The Presence of the Past: A Brief Tour of Webster’s Weird World

1,329 words

C. P. Webster
Lovecraft’s Cat & Other Tales of Weird Fiction
Independently published, 2025

What a foolish, inquisitive fly was I to stumble into this sticky, enveloping embrace of a lurking spider’s web… And very soon, perhaps this very evening, when the sun has set and the twilight creeps up to touch the eaves, then the spider might come crawling for its prize.
—“Still Here”

***

Constant Readers will recall my review of this author’s previous book, The Horror Beneath, where I said that, “On the basis of this novella, I must seek out more — whatever the risks — and I recommend that to you, dear Constant Reader, as well.”

And so the gods have responded!

The publishers say:

Lovecraft’s Cat and Other Tales of Weird Fiction, brings together fourteen of Webster’s widely published works of short-form fiction in a single volume for the first time. In addition, four of the tales are previously unpublished, namely, ‘Lovecraft’s Cat’, ‘The Jackals Will Come for Their Own’, ‘The Second Parcel’, and ‘Still Here’. 

The stories span different times and different places, but all describe encounters with those liminal spaces, that drift just offshore of our own universe. And, sometimes, the creeping denizens of those outer realms, cross over the dark borderland to introduce themselves to us.

Of course, I also expressed my preference for what Henry James called, “the dear, the blessèd nouvelle,” the tale or “long short story” that both James and later H. P. Lovecraft excelled in, and which seems the best of lengths, not just in general but especially in the horror genre.[1]

The tales here, however, are without question in the short story mode, which not a few readers may prefer. In any event, though separate they have several unifying features. One story turns out to be a sequel to another – I’ll let the reader discover which one for himself—and speaking of sequels, another brings back the occult investigator Von Hallerstein, whose demise was an element of The Horror Beneath.[2]

Readers of that review will also recall my suggestion that Webster’s perspective of Lovcraftian Cosmism – the relativity of “good” and “evil” to man’s petty concerns — leaves him free to use more controversial historical figures and groups than the many other ones that crop up in such tales, no better or worse than John Dee, conspiratorial monks, the Roman legions, or the Templars.

Two examples crop up here: in “The Eyes of Kwenengawa” the “lost city that’s best left alone” trope is refreshed by setting it in colonial South Africa rather than, say, the Australia outback (as in The Shadow Out of Time) and making the “reckless explorer who gets what’s coming to him” an English git and the “wise local guide” a Boer; while in “The Four Horsemen” the titular protagonists are not only fighting the British but represent (subtly) non-Anglo-Saxon White ethnicities.

In another, “The Beast of Babylon,” the protagonist representing the “occult detective who resembles Sherlock Holmes and battles esoteric Nazis” trope has a Traditionalist contempt for the modern world, but his admiration for an awakening Germany leads him to agree to take on an assignment for Dr. Goebbels: thwarting a Communist plot to discredit the National Socialists by linking them to a Crowleyian cult.

Locales range from the Welsh countryside – Machen territory – to the South African frontier, both areas well known to Webster.[3]

In truth, anywhere can be a liminal space, due to another theme: psychic residues which, as in The Shining, can provide an unwelcome link to the past, in the form of ghosts, dreams, [4] succubi, amulets, or even perhaps cats, all prone to triggering that urge to take a look-see.[5]

The author gives us his views right from the start:

There is a theory relating to hauntings that goes something like this… and it is simple enough…

The circumstances of a death can, if the events are traumatic, leave a recurring imprint at the site of the misfortune. This is called a residual haunting. In such cases, the tragic participant is seen again and again, repeating like a looped reel of film, sometimes on an anniversary, or perhaps when triggered by somebody who is psychically sensitive, such as a medium, or even a child. One need think only of the Grey Lady, a phantom who walks the halls and stairs of so many of our old, English country houses, to form a picture of this type of creature.

 It strikes me therefore, that it must equally be true, that if a person loved a place in life, that they might too imbue it with their spirit in death. I suppose that it would be a kind of perseverance of that most powerful emotion of all. If trauma, why not love? Or, indeed, both at the same time? And sometimes too, these lingerings are more than a mere replay of the past.

They can be communicated with, talked to…

These are called intelligent hauntings.

 Conversations with beings outside of time, or for whom, at least, time has ceased to have any meaning. Like any layman, I can write only from the observed experience of an ordinary man, I am no scientist….

But in this corner of Einstein’s block universe, my experiences are enough for me.

All these themes can be seen summarized or epitomized in the new tale that provides this theory as well as the volume’s title, “Lovecraft’s Cat.” Yet despite all this, as well as featuring a Lovecraftian figure and even going so far as to quote a letter from Lovecraft himself, the newbie might miss the connection, since “Lovecraft” does not appear anywhere in the story, other than the title and epigraph. [6]

Does the story take place in some alternate timeline where Lovecraft remained an unknown writer; unknown except to those who meet him in dreams? Perhaps the psycho-pompous cat is a playful metaphor for Lovecraft himself, and his effect on our world?

The epigraph from Lovecraft sums up the story and the collection: “For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see…”

So we end as we began: if you are a fan of weird fiction, especially tales with more than a hint of British folk horror, and no woke hangups, then this collection is for you.

Unless, like some of the protagonists, you live in the kind of liminal locale where reading such tales can set bad things in motion. Beware! Beware!

Notes

[1] As I’ve pointed out before, the horror genre requires a patient accumulation of detail, so as to create an atmos’ of verisimilitude, and perhaps suffocation or delirium in the reader, which seems to work against the “unity of effect” that Poe saw would require a short length; hence, the “long short story,” and the dearth of really effective horror “novels,” which often seem padded at a publisher’s request (see: Stephen King). For more see my collection The Eldritch Evola . . . & Others: Traditionalist Meditations on Literature, Art, & Culture (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014)

[2] The linked tales also have elements that recall, or, to use a term that will soon appear, “contain residues” of two British horror films, Dr. Phibes Rises Again (with Vincent Price) and The Medusa Touch (with Richard Burton). “A Weekend at Uncle Andrews” references Hammer Horror, and indeed it might be described as Withnail & I as a Hammer Horror film.

[3] Born in the north of England, Webster’s family emigrated to South Africa in his teens; he now lives in what the publisher calls “the wilds of legend-haunted Wales.”

[4] Several stories also make a very effective use of the experience of dream or sleep paralysis, the inability to escape from an approaching horror.

[5] “Still Here” is perhaps the most explicit link to The Shining, switching out the time-distorting hotel for a time-distoring country house.

[6] The connection to the Lovecraft World is established elsewhere by references to “piping” and to the dreaded De Vermis Mysteriis, as well as a German aviator name Eldrich Beck; perhaps the amulet in “The Sea Witch” comes from the Deep Ones.