Robert Bloch’s story “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” is one of the all-time great Cthulhu Mythos stories. It’s so creepy, and Bloch’s sparse style is so much better suited for a ‘found manuscript’ style tale than Lovecraft’s excessively florid tales in the same style like “The Diary of Alonzo Typer” (although, now that I think of it, nearly all of Lovecraft’s tales are presented as first-person written manuscripts). Also, I grew up in a house in the woods, and I remember being scared when my parents went away, or exploring the creeks and gulleys alone until sometimes, all of a sudden, I’d grow nervous and prick up my ears, as if listening for… something… coming closer, just beyond the next tree. This story captures that feeling perfectly.
In gaming terms, it’s also notable for being the first story to feature what would become the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath (since Sandy Petersen named them that for the Call of Cthulhu RPG). Actually, in the story, it seems clear that the monster with thousands of hooves and slime-dripping mouthes is supposed to be a shoggoth (maybe a woodsy, Northern Deciduous Forest shoggoth), but it does mutter prayers to Shub-Niggurath, so it works for me. Somewhere during the development of the RPG, though, the body shape of the shoggoth/Dark Young became somewhat formalized and it was decided that they only have three big hoofed feet and a generally tree-like shape… but in the story they don’t say how many hooves it has, so I’ve always pictured it as more like a big horrible rolling blob of no distinct form. And yet, there’s a definite vegetal nature to it all, somehow… the tentacles sprouting out of one another like branches… the mouthes opening like boles in tree trunks…
I had a great time at Sakuracon last weekend and ran a bunch of roleplaying games and met lots of folks, including some readers who’d collected Dream-Quest since it first came out in the ’90s! Over at King of RPGs, a new storyline just started, so go read it! And if you like, check out my commissioned sketches!