Lovecraft Ezine Mega-Issue 4 Rev1 Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction by Mike Davis

  ISSUE 29:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #8 by Maxwell Patterson & Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #6 by Robert M. Price

  o The Mouth Of God by Gary Myers

  o Burning Stars by K.G. Orphanides

  o The Time Traveler’s Ex-Wife by Peter Rawlik and Mandy Rawlik

  o The Chamber by Jonathan Richardson

  o The Carrion Birds and the Drone by Harry Baker

  o The Establishment of the Doctors Hamilton by L.T. Patridge

  o The Groaner in the Glen by Eric Ian Steele

  o Adrift in Black Seas by Michael Matheson

  o The Eldritch Force by Peter Rawlik, Glynn Owen Barrass, Brian M. Sammons, Bruce L. Priddy, Robert M. Price, Rick Lai and David Conyers

  o Re: Animated by Kenneth W. Cain

  ISSUE 30:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #9 by Maxwell Patterson & Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #7 by Robert M. Price

  o The Queen’s Speech by Ann K. Schwader

  o Skies Above O Earth Below I Love The Best by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

  o The First Act by Peter Rawlik

  o The Masks of Hastur by Rick Lai

  o Stairsie by Tom Lynch

  o No Mask to Conceal Her Voice by Michael Griffin

  o The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers

  ISSUE 31:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #10 by Maxwell Patterson & Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #8 by Robert M. Price

  o Stone Cold Fever by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  o The Shadow Under Scotland by Cameron Johnston

  o alligators by Scott Nicolay

  o Pick's Ghoul by Ross E. Lockhart

  o Changes by Lars Kramhøft

  o Pawn to E4 by Jenna M. Pitman

  o War Gods of Men by David Conyers and David Kernot

  o Spectacles, Tentacles, Wallet, and Watch by Wayne Helge

  ISSUE 32:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #11 by Maxwell Patterson & Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #9 by Robert M. Price

  o Beyond the Wakeful Senses by W.H. Pugmire

  o The Presence by William Rasmussen

  o The White Cathedral by Robert Karol

  o All Within the Tender Bones by Jason Rolfe

  o Leviathan's Wake by Mark Howard Jones

  o The Power of a Name by David Anthony

  o Princess and the Bee by Greg Norris

  o King Kane by John Howard

  ISSUE 33:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #12 by Maxwell Patterson & Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #10 by Robert M. Price

  o Rain Blush by Neil Murrell

  o Song in the Dark by Andrew Jack

  o A Sense of Time by Pete Rawlik

  o That Which Dwells Beneath by Andrew Nicolle

  o The Pnakotic Puzzle by Josh Reynolds

  o Books (Misc.) by Steven Prizeman

  o The Story of Herr Hackenschmidt by Benjamin Welton

  o Monarch of the Mountains by Matthew Warner

  Credits

  Welcome to The Lovecraft eZine 2014 Megapack! This megapack contains ALL stories published by The Lovecraft eZine in 2014, our 4th year in existence. Here you'll find 39 tales of cosmic horror, including King in Yellow tales, plus fascinating columns by Lovecraftian scholar Robert M. Price, and more!

  Mike Davis

  Publisher & Editor

  Cthulhu Does Stuff is a monthly comic strip by Ronnie Tucker and Maxwell Patterson. Visit their website, Max and Ronnie do comics.

  Maxwell Patterson is a freelance writer, available for parties, corporate events and Bat Mitzvahs. You can contact him at [email protected].

  Ronnie Tucker is an artist who plies his wares (eww, gross!) at http://ronnietucker.co.uk/. You can contact him at: [email protected].

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  Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #6

  Checking into Bates Motel

  by Robert M. Price

  I remember many years ago the announcement of a new TV series called Friday the Thirteenth. Obviously the title was capitalizing on the (inexplicable) popularity of the Jason Voorhees movies. I remember thinking, “How on earth can they make an ongoing series about Jason Voorhees?” Of course they weren’t. They didn’t. It was some stupid thing about having to recover a bunch of occult-powered items that weren’t supposed to be sold despite their presence in a curiosity shop but were anyway. Kind of like the stupid Haunted Collector fiasco on the SyFy Channel (itself something of a fiasco). But nowadays there is a series about a serial killer, Dexter, though I haven’t seen it. But it is still quite a surprise to see the Robert Bloch/Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Psycho becoming a television series. Bates Motel completed its first season to viewer enthusiasm and critical acclaim. I know I liked it. And if you didn’t, well, you can go straight to hell.

  Just kidding.

  But this isn’t the first attempt to create a Bates Motel TV series. Back in the late 80s there was a dead-end pilot with the same title. The premise had Norman Bates, before he died in prison, bequeathing the eponymous motel to some weird-looking kid, who tries to make a go of it. But unscrupulous investors (or whatever), believing there is a fortune hidden somewhere on the property, try to ruin the new business by faking the haunting of the motel by a ghostly Mrs. Bates. There was a mildly enjoyable scene with the fake Norma Bates lunging after someone, knife in hand. But there was also the scene in which somebody was wearing a chicken suit. Mercifully, the network passed on the thing. I videotaped it just because I’m a Psycho completest. I’ve got all the movies, including the Showtime production Psycho IV. I even begged a local cable provider into giving me their promotional poster for the movie. I had it framed. (I’ve also got both Norman Bates action figures as well as the plastic model of his house, plus a lobby standee for Psycho III.)

  Well, once I made the mistake of mentioning that Bates Motel pilot to Robert Bloch. Fireworks! I mean, he was still smarting from Psycho II (ripped off from his script for the nifty Joan Crawford flick Straitjacket). I gather he had made the mistake of surrendering the rights to Psycho and Norman Bates. Maybe that’s why Bloch’s name, as far as I can see (please correct me if I’m wrong), never appears in the credits for the new version of Bates Motel (though IMDB lists him in the writing credits since the show is based on his characters). But I did enjoy the show. I’m sure I’ll be buying the DVDs when I can afford ‘em. It sure beats its predecessor. So far, so good: no chicken suits.

  So how’d they manage to stretch Psycho into a series? By modeling it on Twin Peaks, as the creators readily admit. In fact, they say they see it as virtually a continuation of Twin Peaks. Okay by me; I was a Twin Peaks fan, too. (Did you ever notice how X-Files was kind of a sequel to Twin Peaks, and Fringe was explicitly a continuation of X-Files?) This, I figure, is why they moved the site of the Bates Motel and house from Fairvale, California, to White Pine Bay, Oregon, another Pacific Northwest locale. Imagine Norman as a regular on Northern Exposure. The whole place is a gallery of weirdoes and pervasive perversion and crime. “Show them Machen’s Great God Pan, and they’ll think it a common Dunwich scandal.” But don’t worry, Norman’s in no danger of getting lost in the shamble. He’ll have plenty of opportunity to make his bloody mark.

  The series is a prequel to the events of Psycho. Norm
an is a young teenager, a nerdish pariah. He has an older half-brother and a near-girlfriend. After a stray dog he adopted gets run over, he takes up the study of what Bugs Bunny called “taxidoimy.” We are building step by step to the Norman we know and love. We eventually learn that he killed his father (who used to beat his mother) in some kind of psychotic fugue state, then promptly forgot he did it. The season ends with another such killing, this time a gorgeous teacher who had shown a little too much concern for him. He was sitting in her apartment as she undressed in the next room, when he hallucinated his mother sitting beside him, telling him, “You know what you have to do.” We are to understand that this is only the beginning of his imagined mother giving him his orders. In fact, I hope that, when the time comes for Norman to kill his mother, he does it at the behest of his hallucinated mother! Let’s wait and see.

  How, you may ask, can they have moved the whole shebang to Oregon? Bates Motel is, as it must be, a reimagining and retelling of the story of Norman Bates. It is set in 2013. They could, I suppose, have made a strict prequel, everything retro like Mad Men. But I don’t think that would have allowed enough creative freedom to fill out a whole series. Think of the limitations attaching to Psycho IV. We saw representative scenes from Norman’s teen years, enough to account for his subsequent madness, but a few flashbacks was all it took. Better to use new wineskins to provide room for the new wine to ferment and expand.

  Given Norman’s mother’s pivotal role in making her son what he would become, it is no surprise that she slightly overshadows Norman in this initial season of Bates Motel. The characterization is well done. Norma is believable as a quirky, disturbing, flawed, yet sympathetic figure mummy-wrapping Norman in her apron strings. Vera Farmiga is terrific in the role, as is Freddie Highmore, who plays her famous son. A recurring character in the first three Psycho movies was Sherriff John Hunt (Hugh Gillin). Here he is replaced by Sherriff Alex Romano (Nestor Carbonell)—who looks like Anthony Perkins! I love it! We find ourselves missing Perkins’s beloved features? We got ‘em! Just not as Norman, inevitably.

  I just can’t believe the luck! I’m living in a world that contains good superhero movies, one TV series based on S. H.I.E.L.D. and another based on Psycho! If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me up! If I’m hallucinating, don’t tell me to kill anybody.

  Robert M. Price is an American theologian and writer. He teaches philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on theology and the historicity of Jesus, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Reason Driven Life (2006), Jesus is Dead (2007), Inerrant the Wind: The Evangelical Crisis in Biblical Authority (2009), The Case Against the Case for Christ (2010), and The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (2012).

  A former Baptist minister, he was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003, and has written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a "shared universe" created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft.

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  The Mouth Of God

  by Gary Myers

  Do not call up what you cannot put down. No precept of the magical arts is more important than this one. It commands the magician to invoke no power without first considering the dire results likely to come of that invocation, and then preparing an adequate defense against every contingency that may arise. More than one good sorcerer’s life has been saved by following this simple rule. But mistakes in sorcery often affect more than the sorcerer who makes them. His family, his community and even his world may also suffer for his foolishness. Therefore it is not enough to apply this rule to one’s personal actions alone. The conscientious sorcerer must also apply it to the actions of those around him, and, if need be, prevent those actions by whatever means may be required.

  I will not soon forget the chain of events that brought this great truth home to me, Eibon of Mhu Thulan. I was traveling by camel through the sandy desert north of Tscho Vulpanomi. I had heard of the lakes of boiling asphalt that are the notable feature of that distant land, the southernmost of all the Hyperborean continent, and I wished to behold their natural wonder for myself. The desert above is flat and empty, allowing the observer to see incredibly far in any direction he chooses, but showing him next to nothing in every direction he looks. So my surprise may well be imagined when, chancing to turn my eyes toward the east, I saw what appeared to be a dark stone figure reclining along the far horizon, a gigantic and naked human figure lying on its back in the desert sand!

  No one could look on such a sight and not wish to know more about it. But when I turned to question my guide he showed some reluctance to answer me. Even when pressed he would only say that the figure was unlucky to look at or talk about, and that only by ignoring it could we put ourselves safely beyond it. Yet even his evasions stoked the fires of my blazing curiosity.

  “This promises to be more interesting,” I said, “than a lake of boiling asphalt. I must examine it more closely. But I will not ask you to accompany me to a place you find so fearful. You tell me Tscho Vulpanomi is no more than a half-day’s ride from here. Go on ahead and await me there. I will rejoin you before sunset.”

  I did not wait for his reply, but turned my camel at once toward my distant goal. Yet I was still some way from understanding how distant it really was. I traveled an hour in its direction without closing or even seeming to reduce the emptiness between it and me. The figure only grew larger the farther I advanced, until it filled half the horizon before me. But no matter how large the figure grew, it lost no part of its human appearance. It only grew truer to that appearance the closer to it I came, until I could no longer entertain the idea that it was any kind of natural formation. Perhaps it had been natural once but modified since by some other agency. Perhaps by the army of tiny human figures I now saw working around its base.

  At this point my camel, which had borne me so far without complaint, suddenly declined to bear me farther, and no amount of cajoling could break its iron resolve. “Must we part company also?” I said to it. “No matter. The remaining distance is not so great that I cannot cross it on my own two feet. But wait here for my return.”

  Thereafter I continued on foot and alone. I felt I could do so in relative safety, for while the flat and barren sand offered little in the way of actual cover, those I approached were too occupied with their own business to give a thought to mine. But I was too optimistic in my appraisal, for no sooner had I made it than two small figures broke free of the rest and started walking toward me. A moment later they stood side by side in front of me. Their appearance should have been threatening, yet it struck me as only sad. They were freakishly tall and skeletally thin, with empty eyes and expressionless faces. They were both quite naked, even of hair, and their skins were burned almost to blackness by the scorching desert sun. Neither spoke, but each raised a single long arm and pointed a finger behind him.

  “You wish me to accompany you,” I said. “Under normal circumstances I would think twice before accepting so doubtful an invitation. But since my curiosity drives me in your direction already, I cannot do better than follow you. Lead on!”

  And so they did. They led me on to the great stone figure, first directly toward the upper left arm, then indirectly around the shoulder toward the neck. We passed many workers along the way, all of them in the same sad state as the two who conducted me. But unlike my conductors they showed no interest in me. They continued in their silent occupations, picking at the dirt and rocks in which the giant figure was half embedded, and carrying away the rocks and dirt they had already picked. Yet they worked so slowly at these colossal tasks that I guessed they would still be at them for many years to come.

  Between the shoulder and the neck arose a wooden stair, a ragged line of steps and ladders scaling the giant figure to its top. My conductors took me up this stair, one going close before me and the o
ther coming close behind. As tall as the figure had seemed from the desert floor, it was so much taller now that we climbed above it. The horizon behind us grew higher and higher, and the diggers beneath us lower and lower, until the former looked like the rim of a deep silver bowl and the latter like ants at its bottom. It was a relief to reach the top of the figure and see it laid out before us like a vast plain of stone. It was only when I looked beyond this plain that I saw what it truly was: the upper shoulder of a man so large that three hundred men laid end to end would not have equaled him.

  My conductors led me along the shoulder to the throat, and over the throat to the cliff of the chin, and to the foot of a tall wooden structure standing directly beneath it. The sight of this structure gave me pause, for it was little less imposing than the figure that supported it. It was an open framework of wooden beams, rather like a siege tower, but a siege tower full of wheels and ropes and nets of hanging boulders. An arrangement so complex must undoubtedly have a purpose, but there was no time now to determine it. We climbed a wooden ladder up one side of this tower, to step onto a wooden deck that reached just short of the enormous chin. And here I found a wide array of seven thick cables running out of the tower, across the deck and over the chin, to disappear at regular intervals between the stony lips.

  “Confess!” said a man’s voice close beside me. “Confess that you have never beheld a sight as great as this one!”

  I quickly turned to find the speaker. For a moment I wondered if he was referring to himself, so dramatic a figure did he cut. He was nearly as tall as the naked diggers, but unlike them he wore a light and flowing hooded robe more suitable to this desert land. Only his face looked out of it, as hairless as the diggers’ but not nearly as thin and dark. His eyes were an outland blue. His stance suggested that he had been waiting here for quite some time, and that he had been watching our slow ascent of not only the tower but also the figure under it. I wondered why I had not observed him before. But there was little of either of us to observe against the scale of our vast surroundings.