Season of Sacrifice and Resurrection
The Great Race of Yith, like several of the other HPL critters I’ve drawn on, are products of his later writings, and of a more science-fictional frame of mind: the horror is less all-encompassingly cosmic and more immediate and in many ways comprehensible. The Yith always fascinated me. They are a race of scholars, they seem to possess empathy towards creatures of other species, and – again like several of the other races I’ve used – they occupy a place on the food chain far closer to pitiful humanity than the gods of the outer darkness. Like many other Lovecraftian beasties, the Great Race bear us no active malice. Unlike many, they are actively interested in us, or at least in what we know. They live amongst us, awkwardly inhabiting our clumsy bodies, and they do their best to put everything back where they found it when their lease is up.
And yet they are also coldly genocidal when they need to be, their entire species flinging its consciousness forwards to evict the minds of some other civilization and doom them to the fate the Great Race themselves are escaping. Even the bodies they are best known for, those conical, tentacled things, are not their own, just the fashionable wardrobe for that season of their eternal time-hopping existence.
Faced with extinction or sufficient profit, we’d do just the same, if we could. (AT)
Prospero and Caliban
Trail of Cthulhu fans may be suffering from déjà vu right about now. To them I say, why not?
Being Bermudian, I’ve heard all the stories about the Triangle you can possibly think of, but rarely have I heard one told by a Bermudian. It’s you lot outside who keep insisting that aliens from beyond Pluto’s taint, or whatever it may be, whisk aircraft, ships and people off into the great beyond should they ever dare intrude in that vast expanse of water between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. Frankly, Vincent Gaddis needed a solid kick in the pants, at least once every seven days. But perhaps I’m biased.
Shakespeare’s supposed to have based his Tempest on our still-vex’d Bermooths. Wikipedia helpfully informs me that much of the plot may derive from the commedia dell’arte, and I suppose it’s comforting to know that much of Bermuda’s current political and social climate also derives inspiration from the commedia. Be that as it may, I’ve often felt that we live in a fever dream down here, one from which we have little chance of awakening.
The towns, the majestic cities, the landscapes and seascapes we create thereby; may they not consume us. Or, if you’d prefer a little Latin at this juncture, Quo Fata Ferunt. It’s as good a motto as any, I suppose. (AG)
Moving Targets
“From Beyond” is an early HPL story, one where the real impact is not so much in the specific telling as the wider implication. The monsters are not conjured out of deep space or the past or the sea; they’re not conjured from anywhere at all. They are with us constantly, overlapping our everyday lives, and we and they both live in blissful ignorance of one another until Tillinghast switches on his resonator and expands our senses until we can see them, and they, in turn, can see us. And whilst most of the inhabitants of that concurrent world are harmless save to each other, there are worse things, and simply to lay eyes on them is to risk dissolution. The story usually turns up as one of his minor canon and yet the idea in itself is perhaps the most Lovecraftian of all. The mind-(and body-)destroying other is right there, constantly around and between and within us, and a chance resonance can draw back the veil and expose us to that wider universe. The apparent mindless nature of the denizens of that shared space – very like things seen under a microscope – only goes to emphasise how little we and our vaunted powers actually matter in the grander scheme of things. They don’t send us dreams or want us to worship the Daemon Sultan; they won’t use us or teach us magic or even try to cleanse the world of us. Even when they obliterate us, there’s no guarantee they have any conception of what we are. (AT)
The Play’s the Thing
If Hill House was famously “not sane”, then Lithly House is down to 0-SAN and gibbering maniacally in the corner. Two of my favourite things in horror: The King in Yellow sub-Mythos and spatial impossibility. I’m thrilled by police boxes bigger on the inside, ghosts crawling out of videos, shops that just aren’t there when you come back to complain a week later about the dodgy cursed antique they sold you, people trapped in mirrors … all that stuff that makes you mistrust the basic material fabric of the world.
“The Play’s the Thing” was originally a challenge tale written for our story-writing group, The Deadliners – I think we all had to include certain random sentences and objects (like the tartan blanket) culled from other books. It grew into a massive homage to as many classic supernatural authors as I could think of, as I tried to write a story about a liminal house that had traumatised every horror-story writer who’d stayed there as a guest. The Charlett Room is from M R James, the Whistling Room is William Hope Hodgson, the Red Room is H.G. Wells, etc. Arthur Machen really was a travelling actor at one time. Extravagant tips of the hat to Robert W. Chambers and James Blish of course, as well as the 1970s TV series Sapphire and Steel, of which this is sort of an evil version. (KM)
About the Authors
Adam Gauntlett has loved horror ever since reading Stoker’s Dracula, given as a Christmas present. Thank you Santa, whoever you were! It was part of a packet of cheap paperbacks that Santa happened to be giving away down at Sandys Boat Club, but only Dracula captured any kind of attention. Santa must have noticed because for years afterward copies of Armada’s Ghost Book series turned up, regular as clockwork, each Christmas.
Born in Bermuda, Adam has spent about half his life in the United Kingdom, with small snippets here and there in the States. His writing encompasses history, architectural history, games journalism (The horror! The horror!), and horror fiction of all stripes. Among his published credits are more than a few RPG titles, including many for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu line. Among his scenarios are: “Hell Fire”, “The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby”, “The Long Con”, “Soldiers of Pen and Ink”, “Not So Quiet”, “Millionaire’s Special”, the Dulce Et Decorum Est collection, “Suited and Booted”, “Remember, Remember”, and many others. His short fiction has appeared in The Bermudian magazine, as well as a collection of Bermudian speculative fiction (due 2016).
Keris McDonald discovered H.P. Lovecraft in the local library at seventeen and started running Call of Cthulhu games at college. The Horror on the Orient Express campaign she ran decades ago is still one of her proudest memories – judge her as you wish. She turned to horror writing during a miserable year as a library assistant in the south of England, but nowadays lives a disappointingly pleasant life in the not-very-grim North. Her short stories have appeared in three Ash Tree Press anthologies and the magazines Weird Tales, Supernatural Tales and All Hallows, as well as the Hic Dragones collections Impossible Spaces and Hauntings, and Paul Finch’s Terror Tales of Yorkshire. Her story “The Coat off His Back” was chosen for reprint in Best Horror of the Year: Volume 7 (ed. Ellen Datlow) and her scenario “Master of Hounds” appeared in Worlds of Cthulhu.
However, she now spends most of her writing time under the name ‘Janine Ashbless’, spinning stories of paranormal erotica and dark filthy romance for publishers such as HarperCollins and Ebury/Random House. Her ninth novel, Cover Him with Darkness, an uncompromising tale of fallen angels and religious conspiracy, is out now from Cleis Press.
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. He subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is an eager live role-player and has trained in stage-fighting and historical combat. He maintains a keen interest in history and the biological sciences, especially entomology.
Adrian is the author of the acclaimed ten book Shadows of the Apt series starting with Empire in Black and Gold published by Tor UK. His other works for Tor include standalone novel
s Guns of the Dawn and Children of Time and the new series Echoes of the Fall starting with The Tiger and the Wolf. Other major works include the short story collection Feast and Famine for NewCon Press and novellas “The Bloody Deluge” (in Journal of the Plague Year) and “Even in the Cannon’s Mouth” (in Monstrous Little Voices) for Abaddon. He has also written numerous short stories and been shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award and the British Fantasy Award.
Published by The Alchemy Press
Rumours of the Marvellous by Peter Atkins
Doors to Elsewhere by Mike Barrett
Evocations by James Brogden
Give Me These Moments Back by Mike Chinn
The Paladin Mandates by Mike Chinn
Nick Nightmare Investigates by Adrian Cole
Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties by Jan Edwards
Shadows of Light and Dark by Jo Fletcher
Merry-Go-Round and Other Words by Bryn Fortey
Tell No Lies by John Grant
Touchstones by John Howard
Monsters by Paul Kane
Something Remains by Joel Lane and Friends
Where the Bodies are Buried by Kim Newman
Music From the Fifth Planet by Anne Nicholls
Music in the Bone by Marion Pitman
Invent-10n by Rod Rees
The Complete Weird Epistles of Penelope Pettiweather, Ghost Hunter by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Dead Water and Other Weird Tales by David A. Sutton
Check out www.alchemypress.co.uk
for further details of these and our anthologies
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF ELDER THINGS
© THE ALCHEMY PRESS 2016
The Private Life of Elder Things Page 24
