The Haunter of the Dark

By H.P. Lovecraft

I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name.

—Nemesis.

CAUTIOUS investigators will hesitate to challenge the common belief that Robert Blake was killed by lightning, or by some profound nervous shock derived from an electrical discharge. It is true that the window he faced was unbroken, but nature has shown herself capable of many freakish performances. The expression on his face may easily have arisen from some obscure muscular source unrelated to anything he saw, while the entries in his diary are clearly the result of a fantastic imagination aroused by certain local superstitions and by certain old matters he had uncovered. As for the anomalous conditions at the deserted church of Federal Hill—the shrewd analyst is not slow in attributing them to some charlatanry, conscious or unconscious, with at least some of which Blake was secretly connected.

For after all, the victim was a writer and painter wholly devoted to the field of myth, dream, terror, and superstition, and avid in his quest for scenes and effects of a bizarre, spectral sort. His earlier stay in the city—a visit to a strange old man as deeply given to occult and forbidden lore as he—had ended amidst death and flame, and it must have been some morbid instinct which drew him back from his home in Milwaukee. He may have known of the old stories despite his statements to the contrary in the diary, and his death may have nipped in the bud some stupendous hoax destined to have a literary reflection.

Among those, however, who have examined and correlated all this evidence, there remain several who cling to less rational and commonplace theories. They are inclined to take much of Blake’s diary at its face value, and point significantly to certain facts such as the undoubted genuineness of the old church record, the verified existence of the disliked and unorthodox Starry Wisdom sect prior to 1877, the recorded disappearance of an inquisitive reporter named Edwin M. Lillibridge in 1893, and—above all—the look of monstrous, transfiguring fear on the face of the young writer when he died. It was one of these believers who, moved to fanatical extremes, threw into the bay the curiously angled stone and its strangely adorned metal box found in the old church steeple—the black windowless steeple, and not the tower where Blake’s diary said those things originally were. Though widely censured both officially and unofficially, this man—a reputable physician with a taste for odd folklore—averred that he had rid the earth of something too dangerous to rest upon it.

Between these two schools of opinion the reader must judge for himself. The papers have given the tangible details from a sceptical angle, leaving for others the drawing of the picture as Robert Blake saw it—or thought he saw it—or pretended to see it. Now studying the diary closely, dispassionately, and at leisure, let us summarize the dark chain of events from the expressed point of view of their chief actor. (Continue Reading…)

The Shambler From the Stars

By Robert Bloch

I have nobody but myself to blame for the whole affair. It was my own blundering that precipitated that unforeseen horror upon us both; my own stupidity that caused our downfall. The acknowledgment of my fault does not help us now; my friend is dead, and in order to escape an impinging doom worse than death I must follow him into the darkness. So far I have relied upon the ever-diminishing potency of alcohol and drugs to dull the pangs of memory, but I shall find true peace only in the grave.

Before I go I shall inscribe my story as a warning, lest others make the same mistake and suffer a similar fate. (Continue Reading…)

Nesters

By Siobhan Carroll

They killed the last calf that morning. Ma wanted to hold off, give the poor thing a chance, but Pa said it were cruel to let a body live like that. He cracked the hammer on its head—a sick, sad sound. Later he slit the calf open and showed Sally the animal’s stomach, choked with dust. “Suffocated from the inside,” he said.

Sally cried, or would have cried, but her face was too caked with dirt. The Vaseline in her nostrils couldn’t keep it out. She wondered how much dirt was in her stomach and whether her body was already full of it, like the calf, her tears and blood just rivers of dust. But when she asked, Ma said, “Jaisus, quit nattering and help the bairn.” So Sally did, even though her baby brother was curled up like the calf had been, under a skin of dust that never went away no matter how they cleaned. (Continue Reading…)

Old Things are Meant to Be Found and Shared

By Leanna Renee Hieber

Dear Reader,

A very curious thing happened on a Greenwich Village tour I have been known to lead as a reincarnate Victorian, antiquated speaker and consummate old soul; a walking tour that takes guests along the very same paths that famed horror writers Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft walked in prior centuries when they lived in the West Village. I speak passionately of the stories these men penned in and about certain locations, and of course I must throw in the occasional ghost story as no tale is complete without supernatural influence. I think of Greenwich Village as a sort of spiritual and literary haven. And I’m hardly the only writer to have thought so. There’s quite a legacy on its streets and behind its townhouse facades.

I was nearing the end of my lecture, building my love of history and of Old New York into an artful crescendo when I stumbled across a weather-beaten leather volume, placed directly in my path, leaning against the foot of a gnarled tree. The roots had begun to upend the sidewalk leveled ineffectively to suppress its growth. The black volume, its corners damp with an odd oil, gleamed in the vaguely sulfuric glow of those modern streetlamps built to appear historic. The iron posts of replica gas lamps pepper many old neighborhoods where landmarking laws protect architectural treasures against the ravening jaws of modernity’s bulldozers. Their amber light illuminates a history reinventing itself into an uncertain future. (Continue Reading…)

Where the Brass Band Plays

by Katie McIvor

The day I found seaweed on my sister’s shoes was the beginning of the end, for me as well as her. I grabbed her by the shoulders as she tried to scoot past me into the house. “Audrey, where’ve you been? Were you at the beach?”

She looked behind her. At the green-slimed tennis shoes she’d left by the front door, with brownish globules of air bladders squished between the laces. A frown creased her little face.

“A bunch of us went,” she said, in the high-pitched whine she always adopted when she was being defensive. “Just along the shore a bit. It’s not a big deal.”

I crouched so our faces were level. “Audrey, you don’t go near the beach. Not without me or Dad. Okay?”

“O-kay, Ve-ra,” she sing-songed. She was only seven, and I couldn’t always tell if she was being sarcastic.

She ducked around me and slipped into the kitchen. I heard her greeting Dad. I heard the comforting rumble of his big deep voice asking her how school had been, and I stared after her with an ache that was half-panic and half-dread clenching my guts. (Continue Reading…)

The Fruits of

By Chelsea Davis

They’d long since passed the point where road gave way to trail gave way to forest. Bright green ferns now rose to their knees. Around them, old-growth redwoods loomed forth. It had been like this for miles: only trees, ferns, the sweet scent of pine, and the two walkers, lost and silent.

At least, Amber was fairly sure they were lost. Anton’s navigational methods didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The gruff, stout man in a camo sweatshirt and buzzcut—both style choices that were, she now suspected, aspirational rather than markers of actual military service—barely ever paused to check his compass or beat-up map. Amber didn’t dare question him, though. He had a fragile ego and a short temper, a powder keg of a personality that had both scared and intrigued her when they’d first met behind Danny’s Pub last month. He’d told her, then, with a smug calm that made her breathe harder, that she had literally nothing to go on without him and his knowledge of the nightfruit. “Zilch. Zip,” he’d slurred in the bar alleyway, slashing his Miller from left to right in the universal gesture for “nothing.” His small eyes had shone watery in the red light of the bar sign above the back door. “Also, first hint of funny business and I’ll leave you out there. Don’t care how far we are from the road.” She’d nodded, handed him the cash, watched him count it.

At least it wasn’t dark out yet in the woods, she told herself, her boots sinking into damp soil again and again. Judging by the sun’s place in the sky, they still had two more hours of decent light. Two hours from now they would hopefully have found what they were looking for. And then it wouldn’t matter whether she could see well. (Continue Reading…)

James Courtney Goes Home

By Jamie Grimes

The personal effects of the late Mr. James Courtney found their way to me some months after his passing, once the stipulations of his will had been addressed and the remainder of his belongings had been picked over by his friends and family. He had made a promise to me long ago, and I to him, and now, some decades after he’d done his part, the rest was mine to fulfill.

His steamer trunk was left like a flag staked in the yard, the ghosts of a former life reminding me of the claim they had on my soul. Inside were a pile of well-worn journals, some wadded papers cushioning a couple of chipped dinner plates, and a few books. In with all of this was a letter addressed simply “To Thomas.” In it, Courtney recounted the better part of the last two decades of his life, during which time he never married, made but a few close friends, most of whom helped him put his meager fortune into “charities benefiting the advancement of our peoples.” He wished me great health and lamented that he could never bring himself to come back to the island no matter how he longed for it.

Underneath the letter, next to the plain brass urn containing Courtney’s earthly remains, lay a troublesome volume I’d hoped never to have the ill fortune to see. I’d heard tell of Henry Barksdale’s Statements and Observations Concerning the American Negro Species. What colored person in learned circles hadn’t? So obnoxious it was in its assertions, in its blanket characterizations of a whole people as nothing more than savages tamed to the brink of enlightenment by their enslavers. I had more than half a mind to burn it on sight, but with that urge came an appalling curiosity, and I found myself thumbing through its overwrought suppositions, its “there can be no doubts” and its “undeniable facts” about “the primitive American Negro.” No wonder the world is as divided as it is. If this is the thinking of one of the South’s allegedly preeminent minds, what hope is there in finding our common humanity?

I cursed Courtney for bequeathing me this nonsense, but I was quick to apologize. Never get on the wrong side of the dead. With Barksdale so fresh on my mind—with his feverish rantings about his last days on Ediwander Island in my hands—I ought to have known better. (Continue Reading…)