The Children of Cthulhu

by John Pelan

  The world is still disintegrating inexorably into madness. The prophecies of Lovecraft and Nietzsche are indeed coming to pass. As our knowledge of the universe increases at an almost exponential rate, we continue to grow increasingly schizophrenic as a species, and it cannot be long before we inadvertently let loose Azathoth, the nuclear chaos, to consume the world. In that awful instant, not only our bocies but our minds, our spirits, our very “souls” will be annihilated as we gaze in awe and horror at the blasphemy that is the ground of our being.

  I find it ironic that the man who cursed me with this vision will not even be aware of it when these events come to pass. Marco spends his days and nights screaming out his madness in an asylum. I visited him only once, when the police were still trying to discover where he had hidden himself during his ten-day absence. I almost could not bear to look at him, and when I finally met his gaze I knew my friend was dead. Some other intelligence now looked out from behiid his eyes. Something had compelled me to bring the notebook, and when he saw it he rushed at me, knocking me dowr, and ripped it to shreds with his teeth. Then he tried to attack me, and the doctors said it would be best if I did not visit him again. I later heard that he managed to break his restraints after I left, and in the absence of another person he turned on himself. Before the orderlies could reach him he had chewed off and swallowed two of his own fingers.

  What scares me the most is that the insanity gnawing at the shell of Marco is the same insanity eating away at me, and indeed, at the whole human race. I do not know why I have been spared Marco's fate, unless it is meant as a joke to amuse a power beyond my comprehension. I yearn for oblivion, but what will death bring? Only too well do I understand the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, who held that the best thing is never to have been born. Nietzsche said the thought of suicide can comfort a man through many a dark night, but I am denied even that solace. When I die I will only be absorbed back into the shrieking maelstrom from which I came, the maelstrom that reclaimed Marco even before his death.

  There is only one ray of hope for my salvation. Over the years I have taken the time to read all of Lovecraft's “fiction,” and I cannot understand how he saw so deeply into the truth and yet remained so sane. Perhaps this gentle New Englander knew something I do not, something he was trying to convey when he wrote of the “vast conceit of those who babble of the malignant Ancient Ones.” Perhaps the horror I sense is in me, not in things. Perhaps Marco was wrong, and there is no need to fear the truth. After all, It knows only Itself, and maybe I will not perceive It as horrible after I die. Perhaps “I” will not even exist at all. If this is true, then may it come quickly.

  But this hope can never sustain me for very long, because I know that I bear the evidence of damnation within my own body. The very physical need that compels me to take nourishment is the expression of the abyss to which I must return. I have gained a certain sensitivity in my mouth, a certain unpleasant awareness of the action of the protruding bits of bone that grind to a pulp the flesh of plants and animals to sustain this bodily life. From time to time I pause before a mirror to draw back my lips and gaze at the truth.

  Do I seem mad? Do I seem like a man who has become lost in his own private delusion of hell? Then let me remind you that you also exhibit the truth in your own body. Show me your smile and I will show you your fate.

  NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

  BENJAMIN ADAMS traces his interest in H. P. Lovecraft back to an exposure at age nine to a Scholastic collection titled The Shcdow Over lnnsmouth. After that, nothing was ever quite the same again. Adams's work has appeared in anthologies such as Blood Muse, Miskitonic University, Horror!: 365 Scary Stories, Singers of Strange Songs, a id Return to Lovecraft Country.

  POPPY Z. BRITE is the author of four novels, Lost Souis, Drawing Blood, Exquisite Corpse, and The Lazarus Heart; two short story collections, Wormwood (also published as Swamp Foetus) and Are Ycu Loathsome Tonight? (published in the U.K. as Self-Made Man); and a oiography of rock diva Courtney Love. She wrote and illustrated the novella Plastic Jesus for Subterranean Press, and is at work on a new novel. She is not sure whether “Are You Loathsome Tonight?” is truly a Mythos tale, but once she got it into her head that there was a connection between Elvis and Lovecraft, she couldn't get it out again until she wrote this story.

  MATT CARDIN first encountered the works of H. P. Lovecraft in high school. While in college he spent a considerable amount of time neglecting his assigned studies in favor of reading Lovecraft and Lovecraft criticism. After graduation he underwent a period of profound psychic and philosophic upheaval that led him to write “Teeth” and a number of other Lovecraftian-Ligottian stories embodying an extremely grim cosmic world-view. In recent years he has earned a minor name or himself as an interpreter of Thomas Ligotti's work among the Internet community centered around that author Current!} he is pursuing a teaching certificate for high school English and a master's degree in religious studies at Southwest Missouri State University. He resides in southwest Missouri with his wife and stepson.

  MARK CHADBOURN is the award-winning author behind several critically acclaimed horror novels. His works include a dark fantasy trilogy—World's End, Darkest Hour, and Always Forever—examining how society would fare if the brutally passionate gods of Celtic mythology ever returned. Chadbourn lives in rural seclusion in the English Midlands and can trace his own roots back to the Celts. H. P. Lovecraft was his first introduction to the world of horror, at the tender age of twelve when he picked up a dog-eared copy of The Haunter of the Dark from a market stall. His imagination was instantly caught by Lovecraft's florid mythologies, so it was only a matter of time before he contributed to the Mythos.

  Short story writer and poet JAMES S. DORR is an active member of HWA and SFWA, a past Anthony (mystery) and Darrell nominee, a multitime Rhys-ling finalist, winner of the 1998 Best of the Web award, and has been listed in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror eight of the last nine years. While his present interest lies mostly in horror, Dorr's first acquaintance with H. P. Lovecraft was via “The Color Out of Space,” and so he thought it especially appropriate that his offering for this volume be a piece that is also primarily science fiction.

  PAUL FLNCH writes: “I'm a former cop and journalist, but now a full-time writer, living in the north of England with my wife, Cathy, and my two children, Eleanor and Harry. My bread and butter these days is the British TV crime series, The Bill, which I've now been writing for the last two years, but dark fantasy and horror are still by main literary interests and I devote as much time to them as I can. ‘Long Meg and her Daughters‘ was inspired by a visit to the real Long Meg site in Cumbria. The place is steeped in mysticism and is very atmospheric, and from the moment I got there, the story began to write itself.”

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER'S work to date includes excursions into hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He has also written numerous nonfiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as having produced the novel versions of many films, including such well-known productions as Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. Other works include scripts for talking records, radio, computer games, and the story for the first Star Trek movie. In addition to publication in English, his work has appeared and won awards throughout the world. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first work of sc ence fiction ever to do so. What many readers may be unaware of is that FDster's first professional sale was to the venerable Arkham House, original publisher for the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

  He says, “When I was a young reader, H. P. Lovecraft was the only writer who was really able to give me chills. It's ironic that my first professional sale, ‘Some Notes Concerning a Green Box,’ turned out to be a Mythos tale. I'm happy to return to it.”

  BRIAN HODGE is the author of seven published novels, including his breakout crime debut Wild Horses and the follow-up volume entitled Mad Dogs. He's also w
ritten more than eighty short stories a id novellas, several of which have been shackled into the highly acclaimed collections The Convulsion Factory and Falling Idols. About his novelette here, he says, “For years I've admired the vastness and grandeur of Lovecraft's universe, but in adding to the canon it's not enough just to mimic. I wanted to do something that would resonate on that leviathan scale, but at the same time weave in layers that work on a more intimate level, as well, with matters of self-identify and family history.”

  CAITLLN R. KIERNAN's first novel, Silk, was released in 1998 and received both the Barnes & Noble Maiden Voyage and International Horror Guild awards for best first novel. Her second novel, Trilcbite, was published in 2001.

  Caitlán's short fiction has appeared in such amhologies as The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and her chapbook, Candles for Elizabeth. Her first full-length collection was Tales of Pain and Wonder, followed shortly thereafter by a second volume, From Weird and Distant Shores.

  “I'm not sure of the precise inspiration of this stDry,” she writes, “but it may have been a sculpture of Andromeda by Daniel Chester French. Though much of Lovecraft's fiction has influenced my work, I've always felt that his stories involving the sea, and what it might be hiding from us, are the most powerful.”

  RICHARD LAYMON has been called “a genius of the grisly, the grotesque, and the humorously excessive.” He first read H. P. Lovecraft after discovering a Lancer paperback edition of The Colour Out of Sbace in 1968. Laymon was an English major at Willamette University al the time and he has been reading Lovecraft ever since. Over the past twenty years, Laymon has authored more than thirty novels and sevent/ short stories. He received Bram Stoker Award nominations for two oi his novels, Flesh and Funland; for his short story collection, A Good Secret Place; and for his nonfiction book A Writer's Tale. His novel The Traveling Vampire Show received the Bram Stoker Award in 2000. Recently published novels include Friday Night in the Beast House and Once Upon a Halloween.

  Laymon's books are published in the United Kingdom by Headline, and in the United States by Leisure Books and Cemetery Dance Publications. To learn more, check his website at http://www.rlk.cjb.net.

  TIM LEBBON's books include Mesmer, Faith in the Flesh, White, Naming of Parts, Hush (with Gavin Williams), and the short story collection As the Sun Goes Down. Stories have appeared or are due to appear in many anthologies and magazines, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Best New Horror, Cemetery Dance, October Dreams, and Last Days. His love of horror began with The Rats, and his enjoyment of Lovecraft started with At the Mountains of Madness.

  Lebbon writes: “The Cthulhu Mythos is as fascinating and relevant today as ever, because it invokes a fear of the unknown and a terror borne of our total irrelevance in the scheme of things. And whatever age you live in, that's as scary as it gets.” Lebbon is a recent winner of the British Fantasy Society's award for his novella Naming of Parts.

  L. H. MAYNARD AND M. P. N. SIMS are the authors of the hardback collections Shadows at Midnight and Echoes of Darkness. They provide regular essay columns in At the Worlds End and Masters of Terror, as well as book reviews. They publish and edit under Enigmatic Press, which has produced Engimatic Tales, among other titles. Their supernatural stories of quiet horror have been extensively published in a variety of publications. Their interest in the Mythos has been active for nearly thirty years since they first discovered the Arkham volumes of Lovecraftian stories. Visit their site at www.epress.force9.co.uk.

  CHINA MIÁVILLE is the author of King Rat and Perdido Street Station, as well as short fiction published in various anthologies. He lives and works in London. On his contribution to this anthology he writes, “Weird Tales is the church of high pulp, Lovecraft its pope, the Cthulhu Mythos his unique and astounding liturgy. I offer ‘Details’ to the canon, humble and grateful as an altar boy.”

  YVONNE NAVARRO writes all kinds of stuff, including horror, suspense, science fiction, mainstream, and weird westerns. By the end of the year 2000 she had eleven novels published, including the suspense novel That's Not My Name, Dead Times, and the media original novel Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Paleo. She's currently waffling between several projects (just like a politician) and writing a short story now and flier;. She still stubbornly clings to her dream of someday living in Arizona and owning a big, congenial dog. She thinks “Meet me on the Other Side” is the first story she's written that includes tentacles; then again, she's been at this for nearly two decades and could have easily forgotten a slimy appendage or two along the way. Visit her website at www.para-net.com/~ynavarro.

  WESTON OCHSE lives in Sierra Vista, Arizona, high in the mountains of the Sonoran Desert. This social deviant is an interrogation instructor for the U.S. Army at the U.S. Army Military Intelligence School and enjoys twisting young minds and teaching the finer points of ow-voltage reasoning. He has been writing for four years and is the coaithor of the highly acclaimed collection titled Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors. He has sold more than fifty short stories and is currently hard at work on his novel, Scarecrow Gods.

  MEREDITH L. PATTERSON graduated from the linguistics department at the University of Houston, and is doing her level best to pursue a master's degree and a writing career at the same time. A discussion with one of her professors about computer intelligence prompted her to lead Noam Chomsky's remarks on cognitive specialization, and much later on, this story was the result. She has two cats, a day job, and a long-running fascination with Lovecraft's more fantastic work, like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Ka-dath. Her short fiction has appeared in Texas Magazine, Jackhammer, and most recently the Green Knight Publishing anthology The Doom of Camelot.

  JOHN PELAN is the author of An Antique Vintage from Gargadillo Publishing. His first short story collection, Darkness, My Old Friend, is forthcoming from Shadowlands Press. With Edward Lee, he is coauthor of Goon, Shifters, Splatterspunk, Family Tradition, and nr merous short stories. John's solo stories have appeared in The Urhanite, Gothic.net, Enigmatic Tales, Garpe Noctem, and many anthologies. John i; currently working on several anthologies, including Dark Arts for the Horror Writers Association, and editing the complete supernatural fiction of Manly Wade Well-man for Night Shade Books and several volumes cf short stories by Fritz Leiber for Midnight House. With coeditor Michael Reaves, he is assembling an anthology of Lovecraftian tales set in tie world of Sherlock Holmes for publication by Del Rey Books in 2003. Visit his website at www.darksidepress.com

  W. H. PUGMIRE, Esq., began reading Lovecraft in 1972 while serving as a Mormon missionary in Northern Ireland. He began writing at that time and placed his first story with Space & Time. Upon returning to the States he discovered Arkham House, read the Selected Letters, and became an H.P.L. fanatic. At this time he met Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and it was her attendance at the Sunday School class he taught that led to his being excommunicated from the Mormon Church Under Jessica's steady influence, Pugmire began seriously writing Lovecraftian horror fiction. A book of thirty-three sonnets and his first hardcover collection will see print this year from Delirium Books. He is the Queen of Eldritch Horror.

  MICHAEL REAVES is an Emmy award-winning television writer, screenwriter, and novelist. He's written for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Twilight Zone, and Sliders, among others. He was a story editor and writer on Batman: The Animated Series, and on the Disney animated series Gargoyles. His screenwriting credits include Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and the HBO movie Full Eclipse. Reaves's latest book, Hell on Earth, will be published in 2001 by Del Rey Books, and he has written a Star Wars novel (Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter) for them. Reaves has had short stories published m magazines and anthologies such as Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Heavy Metal, Horrors, and Twilight Zone Magazine, and has written comic books for DC Comics. In addition to winning an Emmy, he has been nominated for a second Emmy, an ASIFA Award, and a Writers' Guild Award. His prose fiction has been nominated for the British Fantasy A
ward and the Prometheus Award. In 1999 he was named Alumnus of the Year by his alma mater, California State University at San Bernardino. With coeditor John Pelan, he is assembling an anthology of Lovecraftian tales set in the world of Sherlock Holmes for publication by Del Rey Books in 2003.

  JAMES ROBERT SMITH is married (to Carole Handerson), has one son (Andy), the two requisite cats, two dogs, and a job. He and his family reside happily in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Visitation” was his forty-fifth sale — this story, in various forms, had been making the rounds for more than eighteen years. Never let it be said that Smith gives up easily. His first book, a collection of twenty-nine stories, is entitled A Confederacy of Horrors. He's waiting for a clever editor to buy one of his novels.

  STEVE RASNIC TEM's recent publications include two short story collections: City Fishing from Silver Salamander Press, and The Far Side of the Lake from Ash-Tree Press. “I'm not particularly interested in playing in other writers' universes, but I am interested in what happens when my own particular obsessions encounter those of another write Hidden races, secret messages in alien tongues, questionable ancestry, ancient and decaying towns, the problems of isolation, the disintegrating family, the dangers of self-delusion, traumas passed down through generations: by the time the story was finished I wasn't sure which were Lovecraft's obsessions and which were my own.”

  JAMES VAN PELT writes and teaches in western Colorado. He was a finalist for the 1999 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His work has appeared in numerous magazines including Analog, Weird Tales, and Realms of Fantasy. New stories from him are scheduled to appear in Analog, Asimov's, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. His wife and three sons think he tells a pretty good bedtime story.