New Tales
of the
Old Ones
edited by Theresa Derwin
& Paul Simpson
Great British Horror Books
www.GreatBritishHorror.com
First published in the UK in a different form by KnightWatch Press, 2013
This edition © KnightWatch Press
an imprint of Great British Horror Books, 2015
“The Call of Home” © 2013 Theresa Derwin
“The Curse of the Frasers” © 2013 Emma Bunn
“The Fear on Kingdom Mountain” © 2013 Jody Ruth
“Just the Wind” © 2013 David Dunwoody
“The Killing Field” © 2013 Tarl Hoch
“Homecoming” © 2013 Sam Gifford
“Dave Zahn” © 2013 Chip Fehd
“The Chalk Circle” © 2013 P N Roberts
“It Grows” © 2013 Sean M Thompson
“Blood, Guns & Tentacles” © 2013 Kirk Jones
“Showtime” © 2013 Sam Gifford
“The Howling Madness” © 2013 Kelly M Hudson
“The Nameless” © 2013 A Stuart Williams
“There is a Sea Serpent in the Swimming Pool” © 2013 Martin R Zdziemborsky
“Deadly Cargo” © 2013 Geoff Gander
“The Darkness at Table Rock Road” © 2013 Michael Reyes
Cover art © 2015 Stephen Cooney
Cover & interior layout © 2015 Great British Horror
The right of authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known of hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
THE CALL OF HOME
THE CURSE OF THE FRASERS
THE FEAR ON KINGHAM MOUNTAIN
JUST THE WIND
THE KILLING FIELD
HOMECOMING
DAVE ZAHN
THE CHALK CIRCLE
IT GROWS
BLOOD, GUNS & TENTACLES
SHOWTIME
THE HOWLING MADNESS
THE NAMELESS
THERE IS A SEA SERPENT IN THE SWIMMING POOL
DEADLY CARGO
THE DARNESS AT TABLE ROCK ROAD
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
INTRODUCTION
by
Bowie V Ibarra
Okay, I’ll admit. I got to the HP Lovecraft party very, very late.
As a fan of horror movies, I remember agreeing to impress a girl I liked named Veronica in the 7th grade by watching a horror movie she had on VHS. There were several movies on the cassette tape, and one of them was a curious movie called The Beyond. It was a dark and mysterious movie, loosely based on Lovecraft’s work of the same name, and man did it trip me out.
Featured very prominently in the opening title sequence was a name: HP Lovecraft. The name would also appear before another movie I would watch in the same time period called Re-Animator. It made me wonder just who this writer was that was inspiring these fear-fests.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved reading books, but had yet to have the courage to step into the horror genre. I was more familiar with Choose Your Own Adventure books and educational books about the paranormal. I didn’t even get to Stephen King until college.
But Lovecraft’s name would appear yet again one morning in my youth. I was getting ready for school, and enjoying an obscure Real Ghostbusters cartoon episode entitled The Collect Call of Cathulhu. (As I write this, I decided to YouTube the episode.) In it, an exhibit of The Necronomicon at a museum was stolen by a dark cult bent on raising ‘Cathulhu’ from ‘the watery depths’. Lovecraft’s name was dropped liberally throughout the episode. It was actually pretty creepy for a children’s cartoon, which was always a cool aspect of those early cartoons.
One of the most notable aspects of the cartoon was how Ray Stantz, one of the more eccentric Ghostbusters, states several times emphatically that HP Lovecraft inspired many authors to write about his Cthulhu mythos and the ‘old ones’. And it is that very fact stated by the cartoon character that brings us together today.
I would later discover Lovecraft was an author who wrote most of his works in the early 1900’s. It was obvious this guy clearly had a lot of street cred to have a body of works that still resonated to this day. With that kind of staying power and following, it was no wonder his work inspired these movies.
New Tales of the Old Ones is a tribute compilation to the tremendous influence HP Lovecraft had on the world of sci-fi, horror, mystery, and especially ‘weird tales’. Lovecraft didn’t just flaunt traditional philosophy and storytelling of the time period, he flipped it on its head. His works included many themes including religion, the dangers of science, fate, and humanity’s inability to understand the supernatural. The stories also dealt with humanity’s impotence against the supernatural’s potential sinister power. He explored subjects such as worlds beyond our perception, worlds that could be all around us, but beyond our perception. In these worlds, we were powerless to the mysteries it held, the dangers.
In my “Down the Road” zombie horror stories, humanity deals with cold manifestations of their greatest fear: death. Like death itself, the zombies creep and shamble their way to the living to kill them and eat their flesh. The living knows exactly what is coming for them and what to do, if they can get along. They can deal with them, with their existence.
But with Lovecraft, humanity must deal with the cold manifestations of an even greater fear, a fear perhaps greater than death. That fear is of the unknown. With the unknown, humanity cannot possibly know what is coming for them. And what’s worse, humanity cannot comprehend what is coming for them, or have the power to stop it even when they find out.
Now that’s scary.
Within these pages, you will find stories that share these same themes, these same mysteries, these same frights. The authors who have been chosen to be a part of this compilation are the cream of the crop, authors who have been chosen for properly honoring Lovecraft’s works. New Tales of the Old Ones is the perfect tribute to the legacy of Lovecraft.
In your hands, you hold a new original homage to Lovecraft’s writings and to his readers. Let’s just hope by reading these stories, we don’t somehow unleash the old ones on the world.
Sincerely,
Bowie V. Ibarra
Author
ZombieBloodFights.com
THE CALL OF HOME
Theresa Derwin
Author’s Note
The psychiatric unit in this story is purely one of the imagination, and bears no resemblance to any local units (to the best of my knowledge). The NHS sometimes gets a bad rap, but come on now, it isn’t that bad!
Speaking of the insane, this story is dedicated to my nutty family, Daddy Paddy, The Spuds (Tish, Paul, Gemma & Kyle) and Mom, may God rest her soul.
“You’re lying, she’s not dead,” I said calmly.
For just a moment the world stopped revolving and the emptiness engulfed me as the words spoken on the other end of the phone sunk in.
I could still hear the tinny voice of the Ward Sister droning in the backgroun
d with pointless platitudes. It wasn’t real. I tried to pretend to myself that I hadn’t heard correctly. It wasn’t Mom. They picked the wrong person at the hospital, mistaken identity. I vehemently denied what my own ears had heard. “I’m sorry Mrs Monk, your mother passed away during the night, peacefully in her sleep”.
It was all lies. It had to be. Mom didn’t sleep, not ever. The nightmares we shared kept us both awake every damn night and kept her trapped in her own mind and in that damn looney bin.
My voice caught in my throat, my chest tight and painful as tears welled up already, even as I tried to deny what I knew was true.
“What happened? How?” I mumbled.
The Sister continued to drone on at me. Natural causes, sure she felt no pain, yadda yadda yadda.
I hung up the call and collapsed onto my chair.
X
I must’ve sped through a million red lights as I raced to Breaside Mental Health Hospital, cars whizzing past me, horns bibbing, though I barely noticed them. The Sister met me at the door and greeted me soberly. She was a petite Asian lady in her mid-thirties, with a cute chocolate bob streaked with mahogany and a pretty smile. She was too young to have the job of telling someone that their Mom was dead, I thought. Her pretty face didn’t match her cold voice as she greeted me.
“Thanks for letting me come so quick, Sister Khadim,” I said. I’d rushed straight to the institution. I had to know why she was dead.
“Please, call me Shab,” she replied, “And that’s quite alright. I understand. Would you like to see her?”
“Yes please,” I said. As I followed, my footsteps echoed hers down the beige tiled corridors.
The building felt ugly. Its fetid pea green walls, the paint stripping off in corners, closed in on me as I walked that long corridor, trying not to hear the disturbing sounds through the secured doors. Screams, cackles of insane laughter, the jangling of keys as though it were a prison, shouting and whispering, all of the sounds competing against each other for a chance to worm their way into my brain.
Breaside had never felt like this before. I’d visited Mom loads of times while she was still compos mentis and knew the building well. Hell, I’d noticed the sounds but tried to ignore them. I’d noticed the sickening walls and ignored them too. I always noticed the musty smell of the patients that mingled with the chemicals of an institution and the faint tang of urine, but I ignored it. I was very good at ignoring things sometimes, especially where Mom was concerned. No one at work knew she was here. I was ashamed, I could finally admit to myself.
We reached Mom’s room and Shab, the Sister, brought us to a halt. She took out the key and opened the heavy white door wide to let me in.
Silently I entered Mom’s room, that cacophony of noise still beating in the background almost deafening me. Mom lay on the bed, a white sheet placed over her body for politeness’ sake.
Slowly, I stumbled forward in a daze. My fingers grasped hold of the sheet and pulled it half way down, so I could see her torso and head. Her skeletal, grey figure was shrivelled, seeming to taunt me with the knowledge that I’d not been a very good daughter. Her eyes had been closed, presumably by the nurse or doctor who had found her. Her hair was wiry and grey, her skin wrinkled and decorated with the shadows of her experiences. She looked in her mid-eighties but was only in her late sixties. Her pain, her fears, the nightmares had wizened her so she looked like an old witch. Her fear had finally killed her. I would go that way too. It was selfish, but all I could think was ‘please don’t kill me too’.
I covered her again with the sheet and turned back to Shab who was waiting patiently for me to finish.
“I have spoken to Dr Storer and he believes there will be no need for an inquest,” she informed me, “unless you feel–”
“No, no. That’s okay,” I said, “I...It’s ok. Can I use a ladies room please? I need to, er, freshen up. I mean–”
“I understand,” Shab replied. We left the room together and she escorted me along another corridor to the visitor’s facilities.
I looked in the mirror in the toilets and splashed my face with water. My eyes looked red and sore and I looked white as a ghost. The only colour on me was my mahogany hair that rested on my shoulders. I was so tired. I took a steadying breath.
I didn’t need an inquest to know what Mom had died of. I could still smell the urine that told me she had pissed herself in the throes of death. I could still smell the fear.
The nightmares had won.
X
It rained the day of Mom’s funeral. Of course it did. It’s Britain for God’s sake. We finished the Church service at Corpus Christi’s then took her to the joint plot in Witton, where Dad was buried, our feet sodden by the mushy grass.
Then everyone came back to our place in Acocks Green. My brother Steve helped serve drinks whilst my darling Chris thanked everyone for coming, the flowers and everything else, whilst I was numb. I couldn’t wait for them all to go.
Finally Chris and I could take a second to breathe in the kitchen away from everyone whilst Steve entertained them with his tall tales.
I stood at the marble counter, trying to just breathe, to exhale and to close my eyes.
“C’mere Missy.”
Chris, a blanket of calm serenity and warmth washed over and through me, standing behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist. He kissed the back of my head and it was enough. He was my anchor, my port in a storm. I turned round to let him envelope me and his lips met mine, his kiss tasting of salty tears. His lips stilled the grief for just a second or two.
“I’m sorry to interrupt...” said a voice, though interrupt us it did.
I broke away from the embrace as a man I thought I vaguely recognised walked into the kitchen and took off his hat, a Granddad cap. Chris had started to fix us both a drink, Isle of Jura on the rocks.
The man was a bit young to be wearing one, in his fifties I think. He looked around my age, late thirties. Under the cap he had red-blonde hair cut close and his eyes were twinkly and blue. His accent had a vague Irish lilt to it, as though Birmingham got somehow crossed with Dublin. I’d worked a few bars in my time and his accent felt real.
“That’s okay,” I answered, “do you need a drink?”
“No, no thank you,” he said, “but have ya got a minute? It’s something important I need ta talk ta ya about otherwise I wouldn’t bother today of all days.”
“I’m sorry, it is a bad time,” I said, shaking my head.
“Mrs Monk, I’m sorry ta disturb ya, I really am. But it’s about your Mam. Me name’s Albert Devaney. I work at Breaside. She asked me to come ta ya if ever, ya know, if ever anything happened ta her. Can we chat in private?”
My heart stopped, a chill prickling up my spine, the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
“You’d better sit down,” I said, nodding towards one of the kitchen chairs, closing the door to ensure our privacy.
Albert took a seat and I made him an Isle of Jura figuring it didn’t matter where the whisky came from. If he was part Irish, he’d like it. Besides, I desperately needed my own that Chris had fixed me earlier.
I breathed a big stressed sigh and asked Chris to join Steve and help entertain the black garbed crowd in the lounge while I talked to Albert. Chris kissed me on the cheek gently, as he let he kitchen.
Albert breathed a sigh of relief himself then took a plain white carrier bag out from under his coat and put it on the table. It had something apparently heavy in it.
“Ya Mam trusted me,” he said, “and I liked her. When she wasn’t on one of her funnies she was a blast. A right old laff.”
“Go on.”
“She gave me something. Something for ya ta keep. She was paranoid what with the schizophrenia and the dreams. She told me ta take something and not let Dr Storer keep them.”
“What dreams? And what did she give you?” I demanded, impatient.
“Diaries,” he answered, pulling out two from what I could see
were a number of books. They were a paisley diary and a worn out brown paper covered book.
He handed them to me. The older of the books smelt rank with age, musty and decayed. The second book, the paisley one, was obviously newer but still had the odour of the years to it.
I indicated Albert’s drink to him then took a healthy swig of the amber liquid swirling in my glass, which was warm and wonderfully peaty and rich as it slid down my throat. I really had needed it.
Albert stayed silent as I opened the front cover of the older book and peered at the first page. The brown paper diary had a barely legible scribble on the first page:
Journal of Events: Mary Margaret Jukes
2nd March to 2nd April 1925
What the hell? It was Nan. Jukes was her maiden name before she’d married Henry Wilcox, my Granddad.
What was this guy from Breaside doing with Nan’s diary and why for that matter had Mom given it to him and not me?
He seemed to read my thoughts and nodded briefly.
“Take a look at the other one,” he said.
I closed the brown diary and opened the paisley one.
Patricia Yeoman’s Diary
Feb to April 1965
I slammed the diary shut and glared up at him.
“Is this some kind of a joke?!”
“No, I swear,” he said, leaning over and grasping my free hand. “Listen. She asked me ta tell ya. The diaries I kept hidden for her the last year or so. I saw no harm in it. It’s the nightmares. The diaries are all about the nightmares. I tell ya, it spooked da shit outta me when I read them. She wanted you to have them when she was gone. So you could fight those dreams, she said, so you could fight what’s in the dreams.”
Albert had so far only shown me one of the diaries.
I took a shuddering breath and sat silent for about thirty seconds, breathing in and out slowly, my fingers lightly dancing across the cover of Nan’s diary. Nan died before I was born. She’d spent the majority of her adult life in Breaside, where Mom had died. Nan had died in 1965, the year Mom’s diary seemed to have started. Mom had been committed there sometime in her thirties I think. Like Mother, like daughter!
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