The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

The late Michael Shea Michael Shea invented a character, “Cannyharme,” whose genesis lay in Lovecraft’s story “The Hound.” “The Hound” involves the exhumation of a ghoul who had lain buried five hundred years in a Dutch churchyard. An amulet — found in surprisingly good condition — is stolen from the skeletal remains as they hear the “baying of some gigantic hound” in the distance. The upper-class grave robbers return to England, but very bad things — accompanied by the hound’s baying — happen. It is decided the strange occurrences are connected to the amulet, and the narrator returns to Holland intending to return it to the tomb. The amulet is stolen, but he re-excavates the grave anyway, only to discover the skeleton “not clean and placid as we had seen it [before], but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound, and I saw that it held in its gory, filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade.”

In the short poetic tale here, you can gather much about the nature of Cannyharme, but the fact he is writing to Edgar Allan Poe, dead at least a century before this correspondence is supposedly penned, has another significance. Lovecraft saw Poe as his major influence, his “God of Fiction.” “The Hound” is an attempt to emulate Poe, but in retrospect, HPL felt his story was “a piece of junk.” Author Lin Carter later agreed, stating it was “slavishly Poe-esque in style” and “a minor little tale. Steven J. Mariconda, although acknowledging HPL’s debt to Poe, sees the story as “written in a zestful, almost baroque style which is very entertaining.”

Michael Shea first wrote sword-and-sorcery and supernatural/extraterrestrial horror, primarily in the novella form (collected in Polyphemus and The Autopsy and Other Tales). In the last decade or so he added homages to H. P. Lovecraft to his novella work (as in collection Copping Squid.) His novel Nifft the Lean won a World Fantasy Award, as did novella “The Growlimb.” His most recent novels are dark, satirical thrillers The Extra and Assault on Sunrise. Shea passed away on 16 February 2014.

An Open Letter to Mister Edgar Allan Poe, from a Fervent Admirer

Optissime! Best of the Best!

It is with reverence and reluctant challenge I unfurl my banner to you herein. Great Poe, of all your peerless poems, it is The Conqueror Worm I’ve cherished most. I have sipped the ichor of its icy truth again and again, amid the dark business of this recent century. The Worm, you see, has long been my metier. The Worm has been my very medium, for longer ages than even your great spirit can conceive.

I write, Sir, to apprise you of my apotheosis. For I must, by the law of Majesty, proclaim and present myself a mightier Monarch than King Worm himself. Until I find you, Sir, I produce this document, that you may know Who seeks you. It is with deep regard that I unfold to you this declaration of myself, my Work, my Way.

Ever since your meteoric crossing of the skies — so bright, so brief! — like steeds your melodies, your Stygian rhapsodies have lofted me and borne me worlds away. You must forgive, oh metric Master, the imperfect measures of my fledgling songs. What grace they have, they’ve learned from you. One of these songs reports my recent rebirth and present course thus:

You who have rendered so well the psychic fecundity of cities will appreciate, I know, the giddy translocation I experienced, from the foggy churchyards of the Lowland, to the human Roil within a maze of pavements. And so, perhaps, you commiserate for what might have been a grave upheaval of my mode of life. But it has not been so! I have blundered upon Powers unforeseen — undreamed! I command a legion here, and have found my own wings in the wills of my living prey.

I’ve passed scarce a century on this continent of yours, Poetissime, but the pathway I have found here has long allowed me entry to all Time. Perhaps, back when you lived, as you threaded the human herds (gathering your materials, perhaps, for “The Man in the Crowd”?) — perhaps twice or thrice, on these brooding, watchful peregrinations of yours in a younger New York, you felt the cold touch of my muzzle against your hand. Perhaps you stopped, looked back, looked around, and found no one near enough to have made that contact? And, just perhaps, the chill of that moment sent frosty reverberations through your sense of Time . . . ?

Or whilst sojourning on Brennan Farm — there pondering the ebony bird who quoth “Nevermore!” — mayhap the night wind lofted my unholy baying unto your perceptive ear. Unsure of its existence, perhaps you paused and heard instead the soft susurration of Death whispering of its inevitable approach?

Just where, in the Realm of the Dead you dwell, Sir, is not yet known to me, so vast is that shoreless realm in which you swim. But it will be known. And perhaps a soul of your scope can understand this mystery: That from the Dead, the Great can be retrieved by those who are themselves above Death’s reach. Master, vouchsafe to harken, and to weigh the wonders that I hold in gift.

While I cannot cease to praise you, Mister Poe, it seems I can’t forbear now to exhort you. I urge, with every reverence, that you accede to my impassioned suit — for now I must be frank. I wish to crown you as the king among the poets of my retinue. How your silvery lyric will ensorcel them, my legionnaires! In short, I cannot take denial. You must be mine.

Death’s whelm is as wide as the starfield, and deep as Old Night, but my eyes are the Lamps of the Tomb, and my nose is keen. The time, Mister Poe, as we two reckon it, will not be long. You will know me when you see me, Bard.

Here, my farewell for now, this Ode and Exhortation I have penned for you alone!