Samuels, Mark - Black Altars
Slim collection that Mark would only grudgingly allow to be reprinted. Some feel like youthful works, but he needn’t have worried over that. They are all good.
Visionaries, mystics and an astronomer fill the gentleman’s narration in “The Lichen”. Kropeki, the mystic, is of the most unfortunate kind, foretelling doom and gloom that are, worse, contagious.
Glanville Home, an imposing brick structure where the well-heeled and well-off sojourn to recover from whatever maladies, real or imagined, trouble them. The sort of establishment our investigative journalist – shall we call him “Patient 704” – ought never to step foot inside.
The night wanderer, the solitary insomniac, who shares dark alleyways and waysides with, what else, cats. A league of felines all paying fealty to “The Ailuromorph”. One of those eerie homages to Bast that HPL would have applauded.
Mentioning Lovecraft, the closing story “Dedicated To The Weird” also bear the fingerprints of the Providence scribe. Through a series of letters to Beatrice, Henri notates the isolated hamlet where he has holed up, writing furiously. The village is odious, the inhabitants corruptions of humanity. Henri senses he cannot tarry overlong. Nonetheless, loathsome town fuels his imagination.
An inducement for those wavering: Two sources (QC & JP) confirmed that Mark revised two stories. The last one only somewhat, but the first one extensively. Rest easy, friend of Machen.