The Kall of Kijiji

The following review was found in its present state on the writing desk of Eric Salomon Victim, the great New York art critic, who was in turn found in HIS present state scattered, as the police report said, "lovingly" over a fair stretch of backwater New England dirt road. The present editor is pleased to present the last work of a fine art critic on the last works of a fine folk artist, both of whom came to a mysterious, eldritch-type end. The present editor will be excused for remaining anonymous. One might ask why a present editor would be so eager to publish something so obviously unnatural; and this editor would respond, anonymously of course, that he does not believe in superstition, and that the art world must be freed from the base sort of mysticism, this Yog Soggothic nonsense...*

*The preceding text trails off suggestively. Please proceed to the rest of the article. - The Anonymous Editor's "wife".

Anybody who knew Nathaniel Irehart as I did - barely at all - suspected, I think, that his inspiration was not altogether free of, oh how shall we say it with delicacy... A slight babbling, gibbous caco-demoniacal insanity? Slight. To the eyes of the world he was a darling sculptor, sometimes the writer of an occasional verse, and sometimes the groper of an occasional nurse. His mysterious disappearance has been a shock to the art world, seen as he was last in the area of a shady semi-glowing crypt in the primeval forests of Maine. Believe it or not, there are some who suggest his end was not altogether natural.

He was loved dearly by all in his hometown of Sidon, Massachussets, New England, America, North America, Map, Hillard and Bimbsly 1957 All Rights Reserved. They fawned upon this tittering little goblin who frolicked from saloon to bar, cheering up the downcast and casting down the beer-cask with equanimity and vomiting. Yet I think they all felt in their innards that there was something not quite Euclidean about Irehart -- his physiognomy bespoke an atavism to some semi-reptilian half-mammal, licking its cold green chops as it crawls its way from the fathomless depths of the dark green sea. The same was often said of his limericks, the hue of which was often a shade darker than bleu.

I provide a sample of his mad verse to display the unique blend of occult and ribald influences which made up Irehart's aesthetic, an odd conglomeration which I term "esoteroticism":

There once was a fellow of Arkham

Whose ballsack was named Yog-Soggarkam

Whenever it'd itch

He'd go see his old witch

Who'd hermetically spark'em and lark'em.

I first encountered this wonder child at a folk-art festival in Connecticut  Among the wood carven knick-knacks and candle sets, his 10 foot totem-poll stood out prominently. I took it to be a bit of west-coast inspiration, until I realized that it depicted, not the traditional Raven or Fisherman of the Haida, but a howling half-moose, half-man, half-wolf (I have since learned its name to be a were-moosetaur) devouring a half-turtle, half-jellyfish along a weird trajectory of a mixed-forest treescape at midnight. 

"Pretty piece of crazy, this." I said under my breath to a fellow next to me. "Thanks! The Old Ones have truly spoken to me through this one" he said. It was Irehart. A debonair 20-something year old sporting a tri-corn and britches, leaning on a gruesome cane made out of Whalesbone and hot-glue rhinestones. 

"Old ones?" I inquired. "Oh you know" he mumbled, with a tittering giggle. "Relations. Old Grandma Irehart. Uncle Pyncheon. Aunt Derleth..." I nodded cautiously with the half-moon grin of the condescending. I may have looked askance, but he looked insane.

Upon learning that I was a noted critic, he invited me to visit him at his cottage in Sidon for an exclusive peak at some "works in progress". "Fat chance!" I thought, "I'd sooner play fetch with moosejaw up there than visit this loony in his loony-bin." Meanwhile I smiled a smile of agreement. "Oh please, do come" he implored with a titter, "If you like animals, can play fetch with rover. And my wife, Luna Bin, just adores company..." It struck me that all was not altogether orthodox with this young artist. Still, an exclusive was nothing to chortle at in those days of vagrant art criticism. Two weeks later I was driving down the rural dirt roads of central-northwest-eastern New England. I was looking for an Outlet antique store, as the missus had her eye out for a credenza.

A week after that I took the greyhound to Irehart's seven-gabled chalet. As I approached the devilish looking house au pied, I felt a shudder in my left pocket, and since my cell-phone was in my right, I knew something curious was afoot. The house was, as I said, devilish looking. Its architecture was one of your standard puritan semi-colonials, but with a strange undulation of gable that crept up behind you and whispered "Hassenpfeffer!" in your ear when you weren't paying attention. Also, it was painted blood red. 

I knocked on the old door with the skeleton demon-claw door-knocker, de rigeur of course, but receiving no answer, I rung the hellish door bell. The tune that I heard reverberate through the old stead is terrifying to re-call, and all but impossible to describe; imagine "Old MacDonald" if it were played slowly through on an old 78 made out of human flesh, the speaker-horn of which was the jaw of a ravening extinct sabre-tooth tiger, and you might have an idea of the terror I felt as I listened to the eerie melody.

Irehart came to the door wearing a smile and an 17th century puritan smock on which was the embroidered phrase Kisse ye the Cheffe -- Stake's On! "Welcome welcome" he beamed at me with a toothsome titter "Dinner's almost ready". From the front door to the parlor the house seemed to be an all corridor-and-cobweb sort of affair. I met Luna Bin surely enough sitting on the rug laughing derisively at an antique portrait above the mantelpiece. Not wanting to pry, I refrained from asking. Fido could be heard breathing fire in the back yard. Well wasn't this lovely. Dinner consisted of a special Innsmouth dish of our host's own ancestors called Lobster Inferno. The gills were the tastiest part, I remarked with a ghost-white countenance and a smile worth a thousand tears.

It was after our brandy and shrunken-heads that the host finally offered to show me his studio. Going down to the basement, we came to a sealed, dungeon like door that, once pried open via an old brass key, led to a further staircase smelling of the usual corpse-and-old-spice required of such classic ossuaries. Down, down to the catacombs we went, my host babbling the while of his latest inspiration, of the Old Ones, of old "Grandma Soggoth" and the like. I was beginning to feel slightly uneasy. Well, here we were. The old studio. I was surrounded by a thousand, well... I suppose you could call them sculptures, but I'd be more inclined to call them semi-rotting alien corpses stapled to life-sized cut-outs of Big Bird.

Actually, I was inclined very much to the left at that moment, and was just about to take a welcome leave of my pesky consciousness, which in this whole affair had been nothing but trouble, when I was suddenly aware of a dark voice coming up from a sewer grate in the floor. Perhaps it was saying something in an eldritch, inhuman tongue? Or perhaps it was asking for peanuts. I didn't care to find out. My host had fallen to the floor in a sudden urge to bow, or perhaps he had lost a contact lense to the Dark Lord Uldoroch. I, in any case, had had enough. Gripping my mind with my hands I reeled about for a bit and collapsed in a fit of Scrooge McDuck impressions, as is my wont during stressful situations.

I awoke innumerable hours later in my bedroom back home. Quickly, I am writing all of this down so as to have something that I can trail off to, before I am inevitably driven out of my mind by various extra-universal horrors who will be coming to visit -- ah, I hear the door-bell. Now's as good a place as any to trail off, methinks...