Our Dreams are with Us

Yesterday I read the new Sirenia Digest which contained a new Caitlin R. Kiernan story called "A Buyer's Guide to Commonplace Bizarreness". It's a little excursion into Lovecraft's Dreamlands, to Dylath-Leen, as well as a dovetailed vision of our waking world. Or supposed waking world. It's the kind of disorienting blend Lovecraft touched on occasionally but may remind a reader more of movies like Videodrome or Inland Empire. It's lovely. Caitlin includes a phot of the basalt formation called the Giant's Causeway in Ireland that influenced Lovecraft's conception of Dylath-Leen.

I love Lovecraft. My nice hardback copies of his stories are among the books I miss the most back in storage in California. I've been resisting the temptation to buy them again. My resistance is aided by the fact that they seem to be much more expensive on Amazon now.

This month, the Criterion Channel has a playlist called "Grindhouse Gothic" featuring Roger Corman's film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe. Included is The Haunted Palace, which is actually based on Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and contains only a couple references to Poe's "The Haunted Palace". In the '60s, Poe was the more bankable name. I wonder if that's quite reversed now. Anyway, I watched a bit of it again. Corman makes the plot a lot sillier but the production design is pretty and Vincent Price is always terrific.

Who is Your Brain Voice?

Sometimes I wonder how my voice sounds in people's heads when they read my blog, or if they hear their own voices. I wonder if the tone I intend is coming through, though often I suppose it doesn't matter if it does or not. It seems more important for my comic.

Every now and then, I have an experience that reminds me of how differently people experience prose. I was reminded again reading an article by Terry Eagleton this morning on the recently crowned King Charles and a comment Charles had once made about Eagleton. The article, entitled, "Why doesn't King Charles like me?" seemed one that shifted between mildly bemused and idly contemplative. Then I scrolled down to the comments and found people taking Eagleton to task at great length for misunderstanding the general perception of the monarchy and for throwing "a hissy fit."

When I took a literary criticism class in college, I had to read a book by Eagleton detailing the history of critical philosophy and thought going back to Aristotle and reaching through the various, splintered concepts and theories of 20th century analyses. Throughout, I found Eagleton's tone to be unobtrusive and congenial, only occasionally offering his own point of view on different theories. It seemed as good as any source I could think of to inform myself on the topic and even kind of a pleasant read. I was surprised, then, in class discussion when many of the students vocally resented having to read the book and angrily accused Eagleton of hating literature and art.

It seems King Charles feels similarly, so I'm with Eagleton in wondering at this mysterious antipathy. I can't think of much to explain it beyond there probably being political connotations I'm unaware of. I remember some years ago watching a debate between Eagleton and Roger Scruton and Scruton coming off better in the debate but Eagleton never inspired the loathing in me other people seem to have for him. Even Scruton seemed to get along with him though he disagreed with him. Maybe I need to hear his book read by someone whose manner of speaking inexplicably sets my teeth on edge, like Olympia Dukakis.

Lately I've been listening to a YouTube channel of Dagoth Ur reading various short stories, mainly HP Lovecraft stories. It's part of a trend I've suddenly discovered of Dagoth Ur parody YouTubers making content such as tier lists and general commentary in the guise of Dagoth Ur. Dagoth Ur, in case you've never heard of him--and he is very obscure at this point--is the villain of the 2002 Elder Scrolls game Morrowind--the predecessor of Oblivion and Skyrim. I doubt Morrowind gets many new players these days and even people who played it twenty years ago might not rank Dagoth Ur as among its most memorable elements as he only appears briefly in the game. But he did have a distinctive voice. I remember my friend, Tim, and I used to like to imitate it. Apparently we weren't alone.

Listening to him read Lovecraft, though, I started to unironically enjoy it.

Back to the Dungeons

Twenty-six years after I last played it, I played Dungeons and Dragons again, two days ago.

At the Japanese junior high school I work at, a couple second year students (14 years old) are native English speakers--one has a parent from Australia and the other has a parent from Canada. The half Canadian student is a big fan of Stranger Things, a show that, oddly, is mostly unknown in the Japanese schools I've worked at. When I asked if she'd be interested in trying out Dungeons and Dragons like the characters on the show, she jumped at the idea. I could tell she wanted the experience of a group of friends like the one on the show and I sure wanted to make it happen.

I told her to ask around for students who might be interested in joining. The other native English speaker wasn't interested but the half-Canadian's best friend, a Japanese student, was interested. I announced the game in a couple of classes and got one more interested student, another girl. I recruited two boys from the English club so we ended up with three girls and two boys, all second year students except one of the boys, who's a first year student.

I ordered dice and the latest editions of the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide off Amazon, English editions both. Japanese versions are being released only later this month, though the older, "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons", was released in Japan years ago. I discovered the tabletop RPG Call of Cthulhu, based on the HP Lovecraft mythos, is widely available in Japan and is displayed prominently at the bookstore in my nearby mall. Which explains why the students recognised the big octopus headed monster I was doodling on the chalkboard one day. One of them was surprised when I told her it was created by an American writer. Whatever the quality of the tabletop RPG, it is nice to know Lovecraft's monsters and mythos are well known while his status as a political football in the US is meaningless.

Anyway, since Dragonlance is what I know, and my copy of The Art of Dragonlance managed to migrate to Japan with me, I decided to use the classic Dragonlance campaign. This meant I also had some ready-made characters if making characters proved to be too difficult or time-consuming for the students, assuming I could convert them to the new rules without any trouble. And generally speaking, I found the new rules to be simpler. I remember how long it took me to understand THAC0. Now THAC0 has been replaced by an attack roll modified by a relevant ability score (strength for melee weapons, etc.) and a proficiency score. I'm not sure if it's functionally simpler but it's easier to understand.

The artwork in the new Dungeons and Dragons books is pretty sad compared to the beautiful stuff in the old Dragonlance material.

Everything looks like it was hastily coloured with a graphics programme algorithm. Gone are the meticulous oil and acrylic paintings by the likes of Larry Elmore and Clyde Caldwell.

Which made me glad I was using old Dragonlance material.

I managed to get a classroom with a big TV I could hook my laptop to, which was helpful for visual aids, and I also used a playlist of fantasy movie soundtrack selections (from Conan the Barbarian, Willow, and The Thief of Bagdad, among others).

We ended up meeting for a total of two sessions. The students all have club activities and, in the wintertime, they all have to leave school at 4:45pm (whenever I tell students I went home at 2pm in junior high school, I'm met with astonished incredulity). So we could only meet on Thursdays, the only day none of the five students had club activities, and only for about an hour. I spent the whole first session explaining what Dungeons and Dragons is and how to make characters. We were still doing ability rolls when we ran out of time.

So before the second session, I made sure to have all the Dragonlance characters converted and distributed print-outs. Even so, most of the students seemed to be overwhelmed and opted not to come back. So for the second session, I had only the half-Canadian and the first year student boy. He's a real champ, that one. In the English club, I have them all practising sections of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and he has the section when Santa says, "On Dancer, on Dasher" etc. Every time he does it he tries to shout it louder and louder. He records himself on his Chromebook which he takes out into the hall to practice. Even so, everyone can hear him from across the school.

I gave him Caramon Majere because he wanted to use a human Fighter. Among the changes he wanted to make was to have him be 10,000 meters tall (converting everything to metric was another headache). When I had the two of them fighting a group of goblins and I asked what he wanted to do, he said he wanted to beat them all. It took some time to bring him down to earth but, once I did, he really got into it, running at the lead goblin with a spear. The half-Canadian student, meanwhile, managed to create a character I helped her with by rolling most of her stats. She wanted to use a spellcaster but chose mostly non-offensive spells. Even so, she managed to kill a goblin with her dagger (I had them both starting at Level 8). At the end of the second session, I was pretty happy, and now the first year student is asking for more. It's a shame next week is taken up by testing and my last day at this school is the 19th. Hopefully, the two of them will find a good way to feed this RP beast I helped them create.

Yule Approacheth

On the train lately, I've been reading MR James stories but I mixed it up a little bit a few days ago and read HP Lovecraft's "The Festival" again. I'd totally forgotten it's a Christmas story.

As the road wound down the seaward slope I listened for the merry sounds of a village at evening, but did not hear them. Then I thought of the season, and felt that these old Puritan folk might well have Christmas customs strange to me, and full of silent hearthside prayer. So after that I did not listen for merriment or look for wayfarers, but kept on down past the hushed lighted farmhouses and shadowy stone walls to where the signs of ancient shops and sea-taverns creaked in the salt breeze, and the grotesque knockers of pillared doorways glistened along deserted, unpaved lanes in the light of little, curtained windows.

This is one of several stories, most famously The Shadow Over Innsmouth, in which the horror is intimately related to the narrator. Revelations of his own heritage slowly increase his anxiety and give meaning to his actions beyond those directly ascribed by the narrator.

As I hung back, the old man produced his stylus and tablet and wrote that he was the true deputy of my fathers who had founded the Yule worship in this ancient place; that it had been decreed I should come back, and that the most secret mysteries were yet to be performed. He wrote this in a very ancient hand, and when I still hesitated he pulled from his loose robe a seal ring and a watch, both with my family arms, to prove that he was what he said. But it was a hideous proof, because I knew from old papers that that watch had been buried with my great-great-great-great-grandfather in 1698.

He hangs back, yes, but what drew him this far? The real horror is unstated, that he may not be in control of himself, or he may not understand his own motives and essential nature. It's a tormenting, existential problem.

I suppose the story would be a good example to present to someone who wants to know why HP Lovecraft is considered great. The simultaneous love and fear he evidently felt for old New England is endlessly compelling.

. . . endless labyrinths of steep, narrow, crooked streets, and dizzy church-crowned central peak that time durst not touch; ceaseless mazes of colonial houses piled and scattered at all angles and levels like a child’s disordered blocks; antiquity hovering on grey wings over winter-whitened gables and gambrel roofs; fanlights and small-paned windows one by one gleaming out in the cold dusk to join Orion and the archaic stars. And against the rotting wharves the sea pounded; the secretive, immemorial sea out of which the people had come in the elder time.

I get that feeling often where I live now in Nara, Japan. There's no shortage of old buildings around here, some hundreds of years old, "scattered at all angles". I don't quite get the same impression of malevolence that comes through in the impressions in Lovecraft's fiction. I haven't been everywhere in Japan, so there may well be such places, but mostly the places in Japan feel sleepy and sedate, a contrast to the always hustling and caffeinated people. I've been thinking lately of how much this place will change once the diminishing population and economy will finally loosen immigration policies. When I came to Japan, I felt happy to be leaving a dying U.S. to come to a place resting on a more solid foundation. Yet, even then I suspected my perception wasn't accurate and now I can see how this place is dying, too. I think a lot about the tragedy of Japan's weak English education system, how necessary the language will probably be to these kids who are dissecting English grammar like frogs in a science lab; a weird, alien curiosity. To-morrow that frog will be Cthulhu.

Green, Glowing, and Alive

Happy Halloween, everyone. Though, of course, I already had my Halloween yesterday here in Japan. What good luck it fell on a weekend this year. I spent the day watching horror movies and television, watching some things I hadn't seen before and revisiting some others. Nearly all of my DVDs and blu-rays are back in the U.S. but two DVDs and two blu-rays, randomly stashed in boxes of books, found their way here to me in Japan. One of the DVDs was my big, two disk special edition of 1985's Re-Animator, still complete with the syringe highlighter pen.

From this you might be led to assume I'm a massive fan of the film. Actually, I came upon the box set at Cosco fourteen years ago for around ten dollars and just thought it was a nice little deal. I do like the movie.

Based very loosely on H.P. Lovecraft's Herbert West--Reanimator, the film takes the great author's Frankenstein pastiche and makes it into something Pauline Kael compared to Luis Bunuel. I might argue it's closer to William S. Burroughs than Bunuel or Lovecraft except the libido infusing the grotesque action has a more youthful blush than Burroughs'.

Certainly all that sex wasn't in Lovecraft. Lovecraft's story doesn't even have the alien horror sexuality that bubbles up in many of his more famous works. Stuart Gordon's film, meanwhile, climaxes in a free-for-all of naked, mutilated, re-animated corpses, one of whom was a headless megalomaniac.

Gordon frames Herbert West like a hero, giving him some charged close-ups with key lines punctuated by beats on the score early in the film. But he's an anit-hero WHICH DOES NOT MEAN HE'S A ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES "DARK" HERO. It irritates me how many people misuse the word "anti-hero" now. Herbert West is an anti-hero because he's positioned like a hero in the plot but he's a straight up murderer out for his own interests.

The film's version is much further gone than Lovecraft's is for most of the story. Film West is already murdering people and cats as part of his effort to find a way to make people immortal. It's pretty credible, if you think of it; how many political hard-liners promise salvation for humanity at the other end of massacres, massacres that somehow never seem to be final?

There's not really a moral centre to the film. Dan is presented that way, sort of, but Bruce Abbott's performance is so weak he renders the character practically invisible.

Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, meanwhile, knocks it out of the park with every breath. It's stunning how good he is in this. Choices for his line deliveries are so weird yet credible. He never projects a corny duplicity when he tells an obvious lie. When he tells Dan he found his cat dead, there's no projected wink for the audience. He's really trying to lie. Just as credible is the passion he can't subdue when talking about his work. Here is a man with a single focus dominating everything. He's the only one not in love with Megan.

Barbara Crampton's performance isn't much better than Bruce Abbott's but you have to admire how game she was for the nudity and violence. We need more Barbara Cramptons in the movie industry.

David Gale, as the film's worse to West's bad, is an unsung asset to this film. That leer from his decapitated head when Megan's naked on the table next to him is worthy of Lon Chaney.

Cat of the Mind

Pictured above is one of my roommates. I was reminded of her while reading "Ancient Sorceries" (1908) by Algernon Blackwood, one of the stories included in H.P. Lovecraft Selects, a compilation of tales drawn from Lovecraft's essay on horror fiction. It has a lot to do with cats, with a town seemingly populated by witches who can take the form of cats, and few works of prose have so vividly conveyed an essence of catness before any actual cats even show up.

The inn, a rambling ancient house, the atmosphere of the old coaching days still about it, apparently did not welcome him too warmly. He felt he was only tolerated, he said. But it was cheap and comfortable, and the delicious cup of afternoon tea he ordered at once made him feel reallyvery pleased with himself for leaving the train inthis bold, original way. For to him it had seemed bold and original. He felt something of a dog. His room, too, soothed him with its dark panelling and low irregular ceiling, and the long sloping passage that led to it seemed the natural pathway to a real Chamber of Sleep—a little dim cubby hole out of the world where noise could not enter. It looked upon the courtyard at the back. It was all very charming, and made him think of himself as dressed in very soft velvet somehow, and the floors seemed padded, the walls provided with cushions. The sounds of the streets could not penetrate there. It was an atmosphere of absolute rest thatsurrounded him.

Lovecraft mentions it as the best of Blackwood's John Silence stories, Silence being a physician detective a bit of the Sherlock Holmes type, though Lovecraft spends a lot more time talking about "The Willows" and other Blackwood stories. Still, it's not hard to imagine "Ancient Sorceries" had some influence on Lovecraft's stories about Ulthar, the town in his Dreamlands where cats are revered. I'd also bet it was a big influence on Val Lewton's Cat People, especially in how the narrative begins to focus on a single young woman who seduces the protagonist.

She moved wonderfully, with sinuous grace, like a young panther, and her approach filled him with such delicious bewilderment that he was utterly unable to tell at first what her face was like, or discover what it was about the whole presentment of the creature that filled him anew with trepidation and delight.

I love that detail about not being able to see her face. Much of the story is spent on the general atmosphere and character of the town before the girl is introduced. Blackwood so wonderfully communicates the sense of falling under a spell, of simultaneous fear and pleasure. The story is one of the most wonderful I've read for simply sinking into. There's also a great psychological element to it as the protagonist--not Silence but a nervous man who tells the story to him--attributes much of the dread and longing he feels to something inside him, to a fearful possibility of acknowledging something fundamental about his own nature. The traditional interpretation of this would be to say that the protagonist, Vezin, is struggling with repressed homosexuality, which is fair. Especially insofar as homosexuality at the time brought with it the sense of so much danger and uncertainty. But for not being explicitly about homosexuality, the story allows us to experience this sense as something that still has, and likely always will, have currency. We are still dreadfully mysterious to ourselves.

The Lands of Sand and Cats

The first Sirenia Digest of the new year is one of the best I've ever read. Caitlin R. Kiernan's new story included in the Digest, "Seven Dreams", is another vehicle for dialogues but the unnamed narrator's communication with different dream characters in different dream scenarios takes on an extraordinary sense of personae eternally bound together and in conflict in ways both subtle and clear.

The story is also set in H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands and the narrator shifts between a dialogue with a woman named Sarah in Ulthar and a dialogue with a mysterious girl with whom the narrator's trudging through a sandstorm. Both Sarah and the girl talk about the other in ways that suggest the other is a dream while also insisting on the importance of dreams. Each one, in a sense, delegitimises the other while also focusing on her in a way that suggests extreme importance. There are other shifts in shape and persona once the narrator and the girl reach Dylath-leen that bring the story to other fascinating, lovely heights. I felt the tale crystallises some preoccupations evident in earlier Sirenia Digests. A really nice piece of work.

Too Natural

Wouldn't life be better if we were all closer to nature? Just don't get too close like Frank Halton in E.F. Benson's 1912 short story "The Man Who Went Too Far". Using robust and beautiful language, Benson creates a sense of heady, rapturous natural beauty which has a nicely subtle, creepy effect that pays off nicely.

H.P. Lovecraft, in his essay on supernatural horror, wrote, "'The Man Who Went Too Far' breathes whisperingly of a house at the edge of a dark wood, and of Pan’s hoof-mark on the breast of a dead man." Which sounds pretty ominous but the story begins with language that recalls something more like an exuberant pastoral poem.

Winds whisper in the birches, and sigh among the firs; bees are busy with their redolent labour among the heather, a myriad birds chirp in the green temples of the forest trees, and the voice of the river prattling over stony places, bubbling into pools, chuckling and gulping round corners, gives you the sense that many presences and companions are near at hand.

This is part of a grand set up, a florid description that takes up a few paragraphs before the characters are introduced and the story begins. A man named Darcy visits his wealthy friend, Frank. The 35 year-old Frank looks remarkably young and happy and throughout the story he explains to Darcy how it has to do with an extraordinary communion he's achieved with nature. He describes it as "the deliberate and unswerving pursuit of joy," his theory being that animals experience a sort of primal joy unknown to humans. There are some subtle rules to it and the story describes how Frank loves the sight of a happy old woman but abhors the sight of an injured child. He talks about some great, final secret yet to be revealed to him and Darcy suggests that the secret might be that suffering is ultimately behind everything, since that's a component seen in abundance in nature but seems peculiarly absent from Frank's experiences so far.

It all reminded me a bit of how 19th century Gothic writers were reacting to the love and reverence for nature exhibited by the Romantics and the Transcendentalists. Like Moby Dick demonstrated the natural world isn't all Leaves of Grass.

The character of Pan appears in the end, perhaps showing the influence of Arthur Machen but "The Man Who Went Too Far" is a nice piece of horror in its own right.

Featured above: The Pilgrim in the Garden by Edward Burne-Jones.

An Anomalous Room

One of the stories included in H.P. Lovecraft Selects which Lovecraft did not talk about in his essay on supernatural horror is "The Southwest Chamber" by Mary E. Wilkins. He does talk about Wilkins, though, saying that her collection of stories, The Wind in the Rose-Bush, "contains a number of noteworthy achievements." But he singles out the story "The Shadows on the Wall", not "The Southwest Chamber". I can only guess why the editors of H.P. Lovecraft Selects chose one over the other but "The Southwest Chamber" is a nice allegory of generational psychological influence in a family.

A pair of sisters, Amanda and Sophia, inherit a large house which they decide to let to boarders. Their aunt has recently died in the southwest chamber and the story begins as they're making it ready for a new boarder, a school teacher named Louisa Stark who absolutely does not believe in the supernatural. Over the course of the story, four people try to sleep through the night in the room--each enters with very firm convictions on the non-existence of ghosts, and each is forced to admit they're wrong. Stark goes in believing only in rational, empirical evidence.

She was more credulous as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in her whole life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not so much horror and terror of the supernatural as of her own self. The weakness of belief in the supernatural was nearly impossible for this strong nature. She could more easily believe in her own failing powers.

"I don't know but I'm going to be like Aunt Marcia," she said to herself, and her fat face took on a long rigidity of fear.

It's the peculiar response exhibited by each subject to the haunted room that makes the story fascinating, disturbing, and amusing. Is Louisa's belief in her own madness really no worse than belief in ghosts?

More in the amusing category is the next wouldbe lodger, the widow Elvira Simmons, who figures even ghosts would be preferable to her previous room which gets too hot in the summer. The evidence of haunting that succeeds in terrifying her is as appropriately trivial.

The final person to attempt sleeping in the room connects the story back to psychological compulsions connected with physical inheritance. Sophia starts finding herself thinking the thoughts of her aunt, a sort of haunting many people might well attest to having experienced.

I find myself intrigued by the idea that a story like this might have influenced Lovecraft. The heart of the story is certainly very different than what he normally produced though arguably The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is just as much about an involuntary psychological inheritance.

Twitter Sonnet #1301

Confusion tilts against a stubborn glass.
In paying eyes the creature took the house.
In never keeps the food sustains a class.
A finished meal disturbs the picky mouse.
In carrot grids the scaling tip reverts.
A measured book includes the sparser rules.
To trucks the talking car at times reverts.
The cherry sword in water slowly cools.
The Shire reels in wavy lines of mint.
Important cards disrupt the science test.
Computer blues prorogue the parliament.
Superbly done is something like the best.
In metal pants the clanging knee offends.
On sturdy trunks the mammal long depends.

Paws and Rooms

I've lately found myself often in coffee shops or parks between jobs so I've had plenty of time to read. Mainly still from H.P. Lovecraft Selects and I've recently read two more stories from the compilation; "The Red Room" by H.G. Wells and "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs. The latter is of course the more famous story but I also consider it to be much more effective, as much as I did like "The Red Room".

"The Red Room" is another example, like "The Dead Valley", of accomplishing a lot with very little, of creating the sensation of horror from a few subtle suggestions. A man agrees to stay in a haunted room and his courage is shaken by minor but truly inexplicable occurrences. Simply the mental image conjured by a "red room" accomplishes a lot. I found myself thinking of the interiors from Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers.

I don't think I'd ever read "The Monkey's Paw". Though it's quite possible I did but forgot. Sometimes when I look through my blog entries from fifteen years ago I discover even good movies or stories I'd forgotten all about having seen or read. In any case, I was certainly familiar with the concept even before the first airing of The Simpsons episode that parodied it in 1991. I was pleased by the actual story's psychological subtlety, the tormenting ambiguity about the guilt the main character bears for the death that resulted from his use of the paw--and the more fascinatingly murky subject of whether it was a good idea to resurrect the dead man.

The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. "He has been dead ten days, and besides he - I would not tell you else, but - I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?"

The knocking at the door at the end of the story reminded me a bit of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body" which concludes with Buffy's sister nearly resurrecting their dead mother. The end of "The Monkey's Paw" is better, though, because it's not as clear that the resurrected person is a zombie or just plain and simply alive again. The man and wife in the story, assuming the wife doesn't get her hands on the paw, will always have that wedge between them because one expected a zombie and the other expected their normal, happy, living son. There will always be the unanswered question and the husband will always have to stand by a position that can never be proved. That's one sinister paw.

A Wrong Route

Horror exists in the feelings inspired by strange and threatening things, something H.P. Lovecraft demonstrated well in many stories where the precise threat remained ambiguously defined. "The Dead Valley", a story by the architect Ralph Adams Cram, is commended by Lovecraft in his essay on horror fiction in which he says Cram "achieves a memorably potent degree of vague regional horror through subtleties of atmosphere and description." An effective tale about a place in the forest that inexplicably saps the life out of anything that enters it, it's hard to imagine it wasn't an influence on "The Colour Out of Space".

The story has a great contrast in tone. The beginning is almost disconcertingly innocent, a description of two affectionate friends who go together to buy a puppy because the thing is irresistibly cute.

He was a round, woolly puppy, so funny that Nils and I sat down on the ground and laughed at him, until he came and played with us in so jolly a way that we felt that there was only one really desirable thing in life, and that was the little dog of the old man from across the hills. But alas! we had not half money enough wherewith to buy him . . .

When the two have the money to pay for the animal, the narrator describes idly looking at their journey as a dangerous adventure despite the destination not being especially distant. This adds the impression of cruelty and excessive punishment for youthful folly when something starts to go wrong and no-one can say why. Here's a kind of terribly beautiful paragraph:

And the air was stagnant,—dead. The atmosphere seemed to lie upon the body like the weight of sea on a diver who has ventured too far into its awful depths. What we usually call silence seems so only in relation to the din of ordinary experience. This was silence in the absolute, and it crushed the mind while it intensified the senses, bringing down the awful weight of inextinguishable fear

The sense of awesome death pervades the strange encounter and it's not hard to believe the story was written by a man who designed gothic revival architecture.

Twitter Sonnet #1290

A verdict held beneath a desert sun.
A gold reflective watch recounts the time.
The racing dust begins a daily run.
The furtive wind commenced a morning rhyme.
Reluctant teas inform the tongue of taste.
Aspired hats assemble bands and brims.
Wasabi comes in tubes of mushy paste.
The flashy car had wheels with glowing rims.
An elf is pressed to lee of bluer moons.
A sailing cup appeared beyond the flow.
A desp'rate word traversed the pallid dunes.
In time the tired men could only row.
Distracted clocks misplace a hand or two.
A silver second swipes a golden clue.

Above painting by Caspar David Friedrich

That Confounded Mummy

It's hard to overstate the inconvenience of a neighbour who resurrects an ancient mummy to commit serial murders. This is the predicament in which the protagonist of Arthur Conan Doyle's "Lot No. 249" finds himself, another story from H.P. Lovecraft Selects. Longer than most of the other stories in the collection, it's a comfortable read with characters who are a little more amusing and idiosyncratic than anyone might expect who's familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle's work only through Sherlock Holmes. "Lot No. 249" is not the first story about a reanimated mummy but it is apparently the first one about such a mummy killing people.

The protagonist of "Lot No. 249", Ambercrombie Smith, is in some ways like Holmes, a bachelor described as having remarkable intelligence and insight, though described as not quite a genius.

Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin, and this coming examination would place him finally as a member of his profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut, somewhat hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in the end overtop a more showy genius.

Like Conan Doyle, he's a medical man, a man with some rough, edifying field experience under his belt before he went to college to get a degree to make his talents official in the eyes of the rest of the world. He has a Watson of sorts named Hasties and it's a pleasure seeing Conan Doyle indulge in some colloquial college boy lingo in conversations between the two.

"Have some whisky," said Abercrombie Smith at last between two cloudbursts. "Scotch in the jug and Irish in the bottle."

"No, thanks. I'm in for the sculls. I don't liquor when I'm training. How about you?"

"I'm reading hard. I think it best to leave it alone."

Hastie nodded, and they relapsed into a contented silence.

"By the way, Smith," asked Hastie, presently, "have you made the acquaintance of either of the fellows on your stair yet?"

"Just a nod when we pass. Nothing more."

"Hum! I should be inclined to let it stand at that. I know something of them both. Not much, but as much as I want. I don't think I should take them to my bosom if I were you. Not that there's much amiss with Monkhouse Lee."

"Meaning the thin one?"

The trouble starts when Smith is compelled to rush downstairs to aid his unconscious neighbour on the storey beneath his own flat. There's a mummy in the room but its ability to walk about on its own isn't revealed yet. Conan Doyle nicely chooses to reveal it slowly, primarily through the deductions of Smith instead of any description of the mummy in action that couldn't conceivably be interpreted as something else by an observer. So a lot of the story compels the reader's imagination to work out surrogate illumination. It works very well.

The Woods of Blood and Words

In his essay on horror fiction, H.P. Lovecraft devotes many words to Ambrose Bierce. One of those words are to call him "uneven" but mostly Lovecraft heaps praise on Bierce. The Ambrose Bierce story included in H.P. Lovecraft Selects is "The Death of Halpin Frayser", another story which seems to bleed out from the edges of its simple premise. "Bleed" definitely being the operative word for this fascinating, gory, dreamlike tale.

The Halpin Frayser of the title is a young man from Tennessee who moves to California, a weird point of identification for me because I was born in Tennessee and moved to California as a child. Halpin moved as an adult, though, after a youth spent with a mother with whom he shared a peculiar attachment.

In these two romantic natures was manifest in a signal way that neglected phenomenon, the dominance of the sexual element in all the relations of life, strengthening, softening, and beautifying even those of consanguinity. The two were nearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their manners were not infrequently mistaken for lovers.

But the story begins with Halpin wandering in the woods of Napa, beholding terrible and strange visions of blood that culminate in a walking corpse.

It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped and plunged his hand into it. It stained his fingers; it was blood! Blood, he then observed, was about him everywhere.

All this actually ties into a murder mystery but Bierce avoids any attempt at contriving a plot, instead intriguingly leaving us with significant points, arranged seemingly at random but with a really great sense of dreamlike significance. It's a fascinating and disturbing tale and it's impossible for the reader not to compulsively allow his or her imagination to wander through disturbing paths in scrutinising it.

Twitter Sonnet #1297

Committed sports combine to make a box.
A timer clicked to one before the twelve.
A siding shed informs as manner talks.
In deeper grapes the seedless slowly delve.
An endless row of boards create the track.
As keys became the nails to hold the dirt.
A slowly drifting car was coming back.
Completed trains again redress the hurt.
A crispy bag contained forgotten salt.
Desired space approached the drying moon.
As water pulled the thick and soupy malt.
As travel took the driver further soon.
A dirty table holds the only drink.
The hope of scones began to sink.

Chasing the Werewolf

The second of two stories called "The Were-Wolf" in H.P. Lovecraft Selects is by Clemence Housman from 1896. Housman uses the werewolf as a very natural and effective inspiration for a story about identity.

In his essay on horror fiction, from whence the collection of stories is drawn, Lovecraft wrote, "Clemence Housman, in the brief novelette “The Were-wolf”, attains a high degree of gruesome tension and achieves to some extent the atmosphere of authentic folklore." This last part is certainly true from the beginning which is the description of a community by fireside from the point of view of a child. Already the tale provides an example of a human behaving as an animal when the boy is described as preferring to crawl on all fours. But the story doesn't centre on him, instead focusing on a pair of mighty brothers--Sweyn, whose prowess in almost everything is unsurpassed, and Christian, who alone can run faster than Sweyn.

The werewolf is a woman in white fur who charms everyone but Christian. I was surprised how similar this wolf woman was to the one in Marryatt's story--another very beautiful woman in white fur.

The woman being taken as a benevolent wonder by everyone else in the community is mirrored by growing distrust in Christian on the part of his brother. If the name "Christian" makes you think the story's going in the direction of a fairly obvious Christian allegory, I'm afraid you'd be right. But before Housman gets to that point she describes a fascinating chase scene when the woman, White Fell, tests Christian's famous speed. They seem to run through snow and woods for several nights and Christian starts to get delirious;

He grew bewildered, uncertain of his own identity, doubting of his own true form. He could not be really a man, no more than that running Thing was really a woman; his real form was only hidden under embodiment of a man, but what it was he did not know. And Sweyn's real form he did not know. Sweyn lay fallen at his feet, where he had struck him down—his own brother—he: he stumbled over him, and had to overleap him and race harder because she who had kissed Sweyn leapt so fast. "Sweyn, Sweyn, O Sweyn!"

This does have the flavour of folklore though with maybe too much of an analytic edge. And with descriptions of crushed limbs and blood it's about as gruesome as Lovecraft said, too.

Ghostly Conveyance

Despite the Halloween season being over, I've kept up reading H.P. Lovecraft Selects, a collection of stories drawn from Lovecraft's famous essay on supernatural horror. To-day I read Rudyard Kipling's "The Phantom 'Rickshaw". Lovecraft describes Kipling as approaching greatness despite "omnipresent mannerisms". These may be the pervasive bits of local colour Kipling is famous for and it is a great and subtle addition to the story of a man seeing his dead lover stalking him in a 'rickshaw. That one element of strangeness is made the more striking for the abundant evidence of the author's casual familiarity with the reality of the place.

This piece of window dressing even comes to the fore as the story's narrator tries to use it as a tool to keep himself sane;

Two or three times I found myself saying to myself almost aloud: “I’m Jack Pansay on leave at Simla—at Simla! Everyday, ordinary Simla. I mustn’t forget that—I mustn’t forget that.” Then I would try to recollect some of the gossip I had heard at the Club: the prices of So-and-So’s horses—anything, in fact, that related to the workaday Anglo-Indian world I knew so well. I even repeated the multiplication-table rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking leave of my senses.

As for the story itself, the poetic justice of a man undone by the ghost of a woman he so cruelly spurned isn't as satisfying as it is horrific. There's a surface of a basic, functioning morality--man does wrong, man gets punished--but the strangeness of it against the authenticity of the location emphasises a dreamlike quality in the proceedings. She may indeed be a manifestation of the narrator's conscious or self-loathing. It's an effective story at any rate.

Things the River May Conceal

Sometimes less really is more. This is demonstrated by the juxtaposition of two stories in H.P. Lovecraft Selects, the collection of stories drawn from Lovecraft's famous essay on supernatural horror. "The Waters of Death" by Erckmann-Chatrian and "On the River" by Guy de Maupassant are both stories about death in water but while the former involves numerous corpses and eventually a giant spider and pyrotechnics, the latter story involves little more than one man's almost inexplicably troubled night alone, stuck in his boat on the Seine.

Often horror fiction achieves effect by crafting a train of thought. Like the suggestion planted by the discussion of terrible things at the beginning of "What Was It?" or the protagonist's feelings of isolation and displacement in Carnival of Souls. Many good horror writers have realised the dread of the anticipated horror is more effective than the completely random appearance of a new horror. Still, leading up to the appearance of a giant spider crab with the characters in "Waters of Death" talking about how much they're afraid of spider crabs may have been a bit too on the nose. In that essay on horror, Lovecraft has only this to say about that particular story:

“The Owl’s Ear” and “The Waters of Death” are full of engulfing darkness and mystery, the latter embodying the familiar overgrown-spider theme so frequently employed by weird fictionists.

He has a lot more to say about Guy de Maupassant and he has a pretty persuasive idea of precisely what makes "On the River" so eerie and good:

The horror-tales of the powerful and cynical Guy de Maupassant, written as his final madness gradually overtook him, present individualities of their own; being rather the morbid outpourings of a realistic mind in a pathological state than the healthy imaginative products of a vision naturally disposed toward phantasy and sensitive to the normal illusions of the unseen. Nevertheless they are of the keenest interest and poignancy; suggesting with marvellous force the imminence of nameless terrors, and the relentless dogging of an ill-starred individual by hideous and menacing representatives of the outer blackness.

Maupassant suffered from the effects of syphillis towards the end of his life and this seems to explain more than anything else how he could conceive of such an idea as "On the River". It's a story in which really very little happens--a man takes his boat out on the river, decides to relax in one peaceful spot, drops anchor, and then is forced to remain in the spot a while after his anchor gets stuck.

The fog which, two hours before, had floated on the water, had gradually cleared off and massed on the banks, leaving the river absolutely clear; while it formed on either bank an uninterrupted wall six or seven metres high, which shone in the moonlight with the dazzling brilliance of snow. One saw nothing but the river gleaming with light between these two white mountains; and high above my head sailed the great full moon, in the midst of a bluish, milky sky.

There's nothing especially sinister in this or in the sounds of frogs perceived by the narrator. Though I would think having to spend the night stuck in a boat like that, with no shelter, certainly might be uncomfortable. When the hint of supernatural finally does come, it's so subtle that it's almost merely a tease. The story ends so abruptly on that note that the reader is compelled to second guess the assumption of supernatural. Maybe the river at night is terror enough, though the idea that throughout the ordeal something more lurked beyond the edges of perception does enhance the story considerably, in my opinion.

Twitter Sonnet #1292

Entire courts of ghastly runts arrive.
A purple bat asserts the right to rule.
No worser gang could twisted hand contrive.
A cleaner cleaver's never half so cruel.
A walking clock discovers hands and feet.
The velvet curtains clasp a hiding man.
Between the walls a spirit hid the meat.
Behind the house a creature swiftly ran.
Adrift between the rivers, floods arise.
A shaking storm disrupts the poison bog.
Exquisite hands decay in life's reprise.
As yellow eyes observe along the log.
An anchor caught where giant spiders lurk.
A goblin pair retreat beneath the murk.

A Good Question

We all have a certain set of ideas about how ghosts, and ghost stories, are supposed to behave, whether it's quiet apparitions or restless and angry souls. Fitz James O'Brien's 1859 short story, "What Was It? A Mystery", is effective in how it seems perfectly ordinary and yet absolutely weird. One of the stories collected in H.P. Lovecraft Selects, stories drawn from Lovecraft's essay on horror fiction, it presents what can at best be called a haunting yet really defies any so easy definition.

A boarder at a purportedly haunted house describes being attacked one night in bed by an invisible entity. The being tries to strangle him until the narrator overpowers it and eventually ties it up with the help of a friend and fellow boarder. Can you do that with a ghost? Not traditionally.

The title of the story certainly reflects accurately the naturally compulsive response to the tale. What was it? There aren't many clues, for the reader or the characters. This, oddly enough, adds an aura of authenticity to the tale--how many strange things in life do have explanations? The story was published the same year as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and I wonder if that's just a coincidence. The description of the entity, once the protagonist has used a plaster of Paris to create a mould, sounds like something between an ape and a man.

It was shaped like a man,—distorted, uncouth, and horrible, but still a man. It was small, not over four feet and some inches in height, and its limbs revealed a muscular development that was unparalleled. Its face surpassed in hideousness anything I had ever seen. Gustave Doré, or Callot, or Tony Johannot, never conceived anything so horrible. There is a face in one of the latter’s illustrations to “Un Voyage où il vous plaira,” which somewhat approaches the countenance of this creature, but does not equal it. It was the physiognomy of what I should have fancied a ghoul to be. It looked as if it was capable of feeding on human flesh.

Maybe it's meant to be a ghost of a human ancestor?

Another possible clue as to the creature's nature is the context. Before the encounter, the protagonist takes opium with a friend and, instead of one of their normal, blissful sessions with the drug, the two find themselves speculating on what might be the most horrible thing one might encounter. Was the creature somehow conjured by this? If not, why does the author spend so much time relating the conversation? The story is marvellously successful at provoking questions. The strangely anti-climactic end to the tale only seems to make it more intriguing.

The Marriageable Lycanthrope

I've loved werewolves since I was a kid so I was looking forward to the two werewolf stories included in H.P. Lovecraft Selects, a collection of influential short horror fiction drawn from an essay Lovecraft wrote. The first werewolf story is "The Were-Wolf" by H.B. Marryatt, taken from a collection of ghost stories published in 1918. There's a nice folk tale quality to the story, it has the motive often found in such tales of warning the reader about subtle ways the Devil might try to trick you.

Set in eastern Europe, the story is told in first person by a narrator speaking of a period from his childhood. His father fled from Transylvania with his three small children after murdering his wife and her lover. I really like how the story begins at this level of instability--the father's already racking up sins but his kids are still dependent on him and have implicit faith in him, even though he beats them. And he ends up not even being the villain, instead it's a mysterious, beautiful woman in white fur who seduces him to become step-mother to the children. It's not hard to see she's the were-wolf referred to by the title.

We all three trembled, we hardly knew why, but we resolved to watch the next night: we did so—and not only on the ensuing night, but on many others, and always at about the same hour, would our mother-in-law rise from her bed, and leave the cottage—and after she was gone, we invariably heard the growl of a wolf under our window, and always saw her, on her return, wash herself before she retired to bed. We observed, also, that she seldom sat down to meals, and that when she did, she appeared to eat with dislike; but when the meat was taken down, to be prepared for dinner, she would often furtively put a raw piece into her mouth.

Like in a lot of great, weird horror fiction, the trouble isn't spotting the monster, the trouble is that the horrible, insurmountable threat becomes undeniable. Their father invited the woman into the house and made a pact with the spirits of the mountains when he married her, pledging even the lives of his children if he betrayed her. The lesson is clear; if someone asks you to invoke demons in your marriage vows, don't do it.

Twitter Sonnet #1291

A hollow engine burned the pumpkin car.
Developed crypts were flipped to sterile stones.
Dejected ghosts could joke when 'long the bar.
The zombie starves 'till humour hits the bones.
Intoning bronze adopts the storied scowl.
Descending lines engrave a ragged face.
In shaded niche the looker goads a howl.
Contorted claws support a stony base.
Extended nights became a greener state.
The brittle leaves have seemed to move themselves.
A weirder glow emerged from 'neath a grate.
A row of eyes replaced the quiet shelves.
Another bowl contains the candy now.
The sugar waves embrace the rotting prow.

Reckless Vows Near Ancient Ears

A few years ago, Barnes and Noble released a collection of stories that H.P. Lovecraft recommended in a famous essay on horror literature. I've been slowly making my way through the collection, mostly in Octobers, and to-day I read "The Venus of Ille", a nice, subtle tale of the supernatural from 1837 by Prosper Merimee. An aristocratic, Parisian archaeologist serves as narrator as he visits a remote village where a local, influential landowner has excavated a peculiar statue of Venus.

It's easy to see the story's influence on Lovecraft from the presence of an object that affects the viewer in profound ways through its shape alone.

But the expression of demoniac irony was perhaps increased by the contrast of the bright silver eyes with the dusky green hue which time had given to the statue. The shining eyes produced a sort of life. I remembered what my guide had said, that those who looked at her were forced to lower their eyes. It was almost true, and I could not prevent a movement of anger to myself when I felt ill at ease before this bronze figure.

The characters have an almost comic vivacity you won't find in Lovecraft, though. The man who discovered the statue is a gregarious fellow who happily invites the narrator to the wedding between his son and a girl who, the narrator infers, is forced into the marriage because of financial woes. The son, Alphonse, proudly shows the narrator the ring he intends to give his bride which the narrator finds gaudy and vulgar. After the wedding there's an extraordinary paragraph where the narrator reflects on what he sees as a horrible, unjust marriage of convenience.

All the scenes of the day passed through my mind. I thought of the young girl, so pure and lovely, abandoned to a drunken brute. What an odious thing a marriage of convenience is! A mayor dons a tri-colored scarf, a priest a stole, and then the most virtuous girl in the world is delivered over to the Minotaur! What can two people who do not love each other find to say at a moment, which two lovers would buy at the price of their lives? Can a woman ever love a man whom she has once seen coarse? First impressions are never effaced, and I am sure M. Alphonse will deserve to be hated.

This bit of psychological insight renders the horrific deed apparently perpetrated by the statue in a provoking light. The troubling juxtaposition between the narrator's thoughts and the terrible event compels the reader either to interpret a connexion or attempt to avoid seeing a connexion. Merimee leaves it unclear. More prominent is the fact that Alphonse had placed that gaudy ring on the statue's finger during a tennis match. Is this the reason for the statue's wrath? Are the two possible motives more related than they seem at first? In the actions taken by the statue there's a wonderful sense of how things may be connected in ways that can't be articulated by human language. It adds to the sense of this statue being a goddess.

Twitter Sonnet #1288

Colliding moons were ripples round the pond.
Another night repeats the muse's song.
In rhyming ode the marvel proves he's fond.
A burning lake affixed the devil throng.
A climbing foot replaced the inch's nose.
A hand for hand adorns the finger help.
A model shows the glue to hold a pose.
A priceless weed was really less than kelp.
Contagious pages spiked the wine and cheese.
Allowance granted late absorbs the cost.
Across the chocolate lake were coffee seas.
In sugar spray's a single sprinkle tossed.
A copper marriage fills the final bed.
A bronze conception woke the nervous dead.

Ghosts of the Bog

Another lovely tale of an ancient, inherited European estate by HP Lovecraft is "The Moon Bog". A very short story written for Saint Patrick's Day, this one is about a man named Denys Barry who inherits an estate in Ireland. Again, the consequences are tragic as contact with the past proves a too strange and horrible experience.

I've been thinking more about the strange conflict between Lovecraft's longing for contact with the past and the horror with which he portrays such contact actually achieved. I don't think this horror is necessarily a comment on the past itself but on the unnatural process of the present coming into contact with the past. Lovecraft uses the phenomenon of ancient bodies discovered in peat bogs to marvellous effect. The improbable preservation of corpses in this way, that nonetheless leaves them hideously altered, certainly stirs the imagination with ideas of the cost of traversing the centuries.

The wide plain, the golden moonlight, the shadowy moving forms, and above all the shrill monotonous piping, produced an effect which almost paralysed me; yet I noted amidst my fear that half of these tireless, mechanical dancers were the labourers whom I had thought asleep, whilst the other half were strange airy beings in white, half indeterminate in nature, but suggesting pale wistful naiads from the haunted fountains of the bog.

At the same time, this description has a strange prettiness to it. I don't remember Lovecraft mentioning naiads anywhere else. Most of the horror in what the narrator beholds can almost be imputed entirely to the narrator himself.

Over the bog was a deluge of flaring light, scarlet and sinister, and pouring from the strange olden ruin on the far islet. The aspect of that ruin I cannot describe—I must have been mad, for it seemed to rise majestic and undecayed, splendid and column-cinctured, the flame-reflecting marble of its entablature piercing the sky like the apex of a temple on a mountain-top.

It's not so much the things described as the fact of the things described, of the incongruity of their presence, that inspires the terror.

Not for the first time, I found myself thinking about Lovecraft's preference for minimal dialogue. The narrator in "Moon Bog" discusses interviewing labourers who experienced bad dreams. Other authors might introduce one labourer and try to paint a picture of his personality to lend a greater sense of credibility. Lovecraft's preference here to keep an academic tone gives a sense of isolation, of someone cornered in the coldness of his own mode of expression. Elsewhere, Lovecraft does invoke colloquial dialogue quite memorably to analyse personality as a specimen of horror, as in "The Picture in the House". That, again, is to show the unnatural quality of a preserved past. I find myself tempted to think there may have been some reflection on himself as someone who longed for the past, that the horror he was portraying was the horror of finding himself so out of step with time in which he lived. I don't think that's something he could have altered even if he wanted to.