“I was desperate, and in spite of everything I clawed my way out.”
(The Thing on the Doorstep, pg.939)
Welcome back to Our Daily Lovecraft. It’s tugging….from beyond…..knocking….clawing…..
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“Through the Gates of the Silver Key“
This story was…interesting. In a sort of tentative, still filtering it through my brain sort of way. Originally E. Hoffmann Price wrote a story called “The Lord of Illusion,” with Randolph Carter as its protagonist and focusing on what happened to Carter after the events of “The Silver Key.” Apparently Hoffmann loved that story and wanted to see its continuance. So he worked together with Lovecraft (who rewrote most of it), and this is the result. According to the intro, Lovecraft “confessed that the result was not entirely satisfactory,” and I’m inclined to agree for the most part.
Four men gather in a room to discuss the matter of Randolph Carter’s estate. It’s been a few years, and many believe Carter is gone and this should be dealt with. At least two others believe it is not so, and a third person, Swami Chandraputra, claims to know exactly what happened to Carter, which he relates in great detail.
It soon becomes obvious to the reader just how Chandraputra knows so much of what Carter did down to exact details, so while indulging in all of the things Carter experiences, you may start to wonder just when the ah-ha! Moment will appear. Don’t worry, it does, though it’s a little lackluster but that’s okay.
I’m not sure how much of Hoffmann’s manuscript changed because sometimes I wasn’t sure how much Lovecraft I was reading and how much was Hoffmann. Some of the style didn’t feel like Lovecraft, and the strange us of ALL CAPS for certain things was weird. I also didn’t fully understand certain elements. All of the entities Carter encounters are, given that we’re sort of out in the cosmos here, not evil. Weird, given that so many of the outer cosmos things in Lovecraft’s universe are either straight evil or just super-fucking-bizarre so as to make anyone feel extreme discomfort/madness. But instead they’re all great, which I finally decided made some sense because in the past the dream places he’s ventured aren’t all full of evil. And then Yog-Sothoth showed up. And it was totally cool. Majestic, even.
I’m sorry, but what? Last I heard, Yog-Sothoth was fathering giant ropey eyeball-filled, human and cow eating monstrosities. And people did cult stuff with Yog-Sothoth at the head. Since when was Yog-Sothoth okay? But I pressed on as Carter chatted with it and learned about multiverses and beyond (I honestly could not stop myself from thinking of Amanda Carter from Stargate SG-1 during some of this because half the stuff Yog-Sothoth was explaining to Randolph Carter sounded like stuff she would already know and be able to explain. Also the name of Carter kind of helped.). For reasons unknown, after discovering the answers to life, the universe, and everything, this omniscient entity asks Carter what else he wants and he decides he wants to visit a planet. Um. Okay? And for some reason he can’t just dip down in whatever non-corporeal form he has, but has to inhabit a body. When Yog asks if Carter has the right stuff to get back, Carter says he does – except he doesn’t. My question is why the hell doesn’t Yog know this? Kind of red flag when the omniscient being doesn’t know the answer to the most basic of questions. Unless it already knows the answer – in which case, why bother asking?
Anywho, Carter gets stuck in a body for thousands of years before finally making it back to Earth and where we are now. And then he leaves through a clock. The end.
I legitimately don’t grasp why it ends this way. The story leading up to then, while a little hiccuppy, was engrossing and made for some good soul-traveling, science fiction goodness. But then it just ended with that clock business, so I don’t really know what to make of it. Did Carter eventually become human again? Or is he still stuck in that alien body shambling around? For wanting to know what happened to Randolph Carter after “The Silver Key” we still don’t have a final answer. Strange.
Post script: Take that, Mr. Aspinwall, you disbelieving old racist bastard.
A decently freakish tale, at first it seems like a basic problem of body swapping. We’re told the story from the first person perspective, as per usual; a gentleman named Dan. Dan’s friend, Edward Pickman (yep, another use of the name Pickman – I think this is the 3rd one now?) Derby has a long history of being overly protected and coddled by his parents. Even so, he’s a smart person who (surprise) is interested in all things occult. Of course both men have read the “forbidden” Necronomicon. There is nothing forbidden about that book! Both of these men also live in Arkham, which seems to me like it’s becoming more and more a dark sort of place where all things evil and sketchy like to appear. Either that or people who come from Arkham end up dealing with all things dark and sketchy. Arkham seems to be the new Shadyside (for those of you that read R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series), except with less constant murder and more cosmic horror.
To the point; Edward marries Asenath Waite, who hails from Innsmouth (yep), and from then on starts to notice bad changes. Dan notices them too, as do the people of the town. Eventually Edward spills the beans to Dan – Asenath is trying to take over his body. Trade spots so that Asenath’s soul is in his body and vice versa. Except it’s not even truly Asenath trying to take over; it’s Asenath’s father Ephraim Waite who took her body years before. Extra creepy. I mean, they had a honeymoon and everything. Yikes.
In essence, Ephraim Waite is kind of the original Voldemort in that he’s keeping himself alive by trying to inhabit fresh bodies. I guess he wasn’t Innsmouth enough to make the change to fishperson and go live eternally beneath the sea. Edward figures it all out and you think all might be lost for him, and that’s why Dan (who starts the story with this information) shoots Edward six times. He knows that Edward is now Ephraim. Extra points for making sure they were headshots. But even creepier portion of the story comes after Edward has been taken over. It’s the thing on Dan’s doorstep that finally tips him into shooting Edward. I don’t want to spoil it, and it’s not a long story, but it’s definitely unpleasant and I feel bad for whoever has to clean up that mess.
Side note: Stop ranting about shoggoths. They’re not cosmic. They were made on Earth by aliens. Chill out.
Either way, it’s a solid story. Tell this one on Hallowmass.
Another dream-tale, it does feel rather like one in that it is short, somewhat disjointed, and leaves you with a few questions.
A man is led into an attic – we’re not told why, save the mention of curiosity. Here’s a tip for the future; maybe don’t let strange, curious people into places they have no right to be. He’s advised not to do anything, touch anything, and don’t even really look at the thing on the table.
Of course he looks at the thing on the table.
We don’t know what it is, but it seems to usher in a ghostly scene from the past. Until one of the specters sees the narrator and advances. Luckily the narrator has a flashlight/not-flashlight (even he doesn’t know what it is, even though he owns the thing) and it saves the day. Except now the narrator looks like that very specter. The end.
It’s a random, weird tale that could use some polishing, and as the intro states, Lovecraft probably would have done so at some point. It was submitted to Weird Tales by Bernard Dwyer – Lovecraft send this in a letter to him – after Lovecraft died. That’s fine and all, but still say that Dwyer or the editor or someone should have tweaked it first.
Featured Image © Nicole Taft
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