'I Serve the Lambdon Worm' by John Darnielle - Running Review of Uncertainties IV

Now here's a little cracker, one of those tiny (one page, in fact) stories that evokes an awful lot of imagery and ideas. It's also doubly interesting to me, as I come from Lambton Worm country, i.e. Sunderland. Yes, the name has been changed, but that's the worm/serpent/dragon I sang about at school. It's also the one dear departed Ken Russell channeled via Bram Stoker in Lair of the White Worm.

The story is essentially a character study. Here is a young man who grew up, as I did, in a land with a myth. But in his case it wasn't a jolly folk song that eventually gave its name to a branch of Wetherspoons (yes, I know) but a terror-cum-deity that overshadows everything. We know from the  title what the end of the story is. Gothic fiction is about fate, as much as anything else, and here Darnielle shows us the human face of that terrible truth.

More from this running review very soon, I hope. But if the fates decree otherwise...