Hello everyone and welcome to the tenth week of our Dream Cycle Book Club. In this thread we’ll be discussing Lovecraft’s epic novella The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.
This week’s reading is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Written in 1927. This is another novella of Lovecraft, weighing in at 104 pages in my copy of his fiction. I’m aware that 100 pages of Lovecraft’s often verbose prose can be trying. Thankfully, Lovecraft actually separated this story into parts, which allows for easy splitting up of the reading. Our reading for this week is parts I-III, with parts IV and V covered next week. The text is available in PDF format courtesy of the Arkham Archivist here. Audio is provided by the talented HorrorBabble here
Image Credit Jian Guo
In the fourth chapter, Carter traverses the abyss and the deep Dreamlands, employing the aid of unlikely allies to reach the surface once again.
The Night-gaunts fly on silent wings, bearing Carter past the famous underground peak of Thok and depositing him on a pile of bones and returning from whence they came. Carter recalls the stories of bholes (later renamed by Lovecraft to dholes), gigantic and hitherto unseen worms that feast on the mountains of bones that fall down into the abyss. Carter, once again demonstrating great knowledge of the Dreamlands and its inhabitants, knows that the ghouls of the waking world know of passages to the Dreamlands, and that they use a hole into the abyss as a refuse dump for their gnawed bones.
Being a friend of the now missing artist and ghoul-friend, Richard Upton Pickman, Carter seeks out the shower of bones and calls out using his limited knowledge of the gibbering ghoul language. He is rescued from the abyss by a rope ladder and not a moment too soon, as a bhole emerges and almost takes him.
Carter is surprised to hear that his disappeared friend Pickman has transitioned to the life of a ghoul and now resides in the lower Dreamlands. Carter is led to his old friend who knows of multiple ways to access the upper Dreamlands. His two recommendations are to climb through ghoul tunnels back to the waking world and once again descend the steps of slumber, or to journey underground to Sarkomand under the dream-plateau of Leng, where he can emerge into the upper dreamlands. There is a third, far more dangerous option of sneaking past the 6m tall carnivorous giants called the gugs, and leveraging open a cursed trapdoor to escape into the Enchanted Woods.
Naturally Carter chooses the latter: he dare not wake and possibly forget the information gathered through his dream, and he is too unfamiliar with Leng and the underground passages to dare the journey. Pickman relents and sents Carter, disguised as a ghoul, with an escort of 3 ghouls and a tombstone to act as a lever for the giant trapdoor.
The group reaches the cyclopean city of Gugs and spies the tower to the surface, marked as Koth. The journey isn’t smooth sailing; though the ghouls waited until the gugs are fast asleep, another danger lurks. The gugs hunt the kangaroo-like ghasts of the Vaults of Zin (the land down under in the Dreamlands down under), and when the gugs take their hour of sleep each day, the ghasts take their revenge. Fifteen ghasts pass a sleeping gug sentry into the city of gugs to enact their revenge. The sentry awakens and begins to fight the invaders. The gug is eventually overpowered and dragged back down into the vaults. During this fracas, the group of ghouls run for the tower. scrambling slowly up the metre-high stairs, they note the coughing bark of a ghast above. They lie in wait and cave in the creature with a mighty blow of their tombstone. They journey onwards.
Reaching the cursed trapdoor, the group struggles to force it open and place the tombstone lever in the crack. They hear the disturbance of the ghast corpse far below and worry that the gugs have awoken and are coming to investigate. In desparation, they manage to finally fit the lever under the door and all escape just as the gugs are approaching. Now trapped in the upper Dreamlands, Carter informs the ghouls to head for Dylath-Leen, where they can find a merchant ship bound for Leng, so that they can re-enter the abyss through Sarkomand.
Another short chapter with few references. The one major reference is to a non-Dream Cycle story, Pickman’s Model. The story Pickman’s Model concerns an artist who, in a secret studio, keeps a ghoul specimen as a muse for his more disturbing works of art. years later we see the return of Richard Upton Pickman, now a renowned member of the ghoul community.
What is interesting to me is the establishing of some new lore of the Dreamlands. Under the Dreamlands is a large connected abyss. The most famous part of this abyss seems to be the Plains of Pnath, where Carter is deposited by the Night-gaunts. These plains are home to the peaks of Thok and the never-seen colossal beast, the bhole (dhole).