The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

“As I was saying earlier,” said Atal, sipping his Oukranos river water, “I was trying to discourage this young fella from his quest, you see. I told him I was under a lot of pressure and didn’t have time to answer all his questions even if I wanted to. Then he did a terrible thing. He plied me with moon-wine until I spilled the beans, hinting that the stone face carved on Mount Ngranek may be a likeness which Earth’s gods wrought of their own features in the days when they danced the Black Bottom. In disguise the younger among the Great Ones often espouse the comely peasant maidens, you see—”

  “Espouse?” said Kaman-Thah. “Please, Atal. When did the gods ever espouse those sluts?”

  “Don’t use such language!” cried the venerable patriarch.

  “Those gods can come off their mountain and espouse me all they want,” said Nasht.

  “You laugh now,” muttered Atal into his cup, slopping water down his wispy white beard, “but it could mean big trouble for everyone in dreamland if this young fella – Rand all Porter I think he said his name was – gets to Kadath in the cold waste and finds the Other Gods. As deities go they’re all right, I suppose, but you have to remember that their soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.”

  “Tell me, has anyone heard the latest about poor Menes?” asked Dick. The ease with which he changed the subject, Rosemary thought, was astonishing.

  “It is said that he has been appointed honorary president of this new quarantine programme for cats who want to enter Ooth-Nargai,” said Old Kranon.

  “King Kuranes himself insisted,” said Nith, the lean notary. “Cats can be detained even if they fly through the Sky around Serannian.”

  “I suspected it. It’s an outrage,” said Shang, the blacksmith.

  “It’s a scam to line the vets’ pockets,” said Thul, the cutter of stone.

  “Six months is absurd,” said Zath, the coroner.

  “Are zoogs exempt?” enquired Dick, waving his nose politely around the table.

  Rosemary admired how he showed an interest in what each of his guests had to say about this controversial if ultimately boring topic. In turn, she talked shop with Old Kranon, or rather she listened while he talked shop, explaining that Menes had never really recovered from the traumatic loss of his favourite kitten as a boy. Her mind soon wandered elsewhere, as did her gaze, which strayed towards her other dinner partner, aged Atal, who was now dozing face-down in his untasted plate of meat.

  “Where is Her Royal Highness anyway, Richard?” asked Nasht. “I thought you said she was invited.”

  Where was Nicole for that matter? wondered Rosemary. At that point Kaman-Thah, who had excused himself earlier, rushed back to the terrace and announced: “Hey, girls, you aren’t going to believe what I just saw in the bathroom!”

  III

  Before Kaman-Thah could savour the impact of this showstopper, he was upstaged by the entrance of two more guests. The entire company rose as one, with the exception of Rosemary, who lagged a second behind – but as she did so she realized who one of the new arrivals must be.

  “Awfully sorry, dear boy,” said King Kuranes to Dick, motioning for everybody to resume their seats. “I would’ve been here sooner, but on the road to Ulthar I met this American chappie, an old friend I used often to visit in waking days. Trust you don’t mind my bringing him along. Allow me to introduce Mr Randolph Carter, of Boston.”

  “I sure appreciate your letting me join your party, Dr Diver,” said the newcomer, pumping his host’s rough and ruddy hand. “According to Ole Kuranie here, to be included in your world for a while is a remarkable experience.”

  “I certainly look back in awe, dear boy, at that carnival of affection you gave when you and your wife first came to dreamland,” said the Lord of Ooth-Nargai.

  “The happiness of my friends is my preoccupation,” said Dick. “One has only to recognize the proud uniqueness of their destinies.”

  “Speaking of which, Doc,” said Randolph Carter, squatting on the armrest of the golden throne, “I was wondering if you could help me realize my unique personal destiny.”

  “So long as you subscribe to my extraordinary virtuosity completely.”

  While he could have taken the vacant silver throne at the foot of the table, King Kuranes elected instead to squeeze in between Rosemary and Atal. This disturbance provoked the aged patriarch to lift his head from his plate and gape at the rising moon. Since Rosemary had no hope of getting Dick to herself that evening, she was content to settle for the attention of royalty.

  Intermittently she caught the gist of the general conversation, concerning whether or not Carter should seek Kadath in the cold waste, wherever that was, for her new dinner companion insisted on hearing in detail her initial impressions of dreamland. At last she succeeded in asking him what he, as an old friend, would advise Carter to do.

  “My dear, I’ve been out beyond the stars in the ultimate void,” said the king, “and I’m the only one ever to return sane from such a voyage – though I admit at times I suffer from post-cosmic stress syndrome. I told Randy earlier he ought to go back to Boston and forget this silly dream-quest, but you know how it is with you enterprising Yanks. For the sake of an aesthetic thrill you’ll blithely risk all your marbles.”

  “I’m just a simple American girl, but the inhabitants of dreamland do seem to have more than their fair share of mental problems.”

  “Yes, there’s a desperate need for qualified physicians to treat all the cases. That’s why we’re so lucky Dick has agreed to join our staff.”

  Kuranes went on to explain that he was director of the Dylath-Leen clinic, which he visited whenever he wasn’t reigning in the rose-crystal Palace of the Seventy Delights at Celephaïs or in the turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian. In his spare time he liked to escape to his grey Gothic manor-house, near an ersatz Cornish fishing village and a Norman abbey he had reared to remind him of England. His latest fancy was to set up his own judiciary to enforce English law.

  “Can’t have all those disease-ridden cats infecting your green and pleasant land, can we?” teased Rosemary.

  In the meantime, Kaman-Thah, evidently blotto after another gourd of moon-wine, kept hinting to Shang, the blacksmith, and Thul, the cutter of stone, that the nasty thing he had seen in the bathroom concerned their absent hostess.

  “I say, old man,” said King Kuranes, “please don’t talk that way about Mrs Diver.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Your Highness.”

  “You weren’t? My apologies.”

  “You bully!” screeched the priest.

  “Steady, old man.”

  “You’re stronger muscularly than I am, you brute!”

  The Lord of Ooth-Nargai turned to Nasht and calmly recommended that he take his partner home – or better yet to their cavern-temple where such behaviour was more acceptable. Kaman-Thah declared in shrill tones that he was not about to leave for any man while the night was young, and did his lordship wish to step out on the balustraded parapet to discuss it further. This performance had the incidental effect of rousing Atal from his stupor. After rubbing the dried gravy from his eyes, the sage peered at Randolph Carter – and suddenly it was as if some fool had accidently set off a cheap alarm clock.

  “Don’t go!” he shrieked. “It’s not allowed, I tell you! Don’t go, unless you want to end up like Barzai the Wise, who was drawn screaming into the sky for merely climbing the known peak of Hatheg-Kla. With unknown Kadath, if ever found, matters would be worse, much worse, I tell you. We’re all doomed!”

  While Dick had drunk about a zoogshead worth of moon-wine himself, he still had the presence of mind to signal to the black men of Parg to remove the party-poopers with the meat course. Aged Atal was going quietly enough, and Kaman-Thah appeared to be actually enjoying the manhandling, when a flock of ghouls, all naked and rubbery, vaulted onto the terrace. The subsequent cavalry charge scattered the pair and their ebony escorts like nine pins. At last, thought Rosemary, they we
re about to have some real fun.

  IV

  Dick led the survivors of the previous night’s party through a trench towards the rugged grey headlands. He was full of excitement that he was eager to communicate, although the ghoul who was once the Boston artist Richard Upton Pickman – dressed for the occasion in beret and paint-spattered smock – had seen battle service and he had not.

  “These rocky headlands here cost one-quarter of the ghoul army two weeks ago,” he said to Rosemary. She looked out obediently at the blasted landscape, littered with broken javelins and hellish flutes. The ghoul that was Pickman and his entourage of dog-like lopers stopped gibbering in respect for their fallen comrades.

  “See that cliff?” continued Dick. “As the night-gaunt flies you could soar there in two minutes. The frightful detachments of moon-beasts and almost-humans spent half the day lumbering up to the top. It took the ghouls half an hour to annihilate those toad-like lunar blasphemies and their sardonic, wide-mouthed allies on the western headland. On the east cliff, however, where the leader of the moon-beasts was present, the ghouls didn’t fare so well.”

  Pickman, who still remembered a little English, grunted a few monosyllables in protest.

  “Okay, okay,” said Dick. “I’m getting to that part. After the western battle was over, the surviving ghouls hastened across to the aid of their hard-pressed fellows and forced the invaders back along the narrow ridge of the east headland, thus turning the tide. In the end it was a total victory for the good guys.”

  The erstwhile Pickman meeped with approval, while one ghoul attempted to pinch Rosemary and several others eyed her full figure speculatively.

  “Any chance I can see a battle while I’m here in dreamland?” she asked, slapping away a mould-caked paw.

  “Why, the gugs and ghasts haven’t quit in the vaults of Zin, dear girl,” said King Kuranes. “And in the vale of Pnath—”

  “That’s different,” said Dick. “Gugs hunt ghasts underground – it’s too dark for tourists. This moon-beast and almost-human business won’t happen again soon, not for another few months anyway, but when it does you can be sure—”

  “Maybe next time the gugs and ghasts will fight the moon-beasts and almost-humans above ground,” said Rosemary.

  “No, the gugs and ghasts would never be any good in the open air. Ghasts cannot live in real light and gugs tend to drowse on sentry duty.”

  They dropped behind the others. Suddenly a shower of broken javelins and hellish flutes came down on them and they ran into the next transverse, where they found Nasht and Kaman-Thah collecting battlefield souvenirs.

  “Oops, my mistake,” said Kaman-Thah, on the verge of hefting another load of debris over the top. “I thought you were the Lord of Ooth-Nargai.” The high priest had challenged Kuranes to a duel – leather handbags at twenty paces – and was still smarting from the king’s refusal to take him seriously. Rosemary burst out laughing.

  “That Kaman-Thah, what a kidder,” Dick said when they came out of the trench and faced a partly consumed refuse heap left by the ghoul army two weeks before.

  “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you,” she said quietly.

  “My dear, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you.”

  “I know you don’t love me – I don’t expect it.”

  “At my age a wholesome replacement process begins to operate, and love attains calm, cool depths based on tender association beside which the erotic infatuation of youth takes on a certain shade of cheapness or degradation. Mature tranquillized love—”

  “Take me!”

  “Take you where?”

  Embarrassment moved him to confess that his mother had described him as “hideous” as a boy and unfit for the draft as a young man, even though her nose was nearly as prehensile as his own. To compensate he had married Nicole, who suffered from an insufficiency complex. The reason she had missed the party was because she was having a nervous breakdown in the bathroom. This time Nicole would have to cure herself. He was hoping a long trip would do the trick. Then rather bashfully he said: “What I am coming to is this – Nicole and I are going with Randolph Carter to try to find Kadath in the cold waste. I wonder if you’d like to go with us.”

  “Oh, would I!”

  V

  In the event their journey included a few unexpected detours. First, Dick and Randolph Carter got drunk on moon-wine with a wide-mouthed merchant in Dylath-Leen, and the next thing they knew they were all shanghaied to the dark side of the moon in one of the reeking galleys of the moon-beasts. Luckily, friendly cats flew to their rescue. Back in Dylath-Leen, they caught a boat to the port of Baharna on the isle of Oriab. There the whole party hiked up the hidden side of Ngranek, only to be seized by night-gaunts. Soon they were dodging gugs and ghasts in the vale of Pnath, and only narrowly escaped with the help of a few ghouls through the tower of Koth. Sensing that Dick was playing the hero in order to impress Rosemary, Nicole seized the helm of their galleon as they cruised into the harbour at Celephaïs, their next destination, and crashed into a wharf.

  By this time everyone was ready for a rest at King Kuranes’ rose-crystal Palace of the Seventy Delights, where the Lord of Ooth-Nargai proved an especially courteous host. Dick, though, after one too many gourds of moon-wine at a local tavern, felt the king was being a bit too attentive to Rosemary and picked a fight that ended up involving a waiter, a cab driver and a bhole. Kuranes considered himself a benevolent monarch, but disturbing the peace was a very serious matter. He had lately constructed a quarantine station for cats in his grey Gothic manor-house’s dungeon, as yet unoccupied, and there Dick and the enormous viscous bhole were placed in a cell to dry out until their case could come to trial. In the circumstances the king deemed it best as well to suspend Dick from his position at the Dylath-Leen clinic.

  Meanwhile, Nicole, eager to show she was well on the road to recovery, agreed to accompany Carter on the last leg of his journey. Rosemary elected to stay behind in Celephaïs and assist the king with his various projects to expand “little England”. In truth, she was coming to appreciate that Kuranes was quite the catch, being not only rich and nobly born but single and available. Never mind that he was dead in the waking world; she was happy to remain indefinitely in dreamland, where her lord and master would protect her from the unwanted advances of its less attractive entities.

  To speed along this story further, it should be said that Nicole and Randolph Carter – after several more adventures, each more sanity-threatening than the last – did finally reach their goal: the dazzling neon-litten castle atop unknown Kadath. They had to wait only a minute or two before they were let past the velvet rope.

  Inside, they followed the maddening beat of vile drums and the ecstatic blasts of tenor saxophones into a cocktail lounge, where a combo was performing an up-tempo version of “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, to which were dancing slowly, awkwardly and with frequent stepping on toes the gauche and ultra nouveau Other Gods.

  “Not exactly the scene you were expecting, is it?” said Nicole.

  “Gosh, no,” said Randolph Carter, making no effort to hide his disappointment. “Atal didn’t prepare me for this. Maybe we came on the wrong night.”

  Then the band took a break and the leader strode across the dance floor: a tall, slim figure in evening clothes with the mature face of an Egyptian gigolo. Close up to Randolph Carter and Nicole strode that dapper figure, who was not quite light enough to travel in a Pullman south of Mason-Dixon. He spoke, and in his suave tones there vibrated the syncopated rhythms of the jazz age.

  “Nicole Diver,” said the band leader, “you have had a long and tiresome voyage. First, you have had to put up with that drunken and philandering husband of yours. What a waste of talent! Second, you have had since your husband’s unfortunate run-in with the law only this proper and provincial New Englander for company. What a waste of beauty! You deserve better.”

  “Hey, what about me?” interrupted Carter. “Wha
t about my quest?”

  “You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had just stayed in Boston – which is where I suggest you return a.s.a.p. As we speak a shantak is waiting to fly you express to Dylath-Leen. I have it from the highest authority that by the time you get there a certain American psychiatrist will have received his sentence – transportation to the waking world. You can do everyone a big favour and see him safely home to New England.”

  “I don’t mean to sound rude,” said Randolph Carter, “but who the heck are you to give me orders? Nyarlathotep?”

  “No, I am Nodens,” the elegant figure replied, “and that is my group, Nodens and the Night-gaunts. The Crawling Chaos and the Bubbling Blasphemers won’t start their gig at the castle for another three weeks.”

  Before Randolph Carter could respond to this surprising news, a pair of bouncers showed him outside to the waiting shantak. Nodens gave the band the nod to resume playing.

  “Shall we dance?” he said to Nicole.

  “Do you like what you see?” she murmured. “You know I was once white-Saxon-blonde.”

  “Baby, you are more beautiful now that your hair has darkened. When you were a kid it must have been like King Kuranes’ turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian and more beautiful than you.”

  VI

  Nicole kept in touch with Dick after her commitment ceremony to Nodens; there were handwritten letters dozens of pages long on political and socio-economic matters, and about the children, who were now taking figure drawing from the ghoul who had once been Richard Upton Pickman.

  In the last letter she had from him he told her that he was practising in Arkham, Mass., and she got the impression that he had settled down with one of his aunts to keep house for him. She looked up Arkham in an atlas and couldn’t find it. Perhaps, she liked to think, he was waiting to get going aesthetically again, like Napoleon on St Helena – or was it Elba? His latest picture postcard was postmarked from Dunwich, Mass., which is some distance inland from Arkham and ridiculously old, older by far than any of the communities within 30 miles of it; in any case he is almost certainly in that section of New England, in one imaginary town or another. And vast infinities away, past the Gate of Deeper Slumber and the enchanted wood, Nicole and Nodens danced cheek to cheek at the exclusive neon-litten castle atop unknown Kadath.