Literature / The Nameless Offspring

"Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday, dear hybrid!
Happy birthday to you!"

"I pray to God that the wall will hold; but the thing keeps on clawing and clawing, like a demon; and I don't like the hollowness of the sound — as if the wall were getting pretty thin."

—Harper

"The Nameless Offspring" is a Short Story in the Horror genre, penned by Clark Ashton Smith for inclusion in the June 1932 issue of Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror. Its first print in book form occurred when it was selected for inclusion in The Abominations of Yondo collection in February of 1960. Of the stories about ghouls that Smith wrote, "The Nameless Offspring" shares with "The Ghoul" that they are both part of the Cthulhu Mythos, though only "The Nameless Offspring" explicitly so.

Nearly thirty years ago, Lady Agatha Tremoth was prematurely interred in the Tremoth Family vaults excavated in the hill behind Tremoth Hall in the English countryside. Before she came to, a ghoul dwelling inside found her and raped her. Nine months later, she perished birthing a ghoul-human hybrid. Agatha's husband, John Tremoth, locked the child away in the room next to his own and fired all but one servant, Harper, choosing the life as a recluse. In the present, Henry Chaldane, son of John's old friend Arthur Chaldane, visits his natal country and through mist and by sheer coincidence, he finds shelter for the night at Tremoth Hall. Henry is welcomed warmly, but a bestial ululation from the sealed-off room confirms to him the stories he was told about Tremoth Hall. He also learns that John could drop dead any minute from angina pectoris and that he wishes to be cremated. Far from at ease, Henry still chooses to stay. The next morning, he is awoken by Harper with the news that John has passed away. To Harper's relief, Henry takes over various tasks in preparation of John's cremation and joins the vigil when the weather delays a funeral pyre for the day. He confirms all of Henry's remaining suspicions and warns him that the hybrid is clawing through the wall to get to the corpse flesh. Near dawn, the hybrid breaks through. It attacks the two men, knocks over some candles, and sets its teeth into John's corpse before the spreading fire forces its retreat. Henry helps Harper to safety as Tremoth Hall burns down, cremating what's left of John. The two men do try to locate the hybrid, but find its tracks to lead to the vaults and know they'd never find it.

In a 1931 letter to H. P. Lovecraft, Smith credits "The Great God Pan" for the inspiration behind his story about a monster-human hybrid, and the parallels between the two works are obvious. On Smith's specific choice for the ghoul as the story's monster, although ghouls have become common place in Weird fiction since "Amina", Smith echoes that story specifically with a mention that the ghoul belongs in the Orient and not in a place like England.

"The Nameless Offspring" was unofficially adapted into the comic "Terror on the Moors", first published in January 1951 in Vault of Horror #6 (#17). It also inspired several plot points in the comic "The Woodlik Inheritance!", first published in Vampirella #31 in March 1974.

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"The Nameless Offspring" provides examples of the following tropes:

• Ambiguous Gender: The ghoul-human hybrid is only ever referred to as "it" and "the thing". Whether it is male, female, something else, or a gender outside of the human spectrum is unknown.
• Big Fancy House: Tremoth Hall in the ancestral manor-house of the Tremoth Family. Some of the furniture is dated to the 1600s and the manor-house is implied to be at least that old itself. It is a large estate with not only ample garden space to its name, but its location is also a good distance away from the nearest settlement. Behind the manor-house is a hill that has been excavated to house the family vaults. That said, it isn't made clear whether the vaults were made for Tremoth Hall or if Tremoth Hall expanded a preexisting excavation, because the vaults are separately said to be of "almost fabulous age and extent." After John Tremoth's death, Tremoth Hall goes up in flames, but the vaults remain as they are.
• Buried Alive: Nearly thirty years ago, Agatha Tremoth came to suffer cataleptic seizures within her first year of marriage to John Tremoth. The third one left her appearing dead and so she was interred in the Tremoth Family vaults that were set within the hill behind Tremoth Hall. Agatha may have never realized she was buried alive, because a ghoul came upon her coffin, ripped it open, and raped her. Agatha regained consciousness around the time the ghoul finished with her, the experience destroying her sanity. John, guided by a queer feeling, found her shortly after and got her out of the vaults. For nine months, everyone dismissed Agatha's stories about the unhuman face as delirium brought on by the shock of waking in a coffin until an unhuman child was born.
• Campbell Country: Henry travels from Manitoba, Canada to experience England, the country he left as an infant. Due to a sudden thick mist coming from the sea, he loses his sense of direction and keeps riding his motorcycle onwards through a desolate landscape on primitive country roads until finally he reaches a centuries-old, lonesome manor-house in disrepair. It is inhabited by two old men who keep a ghoul-human hybrid locked away, a fact the surrounding towns are vaguely aware of and want nothing to do with.
• Child by Rape: Agatha Tremoth gets erroneously interred in the family vault and there raped by a ghoul while unconscious. When she is saved from the vault shortly thereafter, she talks about little more than the unhuman face she saw upon waking up. She does not mention the rape, whether that is out of trauma, shame, or because she was out of it when it occurred, but as the months pass, it becomes clear that she's pregnant. She does not survive the birth and her husband takes up raising the hybrid creature.
• Closed Circle: For twenty-eight years, John Tremoth and his single servant Harper have raised and guarded a ghoul-human hybrid produced when a ghoul raped John's wife. The creature was manageable for all that time, but it senses John's death approaching and wants the corpse flesh. At this time, Henry Chaldane, the son of John's childhood friend Arthur, happens upon Tremoth Hall while lost in the fog and rain during vacation. The weather keeps Henry at the manor-house until John's death, whereafter decency keeps him from leaving until he's helped Harper ensure the ghoul won't eat John.
• Collapsing Lair: The childless John Tremoth had arranged to be cremated upon death, but weather delays his funeral pyre. A fight breaks out when the half-ghoul comes to consume the carrion and in that fight candles are knocked over. The flames travel fast and while the few living occupants make it out alive, the last Tremoth burns with his manor-house as if it were a grand funeral pyre.
• Convenient Misfire: Harper and Henry each arm themselves with an antique revolver from a single set without checking the condition the guns are in. Harper's revolver works just fine, but he misses when the hybrid breaks free and attacks them and gets knocked out. Henry's revolver fails possibly due to rust or aged gunpowder and the hybrid attacks him before he can get another shot in. Thus, the two men fail to keep the hybrid from eating John's corpse and escaping into the world.
• Dark Secret: Nearly thirty years prior, Agatha Tremoth was raped by a ghoul and bore its child. She herself died from what everything did to her body and mind, leaving the child in the care of her husband John. He locked it away in a sealed-off room, keeping it complacent with minimal caretaking. Because health workers were present at the birth, several people saw the ghoul-human hybrid before it was locked away and so word got out to the surrounding settlements. The residents chose to not get involved. It is likely that John's close friend Arthur Chaldane heard about it at this time too, shortly before he emigrated to Canada. From him, his son Henry learned about the secret too, which means that when he by accident comes upon Tremoth Hall, he conveniently already has a grasp on what's going on with the bestial howling behind a barred door.
• Death by Childbirth: Agatha Tremoth gets erroneously interred in the family vault and there raped by a ghoul. She is saved from the vault, but pregnant and nine months later she gives birth to a monstrous ghoul-human hybrid. Whether physically or mentally, the birth pushes the frail woman past her last reserves.
• Desecrating the Dead: Normally, ghouls eat human corpses and they can get ravenously single-minded about that. As it turns out, they may also rape people they find to have been buried before they actually died. It is possible they also get handsy with corpses but that that happens unnoticed.
• Dramatic Irony: After what happened to his wife Agatha, John arranges for himself to be cremated after death and not interred in the family vault. He tells Henry that he can't stand the thought of decay, but implicitly he's afraid of being buried alive too and even more of being eaten by a ghoul. Unfortunately, when he dies, it takes one-and-a-half day for the mist and the rain to clear before a funeral pyre can be built. This is all the time the hybrid needs to break through the walls, attack the two vigilkeepers, knock over the candles, and eat from John's corpse until the fire gets too much. While fleeing, Henry notes wryly that John "had found in his own deathchamber the funeral pyre for which he had longed."
• Due to the Dead: For generations, the tradition of those living in Tremoth Hall was for their dead to be interred in the vaults hewn out of the hill behind the manor-house. So was Agatha Tremoth, only she was prematurely declared dead and there were also ghouls dwelling in the vaults, one of which raped her. John Tremoth saved his wife from the vaults only to see her descend into madness and expire upon giving birth. This experience made him decide to abandon interment for himself and get cremated instead, so that his body would not fall in the hands of ghouls. Though he has two men taking care of the final rites, the bad weather delays the funeral pyre and Agatha's half-ghoul child manages to eat a sizable portion of John's corpse. An accidental fire breaks out, which ultimately grants John's wish as his corpse is burned alongside the house.
• Epigraph: The narrative is preceded by an excerpt from the Necronomicon that Smith made up. Through all the haziness of purple prose, it announces a horror greater than a ghoul: a ghoul-human hybrid.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Agatha Tremoth's child with the ghoul is half humand and half ghoul, though it heavily takes after its paternal side in behavior and appearance. On the other hand, this may have something to do too with its minimalist upbringing in incarceration.
• Haunted House: Until twenty-eight years ago, the centuries-old Tremoth Hall was a respectable English manor-house. Then Agatha Tremoth was raped by a ghoul, gave birth to its child, died in childbirth, and her husband John took responsibility for the hybrid. He locked it away in a room next to his own, fired all the servants except for Harper, and lived the rest of his life as a recluse while Tremoth Hall fell into disrepair. The garden, once filled with fancy topiary, now has twisted shapes between cut growth and wild growth. The singular entrance to the estate are a guard booth and a gate, but these days, the former is unoccupied and the latter open. After John Tremoth's death and the hybrid's escape to the vaults behind the manor-house, Tremoth Hall goes up in flames.
• It's a Small World, After All: John Tremoth and Arthur Chaldane were close friends before Arthur emigrated, which means they didn't live too far apart when Arthur's son Henry was born. When Henry nearly three decades later tours the country he was born in, he most likely does so in the general area of his birth, meaning he's not that far from Tremoth Hall relatively speaking. But he doesn't know where the isolated manor-house is located, he doesn't know what it looks like, he has no intention of visiting it, and if it weren't for a sudden, thick mist and some errors on his part, Henry never would set foot on the manor grounds. That he does so on the very night John Tremoth dies, while John has a half-ghoul hidden away in his home, which has to be fended off and they're short men for that, makes it all the more a coincidence.
• The Jeeves: Harper is the last remaining servant at a Tremoth Hall and fulfills at least all of the daily tasks, which includes feeding the ghoul-human hybrid they've got locked away in a room. Henry describes Harper as a combination of valet, butler, housekeeper and chef.
• Load-Bearing Boss: The childless John Tremoth had arranged to be cremated upon death, but weather delays his funeral pyre. A fight breaks out when the half-ghoul comes to consume the carrion and in that fight candles are knocked over. The flames travel fast and while the few living occupants make it out alive, the last Tremoth burns with his manor-house as if it were a grand funeral pyre.
• The Lost Lenore: Agatha and John Tremoth were married less than a year when she began suffering cataleptic seizures, the third of which left her appearing dead. John had her interred in the Tremoth Family vault, but returned a day later because he felt uncertain about the medical verdict. He was right: Agatha was still alive, but at this point also on a trajectory to mental ruin because she had been found by a ghoul and raped. Nine months later, she gave birth to a ghoul-human hybrid and did not survive the ordeal. John dedicated his life to keeping the hybrid contained but fed, never remarried, fired all but one of his servants, stopped having guests, and overall did little more than await death.
• Madwoman in the Attic: After the birth of the hybrid and the death of his wife Agatha, John Tremoth decides to raise the monstrous ghoul-human hybrid by locking it away in a sealed room for twenty-eight years. The creature doesn't mind too badly, but it grows agitated when it senses John's impending death, needing to eat the dead body. With no other way out, it starts clawing at the thick wooden wall between its room and John's, needing about a day to get through. In its escape effort, the creature knocks over some candles that start a fire. It eats as much of John's corpse as it can before it has to flee the fire. On instinct, it makes its way to the Tremoth Family vaults and is never seen again.
• Ominous Fog: The narrator gets caught by a sudden autumnal mist that rises from the sea during his motorcycle tour through England. The bad weather leads him astray from the middle of the afternoon to twilight's end. It is only because he loses his way in this mist that he ends up at Tremoth Hall and become part of the last act of the Tremoths' secret.
• Orc Raised by Elves: The hybrid is a creature born from a ghoul father and a human mother. Its biofather disappeared after conception, its mother died after birth, and left to raise it was its mother's human husband. Which John Tremoth did, though by locking the hybrid away in a sealed-off room for all its twenty-eight years of existence. Whether due to this treatment or because of its paternal heritage, the hybrid developed into as much of a ghoul as its biofather. It eventually consumes John's one day-old corpse and flees to the vault its biofather once dwelled or still dwells in.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls are canine-like monstrosities that dwell underground. Agatha Tremoth, who saw a full-blooded ghoul, describes it as having "a pale, hideous, unhuman face" and a "large and white" body with semihuman limbs, though it runs on all fours. Henry Chaldane, who saw a ghoul-human hybrid but admits his mind has refused to commit to a full memory, describes it as "a huge, whitish, hairless and semi-quadruped body, of canine teeth in a half-human face, and long hyena nails at the end of forelimbs that were both arms and legs." It stinks of carrion, but this might be a more a hygiene issue than a defining trait. The hybrid is the offspring of the full-blooded ghoul and Agatha. She had been erroneously pronounced dead and interred in the Tremoth Family vaults. The ghoul dwelling inside the vaults found her and instead of eating her, as it would do a corpse, it raped her. The hybrid is locked away and is docile for twenty-eight years until it senses the impending death of John Tremoth and becomes obsessed with consuming his corpse. Determined and strong as it is, it succeeds and on instinct finds its way to the vaults, escaping its pursuers.
• Out of the Frying Pan: Henry gets surprised by mist while cruising the to-him unfamiliar English countryside. He becomes lost for several hours, when finally he discovers a manor-house by the time darkness is setting in and the mist has turned into a drizzle. Seeking shelter for the night, he knocks and learns that he's at Tremoth Hall, by sheer coincidence the home of his father's best friend in relation to whom he has been told a disconcerting story. He takes his chances for the sake of shelter and gets subsequently dragged into the disconcerting story's finale.
• Prematurely Grey-Haired: John Tremoth is around sixty, possibly younger. Henry recognizes him to be scarcely beyond middle life, but also marked with deep wrinkles, a cadaverous pallor, and feeble tottering by both a three decades-long sorrow and an illness, angina pectoris.
• Rain, Rain, Go Away: By the time Henry finds a sign of human existence in the thick fog, darkness is setting in and the fog makes way for a drizzle. To escape the bad weather, Henry knocks on the door of the manor-house and learns it is the home of his father's childhood friend. He's welcomed warmly, but knowing what he's been told about Tremoth Hall's dark secret, a secret that's confirmed when he hears a bestial from a boarded-up room, he'd not stay if not for the night rain. John Tremoth expires that night and Henry agrees to help with the funeral pyre to cremate him, which gets delayed one-and-a-half day due to more fog and rain. This gives the aforementioned secret time to escape.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: While buried alive and unconscious, Agatha Tremoth is raped by a ghoul. She comes to by the time it finishes with her, just in time to see its monstrous face before it leaves. She's rescued shortly after, but mentally stuck on her experience while everyone around her believes she's delirious from the shock having awoken in a coffin. It is possible that Agatha, with time, could've recovered were it not for the pregnancy following the assault.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: The hybrid senses John Tremoth's impending death and becomes agitated, desiring to consume its adoptive father's flesh the moment he breathes his last. Because all exists from its room are locked and reinforced, it begins scratching the wooden wall. Tremoth Hall is an old house with firm, thick walls, so the hybrid has to scrape for a full day to break free, much to the mounting dread of Harper and Henry.
• Spooky Animal Sounds: Henry only once hears the hybrid's voice and it's in the form of a long ululation that begins low and muffled and ends in a shrill fury. It is a sound that leaves him no doubt that the stories about the secret of Tremoth Hall he'd been told in his youth are true.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Harper, John Tremoth's manservant, notes that Henry resembles his father. It's suggested that Harper recognized Henry's likeness as soon as he saw him, which is telling because Arthur Chaldane was nothing to him but his master's good friend until he moved to Canada nearly three decades prior.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Henry opens his retelling by noting that it's fortunate that he witnessed very little directly of what he knows went on, because if he was more part of it, his human hands would be unsuited to write it all down and human eyes would be unsuited to read it all.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Henry remembers many horrible experiences from his stay at Tremoth Hall, including the sight of John's gnawed-down corpse. The one thing he has never been able to recall with any degree of distinctness is what the hybrid looked like. He reckons that the revulsion was too much for his mind to store the memory.
• Womb Horror: In the kindest scenario, Agatha may have not been aware of her rape at the hands of a ghoul, or at least have had room to deny. It's a scenario, however, undermined by her pregnancy and her giving birth to a child that cannot be the product of two humans.

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