I Read Stories: Than Curse The Darkness by David Drake
Than Curse The Darkness by David Drake
Why would humans worship the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, that is the question Drake raises in the introduction of this story. After all if the cultists succeed, then they will wipe human life from the Earth.
Dame Alice Kilrea, Anglo-Irish scholar at the start of the 20th century, has studied the forbidden books for decades. She has cultivated connections in high places. Her studies have revealed that the crawling chaos will be unleashed and where, and she uses all her knowledge and influence – and wealth – to set out to stop it.
In the Congo Free State, at this time the private domain of King Leopold of Belgium, villages must provide 4kg of rubber per week per person. They are given no instruction on how to maintain the rubber trees, so they die, and the villagers must travel further and further. Anyone who falls short – who is ill – is punished brutally, often fatally. Sometimes they are punished because the collectors wish it, for their own reasons or none. There is no recourse. Bullets are scarce and valuable, so each one must be accounted for with an ear (or hand). Which gives human body parts value.
The story chronicles historically accurate examples of mutilation, flogging and murder; the destruction of entire villages and peoples; casual and malicious racism. When Dame Alice arrives in the Congo she joins an expedition against a rebellion. The rebels have massacred a collector and shot at a steamer. The same thing always happens. The Forest Guard surround the village, massacre everyone they can, burn the huts. It’s a wonder anyone rebels.
This group are from deeper in the forest. For the last twenty years survivors of other massacres have gathered. They have a new god.
Dame Alice will not allow the Great Old One to be summoned, to wipe human life from the planet. Why would she? Why would anyone?
Read This: A culmination and repudiation of Lovecraft’s
xenophobic attitudes, rationalising without minimising the horror of the mythos
Don’t Read This: The mundane horror at the dark heart of
this tale is reduced by the fantastical
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