A Mythos Tragedy in Three Acts
We present to you a Mythos tragedy in three acts - The Shambler from the Stars, The Haunter of the Dark, and The Shadow from the Steeple - featuring death, ancient lore, secret cults, and madness. All leading to Humanity's DOOM!
'This is to certify that Robert Bloch, Esq., of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. - reincarnation of Mijnheer Ludvig Prinn, author of De Vermis Mysteriis - is fully authorised to portray, murder, annihilate, disintegrate, transfigure, metamorphose, or otherwise manhandle the undersigned in the tale entitled The Shambler from the Stars.'
The following year, Lovecraft returned the favour in The Haunter of the Dark, starring the surviving protagonist of Shambler, whom he named Robert Blake. Longer than Bloch's tale, it featured the usual Mythos cultists, a doomed diarist registering his plight, and alien entities. In 1950, Bloch completed the triptych with The Shadow from the Steeple, which ignored his own Shambler and was a direct continuation of Haunter.
In The Shambler from the Stars, the nameless protagonist is tired of writing about the usual supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves. So, he decides to seek inspiration in more unusual sources. One day, he comes across a copy of Ludvig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis, aka Mysteries of the Worm, in a used book shop and takes it to his more knowledgeable New England friend so he can translate it. Naturally, things don't go well.
The story is pretty short, but it gives readers some backstory for Mysteries of the Worm and its author, which is always just a creepy name on a list of forbidden tomes. We like that Bloch didn't go for the typical Necronomicon reference, though we were a little disappointed that the entity summoned was just some random cosmic being. He certainly didn't hold back on the violence and the 'mystic dreamer in New England' met an impressive bloody fate. Deserved, too, because reading the incantation aloud was just dumb.
Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark sees the ambitious writer, Robert Blake, return to Providence years after the events of Shambler. Sadly, he didn't learn his lesson and when his attention is drawn to a mysterious church shunned by everyone, including birds, he decides to investigate. If even pigeons avoid it, you know it can't be good. Naturally, he dismisses the fears of the Italian neighbourhood as nothing but superstition and boldly enters the abandoned building. There, he finds a box with a crystal polyhedron and a dead journalist, whose notes helpfully explain the church used to be the home of a cult started by an archaeologist who found a mysterious artifact in Egypt, the Shining Trapezohedron. The Starry Wisdom was very secretive and was believed to practice human sacrifices, though nothing was ever proved. Instead of running away, Blake ends up looking at the shiny stone again and sees weird alien stuff. Worse, he feels someone is looking back at him through it...
Accidentally summoning a deadly alien entity once is tragic, twice is just carelessness. And yet, that's exactly what Blake does. Cue mad diary entries that will make everyone question his sanity after his inevitable death. Blake is mind melding with the entity, who is hiding in the church, waiting for total darkness so it can leave. He suffers from nightmares and sleepwalking that brings him to the church. Finally, he ends up being electrocuted/scared to death in his own room. Afterwards, a Dr Dexter throws the box with the mysterious crystal into the bay, so there'll be no more staring into cosmic abysses and sunken alien cities. But who was the alien entity messing with the poor terrified writer? Why, none other than a manifestation of Nyarlathotep, who, we're told, 'in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man'. We wished Lovecraft had written more about that. Also, shouldn't Nyarlathotep be more powerful? He couldn't protect the Starry Wisdom and can't handle too much light - this avatar clearly has severe limitations.
The Haunter of the Dark isn't bad, but it's something Lovecraft did countless times before. He could’ve compensated for it by expanding Nyarlathotep's backstory but all we got were hints. Lovecraft is capable of explaining things and this was a missed opportunity to share his own ideas for the character with readers.
In 1950, Robert Bloch went back to this literary back-and-forth to create The Shadow from the Steeple, which is a sort of direct sequel to Lovecraft’s Haunter. With both Blake and his mystic dreamer in New England friend dead at the hands of entities they foolishly summoned, it's up to Edmund Fiske, Blake's heretofore unmentioned other friend, to get embroiled in some cosmic shenanigans. It could've been just a straightforward continuation of the 1936 story, but Bloch decided to bring it into the real world and make the real Lovecraft a character in it. Yes, according to Shadow, H P Lovecraft knew things and hid messages in his work. This in itself isn't a bad idea, but in trying to ground Lovecraft’s descriptions of eldritch doom in real life events, Bloch ends up robbing them of their originality.
So, Fiske has been looking for Dr Dexter, who has spent these past fifteen years working with nuclear power and preaching its virtues to an unsuspecting audience. He also keeps his lights on all the time and has acquired a bit of a tan. At first, Fiske just wants to talk to him about what really happened to his friend Blake, whom everyone believes died mad. However, by the time he meets the good doctor, he realises there's something very wrong with him. Namely that he's been possessed by Nyarlathotep all this time and is promoting nuclear power as a way to lead Humanity to its DOOM! Yes, really. Bloch tried to make everything fit with the Nyarlathotep bit in Fungi from Yuggoth while at the same time replacing the cosmic stuff with an unimaginative metaphor for nuclear power. We wrote about Lovecraft’s idea of Apocalypse before, but here's what Bloch based this on:
And at last from inner Egypt came
The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;
Silent and lean and cryptically proud,
And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.
Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,
But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;
While through the nations spread the awestruck word
That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.
Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;
Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;
The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled
Down on the quaking citadels of man.
Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play,
The idiot Chaos blew Earth's dust away
Here, Lovecraft presents Nyarlathotep as the harbinger of the return of Cthulhu and the Old Ones, though it's clearly only a matter of time before Azathoth ruins everything. Fiske claims Lovecraft disguised his knowledge with outlandish images and points out all the ways in which Dr Dexter matches his image of Nyarlathotep, including his tan. Because apparently, a shape-shifting entity whom Bloch himself described as faceless can't change his complexion. It's also weird to say Lovecraft wrote in metaphors and then latch onto a physical description that doesn't fit the chosen character. Honestly, we just don't get why Bloch had to make Nyarlathotep Dexter. He could’ve made the superstitious doctor the lead and then had him become suspicious of a new foreign colleague. This way, he could’ve had his lame nuclear metaphor and an Egyptian Nyarlathotep doing his charismatic Antichrist act. There would've also been no need to introduce some random friend of Blake's.
To make matters worse, this Nyarlathotep is missing his usual malicious personality. From his first appearance in the eponymous short story, it's clear that unlike Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, and Azathoth, Nyarlathotep enjoys messing with humans. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, he could’ve ended Randolph Carter's search any time he wanted, but instead chose to trick him. He's equally devious when tormenting Dr Stugatche in Bloch's own The Faceless God. Here, he just shows annoyance with Fiske and quickly dispatches him. In the very end, we get 'face turned in mockery to the moon' as a couple of escaped panthers lick his hands. Literally. Though Lovecraft’s writing was supposed to be metaphorical. But really, this is a terrible Nyarlathotep.
The Shadow from the Steeple is the worst of the bunch. Turning Lovecraft into a prophet and then removing Cthulhu and R'Lyeh from his apocalyptic vision was a bizarre choice, as was making the Crawling Chaos boring. This was a massive cosmic horror fail and an unnecessary addition to the other stories.
We wanted to love this trilogy because Lovecraft is, well, Lovecraft, Bloch's The Faceless God was great, and Nyarlathotep is our favourite eldritch cosmic menace. However, The Shambler from the Stars and The Haunter of the Dark are just average, and The Shadow from the Steeple is downright bad. It's a shame, because the idea of a Nyarlathotep-centric apocalyptic trilogy sounded pretty awesome.