Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Read online

  Also From Chaosium

  Lovecraftian Fiction

  The Antarktos Cycle

  Arkham Tales

  Atomic Age Cthulhu (Coming Soon)

  The Book of Eibon

  Cthulhu’s Dark Cults

  Eldritch Chrome

  Frontier Cthulhu

  The Hastur Cycle

  The Innsmouth Cycle

  The Ithaqua Cycle

  The Klarkash-Ton Cycle

  Madness on the Orient Express (New)

  The Necronomicon

  The Nyarlathotep Cycle

  Steampunk Cthulhu

  The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson by William Jones

  Tales Out of Innsmouth

  The Tsathoggua Cycle

  Twice Upon an Apocalypse (Coming Soon)

  The Xothic Legend Cycle

  The Yith Cycle

  Weird Fiction Collections

  The Complete Pegana by Lord Dunsany

  Eldritch Evolutions by Lois Gresh

  Mysteries of the Worm by Robert Bloch

  The Terror & Other Stories by Arthur Machen

  The Three Impostors & Other Stories by Arthur Machen

  The White People & Other Stories by Arthur Machen

  The Yellow Sign and Other Stories by Robert W. Chambers

  Science Fiction

  A Long Way Home

  Extreme Planets

  Horror

  Edge of Sundown (Coming Soon)

  Once Upon an Apocalypse

  Undead & Unbound

  Occult Texts

  The Book of Dyzan

  Goat Mother and Others:

  The Complete Weird Fiction of Pierre Comtois

  is published by Chaosium Inc.

  This book is copyright as a whole © 2015 by Chaosium Inc.;

  all rights reserved.

  “Goat Mother”, Eldritch Blue, Lindisfarne Press 2004.

  “The Old Ones’ Signs”, Tales Out of Innsmouth, Chaosium Inc., 2006.

  “The Deep Cellars”, Lin Carter’s Anton Zarnak Supernatural Sleuth,

  Marietta Publishing, 2002.

  “Dreams of Yig”, Cthulhu Codex, Necronomicon Press, 1989.

  “Take Care What You Seek”, The Cthulhu Cycle, Chaosium Inc., 1996.

  “Country of the Wind”, The Ithaqua Cycle, Chaosium Inc., 1998.

  “What the Sea Gives Up”, Cthulhu Codex, Necronomicon Press, 1987.

  “Footsteps in the Sky”, The Ithaqua Cycle, Chaosium Inc., 1998.

  “Zzzzzzzz!”, Cthulhu Codex, Necronomicon Press, 1985.

  “The King in Yellow”, Crypt of Cthulhu, 1994.

  “The Pallid Masque”, Fungi, Pierre Comtois Publications, 1996.

  “Question of Meaning”, Sargasso, Ulthar Press, 2013.

  “Thoughts on Lovecraft and his Mythos”, Cthulhu Codex,

  Necronomicon Press, 1997-1998.

  All other stories are original to this collection.

  Cover Illustration © 2014 Victor Leza

  Interior Illustrations are © C. George Porter (p. 91, 134, 267, 330, 436, 441)

  and Gregorio Montejo (5, 7, 11, 13, 150, 175, 204)

  Editor-in-Chief Charlie Krank

  Similarities between characters in this book and persons living

  or dead are strictly coincidental.

  www.chaosium.com.

  FIRST EDITION

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Chaosium Publication 6060

  Published in February 2015

  ISBN-10: 1568824033

  ISBN-13: 9781568824031

  Printed in the USA

  Contents

  Author’s Preface

  Introduction

  The Secret Name

  Goat Mother

  High and Dry

  The Old Ones’ Signs

  The Deep Cellars

  The Legacy of Acheron

  Aqua Salaria

  Dreams of Yig

  Take Care What You Seek

  The Country of the Wind

  What the Sea Gives Up

  Footsteps in the Sky

  Zzzzzzzz!

  Second Death

  The King in Yellow

  The Pallid Masque

  Final Plea

  Masks of the Puppet Lord

  A Question of Meaning

  Thoughts on Lovecraft and his Mythos

  Afterword

  Author’s Preface

  elieve it or not, I wasn’t always interested in the Cthulhu Mythos. No, really! Before high school, my reading endeavors were divided mainly between science fiction and non-fiction (when I wasn’t reading Marvel Comics of course). By the time I did get to high school, it was the golden age of Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback reprints and it was from the back pages of one of those volumes that I discovered the wonders of the mail order form. Soon after, I latched onto J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and became an avid reader of the Conan the Barbarian comic book which led me to the sword & sorcery worlds of Robert E. Howard whose work was also being massively reprinted at the time. Meanwhile, LOTR served as an introduction to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series all of whose volumes I devoured, but no doubt it was likely Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Spawn of Cthulhu that first clued me in to H.P. Lovecraft. The real closer though, was Lin Carter’s Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos with its appendix listing of nearly every Mythos tale written by the Lovecraft Circle and beyond. From that point on, I had to read everything there was and having exhausted what was immediately available in local stores and mail order, reached out to Arkham House for some of its super-expensive hardcover volumes including Lovecraft’s letters. For the first time, I felt compelled to read an author’s non-fiction output, his letters, essays, and articles—not just his fiction. And as a would-be writer, it wasn’t long before I had a yen to make my own contributions to the Mythos (following in the footstep of many other fans before and since). Of course, it took many years before I had any results that would be worth anyone’s time but with a self-imposed apprenticeship in my own small press mags Fungi and Cthulhu Codex, I managed to improve (if I do say so myself) to the point where other publishers began to search me out for contributions to their own projects. The results of those efforts (for good or ill; the reader will have to be the judge), spread over the last two decades, are contained in this volume.

  By way of a few words about the stories in this collection (which are not necessarily presented in any published or compositional or chronological order), “The Secret Name,” “High and Dry,” “The Legacy of Acheron,” and “Masks of the Puppet Lord” are all unpublished with the first three having been written expressly for this collection and the last for an anthology that was to have been produced expressly for the Japanese market but never came to anything. “The Secret Name” features Dean’s Corners, located next door to Dunwich, which I’ve made the setting for many of my later Mythos stories. This might be insider baseball, but my conception of Dean’s Corners is based on the real life Massachusetts town of Groton (with next door Dunstable standing in very loosely for Dunwich). In fact, they fit the profile so well, I’ve often wondered if Lovecraft himself had those two towns in mind for Dean’s Corners and Dunwich?

  “The Old Ones’ Signs,” “Take Care What You Seek,” (published as “Zombies From R’lyeh”), “Country of the Wind,” and “Footsteps in the Sky” first appeared in Chaosium’s Tales Out of Innsmouth, Cthulhu Cycle, and Ithaqua Cycle respectively, all edited by Robert M. Price.

  “Aqua Salaria,�
�� “The Dreams of Yig,” “What the Sea Gives Up,” and “Zzzzzzzz!,” all appeared in my own small press magazine, Fungi. “Dreams of Yig” was written with Henry J. Vester and the title “Zzzzzzzz!” was a remnant of that tale’s origin as a satire on horror stories written as a radio drama; actually my earliest attempt at writing a Lovecraftian type tale.

  “The King in Yellow” and “The Pallid Masque” have an interesting history. While not directly connected to the Mythos, they are present here due to Robert W. Chambers’ most famous weird stories having been retroactively included. Though neither “story” is directly linked to the Mythos, I, at least still consider them to be a part of it. Anyway, the first has the most interesting publication history: having been concocted by myself and Gregorio Montejo for Fungi, it was later reprinted in Crypt of Cthulhu before being enshrined in the 2001 Arkham House volume Book of the Dead. “The Pallid Masque” while not a direct sequel, was the second part in what I had planned as a trilogy of tales, the third part of which I may yet visit some day. I don’t mind admitting here that a great influence for the approach I take in these tales was Karl Edward Wagner’s classic “The River of Night’s Dreaming.”

  “The Deep Cellars” appeared in Anton Zarnak: Supernatural Sleuth, a collection of original tales based on a character created by Lin Carter and edited again by the ubiquitous Robert M. Price. I liked Zarnak and, with permission, used him as a supporting character in a couple other stories featured in this collection.

  “A Question of Meaning,” an attempt to tie in the Mythos with William Hope Hodgson’s Night Land, appeared in the first issue of Sam Gafford’s Sargasso magazine while “Second Death,” my sequel to Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” will be appearing in Robert M. Price’s forthcoming Return to the Mountains of Madness.

  Finally, “Goat Mother,” perhaps the most disturbing tale in the collection, has been called by some the greatest Tcho Tcho People story ever written. Well, you be the judge of that. Although written to fulfill the requirements of a collection called Eldritch Blue, it was my attempt at trying to come up with a “fate worse than death” for its female protagonist. Although women have not been absent from my Mythos tales, rarely do they take the traditional male role of inheritor of a strange house filled with secrets left by its former owner. So this tale was a bit of a departure from the formu

  Which is not to say I prefer formula to originality. It’s just that in my approach to writing Mythos tales, I never had any desire to expand or push the boundaries of what Lovecraft, his immediate Circle, and the first round of disciples had established. All I ever wanted to do was to play in the same sandbox they did, while along the way, tying elements they created closer together in new stories. Beyond that group, contributions to the Mythos exploded and became impossible to keep straight let alone to keep up with. So, mainly, in my own stories, I wanted to capture what it was about the Mythos that first captured my youthful imagination. But to learn more about my thoughts on Lovecraft and Mythos fiction, check out “Thoughts on Lovecraft and His Mythos” that brings up the rear in this collection.

  The stories presented here cover about 20 years in my writing career and, I hope, a full range of style and subject matter (including a diverse choice of Cthulhuoid menaces!). So if you like your Mythos fiction close to the bone, in the tradition of, and boundaries set by Lovecraft and his disciples, you should have no trouble enjoying (if that’s the right word) these choice offerings.

  Pierre V. Comtois

  October 2013

  la for me.

  Introduction

  ou’ve all heard stories of the glorious days of pulp magazines and how their editors abused and exploited their writers. Well, I am proud to say I have carried on that tradition, both in my 1980s Cryptic Publications titles and in my anthologies for Chaosium. The pulp editors would hand a writer a piece of cover art and assign him to write a story to fit it. I liked that idea! So I went it one better! I used to ask my writers to write up stories to justify particular titles I made up. Hugh B. Cave was always a good sport. He wrote up, now let’s see, “Brides of the Blood Fiend from Hell” and other prescribed goodies. And who can forget Chuck Hoffman’s loonily brilliant story that fully lived up to the title I gave him, “Plaything for the Chortling Fiend.” These tales were, of course, aimed at my Weird Menace title Shudder Stories. But I think the prize must go to the extraordinarily versatile Pierre Comtois, always (apparently) happy to craft a story for any occasion, in any sub-genre, to go with any wacky title. He wrote for me “Zombies from R’lyeh,” “The Old Ones’ Signs,” “Kamikaze Nudes of the Secret Pacific Empire” — this last for the one-shot Men’s Adventure homage/parody I put together, Man’s Guts. Go rent Attack of the Sixty-Foot Centerfold, and you will catch a scene in a doctor’s office waiting room where the bandaged Invisible Man is reading a copy of Man’s Guts!

  Pierre reminds me of Val Lewton, whose films were similarly made to order from lurid titles supplied him by the studio: Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, etc. (the last of which I have always suspected must have some sort of underground connection with the forgettable flick Bride of the Gorilla, with which it has a surprising amount in common). Lewton, you see, was saddled with the curse of a genuine artistic conscience, and he just couldn’t help making better films than they told him to make! The titles promise drive-in schlock (one of my favorite genres, rest assured), but what he turned in were real films with real cinematography, real scripts, taking place in what looked like the real world.

  This is exactly what Pierre Comtois has somehow always managed to do: he has imbedded his horrors in the midst of real historical and personal circumstances. He gives you what you wanted and expected, and more. His devotion to pulp fiction is evident on every page, but, like the pulp writers themselves, he also shows the influence of classic literature. It is sometimes hard to remember that, while many beloved pulpsters wrote fanzine-level campiness and other masters like Lovecraft and Howard created whole new sub-genres, many more showed themselves to be real writers with the instincts and ability to publish in mainstream venues. Pierre falls in this last category. Such an approach lends the horrors a unique chill and power for their seeming to emerge from the “mainstream” world. This is the kind of narration that cannot work if it skimps on historical background, character development, etc., so it doesn’t. And Pierre Comtois doesn’t. Sure, he takes exotic journeys of the imagination to lands afar and unknown, but he is always documenting them in detail in the manner of an attentive anthropologist, and this book contains the compelling results. Enjoy them!

  Robert M. Price

  Hour of the Siesta of the Shoggoths

  The Secret Name

  o you have to go to Josh Turner’s pasture again today?” asked Ruth Mills as she scrambled some eggs at the stove.

  “Now Ruth, we’ve talked about this before,” said her husband, Daniel. “Josh and I have been planning to clear his south pasture since the spring and now that the harvest’s in, we’ve got the time to do it.”

  “But why you? Why not someone in Dunwich?”

  “Because we’re family…”

  “I hardly consider a fourth cousin who’s related to you only by marriage, family.”

  “Just the same, blood is thicker than water.”

  “Especially in Dunwich, right?”

  Clearly exasperated, Daniel threw his fork in his plate with a clatter.

  It was the same conversation they’d been having for the past month, ever since Daniel began going to Dunwich to help Josh clear a thirty acre parcel of second growth forest. Every Saturday, Daniel would be up early for the 15 mile drive into Dunwich in order to get there with enough time left to get a full day’s work in. He came back late in the evening, sometimes after Ruth had gone to bed, exhausted but unwilling to slow down. Daniel wasn’t as young as he used to be and it didn’t help knowing about Dunwich’s unsavory reputation even if the reality didn’t quite come up to what some
folks believed.

  “Ruth, this is just business as usual,” Daniel was saying. “I help Josh with his pasture and some day when I need him, Josh will come over and help me with something.”

  “You’ve never asked anyone for help before and anyway, it’s much better for Josh to come to Dean’s Corners than it is for you to go to Dunwich. I mean, most of the roads there aren’t even paved and there aren’t any town services to speak of…”

  “Dean’s Corners wasn’t that much different until a few years ago.”

  “But the point is, Dean’s Corners has moved into the twentieth century,” said Ruth, scraping the eggs into a plate. “Dunwich is still backward in almost every measure of what a properly ordered town is supposed to be.”

  “So?”

  “So if something happened to you out there, if you got hurt, the town doesn’t even have an ambulance service, let alone a doctor,” said Ruth. “Does Josh even have a phone at his place?”

  Daniel shrugged.

  “Nothing’s going to happen and some people like Dunwich’s isolation. I hear tell that a few folks have moved there occasionally to get away from all the hustle and bustle.”

  “Just the same, there’s always been something creepy about that old town what with its half dilapidated farms and abandoned homes…”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to bring up all those stories we used to hear when we were kids?”

  “They’re nothing to laugh about,” insisted Ruth, sipping at a cup of tea. “Why, just the other day, Myrtle Potter was saying…”

  “Myrtle Potter is the biggest gossip in town,” said Daniel with contempt. “All she does is spread stories about people she has no business telling. You don’t take that stuff seriously, do you?”

  “Of course not, but didn’t you tell me how you and Josh uncovered some funny looking rocks in that pasture?”

  “Sure, but you come across rocks like that around these parts all the time,” said Daniel with a dismissive wave of his hand. “They’re no different than the stone circles in the hills around town. Remember how we used to go up to them to make out when we were kids? People used to be afraid of them so we thought what better place to fool around and not get caught? Nothing ever happened, right?”