"The Insects from Shaggai" was written by British horror author Ramsey Campbell c.1961 and published in 1964. A defining entry in his early Lovecraftian ouvre, it can be found in a number of collections, most prominently certain copies of Cold Print (1985). We'll cover the book's other stories (including "Cold Print") some other time, but right now let's talk brain-parasites and witches...
Spoilers beyond the cut.
Spoilers beyond the cut.
"Sundered Sky (Left Face)" (M. Klaas, Stockholm, 1946)
SYNOPSIS
Writing his suicide note, English fantasy author Ronald Shea explains he will be cutting his wrists at sundown. Days earlier he had visited the town of Brichester, and in a pub met a local teacher and fan of his stories. Over a few beers and apparetly with the intent of planting a few plot seeds for future books, the teacher regaled Shea with stories of how the Romans cut a clearing in nearby Goatswood forest for a temple to Magna Mater – and how in the 1600s a meteor fell to Earth in that same clearing. Witches met there, local lore claims, and soon the worship of the Devil was replaced by worship of the meteorite, which gave “ecstatic pleasure, like … one gets from taking drugs.”
Though the cult was eradicated by the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, the clearing was left untouched. Soon after a half-mad traveller arrived in Brichester, babbling that something in the woods, “almost as tall as a tree” and with metallic footsteps, had chased him to the clearing. There stood a thirty foot tall metal cone "made of a grey mineral that didn’t reflect.” Nearby was an altar, stained with blood. While the man investigated the cone, finding carvings, a trapdoor on its side opened. Rustling shapes crawled forth...
Joining Shea's table, an "old rustic" adds that the madman spoke of being taken underground by the cone's inhabitant, and ever since then strange lights and noises have emanated from the woods. One visitor even died of a heart attack, scared to death by something he witnessed. Stoked on Dutch courage, Shea tells his companions he'll visit the woods – and even chip off a piece of cone for the pub's bar!
Next morning, having driven to Goatswood's foggy forest, Shea explores – and it doesn’t take long for him to bump into a metallic “tree”, its base bifurcated to form legs! Evading the mouthed tentacle that reaches for him, Shea hides among some roots and falls into a fitful sleep. By the time he wakes the sun is setting, and his attempts to escape lead him to the clearing, with its dull metal cone.
Intrigued by the cone’s carvings – which tell the histories of five alien races, including a semi-insect-like species – Shea fails to notice darkness fall. The trapdoor opens and from it, flapping on leathery wings, a gaggle of three-mouthed, scaled creatures with “huge lidless eyes,” jointed tendrils and ten folded legs, fly at his face. His vision melts and warps and he is horrified to realize the “alien matter” of the creatures has allowed one to fly inside his head! It “crawls around in [his] brain.”
Obviously under some alien power, Shea finds this surprisingly normal – even as the insect dumps its memories into him: of flying over green-misted worlds (host to creatures even the insects fear), engaging in a commando raid to steal a weapon from another race, being worshiped as a god by putrescent worm-fungi, and exploring a temple of colossal humanoid statues. Whether these events took place in the insect’s true body or possessing another is left unsaid.
The insects originally came from Shaggai, a planet whose cities of pylons and domes were lit by two green stars. Only forty insects, including Shea’s possessor, survived the destruction of their homeworld. Having been worshiping in their pyramid temple, they were safe when a red planetoid appeared overhead and burned Shaggai to radioactive cinder.
The temple (which could teleport) first went to Xiclotl, a colony world of superstitious and self-sacrificial tree-like slaves. From here the insects summoned survivors of their race to join them. Once regrouped, they teleported with some slaves to Thuggon in a neighboring galaxy. Though a seemingly dead planet, the insects fled when two of their number were murdered by unseen forces.
Next the race went to L’gy’hx (Uranus), whose cuboid, metal inhabitants proved friendly. A new conical temple-ship was built to replace the old one. Yet, even as many of the cube aliens grew disgusted at the debased rituals the insects enacted for Azathoth, some insects in turn saw the L’gy’hxian god – the bat-headed Lrogg – as a more generous deity. After a fight at a Lrogg temple, the L’gy’hxians ordered the pro-Azathoth insects to leave, of whom some 30 did. Those cuboid Ly’gy’hixians who had converted to the worship of Azathoth were executed with acid.
And so the insects arrived on Earth, mis-landing in Goatswood where their temple-ship buried itself with only the top thirty-feet above the soil. At night the insects hypnotized humans and brought them to the cone, forming the witch-cult. Alongside worshiping Azathoth, the humans became addicted to the memories the insects injected into their minds. While at first doing this for fun, the insects quickly saw an opportunity to rule Earth and a means to build a great gate by which to bring Azathoth into our universe.
The destruction of the witch-cult ended this plan, and the insects – wishing to leave Earth – now found some “constituent of the atmosphere” stopped their ship leaving. Lapsing into torpor, they relied upon their Xiclotl slaves to defend the ship as they spent their days basking in Azathoth's glory. Shea is the first human to be possessed by a Goatswood insect in 400 years.
The alien possessor now floods Shea with images of a procession to the cone-vessel's lowest levels, down spiral passages, through Xiclotl cell-blocks and a souvenir hall (containing an eyeless corpse from each of the insects’ slave races) to a ritual room. Here stands a twenty-foot statue of Azathoth before his exile Outside. Armed with weapons, the insects usher on a weakened Xiclotl to be sacrificed. They approach the inner temple and…
Shea awakes in the clearing just before dawn, brain burning with a need to see the cone’s sanctum. He enters through the open hatch, descending dim lit corridors and rooms by memory. In the ritual room, Azathoth’s statue looms like a “bivalvular shell supported on many pairs of flexible legs.”
Azathoth can only be worshiped during the day, hence why the insects stay in their temple except at night. But just before he can open the triangular door guarding Azathoth’s extrusions, Shea's nerve breaks and he flees. Behind him the portal bursts open, a pale grey shape oozing into the corridor.
Careening through the woods, Shea is horrified to meet another tree-like Xiclotl guardian – but now the monster fears him more than he does it. Refusing to return to Brichester, hiding from people, by night the thing in his head tries to get Shea to lure “gullible” folk to the clearing.
Finishing his letter, knowing his actions safeguard humanity, he takes up the razor at his side...
THOUGHTS AND FLIM-FLAM
"The Insects from Shaggai", while not the best of Campbell's Lovecraftian stories, is definitely one of his most iconic – single-handedly introducing one of the most frequent beasties in Lovecraftian roleplaying games. Though certainly not as famous as deep ones (or even mi-go), the RPGs Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green have made Shan among the quintessential "brain-invading" monster, with similar-but-not-the-same multi-limbed, bird-sized mind-parasites cropping up in video games.
What's particularly interesting when going back to the original short story isn't trying to find bits that later iterations cut out, but rather to realize how much later roleplaying writers and gamers added to (or even misunderstood) about the Azathoth-worshiping insects from space.
Briefly looking at the actual plot, "The Insects from Shaggai" is simple enough as a story and all the better for it. It's definitely atmospheric, short enough to not outstay its welcome, and moves along at a brisk clip. True, characterization is nearly non-existent (unsurprising for an early Lovecraft pastiche) but there's a wry eye for character in there, particularly in the extended conversation over beers at the beginning, which effectively tells you everything you need to know without reading the story. Meanwhile, Shea's eventual fate, even if it is stated right at the beginning, is enough to elicit at least a little sympathy. If only our poor, trustworthy fool hadn't overdone the pints and then decided to keep his word the following day.
Anyway, let's talk about some of those difference and points I felt were interesting.
Though peripheral to the story itself, the oft-forgotten Xiclotl slaves who guard the cone actually play a relatively strong role. While it's debatable whether these simple-minded and religious creatues, who worship a plant-god through ritual self-murder, are the same race of strong "oval-headed faceless beings" that the insects control by means of a "box-shaped crystal" but I think we can all agree few other slave-races have been given such short-shrift by successor writers. We've had Elizabeth Bear's "Shoggoths in Bloom" but wherefore no "Xiclotl in Efflorescence"?
In fact at least a half-dozen aliens races are mentioned or shown in the story, including cuboid Uranians, a worm-like thing that rises (with gaping maw) from the mists of an unnamed planet, and a foot-soldier of some unknown species armed with a beam weapon. Assuming the four races (beside the Shan) shown on the outside of their cone are not these creatures but are also slaves, it's safe to assume there may be other forms of Shan locomotion on Earth to which we have not yet been introduced.
The insects themselves – though still the same pigeon-sized three-mouthed beasties - are different from their successors, not least in name. I don't know where the term "Shan" came from but it isn't here; it's "insects" all the way.
In Campbell's take, these insects take flight by night, swooping and soaring in the sky like a flock of birds - pigeons specifically - stretching their membranous wings after a long day's worship. As far as can be ascertained, they aren't bothered by daylight - or at least it's never outright said they are. Instead, the reason they don't come out is a mix of distrust of humanity and a preference for hanging around underground, genuflecting to the gelatinous Azathothian extrusion in their cone-ship (that is cone-ship V2.0, mind; they built this shiny new one on Uranus).
One question that's cropped up time and again in media featuring the Shaggai is: can insects actually "control" humans? Outside of references to "hypnotism", specifically of gullible, weak-minded folk, and an explicit reference to the thing in Shea's head speaking to him at night (apparently wanting him to build a cult), it's hard to work out if Shea's desire to break into the cone and visit Azathoth is his own idea or the insect's. If it was the latter it doesn't say much for the parasite – for what right-thinking thief would you want to crash the car they'd just hotwired, rather than take it for a joy-ride?
While the Shan don't seem to fear Azathoth as the Xiclotl do – those shock-whips they wield seem almost exclusively designed to keep slaves in check, not hold back the idiot god's nuclear fire – maybe they really are just dumb. Maybe they're the extraterrestrial equivalent of the Bible-thumper, the believer so sure in the power and efficacy of his prayer he'd open the Ark of the Covenant just to prove the purity of his faith. Far from the insects being a bunch of sadists and decadents who possess humans for cheap thrills, the original story has them come across as rather... well, puerile.
Human hosts, it seems, get more out of the bargain. After all, the witch-cult didn't worship out of fear but from the indescribable awe of having alien dreams injected directly into their gray-matter. Nonetheless, Shea describes his mind-meld as an "agonising distortion", as if "the lenses of [his] eyes had twisted" – so perhaps those witches weren't necessarily so truthful about the experience.
Compared to Campbell's more explicitly decadent stories – "Cold Print", for instance – the insects seem remarkably chaste, if not outright cowardly. Faced with the multiple choice threat of A) exile, B) death or C) conversion to a new deity, the majority choose (C), tossing their old (and very real!) god in the trashcan of history – something tha means a bunch of Shan are out there, floating around, worshiping Lrogg. I don't think I need to point out the potential for holy-war shenanigans if they and their Earthbound siblings were ever to meet up.
In spite of the story's evident influence on gaming and Lovecraftian lore, the insects from Shaggai don't turn up again much in fiction. The only one I specifically remember is Diane Sammarco's "The Queen", a not especially memorable story about school-girl-days, transformations and Shan reproductive methods (I'll likely review it along with the rest of the RPG-tie-in Made in Goatswood compilation some time soon... ish) and "Random Access" by M.G. Szymanski in the same book. I'm not actually sure if the latter story really is an insects story, actually, so that'll be a good thing to check.
Overall a solid entry (and among the best in Cold Print), serving to demonstrate exactly how far its author would go over the coming years. Though probably owing its premise to the far more "cinematic" body-snatchers of cinema (not to mention Heinlein's The Puppet Masters) and let down by a somewhat weak spine, where the entire plot is explained in the first two or three pages, it's nevertheless a breakthrough in tying together a focus on alien environments, mental domination and body horror that would embody Campbell's most well-known tropes as a young author.
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