Lost Tale: “The Coming of Tsathoggua” (1951) by Herman Stowell King

In the early days of organized fantasy, weird, and science fiction fandom, “fan fiction” was simply fiction by fans for fans, published in fanzines without compensation, to differentiate it from the fiction published professionally in pulp and slick magazines, newspapers, etc. Early fan fiction may have had an amateurish quality, but it wasn’t explicitly based on the works of other writers, or include characters and settings from other works. Mythos stories, however, were an exception; they emerged quite naturally beginning in the 1930s, from poetry like & “The Woods of Averoigne” (1934) by Grace Stillman, “Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1942) by Virginia Anderson, and “The Acolytes” (1946) by Lilith Lorraine, and short fiction like “The Picture” (1939) by Robert D. Harris. The Mythos was open to exploration and exploitation in a way many more consolidated properties were not at the time.

Herman Stowell King (1929-2015) was a science fiction fan and collector, known mostly today for his fanfiction and poetry and a few other pieces published in magazines like Fate and Exploring the Unknown. His particular contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos seems unusually overlooked.

First published in Peon #17 (January 1951).

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The Coming of Tsathoggua

by Herman Stowell King

Far back in the pre-existence of manking, when Earth was still a steaming morass, and the first weird life form crawled forth from the ooze of primal slime, the god Tsathoggua came through the void from a distant planet called Cykranosh (now termed as Saturn by astronomers). Tsathoggua was an evil god; he had lived for interminable eons of time, and Cykranosh was not his original home. Vicenillions of years ago, he had come there from a remote star, in a galaxy so distant as to be unthinkable.

In appearance, Tsathoggua somewhat resembled a huge, bloated toad, although he was not batrachian in the least. His skin, and again we must use a mundane analogy totally adverse from the real thing, was covered with a short, sloth-like fur. There were no pupils in his bulging eyes, and his nose was almost bridgeless. His body was moist and slimy: composed of some viscid, protoplastic substance.

Now although Tsathoggua was extremely repulsive in every aspect, he was an incredibly wise god. He held secrets that a normal terrestrial mind could not begin to conceive; knowledge of extra-cosmic galaxies, multiple dimensions, primordial races of ultimate evolution, the creation of the elements; this, and more, he knew, and could be drawn from wells of the subconscious should he ever have use for such wisdom.

Tsathoggua, however, had more than one attribute of the toad. Aside from quasi-physical resemblance, he was sluggishly lazy. The long journey from Cykranosh (although infinitesimally small in comparison with the one from his original habitat) had tired him, and after gorging on a few amphibian creatures, he burrowed deep in some hot, fetid muck, where for many milleniums he slept soundly.

The Earth had gone through a long stage of cooling and solidification; and the slime vanished from the surface to be replaced by warm seas. Green vegetation sprang up, and soon the land was covered with lush, tropical jungles. Living organisms went through various processes of evolution, and presently the earth teemed with tremendous animals, most of which were reptilian.

Dinosaurs roamed the jungles, and marshes, and pterodactyls flapped ugily though the air. Diplodocus fed on vegetables, while Tyrannosaurus fed on Diplodocus.

The god Tsathoggua was awakened by the cooling of the muck in which he was embedded. Lazily blinking his protuberant eyes (he had sight despite the lack of pupils—a fantastic extra-optical sense of perception) he wobbled elastically onto the dry ground, and proceeded to search about for means of nourishment.

The first living animal to impinge on Tsathoggua’s cognition was a flying Pteranodon. Displaying a remarkable elongation, the squat, drowsy-looking deity from outer space flicked out his tongue and viscously encircled the poor Pteranodon. There was an inarticulate squawk, and Tsathoggua gulped the reptilian bird down his plastic esophagus. Anon followed a period of digestion. Tsathoggua did not convert his food in the manner characteristic of homo sapiens and lesser animals; instead he merely assimilated it into his own individual substance. And considering his essence, there was no danger of over-expansion.

Having done with that small morsel, the toad god ran rubberly off, apparently awkward, but with amazing celerity. Entering the thick jungle he espied a huge, scaly-clad creature walking upright. Tyrannosaurus Rex, the most ferocious of all reptiles.

Surely, this enormous quadruped would satiate his hunger, thought Tsathoggua. Immediately, he waddled placidly toward the Tyrannosaurus, who after an interval of surprised silence (surprised that anything dared approach him) snorted a loud challenge. Eyes red with terrible wrath the battle-scarred carnivora of the Mesozoic Age bounded to meet his non-terrestrial adversary.

Tsathoggua quickly underwent a phenomenal metamorphosis, melting into a semi-liquid state, and literally pouring over the bewildered Rex! There was a short moment of violent convulsion, as the die-hard warrior struggled valiantly against the swallowing tide of tenacious life which engulfed him. All effort was futile however, and after a few feeble tremours, the lumpy mass of adhesively sticky matter remained motionless. It had not taken long for Tsathoggua to incorporate the scrawny Pterandon into himself, but the great Tyrannosaurus was a vastly different undertaking to him!

Hours later, following this extended absorption, Tsathoggua remolded back to his anurian likeness, and deciding he did not like the surface climate, commenced to seek some subterranean abode.

This proved an easy task for such an intelligent deity. By use of some recondite, extra sense, Tsathoggua located a suitable place deep in the bowels of the earth, the entrance being a narrow, volcanic fissure atop a black basaltic mountain.

So the god Tsathoggua found a residence agreeable for a long state of Earth existence. In this underground grotto he slept continuously, coming to the surface only occasionally for food; but usually he even transported his substance by exerting some subtle, psychokinetic energy, without moving physically from his spot of repose.

The ages unfolded as he drowsed; the Mesozoic giving way to the Tertiary, the Tertiary yielding to the Pleistocene, and so on. Man appeared on Earth, and civilization pushed back barbarism.

Vast empires graced the lands; Hyperborea and Atlantis with their fair cities rearing marble cupolas aloft; Mu and Valusia came and went, leaving naught but myth and legend of their existence. There was among those peoples a mystical few who worshipped Tsathoggua, and in return for their carnal tributes he gave them awful and marvellous powers of sorcery and necromancy. Having the wisdom of an elder god at the evocation, these wizards executed nameless foul deeds of evil and corruption. Through the performance of unholy rites and incantations, those that numbered the cult of Tsathoggua could control the elements, conjure up the dead, withstand mortality by regulating the metabolism in the protoplasm; in fact, there was little those devil worshippers could not do.

But as time passed, and all those wonderful civilizations vanished into limbo, so vanished man’s credulity in gods and all things considered immaterial, till finally there was no one to worship Tsathoggua, because no one believed he existed.

Very few were those who still sought pleasure in the form of strange and inexplicable pursuits, and the ones that did find Tsathoggua were woefully weak and pusillanimous, for they went mad at the knowledge of the toad god’s reality. Many of these never returned from the dark-lit grotto, but fell victim to his evil gluttony.

Yea, gone are Hyperborea and Atlantis; gone save in vague fables; but the god Tsathoggua still sleeps in his subterrene abode, and there shall come the time when he awakens voracious, and horror and havoc will descend on the cities of man.

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Tyrannosaurs (late Cretaceous period, 69-66 million years ago) did not prey on Diplodocus (late Jurassic, 152-149 Ma). Nor did either co-exist with Pteranodon (late Cretaceous, 86-78 Ma). If I were glossing this, I would suggest that Tsathoggua had awoken in some remote region where various dinosaur species had continued to co-exist long after the period that paleontologists have assigned to them, like the Savage Land in Marvel Comics. That’s a quibble for a brief, very fannish piece.

Tsathoggua was the creation of Clark Ashton Smith, but because of the vicissitudes of pulp publishing, Lovecraft actually ended up mentioning Tsathoggua in print before Smith did. King was clearly drawing more on Smith’s interpretation of Tsathoggua than Lovecraft’s, but was synthesizing from disparate elements in the Mythos to put his little characterization together:

It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came—you know, the amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1931)

I had never seen an image of Tsathoggua before, but I recognized him without difficulty from the descriptions I had heard. He was very squat and pot-bellied, his head was more like that of a monstrous toad than a deity, and his whole body was covered with an imitation of short fur, giving somehow a vague suggestion of both the bat and the sloth. His sleepy lids were half-lowered over his globular eyes; and the tip of a queer tongue issued from his fat mouth. In truth, he was not a comely or personable sort of god, and I did not wonder at the cessation of his worship, which could only have appealed to very brutal and aboriginal men at any time.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” (1931)

He had cultivated the acquaintance of Zhothaqquah, who, in the desuetude of his worship, was now driven to lead an existence wholly subterranean; he had offered the prescribed prayers, had made the sacrifices that were most acceptable; and the strange, sleepy little god, in return for Eibon’s interest and his devotion, had confided to him certain information that was more than useful in the practise of the black arts. Also he had presented Eibon with some autobiographical data that confirmed the popular legends in more explicit detail. For reasons which he did not specify, he had come to Earth in former aeons from the planet Cykranosh (the name by which Saturn was called in Mhu Thulan); and Cykranosh itself had been merely a waystation in his travels from remoter worlds and systems.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Door to Saturn” (1932)

Black Tsathoggua moulded itself from a toad-like gargoyle to a long, sinuous line with hundreds of rudimentary feet […]
—H. P. Lovecraft & Hazel Heald, “The Horror in the Museum” (1933)

Somewhere beneath that four-coned mountain, the sluggish and baleful god Tsathoggua, who had come down from Saturn in years immediately following the Earth’s creation, was fabled to reside […] You shall know Tsathoggua by his great girth and his batlike furriness and the look of a sleepy black toad which he has eternally. He will rise not from his place, even in the ravening of hunger, but will wait in divine slothfulness for the sacrifice. And, going close to Lord Tsathoggua, you must say to him: “I am the blood-offering sent by the sorcerer Ezdagor.’ Then, if it be his pleasure, Tsathoggua will avail himself of the offering.
—Clark Ashton Smith, “The Seven Geases” (1934)

[…] could turn a human Carter into one of those earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black, plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kythanil, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus […]
—H. P. Lovecraft & E. Hoffmann Price, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1934)

It had been built in imitation of certain temples depicted in the vaults of Zin, to house a very terrible black toad-idol found in the red-litten world and called Tsathoggua in the Yothic manuscripts.
—H. P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop, “The Mound” (1940)

Like “Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad” (1950) by D. R. Smith, this is a fan filling in a piece of unwritten Mythos history. There’s not a lot in the way of plot in this short piece, but it’s a rare example of someone leaning more toward Clark Ashton Smith instead of Lovecraft in early Mythos fanfiction.

The Tsathoggua item threw us but not enough to make the issue as a whole suffer too much.
—Startling Stories Sep 1951

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Lost Tale: “The Mortal” (1927) by Anonymous

Eldritch Fappenings

The following historical poetry is of a ribald nature, with both suggestive and explicit references to human sexuality. It is presented uncensored, as originally published. Reader discretion is advised.

THE secret of a poem, no less than a jest’s prosperity, lies in the ear of him that hears it. Yield to its spell, accept the poet’s mood: this, after all, is what the sages answer when you ask them of its value. Even though the poet himself, in his other mood, tell you that his art is but sleight of hand, his food enchanter’s food, and offer to show you the trick of it,—believe him not. Wait for this prophetic hour; then give yourself to his passion, his joy or pain […]
—Edmund C. Steadman, “Comment on the Poem” in The Raven (1884) by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1845) is widely considered a classic; a narrative poem of 18 stanzas of six lines each, with a relatively complex meter (primarily trochaic octameter) and rhyme scheme (ABCBBB). The result is distinct and easy to recognize, more difficult to emulate accurately but easy enough to parody. Parodies work in part because of shared familiarity; when kids on a school bus sing “Jingle bells, Batman smells…” it hits because of the subversion of expectations. They all know the tune and the original lyrics, and then it veers off into irreverent and transgressive territory. A bit juvenile, but all in good fun. At some point after its publication and rise to popularity, “The Raven” inspired a number of parodies, some of the explicitly sexual variety.

Ribald poetry and poetic parodies used to be more popular. They still are popular, but there are fewer common cultural touchstones, poems that large portions of the reading public can be expected to be familiar enough with that people can appreciate the parody. The parody songs of Weird Al Yankovic like “Amish Paradise” (1996) are good examples of successful and popular contemporary parody verse, though Yankovic’s work is generally fairly clean. Adult parodies these days are normally much more explicit, taking the form of pornographic parodies of popular movies (e.g. Evil Head, a pornographic parody of the Evil Dead films), comic book characters, or celebrities.

Yet in the publishing environment of the late 19th and early 20th century, explicit parodies were difficult to publish openly. Tijuana bibles like Batman and Robin in The Occult Coven (197?) and Red Sonja and Conan: Hot and Dry (1977) by Randy Crawford were explicitly underground publications, crude and potentially opening the publisher up to prosecution. So there was less openly pornographic work and more publications of a spicy or ribald character. Such is the case with sex-infused parodies of “The Raven” that circulated in the cultural milieu of the early 20th century United States.

One particular group or tradition of poems stands out. In the collection Immortalia (1927), which collected various anonymously authored folksongs, poems, doggerel verse, etc. is a parody of “The Raven” titled “The Mortal.” The poem beings with the lines “Once upon a midnight dreary, When of smoking I was weary”; and instead of a raven appearing, a mortal does—in this specific case, a sex worker. Numerous versions of this poem (under various titles) were published in subsequent decades, all of which have the same theme and much of the same specific language, though with notable variations.

However, “The Mortal” didn’t appear full-grown from the head of some anonymous dirty poet, but appears to draw on an existing tradition of parodies of “The Raven.” The earliest relevant version I’ve found is an untitled parody by Edward Cowles from 1913:

This was the obvious inspiration for a bit of verse titled “Raving”or “The Raving” from 1918:

*The St. Louis Republic*, 29 Mar 1918 (12)

*The St. Louis Republic,* 1 Apr 1918 (12)

Both of these have some distinct parallels in language and theme with the opening to “The Mortal,” especially the rhyme “[…] a wishin’ | To my room to gain admission,” which would become characteristic of “The Mortal” and subsequent poems. The repeated language points to a wider family of parodies of “The Raven” that were current in the 1910s and 20s, of which “The Mortal” and its descendants are a subset. For example, “A Big Time in Norfolk” by E.F.S. begins:

“Once upon an evening dreary, When of smoking I was weary, Got me out and—”
—The Transmitter (Mar 1921) 17

And an unsigned bit of newspaper verse from 1922:

(There is a seperate tradition of temperance poems parodying “The Raven”; see also “Your Health” (1935) by C. M. Young).

In the way different groups of kids had slightly different lyrics to “Jingle bells, Batman smells…” This collection of related verses presents an interesting opportunity to compare and contrast how a dirty poem evolved over time. Four iterations of “The Mortal” are presented here, since they all appear to be in the public domain:

The Mortal (1927)
Raven (1928)
The Raven (1933)
The Raven Maniac (1945)

Each publication formatted the poem differently, not trying to parody the full poem or all of its attributes, but invoking its rhyme scheme and specific lines and imagery. While it is tempting to try and squeeze these into a format closer to Poe’s original stanzas, the changes to the rhyme scheme and meter make that difficult. So these are mostly formatted in a way that eases direct comparison of the texts.

The Mortal (1927)

Once upon a midnight dreary,
When of smoking I was weary,
And had drunk up all my whisky
Only wishing there was more;
Suddenly there came a rapping
As of some fair female tapping
Tapping at my chamber door.
’Tis some chippy that’s a-wishin’
To my room to gain admission.
Well, I’ll rise and let her enter,
Enter though she be a whore,
Only that, and nothing more.

So I opened wide the portal,
And there stood such a mortal
As in all my living moments,
I had never seen before.
She had lost her upper garments,
And of all seductive varmints,
She was sure the warmest baby
Mortal woman ever bore;
And each palpitating bubby
Was so round and firm and chubby,
That my spirits rose within me,
Just my spirits, nothing more.

’Twas the fourteenth of December;
But more clearly I remember
When I woke up in the morning
Of December twenty-four—
Sequel of ten days before.
All that’s left of what passed between us
Is one poor infected penis;
Drooping, red and retrospective,
Penitent, and very sore;
And that penis still is dripping,
Every morning, every evening,
Dripping on the bathroom floor.
And I murmur vows forgotten
Every time I change the cotton.
No more tapping, no more rapping,
No, never, nevermore.

Source: Immortalia: An Anthology of American Ballads, Sailors’ Songs, Cowboy Songs, College Songs, Parodies, Limericks, and Other Humorous Verses and Doggerel (1927) 146-147

“Chippy” is late 19th-century slang for a promisculous woman or sex worker. It’s notable that the action takes place in December, which is in line with “The Raven” being set in “the bleak December,” and there is a sly working of the dates so that the sexually transmitted infection is apparently on the 24th—an unhappy Christmas present! The painful drip is largely associated with gonorrhea.

†

Raven (1928)

Once upon a Midnight dreary
When of smoking I was weary
And I’d drank my pint of whisky
And was wishing there was more.
Suddenly there came a tapping,
Sounding like a female rapping,
Rapping like the very Devil,
Just without my chamber door.
’Tis some chip thought I that’s wishing
To my room to gain admission,
Well I’ll rise and let her enter,
Even if she be a whore,
Only this and nothing more

Then I opened wide the portal,
And there stood such a mortal,
As in all my wildest fancies,
I had never seen before.
She had lost her upper garments,
And of all seductive varmints
She surely was the warmest baby
That woman ever bore.
And each palpitating bubby
Was so smooth and firm and chubby.
That my spirits rose within me,
As I went to close the door,
Just my spirits—nothing more.

And distinctly I remember,
’Twas the 14th of September,
’Twas the 15th when she left me,
When our little dream was o’er.
It was a dream without a sleeping,
With sad reproach and weeping,
She showed me some red spots,
Made she told me by her hymen’s gore.
Aye, the 14th of September
But more clearly I remember,
What I found upon the morning of Sept. 24.
Sequel to ten days before,

All that’s left of what passed between us,
Is one infected penis,
Drooping, sad and retrospective,
Penitent and very sore.
And that penis never skipping,
Every morning, Dripping, Dripping,
Still is dripping, still is dripping.
Dripping on the bath room floor.
And I murmur vows forgotten,
Every time I change the cotton,
No more rapping, no more tapping,
Not for Uncle—never more.

Source: The Book of a Thousand Laughs (1928) 38

This version of the poem is more explicit in what it’s parodying by a change of title, but also makes several notable changes. The scene is moved from December to September, which is probably an error, since September, November, and December all fit the rhyme scheme. The woman “showed me some red spots, Made she told me by her hymen’s gore”—but as she was a sex worker and he caught a disease, this is more likely a reference to chlamydia, a sexually transmitted infection that can cause bleeding between periods.

The last line “Not for Uncle” is likely a bit of 1930s slang where “your Uncle” was used for “myself.” So the understood meaning would be “Not for me.”

‡

The Raven (1933)

Once upon a midnight dreary
When of smoking I was weary,
And had drunk up all my whiskey,
Only wishing there was more;
Just as I was lightly napping,
Suddenly there came a rapping
As of some fair female tapping,
Tapping at my chamber door;
“Tis some chippy that’s awishin?
То my room to gain admission;
Well, I’ll rise and let her enter,
Enter tho’ she be a whore,
Only that and nothing more.

So I opened wide the portal
And there stood such a mortal
As in all my living moments
I had never seen before.
She had lost her upper garments,
And of all seductive varmints
She was sure the warmest baby
Mortal woman ever bore;
And each palpitating bubby
Was so round and firm and chubby
That my spirits rose within me,
Just my spirits, nothing more;
Yes, my spirits; nothing more.

Source: The Wrecks (1933) 58

This is a very truncated version, with the poetic scheme greatly simplified and the infectious epilogue to the encounter completely cut out. Which is likely a result of where it was published; the booklet being much more upbeat and cheerful, a little naughty but not filthy. Interestingly, the poem likely derives more or less directly from “The Mortal,” since the language is much closer to that than to “Raven” (1928).

⹋

The Raven Maniac (1945)

Once upon a midnight dreary,
When of smoking I was weary,
And had drank my pint of whiskey,
And was wishing there was more;
Suddenly there came a tapping,
Sounded like a female rapping,
Rapping like the very devil,
Just outside my chamber door.
’Tis some chippy that’s a’ wishing
To my room to gain admission,
Well, I’ll rise and let her enter,
Even though she be a whore,
Let her enter, nothing more.

So I opened wide the portal,
And there stood such a mortal,
That in all my wildest fancies,
I had never seen before;
She had lost her upper garments,
And of all seductive varmints,
She surely was the warmest baby,
That mortal woman ever bore;
And each palpitating bubbie,
Was so smooth, so round and chubbie,
That my spirits rose within me,
As I closed my chamber door,
Just my spirits, nothing more.

Oh! distinctly I remember,
’Twas the thirteenth of November,
’Twas the fourteenth when she left me,
When our little dream was o’er;
But more clearly I remember,
The nineteenth of November,
Six days later, and she said
The blood was just her Hymen’s gore,
Only blood, and nothing more.

All that’s left of what passed between us,
Is one poor infected penis
Drooping, sad and penitent,
And very VERY sore;
And that penis-never skipping
Still is dripping—STILL IS DRIPPING,
Morning, afternoon, and evening,
Dripping on the bathroom floor,
And I utter vows forgotten,
Every time I change the cotton,
No more rapping, no more tapping
Not for Uncle, NEVERMORE.

Source: Folk Poems and Ballads (1945) 55-56

If “The Raven” (1933) comes straight from “The Mortal,” then “The Raven Maniac” (1945) derives more or less directly from “Raven” (1928). Once again, the setting shifts (14/24 December→ 14/24 September→ 13/19 November), which is as likely to be an error as anything, but the sex worker still has her bleeding and her false claim of virginity. Aside from the dates, the most notable shift is an emphasis on certain words; one can easily imagine this one being read aloud to a raucous crowd.

⸸

One of my fondest childhood memories is The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror rendition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1990). What made the segment stand out is that the poem itself is unchanged; it isn’t a parody in the sense that words are mocked or changed, but in the way the poem’s visuals are reimagined into the particular style of animation, with some added asides. It’s an expansion of the poem in the direction of humor, while retaining its core identity with longing and obsession.

“The Mortal” and its variants are a different direction; much more focused on the easily-imitable (and easily-parodyable) external elements of the poem than it is with Poe’s message. Yet to work effectively as parodies, these poems all have to retain the essential features of Poe’s “The Raven”: an individual is alone and hears a knock upon the door, and opens to find a companion for the night. The sole reminder of that fateful encounter is painful, but at the end, the individual is still alone. In a sense, this could be seen as a moral narrative—the wages of sin—but it is also a distant, mutated echo of Poe’s sentiment.

She is gone.

The narrator is alone.

With only a painful reminder of the love they shared.

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—nevermore!
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven” (1845)

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Nécroéroticon (1986) by Anonymous and Adult Frankenstein (2006) by Enrico Teodorani et al.

Eldritch Fappenings
This review concerns graphic adult comic works.
Reader discretion is advised.

The cultural and economic factors that have led to at least two separate European pornographic comics involving the Frankenstein’s Monster and the Lovecraft Mythos intersecting, decades apart but identifiably through some of the same systems and processes, are difficult to articulate. A large part of the issue involves the odd currency that pornographic comics represent to publishers. It can be cheaper and faster to translate an existing work for publication in a new market than to commission and wait for an original work to be published in a given language. This has the odd effect that a number of the same works may be published in different languages, in different countries, years apart, and packaged at each stage as original works. And so readers, writers, and artists may be in communication with each other and sharing influences.

Before the internet, trying to track down the details of where this material was published was difficult. It requires recognizing the same material was published in different media, collating indices to erotic comics magazines (scarce enough data), and making connections with artists, writers, editors, translators, and publishers—data which is often missing or omitted. As a result, some of the data on these works is sketchy or nonexistent. Further digging might yield more details; the work always continues.

What is fascinating to me is that these two works represent independent expressions of the legacy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos fiction, which came together by different people at different times in different ways, yet clearly represent iterations on the same ideas. Horror fans who grew up with both of these mythologies to play with synthesized them into new and original erotic works. Because they are pornographic, the works have largely escaped popular notice and critical scrutiny. Yet for fans of horror, they deserve at least a little recognition. They are, if nothing else, deliciously weird.

Nécroéroticon (1986)

“Franky Stone,” a bald, muscular version of Frankenstein’s Monster, premiered in the black-and-white French comic magazine Supersexy #1 in 1977. The subsequent issues of Supersexy chronicled the continuing adventures of Franky, in and out of bed, as he faced off against various monsters and threats by day and made love with the beautiful Arlette Delapierre, whose company he prefers to his creator, Dr. Stone. Erotic content was limited: bare breasts are on display, and sexual action is often depicted, but without showing the genitals or penetration, using various artistic devices (a gripping hand and carefully placed head, for instance, could completely conceal the penis while implying oral sex.)

Supersexy ended with issue #8, and Franky’s adventures continued in Hypersexy #3 (1978) with the ninth chapter: “Le Nécroéroticon.” This was the chronologically last adventure, although Franky would be republished in the French magazines Miss Eros (1980) and Sexorama (1985). In 1986, all nine chapters would be translated into Spanish by an anonymous translator and published as the 9-issue series La amante de Franksextein, with one chapter per issue, the remaining pages of each issue containing another, non-Franky Stone story. The Spanish issues don’t track in the same order as the original French publication, so “Necroeroticon” appears in issue 8 of La amante de Franksextein.

After a romantic interlude with Arlette, Franky goes to the bookstore to purchase an erotic work in two volumes: the Necroeroticon, which contains some new positions for Arlette and Franky to try. However, in Franky’s haste, he leaves behind the second volume, which is discovered by the villainous Dr. Stone and his assistant Pietr follow:

C’est le Necroerotikon . . . écrit par un Arabe fou du sexe: un nommé Abdul.	Es el Necroerotikon, escrito por un árabe, loco por el sexo, llamado Abdul…	It is the Necroerotikon, written by an Arab, mad for sex, named Abdul.
French	Spanish	English

While the translation is mostly word-for-word, the anonymous translator did have a few moments where they went for the gusto.

Grâce à lui, je me libérerai d’Arlette et récupérerai mon Franky…	Thanks to him, I will free myself from Arlette and get my Franky back…
French	English
Por fin encontré el arma con el cual venceré a esa mujer ladrona e infame. ¡¡El Necroeroticon!!	At last, I have found the weapon with which I will defeat that thieving, vile woman. The Necroeroticon!
Spanish	English

Dr. Stone reads that when the planets are in alignment, and the sex ritual in the first part of the book is performed (which Franky and Arlette are in the middle of), there will be an earthquake that will awaken the sex god Phallocrath (Falocras in the Spanish version). Shortly thereafter, that happens, and Dr. Stone and Pietr (with three young women) go seek out Phallocrath in a cave, and find him. Since explicit sex and genitalia weren’t shown, the “sacrifice” of the three women occurs largely off the page, and Phallocrath is only seen in shadow.

Je suis votre serviteur! Commandez et j’obéirai! J’aime une belle femme pour toi, Phallocrath! Ensuite toutes les femmes de la terre seront tiennes!	Soy vuestro servidor… ¡Mandady, obedeceré! Tengo a una mujer muy bella para ti, Falocras. ¡Enseguida todas las mujeres de la tierra serán tuyas!	I am your servant! Give the command, and I shall obey! I shall find a beautiful woman for you, Phallocrath! And then, all the women of the earth shall be yours!
French	Spanish	English

Unaware of this, Franky and Arlette want to try another ritual… unfortunately, Dr. Stone interrupts the ritual, and Phallocrath loses his powers. Arlette takes the opportunity to dispose of their half of the Necroeroticon.

Je l’ai jeté par la fenêtre… J’aime mieux tes méthodes naturelles et souvaces!	Tiré el libro por la ventana. Me gustan mucho más tus métodos naturales y salvajes.	I threw it out the window… I much prefer your natural, wild methods!
French	Spanish	English

As with El Convento Infernal (1995) by Ignacio Noé & Ricardo Barreiro, we only get glimpses of the Necroeroticon as a kind of grimoire-cum-sex manual. The plot itself is a spicy comedy of errors, with the Lovecraftian elements largely a wink and a nod, with intimations of horrors that never appear on the page, a phallic eldritch entity we never see clearly, and consequences that basically don’t happen. Franky’s status as a Frankenstein’s monster-esque character plays no real role in the story, but Arlette’s assertion that she likes Franky’s natural and unsophisticated methods when it comes to lovemaking is a fitting denouement to the story.

Adult Frankenstein (2006)

Enrico Teodorani (15 May 1970– ) was born in Forlì, Italy; as a teenager in the mid-to-late 1980s began contributing to local fanzines and comics, and started singing in a couple of heavy metal bands. He has long had an affiliation with horror and erotica, and some of his most popular creations follow these trends, including the female western character Djustine, many of whose adventures have been translated and published in English as well.

In the early 2000s, Teodorani was publishing work with X Comics, an Italian-language monthly adult comics anthology magazine. This was a relatively popular format in Europe, and as with Metal Hurlant, there were often comparable volumes in different countries, such as Kiss Comix in Spain, which also had a French translation in France and an English edition in the United States. This meant that the work of a few creators could be available internationally in many languages in different publications, but it kind of makes it tricky to keep track of where everything was being published.

Around 2004, Teodorani began collaborating with various Djustine artists on a series of very short black-and-white works for X Comics that all feature Frankenstein’s Monster; the artists were Marco Guerrieri, Dario Santarelli, Gavino Piredda, Andrea Bulgarelli, Morrik, Luca Malisan, Danilo Loizedda, and Silvano, and the works vary from 1-6 pages. These appear to have been largely filler, but inspired by a 1976/1977 softcore Italian horror comic Frankenstein published by Edizioni Del Vascello/Edifumetto, which got a snapshot history in X Comics #37 (2002).

The Teodorani-written X Comics series appears as fairly disjointed, without a single plotline but more a series of brief erotic interludes in the saga of the Frankenstein’s Monster, the effect of the different artists and their unique takes on the monster, which vary from drawing inspiration from Boris Karloff’s makeup in the early Universal Frankenstein movies to the long-haired, sharp-featured Frankenstein’s Monster of Bernie Wrightson. It is a deliberately eclectic and pulpy mix, which often features Frankenstein’s Monster facing off against some other horror over a naked and nubile woman, and ending with a sex act. All in good fun.

There are two stories with Lovecraftian elements. In the 4-page “Island of Dr. Frankenstein” (artist: Andrea Bulgarelli), Dr. Frankenstein has taken his creation and a young woman to a remote island to use an ancient book to summon an amphibious humanoid from the deep for a sex rite—some clear overtones to “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” although nothing explicit. Frankenstein’s Monster objects, attacks the humanoid from the deep and drives it off, and is rewarded for his trouble.

Some of Bulgarelli’s figurework has a distinct resemblance to John Buscema’s from Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian comics, though none of these are swipes, but all original works. Doctor Frankenstein is sporting a slightly outlandish English-style moustache, but in a comic where he’s dabbling in interspecies sexual relations, that’s hardly his worst character flaw.

The second, and more explicit Lovecraftian entry is the 4-page “Frankenstein, King of Demons” (artist: Silvano), which is the last story in the book. In the second-to-last entry, Frankenstein’s Monster had died and gone to Hell. In this story, in Hell, Frankenstein runs afoul of various Lovecraftian entities and is captured, before being inadvertently summoned by a magician, taking on an armored, costumed appearance very much in keeping with the Dark Age of Comics, and reminiscent of characters like Tim Vigil’s Faust.

“Silvano” is credited for the art, and this is Silvano Calligari, who did some artwork for Djustine, and you can see him having fun here balancing light, nearly non-existent backgrounds with relatively dark, heavily detailed figurework. While other segments in Adult Frankenstein aim for comedy or eroticism, this one is clearly going for horror over titillation.

In 2005, the series was collected and translated into English by Enrico Teodorani, and published as a one-shot titled Adult Frankenstein by Eros Comix, which had handled other English translations of European erotic horror comics, such as Rosano Rossi’s Ramba (1992-1995); Raulo Caceres’ Elizabeth Bathory (2002-2004) and Morbid Tales (2004); and The Young Witches (1991-2005) by multiple writers and artists. An Italian edition with identical title but different cover was apparently published by EF Edizioni in 2008, though I haven’t been able to source a copy to confirm the contents.

When you look at “Nécroéroticon” and Adult Frankenstein side-by-side, it is easy to see the parallels. The creators have taken Mary Shelley and Lovecraft’s creations in very different directions, and the Frankenstein’s Monster is barely recognizable in some of his appearances, marked out from the other characters only by a few tell-tale stitches, while Lovecraft’s Mythos is present more thematically than anything drawn directly from his stories.

Yet both of these works are genuine descendants of an international diaspora of English-language horror media; the shared result of stories, comics, and films that have made their way around the world for over a century and informed the pop culture of countries that Lovecraft, at least, never visited. They are part of an ongoing tradition of erotic horror, a tradition that involves translation across linguistic boundaries so that new audiences can read and maybe be inspired by these works.

Frankenstein’s Monster lurches on…and at least in some iterations, he may have a bit of help from Abdul Alhazred.

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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Lost Tale: “An unpublished Episode of Vathek” (1823) by Charles Pendragon

Historical Orientalism

The work presented and discussed includes stereotypes of Orientialism in accordance with the period, including depictions of a Jewish character in accordance with antisemitic stereotypes.
Reader discretion advised.

In 1786, a new Gothic novel appeared on the market: An Arabian Tale, From an Unpublished Manuscript. The author, unnamed in the first edition, was William Beckford, who composed the tale in French as an original work in the style of Oriental folklore being translated into European languages at the time, and translated into English by the Rev. Samuel Henley. It was published in French as simply Vathek, and in myriad editions over the next couple of centuries would be published under some variation of that title. In 1909, two episodes and an unfinished fragment initially intended as part of the novel were discovered among Beckford’s papers by Lewis Melville, and translated by Sir Frank T. Marzials and published in 1912.

The influence of Vathek on English literature is vast. It is the archetype of the Oriental romance novel, and the discovery and subsequent publication of the lost episodes, occurring when it did, renewed interest in the story among the Weird Tales crowd. When H. P. Lovecraft named the original of the Necronomicon as the Al Azif, he was borrowing an Arabic term from one of Henley’s footnotes to Vathek: “being the name applied to those strange night noises (of insects) which the Arabs attribute to the howling of daemons” (H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [27 Nov 1927], Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 150). The unfinished third episode in particular caught their imagination:

Regarding “Episodes of Vathek”—my copy is even now on its way to you as a long-term loan, & it is my hope that—as interest—you will ere long shew me a completion of the 3d episode which shall out-Beckford Beckford! Possibly you may not wish to write the text in French, as Beckford did, but I am sure you can capture the general atmosphere better than anyone else in the gang. Cook once had a wild idea of letting us all try our hands at this job of completion, & of publishing the collected results in book form. That plan has now evaporated, but I don’t think literature has lost very much thereby—since most of us would be very inept at this form of composition. You, however, are really well fitted for it—& Morton & I were impressed with the idea of what a splendid result you could obtain. I’ll wager Wright would publish the episode with your ending—& perhaps a brief explanatory introduction.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [27 Aug 1932], DS 381

Smith did write his “Conclusion to Wm. Beckford’s story of Princess Zulkais & Prince Kalilah,” later as “The Third Episode of Vathek,” which was published by R. H. Barlow in Leaves #1 (1937).

Yet there was another episode.

“An unpublished Episode of Vathek” was “edited by Charles Pendragon,” and was first published in Knights Quarterly Magazine (1823), a highly literary magazine best remembered today for publishing a review which claimed Percy Bysshe Shelley was the true author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. By comparison, the spurious Vathek episode was a bit of fun, on the order of a literary hoax.

※

An unpublished Episode of Vathek

edited by Charles Pendragon

The taste for tower building, of which Vathek had set the example, became infectious in the country about Samarah. This monarch was at first indignant that his subjects should presume to copy his extravagancies; but his vanity was stronger than his pride, and he left them in the quiet possession of their follies. His most ambitious rival was the merchant Bekfudi. The riches of this superb person were enormous. His caravans every year brought him silks and jewels that would have rivalled a princess’s dowry, and the slaves that cultivated his groves of cinnamon might have formed the rear-guard of a sultan’s army. He became dizzy with his wealth, and fancied that he was descended from the Assyrian kings;—though his grandfather had carried a basket in the streets of Bagdad.

Bekfudi had a handsome palace and extensive grounds; the hills and the valleys of a little province were his; a broad lake lingered in his groves of citrons and palms; and the apricots of his garden almost rivalled those which Vathek so prized from the isle of Kirmith. The ladies of his seraglio were as numerous and as beautiful as the harem of the grand vizier, and the other furniture of his palace was equally rare and costly. But Bekfudi began to be satiated with the pleasures and the magnificence of ordinary mortals; in an evil hour he pulled down his palace and sold his women. He built an impenetrable wall round his extensive gardens, and vowed to raise, upon the highest hill which this barrier enclosed, a palace upon a new fashion. Bekfudi had no violent reverence for the religion of his country; and he therefore considered it a sinless profanation to make his dwelling-place like a mosque, and his tower resembling a minaret, though he modestly proposed it to be only ten times higher than the minarets of Bagdad. It was the extravagance of his ambition which prompted him to shut out all the world till he should have finished his mosque; and when his tower rose above the highest pines of the neighbouring hills, he solaced himself with the hope, that the peasants who gazed at an awful distance would believe that within its walls dwelt one of the sons of men, as powerful as the Genii, and as mysterious as the Dives.

Bekfudi possessed abundance of taste. His command of wealth enabled him to engross the rare productions of art which were sometimes too costly even for emirs to acquire; and he lavished his gold upon those who could best apply their talents to the excitement of his self-admiration. All the ornaments of his palace had reference to his ancestors; but though the artists, who recorded in fit emblems the mighty deeds of his progenitors, had an especial regard to truth, they sedulously avoided all allusion to the basket-bearer. In a word, the mosque was a very magnificent place. It was the handsomest monument that taste ever reared to pride; and though Bekfudi in his arrogance had tried to make his tower rival the dome of the great mosque at Damascus, and had only been stopt in his presumptuous aspirings by the equally insolent hurricane, which twice blew it down,—and though in his profaneness he had built his dormitories like the cells of the most pious santons, and had constructed studies and refectories after the models of sanctuaries and shrines,—still the palace was gorgeous and elegant, and such as no subject ever before raised in the dominions of the Commander of the Faithful.

Bekfudi went on for many moons building and embellishing his mosque,—heaping stones upon his tower till the uncivil blasts gave him hints where to stop, and hanging up new draperies of Persian silks till the limited art of the dyer forbade any further change. The superb merchant lived away in a round of selfish enjoyment; his slaves racked their inventions to prepare him viands of the most costly materials; and as his health would not allow him always to drink the red wine of Shiraz, he took care, under the fatal necessity of resorting to so common a beverage as water, to render it palatable by sending caravans and escorts to bring it from a fountain at a hundred leagues’ distance.

The great Mahomet, who had commissioned the Genii to mature and then pull down the presumptuous darings of the caliph Vathek, also resolved to crush the ambition of the merchant Bekfudi. But as the pride and power of the mosque=builder were bounded by natural limits, it was unnecessary to work any miracles for his instruction. He lived on in his round of luxuries; and as his caravans came duly over the desert, and his ships were seldom lost upon the sea, he thought that the spices and the fruits of his fertile isles would last for ever. But there was a sudden change in the fashions of Samarah. The cooks began to make their comfits without cinnamon, and the green dates of their native plains came into request, to the exclusion of the dried fruits of our wealthy merchant. His spices and his figs lay rotting in his warehouses, and, for the first time in his life, he began to think that his mine of wealth was not inexhaustible.

Thirty moons had passed before Bekfudi ceased to pull down and build up the apartments of his mosque, or to send a hundred leagues for his water. The pastry-cooks were inexorable, and his own household even could not endure the flavour of cinnamon. He at length discharged his masons and his carpenters, and, as a great effort of economy, abridged his table of one of the fifty-two dishes with which it was daily covered. But all these privations were unavailing; Bekfudi was in debt, and his creditors would not wait for a change in the taste for spices. He resolved to invite all Samarah to see his mosque, and to purchase his curiosities. For three moons all Samarah went mad. Away ran the idle and the busy, to scramble up Bekfudi’s tower,—to wander about his long galleries upon carpets from Cairo,—to touch his gold censers, or to pore upon his curious pictures. As to his books, Bekfudi carefully locked them up. He was a great commentator, and his relish for theological speculations led him to fear that his performances might introduce him to too close an acquaintance with the mufti and the cadi.

Amongst the mob who had been to see Bekfudi’s tower, was a clever little Persian Jew, who had the reputation of being one of the most discreet dealers in Samarah. Did a courtier require a thousand piastres to bribe a judge, our little Jew would raise the sum in a moment, upon the pledge of the courtier’s carbuncle; or did a lady of the seraglio desire a pound of gold dust to fee an eunuch, our little Jew would furnish it upon the most moderate interest. His warehouses were full of the moveable treasures of all the great men of the palace, from the grand vizier to the principal mute; and everybody vowed that he was the honestest Jew in the world, and it was a great pity so useful and so clever a trader should be a dog of an infidel.

Bekfudi had a hatred of all Jews; but, nevertheless, our little factor contrived to approach him. “He had come to proffer his services to the great merchant; he humbly proposed to purchase his matchless curiosities, and his magnificent furniture.” “What! he, the giaour from Persia? he presume to offer a price for rarities that monarchs might covet?” “Yes; and moreover, he would purchase his books and his paintings, his vessels of gold and of silver, his wine, his——.” The merchant was in a rage, and drove the Jew from his presence; but he quickly recalled him. “Slave,” cried Bekfudi, “I will hold a moment’s parley with thee. How much wilt thou give for my topaz cup, and my goblet set with emeralds?” “I will not purchase these alone,” said the Jew, “but I will purchase thy lands, and thy mosque, and thy silken draperies, and thy woven carpets, and thy golden vessels, and thy jewels, and thy books, and thy pictures, and all that thy palace contains; and here, without, I have twenty dromedaries laden with four hundred thousand sequins, which shall be thine.” Bekfudi was in a rage, but the eloquence of the dromedaries prevailed; and that night the little Jew locked up the mosque with the airs of a master.

The mob from Samarah was soon dispersed; and Bekfudi prepared with many a sigh to leave a palace of which he had so long been the uncontrolled lord. The little Jew haunted him from gallery to gallery, and from the gloom of the sanctuary to the sunlight of the great lantern. With the most provoking malice he dwelt upon the beautiful proportions of this pavilion, and the magnificent furniture of that saloon; and swore that none of the monarchs of the world could rival the great merchant in taste and splendour. “And what will you do with this unequalled palace,” said Bekfudi? “I have bought it for a dealer in sulphur,” replied the Jew. The pride of Bekfudi was ground into the dust; but he was curious to see the rival of his wealth and the inheritor of his possessions. It was agreed that they should meet at dinner.

The hour came, and Bekfudi appeared in the grand saloon attired in a splendid vest;—the aigrette of his turban was composed of the largest diamonds, and the plume that it bore was from the wing of a bird of paradise. His delicate hands were washed with the choicest essences, and the perfumes of his garments plunged the senses into a languor which nothing but the excitements of the most exquisite viands could dissipate. He expected to have met in the dealer in sulphur, a personage whose riches would have procured for him some of the refinements which belonged to the dealer in spices;—but how was he humiliated when a miserable old man presented himself, as ugly as a faquir that had been doing penance for fifty years, wrapped round with a wretched robe of dirty cotton, and his head surmounted with a beastly turban, that all the waters of Rocnabad could never purify. The forehead of this captivating personage was covered with knots and wrinkles, his blear eyes twinkled in their little pursed-up sockets, his enormous mouth exhibited three teeth of the most delicious blackness, and his rheum was freely bestowed upon those whom the flavour of his breath did not keep at a respectful distance. Bekfudi shrieked and shouted for his dwarf; but the obsequious Jew called in a loud voice for dinner, and the unhappy merchant was constrained by his politeness to take his seat at the board. The new possessor of the mosque was equally attractive in his diet; a ragout of garlic was served up for his especial pleasure; and as he dipped his grimy hands into the golden dish, Bekfudi would, have fainted at the odour of the savoury steams, had not his faithful dwarf thrown the reviving attar over his forehead, and forced a cup of sherbet down his throat. The mouth of the dealer in sulphur distended into an audible grin, and he pledged the dainty merchant in execrable brandy. Their conversation at length became interesting. The man of sulphur had a most agreeable collection of oaths; and as he swore by Solomon and Eblis, by the sacred camel and the dog of the seven sleepers, the man of spice perceived that he had a high reverence for the mysteries of theology;—and a wonderful sympathy in this particular grew up between them. They embraced and parted; but Bekfudi never forgot the garlic.

The little Jew soon applied his master’s purchase to good account. Within a week the superb merchant began to indulge a wish for the possession of some of his former most splendid baubles; he bethought him that his free habit of expressing his thoughts in the broad margins of his beautiful manuscripts might one day cause some awkward inquiries; and he was desirous of securing some pictures, of which he thought none but himself knew the peculiar value. He of the dirty hands was as ready to comply with these reasonable wishes, and Bekfudi began to think that his turban and his garlic might in time be endurable. The articles were selected, but the little Jew had yet to name the price. Bekfudi raved and tore his hair when a fourth of his four hundred thousand sequins were demanded for what had cost even him not a tenth of the sum. He raved and tore his hair; but the Jew and the sulphur-merchant were calm. Bekfudi had not yet learned to subject his desires to his circumstances; and two dromedaries marched off with their costly load.

The Jew and his merchant passed the winter very industriously. From his warehouses in Samarah, this active dealer brought all the glittering pledges which the misfortunes of his clients had left unredeemed; and he decorated the mosque like a grand bazaar, with a great many new curiosities, and a great many rare commodities with fine names from the east and the west, which the artists of Samarah could manufacture as well as those of Persia or China. The little Jew knew where to find expert limners, who could imitate the paintings even of the celebrated Mani, so as to deceive the most critical eyes; clever copyists, that would transcribe the tales and poems of Arabia, with a correctness that would enchant the most exquisite connoisseurs; and acute chemists, that would give to the secretly pressed grape-juice of the gardens of Bekfudi himself, the inimitable flavour of the wines of Shiraz or Kismische. The little Jew had, however, not quite so complete a judgment as the builder of the mosque, and he therefore committed a few mistakes with a very enterprising spirit. Amidst the solemn and subdued splendour of the sanctuary, upon which Bekfudi most prided himself, he hung up an enormous mirror which brought all the varied colours of the neighbouring galleries, and all the garishness of day, into the heart of its former deep and impressive gloom; and in the hall which the spice merchant had dedicated to the worthies of his country, he stuck up the statue of one of the rebellious princes who had presumed to contend against the justice of the great Haroun al Raschid. But the little Jew was yet a most deserving factor. All Samarah again flocked to the mosque with the great minaret; and all Samarah came this time with money in their vests, to purchase some relic of the magnificent Bekfudi. Every one was pleased, except the unhappy builder of the palace, for every one was agreeably relieved of his sequins at his own free-will. He alone writhed under the mortifications of his pride, and the outrages upon his taste. He stalked one day into the palace of his splendour, now metamorphosed into one large bazaar, and with a yell of fury he overthrew the statue of the foe of the caliph, and shivered into a thousand pieces the mirror which deformed the sanctuary. He then coolly paid the price which the Jew demanded, and retired to a humble dwelling without a minaret, to pass the remainder of his days in composing treatises on temperance and humility.

※

Lady Vandeleur, at the other end of the apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her brother, Charlie Pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with dissipation, and very lame of one foot.
—Robert Louis Stevenson & Fanny van de Grift Stevenson, More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885)

There was no Charles Pendragon. Many of the purported authors and editors of the Knights Quarterly Magazine were pseudonyms. The true author of “An unpublished Episode of Vathek” was Charles Knight, the founder and editor of Knight’s Quarterly Magazine. In Passages of a Working Life During Half a Century: With a Prelude of Early Reminiscences (1864/1865), Knight recalls the inspiration for the episode, when Fonthill Abbey, the home of William Beckford (author of Vathek), was to be auctioned off:

In the second number of the Magazine I wrote a paper, upon which I may not improperly say a little, as it in some measure related real incidents of my Working Life. “An unpublished Episode of Vathek” is reprinted in my volumes of “Once upon a Time.” Mr. Rutter, an enterprising bookseller of Shaftesbury, had proposed to me to publish a splen didly illustrated work, which he was preparing, on Fonthill, soon after the period when the wondrous building, of which every one had some marvel to relate but which no one had ever seen, was thrown open to those who chose to travel over Salisbury Plain, and pay a guinea for the long-coveted sight.

Bekfudi, says my tale, the superb merchant, had gone on for many moons building and embellishing his mosque, and living in a round of selfish enjoy ment. But gradually Bekfudi found there was a limit to his extravagance. Bekfudi was in debt. He resolved to invite all Samarah to “see his mosque, and purchase his curiosities. For three moons all Samarah went mad. Away ran the idle and the busy to scramble up Bekfudi’s tower,—to wander about his long galleries upon carpets from Cairo,—to touch his gold censers, or to pore upon his curious pictures. As to his books, Bekfudi carefully locked them up. He was a great commentator, and his relish for theological speculations led him to fear that his performances might introduce him to too close an acquaintance with the mufti and the cadi.”

I was amongst the curious, and had an agreeable holiday. But some months later I went to Fonthill to assist the worthy quaker bookseller of Shaftesbury in getting up his quarto. Fonthill had then passed into the possession of Mr. Farquhar, in the negotiation for which purchase Mr. Phillips, the famous auctioneer of Bond Street, was the agent. He stipulated for the purchase of Fonthill and everything which it contained:

“‘I will purchase thy lands and thy mosques, and thy silken draperies, and thy woven carpets, and thy golden vessels, and thy jewels, and thy books, and thy pictures, and all that thy palace contains; and here, without, I have twenty drome daries laden with four hundred thousand sequins, which shall be thine.’ Bekfudi was in a rage, but the eloquence of the dromedaries prevailed; and that rdght the little Jew locked up the mosque with the airs of a master.”

At this juncture I went to Fonthill. Artists were there making drawings. Journalists were there writing elaborate paragraphs, with a slight tendency to puff. My friend Stedman Whitwell was with me, and we rambled freely over the American gardens, partook of the choice fruit of the hothouses, and laid a sumptuous table every day. To me the ostensible lord of the place, the clever auctioneer, was particularly civil. The first night I was led by him through a long corridor apart from the saloons and galleries of this architectural marvel, and was instiled in a chamber of state, where the hangings of the bed were of velvet, and the chairs were of ebony reputed to have belonged to Wolsey. I sat in a reverie, moralizing, upon the probable dispersion of these splendid things, when I heard a whirr—my wax candle was suddenly extinguished—the bat that had dwelt in the gorgeous draperies was hovering about me. I was glad to creep into the downy bed. But I could not sleep. “Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs?”

There were other’s to whom sleep was that night more difficult to be secured than to myself. Two or three adventurous artists—I think George Cattermole was of the number—elected to lodge in the dormitories of the great tower, some hundred and fifty feet above the floor from which it sprang. The wind rose; the storm grew louder and louder; the frail structure rocked, as Gulliver’s cage rocked in the eagle’s beak. The terrified guests rushed down the broad stairs, and sat drearily in the dark saloon till the daybreak gave them assurance of safety. But I am rambling from my Episode of Vathek.

“Within a week the superb merchant began to indulge a wish for the possession’of some of his former most splendid baubles; he bethought him that his free habit of expressing his thoughts in the broad margins of his beautiful manuscripts might one day cause some awkward inquiries.”

I was taken by my host to the Library. “You are free,” he said, “to make any transcript you please of marginal notes on these books. I have sent an invitation to Hazlitt to come also; but I hear that he has not got beyond Winterslow Hut.” Something was whispered about a new book, to be called “Fly Leaves from Fonthill.” My curiosity was roused, though I shrank from making profit by book or article out of my notes. In truth, as far as I could trace, there was little in these volumes to, alarm their annotator or interest the public. I need not have tested my conscience. When the Library had been glanced at by profane eyes the object was accomplished.

“The articles,” says the Episode, “were selected, but the little Jew had yet to name the price. Bekfudi raved and tore his hair when a fourth of his four hundred thousand sequins were demanded for what had cost even him not a tenth of the sum.” (309-312)

Without this background, “An unpublished Episode of Vathek” must seem a literary oddity with only superficial connection to Beckford’s novel. With Knight’s little memoir, it becomes a biting satire, where Bekfudi is Beckford, and the mosque with the tall minaret is Fonthill Abbey itself, which was constructed unsoundly, the dangerous tower eventually collapsing in 1825; and the 400,000 sequins equivalent to the £330,000 price Fonthill Abbey and all its contents sold for. How many contemporaries were sufficiently familiar with the situation to recognize the satire is difficult to say, but it is in the nature of things that the punchline to a joke may be lost to history—unless someone took the pains to explain it, some decades later.

I suspect it was the lack of any supernatural element in “An unpublished Episode of Vathek,” rather than its satirical nature, which has prevented its wider exploitation. At the time, Knight could hardly have known there were more episodes of Vathek forthcoming, and made no attempt to carry the hoax further. It speaks well of Clark Ashton Smith that, with Lovecraft’s encouragement, he entered into the enterprise of finishing Beckford’s fragment with an open heart and an eye toward producing a work as weird as Beckford himself managed, far away from the literary jests of bookmen.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Black Sands #1 (1996) by Blair Reynolds & James Reynolds

Eldritch Fappenings
This review concerns a work with adult Lovecraft themes and graphic art.
Reader discretion advised.

Right and proper gentlemen, your attention, please. This is a public announcement: Room 308 Graphics & Publishing will no longer pursue games supplement production. Newly completed, the long-anticipated Call of Cthulhu adventure supplement The Mysteries of Mesoamerica, which was to be RM308’s premier publication, will instead be published by Pagan Publishing with an estimated release date as Summer 2008.

My apologies.

As the lone chief editor, operations manager, financial coordinator, sales representative, and sole artist, illustrator and designer for the entire company, I laboured for several years to get The Mysteries of Mesoamerica, a lavishly illustrated 150-page opus and RM308’s premier publication, into production, devoting many hundreds of hours, early mornings and late evenings, weekends and holidays — every spare scrap of free time — to its design and development, anticipating my return to the games publishing forum. But as 2007 came to a close and I began final preparations for MoM’s release — at the same time preparing the foundation for the next supplement, The Mysteries of the Old West, Volume I (like ‘Mesoamerica, another monster supplement in excess of 175 pages!) — I realized that it would be impossible for RM308 to continue as it had. It was simply too much for one artist: rendering cover art, interior illustrations, NPC portraits, maps, spot art and layout, and struggling to maintain the production schedule of a respectable, marketable games publisher. As the sole proprietor, I concluded that RM308 could never become what I’d originally intended it to be.

It must be said that I had meanwhile also grown increasingly disenchanted and frustrated (again) with the games industry’s orthodoxy, mediocrity, vapidity and apathy. Especially where Lovecraft and roleplaying are concerned, I feel strongly that too many bubbly, juvenile, tender-hearted milksops have infested the genre: Pollyannas promoting a kinder, gentler version of the Cthulhu Mythos by way of Cthulhu plush dolls, Elder Sign earrings, ‘Niggurath nursery rhymes, Miskatonic Christmas carols, and buttloads of other flippant silliness.

And it’s not just the gaming industry. The general population of devotees among “Lovecraftian circles” suffers from a fairy tale misconception of the Mythos, one that I believe would turn poor Howard in his grave if he could see the candy-ass travesty that his grand universe has become. The mainstream Mythos is a dumbed-down and diluted, popularized and trivialized, emasculated cartoon, wholly separate from the dark, unutterable, obscene and blood-soaked savagery that is the true essence of the Mythos, and my contempt for this fashionable, New Age, Hello Kitty Lovecraft is well known.

So no more games. RM308 hereby retires from its ambitions at roleplaying publication. Again, my apologies, especially to Brian Appleton and John Crowe, my trusted colleagues and brothers-in-arms.
Room 308 Graphics & Publishing will now concentrate its efforts on the development of my former personal works, Black Sands: Betrothed (the original), Black Sands: Catalogue of the Ten Thousand Churches, and Black Sands: Temple of the Compass. This “creative course correction” will be more manageable and feasible than full-time game supplement production, and will more faithfully reflect my personal (hardcore) concepts of the greater Mythos. More importantly, the rendering of these books will better serve and honour my lord and master, the Great Phæraoh Ahau Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, Father of Knives, Cæsar of the Ten Thousand Tongues and Architect of the Monument of the Great Rain — blessings be upon His name! I’ve long considered my personal works to be secondary to CoC, but no longer.

Previews will soon be available for your inspection at my new website: www.RM308.com, and I hope to receive your continued support.

Cheers,

Blair Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief
Room 308 Graphics & Publishing

Blair Reynolds died in 2021. A few who knew him or admired his work marked his passing (“Blair Reynolds has left the building”). In the few short years after, much of his presence and memory have vanished from the internet. The above message was posted on the Yog-Sothoth.com forums, now defunct and unlikely to rise again. Blair Reynolds’ website, rm308.com, is long gone, although the Internet Archive contains bits and pieces of what it was. Most of his self-published work remains largely unavailable in hardcopy. Perhaps in five or ten years someone will contact the family, scrape through the archives, and put together an artist retrospective. Maybe then we’ll remember Blair Reynolds for who he was and what he did.

The Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game was first released in 1981. Heavily influenced by RuneQuest (1978) and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977), CoC brought then-contemporary ideas of roleplaying gaming to then-contemporary ideas of what Lovecraftian horror and the Cthulhu Mythos were. By the end of the decade, however, things were shifting. Horror roleplaying was moving in different directions (Vampire: the Masquerade would be published in 1991), and Lovecraftian horror was becoming more open and accessible to new voices, further from the rigid categorization of the Mythos under August Derleth.

In 1990, John Tynes founded Pagan Publishing, a small group that put out a Call of Cthulhu gaming fanzine called The Unspeakable Oath. This would be the starting point of what would become Delta Green and a variety of contemporary Mythos fiction that spun out of that, reworking and reimagining Lovecraft’s Mythos in new ways (for more on the history of Pagan Publishing, see Shannon Appelcline’s Pagan Publishing: 1990–Present). What struck most readers first and foremost was the cover by Blair Reynolds:

Reynolds’ artwork was featured on all of the issues of The Unspeakable Oath through 8/9 in 1993. It is probably Reynolds’ best-known work, stylistically distinct, often featuring a combination of photorealism, gore, nudity, and ritual elements that many found suggestive, tantalizing, and disturbing. Some of the effect, with distinct foreground characters against a detailed but darker background, suggests a multimedia-like approach, layering elements on top of each other to form the final composition.

At the time, Call of Cthulhu artwork wasn’t transgressive. Decent artists worked for Chaosium, but no one pushed the envelope in terms of what was acceptable for a roleplaying product in the 1990s; there was little gore, little nudity, and the monsters and cultists could often look more goofy than menacing. In an era when horror roleplaying was moving toward a more mature audience with various White Wolf games like Vampire: The Masquerade, it took more than tentacles and fish-people to really sell Lovecraftian horror as being something more than quaint. It needed something fresh, artwork that took chances and hinted at forbidden rites and rituals, monstrosity and corruption. Blair Reynolds provided that edge of mystery and taboo-breaking.

In 1994, Reynolds left Pagan Publishing to form his own Room 308 Publishing, and although he provided some more artwork for other gaming projects, his focus turned to a creator-owned work: Black Sands #1 (1996), the first part of a self-published black-and-white graphic novel written and illustrated by Blair Reynolds with additional works of fiction provided by James Reynolds.

“Black Sands: Betrothed” runs 26 pages. The pages are not laid out as a comic strip, but are a collection of artistically arranged art, some of it sexually explicit, and text. The text consists of excerpts from the 1924 journal of Frank Orand Buhtbaumbe, recounting a dream given to him by the Vision Serpent about his wife Allison, during their honeymoon in Haiti. Buhtbaumble watches his wife have sex with the human form of the Vision Serpent, and in the morning finds her gone; he consults with a friend, Dr. Henry Tiller, in New Orleans, and discovers that it was Nyarlathotep that took his bride. Buhtbaumbe seeks her at an ancient temple and kills many cultists—only to discover that was his wife’s plan all along. Then he wakes from the dream.

Cover and sample pages:

In the introduction to this issue, Reynolds explains:

This is a “cyclic” story, which means simply that portions of the book – Parts I, II, and III – will trade places back and forth each issue. The main body of each issue will always be entitled “Black Sands”, and for the Premiere Issue the main body is devoted to Part II, which takes place in the early 20th century. In addition to the main body, two “preludes” set the stage for upcoming issues, giving you an idea of what is ahead. The preludes for this issue include Part I (prehistory) and Part II (near future). Issue Two will see Part II (20th century) sliding into a prelude spot while Part I moves into the Black Sands main body, and the “meeting” of Hiuto and Messala will be illustrated in full detail, as the event deserves. Part III will take another prelude position in Issue Two and then come full circle to the main body – and the forefront – in Issue Three. Issues afterward will continue in this cyclic fashion, and in this manner the Black Sands saga will unfold.

It was an ambitious plan, and sadly wouldn’t quite come to fruition. But we can see the outline of what Reynolds hoped to accomplish.

The first prelude is “Tunc” (then), which takes the form of a prose account by Commander Torrence MacLaren, 22 April 2103 that runs for two prose pages. There is a heavy Delta Green vibe, a sense that this is a future of secrets where the Mythos is spilling into the open, and that MacLaren is more than he appears.

The second prelude is “Nunc” (now), two pages of prose from the journal of Onufari Iramus El’de Shaideene Messala, in an indeterminate year, but implicitly pre-gunpowder. This is the first appearance of the characters Hiuto and Messala mentioned in the introduction, and based on the last line, their “meeting” would have been vivid, if it had been published:

She was left speckled with the fluids of her escort when I finally go to her, tied her and left her face-down on one of the mattresses.

I made certain to stand where she could see me while I undressed. I wanted her to see the scars, and the marks of faith. And when I opened the haversack I’d brought in with me, it was especially important for her to see the pale mask I withdrew . . . . . . . as well as the polished metal cylinders and needles.

The remaining six pages consist of four works in the form of “files” for some unnamed group or agency. Two of these are labeled in the introduction “Templar File SK60550/312G” and “Templar File HD86179/782V” by James Reynolds, with supporting artwork by Blair. Again, there’s a strong Delta Green vibe to all of these, the idea of hidden narratives of the Mythos in a contemporary setting, buried under layers of government secrecy. Very much in the vein of what would become the SCP wiki format, although less structured.

“SK60550/312G” involves an experiment where student subjects are dosed with the hallucinogenic excrement of a newly discovered insect species. The results are strongly implied to be nasty, although a lot of blanks are left in the record.

“HD86179/782V” is slightly more infamous; the “Dogon Project” has a child born and raised in complete darkness with minimal human contact, echoing various feral child legends and Harry Harlow’s infamous monkey studies. This is the part which gets, if not exactly graphic, more transgressive than typical:

In his twelfth year he discovered masturbation. I still wonder what his source of fantasy was. He even used to try to engage in sex with his feces and food.

Yet there was one particularly interesting twist beyond that:

When he turned nineteen he had formed his own type of language. His grunts and movements were a way of talking to himself. This seemed perfectly natural to me until one day he formed a word, a word that I knew all too well: CTHULHU!

Sample pages from the files:

Black Sands #1 (1996) is as vivid today as it was thirty years ago. There are still boundaries that fiction and art rarely approach, and while I wouldn’t qualify any of this as pornography or even erotica, there is no doubt that this is in the same vein as the Linda Lovecraft anthologies in terms of being very explicit, mature works, with none of the humor or silliness that often cuts the Lovecraftian horror like baking soda in cocaine. If there’s a criticism, it might be that the writing is a little too obsessed with the question of good and evil, too focused on contrasting what the characters are seeing with Christian definitions of good and evil.

Black Sands #2 and subsequent issues would never emerge; in the 90s he returned to illustration for roleplaying games, and then stuck mostly with prose fiction. However, there was a sort of sequel in the 2010s. In 2013, Room 308 published Black Sands: Catalog of the Ten Thousand Churches, Journal No. 1, which republishes the entirety of the “Betrothed” sequence, along with prose chapters. Here, Blair Reynolds abandoned his original plan and rewrote the material as Col. Franklin Mackenzie Keyes’ field notes on various Lovecraftian cults he had encountered in his adventures.

Journal No. 1 was followed by an edited, much less explicit second edition in 2019, which alters the original “Betrothed” art to remove an erect phallus and various vulvas. This was followed by Journal No.2 (2019) and Journal No. 3 (2021) shortly before Blair Reynolds’ death. All of these volumes are illustrated, though nowhere to the degree of Black Sands #1 (1996), and the later volumes make considerable use of public domain and stock art, altered for purpose. They make for fun reading, nowhere near as edgy as the original Black Sands, but with plenty of wit and quite a lot of thought behind the various cults and cultic shenanigans.

It is a sad legacy. Blair Reynolds’ work, prose and art, is largely forgotten today; his great project of Black Sands was never fully completed, at least not according to his original vision, and even the few books he did put out near the end of his life are rare. All are out of print, except for Kindle editions of Black Sands: Catalog of the Ten Thousand Churches, Journal No. 1 (without the “Betrothed” comic), Journal No. 2, and Journal No. 3, which are still available for now.

Maybe, one day, that will change. I hope so. More people deserve to see what Blair Reynolds achieved, or tried to.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Lost Tale: “Ghosts I Have Met” (1961) by M. P. Dare

One summer between semesters at university, I visited some family in Portland, Oregon for a couple of weeks. There was a small hole-in-the-wall bookstore, the name long forgotten, and no longer there; little more than two long walls full of books through which browsers circled in a shuffling line. My prize that day was a slim little volume of ghostly and occult stories titled Unholy Relics (1947) by M. P. Dare, whose name I did not recognize.

It turned out I had read Dare before, because a few stories had appeared in various anthologies, and I recognized “The Demoniac Goat” from The Shub-Niggurath Cycle. What I didn’t know was anything about M. P. Dare. That would come later, in bits and pieces over the years. An amateur archaeologist and historian, a journalist and bookman, thief and forger, and finally: suicide. I suspect the criminal convictions, the divorces, the accusations, and his final resort to poison have raised M. P. Dare’s profile higher than his fiction alone would have; even the most generous literary critic has noted that Unholy Relics is cruder than M. R. James’ Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and other volumes, for all that Dare seems to be following in James’ footsteps.

Near the end of his life, Dare went on the BBC radio and gave an account of the ghosts he had encountered in his life. It is his most explicit statement of a belief in the supernatural that survives, and has long been obscure, first published in The Listener 21 Sep 1961, and reprinted only twice: in Ghosts & Scholars #18 (1994), and in Ash-Tree Press reissue of Unholy Relics (1997), where it augments Reg Meuross’ biographical introduction.

This is a story of M. P. Dare that most people have not heard: his own story, in his own words.

※

Ghosts I Have Met

by M. P. Dare

THROUGHOUT THE AGES, men have believed intensely in ghosts; they have feared them and have developed an elaborate magic to propitiate them or to counteract their influence. I have myself seen Africans block up the door of a mud hut, knock a hole in the far side, and rush their corpse backwards several times round the hut in order to confuse the ghost and prevent its returning to plague the living.

In any intelligent gathering, if the conversation turns on the subject of ghosts, one will find three classes of people: those who will not believe that ghosts exist, because they have not seen one; those who defend the ghost’s existence because they firmly believe they have seen one; and the agnostic who refuses to commit himself either way. As a person who, for over thirty-five years, has made an active study of occult matters, let me say at once that I belong to the second class: I firmly believe that ghosts do exist; and I would like to give evidence to support that belief—not at second-hand but from my personal experiences.

A question I am always being asked, as an occultist, is: ‘What is a ghost?’, which is extraordinarily difficult to answer. One reply is that a ghost is the disembodied spirit of a dead person, still walking the earth, and for some reason still ‘tied’ to it. Another is that it is only a ‘thought-form’, projected by our own subconscious minds and built up, as it were, into the visible image of a dead person, from vibrations left behind him at the point of death. It is particularly difficult to arrive at a definition, because some kinds of ghosts (or haunters) are never seen—such as the poltergeist, or throwing-ghost, which hurls things about. Again, we find well-verified cases of the apparition of a living person being seen. However, I will try to avoid all controversy.

I have inherited an abnormally developed psychic sense, and had my first encounter with a ghost as a young student at the age of eighteen. In the long vacation I was staying with an aunt in an old country cottage. Returning at dusk one evening, I said ‘Good-evening’ to the dear old village woman everybody called Betty, who lived next door. She was struggling to open the ancient latch, so I went to help her and said: ‘What’s the matter, Betty, can’t you get in?’ She said nothing, smiled very sweetly, and vanished. At first I did not realise what had happened: she had looked so solid, in her usual Victorian bonnet and short cape. When I got over the shock I realized that old Betty had been dead for the past eight months. When I told my aunt she said she ought to have warned me that she had often seen Betty fumbling with her latch. The old lady had been born next door, lived there eighty-two years, and died there.

That, I think you will agree, is a good case, with two independent witnesses; and my aunt had said nothing to me previously which could have put an ‘image’ of Betty into my mind, causing a vision of her to be produced sub-consciously.

It may be said that this class of experience proves survival after death, or it may merely mean that somehow a projected image of Betty was built up from vibrations surviving in the place where she had been so happy for so long—for it is not always those who have been unhappy in life who are earthbound, and who appear as ghosts.

Incidentally, why is it that some people can see ghosts often and with ease, but others never have that experience in a lifetime? I have known cases of two people being together, one seeing a ghost and the other not. Perhaps an analogy with radio will explain it—the suggestion that if you are not tuned in to the right wave-length of the vibrations which cause the visible image, then you will never see a ghost.

Another happy ghost I have known was in an ancient Midland manor house, where I was present on the day that a Tudor doorway, stairs, and a secret room were discovered. It is the home of an old family who were Catholic recusants under the harsh reign of Elizabeth. The maid, bringing in the first course at dinner that evening, dropped the lot in fright and gasped out that there was an old man with a white beard in the passage staring at her. We rushed out, and saw, framed in the Tudor doorway, the dignified figure of an Elizabethan priest, with a small white beard, dressed in a black cassock. The figure smiled, turned slightly towards my host, raised a hand in blessing, and said distinctly, in what you might call a loud whisper, ‘Pax tibi, filius!’ (Peace to you, my son). My host being speechless, I replied: ‘Et tibi pax, Pater’ (And peace to you, Father). Then I asked him, speaking very slowly and distinctly: ‘Why are you here? You have frightened the serving girl’. He replied: ‘I am able to come to you because you have found my room. I was happy here. I was the family priest’.

Up to now, he had seemed material; I could not see the doorway through him; but now he seemed to melt away like a mist. We explained to the servants that they need not fear this gentle ghost. That was twenty-five years ago, and I heard recently that he is still seen sometimes, but never speaks, and if questioned seems unable to reply.

This experience raises several problems. For instance, is this apparition a spirit, earthbound by ties of affection? Why did he not appear before his room was found, to lead us to it? That would have been in accord with the idea that all ghosts have a mission to execute (an idea, by the way, which 5 is not always correct). I do not think this ghost was a ‘mind-projection’ from ourselves, because the maid, who knew nothing about the secret room and recusant priests, saw it before we did.

Another question: Why cannot the priest, if really a spirit from some limbo beyond the grave, answer questions about his present state? This is one of the hardest problems we have in the study of ghosts, for it nearly happens; and when a ghost does answer questions its replies are vague and unsatisfactory. A churchman might explain it by saying that we are not permitted to know in advance the conditions of our future state.

Another ghost of my experience, in yet another English manor house, really did live up to tradition by having a mission; and this one belonged to the class of unhappy haunters. Also, it was an interesting case of a haunter that was never seen. Once its mission was accomplished it ceased to trouble the living. This was in a house near Rockingham, where the family suddenly became the victims of a most unpleasant and annoying form of haunting. It centred on a beautiful little Georgian writing-desk in the bedroom of the young daughter, who was thirteen years of age. It is a curious fact that many ghost-disturbances of this type seem concentrated on young girls on the threshold of womanhood: they seem to be a transmitting medium for the exercise of these violent forces. The trouble began when the girl, awakened by a noise of heavy tramping about the room, saw every drawer in the desk being wrenched open by some unseen force, and the contents pitched out on to the floor. The trouble stopped a few days later, but recurred regularly at monthly intervals. I was asked to investigate, occupied this room, and also saw the desk handled violently and heard the noises.

Concluding that a family ghost with a mission was responsible, and that its search was connected with the desk, I had it searched by an expert, who found no fewer than six secret drawers in it. In one of those was a packet of old faded letters, and these gave us the clue. They were written in 1756 to the son of the house by a village girl whom he had seduced, and who threatened suicide if he did not marry her. I feel absolutely certain that this was his room, and his desk, and that one of his last, intense thoughts when dying was of horror and fear lest someone should find these letters; and I am sure it was his uneasy spirit searching for them. The head of the house and I burnt those letters, and there was no further trouble.

Some of these hauntings by ghosts, both seen and unseen, are much more violent and malevolent than this one, and it is not wise lightly to laugh at them. I remember one awful house, an empty bungalow I went to inspect in India, with a view to renting it, where the atmosphere of evil and death that poured out as soon as one opened a certain door was absolutely incredible. My Great Dane dog, naturally a fearless animal, felt it, and cringed in terror. Enquiry revealed that in that room, five years before, a man had gone mad, killed his wife, and hacked the body to pieces. I did not actually see a ghost—I bolted hastily out of the house after opening that door. But I later learned that an Indian acquaintance who had tried to live in the place had to leave it because of its evil atmosphere. He told me that he had seen, three times, shadowy forms struggling in that same room.

This was certainly a very unhallowed spot; but even so holy a place as a church, surrounded by daily prayer and good influences, can be haunted by an unhappy personality, and in one of two such cases within my own experience I have not only seen the ghost, but recognized it. Here the building was a modern church attached to the Dominican priory in a Midland city. Not only myself, but the three priests officiating at High Mass, and several people known to me in the congregation, saw the apparition. What we saw, to our astonishment, was a fourth priest, in addition to the three who should alone have been there, and we recognized him as a Dominican of the house, who had died a month before in great spiritual distress (it was assumed), because after death his papers revealed a scandal in his private life. Hence he was haunting his priory, where several of the brethren saw him flitting about the corridors. After a special exorcism rite, and a Mass for the Dead had been said, he ceased to haunt.

‘The evil that men do lives after them’, said Shakespeare. How true this often is of the ghost-world, from the English Midlands to the jungles of India.

※

M. P. Dare was not the protagonist of some M. R. James story made flesh, though there are hints in his biography that maybe he wanted to be. This is nowhere more obvious than when comparing some of his anecdotes of ghostly encounters with his sole story collection, Unholy Relics and Other Uncanny Tales. In the introduction to that book, Dare wrote:

These tales are fiction—and yet not fiction. They are all founded upon actual experiences of the author in the realms of the uncanny. The antiquary, perhaps because he is in close touch with the human thought of all time, that is not dead, but sometime sleepeth, comes more into contact with that dim borderline region than most people.

Did Dare actually mean this, or was it just a “Based on a true story” line to help sell the book? Did he start out as critical and slowly become a believer, or did he always carry a belief in the supernatural that only publicly came out relatively late in life? If we accept “Ghosts I Have Met” as true, then Dare may have held a belief for much of his life, and that changes how we read some of his stories. Certainly, the incident of the letters in the secret drawer coincides closely with Dare’s story “The Haunted Drawers” (although thankfully he ages up the lady in that story).

There might be other elements of autobiography buried in Dare’s fiction, incidents from his life that informed or inspired his thin legacy. No one has yet collected all the bits and pieces of that life in one place. There are essays in The Leicester Mail during the 1920s that indicate an abiding interest in archaeology, history, and local superstitions (e.g., “Witchcraft and Superstition in Leicestershire – No. 1” by M. P. Dare), and here, too, we might wonder if a bit of Leicestershire folklore influenced his story “An Abbot’s Magic.”

Perhaps, someday, a scholar will have the patience and resources to correlate the contents of a broken life, like an archaeologist reassembling the shards of a cursed pot. What new light might be shed on these old tales, if only we knew what Dare was drawing on when he wrote them? It would be fitting if the key to Unholy Relics, the part that made the stories more than just Jamesian pastiche, was Dare himself.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

El Convento Infernal (1995) by Ignacio Noé & Ricardo Barreiro

Eldritch Fappening

The following review concerns a work of Lovecraftian pornography.
It includes nude images and will discuss relevant matters of sexuality in detail.
Reader discretion advised.

Ignacio Noé (1965– ) and Ricardo Barreiro (1949–1999) were two of the Argentinian comic creators who found a niche in European comics, their work often bouncing between Spain, France, and Italy, with translations in many different markets. Their collaboration El Converto Infernal first appeared in the Spanish-language adult comics magazine Kiss Comix in 1995, serialized from issue 49 to issue 56, running 62 pages, lavishly painted and drawn by Noé. The result was popular enough to be translated into several languages, and an English translation by Robert Legault was published in a lightly censored edition by NBM in 1997 as The Convent of Hell.

As the title suggests, The Convent of Hell is a work of nunsploitation. The roots of this genre go deep in European art and literature, including historical accounts that amount to “nuns behaving badly,” like the Nun of Watton, but most contemporary scholars point to La Religieuse (1792) by Denis Diderot, a sympathetic novel about a nun trapped in the legal and social constraints of her order and unable to leave, as a turning point. The work both emphasizes the lack of personal freedom that the nun Suzanne Simonin experiences and offers sharp criticism of the Catholic Church and its institutions. This set the stage for the main erotic line, where nunsploitation erotica is primarily a variation on the “women in prison,” but offering tangential and complementary taboos including lesbianism, sex work, BDSM, and blasphemy—themes which all crop up in greater or lesser degree in works like The Devils (1971), directed by Ken Russell.

First panel, showcasing the remote and isolated location of the fortress-like convent.

Openly erotic explorations of the theme varied widely. Robert E. Howard, for example, owned a copy of The Merry Order of St. Bridget, a flagellation novel involving nuns, and captured the central theme of imprisoned passion in a poem:

NUN

I have anchored my ship to a quiet port;
A land that is holy and blest.
But I gaze through my bars at the tempest’s sport
And I long for the sea’s unrest.
—Robert E. Howard to Tevis Clyde Smith, 23 Jun 1926, Collected Letters 1.98

Exploitation filmmakers, comic book artists, and writers in the 1970s became especially lavish in using nuns, working out several variations on the basic theme, especially in countries with a strong Catholic influence such as Italy, Spain, France, and their diaspora. Nor was Lovecraftian media immune. The underground comic Tales from the Leather Nun (1973) includes one of the first original Lovecraftian comics, “Tale of the Leather Nun’s Grandmother” by writer/artist Jaxon, who owes her youth and beauty to the work of the wizard Alhazred—and who has accidentally turned her vulva into a portal into the cosmic domain of Cthulhu and other eldritch entities.

Barreiro and Noé were quite evidently drawing from an eclectic mix of resources in composing their work, and the graphic novel has a frankly erotic character playing out to many interests. There are elements of sadomasochism, bondage, lesbianism, Satanism, and corruption that come together with supernatural elements. After a brutal opening involving the sexual torture of a novitiate, the nuns uncover a hidden locked door in the basement (possibly a reference to Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy), which inspires in the Mother Superior a dream of a Lovecraftian-flavored Satanic ritual:

While the Church of Satan does include a few Lovecraftian elements, the actual being that emerges in this dream is a monstrously-endowed satyr. An older nun manages to find a reference to the door in a handy copy of the Necronomicon…

The mother superior of the convent doesn’t listen to her, however, and forces the door open, leading to an eruption of phallic-headed tentacles reminiscent of Japanese hentai in one of the most infamous scenes from the graphic novel.

Which gets explicit and quite graphic, leading to the afflicted nun’s death and the sealing of the door. Douglas E. Cowan, who summarizes the graphic novel in greater detail in his book The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination, waxes clinical:

When the locks are broken, though, the nuns shrink back in fear as this time a true Lovecraftian horror bursts into the room. A flurry of tentacles, each rubbery arm tipped with a sinister phallus, emerges from whatever unearthly space lies beyond the door. Seizing the first available Marionite sister, it quickly envelops and strips the screaming woman. Fondling her ever more intmately, the tentacled abomination progresses to vaginal, anal, and oral rape—physical manifestations of everything she has sworn to abjure as a consecrated virgin. Although the other nuns are frozen in terror, with every new invasion of the young nun’s body a cut-away panel shows the effect on the Mother Superior, who grows increasingly turned on with each grotesque violation. Finally, the abbess orgasms as the Great Old one lifts the other woman high into the air, sexually impaled, every tentacular phallus ejaculating at once. A rain of eldritch sperm covers her body, and unable to withstand the supernatural assault, she dies naked on the rude stone floor.

We are never told her name. (111-112)

That night, the corrupted Mother Superior goes to unseal the door, and is interrupted by a messenger from God, a child-like angel.

Image truncated because no one needs to see a naked putto.

This sequence—where the corrupted Mother Superior nails the tiny angel to the door and then literally sucks the life out of them through their penis—was omitted from NBM’s edition of The Convent of Hell, probably out of fear that what it was depicting was too close, at least visually, to child sexual abuse material. There are anecdotes that even this mild self-censorship wasn’t sufficient; Steve Fentone in AntiCristo: The Bible of Nasty Nun Snema & Culture reports that: “[…] initial shipments of THE CONVENT OF HELL were reputedly stopped at the Canadian/US border, presumably for the books elements of bestiality and degradation.” (234)

With this sacrifice, the Mother Superior manages to summon a monstrously endowed Beelzebub through the door, in the form of a gigantic satyr. The corruption of the convent is soon complete in an orgy of sex and blood. After a chance encounter with a pair of newlyweds, the Vatican learns of the degradation and sends a special assault force with holy-water-blessed members and flamethrowers to deal with the Satanic infestation, destroy the demon, and block up the doorway once again.

This is not the first erotic comic work to invoke Lovecraftian names and themes; aside from the aforementioned Tales from the Leather Nun, there were works like the Italian comic Ramba, written by Marco Delizia; and the Young Witches series, which was created by Ricardo Barreiro and Francisco Solano López. The conflation of Lovecraftian elements with Satanic elements wasn’t uncommon in this respect, but neither is it really an attraction for those looking for Lovecraftian erotica, instead of Satanic porn with a thin skin of Lovecraftian elements. These few panels reproduced for this review contain basically all the Lovecraftian names and references across 64 pages of art.

El Convento Infernal is definitely a work of art. It is sacrilegious to the point of comedy; occasionally brutal, often over-the-top, yet the artwork is vivid and, as Cowan points out, often draws on classical works of Satanic imagery for reference. There is a vividness to the full-color artwork which is starkly at odds with the sometimes muddy shading of the black-and-white artwork that dominated Kiss Comix at the time. It is an exercise in excess where every episode seeks to grab the reader with at least one can’t-unsee-that image. In that respect, it is a success.

But does it go too far?

This is not a work that delves deep into the psychology of cloistered nuns, although there are hints of sexual repression and political considerations throughout the story; it is primarily, and always, a pornographic work, and some of the acts are violent and nonconsensual. There isn’t any actual bestiality, as Fentone mentions; the great hoofed goat with the enormous phallus is a demon. There is not technically any CSAM; it’s an angel. Yet it is definitely a dark fantasy, and one that is narratively built like a sexploitation horror film if there were no budget on special effects and the actresses would do absolutely anything in front of the camera.

Clark Ashton Smith was living in Auburn, California, when the Catholic order the Sisters of Mercy opened a convent within sight of his cabin in 1939/1940. He sometimes jokingly called it “the Nunnery of Averoigne,” and the sight of the nuns inspired a few poems. Most were relatively sedate affairs, but one speaks of the temptation of the forbidden:

IMPROBABLE DREAM

In my dream a nun,
Proudly bosomed, lunar-pale,
Danced naked in the sun.

—Clark Ashton Smith, Complete Poetry 2.499

El Convento Infernal is, in a much more explicit fashion, just such an improbable dream. More lavish, more detailed, and probably tripping the censors as obscene in some jurisdictions, yet in every sense a pure sexual fantasy that bespeaks a fascination with seeing the untouchable touched, the inviolate violated, witnessing the act of transgression against deeply ingrained cultural taboos.

Outside the United States, there have been multiple editions of this work collected in Spanish, French, and possibly other languages. The English edition has never been reprinted and today is quite scarce. Noé would return to Lovecraftian themes in 2023 when he provided a variant cover for Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu (Zenescope), which is evocative of his earlier work while being in no way tied to it.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Lost Tale: “Fiend of Fire” (1952) by Eando Binder

When Long introduced [Otto] Binder, Lovecraft smiled and exclaimed, “You’re half of one of my favorite authors!”
—Otto Binder: The Life and Work of A Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary 40-41

Eando (“E and O”) Binder was the joint pseudonym of the brothers Earl Binder (4 Oct 1904–13 Oct 1966) and Otto Binder (26 Aug 1911–14 Oct 1974). The Binder brothers were writers for the pulp magazines in the 1930s, including science fiction pulps like Amazing and horror fiction pulps like Weird Tales, where they came to the attention of peers like H. P. Lovecraft. By 1939, Otto was doing the writing while Earl was acting as a literary agent, and in the same year they expanded from the pulps into the burgeoning comic book industry, where Otto would make his mark on characters like Captain Marvel and Superman, among many others.

In the 1950s, before the Comics Code Authority was established that would kill off most of the horror comics, the typical horror comic magazine was essentially an anthology featuring 2-4 short comics, featuring different characters, with a couple of pages of prose fiction. A ghoulish host might introduce the issue and stories and act as a bare-minimum framing narrative. The reason for this specific format could be cultural—various publishers aping the successful EC comics formula—but there are indications of other forces at work.

Comic books fell into part of a broader discussion on changing postal rates during the 1940s and 50s—critics claimed that the government was essentially subsidizing advertisers by allowing them to mail off periodicals primarily intended for advertising at lower rates—and, in part, mail censorship, as postal inspectors were the first line of blocking obscene publication (for more on which, see Obscenity in the Mails: Controls on Second-Class Privileges 1942-1957). However, the Postal Laws and Regulations of the United States of America Edition of 1940 and the Post Office Manual (1952) make no specific reference to comic books or give any guideline for the minimum number of pages of prose fiction in a periodical.

We do know some publications were denied as second-class mail; crossword puzzle magazines notably faced difficulties qualifying as second-class mail (cf. P.O.D. Docket Nos. 1/141; 1/147; 1/155 and 1/156), in part because of the lack of varied content. Report on second-class mail to the postmaster general (1946) by Charles A. Heiss does specifically discuss comic books and the percentage of comics, fiction, and advertising in a sample issue (the fiction coming to ~2.5 pages), so content was clearly an issue the USPS considered, though no guidelines are mentioned or given as to specific numbers of pages per issue. However, there are indications that there were informal guidelines stipulating such requirements. In one trial, a series of questions concerned comic magazines with second-class mail privileges:

Q. Each of these magazines contains not over two pages of textual matter?
A. I wouldn’t say that.

Q. As a minimum?
A. I wouldn’t say that. They usually tell their story in pictures.

Q. Do they have textual matter?
A. I am comming to that.

Q. Can’t you tell me whether or not they have textual matter?
A. Indeed they do.

Q. That is what I wanted to know.
A. They have a reasonable amount of textual matter.
—Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327 U.S. 146 (1946) (No. 399)

Compare this to a letter and its answer in Blue Beetle #5 (1965):

Carl Barks recalled in one instance:

As explained in the entry for “Land Beneath the Ground” (US 13-02), the Gyro Gearloose stories that began in “Uncle Scrooge” No. 13 came about as a result of Western’s applying for a second class mailing permit for the comic. To gain second class privileges a periodical must contain at least two stories, each one featuring different characters. Barks turned to Gyro Gearloose, the inventor, to provide the required second feature.

Two stories had been completed before it was realized that no characters from the lead story could be used. In his 1969 list for Michael Barrier, Barks commented: “The four-page Gyro stories for Uncle S. #13 and #14 were sent back to me for changes. In the #13 story I’d used the nephews. Because of postal mailing laws, no characters used in other parts of the book could be used in the Gyro story. Hence the change to Mickey’s nephews. The character ‘Speedy’ in #14 was originally Donald.”
—Applying For A Second Class Mailing

I have not found any print postal regulations from the 1940s, 50s, or 60s that specify a number of pages of non-comic material, or that stories may not share the lead character. Nor have I found anyone who cites a specific regulation or judicial ruling. However, I have found a judicial ruling which implies guidance on the matter was provided:

The publication with which we are concerned is printed monthly and is principally in comic strip form. Each issue features a special topic such as dogs, horses, Indians, the FBI, etc. […] By agreement at the hearing, ten issues of the publication published at the time of the application were introduced into evidence. The petitioner offered three later issues and counsel for the Director objected to this receipt into evidence. After the hearing he withdrew his objection when the Hearing Examiner indefinitely recessed the hearing because the Director would not appear to testify after being requested to do so by the Hearing Examiner. Each of these three later issues contain four separate stories on four subjects not connected with the principal topic of the issue. These are printed stories and articles rather than the comic strips which are the balance of the magazine. The petitioner added this matter upon the advice of the Director who had informed him that in the former format each issue of the publication was a book about a specific subject and not a periodical. After being so advised the petitioner made an effort to comply with the regulations and changed the format. There is nothing in the applicable regulations as to the content of a publication except to require that it must be for the purpose of “disseminating information of a public character” or “devoted to literature, the sciences, art or some special industry.” Section 132.224, Postal Manual. […] The fact that the Director did not tell him an exact number of pages which had to be devoted to other matter should not be held against the petitioner, especially since no regulation has been promulgated on this point.
—P.O.D. Docket No. 1/158 (36 Feb 1960)

The indication is that at some point, one or more postal inspectors provided guidelines for what qualified a comic magazine as a periodical (second-class matter) instead of a book (third-class matter), and this became de facto standard industry practice, even if it might not have been put explicitly into writing and published as a federal regulation.

Whatever the actual cause, comics in the ’50s often featured brief, forgettable, potboilerish fiction, the vast majority of it not particularly noteworthy and written either anonymously or under pseudonyms. But…there’s also the occasional story from a recognizable name, such as “Fiend of Fire” as by Eando Binder, which was published in Beware! Terror Tales #2 (July 1952, Fawcett). This was almost certainly a solo work by Otto, dashed off quickly to fill an issue, but while it has been reprinted in various comic book reprints since entering the public domain, it has never been included in collections of the Binders’ pulp fiction, as far as I’ve been able to determine.

※

Fiend of Fire

by Eando Binder

HARLOW MAXON felt pretty good as he stuffed his pipe and prepared to settle back for a smoke. He was safe now. His big problem had been settled—completely. He could relax now and enjoy life.

Maxon lit the match and held it to his pipe, ready for a good smoke. But suddenly, the match flame hissed and sprang toward his eyes, like a live thing! With a yelp of pain and fright, Maxon flung it down and stamped on it, breathing hard.

Why had the match acted like that? Maxon calmed down. “Oh, just a defective one,” he told himself. “I’ll try another.”

Lighting another match, he held it gingerly at arm’s length, in case it would act up too, but it’s flame was normal and steady. Sighing in relief, he brought it to his pipe, puffing. But again, amazingly, the flame suddenly expanded lividly and hissed toward his face as if to burn his eyes out!

Cursing, bewildered, Maxon flung it down. But the flame was not out and the rug caught fire, fiercely. It did not seem like a normal flame at all as a patch of rug swiftly burned and widened. Maxon had all he could do to stamp it out with both feet, crushing it underfoot!

Maxon stood there panting, but more puzzled than frightened. Matches just shouldn’t act that way. And he was annoyed too. How could he light his pipe and enjoy a smoke? Well, skip it, he told himself reluctantly.

He settled back and picked up the paper, forgetting the incident. What did it matter, for there, in the news columns, were the words that made him safe—MAN DIES IN FLAMING AUTO! The text went on to state that driving down the street, John Begget’s car suddenly caught fire and the trapped driver was burned to death within, an unfortunate accident.

“Accident,” gloated Harlow Maxon to himself. “Sure it was an accident—planned by yours truly! I killed him, but nobody suspects!”

It was a common enough story. Maxon had borrowed heavily from John Begget, his friend, to indulge his taste for gambling. Losing steadily, he had kept putting off Begget, until in anger, Begget threatened to have him arrested and jailed. Maxon had been unable to raise the money. So what else was there to do but silence Begget? Get him out of the way? That solved everything—at least in the unscrupulous mind of Maxon. And so he had secretly planted the thermite-bomb in Begget’s car, leading to its explosion and complete burning.

That had been this morning. And now, tonight, Maxon was a free man, safe from the law. He dropped the paper with a satisfied smirk, settled back, and started to light his pipe.

But he had forgotten. Again there was a deadly hiss as the small flame grew and shot at his face like a fireball! Maxon stamped it out in a hurry, choking, with a slow dread clutching at his heart. Looking in a mirror, Maxon saw that his eyebrows had been singed that time.

Cursing, eager for his smoke, Maxon went into the kitchen and turned on one burner of the gas-range. It was automatic. He needed no matches. But at the moment the burner went on, its blue flame gave a hiss and shot toward him in a long searing tongue like a striking snake!

Maxon staggered back. The flame seemed to search for him, curling and twisting through the air. Horrified, Maxon dropped to his knees and was thus able to reach up and turn off the gas. The flame died just before it reached the hair on his head.

Trembling and shaken, Maxon went back to the living room and pulled an easy chair up to the fireplace. He had lit the fire before and needed to bask in its warm glow, and recover from his jitters over the weird events that had just happened.

“Ah, this is better,” he mumbled, stretching his hands toward the dancing flames.

But abruptly, they were dancing flames no longer. With a roaring hiss much louder than before, a sheet of flame burst from the fireplace toward Maxon. Screeching, Maxon leaped from the chair and stumbled back, barely in time, out of range.

The long ribbon of flame from the fireplace seemed to reach for him like clutching hands, even though he ran the length of the room. After him the fiery hands came, as if there was no escape!

And then Maxon was in the corner of the room; trapped. He turned at bay, moaning. He waited for the searing hot touch on his body, shuddering, whining in fear . . .

But then, most eerie of all, the flame took form slowly—human form. And its hiss became a mocking voice that said—”No, I won’t kill you this soon. Not before you suffer torment and know what I am. Look at me, Harlow Maxon! Don’t you see who I am?”

Maxon’s eyes bulged, taking in the human shape that the flame had formed. “No, it can’t be!” Maxon moaned. “It can’t be you—John Begget!”

“Yes, John Begget, your victim, hissed back the fire-spirit. “In flames I died—and in all flames I live again! Don’t try to understand, Maxon. It is something beyond the mundane. I was able to make those match flames dart in your eyes before. I made the gas flame leap at you. And now I’ve come for you out of the fire-place. Call me a fire ghost or whatever you will, but now you will die as I died—in fiery torment!”

And with a ghastly, hollow laugh, the fire spirit clutched for Maxon with its flaming hands . . .

But Maxon remembered the fire-extinguisher nearby, enclosed in a wall niche. Somehow he grabbed it out and swung the nozzle at the flame form. The fine spray beat it back. The fire ghost retreated before him and Maxon reached the fireplace, putting out the whole fire there. Only then did he stop, feeling that he had won out in this mad duel to the death with the fire fiend.

But one last ember glowed, and a somber hiss echoed in the air, forming words. “You have won for now, Maxon. But you can’t escape me. Remember, I can strike at you from any flame—anywhere—anytime! You can’t escape me!”

“Yes, I will!” shouted back Maxon. “It’s simple—I’ll just avoid all flame. It’s as simple as that!”

In the following days, Maxon carried out his grim campaign. He stopped smoking. He would never light a match again. And he could do without fires in the fireplace easily enough. As long as he kept away from flame, he was safe. In his daily life among others at the track or gambling casino, it was not hard to keep away from those lighting matches nearby. With care, he could keep out of range of an open fire, in any form.

He had one bad moment when some friends dropped in one evening, surprising him on his birthday. One of the girls came out of the kitchen with a birthday cake and lighted candles, as they all sang the familiar birthday song to him. Maxon stared horrified and then dumped a bottle of soda, snuffing out the candles. He had acted like a maniac and ruined the evening, but once more he had foiled the fire ghost.

Maxon was triumphant, getting a sort of twisted joy out of his strange duel with the supernatural. By sheer persistence, he’d won out.

Even on a hunting party in the winter season, Maxon took care not to sit near the blazing fire they built when having lunch. He almost froze, sitting away from the heat, but he was safe!

Safe that is, until a whipping wind kicked up sparks and before they knew it, a brush fire had blazed up! The others fought the flame but Maxon ran—only to be blinded by smoke. Staggering, coughing, he was suddenly faced by a wall of fire, out of which a fiery shape loomed hugely, with a hissing roar of laughter. The fire ghost again!

Long arms of flame shot toward him, but Maxon saw his salvation not far off—a running brook. Without hesitation, he plunged into the icy waters, safe from the fire spirit, until his friends succeeded in beating out the last of the fire.

Even in the hospital, where his friends hastened him after the icy plunge. Maxon was happy. He was safe from fire—safe from the fire ghost. Safe from being consumed by fiery vengeance from beyond . . .

†

MAXON suddenly started, his spine crawling. What was that the doctor was saying?

“Fever! A very high fever—one hundred and five! We can’t bring it down! Poor chap!”

Maxon’s eyes alone saw the wraith-like shape that sat on his chest, in flowing outline, grinning. He heard the soft hiss of the fire ghost’s words—”Fever is a form of ‘fire’ too, Maxon! Fever consumes the sick body just like a fire! Didn’t I tell you there was no escape? . . .”

THE END

※

“Fiend of Fire” is brief, original, and fairly straightforward with a slight EC-style twist at the end—Binder would go on to write for EC for about a year before the Comics Code Authority killed their horror and crime comics. The bad guy gets his thematically appropriate comeuppance; the supernatural occurrences are an atypical haunting, but otherwise unexplained. A fairly minor work in a long and storied career, but for fans who thought they’d read all of Eando Binder, there’s far more beyond the pulps.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Lost Tale: “The Unmarked Murder Trail” (1941) by Otis Adelbert Kline

Native American Stereotypes

This story contains historical stereotypes of Native American cultures and characters.
Reader discretion advised.

The very first issue of Weird Tales included “The Thing of a Thousand Shapes” by Otis Adelbert Kline—the first part of the first serial to run in the Unique Magazine. Kline was, alongside Farnsworth Wright, one of the readers for the magazine under its first editor Edwin Baird, and one source claims that Kline ghost-edited the massive May-Jun-July 1924 triple-issue that marked the end of the old management. Wright would end up in the editorial seat at Weird Tales, and we can only speculate how things might have been different if Kline had gotten the job instead.

Kline continued as a writer and increasingly as a literary agent, marketing the pulp stories of Robert E. Howard, E. Hoffmann Price, C. L. Moore, and others during the 1930s and 40s, until his death in 1946. Most of Kline’s weird fiction from the pulps has been reprinted in various places, but there are more obscure non-weird works that have never been reprinted, including a handful of short pieces for newspapers. The most substantial of these is “The Unmarked Murder Trail,” which appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly 1 Nov 1941.

※

The Unmarked Murder Trail

by Otis Adelbert Kline

CHARLEY WHITESHIRT, the outcast Seminole Indian, was bent on murder. But he had bided his time and matured his plans so that no suspicion of the crime should fall upon himself. For days, while he pretended to be fishing, he had watched the Florida Everglades bungalow of Rance Gordon, the young Chicago artist who, in Charley’s estimation, was to blame for the death of his daughter as well as his own disgrace.

Two weeks before, Rance had persuaded the shy Seminole maiden to pose for him. She was reluctant at first, but could not resist the money he offered her. Ten dollars seemed such a tremendous sum. It would buy her many trinkets and much fine cloth with which to decorate herself, that she might captivate a certain young man of the tribe.

She well knew the horrible risk she ran but did not fear detection. In this, she overlooked the clever and cunning of her love rival, who spied upon her and immediately told the chief.

A solemn pow wow was held that evening and as a result the girl was expelled from the tribe in the dead of night. At the same time, her father, because of his negligence, was condemned to the disgrace of wearing white man’s clothes and taking a white man’s name. From then on his Indian name was never mentioned. His tribesmen scornfully called him Charley Whiteshirt.

Charley trailed his daughter’s wandering footsteps into the swamp the next day. He found her doubled up in a puddle beneath a cypress tree, her dead face blue and contorted with agony. A water moccasin had bitten her. | It did not occur to Charley that the artist had been perfectly innocent in the matter. Rance Gordon, in his estimation, was the cause of his daughter’s death and his own disgrace. So Gordon must die.

It was for this reason that he had been watching the artist’s bungalow. And now his opportunity was at hand.

Charley put down his fishing rod and took up his ancient thirty-two calibre single shot rifle. A look of intense hatred crossed his copper colored features and flashed in his black eyes. Steadying himself in the boat, he parted the concealing saw palmettos with the rifle barrel.

Bareheaded, and clad in white polo shirt and shorts, young Gordon was walking straight toward his hidden enemy, presenting an easy target. The rifle cracked and the artist slumped to the ground, show between the eyes.

The Indian could have paddled away, leaving no trace of himself on or about the body of his victim. But he had been seen fishing in the vicinity of the bungalow for a number of days. So he knew that he would be the first suspect to be taken into custody. Therefore he had resolved that Gordon’s body must not be found at all.

Depositing his rifle in the bottom of the boat, he swiftly rolled up his trousers, then stepped barefooted into the shallow water and waded ashore. Carefully spacing his steps, he tiptoed to the body. Then he bent over, unlaced the white-and-tan golf shoes, and sitting on the back of his prone victim, put them on. After flinging the body over his shoulder, he turned, and stopping, spread a few handfuls of leaf mould over the marks in the moist earth where it had fallen. Then he sprinkled fresh earth over the blood which had drained from the wound.

Careful Cover-Up

SATISFIED that there was no trace of the murder which even an Indian would notice, he continued toward the water, carefully stepping upon and obliterating the tracks which his bare feet had made, so it would appear that Gordon had stopped at this point for a moment—then resumed his walk straight down to the water and into it.

Heaving the body into the boat, the Indian followed. Then he paddled out to where the water was up to his shoulders, dropped the anchor, and removed his clothing. He had come prepared with wires and heavy stones, and some twenty minutes later when he rowed away, the corpse was buried under two feet of muck and four feet of water.

The Indian was too canny to go far. He anchored his boat in part of the lake where he could not possibly have seen Gordon enter the inlet. Then, after cleaning his rifle, he resumed his fishing.

Some time later an outboard motor with three men in it drew up to the Gordon dock.

“Here we are, young feller,” said Sheriff Abner Peters to the youth beside him, as his deputy, a gangling, loose-limbed cracker with wrinkled leathery features, sprang out and fastened the bow line. “Reckon Rance’ll be mighty glad to see ye.”

“I know I’ll be glad to see him,” replied Jack Williams, Gordon’s brother artist and close friend. “and I sure appreciate your running me up here. Thanks a lot.”

The young red-headed six-footer heaved his bag on to the dock and sprang up after it.

“Don’t mention it, son,” replied the sheriff, stroking the grizzled stubble on his weather-beaten face. Then he shouted in stentorian tones: “Hey, Rance! Here’s company come to see ye.”

He waited in vain for an answer, then shouted again.

Still no reply.

“Funny he don’t answer,” said the sheriff, clambering up on the dock. “Reckon he must have gone for a walk. I’ll traipse along to see if I can help you find him.”

The gangling deputy lumbered after him.

The bungalow door was unlocked, but they found the place untenanted.

“I can’t understand it,” said Williams. “Rance said he would be here today.”

The sheriff went out and scanned the water. Some distance away he saw Charley Whiteshirt, fishing.

“Hey, Charley,” she shouted. “Come here.”

The Indian paddled over to the dock.

“Seen anything of Rance Gordon today?” asked the sheriff.

“Me no seeum at all,” replied Charley. “Me fish.”

“Uh, huh. Fishin’ must be pretty good around here lately, the way you hang around. Never used to be.”

“Not bad,” Charley replied.

“Pretty good at follerin’ a trail, ain’t ye?”

“Plenty good.”

“All right. Let’s scout around and see where Gordon went this morning.”

“May I come along?” asked Williams.

“Sure. Why not?” He turned to his deputy. “Better stay here, Lem, and keep an eye on the boats and things.”

“Okay, sheriff,” replied Blackwell.

“Let’s go, Charley, said the sheriff impatiently.

“Me find,” grunted the Seminole, springing out and tying his boat to the dock.

The sheriff’s eyes rested for a moment on the old thirty-two rifle which lay across the seat, but he said nothing.

The Indian circled the bungalow, followed by the two men. Presently he came to the trail which Gordon had made only a few hours before.

“Fresh track,” he said. “Now we find.”

They followed the trail over a small hummock, and down through the saw palmettos toward the water.

The sheriff paused for a moment at the point where Rance Gordon had fallen, and Charley, fearful that he had not obliterated all signs of the murder, stealthily looked the ground himself. But he could see nothing wrong, and the sheriff made no comment as they proceeded down to the water’s edge.

“He wade into water. See tracks,” said Charley, pointing.

“Danged if he didn’t. But where did he go from there? And why did he wade into the water with his shoes on?” Sheriff Peters bit off a chew, ruminated for a moment, and spat an amber stream into the lake. “Do you reckon he committed suicide?”

“Rance wouldn’t kill himself,” said Williams. “Why he had no reason to take his own life. He was forging ahead in his profession, winning a name for himself. Had plenty of money and leisure.”

“Mebby there was a gal,” ruminated the sheriff.

“Gal plenty bad medicine,” said the Indian.

“That’s right, Charley. There might have been a gal, at that. Let’s go back to the bungalow. Might not be a bad idea to take a look around for the body.”

“If he drown this morning, ‘gator got body by now,” said the Indian.

“Mebby, and mebby not. We’ll have a look, anyway.”

“Mind if I use your boat, Charley?” asked the sheriff. “The other’s kinda of heavy to paddle around, and I want to make a search.”

“Use all you want,” the Indian replied.

“Okay. You go up to the bungalow and keep company with Mr. Williams and my deputy until I get back. I’m going to cut me a 10-foot pole and poke around in the muck.”

“How come, sheriff?” asked Blackwell. “Do you reckon he done buried himself, after committing suicide?”

Peters winked slyly at his deputy so the others could not see, and said:

“You never can tell, Lem.”

“Stick ‘Em Up”

CHARLEY went up to the bungalow with the others. He was somewhat perturbed. The sheriff might find the body, but the chances were small. But he had not expected that Peters would get suspicious and decide to look for the body buried in the muck. Outwardly, the Indian maintained the stoical demeanor characteristic of his race. The deputy rummaged around in the cupboard, pushed a few pine knots into the stove, and made coffee.

The Seminole sipped his in silence while the other two speculated as to what had become of Rance Gordon.

Presently the sheriff came into the bungalow carrying the Indian’s rifle in one hand and his forty-five in the other.

“Stick ’em up, Charley,” he said. “Yore under arrest for the murder of Rance Gordon. Put on the bracelets, Lem.”

The deputy drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and clamped them on the Indian’s wrists.

“Good God! Did this Indian murder Rance?” exclaimed Williams incredulously.

“Ain’t no question of it,” replied the sheriff. “Rance painted a pitcher of Charley’s daughter a couple of weeks ago. She was seen here and told on by another girl, so the chief expelled her from the tribe and condemned Charley to the disgrace of wearing white man’s clothes and taking a white man’s name. Charley found her dead in the swamp from snake bit, next day. So he was out to get Rance.

“Might have got away with it, but he was a leetle too clever. Shot Rance from the boat, walked up to him barefoot, put on his shoes, and carried him back into the water, tramping out his own tracks. But them tracks didn’t fool me none.”

“Did you find the body?” Williams asked.

“Got it in the boat. Rance was shot through the head with Charley’s thirty-two rifle.”

“But what was wrong with tracks—what made you leery?” asked the deputy.

“White man toed out—Indian toed in,” was the reply.

※

“The Unmarked Murder Trail” is not a whodunit. Or a howdoneit, or even a whydoneit; the murderer is identified right away, their motivation established, the method described clearly. So this is an inverted detective story or howcatchem. Having established the crime scene, the interest becomes how the wily lawman outthinks the criminal despite all of his precautions. Television’s Columbo is probably the best-known example of this style in popular culture.

Kline’s little howcatchem isn’t a great example of the genre. The sheriff comes into the story apparently having full knowledge of Charley’s motivation and quickly determines the method. The final clue hinges on something not seen or hinted at—Charley could wear the dead man’s shoes, but his gait was different, so the tracks the two left were distinct.

What is notable about this story is the characterization of the Native Americans. While Kline gets the geography and tribal affiliation correct—the Seminole people have long been associated with Florida and the Everglades (Lovecraft even met a couple during a trip to Florida in the 1930s)—pretty much everything else is stereotype. Charley Whiteshirt speaks in Native American Pidgin English. The Seminoles in Florida do hold a powwow celebration today, but it was started in 1971, borrowed from similar celebrations by other indigenous peoples; the usage here as a general meeting is in keeping with the broad flattening of diverse Native American cultures into a dime novel or Hollywood mold. Even the art for the story by Walter J. Heffron is characteristic garb of Plains peoples, not Florida Seminoles. The total effect is neither particularly accurate nor sympathetic.

This is a potboiler mystery, one that relies on stereotypes for interest, with the barest hint of impropriety—there is the implicit suggestion that Charley’s daughter posed nude; why else would merely modeling warrant expulsion?—and maybe if it were longer Kline would have fleshed it out with a romance and more characterization. As it is, the cast is almost too crowded and much depends on coincidence; Jack Williams only exists to bring the sheriff there in time to see the tracks. One good Florida afternoon rain might have erased the tracks, and Charley would have gotten away with it.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Lost Tale: “Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad” (1950) by D. R. Smith

Donald Raymond Smith (The Sage of Nuneaton) was a notable but reclusive British fan, noted for being one of the first fans to write fanfiction in the contemporary sense—i.e., original amateur fiction featuring fictional characters created by and for fans. Before the 1940s, “fan fiction” was simply fiction written by fans, as opposed to professional writers, and didn’t necessarily reuse the characters or settings of other writers. While there are some examples of this sort of thing in the 1930s in ‘zines like The Fantasy Fan, Smith had a knack for it.

One of his most notable efforts is “Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad,” first published in The Nekronomikon #3 (Autumn 1950), now a very scarce fanzines; and very rarely republished, last appearing in The Second Cthulhu Mythos Megapack (2016).

※

Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad

by D. R. Smith

The fabulous Necronomicon was never finished. This is well-known to all advanced students of the occult, whether or not they have had the courage and good fortune to peruse a copy. A well-known—in spite of the fact that few who have delved into the soul-blasting secrets of that loathsome mixture of revolting instruction and blasphemous history have managed to preserve their sanity to read that final chapter, which begins with the mutterings of one in a frenzy and dies away in the hideous ravings of mania. Abdul Alhazred—may his name be accursed forever—remained devilishly sane during the acquisition and recording of that abominable knowledge which few throughout the centuries have dared to acquire, even in part. It was the story he attempted to tell in that last frenzied chapter that shattered his black mind and sent his spirit gibbering with horror out of his diseased body into the gleeful embraces of the torturers of the damned.

And no one has ever dared to make that story known. Indeed, the most diligent search has failed to trace any mention of the terrible message by any student of the occult. Yet it was known to be sublime genius, and the crux of it published to the world in words still spoke on the public stage:

“(Anthony) . . . . . . on the Alps

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh

Which some did die to look on;”

But should that story be widely known, it may be that what drove the blaspheming Arab mad may well drive honest men sane. And so I transcribe below, shorn of as much of its incoherent madness as possible, and cleansed of the filth that besmirched every thought that bubbled from the cess-pit of Alhzared’s obscene mind, a correct version of the last chapter of the Necronomicon.

. . . . . .

There was One Other. The Great One. Great Father and Great Mother in One. Greater than Great Cthulhu, than Hastur his brother, than Shub-Niggurath the Goat with a Thousand Young, than Tsathoggua, than great Yog-Sothoth himself—for They are but One’s spawn. One was once of the Great Old Ones, near the mightiest, for One challenged the supremacy of Azathoth Himself, the blind idiot, Lord of All. May, his children have told me—but this I may not believe—that One (who is too great to be Named) was indeed Lord of All! So great was One that They-who-Are-Not-To-Be-Thought-Of, fearing lest Evil become supreme, hurled him from his awful throne and chained him within chains of flesh that he might not break to this, the Planet of the Damedn. And as he fell he spawned Yog-Sothoth, who only is less than Azathoth. Sos says great Cthulhu, first of the Great Abominations which One formed from his own flesh to be his servants and the masters of the planet.

Mighty was the Great One. Loathsome the body They had bound him in—yet he gloried in its horror, and moulded it with his own will into a Thing to describe which would strike death into the craven soul of mortal men. The Faceess Nyarlathotep, messenger of the Great Old Ones, could not endure the foulness that was One, where he lay in a pool of his own slimy exhalations in the cavern in the mountains, lay and ruled the world with the terror of himself and the gods he had spawned. Had but I, Abdul Alhazred, been alive then to worship him! Great his Children, diligently have I served them and well have they paid me, with ecstasies the name of which should draw shrieks of horror from those white-livered children-in-men’s-shapes who talk so loud of their puerile torturings with knives and fire and water. But the Great One—to serve him would have been—would have been . . . . . . . .

Curse the Roman! May the Hounds of Tindalos hunt his shrieking soul through the ends of space for a million million times a million eons! How could he do that which he did! Great Cthulhu I asked and he shrank and would not reply. Tsathoggua I asked, and Tsathoggua would not tell me. Yog-Sothoth I asked, greatest of the Spawn, and Yog-Sothoth would not tell me. Yea, by my Art did I call on Nyarlathotep, the faceless howler in the darkness, commanding thee messenger of the Great Old Ones as never man had dared before, and Nyarlathotep ceased his eternal howling and would not reply, though he feared me as he fears only Cthugha, the Eternal Fiery One, who when the Time comes shall consume utterly.

Was it machination of Azathoth? One’s children say Azathoth, even mighty as he was, would never have dared to plot against the Great One. Yet surely it was only by some hostile guidance that this man, this incredible man, was driven with his rabble of soldiers into the mountains where lay the cavern of the Great One. Perhaps the Elder Gods—but they had only wanted to exile the Great One, not destroy him.

However it was, the Roman came. Marcus Antonius, a big brawling lecherous brute who boasted he feared nor god nor devil. A foolish boast, which many have made to me—and fled shrieking if they but smelt the week-old effluvium left from one of Cthulhu’s visits. But Marcus Antonius—how could there be such a man? Man he was, who fought and loved like a man, and died foolishly as a man will through stupid devotion to a trollop. Could such a one be greater than the Great Ones to whom I have given so much worship? That I have damned myself to all eternity for—for . . . . . . . . . NO!

I must tell it. It must be recorded. This Antonius and his soldiers were lost. Starving. They drank the urine of the horses. They killed the horses and ate them—and went on through the bare mountains. Antonius was their leader. He boasted of his strength and endurance and would eat of the horse-flesh, leaving it for others. On they went, and they came to a valley—a gloomy cleft in the hills. But water ran crystal clear down a rocky bed and scrubby pines grew around. They drank the water and made a huge fire of the trees—but the hunger was still there. And Marcus Antonius was hungriest of all.

At the head of the cleft was a cave. Caves are often inhabited by animals. Animals can be eaten. Marcus Antonius led the way to the mouth of the cave, but there all stopped. For from the cave came such a stench as would petrify a man’s soul within his living body, and more evil than that. None could advance further but Antonius, who called them cowards and went on, went down into the dreadful gloom of that cavern. Went alone . . . . . .

Silence. A long silence. Then suddenly, horribly the reverberating uproar of a furious combat in some vast hollow below. Part of the noise the bellows of fighting-mad Marcus Antonius—part of such a nature that many who heard fled screaming from the accursed spot. They were the lucky ones. Those who remained, white-faced, frozen with terror, heard the noises continue, and draw nearer. Abruptly the cavern belched forth a writhing mass, the maniacally fighting Antonius smeared from head to foot with a mixture of his own blood and revolting slime from That which he fought. That which he had dragged out into the light of day, where never had it been seen before. That which is javelin could not slay, his sword not wound. That abomination at the sight of which the watchers dropped dead, the very souls lasted out of their bodies.

It called for help, and twilight shrouded the sun, and the strong shapes of the Wind Walkers, Ithaqua and Lloigor and Zhar and Great Hastur himself came howling down. And Antonius saw and laughed unafraid, and called upon Jupiter, whom the Greeks called Zeus, the Lord of Heaven and master of storms, called asking for aid as from an equal. And lo, on the Walkers and on Hastur, on Cthulhu hurtling from the sea and on Yog-Sothoth gathering formlessly from everywhere and nowhere, on all the hastening Spawn of One, Jupiter hurled his thunderbolts, and his laughter crashed and bellowed and split the skies as he lashed back the children of One with the multi-thonged lashes of the lightning.

And under that madness of light and noise Marcus Antonius, with strength beyond the compute of mortal man, raised the Great One and hurled him onto the mighty fire his men had kindled. Horribly One screamed and writhed amongst the glowing embers, and Antonius laughed and threw on more wood, and in the heart of the flames One screamed abominably until little but blacked charcoal was left of his fightful body. And then Marcus Antonius, a man amongst men, who feared nor God nor devil, but who was very hungry, smashed the charred shell and inside found nothing but a single steaming piece of rank flesh, loathsome of shape and color and odor. But it was flesh, and he ate.

Yes, he ate it! The brutish Roman dolt, he ate it, the yet-living heart of the Great One! And so he destroyed for ever the Great One! And if One could himself be thus destroyed by brute courage and appetite, what of his children? Have I given my life and more than my life to the service of those who have no more power over a brave man than the beasts of the field?

. . . . . . . .

The rest is madness.

THE END

※

Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsèd. On the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on. And all this—
It wounds thine honor that I speak it now—
Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
So much as lanked not.
—William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 4

This is a notable mid-century Mythos pastiche; it is very firmly drawing on the later Derlethian conception of the Mythos, not so much in the elemental schema as the very casual name-dropping of Cthugha and the like, the emphasis on a hierarchy among the eldritch entities, etc. The crowning joke of the piece is that Shakespeare reference, which is one of those obscure points like Tolkien’s Cats of Queen Berúthiel, which is not explained, but hints at something unspoken.

In that final jest, there is a rebuke of the Lovecraftian premise. Reminiscent of whenever Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian encountered an eldritch entity. It represents, in a literary way, the kneejerk response to the fannish devotion that the very look at such-and-such an entity will drive you mad, or that such a creature as Cthulhu is incomprehensible, by responding “Squid guy.”

Basically, Smith was playing the game but subverting the expectation. Yet he plays it straight at the end; how would a dedicated cultist, who has given their life and committed innumerable acts in worship of these alien entities, react when it turns out that these entities aren’t all-knowing or all-powerful, and might, in fact, taste good with a bit of garum?

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.