Cthulhu Mythos Writers Sampler 2013

by Various Writers

  How did changing the title impact the book?

  This name change really branded the book, and brought in fans of the Reanimator films as well as Cthulhu mythos fans. It has also created some misperceptions. Many people expect the book to be almost entirely about Hartwell and West, certainly that is the framing mechanism, and the book does deal with the consequences of Reanimation, and those who must decide how to use it, but it is also about some other issues, most notably what it would be like to live in Arkham during those years when all of Lovecraft’s stories are occurring, how does one do that and what impact does it have on the individual?

  You’ve developed some of Lovecraft’s minor characters into full-fledged protagonists, was this intentional?

  This is something I wanted to deal with in Reanimators, and the books that will follow it; Lovecraft’s minor characters, even those that are unnamed, must all have been affected by the events in Innsmouth and Dunwich. What are their stories? How did they see things? What did they do in response? These are things I want to know. Things are never as black and white as we would like and for every person who participates in an event there is another version of that event. To me stories that end with something like “And I alone escaped to tell the tale” Are inherently ripe for retelling and reinterpretation, because they have very few people to support the events that one character is supposed to have survived. Without anyone to contradict the teller, the events cannot be placed in doubt, but neither can they be substantiated.

  Hartwell tells the story of his life after his incarceration, is he entirely believable?

  This is another issue that some people have brought up, how far can you trust Hartwell? He’s reporting out facts, or is he? He’s couched in a familiar world, grounded in Lovecraftian events we take as gospel, if these events are properly related then why isn’t the rest of the story true as well? Possibly because the man is insane and there is nobody to contradict him. He just might be a very unreliable narrator, but it really is up to the reader to decide how far to believe what is being told.

  At the end of Reanimators Hartwell escapes, is there a sequel?

  As hinted, Hartwell will return, in a book tentatively entitled The Weird Company. It’s the book I set out to write before I detoured to tell Hartwell’s tale. This book is more action packed and will force a group of Lovecraftian protagonists to join together to confront unmentionable horrors, terrors long forgotten and newly rediscovered.

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  About Peter Rawlik

  With the publication of Reanimators in 2013, Pete Rawlik established himself as a new and powerful voice in Lovecraftian horror challenging the idea that pastiche was inherently a substandard form. His work has appeared in the Lovecraft Ezine, Innsmouth Magazine, Crypt of Cthulhu, Dead but Dreaming 2, Worlds of Cthulhu, Tales of Jack the Ripper, Fungi, and several volumes of the anthology series Tales of the Shadowmen. He lives in Florida with his wife and children. According to the Internal Revenue Service his collection of Lovecraftian fiction cannot be listed as a dependent minor.

  Also by Peter on Kindle

  Reanimators

  Connect with Peter Online

  Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Rawlik/e/B00A2O752K/

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  Interview with cover artist Paul Mudie

  What kind of art/illustrations do you produce?

  I mostly work on horror subjects with a bit of SF and fantasy thrown in. Horror has always been my favourite genre and I find it's what tends to fire my visual imagination the most. I'm afraid it looks unlikely at this point that I'll ever grow up and start producing "proper" art!

  What medium do you work in and has your approach to art changed with the digital age?

  I paint digitally in Photoshop with my trusty Wacom tablet, so my approach to art has changed pretty drastically with the digital age! Still, the basic principles are the same as they would be if I was working in oils, and I try to keep a painterly feel to my work. Working digitally might be considered "cheating" to purists, but I really enjoy the flexibility it gives me. I can try different things and simply save different versions of an illustration, and I can undo any dreadful blunders I make!

  Which genres and style to do prefer to work in?

  My tastes lean towards horror, whether it's gothic or cosmic, often with a slightly pulpy edge and hopefully with a streak of dark humour from time to time. I'm particularly fond of Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror and his world is one that I really enjoy exploring in my work.

  I was heavily into comics when I was a youth (especially 2000AD) and I that's probably had quite an influence on my style. I'm not sure I've managed to achieve it yet, but I think my ideal style would be a sort of unholy fusion of Gustave Doré and HR Giger, both of whom I admire greatly. I think Doré's use of lighting in particular is amazing.

  Your work has appeared on many book covers, what are some of your better known cover illustrations?

  I'm probably best known for the Black Books of Horror, of which there are now ten volumes! They seem to be critically acclaimed and I've read a few reviews that said nice things bout my cover illustrations.

  What is your favourite piece and what appeals to you about it?

  It's very hard to pick a favourite but certainly the illustration that I've had the most positive feedback about is my Werewolf illustration, which forms the banner on my website. It seems to have really struck a chord with people. It's brought me quite a few commissions over the years and there are at least three people out there I know of who have tattoos based on it!

  Tell us about the illustration for the cover of the Cthulhu Mythos Writers Sampler 2013?

  That's The Deep Ones, an illustration from Lovecraft's superb tale of fishy horror, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. It's part of an ongoing pet project of mine and my dream is to see a volume of his stories published one day with my illustrations.

  What are your favourite Cthulhu Mythos stories, from Lovecraft or others?

  I love most of Lovecraft's Mythos tales, but I think he was really at the height of his powers in the period of 1926 - 1931. As well as the aforementioned “Shadow over Innsmouth”, my other favourites are “The Dunwich Horror”, “The Call of Cthulhu”, “At the Mountains of Madness”, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, “The Colour Out of Space”, and “The Whisperer in Darkness”.

  What appeals to you about the Cthulhu Mythos genre from an illustrator/painter's point of view?

  There's just something about Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror and the atmosphere he conjures in his best stories that really stimulates my visual imagination. Some of his more vague and ambiguous descriptions supply a lot for the imagination to chew on, and some of his more detailed descriptions (like the disintegrating corpse of Wilbur Whateley in The Dunwich Horror, for example) give you a very precise list of elements to include, and that can be an enjoyable challenge.

  What are you working on now?

  I'm continuing to expand my Lovecraft portfolio with another illustration from “The Dunwich Horror”, and I've been asked to do a poster for the 2014 Edinburgh Short Film Festival. That ought to give me a nice (but hopefully brief) break from cosmic horror!

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  About Paul Mudie

  Paul Mudie is a horror illustrator from Edinburgh, Scotland. Qualified in Scientific and Technical Graphics from Edinburgh's Telford Collage, Paul is best known as a cover artist for various horror anthologies and collections, including The Black Book of Horror series for Mortbury Press, No Man and Other Stories and Passports to Purgatory by Tony Richards, and To Usher, the Dead by Gary McMahon, amongst others. He was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society's 'Best Artist' award in 2011.

  Connect with Paul Online

  Website: www.paulmudie.com

  Folio: http://www.redbubble.com/people/pmoodie

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  In the Gyre

  William Meikle

  A modified version of the following story appea
rs as the first chapter in the novel The Creeping Kelp (Dark Regions Press 2011)

  John Noble had just pulled up the last but one of his sample bottles when thin gray smoke started to waft from the four-stroke engine of the Zodiac. He pushed the button that raised the propeller from the water. Black, almost oily, goop hung from the blades in ropy strands.

  Blasted weed.

  At first glance this particular area of the North Pacific seemed serene, a sheet of blue glass laid under an azure sky, the water only intermittently ruffled by a breeze so faint it could hardly be felt. But after two weeks of study, Noble knew that the surface hid a multitude of sins.

  And all of them caused by the activities of technological society.

  The rotational currents created by the North Pacific Gyre draw in waste material, mainly plastic bottles, from the coastal waters off both North America and Eastern Asia. As this material is captured, wind-driven currents gradually move the debris toward the center of the ocean, trapping it in the region. Once there they coagulate into a thick soup of degrading plastic that now pollutes an area twice the size of Texas.

  And things aren’t getting any better.

  This was the study team’s third year in the area. It was already obvious that the amount of plastic suspended in the water had increased rapidly in the past twelve months. Indeed, in many areas of the affected region, the overall concentration of plastics was greater than the concentration of zooplankton by a factor of seven. Plastic was now the main item on the menu across the whole ecological niche. It was not yet apparent what effect this would have in the long term, but Noble suspected that no good would come of it.

  He had more to worry about right at this moment though. The black goop proved resistant to all his attempts to scrape it from the propeller blades. When he turned the engine on again it whined with a high whistle. The gray smoke started to darken. Noble chose discretion over more sampling and turned the Zodiac back towards the main research vessel.

  Earth Rescue sat in quiet water nearly a mile away. Before he was halfway there the engine started to screech and belch smoke like an old banger on its last legs. He tried to keep the dinghy on a straight line, but it pulled sharply to port, so much so that he was forced to tack as if he was on a yacht under full sail. He was kept busy for the next five minutes, wondering at any moment whether he’d have to suffer the humiliation of being rescued.

  In the end he just made it. As he threw a line to the waiting crew the engine gave up with one last diminishing whine. Noble leaned over to check on it and spotted more of the black tarry substance floating just beneath the water line. He didn’t have time to investigate. He waited until they hauled the dinghy up onto the lower deck then jumped down to the main vessel.

  It was only then that he saw the extent of the black tar.

  It coated the whole bottom of the Zodiac, an oily sludge nearly an inch thick.

  “Oil spill?” Susie Jukes asked from beside him.

  He shook his head.

  “Too thick. This stuff looks more like decomposed weed… or maybe whale blubber that’s gone off?”

  The woman jumped forward like an excited schoolgirl and scraped a piece of the tarry substance away. It had already started to harden in the heat out on the deck. More than that, it had begun to smell, the stench biting at Noble’s sinuses.

  “It’s all yours,” he grunted at the biologist, and headed for the galley, and the beer fridge.

  He was halfway down his second beer before he lost the sour taste in his throat, and was considering a third when Jukes found him and almost dragged him to the lab.

  “You’ve got to see this,” she said. It all came out of her in a rush, as if it had been bottled, shaken and released. “The tar is a complex hydrocarbon all right. But it’s much more than that. It’s alive… or at least it was until you chewed it up. There’s Golgi apparatus, and mitochondrial DNA, but no real cell wall structure to speak of. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before… like nothing anyone’s ever seen before. I think we’ve found an incipient species, one that’s evolving to take advantage of this unique ecosystem. In fact…”

  “Whoa,” Noble said, and managed a smile. “Information overload. Slow down.”

  She stopped talking, but that only allowed her to drag him faster along the corridor and into the cramped lab.

  “Look,” she said, pushing him towards a microscope. “Just look.”

  She was right. He had never seen anything like it. It looked to be mostly undifferentiated protoplasm at first glance, but on closer inspection he could see some structure there.

  “What’s this?” he asked. “These clearer particles embedded in the matrix?”

  She smiled, breaking into a huge grin.

  “I wondered that too, so I had some tested. You’re not going to believe it.”

  Noble sighed.

  “Susie, I’ve had a long day, I’m shagged out, I burnt out an engine, and I haven’t had nearly enough beer. Enough of the twenty questions shit, OK?”

  The grin never wavered.

  “The clear bits are plastic. As are some of the darker bits. You found a plastic eater. A natural garbage disposal unit. Do you know what this means?”

  Noble smiled back.

  “No. But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

  “The planet is fighting back,” she said. “Gaia hasn’t laid down to die just yet.”

  Noble sighed.

  “Come on Susie. Spare me the New-Age babble. You know how much I hate that stuff.”

  She kept smiling.

  “Mock all you like. But you’ll see. This…” she said, pointing at the black tar. “This marks the start of something new.”

  Noble was preparing a put down when the first shouts came from up on deck. The vessel came to an abrupt halt with a jolt so strong that Susie fell against him and almost knocked him to the floor. By the time he got them both steady on their feet the shouting from above had grown louder, more frantic.

  Noble reached the door first, and took the steps up to the deck two at a time. The scene that met him stopped him as if he’d hit a wall.

  Tall black tendrils swayed like cobras in the air above the bows on both sides -- each thicker than a man’s thigh. Noble was tall enough to see that the sea beyond was a seething mass of black tar, like a rumpled carpet lying on the surface as far as the eye could see. For a split second it hypnotized him, his mind straining to encompass the strangeness of the scene.

  A scream brought him back.

  John Oates, one of the crew hung, suspended by his heels, caught by one of the tendrils. Swift as a whiplash it dragged him over the side. The youth’s head hit the gun-whale and cracked and, as fast as that, the lad was gone. Two more crew were plucked into the air before Noble thought to move.

  The case containing the fire-axe split as he tugged at it, driving a splinter deep in his right palm. The axe handle slid in his hand, slick with his blood. He turned, just as a new black tendril reached towards the doorway where Susie Jukes stood, dumbstruck.

  Noble hacked, once, twice. A piece as long as his arm fell, still twitching to the deck. He pushed the biologist back inside, almost throwing her into the corridor. Her eyes widened, staring at a point over his shoulder. She tried to scream, but no sound came. Noble turned and ducked in one movement. The tendril fell on his back, knocking him to the deck. Fast as a snake it wound itself around his right leg and tugged, hard.

  Noble hacked with the axe, but although he raised welts along the tarry surface, they healed almost immediately, the wounds closing moistly like wet lips. He was inexorably dragged across the deck. His attacks with the axe became more frenzied, but the grip on his leg tightened and the pain shot white heat up his side.

  “Look away,” he heard Susie shout. “Cover your eyes.”

  Almost instinctively he obeyed. A white flash lit up the area behind his eyelids, and there was a sudden burst of heat, singeing his eyebrows and tightening his skin. The grip on his leg loose
ned. He dragged himself backwards.

  I’m free.

  When he opened his eyes he looked down on a smoldering pool of black tar with a safety flare still burning bright in the middle.

  Susie tugged at his arm, dragging him back towards the door. Noble looked around the deck. There was no sign of any crew.

  Tendrils waved high all around the hull.

  He allowed the woman to lead him inside. He had one last look at the black tendrils swaying like trees in a wind then slammed the storm door closed, ensuring it was secure before turning to face Susie.

  She threw herself into his arms and hugged him.

  “The planet is fighting back,” she said, and laughed, then sobbed.

  She’s in shock. Best keep her moving.

  He patted her on the back awkwardly then gently pushed her away. He still had the axe in his right hand. It was only now that he noticed the splinter in his palm grate against the axe handle and bring new pain. He pulled the splinter out with his teeth, wincing as fresh blood flowed.

  Outside something slammed heavily on the deck and the woman jumped, as if she’d been struck.

  “Come on. Let’s find the others,” Noble said.

  “If there’s anybody left,” she whispered.

  But she followed, holding his left hand tight as he headed for the bridge.

  There they found four others, including the skipper, staring out at a scene from a nightmare. Once again Noble was reminded of a forest. And if he didn’t know better, he’d think there was a strong wind blowing. Black tendrils rose as far as the eye could see, waving in unison like a wheat field at harvest time. He heard Susie gasp next to him, and her grip on his hand tightened. But the tendrils didn’t come any closer than the hull – there were none within twenty feet of the bridge.