Aunt Hester

"Aunt Hester"  is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Brian Lumley. Written in December 1971, it was first published in the anthology The Satyr’s Head (Corgi Books, 1975). Lumley acknowledges the story's debt to H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1937).Haggopian and Other Stories, "Aunt Hester" (introduction), by Brian Lumley (Subterranean Press, 2008).
==Synopsis==
Hester Lang tells her favorite but long-separated nephew Peter about times when she and her twin brother George--now living in Australia--exchanged bodies. When they were 12, she unconsciously switched with George in order to rescue their younger sister from a swimming mishap. A year or two later, when George was anxious about an exam, they again switched identities without meaning to; Hester as George got high marks on the exam, while George as Hester was thought to be delirious for claiming that she wasn't herself. 
Hester used her mind-swap power intentionally for the first time soon after she and George turn 19, when he had a girlfriend he refused to tell Hester anything about. When the couple was out on a date, Hester projected into George's mind in order to see her--but ended up running away in a panic. Six months later, after George warns a boy away from Hester, she plans to retaliate by taking over his body to sabotage his relationship--but when she made the switch, George jumped through a glass window, putting her in the hospital. He moved to Australia soon afterward. 
After telling Peter this history, she convinced him to help her attempt a switch one last time--supposedly so she could see a niece and nephew she has never met. She makes the transfer when she expects him to be asleep--and ties up her own body, just in case. But when George's mind is in her body, she undergoes a horrific transformation--"purple tongue...protruding from frothing lips"--and her body dies, of an apparent heart attack.
Peter then learns that George had died and was buried three weeks earlier. When Peter finds himself in a "numb, black, silent void," he realizes that Hester is trapped in George's body, and is trying to force her way into Peter's.
==Characters==
Hester Lang: The title character of the story is a 54-year-old woman, the "black sheep" of her family, who is "a bit on the psychic side" and belongs to a "séance group." She was "a bookish kid" and "very plain" as a teenager, and "terribly jealous of [her] brother" George, her twin. 
Peter Norton: The son of Hester's younger sister. He is close to his aunt, going to her house after school to drink cocoa and talk about "things of interest to small boys," until his family moves to London when he was 12. He is out of touch with her until he visits her out of the blue when he is 20.
George Lang: Hester's twin brother. He was a "handsome lad...long and lean and a natural for the girls," though "not strong" and "not...too bright."
==Setting==
Aunt Hester lives "in hoary Castle-Ilden, not far from Harden on the coast," in a "thatch-roofed bungalow...at the Blackhill end of cobbled Main Street, in a neat garden framed by cherry trees." Castle-Ilden (also described as "ancient" and "old") appears to be Lumley's invention, as does Harden; the latter town in referred to in Lumley's story "Dagon's Bell," in which the narrator's parents move to "Harden in County Durham when my father bought a newsagent’s shop there." (There is a Harden in West Yorkshire, England, but it's not on the coast; it's near the center line of the island of Britain, not far from Leeds.Wikipedia, "Harden, West Yorkshire.") Castle-Ilden is mentioned in Lumley's novel The Burrowers Beneath--along with Harden and Blackhill--as places affected by subterranean disturbances.
Seaton Carew, mentioned as the beach where Hester has her first experience of switching bodies with her brother, is a real seaside resort in County Durham, near Hartlepool.Wikipedia, "Seaton Carew."
==Connections to the Mythos==
“I don’t suppose you’ve read Joachim Feery on the Necronomicon?” Hester asks her nephew. Feery, she explains, "was the illegitimate son of Baron Kant, the German ‘witch-hunter,’" and "died quite mysteriously in 1934 while still a comparatively young man." Feery "wrote a number of occult limited editions—mostly published at his own expense—the vast majority of which religious and other authorities bought up and destroyed as fast as they appeared." 
Feery's sources, Hester says, were "very rare and sinister volumes," including "the Cthaat Aquadingen, the Necronomicon, von Junzt’s Unspeakable Cults, Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis, and others of that sort." His quotations, however, "often differ substantially when compared with the works from which they were supposedly culled," with Feery explaining that he supplemented his research with "occult knowledge" that "came to him 'in dreams'!"
The Necronomicon, Hester elaborates, was written by Abdul Alhazred, who was "reckoned by many to have been a madman," but "was without doubt the world’s foremost authority on black magic and the horrors of alien dimensions."
Hester does not own a copy of Feery's "slim volume of notes" on the Necronomicon, but she has read a copy owned by a member of her seance group, and copied a passage relevant to her situation. The book notes that "between certain related Persons there exists a Bond more powerful than the strongest Ties of Flesh & Family," allowing someone "to experienc[e] the Pains or Passions of one far distant." Feery adds that those who "are aided by forbidden Knowledge or Intercourse through dark Magic with Spirits & Beings of outside Spheres" might even be able to "at will inhabit the Body of another even at a great Distance.” Hester identifies herself as one of those Feery mentions who can "work their Wonders through Intercourse with dead & departed Spirits"--but seems to ignore his warning that "often such Spirits were evil Angels, the Messengers of the Dark One & yet more ancient Evils." 
==References==
Category:Brian Lumley works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works