out his service, but details on his later life and career are a bit sketchy without access to Canadian census records. A memorial notice shows Harris died in Toronto in 1991.

That Harris was a fan of weird fiction is obvious from his work published in The McGill Daily; whether he had any connection with other Canadian fans is unknown. Canadian fandom was not well-organized in the late 1930s, and the Canadian Amateur Fantasy Press was founded in 1942, after Harris had graduated and joined the war effort. Still, he may have some distinction at least in writing and publishing “The Picture,” which deals with an eldritch tome familiar to every Lovecraft fan…

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The Picture

Garland hardly needed the picture on his bureau, for he could call up mentally with amazing clarity the image of Peggy’s face at any time. It was, however, a concrete symbol of what seemed to him the main reason for existence, and he appreciated it accordingly. it was Peggy at her very best with that singularly sweet expression which had first caused him to notice her. But strangely enough, there was no studio name on the picture anywhere and when he asked Peggy where it came from, she could not remember the exact place. From the best photographer in the city, it would have been a masterpiece; from an unknown, it was astonishing.

At times, something about the photo seemed to bother him. He would be working at something when he would feel irresistably that someone was staring at him intently; he would resist it as long as he could, and then swing round, to meet its gaze. On first sight, he always felt revulsion; it looked at him so devotedly—almost sickeningly so—and yet so possessively; certainly not like Peggy. The queer thing was, that other times it looked quite normal.

One night, Wilson dropped in, and as Garland scraped into the debris on his desk for an ashtray, Wilson said “That’s a nice picture there—queer expression, though, somehow quite malevolent. Not like Peggy at all, that way. You know I could swear the eyes followed you, as you walk around, just as though it’s watching you; trick of the light, I suppose.”

“You’ve noticed it too?” Garland asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “Weird thing, but it’s just coincidence, of course.”

†††

But after that, the picture came more out into the open with it. The night he came dejectedly home, after a good-sized row with Peggy, the picture first leered at him, but when he looked again, it was smiling sympathetically; there was no mistake about it, it was the truth. At Christmas, when we went home, it was especially bad. He took the picture with him, and all the holidays it wore that happy, possessive look, as though it were saying, “Now I’ve got you all to myself, she isn’t around any more. Just you and I, Brad.”

It was true, the thing was infernally jealous of its prototype. It knew what had happened, every time he came in from being with Peggy. The night of the Formal, when things really occurred, he didn’t get home till five; and the picture seemed to know that he and Peggy had left the dance at two. The thing fairly gibbered at him with rage; the whole face was distorted, the lips slightly drawn back, the brows contracted—it was horrible. He tossed it into the drawer with a shudder; he couldn’t possibly sleep with that looking at him.

He confided in Wilson, who, having seen the picture, was not inclined to laugh. “I don’t even know what the thing wants me to do.” he said. “I can’t very well make love to a picture—but even if I knew, I wouldn’t let it scare me into it.”

“I wonder how it works,” Wilson mused. “If we knew, we might be able to do something about it. Apparently, someone’s got hold of a way of photographing character. If you can get a distortion in physical appearance you can distort the character of the picture, too. If it’s deliberate, I’d say the man was a wizard, meaning just that.”

“Would you destroy the picture?” Garland asked.

“Not yet,” Wilson answered. “It’s very interesting, and you’ll never see anything like it again. Of course, if you feel you can’t stand it—”

“That’s all right,” Garland broke in. “I’ll see what happens.”

†††

The situation got no worse, but it was still bad enough to prey on Garland’s nerve. This continued for about a month, and then matters took on a worse appearance. At first, the picture had tried to get its way by a nauseating amative coaxing, but now its aspect was positively menacing. Strange, vague figures began to appear in the background, and those took on a sharper outline as the days passed.

Then Garland began having nightmares, of the most macabre sort, in which the face in the portrait played a large part. Several times, just as he awoke from a troubled sleep, he heard rustlings in the room, as if numerous little beings were making for the bureau, on which the picture stood.

One night, he woke up suddenly from a worse dream than usual. The full moon was shining in brightly, and in its light, he saw several black shapes moving and flowing about on the walls and ceiling.. With a courage I can only admire, he managed to persued himself that the shapes were only spots on the wall, and that the deceptive moonlight made them appear to move. However, in the morning, the wall was perfectly blank.

There was a little blood on the pillow. “Queer,” he thought. “I don’t remember cutting myself when I shaved last night. However—”

A sudden thought seized him, and he swung out of bed, and over to the bureau. There was blood on the cover, small blobs of blood scattered over the background of the picture, but the largest smear was right on the mouth of the portrait.

He wiped it off. The picture smiled sweetly back at him, but when he picked it angrily up, the features twisted to a look of dismay and rage. The eyes were horribly distended, but worst of all was the ghastly sound when he ripped it across. It certainly did not sound like tearing paper; to him, it sounded like a human scream, but that was probably due to his imagination.

In disgust and terror, he hurriedly held the fragments to a lighted match, and dropped them into the waste-basket. Then, without looking for coat or hat, he ran from the room.

†††

Garland had no more toruble from that source, but there is a sequel. The next day, he saw Peggy, and asked again about the source of the photo.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’d written the address down, and I found it a few days ago. It’s blotted, but it’s either 383 or 385 Ste. Clarisse.”

Garland made a point of investigating these two addresses. 383 was closed, and he could not get in, and the other was merely a rooming house; on inquiry he found that no photographer had ever had a studio there, at least for some years.

I told this story to give point to a little discovery of my own. A friend of mine last week showed me a book that was found on demolishing a row of buildings along Ste. Clarisse and Devraux streets. It is a huge tome, bound in leather, and completely illegible, except for a few words here and there. The name, which conveys nothing to me, is “Necronomicon.” There are several pages of cabalistic symbols, which make it probably a mediaeval book on Alchemy, Black Magic, or some such subject. It is hand-written, in a fluid which resembles very much deteriorated red ink; however, a reputable chemist tells me that it is almost completely of organic origin, which eliminates any theory that it might be ink. The pages, are quite dry and cracked, but I think, like everyone else who has seen it, that they are of human skin.

Found along with the book were several containers for Mazda No. 2 Photoflood Bulbs, and in another corner of the room was a blue silk screen.

— Robert D. Harris

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As a story, “The Picture” is little more than a sketch, with underdeveloped characters and a bit of a rushed ending. Yet Harris manages to tell his story, even if the ending would be obscure to anyone that wasn’t fairly well-read in Weird Tales or managed to get a copy of some early Arkham House books from across the border. If it is a little ungainly in its telling, there are some elements that have the ring of real college life—like staying out ’til 5AM with a girlfriend, when they’d left the dance at 2AM—and readers could only imagine what happened in the intervening three hours unaccounted for.

The most notable element is the description of the Necronomicon; while Lovecraft had hinted at a “portfolio, bound in tanned human skin” in “The Hound,” in none of his writings had he suggested that the Necronomicon itself was bound in human leather, or that the pages were made of human vellum or inked with blood (or at least, a mostly-organic reddish substance). The popular association of the Necronomicon with anthropodermic bibliopegy and being written in blood came from the Necronomicon ex Mortis featured in Evil Dead II (1987) (and for more Necronomicon lore, see The Necronomicon Files by Dan Harms & John W. Gonce III). So Robert D. Harris was certainly ahead of the game in that respect.

“The Picture” by Robert D. Harris is ultimately just a bit of fanfiction, with the inclusion of the Necronomicon just a nod in Lovecraft’s direction—but who else in Canada was that in 1939?

The original text of “The Picture” was taken from The McGill Daily 24 Nov 1939.

Thanks to Sasha Dumontier, who found “The Picture,” did the initial research on Harris and his publications in The McGill Daily, and was kind enough to bring it to my attention. Thanks too to Dave Goudsward for his help on Harris’ vital statistics.

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Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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