The Men from Porlock, collected in [[The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All]], takes place at the [[Slango Camp]] at the foot of [[Mount Mystery]] on the [[Olympic Peninsula]] in [[Washington State]] in september 1923, where a group of loggers come across a primitive, hidden village with strong ties to the [[Children of Old Leech]]. This location is also heavily featured in [[The Croning]] and [[Mysterium Tremendum]]. [[Miller]] is the main protagonist of the story. He's a young army veteran who served as a sniper in the marines during WWI. Miller is the elder cousin of Don Miller, the protagonist of The Croning. The [[Ouroboros]] is first mentioned in a dream-like sequence early in the story: "Behind Miller's left eye the world cracked and vomited blood - red sky limning a benighted prairie of scrub and slick pebbles like the scales on the spine of the Ouroboros." (The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, 214) A French [[Photography|photographer]] named Chet "Gou-lee-ay" ('Gauliér'?) is scheduled to visit the logging camp. Miller takes some men with him to go on a hunt. Stevens got a map from their boss McGrath. It looks like a torn page from a book. The following passage might be a reference to the dolmen from Mysterium Tremendum, and is definitely a reference to the [[The Black Guide]] (and a different, older book), where the map was apparently taken from: "This is a haunted place. Explorers wandered 'round Mystery Mountain in the 1840s (...) Burial mounds 'an cliffside cliffside caves with bodies in 'em like the Chinee do. (...) An pieces o' that book wound up in another one, a kind o' field guide. Looks like a Farmer's Almanac, 'cept black with a broken circle on the cover." (The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, p.221) At one point, the hunters share macabre stories and the story of [[Rumpelstiltskin]] that forms the first act of The Croning is told in relation to the woods they're in: "Well, that part about the demons jumpin' 'round the fire an' calling up the forces o' darkness, some say they seen similar happenins in these hills." (The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, p. 223) The Ouroboros takes on a more prominent role later in the story, when the hunting group encounter the village, where the Ouroboros is painted on multiple houses, trees and beside every window of the big, stone tower at the center of the village. The group finds a massive, hollow tree with something living inside, desribed as a fibrous network of worms or a mass of tendrils with faces. One of the hunters, Horn, deliriously wounded, states that the Children of Old Leech live inside the trees and inside the mountain. The villagers they encountered earlier _"give their babies to their friends inside the trees... inside the mountain. The sons an' daughters of [[Old Leech|Ol' Leech]]."_ (The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, p. ) One of the loggers, a man named Ruark, might be related to the protagonist of the [[Antiquity]] story [[A Clutch]], who might be his [[Alter Ego]]. At the end of the story, Miller is confronted by a man who introduces himself as Dr. [[Boris Kalamov]]. Kalamov is a recurring character who also plays a role in The Croning and is mentioned in Mysterium Tremendum. The man is almost certainly a Child of Old Leech, masquerading as Dr. Kalamov. #Story #Beautiful