August Derleth Pages / Supernatural Horror: Authors and Themes

 

A COLLISION OF WORLD-VIEWS:
A look at August Derleth's "The Dweller in Darkness"

August Derleth's novelette "The Dweller in Darkness" (1944) is a curious story.  It is one of a group of stories that Derleth wrote which, in effect, show the collision of two world-views, both of which have become regarded, until fairly recently, as "Lovecraftian”. (1)

The first world-view is that of H P Lovecraft himself, as shown in such stories as "The Call of Cthulhu" and his other late work. In this world-view, the universe is a blind and mechanical place, in which the human race and its world and aspirations has no special significance. There is no God, there is no special right of humanity to exist unmolested. Any existence of human civilization owes its survival not to benign forces, or to the lack of malign ones, but simply to the fact of chance.

Derleth included these stories, as well as other unrelated stories by other writers, in a grouping he called the Cthulhu Mythos. (He also included Lovecraft stories that bore no real connection with this theme, except for their common fictional New England setting.)

The second world-view is that of Derleth himself. Since he included his own work, and the "posthumous collaborations" with Lovecraft, under the general Cthulhu Mythos heading, the existence of two world-views rather than one, is not at first sight obvious.

Derleth's world-view is much more conventional, and has the universe as a setting for a conflict between good and evil, in which humanity sometimes becomes involved. But whereas Lovecraft had his "gods" simply going about their business, with humanity getting in the way by accident, and so discovering that the universe is simply amoral, with Derleth it became the case that the "gods" were divided into good and evil camps, with humanity being able to avoid getting caught in the crossfire by the use of what amounted to magic. In recent years this second world-view has become known as the Derleth Mythos -- and usually in a pejorative sense.

I do not want to go into detail here about the ramifications of the Cthulhu Mythos and Derleth Mythos. That can be followed up else where. (2) Instead I do want to examine "The Dweller in Darkness" as a story which shows the ambiguities of both world-views coming to gether in a single story.  We get many Lovecraftian trappings, such as mentions of places like Arkham and Miskatonic University, as well as "gods" like Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and so on. But they are set within Derleth's good versus evil framework, a setting which Lovecraft would not, philosophically, have shared. We also get a story set in northern Wisconsin, a regional setting that Derleth knew and used to good effect.  The story also contains plenty of dialogue, and much humour.

After a quote from Lovecraft's "The Picture in the House" --setting the scene for awful goings-on in remote places -- the story opens with a pastiche of the opening of "The Dunwich Horror":

The scene is Rick's Lake, the area around which “had a history that gave pause to even the most intrepid adventurer.” (4) Over the years people have vanished, and folktales have become rife. With several nods in the direction of “The Whisperer in Darkness,” Laird Dorgan and the narrator decide to go to Rick’s Lake in order to investigate the disappearance of Professor Upton Gardner, the latest folklore collector and intrepid adventurer to go missing in the area.

In true Lovecraftian spirit, the men find a collection of letters and notes left behind by the professor. The usual forbidden books are there -- the Necronomicon and Pnakotic Manuscripts -- made available by the modern technology of photocopying, and thus avoiding the fate that Wilbur Whateley suffered in the library of Miskatonic University in “The Dunwich Horror”.

Derleth also expands the canon. One of the professor’s letters made enquiries about “whether it is possible to purchase through one of the local bookstores a copy of The Outsider and Others, by
H P Lovecraft, published by Arkham House last year”! (5) (Derleth always encouraged direct sales, his business acumen ably tying in with the desire to cut out the distributor and get the vital facts out to where they're needed -- and fast!)

Lovecraft’s own creation has engulfed our world. Derleth draws HPL into the exalted company of people like Abdul Alhazred and Dr Henry Armitage, who knew what was really going on. In another modern touch, and another nod to “The Whisperer in Darkness,” Dorgan and the narrator resolve to buy a dictaphone, since Gardner had written about strange noises coming from the forest.  Then they could record the sounds for themselves, and have definite evidence that Something Is Going On.

Some locals appear on the scene, and speak in the usual Lovecraftian phoneticese, hinting of strange things in store. Old Peter, the Zadok Allen character this time around, tells of a great slab with a drawing of "jest things" on it. (6) Resolving to get information out of Peter by the time-honoured method of getting him drunk, the two return to Professor Gardner's notes.

These notes serve to make the connection between Rick's Lake and Lovecraft's aquatic beings. Even the American Midwest isn't safe, any more than the Eastern Seaboard was.  Derleth also then sketches out his notion of making Lovecraft's "gods" and creatures into elementals, as well as supplying some that were lacking from this scheme that HPL never dreamed of. Before our very eyes the Cthulhu Mythos becomes the Derleth Mythos. The universe is now the backdrop for a struggle between beings of Earth and Air, and Fire and Water:

The narrator sits down to read his way through The Outsider and Others. (Derleth always tried to fill orders by return!) He decides that Lovecraft was On to Something in his fiction, and Gardner had got on to it as well, independently. And this time it is going on in Wisconsin...

The two men go to visit the discredited Professor Partier, who also knows the full facts about the Mythos, and who explains the full pantheon of the Derleth Mythos, and how it has constantly been hidden from most of the human race for aeons.  Partier advises them to forget about the whole business:

But there is a story to be told, and one to sell.  Dorgan and the narrator go straight back to Rick's Lake, and begin the process of getting Old Peter drunk. He soon reveals that the slab in the depths of the forest is a thing that is connected with apparitions of Things.

By now the two decide to check out their dictaphone recordings.  After the usual night-sounds of the forest, they hear a weird voice. Then Upton's voice addresses Dorgan, and tells him that he has been with Nyarlathotep, but is now getting cold feet.  He wants him to summon Derleth's fire elemental Cthugha:

They pay a nocturnal visit to the slab. Then "what we saw there sent us screaming voicelessly from that hellish spot." For half a page of italics the Dweller in Darkness, with his hideous flute-players, has conveniently dropped by to visit a little. But -- “Incredible as it may seem, the ultimate horror awaited us.” (10)

Dorgan and friend run back to their hut, but are pursued by odd footsteps. They get back safely, and flake out. Then Professor Upton appears at the door, cool as Kadath in the Cold Waste. With a profound bow to "The Whisperer in Darkness" he dismisses all their worries, and rationalizes all that has happened. And he "accidentally" destroys the incriminating dictaphone cylinder with his voice and the other voice and noises on it. All go bed, tired out.

An hour later, they find that Gardner has never slept in his room, and all his letters and notes have disappeared. Now they realise their mortal danger. They must get away, as originally instructed, but first they must summon Cthugha. As soon as his home star Fomalhaut rises above the trees, Dorgan chants the formula and they run for it.

Destruction. But the men have time to see the footprints made by whatever had pursued them earlier, and to connect them with Gardner's "reappearance," and the apparition of the Dweller in Darkness...

Although it is enjoyable fun, I find myself unable to admire this story (or others like it). Perhaps it is because it isn't really a Derleth story, any more than it is really a Lovecraftian one. To be sure, all the right names are there, and all the right moves are made. But there is too much explanation and too much is revealed and systematised in a way that Lovecraft never did.

H P Lovecraft did not believe in his creations, although the amoral and neutral universe, and the puny value of humanity within it, was a world-view deeply held by him. In writing his "Mythos" fiction, Derleth is also playing to these rules, although it is clear that he doesn't subscribe to them, and so effectively changes them. In Derleth's Mythos fiction there is still too much of his Roman Catholic Christian cultural background and seemingly genuine belief, to make his use of Lovecraft's world-view palatable or credible.

Instead, ever the pro, Derleth adds to the rules and changes them. The Derleth Mythos takes over from Lovecraft's vision.  We get a whole new game, not an updated version of the original one.

It would be unfair to criticize Derleth for not writing Lovecraft stories. Only HPL could do that. Derleth's weird and macabre fiction was always pure entertainment for him, let alone the reader. The underlying morality -- or lack of it -- of the universe doesn't enter into it. Derleth knew how to enjoy himself, entertain his readers, sell his wares, and -- more than Lovecraft ever did -- get paid for it!

 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATA

"The Dweller in Darkness" was first published in Weird Tales, November 1944. It has been reprinted in Derleth's collection Something Near (Arkham House 1945) and in his anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Arkham House 1969). References to page numbers use the 1969 reprinting.

 

REFERENCES

1. The classic "revisionist" exposition is Richard L. Tierney's "The Derleth Mythos" in Darrell Schweitzer, ed., Essays Lovecraftian (T-K Graphics 1976).  Derleth's Lovecraftian stories can be found in such collections as Something Near, The Mask of Cthulhu, and The Trail of Cthulhu.

2. See "The Derleth Mythos," as well as the discussion in the final chapter of S T Joshi,
H P Lovecraft: A Life (1996).

3. "The Dweller in Darkness," p. 111.

4. Ibid., p. 112.

5. Ibid., p. 117.

6. Ibid., p. 119. Zadok Allen appears in Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth," The teetotal HPL showed considerable skill in handling this aspect of his narrative!

7. Ibid., pp. 121f.

8. Ibid., pp. 128f.

9. Ibid., pp. 133f.

10. Ibid., p. 138.

 

A slightly different version of this article was first published in Crypt of Cthulhu #100, Hallowmass 1998

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