
"Old Virginia" - Set in the most paranoid days of the Cold War, a team of CIA operatives guards a couple of scientists and a mysterious patient (Old Virginia) in an isolated cabin. Old Virginia is a gateway for an ancient, primordial entity, and as with most CIA operations things rapidly get out of the agency's control.
"Shiva, Open Your Eye" - Another tale about a representative of a primordial power whose existence and purpose is largely unguessed (and thankfully so) by humanity told from the point of view of the representative.
"Procession of the Black Sloth" - One of the nice things about a good Lovecraftian-style tale is that you are never quite sure whether the events are real or just figments of a disintegrating mind. So in this tale we have the recollections of Royce, who's sent to investigate a seemingly mundane affair of corporate skullduggery but winds up caught in the coils of a demonic cult.
"Bulldozer" - A lot of Barron's characters in this collection are detectives or two-bit thugs hired to investigate "normal" cases but who invariably wind up discovering things that claim life and soul - as is the case in this story about a Pinkerton detective chasing down a serial killer.
"Proboscis" - A story about entities sucking out lives.
"Hallucigenia" - Probably the most "Lovecraftian" of the stories: A degenerate white-trash family straight out of Lovecraft's New England, a creature that resembles Yog-Sothoth or the Dunwich Horror, and portals opening out into the Void. It's also my favorite.
"Parallax" - An interestingly twisty tale about a man suspected of murdering his wife when she disappears, a serial-killer ex-cop, and quantum mechanics.
"The Royal Zoo Is Closed" - This was the least satisfying tale of the bunch. A stream of consciousness ramble, a style I always find hard going.
"The Imago Sequence" - My second favorite of the collection. Reminiscent of Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" and Kiernan's Threshold it also includes a do-it-yourself trephining scene as a madman attempts to become a god.