Hello everyone and welcome back to our Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing What the Moon Brings and The Hound.
There are only three more short stories until we reach the first novella length dreamlands story. If I'd had a bit more forethought, I'd have loaded one of the last two weeks with a third story, as both featured very short stories. Hopefully this week's reading doesn't prove too much. We have three stories for this week: The Outsider, The Silver Key, and The Strange High House in the Mist.
Our First story, The Outsider, was written in 1921 but is listed on Wikipedia as 1926; this led to me missing it a couple weeks ago. It is available in PDF format via the Arkham Archivist here, and a LibriVox audio recording is available here.
The Silver Key is our second story this week, written in 1926. It is available in PDF format via the same link above, and a LibriVox audio recording is available here
Our third story for this week is The Strange High House in the Mist, written in November 1926. It is available in PDF format via the same link above. I cannot find a LibriVox recording, so I rely once again on HorrorBabble who has narrated the story here.
Image Credit Clément Galtier
The Hound is another Lovecraftian tale of cruel and unusual retribution, obsession with death, and lashings of the supernatural. Two grave robbers have created a secret museum of artifacts stolen from the graves of their victims. They are intrigued by the legend of the grave of a centuries old man, a "ghoul" who delighted in grave robbing as they do, and who met his end after one such robbery. The pair seek the treasure of that final robbery.
The two travel to Holland and uncover the coffin, while being haunted by some distant baying of a great hound. They are somewhat unnerved by the baying as legend speaks of the old grave robber meeting his end by such a hound. Still, they carry on. With the pristine skeleton of the ill-fated grave robber, they find a carved jade amulet of a winged lupine creature, described as a "sphinx with a semi-canine face". The pair recognise this amulet as an artifact described in the Necronomicon as some icon associated with the cannibal cult of Leng in Central Asia. They steal the amulet and retreat back to England, haunted by the sea winds which they fancy sounds like the baying of a hound.
The leader of the pair, St John, soon meets his poetic end as he is mauled to death by some great hound. Fearing the same fate, the narrator dashes back to Holland with the amulet, intent on returning it to its former resting place. He is foiled by thieves stealing the amulet from his room, while continuously haunted by the baying of the hound. During one night of particularly loud baying, a mass murder occurs in the same city. In a thieves' den a family is torn to shreds by some unknown beast.
The narrator returns to the graveyard without the amulet, in a desparate attempt to somehow atone for his sin. He notes the baying quieting and eventually ceasing as he reaches the grave of the old grave robber. He digs at the frozen ground only to find the earth suspiciously loose. Opening the coffin, he is confronted by the creature which bays. Rather than the clean skeleton that he previously encountered, the skeleton is soiled with flesh and hair, and cloaked in bats. It's canines are distinctly more fanglike, and it stares sentiently at the narrator with phosphorescent eye sockets. As the narrator notices that in its claw is clasped the amulet of jade, the skeleton's jaw yawns open and unleashes that same haunting baying as if of a hound.
Certain of his fate, the narrator shoots himself to avoid experiencing the horrible dismemberment of the Hound.
The Hound is only tangentially related to the Dreamlands in its mention of Leng, which is a location existing simultaneously on Earth and within the Dreamlands; it is referenced in the fiction as a place where realities converge and is therefore possibly one of many physical bridges between Earth and the Dreamlands.
Also of note is the mention of Abdul Alhazred and his infamous tome the Necronomicon. It was often my interpretation that this tome is very rare and surprisingly few complete copies exist, especially of the 16th century John Dee translation. Indeed, in The Dunwich Horror, the sorceror Wilbur Whateley risks his life in order to steal a complete copy from the library of the Miskatonic University. I find it odd that seemingly any pair of delinquents can obtain and study the volume. It could possibly be argued that it's an artifact recovered from one of their adventures. Admittedly I'm no expert on this topic, but my naive assumption would be that some leather bound tome such as the Necronomicon would be soon eaten away in a grave.
Finally, I'm fascinated by the vampiric creature that is the ancient grave robber. It's interesting to see Lovecraft's interpretation of traditional horror entities and how they fit within the Mythos. I'm left with some questions on the nature of this vampirism. Notably, we do not see the curse passed on to the victims of the creature, yet the creature itself was ostensibly transformed after a similar attack. Also of note is that the amulet remained with the grave robber, rather than being retrieved by his killer. I'm also interested how the amulet found its way into the possession of a Dutch grave robber from an inaccesible plateau in Central Asia (though we see in later tales that Leng is prone to moving and difficult to locate). I think it's plausible to conjecture that the construction of this amulet is part of some ritual communicated by some outer god. The purpose is that in death, the bearer finds unrest whenever the amulet is not in their possession. Thus it may be a item intended to bestow a poetic curse on would be grave robbers.