"Around the Corner" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by American author Jeffrey Thomas.
Synopsis[]
A man who had been a member of a cult as a young child begins to experience strange happenings in his apartment block after a mysterious woman and her group of friends move into the building. As the angles of space and time begin to lose all meaning and the madness infects his mind, the man begins to remember his suppressed past and a chanting begins, opening doorways to another plane of existence.
Characters[]
- Franklin, a lonely man who experienced a dark childhood.
- Reyna, a cult-member who has recently moved into Franklin's building.
Mythos Connections[]
Reyna's cultists speak use Naacal for their ceremonies, a language proposed by British author James Churchward as the language of the lost continent Mu and later incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price in their short story "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".
Additionally, the description of one entity, recalled from a book shown to Franklin by his mother during childhood, is a clear nod to the Great Old One Cthulhu: "a seated creature or entity with a bulbous head bearing three eyes on either side, and many long tentacles where a nose and mouth would be in a human".
Publication History[]
"Around the Corner" was first published in the anthology Return of the Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror in 2017. It was later included in the collection of Thomas's own works The Coming of the Old Ones in 2019.