IBC127 The River of Night's Dreaming

Join us in the relative coolness of Innsmouth Library for a study of Karl Edward Wagner's outstanding The River of Night's Dreaming. We talk The Vampire Lovers, fetish clubs, The End, KEW in London, Silent Hill and find out what happens when the King in Yellow's car won't start.
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SPEAKER_03 0:11

Welcome to Insmouth Stranger.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Greetings, friends, and welcome to our 127th excursion into Innsmouth. A rather sweltering Innsmouth, as you will have noticed, which is why we've brought you into the relative cornness of Innsmouth Library to discuss uh a rather strange story. I'm one of your guides, Rob Poynton.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Indeed, and I'm the other one, Tim Mendies. Yes, so if you do hear any random noises, it's just me mopping my brow with a funnel, because it is still sweltering even in this gloom. Yes, today we're going to be looking at an amazing story on River of Nights Dreaming by Carl Edward Wagner. I wanted to cover this on the 69th episode for obvious reasons, but we for some reason we forgot.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yeah, so we're following a little sort of King and Yellow trail, aren't we, at the moment? A sort of mini-series we seem to have fallen into. Not at all planned because me and you and planning that doesn't really work, does it?

SPEAKER_02 1:17

No, especially when you've got like the strange shadows as well, and half the time we can't remember which week we're doing what.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yes. Having said that, we both have successfully organized groups of musicians in the past. That's that's quite a skill set, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Indeed, indeed.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

So before we take a dip into the cooling river, just a couple of news items. You may have seen recently we've put up the panel announcements for ILF 26 coming up on September the 19th in Oddly Moist Bedford. We've got a chat with our guests of honour, Stephen Jones and Les Edwards. We've got uh an excellent presentation from Mutartis about Lovecraft's UK family connections. And we've got a guest-filled panel entitled Suburban Horror: A Look at What Goes On Behind the Curtains in the Creepy Suburbs.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

And yes, we will have more announcements on that subject when we get the rest of things in order. It's uh shaping up to be a very interesting day, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, I'm pleased to say we're getting some new traders in as well. Of course, we we welcome back a lot of our old, if I can use that term, traders, our regulars. But we've got some new traders signing up as well, including, we're delighted to say, Phantasmagoria magazine, which is a publication celebrating horror, fantasy, science fiction. They put out regular editions and also some really nice looking special editions as well on things like the Lovecraft Circle. I see there's a Doctor Who one, sir. I don't know if that one caught your eye.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yes, and uh, we're gonna be having Phantasmagoria magazine in for a chat. They're gonna be popping into Innsmouth in the near future.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Excellent stuff. Yeah, while we're on the subject of the Innsmouth Literary Festival, people might have heard in the last episode we did that I was just about to go out on the road with my band Groovy and Green, and we were gonna be playing Coventry and Ipswich. I just want to thank everybody who came to these shows, but a special shout out to certain Insmouth Literary Festival denizens who appeared at the Ipswich show. Of course they did. Ipswich. Yeah. No, but no, interestingly, though these those two shows were the first time that we did a new song, The Outsider, which is yeah, inspired by the old song by uh the old story by HPL, obviously. And so, yeah, that well, that would have been the second time we'd done it live. So yeah, I want a special thank you to Dominic Allen, who also took some great pictures. I think he's been to all of the uh ILF so far.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah, Dominic has, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, yeah. And also to Justine Hall and her partner, who were at the uh I don't know if they were at the last one, but they were definitely at the one where Byronic Sex and Exile played in the evening. Nice, so yeah, spreading our tentacles into into Gothic rock territories here now. It's it's all good.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Marvelous. And you got out of Ipswich, all right. Oh no, but did you your van broke down on the way in? I think it wasn't it rather than on the way out.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Oh no, no, not not this time around. No, this time around we were fine. It was that was the time before when we broke down and we ended up in a higher car. No, this time, thankfully, we didn't have any vehicular perils this time at all. It was all good.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, nice, nice. And just one other thing I'd like to mention Continuum, which is a four-day RPG convention, is being held at Cranfield, just outside of Bedford, 24th to the 27th of July. So just in a few weeks' time, and I am going to be present at that in one form or another. I'll certainly have a stall there. I'm also hopefully going to be running some We Want the Gold skirmish games, and it's going to be the Innsmouth setting. In fact, it's going to be the new revamped Innsmouth setting. It's going to be the first outing for that, complete with lampposts and little lights in the houses and everything. It looks, well, I don't know if pretty's the word for Innsmouth. It has a certain sort of prettiness to it, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah, it's um uh scenic. I think that's the that's the word. Scenic.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah, we'll settle, we'll settle on that. Okay, let's get into our story, shall we? The River of Nights Dreaming by Carl Edward Wagner. We have covered KEW before, of course, in episode 46 with Reflections for the Winter of My Soul. And we were both chatting earlier about we were sure we had covered Sticks, but I don't think that was a full episode. I think that was when John Hoolihan came in and we had a chat about True Detective season one.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah, I think that was it, and I think we've also discussed it several times elsewhere. Uh but I was convinced we'd covered it because I know I'd read it for something, but I think it was when we did the True Detective series.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yeah, yeah. So we'll just briefly mention that Wagner was uh American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy. Uh Kane actually is one of my favourite fantasy characters. He was born in 1945, passed away in 1994, and he was from Knoxville, Tennessee. And interestingly enough, especially in relation to this story, he trained as a psychiatrist. Though, as we mentioned before, he got quite disillusioned with the medical profession, I think, and came out of it. So, shall we start with the publication history for this one, sir?

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Indeed. And this is a this is a nice easy one for me because it's all done for me. Uh I've got the Valen Valencourt books reprint of In a Lonely Place, the collection, which contains the story, but it also contains the afterword that he wrote um for the first collection, first published version of the collection. It also contains an introduction by Ramsay Campbell, which I'm going to have a couple of quotes out of later, but that that's for later. But for now, uh quite interestingly, he actually talks about the inspiration of it and the publication history. And then there's a little bit else that I'll get into later, but we'll read that afterwards because it's spoiler territory. So here we go. This is Carl Edward Wagner speaking. Quite often, dreams or nightmares, depending on taste, will provide inspiration for a story. Such was the case with the River of Nights Dreaming. The story is based upon a dream I had during the early morning hours of June 30th, 1979. As do many writers, I keep a commonplace book of notes, ideas, etc., for possible use in my work, and when I manage to struggle out of bed to do so, I make notes on particularly vivid dreams. The story is very close to my dream, in which I was an observer of the events. The only difference being that my dream protagonist was escaping from a prison camp until the protagonist began to have fears concerning the house of apparent refuge. At that point I woke up. I worked on the story for about a year, finally completing it rather past the deadline for one of Charles L. Grant's Shadows anthologies. Grant had been asking me for a story, and this time was actually holding the anthology for me. To his dismay, The River of Nights Dreaming was not only late, but so long that he would have to cut a story or two already slated for the book in order to make room. Further, the rather explicit sexual content of the story was not for the young readers or library audience that Doubleday had in mind for Shadows. I'm just going to cut in here. The Shadows anthologies. There was 11 in the series. Charles L. Grant was a fan of quiet horror. I think probably your best example of that is things like Midnight Sun by Ramsay Campbell, that kind of thing. So he did this series to highlight that kind of subgenre. The first one is probably the most interesting out of the whole lot. With story, two stories from Ramsay Campbell, The Little Voice and Dead Letters. There's a Robert Block story, Picture, and Stephen King's Nona in there.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Now, Doubleday, founded in 1847, was the largest publisher in the United States by 1947. It's now an imprint of Penguin Random House. And yeah, they they for these Shadows anthologies, the whole concept of them was that there was no explicit violence or language, or it was very traditional quiet horror. Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

So yeah. So not only was he late over the deadline, he'd not stuck to the brief at all. Is it any wonder that I feel a bit of a kinship? This sounds like one of my rejections. This really does. It's way too long and it's not what we asked for. Whoops. Anyway, uh Carl Edward Magner continues. Fortunately, Stuart David Schiff had already violated Doubleday's taboos with his Whispers anthology series, and the story found a place there. Schiff was vindicated when the River of Nights Dreaming was a runner-up for the World Fantasy Award.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Wow, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Yeah. So we'll leave that there and we'll come back to that the little bit in the afterword later on. So Whispers was another double-day anthology series curated by Stuart David Schiff and started in the late 70s. One of the first published stories in this whole cycle was Col Edward Wagner's Sticks. Now, this is an interesting little tidbit I think I picked up. The series, Whispers, took its name from a fictitious magazine in a story in Weird Tales created by HPL. Yeah. Was it well done?

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Well I I never never made that connection though. And I must have read that. Well, whatever story that is in, if it's HPL, I would have read it, of course. But never made that connection. Well, I'm reading my story today from the Chaossium Haster cycle. This is the second edition. Of course, part of that great series that Chaossium put out of the the Necronomica and etc. etc.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

All themed anthologies. And it it did. This is the way my brain works. This is what popped into my head. What happens when the King in Yellow's car won't start? Go on. He has to cycle.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Oh god. For goodness sake.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah. That is the sound of Tim's soul leaving his body. You just heard the haster cycle.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

It is a bike in the shape of the yellow sign. Like a really mangled-looking chopper. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Sort of unicycle that folds back in on itself.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

And non-Euclidean unicycle.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

There's another idea for budding writers. That's another one going on there. Going into my commonplace book, which is uh a collection of notepads and bits of paper scattered around the house, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Exactly the same. I tried putting everything in a box file and then nothing had fit, so the box file overflowed. It's now got a big elastic, a big rubber band around it.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Available now, the Haster cycle. That's gonna have to make an appearance as an ad next time we go to the uh Innsmouth Cinema, I think.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Oh yeah, lovely stuff.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Disappear up your own sprocket. Oh god. Well, uh, I mean, this is all highly appropriate, I think, because this is what we would call, well, dreamlike. It would be one expression, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_02 13:21

But it's oh god, yeah. It's psychosis, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yeah, yeah, we're in altered states of reality. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

There's not a reliable bit of narration in the entire story, I don't think. It's uh I love it for that very reason, isn't it? Because right from the beginning, it's just like we're not in Kansas anymore, Totlo, you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

And it starts right in the middle of the action, so to speak. Well, such action as we have in this story. Everywhere, greyness and rain. The activities bus with its uniformed occupants, the wet pavement that crawled along the crest of the high bluff, the storm-fretted waters of the bay far below, the night itself gauzy with grey mist and traceries of rain feebly probed by the one headlights of the bus. Grayness and rain merged in a slither of skidding rubber and a protesting ball of brakes and tearing metal. Now I I wasn't sure at first what an activities bus was. It sounds like the sort of thing they send out for the kids in the summer holidays. Yes. But as we read into this, I'm taking that this is from the local asylum or prison, and it's kind of like do they take them on days out or something like that? Or maybe out to work in the fields or something?

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah, it's it's basically like the work work details.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

It's it they have it's similar to like school buses, they have those big old yellow things, but they've usually got like, you know, state penitentiary on the side of it kind of thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

So it's a yellow bus, is it?

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Ah, there we go. But uh yeah, and uh they better go up chain gangs and all that kind of stuff, right? Working on the roads and all that.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Yeah, well, it's all privatized in the states and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

So it's exactly yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

So we start with this bus crash or this bus going off the edge of the cliff down into the sea, and as far as we know, only one person survives who is our protagonist. Now, who that person is, we can get into as we go along, and there's various theories, but but it's a very dramatic opening with this person struggling in the water. It's nighttime, it's raining. She finds herself in the middle of the sea, and things are looking pretty grim.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Yeah, and I love that I actually really love this bit. There's something about it is incredibly dramatic, and it's incredibly grim, and it's incredibly just gets you into it. I love that kind of fight or flight thing that kicks in, but it's oh god, it it's even beyond self-preservation. It's just like, oh, there's other people struggling over there. Fuck them, I'm out of here.

unknown 16:03

You know, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

She sees a chance to get out, but and it because it mentions that she'd be in there for the rest of her life. So she's obviously been detained for something that's kept her in, you know, away away from society.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yes, and this is an opportunity to escape. It it's a very slim opportunity because this is uh a very isolated area, but far across the bay, she could barely make out the phantom glimmering of the lights of the city. The distance was great in miles, two, three, more, for the prison was a long drive beyond the outskirts of the city, but she was athletically trim and a strong swimmer. She exercised regularly to help pass the long days. How many days she could not remember. She only knew she wouldn't let them take her back to that place. So as well as you say, that survival instinct, we've already got this thing of how many days have I been there? It's already almost like we're waking up. Well, we're in the middle of a nightmare, we just drop straight into it. Not quite sure where we are or why we're here.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Yeah, very much so. Yeah, it says the rescue workers would soon be here. Once they'd taken care of those who clung to the shoreline, they'd send divers to raise the bus. And when they didn't find her body among those in the wreckage, they'd assumed she was drowned, her body washed away. There would surely be others who were missing, others whose body even now drifted beneath the bay. Divers and boatmen with drag hooks would search for them. Some they might never find. Her they would never find. So it's that pragmatism, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

It's just like Yes, and determination to get out of this. And already we've got one word here that stands out the phantom glimmering of the lights of the city. So is this uh like San Francisco Alcatraz kind of situation? Lights of the city almost sound like stars, so we're into that sort of cosmic space. Is this a liminal area? She's passing across into somewhere else. Is she heading for Carcosa?

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Well, that's that I mean, that's kind of the implication, isn't it? Because it's it's very much like the description when we get into the city, it's you kind of you half expect a suicide chamber on the corner, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

It's it's that kind of thing, but yeah, the phantom, the phantom of truth. You get a lot of he's done a really good job of weaving in uh the chamber's references in an almost blink and you'll miss them way.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

And we get quite a long description of this swim, which is, you know, by no means an easy feat. We've got tides and Eddie's she has to remove her prison clothing because that's dragging her down. It's quite some time until she reaches a seawall and manages to drag herself out and press herself against the wet stone, her aching limbs no longer straining to keep her afloat, her chest hammering in exhaustion. The flood washed against her feet, its level still rising, and a sodden rat clawed onto her leg, finding refuge as she had done. And the description we get here of the city, as you say, but there's also an insmouth vibe, isn't there? Oh yeah. It's derelict, it's run down, and the only other living things she can see are these quite large rats that are scurrying around.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Yeah, because we've already met them as she was coming in the because there's sort of an inlet into there's a river running through it. And there's the the storm drains that are obviously because it's tipping it down, they're pumping out all this water and detritus and filth and sewage and Christ knows what from the city above. But again, there's these rats and they're all trying to grab onto her. Um yeah, it's yeah, it's one of those things that it's incredibly unsettling because it's one of those situations that you really wouldn't want to be in, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, yeah. And again, it has that nightmare element. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Oh, yeah, because all those things that like I mean, common ones are falling and drowning, aren't they? Your common nightmares.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

That that endless movement somewhere, whether it's a pursuit or you're just trying to get somewhere and it never seems to get any closer. Oh god. That kind of feeling is very strong. And I I love the description of the place as well. As she crept along the deserted street, she found herself wondering whether she could find anything at all here. Doorways were padlocked and boarded over. Behind rusted gratings, windows showed rotting planks and dirty shards of glass. The waterfront street seemed to be completely abandoned, a deserted row of ancient buildings, enclosing forgotten wares, cheaper to let rot than to haul away, even as it was cheaper to let these brick hulks stand than to pull them down. Even the expected Wynos and derelicts seemed to have deserted this section of the city. She began to wish she might encounter at least a passing car. And uh we we we get the Lovecraftian touch, right, with descriptions of grotesque Victorian facades, misshape and statutory and and and all the rest of it. And all that is underpinned with the scramble of wet claws and fretful squealings from the darkness behind her.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

I like that. And I like the fact that basically she's naked apart from a bra of pants at this point, right? And it's pouring down with rain, been in the sea, she's gonna have hypothermia, right? So this becomes another thing of survival now, but it's a case of how am I gonna find clothes and how am I gonna find them without getting arrested? So Case of oh, I am in a rundown part of the town, so maybe I can find like a thrift shop I can break into because they won't have a burglar alarm on a thrift shop, right? Or a smash and grab. Yeah. I like this this whole survival sort of mentality is kick sort of kicked into overdrive, and it's it's I find it incredibly well done.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

You can very easily visualize this as an FPS video game, can't you?

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think that's why I love it. Yeah, it's it's this is the sort of crap that I play.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

And she does the there's a sort of impression of another presence here as well. Uh a sort of lurking presence that I think manifests itself a little later on in one form, perhaps. It does. But she does eventually see a light high up. She has to go up a stairway, and she sees above her a looming Victorian pile built over the bluff. A casement window, level with the far end of the terrace, opened out onto a neglected garden. She climbed over the low wall that separated the house from the terrace and crouched outside the curtain window. So there is a sign of life at last.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

And I like this that we're we are in fully again into uncanny valley territory here, because we've already established that right, there was a bus and there's cars and things like that. So we're not in the Victorian era.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

No, no, but we're 20th century at least, isn't it? It's it's gotta be, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yeah, at least. So, but now you've got a Victorian house, and the occupants are very much out of time.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Yes. Well, even the sitting room, right, is described as having old-fashioned appointments. That's a lovely phrase, isn't it? Well, a well-appointed room. I do like a well-appointed room. And we've got an older woman crocheting, and beside her, dressed in a maid's costume, is a young woman reading from a book. So yeah, it's very much uh you can almost imagine the oil lamp on the table and that sort of thing, can't you?

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Yes, yeah. And that was a very um sort of common setup, wasn't it? You'd get these old, often widows or or even spinster women who would take a companion. They would have they would yeah, well, they would employ a they would employ a a a younger girl as a maid or a companion, and they would make basically just sit and read to them and keep them company and uh so you know she's as we said, she's cold, she's hungry, she's weakened from her ordeal.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

She taps on the window and you know attracts their attention, and they bring her Yeah, I I like that.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

At the tapping of the window, the older woman looked up from her work. The maid lets the yellow-bound volume drop onto her white apron.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Again, it's nice and subtle, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Yeah, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 24:57

And of course, she has to give some explanation for what's happened to her. So she comes up with this story about uh uh a man attacked her and she managed to get away from him and etc, etc. Uh but from our perspective, of course, we first get the names. Everyone introduces themselves. What's your name, child? The older woman inquired solicitously. Camilla, bring some hot tea. She groped for a name to tell them. Casilda. The maid's name had put this in mind, and it was suited to her to her surroundings. Casilda Archer. Dr. Archer would indeed be interested in that appropriation. And we learn that the old lady is called Mrs. Castain. So we've got Castain, Cassilda or Cassilda and Camilla.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

All characters from the King in Yellow.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Well, because Castain is the um repairer of reputations.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

And Cassilda and Camilla are in the play.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Um, and I can't remember whether they're supposed to be sisters or that they're courtiers, but there's always an interplay with them.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yes, well, it it's all nicely vague, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Yes, as the best weird tales are, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

And I'll mention this here because with what happens a bit later on, certainly, I was also put in mind of Carmela, uh Jay Sheridan Lafanyu, which of course I remember as an adaptation, the hammer adaptation called The Vampire Lovers in Rick Pitts, and that very much ties into how this story develops. I was an impressionable adolescent when that came on at 10:30 one night.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Oh yes, oh yes, uh yeah, all the listeners of a certain age will know exactly what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

And we had quite a lengthy description of this room, how everything seems old fashioned, the clothes that the other women are wearing. Um but Mrs. Castain seemed well fitted to this room and its furnishings. Hers was a face that might belong to a woman of forty or sixty, well featured, but too stern for a younger woman, yet without the lines and age marks of an elderly lady. So even her age is kind of vague and uncertain.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

And we we get our first hint of what is to come when they run a bar for Miss Archer, as we can call her from now on. The bathroom was spacious, steamy from the vast claw footed tub, and smelling of bath salts. Its plumbing and fixtures were no more modern than the rest of the house. Camilla entered with her, and to her surprise helped her remove her scant clothing and assisted her into the tub. She was too tired to feel ill at ease at this unaccustomed show of attention, and when the maid began to rub her back with scented soap, she sighed at the luxury. Where's the soap?

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Yes, indeed, don't hide the soap. Yeah. And they this is where we get the a a nice little mystery dripping into it because there was a throwaway mention of somebody else called Constance. So Miss Archer asks who else lives here? And it's only Mrs. Castain and myself, Miss Archer. Mrs. Castain mentions someone, Constance, whose room I'm to have. Miss Castain is no longer with us, Miss Archer. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Yes, it is it's heavy with implication and and several different possible meanings, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 28:43

That yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Is one of those uh quite often used as a euphemism for somebody who's been uh incarcerated or taken away, gone on a long holiday, that kind of Yes, up to the big house. Indeed, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

And we we get another hint of that sapphic element coming up here as Cassilda is helped out of the bath. Camilla left her to return with large towels. The maid helped her from the tub, wrapping her in one towel as she dried her with another. She felt faint with drowsiness, allowed herself to relax against the blonde girl. Camilla was very strong, supporting her easily as she toweled her small breasts. Camilla's fingers found the parting of her thighs, lingered, then returned again in a less than casual touch. And basically she has a warm bed, she's gonna spend the night there. She falls into a deep sleep, but is troubled by dreams.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Indeed. Yeah, well I like I like this description of said dreams. Troubled by formless fears. So dreams of formless fears. There's a there's an album title, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Nice. We we get another little hint of time period here because when she awakes, she there's a nice description of the room, oriental rugs and pillows, nothing modern in there at all. She knew very little about antiques, but she guessed that the style of the furnishings must go back before the first world war. So we're looking kind of Victorian Edwaldian, possibly.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Yes, yeah. Yeah, in terms of the decor of the house, certainly.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

The classic hammer set, isn't it? Indeed. I I can picture this very vibrant, sumptuous. Sumptuous, sumptuous.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

The actual dream, it's only a paragraph, it's very a very short, brief mention here, but that it also has a lot of hints. So it says that she stared about her anxiously, uncertain where she was. Her disorientation was the same as when she awakened after receiving shock. Only this place wasn't a ward, and the woman who entered the room wasn't one of her wardens.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Yes, yes, it's nicely subtly done, isn't it? Just that little It is. You know, there's there's no backstory. The backstory is revealed in these small hints, and we're we're left to draw our own conclusions.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Yeah, because that goes kind of against because right at the beginning it actually explicitly says prison when she's swimming away, but this doesn't describe a prison. No, no, this is this is something this is this is something else. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

And that kind of treatment, if I can call it that, was prevalent up to the sort of what 1970s, I think, really, wasn't it? Maybe even beyond. Yeah. So uh again, that is possible. This is possibly a a fairly recent and modern setting.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Indeed, and it that tallies up with when Carl Edward Wagner would have been training to be a psychiatrist. Absolutely. There would have at least been echoes of it, if it not still being in practice, there would have still been hangovers from that kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Oh, totally. And we get further confirmation of of that because we get she'd seen no sign of a television or radio here, and an old eccentric like Mrs. Castain probably didn't even read the newspapers. So, on the one hand, that's a little bit odd, but it works in her favour because she's not going to see any news about crash, escape, prisoner on the run, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Indeed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

She's given a tonic with a bitter licorice taste that makes her drowsy. I'm I'm not sure what what that would be.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Laudanum.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Right, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

It's often described as earthy with an almost licorice taste. Very earthy tasting, apparently.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

And that's a very nice sort of Victorian drug as well, isn't it, Matt?

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Indeed, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

And with this next sleep, this induced sleep, we might say, she begins to dream again. She dreamed of Dr. Archer, her stern face and mannished shoulders craning over her bed. Her wrists and ankles were fixed at each corner of the bed by padded leather cuffs. Dr. Archer was speaking to her in a scolding tone, while her wardens were pulling up her skirt, dragging down her panties. A syringe gleamed in Doctor Archer's hand, and there was a sharp stinging in her buttock. So very unpleasant and unsettling dreams and possibly from an actual situation.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah, these are more like repressed memories, aren't they? That's I mean, that's how kind of how I see it. It's kind of a bit like a bit Jacob's ladder, isn't it? Really?

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Yes, yes. Or a few of those films where the person's not sure if they're experiencing reality or not. Yeah. That kind of feeling, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Indeed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

She's awoken by Camilla saying it, oh, it's you're having a nightmare. It's just a nightmare. Mrs. Castain comes in wearing her night dress and carrying a candle. There are elements of this that I thought are very House of Usher, very Corman Ho films as well. Yeah. If it well, we can get on to adaptations because there was an adaptation of this. But again, if this was done properly, it it's going to be in that style, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Yeah, I mean, it is very gothic in a way. I mean, all the trappings are there, right? The house on the house on the cliff, the rain, the sea roiling below. It's it has a lot of the gothic trappings. Even even, you know, the the the mysterious relative who's not there anymore, some kind of an inheritance of a of a sort, you know.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah, yeah. And uh the solution to this nightmare from Mrs. Castain is to give her more tonic. So she sort of wakes from one nightmare, is given more of this tonic, and promptly sinks into another one. This reminds me very much of the scene in Rosemary's Baby, where she's drugged, yeah, and again she has this nightmare in inverted commas. Quite quite graphic in the film and quite graphic here as well.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Because uh Wagner he did like this sort of thing, didn't he?

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Oh, he did, yes, he uh yeah, he wasn't backwards about coming forwards with the old rumpus in his stories, was he?

SPEAKER_00 35:18

So she undergoes this experience, this assault, possibly, in real life or in a dream.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

I I love how it's so it's kind of intertwined because you've got the sexual element, but then you've also got elements of like like the darkness surrounded her, like a black leather mask, her body shaking with uncontrollable spasms. That's the medical stuff going on.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yeah, yeah, which in in itself crosses into SNM territory, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

And it's it's generally to me, I get a sort of claustrophobic feeling from this as well. Something is pressing down on her, you know, it's being imprisoned than something pressing down on you.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Yeah, cu which ties in with night terrors and things, doesn't it? The hag sitting on the chest. But more than that, it's the dark this this pressure, it's mouths. Yes, it's lots of different mouths sort of pressing on her. And I don't know whether is that is that like an actual assault, or is it um uh sort of euphemistically describing the medical procedures?

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Yes, yeah. And it is this intertwining of those two things, or is this your classic sex and death, I guess, isn't it, in a sense? Oh, class the sensual arousal that lashed her lost reality against the lethargy and fever that held her physically, and rising out of the eroticism of her delirium, shrilled whispers of underlying revulsion and terror. And that section finishes with through the darkness blindly flowed her silent scream of ecstasy and of horror. Which is uh I don't know if it's a modern horror trope. I I guess now writers can be more graphic about describing that sort of thing. But we probably go back to poem before that sort of mixture of well, ecstasy and horror.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

Well, you go back to the the classic French Le Petit Mort.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

For the orgasm, a little death. Yes, you know. But I mean, there this also has echoes, these kind of this section specifically has echoes of things like Hellraiser, you know. I think Carl Edward Wagner and Clive Barker were sort of singing from the same hymn sheet on this. Definitely it has got that them uh BDSM trappings.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Yeah, well, one of the first things in Hellraiser is people get chained up, right? Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Well, we recently covered that on um the Monster in My Bed podcast, Zoe and I, and found out that Clive Barker was heavily into that scene out in LA, and there was a specific club which catered to um fetishistic piercings, you know, where you know people getting hung hung from hooks in the back and stuff like that, and that's where it all came from, and the the whole centibyte design came from that sort of thing. So I'm I'm wondering if Carl Edward Wagner had similar interests, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

I I would imagine, I would imagine. Well, I'm I'm gonna mention something I've mentioned before because we both played there, um Torture Garden. Absolutely, yeah. When I played there with um Texas Chainsaw Orchestra, we were chatting to someone, and she'd mentioned the week before they'd had someone hanging up, as she put it, in the uh in the back room kind of thing, and just a crowd gathered watching this experience go on.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Very much that. And there was an interview in the Old Dagon fanzine with the late Carl Ford. Uh, when Wagner came over to London and Carl interviewed him, and there was talk of visits to various establishments. I think Lovecraft in Tottenham Court Road was high on the list. Ah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there were the purchase of several items, I understand, from the interview. If if you can dig that one out, I don't know if it's online anywhere. I'll see if I can find it and put the link up to it. But yeah, uh a great interview with the two of them, sort of on a uh sort of SNM pub crawl around the west end of London. Run Soho, yeah. That's one of those you wish you'd been on, isn't it? That one. Yeah, yeah. Like going out for a drink with Keith Moon and uh Vivian Stanchall.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah, love that gladial, yeah, brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

So then we get the classic thing because they now dress her. Obviously, she needs clothes. This is a bit like the Madame Zelda, as well, right? Where his clothes are taken and just chucked away and he's given this sort of uh medieval outfit.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Casilda now gets the Victorian outfit complete with corset and rather interestingly, the the open crotch knickers.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

And this is very much for me that idea of now you are one of us, you can never leave.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

Yeah, very much so, isn't it? You simply must not say anything more about leaving us, Casilda, Mrs. Castain insisted, laying a hand upon the girl's knee as she leaned towards her confidentially. And this is now where it's like because she carries on saying, You've said you had no immediate prospects, you've got no family, you know. I shouldn't have to remind you of the dangers the city holds for unattached young women. You were extremely fortunate in your escape from those white slavers who abducted you. Without family or friends to question your disappearance, well, I shan't suggest what horrible fate awaits you. So she suggests now, well, why don't you become my companion? Yeah, I'm sure Camilla would like having another young girl around the place, and it's all it's all it's all very manipulative and kind of gaslighting, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 41:16

It's uh yeah, gaslighting exactly that, isn't it? Yeah, it in that sort of uh with that Victorian etiquette laid on top, but it hides there's this underlying sense of unease and formality that hides the implied threat of like, well, you know, look what'll happen if you don't, kind of thing. Yes, you naughty girl.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

And this this is where we get it, right? We kind of go full on now. Of course. Casilda returned Camilla's smile as she entered the sitting room to collect the tea things. From early light, it was evident that the maid had been listening from the hallway. What would you like me to read to you? That book over there beneath the lamp. Mrs. Castain indicated a volume bound in yellow cloth. It's a recent drama and a most curious work as you shall quickly see. Camilla was reading it to me on the night you came to us. Taking up the book, Casilda again experienced a strange sense of unaccountable deja vu, and she wondered where she might previously have read The King in Yellow, if indeed she ever had. I believe we are ready to begin the second act, Mrs. Castain told her.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

So And anybody familiar with the King in Mel Yellow mythos knows second act means madness and death.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Yeah, there's no escape. It's all downhill from here on.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

No, well that that's the whole thing, isn't it? The first the the first act you can kind of get away with a little bit of your sanity intact. You read the second act, that's it. Game over.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

And we get a little sort of description here. Now, this is very interesting to me with the King in Yellow stories. I've read various versions of it, if you like. They never, well, except in one or two cases, never really put the actual text in, but it's more describing the effects of it. And there was a very good one, I think it was in one of these Chaossium anthologies that was written like a play.

SPEAKER_02 43:20

That was actually Lin Carter, not that one, because there's a couple.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Yeah, Lin Carter Linkarter actually wrote out some of the the play itself, but this was the story, but written as though it was a play, from the perspective of people experiencing reading the book. And the very last line, it's just the stage direction, enter the king in yellow, which is a a a great sort of ending.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Oh, I know exactly which one you mean as well.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

It's called it's called something like a room and a book or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, it's not in the chaosum one, it must be in one of the Other ones. It must be in like um uh Echoes from Carcosa or one of them other anthologies. I'll have to have a look because I'd like to read that again.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Yeah, we'll put it up. It's an excellent story.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Yeah, because the Lyn Carter one is Tatters of the King, where he does the the actual play. That's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yeah, yeah. Which I think is a bit of a mistake, really. Because it can never match up, right? You know? Yeah. Yeah. But what we get here is Casilda reading in bed when Camilla comes in with another tonic. There's our continued uh drugging or sedation of the of the person. Indeed. And Cassilda is sat there reading The King in Yellow from the sounds of it. What a thoroughly wicked book to be reading in bed. Have you read The King in Yellow? And Camilla replies, I've read it through aloud to Madame and more than once. It's a favourite of hers. It is sinful and more than sinful to imbue such decadence with so compelling a fascination. I cannot imagine that anyone could have allowed it to be published. The author must have been mad to pen such thoughts. And yet you read it. Cassilda made a place for her at the edge of the bed. Its fascination is too great a temptation to resist. I wanted to read further after Mrs. Castain bade me good night. So it's got its hooks into her. And then we get the telling line it was Constance's book. So now we start to get an inkling of what may have happened to Constance.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Yeah, indeed. Yeah, because especially anybody goes in with that hindsight knowledge of what the King in Yellow play does. Oh right, well. Yeah, she's away, she's no longer with us, she's locked away in the happy home.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Yes, yeah. So in the disappointment room.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Yes, yeah, yeah. Up in the attic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

And then then we get this scene ends with one of those sort of fade to black moments, doesn't it? But you haven't read Beyond the Second Acts, dear Cassilda. How can you know what their fate may be? Oh Camilla, Cassilda leaned her face back against Camilla's perfumed breasts. Don't tease me so. Yes, and it's uh the implication there of what follows.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Yes, because it the this section ends with Were you and Constance friends? She wondered. We were very dearest of friends. You must miss her very much. No longer. So she has become the replacement of Constance. And with the king in yellow, you get that feeling of the cycle is beginning anew. You know, it's that repetition of cycles that's often in weird fiction, especially this kind of story, you know.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Yeah, and and everyone is the same because they're all kind of masked, or they're all, you know, it it might be different people, but it's the same mask kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Well, they're all players playing the same characters in the play. Yeah, they they may be different people, but they're the same character, they've got the same role. That's the whole point, isn't it? You know, I mean, they become I mean, she's already become Cassilda, she chose the name. So there we go.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Yeah. So the next scene opens with Cassilda writing in a journal. It it sort of describes a situation, and again, this is quite typical of this kind of thing. Was everyone's being very nice to me, and it's all very pleasant, and everything else, but I'm I'm not sure if I really want to stay here. So we we get that first hint of uh rebellion, perhaps.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Well, I think it's more just a hint of disquiet that there's some something wrong where she doesn't know what. I mean, do you know what L another story this reminded me of that we had I know we've definitely covered it. Pugmire's Inhabitants of Wraithwood.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

Oh yeah. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

I often wondered if Pugmire had read this. He probably had. And it was a very different take on it, but the the beats are kind of the same.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

Yeah, very true. Uh, this is where we get that date I mentioned before, so I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this. Uh Casilda concluded her entry with the date June the seventh, eighteen ninety. She frowned in an instant's consternation. What was the date?

SPEAKER_02 48:26

1898 is the publication date of Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_02 48:35

There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

But she's writing the journal now in her present day. Yeah. You know, yet this thing has now taken over her so much that well, this is where we go back to her possibly changing into Constance or Constance possessing her or something going on. Yes. That she's been pulled into this kind of time loop thing or something like that. And we get another nice little sentence here. Casilda, now another night, she's getting ready to retire, and she's been having a look round. She's found a tin box in one of the drawers, and she and Camilla had been looking over them as she prepared for bed. Paper dolls, Valentine's greeting cards, illustrations, clips from magazines. She also found a crystal ball that rested upon an ebony cradle. Within the crystal sphere was a tiny house covered with snow, with trees and a frozen lake, and a young girl playing. When Cassilda picked it up, the snow stirred faintly in the transparent fluid that filled the globe. She turned the crystal sphere upside down for a moment, and then quickly righted it, and a snowstorm drifted down about the tiny house. How wonderful it would be to dwell forever in a crystal fairyland, just like the people in this little house, Casilda remarked, peering into the crystal ball. So there we go, it's a direct parallel to her situation.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

Yeah, it's a snow globe, it's liminal, it's yeah, it's all those wonderful weird fiction trappings, isn't it? It's uh it's great stuff.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

And in fact, as she looks closer within the globe, she starts noticing other things. This is like classic horror movie stuff, isn't it? Oh yeah. A small mound, a tiny figure spinning amidst the snowflakes, a second girl. So it it's like that idyllic looking scene, but once you start to peer closer, there's these little odd details that point to something being very wrong.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

Well, it's like oh which one is it? Um, which painting is it? Yeah, I can't remember which one it is. It's one of the ones of Dante's Inferno that just gets weirder the more times you look at it because you notice more and more every time you look at it. But a lit a good literary example would be the mezzo tint.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Yes. Yeah, which is a masterpiece of that idea, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

This paint this quite ordinary etching that just gets really weird annoyable as days go on, you know.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

Until a bloke in a rubber mask crawls over your windowsill.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Oh, yes, of course.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

But let it go. I know, I should let it go. It's been three years now.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

I tell you what, I've got video editing software. I'm gonna do get the rip I've got, and I'm gonna fade it out before that happens and see how it works, right?

SPEAKER_00 51:27

You can't unsee some things, though, that's the trouble. So this is where she dares to ask, where is Constance Castain? And Camilla tells her carefully, Constance became quite ill. She was always subject to nervous attacks. One night she suffered one of her fits, and she and this is where Mrs. Castain bursts in and scolds Camilla, almost to the point of Cassilda wonders if she's going to strike the maid. Go at once to your room.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

Yeah. Being sorry does not pardon the offence of a wagging tongue. Perhaps a lesson in behaviour will improve your manners in the future. Go at once to your room. Please, madame.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Yeah, that's setting us up for the uh the hanky spanky, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. And Mrs. Castain explains that her daughter suffered a severe attack of brain fever and is confined in a mental sanitarium.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Like the one that it's implied that she has already she has just escaped from.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

Yeah, and of course, you know, oh, before you go to sleep, I must fetch your tonic. You've got to have your medicine. So there it is again.

SPEAKER_02 52:40

Mmm. Indeed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

Which, of course, leads us to another bad dream. And this again, this is one of those classic horror film moments where a person wakes, not sure if they're dreaming or not, because they've heard something and they go and investigate. Again, very usher-esque those scenes or premature burial, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 53:01

Yeah, it's an incredibly infective sceneness. Because she hears this crack and then uh a muffled gasp or noise, and uh obviously perverts like myself are instantly like, oh I'm your interest is piqued. Yes, but obviously she goes out to investigate, and I I love this this scene, it's something I've done a few times in my work, of like the slow pad down the corridor with the noise getting louder and and obviously speaking and nobody's reacting, and you can just you can carry on doing it for ages just to build tension. But I think the trick is knowing when to stop.

SPEAKER_00 53:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

And I think he does it absolutely masterfully here.

SPEAKER_00 53:48

So, yes, she makes her way upstairs to Camilla's room, the source of these strange noises, knocks on the door, there's no answer, but the muffled sobs continue. So she opens the door and goes within. Camilla, dressed only in her corset and undergarments, stood bent over the foot of her bed. Her ankles were lashed to the base of either post, her wrists tied together, and stretched forward by a rope fixed to the headboard. Exposed by the open style knickers, her buttocks were crisscrossed with red welts. She turned her head to look at Cassilda, and the other girl saw that Camilla's cries were gagged by a complicated leather bridle strapped about her head. Come in, Cassilda, since you wish to join us, said Mrs. Castaine from behind her. Cassilda heard her close the door and lock it before the girl had courage enough to turn around. Mrs. Castaine wore no more clothing than did Camilla, and she switched her riding crop anticipatorily. Looking from mistress to maid, Cassilda saw that both pairs of eyes glowed alike with the lusts of unholy pleasure. There's another album named The Lusts of Unholy Pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 54:58

Oh yeah, that's a good one. And again, I'm just getting flashbacks to DJing and fetish clubs, and you you know, you go into the playroom at the back. There's always a playroom, right? There's always a playroom, and they've always got one of those horse horses that you had in the gymnasium at school, right?

unknown 55:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

And there was always a woman in sort of Victorian dress with a riding crop.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

The one I always remember, we play Club Antichrist a few times that was um just south of the river, I think, around that sort of area.

SPEAKER_02 55:30

Under the arch to get into it, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 55:32

That was it, yeah, yeah. And and that had you know the playroom or rooms in there. And every time I went, there's this guy strapped to like an X cross. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it was always the same guy. And it got to the stage, you sort of go, all right, and you go, Oh, all right. Yeah, yeah. Just very English. Yeah. Lovely weather we've been having, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 55:53

I must I must have must have told you the story of the one where I was I I was DJing and a guy, a naked guy, came up to me and handed me a BB gun and asked me to uh shoot him in the old uh John Thomas. Just really casually, like, how you doing, mate? You're alright? It was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, not bad. Yeah, it's quite a good turnout, innit? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you mind shooting? Shoot me in the dick. Just carried on doing my mix.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

I hope your aim was good.

SPEAKER_02 56:27

Oh my. I'm a good shot with a BB gun.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

So we've had some practice from the center. So we're then into one of these dream, not dream sequences. Again, we we get mention of the aniseed taste of the tonic or an anisset aftertaste. That's a nice phrase. Her limbs ached as if sore from too strenuous exercise the day before. And then we get another one of those little flashbacks, perhaps. Casilda hoped she was not going to have a relapse of the fever that had stricken her after she had fled the convent that stormy night so many weeks ago. She struggled for a moment with that memory. The sisters in black robes and white aprons had intended to wall her up alive in her cell because she had yielded to the temptation of certain unspeakable desires. So is this a Casilda memory or a Constance memory, do you think?

SPEAKER_02 57:25

See, I think this is a Constance memory because it's evolved again, because it was originally a pr a prison break. And then it was you have a mention of a ward, but it was very modern because you had electro shock therapy and all that kind of thing. But now we've gone into the whole you know, because again, that was kind of what happened back then. The the wayward sister would be sent to the convent and all that kind of thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Uh that put me in mind of the film uh The Devil's.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Which I think I saw recently has just been remastered or something.

SPEAKER_02 58:01

Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

Yeah, I think there's a new version now. I don't know if it's like the director's cut or remastered or something like that. But I'd I should yeah, it'd be interesting to watch that again.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

Yeah, because a lot of these things they play back into that sort of Victorian the Victorian practices, especially when they came to women's mental health, were just absolutely barbaric. You know, the rest cure and all that. Well, that's the yellow wallpaper, all that, all that, and the convents and all this kind of thing. And often it was a case of like the husbands would self-diagnose their wives with hysteria, gaslight them into believing it so they could have them shipped away and take their inheritance.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Yes, totally, totally. And this is kind of the feeling we get here, right? Because she discovers the bruises, and this now takes one step further because in order to turn her into a proper young lady, they fit her with the Skold's bridle, which is the uh well, I'm sure people know what that is. Yes, but I like the way it's done under the the sort of guise of improving her posture, which was you know what used to happen, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

Yeah. Another little thing here that we pick up on is after the the hanky spanky thing, and she wakes up and she's had this this dream and the nuns and all this, her rationalization of all this is that there were too many elusive memories, memories that died unheard. Had she not read that, the king in yellow lay open upon her nightstand, had she been reading, then fallen asleep to such dreams of depravity. But dreams like memories faded mirage-like whenever she touched them, leaving only tempting images to beguile her. That's a lovely little paragraph that is. To to use a really old reference, but uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:56

If it is a memory, whose memory is it as well? Indeed, that's it. And this is what we get now over this next section. She has this rubber ball in her mouth, uh, wrists or ankles are held fast, and we get this kind of dream sequence which sort of combines everything so far. We've got straight jackets and padded cells, but we've also got gowns of satin and velvet in lace.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:21

We've got a grotesque syringe of vile poison, and then we've got Mrs. Castain with the yellow tonic, and it's this lovely blending of all those elements we've had so far, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:33

Yeah, because you've you've got Dr. Archer, and you've also got the nuns, you've got uh the judges, even.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:39

Yeah. Nurses in rubber aprons, the hangman's mask, electrodes on the breasts.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

Yeah, it's an amalgamation of several different memories, and we don't know at this point if any of them are real, if any of them belong to her, how many of them belong to Camilla, how many of them come from Casilva in the play.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:05

So you've essentially got three unreliable narrators all in the same person right now. I think that's an absolute tremendous paragraph because it is done almost. It's a stream of consciousness, isn't it? Yes. Um, I'm not even gonna bother trying to read it, but if anybody's got this, uh go and go and read this bit because it's incredibly unsettling and incredibly effective.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

So yeah, she comes out of this dream or the spasm as it's described, and she finds she has a free hand. She's managed to slip the wrist restraints, which she has done any number of times before. So there's that previous experience again. We've got a storm going on, of course, in gothic tradition. So she frees herself, her tread no louder than a phantom's, she glided from the bed and crossed the room. A flicker of lightning revealed shabby furnishings, and a disordered array of fetishist garments and paraphernalia. But she threw open the windows and looked down upon the black waters of the lake, and saw the cloud waves breaking upon the base of the cliff. So we've got a couple of references there. The house by the lake, again, I'm thinking Usher. Yes. But then also cloud waves breaking. Nice. We all know where that's from. Yeah. And she heads off to the kitchen and finds something that seems quite familiar to her.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:33

Yeah, I like this this description here of her being Wraith-like. And there's also the again a mention of Phantom. But also there's the very again, blinking you miss it, of fetishist garments and paraphernalia. So, how much of that dream was not a dream?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Yeah. The nurses in rubber aprons and all that, and you know. But shabby furnishings as well. We've gone from this opulent Victorian house to shabby furnishings. This is one of those fairy feasts, right? You wake up and you're eating moldy cheese or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:11

That's very yeah, that's a very good point. I haven't picked up on that. But yeah, you're right, you are absolutely correct.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:17

And this now, I have to admit, when I was reading this, I heard the introduction of a certain door song come wafting through, like at the start of the pocalypse now. Oh yeah. The killer awoke before dawn. We'll get to that at the end, if you'll pardon the pun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:34

Indeed, we will be getting to that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:37

So she first goes to visit Camilla and she placed her hand over Camilla's mouth, but she made no struggle as she stared at the carving knife that almost touched her eyes. What happened to Constance? The fingers relaxed to let her whisper, but the knife did not waver. She had a secret lover. One night she crept through the sitting room window and ran away with him. Mrs. Castaine showed her no mercy. Sleep now, she told Camilla, and kissed her tenderly as she freed her with a swift motion that her hand remembered. What does she do next? Well, kind of like in the song, she walks on down the hall. In the song. And now we get Mother Yes, Constance. I've come home. You're dead. I remembered the way back. And she showed her the key and opened the way. So beautiful description for a horrible act of murder with a kitchen knife.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:35

Yes. Yeah. Again, it's done in a beautifully dreamlike way. And I like that. Showed her the key and opened the way. I like that. There's echoes of old Yogsothoth there, right? You know, it's uh Oh yeah, of course. Wow, yeah. So yeah, she I like this as well. It only remained for her to go. She can no longer find shelter in this house. She must leave as she had entered, which means via the window, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:04

Well, yeah, and that was interesting where we had Constance escape out of the window to run away with her lover. She came in the window. Now she's got to go out the window. Out the window.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:15

And this is where we get that odd thing again. She drops the knife, the key had served its purpose. Through the hallways she returned. In the darkness, her bare feet sometimes treading upon rich carpets, sometimes dust and fallen plaster. Her naked flesh tingled with the blood that had freed her soul. So again, now we get a description of this place as torn wallpaper, empty wine bottles littering the floor.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

It's then and now, isn't it? How she's been seeing it is how it was before before Constance killed her family.

unknown 1:05:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

And and how she's now seeing it is as it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

We're we're we're back in our hesitates you the word reality, but we're kind of back. We're back in our world.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:02

Yeah, something just struck me. This is so much like Silent Hill kind of stuff. Silent Hill 2 specifically. Um, with uh uh towards the end of that, uh spoiler alert for the Silent Hill 2 game. If you haven't played it by now, it's been out since 2001. Then I don't know what rock you've been living under. But the whole gist of that is your protagonist, James, murdered his wife, but then he got but he'd repressed that memory, and he had a letter. He knew she was dead, but he'd repressed the memory of him murdering her. They smothered her as a pillow, she was ill. Yeah, so he's gone to Silent Hill because he's received a letter saying, Come and meet me in my special place. So the whole thing is he's like, Could Mary be alive? And the special place turns out to be the Lakeside Hotel on the other side of Toluca Lake. So he goes there and as he's seeing it the first time he's there, it's it's it's kind of just off-season, everything's covered with cloths and all that kind of thing. And but we watch is the videotape, which explains what he did, and then it switches to the other world because there's always the fog world and the other world in Silent Hill, uh, and it switches to the other world, which is how it is now. There'd been a fire, the place is gutted.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:18

That kind of thing is used in all of the Silent Hill games, but I think that's probably the easiest example to explain. But this would make an absolutely brilliant Silent Hill game. You'd add a few squiggly monsters in there to fight, it'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:34

Well, we've got a kind of squiggly monster coming up in a second.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:37

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:38

Yeah. So something's waiting for her at the window. Moisture glistened darkly upon its rippling and exaggerated musculature, its uncouth head and shoulders hunched forward bullishly. Its face was distorted with insensate lust and drooling madness. A grotesque phallus swung between its misshapen legs, serpentine, possessed of its own life and volition. Like an obscene worm, it stretched blindly toward her, blood oozing from its toothless maw. Wow. Uh she needs a BB gun there, I think, doesn't she?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

And some lessons from Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a it's a great monster. Again, it it doesn't give me echoes of Clive Barker. I mean, you could you could get full Freudian on that. It's that but what is it? Oh, what's that word? It was one of our favourite words in uh in Strange Shadows, and it was to do with the the fear of an erect penis as in a statue. Oh, I remember that. Yeah, it was to do with statues, wasn't it? Yeah, but it's an actual phobia. I can't remember off the top of my head the name of it. So, dear listener, if you can remember, please let us know. Yeah, because it's that kind of you know repressed sexuality thing, innit?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

See, the trouble with that word is unlike pecuniary depletion, unfortunately, it could be used on a daily basis when you're a writer.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:04

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:05

I don't really have call to talk about uh a phobia of erections on statues. It doesn't come up in conversation so much. It doesn't, does it? I should have to start moving in better circles, I think. Yeah. So the the monster gets her, right? Is the way I'm reading this. The glass of the casement shatters, its blubbery hands stretch out towards her. There was no pain in that release, only dreamlike vertigo, as she plunged into the grayness and the rain. Then the water and the darkness received her falling body, and she set out again into the night, letting the current carry her she knew not where. So this is one of those we're back at the start again kind of things, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

Oh yeah, it's gonna come full circle, especially that like she specifically mentions the current carrying off the other prisoners, who knows where, and all the rest of it. So one part of me think that was the whole thing just uh a dying dream.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:05

That the drowning man kind of syndrome, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:08

Owl Creek Bridge. Yes, yes, yeah, it's the occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, isn't it? It's that whole is it just the a dying man's final hallucinatory moments kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:20

Yeah. And we finished now. This is Lovecraftian because we cut to somewhere else entirely talking about this person is dead and this is what is happening now, which is you know, it especially when we see the write-ups in journals and that kind of thing, or the newspaper reports, isn't it? Reports are coming in of uh disturbance on the Boston underground, you know. Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:43

And uh we get Dr. Archer appearing now. A few personal effects remain to be offici officially disposed of, Dr. Archer, since there's no one to claim them. It's been long enough now since the bus accident, and we'd like to be able to close the files on this catastrophe. Let's have a look. The psychiatrist opened the box of personal belongings. There wasn't much. There never was in such cases, and had there been anything worth stealing, it was already unofficially disposed of. They still haven't found a body, the ward superintendent wondered. Do you suppose, callous as it sounds? I rather hope not, Dr. Archer confided. This patient was a paranoid schizophrenic and dangerous.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:23

Yeah, but again, this mention now that apparently they were quiet on the ward, but that was down to the ECT and the drugs and regular therapy and all that. And there's this mo this this thing here. Without regular therapy, the delusional system would quickly regain control and the patient would become frankly murderous, which is exactly what happened, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:44

That's what we've had, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And then we get what you might consider the kind of punchline because there's a a stack of dock ear dog eared gothic romance novels. Just return these to the patient's library. Oh, what's this one? Beneath the paperbacks lay a small hardcover volume, bound in yellow cloth, somewhat soiled from age. Out of the patient's library too, I suppose. People have donated all sorts of books over the years. The King in Yellow, Dr. Archer read from the spine, opening the book. On the fly leaf, a name was penned in a graceful script Constance Castain. Perhaps the name of the patient who left it here, the superintendent suggested. Around the turn of the century, this was a private sanitarium. Somehow though, that name seems to ring a distant bell. He can't just this this is like a modern day Smith, isn't it? Yeah. Let's just be sure this isn't vintage porno. I love this next slide. Does does that mean let's be sure by me taking it away and giving it a proper read in private, do you think?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:50

Yeah, exactly. The superintendent's got them memories, fuzzy memories, right? I can't be sure. Maybe something the old timers talked about when I first started here. I seem to remember there was some famous scandal involving one of the wealthy families in the city. A murderess, was it? And something about a suicide? Or was it an escape? I can't recall. Which sums up this entire story perfectly. Was it a suicide? Was it an escape? Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:18

Yes, and then there's the the the third thing, right? Mm-hmm. She's not content, we just won. We could have left it even before this, further back, you know, but it adds adds adds adds harmless 19th century romantic nonsense, Dr. Archer concluded. Send it back onto the library. The psychiatrist glanced at the last few lines before closing the book. Casilda. I tell you, I am lost, utterly lost. Carmilla, terrified herself. You have seen the king Casilda. And he has taken from me the power to direct or to escape my dreams.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:58

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

There we go. That's like a triple whammy ending, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:01

That oh, it's so well done. It's uh I I love that story. It's it's one of my favorites. It is definitely one of my all-time favorite stories. It's just yeah, it just ticks all the boxes of a weird tale for me. You know, it's weird with a capital W, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

Yes, weird with a capital F. Yeah, that's how weird it is. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it opens so much speculation as to what is going on. Yeah. Uh, what is actually happening. I've seen numerous interpretations uh looking round on the internet. Some of them, for example, in the yellow 1890s, Constance is tortured to near death by her mother, sent to the asylum. Her copy of The King in Yellow goes with her. When she dies, time passes, 40, 50, 60 years. When the homicidal maniac Cassilda in Inverted Commas was committed to Coastal State Prison, her drug and electro shock regimen left her open to suggestion from Constance's trace in the book she found in the library. So then Cassilda becomes Constance's instrument of revenge, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:12

I think there's too much time passed there for that to have to work because yeah, I just think yeah, I don't think the mother would still be alive. I think the two slightly too much time, but I think that's almost how I see it, or very, very close.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:30

But I think I think Constance already killed her mother and Camilla.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:35

I think they were already dead all along. I think it was all a big old fever dream.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

Well, the the the way this person explains that this person being 21 Paradoxosalpha on uh uh on a forum that I found. Well, when she gets to the house, it is inhabited but by uh Winos, it's all derelict.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That I quite like that works, yeah, yeah. But again, that ties back in with the Silent Hill thing because there's a great bit in the third one when there's a character Vincent and Heather's been you've been shooting monsters all the way through, and Vincent says to her in a scene, just goes, they look like monsters to you. Nice, she's just been on a massive murderous rampage, it just been just been spree killing away through the shopping wall, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:23

Which uh, which again we see you know in some horror films that what you see as the hideous monster is just a bloke going, You're right, love. You know, it's that uh that distortion of reality. I mean, we meant we mentioned Jacob's Ladder, I think, already. Oh, yeah, a classic example. Uh they did a remake of that, didn't they, recently, I think. I haven't seen it. I don't want to see it to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:44

Neither do I, neither do I. But Jacob's Ladder was one of the biggest influences on the Silent Hill games. And in fact, the latest Silent Hill game, Silent Hill F, the only ending you can get on the first playthrough, does exactly the same thing. The lead character goes on a murder uh a murder spree because of a drug. We've got some interesting tidbits here. So we're going back to Col Edward Wagner's afterward. The title, of course, is taken from Richard O'Brien's song in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The darkness must flow down the river of nights dreaming.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:20

Well, I hope you did notice when I said anticipatorily, I did give a little hint anticipatorily.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:29

Yeah, I like that. And I'm glad I'm not the uh only one who does that kind of thing. You know, a load of my a load of my stories are because I liked the idea of oh, I'll I'm gonna write a song based on the title Body Electric from The Sisters of Mercy. So then I came up with a story that fit it. That kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fantasy fans will no doubt recognize the thread of references to Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow. Rock music fans may recognise certain parallels to Jim Morrison's song The End. Yes, we did. In fact, I've got the lyrics here, so I'm just gonna read you this. The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on, he took a face from the ancient gallery, and he walked on down the hall. He went into the room where his sister lived, and then he paid a visit to his brother, and then he walked on down the hall, yeah, and came to a door, and he looked inside. Father, yes, son, I want to kill you. Mother, I want to, oh yeah, oh, oh yeah, come on, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:41

They they actually censored it on the original album. Oh, did they? Yeah, but there is a re-release where you can hear him just shouting, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, that's the that's the bit after, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:52

Yeah, the fuck fuck oh yeah, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah. Come on, baby, come on, come on, fuck, fuck, baby, yeah. Essentially, this is the end, beautiful friend, this is the end, my only friend, the end. What a tremendous song.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:07

It is, and I have to say, because I played in a door's tribute band for a while. When you play that song, we did we did kind of the Hollywood Bowl version where he he breaks into sort of poem in the middle and all that kind of stuff. And oh yes, yeah. And it it has a ritualistic quality to it, without a doubt. When you have the light show going and that, it is um, yeah, there's something in that song more than it just being a a song, I think. But that's what the doors are all about, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:34

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, like the whole thing, the whole setup of it really does sort of bring to mind a lot of those cults and and all that kind of thing, doesn't it? You know, it's it's all a bit manson family, isn't it? Things like that. You know, the the the bus on the King's Highway and Ride the Snake, Ride.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:53

Ride the Snake, yeah. Well, this is this is the they were the dark side of the 60s, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:57

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

Peace and love, yeah, yeah. Fear and loathing in uh Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:03

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, yeah, that's why I've always been a big fan of it. So here we go, back to the afterword. Only a few readers seem to have realized that the protagonist of the River of Night's Dreaming is actually male, but perceiving himself as female in his psychotic state. And the reality of the story is from his or her point of view, the story is deliberately set upon two levels, supernatural and psychotic, and the levels merge and interchange. Now, did you get that? Because I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:37

I have to say no, no, I I didn't. Now I want to go back and reread it again, knowing that to see if I can pick up on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:46

Now you see, I read it this morning and with that knowledge, and no, I still didn't get that at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:53

Yeah, yeah, I I can't see there's anything in there that overtly points to that, um, unless we're missing something obvious. I'd be interested to see what what listeners think of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:07

Um, that does make me also slightly wary of of this trope of the cross-dressing serial killer kind of thing, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:14

Again, yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's it's strange because I never got that. I never got that at all. And I don't think it's ne I don't think it's actually necessary. I don't think it really adds anything either way. Uh it doesn't add or detract either way, really.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:27

I don't know, there's it there's enough layers in there already, I think. Oh god, there's so many layers, it's like a bloody onion. Glass onion. I mean, a very powerful story, I think, on a lot uh again, like most of these weird tales. You can read that through as a one-off and move on to the next one. But I think the strength in these is when you go back, maybe reread it and start to think of all the implications. That's when the true horror and weirdness comes out. In all of the best weird stories, whether it's Lovecraft or Wagner or Ramsay Campbell, you know, they all have that quality, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:05

Yes, I would totally agree. Um, speaking of Ramsay Campbell, I mentioned earlier that Ramsay Campbell did an introduction to this edition. It's only a little short. In the introduction, there's a very short bit about this story, so I'm just going to read it to you because, yeah, I think he agrees with us. The River of Night's Dreaming may be the finest story. It is certainly the most variously disturbing and a masterpiece. In this story, Wagner uses Robert W. Chambers' mysterious symbol of the King in Yellow for highly personal ends. The River of Night's Dreaming repays especially attentive reading and offers Wagner's finest nightmare landscape to put the reader in the mood. Yeah, I couldn't I couldn't agree more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:53

Absolutely, totally, totally. Yes, a masterpiece of weird fiction.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:58

Absolutely. And that's the thing with this collection in a lonely place. I mean, oh it every story is a banger, you know, it's one of those. And but it's like, how'd you how do you pick between that and sticks? Because in my mind, they're both really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:16

Yeah. Well, and I think it's a great shame that the Kane novels remain unpublished. And if if you want to get the old original copies, which I think probably date back 1970s, 80s, maybe something like that. They're very difficult. Uh I I saw on look there's a Carl Edward Wagner Facebook group, and someone in there scored two of them in uh a sort of thrift shop for 50p each. You know, you go on eBay, they're 250 pounds or something. And there was talk of trying to get the rights to republish at some point, right? But I don't know how far along that is. It would be great to see some definitive editions of those coming out.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:58

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? How some authors you you're tripping over editions, but others, often with better more merit, just seem to get uh you know, like by the wayside, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:10

Yeah, but it's your mainstream effect again, isn't it? Yeah, same with music. The Brandon Sandersons, which all I always thought was such an odd name, or Sandon Branderson, you know. But and and who's the other one who does uh thrillers? I I've I've even blotted his name out. Patterson, is it? Oh yeah. I go in the library and there's just like three shelves of one guy. No way he's written all those, he must have ghostwriters working for him. And it's it's just endless wallpaper, in my mind, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:38

Especially now they've all adopted that same sort of cover art, they all look the same. In fact, in Aldi up the road here, there's the the uh you know the the the center aisles of Aldi, they where you sell like black and decker drills and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:52

The middle of Liddle, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:53

Yeah, yeah, where they sell all that stuff. They've got a bit now for summer reads for holidays, right? And it made me laugh because again, it was the all the same. It's Harlan Coben and Linda Le Plant and all these, and they've all got the same covers. And right in the middle of them was Stephen King's Pet Cemetery with the same kind of cover, it was a white cover with green like splotches on it, and one of these splotches was a cat. And it was like, that's not the right cover for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:22

I want to see a return to 60s and 70s cover art on paperback. So I'm leading that charge. We're just designing the cover for my Queen of the Fens book, which after 15 years is almost ready, we're at final proof stage. Nice, and we're really trying to get that old 70-style paperback look, um, you know, which is a bit of work, but I think it it just gonna look so much more characterful than having uh a red thing and a green thing and a blue square and uh you know a squiggly bit. Yeah, yeah. So there we go, dear listener. Thanks very much for joining us today in uh the river of nights dreaming. Very interested in hearing your thoughts on that one. Pick the bones out of that, as they say.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:07

Although you said joining us in the river of nights dreaming, right now I'm sitting in the river of Tim's sweat, it's horrible.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:14

Oh, it's not a pretty, it's not a pretty sight, folks. He is uh sitting naked in a tub full of jello as well. So yeah, we'll we'll just implant that thought in your mind.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:24

I look a little bit like Sarthogua right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:28

Hey, hey, come on, if you're gonna look like a god, you know, all these things get the body of a god, yeah. I'll go for Sarthogua anyway. Sarthogua, absolutely, absolutely cat, bat, toad, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:39

Yeah, that works for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:41

Yeah, forget forget Apollo and all that nonsense with his little fig leaf. No, I want to be uh Sarthog with a huge endowment, casually lolling over one thigh. Oh, see, we've been infected by Mr. Wagner. Not that we take much infecting. Let's move on to our mailbag, shall we? Our squirming, pulsating mailbag. Indeed. So we're looking back to episode 126, the inhabitant of Carcosa, and we shall start on Patreon. And we have a message in from Watchek Altakobza. As always, a wonderful episode. I've always been fascinated by how Hastur, the King in Yellow, and Carcosa change and involve depending on which author they happen to be under. The latest author to make a significant impact on the Hastur mythos is John Scott Tynes, whose stories Ambrose, Rudelbin, and Sosostris form the basis of Impossible Landscapes, the Best King in Yellow campaign. And let's not forget that there are several on the market for Caller Cthulhu and Delta Green. Thank you for that. Yeah, not a uh writer I'm familiar with, but I shall be looking those up, of course, especially uh if they are RPG related as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:00

Indeed, yeah, I've just been that's why I went quiet for a minute, I was writing it down.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:07

Now we were talking about Beers' pen name, Dodd Grile or Grill, and what the meaning of that was. Helena Nash wrote in, ah, you disappeared down an anagram rabbit hole and concluded that Ambrose Bears had a connection to Old Ridge Road in Ballum, where he lived while in London. Ah well, that would seem to fit if he lived in an Old Ridge Road in Ballum. Dodd Grill, that works. That does work. We're going to investigate that further. Thanks, Helena. Thanks for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:40

Nice. Next up, we have a message in from our old friend Ralph Grasso. Men in Tweed. Jack London may have been the godfather of that West Coast writing group. He also wrote weird fiction, prehistoric fantasy, and racial memory stories, in which Howard picked up on.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:57

Yeah, Jack London was a big influence on Robert Howard, certainly, as Ralph mentions there. And just on that Dodd Grill topic, over on YouTube, Rick Kennett143 posted Bears' pseudonym, Dod Grill. Sounds like it could be a play on the word dogger rule. Yes, yes, that fits as well. Thank you, Rick.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:21

Noing, well, devil's dictionary, I would say that's possibly the winner there. That would be a very Bearsian thing to do, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:33

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:35

Also on YouTube, Rambam3000 says, another great episode. I love Tim's expression full-on scary fairy. Yeah, that's very me, isn't it? But putting that scene aside, mortals should find elves uncanny, even frightening, because of how essentially alien they are to our own condition. Also, if the protagonist of an inhabitant of Coscosa is looking for his body, does that mean he wants to get his carcass on? Oh god, I love it. I love it. Regarding astrology, a scientific and entirely non-judgmental explanation is by researcher Iden Paladin on her Science Sybil channel. I can recommend her. She does excellent work and is very thorough. Well, thank you for that, Rambam 3000. Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:27

Yes, I should check that out. That sounds interesting. Now, just going back a little further in time to episode 125 of the Mademoiselle Dis on the Innsmouth Forum, Tobias writes, Okay, bear with me on this one.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:43

Here we go. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:45

Strap yourselves in. I know it sounds silly, and to be fair, it was intended as a joke to begin with, but then I reacquainted myself with the lyrics. With all your mentions of getting there but not being able to leave, I had to ask how you managed to avoid mentioning Hotel California. Also, have we thoroughly considered the possibility that Hotel California is a liminal space? So the lyrics begin with our protagonist alone travelling through a desert, desert or moorland, both workers' vast landscapes where one can lose oneself without finding any trace of civilization. Cool wind in my hair, he seems fresh and enjoying himself. Then he sees a shimmering light up ahead and suddenly is struck with fatigue. This combined with hearing a mysterious bell and a woman standing in the doorway, you can't tell me this isn't a siren spell put upon him, luring him into her lair. Later, she's got a lot of pretty boys that she calls friends, reminding me directly of Jean Dis and her pickers, Wile and Hasteur. The lady in the song must surely be a siren or some sort of fake creature, ensnaring wary travellers. All through the song we keep hearing distant disembodied voices telling the protagonist what kind of places ended up in. Warning voices from previous victims, or possibly mocking voices from the lady's fake inn. The whole dance to remember, dance to forget, that's straight up fairy magic, that is. I get the same feeling from the feast in the Master's Chamber, being mocked with troves of food you're unable to eat. This also reminded me of the trope of people thinking they're munching down on a feast, where in reality the food is all rotten and spoiled. Fairy eff in magic, I tell you. Anyway, I'll be delighted to hear your take on this. Until then, Cheerio. I can't argue with any of that, Tobias.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:42

I love it. No, it's interesting that you mentioned fairy feasts earlier. But uh yeah. Oh, that that's absolutely brilliant. Yeah, nice one, Tobias. Yeah, I'm surprised nobody's actually written a liminal space weird fiction story based on that, having read that, because that is a synopsis right there.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:03

Yeah, maybe maybe they have. I'm gonna have a search around because I I think I mean it is a liminal space slow down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's a it is a great bit of writing that song. I'm not particularly an Eagles fan, but you can't not like that song, can you really?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:17

It's a classic for a reason, right? I mean, yeah, whether it's your cup of tea or not, it is a uh classic for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:24

Uh you can check in anytime, but you can never leave echoes of Royston Vasy, right? You you'll never leave.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:30

Yeah. And the thing is, as well, you know, because it is a brothel bodello kind of thing, rooms, hotel. I mean, I've been in so many hotels that are like the back rooms, you know. It's all those never-ending corridors, and you know, you you take a wrong turn somewhere when you're trying to find the lobby, and you end up down in the kitchens or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:55

Just that timelessness of the decor and the owners and that sort of stuff. Very sort of Robert Aikman as well, isn't it? Indeed. Yeah, who actually we should cover at some point. I don't think we've done Aikman yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:07

No, we haven't. And and on the same story, we have a message in from Dominic Allen, who again thank you for coming to Ipswich and surviving. He sent me a message saying he enjoyed it, but he was lurking at the back of the room, so not to be seen by the denizens.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:22

We totally expect our listeners to be lurkers, I think. Indeed.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:27

Yeah. Oh yeah, you've got to have a lurk.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:29

It's mandatory.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:31

Absolutely. Regarding the chat about lost towns around the coastline. Now living in Norfolk, I discovered from research, not swimming, that at the end of Cromer Pier, there is the old town of Shipton. This appeared as usual in medieval times, but for years after, at low tide, the top of the church steeple was visible. In 1888, a pleasure steamer from Yarmouth got itself caught on the steeple, also known as Church Rock, and the passengers all had to be rescued after it was considered dangerous and was blown up with dynamite. Love it, absolutely love it. Yeah, I think I think I did know about I've been a croma a bunch of times. I think I did know about that. And um, I think that's that was used in one of the Doctor Who's spin-off audio dramas, Jago and Lightfoot. I think it was used in one of those. But still on the talk of Lost Villages, there is a book, The Lost Villages of Norfolk by Cameron Self, which details, as you'd expect, all the Lost Villages of Norfolk. There are hundreds, and about ten have been taken by the sea. So probably a lot more deep ones than we really know about.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:44

Oh, definitely, absolutely. They're all out there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:47

Yeah. There's a lot round here as well, especially in West Sussex. In West Sussex, there's a load, like just down the road, like near New Haven, there's three. Just between like New Haven and Bright lost lost settlements, lost villages on the coast that have just been swallowed.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:04

It's very interesting, isn't it? Very interesting. And our old friend Niels from California continues the theme. Not lost towns along a coastline, but there's a large dam near my hometown which submerged an abandoned California Gold Rush Town. Any remaining ruins were pretty much demolished when the dam reservoir was filled 70 years ago. But part of the area was exposed during a major drought in the 2010s. All that remained were foundations and footings. They did move the old cemetery, so it wasn't also submerged. Thank God for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:41

You don't want floaters appearing, do you?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:44

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:45

Like the ending of um poltergeist, in it, in the swimming pool.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:50

I should imagine being out fishing on the lake. Oh, I've I've caught a big one here. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's a femur. And finally, just going back to episode 123, the water of knowledge, mournful sire posts on YouTube. Greetings from Slowly Catching Up South End. Just bought the 2016 edition in January and working my way through. And the Hippocampus Press Letters 2 is currently around £26 at Blackwell's and Amazon. Stop recommending so many books, please don't. As always, many thanks, gents. Much appreciated. Oh, you're very welcome, sir. And uh yeah, slowly catching up South End. Uh I don't think South End is shrinking just yet. Let me know if it is. I mean, I know South End very well. Obviously, it's that's like East London on sea, you know, South End.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:45

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:46

I think the Thames estuary is is pretty safe from erosion, but I could be wrong. I know, well, Can V was always at risk from flooding, of course. Uh that that's an issue around there. But uh, I think South End's going to be there for a while and quite right too.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:02

I always thought it was spelt with an R and an F growing up because of the way SAFN. SAFN, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:09

There we go, folks. Please do keep all those letters and messages and missives coming in. We do enjoy reading your thoughts and your opinions. Uh, of course, you can get in touch with us on Patreon, you can leave a message on YouTube, you can send an email to insmouthbooklife atoutlook.com, and of course, it'd be very nice if you could post and join in on the Innsmouth Forum, which has got a lot of interesting stuff happening at the moment, some nice discussions developing there.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:39

Yes, so thank you very much for joining us this episode. And tune in next time, where we will be joined by Marco Visconti.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:47

Yes, Marco is going to be dropping into Innsmouth next time. He is a guest at the ILF, of course. Now, Marco has just recently released a book called Black Stars in Dim Carcosa, The Nechronomican Field Notes. And I popped down to Watkins Books in London a few weeks ago to see him give a talk on that. So we thought we'd get him in. It's going to be a very interesting chat. Marco is an experienced occultist, uh a musician, and uh a Lovecraft enthusiast. So we're looking forward to his visit. And just before wrapping up, we'd like to give a big Innsmouth welcome to our latest patron, Forsaken City. If you'd like to join them in supporting the show, then nip over to our Patreon site. Of course, when you become a member, you get access to bonus contents for the Innsmouth Book Club and Strange Shadows. You get a quarterly copy of Innsmouth News PDF, and of course, free entry to the Innsmouth Literary Festival and uh any other events that we may be planning. We're going back to that planning thing. Planning is one thing, getting it organized is another, right? But we we have good intentions, they just take a little while to bear fruit sometimes, like uh like anything good in Innsmouth, fruiting bodies, fruiting bodies, absolutely. And on that gruesome note, it's goodbye from him, Timon Tilado Mendieselbub.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:21

That is goodbye from him, Roberto Puffyo Gravewormioitem.