I listened to 'The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis on the HorrorBabble channel on YouTube. It is stated to be from the restored version, not the abridged form that was published in 'Weird Tales' magazine. I haven't read much by Clark Ashton Smith, although I knew about him from reading about H. P. Lovecraft.

The action is set on Mars, a Mars with humanoid natives, very cold nights, and an atmosphere as thin as the Himalayas. Our information comes from a story dictated by Rodney Severn, sole human survivor of an archaeological expedition to the deserted. legendary city of the extinct Yorhis race, Yoh-Vombis. (The Yorhis apparently were wiped out about 40,000 years ago.)

Seven archeologists and two Aihais, native Martian guides, made the trip. The first night, before they actually enter the ruins, Rodney thinks he sees something while he's half asleep. The audio book doesn't have any background music. If it did, this would have been a cue for something nicely ominous. I find it interesting that Smith wrote 'The feeling seemed to be made of a million spectral adumbrations that oozed unseen but palpable from the great, unearthly architecture; that weighed upon me like tomb-born incubi, but were void of form and meaning such as could be comprehended by human thought. I appeared to move, not in the open air, but in the smothering gloom of sealed sepulchral vaults; to choke with a death-fraught atmosphere, with the miasmata of aeon-old corruption.' Why use 'incubi'? Incubi prey on women. Succubi prey on men. (I have wondered if a gay man would be preyed upon by an incubus and a lesbian by a succubus. I suppose if one is bi, either one could do the preying.)

The Aihai guides refuse to enter the city. Naturally, the archeologists assume it's some taboo. I've been reading/listening to/watching horror for decades. I just wanted to smack those arrogant idiots for taking only a crowbar and two picks inside, leaving other tools, explosives, and guns at their camp. Well, they do have electric torches (flashlights). Don't expect them to have sense enough to weight a big ball of string at the entrance of the underground vaults so they don't get lost. These are your genuine horror story first-class scholarly twits we're dealing with.

The descriptions are excellent for building atmosphere, particularly when they make their big discovery. Will this lead to the stuff of nightmares? Fear not, it will! The end is deliciously gruesome in its implications.

If you enjoy old horror stories, you should enjoy this one. I used an online text to get the spellings. If you read instead of listen to the story, expect some old-fashioned spellings. I thought it interesting that Rodney referred to his previous explorations as 'ultra-terrene' instead of extra-terrestrial. ( )

Absolutely amazing. ( )