Cthulhu Fhtagn!

by Laird Barron

  Impressed as I am by the fortitude of your prose & dedication to the macabre, I feel inclined to impart some of the secrets I have learned, should our relationship continue to blossom. Words can contain a certain magic, some more potent than you perhaps imagine. I find myself wondering about your age & strength & susceptibility to illness…

  I am very sorry to hear about your mother’s health. If it may provide even the slightest condolence, my own family is long passed, aside from nearly nameless extended cousins, & my own fair Mia F.L., though I fear daily that she will discover that our age discrepancy is beyond her patience & tolerance.

  Did you know that before she & I ever met, I received a letter from one C. Manson? Of course I never responded to it, & thought nothing of it at all until the news of 1969. For some unfathomable reason, every time something remotely linked to the occult fans the flames of media hysteria, my publicist is contacted for quotes.

  You will not be surprised at my utter disgust that a group so mad & unkempt as Manson’s should be in any way linked to my own explorations of cosmic doom. Yet alongside his bacchanal Beatles & Beach Boys albums & other cacophonous aural detritus was a stack of my more recent tomes. Helter Skelter, indeed!

  Your concern expressed in regards to my rather conservative views on certain politically sensitive matters is well intended, & timely. It is true that for much of my life I harbored rather irrational perceptions of genetic superiority underscored by my antiquarian preferences. For decades I clung to these unfashionable bigotries, only to have the moldiest shingles of my gambrel-roofed mind slowly peeled back over the course of the Swinging Sixties & their associated civilities. I hope it will assuage your concerns to know that it was none other than Sammy Davis who finally enlightened me on the subject. When witchy young Karla LaVey cleverly inducted the two of us as Honorary Warlocks at the same ceremony, I was initially taken aback. But that wicked black Cyclops charmed me like the Candy Man that he is, & I have continued to revise my views ever since. It is through him that I met Mia, & for that will ever be grateful. He truly is a credit to his tribe.

  If you will allow the digression, I cannot help but recall a particularly festive gathering that began with a swirling crystalline midnight punchbowl, & ended with Sammy & myself staggering & laughing like utter fools on the hillock below the kaleidoscopically fracturing Hollywood sign as glorious sunrays broke on the horizon. It was at that moment of madness & lucidity that I pledged to re-grow my hair in the style of my earliest youth—the flowing locks you have likely smirked at by now, as immortalized on my more recent dust jackets.

  As you will have undoubtedly realized before setting paperknife to thread, I have attached this missive to a signed copy of my latest hardback, 1972’s Hastur La Vista—a continuation of my latter day Latin American Mythos saga that steeps itself in Mayan history & storms to the present with Congressional cultists trading high tech weaponry for hieroglyphic scrolls & tools made of metals that seem somehow…unearthly. I sincerely hope that you will find it a fraction as enjoyable to read as I did to write.

  Well the winter wind doth blow, & the ink in this pen grows leaden as I rest my aching elbows on this ancient escritoire. Out my window is the white blanket over Providence at Yule. Your own Cumberland County can only be nether side of still deeper drifts. Perhaps when the thaw comes next Spring, I can muster the energy to visit you, & share a few of the things I have learned. The salt marshes of Scarborough have a certain allure, & I have long read of the bonfires once lit atop Scottow Hill, which looms over Saco Bay. Those are sights I would drink in deeply with the company of a young aspirant as enlightened as thee.

  Most cordially & sincerely yours,

  H P Lovecraft

  April 08, 2016

  1:06 pm EST

  World Weird Con - Portland, ME

  Guest of Honor Keynote

  I thought that might whet your appetite. Now, if you’ll bear with my own part in this, I promise to read the rest before the day is through. My mind has been dancing in circles since the moment I discovered this invaluable and long lost correspondence.

  Lovecraft loomed large over our household when I was growing up. I recall simple games of “Ring a Ring o’Roses” with my siblings being violently disallowed until one of us was clever enough to replace the phrase with, “That Is Not Dead, Which Can Eternal Lie…” Then my father would give us a calm smile and resume sipping his coffee and petting one of his many cats, all the while poring over some moldering gothic novel or another.

  Certainly dear old dad kept an obscenely complete library of Lovecraft’s work, relaxing only when his own legacy seemed to have indeed matched that of his stylistic hero. And then there is the aforementioned bit that you all know well: that in 1974, less than a year before my birth, King visited Lovecraft in Providence on the latter’s deathbed. The two met in person that one and only time. To think of the conversation those two men had…it defies comprehension and has been shrouded in mystery and imagination, until…

  But I’m getting ahead of myself again. God, my hands are sweating. Are there towels? I was promised clean white towels. Ah yes, thank you. Continuing on…

  Though he was dead before I arrived in this world, Lovecraft and I shared something: Both our mothers were institutionalized when we were very young. It’s not something I’ve ever enjoyed talking about. I’ve only ever been pressured to speak of her by therapists and girlfriends—but poor old Tabby was locked up during the first trimester of pregnancy. I was the only bit of her to make it beyond those padded walls in the Cumberland County Asylum.

  I’ve been estranged from my father for a long time, and I am his fourth and youngest child by Tabitha. Yet our family attorney recently produced a will that named me his sole heir, for which I am both stunned and awkwardly grateful. Certainly there was no love between us, and his craft as an author will always outshine my own pitiful attempts. Yet here I stand before you, a millionaire at forty-two, with one parent in the grave, and another raving upstate with wide eyes and fingernails torn off at the cuticle.

  It’s difficult to come to terms with death when machines keep the heart beating. Our distance was great, and my first warning was a series of bizarre phone calls from a buzzing voice that never seemed to construct logical sentences, yet somehow rang in from my father’s number. As it turned out, all of these tasteless pranks were conducted after he’d already been hospitalized as a breathing vegetable. But someone as famous as him, despite wealth and resources, was not likely to go unrecognized, and soon the tabloids had their field day. Headlines read, “The King is Dead”—weeks before we’d even begun to consider pulling the plug.

  Even if my father had wanted to descend into solitude at his advanced age, it would have been nearly impossible after displaying his face on postage stamps, talk shows, and hundreds of millions of dust jackets. The police, the attorneys, and the medical team were convinced that he would never awaken, and that his soul had passed on. I hope he will find the peace in death that his days on Earth seemed never to provide.

  In grave preparation, I visited Tabitha at the asylum. Throughout my life, we’ve had few conversations that ever amounted to much more than tears and sorrow. In fact, during my first voluntary visit as an adult, she rambled that my father had once been a good man, and had given her three beautiful children. That statement alone was enough for me to halt all visitations and cancel the fruit baskets for a decade.

  But with SEK for all purposes deceased, it seemed one last attempt to communicate was the thing to do in good conscience, especially since all my older siblings had died young. They say there is nothing worse for a parent than to outlive her children. If Tabby wasn’t already nuts by the time I was born, she certainly lost the rest of her marbles as her darlings passed. Car accident, overdose, illness… Each unrelated and emotionally devastating. Of course I feared for my own life after Joe was the last to go. But as you can see, I stand before you with my health, my father’s wealth, and the ears of the horror e
lite.

  Where is this all going, you may ask? At that final visit to the asylum, I told Mother that she was soon to be a widow. Her mixture of grief and glee only underscored her unalterable madness. But behind her bloodshot eyes and beneath that shock of white hair came a memory. She urged me to return to the attic of our old family home. It seemed pointless, but her insistence revealed the only brief clarity of conception that I could recall her offering during my entire adult life.

  It was a two-hour drive from Bangor down to Stratford, and I questioned my own sanity the whole time. Here I was, the only living member of my immediate family, save my own mother who was institutionalized. Sure, I have many half-siblings younger than myself, but most of us have never spoken, save for the few that came sniffing for funds after the will was read, in order to augment their pitiful, dilettante lifestyles.

  As I twisted the key in the rusting lock to the apartment where my father lived as a boy, I couldn’t help but note how much the setting seemed to spring from a gothic novel; the clinging weeds and clouded windows were thick with dust and cobwebs. But this is real life and a flashlight can do wonders to banish dark spirits.

  Though choked with old air, and what I presume was bat guano, the crawl space was accessible, if quite cramped for one of adult stature. There were many teetering stacks of boxes, which yielded books, maps, and old documents in various states of decomposition. I was frustrated at driving so far, for nothing particularly unusual had turned up on casual investigation.

  Then I recalled one of the earliest interviews my father had given as a published author, in which he cited my great-uncle’s use of an apple branch to dowse for water. SEK had been inspired to try something similar when he had discovered the Lovecraft book in this same attic, over a decade before my birth. This is also in the Wikipedia article. I have double and triple checked. And shuddered.

  Feeling a bit sheepish, I scavenged an old coat hanger, bending it for my needs, and clipping it into shape with the multi-tool I carried. You know the ones they make in the other Portland? Anyway, with the divining rod in one hand and my keychain Maglite in the other, I followed the swaying.

  If such things as ley lines do exist, I was standing atop one that day. Mere seconds passed before the dowser snapped to my right, and led me to an obscure attic shelf with a board nailed diagonally across its backing. I swept cluttered junk off the shallow ledge and prised away at the wood, which tore more easily than the hand-hammered nails that had held it secure for so many years.

  Behind the wall was a small recess with a brown folder that bore my father’s initials. Inside was a bundle of letters that I have brought with me today.

  It is unfortunate that only Lovecraft’s side of the correspondence is extant. It is most strange since scholars have discovered that he kept so many others that he received throughout his long life. Perhaps these missives from a young author to his hero were inconsequential to a man so long in the tooth and revered the world over. Perhaps… Still, much can be inferred from the surviving posts. I simply cannot help but wonder what became of my father’s letters, or why they might have been suppressed or destroyed. What I read to you now makes loss or accident seem ominously unlikely…

  [HPL to SEK]

  10 Barnes St.,

  Providence, R.I.,

  Jan. 12, 1974

  Dear Mr. Prince,

  Please accept my deepest regrets on the passing of the late Ms Pillsbury. I can only imagine grief over the death of a parent who actually contributed to the development of your life in a direct manner. The closest I can come to such emotion is in regards to my auntie, now many years gone. R.I.P.

  It seems an insensitive time to delve into criticism of your novel, but I will admit that there is a great promise in your work, along with vistas of potential after certain growth & maturation is reached. Let us set that conversation aside for now, perhaps to resume upon our meeting this Spring. Indeed, I am delighted to read your enthusiastic response at such a prospect. Believe me, there are few minds in this world sensitive to the themes we enjoy, & all too many of them disregard the basic concepts. While Bradbury & Bloch handled my milieu with respect, fools like Derleth attempted to insert Good & Evil into the equation. Thankfully a Cease & Desist from my attorney brought that matter to a rather Neutral & Objective conclusion!

  Perhaps it will give you some small pleasure to know that I recently combed my archives & discovered that I possess a certain issue of Startling Mystery Stories from 1967 that bears the byline of one SEK. Yes, I knew that your name rang one of the cracked bells in the labyrinthine towers of memory. More than anything, your rapid development over the last few years is staggering, & the hints you have dropped thus far of the progress on your Jerusalem’s Lot bears all the evidence of that crucial first masterpiece.

  But the cosmic coincidence runs deeper. As I sift the cobwebbed strata of remembrance, the image of a merchant seaman comes to mind. Some thirty years prior, I was forced by my publisher to promote a certain paperback with which you are familiar—The Lurker in the Shadows. It was in a seaside bookshop on the coast of Maine that this seaman purchased one. I only now recall signing a copy for him. His name was King. I wonder if your ancestral library still contains this memento from a lost age…

  I know that I once dismissed this wicked little tome in my initial correspondence, but our deepening confidence inspires me to reveal the grave rarity & potency of its words. It is true that I have allowed “The Whisperer in Darkness” to be reprinted, & the story of Mr. Curwen’s unfortunate inhabitation by interplanetary beings spirited throughout the cosmos in consciousness-binding cylinders to be enjoyed as a bone-chilling yarn in myriad collections. But the remaining story cycle has never reared its many blasphemous heads since that single abominable printing. & for good reason.

  More than once I have implored you not to postpone your imminent visit, that we may discuss matters that only scribes such as ourselves can fathom. In the interest of piquing your curiosity a touch further, I have included a magnetic audio reel capturing my own voice reading a bit of verse you may recall from the titular tale in TLITS. Do listen at once, my good man. I am certain you will find it efficacious.

  Best wishes to you & Tabitha & the children. Stay warm & keep your pen to page. Do not let misery overtake you, or rather, use it to the advantage of your dark fantasy.

  With utmost concern & regret,

  H P Lovecraft

  [HPL to SEK]

  10 Barnes St.,

  Providence, R.I.,

  June 23, 1974

  Dear Mr. King,

  Please accept my apologies for not writing over these past few months. I have received all your letters, but declining health has brought my correspondence to a veritable halt. Mia has left, & once again I am truly alone. There are factors at work that are vastly beyond my powers, & aversion of the inevitable seems but a childhood dream. I have no belief in the afterlife, & well fear that if we do not meet soon, it will be a regret that you will live with while I inhabit the infinity of oblivion.

  It was once my wish to travel to you, & explore the mystic side of Maine with a guide born & bred. Instead I must implore you to come to Providence, & soon. Enclosed here is a date & location. If you will indulge an old gentleman, tell no one any details of this trip. For there are things I would reveal to you that I have not shown another.

  You once whispered a dark fondness for my depiction of the cylinders… I know you will attribute this to careless jest, or perhaps the lunacy brought on by my entropic state of being, but I would show one to you. Come see for yourself from whence my dreams have sprung. Let us read together from the last crumbling copy of The Lurker…

  Agh this gnawing in my gut has returned with the vengeance of forty damnable years.

  Do come,

  & graciously allow your host this one final request?

  H P Lovecraft

  April 08, 2016

  1:23 pm

  WWC event Portland, ME

 
; This was the last letter of the bunch. And its implications leave my mind reeling. My nerves these last few weeks have caused me to feel a bit of Tabitha’s blood coursing through my veins for the first time in my life. Someone please bring me a refill? My hands are shaking.

  My father did make that fateful visit. And shortly after their meeting, Lovecraft’s body was buried, forever honored by the famed statue and elegant crypt erected in his honor. Whatever spirit was locked in that mausoleum remains an influential, indeed stifling, cloak upon my family.

  The night he returned from Providence is the night I was conceived. Of this there can be no doubt, for my mother’s sanity fled within days. Medical reports document that she had convinced herself that the good man she’d married was no more. Her mongrel mutterings of whispers and cylinders and Pluto were more than adequate to institutionalize her for the rest of her days.

  Added to this was the literary influence of HPL on my father. “More Lovecraft than Lovecraft,” read the blurb on the dust jacket of every subsequent novel he wrote, from Arkham’s Lot to his latest and yet unpublished final masterpiece of misery, Betwixt the Mountains of Sadness. Scholarly analysis has proven that Carrie was not only suppressed, but the style that my father had formed up to that point was completely abandoned, irretrievably it seems, from the time of that road trip to Rhode Island.

  Until this moment, standing here before you, I have not let my mind connect these dots so fully. May God help me, for letters were not all that I found in that crawl space. There were cylinders of wood and brass that seemed to have been crafted by hands not human. And the machines… And the stained and yellowed fragments of pages from an old pulp paperback…