"Sticks" (1974)

If H.P. Lovecraft married The Blair Witch Project and they had a baby, it would be this story by Karl Edward Wagner. Wagner was a trained doctor and psychiatrist who abandoned the profession as soon as he could. He looked like a biker outlaw or member of Jethro Tull. A tireless champion of cosmic horror, he published as the principal of Carcosa Press, edited an annual Year's Best Horror anthology through the '80s and into the '90s, and wrote a lot of stories. He died young, in 1994, at 48. "Sticks" is a great example of Wagner's knack for the cosmic. It's now considered part of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. I particularly like the casual inside view Wagner brings here of horror publishing, making the main character an illustrator for pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, mentioned by name. But it's the so-called lattice structures that particularly make the story. They are combinations of sticks and boards nailed or bound together in geometric shapes and they litter the forest floor by the hundreds. Our guy is out looking for a trout stream the day before he is due to report to the draft board to serve in World War II. He finds these strange stick figures and follows them to what might be their source, an abandoned house deep in the woods dating back to pre-Revolutionary times. The stick figures multiply the closer he gets to it and, well—we're here to solve the mystery of all this, which takes years and decades. The closer our various psychic detectives get to it (writing letters to one another—a lot of this story is classic epistolary business), the more likely they are to die under strange circumstances. It's altogether epic for a story that only goes about 20 pages. Things happen in it you can't expect, even if you've read Lovecraft and watched Blair Witch. It's great with landscapes, especially the New England wilderness, which is really the heart of the whole thing. I must be getting used to the Lovecraft style (minus the bigotry), because I found "Sticks" easy and enjoyable to settle into, let it work its magic, and ride along for the fun. I liked the peek behind the curtain of horror fiction publishing, and the sense of how important illustrators are to the enterprise. The story never feels strained, maintains a nice pace, and all developments are organic and natural enough on their terms. Something just feels unusually lucid in this story of the Cthulhu realms. It might even be a good place to start on cosmic horror if you're not sure of Lovecraft and his well-deserved reputation for being objectionable.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Masters of Horror and the Supernatural: The Great Tales, ed. Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg, & Martin H. Greenberg (out of print)
Listen to story online.