Haggopian and Other Stories

This one was written in November 1971. It was supposed to appear in a magazine called Pulp (just that?) which to my knowledge promptly disappeared—an all-too-regular occurrence! But then Kirby McCauley sold it to a brand-new magazine, Stuart Schiff’s Whispers. In fact it was the very first story in the very first issue in July 1973; following which it took off. This tale has now seen more reprints and translations than anything else I’ve ever written: in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror; in the first Orbit Book of Horror; in Doubleday’s Whispers anthology; in Jove’s paperback Whispers; in Josh Pacter’s Top Fantasy, and so forth; until, in 1984, W. Paul Ganley used it in (and as the title of) my Weirdbook Press Volume, The House of Cthulhu And Other Tales of the Primal Land, in both hardcover and paperback editions. Not to be outdone, in 1991 Headline in the UK published the book in paperback, and most recently (2005) TOR Books in the USA have done a lovely little hardback, with fabulous jacket art by my good friend Bob Eggleton. All in all, a very long (and very satisfying) road for this short Mythos story.

Where Weirdly angled ramparts loom,

Gaunt sentinels whose shadows gloom

Upon an undead hell-beast’s tomb—

And gods and mortals fears to tread.

Where gateways to forbidden spheres

And times are closed, but monstrous fears

Await the passing of strange years—

When that will wake which is not dead…

“Arlyeh”—A fragment from Teh Atht’s

Legends of the Olden Runes

. As translated by Thelred Gustau from the Theem’hdra manuscripts.

Now it happened aforetime that Zar-thule the Conqueror, who is called Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities, swam out of the East with his dragonships; aye, even beneath the snapping sails of his dragonships. The wind was but lately turned favorable, and now the weary rowers nodded over their shipped oars while sleepy steersmen held the course. And there Zar-thule descried him in the sea the island Arlyeh, whereon loomed tall towers builded of black stone whose tortuous twinings were of angles unknown and utterly beyond the ken of men; and this island was redly lit by the sun sinking down over its awesome black crags and burning behind the aeries and spires carved therefrom by other than human hands.

And though Zar-thule felt a great hunger and stood sore weary of the wide sea’s expanse behind the lolling dragon’s tail of his ship Redfire, and even though he gazed with red and rapacious eyes upon the black island, still he held off his reavers, bidding them that they ride at anchor well out to sea until the sun was deeply down and gone unto the Realm of Cthon, even unto Cthon, who sits in silence to snare the sun in his net beyond the edge of the world. Indeed, such were Zar-thule’s raiders as their deeds were best done by night, for then Gleeth the blind Moon God saw them not, nor heard in his celestial deafness the horrible cries which ever attended unto such deeds.

For notwithstanding his cruelty, which was beyond words, Zar-thule was no fool. He knew him that his wolves must rest before a whelming, that if the treasures of the House of Cthulhu were truly such as he imagined them—then that they must likewise be well guarded by fighting men who would not give them up easily. And his reavers were fatigued even as Zar-thule himself, so that he rested them all down behind the painted bucklers lining the decks, and furled him up the great dragon-dyed sails. And he set a watch that in the middle of the night he might be roused, when, rousing in turn the men of his twenty ships, he would sail in unto and sack the island of Arlyeh.