H.P. Lovecraft

Through the Gates of the Silver Key is the final story in the Dream Cycle and the final story of Randolph Carter. In the continuity, it takes place four years after the events of The Silver Key which we have previously covered in this book club.

Four years after the 1928 disappearance of fifty-four year old Randolph Carter, a small group meets at the mansion of an occultist Atienne de Marigny to settle the estate of Carter. Also in attendance are the Carter’s long time friend Harley Warren, dreamer and pulp horror writer Ward Phillips (another self-insert of Lovecraft), and attorney Ernest Aspinwall who is Carter’s cousin.

Carter was declared missing shortly after the events of The Silver Key. Detectives from Boston had followed Carter’s trail to his childhood home in the rural hills near Arkham. There they found Carter’s car, along with the oddly carved box once containing the Silver Key and a parchment with an indecipherable script. The Detectives searched the old cave called the “Snake Den” where Carter played as a child, but could not find him.

Ernest Aspinwall is apparently ignorant of the occult and is hoping to settle Carter’s estate quickly for personal gain. The friends of Carter, who are all familiar with the occult, object to settling the estate based on a conjecture that Carter is alive and trapped in some tangential spacetime.

The friends of Carter have been in contact with a Hindu Swami, known as Chandraputra. The Swami has been invited to offer evidence that Carter still lives. Chandraputra claims that Carter experimented with the Silver Key following a peculiar hallucination of being propelled back to his childhood. He believed this experience was linked to the Silver Key and the Snake Den, so he returned there to perform a ritual using the Key.

In the recitation of this ritual, Carter has inadvertently opened a gate leading from our local spacetime to some alien higher dimensional spacetime containing our own. Following the teachings of the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon, Carter makes a deal with an ancient and terrible guide Umr At-Tawil. The entity guides Carter deeper into the strange cosmos, to the Ultimate Gate through which a traveler may pass to the final void. Carter passes through the Ultimate Gate and is greeted by the All-in-One and One-in-All, Yog-Sothoth, who reveals the truth of our existence to Carter through godly pulses of information.

Living creatures in our world are in fact three-dimensional “slices” of higher dimensional Beings (much like how a three-dimensional cube can be understood as a shape with many two-dimensional square faces). Our concept of time is a misconception based on a lack of information. What we perceive as the passage of time is in fact a consequence of an ever-altering view of the higher dimensional being; to focus on a new “slice” of the being creates the illusion of change and time.

Carter looks upon the Being that contains his entire life, and he sees new lives contained within the same being and therefore linked to Randolph Carter. Returning to our example of the cube, The life of Randolph Carter is merely one facet of the higher dimensional Being; rotating the Being much like rotating the cube will reveal a new facet corresponding to a different life. Carter inspects these facets of the Being and finds an interesting creature: an alien wizard who lived eons before Carter on a planet thousands of light-years from Earth. Carter has often dreamed of this creature and thus wishes to experience the facet. Yog-Sothoth warns that Carter must be mindful of the rites of returning, should he wish to return here and then back to his former life. The arrogant Carter believes that the Silver Key itself is sufficient to return to this place.

Carter finds himself an unwelcome guest in the mind of Zkauba, the alien wizard from the planet Yaddith. Understanding that the two beings both in fact are pieces of the same super Being, Carter understands that he is essentially the same as Zkauba, and uses this to wrestle control of Zkauba’s body from Zkauba. Finding himself in fact trapped on Yaddith, Carter uses Zkauba’s vast knowledge of advanced science-magic to concoct a drug that can suppress the portion of his mind inhabited by Zkauba. Over the course of centuries, Carter uses his own knowledge of astronomy relative to Earth and Zkauba’s superior analytical skills to plan a journey that will deposit him on Earth at the time and place of his 1928 disappearance. This journey involves orbiting Yaddith in suspended animation for a few eons and then slingshotting himself on a collision course with Earth. He also crafts himself a mask and disguise which he can use until he regains his human form, and he stashes a small fortune of gold on his spacecraft.

In suspended animation, Carter perceives eons of history of Yaddith pass by in an instant. He sees how the alien race is overrun by the monstrous dholes (an enemy Carter escapes in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Carter yeets himself in the direction of Earth moments before a monstrous dhole yanks him from orbit.

This little hiccup is responsible for a gross error in Carter’s calculations, and he arrives on Earth an entire TWO YEARS late. In a passable human disguise but not a good Carter disguise, Carter exchanges his horded gold for money and embarks on a research mission to return to his old body. During his two years of study he contacts many mystics for help in his research.

This is where Chandraputra enters the scene. He began lodging with Carter to help with research and to be an advocate for Carter in matters where Carter himself could not personally appear.

Around this time, the selfish Aspinwall is done with Chandraputra’s story. Clearly this is some fabrication designed to dupe Carter’s occultist friends. Carter’s friends object to Aspinwall’s objections and state that Chandraputra has in fact been keeping them informed on his research. Chandraputra offers the Silver Key, last seen with Carter four years ago, as evidence. Aspinwall throws some racial slurs at Chandraputra, asserting that Chandraputra had stolen the Key from Carter. Chandraputra offers as further evidence to answer any questions that only Carter could answer.

Aspinwall has been suspicious of Chandraputra and his seemingly expressionless face all night. Suspecting a masked criminal attempting the rob the company, he grabs Chandraputra’s face and pulls.

Carter’s friends do not see what is uncovered, but it is sufficient to frighten Aspinwall to death. From Chandraputra they here an odd buzzing. Chandraputra then confirms their suspicions that he is in fact the changed Carter, and that he needs them to keep his estate open for just a few more months. He then uses the Silver Key an odd antique grandfather clock in the parlor and enters it. When de Martigny opens the front of the clock, the creature is nowhere to be seen.

Having not seen Carter and never actually having the opportunity to ask personal questions, the three friends are left to wonder if the creature was actually Carter, or some manner of would-be thief.

Narratively, this story is a bit of a mess, which can be in part blamed on the collaboration. Reportedly E. Hoffmann Price approached Lovecraft with a draft for a sequel to The Silver Key. The manuscript was essentially the tale of Chandraputra, up to the point of the higher-dimensional Being, and was essentially theosophical raving and crappy maths wrapped in the veneer of a Lovecraft story. Lovecraft kept as much of his collaborator’s ideas as possible, and added the ideas of Zkauba and the pretense of settling a will.

I think the story itself didn’t need to be told and Randolph Carter didn’t need this odd send-off. The karma and reincarnation with extra steps both over-explains and obfuscates.