The Call of Cthulhu

The novella is a three-tier collection of documents on a fantastic entity known has Cthulhu.

The first phase is brought by a clay bas-relief by Henry Anthony Wilcox brought up on March 1, 1925, to a group of archaeologists, a bas-relief he has executed in a trance within or just on the verge of a dream. This clay tablet reproduces a monstrous figure with some glyphs on the edge.

The second phase is a report by police inspector Raymond Legrasse from New Orleans about a police operation to control some voodoo celebration in New Orleans, or in the swamps close by. The celebration is described as an orgy od violence, rhythmic drum playing, dancing, and sexuality. Less than 100 people. Forty-seven were arrested. They got some tale about Great Old Ones that existed before anything else and who have to be worshiped. They centered their rituals on an idol.

“The statuette, idol, fetish, or whatever it was, had been captured some months before in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed voodoo meeting; and so singular and hideous were the rites connected with it, that the police could not but realize that they had stumbled on a dark cult totally unknown to them, and infinitely more diabolic than even the blackest of the African voodoo circles. […] between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopuslike head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet.”

The whole episode ended badly with two men hanged in the name of justice and all the others of the 47 arrested people institutionalized for life. No regeneration, no reformation, nothing but let's pu them away till death can liberate us from them, or from the fear they inspire in us.

“Only two of the prisoners were found sane enough to be hanged, and the rest were committed to various institutions. All denied a part in the ritual murders and averred that the killing had been done by Black-winged Ones which had come to them from their immemorial meeting-place in the haunted wood. What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.”

This idol is quite similar to the figure on Wilcox's clay bas-relief. What's more this cult brings up some “language,” in fact a formula: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." Translated as "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." It is this formula that led the police inspector to William Channing Webb, a professor of anthropology in Princeton University. He mentions a tour of Greenland where he witnessed some similar cultish rituals among some local Eskimos.

The idea that emerges here due to the events happening at a certain date, or within a certain period of time, is that this Cthulhu was calling during that period of time.

The third section of the novella is dedicated to what happened to the Norwegian naval officer Gustav Johansen and his crew in the Pacific in the same period in 1925. It is the testimony of the emergence of the city of R'lyeh from the ocean for a short period. This city is explored by Gustav Johansen and his crew and only two manage to go back to their ship, one completely berserk, Gustav Johansen still capable to sail the ship. They were, the ranting mad man and the traumatized Johansen, rescued by some naval agency in New Zealand. They had been confronted to a monstrous being that is quite similar to Cthulhu, the idol of the other cases. But the period of time during which this call was heard and felt comes to a close and nothing remains except the clay bas-relief and the small idol from New Orleans.

D. Jacques COULARDEAUr


Lien : https://jacquescoulardeau.me..