A Story With a History
“The Mound” by Zelia Bishop and H. P. Lovecraft is one of the last Lovecraft Mythos stories to see print. Only “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” would come after. Oddly, for me, I hadn’t read it until the year 2020. I have read probably 95% of everything HPL wrote that is even vaguely related to horror fiction. Granted, I read most of his work with an eye on using the material for my Call of Cthulhu role-playing games. (I could stand to go back and re-read just for the pleasure of it now…) But I finally got a copy of the Weird Tales version of “The Mound” (Weird Tales, November 1940). Oddly, the cover is neither an illustration of this story, nor does it bear HPL’s name.
The story has a bit of a history. Bishop supplied a fairly conventional ghost story outline which HPL turned into a 30,000 word novella. According to Bishop, she and Frank Belknap Long wrote the story with Lovecraft’s guidance. I don’t think this is supported by the facts. Whoever wrote it, Farnsworth Wright rejected it in 1930, for being too long. Frank Belknap Long did an edited but it still didn’t sell.
Farnsworth Wright left Weird Tales in 1940 and then died shortly after. The story was edited down by August Derleth (which he would do with “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” as well in 1942) and sold it to Dorothy McIlwraith. In 1989 the full version was published in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions. So it is the Augie Derleth version I have finally read. Some day I may try the longer one.
Welcome to Oklahoma
The story is a kind of sequel to the Bishop/Lovecraft story “The Curse of Yig” (Weird Tales, November 1929). There is a vague reference to: “a place I had long known as the scene of a very terrible and particular inexplicable occurrence connected with the old snake-god myth.” Beyond this “The Mound” only shares a common setting, Oklahoma.
The main character is a visiting archaeologist who is intrigued by the mounds that lie just outside of Binger in Caddo County. He stays with a local family named Compton. Gramma Compton is a well of information. She tells of stories of two ghosts that haunt the mounds, a male Indian during the day who walks back and forth, and a headless woman who carries a blue light at night. Many people have gone to the mounds, some have dug. There are people who have found nothing, and others who were never found again. In one case, in 1920, the Clay boys, Ed and Walker disappeared. Ed came back months later, with a wild story about an underground civilization that held him. His brother Walker had died by torture but Ed escaped. Once home, Ed wrote a long missive then burned most of it before killing himself.
The next part of the tale follows the narrator approaching the Mound with shovel and pick-axe. No one will accompany him the whole way. A group watches from safety. He digs and finds a metal cylinder. This proves to be made of some unknown metal and bears obscene carvings on it. Inside, is a yellowed manuscript in colonial Spanish. The man returns to his room at Compton’s and begins translating. It fascinates him to think the words were written in the time of King Henry VIII.
The Tale of Zamacona
The missive is a journal by Panfilo de Zamacona from 1545. The date surprises the translator because Francisco Coronado who explored north of Mexico in 1540 had turned back before 1545. Zamacona left the expedition and struck out on his own. With the help of a Native American man named Charging Buffalo, Zamacona learns of entrances that lead to an underground world where the Old Ones went. This fascinating place is terrible and mind-numbing but gold lies everywhere. Loaded with food and torches, Charging Buffalo takes the Spaniard to the entrance but will not go with him.
Zamacona climbs through holes and down passages and slopes until he arrives at the plain below. Only once does he glimpse an obscene pale white figure. He finds a number of weird tracks he can’t identify. At the bottom he finds a temple. The exterior is a ruin of stone but the interior is entirely made of gold. Above the altar is a recognizable figure: “…the sinister pyramidal altar with the hollow top, or the monstrous, octopus-headed abnormality in some strange, dark metal leering and squatting broodingly on its hieroglyphed pedestal….”
The Conquistador sees a large herd of strange animals approach. He goes into the temple and closes the door with difficulty. He can hear the beasts outside but eventually goes to sleep. He is woken by knocking. The door is difficult to open because of the dirt the animals have disturbed but a group of men await. They resemble Native American but not of the kind the Spaniard is familiar with. The men sit and communicate with Zamacona using telepathy.
The Land of K’n-yan
They tell him many things: the underground world is called Xinaian or K’n-yan. They come from a city called Tsath. The people and animals of K’n-yan all share a common genetic ancestry, blending the Xianians, their slaves, their animals. This fact horrifies Zamacona, because he could see that certain features the animals possess appear to be human. The Xianians slave race is called the y’m-bhi, the animals gyaa-yothn. Zamacona rides one of the animals which have rudimentary intelligence and require no halter or reins.
For the next four years, Zamacona is an honored guest of the Xianians. Since no surface man has been allowed to stay among them since Atlantis and Lemuria, he is wealth of information. (This doesn’t quite jibe with the tale of Ed Walker.) He is given an apartment, lovers, all the luxuries of the higher classes. Despite this Zamacona wants to leave (something he is not allowed) with a fortune in gold. He learns about the gateways, which are now guarded. Zamacona’s information about Spain and other European countries coming to the New World worry the underdwellers. The gateways are guarded by two ranks of y’m-bhi, one at night and the other in the day. (The translator remembers the headless woman and the day ghost.)
To truly escape, Zamacona cultivates a relationship with one female Xianian, T’la-yub. Her family is connected with gateways. She knows of a gate that is not guarded. Disguised as workers, Zamacona and T’la-yub take four pack animals with packs of gold and make their break. One of the animals gets frightened by the overgrown gateway and flees. It tells the Xianians of the escape and the couple are arrested. Zamacona is reinstated in his privileged life (with a warning never to try again) but the woman as a native is sent to the amphitheater for the games. She has her head cut off then is made into an undead y’m-bhi and set to guard the same gateway she tried to use.
Return From Tsath
Zamacona doesn’t learn his lesson. He finds the Xianians too decadent, cruel and nihilistic. He continues to pray to Christ and tries again. The fact that the cylinder is found in the dirt of the Mound suggests Zamacona was recaptured and faced a terrible fate. The translator wonders if he can believe this story or if it is a very elaborate hoax. He returns to the Mound the next day but finds his shovel and pick-axe (which he left) gone. Using his machete and knife he digs anyway until the ground breaks. There is a passage way. His tools are there. He follows the passage, seeing evidence from Zamacona’s story, again and again. And finally he sees the guard:
…It had been made a sentry for punishment, and it was quite dead, besides lacking head, arms, lower legs and other customary parts of a human being. yes, it had been a very human being once; and what is more, it had been white.
A poorly written Spanish message is written across its chest: “Seized by the will of K-n-yan in the headless body of T’la-yub.”
Conclusion
And with that last italicized show stopper, I think I have now read every major piece Lovecraft wrote. It makes me a little sad. This tale strikes me as not particularly effective. It’s way too long to be scary. It is fascinating as a piece of Lost World fiction but not Lovecraftian horror. (Edgar Rice Burroughs was one of his influences.) I am a fan of Adventure Mythos, but this strikes me as a middling sample of that. I think as a horror tale it gives too much away. If the middle part was removed, with some shorter replacement, and then the ending it might have worked. Lovecraft forgets his own rules for weird fiction in “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction”(1933):
Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing. Prime emphasis should be given to subtle suggestion—imperceptible hints and touches of selective associative detail which express shadings of moods and build up a vague illusion of the strange reality of the unreal. Avoid bald catalogues of incredible happenings which can have no substance or meaning apart from a sustaining cloud of colour and symbolism.
Perhaps I am wrong. I will try to find the unedited version and see if that is better. Like “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, “The Mound” is intriguing as an example of Lovecraft writing outside the usual Jamesian model. I can only shed a small tear there are no more completely unknown Lovecraft text to conquer.
