The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (43 page)

As noted by Scott Connors and Ronald S. Hilger (see
CF
1
.
271
), the house on which the story is based is a real one at
153
Sacramento Street in Auburn, reputed to be haunted. The first-person narrator, Philip Hastane, returns in “The City of the Singing Flame” and several other stories. The story may have been partially inspired by HPL's “From Beyond” (
1920
), in which an unnamed first-person narrator visits the house of a friend, Crawford Tillinghast, who has built a machine that will purportedly break down the barriers imposed by the limitations of our senses and allow us to see entities normally withheld from our sight. As a result, a multitude of hideous creatures are seen, and in the end Tillinghast dies, apparently of a heart attack. Although the story was not published until it appeared in the June
1934
issue of the
Fantasy Fan,
CAS appears to have read it on several occasions in manuscript. A mention that he had “re-read” it in March
1930
(
SL
111
) suggests that his first reading had occurred some time before, probably before he had conceived his own tale.

1
. Auburn's Chinatown is just down the hill from the house where this story takes place, near the downtown area. A series of underground tunnels runs through the region—a common feature of Chinatowns on the West Coast.

2
. The Auburn Public Library at
175
Almond Street, one of the Carnegie libraries, built in
1909
, was well known to CAS. “There is not a volume of Ambrose Bierce among the two thousand-odd in the local Carnegie library—and I suppose Auburn is average enough in its tastes” (letter to GS, April
12
,
1912
;
SL
9
).

3
. Ahriman is the evil spirit in the Zoroastrian religion, opposed to the spirit of good, Ahura Mazda.

4
. Beausobre is fictitious. For CAS's translation of Baudelaire's
Les Fleurs du mal,
see the Introduction.

5
. Actually, “l'Enfer où mon coeur se plaît” (as translated by CAS, “The hell wherein my heart delights”). “Horreur sympathique” (number
84
of
Les Fleurs du mal
). For CAS's translation (“Sympathetic Horror”), see
CPT
3
.
145
.

6
. Malebolge (“evil ditches”) is, in Dante's
Inferno,
the eighth circle of hell, consisting of a series of concentric circles of ditches; at the center of Malebolge is the ninth circle of hell. See also “The Hunters from Beyond” (
1932
), another story involving Philip Hastane: “Then, behind her, where stood an array of carven Satans and lamias, the room seemed to recede, the walls and floors dissolved in a seething, unfathomable gulf, amid whose pestilential vapors the statues were mingled in momentary and loathsome ambiguity with the ravening faces, the hunger-contorted forms that swirled toward us from their ultra-dimensional limbo like a devil-laden hurricane from Malebolge” (
CF
2
.
262
–
63
). CAS wrote a
1937
letter from “Auburn-in-Malebolge” (
SL
299
).

THE UNCHARTED ISLE

This story was completed on April
21
,
1930
, and first published in
Weird Tales
(November
1930
), and subsequently in
OST
and
CF
1
. It remained one of CAS's favorites, and he wrote a heading for it in Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend's anthology
My Best Science Fiction Story
(
1949
) in which he stated that one of the reasons he was pleased with it was that “while having a basis in theoretic science, the tale is not merely an ordinary science fiction story, but it can be read as an allegory of human disorientation” (quoted in
CF
1
.
274
).

1
. Callao is the most significant port city in Peru; Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, on the southern tip of the North Island. Accordingly, the voyage across the Pacific Ocean would span about seven thousand miles.

2
. Mu was thought by occultists to be a lost continent that had sunk in the Pacific Ocean. Colonel James Churchward (
1851
–
1936
) wrote several fanciful books about Mu, including
The Lost Continent of Mu
(
1926
). For Hyperborea and Atlantis (and CAS's tales set in those realms), see the Introduction.

3
. The phrasing recalls Poe's celebrated couplet “And much of Madness and more of Sin, / And Horror the soul of the plot” (“The Conqueror Worm” [
1843
], lines
23
–
24
).

4
.
heteroclitic:
abnormal, anomalous.

5
. A
pell
is a roll of parchment.

6
. A
parapegm
is an engraved tablet set up in a public place.

7
. For Lemuria, see note
1
to “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros.”

8
.
wried:
writhed, contorted.

THE FACE BY THE RIVER

This story was written on October
29
,
1930
. The next day he wrote to HPL: “There's not much of the cosmic in it; but it might interest you as an attempt at psychological realism”
SL
130
). HPL was indeed interested, writing: “The element of relentless Nemesis-pursuit in ‘The Face' is very effectively handled—& given a realism too seldom cultivated in tales with this theme” (letter to CAS, November
7
,
1930
; manuscript, JHL). There is no evidence that CAS submitted the story anywhere. Although a typescript appeared to survive among CAS's papers after his death, it was subsequently lost; but a carbon copy was found among the papers of Genevieve K. Sully. The story was first published in
Lost Worlds
1
(
2004
) and reprinted in
CF
2
. An extreme anomaly in CAS's work, and in apparent contrast to his own avowed hostility to realism (“To me, the best, if not the only function of imaginative writing, is to lead the human imagination
outward,
to take it into the vast external cosmos, and
away
from all that introversion and introspection, that morbidly exaggerated prying into one's own vitals—and the vitals of others—which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as ‘incest'”: letter to
Wonder Stories
[August
1932
],
PD
12
), the tale is evidence that CAS could write tales focused on human psychology with a minimum of fantasy or supernaturalism.

See Scott Connors, “The Face Behind the Mask,”
Lost Worlds,
no
.
3
(
2006
):
15
–
18
.

THE CITY OF THE SINGING FLAME

This story was completed on January
15
,
1931
. It first appeared in
Wonder Stories
(July
1931
) and was reprinted in
OST
and
CF
2
. The story was based on CAS's visits to Crater Ridge, near the Donner Pass in northern California close to the Nevada border. In late January
1931
he told HPL that he had written “a new trans-dimensional story, ‘The City of the Singing Flame', in which I have utilized Crater Ridge . . . as a spring-board. Some day, I must look for those two boulders ‘with a vague resemblance to broken-down columns'. If you and other correspondents cease to hear from me thereafter, you can surmise what has happened! The description of the Ridge, by the way, has been praised for its realism by people who know the place” (letter to HPL, January
27
,
1931
;
SL
144
–
45
).

The story proved so popular with the readers of
Wonder Stories
that editor Hugo Gernsback commissioned a sequel, which CAS titled “Beyond the Singing Flame” (completed on June
30
,
1931
; published in
Wonder Stories,
November
1931
). But this story—recounting how the writer Philip Hastane found his way into the transdimensional realm, came upon both Giles Angarth and Felix Ebbonly, and eventually returned with Angarth to the real world—is widely regarded as a rehashing of the original story, although CAS himself thought highly of it (“This is, by all odds, my best recent story”: letter to Donald Wandrei, August
18
,
1931
; manuscript, Minnesota Historical Society). Walter Gillings, editor of
Tales of Wonder,
stitched the two stories together into a single narrative when he published them in the Spring
1940
issue of his magazine. When CAS was preparing
OST
for publication, he could not find either the carbon of his original typescript of “The City of the Singing Flame” or the
Wonder Stories
appearance, so he submitted to Arkham House the tearsheets of the
Tales of Wonder
appearance; this version has been reprinted in several anthologies.

1
. In the Bible, the Anakim were a race of giants (descended from Anak) who dwelt near Hebron; they were largely expelled by Joshua (see Joshua
11
:
21
–
22
).

2
. “Of course, it would seem that the arguments of material science are pretty cogent. Perhaps it is only my innate romanticism that makes me at least hopeful that the Jeans and Einsteins have overlooked something.” CAS to HPL, [c. early November
1933
] (
SL
236
). CAS refers to the British astronomer Sir James Jeans (
1877
–
1946
).

3
. For Thebes, see note
3
to “Sadastor.” Heliopolis is the Greek name for Iunu, one of the oldest cities in ancient Egypt, whose ruins now occupy a northern suburb of Cairo. Its name (“city of the sun”) is derived from the fact that it was a place associated with sun-worship.

THE HOLINESS OF AZÉDARAC

This story was completed on May
19
,
1931
. It was first published in
Weird Tales
(November
1933
) and reprinted in
LW
and
CF
3
. It is one of the most vivid and pungent of the tales set in the medieval realm of Averoigne. In a letter to August Derleth (June
15
,
1931
), CAS wrote: “I agree with you about ‘Azédarac,' which is more piquant than weird. But I like to do something in lighter vein occasionally” (
SL
154
). HPL took issue with one element of the historicity of the tale: “Did I make a certain historical criticism when I read the manuscript a year or so ago? I meant to, but may have become sidetracked. The thing is, that I'm in doubt about the picture of Roman Gaul in A.D.
475
 . . . especially the idea conjured up by the phrase ‘an obsolete variant of the French of Averoigne'. I assume you realise that in
475
no such language as
French
existed, the vulgar Latin of Gallic not being sufficiently differentiated from the parent stock to be any sort of separate speech. . . . By no stretch of the imagination could the popular Latin of
475
be called ‘old French'” (
Selected Letters
1932
–
1934
[Sauk City, WI: Arkham House,
1976
,
319
–
20
). CAS replied: “You have certainly pointed out my vagueness and ignorance in regard to Gallic history! Of course, if I had stopped to reflect, I ought to have known that the Romans were still strong in Gaul about the time of Moriamis, and that French, as a language was not yet born from the Latin womb. I suppose that the fact that I was dealing with a realm no less mythical than Cabell's Poictesme made me doubly careless about correlating its chronology with that of historic Europe. If ever there is any prospect of issuing Azédarac and the other Averoigne tales in book form, I shall certainly correct the anachronistic reference to the ‘obsolete variant' of French spoken by Moriamis” (letter to HPL, [circa December
4
,
1933
;
SL
239
). CAS did not in fact alter the passage when he prepared
LW
for publication.

At some later date, CAS considered writing a sequel to the story, to be titled “The Doom of Azédarac” (see
Black Book,
entry
49
). Here, Azédarac, on his deathbed, transports himself to an alternate version of Averoigne, where he encounters an otherworld variant of himself, in which he engages in a necromantic battle and loses.

1
. Dagon was a Philistine god who, in the Old Testament, was frequently referred to as an opponent or rival of Jehovah (see
1
Samuel
5
:
2
). Derceto (or Aphrodite Derceto) was the Greek name of the Syrian fertility goddess Atargatis.