[For the October 26th highlight, click here.]

October 27th

The Good Doctor’s residence/secret laboratory has burned down (in a plot echo of the climax of Frankenstein). At the site of the razed home, Snuff and Graymalk meet Bubo, who explains: “The experiment man got mad at the Good Doctor and started wrecking the lab. Sparks from some of the equipment set the place burning.” More importantly, the rat confesses that he has been passing himself off as a Game player to “get respect and decent treatment from the rest” of the animals in the neighborhood. “I’d been hanging around the Good Doctor’s place already,” Bubo says, “for the leftovers from his work. So I let on that he was in the Game and I worked for him.” In actuality, the Good Doctor had just taken up residence there for the privacy it provided him as he conducted his experiments. This key bit of information concerning the Good Doctor (neither a closer nor an opener) also explains why Snuff’s calculations of the pattern have been consistently off: he’s included one Game participant too many (not failed to identify a “secret player”). The revelation that Zelazny has been employing a red herring in the case of this particular Universal-Monster-movie-alluding character comprises the highlight for the October 27th section of the novel.

[For the October 25th highlight, click here.]

October 26th

The latest entry in Snuff’s narrative begins with the admission, “It was a slow day.” Snuff doesn’t even have any official rounds to make, so he decides “to prowl the woods, to keep the old instincts in shape.” Along the way, he senses someone following him: the prowler that the ward-screen previously detected snooping around outside Jack’s residence. After the man comments about all the peculiarity in the area, Snuff warns him about the upcoming Halloween upheaval: “Weird stuff” is set to transpire at month’s end. “A little specialized craziness. Stay away from any human gatherings that night.” But I’ll select the final paragraph of this short, change-of-pace chapter of Zelazny’s novel as the October 26th highlight: “Overhead, growing in strength, the older, wiser moon paced me. I’d give her a run for her silver.” The clever wordplay and poetic imagery presented by these closing lines serves as a reminder that for all its famous-monster references, the novel really proves so enjoyable because of Zelazny’s stellar prose.

[For the October 24th highlight, click here.]

October 25th

Last night’s Halloween-style prank is given another wicked twist when the burnt body of Owen is discovered the next day in a basket right alongside the charred remains of the vanquished Things. The October 25th section of Zelazny’s novel focuses on the aftermath of the murder–on Snuff and Graymalk’s efforts to assist Owen’s surviving familiar Cheeter. According to the talking squirrel, his master “made me smarter. He gave me special things I can do, too, like that glide [down from a tree]. But I lost something for it. I want to trade all this in and go back to being what I was–a happy nut-chaser who doesn’t care about opening and closing.” What Cheeter has lost is his own shadow, magically separated from his body by Owen and bound to an occult diagram on the wall by seven silver nails (Snuff and Graymalk work diligently to liberate the shadow and restore it to its former caster). The revelation that the narrative’s familiars are not necessarily demonic entities in beastly disguise but rather magically-boosted animals from nature forms the highlight of this late October night.

[For the October 22nd highlight, click here.]

October 23rd

Another lengthy chapter, and one that pairs nicely with its predecessor, as the ancient cat’s prophecies to Snuff in the Dreamworld quickly bear out. The predicted loss of a friend occurs after Rastov is found hung (a murder by Vicar Roberts that is made to look like a suicide), and Rastov’s familiar Quicklime decides to retire from the Game (and go live in the woods). Later, after Snuff has a violent run-in with Roberts, the vicar has him dognapped and sold off to a trio of London vivisectionists. Unfortunately for the animal mutilators, Snuff’s master Jack is a man possessed when he comes to rescue his faithful companion, and the carnage that Jack creates at chapter’s end when he rips through the vivisectionists provides the “seas and messes” of blood “all around” that the ancient cat foretold to Snuff. But my chosen highlight for the October 23nd section of Zelazny’s novel is actually drawn from the very beginning of the chapter. Heading outside first thing that morning, Snuff discovers a potential red flag: “A black feather lay near our front door. Could be one of Nightwind’s. Could be openers on a nasty spell. Could just be a stray feather. I carried it across the road to the field and pissed on it.” Snuff is so eloquent and witty, it’s easy to forget sometimes that the intelligence of this crafty familiar is contained in a dog’s body. Here, though, his recounting of his recourse to a basic canine function furnishes a wonderful contrast between the cerebral and the physical. Snuff’s urination appears to be a practical act that washes away any magic possibly attached to the feather, but his debasing gesture also serves as quite a carnivalesque flourish.

[For the October 21st highlight, click here.]

October 22nd

This next chapter of Zelazny’s novel begins with with the next leg of the running joke: the Thing in the Circle tries to entice Snuff with the form of a chihuahua, but Snuff declines the offer by bluntly claiming “Language barrier.” Snuff and Graymalk then venture up to Dog’s Nest for some hilltop recalculation of the pattern. While there, they are forced to take shelter from a storm, and discover a stone with strange engravings. Graymalk makes the offhand remark that she hopes “Nyarlahotep, Cthulhu, and all the rest of the unpronounceables” appreciate their efforts. Apparently, the Elder Gods are touchy, because they proceed to reach out through the suddenly-blazing stone and attempt to singe Graymalk with a lightning strike (Snuff wonders if such display of power “were simply another instance of the famous inscrutability which I sometimes think to be better understood as childishness”). The attack opens a gate, and the two familiars are drawn through it into the fantastic space of the Dreamworld (which hardcore fans of weird fiction will recognize as a nod to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath). Upon arrival, Graymalk launches into a “litany of Dreamworld geography,” in dizzying mimicry of Lovecraft’s florid Orientalist description (e.g. “To the north again, one may behold the charnel gardens of Zura, place of unattained pleasures, the templed terraces of Zak, the double headlands of crystal at the harbor of Sona-Nyl, the spires of Thalarion…”). Zelazny’s knack for simultaneously pastiching and parodying the Lovecraftian, nowhere more evident than in this chapter, forms the highlight of the night of October 22nd.