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Welcome, fear-fans, to this ichor-curdling
collection of rancid recitals from R'lyeh called . . . heh-heh . . . Tales
from the Crypt of Cthulhu! But before you dig into this foetid fright-feast,
let your old Crypt-of-Cthulhu-Keeper share a few words about what's in store. .
. .
Just when it seems that the literary
remains of a writer have been picked clean, further ghoulish digging is
sometimes rewarded with big surprises. It is from such unsuspected recesses that
we bring you the current collection of neglected fiction by the masters of the Weird
Tales tradition.
"The Tree on the Hill" first
appeared in the September 1940 issue of Polaris, a small-circulation
mimeographed fanzine. There it was credited to Duane W. Rimel, who did indeed
write the initial draft, which became the initial portion of the finished story.
He passed the draft onto his friend H. P. Lovecraft who had performed revisory
services on Rimel's earlier tale "The Sorcery of Aphlar". "The Tree on
the Hill" was sent along with Rimel's poem "Dreams of Yid", which
appeared in The Fantasy Fan as "Dreams of Yith", with substantial
Lovecraftian retouching. While the poem was picked up for reprinting by Arkham
House (in Dark of the Moon), "The Tree on the Hill" sank into
obscurity, having after all appeared in a rather obscure publication; Polaris
was not even as widely read as The Fantasy Fan. Perhaps it would have
been resurrected before now had anyone realized the extent of Lovecraft' s
involvement in the tale. As Rimel himself now reflects, nearly fifty years
later, Lovecraft wrote at least the whole of the last of the three sections, as
well as the quoted passage from the text of elder lore. And as critical analysis
to appear in Crypt of Cthulhu No. 17, "Revisions Issue II", will
show, HPL may well have contributed more than this. At any rate, "The Tree
on the Hill" supplies us with a meaty if small chunk of Lovecraftian
fiction, as well as a welcome look at the creative skills of Duane W. Rimel, a fantasiste
whose too-few works in the genre are valued by those who have read them.
"The Hand of Obeah" (i.e., of
Voodoo) is a hitherto-unpublished "weird menace" yarn by Robert E.
Howard. REH fans will readily note similarities to other minor Howard stories
including "People of the Serpent", "Moon of Zambebwei", "Black
Canaan", and "Black Talons". This story is far from Howard's best; indeed
it is not even among the ranks of what one fan has dubbed "second-string
Howard". It shares the faults of his other detective fiction, being chiefly
notable perhaps as an attempt to create a character modeled upon Seabury Quinn's
suave and silly occult investigator Jules de Grandin. At any rate, what Howard
fan will not welcome the appearance of any "new" REH story?
"Double Cosmos" by Clark Ashton
Smith is another work that has never before seen print. Readers of Smith's Black
Book have seen an early synopsis of the tale as "The Appendix"
(item 38). Smith had done some work on a draft of the story under the title
"Secondary Cosmos" in late June, 1934. In a letter to R. H. Barlow,
August 16, 1938, he reported that he was "trying to finish this". Another
draft entitled "Double Cosmos" is dated February 24, 1940. The present
version is undated but is the last version completed by Smith. The manuscript,
incidentally, was partially burnt in a fire at Smith's cabin, but miraculously
not a word of the story was lost!
"The Creeper in the Crypt" by
Robert Bloch originally appeared in Weird Tales, the July 1937 issue.
Thus, it is not quite the rarity that our first three tales are. Yet many of us
are dependent on various paperback anthologies for our glimpses of vintage Weird
Tales fiction. One such volume was Mysteries of the Worm (Zebra
Books, 1981). Lin Carter edited this valuable collection of Robert Bloch's early
Cthulhu Mythos fiction. Though Lovecraftian in nature, "The Creeper in the
Crypt" was not included in Mysteries of the Worm. Those who having
finished that book were still necrophagously hungry for more should enjoy this
little episode in Arkham.
"Something from Out There" by
August Derleth rounds out this booklet. It, too, is a Weird Tales
reprint. Amazingly, given Derleth's penchant for collecting his multitudinous
stories in book form, this one has never, to our knowledge, appeared in any
collection. This is all the more astonishing since "Something from Out
There" is a thorough-going Cthulhu Mythos story and is more original than
most of Derleth's Mythos tales. In fact it is the third in a mini-series of
stories featuring Derleth's grimoire The Confessions of the Mad Monk
Clithanus. Brother Clithanus's tome first appeared in "The Passing of
Eric Holme" (written under the house name "Will Garth") in Strange
Stories, December 1939 (reprinted in Dwellers in Darkness, Arkham
House, 1976). The Confessions surfaced again in Derleth and Schorer's
"The Evil Ones" in Strange Stories, October 1940 (reprinted in Colonel
Markesan and Less Pleasant People, Arkham House, 1966, as "The Horror
from the Depths"). It's last appearance was in our story in Weird Tales,
January 1951.
We would like to thank Duane Rimel, Gerry
de la Ree, Scott Connors, S. T. Joshi, Glenn Lord, Steve Behrends, Mark Brown,
Richard E. Kuhn, Charles Gray, Robert Bloch, Forrest O. Hartmann, and Steve
Fabian for their indispensable help in this project.
Okay, wake up now, all you gibbering gore-mets,
and feast all three of your eyes on these terrifying tidbits . . . heh, heh. . .
.
Robert M. Price
The Old Crypt-of-Cthulhu-Keeper
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