Books Reading the Weird The Magnificent Vanishing Act of the Mountains of Madness: K.M. Tonso’s “Last Rites” Humanity might deserve to one day unleash the shoggoths upon itself… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on January 28, 2026 Comment 5 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover K.M. Tonso’s “Last Rites,” first published in 2014 in S.T. Joshi’s The Madness of Cthulhu anthology. Spoilers ahead! Paul Dyer, chairman of the Geology Department at Miskatonic University, is “something of an outsider” among the faculty. Most professors have transitioned into the digital age; a stoop-shouldered “pipe-smoking dinosaur of tweed suits and bow ties,” Dyer’s more likely to be found among books, papers and pens than screens. Alf Marsh meets Dyer as a (pre-digital) undergraduate, and comes to appreciate the professor’s kindness when Dyer accepts a hand-written paper after Marsh’s typewriter breaks. What’s more, Dyer gives the paper an A. Dyer shares Marsh’s interest in abyssal-zone hydrothermal vents that mysteriously occur away from subduction zones or magma plumes. He becomes Marsh’s mentor, but when Marsh decides to pursue geology, Dyer warns him that it’s “perilous work.” Consider Dyer’s father. Paul Dyer’s father was William Dyer, who led Miskatonic’s ill-fated 1930 Antarctic expedition. Marsh finds little information until, with Paul’s permission, he gains access to the MU Library’s Special Collection. The first expedition report describes the plan to obtain geological specimens buried under deep ice, via engineer Frank Pabodie’s then-revolutionary drilling rig. Peculiar Comanchean Era fossils sent biologist Lake into unexplored territory, dominated by mountains higher than Everest. Terrific windstorms wiped out Lake’s party, along with Pabodie’s rig, and the expedition was terminated. So far sad but ordinary – why is this information restricted? A second report, though, contains William’s account of the party he led to Lake’s camp. There rescuers found not only the mutilated bodies of men and dogs, but incredibly well-preserved specimens of giant radiates: barrel-shaped, starfish-headed creatures with many eyes and mouths, and limbs arranged in fives. William called the creatures “Old Ones” and claimed they “filtered down” from space to a lifeless primordial earth. Indeed, the Old Ones’ biological experiments started the evolution of all Terran organisms. William and a colleague explored Old One ruins beyond the new-discovered mountain range and gleaned their history from carven wall murals. But what inspired William to warn against future Antarctic exploration was a survival of the Old Ones’ servants, “half-sentient conglomerations of hypnotically controlled cells.” These “shoggoths” had destroyed their masters, and could destroy humanity if roused. Ironically, the Starkweather-Moore expedition that William tried to stop would refute his claims. At the charted location of the super-Himalayan peaks, they found no mountains, no ruined city or Old Ones, just wind-swept ice and snow. William’s tenure was revoked. His reports were placed among “the equally hysterical delusions of d’Erlette and Prinn” in Special Collections. Marsh is torn between William Dyer’s compelling narrative and the evidence against him. After a rough break-up with his fiancée, he takes refuge in Paul’s house, an inherited edifice that he rattles around in alone. The two live together as “congenial colleagues” for years, comfortable and celibate (as Marsh stresses). Aware that Paul’s “ensnared” in the same “moebius” of credulity and doubt as himself regarding William, he digs deeper into the enigma. He learns that a Kalpaxia Mining Company ventured to Lake’s mountains in 1933; no luckier than Lake, it lost all its equipment and thousands of workers. Only a dozen men escaped, half-mad. The last survivor is fully mad and institutionalized outside of Arkham; Marsh interviews the man. He reveals that the reason the later Starkweather-Moore expedition found no mountains was that Kalpaxia accidentally leveled the vulnerable Archean slate peaks, trying to uncover their mineral wealth. The mountains slid into the valley behind, burying the ruined city but releasing amorphous monsters, which in turn destroyed Kalpaxia’s venture. Soon after, Dyer learns that core samples from an abyssal “smoker” contain cryptically marked soapstones like those his father found—perhaps it’s an enclave of surviving Old Ones, and vindication for William! He and Marsh plan an expedition to the ten-thousand-meters deep smoker, made possible by the engineer grandson of Frank Pabodie, who’s developed a submersible super-resistant to pressure, and bathysuits designed around breathing liquid oxygenated perfluorocarbons. Dyer and Marsh make the first dive. Halfway down, they spot a dim glow emanating from a sea-mount cave. They exit the submersible in bathysuits and enter a vast grotto of stalagmite pillars lit by bioluminescent algae-animal growths. More disturbing is a “subliminal current… of pure thought” both pick up, repeating “You shall not come.” Deeper in, they find barrel-shaped bodies—Old Ones!—four dead, one dying. The thought-current comes from this survivor, beside which the compassionate Dyer kneels to clasp one of its “manual” stalks. Marsh explores ahead. He’s stopped by a massive rock-and-debris wall, behind which a “hot-wave of stubborn hate” glows like a “half-sentient furnace.” He fears that the Old One’s telepathic “You shall not come” is all that keeps shoggoths from breaking through this last barrier between their Antarctic prison and the world. He retreats to find Dyer whispering “a final parting grace” to the Old One. It dies. The barrier groans under the shoggoths’ assault. Dyer and Marsh rush back to their submersible, but Dyer doesn’t enter. He releases two explosive devices he’d attached to the hull, in case what Marsh learned about Kalpaxia’s destruction was true. He’ll set them off manually while Dyer heads home. Having vindicated William to himself, Paul’s work is done. Marsh survives. He doctors the dive records to suggest that Dyer’s bathysuit failed. Miskatonic, loath to deal with another uncanny failure, accepts the story. Back in Arkham, the grieving Marsh learns that he’s Paul’s sole heir. He goes on living in their house. Often he worries that Paul’s sacrifice might not be enough. What about new deep drilling studies? What about other Kalpaxias? When cynical, he figures humanity will “manage to hold on to our comparatively wretched lives.” When less despairing, he remembers Paul’s “final valediction,” mouthed to the Old One in hope it would telepathically understand. It was a “message of profound peace and reconciliation. Simply: “I forgive you.” The Degenerate Dutch: Amid his tale of lost expeditions and ancient aliens, Alf takes time to “no homo” his decades-long bachelor residence with his mentor. He certainly wouldn’t want the local Gay and Lesbian Coalition to profit from their “celibate Castalia.” Libronomicon: Dyer Senior was shortsighted in naming his discoveries using terms from the Necronomicon. Miskatonic keeps that tome, and others, in “the Vault” where access requires either professorial permission… or a bribe. Weirdbuilding: We’re in full-on mythos mode, with a Dyer and a Marsh (plus a Pabodie) working at Miskatonic and tracking down sequalae to the Dyer Antarctica Expedition, with Old Ones and Shoggothim waiting in the wings. Madness Takes Its Toll: The last survivor of the Kalpaxia mining expedition just happens to be in a badly-run asylum outside Arkham. He dies in response to Alf’s questioning; Alf seems weirdly un-bothered. Anne’s Commentary It’s been a long time since Ruthanna and I went back to our Lovecraft Reread roots and considered a story that not only riffs on the Cthulhu Mythos but that also employs HPL’s structural modus operandi, milieu, and even style without the writer’s tongue obviously planted in cheek. K. M. Tonso is a nom-de-plume of Gael Baudino, who has written novels and short stories across multiple genres. With “Last Rites,” she nails the sub-sub-subgenre of Mythos (core Lovecraft) — “At the Mountains of Madness” inspired — Canon-friendly sequel. That sub-sub-subgenre’s an official thing, right? In my office, anyhow, where it disappears as quickly as doughnuts. It seems like Miskatonic University had a strong legacy admissions program, not that I mean to imply that William Dyer’s son and Frank Pabodie’s grandson were not amply qualified to succeed their relations all the way to tenure level. Alf Marsh doesn’t mention any particular predecessor at MU, but surely the Marshes of Innsmouth were always welcome there. From Paul Dyer’s jest that Alf would do fine with breathing liquids given his hometown, I take it that at least some of the university community has gotten over stigmatizing those blessed with amphibious genes. The university community with access to the SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, you know. I wonder if having breathed liquid perfluorocarbons might trigger Alf’s dormant genes to produce water-breathing modifications. Then he wouldn’t need any bathysuit to explore the ocean depths. That’s assuming he could get over the traumatic stress of nearly meeting some very, very angry shoggoths. On the other hand, Deep Ones do get along with shoggoths, even at times employing them as servants—servants, one hopes, with better pay and benefits than those the Old Ones provided. Which brings us to the aeons-old ethical problem of Old One/Shoggoth relations. Does the creator of a life form have the right to control (exploit, enslave) that creature? What if the creature is sentient, and does the degree to which it is sentient or sapient matter? In At the Mountains of Madness, Dyer and Danforth finally accept that the barrel-shaped beings from the ruined city’s murals aren’t some sort of totemic metaphor for a lost race of humans, but a truly alien race. At this point, Lovecraft’s sympathies encompass the Old Ones. Star-headed radiates though they are, they are men, damn it. It was chancy for them to make a subordinate species as physically malleable and powerful as shoggoths. It was a fatal miscalculation to control them telepathically, so that the hyperimitative beasts developed rudimentary intelligence, self-awareness and will. So, yeah, the Old Ones made a mistake, but they didn’t commit a crime or sin. They were not “evil things of their kind.” At worst, they were tragic victims of hubris. But, come on, it’s easy to be over-confident when you’re interstellar travelers and founders of a great civilization! Whereas shoggoths are just jumped-up blobs who graffiti poor imitations over the art of their betters and otherwise just suck the heads off penguins, gross. They are always going to be the bad guys. “Last Rites” basically reiterates this dichotomy between the Old Ones and the shoggoths, with the former being flawed but capable of heroism, and worthy of human compassion like that of both Dyers. Whereas the latter are treacherous servants and merciless killers, “hot [waves] of stubborn hate” and “huge, half-sentient [furnaces].” Not that shoggoths are that much worse than the humans Alf Marsh deprecates as wagers of “useless wars” and indulgers in “petty hate and bigotry.” Humanity might deserve to one day unleash the shoggoths upon itself. Except— Except that humanity includes a human like Paul Dyer, who clasps appendages with the dying Old One defender of whatever remains worth fighting for. It’s a genuinely moving scene, as are Dyer’s final words to this fellow creature: “I forgive you.” Exactly what he forgives is up to each reader. The very act of forgiveness, I think, is where the deep benediction lies. Ruthanna’s Commentary My wife likes to describe Rodrigo Borgia as “the guy who literally gave nepotism a bad name.” That was in 1492, but word clearly hasn’t reached Miskatonic University, where the best way to get a professorship is to be descended from a previous professor, and the second-best way is to be a student-turned-grad-student-turned-teacher with an old-money name. This is a striking contrast to most Ivy Leagues—what I always heard was that you get tenure at Harvard not by going there, nor by taking a tenure-track job there, but by becoming a rock star somewhere else at which point they will lure you away with scads of money (on the academic scale). But poor Miskatonic doesn’t get its pick of rock stars, perhaps because of the ding to its scientific reputation from the old Dyer Expedition, now firmly considered a hoax. So they’re stuck offering jobs to Dyer Junior and Pabodie Junior and a wayward, non-water-breathing Marsh. And both Dyer and Marsh have very specific research interests: they are absolutely obsessed with uncovering the truth about Dyer Senior. Here’s where things get dicey. I am totally willing to believe in an ancient star-headed civilization, and their collapse in the Great Shoggoth Revolt. I’m happy to imagine that remnant Old Ones have held out for aeons, with shoggothim still going strong in the 21st Century, and that the last Old One conveniently draws their last breath just as the last Dyer happens by. But one wayward blast of TNT taking down two Everest-high mountain ranges? In a way that leaves absolutely no trace discernible by PhD geologists a couple years later? A mining disaster in the exact location of a controversial Miskatonic expedition that somehow never comes to the attention of Miskatonic? Hell, the mining company not bothering to consult with Miskatonic – perhaps to poach a consultant about their promising geological findings—prior to haring off? This makes no bloody sense. I also strongly advise not getting into a submersible that your local oceanographers won’t touch. But that, at least, is realistic. If you want effective amateur deep-ocean expeditions, consult with your local James Cameron. Alf isn’t persuaded of the Old Ones’ reality by photos, but recognizes something ineluctably inhuman in their art. “Regardless of deformity, futurism, style, or evidence of mental instability, a work of art made by a human being demonstrates by its very nature the axiomatic groundwork of our consciousness and psychology.” This is a fascinating claim, and absolutely the sort of thing a geologist would believe with great confidence. It makes me want to run a psychological experiment presenting people with a full range of human and Old One art, and asking them to judge which is which. What does it take for art to be non-human, and yet recognizable to humans as art? There’s a whole untapped field of inquiry here. The scene with Dyer holding the dying Old One’s tentacle is sweet, even moving. They were men, after all, and recognize us as such when they aren’t dissecting us. I would like to know what Dyer thinks he’s forgiving the Old One for, though. Failing to leave a resilient enough record to preserve the Dyer reputation? (Not the Old Ones’ fault.) Dying, and thus unleashing angry shoggothim on an unsuspecting world? (Also not the Old Ones’ fault.) Creating shoggothim in the first place, enslaving them, and refusing to recognize their personhood? (Actually the Old Ones’ fault, and really not Dyer’s place to forgive.) Finding evidence of still-surviving-until-yesterday Old Ones, and then blowing it up without giving your surviving student a sample corpse to carry away for further research? Not forgivable at all. Next week, we wrap up Sister, Maiden, Monster—and perhaps the lifespan of the human species—with Chapters 29-30.[end-mark] The post The Magnificent Vanishing Act of the Mountains of Madness: K.M. Tonso’s “Last Rites” appeared first on Reactor.