THE DOOM THAT CAME TO DUNWICH
Weird mysteries of the Cthulhu Mythos
RICHARD A. LUPOFF
© Richard A. Lupoff 2017
Richard A. Lupoff has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Acknowledgments
THE DOOM THAT CAME TO DUNWICH
THE SECRET OF THE SAHARA
THE TURRET
THE PELTONVILLE HORROR
THE DEVIL’S HOP YARD
DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE OF ELIZABETH AKELEY
BRACKISH WATERS
THE ADVENTURE OF THE VOORISH SIGN
NOTHING PERSONAL
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INTRODUCTION
The central conceit of the famous “mythos” stories of H.P. Lovecraft was concerned with the idea that Earth had been colonized by malign aliens in the remote past, long before mankind arose and became civilized, who eventually became worshipped and feared as evil Gods by their human servitors. Eventually these aliens had been “banished” to another dimensional limbo by a benign Elder Race, but might one day return to reclaim the Earth “when the stars are right.”
During his lifetime, Lovecraft encouraged other authors to write their own stories based on these precepts, and to develop his ideas. Countless authors accepted his invitation, including, inter alia, Robert Bloch, August Derlerth, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Frank Belknap Long, and Clark Ashton Smith. The parade of other writers has continued, unabated, to the present day, and they include Richard A. Lupoff.
Lupoff has written his own interpretation of Lovecraft’s vision:
We are told that humans — or creatures that could reasonably be defined as humans — have walked the earth for 2,000,000 years at the least, and perhaps for as long as 5,000,000 years. And yet civilization, in any form that we would recognize and acknowledge, has existed for a mere 10,000 to 15,000 years. We are thus asked to believe that Gug and her mate Ug led a primitive existence, hunting and gathering or perhaps scratching a few crude holes in the ground and dropping seeds into them each spring, and made little more progress than that for a minimum of 1,985,000 years. Following this there sprang into being virtually simultaneously the miracles of Angkor Wat, Babylon, Thebes, Kukulcan, Yucatan, and Cuzco.
We are also told that life has existed on the earth for at least 2,000,000,000 years, and perhaps as long as 6,000,000,000. Uncounted millions of species have evolved and disappeared. Whole orders of life have emerged and departed. Creatures as tiny as a virus and so huge as to dwarf the mammoth or the whale, creatures of infinite variety and endless complexity, have lived and died on this world. And yet we are told that of all these species, only one, our own, and at that, only in a relative flicker of an eyelash, has developed true consciousness and intelligence.
What nonsense! What arrogance! What blind, ignorant balderdash!
Richard A. Lupoff lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Patricia, and has enjoyed successful careers in several mediums. Beginning in his student days in New York (he was born in Brooklyn) he first worked as a print journalist, then in the emerging computer industry with IBM. His first book (non-fiction) was Master of Adventure : The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1965). Earlier, he and Patricia had won a Hugo Award for their fanzine Xero in 1963, and from its pages he compiled (with Don Thompson) All in Color for a Dime (1970), another non-fiction book, about the history of American comics. His first SF novel was One Million Centuries (1967) and parallel with his writing was a 50 year career interviewing famous (and not so famous) writers on his own show on local radio station KPFA.
After he started appearing regularly in the fantasy and SF magazines, and anthologies, Lupoff became recognized as the “go to” man for anthologists wanting to commission original short fiction. They knew they could rely on him to deliver a quality story on a huge range of diverse themes, and spanning all genres. Prominent in these works were Lupoff’s stories exploring the “mythos” created by H.P. Lovecraft.
Writing a background note in 2005 for anthologist Stephen Jones, the astute editor who first published his Lovecraftian short story “Brackish Waters”, Lupoff revealed how he had first encountered the stories of H.P. Lovecraft as a youngster:
“One week I stumbled across a little paperback anthology called The Avon Ghost Reader. As I remember, it had a deliriously lurid cover painting — a green, claw-like hand rising menacingly in the foreground, a spooky-looking old mansion in the distance — and a marvellous selection of frightening stories, including ‘The Dunwich Horror’ by H.P. Lovecraft. At age eleven I had no understanding of the publishing industry, and didn’t realise that this story was a reprint and that its author had been dead for nearly a decade.
“What I did understand was that I’d stumbled across an author of unusual merit. I vowed to watch for his byline. My next reward was a copy of another little paperback, Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth, and I was totally hooked. I’ve been a Lovecraft fan for most of my life, and I am delighted to see the Old Gentleman finally getting his due. I’m equally gratified to have made my own small contribution to the traditions of his work.”
One has to raise a wry smile at the words “small contribution”, which is typical of Lupoff’s modesty and self-effacement. It is manifestly inadequate when one considers his many Lovecraftian stories, culminating in his astonishing tome Marblehead: A novel of H .P . Lovecraft (2006) aka “Lovecraft’s Book” (abridged, 1976) which is a dazzling blending of fact and fiction that transcends genre writing.
And yet there is something paradoxical in the fact that Lupoff should have become such a fan of Lovecraft, because their approach to writing was actually very dissimilar. Most likely it was because Lupoff encountered his stories at a very young, impressionable age. Lovecraft entered his psyche, and became submerged along with myriad other writers.
In his essay “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction” (included in the collection of his writings titled Marginalia (Arkham House 1944) H.P. Lovecraft wrote:
“Inconceivable events and conditions form a class apart from all other story elements, and cannot be made convincing by any mere process of casual narration. They have the handicap of incredibility to overcome; and this can be accomplished only through a careful realism in every other phase of the story, plus a gradual atmospheric or emotional building-up of the utmost subtlety. The emphasis, too must be kept right — hovering always over the wonder of the central abnormality itself. It must be remembered that any violation of what we know as natural law is in itself a far more tremendous thing than any other event or feeling which could possibly affect a human being. Therefore in a story dealing with such a thing we cannot expect to create any sense of life or illusion of reality if we treat the wonder casually and have the characters moving about under ordinary motivations. The characters, though they must be natural, should be subordinated to the central marvel around which they are grouped. The true “hero” of a marvel tale is not any human being, but simply a set of phenomena.”
In complete contrast to Lovecraft’s thesis, Lupoff’s own approach to writing is to put human beings centre stage. This was to eventually contribute to his drifting away from science fiction into other fields, most notably that of the murder mystery novel. A detailed and fascinati
ng exploration of Lupoff’s writing career and his motivations can be found in his latest book, Where Memory Hides: A Writer’s Life (Bold Venture Press, 2016) and so does not need to be detailed here.
Over five decades, Lupoff has experimented, writing stories in the “style” of many popular writers, but in all cases they are never mere pastiches, because Lupoff seeks to invest them with his own evolving voice. He has never ceased to develop as a writer, and is clearly utterly enamoured of the craft of writing — in particular what has been labelled as “popular fiction” (though in Where Memory Hides Lupoff has convincingly argued that there should be no real distinction between what he has termed “Hi Lit” and “Low Lit”.) Lupoff has an almost eidetic memory for the myriad stories he has read, and an abiding admiration for authors who thrilled him as a teenager with so-called popular fiction, and even when he became older and his tastes wider and more sophisticated, he sought to analyse and understand the appeal of his earlier pulp idols, as well as the emerging and recognised giants of the mainstream.
Lupoff’s “take” on Lovecraft is an important contribution to fantastic literature, and after reading and enjoying his stories over many years, I recently suggested to him that it was high time that the best of them were collected into one book. To which he replied: “I like your idea of assembling my Lovecraft stories into one book. In fact an editor at Chaosium made the same suggestion some years ago, but nothing ever came of it… I’ll scout around my files (both “e” and paper) and bookshelves and see what I can put together.”
Shortly thereafter I had the great pleasure of reading all his Lovecraftian stories (including many I had never read before) and then agreeing a generous selection of the best of them, with the author, and assembling them for publication.
It is an honour and a privilege to present them to you now, collected into single book form for the very first time!
Philip Harbottle,
Wallsend,
Tyne and Wear
February 2017
Acknowledgments
THE DOOM THAT CAME TO DUNWICH
Return to Lovecraft Country, edited by Scott David Aniolowski, Triad Publications, 1997
THE SECRET OF THE SAHARA
The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures, edited by Mike Ashley, Robinson, 2005
THE TURRET
Made in Goatswood, edited by Scott David Aniolowski, Chaosium Publications, 1995
THE PELTONVILLE HORROR
It’s That Time Again 2, edited by Jim Harmon, BearManor Media, 2001
THE DEVIL’S HOP YARD
Chrysalis 2, edited by Roy Torgenson, Zebra Books, 1978
DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE OF ELIZABETH AKELEY
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1962
BRACKISH WATERS
Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones, Fedogan & Bremer, 2005
ADVENTURE OF THE VOORISH SIGN
Shadows Over Baker Street, edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan, Del Rey, 2005
NOTHING PERSONAL
Cthulhu’s Reign, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, DAW, 2010
THE DOOM THAT CAME TO DUNWICH
When a traveler in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury Pike just beyond Dean’s Corners he may feel that he has fallen through a crack in time and emerged into an earlier era in New England. The countryside is marked by rolling hills and meadows, spotted here and there with stands of woodland that, at first glance, appear lush and healthy, but that, upon closer examination, seem to emit an almost palpable miasma of wrongness. The grasses are oddly yellow. The tree trunks seem to be writhing in pain, while their leaves appear oddly fat and to give off an unpleasantly oily exudation.
If one arrives in what has become known as Dunwich Country at night, the sense of temporal alienation is especially strong. The few advertising billboards that were erected along the Pike in earlier decades have fallen into wrack and ruin, but no one has bothered either to rehabilitate or to remove them. The few tatters of once-colorful posters that remain attached to their frameworks, flapping in every errant gust of wind, remind the traveler of products long removed from the market: Graham-Paige automobiles, Atwater-Kent superheterodyne radio sets, Junius Brutus Cigars.
Even tuning the radio to stations in Boston, Providence or Worcester does little good, for the particular conformation of the terrain, or perhaps the presence of deposits of as yet undetected ores beneath the ground or of unexplained atmospheric conditions, makes it impossible to receive more than an unpleasant mélange of sound, interspersed with indecipherable whisperings and gurglings.
Rounding the base of Sentinel Hill on the outskirts of Dunwich, the site of the infamous “horror” of 1928, the traveler beholds an incongruous sight: a modern laboratory and office building of mirrored glass construction. Activity in the building proceeds uninterrupted, day and night. A wire-mesh fence surrounds the facility, and a single rolling gateway is guarded at all times by stern-faced young men and women. These individuals are clad in dark uniforms of unfamiliar cut and tint, identifiable neither as military nor police in nature. Each uniform jacket carries a shoulder patch and each uniform cap a metal device, but the spiraling helix into which these insignia are formed is also unique to the Dunwich facility. This ensign, it may be noted, is laminated as well on the stock of the dull-black, frightening sidearm which each uniformed guard carries.
A small wooden plaque is mounted beside the rolling gate, in sparse letters identifying the facility as the property of the Dunwich Research Project. No newspaper files or directories of government organizations make mention of the Dunwich Research Project, and neither the directory issued by the Dunwich Telephone Company, nor that company’s Directory Assistance operators are able to furnish a number by means of which the facility may be contacted.
However, careful study of federal appropriations documents of past years may reveal “black” items in the budgets of major agencies which, a selected few Washington insiders are willing to concede, may indeed have been directed through back channels to the Project. Further study of federal records will show that these covert appropriations for the Dunwich Research Project began in 1929.
The initial appropriation was extremely small, but in later years the funding for the Dunwich Research Project increased despite crisis, Depression, or war. The names of every President from Herbert Hoover to the present time will be found attached to these “black” items.
It was to this region that young Cordelia Whateley, a graduate student of anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, drove her conservative gray four-door sedan in the late spring of the year. Her examinations over for the semester, she had determined to spend the next several months researching her master’s dissertation on the events of 1928. It was Miss Whateley’s belief that an encounter with one or more alien beings had provided the basis for those horrific happenings. Because she was herself a member of a distant (and undecayed) branch of the Whateley family, she had been inculcated from infancy with a revulsion for her (decayed) kith and kin. This she wished to resolve once and for all: to prove that her distant cousin Wilbur Whateley had been not so much a menace to be feared and loathed as he was a sport of nature deserving of the sympathy and aid which he failed to receive from those around him.
Miss Whateley brought her automobile to a stop outside the rolling gate of the Dunwich Research Project. The guard on duty, a young man with a square jaw and muscular build, approached her and courteously asked her business at the Project. She showed him a letter from her faculty adviser at McGill, addressed to the Director of the Dunwich Institute, and a response, on Institute letterhead, welcoming her inquiry and authorizing all concerned to offer the bearer every possible courtesy and assistance.
The merest suggestion of a smile played around the lips of the guard as he handed the documents back to Miss Whateley. “You’ll want the Dunwich Institute, miss,” the guard explained. “This is the Dunwich Research Proj
ect. The Institute is in Dunwich Town. On South Water Street. Dr. Armitage is the Director. That’s his signature on the bottom of your letter. You want the Institute, miss. The Research Project is off limits.”
He gestured courteously, suggesting but not exactly duplicating, a military salute. Then, with a series of clear and vigorous hand gestures (he was wearing white gloves) he directed Miss Whateley to depart and return to town.
Cordelia Whateley complied, swinging her automobile around and pointing its nose back toward Dunwich proper. As she circled Sentinel Hill she could not help noticing that an array of radar dishes dotted the top of the hill. To her, they looked like a recrudescence of white, puffy toadstools.
The town of Dunwich had neither grown nor changed noticeably from the illustrations and descriptions Cordelia Whateley had studied in preparation for her visit to the region. Authorities in the United States had been reluctant to send materials dealing with Dunwich out of the country, even to so friendly a neighbor as that to the north, but a friend of Miss Whateley’s at the University of Massachusetts had managed to borrow many such documents and share them with the researcher by means of electronic transmission.
As Cordelia Whateley motored down Winthrop Street toward South Water, she noticed that Osborne’s Store still stood at the corner of Winthrop and Blindford. Beside it, a grimy-windowed establishment advertised EATS and ALE. No other name identified the establishment, but after a lifetime in which her world had become increasingly dominated by malls and franchise enterprises, Cordelia Whateley found the survival of Osborne’s Store and of an establishment identified solely as EATS and ALE oddly comforting.
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