Joseph Aleo

As October unfolds, I find myself once more ensnared in a ritual steeped in shadowed lore, drawn to the eerie texts of H. P. Lovecraft, that most harrowing chronicler of cosmic horror. Each day, I immerse myself in a tale; each day, my thoughts stray ever nearer the dark recesses of the man’s peculiar themes and dreadful fascinations. Take, for instance, today’s chosen tale, “The Outsider.” Who among us, at some agonized moment, has not glimpsed within the glass of society only to find themselves alien, a mere shadow, bereft of kinship among their mortal brethren? Lovecraft himself, a soul perpetually displaced, once confided, “I know always that I am an outsider, a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.” Indeed, while his works brim with the chill vastness of cosmic horror, it is in tales like “The Outsider” that we, for all our yearning, feel the icy caress of his existential despair.

In the haunting narrative of “The Outsider,” we are introduced to our narrator who has spent his life imprisoned within a desolate fortress, shrouded in unrelenting darkness and embraced only by the twisted forest that surrounds it like a malevolent spirit. With no recollection of human warmth, his only understanding of the world beyond is derived from ancient texts, remnants of a reality he can scarcely comprehend. A profound yearning compels him to ascend the decaying steps of the tallest tower, each crumbling stone bearing the weight of centuries. Finally, he emerges, quivering, into the night—a vast, mad sky casting pallid light upon him, an unfamiliar freedom coursing through his veins.

I beheld in full, frightful vividness the inconceivable, indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had by its simple appearance changed a merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives.

He wanders, driven by a nameless yearning, until he reaches an opulent castle amid revelry. Enticed by its splendor’s gleam and thirst for connection, he clambers through an unguarded window, entering the radiance within. But the sight of him rends the guests’ joy into terror; they shriek and flee from his sight as though he were some ghastly apparition. Agonized, he searches for the wellspring of their horror, his dread mounting, until he perceives a grotesque presence in the periphery. A trembling hand reaches out, and in one abominable touch, he understands the source of their repulsion—for it is his own loathsome visage, reflected in a mirror, that embodies the horror they so desperately flee.

Exiled from any sense of belonging, he drifts henceforth on the night breeze, his spirit forever stranded in that bitter revelation of his monstrous essence. And so, the echo of Lovecraft’s lament for all who wander alone in this vast and uncaring universe reverberates, chilling, timeless, and eternal.

Once more, as the shadows lengthen and the leaves of October begin their slow descent, I have renewed my tradition of reading one eldritch tale each day from the unhallowed works of the master of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft. This ritual, which I first embarked upon as a youth in Dorchester, Massachusetts, was then, as now, intertwined with the ancient, crumbling homes and the morbid beauty of autumn’s twilight that lent Lovecraft’s grotesque visions a curious veracity.

Today’s tale, “The Moon-Bog,” stirs within me a poignant remembrance, harkening back to the fog-shrouded days of my boyhood when I would tread solemnly past the hallowed Cobb Library and along that lonely path dividing the desolate cranberry bogs. The stillness of the place was broken only by the unsettling drone of unseen insects, the occasional plop of a toad’s furtive leap into the murky depths, and the far-off cries of birds whose names I never knew. There, amidst the silence, my mind would conjure images most unnatural—visions of lurking horrors born from the primordial ooze, creatures akin to the monstrous Swamp Thing imagined by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, which swayed with the shadows just beyond my sight.

Ah, those days were touched with the eerie glow of forgotten ages when reality and fantasy seemed to blur beneath the crimson sky.

But alas, I digress. It is time to cast aside nostalgia and immerse myself in today’s macabre offering!

Half gliding, half floating in the air, the white-clad bog-wraiths were slowly retreating toward the still waters and the island ruin in fantastic formations suggesting some ancient and solemn ceremonial dance.

In the tale, our unnamed narrator recounts with shuddering detail the tragic and sinister demise of his once-esteemed companion, Denys Barry, a man of resolute will and American blood, whose ancestral roots had long since entwined themselves with the mist-wreathed soil of Kilderry—a forsaken hamlet, lurking amidst the forgotten depths of Ireland. Against the insistent warnings of the trembling villagers, whose superstitions and whispered dread seemed to rise from the very earth itself, Barry dared to defy the ancient curse that hung over the land like a malignant fog. For it was in his arrogant ambition that he sought to drain the nearby bog, a place whose dark waters concealed mysteries beyond mortal comprehension.

In this grievous transgression, Barry paid no heed to the cryptic legends of old—the half-remembered lore of the Partholonians, the first wanderers to tread upon the accursed shores of Erin. These shadowy figures, it was said, had been scourged from existence by a nameless plague that descended upon them with the swiftness of divine retribution, somewhere in the dim recesses of prehistory, when time itself was young. Though their bones had long since crumbled into dust, their restless shades were rumored to linger in the damp hollows of that ancient land, their wrath undiminished by the passage of millennia.

So too did Barry ignore the persistent whispers of the peasants, who clung fiercely to the notion that their race sprang not from native soil, but from far-off Greece, borne across the wine-dark sea by those same Partholonians—exiles from a forgotten Mediterranean past. In disturbing the foul bog, Barry unknowingly disturbed far more than mere earth and water, but the very spirits of the land itself—spirits whose slumber had been long and whose vengeance would be terrible.

Thus, as the bog was drained and the eldritch forces beneath it were unshackled, the doom of Denys Barry was sealed—a doom that would reverberate in the mind of the narrator like a distant and ghastly echo, long after the cursed estate had been swallowed once more by the encroaching dark.

One of the unexpected yet ineffable joys of rekindling my autumnal tradition—devoting each October day to the master of cosmic dread, H. P. Lovecraft—has been the slow, tantalizing revelation of the forgotten facets of his genius. In those shadow-haunted hours, I have come to revel in the curious works where Lovecraft, influenced by Lord Dunsany, weaves his eldritch visions with the somber strains of a Grecian tragedy. Once, I craved only the cold, creeping terror of such tales as “The Rats in the Walls” or “Cool Air,” but now my spirit yearns for those wistful, far-off lands that breathe with melancholic beauty and strange ruin.

Foremost among these tales is “The Quest of Iranon,” where Lovecraft, in his peculiar way, interlaces the shimmering threads of his earlier works, invoking names both ancient and unknown. At one point, the golden-haired wanderer Iranon recalls having “dwelt long in Olathoe in the land of Lomar,” thus whispering the long-forgotten dream of “Polaris” into this tale. It is as though this story, like so many of Lovecraft’s works, hints at some immense and incomprehensible world of prehistoric antiquity—an Earth that existed not in time but in a dream of 24,000 years past. Further still, Iranon speaks of gazing upon the desolate marsh where the titanic city of Sarnath once stood, invoking that distant doom as described in “The Doom that Came to Sarnath.” The interconnectedness of these tales speaks to an ancient, dream-bound unity that pulses beneath the surface of Lovecraft’s mythos.

Wherefore do ye toil; is it not that ye may live and be happy? And if ye toil only that ye may toil more, when shall happiness find you?

The tale itself is an eerie lament, charting the journey of Iranon, a prince of uncertain lineage who wanders into the grim and colorless city of Teloth. There, he speaks of the golden city of Aira, where beauty and music reign supreme, but the dour inhabitants of Teloth, steeped in practicality, have no ear for his songs nor for his far-flung memories. Cast out, he joins a boy, Romnod, and together, they seek the fabled city of Oonai, where Romnod, in his youthful hope, believes Aira might be found under another name.

But as the years wind on, the bitter weight of time presses down upon Romnod, while Iranon, uncannily untouched by the ravages of age, remains ever the same, as though outside the grasp of time. When they at last reach Oonai, it is but a fleeting mirage, no true refuge of splendor. Though the people adore Iranon’s songs for a moment, their interest wanes and Romnod succumbs to drinking and dying in his disillusionment.

The denouement is one of tragic and inescapable horror. Iranon, in his endless, futile quest for the unattainable Aira, encounters an old shepherd who shatters the illusion. Aira, that radiant dream city, never was. It was, but a figment spun by a beggar boy lost in the empty fancies of his mind. With this revelation, Iranon’s ageless enchantment dissolves, and, in a moment of unbearable despair, he casts himself into the quicksands—those treacherous depths swallowing all hope and life—forever extinguishing his doomed quest.

In this tale, Lovecraft, with his characteristic genius, paints a world that is at once beautiful and terrible. The veil between reality and illusion is gossamer thin, and the only certainty is the inevitable erosion of all dreams.

I found myself grateful that yesterday’s reading, “Ex Oblivione,” from the venerable H. P. Lovecraft, was but a brief excursion into his eldritch domain. Though the resurgence of my October tradition—immersing daily in the master of cosmic horror’s inky depths of terror—fills me with a dark thrill, the demands of life often render these moments of reflection fleeting and elusive. Yesterday’s tale was mercifully brief, yet today I faced a more formidable task. “The Nameless City,” the longest in The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft so far, awaited me, yet, to my fortune, this day lacked the frenetic chaos of the last.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.

In this tale, our hapless narrator ventures into the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, lured by the promise of a lost city shrouded in forgotten lore. He traverses desolate ruins and ominous carvings, ultimately discovering a cliff lined with low, stunted buildings—structures clearly not meant for human habitation. Within a larger, grim temple, he descends into an abyssal corridor, where he is greeted by grotesque reptiles encased in ancient coffins. Crawling ever deeper, he finds a brass door and a mist-laden portal, haunted by distant, disquieting moans. A sinister wind beckons him toward the light, revealing creatures grotesque in form—crocodilian yet unearthly. The wind ceases, yet the door seals him in blackness, alone with the nameless dread.

One of the many challenges in rekindling my ancient October tradition—immersing myself daily in the eldritch works of that master of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft—is finding time amidst the modern world’s ceaseless demands. Yet, fortune smiles upon me, for most of his dread-laden tales are mercifully brief. On this particular Monday, burdened as I was by earthly obligations, I was grateful that today’s selection, “Ex Oblivione,” was the shortest of his works I have yet encountered, requiring but a scant three minutes to absorb its haunting prose.

Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples.

In “Ex Oblivione,” our nameless narrator speaks of a man nearing death, who, in his dreams, treads through a desolate valley and arrives before a vine-clad wall where a bronze gate stands, locked and impenetrable. Obsessed with the mystery of what lies beyond, he seeks answers within the dream-city of Zakarion. There, the dream-sages offer cryptic, contradictory whispers: some tell of beauty and wonder, while others foretell only horror and despair. Yet, the man, driven by an insatiable longing, takes a fateful drug, unlocking the gate. Upon stepping through, he finds both promises fulfilled—freedom from earthly suffering and the ultimate, chilling revelation: beyond lies only the infinite void of oblivion, the final solace of death.

When I was but a young man, in the dim, shadow-haunted streets of Dorchester, Massachusetts, each October brought with it a ritual most solemn. In the fading light of autumn, I would immerse myself daily in the works of that master of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft. I dwelt then in a creaking, ancient abode, nestled among similarly decrepit houses, where the air itself seemed to whisper of ancestral secrets long buried. My neighbors, peculiar souls themselves—either descendants of families rooted deep in Dorchester’s soil or members of strange communal gatherings—only heightened the otherworldly atmosphere. The very essence of the place lent a deeper terror to the tales of Lovecraft.

Killin’ sheep was kinder more fun—but d’ye know, ’twan’t quite satisfyin’. Queer haow a cravin’ gits a holt on ye— As ye love the Almighty, young man, don’t tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun ta make me hungry fer victuals I couldn’t raise nor buy—here, set still, what’s ailin’ ye?—I didn’t do nothin’, only I wondered haow ’twud be ef I did— They say meat makes blood an’ flesh, an’ gives ye new life, so I wondered ef ’twudn’t make a man live longer an’ longer ef ’twas more the same—

Now, in this distant city of San Diego, though the house in which I dwell bears its own weight of years, it cannot summon the same dreadful atmosphere. This day, I revisited “The Picture in the House,” wherein a genealogist, fleeing a storm in the accursed Miskatonic Valley, encounters an ancient abode, teeming with pre-Revolutionary relics. Its sinister occupant, a ragged, timeworn figure, reveals an unnatural hunger—a hunger which, despite his denial, is made manifest when blood from some unseen horror above betrays his foul deeds. The house, struck by a bolt of heavenly retribution, is obliterated, but the narrator lives to tell his ghastly tale—a tale which echoes now, across the aeons of dread that bind us to the unfathomable void.

As I embarked once more upon the hallowed ritual of reading a tale of cosmic dread each day during the somber month of October, delving into the works of that master of unnameable horrors, H. P. Lovecraft, I found myself unprepared for the humble beginnings of certain themes that would later ascend to prominence in his mythos. Consider Nyarlathotep, who first slithered forth into Lovecraft’s dark pantheon in the 1920 prose poem of the same name. It is in that brief and uncanny work that we first glimpse the horror that would later manifest again, notably in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where Nyarlathotep—assuming the guise of a pharaoh—confronts the dreamer, Randolph Carter.

Further still, in the 21st sonnet of Fungi from Yuggoth, the tale is retold, a whispered echo of that earlier malign visitation. In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” Nyarlathotep reappears, now cloaked as the “Black Man” of witchcraft lore, a dread figure who haunts Walter Gilman, a diabolical pact-maker mistaken for a man of African descent, though his visage is more insidious than any mortal could fathom. Lastly, in “The Haunter of the Dark,” the bat-winged monstrosity in the Starry Wisdom church’s steeple is none other than Nyarlathotep, who loathes the touch of light.

A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low.

Today’s’ tale, “Nyarlathotep,” unfolds, shrouded in the narrator’s palpable dread—a fear that grips all of humanity as Nyarlathotep, claiming to have emerged from the black abyss of antiquity, spreads across the land. His arrival in each city plunges the inhabitants into nightmares of an apocalyptic kind. Upon reaching the narrator’s city, Nyarlathotep demonstrates his horrific, arcane powers, yet the narrator dismisses them as mere charlatanism. The city soon descends into ruin, as light fails and the streets fall into madness.

The narrator, amidst a trance-like procession, stumbles into the frozen countryside, where an abyss beckons. He is drawn into a rift of endless horror, beholding visions of a decaying universe ruled by mindless, ancient gods—Nyarlathotep ever their messenger, their soul, the harbinger of inevitable doom.

I have once again resumed my cherished ritual of reading a tale each day during October from that master of eldritch dread, H. P. Lovecraft. Today’s tale, “From Beyond”, holds a particular resonance with me for two profound reasons. First, I regard “From Beyond” as Lovecraft’s initial foray into the realm of true cosmic horror—a genre of incomprehensible forces and nameless, lurking beings. Second, it stirs memories of a conversation with a dear, long-lost friend who once posed an unsettling question: “Have you ever pondered the possibility that beings exist, sharing our world, yet utterly beyond the limits of our perception?” To this, I answered in the affirmative, adding that Lovecraft had captured such a vision a century past.

Now, allow me to recount today’s tale of dread, “From Beyond.”

You see them? You see them? You see the things that float and flop about you and through you every moment of your life? You see the creatures that form what men call the pure air and the blue sky? Have I not succeeded in breaking down the barrier; have I not shewn you worlds that no other living men have seen?

In this grim narrative, our nameless narrator is drawn into a horrific experiment by the brilliant yet deranged scientist, Crawford Tillinghast. The invention of a machine that awakens the pineal gland thrusts them into a terrifying dimension, teeming with grotesque, unseen creatures. Tillinghast, in his madness, reveals the servants were slain by these beings, and that the creatures can now perceive them. In sheer panic, the narrator destroys the device, leaving Tillinghast dead from apoplexy, and the police baffled at the disappearance of the servants’ bodies.

In this, the month of October, when the thin veil between the known and the unknown seems perilously frayed, I have returned to my venerable ritual: the daily immersion into the eldritch realms conjured by that grim architect of cosmic dread, H.P. Lovecraft. Yet as I tread these spectral paths, I have found myself ensnared by certain tales, disquieting not for their horrors beyond comprehension, but for the festering bigotry that, like a stench, clings to the pages of some of his works. These tales, repugnant in their smallness of spirit, mar the grandeur of his broader mythos.

Thus it was with a rare sense of reprieve that I turned to today’s reading—“Celephaïs”—a tale unlike the others, born not of the crude prejudices of men but from the deeper, purer wellspring of dreams. I find myself drawn to this story, not only for its ethereal beauty but for its origin, nestled as it was in Lovecraft’s own commonplace book, a fragment of a dream that his mind, so often clouded with darker thoughts, shaped into a vision of fantastical splendor. Like Lovecraft, I too have transmuted the ephemeral substance of my dreams into stories, and I hold in high regard all those who dare to do the same, who pluck the strange and ineffable from the vast night of slumber and bring it forth into the waking world.

For many months after that Kuranes sought the marvellous city of Celephaïs and its sky-bound galleys in vain; and though his dreams carried him to many gorgeous and unheard-of places, no one whom he met could tell him how to find Ooth-Nargai, beyond the Tanarian Hills.

In the twilight hours, as the mists of an eldritch London coiled about the crumbling tenements, Kuranes—though this name be but a whisper in the nocturnal realm, his true name lost to the aeons—wandered, a forlorn relic of the once-proud English gentry. His youth, adorned with the trappings of privilege and the intoxicating beauty of pastoral estates, had long since decayed into the dust of forgotten epochs. Yet in the spectral depths of his dreams, stirred by nameless forces, he once more glimpsed that which mortal eyes had scarcely dared to perceive: Celephaïs, a city born not of stone and labor but of the intangible substance of dreams.

In his fortieth year, estranged from time and fortune, Kuranes found solace only in slumber, where the luminous spires of Celephaïs, long faded from his youthful visions, shimmered anew on the horizon of his mind. And so, in thrall to the dream-world, he relinquished his grasp upon the waking realm, slipping ever deeper into the shadowed recesses of the unknown. The mundane became a distant memory as knights, clad in the raiment of forgotten ages, emerged from the mists, guiding him across a landscape that seemed at once familiar and alien—medieval England, with its ancient castles and winding, time-worn paths, echoing with forgotten tales.

At last, they came upon the ancestral estate of his boyhood, the manor where his laughter had once danced upon the winds of a summer long past. But beyond, further still, lay Celephaïs, the city of his deepest yearning. There, Kuranes ascended to the pinnacle of his forgotten majesty, reigning not only as monarch but as a deity among dreamers, his every thought shaping the contours of that enchanted realm.

Yet in the cold, unforgiving reality from which he had fled, his body was found—pale, lifeless—carried by the inexorable tides to the tower that had once stood as a sentinel of his lineage. Now it was claimed by a parvenu, an unworthy usurper of a name that history had all but erased, while Kuranes himself had transcended both time and death, a king eternal in the city that dreams had made.

When I embarked upon my solemn ritual of reading one tale per day from the grand architect of cosmic dread, H.P. Lovecraft, in this month of October, I was steeled to confront the malignant specter of his bigotry. Yet, I confess, I was ill-prepared for the depths of what I uncovered. In days long past, I had read mere anthologies of Lovecraft’s works, but now, with The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft “The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft”) in hand, I discern why certain tales were wisely omitted from those youthful collections. Today’s offering, “The Street,” “The Street”) stands as a stark and lamentable testament, where Lovecraft unreservedly lays bare his repulsion for “Indians” and “swarthy and sinister” peoples—those he viewed as defiling the sanctity of his cherished homeland.

Before pressing on, I must express gratitude to Alan Moore “Alan Moore”), whose Providence series lends invaluable context to the Boston Police Strike of September and October 1919 “Boston Police Strike of September and October 1919”), referenced in “The Street.” Moore’s meticulous scholarship shines, and Providence itself is a dark masterpiece. Yet, I caution you: where Lovecraft kept his horrors as subtext, Moore makes them text—and one’s constitution may falter before such grim revelations.

Then came days of evil, when many who had known The Street of old knew it no more; and many knew it, who had not known it before.

The tale chronicles the dark and uncanny evolution of a forgotten street in a New England city, likely the ancient and accursed Boston. Once but a mere path in those shadowed days of colonial ambition, it slowly assumed form—a street lined with noble houses of brick and wood, each adorned with gardens of unspeakable beauty. Yet as the inexorable tide of the Industrial Revolution swept through, so too did the street’s soul decay into ruin, the once-proud homes now standing as spectral husks amidst the poisoned air of a slum. After the Great War, a strange influx of foreign souls from the troubled land of Russia—agents of a dreadful conspiracy—settled there, bent on the obliteration of America. But on the fated day of their grim design, a shudder passed through the earth, and the very houses collapsed as if by some unseen and eldritch will. Witnesses, trembling in terror, swore they saw fleeting visions of the street’s bygone elegance—of towering trees and rose gardens long since lost to time.

As I once again took up my October tradition of reading a story each day from the ghastly canon of the master of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft, I steeled myself for the inevitable confrontation with his racism. In the innocence of youth, my fascination with the sheer magnitude of his terrifying visions had eclipsed such dark undercurrents. Yet, with time and reflection, the vile truths lurking beneath the surface of his tales became all too clear, and the further I journeyed into his works, the more abhorrent certain themes appeared—none more so than in the tale “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family.”

This story, a twisted reflection of Lovecraft’s deep-seated bigotry and unyielding elitism, remains among the hardest to bear. Its grotesque allegory of ancestral pollution and the resultant suicidal horror mirrors the same toxic obsessions that thread through his other writings—those fears of racial impurity that gnawed at Lovecraft’s mind as he beheld a world changing beyond his understanding. The motifs of expiating ancestral sin and self-destruction upon discovering a tainted bloodline are but the macabre manifestations of his most venomous prejudices.

And yet, I cannot escape the creeping suspicion that, in this tale, Lovecraft’s venomous pen was also aimed at Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose own Tarzan carried its share of insidious notions. One might wonder if, beneath Lovecraft’s seething hatred of anything alien or impure, there simmered a bitter rivalry—each man’s work twisted by the same repugnant convictions, feeding into a dark reflection of the world they both feared and misunderstood. But such contemplations spiral endlessly, and the weight of Lovecraft’s malignancy taints the very horror that first captivated my youthful imagination.

The stuffed goddess was a nauseous sight, withered and eaten away, but it was clearly a mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any recorded variety, and infinitely nearer mankind—quite shockingly so.

Our tale unfurls the accursed lineage of Sir Arthur Jermyn, a name long tainted by strange and unsettling physical traits, whispered of in dark corners as the progeny of a forgotten and monstrous past. The shadow first descends with Sir Wade Jermyn, Arthur’s great-great-great-grandfather, a doomed explorer whose ill-fated ventures into the dark heart of the Congo yielded terrible secrets. Wade spoke of a hidden white race amidst that primordial wilderness, but his claims were met with derision, and he was cast into the cold confines of an asylum—his mind irreparably shattered.

Wade’s descendants, from his son Philip to his grandson Robert, were no less cursed. Robert, a man of science, twice ventured into Africa’s unknown reaches, but it was not knowledge that he found. Instead, upon hearing of a city of pale apes ruled by a ghastly white god, madness gripped him, driving him to unspeakable acts, murdering both an explorer and his own offspring in a frenzy of delirium. His son Alfred escaped only to meet his own grim fate—drawn to a pale gorilla whose unnatural hue both fascinated and consumed him, until his death in a brutal confrontation with the beast.

Sir Arthur Jermyn, inheritor of this sinister bloodline, sought solace in scholarship. But his inquiries led him on a dread journey to the Congo, where whispers of a stone city and an ape goddess pulled him deeper into the abyss. When the desiccated form of that goddess arrived at his ancestral home, Arthur, in one harrowing glance, beheld the truth. The horror of his own visage reflected in the ancient being—Wade’s wife had never been human, but the loathsome ape goddess herself. The blood of an unholy union coursed through him. In a final, merciful escape, Arthur doused himself in oil and perished in flames, his legacy of blasphemy consumed by fire, as the Jermyn line withered in madness and flame.

Thus far, my renewed tradition of delving into the works of the cosmic master, H.P. Lovecraft, with a tale per day throughout the gloomy month of October, has offered but brief glimpses into the unspeakable horrors he so artfully conjures. However, this changed with “The Temple”—a narrative of far greater length and grim profundity than any I have encountered in this month’s journey through Lovecraft’s labyrinthine imagination.

This daemoniac laughter which I hear as I write comes only from my own weakening brain.

The tale, presented as a “found manuscript,” is recounted by none other than Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, a lieutenant-commander of the Imperial German Navy during the shadowed days of World War I. Altberg, with the detached arrogance befitting his station, pens this chronicle to unveil the bizarre chain of events that led to his inevitable doom. After sending a British freighter and its lifeboats to their watery graves in the cold North Atlantic, Altberg’s crew retrieves a strange artifact—an ancient, carved ivory charm—from the lifeless body of a seaman. What follows is a descent into madness as otherworldly visions and grotesque nightmares haunt the U-boat’s crew while an unseen oceanic force pulls the submarine southward toward horrors unimaginable.

Amid the crew’s increasing delirium and fear, Altberg resorts to brutal measures to maintain his crumbling authority, even executing those whom he deems too far gone to serve. When a mysterious explosion cripples the U-boat’s engines, leaving them stranded beneath the waves, Altberg chooses murder over surrender. As the submarine sinks into the abyss, his crew, driven mad by the cursed charm, stage a futile mutiny, but Altberg coldly slaughters them, leaving only himself and the deteriorating Lieutenant Klenze.

The doomed vessel finally settles on the ocean floor, revealing the eerie remnants of an ancient and fantastical city that Altberg, in feverish awe, believes to be the lost Atlantis. Overcome by this ghastly discovery, and as the U-boat’s power fails, Altberg succumbs to madness. Visions plague his fevered mind, and disembodied voices beckon him toward a strange temple that mirrors the design of the accursed ivory talisman. As the lights flicker out and the last vestiges of sanity slip away, Altberg makes his final preparations. Donning his diving suit, he pens his last testament, sealing the manuscript in a bottle before stepping into the ocean’s eternal embrace. The manuscript, later discovered on the Yucatan coast, leaves behind only hints of the eldritch secrets lying beneath the waves, where Altberg vanished into the cursed ruins of Atlantis.

One thing I have gleaned from my renewed custom of indulging in a daily sojourn through the works of the master of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft, this October, is the paramount importance of setting. The locus in which I partake of Lovecraft’s macabre imaginings greatly shapes the reception of his foreboding visions. To read Lovecraft’s tales under the benign tyranny of daylight is to strip them of their eldritch power, their whispered horrors blunted by the sun’s indiscriminate glare. But to immerse myself within his pages in the sanctum of my chamber, the windows tightly shuttered, the light faint and flickering? Ah, it is in such gloom that the full dread of his craft seizes me, and my very skin tingles with apprehension. Ideally, I would engage in this ritual amidst a forgotten New England graveyard, candlelight casting trembling shadows upon ancient tombstones.

Another truth I have reawakened to, one buried yet familiar, is Lovecraft’s deft alteration of style. His signature is unmistakable, yet in tales such as “The Cats of Ulthar,” one finds him channeling the ethereal touch of Lord Dunsany. I’ve long known of Lovecraft’s admiration for that Anglo-Irish fantasist, whose mythic narratives laid the foundation for what we now call fantasy. I find myself inexorably drawn to seek out Dunsany’s works again—perhaps The King of Elfland’s Daughter or The Gods of Pegāna—once October’s twilight days wane.

One final note, though tinged with the unsettling resonance of my own introspection. Rudimentary Peni’s Cacophony—an album whose very existence reverberates with a chaotic dissonance—is perhaps their magnum opus, a discomfiting echo of pain, much like the inscrutable torment that plagued the soul of H.P. Lovecraft himself. Yet, amidst the tumult of sound and frenzied lyric, I cannot help but perceive a dark and deliberate tribute within the closing strains of “Kapap Alpha Tau,” a spectral homage, perhaps, to that curious tale, “The Cats of Ulthar.”

And when they had broken down the frail door they found only this: two cleanly picked human skeletons on the earthen floor, and a number of singular beetles crawling in the shadowy corners.

In today’s tale, “The Cats of Ulthar,” an unnamed narrator recounts the strange genesis of the law that forbids the killing of cats in that eerie town. The story unfolds with the introduction of an old cotter and his malevolent wife, whose grim delight lies in the trapping and slaying of any unfortunate feline that strays upon their desolate property. The townsfolk, gripped by a nameless fear, dare not challenge the wicked couple but merely strive to protect their own beloved cats. It is the arrival of a mysterious caravan of wanderers, among them a forlorn orphan named Menes and his cherished black kitten, that sets the stage for the town’s fateful reckoning. When the kitten vanishes, Menes—consumed by sorrow—invokes an arcane and inscrutable power, awakening the sentience of Ulthar’s cats. The travelers depart into the night, and with them, the cats of the town. By morning, the felines return, sated, while the cotter and his wife have disappeared. All that remains of them are bones, gnawed clean. The burgesses, struck by the grim tale, enact the law, forever forbidding the slaughter of cats in Ulthar, lest such unspeakable events recur.