Mr. Wodehouse, Meet Mr. Lovecraft

“It’s those RSPCA blighters again!” said Lord Boggleton, naming his bete noire.

“Let’s go have a look,” Monica said, and the rest followed.

The oft-surly and unpredictable English summer smiled upon the group as they crossed the sunny lawn into the copse. Once inside, however, they were confronted by willows contorted as if by torture, malignant nooses of Spanish moss, lichens arranged in patterns of decay and foreboding. Along the once-pleasant path there hung a palpable sense of unnameable evil.

“The garden seems to have rather gone to pot,” Bill said, then caught himself. “but it’s nothing a good landscaper couldn’t fix.”

“No use in being sentimental, I must sack that McTavish,” Boggleton grumbled, plucking at a monstrous fern that seemed to suck ravenously at his shoe.

They rounded the bend, and saw a blood-chilling sight: At the water’s edge were clustered all the meanest inhabitants of nearby Lower Boggleton. Members of the household staff led the orgiastic proceedings, chief among them none other than Peeves.

“Rather a lot of half-caste cult fiends for a sleepy English village, don’t you think?” Monica said.

“Still, it takes all kinds!” Bill said, solely for Mrs. Tramway’s benefit.

“McTavish, I want a word with you!” Lord Boggleton yelled. The gardener made no reply, concentrating instead on his arcane chanting and spasms.

The nightmare corpse-city of R’yleh had risen up in the middle of the lake, its ooze-covered bulk obscuring the gently rolling hills beyond. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age cut no ice with the property’s owner. “That wasn’t there yesterday.” He said. “It’s a blamed eyesore.”

Wafting above this eerie scene was the unholy chanting of McTavish and the others: “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!’

“What does that mean?” asked Monica.

“Something to the effect of, ‘This Cthulu blighter is top-hole,’ I expect, ” said the Colonel. “I encountered some of these chaps in a watering-hole in Singapore,” he said. “They asked me for a donation.”

“I bloody well hope you gave them one!” Bill shouted, his nerves shot. There went the sale, he thought. Who would want to live near a corpse-city and a chorus of bellowing lunatics?

Mrs. Tramway suddenly screamed, and all attention was focused on her.  “I’ve lost my diamond necklace!”

A collective gasp riffled the now-brackish water. “But who could’ve taken it?” Bill asked.

(Mr. Wodehouse, Meet Mr. Lovecraft continues…)