Haggopian and Other Stories Read online

  Best Mythos Tales, Volume Two

  Brian Lumley

  Haggopian & Other Stories: Best Mythos Tales, Volume Two

  Copyright © 2008

  by Brian Lumley. All rights reserved.

  Dust jacket and interior artwork Copyright © 2008

  by Bob Eggleton. All rights reserved.

  Interior design Copyright © 2008

  by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN 9781596064270

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  www.SubterraneanPress.com

  “The Caller of The Black,” from the collection of the same name, Arkham House, 1971.

  “Haggopian,” from F&SF No. 265, 1973.

  “Cement Surroundings,” from Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House, 1969.

  “The House of Cthulhu,” from Whispers No. 1, 1973.

  “The Night Sea-Maid Went Down,” from The Caller of The Black, Arkham House, 1971.

  “Name and Number,” from Kadath, Vol. 2 No. 1, July 1982.

  “Recognition,” from Weirdbook No. 15, 1981.

  “Curse of the Golden Guardians,” from The Compleat Khash, Vol. 1, Weirdbook Press, 1991. “Aunt Hester,” from The Satyr’s Head, Corgi, 1975.

  “The Kiss of Bugg-Shash,” from Cthulhu 3, Spectre Press, 1978.

  “De Marigny’s Clock,” from The Caller of The Black, Arkham House, 1971.

  “Mylakhrion the Immortal,” from Fantasy Tales, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1977.

  “The Sister City,” from Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House, 1969.

  “What Dark God?” from Nameless Places, Arkham House, 1975.

  “The Statement of Henry Worthy,” from The Horror at Oakdeene, Arkham House, 1977.

  “Dagon’s Bell,” from Weirdbook 23/24, 1988.

  “The Thing from the Blasted Heath,” from The Caller of The Black, Arkham House, 1971.

  “Dylath-Leen,” from The Caller of The Black, 1971.

  “The Mirror of Nitocris,” from The Caller of The Black, 1971.

  “The Second Wish,” from New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House, 1980.

  “The Hymn,” from HPL’s Magazine of Horror No. 3, 2006.

  “Synchronicity or Something,” from the chapbook of the same name, Dagon Press, 1989.

  “The Black Recalled,” from the World Fantasy Convention Book, 1983.

  “The Sorcerer’s Dream,” from Whispers 13/14, 1979.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  The Caller of The Black

  Haggopian

  Cement Surroundings

  The House of Cthulhu

  The Night Sea-Maid Went Down

  Name and Number

  Recognition

  Curse of the Golden Guardians

  Aunt Hester

  The Kiss of Bugg-Shash

  De Marigny’s Clock

  Mylakhrion the Immortal

  The Sister City

  What Dark God?

  The Statement of Henry Worthy

  Dagon’s Bell

  The Thing from the Blasted Heath

  Dylath-Leen

  The Mirror of Nitocris

  The Second Wish

  The Hymn

  Synchronicity or Something

  The Black Recalled

  The Sorcerer’s Dream

  Dedication:

  To the Memory of August Derleth

  FOREWORD:

  Notes on the Cthulhu Mythos,

  August Derleth, and Arkham House

  This book of short stories is presented as a companion volume to my Subterranean Press collection of Cthulhu Mythos novellas, and to repeat what I said in the introduction to that book, it isn’t my intention to offer any kind of in-depth definition of the Mythos here. That has already been done by too many others. Also, because it seems you’ve opted to read this book, I think I can be reasonably sure that you are already familiar with H. P. Lovecraft’s most enduring, most fascinating creation. (Well, at least he created its roots, since when the vast bulk of the Mythos—much like the gradually expanding acreage of diseased earth and vegetation around HPL’s “Blasted Heath”—just keeps on growing, though by no means as slowly!)

  When they talk about the Mythos, most people automatically associate it with HPL. And rightly so, to a degree, insofar as Cthulhu was his creation…but the Mythos itself was not. It came into being when HPL’s friends—fellow authors with whom he regularly corresponded, certain revision clients, and others that he himself invited to build upon his literary foundations—when they began to contribute their own stories fashioned in the same vein. But it was not until August Derleth established Arkham House to immortalize Lovecraft, and set about publishing his own Lovecraftian pastiches and so-called “collaborations,” along with the Lovecraft-inspired works of other authors, that the more solid foundations of the Mythos were laid. Indeed, it was with Derleth’s remarkable landmark anthology, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos—the Arkham House volume that finally tied the ungainly thing together—that the first real cornerstone was set in place. For Derleth had collected together such an appropriate list of titles—some of which, because of their vague yet tantalizing similarities, themes and allusions, had puzzled and obsessed me when first I had read them as individual tales in this, that or the other magazine or anthology—that now in their entirety they loaned a semblance of order to the Mythos, making a generally acceptable sort of sense of everything.

  The book was full of the stories of former correspondents and friends of HPL—such people as Derleth himself, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, J. Vernon Shea and one or two others—along with more recent or relative newcomers to the Mythos, such as Ramsey Campbell, Colin Wilson, and myself. I found Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos an excellent read and Derleth’s choice of material first class…but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? For after all, this was the very first hardcover book in which a story of mine—two of them, in fact—had seen print.

  Anyway, from an entirely personal point of view I believe that second only to Necroscope, my breakthrough book, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, was (probably) more important to me than any other volume; my reading copy has long since been thumbed close to death!

  But where Derleth and Arkham House were concerned I wasn’t the first (or last) writer who would have his initial forays in fiction preserved in shining Holliston Black Novelex; no, not a bit of it! For Derleth had published Robert Bloch’s first collection, The Opener of the Way; and A. E. van Vogt’s first hardcover, Slan; even Ray Bradbury’s first book, Dark Carnival. And there were many others, and several still to come even after I, a relative late-comer, had made it onto the list.

  So then, surely we should thank August Derleth for all of this, especially for the preservation of Lovecraft’s works, including five vast volumes of his letters, but in particular for turning Arkham’s spotlight on the Cthulhu Mythos. We should…but has he in fact received such thanks?

  No, not really. Instead Derleth has been much criticized in certain quarters with regard to his treatment of the Mythos: which is to say that mainly, in a somewhat cursory “definition” of the Mythos, he grafted onto it elements of a religious background that parallel the Christian mythology and appear not to sit well with HPL’s original intentions. This and certain other minor “crimes” perpetrated in his editorial capacity, during a short lifetime of publishing among others a long list of otherwise neglected authors, have seen Derleth castigated for being (of all things) “a heretic”; this, paradoxically, by the self-same people who insist upon Lovecraft’s (religiously) destitute Mythos-ideology! Indeed, it has someti
mes seemed to me that the most fanatical of HPL’s readers have made a god—or at least fashioned an idol—out of Lovecraft himself!

  Such has been the outcry against “the heretic” that even the title of Derleth’s anthology, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and of the Mythos itself, have been criticised; mainly because another member of the Great Old Ones, one Yog-Sothoth, is seen as being rather more central to the pantheon. But, as I pointed out elsewhere, could we really expect Derleth to have published a book called Tales of the Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth? Too long, complicated, and even—dare I say it?—too risible. Whereas Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos fits the bill precisely, not only in its length but in that it “sounds” so very right.

  Myself: I believe that where H. P. Lovecraft is concerned, August Derleth’s efforts were heroic. Because of him the Mythos lives on. And also because of him—again on a personal level—I am what I have since become: the moderately successful author of this, the book you now hold in your hands, and of many other books.

  All of which to explain why, and not for the first time, I have dedicated a volume—this volume—to the memory of August Derleth…

  Brian Lumley.

  The Caller of the Black

  One of my first stories, written in 1967 before any of my work had been published, “Caller” is derivative not only of H.P. Lovecraft’s work but also the work of others, more especially of August Derleth. Looking back I think this was probably a deliberate ploy; it was the sort of story that Derleth published, the sort I was reading in his collections and anthologies, and it was a Cthulhu Mythos story. In short I had been “studying the markets,” but the only market I had going for my work was Arkham House! Anyway, Derleth liked the story and it eventually saw print in 1971, in my first book from Arkham House, which was published under the same title: “The Caller of The Black”. Incidentally, the capitalized definite article in the tale’s title is also deliberate, because as you will discover, “The” Black is pretty much a one-of-a-kind sort of thing…thank goodness!

  On monoliths did ancients carve their warning

  To those who use night’s forces lest they bring

  A doom upon themselves that when, in mourning,

  They be the mourned…

  —Justin Geoffrey

  One night, not so long ago, I was disturbed, during the study of some of the ancient books it is my pleasure to own, by a knock at the solid doors of my abode, Blowne House. Perhaps it would convey a more correct impression to say that the assault upon my door was more a frenzied hammering than a knock. I knew instinctively from that moment that something out of the ordinary was to come—nor did this premonition let me down.

  It was blowing strongly that night and when I opened the door to admit the gaunt stranger on my threshold the night wind gusted in with him a handful of autumn leaves which, with quick, jerky motions, he nervously brushed from his coat and combed from his hair. There was a perceptible aura of fear about this man and I wondered what it could be that inspired such fear. I was soon to learn. Somewhat shakily he introduced himself as being Cabot Chambers.

  Calmed a little, under the influence of a good brandy, Chambers sat himself down in front of my blazing fire and told a story which even I, and I have heard many strange things, found barely credible. I knew of certain legends which tell that such things once were, long ago in Earth’s pre-dawn youth, but was of the belief that most of this Dark Wisdom had died at the onset of the present reign of civilized man—or, at the very latest, with the Biblical Burning of the Books. My own ample library of occult and forbidden things contains such works as Feery’s Original Notes on The Necronomicon, the abhorrent Cthaat Aquadingen, Sir Amery Wendy-Smith’s translation of the G’harne Fragments (incomplete and much abridged)—a tattered and torn copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts (possibly faked)—a literally priceless Cultes des Goules and many others, including such anthropological source books as the Golden Bough and Miss Murray’s Witch Cult, yet my knowledge of the thing of which Chambers spoke was only very vague and fragmentary.

  But I digress. Chambers, as I have said, was a badly frightened man and this is the story he told me:

  “Mr. Titus Crow,” he said, when he was sufficiently induced and when the night chill had left his bones, “I honestly don’t know why I’ve come to you for try as I might I can’t see what you can do for me. I’m doomed. Doomed by Black Magic, and though I’ve brought it on myself and though I know I haven’t led what could be called a very refined life, I certainly don’t want things to end for me the way they did for poor Symonds!” Hearing that name, I was startled, for Symonds was a name which had featured very recently in the press and which had certain unpleasant connections. His alleged heart failure or brain seizure had been as unexpected as it was unexplained but now, to some extent, Chambers was able to explain it for me.

  “It was that fiend Gedney,” Chambers said. “He destroyed Symonds and now he`s after me. Symonds and I, both quite well-to-do men you could say, joined Gedney’s Devil-Cult. We did it out of boredom. We were both single and our lives had become an endless parade of night-clubs, sporting-clubs, men’s-clubs and yet more clubs. Not a very boring life, you may think, but believe me, after a while even the greatest luxuries and the most splendid pleasures lose their flavours and the palate becomes insensitive to all but the most delicious—or perverse—sensations. So it was with Symonds and I when we were introduced to Gedney at a club, and when he offered to supply those sensations, we were eager to become initiates of his cult.

  “Oh, it’s laughable! D’you know he’s thought of by many as just another crank? We never guessed what would be expected of us and having gone through with the first of the initiation processes at Gedney s country house, not far out of London, processes which covered the better part of two weeks, we suddenly found ourselves face to face with the truth. Gedney is a devil—and of the very worst sort. The things that man does would make the Marquis de Sade in his prime appear an anaemic cretin. By God, if you’ve read Commodus you have a basic idea of Gedney but you must look to the works of Caracalla to really appreciate the depths of his blasphemous soul. Man, look at the missing persons columns sometime!

  “Of course we tried to back out of it all and would have managed it too if Symonds, the poor fool, hadn’t gone and blabbed about it. The trouble with Symonds was drink. He took a few too many one night and openly down-graded Gedney and his whole box of tricks. He wasn’t to know it but the people we were with at the time were Gedney’s crew—and fully-fledged members at that! Possibly the fiend had put them on to us just to check us out. Anyway, that started it. Next thing we knew Gedney sent us an invitation to dinner at a club he uses, and out of curiosity we went. I don’t suppose it would have made much difference if we hadn’t gone. Things would have happened a bit sooner, that’s all. Naturally Gedney had already hit us for quite a bit of money and we thought he was probably after more. We were wrong! Over drinks, in his best ‘rest assured’ manner, he threatened us with the foulest imaginable things if we ever dared to ‘slander’ him again. Well, at that, true to his nature, Symonds got his back up and mentioned the police. If looks could kill Gedney would have had us there and then. Instead, he just upped and left but before he went he said something about a ‘visit from The Black’. I still don’t know what he meant.”

  During the telling of his tale, Chambers’ voice had hysterically gathered volume and impetus but then, as I filled his glass, he seemed to take a firmer grip on himself and continued in a more normal tone.

  “Three nights ago I received a telephone-call from Symonds—yes, on the very night of his death. Since then I’ve been at the end of my rope. Then I remembered hearing about you and how you know a lot about this sort of thing, so I came round. When Symonds called me that night, he said he had found a blank envelope in his letter-box and that he didn’t like the design on the card inside it. He said the thing reminded him of something indescribably evil and he was sure Gedney had sent it. He asked me to go round to h
is place. I had driven to within half a mile of his flat in town when my damned car broke down. Looking back, it’s probably just as well that it did. I set out on foot and I only had another block to walk when I saw Gedney. He’s an evil-looking type and once you see him you can never forget how he looks. His hair is black as night and swept back from a point low in the centre of his forehead. His eyebrows are bushy above hypnotic eyes of the type you often find in people with very strong characters. If you’ve ever seen any of those Bela Lugosi horror films you’ll know what I mean. He’s exactly like that, though thinner in the face, cadaverous in fact.

  “There he was, in a telephone kiosk, and he hadn’t seen me. I ducked back quickly and got out of sight in a recessed doorway from where I could watch him. I was lucky he hadn’t seen me, but he seemed solely interested in what he was doing. He was using the telephone, crouched over the thing like a human vulture astride a corpse. God! But the look on his face when he came out of the kiosk! It’s a miracle he didn’t see me for he walked right past my doorway. I had got myself as far back into a shadowy corner as I could—and while, as I say, he failed to see me, I could see him all right. And he was laughing; that is, if I dare use that word to describe what he was doing with his face. Evil? I tell you I’ve never seen anyone looking so hideous. And, do you know, in answer to his awful laugh there came a distant scream?

  “It was barely audible at first but as I listened it suddenly rose in pitch until, at its peak, it was cut off short and only a far-off echo remained. It came from the direction of Symonds’ flat.

  “By the time I got there someone had already called the police. I was one of the first to see him. It was horrible. He was in his dressing-gown, stretched out on the floor, dead as a doornail. And the expression on his face! I tell you, Crow, something monstrous happened that night.