Clark Ulman is a character created by Frank Belknap Long for his Cthulhu Mythos novel The Horror from the Hills.
Biography[]
Clark Ulman is an American archaeologist who ventured into the remote and inhospitable Plateau of Tsang in central Asia and brought back what was originally believed to be a statue of Chaugnar Faugn, but was actually the ancient god itself, in a state of dormancy.
Ulman's journey across the Plateau of Tsang was exhaustive. He crossed the desert on foot, since there were no camels available. Food and water were so scarce that eventually, he was forced to eat dog feces and drink his own blood to satiate his debilitating thirst.
When he finally found the cave inhabited by Chaugnar Faugn and its worshipers, the latter tortured Ulman as they had done to a previous explorer, Richardson. However, the high priest Chung Ga ordered the others to spare Ulman, reasoning that the American man could be their means to take Chaugnar eastward across the Pacific Ocean, fulfilling the ancient prophecy of Mu Sang that claimed that once there, Chaugnar would claim the whole world and devour everything on it, sparing only the loyal followers who sent it on its journey. The starved Ulman, for his part, agreed to take Chaugnar back with him in return for food.
On the same night, Ulman discovered that what he assumed to be a mere stone idol was in fact the living Chaugnar Faugn, and was powerless to prevent the entity from feeding on his blood, an action it repeated every few days during the long eastward trip.
Contact with the eldritch deity resulted in a physical change in Ulman, whose facial features became increasingly deformed to resemble those of his tormentor. Ulman's nose and ears grew abnormally long and flabby, forcing him to hide them under a scarf. Conscious of Chaugnar's powers and vindictive nature, Ulman resisted the temptation to throw the idol overboard when crossing the ocean, and went on even as Chaugnar's feeding habits kept Ulman's wounds painfully fresh and worsened his disfigurement.
After sending the stone god to the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts, Ulman telephoned his friend, the Museum's Curator of Archaeology, Algernon Harris, urging him to destroy the statue when it arrived. Ulman himself showed up in Harris' office soon after the idol was delivered, and Harris was horrified to see his friend in such physical and mental distress, especially after Ulman took off the scarf to reveal his transformation.
After telling his story, Ulman mysteriously collapsed as if attacked by an invisible opponent and suffocated to death before Harris could do anything to assist him. After death, his body underwent an abnormally fast decomposition, although his unnaturally elongated nose continued to move for hours afterwards. The coroner, Henry Weigal, attributed Ulman's death to heart failure induced by anxiety and shock, and accepted Harris' suggestion that the physical deformities might have resulted from a highly skilled form of plastic surgery and hormonal treatment. (CIRCLE: The Horror from the Hills)