The Isle of Dark Magic

"The Isle of Dark Magic" is a horror fantasy short story by Hugh B. Cave, set in the Cthulhu Mythos. It was published in the August 1934 issue of Weird Tales.
==Synopsis==
Father Jason is a missionary priest stationed in the island of Faikana, close to the Marquesas, which has a very small native population. One day, a ship arrives bringing Peter Mace, a young recluse who paid the captain to take him to the most isolated isle available, so that he would not be disturbed.
Mace is extremely secretive, revealing nothing about himself, and spends the days locked in the second floor of his house, where he keeps something brought inside a large crate, and allows no one access to it. The rest of the time, Mace drinks and studies piles of books. One day, Father Jason finds the house open and is horrified to discover that the books are grimoires. Driven by curiosity and a desire to know what kind of sin Mace is committing, so as to be able to help him, Jason climbs the ladder to the second floor and sees what he assumes to be a naked woman, but is interrupted by the arrival of a drunken Mace, who violently kicks him out.
Several days later, Mace seeks out Jason while drunk, and invites him to his house to explain things. When he sobers up, he tells Jason that he was once a prestigious medical student, but was expelled from the university after performing some undisclosed experiments. He was also deeply in love with a young prostitute named Maureen Kennedy, and was devastated when she died. However, he figured a way to try to resurrect her, and asked his artist roommate to make a life-sized sculpture of her. This marble statue is what Jason saw when he peeked into the second floor.
Mace forces Jason to watch as he takes an inverted crucifix, pours a dark liquid into a dish, and recites a prayer to Hastur, Nyarlathotep, and other entities. Jason hears other voices joining Mace's, and watches incredulous as the marble statue becomes alive for a few moments and contorts in obvious agony, before returning to its inanimate state. Mace reveals that this is the fifth time he performs this ritual, and that the gods have promised him that on the seventh time, Maureen would be revived permanently.
Several days later, Mace's native servant, Menegai, comes to Jason for help, telling that he saw Mace go into the second floor and heard the voices of demons chanting, followed by the sound of a woman screaming in pain. At this moment, a ship arrives at the island: the same one that had brought Mace. This time, the passenger is a young woman, whose face is concealed behind a veil, and who came to Faikana to look for Peter Mace. Jason accompanies her to Mace's house, and arrives just in time to hear Mace's ritual, culminating in triumphant screams.
When Jason enters the house, he sees that the statue is alive, and Mace is embracing her. However, when Jason informs Mace that another woman has come to look for him, Mace soon recognizes the veiled lady as the real Maureen, reanimated from the grave by the same spell that gave life to her marble lookalike. Mace is so happy to see his beloved in flesh and blood that he immediately embraces her, forgetting all about the stone woman. Before Jason can warn him of the danger, the rejected statue becomes furious with jealousy and brutally strangles the two lovers to death with the strength of her stone fingers. Then, realizing what she has done, she leaves the house and heads towards the jungle.
Jason and the natives bury the bodies of Mace and Maureen Kennedy, and move to a different island, leaving the jungles of Faikana to the immortal woman of stone.
==Characters==
*Father Jason, the story's narrator, a missionary priest in Faikana.
*Peter Mace, an occultist and former medical student with a mysterious past, living in seclusion in Faikana.
*Captain Bruk, the captain of the ship that takes Peter Mace to Faikana, at Mace's request.
*Menegai, a young native who works for Mace.
*Maureen Kennedy, a "woman of the streets" and Mace's lover.
*Jean Lanier, Mace's former roommate, a skilled artist who made a sculpture of Maureen for Mace after her death.
*The marble statue, sculpted in the likeness of Maureen, and brought to life by Mace's dark rituals.
==Behind the Mythos ==
Peter Mace's prayer to his dark gods mentions the names Bethmoora, Nyarlathotep, Yuggoth, Yian, and Hastur. It's not known whether all of these are intended as gods, or some are instead titles or other references, as it should be noted that Bethmoora, Yuggoth and Yian are all identified as locations by the authors who created them (Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert W. Chambers, respectively). Yuggoth would later be portrayed as an entity in some works of the Expanded Mythos, while Hastur was first conceived as a god by Ambrose Bierce, but was referred to as a place in some of Chambers' stories. The prayer also mentions other concepts created by Chambers, such as the lake of Hali and the Yellow Sign.
Additionally, the passage that talks about "the wells of night where the crawling ones lurk unseen, waiting for wings to raise them" might be interpreted as a reference to Lovecraft's "The Festival".
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Hugh B. Cave works