The mind behind reality is insane. That’s the seed from which sprouts the fleshy jungle of Sutter Cane’s masterwork, In The Mouth of Madness, the culmination of his horror career.
Is the mind behind reality your own consciousness, that hermit sea trapped behind the rocky shore of your skull? Or is this mind not even your own? Is the puppet master a dull godhead birthing all things that live and die without ever knowing their true parentage? Is it some madman’s dream? Certainly would make sense these days. Such a mind, in all its massive responsibility, can only be insane. Sutter Cane declares he is this mind and he is indeed mad. And you will be, too, once you get stuck In The Mouth…
The thin membrane that peels off the plot, like shedding skin, is a late twentieth century neo-noir, which calls to mind Dan O’Bannon’s The Resurrected. John Trent is offered as a protagonist who is above it all. He sees most of human behavior as lies beguiling a scummy truth. As he investigates the mystery of the missing horror author, Trent regards himself as perfectly detached. Self-satisfied with his alienation, he denies himself any interconnectedness. Trent’s native New Yorkerness is an interesting detail; he feels at home in the heaving superorganism of the urban environment, surrounded by people he ultimately finds repulsive and untrustworthy. This sets him up for a gnosis only Weird Horror can offer.
The book’s first act shines in the disgustingly mundane: the filthy asylum and its shoddy management, streetside civilians startled from their apathy by an axe-murderer, Trent’s time-loop on the subway, first with people then with things. Cane paints the world as a monstrous carnival long before the teratological freaks flash their malformed fangs. He also does a great job populating this world. The day players engage Trent with enough credibility in their lives outside of the interactions. Cane generates a whole world this way; there’s a lot of color to the third-person omniscience. Little jokes pepper the atmosphere, alleviating the tension, then scatter like frightened fish when the terror takes off.
The descriptions are very grounded. The beasts are vivid with leering grins, crackly bones, and of course lots and lots of tentacles. The action sequences are well paced; you always know where the characters reside within the motion. Once reality starts melting, the reader must trust Cane to guide us through the fetid liquid. And he proves a most loquacious Virgil. In another stunning choice, Cane actually provides first person narration as himself. It feels like Cane has pulled up a chair at the table where I was reading alone. And I alone can see him. Yet he sees all of us. He sees you.
Trent’s reply came, low and bitter. “God’s not supposed to be a hack horror writer.”
Cane smiled. “I love that line, a bit of self-depreciation on my part.”
The book mocks itself, trafficking in lurid mutations while having Trent criticize them as cheap fakery, not just within the narrative but in the meta-dialogue about horror schlock at large. This mass entertainment, which you the reader currently consume, is warping your delicate sensibility, and you won’t care when you are finally swallowed whole.
The concrete horror reaches its apex halfway through the plot then recedes, like a dark tide, leaving the reader in the fishy stink of reality. It is once Trent is allowed to escape Hobb’s End that a deeper horror is unearthed. He wanders back into his familiar world, the hazy shadow of his experience dogging his every step. Trent’s conflict is not fisticuffs with mutated townsfolk, but with the violation of his waking mind as he attempts to resolve his impossible experience within a cozy framework of reason. That’s when the book’s true tension winds up, in the lockstep of John’s teetering doom.
The finest moment of cosmic horror is reserved for the climax of the Old Ones’ becoming. Cane never uses their names, but that’s certainly what they are. There’s even a deviously sneaky “Arkham” reference slipped in near the end; see if you’ve the eyes to clock it. I won’t give away the ending, but it’s simply stunning. Feels like the book has pulled the reader round and round a swirling drain, and at the end we vanish from sight never to emerge again. The Final Word elevates the book to the height of Weird Meta-Horror. You will have to see it for yourself.
The horror follows you. The thing about reality is you can compartmentalize it. I see with these eyes in the car, those eyes at the office, and a third pair at home. I see friends, family, neighbors, tense & terse interactions each performed by a discordant variation of my mind. Like melodies emerging at their designated rhythm, my patterns were preset, comfortable, normal. Now they are not.
I’ve been getting headaches since I finished reading. I only feel better at night. The moonlight sharpens my vision. In the pale glow, skin becomes waxy and smooth, as if the whole world were populated by candle-folk. It would be dazzling to watch them burn and melt. My gums are bruised. I’m spitting out teeth. I can see the fangs coming in at random.
Now all the waxy skin looks tasty, like flesh covered in maggots. Want to use the fangs. Carrion feast for the senses. I can feel the mind behind reality, its thoughts popping like bubbles in curdled milk. Prodding me. It is not mine. It’s moving my tubes, blowing cold air through the pipes in my organs, remaking me into an instrument for him.
Dizzy. Nausea. Dreams in the daytime. I remember when I still had dreams of my own. I’m having trouble picturing my father’s face. It must have existed, since I exist. I have to have a father. His blue eyes, cold in the dying sunlight. His narrow face and wild steel-gray hair. My father. The mind behind me. What was his name? Kane? Cane?
I stare at my face in the mirror and know that something is off. I didn’t always have blue eyes; I know that FOR SURE. My eyes are brown, so why does a stranger in the mirror stare back with those icy azure irises? The nausea, the dreams, the growing pains. Long fangs sinking into tender waxy flesh…
The worst part is that the book didn’t cause this; it brought my attention to it. It was always here. I was always becoming, I just didn’t have eyes to see. I was another cave fish skulking about in the pond scum like the rest of you. And now new eyes have sprouted from the benign flesh of my smooth forehead. Sutter Cane isn’t even solving anything. He’s just lifting a finger and pointing at the rip in the sky. My new eyes follow, and I can finally see what is pouring through.
A writer is a person whose book is true to them. That’s what makes a powerful read. Sutter Cane is deceptively simple. You think he’s just taking another ride around the cul-de-sac of genre, letting you gawk at papier-mâché monsters, but no. The trick the author pulls is devious. The circus ends, but you find yourself still strapped to your seat. The show never ends, but you’re finally aware of it. You wake up as one of Thomas Ligotti’s clown puppets. And there’s Sutter Cane behind you, tugging the strings like a cruel child.
It’s all so baroque, but don’t you love a good old-fashioned spookfest? The claws. The tentacles. The colours shedding off like snakeskin in the waxing moonlight. I’m a cosmic giggle of sardonic delight wrenched from his throat. I’m spit in the wind from his mouth. Can you see me? I can see you. So can he. It’s a fun book. I encourage you to read it.
The mouth opens this Halloween.
