Nightmares From a Lovecraftian Mind Read online

  NIGHTMARES FROM A LOVECRAFTIAN MIND

  Jordan Krall

  Nightmares of a

  Pampiniform Mind © 2011 Jordan Krall and originally appeared in the AKLONOMICON anthology.

  His Candescence, A Reptant Hell and Hail Desire and The Bodies of Cold Gentlemen © 2011 Jordan Krall and were previously published in UNFRUITFUL WORKS but have been slightly revised for this collection.

  And You Should Believe in Solar Lodges © 2011 Jordan Krall and was previously published in the COPELAND VALLEY SAMPLER.

  Argon Seizure © 2012 Jordan Krall and was originally included in FALSE MAGIC KINGDOM.

  All other material © 2012 Jordan Krall and our original to this collection.

  Cover art by Mike Lamb.

  Cover design by Matthew Revert

  Published by

  DUNHAMS MANOR BOOKS

  Respectfully Dedicated

  to

  Wilum H. Pugmire

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  WE SHOUT OUR OMENS

  WHY OUR FATHER LEFT US

  A REPTANT HELL

  XNOYBISTIC FRAGMENTS FOUND IN AN INDUSTRIAL PARK

  HIS CANDESCENCE

  HAIL DESIRE AND THE BODIES OF COLD GENTLEMEN

  ARGON SEIZURE

  NIGHTMARES OF A PAMPINIFORM MIND

  OUR UNRELIABLE STRUCTURES

  AND YOU SHOULD BELIEVE IN SOLAR LODGES

  XNOYBIS ITSELF

  INTRODUCTION

  I discovered the works of H.P. Lovecraft at the impressionable age of 12. That was about around the same time my parents were taking me on countless vacations to Atlantic City, New Jersey. I even bought a copy of Lurker at the Threshold in a bookstore on the boardwalk. It was at this time that I started to write a small amount of horror fiction. Because of this I associate HPL with that city. Those towering hotels strike me as very sinister as does the ocean across the boardwalk. I also refuse to step foot in the ocean (though this is probably only partially due to Lovecraft’s watery horrors. Since I was a small child, I often worried about my father going too far into the ocean and the possibility of his being lost terrified me). This information is just background of my fearful nostalgia.

  So from age 12 I was influenced by the hints of cosmic horrors and the earthly cults that worshipped them. I think that was the part that scared me the most: that there was the possibility that seemingly normal people could harbor such infernal interests. These cult members could be of an intellectual sort, both fanatical and educated. To me, that was and is a frightening combination.

  I did not begin to write fiction seriously until I was in my mid 20s and by that time I knew I was not going to be able to emulate the prose style of Lovecraft despite my adoration of his work. But I never really thought I had to. I needed to have my own style, my own voice, and try to pass on that feeling of dread and cosmic otherness to the reader on my own terms. That’s what you are going to be reading in this book: stories and prose poems that encompass my own fears of personal, physical, and cosmic horrors.

  I am fully aware there are Lovecraftian purists who snub their noses at anything that deviates from their definition of what constitutes good Lovecraftian writing or anything that has the wee bit of sex or violence. This is the 21st century and for a genre (or sub-genre) to stay fresh, we need to let modern sensibilities seep through. But that is only my opinion.

  As a warning, there is one story in this collection that may offend some whose tastes are old-fashioned. That story is Nightmares of a Pampiniform Mind which was written for the AKLONOMICON anthology published by Aklo Press. Those with weak stomachs may feel free to skip that one. However, if you are indeed willing to read it, I ask that you do so with an open mind. You will not find anything extremely gratuitous. Instead, you will find a writer trying to write through the cosmic terror in his own voice, in his own way.

  Also, you will not find a copious number of Cthulhu Mythos references. There may be a handful of references in one story (Nightmares of a Pampiniform Mind) but as a whole, I have not followed suit with most mythos writers. Instead, I tried to channel the nightmares Lovecraft (and other Lovecraftian writers) has given me into something personal.

  Well, here we go….into the ocean I am terrified of, into the cosmic nightmares I truly know exist.

  Jordan Krall, East Brunswick, 2012

  WE SHOUT OUR OMENS

  Our shouting does not open the gates for there are no gates. Our pleading does not pave the way for there is no way. Our hearts do not beat for the universe for there is no universe and we have no hearts.

  As our voices lay like concrete upon the weakening foundation of our father’s homestead, we realize the prices we will have to pay are astronomical. Still, the omens we speak, the ones we shout and declare, are simple ripples in the pond of our insignificance.

  But we still have the omens.

  They are our own. They are ours to keep locked within our wooden skulls, the skulls some have opened to reveal our brains and count the rings. Our brains, those simple grey kites confused in the wind, playing pretend in morbid minstrel shows: pockmarked dolls spitting and swearing for the amusement of those tourists brave, or bored, enough to stop and stare at us.

  Our brains tell us our omens are true, but blanketed in false starts and illusionary symbols. We cannot stutter forever…despite our tongues that are stiffened and paralyzed by fear of the inevitable.

  Our omens must be true.

  Our own grey matter magick would not deceive us.

  Our speech is lost in the heavy breath of those oblivious deities we’ve ignored, those deities who have despised us and our infantile projections, expectations, and rebirth. But our omens must be true for they have brought us here.

  They have brought us back to the womb.

  Our omens must be true.

  WHY OUR FATHER LEFT US

  It began with a visit to the doctor and ended with a trip to the moon.

  Of course, our father was scheduled to go to the moon well before his visit to the doctor. But that appointment is what led him to believe that I, his only son, was the cause of his long dormant insanity that had begun to manifest itself in his erratic behavior. You may not have noticed this behavior because your relationship with him has been strained over the years but if you had been here, you would have seen it: his reading books in languages he did not understand, ignoring life long friends he encountered on the street, dressing in clothing that looked more eighteenth century than twenty-first. These are the things he did in your absence.

  And he blamed all of it on me.

  It was gradual, this blaming, and if I had known what was to happen, I wouldn’t have even driven father to his doctor’s appointment. If I had known this so-called professional physician was going to reinforce or encourage the paranoid mental processes of our father, I would have chosen another one. Why should I take the blame for the disease of another person? It is clear his condition was a latent one, gathering momentum throughout his life, before my birth and through his marriage to our mother. Why should it be the son who is responsible for the father’s mental and physical failures?

  But I am not one to complain. I can only make observations.

  Before his departure to the moon, father mailed me a large black envelope which contained six hundred and five type-written pages. I have no doubt he typed them up all himself on that archaic little typewriter mother had gotten him for an anniversary gift so many years ago.

  The paper he had used was thin, almost translucent and apparently he did not believe in traditional margins as the words came a quarter of an inch to the edges of the paper as if he needed to squeeze in as much as on the skin-like pa
per as possible.

  You probably want to know what our father had typed but I cannot sum the content up without dizzying myself into some manic state of untranslatable insanity. He had typed up English words, yes, but in such a blasphemous combination, a hypnotic code of syllables and punctuation that was exhausting to read. I could not finish it because I imagined father laughing to himself as he thought of my perusing his six hundred and five page declaration of blame and I was unwilling to give him the satisfaction.

  I threw the manuscript in the trash. If he was to ask me where the pages were, I was planning to tell him I sent it to the moon, that it was waiting for him there. I am sure he would not have appreciated my sense of humor.

  But he never did ask about it.

  The day before he was to launch, though, he telephoned me.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, son.”

  “I know.”

  “You have anything to say?”

  “You called me. Do you have anything to say?”

  No response.

  Then I said, “I hope you have a safe flight.” But I really didn’t mean it. I hadn’t cared either way.

  “No flight is ever safe,” he said.

  “Well then…”

  “But you could apologize.”

  “Apologize for what?”

  A heavy sigh from father.

  “For what?” I repeated my question even though I knew what I needed to apologize for.

  “There’s iron at the core of the moon, more than was previously thought, I mean. Oceans, too, magma, something like pyramidal faces. I’m going to be seeing it all. I’m going to study them.”

  “Do I need to know this? Will this help me?”

  “Nothing will help you, son.”

  “So why tell me?”

  “Because I have nothing else to say to you. Nothing at all, son.”

  Then he hung up the phone.

  I did not watch the launch on television the next day but I dreamt about it. I dreamt my father went up there alone. He was dressed not for space but for some semi-formal affair. His hair was slicked back and his mustache neatly trimmed. He had used some extremely pungent mouthwash that made my dream-eyes water. When he reached the moon, he explored a crater and found the black envelope containing the manuscript he had sent to me. He chuckled and read it aloud in my dream and I was forced to listen to every word.

  The following day I made an appointment with my father’s doctor. I see him this evening, actually. I hope I can get to the bottom of this. I will insist the doctor explain himself, to explain my father’s condition and why I was to blame. If not, then I don’t know what I’ll do.

  Truly, I do not know what I will do.

  A REPTANT HELL

  I. Revulsions of the Kyphotic

  Before he could speak his father’s name, Lucasse needed to down a glass of cold milk and alcohol. The combination of liquids soothed his chest, stomach, and bowels where it then exited in a very brief but loud fecal exorcism. During that process, he was able to utter the word that was the closest thing to a curse that was ever expelled from Lucasse’s lips.

  “Maurent.”

  There. He said it. He spoke it into the broken air. He spoke it into the corner of his room, the corner where the wallpaper was stripped away by the insects and where layers stains of unknown origin combined to form abstract pornography.

  Lucasse waited.

  He waited for no specific result, no specific end to his ongoing turmoil. Every incident in the past had been different, every result a separate personal cataclysm independent from the last yet related by a similar set-up: the milk and alcohol ritual. An outsider would not have thought each episode to be linked but Lucasse knew better. He knew the truth.

  Or rather the truth he wanted to believe: that his father’s eyes would come back to look after him.

  For years Lucasse had been a guest in his Aunt Eurice’s home in a town he had never heard of before coming to visit. The name of the town was generic and one Lucasse had a difficult time remembering. In fact, there were times he had suspected the town did not even exist prior to his arrival as if it had been invented simply to accommodate his needs. Lucasse normally shrugged off that arrogance until the next time he took a walk around the town and felt that same feeling of newness that was out of place in a town that looked so ancient, so colonial. Most of the buildings were supposedly built two centuries ago yet they held a fresh presence, an almost psychic weight of modernity that should have been alien to such structures.

  Lucasse had once taken a walk through a small patch of woods that led to a large farm house. Nothing seemed peculiar until he walked alongside the house and felt a severe pain in his temple. At first he thought it was the sunlight piercing his eyes but realized the sun was hidden by a bulbous cloud like a child hiding from its mother. As the mystery of the pain swirled in his head, all sounds of nature ceased. It was then that Lucasse knew it was the house itself that had somehow struck him. It was the house that was telling Lucasse it was not what it seemed to be. It was not an old house despite its appearance and its half-page of faux history in the brochure available at the town hall. Through the giving of pain it was spilling its ancient secrets, a newborn revealing its true nature through anguished howling out of a mouth of blood. The house was a cranky newborn made of wood and paint and its primal cries had pierced Lucasse, causing the pain in his head. After walking around to the back of the farmhouse, he decided to knock on the door to see if anyone lived there who could provide him with answers. If they couldn’t offer that, then maybe they’d give him a drink of water or perhaps, if they were liberal about such things, a small drink of alcohol.

  Three knocks on the door brought nothing but a wind chime’s weak song despite his feeling no wind. Lucasse opened the screen door and stepped into the porch. It smelt of moss and blown-out candles. Magazines were strewn across the floor. All of the titles had been cleanly cut off with a razor. Lucasse crouched down to pick one of them up but found it stuck to the floor by a yellowish gummy substance.

  He wiped his fingers on his shirt and stood up.

  The door to the interior of the house opened on its own, revealing a tenebrous chamber that was nothing like the inside of any house Lucasse had ever known. It was more like what he imagined a stomach of a whale would look like: humid, dank, and dark with swollen shadows that moved in waves.

  “Hello?” he said to the blackness.

  No voice answered. There was only the chimes again, brief and weak but sinister in a way only soft sounds could be, like the footsteps of a home invader or the sharpening of a butcher’s blade.

  “Anyone here?” he said. “I was just wondering if I could have a drink. I’ve been walking for a long time.”

  No answer.

  But the shadows at the heart of the room started to spread, making everything darker. Lucasse didn’t think that was possible: shadow within shadow within shadow within an even darker shadow. An infinite black.

  Then he found himself lying on the couch with an icepack on his forehead.

  “Where am I?”

  A voice from behind him said, “You’re home.”

  It was his Aunt Eurice. This was her house.

  The shadows above him swayed with the sound of chimes.

  “I’ll show you to your room,” Aunt Eurice said.

  That is when Lucasse fell asleep.

  II. Once When the Sky was Outnumbered

  There was only one park in town and Roux spent most of his time there. Though some citizens enjoyed taking walks, flying kites, or playing with their children, Roux could usually be found in the park reading a book on one of the wooden benches.

  Before leaving his house to go to the park, Roux would run his hands along his many shelves and take a book at random. He needed it to be random. In fact, every night he rearranged the books on the shelves while keeping his eyes closed. Making decisions was difficult for Roux and so he decided to let chance dictate what it was that he read. />
  Book reading was not the only thing chance dictated. Roux’s meals were chosen at random from random menus from various eateries that delivered to his home. Roux did not want to have the responsibility associated with such decisions. If a decision was poor, he’d rather be angry at the silent, allusive god called Chance than at himself.

  On this particular morning he was sitting on a bench reading a book on the history of industrial parks. He hadn’t even remembered purchasing the book yet he must have since it had been sitting on his shelf. He had never received a book as a gift even when he had family who would be so inclined to present him with such an item. Roux concluded he must have bought it during one of his rare book-buying binges during which he would grab the first few books from a random shelf and pay for them in a frantic display of monetary irresponsibility. Still, he was surprised he hadn’t remembered bringing such a title home. Oh well, he thought, it was surely just as good as the rest of them.

  It wasn’t a particularly sunny day nor could it really be considered cloudy. It was, Roux thought, somewhere in between the two. The air was neither warm nor cool. It was as if the air came from a yet undiscovered season. No wind blew through the park; it was a morning of stillness and Roux was terrified.

  He looked down at his book. The words on the page were jumbled. They were begging for wind, begging for something to move it away from Roux’s hands which were too smooth, too unused. The letters, which were previously all English, had somehow been transformed into insidious shapes and sigils foreign to any alphabet Roux had ever seen.

  Roux knew the book wanted to disown him. It had altered itself (or had let itself become altered by some outside force invisible to Roux) just to distance itself from him. The book had become an outsider in his hands.