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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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.

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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: “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.

Lost Tale: “Something from Beyond” (1941) by Paul Dennis LaVond

In 1941, Robert A. W. Lowndes became editor of a science-fiction pulp magazine titled Future, which had been merged with another magazine titled Science Fiction Quarterly, and over the next few years would go by such titles as Future Combined with Science Fiction, Future Fiction, Future Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Stories over the next few years. Future, under whatever title, contained a great deal of work by Lowndes and his friends, sometimes under their own names and sometimes under pseudonyms, often joint pseudonyms for collaborations. One such pseudonym was Paul Dennis LaVond.

Lowndes had been a minor correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft, and like several of HPL’s friends, had carved out his own corner of the Mythos, starting with “The Abyss” (Stirring Science Stories Feb 1941), which introduced a new eldritch tome: The Song of Yste. Lowndes would revisit and expand this personal Mythos in stories like “The Mantle of Graag” as by Paul Dennis LaVond (The Unique Magazine Oct 1941), “The Long Wall” as by Wilfred Owen Morley (Stirring Science Stories Mar 1942), “The Leapers” as by Carol Grey (Future Fantasy and Science Fiction Dec 1942), and the poem “Nyaghoggua” (Phantasmagoria 1939 / Famous Fantastic Mysteries Apr 1941). All of these stories were reprinted, sometimes in revised form and under slightly different titles, in later years…except one.

“Something from Beyond” (Future Dec 1941) by Paul Dennis LaVond is a story in the Song of Yste cycle that somehow fell through the cracks. Lowndes never republished or revised it; nor did Robert M. Price, who was studiously collecting early Mythos fiction in Crypt of Cthulhu and various anthologies like The Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab (1996, Chaosium) and Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (1992, Fredogan & Bremer / 2002, Del Rey). Other authors associated with Paul Dennis LaVond include C. M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, and Dirk Wylie; Mike Ashley in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines (1985) credits “Something from Beyond” to Lowndes, Pohl, and Wylie (279). Perhaps that was why Lowndes never reprinted it.

※

Something from Beyond

by Paul Dennis LaVond

Foreword

WALLACE GREY was born in 2009, some thirty years after Harley Graeme made his first moon flight, in Norwich, and was schooled in Laurie Hall nearby, later attending Norwich University.

Although not nationally known, Norwich University has a fine, solid reputation for turning out acute, liberally-minded men, men who are neither too idealistic to adjust themselves to the harsh practicalities, nor yet too cut and dried to see beyond their noses. There are compulsory courses in subjects the mere mention of which would bring ridicule in other schools; they teach the occult and delve into what is known as Black Magic. Yet never do they permit their students thus to lose their grip on a world which denies and derides these things. The purpose of these courses is to instil into the student a love of truth and the unknown; they seek to make them like those sturdy scholars of a distant past who were willing to search through innumerable haystacks of falsehood for the needle of truth therein. Norwich men have always been the last to snort and cry “impossible” when the unknown occurs.

Shortly after graduating, Grey turned to anthropology for his vocation, but found the recognized authorities in the field to be grey-headed dodderers with a distaste for unorthodox views. In a fit of despair, he joined the Space Patrol, then popularly thought to be a glorified suicide club, nothing more. After a few months, his state of mind improved; but instead of buying his way out, as easily he could have done, he set about forging ahead in the Patrol. He was the first commissioned officer to rise from the ranks and there is no doubt but that he would have gone far, made a name both for himself and for the Patrol had not his career abruptly been terminated.

Grey was found dead, along with two other members of the crew, in the Patrol ship he commanded. The circumstances of his death were unusual inasmuch as the bodies of the three men were frozen, although the ship was quite warm. These bodies could not be thawed, yet gained heat rapidly upon arrival at Earth until the temperature was almost that of living men. An investigation brought no light upon the incident; there remains only Wallace Grey’s journal, extracts from which we give below.

From the Journal of Wallace Grey

“WHATEVER our scientists may say about the lifelessness of space, I cannot help believing that the void is indeed a harbor of life, even though it may not resemble the life we know. Perhaps such life is so alien that the very word itself cannot be applied, so different that by no stretch could the most plastic imagination conceive it. Yet, we have this word, and it signifies anything which possesses consciousness of being; to that we add growth, power of ingestion, reproduction, motion, and thought. Perhaps there are vortices of pure thought here in space. . . . But there is something out here which we cannot see, hear, taste, touch or smell. Yet we do sense its presence; we know it is here.

“It…. I cannot call the thing by any term more definite than ‘it’…. is watching us, or, should I say, it is aware of us; it may not possess what we know as sight. It is aware of us and has been following us for the last few days…. perhaps longer: we cannot tell how long it may have been hovering over us before we became aware of it. Perhaps a considerable length of time in its presence is necessary before any suggestion of its being can permeate us; Awareness has come, but not through the customary channels of perception. I wonder, though: is it conscious of us?…. Are trees conscious of the birds and animals that nest therein, of the little boys that climb them, of the men who come at last to hew them down?…. No, trees are still strange to men, even though men have known and dealt with trees as far back as our racial memories go. Even yet we do not know whether or not the tree has a consciousness of being, an awareness of other life-forms about it…. Imagination, psychological delusion, wishes that father thought…. we cannot be certain about anything; our greatest positivism can only be relative. Yet, I say that I can feel that this is a living, malevolent entity; but how do I know it is not my own emotions telling me this, my emotions which color my every act no matter how diligently I try to whitewash? It is only natural that we distrust what we do not know: all that we know is full of danger, pain, disaster, and death for us. We cannot trust ourselves: how, then, can the unknown bring other than apprehension to us?….

“I think that I am aware of this…. phenomenon…. more than Orloff or Jac; yet Orloff has been acting queerly for a number of days. He always was more than a little absent-minded; now he seems completely dazed. Ever since he and Jac repaired the blast-tube, Orloff has been…. different. He speaks very little, and, when he does, it is almost with an effort, as if he did not know the language he was trying to use. His voice, too, seems to have changed and the inflection is weird. I can see that Jac is puzzled; he asked me a few hours ago whether I thought Orloff might be developing some form of space-dementia. That is possible. I have tried to speak to Orloff several times, to see if he is in pain or feeling sick; he evades me and does not seem to understand what I am saying. There is, however, no fault to be found with his work; he does, true, perform his duties a trifle more slowly than before, but his efficiency has increased noticeably. He was always somewhat timid at the controls, fearful lest he make a blunder which would be disastrous to us all; now he handles them with confidence, does so well that I need not oversee him. He spends nearly all of his spare time staring out the portholes into space, although he does not appear to be watching anything. His eyes, I have noticed, are somewhat glazed as he stands there and, after he has finally turned away, his movements, for a few seconds, are incongruously stiff and awkward. Can there be any relationship between Orloff’s eccentricity and it? I must look into the Song of Yste again…. How out of place that ancient book seems aboard this ship, on the dark side of Luna, some quarter-million miles from Earth. Did those olden probers into the unknown, I wonder, ever dream of the day when men would leave the Earth physically?…. Yet, there is a vast amount of truth in this volume! I am told, by friends, that it was once declared pernicious, blasphemous, accursed, and to be destroyed on sight. A few copies were handed secretly from generation to generation lest they be discovered and burnt. (I wonder sometimes just how grandfather obtained it. Did he find it in a tomb, as he claimed, or was it obtained by other methods?)”

Later:

“Something has happened to my copy of the Song of Yste. I am positive that it was packed among other, more orthodox, volumes when we left Earth; yet it is not there now. I am sure Jac would not be rummaging around my things; even if he were, what possible Interest could a book like that hold for him. And Orloff…. but how could the lock on my chest be tampered with without traces being left? Moreover, of what value could a copy of this book be to other than myself? It is in cipher, most ingenious cipher. It took grandfather ten years to work it out, and another five to prepare the volume I now possess. But the mere possession of the key would be of little value, for even then one uninitiate could not read it. Each page holds a different variation of the cipher, the clue to which lies in the little sketch heading the page. Grandfather told me before he died. I mention this to point out the difficulty of reading a volume like my special copy of the Song of Yste and to draw attention to the high improbability that two people on the same ship, two members of the Space Patrol, further, would have the required abilities. Yet, Orloff’s condition leaves him open to grave suspicion.”

Later:

“Orloff has taken a change for the worse. He is unconscious now: Jac found him lying on the floor when he went below to see why Orloff did not respond to his signals. For a moment, he appeared to revive; his eyes opened yet I would swear that it was not Orloff who looked at us. He is lying on the couch in the next room; Jac and I are sharing his duties. I took advantage of the emergency to search Orloff’s room. Of course, it is within my authority to demand search at any time but I had been reluctant to use my power in this case as I was not sure that perhaps the blame was not mine. But the search proved my initial suspicions to be correct; it was in his room, and he had been reading it. Found figures on a sheet of paper in his desk which prove conclusively that he knew the cipher, was computing the variations for specific pages. When I am free, I shall determine just what he was reading; perhaps it will shed some light upon this gruesome state of affairs.”

Later:

“We are functioning under automatic controls, such as they are…. I have been reading that portion of the Song of Yste which seemed to be of so much interest to Orloff; it is damnable. Now I know what it is which has come out of space to dog our heels; I know why we feel so cold and the reason for Orloff’s curious condition…. We are completely helpless…. If I seem a bit reluctant to state what I know, it is because of the stark, objective closeness of the thing which stuns me. It is one thing to delve into the unknown and learn of hideous and alien secrets with which the cosmos is filled. That is one thing, I say, and it is a thing more than many minds can endure. But to face the actuality of these things is another matter. To those not afraid of thought, the Song of Yste is not so utterly horrible…. bizarre, grotesque…. words, words, words, but what can they mean, what can they mean when the reader has nothing in his own experience to approximate them?…. Imagination always paints a fascinating picture, albeit how gruesome, attaching glamor to the unknown and alien…. but the reality… Ia, Nyagghogua! Shub-Niggurath! Nyarlathotep! Nyartathotep!…. Nyagghogua, dissolver of space…. K’halkru!….

“Orloff’s condition is unchanged. He is still in a coma, apparently. But there are no wounds, no concussion, fractures or symptoms of shock. Jac does not suspect his true condition… but I know…. I know!”

“This is my last entry. It has come out of space…. for us. A short time ago I heard the call…. within. Weird piping sound ending in a piercing shriek. We…. felt it rather than heard it. Jac did not know what it was…. I tried to explain something natural….

“Orloff has arisen…. at the call. He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at us, and, in his eyes a blackness, a vast shape of inconceivable power, malevolent power, that glared out at us. We are rooted to our seats…. though I cannot see what manner of resistance we could make were we free. I suppose it prefers us alive…. though could I reach the wall, none of us would go to it alive.

“We both feel very cold, although the instruments show that the temperature has not dropped a single degree. The cold comes from…. within. Orloff is moving slowly toward the space-lock; I sit here frozen to my seat, writing furiously…. Must try to put down what I read in that accursed book last night….

“‘Let not the hearts of men dwell too pleasantly upon escape from this earth to worlds of strangeness and glamor beyond the veil of night for without lies horror and madness and that which no human tongue or pen can describe. Vaster by far than the might and malevolence of those demons that plague and befoul the earth is that which comes out of space to feast upon the souls of men; yet, indeed, it is but a lesser manifestation of the evil which dwells beyond the stars. This out of space may be known by the coldness it brings, a coldness which no fire can abate, and by its unholy piping by which it summons its victims to sacrifice. For of old is it known to send itself into the living bodies of certain creatures so that they appear bewitched and know not themselves, shunning the day and the radiance of the sun which is hateful to it. Many and multiform are the prodigies it performs, for it may enter a city and blast all within into frozen corpses, yet, when these are discovered, there will have been no sign either of cold or of its point of entrance. Many and multiform are the prodigies it performs for its own amusement and contempt for men. And the crowning foulness of all….’

“I may write no more. The space lock is opening…. Orloff…”

“ENTRY in the log of the Space- Liner Majestic, Earth-Mars voyage EM 206: (From File .0078, Derelicts, Report of, for the year 2027, Record Rooms, Interplanetary Transit Building, N’York, Terra.)

“December 9, 2027. Discovered derelict space-patrol cruiser. #SP-070 R3, reported missing August 24, 2027, drifting in and parallel to Band 5. Found bodies of three men in cabin. Two in their official places; a third lying on the floor in such a position as to assume he had been placed there after death. Although ship was entirely warm and instruments showed no variation in room temperature, the corpses were frozen. Ship’s log, found in cabin, was dated August 5, 2027, no entries after that date being found. Journal of Commanding Officer, Wallace Grey, Lieutenant, Space-Patrol, hereby forwarded without comment. Lt. Grey was found, pen in hand, in the act of making entries in aforementioned journal.’’

The End

※

“Something from Beyond” is pure Lovecraftian pastiche, albeit in an uncommon space opera setting, which gives it the feel of a very stripped-down prototype of Event Horizon. Aside from the direct mentions to Lovecraft’s Mythos, the mention of Khalk’ru is a nod toward A. Merritt’s Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), where Khalk’ru is an extradimensional kraken worshipped by a cult in Alaska—sometimes seen as Merritt’s nod toward Lovecraft. Whether Lowndes intended any connection between Wallace Grey and Carol Grey (or simply liked the name) is unknown.

The original publication of “Something from Beyond” can be read on the Internet Archive.

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.

“A Clicking in the Shadows” (2002) by Chad Hensley & W. H. Pugmire

Roach smell is distinctive. A kind of sickly, musty reek that clings to places; sign of the often unseen dwellers in darkness. At night, sometimes, you can lie awake, dreading the skitter of tiny feet. Knowing they’re there. Knowing they could appear anywhere. On your toothbrush. On the ceiling. Walking across your face… and they often incite a visceral reaction, these alien creatures which cohabit the welcoming space that is human habitation. A kind of horror that has nothing to do with grimoires or ancient gods, but of much more mundane and realistic issues of filth, disease, and the invasion of personal space.

What a wonderful idea for a story, they must have thought, before writing “A Clicking in the Shadows.”

“Can you smell them? Yep, they’re nearby now, right enough. By their stench shall ye know them! Tryin’ to squeeze through the spaces, sure enough. They stink to all-mighty heaven.”
—Chad Hensley & W. H. Pugmire, “A Clicking in the Shadows” in
A Clicking in the Shadows and Other Tales (2002) 7

By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”

W. H. Pugmire was one of the most evocative voices in Lovecraftian horror from about the 1970s until his death in 2019. Chad Hensley is probably better known as the editor of EsoTerra: The Journal of Extreme Culture than as a horror writer, though he’s put out a fair bit of work over the years. The two writers collaborated together, and “A Clicking in the Shadows” is the premiere piece in their (now very obscure) joint collection A Clicking in the Shadows And Other Tales (2002).

From 1997 until 2003, I lived in Seattle, Washington. Wilum Pugmire lived down the street from me. So it was easy to meet up, critic each other’s fiction, as well as collaborate. We’ve written one poem and three short stories together, one of which wound up in the mass market paperback anthology The Darker Side: Generations of Horror. Wilum and I also collaborated on a chapbook of short stories titled A Clicking in the Shadows and Other Tales published in 2002. The lead story received an honorable mention in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. I’m really pleased and proud to have collaborated with Wilum and hope to do so again one day.
—Madhouse Introduction: Meet Chad Hensley (6 Apr 2014)

Oftentimes with collaborations, one name may be more recognizable than the other, and gain the bulk of the attention from critics. In this case, Pugmire is certainly the more well-known in Lovecraftian circles, and in his introduction to A Clicking in the Shadows, Robert M. Price writes:

All seven of their tales herein contained seem to take place in Sesquas Valley or at least in a kindred state of mind. In fact, a perfect image for the mood of these stories would have to be the scene in “A Clicking in the Shadows” where one character frantically wields a can of poison bug-spray to whelm a looming tide of horrific vermin. The spray itself is as poisonous as the I’ll it aims to eradicate, and one is not sure whether its intended path to relief is to destroy the pests or to put the pestered out of their worldly misery! Such is the desperate, sweetly poisonous atmosphere through which we move in these stories. (4)

I don’t think that’s strictly accurate. While one story in the collection, “Hairs of the Mother” by Hensley, is explicitly set in Sesqua Valley, none of the others are. “A Clicking in the Shadows” is set in Mississippi, far from the Pacific Northwest where Sesqua Valley is located, so from a purely pedantic geographical point, it doesn’t hold up. The question of whether it occupies a bit of psychogeography akin to Sesqua Valley is more subjective. Pugmire’s bit of personal Lovecraft country is aggressively rural or semi-rural; there are houses, a small town, but it’s the unmanaged wilderness that is the Valley itself. Hensley’s stories, at least in this slim volume, tend to more urban locales; nor is Hensley building a mythology. Some of the stories in A Clicking in the Shadows are explicitly or implicitly part of the Arkham myth-cycle, but they’re not the legends of some particular eldritch entity or place, but it is primarily an aesthetic anthology. Two different voices that sometimes work in harmony.

“A Clicking in the Shadows” is an effective bit of harmony. The story is brief, and holds to a very down-to-earth horror vibe until near the end, when things ratchet up from the realistic to the uncanny to the frankly eldritch. It reminds of another collaboration, “Pale, Trembling Youth” (1986) by W. H. Pugmire & Jessica Amanda Salmonson, where the resulting product is reminiscent of the work of both authors but also finds its own voice, which isn’t quite the same as either on their own.

Late in the night, Thorp was awakened by an itch on his nose. Numbly, in groggy stupor, he clumsily scratched at his face. His fingers found a small, flattened body that squirmed in his hand as he grabbed it.
—Chad Hensley & W. H. Pugmire, “A Clicking in the Shadows” in
A Clicking in the Shadows and Other Tales (2002) 8

It would be nice if, one of these days, a new collection were issued with all of Pugmire’s collaborations. Maybe it would lead more readers toward Chad Hensley; maybe not. Certainly, such a collection would be worth reading, if only to showcase the talents involved.

“A Clicking in the Shadows” was first published in A Clicking in the Shadows And Other Tales (2002); it was republished in Inhuman #6 (2015).

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.

“The Horror in the Stable” (2017) by R. C. Mulhare

The winter evening settled down over the town of Bolton, with snow falling past the windows of the office of Doctors Danforth Kane and myself, Herbert West. Christmas Eve, and while I prepared to ‘hold down the fort’, Danforth donned his greatcoat, preparatory to leaving for the night and a Christmas Eve fete with his intended. As I no longer believed in Jesus of Nazareth as the avatar of God who had clearly turned his back upon his own celebration, if he existed at all, I no longer saw much need for me to celebrate it.
—R. C. Mulhare, “The Horror in the Stable” in
Deadman’s Tome: Cthulhu Christmas Special and Other Yuletide Tales (2017) 50

Of all of Lovecraft’s works, “Herbert West—Reanimator” is arguably the most deliberately and gleefully outrageous; with West as the caricature of the mad scientist without conscience, and outrage often heaping on outrage. This lends itself equally gleeful parody, as in “Kanye West—Reanimator” (2015) by Joshua Chaplinsky, “Herburt East: Refuckinator” (2012) by Lula Lisbon, and Reanimator (2020) by Juscelino Neco & H. P. Lovecraft, and to reinterpretation that unveils new sides of West and his work, such as “Herbert West in Love” (2012) by Molly Tanzer and “(UN)Bury Your Gays: A Queering of Herbert West – Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft” (2022) by Clinton W. Waters. Even direct expansions of the Reanimator mythos, such as Peter Rawlik’s Reanimators (2013) and Reanimatrix (2016), and the anthology Legacy of the Reanimator (2015), are often gleefully transgressive. It’s the nature and appeal of the characters and their stories.

But what does the Re-animator have to do with Christmas?

Arguably, the first Herbert West/Christmas episode was “Herbert West—Reincarnated: Part II, The Horror from the Holy Land” (1999) by Brian McNaughton. This was part of a series of sequels to Lovecraft’s original stories, postulating on the continued existence and adventures of West and the nameless narrator of his tales. In this case, McNaughton had the pair working for Nazi Germany, and tasked with reanimating an almost two-thousand-year-old corpse recovered from the Middle East. This second miraculous resurrection was accomplished, although what returned for its second birth was typical of West’s other experiments. The reanimated Jesus, however, only makes this a Christmas tale by technicality. For stories that are set at the right time and setting, we have to look at works like R. C. Mulhare’s “The Horror in the Stable.”

Horror is a Christmas tradition, although that tradition began with rather staid ghost stories, as composed by M. R. James (and as lampooned by Jerome K. Jerome), and today is more common with horror films set during the holiday, from the classic Black Christmas (1974) and Gremlins (1984) to more contemporary fare like Krampus (2015) and Red Snow (2021). Many of these works take advantage of both the natural attributes of the winter holiday setting—the weather, the social gatherings (or lack thereof), and the emotions those invoke—and the juxtaposition of the bright, festive holiday with gore, terror, melancholy, and fear that are hallmarks of the horror tale.

“The Horror in the Stable” does both of these things. It reads like a lost episode from the original “Herbert West—Reanimator” series, save that it is told from West’s own point of view; the nameless narrator has the night off for Christmas (and, as a jest, Mulhare borrows a bit from Re-Animator (1985), giving the narrator’s name as Danforth Kane). West is called by the police to a nearby barn, though he finds no expectant mother or manger prepared to house a holy infant. Instead there are a pair of brutalized child patients, one of whom is a little too far gone…for anyone except Herbert West.

Taking a vial of the serum which Danforth and I had worked to perfect, from a hidden pocket inside my satchel, I filled a clean syringe with the liquid and injected it into the back of the boy’s skull above the top of the spine. “A painkiller to ease their sufferings in this state,” I said, answering the officer’s questioning look and the better to hide our work in plain sight.
—R. C. Mulhare, “The Horror in the Stable” in
Deadman’s Tome: Cthulhu Christmas Special and Other Yuletide Tales (2017) 53

Which has the expected results. If there is a criticism to level at this story, it is that despite West’s victim being a child and the events being set at Christmas, it isn’t quite as outrageous as it could be. The one is more melancholy than sanguine; much of the horror of the story is subtle. The children are orphans who lived hard lives, and West, surprisingly, isn’t unsympathetic. Mulhare takes advantage of the opportunity to flesh West out a little, without detracting from his overall menace or obsession. The finale, when it comes, is gruesome—but it is also familiar.

In his arms he clutched, as a child might clutch a new toy given him for Christmas, a small, pale leg, with one tattered shoe covering the foot.
—R. C. Mulhare, “The Horror in the Stable” in
Deadman’s Tome: Cthulhu Christmas Special and Other Yuletide Tales (2017) 56

We’ve seen this before, so it loses something of its impact here. Yet neither is it inappropriate. This is an episode that could slot easily into the existing Herbert West mythology, without need for extensive glosses. Like picking up an old book and finding a leaf uncut, never read all these years, and with the swipe of a knife the lost episode is revealed.

What is Herbert West to Christmas? In the canon of Lovecraftian Christmas tales, like “Keeping Festival” (1997) by Mollie L. Burleson and “A Very Cthulhu Christmas” (2016) by Melissa McCann, “The Horror in the Stable” slots in as a tale that acknowledges the holiday without celebrating it. West is an atheist; he stands apart from the carolers and the revelers, and if he blasphemes against God and Christ, he does so without acknowledging them. The horrors are secular horrors for a largely secular holiday…and in the context of the Re-Animator tales, that works.

“The Horror in the Stable” by R. C. Mulhare was first published in Deadman’s Tome: Cthulhu Christmas Special and Other Yuletide Tales (2017). It has not been reprinted.

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.

“A Very Cthulhu Christmas” (2016) by Melissa McCann

My first positive utterance of a sceptical nature probably occurred before my fifth birthday, when I was told what I really knew before, that “Santa Claus” is a myth. This admission caused me to ask why “God” is not equally a myth.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith” (1922)

From a strictly literal viewpoint, Christmas is a Christian holiday, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. That simple truth, so celebrated and shorn of pretension during Linus’ famous recitation at the end of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) should not be forgotten or disputed. However, in the last two thousand plus years since the death of Christ, things have gotten complicated. How and when and why Christmas is celebrated has changed; traditions have arisen, fallen out of favor, or been borrowed in. Christmas tress became popular, and stockings, and gifts wrapped in bright paper and ribbons, but many of these are things essentially secular in nature, enjoyed both by devout Christians of various denominations and folks who have never darkened the door of a church.

The Christian origins have been bedecked by a more elaborate and peculiar mythology of traditions, folkore, fakelore, and rituals. The most notable entity outside the baby Jesus itself might be Saint Nicholas or Father Christmas or Santa Claus; but celebrants certainly know others. Song, story, and film have given St. Nick a wife, reindeer, and a troop of elves, at least in many English-speaking countries. A more shadowy and often peculiar extnded Christmas-time pantheon that might include the Krampus, Zwarte Piet, Père Fouettard, Belsnickel, Yule Cat, Befana, Grýla, Perchta, and Elf-on-a-Shelf, among others.

Why not add Cthulhu to the holiday mythos?

While Lovecraft may not have believed in Santa Claus, or even necessarily the historical Jesus, he certainly enjoyed Christmas, and even had a Christmas tree when he could afford it, exchanged gifts and notes with friends and family. Nor was he immune to the general charms that the holiday offered, as evidenced by “The Festival” (written 1923), where he imagines a strictly pagan celebration “that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.”

Followers-on in the Lovecraftian tradition don’t necessarily go that hard. Some stories are just a bit of Xmas fun.

It was the night before Christmas, and in a haunted house on Ash street, a tiny creature in a floppy red Santa hat and coat manifest in the dark beneath an ornamented tree.
—Melissa McCann, “A Very Cthulhu Christmas” (2016)

This short tale is not a word-for-word riff off Clement Clarke Moore’s classic “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” although it probably takes general inspiration from the idea. Christmas Eve. The house is quiet. Everyone is safely tucked away. Yet something is stirring.

The short tale works because while it is set on Christmas Eve, it is also set in a haunted house whose inhabitants are more than a little eldritch, though many of the details and backstory are very much left hinted at rather than explicit. The story treads a fine line between humor and seriousness, and the overall tone is vaguely reminiscent of Roger Zelazny’s classic A Night in the Lonesome October. It is a very secular Christmas tale; Linus would have no place here, although a reading from the Necronomicon would probably be appreciated by the inhabitants of this particular house. Nor does McCann try to hamfistedly tie Santa Claus into the Mythos. It is a Christmas story in the way Die Hard is a Christmas story, because of setting and props, recognizable elements and old familiar names.

Which works. McCann isn’t trying to save the world and/or Hanukkah, or set up a Hallmark romantasy with tentacles, but she sets out to tell a well-paced, straightforward tale where the tropes of two very different cults mingle and overlap in ways that are both funny and appropriate.

“A Very Cthulhu Christmas” (2016) by Melissa McCann can be found as a standalone Amazon ebook, and is also included in her collection King of Midwinter (2019).

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.

“Re-Quest Denied” (1998) by Stanley C. Sargent

Dedicated to W.H. Pugmire, the culprit concealed behind every bush of Sesqua Valley.
—Stanley C. Sargent, “Re-Quest Denied” in Mythos Online, Vol. 1, #8 (Feb 1998)

In 1996, Stanley C. Sargent wrote “For Wilum, Gent.,” published in the obscure journal Leathered in Crimson #1. In 1997, Sargent reviewed Tales of Sesqua Valley by W. H. Pugmire; it was Pugmire’s first fiction collection. In 1999, Sargent co-edited and illustrated Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror, Pugmire’s next collection. They were friends, they were admirers of each other’s work. And in 1998, Sargent penned a small tribute to his friend.

“Re-Quest Denied” is a rare tale of Sesqua Valley written by someone other than Pugmire himself, and interestingly it parallels some of the themes expressed in “Vyvyan’s Father” (2013) by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy. Both stories essentially deal with an escape into disenchantment, the refusal of the call of beauty and emotion to focus on logic, rationality, mundanity, dullness—and both ultimately come to regret that choice and embrace what they had once rejected.

There is a question as to how much of Sargent himself went into this story. Not in the exact details, but in the emotions. In his own brief bio, he wrote:

Born at high noon on the summer solstice, 1950, in Ohio, Stanley C. Sargent grew up near his grandparents’ 200 acre farm. He populated three large, abandoned gravel pits on the farm with prehistoric and mythological beasts only he could see.

At age 18, Stan pulled up stakes and moved to San Francisco, where he could live as he liked and be openly gay. He attended a conference on Mayan hieroglyphs in Guatemala City in the mid-1970’s, and he spent a month in Iran in 1979. He worked for many years for corporate law firms, as word processing department supervisor.

In 1991, Stan abandoned the business world. He continued his long-time interest in and production of art (ink pointillism and later airbrush painting); in 1999, he completely illustrated a paperback book by W.H. Pugmire. At age 44, he began writing horror fiction inspired by the style of H.P. Lovecraft.

Compare that to:

Victor had dedicated every moment of his waking life to work, to the exclusion of all else. He had never even stopped long enough to get married. Emotions, longings, and his natural romantic lean had been suppressed and ignored completely. The result had been a brilliant career as advisor to the most powerful men and women on Earth; all the world had known and honored him. Now he was retired, and none of it meant anything to him.

At age sixty-five, Victor felt his life had been wasted. Without the endless distractions he had always known, a tidal wave of emotion rose up from deep within his soul, overwhelming him with the realization that, regardless of his worldly success, his life was a total failure.

He had lived a one-sided existence devoid of love and passion. He had spent his life building a magnificent palace in which he dwelled alone; in all his years, he had never found anyone with whom to share the love or passion that resided within him. And now that he was an old man, overweight and wrinkled, loosing his hair, it was too late.

Likewise, it seems clear that “Pug” is inspired by W. H. Pugmire, even if it isn’t meant to be him. A sort of idealized Pugmire, the eternal youth that echoes the kind of masculine beauty that written about in stories like “Pale, Trembling Youth” (1986) by W. H. Pugmire & Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Pug is a dream, a promise, a part of Sesqua Valley made flesh, the fire the moth is drawn to.

In terms of writing, this is one of Sargent’s minor works; the prose is straightforward, a bit basic, the plotting fairly straightforward and heavy with foreshadowing. Readers might compare it to The Substance (2025), only in reverse. Perhaps wisely, Sargent doesn’t step on Pugmire’s toes, doesn’t add much to the lore of Sesqua Valley. A single legend, a couple of inhabitants. Nothing that Pugmire would have to write around or contradict in his own works, but also not much to tie it in except for Mt. Selta itself.

“Re-Quest Denied” is far from a lost work, although it remains fairly obscure. Originally published in the now-defunct Mythos Online webzine in 1998, it was reprinted in the print journals Al Azif #3 (May-Jun 1998), Dreaming in R’lyeh #1 (2003), and Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos: Cthulhu’s Creatures (2007), all of which are long out of print. Unfortunately, Sargent never included it in any of his own collections; even more unfortunately, the original art that accompanied this work (titled “Pug” and with the alt text: “Yet it was the nude youth of breathtaking veauty that was the true centerpiece of Victor’s dreamlike vision.”) appears to be lost, as it wasn’t captured by the Internet Archive.

Alas.

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.

“Vyvyan’s Father” (2013) by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

In H. P. Lovecraft’s body of work, the town of Innsmouth is mentioned by name only in four stories (“Celephaïs,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” “The Thing on the Doorstep,” and “The Dreams in the Witch House”) and a couple “Fungi from Yuggoth.” The core of Lovecraft’s Mythos, which so many writers have expanded upon over the decades, tends to be fairly scanty. Lovecraft country, that literary realm where the Old Ones walk, was painted in broad strokes and a few fine details, and it is everyone else who has filled in the gaps.

Writers who came after Lovecraft have, when not playing in his sandbox, carved out their own spaces. The most famous are Ramsey Campbell’s Severn Valley stories set in and around the literary Brichester and Goatswood in the United Kingdom; and W. H. Pugmire‘s Sesqua Valley and associated towns and mountains set in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Since these writers lived much longer than Lovecraft, and had more opportunity to write and publish, it might not be surprising that they have produced correspondingly more lore for their associated locales than Lovecraft did for his.

And yet, these places often feel smaller, because the voices associated with them tend to be singular. While anybody can write a tale of Innsmouth, it is generally considered uncouth to poach a living author’s copyrighted creations without permission. Some of them have consented to letting other writers splash in their ponds—Ramsey Campbell, for instance, consented to Made in Goatswood (1996), a tribute anthology; and in 2013 the Lovecraft eZine #28 did a similar tribute to W. H. Pugmire.

These tales represented a first step at a wider Sesqua Valley Mythos. New ideas, new perspectives, new angles. Pugmire was never dogmatic about his Sesqua Valley lore, preferring to expand it in hints and suggestions, a tale at a time, and there has not yet been an effort to correlate all the contents of his fiction into a single concordance or wiki. Perhaps, in the future, there will be more. For now, one particular tale from Lovecraft eZine #28 is worth discussing, because it does something different than the rest. Something very Pugmire-like in its approach to the Sesqua Valley tales.

“Vyvyan’s Father” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy does not mention Sesqua Valley. Simon Gregory Williams and William Davis Manly do not appear on the page. Uniquely of the tribute stories in the eZine, Satyamurthy chose to write a story that is definably set in the world of Sesqua Valley—for anyone who is familiar with Pugmire’s work, at least, it is obvious from the clues and details as much as the context of the issue—without falling into the same trap of Mythos pasticheurs who load up a story with familiar names. It is an approach that echoes Pugmire’s own insistence that writing Lovecraftian fiction should echo the aesthetics of Lovecraft, not just pay lip-service to Arkham and Innsmouth, Dunwich and Kingsport, Cthulhu and the Necronomicon.

His eyes beguiled me, being slightly slanted and of a silver hue that seemed to contain particles of other shades in their pale irises.
—W. H. Pugmire, “The Horror on Tempest Hill” in An Imp of Aether 142

If his eyes were open, they would startle you with their timeless, silvery-grey depth.
—Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, “Vyvyan’s Father” in Lovecraft eZine (2013)

There is something very appropriate in how Satyamurthy’s tale is a bridge between India and Sesqua Valley; the lost child, the orphan of the Valley, is caught between two worlds in a way that echoes something of India’s own history as a crossroads of empires, with those who fall outside the established social orders caught like nuts in a pulau: a part of the whole, yet apart from the rest. This between-two-worlds tension defines Vyvyan’s character, but it also echoes the story as a whole: instead of just playing in Pugmire’s backyard, Satyamurthy builds a bridge between the setting of many of his own stories and Pugmire’s. Instead of submitting himself to Pugmire’s aesthetic, he shows how their themes can connect. Like New World tomatoes incorporated into a quintessentially Indian paneer gravy.

The slow expansion of Sesqua Valley beyond the bounds of Pugmire’s fiction is not the trauma-driven diaspora that marks much of contemporary Innsmouth tales. It is a different kind of cultural diffusion, spread by wanderers and their children, artifacts and ideas that spread out and draw strangers in. Where it goes from here…who can say?

“Vyvyan’s Father” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy can be read online at Lovecraft eZine #28, and print edition is also available.

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.