If you’re feeling the distinctly sharp absence of cults, exorcisms, and unnameable discomfort in your life, look no further than A Commonplace Book of the Weird: The Untold Stories of H.P. Lovecraft to soothe your aching void.

Creator of such oddities as the Cthulhu mythos (which has ravaged human hearts since the 1920s), and the fictional grimoire the Necronomicon (inspiration for a slew of literary hoaxes), Lovecraft left behind 221 unwritten stories of dread and mystery, just barely birthed in descriptions like:

142. Members of witch-cult were buried face downward. Man investigates ancestor in family tomb and finds disquieting condition.

106. A thing that sat on a sleeper’s chest. Gone in morning, but something left behind.

41. The Italians call Fear La figlia della Morte–the daughter of Death.

53. Hand of dead man writes.

Edited by Joseph Fink, A Commonplace Book of the Weird anthologizes the interpretations of a legion of authors whose intent was to carry Lovecraft’s darksome visions to completion. And so it was that Marcus Goodyear came to tell a tale of parents undead, F. Omar Telan wove a monstrous thing of an old seaside tavern, and Marta Rainer translated the strange tongue of number 214’s talking rock of Africa. For those who know what darkness breeds beneath the pitch-dark staircases of pyramids, or those who’ve ever known the nausea of losing their faces, this book will be an abyss most comforting. Letters skitter across trembling pages, below the smears of a title comprised of two blacked-out words we’ll never know, opposite drawings etched by ink-stained hands, and between the moaning white columns of poems invisible to human eyes.

There’s a lot to unearth here: horror, “experimental text art,” science fiction, and even a few stygian servings of comedy. You may find yourself lost, at times, in the foggy miasma of labyrinths inaccessible (love letters from aliens, vampire dogs in the distance, a clinging to one girl and Aleister Crowley as both disintegrate, something about a really disturbed plate), but more often than not, you’ll be deftly transported. Wrap your arms around the blissful dread inherent to deals made with the devil, and bask in the bruises left by forbidden knowledge and glitches in time.

Lovecraftian devotion to the monstrous and fantastic is well-reflected in the wide spectrum of pieces held in this enigmatic anthology. If Lovecraft is turning over in his grave, it’s to get a better look at the mirror. And if Cthulhu is listening from the depths of the sea, no doubt there’s a smile on its horrible face.

by Patricia Cram
an Editorial Assistant for Black Clock and an MFA Writing candidate at CalArts