Here’s a Sneak Peek at “Stairway to Hell”

Pierce Mostyn fighting inter-dimensional beings. Photo from a secret  OUP  file.

HP Lovecraft never made his living by writing. For one, he simply didn’t write enough. And for two, he had issues with writing for money. Consequently, a number of his stories were published in essentially fanzines, the amateur press, for which he didn’t get paid.

For all of his adult life Lovecraft lived in, as he called it, “genteel poverty”. Towards the end of his life, however, he offered his services to hopeful authors in order to make a few bucks. He would edit other writer’s stories, or ghostwrite  stories for them.

“The Mound” was a story that Lovecraft wrote for Zealia Bishop from an idea she gave him. It is most assuredly not one of his better efforts, but it certainly doesn’t qualify as trash either.

I like how Lovecraft turned Bishop’s rather ho-hum ghost story idea into a Cthulhu Mythos tale. And by setting the story in a subterranean world he really hooked me, because I’m a sucker for subterranean world stories.

Lovecraft’s story became the inspiration for the second Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation: Stairway to Hell, which will hit the virtual bookstores in late February.

In preparation for Stairway to Hell’s launch, I thought I’d give you a sneak peek.

Pierce Mostyn and his team are investigating an ancient tunnel, with strangely grotesque carvings and mysterious hieroglyphs. And then… Well, read on!

Jones started to speak and Mostyn held his hand up to silence him. After a moment, he asked, “You hear that?”

“Yeah, it sounds like the slapping of bare feet on stone.”

“I think company’s coming. C’mon!”

Mostyn ran back to the chamber, Jones following. He burst into the room. “Everyone, back into the tunnel! Company’s coming!”

In a mad scramble, soldiers and scientists rushed back the way they’d come. Mostyn called out, “Gibson, Tanner, Michelson, Ellis, you have the firepower. You’ll be in the mouth of the tunnel. Jones and I will be behind you. Pettigrew and Grundseth, you’re the rear guard. Listen up! If they attack and we can’t hold them, the rest of you retreat. Get the hell out of here and back to the surface. Tell Obermaier to seal the stairway. Now get down, everyone!”

The team was in position in the tunnel and waited for whoever it was that was coming. They didn’t have long to wait. Shambling into the chamber was a horde of beings, for human would be too generous a term for them.

Perhaps they’d once been human, but no human has two heads, or three legs, or five arms, or seven eyes. And no human has no head or the body of a four-legged animal. What was also apparent, was that they were ready for combat. In their hands were an array of spears, bows and arrows, swords, and maces.

Slezak screamed and panicked, thrashing about in an attempt to flee. It took both Zink and Baker to get her under control.

Mostyn, in a quiet voice said, “Tanner, get ready. Those, I’m guessing, are y’m-bhi. Think of them as being like zombies.”

“Got it, sir,” Tanner answered, and got his flamethrower ready.

To the group of beings in the chamber, Mostyn called out, “We mean no harm. I would like to speak to your leader.”

There was no initial response, then after a few moments up came a bow with an arrow nocked to the string. Mostyn yelled, “Tanner, now!”

There was a click and then a stream of fire shot out of the barrel of the flamethrower, cutting through the zombie-like creatures, and hitting the opposite wall. PFC Tanner swung the barrel and, in the ten seconds that the igniter cartridge was burning, he’d reduced the living dead to a pile of smoking and charred flesh. He emptied the burnt out cartridge and put in a fresh one.

In a matter of moments, another hoard of the zombie-like creatures poured into the chamber and Tanner’s flamethrower spewed out another wall of fire that reduced the ambulatory dead to a pile of smoldering flesh and bones.

“How many more of those things are there?” Corporal Ellis muttered.

Tanner looked back. “I don’t know, Corporal, but I’m almost out of fuel.”

“The spirits! The spirits!” Beames yelled.

“Fire, Gibson! Fire!” Mostyn ordered.

“Where? I don’t see anything.” Gibson’s voice was shaking.

“Arc it!” Mostyn yelled.

She flipped the switch, the sonic disruptor powered up, and she pulled the trigger as fast as she could, swinging the big weapon in an arc across the chamber.

“Beames! Did she get them?” Mostyn asked.

“They’re gone,” Beames replied.

“Okay, people, let’s get out of here,” Mostyn commanded. “Back the way we came. And double-time it.”

Thirteen people took off running back up the corridor. Suddenly Private First Class Pettigrew screamed, “They’re here!” And both she and PFC Grundseth opened fire.

Mostyn pushed his way to what was now the front of the column. Seven bodies lay in the tunnel.

“They just appeared out of nowhere,” Grundseth said.

Mostyn heard behind him the whine of the sonic disruptor and the crack of a pistol. In front of him a half-dozen figures materialized and in a second they were cut down by Pettigrew and Grundseth.

From the back of the column, came the whoosh of the flamethrower and then the whine of the disruptor.

More figures materialized in front of the column and they were quickly cut down by Pettigrew and Grundseth.

“Come on! Let’s move it!” Mostyn yelled, and took off at a run up the tunnel with Pettigrew, Grundseth, and the rest of his team following.

Pistol and rifle fire came from behind and up ahead a large group suddenly materialized. Pettigrew and Grundseth emptied their magazines and still more people materialized in front of Mostyn’s team, blocking their retreat.

Ellis shouted, “The flamethrower’s empty, there’s no more charge for the disruptor, and we have ghosts up our ass. Dozens of them!”

Mostyn looked back and saw the partially de-materialized beings. They were clearly visible, but there was a filmy translucent quality about them. He turned around and saw the very large group of very physical men in front of him and then they were yelling and screaming as they charged.

Grundseth and Pettigrew got their rifles reloaded, but not before the attackers were on them and they were quickly overpowered. Mostyn threw a punch and caught one of the attackers before he could use his club. He put his head down and barreled into a man, who went down. Mostyn was on top of him and grabbed his club, using it to block a slash from a sword.

Suddenly there was only Mostyn, with half a dozen sword points mere inches from his chest.

I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into the next Pierce Mostyn adventure. Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

The Fourth Wall, or Secondary Belief

Pierce Mostyn trying to save his team from the denizens of Agate Bay.

Anyone familiar with drama knows about the Fourth Wall. It’s that invisible wall that separates the world of the play from the world of the audience. The Fourth Wall prevents the characters from knowing the audience exists, while letting the audience observe the world of the characters in the play.

In literature, this is known as Secondary Belief. The world of the story is separate from the world of the reader. And as long as the world of the story is believable — even though perhaps very different from the world of the reader — the reader will accept it and be entertained.

Magic acts, for example, work on this principle. The audience knows the woman is not cut in half, but accepts what it sees as real in order to be entertained.

In order for the Fourth Wall, or Secondary Belief, to work two things must happen:

• The writer must make the fictional world believable
• The audience/reader must accept the fictional world as believable.

The Burden of the Writer

How does the writer make the fictional world believable? That is the burden of the storyteller — to create a consistent world that, because of its consistency, is believable.

The operative word here is consistent.

For example, we know there are no such things as orcs, or hobbits, or elves, or a place called Middle Earth. However, JRR Tolkien created his world so that it was consistent and therefore appears real and believable to us. And we are thus entertained by the story.

The Burden of the Audience

The audience/reader knows when he or she reads a novel, or watches a movie, that the story or movie is fiction. It is not true. That is what it is called Primary Belief.

However, if the world comes across as realistic and consistent, and therefore believable, the audience/reader will choose to believe what is going on as though it is true. That is Secondary Belief.

If the writer fails to make the story completely believable, or consistent, the audience can choose to suspend disbelief in order to continue to be entertained.

However, once the audience can no longer suspend disbelief, the writer has completely failed.

The Storyteller’s Art

A good storyteller draws you in. Sometimes without you even fully knowing it.

Saki, in “Sredni Vashtar”, starts with a sickly boy, Conradin. Saki paints us a picture of Conradin that we find believable. Perhaps because the boy is like us. We learn of Conradin’s world and of his over protective aunt. And slowly, slowly we find ourselves on Conradin’s side in his struggle with his aunt — because it is also our struggle against authority. We believe because something similar has happened to us. The author has hooked us without our even knowing it.

But he couldn’t have done that if the world of the story wasn’t consistent and therefore believable.

A poor storyteller may hit all the plot points on the head and may pack the story with action on every page, but if the tale isn’t consistent within what we understand to be believable — we will feel the story to be artificial and not ring true. And sadly forgettable.

Recently I started reading a novel where the main character was bonded with some sort of sentient cat and even though they couldn’t stand each other they couldn’t separate because of their bond. That was difficult to believe, but I accepted it and continued reading.

But when the cat kills several people and the townsfolk just stand around and look at the dead bodies, don’t call the authorities, and don’t do anything against the cat and main character, who are outsiders, the writer lost me. Where is that a normal reaction to murder? Certainly not in my world.

In addition, the plotting was so wooden, mechanical, and obvious I found it too painful to continue. It was writing on par with a paint by numbers kit.

The key to telling a good story is consistency in the fictional world. There’s a reason for the old saying that fiction must be believable, whereas real life doesn’t.

We can except the inconsistencies in real life, even though they might not make sense, because that is how real life is. But we are intolerant of those same inconsistencies when it comes to fiction. The fictional world must hang together. It must be reasonable. That is just how we are.

The advantage of traditional publishing is that the editor at the publishing house will reject any manuscript that is unbelievable. We the reader are spared, for the most part, lousy stories. That isn't always the case, but mostly.

Indie authors have no such gatekeeper — other than their readers. Even if the author uses an editor, there is nothing to make the writer incorporate the editor’s suggestions.

The biggest failing I find among indie authors is that their storylines, characters, and the world of the story lack consistency. They simply aren’t believable. Sometimes I can suspend disbelief, but most of the time the books are just too bad to do so.

Therefore my advice to would-be authors is to make sure your characters are consistent with themselves, that there are no gaping holes in your fictional world (in other words, that your world is consistent), and that your storyline flows naturally and doesn’t appear to have been written by the numbers.

We readers want to believe. You writers, help us to believe by being consistent.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

Hey, look! Even Cthulhu is reading the Pierce Mostyn adventures! 

And you can too starting January 29.

Nightmare in Agate Bay-The Trailer

Nightmare in Agate Bay. Whatever happened to Minnesota Nice?

Agate Bay, Minnesota. A quiet little town on the north shore of Lake Superior. Or is it?

The US Office of Unidentified Phenomena has sent its best agent, Pierce Mostyn, and his team of investigators, to check out the rumors concerning the little hamlet.

Is it true there is a horrible disease afflicting the inhabitants? Or is it something more sinister?

Mostyn know nothing is as it seems. Nothing. Ever.

So what secret are the good folk of Agate Bay hiding? What threat does the sleepy little hamlet pose for the United States of America? And for planet Earth?

On January 29, 2018 you can find out.

Mostyn and Kemper fighting their way out of Agate Bay, Minnesota

HP Lovecraft and Pierce Mostyn - Part 3

Office of Unidentified Phenomena Logo

HP Lovecraft was the creator of the cosmic horror subgenre. I find cosmic horror much more terrifying than some crazy axe wielding maniac jumping out of a closet and chopping up someone.

We want to have value. Today’s educational system is busy trying to build children’s self-esteem. “We’re all winners.” “Everyone has value.” “You have a purpose.”

And while those are indeed lofty sentiments, in reality the children taught those sentiments are going to have a difficult time when they encounter their first selfish SOB out in the real world.

When I was in fifth grade, I lived in terror of the bullies who every recess when we were outside pantsed wallflowers such as myself. Those bullies didn’t give a fig about playing nice, or that everyone had value, or that everyone was a winner. They operated on a primeval level. Those who were stronger got their way. They were the winners.

Lovecraft’s point was no different. We humans sit on this speck of dirt and tell ourselves how important we are. That we have intrinsic value just because we’re human. However, the universe isn’t listening. And it isn’t listening because it doesn’t care. We don’t matter. It’s indifferent to us. We have as much value as the ball of ice orbiting our sun known as Haley’s Comet.

Everyone in the tiny Greek city-states was important (if you weren’t a slave, that is). When Alexander the Great suddenly expanded the world across a huge chunk of Asia, those same Greeks were suddenly faced with an identity crisis.

“Who am I in this huge new world?” they asked. The Epicurean and Stoic schools of philosophy arose in response to that question and attempted to provide answers.

Today we are faced with the same question. For the sake of literary convention, Lovecraft personified the universe’s indifference to us in The Great Old Ones. For Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos was an attack on religion and it’s false hope. And the irony should not be lost that Lovecraft gave The Great Old Ones worshipers.

Lovecraft was throwing down the gauntlet. All of our cherished beliefs are false. We have no objective meaning. We are living in a dream world if we think we do.

And the terror comes when we suddenly awake and are confronted with the meaninglessness of reality. That’s why I think The Great Old Ones and their minions are described as insanities, contrary to nature, blasphemous, and the like. They are contrary to everything that we think is normal.

Those bullies on my playground didn’t care about values or artificial constructs of behavior. They were contrary to everything that was considered normal behavior. If they could catch you, they would pants you. That was their reality. And their laughter at your pain and embarrassment was a reminder that the universe did not play fair and did not care.

Lovecraft’s heroes are basically helpless. They can do nothing to stop The Great Old Ones. All they can do is warn us that they are coming.

Pierce Mostyn, then, is not your typical Lovecraftian hero. He fights back against that cosmic indifference. He does so out of a sense of duty. Much like the Stoic who lives his life according to the principles of virtue and duty. Duty arises out of our being part of a whole, and we have obligations to that whole. Obligations that the virtuous person is bound to discharge.

Mostyn doesn’t see himself as helpless, even when facing an entity such as a shoggoth (one of those walking insanities that is a blasphemy of nature). He’s willing to admit there is a lot out there that we don’t understand. And maybe can never understand. He uses reason, and approaches the problems of life rationally. Not unlike the Stoics before him.

Dr Dotty Kemper, Mostyn’s main sidekick, on the other hand is a materialist. She believes science has all the answers. She’s a paranormal skeptic. It is science that replaces superstition with knowledge. Sometimes though she has a rough time of it, especially when science has no explanation.

In a sense, the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations aren’t pure cosmic horror. Because in the face of the universe’s indifference, and I do agree with Lovecraft on that, I think Marcus Aurelius provides us with a ready answer. Namely, that life is opinion. Or, if we expand the translation, life is what you make it to be.

I hope you enjoyed this little discussion of Lovecraft, cosmic horror, and Pierce Mostyn. The series, Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations, launches in 3 weeks on the 29th. So mark your calendars!

The emblem at the top of this post is the emblem of the Office of Unidentified Phenomena (OUP), which is part of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which is a child agency of the US Department of Homeland Security. But don’t Google it, or check Wikipedia. You won’t find it there. Maybe if you went to the dark web…

Comments are always welcome, and, until next time, happy reading!

Dr Dotty Kemper trying to prove the efficacy of this dimension's lead bullets and physical laws versus the physical properties of other dimensional beings.

HP Lovecraft and Pierce Mostyn - Part 2

Cosmic, or Lovecraftian, Horror

Cosmic horror is largely, if not solely, the creation of HP Lovecraft. Of whom Stephen King said he “has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”

There are certain themes that differentiate Lovecraft’s brand of horror from other horror subgenres. Let’s take a look at some of the key themes.

Humans Are Insignificant

It’s a big universe out there. And we don’t know even a fraction of it.  As Lovecraft commented often (and I’m paraphrasing), we are an insignificant species on a fly speck. And if there are in fact multiverses, then that fly speck just became innumerable times smaller.

Philosophically, Lovecraft was basically a mechanistic materialist. We exist, but that doesn’t mean we’re more important than anything else. In fact, the universe is indifferent to us. We aren’t objectively special. For Lovecraft, we definitely weren’t made in God’s image. There’s no God, for starters. Rather, he was inspired by the atheistic Epicureans and the theory of evolution.

Therefore, in the typical cosmic horror story there is little focus on characterization. The main character is usually the story’s narrator. We get to know something of him, although sometimes he’s an unreliable narrator.

The focus of the story is on the gradual revelation of that which is hiding behind the narrator’s (and our) illusion of reality. That which is greater than us and views us as we view ants on the sidewalk.

The Great Old Ones, at least for Lovecraft, didn’t actually exist. They were literary devices to convey our position in the vastness of the universe and that the universe doesn’t give a fig about us.

The Heroes Are Loners

The hero of the cosmic horror tale has affinities with the punk hero. He is socially isolated, and therefore frequently a loner. Occasionally an outcast. He is often reclusive, and possesses a scholarly bent.

This puts the cosmic horror hero in the unique position of being able to peel back the veneer of what we think is reality to see the real reality behind it. Often at the expense of his sanity.

Pessimism, or Indifference

Lovecraft insisted later in life that his philosophy was not pessimistic, but rather led one to indifference. A fine line there. Basically, though, there is nothing in the universe that cares about us or values us. We humans are alone on a tiny speck of dust. We are dwarfed by the vastness of space. The very vastnesses of which Whitman sang so positively and eloquently about. For Lovecraft, there is nothing positive about them.

In this, Lovecraft was very much in line with the ancient Greek Epicurean philosophy. The universe was simply chaos. It provides us nothing. We must focus on ourselves and find pleasure and happiness in intellectual pursuits away from the madding crowd.

The Great Old Ones of Lovecraft’s invention aren’t so much malignant or malevolent as that they just don’t give a fig about us. We are inconsequential to them.

However, to us their indifference might seem to be malevolent or evil. But in reality, like us, they just are. They’re doing their thing. If we suffer as a result, well, do we care about the ants we step on?

Therefore the hero in the cosmic horror tale is often incapable of doing much to thwart the cosmic forces ranged against him. The best he can do is warn us of the truth that is out there.

The Veneer of Reality

We live in a dream state, as it were. Lovecraft was fascinated by dream worlds. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath he postulates a parallel world only attainable by means of dreams.

Because we are in a dream, as it were, what we see and think to be reality isn’t in fact reality at all. It’s Dorothy in Oz. Only we see a nice old man until Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals the monster at the controls.

The real reality is too horrible for us to comprehend. In our dream state we believe we have value — when in reality we have no value at all. We have no significance in the universe. And by extension nothing else has any significance either.

That is the true terror of cosmic horror: the revelation and realization that we are living a lie. It is the literary portrayal of the Nietzschian coming to awareness of who and what we really are.

That realization is also the basis for the “leap of faith” to find meaning for our existence. Epicurus sought meaning in intellectual pleasure. Nietzsche sought meaning in the pursuit of art; that is, creativity. The Existentialists made that leap to whatever might have meaning for them as individuals. And argued that we do the same.

Not unlike the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius’s statement that “life is opinion”. That is, life is what we think it is. Although, for the Roman emperor, the statement was more an affirmation of the contemporary saying, It’s all in your ‘tude. Because Stoicism is inherently a much more positive philosophy.

Fear Of The Other

We have an innate fear of that which is not like us. This goes back to the very beginnings of the human species when we existed in family units and tribes. Anything that was not us, was to be viewed with suspicion — if not outright fear.

Lovecraft is frequently criticized today for being xenophobic and racist. By today’s standards he was — but in his own era I’m not so sure he was any different than most of his peers. There is a danger in judging the past by other than it’s own standards.

Even today, Western views of what constitutes xenophobia and racism are not universally shared. Which means the question must be asked, what makes Western views any more valid than any other views? That, though, is another discussion.

One thing is for sure — the xenophobia and racism we see in Lovecraft’s stories feeds on our own innate and latent fear of those people and things that are different from us and of our fear of the unknown in general. They feed on our own tribal mentality. The primeval us-them dynamic. The dynamic that made us who we are today: too often judgmental, critical, and suspicious. We and our opinions are good. Everyone else and there opinions are bad.

Throughout most of our history as a species, the tribal mentality allowed us to survive. The problem being that as we developed civilization, many of those survival traits became a hindrance to our working together in a genteel environment. Hence the creation of religious moral codes and cultural mores and folkways to control those “undesirable” traits.

As Will Durant noted, “Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, as hatred becomes respectable in war. Brutality and greed where once necessary in the struggle for existence, and are now ridiculous atavisms; men’s sins are not the result of his fall; they are the relics of his rise.” Do note that every vice may become respectable again. Something to think about.

In Lovecraft’s worldview, the Other consists of all the impersonal cosmic forces that exist. In his fiction, he personified these impersonal forces as The Great Old Ones. Inter- or Other-dimensional beings who have moved into our territory.

Just as we give little thought to mosquitoes, or gnats, or ants, so The Great Old Ones give little, if any, thought to us. To repeat, they aren’t so much malevolent, as they are indifferent to our existence and survival. Just as we are indifferent to the survival of mosquitoes, gnats, or ants.

Lovecraft is simply positing that cosmically speaking — we aren’t necessarily at the top of the food chain. Something to think about as we venture into outer space. Which was cleverly addressed in The Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”.

In light of the above, the Pierce Mostyn adventures may not be pure examples of cosmic horror. But we’ll look at that next week.

Comments are always welcome! And until next week, happy reading!