“Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä! No, I shall not shoot myself–I cannot be made to shoot myself!”
(The Shadow Over Innsmouth, pg.858)
Welcome back to Our Daily Lovecraft. My mind…it slips from me…
If you’re just joining us, you can start your Lovecraftian journey here!
I think I may have made a mistake in reading so much Lovecraft in such a short time. There are times, so late in the month now, that I feel like my brain is turning to jelly by cramming in this amount of horror and fantasticalness especially given the style that it’s in. But we’re near the finish now, so I can’t stop. I won’t stop. Just like so many of Lovecraft’s narrators who plunge on into darkness and insanity even though they really ought to think about what they’re doing and maybe don’t do it.
Here in Antarctica, as this particular tale is set, geologist William Dyer sets out with a number of fellow professors (everyone coming from the one and only Miskatonic University – where else?), students, and other assistant folk and sled dogs, to do some drilling and various geological and biological research. When one professor Lake of biology discovers something interesting and goes off on a separate direction, he finds something extraordinary. Then the wireless communication goes dark and Dyer is forced to check up on him. His party finds Lake’s party – in pieces. Dogs included. A lot of the specimens – that is, fully formed but frozen creatures – that Lake found are gone. A few of them buried, but not by human hands. Of course Dyer and one of the pilots and graduate assistant, Danforth, decide to sally forth over the giant mountains Lake found, and beyond that they discover a city, which they explore, and then go below the city based upon what they found. Where they find more awfulness.
First off, I’d like to announce that this story, slightly similar to “The Case of Charles Dextard Ward,” is far longer than it needs to be. There is just an excess of description, much of which we’ve already heard several times from other people (i.e. Lake’s description of the mountains, and then Dyer’s description of the mountains, and then later Dyer’s description of the mountains again, and, well, you get the idea). Or, when we finally reach the point when Danforth and Dyer run screaming from the cavernous underground, it takes about 5 paragraphs too many to finally tell us what we already know they’ve seen.
I’d also like to take a moment to state that I feel like Lovecraft has injected an unnecessary dose of “horror” into this horror story. What I mean by that is it feels like he’s trying to make certain things horrific when they’re just extremely startling. The city itself is an excellent example. As the two men fly over it for the first time, while they are mind-boggled, Dyer is always commenting on how terrible it is. How monstrous, fiendish, frightful, and blasphemous the city is. Except it’s not. It’s a city; one that isn’t even functioning, I might add. It’s completely abandoned. Yes, I will concede that it’s perfectly normal to be highly disturbed by finding such a city in the Antarctic that precludes anything anyone has ever known, no one is going to be that horrified with it. Hell, it’s 2018 and someone opened a black sarcophagus a handful of months ago. Man’s curiosity will likely always get the better of him, and that happened here as well, yet at the same time, don’t tell me how “hideous and menacing” it is and then stroll right on into it. Clearly it’s not that hideous or menacing to go in there and then be there for 16 hours.
Likewise, the history of the creatures themselves that Dyer discovers, which he dubs Old Ones, via sculptures and other carvings in the city, give the story of – despite being alien – a normal functioning society of creatures. While their looks are truly bizarre, and they have extremely advanced technology and knowledge, they still build cities, had households of individuals, decorated their living quarters, cooked their food, and so forth. Nothing in their history suggests any kind of menace or inclination toward harassing other species. In fact, they themselves were harassed, first by Cthulhu spawn, and later by the creatures previously mentioned in “The Whisperer in the Darkness.” At one point they had to deal with their own creations, shoggoths, along the same lines of what we fear when artificial intelligence gains self awareness (at least what we put down in science fiction tales). So no, these creatures aren’t evil. They do their thing. In fact, Dyer even sympathizes with them later when he discovers what has happened to some of the recently awakened Old Ones and doesn’t even blame them though there’s a good chance they were responsible for what happened to Lake’s party. And I don’t either.
I don’t even find the shoggoths particularly scary. Amorphous blobs ripping the heads off their own creators, okay, yes, disturbing, but they’re made of organic material. Protoplasm may sound fancy, but it’s still organic. Especially since it’s made clear that the Old Ones had to use the organic material already on earth to make them. Bring enough flame throwers and you’re set. Again, Lovecraft makes it sound like the shoggoths are something super horrific and goes to extra unnecessary lengths by bringing in the Necronomicon into this, as if they’re special things spawned by eldritch gods. Nope. They’re not.
While we’re on the subject of the Necronomicon, has anyone not read this book? References to past things Lovecraft has written were, at one time, fun. They were sneaky little things, occurring here and there where they made sense regarding the story. Even after “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” brought them all into one setting, it worked because so many of those things were fantastical already. Yet in this story, it’s as though Lovecraft is invoking them because of their creepy mystical prowess despite them having no reason to be here. Dyer is a geologist – why has he read any of the Necronomicon? Indeed, it’s mentioned that numerous people – the biologist, engineer, and even the graduate assistant Danforth – have all read this awful book. Why even bother keeping it “under lock and key” when everyone and their grandma can read it at any time? Throughout past stories it’s made to be some mystical sort of manuscript and there are only a handful of copies of quality in existence – and yet an absurd amount of people have thumbed through it like it’s a magazine. Likewise, Dyer knows all about things like the Cthulhu cult, the creatures from “The Whisperer in the Darkness” because of course he’s chatted with Wilmarth, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, Tsathoggua, even Leng, Olathoë, and Lomar – the last three of which are dreamlands of which Dyer should know nothing. DUDE. You are a geologist. You should not know this much about weird occult stuff. Lovecraft also shoves in more at the end when Danforth is rambling about what he saw on some even higher mountains in the distance (which are supposedly the true horror of the whole of Antarctica and even the Old Ones didn’t like the place, but aside from Danforth’s madness, are wholly irrelevant to this story), he mentions “the elder pharos, Yog-Sothoth,” and even “the colour out of space.” There are even more references that are in this story that I don’t mention here. Stop, Lovecraft. Just stop, please.
Tibet, Himelayas by Nicholas Roerich, everyone.
Also please stop calling everything “Cyclopean.” We get it. Things are big. It happens in every story, and here it’s used 11 times to describe things. Pick a different descriptor. Same with the “strange Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich” which were referenced 7 times. They’re not that strange or disturbing, by the way. I looked them up.
It’s a good tale. It’s just too long and there’s nothing scary about it. Just weird. My brain made the entire city out of black stone just to try and creep it up a bit when in fact it’s made of not-scary-materials at all: sandstone (basic brown), schist (brown/light gray/dark dray), and slate (light to dark gray). The most interesting part was Dyer relaying the history of the Old Ones. Dyer is relaying this entire tale in the hopes of stopping future expeditions into the Antarctic. But I say go ahead. Just bring a lot of people, plenty of flamethrowers, dogs for early detection, and ignore the tall mountains in the distance, and everyone will be fine. Explore away!
Now this. This is an unfortunate tale. Yet another long novella, this one certainly keeps pace with itself and I remained engrossed with it until the end. I’m not sure why Weird Tales rejected it twice – although maybe the concept of sex with fishpeople was just too much.
Oh yes. You heard me. Sex with fishpeople. But we’ll get to that.
Our narrator is traveling. Once again we’re treated to first person point of view, through this particular narrator is never given a name. He’s happy to visit old towns and countrysides along the New England coastline and hears particular tales about a small run-down town called Innsmouth. The rumors surrounding it are not good, but he visits nonetheless, only to be disquieted by the strange people there, the dilapidated state of the town, and then later on when several people – if they can be called that – try to break into his room. From there it’s a breathless flight from the town until he makes it to safety…only to discover something terrible regarding his own family line and the people of Innsmouth.
But I’ll tell you.
Basically the people of Innsmouth pay sacrificial tribute to fishpeople (who seem to be the spawn of Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, as referenced later in the story as well as attached to the previous story as the creatures the Old Ones dealt with for a time), until those same Deep Ones decided they too would like to live on land – but that means mating with humans. Yep. And they did it. Gross. Which is why the people of Innsmouth look weird and everything smells like fish 24/7 and when the people get older they transform more before finally joining the Deep Ones as one of them and living forever.
The surprise for me came when the narrator later is doing some genealogy and stumbles across a slight bit of information that makes him dig a little deeper – until he realizes that his bloodline is a part of the same Innsmouth line. He tries to ignore it, but then the dreams start. And the changing in his face and body. And eventually, he goes to the dark side, succumbing to the desire to be a part of the Deep Ones in the sea.
Wow. Bummer.
I liked this story because it kept going. You learn things about Innsmouth, follow around the narrator as he checks out the town, get even more history from someone who lived there, panic with the narrator as he tries to escape, and then have that, “Oh no,” moment when he discovers what is going to happen to him. I knew going into this story that Innsmouth was filled with dark, secretive, fishy-sort of people after watching someone play through a videogame called Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. The game was atrocious which made for hilarious commentary. But it included all sorts of things, including Dagon, everyone’s favorite water god (or whatever it actually might be). The end, however, was not expected, so it made for a pretty great twist. Even better, no one in this story has read the Necronomicon. So that’s a plus. However, apparently Deep Ones can also make shoggoths, which I do not appreciate and feel that, once again, Lovecraft is shoehorning his own stuff where it needn’t be.
But in the end, I had a good time. Had no idea where the story might lead, and was pleasantly surprised with what I found, albeit mildly horrified, as one should be. The whole sex with these creatures is probably the most unpleasant bit when you think about it too much. Look, I’m all for interspecies relationships in science fiction novels, but honestly, nothing about what’s going on in this story regarding that concept sounds appealing. At all. GOOD DAY, SIR.
“If you ever find yourself in a house previously inhabited by a witch, maybe don’t live there. Especially if, after living there, you start to have some seriously messed up dreams.
What’s what happened to Walter Gilman (by the way, is he related to any of the Gilman family from Innsmouth? Just wondering…). He did so by his own design, but after a while common sense should have won out and he should have left the place. Even if the dreams weren’t enough, when finding out the things that happened in the dream seem to be crossing over into real life (they were – Gilman was just either too ignorant or in some extreme denial to accept it), you should leave.
But Gilman doesn’t, so we’re treated to all his dreams, which would be interesting had they not been tainted by a witch with the sort of skills and connections that would make most witches back the hell up. Her familiar is freakier than most familiars as well. Gilman’s dreams take him places and show him things that both horrify and fascinate him. He sees some of the things we’ve come across in our adventures with Lovecraft (or at least I have, in case you haven’t been following along with me), such as the Old Ones and good ole’ Azathoth.. It makes for an interesting ride as he falls in deeper and deeper, questioning what he’s dreaming about, if he’s dreaming, if he’s sleepwalking, where he’s going when he sleepwalks, and so forth.
I got surprised a few times in this story. Once was when Gilman brandished a crucifix against the witch, which made her momentarily recoil. It makes me wonder – does that give the God most of us are familiar with some kind of power in Lovecraft’s universe? And if so, is God one of the many or something else entirely? Good? Bad? Who knows in this place. The second was the actual human sacrifice that showed up. Didn’t see that coming, and even after realizing that it was going to happen, I thought Gilman would be able to stop it. Boy, was I wrong.
The last surprise was the act of the witch’s familiar at near the end of the story. I believe it is the most gruesome thing that I’ve experienced in all of Lovecraft’s stories thus far. I mean, damn.
It was different, interesting, and I guess that end bit is why we get the story in third person rather than first. Because damn.
Featured image © Nicole Taft
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