“The God of Dark Laughter” (2001)

I was surprised to find a story by Michael Chabon in The Weird—I had not realized he wrote in that vein. But he does and here we are. This was published originally in the New Yorker, so we’re not fooling around. It’s almost a parody of cosmic horror, lifting some of H.P. Lovecraft’s ideas whole and generally monkeying around with the Cthulhu mythos. Why not? It’s set up as a mystery, told by the district attorney in a quiet rural area where they don’t see much crime. The victim is a clown that has been horribly mutilated. All the skin from his head and shoulders has been cut away with “a very sharp knife.” It seems like I’ve been seeing a lot of clown and killer clown stuff lately, so I perked up for that part—really the whole story is pretty good. As our investigating DA digs into the case he starts finding literature that references a conflict between two ancient sects. One worships the God of Dark Laughter. The term “coulrophobia” comes up along the way: “morbid, irrational fear of or aversion to clowns.” Nice touch. The specific Lovecraft reference is to the mythical author Friedrich von Junzt (which is actually original to Robert E. Howard though Lovecraft used the device too). Von Junzt wrote, “Űber das Finstere Lachen” (“About the Dark Laughter”), as well as “a small volume bound in black leather and printed in no alphabet known to me, the letters sinuous and furred with wild diacritical marks.” An actual baboon in a clown suit shows up at one point, there for the color mostly (and the Poe reference). It takes the story a while to get to its concepts. The God of Dark Laughter is “the proto-Urartian deity Yȇ-Heh.” Chabon is obviously having fun making stuff up (or maybe it’s original Lovecraft? all the same). The god in opposition to Yȇ-Heh is “Ai, the God of Unbearable and Ubiquitous Sorrow.” Yȇ-Heh’s followers are hedonist, cruel, and mocking. Ai’s “gloomy fanatics saw the world as no less horrifying and cruel than did their arch-enemies [Yȇ-Heh’s followers], but their response to the whole mess was a permanent wailing.” Never mind the inadvertent reference to artificial intelligence. Ai-ites are on a mission to wipe out the remaining followers of Yȇ-Heh, most of whom “have survived, for the most part, by taking on work in traveling circuses." Thus does Chabon close this loop. More than anything it is a traditional mystery story with exotic touches of cosmic horror and Chabon’s inspired language. It all hangs together and it’s quite good, very entertaining.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Story not available online.