Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois

by Pierre V. Comtois

  Moving on, Stillnor became interested in a display of prehistoric artifacts found in the cave explored by Lake and his colleagues: bones, rock fragments including some displaying the odd “footprint” that Dyer claimed belonged to the Old Ones, and an exact replica of the star stone Detective Shonross had given him. Next came more photographs, this time of the megalithic city discovered by Dyer and Danforth on the other side of the mountains that looked down upon the advance camp. Suddenly, the reality of Dyer’s claims became substantial to him as he gazed upon actual evidence of the existence of the city. A feeling of mounting strangeness overcame him as he looked at the historical carvings Dyer had described so vividly in his monograph, the titanic stone structures that had collapsed upon themselves, the winding stairways and inclined planes that led into deeper gloom in chambers that lay far beneath ground level, the occasional rubble and the long corridors that ended in darkness ahead. Occasionally, a photo even captured the figures of either Dyer or Danforth themselves standing beside some object to help to give the observer some notion of its size. Looking at them, Stillnor was struck by either man’s youthful appearance. Danforth had only been an undergraduate of 20 or so when he accompanied the expedition while Dyer was in his prime at 54.

  Sobered by the series of photographs that had altered Dyer and Danforth in his mind from an historical figure and a madman to flesh and blood human beings who had lives and hopes and dreams, Stillnor came to the final portion of the exhibit. Mounted on the wall in glass fronted cases extending from floor to ceiling, were the organic remains of the star headed creatures discovered by Lake in the cavern beneath the Antarctic ice. Whether they were plant or animal, no one was sure at the time, although in his monograph Dyer claimed they were actually members of the alien race he called the Old Ones. Rather unimpressive, most of the artifacts appeared to be bits and pieces of the things, desiccated and petrified, cut by scalpel in such ways as to best display external and in some cases internal, bodily functions.

  Taking an involuntary step backward, Stillnor felt an odd repulsion at the display and as his gaze moved upward, it finally came to rest on what could only have been one of the creatures’ star-shaped head. It lay flat against the tack board behind it with pins holding the five pointed ends at full extension along with the thinner eye stalks. The slit at the center of the star shaped head was as Dyer had described it in his monograph. All of it was vaguely disgusting to Stillnor without his being able to say exactly why. Just then, the shadows created by the muted lighting seemed to press down around him and he felt suddenly alone. He hadn’t seen a single person in all the time since he entered the museum wing and wondered if it was still open to the public. If no one knew he was here, maybe he’d been locked in? He was on the point of looking for the welcome desk when he was stopped by a peculiar odor. Sniffing, he began to cough and his gorge threatened to rise. He managed to overcome his initial reaction and, controlling his breathing, couldn’t help but follow the scent to find out what could be causing such a stink.

  Stepping back out into the corridor, he looked up and down and still saw no one about. Continuing on, he followed the hallway back the way he’d come until arriving at another arched doorway. This one led through a darkened room to another archway on the other side where light revealed many green plants. Heading in that direction, the stench remained strong but now included elements of earth and green growing things. Arriving at the second arch, he found himself at the entrance to a greenhouse filled with what looked to him like exotic plants. Great fern trees stretched to a glass ceiling where a cloud-veiled moon struggled for release in the early evening sky. Closer to the ground, exotic shrubs, flowering plants, lianas, and other flora more akin to a rain forest than the forests of New England dominated. Everywhere, the unpleasant smell still lingered and despite his having come no closer to discovering its source, something prompted him to continue deeper into the greenhouse where light from the entrance found it difficult to penetrate. Here, the ferns and palms hung thickly about, their details obscured as clouds continued to cover the moon. There was a tinkle of something knocked across the floor, and suddenly Stillnor was certain he wasn’t alone. Frightened, he whirled, casting quick glances around him and seeing only the looming silhouettes of plants whose fronds brushed his head and shoulders. At last, his attention rested on one particular shape that bulked largely amid trunks of palm trees and low hanging branches. Had it moved? Stillnor wasn’t sure; it could have been his own looking about that stirred the still air of the greenhouse. If only the moon would come out from behind that cloud…Then, his vision seemed to come into focus and gradually, he was able to distinguish the shapes about him. There was a palm tree and there a cactus and there…he gasped and drew back tripping over something that clattered too loudly in the silence of the greenhouse. Tumbling, he flailed his arms helplessly trying to find support and failing, fell heavily to the concrete floor. Kicking himself away from the plants in front of him, he couldn’t help looking up hoping he’d been mistaken about what he thought he saw. He wasn’t. Looming before him in the gloom was a bulky figure topped by a star-shaped head piece! Soundlessly, cord-like tendrils waved about it and half way down the solid trunk of its midsection were ropy appendages that divided and sub-divided into a myriad grasping hands. And then, appallingly, there was the sound of stiff, plastoid flesh stretching and pulling as the thing bent slowly forward. Stillnor felt the oppressive nearness of its heavy bulk pressing him down, cornering him and suddenly, the stench that had receded into the background of his consciousness flooded back in greater force than ever. At that moment, the damned moon chose to emerge from the clouds that up to now had prevented Stillnor from getting a good look at the thing before him. It lasted only a moment, but it was enough. The fright that had been building somewhere inside of him, that had been kept pent up, controlled somehow, was finally loosed and he screamed, screamed like a child faced with its worst nightmare, screamed like the poor souls he dealt with on a daily basis at the hospital. The next he knew, he was stumbling from the greenhouse, running blindly, not knowing where so long as it was away from that arboretum of horror and madness. Afterward, he could never recall just how he escaped the museum only that he never stopped running. He ran and ran until exhaustion overtook him and he fell to the cold ground panting, his heart pounding. When he was able to stand again, he ran some more and this time didn’t stop until he’d burst through his own front door and locked himself in. He spent the rest of the night on the floor, his back firmly pressed against the door, deathly afraid that something that had followed him from the museum would get in.

  The next day he’d learned that the museum wing at Miskatonic had burned to the ground. The result of a gas explosion it was said. And because he’d abandoned his car in the library parking lot, he was asked to come to police headquarters for questioning. Still somewhat incoherent after his experience, the police found his explanations unsatisfying and kept after him for hours. Finally, he was allowed to go home. Disheveled and exhausted from his ordeal, Stillnor fell into a chair and congratulated himself in managing not to tell the police everything that had happened the night before. If he’d had, he was sure that not only would he have been implicated in the destruction of the museum but accused of being a madman himself and candidate for residency at his own hospital; a verdict that he was not at all sure would be far from the truth. Fearful of talking to anyone about what really happened, he finally decided that there was only one person with whom he could confide.

  After making himself presentable and reclaiming his car from the garage where the police had it towed, he drove out to the hospital and, avoiding as many of the staff as he could, made his way to the third floor where he greeted the duty nurse and asked for the key to Danforth’s room.

  Inside, Danforth had been released from his straightjacket but was once again secured to the bed. Unspeaking, he at least acknowledged Stillnor’s presence when he turned his head in his direction and stared at him with dul
l, emotionless eyes.

  Taking a chair, Stillnor set it beside the bed and sat down. He was about to say something when Danforth surprised him by speaking first.

  “I can tell that you’ve seen it,” he said.

  Stillnor said nothing.

  “Have you told anyone?” asked Danforth.

  “Who’d believe me?”

  After that, the two talked for a good while before Stillnor finally left.

  Back at home, he chose not to turn on the lights and simply sat in the study listening to the occasional car swish by outside. His mind wandering, Stillnor recalled his conversation with Danforth, a conversation whose content he would have dismissed as lunatic only 24 hours before. All about how the Old Ones had mastered cellular manipulation and could and did create the ancestors of the creatures that went on to populate the Earth following their extinction. How they developed telepathic skills that enabled them to communicate with the Shoggoths, their greatest creation and eventual heirs. Finally, as Danforth felt more at ease with him, he confided to him that it had been Gedney’s voice he heard telling him to remove the wards around Arkham and in the weeks in which nothing was seen of him after his escape from the hospital, it was the voice again that directed him to South America where he arranged for cargo to be transported to Boston. At that point, after his own harrowing experience, it finally struck Stillnor in all its terrible implications that the Old Ones were real. As were their servitors, the monstrous Shoggoths who had evolved over millions of years into self-conscious beings filled with curiosity of a world outside the confines of their subterranean abode and eager to learn more about it. Imitative creatures, they had mastered many of the Old Ones’ skills including the manipulation of organic matter, either dead or alive, so that if given the opportunity, they could no doubt alter the structure of a human being so that it could survive the rigors of life deep beneath the Antarctic continent. Such alterations would also no doubt make telepathic communication between themselves and their mutation easier to accomplish. Stillnor knew this was so because he’d seen an example of it the night he found himself in the greenhouse at Miskatonic University, lured there under a telepathic guidance that had prodded him first to the library, then to the museum, and finally to the greenhouse. Although he hadn’t realized it at the time, it had been a call for help after Danforth had been removed from the scene and restrained at the hospital. A cry for help that went unheeded until a deep desperation no other human being could possibly understand forced the telepath to end its existence in a fiery blast of its own making. A cry for help in fact, from a tortured soul trapped in the shape of an Old One, but that still retained its human mind. It had been a sight that badly frightened Stillnor when he saw the star-headed thing looming over him but it wasn’t that which finally sent him screaming into the night. Rather, it was what had been revealed in those few seconds when moonlight broke through the clouds, for nested amid those waving, pleading tentacles were fixed the unmistakable features of Felix Gedney!

  ss.”

  The King in Yellow

  Preface

  harles Vaughn (1902-1966), was the first and perhaps foremost American example of that traditionally Gallic malady, the poete moudit. He came from a well-to-do Long Island family of solid Welsh stock. His father, James Cabot Vaughan, was a prominent New York attorney; his mother, Elizabeth Forester Vaughan, nee Woolton, was a socialite who spent her childhood in Europe. James Vaughan expected his son to follow him into the law profession, and Charles read law at Cambridge for one fruitless semester. In 1920, contrary to all his father’s explicit wishes, Charles left for France to study art. After failing to enter the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Artes, he turned his interests to the burgeoning, post-war literary movement centered in Paris. Vaughan began writing poetry, and living on a small stipend secretly sent by his mother, he tramped about Europe — a few months in Germany, an extended visit to Italy, and a return to Paris in early 1923. There, with the help of friends and admirers, he was able to self-publish his first book, Rhine Sketches; a small collection of reminiscences and vignettes extolling the beauty of the Bavarian countryside, and the pleasures of the Hamburg brothels, all in the overblown, overtly romantic language typical of his early prose and verse.

  Prima Matera, a group of extended poems dealing with more philosophical concerns, followed in 1925. These poems, in the manner of Rimbaud and Appolinaire, found a willing publisher and some critical and public success. With his mother’s stipend and the small profit from Prima Matera, Vaughan moved with his mistress to Nice where he began writing a novel. This disastrous and huge book (816 pages!) appeared in 1928. Athenian Nights, set in the Paris of the 1920s, and based on Sophocles’ Oedipus plays, was hated by both the critics and the public at large. This monumental failure coincided with his father’s death. In despair, Vaughan fled Nice, leaving his dreams of writing and his mistress behind. After a failed suicide attempt and months of wandering, Vaughan settled in Berlin in 1929. Vaughan found solace in the expressionist theater he found there. Inspired by the plays of Ernst Toller, Georg Kaiser and Bertold Brecht, he began writing one-act plays which soon won him a new-found reputation as one of the best new dramaturges of the era. In 1933, anticipating the Nazi regime’s fascist policies, Vaughan fled to England where he was greeted enthusiastically by the critics. In 1934 he had his first widespread success with a full length play titled Descartes: a three hour montage of scenes from the French mathematician/philosopher’s life, interspersed with excerpts from Descartes’ Les Passions de L’ame (1649) sung by a Greek chorus. Fresh off this success, he soon completed his most ambitious play to date, The Age of Bronze (1936), a scathing modern drama which dealt with the rise of fascism in Europe. The Age of Bronze was also Vaughan’s first triumph on the Broadway stage; and in 1938, he returned to the United States after eighteen years of self-imposed exile.

  From 1939 to 1945, Vaughan continued to write one-act plays, poetry, and essays ranging in subject-matter from art to mysticism (collected in The Night Watch, 1972). In 1946 his mother died, and his new full-length play, Charles I, opened to enthusiastic reviews. Olivier’s refusal to play the doomed king, along with the author’s tumultuous personal life made Vaughan one of the most scandalous and well-known writers in America. In 1949, Vaughan completed the libretto for La Rouge et le Noir, an opera based on the classic novel by Stendahl, and he married the artist Virginia Abrams. Vaughan’s next play was Hadrian’s Wall (1952), a bitter parable which compared the decline of the Roman empire with Cold War America. This made Vaughan the target of an investigation by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Vaughan became silent until 1957, when his next, eagerly-awaited play Metaphysique premiered. This stark, disturbing farce/tragedy is made up of one long monologue, often sinking into a stream-of-consciousness, recited by a number of gray, faceless characters inhabiting a dark, featureless wasteland. This confusing monologue is repeatedly interrupted by inexplicable passages of brutal, sadistic violence including a beheading, a number of acts of rape, and a crucifixion. It managed to deeply shock critics and audiences alike. Vaughan retreated into a solitude in which he remained until his untimely death a decade later. Vaughan’s death was as controversial as his life and has been the subject of much conjecture. Did he accidentally shoot himself, or was it a suicide? In the twenty years following his death, Vaughan’s collected oeuvre has been brought back into print, along with a tantalizing fragment first published in 1975. This fragment, The King in Yellow, is put forth by some as Vaughan’s final play. A full decade of scholarship has not revealed any conclusive answers.

  Vaughan retreated into a solitude in which he remained until his untimely death a decade later. Vaughan’s death was as controversial as his life and has been the subject of much conjecture. Did he accidentally shoot himself, or was it suicide?

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Works by Charles Vaughan

  Rhine Sketches, 1923

  Prima Matera, 1925

  Athenian Nights, 1928 Novel
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  Descartes, 1934 Play

  The Age of Bronze, 1936 Play

  Charles I, 1946 Play

  La Rouge et le Noir, 1949 Libretto

  Hadrian’s Wall, 1952 Play

  Poems 1920-1950, 1955

  Metaphysique, 1957 Play

  Selected Poems, 1964

  Complete One Act Plays, 1968

  The Night Watch, 1972 Essays

  The Carcosa Trilogy: three unproduced plays, 1975 (written 1957-1966?)

  Collected Poems, 1920-1964, 1979

  Collected Plays, 1981

  The Portable Vaughan, 1984

  A Vaughan Omnibus, 1995

  THE KING IN YELLOW

  By Charles Vaughan

  CHORUS:

  Along the shore the cloud waves break,

  The twin suns sink behind the lake,

  The shadows lengthen

  In Carcosa.

  Strange is the night where black stars rise,

  And strange moons circle through the skies,

  But stranger still is

  Lost Carcosa.

  Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

  Where flap the tatters of the King,

  Must die unheard in

  Dim Carcosa.

  Song of my soul, my voice is dead,

  Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

  Shall dry and die in

  Lost Carcosa.

  — Cassilda’s Song

  Act I, Scene 2:

  (As evening approaches night, Cassilda and Camilla walk slowly, arm in arm, along the garden terrace of the palace. In the distance, glowing dimly on the horizon, are the almost-hidden spires of lost Carcosa. In the sky, their light suffusing the terrace, hang the strange moons of Carcosa. Dimly, below the heights upon which the palace is located, gleams the still surface of the Lake of Hali, upon whose shores the cloud waves roll and break. Bright wedges of light fall through open doorways at stage right along with the sounds of a masque: the laughter of people, the tinkling of glasses, the music of popular dances. But outside, all is subdued. Cassilda and Camilla are dressed in the style of past centuries, their hair layered in extravagant pompadours. They each hold small face masks, gilded in silver and gold, before their eyes.)