Jake’s Monthly
(Part 2)
Lovecraftian Horror Anthology
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Table of Contents
Dread Tale by Mike Jansen
The Done Witch Horror by John H. Dromey
Sitting, Waiting by Jon Chan
Memories of Inhuman Nature by Rick McQuiston
The Fun Guy From Yoghurt by John H. Dromey
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Published by Jake’s Monthly on Smashwords.
All featured authors now receive their reprint-rights.
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Welcome back to Jake’s Monthly, which is now in its second anthology. This project has been created to bring you a brand-new short story collection with a different theme every month. How long will it go? No one knows!
Having begun our maiden voyage with flying colors, this literary vessel of ours has now sailed into darker and more unstable waters. This anthology, in Halloween spirit, features work inspired by the most influential man in horror: H.P. Lovecraft. Fresh and returning authors have sent in stories that set out to cover all corners of Lovecraftian fiction, from dark horror of the unknown to comedic Lovecraft Lite to a well-written, high-quality example of the regularly-infamous Christian mythos.
So sit still and enjoy while we move our way through here. There are things in this water that smell fear, and they’re getting hungry…
A quick note: Our original intention was to include some of Lovecraft’s stories, but with so many issues as to whether his works are public domain, we haven’t. Instead, we’ve opted to include links to his stories at the ends of some stories presented here, in order to illustrate the connections. (Note: these links are not hyperlinks, as hyperlinks don’t seem to behave well outside of the PDF versions. Thus, if the given url isn’t working if you click it, just paste it into your address bar and it should take you to the right place.)
Briefing will now begin. If you don’t want any details on the stories in this anthology, please skip over this. If instead you want a little more information on them, keep reading.
“Dread Tale” by Mike Jansen is a short poem which details the lifestyle of a modern Lovecraftian writer.
“The Done Witch Horror” is by author John H. Dromey. It’s a relatively simple story with an interesting main character and nice twist.
“Arden Bluff” by Rick McQuiston is a Christian Lovecraft story, a subgenre which is bathed in infamy. However, this story does exceedingly well in its balancing of otherworldly fear, Christian cosmology and tense pacing.
“Sitting, Waiting” by Jon Chan is a chief example of the fear of the unknown which Lovecraft delivered. It can also be interpreted as a sequel to Arden Bluff and a prequel to the story which immediately follows it:
“Memories of Inhuman Nature” by Rick McQuiston rounds out this imagined trilogy in a pensive story with an excellent reveal. It previously appeared in the Lovecraftian anthology “The Shadow of the Unknown”.
“The Fun Guy from Yoghurt” by John H. Dromey is a short piece of Lovecraft Lite which plays with the basic ideas behind horrific Lovecraftian prose. Either that, or it’s a genuinely creepy story.
“SHUB” is by David Perlmutter, and is set in a universe populated by cartoon people where a slang-spouting noir Shub-Niggurath solves crimes. It’s also drenched in continuity, and is recommended for people who’ve read a lot of Lovecraft’s work.
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By Mike Jansen
It is late at night
You sit down and write
A tale of dread and threat and doom
Protagonist, antagonist, village, city, continent, world
All shall fall to the footsteps of the Ancient One
The tale is good, it is intense
You reach that which you crave, the writer's trance
The words fly from your fingers
and you almost feel the crackling of the atmosphere
Until you reach -The End-
You yawn, you stretch,
you read the final lines, then go to bed.
As you snore the screen lights up and words appear
CthulhuCthulhuCthulhuCthulhuCthulhuCthulhuCthulhu
For anyone who didn’t understand the final line, a link to one of Lovecraft’s most famous stories, The Call of Cthulhu. http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.asp .
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Sunlight bounced off of the chrome-domed hills as though it were wary of lingering there overlong. The surrounding gorgeous ravines were more to the liking of the unseen visitor anyway, clad as she was almost entirely in black. She was reluctant to plumb their unknown depths, fearful perhaps of encountering one or more of the whispered-about monstrosities in wooden britches that crossed those shadowy divides.
The unnoticed wanderer had been told about the place by a precocious child whose vocabulary—while commendably extensive for someone of tender years—sometimes failed to convey accurately the youngster’s inchoate thoughts due to capricious or even eldritch application of those very words.
What of the traveler herself who followed the long, dusty road that snaked its way around the craggy peaks? In plain English, Wanda was washed-up, a has-been, finished, done-for. She’d hung up her broomstick for good. Her spell-casting days were over.
That was the popular opinion, anyway. Her contemporaries surmised that if someone of Wanda’s prowess—a young woman still in her prime—could lose her powers overnight, then the same thing could happen to any one of them, at any time. And that was a scary prospect. Her fellow spellcasters shunned her presence in case the horrific contagion was transmittable. Since she was already accustomed to being alone much of the time anyway, Wanda was not particularly bothered by her forced isolation.
Out of sight perhaps, but not out of mind. Tongues wagged. What these loquacious gossipmongers failed to realize was that Wanda had become an outcast by choice. Although she cherished her independence dearly, there was a significant void in her life, and she longed to be reunited with a companion (of sorts) from her childhood. Toward that end, she was about to embark on a quest among the workaday folk, those who get by without magic in their everyday lives. If it were at all possible for someone of her ilk, she wanted to blend in with their mundane society during her sojourn in their midst. This desire had influenced her recent outwardly-eccentric behavior.
Wanda planned her itinerary so she would not have to travel at night.
“I don’t want to be out after sundown when the goatsuckers are active,” she told a farmer who was kind enough to give her directions.
“I haven’t heard of any chupacabra being this far north,” he said.
“I was referring to nocturnal birds—nighthawks and whippoorwills. They’re both in the goatsucker family.”
The farmer soon left her. She continued on her journey along the unmarked roads.
Later that day, the heels of the sturdy walking shoes worn by the enchantress beat out a hollow tattoo as she strode over the plank floor of the covered bridge that spanned a deep crevasse. She’d been unsure about whether or not the ancient, wooden structure would support the weight of a modern automobile, so she’d left her rental car on the other side.
As she emerged from the shadows onto solid ground, she saw an old but well-maintained building with a gambrel roof. A youthful face peeked out from between the curtains in a second-story window. Wanda knew that this was the child she’d spoken to on the telephone. Surely this was her intended destination.
The witch walked up to the front door, took a deep breath and entered. A tiny silver bell tinkled over her head.
Shortly thereafter she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Wanda shuddered when for the first time in many years she beheld the object of her search up close. The dog ears, the curved spine, the faint odor of decay which would have been off-putting to almost anyone else.
Not to her. All that mattered was this long-awaited reunion. She gingerly picked up the precious object and pressed it to her bosom.
“I’ll take it,” Wanda said, holding out her credit card to the proprietor of the rare-book shop.
John H. Dromey was born in northeast Missouri. He’s had a mini-mystery published in Woman’s World, as well as short fiction online at Liquid Imagination, Thrillers, Killers ’n’ Chillers and elsewhere. He’s also had stories published in a number of print anthologies, including “The Lyin’ Witch and the Wardrobe Malfunction” in Wicked Witchery (Static Movement, 2011), and “Walking Barefoot on the Moon” in Told You So (Pill Hill Press, 2011).
One of Lovecraft’s longer works, The Dunwich Horror. While its ties to this story are tenuous beyond title and imagery, reading it will really come in handy at the end of this collection. http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dh.asp
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1
Sheriff Ted Bonder sighed as he poured himself a cup of coffee. Thin rays of sunlight, diluted from the dust in the air and streamed into the office. He shielded his eyes from the glare, only faintly aware of the irritation.