The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) by Vin Suprynowicz Read Free Book Online
Authors: Vin Suprynowicz
live on.”
“Milliner as in hats?”
“Right. Millinery. This was the 1920s, when virtually everyone in America still wore a hat whenever they stepped outdoors. Sonia Greene designed hats.”
“OK.”
“So finally Lovecraft’s homesickness for Providence overwhelmed him, they both came back here, Sonia told the aunts she could open a hat shop, which would have been the family’s only source of income, and they wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Why?”
“I told you; they were ‘Society’ — an attitude I’m afraid I know a little something about. They would not have any wife of any nephew of theirs bringing in an income by being involved in ‘trade.’ Would not hear of it.”
“Amazing.”
“Sonia gave up and left.”
Matthew nodded.
Worthy leaned forward in his chair. “Up through the summer of 1920, when Lovecraft turned 30 years old, he embraced this ‘nothing commercial’ attitude, which wasn’t unique for the time. Then, in the fall of 1920, Lovecraft wrote a short story called ‘From Beyond.’ And soon after, the next year, ‘Herbert West — Reanimator.’
“Now, Lovecraft never made much money from his writings. He was lucky to get $25 or $50 for a story, so it wasn’t exactly selling out for the big bucks. But these stories were different. They bridged thegap between fantasy and what we now call Science Fiction. Right, Les?”
“Absolutely. Lovecraft became an inspiration and a mentor to a whole generation of future horror and science fiction writers, some of them just teen-agers when they started trading letters with him. The days before the Internet, of course. Henry Kuttner, Fritz Leiber. By the 1960s and ’70s they were making feature-length films out of stories like ‘From Beyond’ and ‘Re-Animator,’ which was about a scientist who develops a serum that allows him to bring dead bodies back to life, fifty years before anyone ever heard of Pet Sematary. ”
“So you’re saying something changed in 1920?” Matthew asked.
“Exactly. Why in the fall of 1920 did he suddenly start writing science fiction, stuff good enough that people are still eating it up, almost a century later? Why did it start with ‘From Beyond’? And why does that story still resonate today, so they’re still making movie versions of this little 2,400-word short story?”
Les took over. “What Worthy’s asking is whether ‘From Beyond’ was just a nightmare, or whether Lovecraft based it on something real — something he encountered in the summer of 1920, something he recorded in this notebook.”
“‘From Beyond’ is the one about the resonator?”
“Exactly,” Worthy took over again. “A scientist — Lovecraft’s rough draft used the name Annesley, although later in the published version he changed the name to Tillinghast — develops a machine that allows anyone in close proximity to see things that are normally outside the limited frequency range of human vision — creatures that share this space with us but live in another dimension, able to literally pass right through what we see as solid objects.”
“Which readers at the time would have considered impossible,” Les added, getting up to answer a scratch at the back door. It wasn’t Tabbyhunter this time, though, but coal-black Serafina, she of the emerald eyes, who spotted a stranger in the kitchen, backed off nervously, and immediately scratched to be let into the back stairwell.
“Less so, now,” Matthew nodded. “It’s been commonly reported among users of ayahuasca and the Stropharia mushrooms that they encounter a hum, a buzzing tone, at a certain frequency that grows louder as the drug trance deepens. Then they figured out it wasn’t just hallucinated, if you hummed or chanted that same tone or its various harmonics it set up a vibration inside the skull that considerably enhanced the experience. The McKennas went down to the headwaters of the Amazon and conducted an experiment with these tones, they
“Milliner as in hats?”
“Right. Millinery. This was the 1920s, when virtually everyone in America still wore a hat whenever they stepped outdoors. Sonia Greene designed hats.”
“OK.”
“So finally Lovecraft’s homesickness for Providence overwhelmed him, they both came back here, Sonia told the aunts she could open a hat shop, which would have been the family’s only source of income, and they wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Why?”
“I told you; they were ‘Society’ — an attitude I’m afraid I know a little something about. They would not have any wife of any nephew of theirs bringing in an income by being involved in ‘trade.’ Would not hear of it.”
“Amazing.”
“Sonia gave up and left.”
Matthew nodded.
Worthy leaned forward in his chair. “Up through the summer of 1920, when Lovecraft turned 30 years old, he embraced this ‘nothing commercial’ attitude, which wasn’t unique for the time. Then, in the fall of 1920, Lovecraft wrote a short story called ‘From Beyond.’ And soon after, the next year, ‘Herbert West — Reanimator.’
“Now, Lovecraft never made much money from his writings. He was lucky to get $25 or $50 for a story, so it wasn’t exactly selling out for the big bucks. But these stories were different. They bridged thegap between fantasy and what we now call Science Fiction. Right, Les?”
“Absolutely. Lovecraft became an inspiration and a mentor to a whole generation of future horror and science fiction writers, some of them just teen-agers when they started trading letters with him. The days before the Internet, of course. Henry Kuttner, Fritz Leiber. By the 1960s and ’70s they were making feature-length films out of stories like ‘From Beyond’ and ‘Re-Animator,’ which was about a scientist who develops a serum that allows him to bring dead bodies back to life, fifty years before anyone ever heard of Pet Sematary. ”
“So you’re saying something changed in 1920?” Matthew asked.
“Exactly. Why in the fall of 1920 did he suddenly start writing science fiction, stuff good enough that people are still eating it up, almost a century later? Why did it start with ‘From Beyond’? And why does that story still resonate today, so they’re still making movie versions of this little 2,400-word short story?”
Les took over. “What Worthy’s asking is whether ‘From Beyond’ was just a nightmare, or whether Lovecraft based it on something real — something he encountered in the summer of 1920, something he recorded in this notebook.”
“‘From Beyond’ is the one about the resonator?”
“Exactly,” Worthy took over again. “A scientist — Lovecraft’s rough draft used the name Annesley, although later in the published version he changed the name to Tillinghast — develops a machine that allows anyone in close proximity to see things that are normally outside the limited frequency range of human vision — creatures that share this space with us but live in another dimension, able to literally pass right through what we see as solid objects.”
“Which readers at the time would have considered impossible,” Les added, getting up to answer a scratch at the back door. It wasn’t Tabbyhunter this time, though, but coal-black Serafina, she of the emerald eyes, who spotted a stranger in the kitchen, backed off nervously, and immediately scratched to be let into the back stairwell.
“Less so, now,” Matthew nodded. “It’s been commonly reported among users of ayahuasca and the Stropharia mushrooms that they encounter a hum, a buzzing tone, at a certain frequency that grows louder as the drug trance deepens. Then they figured out it wasn’t just hallucinated, if you hummed or chanted that same tone or its various harmonics it set up a vibration inside the skull that considerably enhanced the experience. The McKennas went down to the headwaters of the Amazon and conducted an experiment with these tones, they
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