Shotguns v. Cthulhu Read online

  SHOTGUNS

  v.

  CTHULHU

  Double-barreled action in the horrific world

  of HP Lovecraft

  Edited by Robin D. Laws

  Published by Stone Skin Press 2012.

  Stone Skin Press is an imprint of Pelgrane Press Ltd. Spectrum House, 9 Bromell’s Road, Clapham Common, London, SW4 0BN.

  Each author retains the individual copyright to their story.

  The collection and arrangement is copyright ©2012 Stone Skin Press.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  ISBN 978-1-908983-83-1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This book can be ordered direct from the publisher at

  www.stoneskinpress.com

  Contents

  Robin D Laws Preface: Save a Barrel for Yourself

  Kyla Ward Who Looks Back?

  Rob Heinsoo Old Wave

  Dennis Detwiller Lithic

  Chris Lackey Snack Time

  Dan Harms The Host from the Hill

  Steve Dempsey Breaking Through

  A. Scott Glancy (based on an idea by Bret Kramer) Last Things Last

  Chad Fifer One Small, Valuable Thing

  Nick Mamatas Wuji

  Natania Barron The One in the Swamp

  Kenneth Hite Infernal Devices

  Dave Gross Walker

  Robin D. Laws And I Feel Fine

  Larry DiTillio Welcome to Cthulhuville

  Ekaterina Sedia End of White

  Biographies

  Save a Barrel for Yourself

  A Preface

  We’re used to thinking of H. P. Lovecraft’s horror tales as the genteel territory of doomed and scholarly men, whose instinctive reaction to physical threat is the fainting spell. Those wanting action in their mythos tales, conventional wisdom tells us, should look to Robert E. Howard’s rip-roaring confrontations between heroic protagonists and inhuman expressions of cosmic horror.

  Yet when you look at Lovecraft’s stories, you see, amid the antiquarian narrators and literary references, a writer fully capable of heart-racing action.

  The rooftop chase from “Shadows Over Innsmouth” stands toe to toe with any pursuit scene, in or out of the horror genre.

  Walter Gilman’s hand-to-hand struggle against dimension-hopping witch Keziah Mason in “Dreams of the Witch House”, with its apparently climactic strangling by crucifix chain, presents as muscular a confrontation between man and monster as an aficionado of the weird could ask for.

  In “At the Mountains of Madness”, the flight from the shoggoth brings sudden physical terror to the mind-blowing metahistory discovered below the Arctic wastes.

  Then there’s the little matter of a certain nautical ramming action, as performed by men of the commandeered schooner Emma against the risen Cthulhu himself. That famous scene from “The Call of Cthulhu” constitutes the kind of action set-piece filmic blockbusters are made of.

  We associate the action sequence with escapism. Lovecraft decouples this connection; his protagonists’ physical efforts are no less protected from futility than their mental explorations. Gilman’s triumph goes unrewarded. He fails in his ultimate objective, the saving of a kidnapped infant’s life, and is soon himself destroyed. Robert Olmstead may get away from the fishy denizens of Innsmouth, but not from the monstrous genetic heritage that will eventually claim him.

  This collection plays with the action side of Lovecraft’s writing, and of the mythos tradition as taken up by others. We recruited a phalanx of rising neo-Lovecraftians and asked them to give us fresh mixtures of action and cosmic dread. Whether they embraced the bleakness or allowed their heroes to blast tentacled foes left and right was a choice left up to them. Shotguns, they were instructed, were optional. Nearly all included them.

  Blasting firearms and ferocious hand-to-hand struggle are all well and good, but the iconic horror action sequence remains the flight from relentless pursuit. Kyla Ward’s “Who Looks Back?” resounds with pumping blood, the exhalation of breath, and the exhaustion of muscle as hikers in New Zealand’s Waimangu valley confront an underutilized Lovecraftian entity.

  We know what happens when Norwegian sailors enter Cthulhu’s south seas domain. But what of the region’s islanders? In “The Old Wave”, Rob Heinsoo explores the impact of the mythos on its earlier inhabitants. He delivers the atmosphere and thrills of the exotic tale without succumbing to the pitfall of exoticizing his central characters. Along the way he pulls off a tricky voice shift and brings us ever closer to the green shark’s devouring maw.

  Fragmented perspective and a scattergun prove a troubling combination in “Lithic.” Dennis Detwiller invokes the mythos with a minimalist, allusive touch, as his shattered narrator comes to terms with what he saw—and what reached out to him—on the fringes of a Vermont resort town.

  If horrific events become all the more shocking when they arise in prosaic, familiar locations, Chris Lackey’s “Snack Time” proves that the principle goes double for siege action. Chris finds new reasons to be terrified by a classic pack of Lovecraft creatures. When they pursue the protagonist to a take-out joint, the barrier between mundane and insane shatter like our conception of Euclidean geometry.

  Himself a researcher of grimoires, Dan Harms drafts as his action hero the historical figure John Georg Hohman, 19th century compiler of the magical recipe collection The Long-Lost Friend. Set in snowy Berks County, PA, “The Host from the Hill” shows how a nose for occult books might lead one to an alarming letter, backwoods ritualists, and an excitingly rendered aerial battle.

  Steve Dempsey situates the potentiality for violence of his story “Breaking Through” in the contemporary London drug scene. It starts with a brutal baseball bat beatdown, carries its protagonist into a flash-mob mystery, and concludes with... well, let’s just say there are trains and squishiness.

  No collection of action-oriented Cthulhuiana would be complete without a visit to the classic Delta Green milieu. Delta Green, as seen in games and fiction, fuses the Clancyesque guns and paranoia genre with mythos terror. “Last Things Last”, by one of Delta Green’s original creators, A. Scott Glancy, brings all the tradecraft, ballistics lore and brittle professionalism you’d anticipate from such arrangement. That he brings us a touch of pathos amid the dread might not be so expected.

  In “One Small, Valuable Thing”, Chad Fifer wraps his take on the mythos under a seamless layer of contemporary hardboiled crime story. His action sequences arrive with the force our anthology concept demands. The story plays with our awareness of its inspiration without having to underline it with a usual litany of direct references. Along the way, it finds a straight-faced modern analog to the aforementioned Lovecraftian fainting spell.

  Martial arts explode on the hot streets of late 60s Oakland, CA, in Nick Mamatas’ “Wuji.” Fresh elements of time, place and milieu bring bone-crunching immediacy to a tale exploring the cosmic toll of personal transformation.

  With its gleeful sense of play and hybridized western-steampunk pedigree, Natania Barron’s “The One in the Swamp”, leans to the romp end of the action-horror spectrum. Yet when the horrors appear, they’re no mere monsters in a shooting gallery. They maintain their sense of menace and visceral nastiness.

  If anything distinguishes the work of Tour de Lovecraft author Kenneth Hite more than his affinity for mythos horror, it would be his nose for piquant historical detail. When presented with the brief for this bo
ok, he combined those two loves, delving deep into the archives to find the inspiration for “Infernal Devices.” This time-spanning, viewpoint-hopping tale takes as its point of entry the origin of the shotgun itself.

  In the nomadic wilds of a modern American city, the needs of flight and fight are never more than a millisecond away. Dave Gross grounds the weirdness of his tale “Walker” against a tellingly drawn backdrop of Seattle street life. The story’s voice shifts to match the uncertainty of the characters’ perceptions and loyalties.

  As per my publisher’s instructions, I honored a longstanding tradition of Cthulhoid anthologists by writing a story of my own, entitled “And I Feel Fine.” While I was at it, I figured I might as well destroy the world.

  Speaking of the apocalyptic, Larry DiTillio lets out all the aesthetic stops in “Welcome to Cthulhuville.” It partakes of the unhinged wildness of a Robert E. Howard mythos tale, cranking it so far past eleven that it breaks through into a gobsmacking realm of surreal, tentacled experimentalism.

  Who says terrifying violence and exquisite lyricism can’t go hand in hand? Ekaterina Sedia proves the contrary with “End of White.” A corrupt fecundity gradually suffuses a world of doomed Bulgakovian reverie as soldier Coronet Kovalevsky chooses, rather than join the Bolsheviks, to while away his days in a deceptively sleepy shore-side Crimean town.

  Together these fifteen stories show that action and horror go hand in putrescent hand. Strap on your armor, count your bullets, and brace yourself to turn the page. Mayhem is about to rain down.

  — Robin D. Laws

  Who Looks Back?

  Kyla Ward

  Who looks back on the Waimangu track?

  Not Kelsie Munroe, running light over gravel, the slope gentle but the surface potentially foul. The track’s made for walking, not running or driving. There is a road proper for that, for ferrying tired tourists back from Lake Rotomahana. You’re meant to walk one way down the length of the valley, taking in all its steams and smokes, and weirdly-coloured sinter. But Kelsie never walks where she can run and Lewis jumps.

  Lewis Zabri keeps her pace for now: brown skin abreast of freckles, black stubble beside red hair. They dress much the same; singlets, shorts and runners, packs strapped into the small of the back. Kelsie is taller and can beat him over short sprints but this is four kilometres of up and down, winding and in places rough. Lewis keeps himself loose and breathing easy. He knows she’s planning something.

  The valley of Waimangu, New Zealand, is the youngest landscape on earth. Nothing here, not the trees, not the streams, nor the cliffs themselves, existed before the eruption of 1886. The ground split, swallowing everything, then spewing it out again as boiling mud. Forest and farmstead, whole villages died. For kilometres around, there was not a single living thing. On the walls of the Visitors Centre, blurry black and white photos show weirdly peaked hills and plains of ash. It’s gone green now: first the extremophile algae, then lichen and ferns, then melaleuca spilling down the slopes in a long, slow race, the reclamation marathon. The algae was first to reach the bank of Frying Pan Spring. But Kelsie, or maybe Lewis, will catch up soon.

  You’re not meant to run and definitely not to leave the track, risking a scalding, broken limbs or damage to the unique terrain. But Lewis and Kelsie leap, climb and throw themselves off things as a matter of course and the terms of this race have been agreed: first to the lake via the Mount Haszard lookout. Ahead of them and still a serious drop below is where the track and creek first cross. The climb to the lookout begins there, but Lewis sees no reason to wait. Running straight at the guard rail, he extends hands and flips himself over the cliff in a perfect saut de chat. He doesn’t so much as glance over his shoulder.

  Kelsie is not impressed. She trains in parkour herself but this isn’t the terrain. Lewis can say what he likes about the zone and the flow, but terrain is king. She knows this and that’s why she’ll win. He’s risking a spill for a gain she’ll more than make up at the lookout, if the map approximates reality. Worse yet, this close to the Visitors Centre he’s risking the rangers seeing him.

  Three metres below her now, Lewis adjusts automatically to the crunch and mealy slide beneath his feet. So long as he stays off the algae, he’ll reach the start of the climb seconds ahead of Kelsie and that gain he’ll keep. Ribbons of colour unwind beside him, pink rock and water a startling green. Steam sifts across his field of vision and there is frantic noise around him, an all-encompassing bubble and hiss. One part of his mind feels the heat and moisture and yes, some fear; the other only registers angles, surfaces, opportunities. He is in the zone, feeling the flow. The goal of all his training is to clear his mind of the artificial clutter of modern life and here, now, he is almost free. That’s why he’ll win.

  Kelsie burns on down the track. Despite his pretensions to this or that philosophy, Lewis never really thinks, or else thinks that everywhere is just like London, where no one gives a damn. But sometimes people do care. They care about travelling together. They care about sleeping together. By God, a whole lot of them care when someone tic-tacs on the shrine at Tanukitanisan Temple and what was the point of that? They had to leave Japan overnight and it didn’t even make the blog. Then again, nor will the stunt she’s banking on today, for which she’s carrying an extra kilo.

  Twenty metres, ten: Lewis vanishes ahead of her into the steam. She can hear the creek: is that the creek? It sounds like voices. It’s like from out of the ground, from the weeping black ferns and deliquescent rocks there rises a deep and liquid dissension. The warmth envelops her, damp upon her arms and face, sulphurous in her eyes and nose. For a moment she runs blind.

  Lewis rejoins the track and not a moment too soon: Kelsie is coming up fast. Here, the valley narrows sharply and the banks seem to be rotting, a foul, yellowish slough choking the creek bed. He peers ahead for the turn-off and sees only the wildly swirling fog. Is he motion then, with nothing to mark his passage? Can there be motion in a void? Yes, there can: so long as Kelsie comes behind. Grinning just a little, he eases, anticipating her sight of his back. She takes all their games so seriously, even in bed. Then something shifts beneath his feet. The gravel is suddenly live as well as warm. The fog billows and the noise of the creek rises sharply around him: is that the creek roaring? He does not stop, cannot, as directly in front of him, something forms from the white.

  Kelsie knows that sound isn’t the creek. Its voices have not vanished, merely retreated behind the encroaching rumble of a truck on gravel: she has Australian ears, accustomed to country sounds. A bank of wind hits her face, clearing the steam and she sees Lewis running slow and beyond him a large, white utility bearing the park logo. Coming straight at him, at her. Behind the cab she glimpses ridiculous things, white and shapeless with reflective face plates and Lewis is—oh no, he’s not! Not slowing or swerving, Lewis guns straight into the path of the moving vehicle and vaults. Hands and foot on the bonnet, next step against the windscreen. Even though the truck is jerking, skewing to a stop, he executes the move with perverse bloody brilliance. Straight over the top he goes and through the white shapes, revealed by their reaction as men in thermal suits. In the instant of their shock, before they even imagine her presence, she shifts balance and angle, and leaps out across the water.

  Lewis sees angles, shapes, the moving flat of the truck bed. His pulse sings as he leaps to the ground and keeps running, unfaltering. Yes, yes; that was perfect! Did those guys even see him? By those shouts and grinding, clunking gears, oh yes they did. A grin splits his face as he rounds the bend and sights the turn-off.

  Kelsie grinds uphill through ferns and bushes, wincing as she pushes on her right ankle. Her leap covered the distance as she saw it, but seeing isn’t believing down here. Solid is slurry, ferns anchor foam. Her ankle stings and she’s not sure if it’s burn or graze. Either way, she’s committed: their rules don’t compensate for accident, pursuit or even biohazard. It’s win or lose and she is not losing today, there’s too much
at stake. So she climbs a bad climb. Exposed rock to fallen log: it’s an obstreperous sign of her progress that the plants get bigger. The pink and yellow cools into grey; spindly trunks and spiking tussocks block her view of the stream, but she can still hear voices. And not shouting scientists and squealing rangers; the old voices, that the Maori tribesmen must have heard to mark this place as the realm of monsters. While Lewis was psyching himself up, she read the placards in the Visitors Centre. Then suddenly, startlingly, she is out of the bush with hard-pressed earth beneath her feet. Before her the path to the lookout swerves up a steep defile. But she is alone and whether Lewis is ahead or behind, she has no idea.

  Lewis would say he was ahead: ahead of the utility and its shrouded occupants. What the Hell were they doing, dressed up like that? The cluttered part of his mind noticed machines in the back of the ute, the monitors and probes. It made sense they’d check the valley regularly, though he would have thought they’d use the access road for that. But here he turns up the hill and here the Klu Klux Rangers cannot follow him, if that’s what they’re shouting about. It’s true they could reverse all the way back to where the climb rejoins the main track and wait for him there, but surely they’ve got somewhere to be! Another blast of air strikes him from down the valley. He hears a new note in the creek, a warbling, high pitched sound.

  Kelsie ploughs up the path but she’s spent her best. If by some miracle Lewis is behind her now, she’ll abandon her plan and take the track down to the lake. But how to tell? The vegetation here is thick. Strange flowers rise aside of the path: purple trumpets on stems like giant foxgloves. Huge tree ferns, the biggest she has ever seen lip over her head and reach for her feet with long, black tendrils. Branches bristle with inch-long thorns. Still, a faint whispering rises from the earth, punctuated by the rasp of her feet and controlled breath. Then suddenly by screams.