“Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.”
(The Dunwich Horror, pg.645)
Welcome back to Our Daily Lovecraft. The end of all things is nigh…
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“Ibid”
The introduction to this story states that it is satire and that “the true focus of the satire, however, is not the folly of ignorant students but the pomposity of academic scholarship.”
Okay?
It is yet another departure from Lovecraft’s usual fare of fantastical dreamery and dark, slimy horror, as “Old Bugs” and “Sweet Ermengarde” were. It’s written like an essay with footnotes and the like, chronicling a Roman by the (shortened) name of Ibid for about two pages before transitioning to his skull’s movements through history for the remaining two, the skull being passed from person to person throughout the ages.
I guess I could comment on that particular part, I suppose the skull section being how bloated and unnecessary academic pieces can get, but I’m here for the fantastical and the horrific, and so I will leave this snippet for others to over-analyze and ponder. (Which, now that I think about it, is kind of ironic.)
While not quite as pervasive as Cthulhu in terms of attachment to Lovecraft’s name, this one is definitely still up there as something you’ll come across when perusing Lovecraftian things. While searching out assorted items for this particular project, in fact, I kept coming across mentions of this story (I’d put it in a solid 3rd place with “At the Mountains of Madness” coming in 2nd) so that eventually, like “The Call of Cthulhu,” I’d started to put some expectation on it. Will I see some true terrors? Will I shiver at the Dunwich Horror when it slumps onto the page?
Not really.
I’ve started to notice a kind of formula with a lot of Lovecraft’s tales, which is something that you can find in most authors when you read all of someone’s work back to back in such a fashion. In this case it’s the concept of someone evil (or occasionally not so evil) using the occult, dark arts, and often a copy of the Necronomicon to call up ghastly creatures or other menaces that must then be put down – and sometimes never are. These last few times forcing the hero(es) to examine the same dark books and magic in order to discover the means of putting down such awfulness. I’ve also noticed that ever since Charles Dexter Ward, Yog-Sothoth is showing up more and more. More than Cthulhu, it seems, which is interesting since it almost seems that, at this point in time, that particular deity is more interesting to Lovecraft than Cthulhu is, yet Cthulhu is the one everyone is always so fixated on.
The surprise to me was actually that the main antagonist, Wilbur Whateley, turned out to not be the Dunwich Horror. Even though it’s made clear that he’s housing something disturbing, I kept thinking that it was just some awful called-upon creature he needed for whatever final purpose he intended. But then things take a bad turn for pretty much everyone and that thing escapes and it is the Dunwich Horror. Understandably so. The descriptions Lovecraft gives both Wilbur (once his true form is revealed) and the horror itself are pretty wild, and plugging them into search engines will yield some freaky artist results.
The additional little twist near the end was unexpected, but what I appreciated more was when the villagers at Dunwich wanted to know just what the hell they’d witnessed and the professors that had taken care of the matter actually explained it to them.
I do think that, up to this point, this is the longest any eldritch-sort of creature has lingered on our particular plane of existence. I’ve also decided that Arkham Asylum in the DC universe is aptly named. Even if it’s not named after the Arkham in Lovecraft’s universe, there sure is a lot of really weird shit that happens within traveling distance of that place. No thank you.
This tale was a good one, albeit it has a few issues. It’s fun that Lovecraft utilized the newly discovered Pluto in this piece; the alien creatures that are currently moseying around in Vermont’s backwoods are from Pluto, which they call Yuggoth.
The confusing bit (at least to me) for this story is that initially it seems as though the aliens are just mining for something that they can’t get back home (or elsewhere, despite their later announced ability to go literally anywhere) and don’t bother anyone. Even Akeley, the gentleman writing to our main character and who essentially drags him deeper into the story, tells him that they won’t hurt anyone as long as they’re left alone, are only afraid of people finding them out and subsequently wiping them out, and have no interest in conquering earth. Akeley even tells the good professor to let the matter of these creatures go (as mentions of them got into various papers due to a flood that washed some of their bodies downriver) so that publicity subsides.
Good plan – except Akeley spurs Wilmarth, the first person narrator of this tale, into action. And Akeley continues to prod things into more action. Even in his own words he says that the aliens should be left alone, but instead keeps correspondence with Wilmarth and tells him everything that’s going on and tries to send him stuff he’s figured out. Look, if you know the aliens don’t like that, don’t do it. Maybe you’d survive then. And when the aliens do get all angry about it to the point that they’re constantly besieging your house, killing well over 11 dogs and have human accomplices who shoot up your house, it’s time to leave. That’s a bit that annoyed me. Akeley refused to leave primarily because that was the home of generations of his family before him and the idea of leaving bummed him out. Understandable, but I’m pretty sure any sensible human being would realize that aliens constantly attacking your home is a quality reason to get the hell out of there. So for a large chunk of the story I couldn’t help but feel that Akeley was an idiot.
There was also a time when I felt Wilmarth was pretty dumb as well. He continuously gets letters from Akeley which increase in panic – until one day he gets one in which Akeley basically says, “Never mind, everything is cool and the aliens and I are pals now. You should totally come visit and hey, you know all that super important stuff I sent to you? You should bring ALL of it back to me. Oh, and don’t tell anyone where you’re doing or what you’re doing.” Wilmarth thinks this is kind of weird, but then eventually just shrugs his shoulders and thinks, “Seems legit,” and does exactly what Akeley asks. Despite having gotten a fake telegraph from someone pretending to be Akeley maybe a week beforehand, and both of them having letters to each other go missing. But no, I’m sure everything is fine.
The aliens themselves are also confusing. Because of Akeley’s first letter which states that they keep to themselves and do their own thing unless people start sussing them out, they seem fairly innocuous. And yet there are a lot of things that make them out to be far more sinister; starting primarily with the recording Akeley got of them which references Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep (who is never a nice entity), Azathoth (also not nice), and some newcomer named Shub-Niggurath aka the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. Sounds nice. It’s weird to me that, while there isn’t much wrong (and I use that term loosely) with aliens worshipping these Outer Gods and such entities, the phrase “black goat of the woods” seems like a very human thing and odd that aliens would praise it as such. And given how humans are the ones that, so far outside of the land of dreams, worship these entities, I first wondered – did humans teach these aliens of these entities? Did the aliens then go looking for them in the abyss that is space? Did they find them?
The aliens, before Wilmarth and Akeley’s digging, seemed rather chill. Akeley himself states that after he took a black stone with hieroglyphics from the mountain, everything became different. Maybe just give them the stone again, dude? He also states that the aliens “like to take away men of learning once in a while, to keep informed on the state of things in the human world.” Yet no one ever hears of these people going missing?
I don’t know. I’m on the fence about the true evil-ness of the aliens and feel more like they’re just…aliens. The addition of the elder gods and whatnot felt more like an attempt to make them creepier or otherworldly when being from Pluto is enough, really. Even so, it made for interesting reading, the descriptions of the aliens themselves were intriguing – I like that when Lovecraft goes alien, he goes full alien. None of this humanoid Star Trek stuff. (No offense – I like Star Trek, but it’s pretty egotistical of us to always think aliens are going to look similar to human. It’s also boring.)
Featured image © Nicole Taft
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