- 🔀 This article is for the short story "Zoth-Ommog", aka "The Horror in the Gallery"; for the Great Old One see Zoth-Ommog.
"The Horror in the Gallery", originally published under the title "Zoth-Ommog" in the 1976 anthology The Disciples of Cthulhu, is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by Lin Carter, and part of his Xothic Legend Cycle.
For people interested in Mythos lore, it is perhaps most significant for including long passages that detail the history of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, based on and including references to the works of several Mythos authors.
Synopsis[]
The story is presented as a police testimony given by Arthur Wilcox Hodgkins in 1929, after a night watchman is found murdered in the South Gallery of the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Antiquities in Santiago, California. Hodgkins maintains that there were actually two bodies, the second being the body of the night watchman's murderer.
Hodgkins worked at the Sanbourne Institute as an assistant to curator Henry Stephenson Blaine, but assumed Blaine's duties following the latter' internment in a mental institution (see "Out of the Ages"). At the time of his mental collapse, Dr. Blaine had been cataloging the collection of files and artifacts belonging to the late Professor Copeland, including a mysterious jade figurine found off the coast of Ponape that represented the god Zoth-Ommog. Since Copeland himself had died raving in an asylum, the press reacts to the news of Blaine's madness with the sensationalist claim that the haunted figurine had made another victim. Hodgkins is told to resume the cataloging, as the directors want the Copeland Collection to be put on display in the South Gallery later that year.
A few months later, Hodgkins receives a call from the asylum telling him that Dr. Blaine is extremely agitated, asking to see Hodgkins immediately. Blaine tells Hodgkins to destroy the Ponape figurine rather than put it on display, and advises him to consult the Necronomicon at the Miskatonic University library. He makes Hodgkins promise to read the Copeland files marked as "Xothic Legend Cycle", which Hodgkins agrees to. From Copeland's files (and Blaine's annotations), Hodgkins learns about the Cthulhu Mythos and particularly about Cthulhu's son, Zoth-Ommog, imprisoned under the island of Ponape. That same night, he starts experiencing bad dreams in which the face of the Zoth-Ommog figurine watches him menacingly.
Studying passages copied by Copeland from books such as De Vermis Mysteriis, The Revelations of Glaaki and the Cultes des Goules, Hodgkins learns that the Great Old Ones can create psychic links with those who have been in contact with the idols and statuettes that represent them, and those who have been in contact with such objects will have their life force drained by these eldritch deities, and see them in their nightmares. Even more alarming, he also learns that the Great Old Ones' servants can use these idols to summon their masters. A note by Copeland points to a page of the Necronomicon where a method for destroying such statuettes can be found. Any skepticism Hodgkins might have still harbored at this point evaporates when he realizes that the jade idol has moved since the last time he'd seen it.
After trying in vain to dissuade the directors from putting the Ponape figurine on display in the gallery, Hodgkins travels from California all the way to the Miskatonic University to have access to the Necronomicon. To pass the time during the long train trip, Hodgkins reads from Copeland's rare copy of the unexpurgated first edition of the Unaussprechlichen Kulten by Friedrich von Junzt. The passage he reads consists of the so-called "Narrative of the Elder World", a detailed account of the history of the Great Old Ones' creation, rebellion and imprisonment.
Once he arrives at Miskatonic, Hodgkins meets several members of the staff, including librarian Henry Armitage, anthropologist Dr. Seneca Lapham and his assistant Winfield Phillips, all of whom have dealt with Mythos phenomena in the past. In addition to support and advise, the Miskatonic staff members offer him a star-shaped stone from the land of Mnar, the same amulet that Hodgkins had read about in von Junzt's book and reiterated in the Necronomicon as the means to destroy the idol. A new problem arises, however, because none of the occult tomes will explain what one must do with the star-stone, and Armitage and Lapham debate about whether placing it in proximity of the idol would be sufficient to negate its effects, or whether some ritual must be performed. When Hodgkins learns from newspapers that the Ponape figurine has been put on display, he returns to California as fast as possible, taking one of the star-stones with him.
Hodgkins arrives at the Sanbourne Institute some hours before opening and finds the night watchman murdered and the Zoth-Ommog figurine emanating a strange energy, as if it was alive. He soon finds the intruder who had bludgeoned the watchman to death, and whose batrachian aspect, sea-salt smell and large mittens reveal as a Deep One intent on using the figurine to summon Zoth-Ommog himself.
Hodgkins desperately tosses the star-stone at the idol, and the collision results in a blast that annihilates the two objects and releases streaks of lightning-like energy, one of which hits the Deep One and kills him by liquefying his body (leaving nothing for the police to find later). Hodgkins loses consciousness and wakes up in a hospital suffering from severe burns. Accused of having killed the night watchman, stolen the Ponape figurine and set fire to the gallery, Hodgkins is declared insane and committed to Dunhill Sanitarium.
Characters[]
- Arthur Wilcox Hodgkins, temporary curator of manuscripts at the Sanbourne Institute, former assistant to Dr. Blaine.
- Dr. Henry Stephenson Blaine, former curator of manuscripts at the Sanbourne Institute, now interred in an asylum.
- Dr. Harrington Colby, psychiatrist in charge of Dr. Blaine.
- Dr. Henry Armitage, librarian at Miskatonic University.
- Cerberus, Armitage's bull mastiff and the library's guard dog.
- Dr. Seneca Lapham, anthropologist at Miskatonic.
- Winfield Phillips, assistant to Dr. Lapham.
- Prof. William Dyer, geologist at Miskatonic.
- Dr. Ferdinand Ashley, historian at Miskatonic.
- Albert Wilmarth, literature instructor and folklorist at Miskatonic.
- Wingate Peaslee, psychology instructor at Miskatonic.
- Emiliano Gonzalez, night watchman found murdered in the South Gallery.
- Deep One intruder who breaks into the South Gallery.