Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  NIGHT-GAUNTS

  DAGON

  THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER

  THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH

  THE CATS OF ULTHAR

  THE NAMELESS CITY

  HERBERT WEST - REANIMATOR

  THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN

  THE LURKING FEAR

  THE HOUND

  THE RATS IN THE WALLS

  UNDER THE PYRAMIDS

  THE UNNAMABLE

  IN THE VAULT

  THE OUTSIDER

  THE HORROR AT RED HOOK

  THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

  PICKMAN’S MODEL

  THE CALL OF CTHULHU

  COOL AIR

  THE SHUNNED HOUSE

  THE SILVER KEY

  THE DUNWICH HORROR

  THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS

  THE STRANGE HIGH HOUSE IN THE MIST

  THE DREAMS IN THE WITCH-HOUSE

  FROM BEYOND

  THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY

  AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

  THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH

  THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME

  THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK

  THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP

  THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD

  THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH

  TO A DREAMER

  AFTERWORD A GENTLEMAN OF PROVIDENCE

  PRIMARY COLLABORATIONS AND REVISIONS

  About the Author

  Howard Phillips Lovecraft is probably the most important and influential author of supernatural fiction of the twentieth century. A lifelong resident of Providence, Rhode Island, many of his tales are set in the fear-haunted towns of an imaginary area of Massachusetts, or in the cosmic vistas that exist beyond space and time. Since his untimely death, Lovecraft has become acknowledged as a master of fantasy fiction and a mainstream American writer second only to Edgar Allan Poe, while his relatively small body of work has influenced countless imitators and formed the basis of a worldwide industry of books, games and movies based on his concepts.

  H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror and science fiction and are as powerful today as they were when they initially appeared. For the first time ever in a single volume, this definitive collection gathers together in chronological order all of Lovecraft’s major stories and short novels, including the complete ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ cycle, just as they were originally published more than half a century ago.

  ‘Lovecraft opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me’ Stephen King

  ‘H.P. Lovecraft built the stage on which most of the last century’s horror fiction was performed. As doomed as any of his protagonists, he put a worldview into words that has spread to infect the world. You need to read him - he’s where the darkness starts’

  Neil Gaiman

  ‘As a writer he stands among the best in the world’ August Derleth

  ‘H.P. Lovecraft is not only the essential link between Edgar Allen Poe and the present day, he has become an almost unimaginably influential force throughout the whole of our popular culture’ Peter Straub

  ‘H.P. Lovecraft is the most important single writer of the weird . . . his achievement lies not so much in his influence as in the enduring qualities of his finest work’ Ramsey Campbell

  ‘In his case the highest literary genius was allied to the most brilliant and most endearing personal qualities’ Clark Ashton Smith

  ‘It’s hard to name a single modern writer of weird fiction who hasn’t to some extent, often profoundly, felt the influence of Howard Phillips Lovecraft . . . It’s possible that I personally would never have written anything if I hadn’t first read H.P. Lovecraft. And I fancy I’m but one of many’ Brian Lumley

  ‘The thing that particularly drew me to Lovecraft as a young and innocent child was the way his stories and the concepts in them would - in a genuinely eerie way - activate the creative machinery in my head’ Gahan Wilson

  ‘One of the twentieth century’s most original writers’ Arthur C. Clarke

  ‘He’s an American original, whose influence on subsequent writers in the field is all-pervasive’ Joyce Carol Oates

  ‘In a genre blessed with many great stylists, H.P. Lovecraft’s baroque imagination and outrageous use of language still manages to stand head and shoulders above the rest. A timeless master of the macabre and the true connoisseur of dread’

  Michael Marshall Smith

  ‘There will never be another like him’ Edmond Hamilton

  ALSO BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

  The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag (1923)

  The Shunned House (1928)

  The Battle That Ended the Century [with R.H. Barlow] (1934)

  The Cats of Ulthar (1935)

  Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936)

  H.P.L. (1937)

  The Notes and Commonplace Book (1938)

  The Outside and Others (1939) Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943)

  The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories of the Supernatural (1944)

  Marginalia (1944)

  The Dunwich Horror and Other Weird Tales (1945)

  Supernatural Horror in Literature (1945)

  Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (1945)

  The Lurker at the Threshold [with August Derleth] (1945)

  The Dunwich Horror (1945)

  The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (1947)

  Something About Cats and Other Pieces (1949)

  The Haunter of the Dark and Other Tales of Horror (1951)

  The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1951)

  The Challenge from Beyond [with C.L. Moore, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long] (1954)

  The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (1955)

  The Survivor and Others [with August Derleth] 1957

  Cry Horror! (1958)

  The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces [& Divers Hands] (1959)

  The Shunned House (1961)

  Dreams and Fancies (1962)

  The Dunwich Horror and Others: Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (1963)

  Collected Poems (1963)

  Autobiography of a Nonentity (1963)

  The Dunwich Horror and Others (1963)

  The Colour Out of Space (1964)

  At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1964)

  The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (1964)

  Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1965)

  Selected Letters I: 1911-1924 (1965)

  At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (1966)

  The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces [& Divers Hands] (1966)

  3 Tales of Horror (1967)

  The Shadow Out of Time and Other Tales of Horror [with August Derleth] (1968)

  At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (1968)

  Selected Letters II: 1925-1929 (1968)

  Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1969)

  Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos [and Others] (1969)

  The Tomb and Other Tales (1970)

  The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror (1970)

  The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1970)

  The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1970)

  At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (1971)

  The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (1970)

  The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1971)

  Fungi from Yuggoth and Other Poems (1971)

  Nine
Stories from the Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1971)

  The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Stories of Horror (1971)

  The Shuttered Room and Other Stories (1971)

  Selected Letters III: 1929-1931 (1971)

  The Watchers Out of Time and Others [with August Derleth] (1974)

  Lovecraft at Last [with Willis Conover] (1975)

  The Horror in the Museum and Other Tales (1975)

  The Horror in the Burying Ground and Other Tales (1975)

  Selected Letters IV: 1932-1934 (1976)

  Selected Letters V: 1932-1937 (1976)

  The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1982)

  The Dunwich Horror and Others (1984)

  At the Mountains of Madness (1985)

  Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1986)

  The Horror in the Museum (1989)

  H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 1: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (1985)

  The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 2: Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1985)

  The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 3: The Haunter of the Dark and Other Tales (1985)

  Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1987)

  The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1989)

  Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos: Golden Anniversary Anthology [& Divers Hands] (1990)

  At the Mountains of Madness (1990)

  Crawling Chaos: Selected Works 1920-1935 (1993)

  Miscellaneous Writings (1995)

  Dreams of Terror and Death (1995)

  The Road to Madness (1996)

  Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (1997)

  The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft (1997)

  More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft (1999)

  The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (1999)

  Black Seas of Infinity: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft (2001)

  The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft (2001)

  The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (2001)

  At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (2002)

  Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei (2002)

  Waking Up Screaming (2003)

  Graphic Classics 4: H.P. Lovecraft (2003)

  The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (2004)

  Letter from New York (2004)

  Lovecraft: Tales (2005)

  At the Mountains of Madness (2005)

  Shadows of Death (2005)

  Necronomicon

  HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  In memory of

  AUGUST DERLETH

  and

  DONALD WANDREI

  for keeping the

  nightmares alive.

  A Gollancz ebook

  Selection and editorial material copyright © Stephen Jones 2008 Cover and interior illustrations copyright © Les Edwards 2008 Map of Arkham circa 1930 copyright © Gahan Wilson 1970

  All rights reserved

  The right of Howard Phillips Lovecraft to be identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Gollancz

  An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 0 5750 8603 6

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following individuals, whose ground-breaking work was consulted (and in some cases quoted from) in the compilation of this volume: H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, L. Sprague De Camp, E. Hoffman Price, Lin Carter, Willis Conover, Peter Cannon, Mike Ashley, Sheldon Jaffery, Dorothy M. Grobe Litersky, Robert Bloch, Hazel Heald, Zealia B. Bishop, W. Paul Cook, Donald Wandrei, Ramsey Campbell, Leo Margulies, S.T. Joshi, Farnsworth Wright, T.G. Cockcroft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Joseph Payne Brennan, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Kenneth Sterling, Brain Lumley, Basil Copper, Colin Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik, Mark Owings and Jack L. Chalker, Ed Naha, Darrell C. Richardson, Rheinhart Kleiner, Peter Ruber, Tim Stout, Paul Walker and Gahan Wilson.

  Special thanks also go to my editor Jo Fletcher, Malcolm Edwards, Gillian Redfearn and Val and Les Edwards, for all their help and support.

  ‘Night-Gaunts’, originally published in The Phantagraph, 1936.

  ‘Dagon’, originally published in The Vagrant No.11, November 1919.

  ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’, originally published in The Vagrant No.13, May 1920.

  ‘The Doom That Came to Sarnath’, originally published in The Scot No.44, June 1920.

  ‘The Cats of Ulthar’, originally published in The Tryout Vol.6, No.11, November 1920.

  ‘The Nameless City’, originally published in The Wolverine No.11, November 1921.

  ‘Herbert West - Reanimator’, originally published under the title ‘Grewsome Tales’ in Home Brew Vol.1, Nos.1-6, February-July, 1922.

  ‘The Tomb’, originally published in The Vagrant No.14, March 1922.

  ‘The Music of Erich Zann’, originally published in The National Amateur, Vol.44, No.4, March 1922.

  ‘Celephaïs’, originally published in The Rainbow No.2, May 1922.

  ‘The Lurking Fear’, originally published in Home Brew Vol.2, No.6-Vol.3, No.3, January-April 1923.

  ‘The Hound’, originally published in Weird Tales, February 1924.

  ‘The Rats in the Walls’, originally published in Weird Tales, March 1924.

  ‘Under the Pyramids’, originally published (as by Harry Houdini) under the title ‘Imprisoned with the Pharaohs’ in Weird Tales, May-July 1924.

  ‘The Unnamable’, originally published in Weird Tales, July 1925.

  ‘In the Vault’, originally published in The Tryout Vo1.10, No.6, November 1925.

  ‘The Outsider’, originally published in Weird Tales, April 1926.

  ‘The Horror at Red Hook’, originally published in Weird Tales, January 1927.

  ‘The Colour Out of Space’, originally published in Amazing Stories, September 1927.

  ‘Pickman’s Model’, originally published in Weird Tales, October 1927.

  ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, originally published in Weird Tales, February 1928.

  ‘Cool Air’, originally published in Tales of Magic and Mystery, March 1928.

  ‘The Shunned House’, originally published in The Shunned House (The Recluse Press, 1928).

  ‘The Silver Key’, originally published in Weird Tales, January 1929.

  ‘The Dunwich Horror’, originally published in Weird Tales, April 1929.

  ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’, originally published in Weird Tales, August 1931.

  The Strange High House in the Mist’, originally published in Weird Tales, October 1931.

  ‘The Dreams in the Witch-House’, originally published in Weird Tales, July 1933.

  ‘From Beyond’, originally published in The Fantasy Fan Vol.1, No.10, June 1934.

  ‘Through the Gates of the Silver Key’, originally published in Weird Tales, July 1934.

  ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, originally published in Astounding Stories, February-April 1936.

  ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, originally published in The Shadow Over Innsmouth (Visionary Publishing Co., 1936).

  ‘The Shadow Out of Time’, originally published in Astounding Stories, June 1936.

  ‘The Haunter of the Dark’, originally published in Weird Tales, December 1936.