“Sticks”
1974
by Karl Edward Wagner
Illustrated by Lee Brown Coye
Originally published in 1974 in Whispers Magazine, and a winner of the British Fantasy Award, this story is considered by archivists and madmen to be canonical Mythos, and to my inner eye could easily have been penned by Lovecraft himself with its vague otherworldly shifts and bleak upstate New York setting. (It takes place, in fact, not far from Rod Serling’s birthplace, Syracuse, a birthplace which is shared by illustrator Lee Brown Coye.) Coye is known for his flesh-crawling folk art appearing in <em>Weird Tales</em>, Arkham House, and the backwoods horror of Manly Wade Wellman.
Why do I mention the illustrator, when the text of “Sticks” has appeared in so many different anthologies and formats since its original publication? Because the story, while written by Wagner, was based on the experiences of the artist whose signature stick lattices form the basis of the narrative. Coye’s lattices are the primary reason the short story warrants closer examination. There is a clear influence on the eerie stick glyphs in The Blair Witch Project, and the underlayment of the series True Detective is admittedly (by writer Nic Pizzolatto,) a cosmic horror that ranges from Wagner’s “Sticks” to Robert Chamber’s “The King in Yellow”.
Sticks is about an artist named Colin Leverett, who, while out hiking in late ‘30s, discovers a derelict house that seems to be an abandoned in the backwoods of the Adirondacks. Its overgrown yard is filled with sticks lashed together, some poking out of stone dolmens, some hanging from trees, some sketched out on the interior walls of the house, as if being planned out. Exploring the basement, a stone structure that seems ages older than the house that that currently stands atop only a portion of it, Colin is attacked by a lich on a sacrificial table! He smashes its head in and escapes!
After the war, consigning his experience to the realm of mental hallucination, Colin is approached by publisher Prescott Brandon who commissions some work to accompany a collection of creepy H. Kenneth Allard stories, (a thinly veiled parallel to Lovecraft,) but they need that… extra touch. So Colin turns to his old sketches of stick lattices.
“Scotty” Brandon also refers the artist to a local historian and archaeologist Dr. Alexander Stefroi who is also intrigued by the locality and the bronze age megaliths that seem to recall the cellar in Colin’s origin story of the lattices. He tells of a cult that exists today that worships the Great Old Ones and believes that through ritual they can maintain immortality until the ancient gods return and bring their servitors back to life.
As soon as the volume of books bearing the illustrations of stick glyphs hits the shelves, he gets word of his publisher Scotty being murdered by someone searching through his offices! Did he share occult knowledge he wasn’t supposed to be privy to? Is Colin next?
Soon, who should show up at the door but the nephew of the author whose book he illustrated, Dana Allard, with a briefcase full of unpublished work that he’s bringing to press himself, and he’d like Colin to illustrate them! ($Cha-ching!) The stories happen to be about the very same stick glyphics that influenced Colin’s earlier Allard illustrations. At the same time, Colin begins having nightmares where he encounters the same lich being (named Althol), an immortal high-priest of the prehistoric cult that the Brethren of the New Light evolved from, with his head still caved in from Colin’s iron weapon back in the abandoned house.
Then the cult (we assume) kills the nosy archaeologist that was investigating the monument builders. Colin runs to the Dana, warning that they’ll kill them both if the stories go to publication… but it’s too late. The books are shipping. Dana has a couple palettes in the basement already.
quote
SPOILER
(Just in case you haven’t actually predicted how this very Lovecraftian story ends:)
Turns out the nephew isn’t actually a relation of Allard’s and executor of his estate, it’s H.K. Allard himself, the original author of weird cosmic horror tales. He is truly immortal (not just through his writing). Althol’s dain-bramage set the Brethren of the New Light back a few decades, but now that Allard has actually published the lattice incantations from Leverett’s artistic memory, the grand summoning spell will appear before thousands of eyes, casting an invocation that will open the gate and bring forth the Great Old Ones! Cue evil laughter! And Colin too, is to become immortal…
The best audiobook adaptation of “Sticks” was done back in 1998 by ZBS, one of the first productions in what we now refer to as 3-D sound (“Kunstkopf Binaural Sound”, though the Zeebers referred to their dummy-head as Fritz). This is no less that what I’d expect of the creators of The Fourth Tower of Inverness and Ruby, The Intergalactic Gumshoe. I’m almost deaf in one ear, so my personal binaural experience has always been underwhelming. Yet in this case, I found myself –more than once during the story– sitting up to see who else was in the room with me because the incidental background noises were so life-like!
The audio adaptation by Meatball Fulton (Tom Lopez) has slightly adapted the story of the original text to fit into a half-hour presentation… and to be a little less cryptic. This isn’t just a reading of the story, it’s an audio drama with actors playing out the artist’s point of view as he publishes his work based on renditions of the stick-lattice occult symbols and then learns of his publisher’s murder. Here, the protagonist’s girlfriend, interested in the history of the old crumbling foundation has gone out to those original woods to explore the house! In the dark. Despite the hints of a still-living pagan religious cult and Colin’s own nightmarish hallucinations. The sound effects in the cellar scene remind me of the <em>Lights Out</em> radio show episode “The Dark”.
