A Mountain Walked (story)

"A Mountain Walked" is a short story by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It first appeared in the September 2012 issue of Sirenia Digest.
The title comes from a passage from H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", in a description of the titular entity: The Thing cannot be described -- there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked, or stumbled.
==Synopsis==
The story is presented as "Excerpts from the Field Journal of Arthur Lakes During His Explorations for Saurians and Fossil Remains in the Wyoming Territory (June 1879)"; Lakes was a historical geologist,Wikipedia, "Arthur Lakes". as was William Hallow (or Harlow) Reed,Science Buzz, "The Discovery of Como Bluff: Wyoming's Rich and Historic Dinosaur Graveyard", March 7, 2013. and they both worked for famed paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh;Wikipedia, "Othniel Charles Marsh". Marsh really did visit their excavations in 1879, and did butt heads with Lakes' "bone sharp" William Holland Reed. 
In the story, Lakes and Reed first hear "a most peculiar booming" in the sky. Then while digging, they strike a spring that produces "water foul and oily," with a "most noisome odour as if from decaying vegetation"; later they find the water has "an oily iridescent sheen". 
When Marsh arrives, he finds an "Indian stone fetish or lithic artefact which could be, at a casual glance, taken for the effigy of some winged demon as from the illustrations of Gustave Doré." Reed insists that taking the figurine will cause unnecessary trouble with the Sioux or Cheyenne, and he and Marsh have an escalating quarrel over it. The meat of wild game turns tainted, a blood-red ring is seen around the Moon, a dust storm lasts for days. 
Finally, one night, a mysterious figure appears at the camp: A nude woman, seven or eight feet tall, "her skin and hair...as white as a fresh snowfall.... [T]he lankiness of her arms and legs gave her a faintly insectile semblance...both grotesque and unspeakably beautiful." Behind her "a titanic form stood, blotting out both the stars and moon." She silently demands the return of the figurine; Reed threatens to shoot Marsh if he does not comply. He acquiesces, and it disappears from his hand and reappears in hers, leaving a spot of frostbite behind. 
No one talks again about the experience, but Lakes says he is compelled to write it down: What was witnessed, for all its horror, I cannot wish to forget as it hints at a world even more distant and ultimately impervious to our understanding than the bygone ages and their fauna hinted at by our diggings. 
==Behind the Mythos==
The winged fetish recalls similar statuettes in "The Call of Cthulhu", from which the story takes its title. The iridescent water and tainted meat recalls the contamination from the meteorite in "The Colour Out of Space".
Ruthanna Emrys suggests that the "titanic form" seen at the campsite is not Cthulhu, but rather an unnamed entity in "The Call of Cthulhu" that escapes from R'lyeh just before Cthulhu's emergence--"a darkness almost material" that "burst forth like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membranous wings."The Lovecraft Reread, "Othniel Marsh, (Probably) No Relation: Caitlín Kiernan’s 'A Mountain Walked'”, Ruthanna Emrys (with Anne M. Pillsworth), March 28, 2018.
==Publication History==
After its first appearance in Sirenia Digest #82, "A Mountain Walked" was reprinted in The Madness of Cthulhu Vol. 1 (2014). It later appeared in Kiernan's collection Houses Under the Sea (2018).
==External Link==
"Othniel Marsh, (Probably) No Relation: Caitlín Kiernan’s 'A Mountain Walked'” at The Lovecraft Reread
==References==
Category:Caitlin R. Kiernan works
Category:Mythos-Inspired Works