The Dweller in Darkness

"The Dweller in Darkness" is a Cthulhu Mythos story written by August Derleth that first appeared in the November 1944 issue of Weird Tales. 
The story concerns mysterious Mythos-linked goings-on at Rick's Lake, a remote body of water in north-central Wisconsin. 
==In the Mythos==
The "Dweller in Darkness" of the title turns out to be Nyarlathotep, described as well as "the Blind, Faceless One" and "the Howler in the Night." The entity has some sort of special connection to the area around Rick's Lake, known as the Wood of N'gai. Pictographs found in the area portray him as a vast, amorphous creature...bearing only a curious, cone-like head which even in stone seemed to have a fluidity which was unnerving; moreover, the creature was depicted as having both tentacle-like appendages and hands—or growths similar to hands, not only two, but several; so that it seemed both human and non-human in its structure. When the story's main characters encounter the god, the stone carving turns out to be a close likeness: [T]here was now a gigantic protoplasmic mass, a colossal being who towered upward toward the stars, and whose actual physical being was in constant flux … [F]rom its mass of amorphous flesh there grew at will before our eyes tentacles, claws, hands, and withdrew again; the mass itself diminished and swelled effortlessly, and where its head was and its features should have been there was only a blank facelessness. This depiction of a faceless, tentacled Nyarlathotep had a considerable impact on the popular image of the entity--one of the most iconic of his "thousand forms".A Dickens of a Blog, "From Giving Us Tentacled Headed Nyarlathotep..." by Doug Bolden, October 11, 2011.
In the story, the only way to defeat Nyarlathotep is to summon the fire elemental Cthugha, the one being he fears, from his dwelling place at Formalhaut. Invented to complete Derleth's schema of the Mythos entities corresponding to elemental forces, Cthugha makes his first appearance in this story,The Nyarlathotep Cycle: Stories about the God of a Thousand Forms, Robert M. Price, editor (Chaosium, 1997). manifesting as a "great being hovering like a cloud of living fire above the trees."
==Rick's Lake==
Rick's Lake, the setting that the story centers around, is in "north central Wisconsin." It's described as "a clear blue lake around which century-old trees brood eternally, a country where the only sounds are the cries of the owls, the whippoorwills, and the eerie loons at night, and the wind’s voice in the trees." One gets there by taking "the left fork at the junction of the Brule River highway and the Chequamegon pike on the way to Pashepaho." (The Brule is a real river in Wisconsin;Wikipedia, "Brule River". Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior has been the site of a Native American village since the 17th century, and was the first place in Wisconsin where Europeans settled. Pashepaho appears to be a fictional place, named for a Sauk Indian leader who was tricked into signing away his nation's lands.History of Iowa from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, by Benjamin F. Gue (1903).) 
The land around Rick's Lake is depicted as "country so primitive that it would seem remote from all human contact.... [I]t is not desolate country, but an area thick with growth, and over all its expanse there persists an intangible aura of the sinister, a kind of ominous oppression of the spirit quickly manifest to even the most casual traveler." 
Professor Partier, who is familiar with "horrible, forbidden matters," declares that there are "certain shunned places. Rick’s Lake is one of them.” Upton Gardner calls it "the Wood of N’gai, the terrestrial abode of the Blind, Faceless One, the Howler in the Night, the Dweller in Darkness, Nyarlathotep."
==Characters ==
*Jack: The story's narrator. He appears to be associated with the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
*Upton Gardner: A professor at the University of Wisconsin who has written "collections of Paul Bunyan, Whiskey Jack,Wikipedia, "Wisakedjak". and Hodag tales, and was engaged upon a compilation of place legends" when he began investigating the stories around Rick's Lake. He stays in a lodge on the lake in the summer of 1940, and disappears in September.
*Laird Dorgan: An instructor at the University of Wisconsin, he tells Jack about his friend Gardner's disappearance in October 1940. He has "frank blue eyes".
*Professor Partier: An anthropology professors whose ties to the University of Wisconsin are severed because he spoke of "horrible, forbidden matters." (The press was told the issue was his supposed "communistic leanings".) He later lives in Wausau, Wisconsin. Though he has "the appearance of an old man, wore a long white beard, and a fringe of white hair straggled from under his black skullcap, he was as agile as a young man; he was thin, his fingers were bony, his face gaunt, with deep black eyes, and his features were set in an expression that was one of profound cynicism."
* Old Peter: A "half-breed" who is "obsessed with the idea that there were mineral deposits in the vicinity of the wood" around Rick's Lake. He relates the mysterious happenings at the lake to the legend of the Wendigo. He is described as "a dark-skinned, ill-kempt fellow."
*Sheriff Cowan: Described as "a tall, saturnine individual clearly of Yankee stock."
*Father Piregard: A French missionary based at Chequamegon Bay. He disappears in the 17th century while on a mission to help starving Indians, leaving behind a journal that records his fear that "some creature is following me." His frozen body mysteriously reappears some three centuries later, in a hollow tree by the Brule River.
*Big Bob Hiller: "One of the most rapacious lumber barons of the entire Midwest," he attempts to illegally log the pine forest around Rick's Lake, and gives up after 18 of his lumberjacks are killed.
*Joseph X. Castleton: A test pilot who reported seeing "a very large animal rising from the waters" of Rick's Lake.
==Publication History==
After its initial appearance in Weird Tales, "The Dweller in Darkness" was reprinted in Derleth's collection Something Near (Arkham House, 1945). Derleth later chose it to represent his work, along with "Beyond the Threshold", in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Arkham House, 1969). It was later included in The Nyarlathotep Cycle: The God of a Thousand Forms (Chaosium, 2006).Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Title: The Dweller in Darkness".
==Legacy==
In addition to introducing Cthugha and creating an iconic image of Nyarlathotep, "The Dweller in Darkness" provided the name for the Marvel Comics villain Dweller-in-Darkness, an extradimensional entity that preys on human fear.
==References==
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:August Derleth works