We associate the image of Dionysus with that of Pan, the piper. Pan appears in an early work of cosmic and pagan horror, The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen (1894). There is madness and despair in that story, just as there is madness and despair in The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and the short story "The Last Bonneville" by F. Paul Wilson. This madness and despair, as well as murder, horror, and death, are brought on by seeing and hearing things that are supposed to be beyond human ken, by peering into abysses, and by close encounters with Chaos, the Void, and Evil itself, incarnate. There is piping in Lovecraft, too. It is associated with his god Azathoth, the so-called daemon-sultan who is seated at the center of "Ultimate Chaos."
In The Great God Pan, there are many strange and terrible events. One of these is a bizarre and horrifying transformation undergone by a woman, among other things of woman into man. The passage describing this transformation is too long to give here. You will find it in Chapter VIII, The Fragments.* People who believe the human body can be altered in its fundamental form should read this passage and recognize the kind of horrors they're trying to bring into our world. In the story of Genesis, read from around the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968 by the Apollo Eight astronauts, God said, "Let there be light." The creation of life follows. In this scene of transformation from Machen's story, there is "the negation of light." That negation is followed by death.
There is in The Great God Pan a reference to Nodens, "the god of the Great Deep or Abyss."** Abysses are elsewhere in Machen's story. So is void:
"[. . . ] the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought."
Articulate and intelligible speech, then, pushes back the bounds of the void, just as God spoke his Word, thereby banishing it. Word is positive and creative. Being atheists and probably many of them nihilists, authors of and believers in cosmic horror want instead for us to be bound ever more closely by the void, for it to encroach upon us until we are annihilated. They want, I suspect, Creation to contract and Chaos to reign. The language of the Void, then, is gibberish to us. If we translate it into our language, we go mad, or we lose the will to live. Remember that in the essay preceding his story, Mr. Wilson describes cosmic horror as a genre in which "Chaos reigns." (p. 49)
The Great God Pan has been, I think, an inspiration for much weird fiction and horror fiction, from the works of the devout, such as William Peter Blatty, to those of the skeptical, such as H.P. Lovecraft. F. Paul Wilson mentions The Exorcist and Lovecraft in his essay "Abrahamic vs. Cosmic Horror." He also writes that The Great God Pan "can be rightly viewed as a paradigm of cosmic horror." (p. 49) He seems to have looked to that paradigm in writing his own story. So did the other authors in the Cosmic Horror Issue look to The Great God Pan as well? Or did they consult with Mr. Wilson before they began?
* * *
One more thing: In The Great God Pan, there are the names Helen and Mrs. Beaumont. Another Helen is in the Iliad, just as Dwight Bonneville's given name is originally from Ancient Greece and refers to Dionysus. As for his surname, it echoes Mrs. Beaumont's, for Bonneville means "good town," while Beaumont means "beautiful mountain."
-----
*The description of that final transformation makes me think of a similar scene near the end of The Thing, John Carpenter's film adaptation of John W. Campbell's story.
**There is also this, from a letter quoted in the story: "I am like a traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has drawn back in terror." Is this the source of the title of Francisco Tignini's story "The Traveler"? Dwight Bonneville in "The Last Bonneville" could say the same thing except that he has embraced the abyss instead of being terrified by it.
* * *
I think "The Last Bonneville" is the best story, or the most enjoyable, so far in the Cosmic Horror Issue. Part of that is because of its humor and its tone. Also, we don't have to get ourselves wrapped up in an author who seems wrapped up in himself. Mr. Wilson's story moves, whereas the others are more nearly static. That's what happens when you put Americans into their cars. I guess I should point out that Mr. Wilson is an American, whereas Paul Cornell is British, and Caitlín R. Kiernan, though now an American, was born in Ireland.
* * *
Finally, a couple of things that are wrong. One has to do with the story, in which the authorial voice duplicates in some places the voice of the driver De Groot. We need only one subjective voice. The other is in the Wikipedia entry on F. Paul Wilson, in which he is first described as a "medical doctor," then as a "Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine." It's not his fault or the fault of Weird Tales magazine that there is a lack of precision in his Wikipedia biography. I will point out, though, that the practice of osteopathic medicine grew out of osteopathy, which was just another in a long line of nineteenth-century pseudosciences, some of which still plague us. Can't we be done with pseudosciences, especially when it comes to the practice of medicine? Can't we be done with the lies, hoaxes, and propaganda, the money-grubbing and status-seeking, most of all the Mengele-level experimentation and butchery of what is supposed to be prevention, treatment, cure, and care of the human body and the human soul?
* * *
One last question in regards to "The Last Bonneville": who is in Nevada?
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
