Return of the Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror Read online

  RETURN OF THE OLD ONES: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror © 2017 Dark Regions Press, LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events or organizations in it are products of the author’s imaginations or used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved.

  Not with a bang, but a scream © 2016 Brian M. Sammons

  Around the Corner © 2016 Jeffrey Thomas

  Tick Tock © 2016 Don Webb

  Causality Revelation © 2016 Glynn Owen Barrass

  The Hidden © 2016 Scott T. Goudsward

  The Gentleman Caller © 2016 Lucy A. Snyder

  Scratching from the Outer Darkness © 2016 Tim Curran

  Messages from a Dark Deity © 2016 Stephen Mark Rainey

  Time Flies © 2016 Pete Rawlik

  Sorrow Road © 2016 Tim Waggoner

  The Call of the Deep © 2016 William Meikle

  Howling Synchronicities © 2016 Konstantine Paradias

  Chimera © 2016 Sam Gafford

  The Last Night on Earth © 2016 Edward Morris

  The Incessant Drone © 2016 Neil Baker

  Breaking Point © 2016 Sam Stone

  The Allclear © 2016 Edward M. Erdelac

  The Keeper of Memory © 2016 Christine Morgan

  Shout / Kill / Revel / Repeat © 2016 by Scott R Jones

  Strangers Die Every Day © 2016 Cody Goodfellow

  Dark Regions Press, LLC

  P.O. Box 31022

  Portland, OR 97231

  United States of America

  www.darkregions.com

  Edited by Brian M. Sammons

  Cover image and design © 2016 by Vincent Chong

  Interior illustration © 2017 by M. Wayne Miller

  Interior design by Cyrus Wraith Walker

  First Trade-eBook Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-62641-239-2

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Not with a bang, but a scream – Brian M. Sammons

  In the Before Times

  Around the Corner – Jeffrey Thomas

  Tick Tock – Don Webb

  Causality Revelation – Glynn Owen Barrass

  The Hidden – Scott T. Goudsward

  The Gentleman Caller – Lucy A. Snyder

  Scratching from the Outer Darkness – Tim Curran

  Messages from a Dark Deity – Stephen Mark Rainey

  Where Were You When the World Ended?

  Time Flies – Pete Rawlik

  Sorrow Road – Tim Waggoner

  The Call of the Deep – William Meikle

  Howling Synchronicities – Konstantine Paradias

  Chimera – Sam Gafford

  The Last Night on Earth – Edward Morris

  The Incessant Drone – Neil Baker

  Life in the Shadow of Living Gods

  Breaking Point – Sam Stone

  The Allclear – Edward M. Erdelac

  The Keeper of Memory – Christine Morgan

  Shout / Kill / Revel / Repeat – Scott R Jones

  Strangers Die Every Day – Cody Goodfellow

  Contributor Bios

  NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A SCREAM

  Brian M. Sammons

  “The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.”

  —H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror.”

  That quote is where the idea for this book began. The Old Ones, the undying, cosmic entities that H.P. Lovecraft gave birth to, and other authors would expand upon, in what would one day be known as the Cthulhu Mythos, have captivated my imagination since I first read about them. They are titanic, beyond comprehension, eternal, and inevitable. Because they are so truly alien to us, their motives are unfathomable and that adds to their horror. You have no idea where they’re coming from. Unlike the Devil, they’re not in a cosmic chess match with the Almighty for our souls. That doesn’t stop the cults that worship them like gods from sacrificing victims in their name. Unlike raging beasts, they don’t want to consume us out of hunger, as they are beyond such petty physical concerns. That doesn’t mean they won’t gobble a few people down just because they enjoy the taste. They don’t kill for sick, sadistic pleasure like a psychopath, for if the Old Ones have any emotions at all—and that is debatable—they are certainly deeper and more complex than any that we can relate to. Although they do seem to have other baser impulses that they indulge in from time to time, as Lavinia Whateley could attest to. But even then there seems to be purpose in their actions. Every action a step forward in some grand plan. Whatever could that be?

  And the Old Ones shall be.

  Unlike many horrors in fiction, the Old Ones can’t be beaten or escaped. Death and taxes have nothing on these immortal beings. At best humanity can only delay their inevitable return, only slightly from their point of view, and then only at great cost. They are more than a force of nature; they are that mysterious force behind nature that we think we understand, but when we’re honest with ourselves we admit that we do not. Cannot. Not really. The Old Ones are beyond us in every way imaginable. And they. Will. Return.

  While I love horror fiction in many forms and flavors, my favorite kind of terror tales are the ones about inescapable horror. If the family moving into the haunted house only heeded the signs and “got out” their ordeal would be over. If the teens at the summer camp trusted their instincts and didn’t go off alone to investigate a strange noise, the masked slasher would never get them. If people facing vampires only acted during the day. If those being stalked by a werewolf would only believe “those old stories” sooner rather than later and get some silver. If the kids at the prom hadn’t been assholes toward the weird, creepy girl with the massive telekinetic powers. But there is no such scenario for getting out alive and well when dealing with the Old Ones. One day, they will return, and then that’s it for humanity or, at the very least, life as we know it. Sure, by great hardship and sacrifice you may postpone that day for a little while, but it’s still going to happen. There will come a time when the Stars are Right, and when that happens.…

  Well, that’s what I wanted to explore with Return of the Old Ones, and I wanted to look at all aspects of it. So I began with: What led up to that final day of reckoning? What were the signs? Who played a part, however small, in the ushering-in of a new age, and who tried to oppose it, however ineffectually? Was there a moment when humanity could have once again delayed their own demise for a few more years and failed to act? Was this the last few ticks of the great cosmic clock before the Stars were once again Right?

  Then I wanted to look at that fateful day when the world shook, the wall between realities crumbled, and the Old Ones stepped through and returned for once and for all. What would people do in the face of such a momentous event? Would mankind go gentle into that not-so-good night, or would they rage against it? Would humanity come together at last or, more predictably, turn on itself in one last orgy of fear, hate, and violence? And then there were the individual stories I wanted explored. The “Where were you when …” moments that would go unremembered in whatever future that was to follow.

  What of that future nightmare life would become after the Old Ones returned? Who would survive? How would they survive? In addition to the more usual post-apocalyptic survival stories, how would having living “gods” walking the face of the Earth affect people mentally? Spiritually? Faith, one of the things humanity could always turn to in time of crises, would be shaken to the core, gone, and redefined. Would the world as
it once was become myth? Just tales parents living in the dark shadows of uncaring deities would tell their children to give them some glimmer of hope? Would half-remembered truths that the world wasn’t always this way and half-believed lies that one day things would get better be the new bedtime stories? And for those that did live in the new world, what price would they pay for existence? What bargains would they make with their new overlords? How would mankind have to evolve when the Old Ones returned, and would they still be recognizable as humanity?

  Questions. So many questions. I asked those questions to some of the best authors writing in weird and horror fiction today, and I was amazed by the answers they gave me. Each told their own unique tale of cosmic apocalypse. Each had their one take on which Old Ones would come back first, how they would breach the boundaries between their world and ours, and what would be the aftermath. For every scenario I could have thought of, I received a multitude of others that never occurred to me. Some were as black as the darkness between the stars. Some offered the faintest glimmer of hope, something to cling tightly to, something worth fighting for.

  Here are those answers, those stories. Nineteen very different takes on what happened on the days before, the day of, and all the days that followed the Return of the Old Ones.

  Brian M. Sammons

  March 12, 2016

  In the Before Times

  AROUND THE CORNER

  JEFFREY THOMAS

  Coming in from the summer glare outside, the darkness within Unit 3 of the Trinity Village Apartments was like having a black cloak thrown over his head. A vague purplish afterimage, like a negative impression of light, throbbed in the darkness like a great jellyfish pulsing at the bottom of the sea. It didn’t help that Franklin was suffering a throbbing headache from having had too much to drink last night, it having been Friday. Though, drink or no drink, these headaches had been pretty frequent lately, for the past couple of weeks occurring just about every other day. He remembered having endured debilitating headaches as a kid, though it was one of the few things he recalled from his childhood.

  The smells of the building’s hallway, a mix of food cooking behind the closed doors that lined it and industrial-strength carpet cleaner, didn’t do much for his headache, either. Muted bass-heavy music and TV firefights provided an aural complement to the miasma.

  Before his vision adjusted to the sudden contrast of subterranean gloom, he detected a low muttering close by, like the forlorn whispering of a ghost. Franklin turned toward it, and from out of the murk a human shape took form. A diminutive, elderly white woman stood in front of the elevator, poking its button and murmuring to herself fretfully, all the while casting nervous glances at Franklin as she no doubt had been doing since the moment he entered the hallway. One would think he was the first African American man she had ever seen, though that could hardly be the case at Trinity Village. He vaguely recalled having seen her before, but if so he hadn’t paid her much mind.

  “Not working?” he said to the woman. Though he lived on the third floor he seldom used the elevator himself, even when he carried a fistful of plastic shopping bags from the market as he did now. He didn’t spend his lunch breaks in the company gym just so he could ride elevators when he didn’t need them.

  “No,” the old woman said in a childishly self-pitying tone. “It won’t open.”

  Franklin strode to the elevator and pushed its call button himself. “Looks like it’s stuck at the top floor.”

  “That’s where I live.” She looked down at her two-wheeled folding shopping cart, which was laden with plastic bags of her own, and moaned piteously. “Ohhh … what am I going to do?”

  “Fourth floor, huh?” Franklin said. “I’ll bring that up for you, but can you climb up there okay?”

  “Ohhh … I’ll try, I guess.”

  They entered the stairwell beside the elevator and proceeded upstairs slowly, Franklin carrying his own bags in one hand and dragging the cart after him one jouncing step at a time. “God damn,” he said under his breath. He had told the old woman to go first and she kept looking back at him as if she expected him to suddenly rush back downstairs, claiming her supplies as his own. When they reached the third floor he said, “Let’s just wait here a sec so I can drop off my groceries. It’ll be easier.” He left her cart beside her on the landing, jogged down to his own door, unlocked it and left his bags just inside, then returned to the woman so they could mount the next flight. This time, instead of dragging the cart, he picked it up and carried it in both arms. When they reached the long, dimly-lit hallway of the top floor he set it down on its wheels again.

  The woman was wheezing and mumbling to herself, eyes closed and bracing one hand against a wall bearing the faded traces of graffiti that had been inadequately scrubbed and painted over. “Hey,” Franklin said to her, “you okay, there?”

  She cracked her eyes and started a little as if seeing him for the first time. Finally, she pointed. “The last door.”

  “We’re almost there, then.” He continued pulling the cart for her and forced himself to walk ploddingly to remain at her side as she shuffled along. The wheels squeaked as if complaining after their ordeal on all those steps.

  The old woman had begun scanning the apartment numbers on the right side of the hallway as they passed, her face scrunched in confusion. She stopped once, abruptly, to look back over her shoulder, then at a door on the left side of the corridor, then resumed walking. Seeing this, Franklin asked, “Are you sure you’re in the right building, ma’am? This is Unit 3. Did you want 1 or 2?”

  “I know what building I live in,” she groused. “But I think someone moved the numbers on these damn doors.” She stopped again, at the last door on the right. “This should be my apartment,” she said. “10D!”

  The number stenciled in gold on the dung brown door was 8D … D referring to the fourth floor. Franklin knew there were ten apartments on each of the four floors of the three buildings that made up Trinity Village, for a total of one hundred and twenty apartments, though there were one, two, and three bedroom units. His had only one bedroom, as he and Jess had never had children and now even Jess was gone.

  “Hang on,” Franklin said, abandoning the cart for a moment and continuing a few steps further. Just ahead, the hallway took a ninety-degree turn to the right. Coming to this corner, he entered a little dead end. It didn’t have an equivalent on the third floor or he’d have seen it, since his apartment was 9C, the last door on the left. This unlit corner had an oddly angled ceiling such as one might find in an attic, and he supposed that was because they were just under the building’s roof. The tapered, folded look of the ceiling and walls reminded him, oddly, of paper airplanes he had made as a boy, or of origami. The smell here was intense and unpleasant—maybe from some dish the woman had burned recently, such as fish—and it aggravated his headache, giving it a sharp nudge like a baby kicking in the womb.

  Two doors stood close together along the inner wall just around this corner. The nearer of the pair bore the number 10D. The other was a metal door stenciled EXIT. Each floor, according to code, had to provide two means of escape should a fire break out. He never used the back stairs himself, though, as the residents’ parking lot and even the trash dumpster were at the front of Unit 3. The ceiling slanted so close to this exit that he figured the door must barely clear it when it was opened.

  Franklin poked his head out from the miniature hallway and gestured for the woman to join him. “Here you go, ma’am … it’s right here.”

  “What?” She waddled over suspiciously, perhaps afraid he meant to lure her into an attack. Holding back a few steps, she grimaced at the number on the door as he pointed to it. “That’s not my apartment!” she protested.

  “Ma’am, you got your keys on you, right? Just try it.”

  He backed out of the bent little section of corridor to give her room as she drew close to the door and dug a keychain out of the pocket of her house dress. She inserted a key, the lo
ck clicked, and the door swung inward. The woman pushed it in further warily, as if still expecting some sort of wired booby-trap to go off. Meanwhile, Franklin retrieved her cart and brought it to her.

  “So … your place, right?”

  “It looks like it,” the old woman said, but she didn’t sound convinced. She reached back and took the handle of her cart, her gaze so fixed on the interior of the apartment that she never looked back to thank him. Her door creaked shut and locked from the inside.

  Franklin sighed and turned away, and as he did so found himself facing another woman, standing in another doorway: that of apartment 9D in the opposite wall. The apartment just above his. This woman, though also short in stature, was much younger. This woman he knew for sure he’d never seen before, because she was attractive and he’d have remembered her. He took her to be Mexican or from Central America, with lustrous black hair and oversized dark eyes that were capped with sexily drooping lids. The pupils of her eyes were dilated like twin eclipsed suns, their whites very red, and he suspected she’d been smoking weed though he didn’t smell it on her. Still all he smelled was that stench like burnt fish.

  When he met her gaze she giggled, and he took that to mean she’d witnessed his exchange with the elderly woman from 10D. He grinned and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Pretty crazy, huh? I think she must have that Oldtimer’s Disease.”

  “You shouldn’t make fun of her,” the young woman said. Her voice was vaguely accented. “I’ll bet you’ve forgotten some important things in your life, too.”

  Franklin stared at her for several seconds. She had to be new here and couldn’t possibly know anything personal about him; even his longtime neighbors knew nothing of his history. She couldn’t have meant that statement in the way he had heard it. He regained his smile and said, “You kidding me? When I’m her age I’ll be lucky if I know my own name. By the way, it’s Franklin.” He extended his hand.