Steffan B. Aletti in the Lowdnes magazines of the late 1960s is a good example of the renewed interest in H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos that happened at that time. Attacks on Lovecraft’s legacy had been made by Damon Knight in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction with “The Tedious Mr. Lovecraft” (August 1960). J. Vernon Shea wrote a counter-argument for HPL’s greatness in “H. P. Lovecraft: The House and the Shadows” (F&SF, May 1966). Fritz Leiber also wrote in Lovecraft’s defense.
Writing Mythos
While the SF crowd reviled HPL, the horror readers were discovering him again. August Derleth and Arkham House had kept the flame burning since 1939 and small revivals happened off and on. This would happen again around 1985 when Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu rpg would spawn a whole new crowd of fans. As one of those fans I read every Mythos tale I could find: original Weird Tales, later posthumous pastiches, the early Ramsey Campbell, you name it. I figure I read over two hundred stories. I have to admit I missed Mr. Aletti’s work, probably because it wasn’t reprinted until the 1990s.
Sitting in 2021, I have to be honest and say my appetite for Cthulhu Mythos pastiche has become less than it was. There seems to be a new anthology of Mythos material every other month from editors like Stephen Jones, S. T. Joshi or Brian M. Sammons. Which is great for the new fans of the 21st Century, but not for me. My Mythos ship has sailed.
The Castle in the Window
So I was surprised when I dipped into Aletti’s stories and found I quite enjoyed them but perhaps not for the reasons you’d think.
“The Castle in the Window” (Magazine of Horror, July 1968) has a man buy a diary from an old bookshop that tells of how its writer, Gywnn, created a mirror on the past. He had it placed as a window in an old house in Cornwall. Going there, the narrator and his antiquarian friend, Colin, find ‘Reynolds House’ and uncover the glass. Scraping the paint from the surface and removing the wall boards on the outside of the house, Colin manages to get the glass working. The two men can see medieval Cornwall lying in the mist. Colin presses so hard against the glass he breaks it but falls through time.
Later when the narrator checks the castle records he finds mention of a man dressed in strange clothes who spoke an odd form of English. The people of the castle hand him over to the witch hunters, who burn him alive.
This slight tale reminds me a little of August Derleth’s posthumous collab “The Gable Window” or “The Murky Glass” (Saturn, May 1957) as well as Donald Wandrei’s “The Painted Mirror” (reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader, February 1949), both far more horrifying tales. Aletti’s story has a reference to the Necronomicon and a Lovecraftian bookishness but feels like only half a story. Despite this, the editor said in the intro of his next story that the readers thought highly of it.
Letters to the Editor
In a letter (Magazine of Horror, September 1968), Aletti discusses his initial reasons for writing horror:
“I’ve thought a great deal about horror; I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s very often an inborn interest. For no apparent reason (to me anyway), when I came of reading age, I bought the Modern Library editions of Famous Ghost Stories and Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural; about that time, Nelson Omstead was on the radio at night reading horror stories on his program, ‘Sleep No More’. Several years after this, the horror movies arrived on television, and every Friday night I would watch them; thus I got to see all the classics as well as some really terrible old movies that were more horrible in quality than content.
The Eye of Horus
“The Eye of Horus” (Magazine of Horror, November 1968) is an Egyptian tale in the Robert Bloch/Weird Tales tradition. An editor, known only as M. K., gives us the typed account of George Warren. A rich man, Warren funds several digs, but finally goes his own way and finds an untouched tomb. Accompanied by a Greek soldier of fortune named Kalatis, they descend into the tomb to find a bird-like specter. Kalatis also finds a statue of Horus that is not a piece of sculpture but a living god. Horus raises a flock of hawks that kill the Greek and chase Warren out. Rushing to the museum he types up the account, giving the carbon to MK. Both manuscript and Warren mysteriously disappear.
A fan of Bloch’s many Egyptian Mythos tales as well as Robert S. Carr’s “Spider Bite”, I could dig this story. It had a good monster in it at least, which “The Castle in the Window” lacked. The only problem was the build up was too rushed. The movie, The Pyramid (2014) is pretty much this story with Anubis instead of Horus.
The Last Work of Pietro of Apono
“The Last Work of Pietro of Apono” (Magazine of Horror, May 1969) has a Renaissance scholar looking for the last, lost scroll of Pietro of Apono, who was burned by the Inquisition. The scroll was the final thing he worked on before being taken away. The hidden manuscript was translated into Latin and buried with the heretic. Digging up the body, the narrator reads the obscene rites of vampirism mentioned. Since the rite is not finished he does not become possessed but only tormented by evil visions. He takes poison and walks in the Italian sunshine…
I think Aletti was going for something like an M. R. James tale or Lovecraft’s “The Hound” but there just isn’t enough here. It is a good set-up for a story that wasn’t written.
The Cellar Room
Aletti wrote another letter (Magazine of Horror, Summer 1970) breaking down his thoughts on the previous issue in the best fan boy manner. This was his last appearance in MOH but his last story appeared in another Lowdnes mag. “The Cellar Room” (Weird Terror Tales, Fall 1970) seems like Aletti’s most complete story. In the past, a psychic researcher, Sir Harold Wolverton, suffered a tragedy when having a seance that resulted in the death of his wife. Harold claims an ectoplasmic body formed and attacked the researchers.
Wolverton hires the narrator, a spiritualist, to edit his diaries. The narrator insists on re-enacting the same seance in the cellar with Sir Harold. Ectoplasm flows out of the old man, reforming the weird elemental. The spiritualist manages to escape by lighting matches. He calls for the butler and a lantern. Returning to the cellar, the elemental has formed into an eight foot tall thing with long pseudopods. The monster kills the butler, trapping the narrator. He escapes when the sunrises comes up. Stumbling in the street he calls for help.
When the cops check the basement, they find the dead butler and Sir Harold all shriveled up. The doctors say he has been dead for months. Evidence by witnesses prove this can’t be the case and the narrator is not charged. The police don’t see the monster but several murders have happened in the area, so the narrator knows it is still out there. There is no sequel to tie up this loose end. His use of an elemental instead of a ghost is interesting, being a monster in a Flaxman Low’s “The Story of Baelbrow”, a Jules de Grandin’s “The Curse of Everard Maundy” or even Dr. Muncing.
The Good, the Bad and the Awful
To go back to that cryptic statement earlier, about enjoying Aletti’s work for a reason you might not expect… I can remember writing Mythos fiction in the late 1980s and dwelling in a place that Mr. Aletti obviously knows well. It is a world where Lovecraft colors everything, new ideas are frequent and you feel you have to write them down quickly. (I got the same feeling when I read Joe R. Lansdale’s earliest short stories.)
Decades later that feeling is much harder to find. This is good and bad. It means reading Mythos is harder to enjoy, because you’ve read eighty deep one tales already, and countless diaries and mad men telling their stories in asylums. But it is good too. Lovecraft is in my skull but not an overwhelming force any longer. I can slow down and re-read HPL’s original tales (and those of the Weird Tales crowd) with a more critical eye. And I have found my own voice in the process. I have taken what I want from the world of Arkham and I have moved on. I am sure Ramsey Campbell could tell you something about all of this too.
Finding the Magic
Steffan B. Aletti resurfaced after the groovy days of 1970, with new stories in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror and Eldritch Tales. Robert M. Price collected his “The Castle in the Window” in The Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab (1996) and the last three tales in Acolytes of Cthulhu (2001). His last work dates to 2019 so more Aletti stories may be on the horizon. I look forward to finding and reading these later works. I can only hope Aletti, too, has moved on to his own dark magic.
Unfortunately, Mr. Aletti passed away May 30, 2018. He was a well-respected jeweler, journalist, photographer, and musician, and was apparently 74 years old. Aside from the stories mentioned in the article, I only know of four others published many years later: “Yellow Shadows,” Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror (2003), “The Glade by the Lake,” Eldritch Tales, Vol. 2, no 3 (2018), “Chat,” Eldritch Tales, Vol. 2, no. 4 (2018), and “Stereopticon,” Eldritch Tales, Vol. 2, no. 5 (2019), all four edited by Robert M. Price. I wish someone would put together a book collecting all of his fiction. He was a very talented writer, and should not be forgotten.