A Gentleman from Mexico

"A Gentleman from Mexico" is a short story by Mark Samuels that originally appeared in Summer Chills: Tales of Vacation Horror (Carroll & Graf, 2007). It tells the story of a London literary agent who meets a man in Mexico who acts, speaks, and writes exactly like H. P. Lovecraft--yet insists that he is merely a lunatic who is under the delusion that he is Lovecraft.
== Characters==
* Víctor Armstrong: A London literary agent who specializes in anthologies featuring "tales depicting the weird and uncanny."
* Juan San Isidro: A "so-called underground poet specialising in sinister verse written in the Náhuatl language," rumoured to have "links with the narcosatánicos." A "notorious drunk" in his mid-thirties who is "scarcely ever sober," he is a "huge bear of a man" with an "immense bulk," shoulder-length "lank black hair," and "a shaggy goatee beard." He looks "twice his actual age."
* Felipe López: He was once "a fanatical devotee of Lovecraft’s life and work," one of those "freaks who adhere to the outlandish belief that, rather than writing fiction, Lovecraft had unconscious access to ultramundane dimensions." Since March 15, 2003, he has (as he puts it) "been subject to a delusion whereby the identity of Lovecraft completely supplanted my own." His fiction resembles "a previously undiscovered work written by Lovecraft himself," with "the same sense of nightmarish authenticity as the best of the Providence author’s tales." López has "an olive complexion" and "the features of a mestizo," is "perfectly clean-shaven with "short black hair...parted neatly on the left-hand side," and is "about forty years old." He has a "slight stoop," and his speech and accent is "pure, authentic New England Yankee."
==Publication History==
The story has been repeatedly reprinted, including in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Nineteen (Running Press, 2008), The Book of Cthulhu II (Night Shade Books, 2012), and A Mountain Walked (Centipede Press, 2014).
Category:Mark Samuels works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works