"The Night Music of Oakdeene" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Synopsis[]
Nick Garrett, a man with a dark past, is a security guard at Oakdeene Sanitarium. After coming across an old scrap of paper covered with strange phrases, he discovers that one of the words drives his hated charges insane. Deciding that the incarcerated deviants should suffer a little for their crimes, he records the word on a repeating cassette and plays it over and over. Unfortunately for Nick, this causes the inmates to begin a chorus which summons a black entity which needs to feed.
Characters[]
- Nick "Quick Nick" Garrett, night-shift security at Oakdeene
- Martin Spellman, a guard-turned-inmate at Oakdeene
- Yibb-Tstll, The Patient One, an Outer God
Publication History[]
Although it was written in May 1985, "The Night Music of Oakdeene" was not published until May 1998 when it appeared in short-lived Mythos magazine Al-Azif #3. In December 1999 it appeared in the online magazine Nightscapes. It was later included in the John B. Ford/Steve Lines anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos: Cthulhu's Creatures, and again in Pulver's own collection Blood Will Have Its Season.
Trivia[]
- In Nightscapes "The Night Music of Oakdeene" carried the following dedication "For Brian Lumley - Whose rich songs carry us to all to the strange lands of night." British author Brian Lumley wrote the short story "The Horror at Oakdeene."