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Episode 447 - The Bells of Oceana (Patreon)

Published:
2019-04-16 03:25:52
Edited:
2019-04-21 22:46:24
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Tune in to listen to The Bells of Oceana by Arthur J. Burks!

Special thanks to our reader - Wyatt S. Gray!

Next up: The Moon Pool - Part One

Comments

Anonymous

Ahh, yes, mermaids. One of the more iconic Celtic Fae, they'd lure men to the abyss so they could be kept as slaves in golden chains on the sea floor. (A shame they aren't around; nowadays they'd find no dearth of people actually into that.) Nice to see such an old staple brought to life with some fresh horror--even if a mermaid isn't nearly as upsetting as a fachen, dullahan, or the skinless Knoggelvi. As per the vagueness of the tale, I have an idea; though I haven't read it, so the writing may contradict it in some way. This seems to me a mental or spiritual threat--the kind of thing with no physical effect save it taking you, should it manage to do so. The guards may well have been going about their business without the faintest idea of what was closing in on them. Because the narrator was asleep, though, he was engaging in an age-old human pastime that is oft ascribed a mystic or spiritual dimension--dreaming. And so he dreamed of the ship, and the captain, and the guards, but here he saw the drama play out with the predator in full view. He woke up upon managing to escape the beast's clutches, of course; the Captain didn't remember because, to him, none of that happened--he spent the night quite awake. The only souls who could elucidate the matter at all, of course, are those two who disappeared, so...

Anonymous

I love it when suspension of disbelief comes crashing down. Weird pale face framed with seaweed outside the porthole? Disbelief suspended. Boat pursued by an island of seaweed? All good on the suspended disbelief front. Nude lady luring men to their death with promises of sweet sweet sweets and the tinkling of bells? We're good so far as the disbelief and suspension paradigm. Snake bottomed lady leaves footprints despite having no feet and the deck being covered in storm water? A bridge too far, my friends. Disbelief, I regret to inform you, has come a crashing down.

Anonymous

I also picked up Wyatt Gray's latest audiobook, mentioned in the podcast. Great stuff.

Jason Thompson

(1) This had some good writing, but it felt like the author was sorta making it up as he went along (inconsistencies like the feet/no-feet, the seaweed moving but why, the it-was-all-a-dream-but-not ending).

Jason Thompson

(2) It’s been really interesting to read these “Lovecraft’s Favorite Weird Tales of the 1920s and 30s” stories! In general they’re really good. It’s also interesting in that I feel Lovecraft at the time was increasingly getting away from these kinda short, eerie horror stories, and moving more and more into longer and science-fiction-ish narratives, like “At the Mountains of Madness” and “Whisperer”. Clearly he was still able to appreciate a good ‘pure’ horror story, even if his personal interests in what he wanted to write were evolving. I wonder what Lovecraft’s favorite current (to him, 1920s-30s) science fiction* stories were?

Anonymous

So is it me, or are these sirens not sirens at all? Surely some of you good folk know what an angler fish is, right? For those of you who don't, it's a fish with a projection extending from the top of its head that acts as a lure to attract its prey. I think those sirens are just parts of a much larger sea monster (probably a psychic one like in "The Horror at Martin's Beach") that can appear as whatever the marines in the story desire most (in their case, the "Perfect Sweet-Heart", right?). Or maybe it just evolved projections that look like pretty ladies when you're lonely on the sea. I can't explain much else about the story, but I think that part's right.

Anonymous

Definitely Daryl Hannah. That's how you explain the wet footprints.

Richard Horsman

Fantastic show guys. I feel like someone clever at pastiche could stitch together some kind of longer narrative out of this and "The Upper Berth".

Anonymous

Since you already mentioned them in passing: Would it be possible to get full readings of "The Mystery of the Old Nail Clipper", "Nail Clippings in the Dark", "The Middle Toe Nail of the Right Foot" and "Clipped Red Nails" at some point in the future? Keeping my fingers crossed!

Anonymous

More of your original fiction!!! More WoC protagonists! Please Please Please!

Anonymous

Over all I thought the story was good, if a bit confusing. Like the leaving of foot prints despite not having feet. But I DO think I figured out why the ending is the way it is; it was a dream, sort of. In the beginning when our lead sees the face he mentions that the porthole is too small for a person to fit through, but, he then sticks his head out to look for the figure he saw, so we know your head atleast will fit. So my theory is, once he finished his shift and went to sleep everything after that point is a dream by the "siren" trying to lure him overboard. However the window is too small for anything but his head so in the end she can't catch him. This explains why his hair is soaked but not his clothes and why the other men are missing but no one else remembers the events. Its not a flawless interpretation I'm sure but that's how I took it.

Christopher Hawkins

I liked Chris' interpretation that the mermaid is luring all these straight marines beneath the waves to have bi curious makeout parties. She sounds like a cool lady. On a related note, sirens is why you never leave port without a gay on board.

Anonymous

Not relating to the story in any way, but I heard a news story on NPR on the way home from work about how some scientists restored function to certain areas of the brains of slaughtered pigs. I'm pretty sure they said they used a "solution". My first thought was Herbert West. I wonder if anyone else made the connection?

Anonymous
>>21812375

Oh, Chad, you said something MASSIVELY innaccurate. The crew on Shackleton's expedition didn't "die one by one"--NONE of them died. That mad, magnificent bastard didn't lose a single man during their trip to icy Perdition.

Anonymous
>>21862161

For all we know, they're shapeshifters. It's safer to have at least one ace, aromantic crewmember.

Anonymous

For no particular reason I had the image of the mermaid, especially the last one that was described as having a long snake body as being the "bait" tentacle like an anglerfish but of some monstrous cthonian entity. So the footprints could have been made by another set of tentacles that just have a pair of human feet dangling off of them. Horrific and funny. But I really liked the story even if it wasn't always clear, it was so much better than that Rube Goldberg house of infinite ball bearings.

Anonymous

Me too @Forrest Rush! I like the idea of some Dagon-like creature running a little wheel of severed human feet over the deck after every attack :) Loved this tale, and the show (oooh! So much Bliss!!) but best of all I was wracking my head for something to draw in #mermay and this IS IT!

Anonymous

Re: Loreley You were right, the Loreley is a rock/mountain in Germany at the Rheinufer, however, the Loreley is also a sort of Siren figure based on Clemens Brentano’s “Kunstsagen” (which are told like a myth but aren’t) although tragic ones (in some iterations of the story, she kills herself by jumping off the rock Loreley after being falsely accused of witchcraft). It turned into folklore because the rapids around the Loreley were very dangerous and people heard weird echoes coming from the mountain (which were probably just very normal echoes). Perfect folklore fodder. She’s like a beautiful mermaid with a great voice who just wants to sing her tunes and inadvertently distracts shipmen from staying on course. A bit like singing along to Beyonce really loud in the car, trying to get that high note on “Halo” and swerving into a tree. I actually had to sing that Heinrich Heine poem in school (which was composed as a song by Frank Liszt) and it’s especially torture for boys going through puberty because it’s a very high melody and very hard to sing. So, in a way, even nowadays, the Loreley drags young men into despair.

Anonymous

Chad's renditions of the sentries' cries of bliss and ecstasy had me not just laughing but thinking of Defago from The Wendigo (paraphrased) -- “Oh, oh! This fiery deep! Oh, oh! My crotch of fire! My burning crotch of fire!”

Anonymous
>>22084811

Ah, now I just keep thinking of the song - “And it burns, burns, burns - the crotch of fire, the crotch of fire. Doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doooooo...”

Anonymous

Don’t forget Lorelei Circe AKA “The Siren” from the Adam West “Batman” tv show. Played by Joan Collins.