Hounds of Tindalos

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A Hound of Tindalos is a fictional creature created by Frank Belknap Long for the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. They first appeared in Long's short story "The Hounds of Tindalos" (1931). Lovecraft mentions the creatures in his short story "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931).

[edit] Description

"They are lean and athirst!" he shrieked... "All the evil in the universe was concentrated in their lean, hungry bodies. Or had they bodies? I saw them only for a moment, I cannot be certain."
—Frank Belknap Long, "The Hounds of Tindalos"

The Hounds of Tindalos dwell in the distant past of the earth, when normal life had not yet advanced past one-celled animals. They are said to inhabit the angles of time, while other beings (such as humankind and all common life) descend from curves. The Hounds are thought to be immortal and are believed to lust after something in humankind and other normal life, and will follow victims through time and space to get it. Their appearance is unknown because no characters who meet them survive long enough to give a description. It is said that they have long, hollow tongues or proboscis to drain victims' body-fluids, and that they excrete a strange blue pus or ichor.

Though the Hounds are sometimes pictured as canine, probably because of the evocative name of the first story in which they appeared, it is not likely that they appear as such- the story states that the name "veils their foulness". Various pastiches suggest that the Hounds are more bat-like in appearance, like the byakhee, or may appear even worse. The name Hounds of Tindalos refers more to the creatures' habits than their appearance.

Because of their relationship with the angles of time, they can materialize through any corner if it is fairly sharp—120º or less. When a Hound is about to appear, it materializes first as smoke pouring from the corner, and finally the head emerges followed by the thing's body. It is said that once a human becomes known to one of these creatures, a Hound of Tindalos will pursue the victim through anything to reach its quarry. A person risks attracting their attention by travelling through time.

[edit] Other appearances

  • In the story Tindalos by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the main character is haunted by a being named Tindalos. It shares many attributes with the creatures in "The Hounds of Tindalos", and the main character reads the Frank Belknap Long story in-story, as a way of gaining an understanding of the chewing sound that haunts her.
  • The Hounds chase the time-traveler De Marigny in Brian Lumley's Elysia (book VI of the "Titus Crow" or Cthulhu Cycle Deities saga).
  • Shadow Hearts uses a very loose interpretation of one of the creatures as a boss. Tindalos, as it is referred to, is depicted as resembling the rotting corpse of a giant, skinned dog, and is of a very different origin from the Hounds.
  • In The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom), a webcomic satirizing the Cthulhu Mythos beings, there is a lean, dog-like being known as "Tindaloo" which is capable of passing through other dimensions and sometimes acts as the "family dog" to the deities.
  • The hounds make a brief but substantive appearance in God Screamed and Screamed Then I Ate Him, a chapter from Lawrence P. Santoro's novel, JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE. As a stand-alone story appearing in CTHULHU AND THE COEDS: KIDS AND SQUIDS, "God Screamed..." was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in Long Fiction in 2000 by the Horror Writers Association.

[edit] References

  • Long, Frank Belknap. "The Hounds of Tindalos" (1931). In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1st ed.), Random House, 1998. ISBN 0-345-42204-X.
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