Joseph

Last month, I took to reading one H. P. Lovecraft tale each day. Took to writing afterward too, capturing his voice and style in ways I’d come to appreciate like a ritual—a communion with the page. The pattern of it, predictable, dependable. But now it’s gone, and something’s been taken with it. I still write, sure. VIKINGS vs SAMURAI is about the comic book and everything related to it. My journal is where I capture moments and process my thoughts and feelings. But what will bring that same purpose to the blank screen now? What will drive the words?

This is what I’m left to reckon with in the weeks, or months, ahead.

On this final day of October, this day of Halloween, I find myself compelled to reflect upon the curious rite I have revived—a practice of honoring the master of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft, by immersing myself in one tale each night. Thus did I delve into that vast tome, The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft, a volume of heavy presence and arcane import, which, to my astonishment, revealed new realms unknown even to one such as I, who thought himself well-versed in every terror the man had penned.

For many years, I believed I had plumbed every dark depth of Lovecraft’s works. Yet I was gravely mistaken. The tome unveiled secrets undreamed of—strange stories hidden from more familiar collections. Admittedly, there are tales within whose artistry leaves much to be desired, and I suspect it was their very rawness that saw them omitted from more curated assemblages. And yet, there is a strange satisfaction in having read them, as though I have peered into the very soul of the creator himself, unvarnished and unrefined.

In truth, I am far from exhausting this trove of eldritch nightmares. Indeed, I have only begun to explore its dread expanse. Thus, I anticipate, in future Octobers, returning to this rite, delving deeper each year into Lovecraft’s labyrinthine mind.

For this year, I concluded my reading with the elusive fragment, “Azathoth,” a tale weaving the threads of dreams and the dreadful reality beyond mortal comprehension. Permit me, however, to linger upon why this slender story resonates so deeply within me. You see, I am a meticulous keeper of dreams. Each vision that disturbs my slumber I capture upon the page, seeking—as the venerable Jung himself advised—to uncover the recurrent symbols and themes that may shed light upon the buried dimensions of the psyche. Only yesterday, a chance encounter with a stranger stirred memories of a dream from the previous week, though upon closer scrutiny, the connection was but an illusion. And yet, for those few brief minutes, the veil between waking and dreaming thinned, casting the ordinary world in hues strange and wondrous.

But now, to the tale itself!

And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream-haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher’s window to merge with the close air of his room and make him a part of their fabulous wonder.

Lovecraft’s “Azathoth,” intended as an Eastern fable in the antique style inspired by William Thomas Beckford’s Varhek, opens with a lament upon the dreariness of modernity—a world stripped of the old magic, bereft of any glimpse of the numinous. The tale’s nameless protagonist inhabits a dreary, ignoble city, yet each night, he casts his gaze skyward, seeking solace in the stars. Over time, those distant lights reveal unto him vistas hidden from the common eye. One fateful night, the chasm between his soul and those cosmic spheres dissolves, and his mind is loosed from mortal bounds, ascending into a boundless and terrifying infinity.

Today marks the penultimate day of my resurrected ritual—an immersion in the macabre, wherein I partake daily of a tale from that towering harbinger of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft. This humble blogger ensnared within the many toils of earthly existence, found a rare mercy in today’s selection, “What the Moon Brings,” for this potent prose-poem of eldritch insight proved mercifully brief. Yet, despite its brevity, it reverberates with that peculiar chill, leaving an indelible mark upon the soul—a whisper of ancient fears that lingers, unseen and yet unshakable.

I hate the moon—I am afraid of it—for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.

In that twilight realm of dreams beyond mortal understanding, an unnamed soul, trembling yet drawn forth, wanders through a garden of spectral beauty, veiled in pallid moonlight and the haze of unreal visions. Like specters frozen in eternal dread, eerie stone idols loom from the shadows, silent custodians of a forgotten age. From a meandering stream he ventures forth, compelled toward an endless, unnatural river whose ghastly shores beckon with a horror veiled in darkness.

As he nears the river’s dismal banks, the outline of a city—ruins borne of unutterable antiquity—emerges from the mist. Here lies a city of the dead, its crumbling towers and skeletal archways faintly visible beneath the oppressive cloak of the heavens. A sensation of something titanic and grotesque stirs within the abyssal depths, an abominable watcher whose presence seeps into the marrow with chilling certainty. The murky waters heave with slow ripples, the vile and eldritch writhing of creatures unseen—sea worms, he suspects, though they bear a loathsome implication beyond mortal comprehension.

Terror mounts, yet his mind, on the precipice of madness, perceives this monstrous sight as a portal to a fate more dreadful than death itself. In a final, fevered surge of defiance, he chooses oblivion, preferring the cold embrace of the depths to the inexorable dread that looms above. Casting himself toward the submerged ruins, his fate hangs in shadow, uncertain and terrible—a whispered legend lost to the blackened tide.

I have rekindled a hallowed ritual in this spectral October—a ritual devoted to imbibing, daily, a single tale drawn from the ominous corpus of H. P. Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror. Today, I partook of “Hypnos,” a tale whose dark currents struck deeply within me, for I myself am a diligent chronicler of dreams. Of late, a torrent of visions has visited my slumber, compelling me to inscribe them with a meticulousness borrowed from Jung’s own technique—capturing not only the echoes of feeling but also the symbols and archetypes, the nebulous associations and strange, recurrent themes that float in shadowed patterns across my nights. Though many dreams are mundane, there are others that, upon awakening, draw me into long hours of contemplation, teasing at mysteries I cannot quite grasp. Yet none—none—approach the dread majesty or monstrous awe of those Lovecraft has conjured forth.

Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom, but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night, haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore.

In “Hypnos,” a sculptor reveals the tale of his strange and sinister bond with a mysterious figure encountered in the shadowed corridors of a railway station. From the first glimpse of the stranger’s “immense, luminous eyes”—those piercing orbs which seemed to harbor secrets beyond mortal comprehension—the narrator felt an unearthly kinship, an alliance with one whose presence stirred the latent mysteries of his soul. Together, they embarked upon dream-like voyages, traversing surreal and otherworldly realms that defied all human understanding, venturing ever closer to the edge of cosmic truth.

Yet, over time, the stranger’s ambitions grew monstrous, as he became possessed by the idea of wielding these hidden powers to rule over all existence. The narrator, though drawn to the abyss, recoiled from this dread aspiration. Through the use of strange potions and drugs, they evaded sleep, clinging to the waking world with fevered desperation. But each journey left them increasingly haggard, haunted by visions that lurked beyond description. One fateful night, the stranger fell into an unbreakable slumber. In horror, the sculptor found himself alone, surrounded by police, who informed him that his companion was nothing more than a statue, a bust inscribed with the name ΥΠΝΟΣ (Hypnos).

Today, as a gift unto myself, I have granted leave from my daily labors to observe the passage of another year—a brief suspension of toil that I might ponder the strange, winding course of life. I awakened late, indulging in restful slumber, and turned then to meditation, sinking deep into the realms of my own mind. Later, I shall embark on a journey to Nuclear Comics, a peculiar temple of knowledge where I hope to unearth the haunting works of Bernie Wrightson, that celebrated architect of the macabre, whose imagination has sculpted unforgettable horrors—the tragic monstrosity of Frankenstein, the melancholy Swamp Thing, and countless grim illustrations, all rendered with Wrightson’s distinct, meticulous penwork. Truly, his visions capture the essence of dark genius, and I, a humble seeker, am eager to lay my hands upon them.

Of course, October draws me, as always, to the spectral works of H. P. Lovecraft himself. Today, I indulged in “Herbert West—Reanimator,” the tale of grim reanimation and hubris that ensnares the reader in morbid fascination. The narrative, serialized initially for Lovecraft’s friend George Julian Houtain’s Home Brew, marks one of Lovecraft’s earlier forays into the themes of ghastly resurrection, a motif that has since permeated popular culture as a precursor to the modern zombie—a creature neither fully dead nor alive, a vessel of horror distilled. Though admittedly pulpy in tone, the work is no less deliciously macabre, an archetype of Lovecraftian depravity and eerie speculation.

The ghastly tale of “Herbert West—Reanimator” found, decades hence, a strange new life beyond the printed page. In the year 1985, it served as the foundation for the film Re-Animator, a chilling and grotesque interpretation that would birth a series of sequels and adaptations across various media—a testament to the tale’s enduring, morbid allure. Indeed, this cinematic incarnation brought forth a remarkable thespian, one Jeffrey Combs, whose portrayal of the titular West has since become iconic. Combs, I confess, I have watched with a fascinated eye through the years as his career has woven through realms of horror and the uncanny, an actor bound—whether by fate or by providence—to the shadowed legacy of Lovecraft’s own making.

Come, let us recount today’s tale, “Herbert West–Reanimator.”

It is uncommon to fire all six shots of a revolver with great suddenness when one would probably be sufficient, but many things in the life of Herbert West were uncommon.

“Herbert West—Reanimator” chronicles the dread-infused exploits of Dr. Herbert West, a man driven by an insatiable lust to conquer death itself. West, a student of medicine at the shadowy Miskatonic University, envisions the human body as naught but a sophisticated machine, susceptible to “restarting” if only the proper key could be found. Thus, his dark obsession leads him to concoct a bizarre serum—a blend of science and sorcery—to restore life to dead tissue. Yet his ambitions falter in the face of reality, for his serum’s efficacy must be proven on human subjects. Lacking access to the cadavers necessary for his work, West resorts to grotesque methods, accompanied always by the unnamed narrator—a reluctant partner in these morbid ventures.

In an isolated farmhouse, far from prying eyes, West and his companion commence their grisly undertakings. Corpses are exhumed from fresh graves by hired hands, only for each experiment to result in grotesque failure. Driven by desperation, West and the narrator take to the graves themselves, retrieving the body of a recently killed laborer, only for the unholy concoction to unleash an ear-splitting scream from the lifeless form before flames devour the farmhouse—a fitting end to such profane deeds. Yet, West, undeterred, pursues his dread mission.

When access to corpses proves scarce, fate deals West with a grimly serendipitous boon: a typhoid outbreak. With a steady stream of freshly deceased bodies, West escalates his experimentation, injecting victims of the pestilence with an improved serum. Most prove unresponsive, displaying only the faintest hints of reanimation—save for Dr. Allen Halsey, West’s mentor and adversary, whom West, in a perverse homage, chooses as his latest subject. Halsey rises once more, but as a ferocious, degraded mockery of his former self, brutalizing those in his path before finally succumbing to madness and incarceration. West laments that Halsey’s deterioration was due to his delay—a rueful reminder of the delicate balance his work demands.

Relocating to Bolton, West and his now equally damned companion resume their experiments, settling near a cemetery to ensure a steady supply of bodies. The story reaches new heights of horror with the acquisition of a prize specimen—a boxer felled in an illicit brawl. When their serum fails, they bury the cadaver, only to later encounter it at their very doorstep, its decayed form clasping the severed limb of a child. Overcome with revulsion and dread, West destroys the abomination, cursing the monstrous path his work has carved.

In time, West develops a preservation serum, allowing him to delay decay at the precise moment of death. He preserves a traveling salesman who perishes unexpectedly, awaiting his partner’s return to continue the blasphemous rites. Reanimated, the corpse implicates West in his own death—a haunting whisper that sparks terror and suspicion in the narrator, whose trust in his companion begins to fray.

Years later, in the carnage of World War I, West plumbs even darker depths. In a wartime medic tent, he befriends Major Clapham-Lee, a fellow physician intrigued by West’s grotesque experiments. When Clapham-Lee perishes, his head nearly severed by a crash, West seizes the opportunity. The reanimated trunk spasms violently, Clapham-Lee’s head screaming out in undying agony—a manifestation of death defied. A well-timed bomb obliterates the laboratory, though West remains haunted by the specter of a vengeful, headless medic.

Upon returning to civilian life, West grows increasingly paranoid, haunted by thoughts of his past sins returning to claim him. One fateful night, news reaches them of an attempted break-in at the asylum where Halsey was held—a raid led by none other than a wax-headed figure that could only be Clapham-Lee himself. Shortly thereafter, West receives a sinister visitation: an entourage bearing a sealed box. Filled with dread, West commands that the box be burned, but the conflagration summons an unspeakable fate. Figures emerge from the shadows—once-men, victims of West’s cruel ambitions—tearing through the house as they descend upon their creator. With grim resolve, West accepts his doom; his life ends in the jaws of his own unnatural children.

Our narrator, left alone in the aftermath, offers his tale in fragmented whispers, for no soul shall believe the horrors he has witnessed. The walls have been rebuilt; the catacombs sealed. Yet, in the narrator’s fevered mind, the knowledge of what truly transpired lingers—a dissonant echo in the dark corridors of sanity.

Twenty-seven days into my rekindled habit of delving, with dread and reverence, into the arcane works of the master of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft, I find myself at last arriving at one of the most sublime and unsettling tales ever penned by that mad scribe of unfathomable terrors: “The Music of Erich Zann.”

What is it, I muse, that draws me with such fearful admiration to this particular tale and lifts it above the shadow-haunted corpus I have consumed thus far? It is a question I had not fully pondered until today’s reading, as the eldritch tones of Zann’s viol once again filled my soul with disquiet. Perhaps it is the setting, that strange and nameless street—Rue d’Auseil—with its claustrophobic, ancient buildings huddled together beneath a brooding, oppressive sky. Or maybe it is the squalid, forlorn chamber where Zann, a mute German of strange and haunted countenance, plies his ungodly trade. How curious that, no matter how fervently the narrator seeks, the cursed Rue d’Auseil can never again be found on any earthly map. Yet I know that neither the place nor the isolation of the reclusive Zann truly grips my imagination, what sinks its talons into my very mind.

No, the truth is far more insidious. It lies in the dreadful mystery of what unspeakable visions lurk beyond Zann’s accursed window, concealed behind heavy, shrouded drapery that quivers in the night as though straining to contain a hideous, otherworldly force. And it is the sound—the alien, maddening strains of Zann’s viol—emanating not from a mere instrument but some cosmic gateway to that which should not be known. What arcane melodies, what ghastly harmonies, did Zann conjure from beyond the veil of human understanding? My mind reels with the horror of it as I realize I am far from his modern Laundry Files series; Charles Stross invoked this same sinister motif—a testament to the enduring terror of Zann’s music, which resonates even in the most blasphemous of contemporary minds.

It would be useless to describe the playing of Erich Zann on that dreadful night. It was more horrible than anything I had ever overheard, because I could now see the expression of his face, and could realise that this time the motive was stark fear.

In “The Music of Erich Zann,” we follow the fateful descent of a nameless student of metaphysics, destitute and weary, who seeks shelter in the dilapidated Rue d’Auseil—a steep, cobbled street seemingly forgotten by both time and the sane world. Zann, a mute viol player of unnerving reclusion, dwells atop the highest floor of a decaying edifice among its meager and shadowy inhabitants. Night after night, the student hears the unearthly, nerve-shattering music emanating from the old man’s quarters—melodies that scrape the soul, beckoning the student with their unholy allure.

When the student finally gains entry to Zann’s inner sanctum, what he finds defies rational explanation. Frantic and wild-eyed, Zann plays with fevered intensity, as though his music alone holds back some invisible, malevolent presence from beyond the window. And then, in that final, unspeakable moment—the window shatters, the night outside devours the papers that might have explained the abominable truth, and through the gaping void, the student sees not the city below but a vast, black infinity—an abyss where no man’s gaze should ever fall.

The horror, once glimpsed, cannot be forgotten. And though the student fled that cursed room, that malignant street, he is haunted still by what he saw—or rather, by what he could never fully comprehend. For Rue d’Auseil, the truth of Zann’s music is lost to him forever. No map bears the street’s name, and no inquiry will bring it to light. It is as though the whole place—like the awful music itself—existed only on the threshold of reality, a whisper of madness on the brink of oblivion.

And thus, the mystery lingers, unresolved, lurking in the shadowy corners of the mind, as one asks: What horrors did Erich Zann see? What unspeakable melodies did he play to keep the darkness at bay? The answers are lost, perhaps mercifully so, in the eternal void beyond the window.

Five days remain in this most hallowed tradition I have rekindled—this dark ritual of reading one tale each day during the sinister month of October, drawn from the dread corpus of that ineffable master of cosmic horror, H. P. Lovecraft. It is no small coincidence, then, that today’s reading, “The Other Gods,” should coincide with the gathering known, in euphemism, as my grandson’s so-called “Harvest Festival.” Oh, how they attempt to mask its true nature beneath pastoral pretense, but none are deceived! For the air is thick with the revelry of costumed children—those harbingers of something far older, far darker, than they know. Ghosts, vampires, and creatures of unspeakable eldritch ancestry scuttle across the fields, playing games for tributes of sugary indulgence and venturing into what they believe is a mere “haunted castle.”

Yet the disguises are not perfect. Among the specters of folklore wander apparitions clothed in the garb of anime and superheroes, modern-day idols of a distracted age. No matter that the air hangs heavy at 77 degrees, and that beneath masks and layers of fabric some may fall prey to the sun’s cruel heat. I gaze upon mothers who have taken on the mantle of witches and fathers—foolishly—adorning themselves with the logos of death metal bands like Entombed. The laughter, the merriment—it is all but a mask. They call it a “Harvest Festival,” yet we, who have delved into the forbidden lore, know better. We gather here for darker reasons, unspoken but understood by those who dare to see beyond the veil.

Now, I turn to today’s reading, whose lines tremble with the names of long-forbidden places: Ulthar, where no man may kill a cat; unknown Kadath, that dread, unreachable city of the gods; and the ominous Pnakotic Manuscripts, those repositories of knowledge mankind was not meant to possess. Ah, how the tendrils of these eldritch realms weave through Lovecraft’s many tales, binding us closer to the great and terrible unknown that lurks just beyond the fragile shell of our world!

The wisdom of Barzai hath made him greater than earth’s gods, and against his will their spells and barriers are as naught; Barzai will behold the gods, the proud gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn the sight of men!

Barzai the Wise, high priest of Hatheg-Kla and prophet of unutterable mysteries, stood as one accursed with knowledge, for in his veins ran the eldritch blood of antiquity, and his mind was haunted by the forgotten lore of the Great Ones—the “gods of earth,” beings revered by mortals but ever elusive. His quest, driven by a mad thirst to behold these celestial powers face to face, led him to the accursed slopes of Hatheg-Kla. Accompanied by the trembling Atal, his youthful disciple, Barzai’s ascent was filled with a sense of dark destiny, as the winds whispered secrets known only to those doomed to blasphemous revelations.

Upon reaching the dread summit, Barzai’s countenance shifted from triumph to terror, for the air grew thick with the presence of something far more terrible than the Great Ones themselves. The “gods of earth,” frail and ephemeral, were not alone in their dominion, for they were but puppets, mere playthings of an older, far darker pantheon—the “Other Gods,” nameless entities from the outer hells, watchers over the feeble earthbound deities, their malice unspeakable, their gaze upon Barzai a curse of eternal madness.

With a shriek that echoed through the aeons, Atal fled in terror down the mountainside, his soul forever scarred by the glimpse of unholy truth. Of Barzai, nothing remained but an emptiness more profound than the void between stars. No mortal eye ever beheld him again, and it is whispered in forgotten corners of the world that his doom was woven into the very fabric of the abyss, claimed by powers too vast and too hideous for the frail mind of man to comprehend.

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.