THE READING RHEUM: "THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS" (1930/1931)

 

Now this is more like it; cosmic horror the way HPL fans like it!

WHISPERER is one of the first six HPL stories I encountered in a particular collection back in The Day, and as I noted in my previous essay it eschews the dodgy dialect of HPL's immediately previous Mythos-tale DUNWICH HORROR. I'll note briefly that this time the reader also doesn't know the significance of the novella's title until the very end of the story. 

WHISPERER also resembles THE COLOUR OUF OF SPACE because it shows HPL's skill at describing the natural backdrops of the story, which in this case are the desolate woodlands of Vermont. The flooding of a local river causes the local townsfolk to circulate rumors about the corpses of mysterious beings in the waters. Albert Wilmarth, a literature teacher at Miskatonic University in Arkham, launches an amateur investigation of the rumors, writing newspaper articles on the local mythology of the aboriginal Indians. These essays cause a local farmer, Henry Akeley, to contact Wilmarth about his own experiences.

Though most of the exchanges between Wilmarth and Akeley are in the form of letters, this epistolary method of storytelling never sacrifices any tension. Akeley tells Wilmarth that for months his secluded farm has been besieged by mysterious beings which, when glimpsed at all, look like winged, claw-handed humanoids. The two humans eventually learn that these beings, "the Outer Ones," are visitors from the planet Yuggoth (Pluto), and they've set up a clandestine mining-operation in the vicinity of Akeley's farm. Only Akeley's supply of guns and guard-dogs has preserved him from being killed or abducted by these alien intruders. Eventually Wilmarth hears enough to convince him of the farmer's veracity, but by the time he physically arrives at the farm, he encounters what he thinks is Akeley, but is in truth "the whisperer in darkness."

Before I began this review-project, I mentioned here that I wondered if any of HPL's Mythos stories registered as crossovers. After all, the cosmic horror of WHISPERER is enhanced by two major sequences in which the human protagonists are exposed to an overwhelming variety of references to dozens of alien beings, domains, and deities, some original with HPL, some invented by authors with whom the writer was friendly, like Robert E Howard, Frank Belknap Long, and Clark Ashton Smith. (Smith had apparently shown HPL his story "The Story of Satamptra Zeros," because that tale, which was the debut of Smith's toadlike god Tsatthoggua, didn't see print until after WHISPERER did.) 

All these arcane references built up HPL's vision of a bizarre universe beyond the ken of human reason-- but references, in my system, count only as "null-crossovers." However, though the main monsters of WHISPERER are the Outer Ones-- who had previously appeared in an HPL poem, "Fungi from Yuggoth"-- they do apparently enlist one of the "Great Old Ones" to deceive Wilmarth. HPL subtly mentions that the "mighty messenger" Nyarlathotep-- who was the narrative focus of a 1920 tale-- "shall put on the semblance of men." And this imposture proves necessary because, unlike the Outer Ones with their wings and claws, Nyarlathotep has already been established as being able to pass for human. So, in addition to THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. WHISPERER is a bonafide crossover story.