Hello everyone and welcome to the tenth week of our Dream Cycle Book Club. In this thread we'll be discussing Lovecraft's epic novella The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.
This week's reading is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Written in 1927. This is another novella of Lovecraft, weighing in at 104 pages in my copy of his fiction. I'm aware that 100 pages of Lovecraft's often verbose prose can be trying. Thankfully, Lovecraft actually separated this story into parts, which allows for easy splitting up of the reading. Our reading for this week is parts I-III, with parts IV and V covered next week. The text is available in PDF format courtesy of the Arkham Archivist here. Audio is provided by the talented HorrorBabble here
Image Credit Jian Guo
The second "chapter" concerns the voyage of Randolph Carter aboard the slavers' ship and his eventual rescue from his captors.
Carter regains consciousness on the foul smelling slaver ship, and notes that he must be on the Southern Sea, travelling at terrible speed. As he watches the islands race by, he marks that they are following the path travelled by in olden times by an old lighthouse keeper of Kingsport. He then comes to a stark realisation of his intended fate at the hands of these slavers. Evidently, the slavers are in league with the Other Gods, who protect the relatively weak gods of Earth. Carter concludes that the final destination of the ship is the colossal cataract that swallows the waters of the Dreamlands. From there, they will descend into the void that is the dominion of the blind idiot Other Gods and their sultan Azathoth. Being too close to humans, Carter doubts the slavers would survive in the presence of the Other Gods, and so he must be handed off to the soul and messenger of the Other Gods, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
As they reach and plunge into the cataract, Carter is somewhat relieved that the ship has altered its course and is somehow sailing directly towards the moon. Travelling to the dark side of the moon, Carter notes that the slavers appear to be agricultural, growing fields of fungus. In the distance he spies towers and temples of unnerving proportions, and he dares not guess at the creatures for whom these buildings were designed.
As they travel ever onwards on a greasy brown river of the moon, he sees other terrible creatures: blind, pink-tentacled toad creatures, to whom the turbaned near-humans of the ships are slaves. He sees these toad-things embark other slaver ships, with the near-humans embarking to undergo tasks that do not require strength. Evidently, their odd dress disguises these near-humans so that they can trade on the toad-things' behalf in Earth's Dreamlands.
Even more unnerving is the sight of fatter specimens among these near humans being appraised by the toad-things, then packaged into crates and shipped inland. Carter worries for the fate of the slaves bought in the Dreamlands.
After docking at the moon city, Carter is led on a seemingly infinite climb and imprisoned for an indeterminate amount of time; he surmises that the toad-things are making contact with Nyarlathotep in order to make the exchange. Eventually he is summoned and escorted by a procession of ten toad-things and 24 near-human slaves bearing torches.
On their march to his inevitable doom, Carter hears a familiar and comforting sound: the mewing of Earth cats. Knowing a small amount of the tongue of cats, Carter calls for help, but his cries are soon drowned out by the angry yells of a legion of cats. His captors are beset upon from all sides by these cats, and Carter is soon overwhelmed by the waves of cats coming to his rescue.
When Carter regains his senses, he notes that a legion of cats surrounds him in concentric circles while three of their leaders fuss over him. Of his captors the sign is a discarded bone. The leader of the cats remarks that Carter is known as a friend to cats, both in the waking world and the Dreamlands, and thus when they recognised him as the prisoner of the moon-folk, the cats strove to free him.
The cats cannot stay too long on the surface of the moon, for they may soon be set upon by the cats of Saturn, who hold treaties with the moon-folk and are hostile to the cats of Earth. The cats, leading Carter through the void, pounce back down to earth and leave Nyarlathotep foiled atop the moon mountains.
Thus ends what I'd consider the second chapter of this story. In this chapter we find three references to previous Dream Cycle stories: The White Ship, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, and tangentially The Strange High House in the Mist.
A small detail that is easy to miss is found in the mention of the old lighthouse keeper from the White Ship. Carter notes that Basil Elton is from Kingsport. Readers who are on the ball will recognise this as the town in which The Strange High House in the Mist takes place. I just think it's rather interesting to see the two disconnected threads of previous story snap together through an offhand comment in a third story. From this, we can imagine the treacherous sound near the lighthouse as the precipitous crags described in The Strange High House in the Mist. Given the regular deep mists that encompass even the highest crag, and the haunting sounds that can be mistaken for buoys, the need for such a lighthouse is abundantly clear.
Nyarlathotep is mentioned fairly liberally throughout this chapter, and is often mentioned by the title given to him at the end of his own prose-poem, that of "the soul and messenger of the Outer (or Other) Gods*. Given that the Outer Gods are often described as blind idiots, in calling Nyarlathotep their soul is Lovecraft hinting at some level of control over these gods? being the only known Outer God that's been mentioned as having some measure of intelligence, it would be rather easy for the messenger of the Outer Gods to influence their power to suit his will. While there are certainly gods who can claim a greater measure of power, I doubt it can be argued that any of them claim a similar amount of control than Nyarlathotep.
In this chapter, Azathoth is mentioned for the first time (in the Dream Cycle) as the daemon-sultan of the Outer Gods. Though he is never mentioned in the short story named after him, there is a link to be found here. Azathoth is remarked as dwelling in the void by Carter. In the short story Azathoth, the dreamer observes the cosmos and discovers passages through the void. Could this be another - albeit more dangerous - way of accessing the Dreamlands; through traversing the void and emerging from the cateract described in The White Ship?