... What brought Chambers and “The King in Yellow” a worldwide recognition after over a century was HBO's TV show “True Detective”, which premiered in January 2014. “… shot through a ‘weird fiction’ prism”[1], the show’s first season was intended to be as unsettling as its literary inspirations. The writer standing behind “True Detective”, Nic Pizzolatto, admitted in numerous interviews to be a dedicated reader of this genre; in an e-mail conversation with Michael Calia from The Wall Street Journal, he explains that the fascination started “… maybe six years ago, when Laird Barron’s first collection alerted me to this whole world of new weird fiction that I hadn’t known existed”[2]. The show’s references to “The King in Yellow” are obvious, but Pizzolatto did not limit himself to drawing from Chambers only – among other authors he claims to be influential on his work are H.P. Lovecraft himself, Thomas Ligotti, Karl Edward Wagner or already mentioned Laird Barron[3].
          The synopsis of the first season of “True Detective” suggests another crime drama. Using two different timelines, it tells a story of a pair of detectives investigating a murder of a former prostitute that occurred in 1995 – a particularly disturbing murder, but the idea of the story still fits any crime show. What makes “True Detective” so different and interesting in terms of “uncanniness” felt by a recipient of weird fiction art is the number of various elements and devices destined to unsettle the viewers. They can be divided into two categories – the natural and the supernatural.
          The first category covers everything mundane that turns out to be unnerving one way or another. The lives of the protagonists, both difficult, full of suffering and mistakes; crimes, the cruelty of which seem to prove right the claim of Thomas Hobbes regarding people being born already profoundly evil; even the landscape itself, though not entirely intended by Pizzolatto to be so[4], seems to be harsh and unfavorable with its bleak colors and indifference to human tragedies. The leading figure of this category is Cohle whose view on the world is, as he describes it, pessimistic, although that term is a euphemism; genuinely nihilistic, he personifies Ligotti’s influence on Pizzolatto’s creation: “I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution”, says Cohle in the very first episode of the show. “We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self … when in fact everybody's nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing.”[5] On one hand, for some people, the existence of individuals as bitter as Cohle is frightening; on the other, the true horror comes into play when a recipient is provoked by the detective’s attitude and starts to examine his or her conscience and ponder about the purpose of humanity and its place in the universe. Cohle did not have to read past the first act of the infamous play invented by Chambers; by force, life showed him the abyss most of people would not acknowledge for the sake of sanity of the limited human brain. When paired with bleak surroundings of “…the steamy backwoods Louisiana setting, seething with dread, evoking the pessimist philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer”[6], the “mundane” dread is enough to kindle the sense of existential unease in the viewer; and again, this unease is related to the particle of “the unknown” – of how clueless we are as a species and of the subconsciously denied possibility that humanity, as a whole, is entirely purposeless.
          Seemingly otherworldly influences fall to the second category, the most important of them being the presence of the King in Yellow. Surrounded by an enigmatic, dangerous cult responsible for ritual murders, the elusive King “remains as unseen in True Detective as it was in Chambers's work: something tantalizingly hinted at and lurking beyond the margins but never revealed”[7]. The Lovecraftian “fear of unknown” is the main device used to stretch “True Detective” beyond a simple crime drama; much like in Chambers’ work, the viewer is left unsettled not by what is revealed, but what is actually not.
          Another element present in the “King in Yellow” book that got incorporated into the show is the already mentioned unreliable narrator. The main executor of this device is again Cohle, whose nihilistic approach to life is deeply intertwined with personal tragedy and brain trauma. The visions of his deceased daughter make the viewer question if everything seen through Cohle’s eyes does take place or if it is yet another hallucination. On one hand, there is a hint of supernatural influence, e.g. the birds forming the same symbol as the one painted on the murdered prostitute’s body. For the recipients familiar with Chambers it is a reference to the Yellow Sign, but then again, the birds are seen by Cohle and, as Pizzolatto points out, “… there is a realistic explanation for everything. Cohle’s visions are accounted for by his neural damage … There’s no evidence to suggest that the things we’ve seen are the result of anything supernatural. Ritualism, some sort of worship is implied in the murder, but there’s nothing supernatural. Reality is the dread …”[8].
          Reality is the dread from the very start of the story when the mentioned prostitute’s corpse is found. One could say that the body was decorated and desecrated at the same time, adorned and positioned in a suggestively ritual manner. As already said, a symbol, supposedly the Yellow Sign, is painted/tattooed on her back and a crown made of twigs and deer antlers is placed on her head. Moreover, the victim is arranged in a sort of a praying position, kneeling in front of a large tree which stands solitarily among Louisiana fields. The overall picture brings common superstitions about pagan cults to mind; the effect is strengthened by the unwelcoming surroundings. The sense of bewilderment intensifies as a twig latticework, allegedly symbolic and unfamiliar, is found near the body. Another one of the stick craftworks turns up to be hidden in the house of relatives of a young girl who went missing five years before and was never located. A mysterious connection between a ritual murder of a prostitute and a missing child is a shuddering one.
          Another object contributing to the “fear of unknown” is discovered as the story unfolds – a diary of the murdered prostitute. It is full of references to “The King in Yellow” book – drawings and notes, among which a large portion of Cassilda’s Song from the play is rewritten. The journal’s entries have a mystical tone; the deceased woman writes about closing her eyes and seeing the King move through the forest. She also mentions the children of the King, who are marked and become his angels. This could refer to whoever is under the King’s power – his followers, but an attentive viewer will remember the case of a missing child. Either possibility outlines the King as a sort of a malevolent, reversed Jesus figure. The mystical, religious style of the diary is justified as prior to finding it, the detectives learn that the victim was a member of a church, the location of which is described in the journal.
          The building itself, devoured by fire, is another display of the uninviting landscape. Located among vast fields, afar from the city, the church ruins make quite a hostile impression the same way the tree at which the prostitute was found does. Nature already claimed portions of the wreckage and under a curtain of hanging moss, the detectives make a disturbing discovery – a painting of a female figure, wearing a crown of deer antlers, naked and kneeling just the way the victim was found. Next to the painting, there is a Bible quote, contributing to the sense of extremely twisted religiousness. Now, for the majority of people, some kind of spirituality is one of the biggest life foundations. A viewer does not need to be of a Christian faith or religious at all to recognize how the show strikes at another of pillars contributing to the sense of day to day safety in order to throw both the characters and the recipients into a universe where familiar constants do not apply. What is more, over the course of the show it is revealed that the cult in question would indeed perform ritual sacrifices and one of the victims of these was the missing girl.
          Although the show concludes with the disclosure of the King in Yellow as just a man, albeit insane, it does not negate the supernatural element. The mundane dread interweaves and goes head to head with cosmic terrors in the lair of the King, obviously named Carcosa. The King lives in an unkempt, filthy house together with his half-sister, with whom he also maintains a sexual relationship; family man as he is, he also keeps his father corpse in a shed covered with obscure, esoteric paintings in the backyard. All this suffices to see the King as a backwoods fantasy on Norman Bates, but more terror lies further behind the house; the actual “Carcosa”, a bizarre, labyrinthine overgrowth construction entangles old ruins, a place of worship, sacrifices and sexual abuse conducted by the cult. The major contribution to the supernatural part is a hallucination Cohle has when he reaches the innermost chamber of the odd structure; as unreliable as he is, the giant vortex he sees in the sky immediately brings to mind the thought of distant, alien galaxies full of unspeakable, unfathomable horrors H.P. Lovecraft dwelled on. Another eerie element is a totem found in “Carcosa”, made from sticks, human skulls and deer antlers, and dressed in yellow rags.
          Despite, or perhaps due to the fact that in the end it was a human being behind all the repulsive crimes, “True Detective” is nowhere less unsettling. The idea of a malevolent, otherworldly, and unidentified being is daunting, but so is the thought that another person, after all biologically akin to any of the viewers, is capable of sexual abuse, murder, and brutal sacrifices. It does not matter if the source of dread is natural or supernatural – what matters is the unfamiliarity of it. “True Detective” combines a multitude of various elements to keep the recipient unnerved by the possibilities of what terrors could be “out there”. It leaves him questioning the human morals and the nature of the universe, truth about which is better left unexamined. “This is why True Detective is so fascinated with the Yellow King … the idea of The King in Yellow exploits our existential fears about the nature of sanity, agency, and our own place in an inconceivably vast universe that ultimately cares nothing for us. … it is this abyss that the protagonists of True Detective are actually investigating. Like in Chambers's stories, whether there is an actual Yellow King at the bottom of that abyss is almost beside the point.”[9]  

[1] Colon, Gilbert. “True Detective: Pulp, Crime, and the Weird Tales of Nic Pizzolatto.” Tor.com, www.tor.com/2015/06/19/true-detective-pulp-crime-and-the-weird-tales-of-nic-pizzolatto (as of 17th Sep 2016)
[2] Calia, Michael. “Writer Nic Pizzolatto on Thomas Ligotti and the Weird Secrets of ‘True Detective’.” The Wall Street Journal, blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/02/writer-nic-pizzolatto-on-thomas-ligotti-and-the-weird-secrets-of-true-detective (as of 17th Sep 2016)
[3] Colon.
[4] “Interview: Nic Pizzolatto, creator/writer of HBO's True Detective.” Arkham Digest, www.arkhamdigest.com/2014/01/interview-nic-pizzolatto-creatorwriter.html (as of 17th Sep 2016)
[5] en.wikiquote.org/wiki/True_Detective_(TV_series)#Season_1 (as of 18th Sep 2016)
[6] Calia, Michael. “The Most Shocking Thing About HBO’s ‘True Detective’.” The Wall Street Journal, blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/01/30/the-most-shocking-thing-about-hbos-true-detective (as of 18th September 2016)
[7] Brownlee, John. “The Book That Lies Behind The Success Of HBO's ‘True Detective’.” Fastcodesign.com, www.fastcodesign.com/3027126/the-book-that-lies-behind-the-success-of-hbos-true-detective (as of 17th September 2016)
[8] Arkham Digest.
[9] Brownlee.