Algernon Harris is a character created by Frank Belknap Long for his Cthulhu Mythos novel The Horror from the Hills.
Biography[]
Despite being only 26 at the time of the novel, Algernon Harris has post-graduate degrees from Yale and Oxford, and has recently succeeded the late Halpin Chalmers as Curator of Archaeology in the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts.
Dressed unassumingly, with a genial and jovial disposition, Harris is often mistaken for a subordinate, and there's nothing in his aspect that gives away his scholarly inclinations. He is very enthusiastic about his work and well regarded by the Museum's field workers, who have ventured into the remotest corners of the globe to bring back new artifacts. Despite his young age and generally informal attitude, Harris is very capable of speaking with authority if needed.
When Harris' friend, Clark Ulman, returned from a lone expedition into the inhospitable Plateau of Tsang, bringing along what appeared to be a statue of Chaugnar Faugn, Harris was horrified to find out that Ulman had been inexplicably disfigured and was suffering from physical and mental stress. However, he didn't believe in Ulman's claim that the supposed statue of Chaugnar Faugn was actually Chaugnar itself in a dormant state, and that his disfigurement had been the result of Chaugnar periodically feeding on his blood. Harris did believe in Ulman's claim to have met the cult of Chaugnar in the Plateau of Tsang, but assumed that the high-priest Chung Ga had implanted hypnotic suggestions on Ulman and that Ulman's disfigurement was the result of some unknown hormonal treatment and/or surgical procedure. At this point, however, Ulman started to convulse as if being attacked by an invisible assaulter, and died before Harris could do anything to help him.
The coroner attributed Ulman's death to heart failure, and reluctantly accepted Harris' hypothesis about the unfortunate man's disfigurement. However, Harris himself was less inclined to believe in his own explanation after witnessing how Ulman's body putrefied abnormally fast, and how his elongated nose kept moving even hours after death. Pressed by reporters and public interest, Harris agreed to put the Chaugnar Faugn "statue" on display in the museum.
A few days later, Harris took a bus and came across his boss, George Francis Scollard. While talking about Ulman's fate, the two noticed a large crowd gathered around the museum and found that the watchman, Cinney, had been killed and mutilated beyond recognition, with nothing of his face remaining. Cinney's body was also entirely drained of blood, while Chaugnar Faugn's mouth, trunk and tusks were covered in it.
While the police was showing the crime scene to Harris and Scollard, a Chinese man named Hsieh Ho was arrested. The owner of a local laundry, Hsieh Ho clang to Harris desperately, claiming to have seen him in his dream and that Harris would help him. In his dream, Hsieh Ho had seen Chaugnar Faugn and its Brothers (described by him as "big green animals") descend from the mountains to feed on blood, and had been summoned to Chaugnar's presence to be devoured. While Chaugnar didn't devour him, Ho did witness the god feeding on the unfortunate Cinney.
As predicted in the dream, Harris was convinced of Hsieh Ho's innocence and spoke in his defense. Using the authoritative tone he was capable of (but rarely used), Harris confronted the police and threatened to sue them if they carried on their plan of intimidating Hsieh Ho and forcing him to confess to the murder of Cinney. Soon afterwards, when examining the stone god itself, Harris noticed that the trunk had moved since the last time he had seen it.
Convinced at this point that Ulman's narrative had been entirely true, that the world was indeed in grave danger, and that the police wouldn't be of any assistance, Harris first tried to contact a friend of his, the great ethnologist Dr. Henry C. Imbert. While unable to help him directly, Imbert advised him to seek help from occultist, former forensic detective and scholar of paranormal phenomena Roger Little. At first dismissive of what he assumed to be a simple murder case, Little became seriously interested when Harris mentioned Chaugnar Faugn by name. Much like Hsieh Ho and other sensitive individuals, Little had also had a dream that predicted Chaugnar's return.
While Harris and Imbert were talking to Little, Harris received a phone call informing him that the Chaugnar Faugn "statue" had been stolen (although the base remained) and realized that the monster was already on a rampage, with police reports about mysterious deaths confirming his worst suspicions. Meanwhile in Europe, Chaugnar's Brothers were also killing people across the Pyrenees.
Armed with Little's entropy-reversing machine, Little, Harris and Imbert managed to follow Chaugnar Faugn through the Jersey coast and use the machine to banish it back to the higher dimensional planes it had come from, along with its Brothers who are dimensionally connected to it. (CIRCLE: The Horror from the Hills)