Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club. Today we will discuss the final two parts of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
Our reading for this week is the first five chapters of At the Mountains of Madness, written in 1931. The first five chapters should put us at around the halfway point of this novella.
I'd call this one Dream Cycle-adjacent, as it features and mentions locations such as Leng and Kadath. It's also an important story in Lovecraft's Bibliography, but we'll cover that during the relevant discussion.
A PDF of the short story is found in the collected works curated by the Arkham Archivist here. A LibriVox audio recording is available here.
Image credit Jagoba Lekuona
Part IV of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is titled "A Mutation and a Madness". It concerns the apparent rapid decline of the sanity of the eponymous Ward and his eventual institutionalisation.
Following the Good Friday evocation which disturbed the entire household, Ward becomes more active. He has developed a large appetite, makes frequent excursions to the old house of Curwen, and takes frequent walks along the river banks of Pawtuxet. The rituals briefly start up again but are promptly stopped by the elder Mr Ward.
Quite concerning to Ward's mother in particular is his apparent talking to himself in different voices. No others enter his laboratory so surely he must be talking to himself. One night while the butler is locking up, Ward gives him a stern and uncharacteristic stare that causes him to resign the next day.
The next evening, Ward grabs the evening paper and "loses" a section. Our protagonist Dr Willett travels to the office of the paper and looks up the missing pages. On these pages are two stories of interest: the vandalism of the grave of Ezra Weeden (who was responsible for revealing Curwen's necromancy), and the baying of dogs at 3am in the area of Pawtuxet where Ward frequents. Around this time there are frequent nighttime "vampire" attacks which alienists later attribute to Ward, though the family physician Dr Willett denies these allegations.
Ward's mother takes ill due to adverse effects related to Ward's distressing behaviour. She departs for a recuperative holiday and Ward promptly becomes more active. He seeks certain property in Pawtuxet and begins hanging out with a bespectacled and bearded Dr Allen and a portuguese man named Gomes. He moves his operations completely to Pawtuxet and often takes week long trips. Around this time it is noted that he constantly carries a foul smell with him.
Ward making illicit orders of cadavers to his new bungalow. He explains this away as him believing that he was a scientific researcher making honest purchases, and gives an address of the "dodgy trader" which does not come to fruition. Shortly after he sends a desperate letter to Dr Willett, begging for intervention. He also instructs Dr Willett in the postscript to shoot Dr Allen on sight and to dissolve the body in acid. Dr Willett attends the intervention only to find that Ward never attends.
Willett journeys to the bungalow to confront Ward. Ward now appears very ill and states that he was merely experiencing anxiety concerning the new frontiers he was crossing in his research. Willett notes that he speaks in a hoarse whisper and uses archaic speech. It's clear to Willett that Ward is saying anything to get Willett out of the door.
The local banks contact Ward about apparently forged cheques that he has issued. Ward explains the poorly forged signature by stating that he has become frail and has trouble holding a pen. The elder Mr Ward as well as Willett and a team of other doctors stage an impromptu medical intervention at the bungalow and promptly institutionalise Ward. During the medical examination, Willett discovers a scar above the eye which Ward never had, but Curwen had. Ward is also missing his telltale olive birthmark and instead has a black splotch. Notably, Curwen bore a black splotch which contemporaries called a "devil's mark".
Searching the bungalow, they find mail forwarded to Dr Allen. The letters address him as C or J.C. and the senders of the letters call themselves H. and Simon O. (Hutchinson and Simon Orne were Salem contemporaries to Joseph Curwen). The letters speak of a trade of ancient bodies that hold many secrets when questioned. Shockingly, one question instructs to kill "the boy" if he proves too squeamish for their business.
At this point I was briefly stumped. My guess from last week was that Curwen was somehow possessing Ward. However, letters from Curwen's collaborators address this Dr Allen as Curwen. They speak on how "the boy" was timid when receiving instruction in Roumania. Notably, Ward spent some time studying in Roumania. Evidently this trio seeks harm to Ward if he doesn't step in line with their necromantic research.
A notable mention in this part is how Simon O. signs off his letter. He writes "Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin". This is in fact the first written mention of Yog-Sothoth, who will later become known as some manner of patron to wizards.