Welcome back to our Dream Cycle Book Club, where we explore the dream based stories and dream-adjacent tales written by H.P. Lovecraft. In this week's thread we shall discuss the final half of At the Mountains of Madness.
This week we will be reading our penultimate story: The Dreams in the Witch House. The Arkham Archivist provides us with a collated collection of stories here. A LibriVox audio recording is not available and so I direct you to a recording by the YouTuber HorrorBabble here
This week image credit goes to Joseph Diaz.
In Chapter IX Dyer and Danforth seek out an entrance to the abyss which houses the "new" city.
Using the bed of the ancient river to orient themselves, Dyer and Danforth use the murals to sketch a map to some of the closest entrances to the abyss. They have spent much of their battery power in studying the murals, and so they can only safely check two entrances.
The two head out towards the closest entrance to the abyss, hoping that the passageway has not collapsed or been blocked by debris. Unfortunately, the passageway is blocked, but they recognise some disturbing scents. The first scent is a disgusting and unnerving scent, similar to that of the dissected specimen which the two unearthed from a snow coffin. The other scent is that of gasoline.
Following the scent of gasoline, the pair find odd swaths through the ancient debris, hinting at recent disturbance. They soon find a puddle of spilled gasoline and remnants of some gear taken from the camp, including some crumpled papers and food cans that have been opened in an odd manner.
Dyer smooths out some paper to inspect its contents. He finds that whoever passed by previously had also drawn a hasty map for navigating the city. This map depicts another entrance by the ruins of a circular tower that Dyer and Danforth spotted from the air. The detail of this map is disconcerting; there is a level of detail to the maps such that, though the maps were hastily drafted, appear superior to the depictions of the city on the murals. Evidently these maps were not simply copied from murals. Also on the paper is the odd dotted script found throughout the buildings.
The duo follow this new map to the circular tower which is surprisingly well preserved, considering its long exposure to the weather. Searching the interior, they find three missing sleds from the camp. They are drawn to a conspicuous pile covered by a tarp. Underneath the tarp they find the frozen remains of the missing scientist Gedney and the final sled dog.
I loved this chapter and found it rather chilling. There's a surprising amount of tension packed into following the trail of the Elder Things, hoping against hope that at the end of the trail they will find Gedney, only to have their worst fears realised.