Review of "A Cosmic Horror Double Feature: 'Dreadge' & 'Prestwick's Project'"

The Arbo Files

If you read close enough you may be able to surmise something surprising about the late, great Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft. Specifically, he disliked the Dutch. Seriously. I submit for your approval a few indications of Lovecraft’s anti-Dutch animus:

• Dutch-American mountaineer Joe Slater, or Slaader, is described as a “typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a little-travelled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more fortunately placed brethren of the thickly settled districts” in “Beyond the Wall of Sleep.”

• The horror that plagues the aesthete fops in “The Hound” emanates from a Dutch churchyard and the grave of a long-dead Dutch occultist.

• The Martense family of Dutch colonial stock become vile and vampiric goblins in “The Lurking Fear.”

• The evil character in “The Horror at Red Hook” is Robert Suydam, who is characterized as “a lettered recluse of ancient Dutch family, possessed originally of barely independent means.”

Maybe old Howie’s distaste for the Dutch was part of his larger disdain for Gotham. Then again, the arch-Anglophile may have just held his nose at all non-English peoples. Whatever the case, Lovecraft is likely smiling down from his throne inside of the Crawling Chaos because of A. Cuthbertson’s novella, Dreadge. Like the long-gone master, Mr. Cuthbertson has taken it upon himself to articulate the dangers of the Dutch Menace in his impressive work.

The first novella in a two-part book published by the boys of the Bizarchives, Dreadge is a Lovecraftian story set in the fens near Cambridge, England. You may hear “Cambridge” and think of the famous university. The fine English gentleman Cuthbertson wants you to think of another, far more insidious history of Cambridge in this yarn. Once upon a time, during the 17th century, a shadowy group of local men called the “Fen Tigers” violently resisted the forced draining of the fens around Cambridge. Acts of sabotage and even murder were done by villagers in order to protect their traditions, which relied on the swampy, marsh-like lands for their work and sustenance. In Dreadge, Cuthbertson takes this history and makes it weird.

Dreadge is told from the perspective of a Victorian mercenary. Said mercenary is the leader of a group of scabs and thugs who make their money beating up striking workers while dressed as police, or by being muscle for unwanted industrial developments in rural England. Because of their skills, the mercs-by-gaslight are hired by a strange Dutch entrepreneur named Van Buskirk. As the narrator tells it, Van Buskirk “made a pretty penny reclaiming farmland from the sea for the Dutch government…using some kind of advanced engineering.” Now Van Buskirk’s goal is to drain Cambridge. The only problem is that the local villagers do not want it, and their insurgency has so far been successful. That is where the mercenaries come in. Their job is to protect Van Buskirk and his Dutch workers from local axes, cleaves, and other deadly tools.

The Dutch countryside — the source of all evil.

In true cosmic horror fashion, Van Buskirk’s mission has nothing to do with the economics of farming. The villagers know, and the mercenaries eventually learn that Van Buskirk has his mind set on resurrecting horrors from beyond the stars. His D.R.E.A.D.G.E. machine is designed for “Dredging Raising Excavating Aqueous-Draining Grave Exhumer.” If the grave below the fens, is exhumed, it could destroy the whole world.

Dreadge is one of the best modern cosmic horror tales that I have ever read. While it clearly owes much to Lovecraft, Cuthbertson writes with his own style and voice. Unlike the man from Providence, Cuthbertson gives center stage to working class characters rather than reclusive academics or general weirdos. The mercenaries and villagers in Dreadge are tough, hardy people ultimately caught off-guard by the evil machinations of Van Buskirk and his minions. The Dutch are at it again in Dreadge, and this story’s gore-soaked climax cannot be missed.

While Dreadge is cosmic horror told with a streetwise panache, the second novella, Prestwick’s Project, is closer in spirit to the alienating weirdness of Lovecraft’s later science-fiction tales. Professor Prestwick is the mad scientist who uses two graduate students as guinea pigs in an experiment that eventually swallows the entire world. Prestwick’s ravenous scheme not only messes with time and minds, but it warps the very physics of the atmosphere. This strangeness is mirrored by the writing in Prestwick’s Project by Mr. Cuthbertson. There are moments and entire paragraphs in this novella wherein the reader’s disorientation parallels the discombobulation felt by the narrator. That is a skill that a select few writers have, and Cuthbertson has it.

Prestwick’s Project may have a dour ending, but you, dear reader, will feel nothing but joy if you pick up this book. A. Cuthbertson is a gem of a gent, plus he is a helluva writer. While other supposed sons and daughters of Lovecraft have produced nothing but pabulum over the decades (even worse, politically correct pabulum), Cuthbertson is the real McCoy. Both novellas move with a purpose. Better yet, given the differences in the characters between these two stories, the writing is specific and logical. The language is rougher in Dreadge, while Prestwick’s Project is more refined. Both are top-tier tales in their own right.

A. Cuthbertson is clearly a talent on the rise. And although he may share one of Lovecraft’s lamentable ethnocentric biases (I kid, I kid), he is clearly one of the best writers in the Bizarchives bullpen. He should do the wicked world a favor and write more tales.

We’re waiting underneath the water.