Synecdoche

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.

Though I find myself gratified by the renewal of my long-cherished tradition—reading, each day throughout October, a tale spun by that master of cosmic terror, H.P. Lovecraft—I confess an unshakable disquiet. There is something faintly profane in absorbing these eldritch horrors through the cold, pallid luminescence of a backlit Kindle screen rather than from the ancient, worn pages of a proper tome. Yet, what choice have I? The modern world, in all its indifferent progress, has forced my hand. And so be it.

But the olive grove still stands, as does the tree growing out of the tomb of Kalos, and the old bee-keeper told me that sometimes the boughs whisper to one another in the night-wind, saying over and over again, “Οἶδα! Οἶδα!—I know! I know!”

Today’s story, “The Tree,” is one I have read before—yet now, with the deeper knowledge gleaned from perusing the works of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, I find myself newly attuned to Lovecraft’s craft. His tale grows more haunting with each re-reading, as though the fabric of its mystery darkens with age.

In the desolate foothills of Mount Maenalus in Arcadia, an olive grove casts a sepulchral pall over a crumbling villa and an ancient tomb of marble. From this ground, there rises a grotesque, distorted tree—a hideous mockery of human form, its gnarled roots shifting the very stones of the tomb beneath it.

The tale, as our narrator relays it, came from the lips of a simple beekeeper. In those ancient days, the villa was home to two illustrious sculptors, Kalos and Musides. Though bound by the deepest of friendships, they differed greatly in their souls. Kalos sought the quietude of the olive grove, where he communed with strange inspirations; Musides reveled in the life of the city. The Tyrant of Syracuse sent emissaries to these two, demanding a statue of Tyché, goddess of fortune. Yet, as fate would have it, Kalos fell gravely ill, leaving Musides to watch in despair as his friend grew weaker.

As Kalos lay dying, his calm stood in stark contrast to Musides’ grief. He made one strange request—that olive twigs be buried near his head when his inevitable death came. And so it was. From that burial sprouted a great olive tree, unnaturally swift in its growth, overshadowing the unfinished work of Musides.

Three years passed, and Musides completed his statue. Yet in the end, a malevolent storm, like the very hand of fate, came howling down from the mountain. The next morning, the villa was found in ruins, the statue crushed beneath the twisted boughs of the tree, and Musides vanished without a trace.

Thus, the story ends as it began—with that grim reminder: “Fata viam invenient”—fate will find a way, no matter how we struggle against its inescapable pull.

I have once again embraced my tradition of immersing myself, each day of this accursed October, in the unsettling visions conjured by that inimitable master of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Today’s selection, “The Angry Old Man,” proved to be a tale of remarkable brevity—so much so that I consumed its dark essence in the span it took for my coffee to brew. Yet, despite its brevity, the tale was no less steeped in the ineffable dread and creeping unease that so defines Lovecraft’s works.

And they say that the Terrible Old Man talks to these bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Long Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis, and that whenever he speaks to a bottle the little lead pendulum within makes certain definite vibrations as if in answer.

In the shadow-haunted town of Kingsport, there exists a figure whose name has long been swallowed by the tides of time. This ancient man, once rumored to have been a captain of clipper ships that sailed the unwholesome waters of the East, dwells alone in a decrepit house on Water Street, where the years have worn away the barriers between the mundane and the unknown. The very air around the house is heavy with a dread beyond mortal comprehension, and though few dare to speak of it, those who pass his dwelling whisper of bizarre collections of stones in his yard and of strange, eldritch conversations with bottles upon his table—bottles that, inexplicably, seem to respond in kind.

It was against this grim and arcane backdrop that three men—Angelo Ricci, Joe Czanek, and Manuel Silva—sought the treasures whispered to lie within. With greed-fueled bravado, Ricci and Silva entered the abode, leaving Czanek outside, oblivious to the cosmic horrors lurking within. When the ghastly cries shattered the stillness, Czanek, unaware of the lurking forces, presumed mere mortal violence had ensued. But from the ancient threshold emerged not his comrades, but the old man himself, his eyes aglow with an unnatural, yellow luminescence, a smile twisted in unspeakable malevolence.

Later, the mutilated corpses of the would-be thieves were discovered near the sea, their bodies ravaged by horrors unknown to earthly men, as if by the cruel hands of spectral sailors from some nameless void. The people of Kingsport murmured of strange happenings, but the ancient figure remained detached from the prattle of the world, his mind surely preoccupied with forces far older, far darker, than any living soul could fathom.

In the eldritch gloom of an overcast October dawn, I partook of my renewed ritual—devouring one tale a day from the master of cosmic dread, H.P. Lovecraft. This morning, bathed in the bleak, spectral light that seemed to mirror the very essence of doom, I embarked upon the baleful journey that is “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” Indeed, had I waited for the merciless San Diego sun to rise in all its garish splendor, the experience would have been irrevocably tainted, its otherworldly horror dispelled by that damnable orb.

You cannot deceive me, Joseph Curwen, for I know that your accursed magic is true!

The tale itself unfurls like a miasma of ancestral terror. Charles Dexter Ward, the scion of a venerable Rhode Island family, vanishes from a mental asylum after succumbing to madness—a madness rooted in revelations far beyond mortal comprehension. His family doctor, the resolute Marinus Bicknell Willett, delves into the young man’s unsettling descent, uncovering an unspeakable truth. Ward, bewitched by the shadow of his ancestor, Joseph Curwen—an infernal necromancer of the eighteenth century—dared to unearth those ancient and malevolent rites that might summon the dead from their unhallowed rest.

Willett’s investigation drags him into a labyrinthine catacomb, a hellish underworld where Curwen once wrought horrors beyond imagination. There, amidst the nameless whispers and dreadful relics, the doctor uncovers not only Curwen’s return but his infernal pact with necromancers of yore—an alliance that imperiled the very fabric of humanity. Yet, through the dark machinations of fate, Willett unwittingly calls forth a being hostile to Curwen, one that imparts the knowledge needed to unmake the sorcerer.

In the end, it is in the grim confines of the asylum that Willett brings the tale to its calamitous close, dissolving Curwen to dust and obliterating his vile conspirators. Thus does one nightmare cease—yet I, the reader, am left haunted by the cosmic shadow of others still lurking.

I have once again renewed my eldritch tradition—immersing myself, one tale a day, in the dark and unnameable horrors spun by the master himself, H.P. Lovecraft, throughout October. To be sure, it is a peculiar sensation reading such works under the relentless sunshine of San Diego rather than amidst the autumnal shadows of New England. Yet, despite the incongruity of my surroundings, the strange pleasure I derived from revisiting “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” remained undiminished. Truly, the title itself is a blasphemous hymn to the unholy—one that is, as the modern youth might say, “metal AF!”

Where once had risen walls of 300 cubits and towers yet higher, now stretched only the marshy shore, and where once had dwelt fifty millions of men now crawled only the detestable green water-lizard. Not even the mines of precious metal remained, for DOOM had come to Sarnath.

More than 10,000 years ago, a race of shepherds, hardy and ambitious, colonized the banks of the river Ai in the land of Mnar. They founded the cities of Thraa, Ilarnek, and Kadatheron, and from there, their avarice led them to the desolate shores of a vast, dark lake, where they established the mighty city of Sarnath. Yet, there, beside the silent waters, lay the grey and ancient city of Ib, home to a queer, voiceless race who had descended from the Moon itself. These beings—green-skinned, with bulging eyes and flabby lips—worshipped the great water lizard Bokrug, and for their grotesque forms alone, the men of Sarnath loathed them.

In their arrogance, the Sarnathians rose in merciless slaughter, wiping out the inhabitants of Ib, razing the city to the ground, and carrying back the idol of Bokrug as a symbol of their victory. But that night, as the idol vanished from the temple and the high priest Taran-Ish was found dead, with the single word “DOOM” scrawled in his final moments, the true fate of Sarnath was sealed.

A thousand years later, when Sarnath had reached the zenith of its power, a feast was held to celebrate the destruction of Ib. But the revelry was cut short by strange green mists rising from the lake, sending waves of terror through the city. Survivors claimed to have seen the long-dead inhabitants of Ib staring out from the towers of Sarnath. The following day, Sarnath was no more—vanished, leaving only a desolate marsh crawling with water lizards and the missing idol of Bokrug. From that dark day forward, Bokrug reigned supreme in Mnar, a grim reminder of the doom that befell the proud city of Sarnath.

One of the strange and unforeseen pleasures of my autumnal tradition—reading one tale per day from H.P. Lovecraft throughout October—has been the unsettling realization that, even after years of this ritual, there still linger tale of his prose yet undiscovered. Some of these forgotten works, it must be admitted, are but dim echoes of his grander nightmares, relegated perhaps justly to the fringes of anthologies. Yet, there are those—like “The White Ship”—that stir within me a deep, indescribable awe, transporting me, like poor Basil Elton, to realms that no human tongue can fully describe.

And thereafter the ocean told me its secrets no more; and though many times since has the moon shone full and high in the heavens, the White Ship from the South came never again.

Elton, our solitary lighthouse keeper, is drawn under the pale glow of the full moon to the phantom vessel of a bearded mariner, whose ship, like a thing of dreams, drifts on spectral seas. Across a shimmering bridge of moonbeams, he steps into uncharted dimensions, visiting lands forgotten by the waking mind—Zar, where unremembered dreams dwell, and Thalarion, a city of dreadful wonders from which no soul returns. They traverse Xura, a treacherous paradise that promises joy from afar, but exudes pestilence upon approach. And in Sona-Nyl, the land untouched by time, Elton lingers for untold eons, yet it is the elusive Cathuria, the “Land of Hope,” that calls to him with a maddening pull.

Against the mariner’s wisdom, Elton demands to seek this enigmatic land, and so they embark on a westward journey fraught with unseen peril. But Cathuria remains a phantom, and instead, they reach the world’s precipice, where the ship is swallowed into the gaping void beyond all existence. Elton awakens, shaken, upon the jagged rocks of his lighthouse, just in time to witness the doom of a mortal ship that perished in the darkened waters below—victim to his extinguished light. Haunted still by this eerie voyage, Elton later discovers the lifeless form of an azure bird and a splinter from the white ship, tangible remnants of his fateful passage into realms beyond human ken. The white ship, it seems, shall haunt him no more.

Having once more embraced my solemn October custom of perusing a tale from the dread pen of H.P. Lovecraft each day, I find myself startled by the discovery of narratives long buried within the murk of forgotten lore. Today’s chilling revelation, “The Transition of Juan Romero,” unveils a departure from Lovecraft’s familiar, shadow-haunted Rhode Island, evoking the muscular atmospheres of Robert E. Howard’s own fevered imaginings.

At one time I fancied I had gone mad—this was when, on wondering how our way was lighted in the absence of lamp or candle, I realised that the ancient ring on my finger was glowing with eerie radiance, diffusing a pallid lustre through the damp, heavy air around.

The tale recounts a mining expedition’s dreadful encounter with an abyss of unimaginable depth, whose yawning maw refuses to yield to the probing lines of mortal men. The very night following this accursed revelation, our narrator, along with the ill-fated Mexican miner, Juan Romero, are irresistibly drawn into the mine, lured by a grotesque and inhuman pulsation from beneath the earth. Romero, reaching the abyss first, is inexorably consumed by it. The narrator, peering over its lip, is confronted by a vision so eldritch, so terrible, that he dares not speak of what he witnessed, his reason faltering as he falls into unconsciousness.

Come morning, both Romero and the narrator are found lifeless in their bunks, untouched by any journey to the depths, while the chasm—oh, that unholy pit—has utterly vanished, as if it had never been. Other miners, in dread certainty, swear that neither man had stirred from their cabin that fateful night.

I’m excited to see Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man on the big screen later this month! The last time I watched it was last century on a VHS cassette I ordered through Amok Books. That movie had such an impact on me that I named Lord Tsukamoto, the big bad from my comic book, VIKINGS vs SAMURAI, after him.