Castle of Ages Release!

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Chapter One

I can say without any semblance of ego that I have seen deeper into the shadows than any of my kind born upon this earth. I have pierced through the hearts of men and found the horns hidden underneath the brows of innocents. I have been kissed by demons and cursed by those who claimed to serve the Lord.

Yet, in all that I have witnessed, of all of the multitudinous horrors, including bearing witness to that awful chamber of the Castellan, nothing could have prepared me for the Aionic canal. Time, the Castellan said, was a difficult thing to manage and there are always the elements of physical law to consider. I know now that time itself occurs simultaneously to our dimension, or no, perhaps it is more accurate to say that time does not occur at all; it is immovable and mass and matter merely revolve around it. This, of course, becomes something of an issue when one decides, perhaps foolishly, that he wishes to travel to an earlier era— for matter must be dissolved to its simplest iota to be put to use elsewhere. Great minds in the fields of chemistry and physics have postulated that there is a finite amount of matter. There would be no lesser or greater amount of the stuff in 1503, my destined era, than there was in 1903, the year I departed from. Hence, the Castellan’s Aionic canal must strip me of my physicality in 1903 and find a suitable amount of atomic material in 1503 to re-establish my form.

This was not a pleasant experience if I might offer a wry understatement. Imagine that you have been pushed through a sieve with an imperceptibly small mesh or otherwise have fallen into a meat-grinder and even the most vivid of imaginations could not possibly anticipate the amount of pain one must endure to travel backward through linear time. The physical pain was one thing and perhaps easier to understand. Now apply the process to your mental state or, if you dare, your spiritual being. Of how many memories creates a person? Of how many thoughts and ideas? These are ethereal concepts, containing no substance, yet these too must become obliviated, parceled into the tiniest parts of their humane sum. One might be able to calculate the weight, volume, and atomic material a single body possesses, but the equation is less precise when it comes to the intangible modules of the human spirit. This is why the Castellan prefers a sacrifice when transmuting a body along the canal— simple maths of debit.

Perhaps it would be helpful to provide an allegory to better explain myself. In my travels to visit my mother country of Russia, I encountered a former Buddhist monk from Japan who once tried to explain to me, over a shared bowl of saké, where the concept of separate identities comes from. He asked me to consider the table and he asked me to give it a name.

“It is a table,” I told him.

He agreed. Then he asked me to consider what I would call it if he took an axe to it.

“A broken table,” I told him.

He agreed. Then he asked me to consider what to call it if he shredded the table to absolute bits.

“Splinters.”

He asked me to consider what to call it if he then shredded it further.

“Sawdust.”

And then what to call it if he burned it?

“Smoke. Ash.”

“And once the smoke disperses and the ash is thrown

into the dirt?” “Air. Soil.”

“And yet you continue to call this a table,” the monk said, somewhat mockingly. “And can you make a table out of air and soil?”

“No,” I said.

“You can,” he said. “You need only to wait.”

It was not until I had separated into a million particles that I fully understood what the monk had been saying. My identity as the man, Ulysses Malevich, my body, my mind, had joined the cosmic oblivion of energy passing into states of motion and rest. Memories of my mother holding the obsidian knife to my eye, blessing me with the Siren Goddess’s vision of collapsable probability, separated into the concepts of mother, knife, eye, blessing. And then those concepts separated into vaguer ones, woman, child, stone, sight, prayer, blood… and so on. They mingled with the particles that once comprised my face, my eyes, nose, forehead, eyebrows, ears… Atoms that had comprised my circulatory system passed through synaptic charges of energy that held thoughts of duties, compulsions, the drive to eat… and what’s more, after their unbecoming, the differences between them were unrecognizable.

This, then, is the Castellan’s gift, for it soon dispatched of the particles that comprised my bodily form and absorbed it to put to use in my “modern” era. With it left all feelings of pain and misery. All else was flushed into a great sea of energy, thought, and consciousness. From there, I witnessed every possibility from every outcome. Perhaps, I misspoke. Earth barely registered as a place here. The universe, as I had once considered it, also appeared small and inconsequential to me. I was then a part of some greater formation, some eternal architecture. Flowing through it. I had not the capacity to feel joy or sublimity, nor had I even the faculties to think— again, I floated like a cloud of concepts, partially formed ideas, and then merged with every concept. There was no future, no past, no love, no hate, nothing. I was the table shattered, burned, and returned into this swirling void of the never-was, the cannot-be, the all-encompassing tide of non-reality.

And then, when I felt as if I had finally found my home, those damnable Newtonian physics once again began to seep into veracity. With it, my amorphous cloud of concept began cleaving back into itself, memories, lusts, and traumas made whole, as physical law crafted planets and stars according to their mass and volume. I became aware of globules of atoms here, snatches of particles there, elements from quasars, salts from unnamable moons, proteins filched from protozoan organisms from cratered pools of ice pocking the surface of meteors, all of it carrying the pain of entropy, establishing in my thinking that to exist within this universe, one must suffer.

I became the table reborn.

The Holiday Stone: Chapter One

Below is a sample from my most recent work, The Holiday Stone. It is available on Amazon and elsewhere here.

I was returning from a journey to Barcelona, another exhausting stop on my steadfast quest to find certain apocryphal scrolls pertaining to a lesser known Saint in a pre-Catholic cult of Christ. My search yielded nothing but a sense of disappointment and, I admit, embarrassment. The universities there, while welcoming, eschewed any theories I posited, refusing to even entertain the possibility that this chapter in the non-canonical Bible truly existed. The professors there were too courteous to laugh directly in my face. They had the decency, by God, to wait until I had turned my back. I do not regret the trip, however, as I am used to such suspicion and skepticism. I do, however, regret returning so early, as a few days on the beach would have surely restored my harried and frayed nerves after so much tedious study. If that had been the case, then I would not have come home in time to act on that fateful letter from Doctor Woodstrom.

I remembered the good Doctor, of course. He had instructed me in the fields of human anatomy and physic when I was just a fledgling medical student, but it wasn’t until I took his elective course in experimental medicines that we actually bonded. We would sit in his office over tea and brandy and discuss his research into ancient methods of healing, which naturally led us to conversations on shamanism and associated atavistic mysteries, until our shared scholarly passion for occultism (heretofore a solitary, clandestine enthusiasm) became our primary obsession. The surprising seriousness with which this esteemed man of science indulged the fantastical imagination and dubious theories of one of his medical students gave me an indispensable confidence in the value of these pursuits, but my studies after receiving my degree led me far afield, and I had quite lost touch with Doctor Woodstrom.

So it came as some surprise when I received word from him in that unseasonably crisp springtimeof 1904. I assumed, frankly, that he would long since have passed away, for I knew his nature to be that of a physician, through and through. A good doctor’s energy is all too frequently focused on the health of his patients at the expense of his own. I myself was on the verge of becoming an old man, ever so slightly jaded by the vicissitudes, and those university days seemed very far away, but Woodstrom had always been a good-natured and gentle man…a friend to me, in his way, and I must say that I was not unhappy to hear from him.

I tidied myself up, dishevelled as I was after having spent the day traveling. I took a bath and sent for a simple meal of sausage and sliced bread from the delicatessen below my apartment. I thought to read the letter as I ate, but I instead found myself nodding into a doze over the newspaper. I put myself to bed, saving a focused reading of Woodstrom’s letter for less weary eyes.

In the morning, I consumed the letter more attentively over coffee and boiled eggs, rereading it several times. It wasn’t an unfriendly or anguished dispatch, but it worried me all the same. It read as follows. Bear in mind whilst reading it that English was not the Doctor’s first or even second language:

My dear Simon Holiday,

I hope this letter finds you well. In my memory you have always been my most promising student as your principal notion was to unearth core truths beyond what has already been discovered. I was saddened to hear that you had abandoned your study of medicine and man’s health, although I have heard rumors that you have been intrepidly following other pursuits. Would these perchance be the same pursuits we had once discussed in my office so long ago? If this be the case then I am in need of your assistance. I am currently in the American state of Louisiana, engaged in various fields of study at Elbridge University. I have secured a position for you here if you would so choose it. If you do, I would ask desperately that you bring that artifact left to your inheritance, as it might hold yet some valuable secret. I guarantee that you will find here what you have been searching for all over Europe. Please respond without delay and I will arrange the necessities of your voyage and your room here in New Orleans.

All the best,

Professor Woodstrom

I turned his words over and over in my mind. He was speaking with discretion about my interest in the occult and yet very openly about where I could find the answers that I have been looking for. The apparent fact that Woodstrom had some intimate knowledge of my movements around the continent was exceedingly curious. That realization did little to settle the growing unease within my stomach. And yet the suggestion that Elbridge University might hold within its library the apocryphal scroll that I had so fervently been searching for these last few years was too great a temptation to ignore.

But what of the favor he asked of me? I knew at once the artifact he was referring to, yet I could barely recall how he came to know of it. Eventually, I remembered that I did bring the object to his office for his expert inspection. We dipped deeply into the brandy that night and conversed into the small hours until his room was so thick with cigar smoke that I could hardly see. I forget now, of course, the details of our conversation, but the subject throughout was the nature and provenance of the Stone.

The Stone had always been to me a wretched memento that haunted my belongings. I expect that it had haunted my father’s house as well, before and after his passing. I had long since sealed it in a velvet pouch and locked it in the bottom of a chest of winter clothes so that I might only chance to remember its existence once or twice a year, upon wardrobe rotation. It was to this chest that I returned from a wasted day of research at the library.

The texts that I had borrowed, I knew, would offer little to no information that I had not previously gleaned, and my eyes wandered from the script, thinking back to my cursed heirloom. After fortifying myself with a double brandy, I unlatched the chest and rooted underneath coats and scarves until my hands felt velvet. I took the pouch to my study and set it down on my desk. I refilled my brandy and, thinking on old times once more, lit a cigar. I unsheathed the object and weighed it in my hands, inspecting it closely.

It was heavier than one might expect, a burden in both practicality and metaphor. Having the thing too near my eye, however, sent a shiver down my spine and I quickly set it upon my desk. I filled my pipe with tobacco and lit it, feigning insouciance for the benefit of no one but my own unsettled self, blowing smoke rings at the artifact as the flickering lamp-flame imbued it with an eerie semblance of animation.

It was a large stone of crystalline green amber, cut to resemble a tetragonal prism, though flat along the bottom so that it could freely stand. Suspended within the crystal was a necrotic human hand, half skeletal and minus its ring finger entirely. The flame of my lamp danced within the green gem, casting a rainbow of prismatic colors upon my face and the walls around me. I could not help but think that the stone itself was beautiful, ethereally hypnotic in its array of glittering imperfections. The dessicated palm ensconced within the stone cast the mineral beauty into higher relief, creating an effect so mesmerizing and disquieting that the beholder might quite evade the relic’s gruesome implications.

So I stared at the Stone, pondering the Doctor’s proposition. I was loath to admit it, but my research had reached an impasse in Wales. Perhaps some time in America would not only benefit my studies, but also restore the vigor and joi de vivre that had been so lacking in me as of late. A trip would do me good, on professional, personal, and constitutional terms. I had made up my mind. I pushed the garish object out of view as I drew up a letter of acceptance.

As I wrote, the shadows on the periphery of my vision made a flickering mockery of my rational faculties, somehow indicating to my atavistic unconscious the trepidations of a spectral presence. Perhaps it was merely a trick of the lamp’s inconstant flame, its dancing refracted within the crystalline amber— but I could have sworn I saw those wretched fingers ever so slightly twitch.

***

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Castle of Blood [Sample]

The Dark Castellan series is in full swing. Here are some sample passages from Castle of Blood. If you would like to pre-order the book, please do so here. Enjoy.

Diary of Henri Le Brun

Paris, France

Entry, March 23^rd, 1903

I had been making my usual nightly routine of a brisk promenade through the Parisian streets as usual when I came home to a disquieting dispatch from a former colleague from the Sûreté Nationale. I admit that I was not keen on immediately opening the letter as I had largely left policing matters behind me after I had suffered a series of palpitations that had left me unconscious for several days and required bedrest for many weeks afterwards. The physician that now attends me is adamant that I take course to invite morning and evening air into my lungs and to avoid any strenuous activity as well as any business that might cause my heart undue rigor. The contemptible doctor also tells me to avoid red meats and keep to a diet of fish and dark vegetables and red wine. The man has robbed me of the pleasures of cigars and brandy and has recommended that I switch to cigarettes and should I have want for spirits, to embellish the pour with mineral water.

The letter remained on the chair where I had dropped it until late evening, after I had supped on an unsatisfying meal and after delaying the task for as long as I could, I opened it and read the contents, wishing afterwards that I had left it sealed. The letter was addressed from a magistrate from the Ministry of the Interior and one that I knew quite well and one of the few that I still held any fondness for. That would one François Soulages and if the note had not been written and stamped with official letterhead and seal, I would have been happy to hear from him. I will transcribe the letter here for future referencing.

Monsieur Le Brun,

Hello my friend, it has been too long since we have last spoken. I pray that you have been recovering well although I was saddened to hear that you would not be returning to your duties any time soon. The ministry suffers a lack of personality with you gone and your absence is deeply felt by all who worked with you. I wish that I was writing you to describe personal matters as much has happened in my life and I would be eager to hear the events of yours, however, there is some business I must attend to and it would seem that you might be uniquely capable of solving a particular problem that has been plaguing the ministry. There appears to be a dispute in a rural municipality concerning the slaying of bovine farmstock. Generally, as you know, these matters are resolved to be the mere whims of nature, the culprit revealed to be a hungry wolf or daring badger, but the frequency of requests to send a magistrate to the village is staggering. I’ve wired the nearest municipal director of police but it would appear that lines of jurisdiction would be violated if they were to intercede, making this one of those petty national matters. My offices are currently lacking in manpower, much less an officer that would be able to make a trip so far into the country. I am disinclined to ask anything of you, as your service to this country has long been demonstrated and I know you have suffered for it. But I do not know Henri Le Brun to be a sickly man, but a robust investigator keen for the next challenge. Perhaps the countryside would also do you well. I will not force the issue should you refuse it, but it would mean a great deal to an old friend if you were to travel to Lons-le-Saunier prefecture and meet with the local brigadier of the constabulary to help aid any investigation into the wrongful harming of livestock in the surrounding area. I hope that you will take the opportunity and await your response.

Mag. Francois Soulages

The insult of the letter was nothing less than an open palmed strike to my face. I dispensed the original copy to shreds and deposited it in the fireplace, alighting it with a match that I then took to a petite cigar. The flame took the page suddenly and after a flash, it cindered in black webs before dying into white ash. I felt as impotent as the fire and having lost my taste for the cigar, snubbed it out. I will read now to take my mind off things, as I feel my heart is agitated.

Later: Novels do me no good, nor does the evening dispatch. I am ruminating ever on the act of pitying kindness from my former friend Soulages. That I have fallen so far as to become a wretched errand boy—no, a judge presiding over barnyard livestock—burns me to little end. I put these words down in the hopes that I might void the matter from my mind. I am ready for sleep and I do not want to dream fitfully, or cling to this resentment.

Entry, March 24th

In the morning I felt very much the fool for having borne any hatred towards Francois. My morning promenade took me through the foggy channels of Paris—I’m afraid our spring has yet to catch up to the calendar— and I returned to my apartment to break fast with a few slices of toasted bread and a smear of camembert with a dollop of currant. I returned to this diary to reread the words and my feelings of disgust were reignited. I nearly thought to tear the pages from the journal and cast them into the fire but that ritual had done so little to quell my fury the night previous that I applied no effort to indulge the impulse. I am due for an appointment with my physician. He will want to know why I am so agitated. I think I will tell him of the troubling letter and leave out the details of the cigar. He will give authority over my refusal to accept the task and vindicate any guilt I might experience for such a blunt response.

The damn physician is a quack! I’ll write it here the exchange so it will not trouble me later. I came to his offices so that he might examine my physic and when I made mention of the letter that Francois Soulages had sent me, the imposter agreed with the bloody magistrate! He said that in his studies of the mental physic, engaging in tasks with a defined goal would benefit the body as well as the mind. I argued with the man, saying that he had told me to refrain from any strenuous activity. His response, “Getting on a train and examining the remains of a few bovine carcasses does not sound like too much of a strain.” I had hoped that I had an ally within the doctor, but it would seem that I am as lonesome as I ever was in any of my efforts. I must sit down to luncheon and hope that the matter leaves my mind some quiet.

I cannot focus on my book and I fear that this anxiety has not let the ham sandwich sit well in my stomach. I will take an early stride through town until my nerves and belly cooperate.

Upon returning from my walk, I found another letter courier-expedited in my mail slot. It was another from François and this time, I ripped it open with haste so that I could sooner hate his pitying words. I read it once and then again more carefully. I set it down on the table and made myself a coffee and returned to it to read a third time. I shall clip the margins of the letterhead and paste it inside this diary. Transcription is too much of an effort for me as of now.

Letter Insert

In the hand of François Soulages

Sealed with the stamp of the Ministry of the Interior, Paris

Monsieur Le Brun,

I fear that my last letter may have been too hastily written and I may have incurred some insult upon you. It was not my design to wound the pride of such an esteemed officer of French security such as yourself as I well know the efforts you have plied to ensure the surety of our people. It is regretful that a mind such yours should be put to waste as your cunning has demonstrated time and again to ably penetrate the obfuscation of truth. Mark that it is for no little matter that I wish to employ you. Since I have last written, I have received no less than three more messages of livestock mutilation. As the first were bovine, these new complaints concerned swine. The nature of their mutilation might interest you in that their carcasses were displayed in such a fashion that no animal could have designed. Police in Lons-le-Saunier are still unsure of their legal recourse to intervene and it requires a third party to investigate. They have told me that they would assist you with what they can. I know that you are a man of little spoken affect, and none at all if the thought of response displeases you, but I ask that you reconsider your silence and position of acceptance. I have little agency to dispense any officers into a region so far as there are pressing matters in the north that have unfortunately usurped our resources. It would be no small favor if you inclined to accept. I await your reply eagerly.

Mag. François Soulages

I have finished my coffee and my third reading of the letter. It strikes me that flattery must be the principal tool of the ministry these days which is a sad state of affairs. Flattery rankles less than passive insult, however, and I was not displeased to read the heaping praise Soulages poured over my abilities as an investigator. My coffee is finished. I shall do some tidying up and return to this journal when I have taken my evening promenade.

My evening jaunt consisted of passing over a bridge, stopping at a butcher’s and peering through the window, and strolling through a park moistened by the evening fog. I was struck with a fit of rheumatism on my journey home, for it would seem that this air is yet too wet for my lungs. My heart had a flutter and I was made to stop and relax myself. Perhaps the city is not the right place for my recuperation. I admit, before scrawling in these pages, I skimmed the passages previous since my embolism. It would appear that I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the only sights I’m willing to see are limited to the butcher’s shop and a petit and often foggy park. I dared not look at the passages previous Celine’s passing. I cannot bear to. I poured myself a brandy and mineral water and stressed François’s issue into my temples. I could not deny that the new information held some new intrigue over me. I must think on this.

Perhaps it was the brandy but I removed a leaf of paper from a folder and wrote a reply to François. There is no need for transcription but I kept my language cordial and made no indication of my previous mood. I accepted the offer and inquired about particulars concerning travel and dates and persons of whom I would have need of introduction. I sealed the letter in an envelope and brought it to a peddling courier. Walking back upstairs, I regretted it. I prepared a meal of fish and potato and relished no flavor. It is time for bed. God help me, I hope I have not done anything foolish.

If you would like to read more, please pre-order the book for Kindle or buy it in paperback in late February. If you still haven’t read the precursor, Castle of Shadow, please do that now or suffer the ghosts of mirrors for all times.

Castle of Shadow [Chapter Two]

Castle of Shadow launches today and can be purchased here

Chapter One is available for free here.

ii

The morning began, however, with an element of confusion, as we were not accustomed to the east country’s atmosphere and it appeared, upon first glance that the hours still belonged to the night. Robert made mention of the sky’s refusal of the sun’s rays and had to check his watch against that of an attendant to ensure himself that morning had indeed come. A cart came bearing coffee and buttered scones and that did much to improve our temperament, although Robert remarked that perhaps his mother was right and expected Zenborough to be a likewise gloomy place. I soon came to enjoy the dramatic romance of the scenery as it looked remarkably like the paintings I had come to adore within the church where my flower bed once resided.

Once we had performed our morning toilet and dressed for the day, Robert mused over the figures of his business while I stared out of the window, entranced with the somber landscape outside. Just as it had happened the night previous, I lost track of time and before I knew it nearly an hour and a quarter had passed and had been non-risible to Robert’s touch. A morbid curiosity weighed on my mind then: had I been watching the land outside or had I been once again bewitched by my faint reflection on the windowpane? I shook it off and made the excuse to Robert that I was simply not feeling well. Robert apologized profusely and said that he had been a fool for not expecting that I might endure some travel sickness, never having ventured so far before. He left and returned a few minutes later with a glass of brandy and a quinine tablet. I accepted the medicine gratefully and returned my attention to my novel, fearing any prolonged stare through the glass would lapse my attention back into my trance.

I still allowed myself brief glances to note the progress of our journey. It struck me as strange as to how many owls flew in the sky— generally solitary and nocturnal hunters, the creatures seemed to congregate en masse like a flock of sparrows. When I last glanced at the countryside, I took notice of how densely forested the area had become and how thick the trees themselves were. Black coniferous giants walled off any other features of the countryside and this frustrated any attempt to gauge our distance. I was again flummoxed when an attendant notified us that we were to arrive in Zenborough in a quarter-hour. I remarked to my Robert that there was surely no way any town or village could exist in such dense arboreal vegetation and that seemed to amuse him although I suspect he had the very same inkling.

On the train platform, Robert took care of the particulars to have our luggage delivered to our hotel and asked the bag man for a recommendation for a place that would serve some coffee or tea. The man, whose face was flushed red and carried an odor of bitter alcohol and petulant pipe tobacco, directed us to a cafe near the town square. Robert thanked the man and pressed a silver coin into his palm and we made haste at once, eager to get out of the misting rain and muddy streets.

Robert enjoyed a coffee and a small cigar while I chose chamomile and nibbled on a petite cake. Robert warned me not to eat too much as a Duke’s feast was sure to warrant a healthy appetite. After our luncheon, we settled into the hotel, bathed and took care of our toilet duties before donning our nicest garments— Robert looked absolutely handsome in his dark suit and I slipped into a green dress, an engagement present from my beloved after he had noticed me coveting it through a window. The principle adornment was the silver crucifix necklace and I was moved nearly to tears when Robert said that he had been stricken breathless by my stunning beauty.

Our carriage arrived to take us out to the manor driven by none other than the drunkard who had taken our bags just a few hours earlier. I’m afraid my feelings were not friendly towards the man as intoxication does not usually make for a charming disposition. Robert, however, smiling and eager as ever gave the man two pieces of silver and even asked to know the drunkard’s name which he gave as Klaus. The moment humbled me as I am occasionally too quick to judgment about the lower classes, now that I have been elevated. A true lady remembers her beginnings or she hazards losing her gratitude.

The misting rain turned to downpour on our way to the Duke’s manor and the noise of raindrops against our carriage roof was to be accompanied by the owls’ fevered screeching overhead. This did not seem to affect Robert and thusly I vowed that it would have no effect on me. As the windows of the carriage had no glass, I felt I was again free to gaze outside and take in the sights, what little I could see through the rain and the trees in the night’s gloom. An interesting notion caught me when I regarded the moon— which bore larger here than back home and with a muddled orangish tint— and then some minutes later, after a few miles had been crossed, the queer notion caught me again. It could be the coincidence of our location, but it appeared to me that the moon had not shifted in its location in the sky. Robert squeezed my hand and remarked on how excited he was to meet this Duke and I soon put any thought about the moon and the peculiar absence of stars out of my mind.

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Castle of Shadow [Sample Chapter]

Below is the first chapter of Castle of Shadow, released November 26th. The eBook is available for pre-order here.

It all began innocuously enough when my fiancé received an invitation to attend dinner from the esteemed Duke of Zenborough in the late of September. My fiancé and benevolent darling, Robert Littelfield, to whom I adore more than anything in this world, is a remarkable craftsman of fine jewelry and purveyor of magnificent gems. He positively delighted in the news that we were welcome at the gracious Duke’s dining table. I’m afraid that I did not catch the significance. Truth be told, Robert curried my favor well out of his class. I was lowly born and orphaned young and had been paying for my room and board by merchandising the flowers I kept in a small bed in the shadow of a church on the east side of town and I was therefore ignorant of the value in twining social connections amongst the world of fine jewelry. My fiancé patiently assured me that this was indeed great news— the Duke, who is a renowned collector of arcane curios, would surely wish to hire my sweet Robert for his skill in his trade.

“We must make arrangements,” declared Robert. Oh, it was the happiest I have ever seen him and his enthusiasm soon spread to my heart as well.

His mother was not as warm on the idea, claiming that Zenborough was a grisly place and crossed herself doubly over her chest. She is not a cold woman, Mrs. Littelfield, but I have never won her affection. She has inspected me as if I am some horrid insect that has crawled into her supper. When Robert was first courting me the woman would not even utter a word towards me. She regarded some perceived slight in my mere existence and there was nothing to be done to win her forgiveness. She nearly fell from a faint when Robert told her that we were betrothed and intended to marry in the spring. On this matter, Robert heartily reminded her that the invitation to the manor was not hers to decide and he happily went to town to send back a reply and to arrange the train tickets due to depart in a mere nine days.

The days passed easily and I would contend that it was the happiest I have ever been. Robert reminded me daily that he loved me more than he did yesterday and did not think that was possible. Robert was able to expedite a few sales that freed up a sizable allowance for us to live as we wished in the days leading up to our journey and so we delighted in the city’s finer offerings, taking in amusements at the theater and dining on fresh fish and sweet wines by the bay. During a promenade around the park with my head firmly nestled into the cradle of his neck, I was reminded about how Robert first came to court me, having stopped by my flower cart to make a purchase and then handed me the flower. It was such a romantic gesture, I was nearly horrified for I had forgotten how to behave! My word, he was so cordial and allowed me to hide my fluster with a whole bouquet next. I do not understand how a woman of my low bearing could have been so lucky as to have found a man as gentle and generous as the one at my side.

When finally the day arrived for us to depart my excitement gave me a barely containable and buoyant energy and Robert was of easy and gregarious cheer. We kissed Mrs. Littelfield goodbye although her mood was dark and ominous. She told us to go with God and draped a silver crucifix necklace over her son’s neck. Robert laughed and accepted the gift but when we were seated he claimed that it was too girlish a feature for himself to wear, and quickly removed it and draped it over my breast. When the train lurched and took off I admit I was glad to be free from the overbearing presence of Mrs. Littelfield and looked forward to a few days without her admonishments. Robert busied himself with the gazette and I a small novel. A cart brought us a tray of cured meats and exquisite cheeses although the bread was rather stale. At nightfall, I made use of the water closet for my evening toilet when a strange thing occurred. I examined my face in the looking glass, although that of itself is not unusual but rather the nightly routine of a young woman who wishes to remain the precious object of her fiancé’s affection, but the peculiarity arose when a knock fell on the door and the concerned tone of my dear Robert came muffled through the wood.

“Are you all right, my love? You’ve been in there for nearly half the hour.”

I snapped alert and it dawned on me that I had been staring into my smiling reflection and fondling the silver cross between my thumb and forefinger. I was dreadfully embarrassed as it is not a woman’s place to reveal her toilet activities to the man she intends to marry and I called back that I was indeed fine and made an excuse about worrying over combing my hair. My beloved Robert mentioned something about never understanding the minds of women and I heard his footfalls retreat to our cabin where I soon joined him. We toasted a small glass of brandy and were both quickly asleep in our beds amidst the rocking cradle of the moving train. Silly dreams filled my head that night and awful ones at that. When I woke and foolishly concerned Robert with the matter he gently reminded me that foul dreams are merely the apparitions of the body’s strained nerves. I was simply anxious about my first big social gathering and nothing more. Robert is so clever and wise and I felt small and childish for even bringing it up. I resumed my slumber and slept easily enough until morning.

I hoped you enjoyed this sample. This book will be released on November 26th. If you would like to pre-order this book, simply click here.

Fetal Alchemy Syndrome [Short Story Sample]

Below is the first couple pages of a horror short story that I wrote earlier this year. If you’re interested in reading the rest of it, or perhaps listening to an audio version, please visit patreon.com/PierreManchot where you can purchase the piece for as little as $1. Thanks!

Fetal Alchemy Syndrome

by Pierre Manchot

Paris, 1856

A letter from Benoît Marquis to Hugo Undeig

Translated by Brenda Undeig, University of Kansas, 1979

I know now that heaven cannot help me. Man cannot help me. I’ve created something beyond both and I fear that its rapacious hunger will not only end my own life but potentially all of France and perhaps even the world in its entirety. I write this as a confession, in part. I am aware that this screed in no way absolves me of the sin I’ve brought into this world. Forgiveness is not an option for me. I only hope that you, once a dear friend of mine all those many years ago, might understand the gravity of my actions and, if fate can shine more benevolently upon you than it has myself, you might destroy the culmination of my foolish ambitions.

You won’t find my name preserved in history anywhere but this document. My success in the collegiate arena of ideas has been marred by my lifelong fascination with the alchemic arts. Despite holding the title of Professor at Grenoble in the sciences of chemistry and physics, my own word capsized my career after my second year. I had written a sequence of articles during my fledging academic stay at university praising the works of such alchemists as Jean Haville, the German Herst Groundlewerg, and the American George Prowell. That was enough to diminish my works in the honorable sciences right there, but it appears that I could not help myself and submitted two published articles on the theories of the ancient Egyptian Tiem Lazara who was able to conjure unearthly metals out of nothing but sand, water, and primitive electrical conduits. My professorial duties were revoked and my academic record expunged. With the knowledge that my pursuits would lead to what it has, I hold no blame for the institutions themselves.

Yet, wounded by the fragility of the central-thinking university system, I pursued the forbidden sciences with an even more fervent vigor. I furthered my understanding of the metallurgic arts and became familiar with hematology, what that I could. When my mother died, I was drawn back to Paris and, after the good woman was buried, I proceeded to pervert her apartment into a laboratory of my own design. I have little faith that a God, benevolent or otherwise, would welcome her to heaven— and it would only serve as a cruel jape to have my mother bear witness to the fruit borne from my evil obsession. I only hope that she passed into some eternal dream, blind to the mockery that obsession had made of her own home.

Where my mother’s duvet once sat, a table now stands, now covered with vials containing metals, acids, bases, and more— the duvet was still there, only perched on its arm, leaning uselessly against a wall. There are texts, ranging from the scientific to the religious, spread out half-read throughout the floorspace. The kitchen rarely produced a meal as I was more interested in boiling lead and mercury and notating the properties. I had converted what was once a charming flat into an alchemic prison. I couldn’t see that, no, not yet, my friend.

You might be considering that what I am telling you might be the exaggerations of a man locked in a room of malodorous fumes and foul humors, a man who might have lapsed into the loathe madness of milliners and brim shapers. I respond to your supposition without contempt, for I wish that it were so! I have sought treatment for nerves and exhaustion after desperately convincing myself that my mind had been made feeble from exposure to my craft’s metals. I desired nothing less than to assume all that I had seen was simply a waking dream or some grand deceit designed by some malicious fever or poison rooted inside my brain. The fledgling science of the mind could give me no answers and, lest I be subject to the horrors of the sanitarium, I withheld the more colorful details of this evil experience. Physicians, while slightly more competent, were no more able to provide me relief. Alas, the memory of blood and destruction always returned and I knew that it could not be false.

[To finish this story, please visit patreon.com/PierreManchot where you will be able to pay for the full piece.]

Digging Into Horror – A study in HP Lovecraft

I have a few highlighted passages in Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 2 by Eugene Thacker with my annotation, “aaaaaaaaah!” written next to it. Here is the first:

…something exists, even though that something may not be known by us (and is therefor “nothing” for us human beings)… (p. 41)

Shortly thereafter, I have this highlighted:

Darkness is the limit of the human to comprehend that which lies beyond the human… knowing of this unknowing… the conciliatory ability to comprehend the incomprehensibility of what remains outside… (p. 41)

Next to which I have annotated, “we only know so little about how we only know so little.” I then highlighted the following:

…there is nothing outside, and that this nothing-outside is absolutely inaccessible. This leads not to a conciliatory knowing of unknowing, which is really a knowing of something that cannot be known. Instead, it is a negative knowing of nothing to know. There is nothing, and it cannot be known. (p. 42)

I have annotated, “we don’t even know what we don’t know,” followed by “aaaaaaah!” again.

Cosmic horror is more or less predicated on these principles– that we are insignificant and blind to the order of the universe, allowing for the possibility to dream up monsters of the dark that are, by our nature, incomprehensible. The general conclusion of most stories that fall into this genre is that a character having been exposed to the unknowable will inevitably go insane.

All horror on some level follows this notion, whether intentionally or not– good horror allows our own minds to scare us instead of the monster on screen. Jaws famously buried its shots of the shark under several iterations of editing, John Carpenter’s The Thing never shows the true alien’s form (only the perversion of the host’s body it’s replicating), Jason Voorhees and Mike Meyer’s hide behind dehumanizing masks, and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead “zoomcam” follows from the perspective of the damned, but we only only see the evil manifested in the body of the possessed victim. The monster loses its potency once you see it in the light– once it’s realized, it can be killed.

So what sets the works of HP Lovecraft apart from the rest is how he’s able, in prose, to bury the horror so deep that it gradually creeps up on the reader. At first it seems like a magic trick. Until you see the cards.

The culmination of reading HP Lovecraft is unlike anything else I’ve read: for me, it was a joyful experience. I tried to pay attention to how Lovecraft crafts that lovely feeling.

First, he tells you the ending up front, usually in the first sentence of the story. From Dagon: “I am writing this under appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.” You know from the outset that the narrator is insane and will be dead soon, likely by suicide. It reminds me of the theory that spoilers only enhance the enjoyment of something, because you know what you’re looking forward to. It’s a clever device that answers a question and asks another– you know the ending, now don’t you want to find out how it got there? Eh? It also plants a seed of anxiety in the reader and puts them on edge– they know something’s going to happen, just not when.

You’re going to need that little push to get through a lot of his work, too, because HP apparently loved writing in arcane language. Most of his work came out in the 20s-30s, so it’s pretty dated by modern standards–and by the standards of the time. It’s dry and academic and I’m 90% certain that it’s written stiff on purpose. I kind of love this because its so antithetical to Lovecraft’s literary contemporaries– whereas Hemingway and EB White preached “brief and concise” to get the idea across effectively, Lovecraft prefers “vague and elevated” language to confuse the reader. Reading the geographic descriptions of a simple landscape often gets convoluted in its crags and valleys and deviations, such that the reader becomes lost. When describing “cyclopean” architecture and the horrific attributes of the ancient alien creatures, the high-brow, academic language remains indirect and it fails in its description. It’s supposed to, as what’s being described is unknowable.

A note about the academic tone worthy of mention is how seemingly tangential it is. At The Mountains of Madness, for example, Lovecraft spends a frustrating amount of time establishing a consensus on the best arctic drills to use during expeditions; The Whisperer In The Dark, along with The Call of Cthulhu, lingers on the “reasonable” explanations behind the strange inquiries at hand. The Dunwich Horror begins so raptly obsessed with the town’s history, that while one knows that something bad will eventually happen there, it strikes a chord ironic that anything out of the ordinary could happen when described in such a dry tone. I think this discourages a lot of readers from following through. I know it made me reticent. But after reading through a lot of these stories, I think it’s a brilliant, if not stubborn, move. You need to start at a place of reason and scientific certainty, only to let those ideals betray you later on. It’s a long grift, but one that works.

There’s also the fact that Lovecraft is inconsistent in the descriptions of his horrors. As I pointed out earlier, Lovecraft’s not trying to amass a rigidly defined mythology, but rather utilizing a loose one to tie his stories together. Monsters change shape from story to story, and the ambiguity of the descriptions only lends itself to how effective this is– although I don’t really have any evidence that this was done intentionally, I’m following the hunch that this is what makes HP’s work so damn haunting. Especially for those poor souls who have investigated the entire pantheon. Nyarlathotep shows up in a bunch of works, almost never fitting the same description twice, the Mi-Go are alternatively described as Yeti-like and crab-like fungoids… but my favorite is Yog-Sothoth, who generally goes unseen save for a benevolent lightning strike to banish some abomination back to the void. Admittedly, the following passage comes from a story I haven’t yet read, “The Horror at the Museum”:

Imagination called up the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth—only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness.

First pause to recognize how nondescript that is, and yet it conjured some image in your mind. Second recognize how he nods to your own imagination, in addition to the narrators, with the very first word, effectively robbing the narrator of certainty. Now let’s take a look at a passage describing, not Yog-Sothoth, but one of his human half-breeds, from the hilarious vantage of a hillbilly:

“Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face–that haff face on top of it… that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no chin,’ like the Whateleys… It was a octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but they was a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like Wizard Whately’s, only it was yards an’ yards acrost….” — The Dunwich Horror

I find this passage particularly fantastic firstly because it contains a very uncommon break from the academic prose in favor of the native tongue of hill people– and even the layman can’t articulate precisely what the creature looks like, only approximating that it looks like an octopus, or centipede, or spider with a giant ugly face on it. Second, it’s incongruous with the description from Museum, even though we know by the final line of Dunwich, that “it looked… like the father.”

This kind of indirect, approximate horror can be found in the narrative structure itself. I mean, it has to be, right? If it’s in the language and “canon” then the story itself needs to mimic the same philosophy. HP does not disappoint. In The Dunwich Horror, the final spectacle is seen only from afar and those that watched it through a telescope were mentally injured:

Curtis, who had held the instrument, dropped it with a piercing shriek into the ankle-deep mud of the road. He reeled, and would have crumpled to the ground had not two or three others seized and steadied him. All he could do was moan half-inaudibly.

It becomes a game of telephone. It’s not that what Curtis saw was reported, but his reaction to the thing he saw, thrice removed from the reader. You attach to Curtis’s reaction, but you still want to know what he saw.

Even better is how the Whisperer In Darkness plays out, beginning with the “ending up front,” motif:

Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end.

And neither does the reader. It’s all suggested, all unknowable. The story continues in the now obligatory academic skepticism of strange supernatural happenings, when the narrator makes a pen-pal out of a true believer who seeks an academic understanding of the Mi-Go. The horror happens “off-stage” to that character, writing an epistolary arch of curiosity, fear and finally acceptance and friendship with the alien race. When the narrator visits him, he understands something is off, but only sees traces of the Crab-like fungoids, never the things themselves. When he speaks to a human being’s brain in a jar, that too is met with skepticism, with a narrative eye looking for clever deceits, but it’s never answered one way or the other as to whether a person or a recording provided the dialogue. Even when he’s speaking directly to one of the fungoid creatures, it’s a ruse born of either crafty mask work or expert taxidermy. He leaves it as a question as to what.

After everything (and often at the beginning), Lovecraft will give the opportunity to jettison the narrative from the reader’s mind, and suppose that the narrators really are insane. It’s a red pill, blue pill binary. Red pill, and it’s a fall towards an investigative rabbit hole as the rules of biochemistry and physics begin to deteriorate, before culminating into, possibly, a fervent spiritual awakening subservient (or antagonistic) to higher gods.

Blue pill, it’s a sick fantasy from a sick mind. Which is how Lovecraft wants you to swallow it. The cognitive dissonance between trusting one’s own interpretation over the rational accounts of those who have encountered unspeakable, unknowable horrors, is perhaps the juiciest turn of all. It forces the reader to linger in that space of nothingness and unknowable-ness long after the book is put back on the shelf.

If you like horror blended with political satire try reading The Least of 99 Evils available here.

Planning Your Escape

You ask any number of readers (or gamers, or cinephiles, etc) why they read and I’ll bet you a shiny Sacagawea dollar that the number one answer is going to be “being teleported to another world.” (Popcorn flicks – “to turn my brain off for a while”; video games – “veg out and kill shit”; Netflix – “Chillll.”) Some call this “escapism.” I’m not here to judge the value of escapism, because I already know from personal experience that it’s practically necessary for the survival of my sanity. But looking at escapism from the creative perspective and the work that goes into it, there’s a few things I’ve noticed.

In writing circles, there’s a dumb phrase floating around called “World Building,” in which the writer conceptualizes the setting that their story is going to take place.

I’m pretty sure it’s a trap.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to understand the world you’re trying to convey to the audience. Understanding spacial relationships within the story is important, too. Fleshing out characters, even minor ones, crucial. But I feel that writers often get stuck in this development phase and it’s tempting to stay there.

Consider HP Lovecraft, often considered the premiere cosmic-horror author, and to do this, consider all of HP Lovecraft’s annoying goddamn fans (BYE, NERDS! Don’t let the red X button hit you on the ass on your way out!). Lovecraftian nerds love to piece together an overarching mythology to Lovecraft’s work, because that’s what human beings do– we organize, label, and critique things. But if you start writing a comprehensive universe first, you’re essentially working backwards. My take is that HP built outwards (very elaborately) to satisfy the needs of the stories he was working on. From the Cthulhu Mythos wiki:

The view that there was no rigid structure is reinforced by S. T. Joshi, who stated “Lovecraft’s imaginary cosmogony was never a static system but rather a sort of aesthetic construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator’s developing personality and altering interests… [T]here was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated… [T]he essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in a cobwebby collection of forgotten tomes, but rather in a certain convincing cosmic attitude.”

Something to take from this is the likelihood that intricate, pre-fabricated (in the writer’s notebook) worlds can inhibit creativity. Think about it. If you built a world that featured, I don’t know, a fountain of banana flavored pudding, you’re very likely to move the direction towards that useless fountain instead of where the story needs to go. You’re going to feel obliged to show off your pudding fountain; if you didn’t, you would feel as if you’d wasted your time world building. That’s how you write yourself into a corner. Which is how lazy and contrived plot contrivances (eg- deus ex machina solutions) occur. Keeping things open allows for opportunities, forces the writer to make choices, and to arrive at something unexpected– you know, also known as “the joy of writing.” To offer another example, you can figure out exactly when Venture Bros turned shitty– and it’s at the precise moment that the comedic vehicle of the cartoon was exchanged in favor of in-depth story extrapolation. Compare that with Metalacolypse, which always brings its story to the brink of explanation and then blatantly disregards it. Metalacolypse stayed fresh because it stuck with its comedic guns, favored character over plot, and didn’t get stuck up its own ass.

Another take: Much like character sketching, developing values and rule is more important than the details (although the details should imply the values and yada yada yada). HP Lovecraft is not consistent with his “cosmogony”. He is consistent in his themes and paradigms (“the universe is an uncaring, mechanical place,” “true horror cannot be understood by human minds” etc). To offer another example, the Harry Potter universe isn’t the most consistent– except in its subversion of the ordinary (“This boot is a teleportation device!” “There’s a piece o’ soul in this snake!” “School is fun and zany!”) and its overarching themes (“Love is magic, PEOPLE.” “Racism is bad!”) which makes the series charming and feel cohesive.

A third take: Much of the Lovecraftian universe was organized and expanded on by other writers. The current expansion of the Harry Potter universe feels like an unnecessary shill. The expanded Star Wars universe (with the fine exception of KotOR) is an exercise of human futility. Seems weak to me. Don’t write fan fiction for your own story. Don’t write fan fiction. Write your story.

And I know what you’re thinking: Tolkien did it. Sure, Tolkien did it, but there’s some caveats to that argument. I haven’t read the Simarillion (fight me, why doncha), but I know that Tolkien included only a mere fraction of his notes in The Lord of The Rings (showing immense creative restraint to convey only enough as was necessary), and that he baked in his Roman Catholic values into the grain of the narrative which guided the story through its paces, instead of offering some kind of railcar tour of a bunch of stuff in Middle Earth. It’s also important to recognize that Tolkien was a philogist— he studied classical languages, literature and their historical context– and a large part of what Tolkien was doing was combining a lot of epic poetry and European mythology into a series more easily digestible by his modern audience.

There’s been a lot of fantasy churned out since Tolkien and a lot of it only goes so far as to mimic his work. But if you study the epic poems Tolkien sourced as influences (well hello, fellow English majors. How come you all look so sad all the time?), you need to remember that they are representing the world as it was– Beowulf was a modern narrative upon its original telling. So was The Green Knight. The world described in those poems is the world that they lived in with the addition of other worldly forces at play. After Tolkien we fetishized his aesthetic as the ultimate expression of fantasy– which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so much as it has become a tad stale as it may no longer reflect the world we live in.

It seems trite to conclude that the way to combat stale universe development is to “just look outside for inspiration! That’s what the poets of the middle ages did!” But it still has to be said. So remember:

Aesthetics are important, but not absolute. Like the way you can change your shirt if you spill nacho cheese on it.
It’s about a convincing atmosphere…
…which is often rooted in reality and then somehow subverted
Stay consistent in values
Heavy exposition drags. There’s no goddamn reason I need to know “that it rains sometimes on Klthgbak Mountain, a place our heroes will never visit, but will often think of, as Tostito Mojito’s mother was born on Klthgbak Mountain while it was raining.” You like that? I just made that up. Quit being part of the problem.
The Devil is in the Details but just this one time, the Devil is not your friend.
I bet you HBO calls me tomorrow hoping to develop Mountain Thinkers starring Christian Bale as Tostito Mojito’s mom because THE WORLD IS BROKEN.

Pierre Manchot

Tag: hp lovecraft