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| Weird Tales 1924.05 |
Opening Statement:
Mystery attracts mystery. Ever since the wide appearance of my name as a performer of unexplained feats, I have encountered strange narratives and events which my calling has led people to link with my interests and activities. Some of these have been trivial and irrelevant, some deeply dramatic and absorbing, some productive of weird and perilous experiences and some involving me in extensive scientific and historical research. Many of these matters I have told and shall continue to tell very freely; but there is one of which I speak with great reluctance, and which I am now relating only after a session of grilling persuasion from the publishers of this magazine, who had heard vague rumors of it from other members of my family.What in Brown Jenkin's Name..?
While sightseeing in Egypt, Houdini gets dropped into a pyramid by some ruffians. At the bottom, he encounters a procession of strange creatures.Synopsis:
Houdini describes a tourist trip to Egypt where he visits the pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza near Cairo. Later that day in Cairo, his guide gets into a fistfight with another local, leading to a showdown on top of the Great Pyramid. After the showdown is over, the locals decide to tie Houdini up and lower him down a well, eventually dropping him.
When Houdini wakes up, he tries to free himself from the rope, still leading to the surface. The rope is released and begins falling, and Houdini loses consciousness again. When he wakes the ropes have disappeared, but he is covered with small cuts and bites. In the darkness, he follows a draft and falls down some stairs, becoming unconscious again. When he wakes, he finds himself among massive hieroglyph-covered columns, and hears ritual flute and percussion sounds. Hiding behind a column, Houdini sees shadows of a hybrid human-animal mummy army on the march (including a "topless" walking torso). The army stops before a foul-smelling pit and begins throwing objects into it in some kind of sacrifice ritual. Houdini sneaks over to one of the stairways leading to the surface and begins ascending to safety. Leaning over the railing, he sees a 5-headed, tentacled creature accept the tributes offered by the un-dead hybrid creatures. Eventually he reaches the surface, near the Great Sphinx. Houdini wonders if the Sphinx was originally carved to look like the beast below (its face was later re-carved to reflect one of the Pharaohs). He also realizes that the 5-headed altar creature was actually the 5-toed foot of a much larger entity.
The monstrosities were hailing something which had poked itself out of the nauseous aperture to seize the hellish fare proffered it. It was something quite ponderous, even as seen from my height; something yellowish and hairy, and endowed with a sort of nervous motion. It was as large, perhaps, as a good-sized hippopotamus, but very curiously shaped. It seemed to have no neck, but five separate shaggy heads springing in a row from a roughly cylindrical trunk; the first very small, the second good-sized, the third and fourth equal and largest of all, and the fifth rather small, though not so small as the first.
Out of these heads darted curious rigid tentacles which seized ravenously on the excessively great quantities of unmentionable food placed before the aperture. Once in a while the thing would leap up, and occasionally it would retreat into its den in a very odd manner. Its locomotion was so inexplicable that I stared in fascination, wishing it would emerge farther from the cavernous lair beneath me.From Dr. Armitage's Notes:
- An "elbow" is found in “The Shunned House”.
- More flutes.
- In the first section, Lovecraft generously pads his story with Egyptian travelogue material.
The Horrible Conclusion:
Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror - the unknown God of the Dead, which licks its colossal chops in the unsuspected abyss, fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist. The five-headed monster that emerged ... that five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus ... the five headed monster - and that of which it is the merest forepaw...
But I survived, and I know it was only a dream.Read it here.
Follow'd by "The Shunned House".
