The Xothic Legend Cycle

IN an early page of notes for "the Ythogtha Tales", Lin Career called chis story “The Inhabitant of the Crypt.” For its planned appearance as part of the episodic novel The Terror Out of Time he had intended to change the title to "Zanthu." I have chosen to stick with the title borne by the story in its only publication thus far, in the 1971 Arkham House anthology Dark Things, where it was called "The Dweller in the Tomb." It is likely enough that Lin borrowed the title for this story from one of Robert E. Howard’s Conrad and Kirowan stories, "The Dwellers under the Tombs" (included in the 1978 Berkley collection Black Canaan).

On the other hand, it is an obvious choice from the paradigm of possible Lovecraft/Weird Tales horror titles, all constructed on the same syntagmic scheme: a participial noun followed by a spacial preposition, followed in turn by an ominous-sounding location. It’s easy, just like that old Mad magazine gag inviting you to write your own Bob Dylan song by picking one cliche Dylan term from column A, another from column B, a third from column C, etc., since all the songs were so much alike that the words were nearly interchangeable. First, pick your noun: the Horror, the Lurker, the Haunter, the Whisperer, the Colour, the Shadow, the Dweller, the Inhabitant. Next, choose your preposition: at, on, over, under, out of, in. Next, your location: Red Hook, Warrendown, the Graveyard, Time, Space, the Ages, the Aeons, Darkness, the Dark, the Threshold, the Tomb, the Lake, Innsmouth, the Gulf. Presto! You’re a Mythos writer!

This story, and the four others that with it were intended to be The Terror Out of Time are being published in this book with Lin’s intended revisions. These revised versions appear in print for the first time.