Lovecraft Ezine Mega-Issue 3 Rev3 Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction by Mike Davis

  ISSUE 21:

  o Beneath the Pier by Stephen Mark Rainey

  o An Eidolon of Filth by W.H. Pugmire

  o A (~BIG~) Fishy Menu by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  o Dom and Gio’s Barber Shop by Gerry Huntman

  o The Stranger’s Trail by Tom Lynch

  o Dunwich Redux by Tim Scott

  ISSUE 22:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #1 by Maxwell Patterson and Ronnie Tucker

  o The Dance by Robin Spriggs

  o Maybe the Stars by Samantha Henderson

  o The Pyramid Spider by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  o Powers of Air and Darkness by Don Webb

  o Verbapeutic by Joe Nazare

  o The Masked Messsenger by David Conyers and John Goodrich

  ISSUE 23:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #2 by Maxwell Patterson and Ronnie Tucker

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

  o The Strange Tale of Samuel Winchester by Andrew Nicolle and Samantha Henderson

  o Tracking the Black Book by Douglas Wynne

  o Not With a Bang, But With Waves Whispering by Wendy Wagner

  o A Cold Yellow Moon by Edward R. Morris, Jr. and Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  o The Whisper From the Deep by Cora Pop

  o Nectar of Strange Lips by Michael Griffin

  ISSUE 24:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #3 by Maxwell Patterson and Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #2 by Robert M. Price

  o Less A Dream Than This We Know by Christopher M. Cevasco

  o The Horror Under the City by Kevin Crisp

  o How Rare are Light and Life by J.T. Glover

  o The Basalt Obelisk by Michael Wen

  o Evolved by Kenneth W. Cain

  o Cosmic Terror from Poe to Lovecraft by Sandro D. Fossemò

  ISSUE 25:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #4 by Maxwell Patterson and Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #3 by Robert M. Price

  o And They Did Live By Watchfires by Evan Dicken

  o In Dark Corners by Bradley H. Sinor

  o Missing Presumed Wiped by Derek John

  o The Eye by Justin Munro

  o A Glimpse of the Future by Stewart Horn

  ISSUE 26:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #5 by Maxwell Patterson and Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #4 by Robert M. Price

  o The Crevasse by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud

  o Cement Shoe Cthulhu by Derek Ferreira

  o Between by William Meikle

  o The Moon’s Architecture by Graham Lowther

  o The Arkham Terror by Pete Rawlik

  o The Pariah by Bruce Durham

  ISSUE 27:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #6 by Maxwell Patterson and Ronnie Tucker

  o He Knew Not the Month Was October by Zach Shephard

  o Crash_the_World.exe by Derek Ferreira

  o A Knight in the Lonesome October by William Meikle

  o Mother of Monsters by Joshua Wanisko

  o The Bells of Northam by Joshua Reynolds

  o What You Leave Behind by Evan Dicken

  ISSUE 28:

  o Cthulhu Does Stuff #7 by Maxwell Patterson & Ronnie Tucker

  o Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt #5 by Robert M. Price

  o A Massing of the Shades by Richard Gavin

  o The Storm Horses by Scott Thomas

  o Vyvyan’s Father by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

  o The Winds of Sesqua Valley by Ann K. Schwader

  o Jar of Mist by Jeffrey Thomas

  o (he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr

  o The Deep Black Pit by Jessica Salmonson

  Credits

  Welcome to issues 21 through 28 of The Lovecraft eZine! These eight issues were published in 2013, and they are bundled together here for your convenience. The Lovecraft eZine is published every other month: visit www.lovecraftzine.com to read and buy current Kindle or Nook versions. Thanks for reading, and please be sure to leave a review on Amazon for us.

  Mike Davis

  Publisher & Editor

  Beneath the Pier

  by Stephen Mark Rainey

  Mercer was only fifty, but they called him “Old Grand-dad,” like the whiskey, because he had made the trip to Lufford Bay every year since the others were adolescents and his weathered features and thin, sandy hair made him look wise—or more perhaps more apt, battered but unbeaten. He liked these young people; six of them this year: the sons and daughters of his companions from trips long past, when the highway between Georgetown and Charleston was little more than a rutted, two-lane passage through the pine forests, cotton fields, and marshes. The highway was bigger and better paved now, but once you left it for the narrow, sandy roads that snaked toward the bay, you went back a hundred years, or thousands, into a lonely, primeval landscape that once had been the domain only of pioneers, pirates, and the Swamp Fox.

  Once each year they came, early in the autumn, while the ocean was warm even as a chill began to overtake the nights. There was too much marsh and mud here for hotels and tourists, so Lufford remained mostly unspoiled by humans. Nature, however, had smashed it time and again with wind and water, leaving behind vast networks of black, reed-ridden pools and scattered clusters of only the sturdiest oaks, their branches choked and dripping with Spanish moss, their trunks gnarled, bent, and knotted. The beach cabin looked as if the slightest breeze might topple it, yet it had withstood five decades of storms and might stand for just as many more. Its dark bulk squatted atop a balustrade of bowed stilts, its sharply angled roof crooked but sturdy, its seams still sealed against the elements. Mercer didn’t remember what color it might have been, all the paint long since stripped, the splintered wooden siding now as gray as ancient cobweb. His father had built the house to endure.

  The two four-wheel drive vehicles rattled and shuddered as they pulled up next to the cabin, their bodies and tires coated with fine gray sand. Mercer drove the lead truck; he always drove. Without a word to his companions, he shoved the door open and dropped into a bed of sand that swallowed his feet to his ankles. The others disembarked slowly, sighing and groaning after the long drive from Chapel Hill. The late afternoon sun was hot, almost stifling, but within the hour, the ocean breeze would turn cool, and come nightfall, a roaring fire would feel like heaven.

  “I thirst,” Ted Wakefield rumbled, stretching his arms out, Christ-like. “Rum, I think.”

  Ted’s younger sister, Kelly, stood next to him, three heads shorter, slim and blond, almost mousey. Not yet thirty, but her eyes looked ancient. Methodically, they scanned the landscape. “It looks the same as before. The same deadfall. The same puddles. The same deer path.”

  Mercer nodded. Their father, Rob, had been his closest friend. Apart, his children were nothing like him: Ted boisterous, energetic, sometimes crass; Kelly solemn, contemplative, even withdrawn. Together, they were their father, reborn.

  There was Jack Henry—Lewis’s son—and his wife, Rachael, both from Greensboro. And Ike and Steve Badden, Terry’s two boys, three years apart, both in their thirties now, but to Mercer, as much the brash, rambunctious teenagers that he recalled from too many years past. Or they should have been; this trip, they were subdued. Last September, they had lost their younger sister, Natalie.

  The young ones began to unload the vehicle while Mercer ascended the na
rrow, groaning stairs to the door, squeezing the key between his thumb and forefinger as if it were an amulet, averting his eyes from the long, shadowed structure that extended into the sea a few hundred feet from the cabin. The roar and hiss of the waves beckoned him to steal a glance at the pier, just as it did every year. Just as he did every year, he refused.

  When the time came, he would look and see all there was to see.

  He thrust the key into the lock and pushed the door open. A sweet, musty smell—ultimately pleasant—wafted out of the dim interior. The cabin still retained his father’s scent.

  “Make way, Grand-dad,” Jack Henry called, clumping up the stairs, a heavy suitcase in each hand. Mercer stepped inside and then out of the way as Jack stumbled in, dropping the larger of the cases and shoving it into the nearest corner. “We come for a weekend, and she packs for a month.”

  “Her mother was like that,” Mercer said absently, his eyes roving around the small living room, both comforted and revolted by its familiarity. The long couch, its upholstery stained and threadbare; the pair of spindly, 1960s-vintage lamps sprouting from dust-covered end tables; the rickety Boston rocker next to the darkened, draped window, one arm cracked and oozing hardened glue from his father’s crude repair work; the rust-toned throw rug on the scuffed hardwood floor. Everything as it had been left the previous year.

  The others entered, silent and somber, gathering the memories that haunted the cabin, many of them sharp and stinging, like the sword grass that separated the dunes from the marsh. Pure stillness for a moment, and then the Badden brothers shattered the spell, breaking ranks and tromping up the stairs to claim their second-floor bedrooms. After last year, they had sworn they would never return, but even then, they— like Mercer—knew they were lying. With a heavy thud, Ted Wakefield’s suitcase fell into a corner, and he, intent on settling more pressing matters, began to set up the bar. His sister vanished in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Drink, Grand-dad?”

  “Yeah. Your rum sounds good.”

  In a matter of seconds, Mercer was holding a full glass, complete with ice and his traditional wedge of lime. He tossed back half the glass and then started up the stairs. Ted called out behind him, “Want me to bring in your bag?”

  “Please.”

  The master bedroom—his room—occupied the northernmost corner of the cabin on the second floor. Its single window overlooked the beach and the pier, but a faded gold curtain closed off the view, and, until tomorrow, he preferred it that way. He gulped down the rest of his drink, opened the top drawer of the nightstand, and produced the bottle he had left there the previous year. He had just refilled his glass and was about to lift it to his lips when something bumped against the window. He paused but did not look up. Only when another soft thump came, followed by a harsh scraping sound, did he turn his eyes to the window, where they registered the distinct silhouette of a large bird behind the translucent curtain. The shape jerked back and forth a few times, its claws or beak rapping repeatedly against the glass.

  A seagull. Unusual for one to come right up to the window.

  “Alas, bird. Nothing for you.”

  A heavier thump behind him, and Ted plodded through the door, Mercer’s suitcase in hand. “Here. I work for tips, you know.”

  “I won’t pay.”

  Ted glanced at the window, but the bird was gone. He gave Mercer a long, thoughtful stare before saying in a near-whisper, “I don’t know if I can do this again.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Ted sighed. “Yeah. I’m here. Guess I’ll be here next year too. And the year after that. If I make it.”

  “You will. We all make it this year.”

  “You’ve foreseen this?” A wry half-smile.

  “It has been ordained by all that’s holy.” He lifted his glass and shook it so the ice tinkled.

  Ted offered a tentative smile. He knew Mercer well enough to be aware that he rarely used humor, but not well enough to recognize it when he did. “I guess I’ll unpack.”

  “Likewise.”

  “See you at the fire, Grand-dad.”

  “Till then.”

  Golden firelight wormed its way into the crevices of the surrounding shadows as roiling flames scorched the cool evening air, the roar and crackle harmonizing with the rhythmic pounding of surf, occasionally striking a dissonant note when a log shifted or collapsed. The six young people around the bonfire appeared focused on its blazing heart, while Mercer studied them from outside the circle, seeing not their faces but their parents’, recalling too many moments such as this for any single one to become clear. He wondered what it would be like to have children. He almost certainly never would, unless Gayle’s womb should suddenly become whole again. His blood warmed at the thought of her, but this outing, this experience, was the one thing in his life he had never shared with her, knowing that approval or even understanding would elude her. Her brain was too logical, too rational. As far as she was concerned, he was on his annual fishing trip.

  The firelight’s questing fingers stopped short of the pier, but amid the curling white crests of the breakers he could make out its nearest pilings and a few crooked, splintered planks. Even in the dark, the structure’s awry angles exuded a wrongness that nauseated him. Nearly a century ago, his father’s father had constructed the pier, long before the cabin even existed, but it had rarely been used for its traditional, mundane purpose. After a moment, he felt he was being watched, and, looking back to the fire, he found six pairs of eyes gazing at him expectantly, as if their owners awaited words of wisdom from their de facto leader. He was that, after all. Not forever, though, for eventually, one of the others would take the part—if this ungodly undertaking remained in the future’s cards.

  Jack Henry, powerfully built but soft-spoken, his eyes bright with both apprehension and a nearly childlike excitement, took one step toward him. “In all this time, you’ve never told us where it comes from. You’ve always said ‘someday.’ Is it now?”

  He shook his head. “I told you ‘someday’ because that’s when I will know. And that is not today.”

  Rachael said, “You’re never going to know. I don’t think anyone can know.”

  Jack looked embarrassed “Rachael—”

  “No, she’s right,” Mercer said. “To get answers, you have to ask the right questions. We don’t know what those are.” He sighed. “All we can do is what we do.” He reached for the bottle of rum he had placed in a bucket of ice just outside the ring of firelight and poured a fifth glass, wondering if the alcohol’s effects would ever catch up to him. He rather wished they would.

  “Your grandfather,” Jack said. “Timothy. That was his name, wasn’t it?”

  “Yep.”

  “He built this. We know what it does. But not why.”

  “Must we?”

  “But everyone has a reason. What was his? To kill people?”

  Mercer shook his head. “I never knew my grandfather. But I knew my dad, and he took after his dad. He didn’t want to kill. I think he just wanted to know.”

  “He knew too much. From all those books he had. From his travels. From sailing with Captain Marsh. Wasn’t that enough?”

  “If you could make something so beyond the ordinary, would academic knowledge be enough for you?”

  Kelly spoke up. “If I knew that what I made would kill — not could but would — then yes, it would be enough.”

  “No. It would drive you mad.”

  “We should have destroyed the pier. Someone should have. A long time ago.”

  “How many times have we talked about that?” Ted asked. “That wouldn’t be enough. Not for all of us.”

  “Not for me,” Jack said. “We’d never know for certain. This is the only way we’ll ever know for certain. It’s the only way to know it’s doomed to die.”

  “How do we know the thing can’t just go somewhere else? Maybe this isn’t the only way.” Kelly asked.

  “I
f it could, it would have by now,” Jack said. “Don’t you think?”

  Ike Badden, the older of the brothers, glanced at his watch. He had chosen to act as overseer this year; he would not be a part of the experience, not the way the others would. Perhaps it was the memory of his late sister, who had assumed that role for several years. She had died of heart failure, a few days after they had all gone home. Perhaps he wanted to confirm—at the risk of his life—that her death had not been a part of this, that something else altogether had claimed her.

  Maybe it had. Maybe it hadn’t. Other friends had died, but never after an experience as overseer.

  “It’s getting on time,” Jack said.

  “Yes,” Rachael whispered. “It is time.”

  Ike, glancing at his brother with eyes of concern, stepped out of the circle to retrieve a long duffle bag lying at the base of a nearby cluster of sword grass. He carried the bag to the fire and withdrew from it a number of long wooden poles wrapped in polyurethane, which he removed, unleashing the distinctive scent of petroleum. The others, including Mercer, each took one of the handmade torches and lowered its oil-soaked tip into the fire, then stepped back and waited until Ike had removed several coils of thin rope and looped them over one shoulder. Then he lifted and lit a torch of his own.

  Together, their fiery beacons held high and in solemn silence, they began to walk toward the pier.

  With torches planted in the sand on either side of the pilings, the seven stepped beneath the shadows of the old structure, where the waves rushed noisily toward them, only to draw back as if in fear just shy of their feet. High tide was at midnight, less than an hour away, and then the water would reach waist-high. From their perspective, the pier extended like a tunnel toward the dark sea, its oddly angled crossbeams forming a twisted, web-like pattern whose center vanished into a distant black hole.

  Such strange, wrong angles. Attempting to focus on them made Mercer dizzy and—if he stared too long—queasy, as if he had been spun in a giant centrifuge. A disconcerting, alien sensation, yet one to which he had become inured over the years.

  “Okay, Grand-dad. You ready?”

  Ike Badden’s voice at his ear. He nodded. Then he felt his arms being pulled back, around the thick post behind him, the rope encircling his wrists and going taut. His shoulders and biceps screamed at being stretched too far, but he knew that in a short time numbness would set in, and his perceptions would be diverted to other things. Ike touched his shoulder, gentle and reassuring.