Through a Mythos Darkly

  “But they’re our friends,” Ieva said, her voice catching.

  Another woman nodded. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “They’re gone and they would do the same.” She took off at a run to the next post, knife at the ready, with several others at her heels.

  They did not hesitate, they did not falter, and with each death, the false sky broke apart a little more and the false stars fell. The monster in the sky cried rage but continued to advance in the slices of darkness left.

  Daina ran to Lukas. Touched his cheek, his hands, hands that once caressed her body, that once held her close.

  “Please wake,” she whispered, knowing he would not, and the beast was so close now. She felt it in her mind, promising her a place at his side if she’d only stop, and she wanted to stop; she didn’t want to do this thing.

  But she lifted her knife. “I’m sorry, Lukas.” Something brushed against the back of her neck; dropping to a crouch, she plunged the blade into Lukas’ belly, drawing it across. As his intestines spilled out purple-red and—

  mercy murder mercy murder

  —reeking of waste, there was a rushing wind, but rushing back, rushing away, and a faint and distant shriek.

  She put her face in her hands, blinking away the sting of tears. When she finally took her hands away, the beast was gone. So, too, the stones, the stink of sulfur, the black water, the strange sensation in her skin. Remnants of the wrong sky drifted down onto the sea like torn scraps of paper, dissolving on the surface.

  She watched until the last piece fell, then lifted her face to the sun with eyes closed, breathing slow and deep, until the others approached.

  “What do you want us to do now?” Ieva asked in a quiet voice.

  Daina jammed her spear into the sand, tucked her knife through her belt, and turned her gaze to the sea. Tears burned in her eyes again; this time, she let them fall, finding strength within the sorrow. “We bury our friends. We grieve. We stand together. And if, when, the monsters return, whether familiar or not, we kill them. As always.”

  Contributor Biographies

  Glynn Owen Barrass lives in the North East of England and has been writing since late 2006. He has written over a hundred and thirty short stories, most of which have been published in the UK, USA, France, and Japan. He has also edited anthologies for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu fiction line, and writes material for their flagship roleplaying game. To date he has edited the anthologies Eldritch Chrome, Steampunk Cthulhu and Atomic Age Cthulhu, for Chaosium, In the Court of the Yellow King, for Celaeno Press, and World War Cthulhu for Dark Regions Press. Upcoming books include The Eldritch Force, The Summer of Lovecraft and World War Cthulhu II. Cody Goodfellow’s previous collections Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action both received the Wonderland Book Award. His latest, Rapture of the Deep & Other Lovecraftian Tales, is out now from Hippocampus Press. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene film Stay At Home Dad, which can be viewed on YouTube. As a bishop of the Esoteric Order of Dagon (San Pedro Chapter), he presides over several Cthulhu Prayer Breakfasts each year, from Comic-Con to the Queen Mary. He is also a director of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Los Angeles and cofounder of Perilous Press, a micropublisher of modern cosmic horror. John Langan is the author of two novels, The Fisherman (Word Horde 2016) and House of Windows (Night Shade 2009). His collections include Sefira and Other Betrayals (Hippocampus 2016) and The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus 2013). With Paul Tremblay, he co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (Prime 2011). One of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Award, he lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife and younger son. D.A. Madigan thinks that every problem is a hammer, so I guess that makes him a nail, and a shameful embarrassment to Simon & Garfunkel as well. He silently practices curses in ancient Lemurian while talking on the phone to addle-witted customers at his job, who nonetheless resolutely refuse to disappear into slavering extradimensional maws (as far as you know, anyway). He can often be found typing in his office in the lovely new home he shares with his brilliant and beautiful wife and daughters. He has written some fifteen book length objects, all of which may be purchased at www.damadigan.com. His best seller is Harvest Night, An American Horror Novel, a cheerful, upbeat tome concerning itself with occult urban mythology, cannibalism, torture-murder, a pleasantly Capraesque and All American little town full of Satan worshipping serial killers, and many things blowing up real good, but he’s written a lot of other cool stuff, too. Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including The Last Weekend and Lovecraftian murder mystery I Am Providence. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, on Tor.com, in the anthologies Future Lovecraft and Lovecraft Unbound, and in many other venues. During the day, he edits books for VIZ Media, including the Haikasoru imprint of Japanese science fiction in translation. His most recent anthology is Hanzai Japan, co-edited with Masumi Washington. William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with twenty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, DarkFuse and Dark Renaissance, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines with recent sales to NATURE Futures, Penumbra and Buzzy Mag among others. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he’s not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory. Christine Morgan recently relocated from the Seattle area to the Portland area, beginning a new, more-social phase of her life among the local horror/bizarro weirdo creative community. They like how she brings baked goods to readings and events. In addition to her several books and dozens of short stories in print, she’s a regular contributor to The Horror Fiction Review, the editor and publisher of the Fossil Lake Anthologies, and dabbles in many other writing-related projects. Her other interests include history, mythology, cooking shows, crafts, superheroes, gaming, and spoiling her four cats as she trains toward eventual crazy-cat-lady status. She can be found online at https://christinemariemorgan.wordpress.com/ Edward Morris is a 2011 nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, also nominated for the 2009 Rhysling Award and the 2005 British Science Fiction Association Award. His short stories have appeared in The Starry Wisdom Library (PS Publishing;) The Children of Gla’aki (Dark Regions Press), and Eternal Frankenstein (Word Horde Books.) He is currently writing a superhero novel called I am Lesion for the National M.S. Society, and finishing a science-fiction horror meganovel called There was a Crooked Man that Barry N. Malzberg pronounced “fit to stand on the same shelf as Earth Abides and The Day After.” Konstantine Paradias is a writer by choice. His short stories have been published in the AE Canadian Science Fiction Review, Atelier Press’ Trident Magazine and the BATTLE ROYALE Slambook by Haikasoru. His short story, “How You Ruined Everything” has been included in Tangent Online’s 2013 recommended SF reading list and his short story “The Grim” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Robert M. Price, a fan of H.P. Lovecraft since the Lancer paperback collections of 1967 appeared, began writing articles on HPL and the Cthulhu Mythos in 1980. His celebrated semi-pro zine Crypt of Cthulhu began as a quarterly fanzine for the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association in 1981 and made it to 109 issues. Contributors included rising stars of Lovecraft scholarship S.T. Joshi, Donald R. Burleson, Peter H. Cannon, and Will Murray, as well as renowned Cthulhu Mythos writers such as Brian Lumley, Lin Carter, Ramsey Campbell, Colin Wilson, Gary Myers, and John Glasby. In 1990 Price began editing Mythos fiction anthologies for Fedogan & Bremer, including Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos, The New Lovecraft Circle, Acolytes of Cthulhu, and Worlds of Cthulhu. He has compiled a great number of Mythos anthologies for Chaosium, Inc., including The Hastur Cycle and The Azathoth Cycle, Anthologies for other publishers include the Arkham House Robert Bloch collection Flowers from the Moon. His own fiction has been collected in Blasphemies and Revelations from Myth
os Books. His monograph Lin Carter: A Look behind his Imaginary Worlds is now quite rare. Price has continued the adventures of Carter’s Sword-&-Sorcery hero Thongor of Lemuria, as well as those of Carter’s occult detective Anton Zarnack. Stephen Mark Rainey is author of the novels Balak, The Lebo Coven, Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (with Elizabeth Massie), The Nightmare Frontier, Blue Devil Island, and The Monarchs; over 100 published works of short fiction; five short-fiction collections; and several audio dramas for Big Finish Productions based on the ABC-TV series Dark Shadows, featuring members of the original TV series cast. For ten years, he edited the award-winning Deathrealm magazine and has edited anthologies for Chaosium, Arkham House, and Delirium Books. Mark is an avid geocacher, which oftentimes leads him to discover creepy places — and people — that wind up in his horror stories. He lives in Greensboro, NC, with two precocious house cats, one of which owns a home decorating business. Visit Mark’s website at http://www.stephenmarkrainey.com. Pete Rawlik is a long time collector of Lovecraftian fiction and in 1985 stole a car to go see the film Reanimator. He successfully defended himself by explaining that his father had regularly read him The Rats in the Wall as a bedtime story. His first professional sale was in 1997, but didn’t begin to write seriously until 2010. Since then he has authored more than fifty short stories and the Cthulhu Mythos novels Reanimators, and The Weird Company. He is a frequent contributor to the Lovecraft ezine and the New York Review of Science Fiction. In 2014 his short story Revenge of the Reanimator was nominated for a New Pulp Award. In 2015 he co-edited The Legacy of the Reanimator for Chaosium. Somewhere along the line he became known as the Reanimator guy, but he fervently denies being obsessed with the character. His new novel, Reanimatrix, is a weird-noir-romance set in H. P. Lovecraft’s Arkham, and will be released in 2016. He lives in southern Florida where he works on Everglades issues and does a lot of fishing. Brian M. Sammons is the weird fiction line editor for Dark Regions Press and the Chief Editor for Golden Goblin Press. He has been a film and literature critic for over twenty years for a number of publications and has penned stories that have appeared in such anthologies as Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Mountains of Madness, Deepest, Darkest Eden, In the Court of the Yellow King and others. He has edited the books: Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, Steampunk Cthulhu, Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu, Flesh Like Smoke, The Legacy of the Reanimator, Return of the Old Ones, Children of Gla’aki, Dread Shadows in Paradise, and more. He is currently far too busy for any sane man. For more about this guy that neighbors describe as “such a nice, quiet man” you can follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons Sam Stone began her professional writing career in 2007 when her first novel won the Silver Award for Best Novel with ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards. Since then she has gone on to write several novels, three novellas and many short stories. Stone loves all types of fiction and enjoys mixing horror (her first passion) with a variety of different genres including science fiction, fantasy, crime and Steampunk. She currently resides in Lincolnshire with her husband David and their two cats Shadow and Freya. Her works can be found in paperback, audio and e-book. www.sam-stone.com Molly Tanzer’s debut novel, the steampunk weird western Vermilion, was an NPR Best Book of 2015. She is also the author of the British Fantasy and Wonderland Book Award-nominated Lovecraftian collection A Pretty Mouth, the cocktail-themed collection Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations, and the historical crime novel The Pleasure Merchant. She is also the co-editor (with Jesse Bullington) of the forthcoming anthology Swords v Cthulhu (summer 2016). Molly lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she tweets @molly_the_tanz, and blogs — infrequently — at mollytanzer.com. Jeffrey Thomas is an American author of fantastical fiction, the creator of the acclaimed milieu Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices From Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Gray (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, and Red Cells. Thomas’ other short story collections include Worship The Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Unholy Dimensions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Aaaiiieee!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, and Encounters With Enoch Coffin (with W. H. Pugmire). His other novels include Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, Beautiful Hell, Boneland, Subject 11, Beyond the Door, Thought Forms, Blood Society, Lost In Darkness, The Sea of Flesh and Ash (with Scott Thomas), and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers. His short stories have been reprinted in DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories, St. Martin Press’ The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and Undertow Publications’ Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and he has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker and John W. Campbell awards. Thomas lives in Massachusetts. Tim Waggoner is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist who has published over thirty novels and three short story collections of dark fiction. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. You can find him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com. Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Paper Tigers (Dark House Press, 2016) and Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Publications, 2015). Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including Cassilda’s Song, Nightscript I, Cemetery Dance Online, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Apex Magazine. She’s also a freelance editor and, until the magazine’s closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescued pit bulls. Find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or on the web at http://damienangelicawalters.com. Don Webb teaches high school, has shot fireworks professionally, and is an expert on the Greek Magical papyrus. He has had one rock-n-roll song recorded, designed games, and has two cats that are smarter than he is. Lee Clark Zumpe, a Florida native, lives in the Tampa Bay area and spends most of his time writing. By day, he is an award-winning entertainment columnist and reviewer with Tampa Bay Newspapers. At night, he writes Lovecraftian horror, dark fantasy and science fiction. He has penned dozens of short stories and hundreds of poems. His work has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. His most recent appearances include short stories in Black Chaos: Tales of the Zombie (Big Pulp), Vignettes from the End of the World (Apokrupha), Steampunk Cthulhu (Chaosium) and World War Cthulhu (Dark Regions Press). Lee is also co-author, with David Lee Summers, of the book Blood Sampler, a collection of vampire flash fiction currently in its second printing from Alban Lake Publishing. Feed Me Wicked Things, a collection of Lee’s poetry, can also be purchased through Alban Lake. For more information, visit www.leeclarkzumpe.com.

  THROUGH A MYTHOS DARKLY

  Copyright © Glynn Owen Barrass & Brian M. Sammons 2017

  COVER ART

  Copyright © Tomislav Tikulin 2017

  First published in hardcover in September 2017 by PS Publishing Ltd. by arrangement with the contributors, this eBook edition is published in October 2017. All rights reserved by the authors. The right of each contributor to be identified as Author of their Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN 978-1-78636-218-6

  PS Publishing Ltd

  Grosvenor House, 1 New Road

  Hornsea, HU18 1PG, England

  editor@pspublishing.co.uk

  www.pspublishing.co.uk

  Contents

  THROUGH A MYTHOS DARKLY

  Introduction

  The Roadrunners

  Scrimshaw

  Sweet Angie Tailor in: Subterranean Showdown

  An Old and Secret Cult

  Stewert Behr—Deanimator

  To Kill a King

  The Last Quest

  Fate of the World

  Red in the Water, Salt on the Earth

  The N
ight They Drove Cro Magnon Down

  Sacrifice

  Get Off Your Knees,I’m Not Your God…

  Excerpts from the Diaries of Henry P. Linklatter

  Plague Doctor

  Amidst the Blighted Swathes of Gray Desolation

  Cognac, Communism, and Cocaine

  Kai Monstrai Ateik (When the Monsters Come)

  Contributor Biographies

  THROUGH A MYTHOS DARKLY