Джефф Вандермеер - The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

The predicament does underscore one reason Mignola abandoned the book: “Too much stuff eventually washes up. Sometimes just when you’d like it to stay lost. I’d rather just draw stuff that’s always there, like monsters.”

Museum Name and Location: The Stackpole Museum of Prototypical Industry; Port Angeles, Washington

Name of Exhibit:Pioneer Myths and Lore in Peninsular Victoriana

Category information

Creator:Addison Sobiesky Howell (alleged); American, born 1828 in Chicago, Illnois. Died 1899 in Humptulips, Washington

Title:“Clockroach,” built 1878(?)

Medium: Mixed, primarily steel, cast iron, rubber tubing, and glass

Source:Donated in 1953 by the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington, at cost of transportation—and a gentleman’s agreement with regards to subsequent restoration and display

Accession number:1953.99

Exhibit Introduction Panel:Pioneer Myths and Lore in Peninsular Victoriana

The Olympic Peninsula has long been home to a number of Native American tribes, including the Hoh, Makah, and the Quileute; but it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that it became settled by white homesteaders. Primarily, these homesteaders were farmers and loggers, lured by the Homestead Act of 1862 and the promise of a temperate climate.

Though much can be said about the Native traditions and myths, this exhibit focuses on the rural homesteaders and their inevitable bedtime or campfire stories—some of which were regarded with a seriousness that borders on the charmingly naïve or dangerously optimistic, as evidenced by the items on display.

Highlights of the collection include:

(1908.32, items a-g) Filbert Seyfarth’s assortment of “vampire-killing” poisons. These anti-undead concoctions were understandably unpopular—considering that, given a vampire’s traditional diet, the poisons must first be consumed by a potential victim (presumably, of the suicidally game-for-anything variety).

(1912.11) Earl Lenning’s Skoocooms Mesmerizing Ray (patent no. D224,997), a trigger-operated light-projecting contraption intended to befuddle a creature now better known as “Sasquatch.” The existence of this device leads some researchers to suspect that a Native American practical joker enjoyed a hearty laugh at Mr. Lenning’s expense.

(1953.99) Addison Howell’s “Clockroach,” a one-man, quasi-lobster-shaped vehicle allegedly designed and driven by an aloof, peculiar craftsman who was rumored to be the devil himself.

We at the Stackpole Museum of Prototypical Industry would like to welcome you to this exhibit and invite you to ask questions. However, we ask that you not touch the Clockroach—nor allow children to climb upon it and make the choo-choo noise, as this is both contextually inappropriate and bound to result in tetanus shots for all concerned.

Clockroach: The Legend

(Oral tradition transcribed by UW graduate student Gregory Blum from an interview with Petra Oberg [1902–1996], daughter of Isac and Emma Johnson—two of Humptulips’ original settlers.)

Addison Howell didn’t so much arrive in Humptulips as appear there sometime around 1875. He had money, which set him apart from everybody else—because everybody else was working for the logging company, and mostly they didn’t have a pot to piss in, as my daddy put it. 1

Mr. Howell built himself a house, way outside of town, a big three-story place set back in the hills—and you couldn’t see it until you were right on top of it, what with all the trees.

He had a wife with him at one point, but she died up there. Folks said he’d murdered her with an ax, but there was never any proof of that and we didn’t have any law at the time nohow, not a sheriff or anything, much less a jail. We had a mayor, though—a fellow named Herp Jones—and I think if Herp could’ve rounded up enough warm bodies, he would’ve seen to a lynch mob. 2But everyone he might’ve asked was either working or drinking, so I guess that didn’t happen.

The town gave Mrs. Howell a Christian burial in a little plot back behind the only church we had, and her guilty-as-sin husband paid a pretty penny to have a crypt built up around her. It was a real big deal, because nobody else in town had ever gotten a crypt, and only about half the folks who ever died even got a tomb stone. 3Then Mr. Howell went back to his house in the trees, and, for the most part, nobody hardly ever saw him again.

Addison Howell on his Clockroach

A few years later, as I heard it, Addison Howell was out and about doing whatever it is a wicked man does on a Sunday, and he came across a homesteader’s camp just off the old logging road. There was a wagon with a broken axle, and two dead men lying beside a campfire. It looked like they’d been tore up by wolves, or maybe mountain lions, or somesuch creature. But inside the wagon he heard a little girl crying. He looked inside and she screamed, and she bit him—because like attracts like, I suppose, and the girl had a bad streak in her, too. That’s why he took her home with him.

She was maybe eight or nine when he brought her inside, and legend has it she was mute. Or maybe she didn’t feel like talking, I couldn’t say. . . . 4. . . Anyway, he raised her as his own, and they lived together in the house in the hills, and nobody ever visited them because everybody knew they were doing evil things up there. 5

But people started telling stories about hearing strange noises out there at night, like someone was whacking on metal with a hammer, or sawing through steel. Word got around that he was building a machine that looked like a big bug, or a lobster, or something. It had a big stack on top and it was steam-powered, or coal-powered, or anyway it was supposed to move around when he was sitting inside it.

I don’t know who was fool-headed enough to get close enough to listen, but somebody did, and somebody talked.

And later on, the mayor and some friends of his, all of them with guns and itchy trigger fingers, went up to that house and demanded to know what was going on up there. For all they knew, he was summoning Satan, 6or beating up that girl, 7or raising whatever kind of hell I just don’t know.

Addison Howell told them they were welcome to look around, so they did. They didn’t find anything, and they were mad about it. They asked the girl what was going on, but she wouldn’t say nothing and they thought maybe she was scared of Howell, and that’s why she wasn’t being helpful. But she was a teenager by then, or old enough that she could live there with a dirty old man if she felt like it, and people’d look askance, but no one would take her away.

Not long after that, Addison Howell went into town to do some business—he was over at the logging foreman’s place, and nobody has any idea why, or what they were talking about. They got into some kind of fight—the foreman’s wife overheard it and she came out and saw them struggling, so she took her husband’s shotgun and she blew the back of Addison Howell’s head clean off, and he died right then and there.

The foreman went and got Herp Jones, and between ’em, they figured it was good riddance. They decided they should just leave him in the crypt with his wife, since there was a slot for him and everything, and that’s what they did. They wrapped up his body and carried it off.