October Sixth

 Today's illustration is hard to describe without reference to the story, but whatever. It depicts a man in a suit -- Jack -- holding a wand ("his mundane wand") that, mundane or not, is pretty strange-looking. The best way to describe it is a skinny pipe wrench with a light source between its gripping bits. Anyway, Jack stands before some kind of shelf . . . furniture . . . thing, that the story lets us know is a mirror. And there's a tentacle, from one of the Things in the Mirror, waving from it.

    October sixth in Master Jack's household gets off to a rousing start when the Things in the Mirror break containment and try to escape. Luckily Snuff catches them in the act, and intimidates them into staying put by barking like mad. Jack gets his mundane wand (not the one he uses to gather ingredients for the Game) and transfers them into another mirror.

    Crisis averted, Snuff heads outside to walk the neighborhood and consider the pattern made by the houses of the known players. The players of the Game apparently always settle around the place where the rite of the 31st will occur -- where the potential door to be opened or held closed will be. Hence the importance of figuring out who all the players are, and where they have their lairs. Snuff knows that the pattern is incomplete at this point, but is doing some initial calculations.

    While walking and thinking, he's hailed by Nightwind, who got caught out by daylight and took refuge in a hollow tree. The two of them discuss the pattern, and that until the Count's resting place is known, the pattern can't be finished. Not to mention there may be other players that neither of them is aware of yet. Snuff talks Nightwind into trying to follow Needle, the Count's bat companion, back to their lair.

    I'm so curious about Jack, and it drives me crazy whenever I revisit this book. He's pleasant and urbane. He's also the Ripper, which seems to do with a curse he's under. Would he have become a murderer if it didn't affect him? Of course, there's also the Game, which seems to require killing to source some needed ingredients . . . Maybe it's not the Game itself that calls for blood, but the particular magics the players use. Jack is obviously a mage of some kind, calling and binding various creatures for his work (and just what was Snuff before Jack summoned him and gave him the job of watchdog?) and savvy about the ways of the Game. We never learn how long he and Snuff have been playing, but the implication is they've been at it for a long time indeed. And they're closers. They play to keep the Elder Gods out of this world.

    Anyway, I really want to know this guy's story. I don't write fanfiction, don't read much either, but this Jack is one of the few characters that tempts me to indulge in fanfic, one way or the other.

October Fifth

 

Today's illustration is an owl perched atop the shoulder of a sitting/slouching and rather gloppy-looking corpse.

    Chapter 5 sees Snuff up before dawn to make his rounds in the house, and go out to check some ideas around the neighborhood. He bumps into Graymalk, and the two of them walk together, discussing a killing in town, in which a man was torn apart, as if by a large, savage dog. Snuff says it wasn't him -- he and Jack had been in town, but on a different kind of business.

    Snuff is tracing lines between the houses of the known players, making some kind of calculations. He and Graymalk seek out Nightwind, the owl, who'd brought Gray the news of the killing. When they find him, Snuff asks what the owl saw, then the three of them decide to trade the identities of the players they're aware of.

    That's how Snuff and Gray learn about the Good Doctor, and his small hunched henchman who's been robbing graves around the area for the last few nights. When they poke around the Doctor's house, lightning flashes, something flares brilliantly in the basement, and the flash is followed by jubilant laughter. The Doctor is definitely someone to keep an eye on.

 

 

I've been making a man

with blond hair and a tan

he's good for relieving

my tension

 

-- wait, sorry, different Doctor

October Fourth

 

The illustration today depicts an extremely craggy man with long hair, clad in a robe, a small sickle in his hand. The sickle has runes drawn or engraved around the top of the handle: wunjo -- sowilo -- othila. A creature that looks rather like a baggy dormouse (but that we know from the story is a squirrel) sits on the man's shoulder.

    Another brief chapter. Snuff makes his usual rounds in the morning, marked by rapid-fire entreating and cursing on the part of the Things, then lets himself outside to patrol. He spots "the old man who lives up the road" harvesting mistletoe from a tree in his yard with a sickle, while a squirrel perches on the man's shoulder. Another pair of players revealed. Snuff and Cheeter, the squirrel, have a brief conversation as Snuff tries to get Cheeter to slip up and reveal more than he wanted.

    And in the evening, Snuff and Jack head out again. Jack bears a significant wand this time, instead of his knife. They pass the Great Detective and his friend several times in the fog, and Snuff notes the Detective's companion limps a little from getting dog-bitten the previous night.

October Third

 Today's illustration is a bat on the wing, with hooked claws at the end of every digit, long fangs, and a derpy grin on its face.

    The chapter for October third begins at night, with Jack donning his cloak and taking his knife, and going out to hunt. Snuff, of course, accompanies him. The hunt is successful, but they're spotted, and Snuff eventually has to nip a pursuer to discourage them from continuing to chase the pair.

    Later that night, on the prowl and keeping tabs on the other players, Snuff meets a bat called Needle. Needle is the Count's familiar, and the pair of them joined the Game two nights prior. There's no question who or what the Count is, and Snuff knows as well as we do. As he tells us, "Life was suddenly even more complicated, and I'd no way of knowing if they were openers or closers."

    I think this is the first time we encounter those terms, and the use of "Game" to describe the proceedings. 

    I wonder if this would be a good premise for a roleplaying game? The player characters live in an area experiencing a wave of killings, grave robbings, thefts, and occult weirdness. Maybe ghosts are going bonkers at seances, babbling about doors and a coming darkness. Maybe the local artists are all making strange, symbol-laden art inspired by their dreams. That kind of thing. The PCs could be the local constabulary, or a mix of investigators and concerned citizens, or a knitting circle of elderly ladies (especially if you're playing Brindlewood Bay).

    The strange doings are the work of various eldritch people/beings who've moved into the area recently and are playing this Game which could end very badly for humanity, not to mention the neighborhood. And maybe the more they learn about it, the more the PCs find they're effectively playing, too -- and ultimately have to pick a side.

October Second

 

The illustration for this chapter is not on the facing page of the chapter beginning. Thumbing through the book, I see I was wrong about that -- the art is wherever the heck in the chapter the publisher put it. Oh well. I guess putting each one on the facing page would probably have upped the page count by a lot, and might've been harder to lay out well.

    Anyway, our illustration today is a sinuous tree, with an equally-sinuous cat peeking out from behind a bough.

    The 2nd sees Snuff and Jack back home after harvesting ingredients "at the place of a killing by somebody else." Snuff resumes his watchdoggery and spots the cat Graymalk spying around their house. As Snuff is Jack's animal companion in their work, so Graymalk is the companion of a witch called Crazy Jill, who's also involved in the business that preoccupies Snuff and his master.

    This is another short chapter, only about three pages, counting the illustration, and it consists mostly of the conversation between our watchdog and the cat. Though both are very cagey with each other, they trade a little information, and we learn the names of other players in the game: Morris and MacCab, who seem to be a team, and their owl Nightwind; and the "mad monk" Rastov, and his snake, Quicklime, who lives in his belly.

    One of the pleasures of this book is clocking the character inspirations. Knife-wielding Master Jack is an obvious nod to Jack the Ripper, while mad monk Rastov is a tip of the pen to Rasputin. I've never worked out if Crazy Jill was inspired by anyone in particular, though.

    Morris and MacCab are a little tricky; my guess (and I think that of many readers) is that they're a reference to Burke and Hare, the murderous "resurrection men." There's certainly murder and graverobbing going on in the background of A Night in the Lonesome October, so it's not like they'd be out of place.

It's 2026, It's Raining, The Moon Is On The Wane

A Night in the Lonesome October is a novel by the late Roger Zelazny, published in 1993. It was illustrated by the great macabre cartoonist Gahan Wilson, who provided a color drawing for the back cover (the front cover art is by James Warhola, and depicts a gathering of the characters) and a black and white illustration for each chapter.

    From the jacket copy:

"During a dank and damp autumn in the late 19th century, good dog Snuff loyally accompanies a mysterious knife-wielding gentleman named Jack on his midnight rounds through the murky streets of London -- collecting the grisly ingredients needed for an unearthly rite that will take place not long after the death of the moon.

But Snuff and his master are not alone. All manner of participants, both human and undead, are gathering from Soho to Whitehall with their ancient tools and their animal familiars, in preparation of the dread night when black magic will summon the Elder Gods back to the world. Some have come to open the gates . . . and some to close them. It is brave, devoted Snuff who must calculate the patterns of the Game and keep track of the Players -- the witch, the mad monk, the vengeful vicar, the Count who sleeps by day, the Good Doctor and the hulking Experiment Man he fashioned from body parts . . . and a wild-card American shapeshifter named Larry Talbot -- all the while keeping ogres at bay, and staying a dog-leap ahead of the Great Detective, who knows quite a bit more than he lets on."

    Evidently, some fans make a practice of reading the novel in October, starting on the first and going a chapter a day. I thought I'd do that this year; and to keep myself from just falling in and rereading the whole thing over this coming weekend, I'll write a post on each chapter. Things that catch my attention, references I especially like, comments on the writing, that sort of thing.

    So.

    See you at the death of the moon.