Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2013

by Mike Davis (Editor)

  "Cut me free, Captain." I struggled to a sitting position, then fell back as the world seemed to upend itself. I guess I'd lost more blood than I thought. Still, the move let me palm the derringer.

  "Sorry, Fran, there ain't nothing for it." Rip glared at Simon. "Light the damn thing."

  "If you insist." Simon lit a torch and held it high.

  A feeling of mounting dread crawled up my spine, slick and leggy as a millipede. The atmosphere in the courtyard felt stifling as an Austin summer and thin as the air in a mountain pass.

  Things shifted behind the darkness. I knew they saw me. Worse, I knew they recognized me. Everything around us seemed flat as paint on canvas--depth, light, shadow; time no more than an artist's tricks.

  "Do you see, Dru?" Simon looked down at me, face shining with mad joy. "Do you see?"

  I saw well enough. My brother wasn't fixing to light just any fire, he meant to burn everything away. I couldn't stop him as I was--bloody and trussed like a Sunday roast--so I did the only thing I could think of.

  I whistled for my horse.

  For a moment, nothing happened apart from everyone staring at me like I'd started singing campfire songs. Then it came--the rattle of hooves, the pounding of surf building like a storm. A wave crashed through the wall, the water dark as a broken promise. It slammed into me with enough force to drive the air from my lungs. Somehow I managed to keep hold of the derringer. Just as I was about to fill my lungs with ice water, something took hold of my collar and dragged me into the air.

  Thirsty had come, and she'd brought the river with her.

  "Good girl," I sputtered between great gulps of air. The courtyard was knee-deep in water, bodies and bits of wood floating on the choppy surface. Simon struggled up, hair slicked flat, robes plastered to his bony chest.

  "Try and start your goddamn fire, now," I said.

  "You think this will stop me?" He sloshed toward me, knife in one hand, wand in the other. "I didn't want to do this, but you've left me no choice. Why couldn't you just leave well enough alone, Dru? It's what you do best."

  Thirsty flowed toward him, terrible as a riptide.

  Simon pointed the wand at her, and she gave a shriek like a kettle on the boil. Great billowing clouds of steam rose from her flesh as she sank back into the water. My brother advanced, not even the barest flicker of emotion on his face. It was a look I remembered well, although one I'd never seen him wear. I knew then there was no pulling him out. He'd become what Ma made him, what I'd been too afraid to save him from. Even so, he was my brother, my responsibility.

  Simon knelt beside me. "I'll give Father your regards."

  Hot tears stung my eyes as I twisted to press the derringer to his chest. "I'm sorry."

  There was a pop like that of a champagne cork. Simon looked down, blood almost invisible against the crushed violet of his robes. He sat down in the water, anger melting to surprise. The Athame slipped from his hands. I squirmed to grab it, then wedged the handle between my boots so I could saw through my bonds.

  "That's against the rules." His accusation was almost a whisper as he slumped against the wall.

  "I ain't playing your damn game."

  The look he gave me was equal parts pain and reproach, but I'd done what I had to. Only cowards don't take care of their own.

  Simon gave a single painful swallow, and fell still.

  There were shouts, then a flurry of splashes as those of Simon's flock who'd survived the flood fled into the night. I held my brother's body for a spell, wondering if there'd been a single moment when the boy I knew died, or if slow starvation of the spirit had made him like this.

  A shadow fell over me. Rip looked like a drowned cat, but the smile on his face was warm as a Mexican sunrise.

  "You really saved us back there, Fran. Not just us, everything. How'd you know the kelpie would bring the river?"

  "My brother said it was a water spirit. Just a hunch."

  "That was some quick thinking. I could use someone like you in the Rangers."

  "They don't take women."

  "We could change that."

  I looked up at him. "I think I've had about enough of other people telling me what to do."

  I stood to shouts and back slaps from those of the La Puerta crew who were still alive.

  The Mandarin joined Rip, sketching a deep bow. "Madame, you have my undying gratitude. I am Han Wu--"

  "I don't much care who you are, who any of you are." I was getting damn sick of fellas who thought everything was about them. I pushed through the stunned crowd, looking for the only thing that still mattered to me.

  To my relief, Thirsty rose from a ripple of water, her coat oil-slick black, her mane like fronds of pond grass. Strangely, she came saddled, my carbine in its holster and my gunbelt hanging from the saddle horn. She whickered appreciatively as I ran my fingers through her mane before pulling myself onto her back.

  "Where you headed, Fran?" Rip called after me.

  "Don't know, and if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't tell you."

  I could've stayed, I suppose, could've been all they wanted me to be, but soon enough everything would start to chafe, and like a fly battering itself against a windowpane, I'd either have to get out or kill myself trying. It had always been like that for me, but at least now I knew why. Wherever I went people said it was because I wasn't from around here--wherever here happened to be. If Simon was right about Pa, I might not be from around anywhere.

  I reckon that suited me just fine.

  The moon looked down on us, bright and round as a silver dollar. There was a chill in the October air, but a change of clothes and a few hours on the trail would take the edge off. It felt good to be in the saddle again, and even better to feel, for the first time, like I wasn't running from something.

  I patted Thirsty's neck. "You know, girl? After all that, we'll have to give you a new name."

  The night was silent but for our breathing, and the steady thud of her hooves. Sweeter music I'd never heard.

  I blinked back tears. "Hell, I might even need one, too."

  By day, Evan Dicken fights economic entropy for the US Department of Commerce, and researches Edo period cartography at the Ohio State University. By night, he does neither of these things. His work has most recently appeared in: Daily Science Fiction, Innsmouth Magazine, and Toasted Cake Podcast, and he has stories forthcoming from publishers such as: Chaosium, Andromeda Spaceways, and Woodland Press. Feel free to visit him at: www.evandicken.com.

  Story illustration by Steve Santiago

  Return to the table of contents

  Cthulhu Does Stuff is a monthly comic strip by Ronnie Tucker and Maxwell Patterson. Visit their website, Max and Ronnie do comics.

  Maxwell Patterson is a freelance writer, available for parties, corporate events and Bat Mitzvahs. You can contact him at maxpatterson88@gmail.com.

  Ronnie Tucker is an artist who plies his wares (eww, gross!) at http://ronnietucker.co.uk/. You can contact him at: ronnie@ronnietucker.co.uk.

  Return to the table of contents

  Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #5

  Wilum on the Line

  by Robert M. Price

  I believe that Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, the Oscar Wilde of our time, is the most revered and beloved figure in the Lovecraftian movement today. And he deserves it. He is a genuine “character,” and this is by no means beside the point.

  In his fascinating book The Philosophy of Horror, Noel Carroll explains, quite convincingly in my opinion, that the secret to horror is what the great anthropologist Victor Turner calls “liminality.” He studied rites of passage from one life-stage into another, a field pioneered by Arnold van Gennep. The sacraments of Roman Catholicism mark most of the transitions (and thus transformations) through which people proceed in all cultures and throughout history: birth, puberty, vocational ordination, marriage, retirement, and death. Each stage is virtually a new life, the entrance upon it a rebirth. The greatest of these is the puberty ri
te. In it, the new adult is initiated into the secrets of sex, death, and the sacred. Turner wanted to know why such rituals were associated with symbols, masks, etc., that combined features of diametrically opposed creatures: chimeras, sort of like totem poles. What does such mixed symbolism have to do with the rites of life passage? Simply that the initiate himself becomes a boundary-breacher, a “monster” of sorts, as he, e.g., engages in ordinarily forbidden behaviors (think of bachelor parties) in ceremonies that are literally marginalized, often conducted outside the settlement. The initiate may even become or embody the boundary he is crossing, as in the ouch-inducing practice of sub-incision, slitting open the underside of the penis in order to create a male vagina. This is to become, symbolically, a hermaphrodite, breaching the boundary between the genders in the process of transitioning from pre-sexual child to sexual adult. Thus the appropriate ritual-mythical characters on stage for the ritual are also living instances of category transgression.

  Mythical entities share this character because they, too, bridge a chasm between the real world and the unseen world of the divine and the supernatural: angels (winged men), griffins, centaurs, demigods, virgin mothers, minotaurs, etc. And so do the classic monsters of horror: the Wolfman, the Gillman, and the various tribes of the living dead: vampires, mummies, zombies, the Frankenstein monster. They are all door men attending the horror hotel. So are horror authors.

  Liminality also marks prophets, shamans, and seers because they, too, are living portals to the unseen worlds. Ritual transvestism is a recurring feature of oracles and seers. The ancient cave painting of the Dancing Sorcerer shows a man wearing a deer skin and antlers. Believe me, we are getting close to Pugmire. You see, only a thin line (there's liminality again!) separates the prophet from the poet. Artistic inspiration (the Muse) is pretty much the same thing as prophetic inspiration. In both cases we are talking about a very thin veil between the conscious mind which hold the pen and the vast subconscious which tells it what to write. Aleister Crowley has a great discussion of this in Moonchild. Abdul Alhazred is a prime example. He was typical of the Arabic kahin, or poet-soothsayer, inspired by the jinn, desert spirits.

  And that's Pugmire.

  And of course he's flaming queer. That's a case of liminality, too. The connection between homosexuality and artistic creativity is evident. Homosexuality is interstitial. Wilum the Hopfrog's Lovecraftian credentials would be impressive in any case. He belongs to that “greatest generation” of fans who actually knew some of the Founding Fathers of the Weird Tales tradition. He has written distinctive fiction. He has designed and published some small press marvels. He is hilariously witty. But I think the defining characteristic of this strange man is his perfect liminality.

  Robert M. Price is an American theologian and writer. He teaches philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on theology and the historicity of Jesus, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Reason Driven Life (2006), Jesus is Dead (2007), Inerrant the Wind: The Evangelical Crisis in Biblical Authority (2009), The Case Against the Case for Christ (2010), and The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (2012).

  A former Baptist minister, he was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003, and has written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a "shared universe" created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft.

  Return to the table of contents

  A Massing of the Shades

  by Richard Gavin

  Over dessert the gaunt man offered to draw Craig a map to the Tower. His tone of utter indifference was no doubt premeditated, and he added to this lackadaisical charade by focusing his attention on his dish of pomegranate sorbet. The man spooned up three gory-red mouthfuls without affording Craig or me so much as an upward glance.

  We were sitting in the White Mount Cafe, a dwarfish eatery made to feel smaller still by the glass-walled view of Mount Selta. Craig and I had spent the better part of that summer hitchhiking up and down the west coast. One could do that in those days because the dangers of riding with a variety of strangers were either slim or simply unknown. I suspect it is the latter because, if my recent experiences are any indication, the world is a minefield, one that we traverse at our peril.

  The pair of us had decided that Washington would be a nice state to tramp around for August. But my interests were far less exotic than Craig’s. I wished to sightsee, whereas he prodded each new driver who’d been kind enough to pick us up (we must have resembled drowned rats by that time) for the most arcane information. He was forever hunting for eerie rumours about whatever town we happened to be drifting through. He was like a pig unearthing truffles. No matter how deeply he had to bore, or how filthy the treasure, Craig never failed to fish out a treat. After we reached the west coast it didn’t take long for him to learn of Sesqua Valley, and once he did the haunting details dragged Craig – and me, by consequence – to the region as swiftly as a hooked fish being reeled in.

  “Oh, Sesqua Valley, sure I know it,” the thin man had told us during what was to be Craig’s and my last drive together. “If you know about the valley, then you must know the legend of the Man in the Tower.” We did not. But the name of the legend alone practically had Craig coming out in a rash. “There’s a restaurant just a few miles up the road. Why don’t you boys buy me a meal and we’ll call it even for the gas? I’ll tell you about the legend over dinner. Believe me, it’s not the kind of story you want to hear when you’re travelling a cold grey stretch of highway like this one.”

  So we had settled into a booth by the window through which the pale climes of Mount Selta studied us like we do insects. We bought our driver supper (he ate a surprising amount for such a thin man, though his monochrome black attire likely made him appear even slighter) and he told us the story of the Man in the Tower.

  Ostensibly, like most towns in America, Sesqua Valley had at least one Old Family, one whose roots twisted all the way back to the Nootka Convention and this state’s nativity. In this case it was the Williams family, who had resided in Sesqua Valley for as long as anyone could remember. Whether it was their extensive bloodline or some other quirk I cannot say, but the Williams family had a reputation for being more fey than earthly; none more so than Simon Gregory Williams, the notorious Man in the Tower.

  According to legend (or simply to the puckish imagination of our driver), Simon Gregory Williams always walked with each of his feet in different realms. He was driven by strange, dark forces, and thus lived a solitary life instead of cavorting with the locals. His time was his own and he filled it with creative and esoteric pursuits. By the time he’d reached manhood, Williams’ collection of arcane books was so great that he resorted to constructing a fortified tower to store his library. As to why he had chosen to build this tower at the base of Mount Selta, the theories were legion: everything from leylines running beneath the soil to his own obsession with Sacred Geometry. Whatever the reason, a cylindrical tower was erected, and behind its bolted door of iron Simon Gregory Williams spent the lion’s share of his remaining years, studying, chanting queer words, attempting to call things back from afar.

  Though he never hosted a single guest in his tower, it was said that Williams was never alone out there.

  “So what happened to him?” Craig had asked. He was caught; hook, line, and sinker.

  When our driver said that Williams had simply disappeared without a trace I think I might have groaned. The clichés didn’t seem to bother Craig. He watched with breathless delight as the man extracted a silver pen from the inside pocket of his blazer and used it to sketch a crosshatched topography of Mount Selta and the cold black river that flowed near its base...and the tower that stood amongst the sycamores and the evergreens.

  And with that our driver dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin, nodded, and wished us luck on our quest.

/>   I hate to think that I had become as susceptible to uncanny influence as Craig, but as I watched the man exit the restaurant and make his way to his sedan, it did seem as though he was merging with the evening shadows, which were stretching long and lean across the parking lot.

  The Pacific Northwest is beautiful, particularly in summer, which is why I tend to doubt the reality of the deep autumn chill that hung heavily over the valley during our hike into the woods and along the river. Based on that memory alone, I would say that the region was nothing short of ominous, even hostile.

  Steam rose from the coldly churning river. Craig charged onward, the crude map clutched in one fist, a flashlight in the other. I spent the majority of the journey calling out my doubts about the authenticity of the map, and my worries over the potential dangers we were putting ourselves in by traipsing into the alien woods in the dead of night.

  My protests were in vain. Craig would not yield until he had drunk in the Williams site with his own eyes.

  And when our path finally intersected with the tower, or rather its remnants, Craig toppled just as our destination must have, perhaps on a night as Gothic as this one.

  It must have been an impressive, imposing monument at one time. Assuming of course that one can judge a thing solely by examining its bones, for that was all that was left of Simon Gregory Williams’ sanctuary. Whoever or whatever had destroyed the tower must have done so with great force, for Craig and I had begun to stagger over the chunks of cinderblock for a good half-mile before we finally came to the clearing. We both stood, our ankles aching from the sudden jerks and twists they had endured. The two of us looked upon the twisted shape by the moon’s grey light. It seemed to spiral up from the fallow soil like a stalk of redbrick and iron.