Synecdoche

One of the strange and eldritch pleasures in traversing the labyrinthine depths of H.P. Lovecraft’s literary oeuvre is the occasional uncovering of tales previously unknown, like forgotten relics buried beneath the sands of time. Such a discovery is “Old Bugs,” a curious departure from the cosmic dread that so often permeates his works. Here, Lovecraft weaves not a tale of unimaginable horrors lurking at the edges of our reality, but a morality play, quaint and unexpectedly grounded in the human experience.

The old man would then rise from the floor in anger and excitement, muttering threats and warnings, and seeking to dissuade the novices from embarking upon their course of “seeing life as it is”.

Set during the grim days of Prohibition, Chicago’s Sheehan Billiard Room becomes a bleak refuge for souls lost to vice and despair. Within its shadowed walls toils Old Bugs, a man corroded by his own ruinous choices, yet possessing fleeting glimpses of a once-refined intellect. When young Alfred Trever, lured by his friend Pete Schultz into this pit of moral decay, steps through the tavern’s ill-fated doors, Old Bugs, in a rare moment of lucidity, pleads with the boy to turn away from the path that consumed him. It is a simple tale, but one that holds a quiet horror of its own—the horror of human frailty, and of lives unraveled not by cosmic forces, but by the slow, inevitable decay of the self.

In the shadow-haunted hours of October, I find myself steeped in the grim, forgotten pages of The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft. With an arrogance bred of years, I had foolishly believed I had traversed every eldritch corner of the master’s mind—had braved every unutterable horror he conjured from the abyss. Yet this collection, more vast than I had ever imagined, now reveals the depth of my error. Today, my trembling hands turned the pages of “Memory,” a strange tale that, to my disquiet, felt both new and familiar—as if dredged from some dim recess of my own shattered recollections, or perhaps a dream long forgotten.

I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, for it was like to that of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were called Man.

In the shadow-haunted vale of Nis, where ancient and nameless horrors sleep beneath the creeping foliage, monolithic ruins lie crumbled and forgotten, their stones now the abode of loathsome grey toads and slithering serpents. Towering trees, twisted and gnarled, stretch their limbs over the accursed landscape, while small, gibbering apes cavort through the decaying remnants of a civilization long lost to time’s relentless grip. Across this forsaken land, the foul and sluggish river Than winds its red and slimy course, a baleful reminder of untold eons past.

Amidst this bleak desolation unfolds the tale of “Memory,” wherein two eldritch beings, the Genie who haunts the moonbeams and the Daemon of the Valley, converse. The Genie, ethereal and luminous, inquires of the Daemon, who in that distant age erected the towering stones now in ruin. The Daemon, ancient and burdened by the weight of forgotten ages, replies with grim certainty: the creatures were called Man, remembered only because their name echoed that of the cursed river Than. Dimly, he recalls their form—resembling, in some monstrous fashion, the shrieking apes that now infest the ruins of their works.

As the Genie returns to his ethereal domain of moonlight, the Daemon, with eyes aglow with the dim embers of forgotten knowledge, watches silently as one of these pitiful apes scurries through the ruins—a grotesque echo of what once was.

In accordance with a custom that has become as much ritual as indulgence, I persist in my daily readings throughout this haunted month of October, immersing myself in the cryptic and eldritch narratives penned by the very architect of cosmic dread, H.P. Lovecraft. On this particular day, I find myself drawn inexorably into the strange and haunting corridors of his work, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” where realms beyond our comprehension glimmer darkly on the edge of perception.

It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves of radiant energy like heat, light, and electricity. This belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus, and I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbrous devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude, pre-radio period.

Our narrator, a former intern at that dread institution, the mental hospital, recounts a singularly unsettling encounter with one Joe Slater, a man whose brutal hands had delivered him to the clutches of law and madness alike. Slater, a coarse and untutored denizen of the wild Catskill Mountains, had been condemned for murder, his mental faculties deemed shattered beyond repair. Yet, from the moment of his confinement, there emerged in him a wild and otherworldly fury, manifesting in violent seizures and ravings, incomprehensible to those around him. Nightly, Slater would plunge into these fearful fits, each outburst more lurid than the last, describing in his crude vernacular visions of a burning entity—an astral presence bent on vengeful retribution. The doctors, baffled by the savage’s uncouth and rustic nature, could not fathom how such untaught lips could shape such spectral images.

It was then that the narrator, seized by a morbid curiosity and remembering the strange apparatus he had once devised for the purpose of telepathic communion, resolved to investigate further. This device, born of the radical theory that thought might indeed be a form of radiant energy, had yet yielded no success. But now, as Slater teetered on the edge of oblivion, the narrator fastened his creation to Slater’s fevered brow. What followed shattered the foundations of all the narrator had known. Through the medium of this deranged mind came a revelation—an ancient truth too horrible to contemplate. A being of light, inhabiting Slater’s form but unbound by flesh, spoke of realms beyond sleep, where their slumbering souls wander amongst unfathomable planes, untouched by mortal understanding.

The being revealed its impending battle with an eternal nemesis near the distant star Algol, a conflict waged in a realm where matter was meaningless. When Slater at last succumbed, a brilliant star flared into existence near Algol, burning bright in the night sky before fading over the following weeks. The eerie coincidence left me pondering whether Slater’s death had not merely been a release but the herald of something far more cosmic and terrifying.

In the waning days of October, as the eldritch chill of autumn crept through the twilight hours, I once again revived my sacred tradition. Each day, a solitary tale from the arcane mind of the master of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft, graced my thoughts, casting shadows deeper than the encroaching night. Today, I turned my trembling gaze to “Polaris,” that star-born nightmare, whose otherworldly light pierces through the veil of forgotten time and forgotten dreams.

Slumber, watcher, till the spheres
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv'd, and I return
To the spot where now I burn.
Other stars anon shall rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Only when my round is o'er
Shall the past disturb thy door.

Our tale commences with a narrator, adrift in long, sleepless vigils beneath the infinite vault of night, his gaze riveted upon the baleful presence of Polaris, the Pole Star. He describes it as a malignant, watchful eye, a cosmic sentinel that seems to convey an ancient and terrible message, now long forgotten. One fateful night, beneath a ghostly aurora that writhed above his swamp-bound abode, the narrator’s mind is drawn into a strange dream—a marble city, stark and silent, perched upon a lonely plateau, and bathed in the eerie light of Polaris.

Within this spectral city, he observes its denizens, conversing in a language unknown yet disturbingly familiar to his ears. Upon waking, the dream clings to his consciousness like a shadow, returning night after night, growing ever more vivid and insistent. Our narrator’s obsession deepens, as he grapples with a terrible uncertainty: could this otherworldly city be real? Could his waking life be the true illusion?

Over time, his desire to merely observe the city transforms into something darker, more desperate. He begins to question the very fabric of reality, unsure whether his fragile existence belongs to the waking world or the dream-realm. In one fateful vision, he finds himself not merely a distant observer, but an inhabitant of the city—Olathoë, upon the plateau of Sarkis, in the ancient land of Lomar, now besieged by the brutish Inutos.

Assigned to a watchtower, he is tasked with guarding the city from invasion. Yet as he gazes upon Polaris, its malignant power grips him, and he hears an ancient, cryptic rhyme whispered by the hateful star. Overtaken by confusion, he succumbs to sleep, failing in his duty. Upon awakening, he finds himself once more in his swamp-bound home, yet now utterly convinced that his life is but a dream, and that his true fate lies eternally bound to the lost city of Olathoë, forever unreachable, forever haunting.

In this accursed month of October, I have embarked upon a dread and solitary journey, wherein I shall immerse myself, each day, in the abominable works of the master of cosmic terror, H.P. Lovecraft. Today’s offering to the void is that eldritch tale of unspeakable horrors, “Dagon.”

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!

In this ghastly testament of a broken soul, a man ravaged by morphine recounts a nightmarish incident during his time as an officer in World War I. After his cargo ship is seized by a German raider in the desolate Pacific, he escapes in a lifeboat, drifting aimlessly until he lands upon a loathsome black mire. This hellish wasteland, strewn with decaying sea creatures, seems to be the ocean’s floor, upheaved by some cosmic force from unfathomable depths.

For days, he traverses this foul expanse, finally arriving at a monstrous chasm, where a great white monolith stands. Carved with indecipherable aquatic hieroglyphs and grotesque sculptures, the stone hints at an ancient, aquatic civilization. As he gazes in horror, a nightmarish creature rises from the depths—its form too ghastly to comprehend.

In terror, the mariner flees back to his boat, losing consciousness in a storm, only to awaken later in a San Francisco hospital. There, no one believes his story of the unearthly Pacific upheaval. Even his inquiries into the ancient Philistine god Dagon are dismissed.

Plagued by haunting visions, especially during the gibbous moon, and with his narcotic escape fading, the narrator prepares to end his life. As he writes, he hears a terrifying sound outside—something immense and slick pressing against the door. His final cry, filled with madness, invokes the horror of a monstrous hand at the window before the narrative ends in unspeakable terror.

In the shadowy recesses of my youth, each October I partook in a most curious ritual—a daily communion with the macabre genius of H.P. Lovecraft, immersing myself in one of his dread-laden tales as autumn’s chill encroached. Today, that ancient tradition stirred once more within my soul, compelling me to delve into the spectral pages of “The Tomb.” How strange, yet wondrous, was my discovery that the band Rudimentary Peni had woven Lovecraft’s very drinking song from “Dream City” into their haunting opus, Cacophony! Truly, it was as though the eldritch whispers of the Old Ones still echo through the dim corridors of our modern world.

“The Tomb” unfurls with the darkly enchanted life of Jervas Dudley, a soul possessed by strange reveries. From childhood, his spirit is drawn to a long-abandoned mausoleum belonging to the Hyde family, whose mansion had perished in fire and ruin. Jervas, unable to breach the tomb’s padlock, succumbs to a peculiar obsession, taking solace in slumber beside its cryptic entrance. Yet in the shadowy intervals of years, the tomb seems to call him, beckoning him with spectral light and forgotten secrets.

One fateful night, Dudley uncovers a key in an ancient chest, long since rotten. He descends into the depths of the tomb, finding a coffin eerily inscribed with his own name—“Jervas.” Each night thereafter, Jervas believes himself drawn to rest within that sepulcher, though others see him only beside it, untouched by its interior gloom. Haunted by strange forebodings of thunder and flame, his once peaceful contemplations unravel into visions of debauched revelry within the now-restored Hyde mansion—a phantasmagoric feast doomed to burn as it once had, and again, he perishes within its inferno.

Yet when he awakens, Jervas finds himself restrained, declared mad. The tomb’s lock, untouched by mortal hands, betrays no entry. Consigned to an asylum, his mind writhes in the unfathomable, until his faithful servant, Hiram, at last breaks the lock and reveals what lurked below: the coffin, bearing his name. Jervas, his fate entwined with ancestral doom, declares that he will one day take his rightful place, not in life, but in death’s eternal slumber, as the grave he sought all along was, indeed, his own.

Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,
And drink to the present before it shall fail;
Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,
For 'tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:
So fill up your glass,
For life will soon pass;
When you're dead ye'll ne'er drink to your king or your lass!

Anacreon had a red nose, so they say;
But what's a red nose if ye're happy and gay?
Gad split me! I'd rather be red whilst I'm here,
Than white as a lily–and dead half a year!
So Betty, my miss,
Come give me a kiss;
In hell there's no innkeeper's daughter like this!

Young Harry, propp'd up just as straight as he's able,
Will soon lose his wig and slip under the table;
But fill up your goblets and pass 'em around–
Better under the table than under the ground!
So revel and chaff
As ye thirstily quaff:
Under six feet of dirt 'tis less easy to laugh!

The fiend strike me blue! I'm scarce able to walk,
And damn me if I can stand upright or talk!
Here, landlord, bid Betty to summon a chair;
I'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there!
So lend me a hand;
I'm not able to stand,
But I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land!