Thoughts and quotes: tHE sHADOW oVER iNNSMOUTH AND tHE hAUNTER OF tHE dARK by H.P. Lovecraft

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories:
THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH and THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK
by Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Penguin Classics (1999), Paperback, 448 pages

The Shadow Over Innsmouth (November - December 1931) tells of the village of Innsmouth, where lives a hybrid race: half-human and half-fish/frog. Lovecraft resumes Dagon’s myth of the god fish.
The narrator arriving by bus at Innsmouth is facing a deserted city and mostly in ruins. The Innsmouth’s people are fish-like head: the so called ‘Innsmouth look’.
The only normal person is the grocery’s clerk, who informs the narrator about the city and a man, named Zadok Allen, who is known as a good source of information.
Zadok tells to the narrator a story of fish-frog men, they live beneath the sea. These men, called the Deep Ones, help the humans bringing them fish and jewelry in exchange of human sacrifices.

Zadok Allen: "Hey, yew, why dun't ye say somethin'? Haow'd ye like to he livin' in a taown like this, with everything a-rottin' an' dyin', an' boarded-up monsters crawlin' an' bleatin' an' barkin' an' hoppin' araoun' black cellars an' attics every way ye turn? Hey? Haow'd ye like to hear the haowlin' night arter night from the churches an' Order o' Dagon Hall, an' know what's doin' part o' the haowlin'? Haow'd ye like to hear what comes from that awful reef every May-Eve an' Hallowmass? Hey? Think the old man's crazy, eh? Wal, Sir, let me tell ye that ain't the wust!" (page 306)

The narrator is forced to spend the night in Innsmouth, and during the night he hears people talking and forcing his room’s door; he manages to escape from a window.

After some time from the nightmare in Innsmouth, the narrator starts researches into his family tree, discovering …

“In the winter of 1930-31, however, the dreams began. … Great watery spaces opened out before me, and I seemed to wander through titanic sunken porticos and labyrinths of weedy Cyclopean walls with grotesque fishes as my companions …
I was one with them …” (page 333)

THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK

The Haunter of the Dark (November 1935) is a short story of the Cthulhu Mythos. The Haunter is an entity living in a church, and it is described as an incarnation of Nyarlathotep (a malign deity in the Cthulhu Mythos).
An ancient artifact, known as Shining Trapezohedron, is used to summon a being from the depth of time and space.
Professor Enoch Bowen discovered the Shining Trapezohedron in Egyptian ruins, although made of alien material.
Members of the Shining Trapezohedron’s cult awaken the Haunter of the Dark by gazing into the glowing crystal.

“Before his eyes a kaleidoscopic range of phantasmal images played, … the thought of ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, …” (page 354)

Nyarlathotep comes from the chaos, and he shows other worlds, and the secrets of arcane knowledge.

“I am on this planet.” (page 359) (maybe!)