"The Fairground Horror" is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Brian Lumley, written in 1972 and first published in The Disciples of Cthulhu (DAW Books, 1976).
Two brothers run a house of horrors at a travelling funfair--and one brother seems to take the horrors far too seriously.
Characters[]
- Hamilton Tharpe: Part owner of the freak show at Hodgson's funfair. Raised in the carnival, then owned by his father, he had a "joy in old books and fancifully dubious legends," and a "lust for travel, adventure, and outre knowledge" that took him to the Pacific islands, from which he returned with an idol of Cthulhu, and then to Arabia. Afterwards, the "sensitive, mystery-loving traveller" became a reclusive cultist, and he began using the freak show to attract sacrifices to his god. He wore a shaggy toupee to conceal an anemone-like growth on this head.
- Anderson Tharpe: Hamilton's older brother, whose interest in occult paraphernalia is strictly mercenary. He is a "a tall man, well over six feet in height but...thin and emaciated.... His hair was prematurely grey and purposely grown long in an old-fashioned scholarly style, so that he might simulate to the crowd’s satisfaction a necessary erudition."
- Hiram Henley: A professor of archaeology and ethnology at Meldham University, with a specialization in Hittite antiquities; he lost his position due to his obsession with "cycles of myth and aeon-lost legend." He is a "slight, middle-aged man" with a "thin figure," a "balding head and tiny specs through which his watery eyes constantly peered." He was "conspicuously odd," yet his "intelligence was patent; the stamp of a 'higher mind' was written in erudite lines upon his brow." He wears gloves to conceal his worm-like fingers, the mark of his secret status as a priest of Cthulhu.
- Stainton Gamber: An "eminent explorer and archaeologist; one whose name...might be even higher in the lists of famous adventurers and discoverers but for a passion for wild-goose expeditions and safaris."
- Bella Hodgson: The owner of the funfair, who buys it after the Tharpes fall into financial difficulties.
- Madame Zala: A "young, single, dark-eyed Romany fortune-teller" associated with Hodgson's Funfair, "a Gypsy girl of genuine Romany ancestry." She lives in a horse-drawn caravan. Hamilton Tharpe had been "somewhat enamored" by her, but cooled to her after his travels, and she "had been seen to cross herself with a pagan sign" when he passed by. Leaves the funfair, only returning after Anderson Tharpe's disappearance.
Publication History[]
After its initial appearance in The Disciples of Cthulhu, "The Fairground Horror" was reprinted in the anthologies The Book of Cthulhu (Night Shade Books, 2011) and Beside the Seaside: Tales from the Daytripper (Things in the Well Publications, 2019). It was included in Lumley's collections Dagon's Bell and Other Discords (New English Library, 1994), Beneath the Moors and Darker Places (Tor, 2002), and The Taint and Other Novellas (Subterranean Press, 2007).