The Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations

 

Four years ago, back in 2017, I started writing the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series. The first book, Nightmare in Agate Bay, was published in January 2018.

I’d been watching the first season of The X-Files, and thought how cool it would be to mash-up the Cthulhu Mythos with The X-Files. And just like that, Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena was born.

The Pierce Mostyn series was an immediate hit, and it’s been my annual top seller since its introduction.

What is it about Pierce Mostyn and his cohorts that readers like?

I’m not big on surveys, questionnaires, and the like. To tell the truth, I’m just not big into data. But to answer the question, I took a look at what readers put in the reviews.

Here are some of the things that stuck out:

“entertaining and action packed”

“a charming, easy to read, creep-fest”

“contemporary and action-packed”

“keeps the reader on the edge”

“fun and exciting”

“non-stop action”

“tautly paced and elegantly plotted”

“The character development is detailed”

“fast-paced and the tension is great”

“all kinds of scary fun”

From those snippets, what stands out is the action, the suspense, and the fun factor. Those are what make Pierce Mostyn a top seller.

The fun factor kind of surprised me, but then I asked, Why?

The books are doggone fun to write. Apparently, my having all that fun writing comes right through the page and grabs the reader. Which is what we writers and readers want, isn’t it?

Well, the eighth Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation is live — and only 99¢ through the end of March. Now it’s your turn to get in on the fun, if you haven’t already.

In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness

Only 99¢ on Amazon!

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

In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness

 

Pierce Mostyn is back in an all new adventure! A creature feature extraordinaire: In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness.

I’ve been sharing snippets with the folk on my mailing list. If you want to get in on sneak peeks and exclusive never-before-published content, sign up for my VIP Horror Readers Club. Plus, you’ll get the exclusive novella, “The Feeder” — which is not available in stores.

And if you haven’t yet discovered Pierce Mostyn, take a look at the books and pick your monster!

This time around, Mostyn and his team are sent to Antarctica to investigate why a Russian base has suddenly gone silent. Once they find out why, Dr Rafe Bardon, the director of the Office of Unidentified Phenomena, sends them off to the subglacial Gamburtsev Mountains, also known as The Ghost Mountains. Because Dr Bardon thinks they fit the coordinates of the infamous Mountains of Madness.

Those familiar with the stories of HP Lovecraft will immediately recognize where the inspiration came for my story.

Lovecraft welcomed other writers to write in his Cthulhu Mythos universe. And many took him up on the invite, and many more continue to do so today.

I enjoy working in the Mythos. It’s a walk in a world where we are not at the top of the food chain. It’s a world where there are forces at work much bigger than we are. Beings to whom we are not unlike the ants on a sidewalk. Blithely stepped on without a second thought.

The universe of the Cthulhu Mythos puts humans in a place where we are not only not equal with nature, we are less than nature. It’s a universe that makes me stop and think about all of our petty squabbles. It makes me realize how, in the big picture, our troubles and problems are truly insignificant.

I’m looking at the 25th of March as the launch date of In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness. Stay tuned!

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

For the Weekend 9

This weekend is Halloween and I thought it appropriate to recommend something horribly spooky for your entertainment.

Crispian Thurlborn

Crispian is one of my favorite authors. If he writes it, I’ll read it. For this weekend, I recommend:

Exit. This is a slow burn chiller. Something like the twilight zone. Mysterious, with a shocking revelation at the end. Get the book at Amazon!

01134. We’ve never been so connected, yet we’ve never been so alone. We crave companionship and when we get it we’re on top of the world. When we lose it… A superb tale of psychological horror. On Amazon!

Cinder. Jill is a college student, and like all college students she needs money. Which means she takes the occasional babysitting job. And the job of watching the Comptons’s kid seems to be like any other. That is until those things desiring to ward of the chill of the coming winter make themselves known. Get it on Amazon!

Sign up for Crispian’s mailing list and get the terrifying short story “Wednesday’s Girl”.

Richard Schwindt

Richard is another author who writes outstanding fiction. If he writes it, I buy it. For this weekend, I want to draw your attention to:

Herkimer’s Nose. This was the first book I read by Richard and it’s still my favorite. A fabulous cast of characters, with lots of humor, terror, monsters, ghosts, and spies. A delightfully spooky tale, that’s at Amazon!

Tony Price: Confidential. Tony is a social worker and an amateur occult detective. If you like mysteries and monsters, this trilogy is for you. I loved it. Get it at Amazon!

Ottawa Confidential. This story is the Tony Price prequel. And very appropriate for Halloween. It’s about dogs. Well, not really. More like wolves. Well, not really that either. Just read it. You won’t regret it. At Amazon.

A Killing in Samana. Murder mystery meets occult detective. And we discover Richard’s other amateur sleuth, Chris Allard, knows Tony. Together, they solve an eerie murder case. Pick it up at Amazon.

R.H. Hale. Hale’s Church Mouse duo is an incredible work of fiction. The writing is literary, and some of the finest I’ve read. I don’t care for a lot of description, yet Hale’s descriptions mesmerize me. They set the mood and atmosphere, and establish the eerie Gothic quality that makes these books work so well.

Rona, the main character and narrator of the story, is exceedingly well-drawn. She is truly lifelike.

Sergei, the vampire and antagonist, is also very well-drawn. His character is richly complex. We hate him and we love him.

The Church Mouse duo easily makes my top ten list of recommended horror reads. They are novels you truly do want to read before you die.

Get Church Mouse: Memoir of a vampire’s servant at Amazon, along with Church Mouse - Book 2: The Change, also at Amazon.

Lastly, a bit of shameless self-promotion. Aside from my Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, I’ve published the following stories:

Do One Thing For Me. George is old and going senile. Beth isn’t what she appears to be, but George isn’t sure she’s even real. And then she makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Or can he? Get it at the Zon.

Ancient History. Two brothers with a history, and not a good history at that. But they’re getting older and maybe it’s time to mend things. Put things right. But the ghosts think otherwise. And as one reviewer wrote: “…the ending was a shocking twist I never saw coming!” On Amazon.

Metamorphosis. I love vampire stories. And this is my contribution, to date. Devon is sick and having a mid-life crisis. His solution? Become a vampire and leave the problems behind. But his minister, who is a vampire, convinces him otherwise. Or does he? At Amazon!

What the Next Day Brings. A tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, set in 1920s Vienna. Everyone of us makes choices. Sometimes out of desperation. And starving to death, that’s what Franz does. However, as we all know, such choices often hand us more than we bargained for. Also at Amazon.

Plenty of good reading for your Halloween weekend. Enjoy!

To Build a World

Worldbuilding, while often thought of as something only fantasy and science fiction writers need to do, is actually something all authors engage in.

The New York of Nero Wolfe isn’t exactly the New York that actually exists. It is a carefully constructed version that suits the storytelling of Rex Stout.

My Justinia Wright series is set in Minneapolis. But it is not quite the same Minneapolis that currently exists. The Minneapolis of Justinia Wright is a fictionalized version that suits the needs of the story.

The Pierce Mostyn series, although set in the present day, is a fictionalized version of today. The world building is much more subtle, than say Neverland, or Oz, or Barsoom, or Pellucidar, or any of the Star Trek worlds, but it is still worldbuilding.

This is because fiction is, well, to be honest, a lie. Stories are not reality. They’re entertainment. And to be successful entertainment they need to be lifelike, but not real life.

Take “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The setting is small-town America of the 1940s (the story was published in 1948). But it is no small town that actually existed then. What small town annually stoned to death one of its citizens? Jackson created a world that was mostly normal, save for that little part that wasn’t. Superbly horrific worldbuilding.

For Pierce Mostyn, while there is much that is “normal”, there is much that is not. There is much that is made up or borrowed from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Kathy Edens, in World-Building 101: How to construct an unforgettable universe for your fantasy or sci-fi story (published by ProWritingAid), gives us three rules of worldbuilding:

1. Creating a new world goes way beyond mere setting
2. Use other author’s worlds to inspire your own
3. Don’t make new world your story’s focus

In Pierce Mostyn, the setting is the contemporary world. However, it doesn’t stop there. Monsters exist. Weapons and devices exist in Mostyn’s world that don’t exist in ours. Geography is manipulated to suit the needs of the story. Pierce Mostyn’s world is one where monsters and terrifying aliens are alive and bent on our destruction, unbeknownst to the population at large.

To build Pierce Mostyn’s world, I borrowed from The X-Files and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos — and then added stuff from my imagination. The world may look a lot like our own, but it is as fantastical as Oz.

And while Mostyn and his team hunt monsters to save us from annihilation or enslavement, the stories ultimately deal with people and the larger issues of life. Cthulhu is as important as our reaction to him.

There are now 7 books in the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, with an 8th in the works, and a 9th on the drawing board.

I hope you enjoy reading about Mostyn and his world as much as I enjoy writing about them.

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

Flawed Heroes: Bah! Humbug!

Pierce Mostyn rides again in 7 days! I’m looking forward to the release of Book 7 in the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series. There’s nothing better than fighting monsters and bad guys and coming out on top.

The series is a combination of Cthulhu Mythos, creature feature, and action/adventure. And I have great fun writing the books. The series has also been my top seller since its introduction in 2018.

Lee Child wrote that he created Jack Reacher to be the opposite of the angst ridden and troubled main characters of detective and thriller fiction. He was tired of flawed characters. So Reacher doesn’t have any flaws. And because he’s the guy who beats up the playground bullies, he’s something of a superhero as well.

Quite accidentally, Mostyn is cut from the same cloth. Probably because the characters I enjoy most aren’t overly flawed. They might be quirky, but they don’t have flaws. Characters such as Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Holmes and Watson, Solomon Kane, Jules de Grandin, Hercule Poirot, and Philip Marlowe.

Perhaps because I see my own flaws all too clearly, I want my fictional heroes to be flawless. Quirks are okay. Delightful in fact. But flaws? I can do without them. Give me a hero who is just a bit larger than life.

If you haven’t read Pierce Mostyn, give the series a try! The books are at Amazon, and free with Kindle Unlimited.

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

Riffing on The X-Files

Since his debut in Nightmare In Agate Bay (January 2018), Pierce Mostyn and his paranormal investigations has been my bestselling series.

The genesis for the series was The X-Files. And while the overarching story arc of the TV series was about space aliens (a storyline very similar to the earlier TV series The Invaders), it was the “monster of the week” episodes that I found most interesting. I liked the concept of a government agent investigating those things that go bump in the night.

The biggest things that go bump in the night, IMO, are Cthulhu and his ilk. So it was only natural for me to mash up The X-Files concept with The Cthulhu Mythos, with the “monster of the week” idea finding its way into the sub-series with diabolical mastermind Valdis Damien van Dyne.

Van Dyne lets me play with the whole cryptid menagerie, much as the producers and writers did with The X-Files. Let’s face it — we like monsters. We like weird, paranormal critters and beings. And while the cosmic horror of Cthulhu and his fellow Old Ones is terrifying, there is nothing immediately scarier than a good old-fashioned monster. Hence, the perennial popularity of the “creature feature”.

On Monday, the 20th of July, you will be treated to a rare and unusual cryptid: the zuvembie. The creation of Robert E Howard, drawn from the spooky stories his grandmother told him. 

The zuvembie is a top-drawer creation, yet to my knowledge it only appeared once in the Howard oeuvre in the story “Pigeons from Hell”. I’m pleased that arch-villain Valdis Damien van Dyne learned the secret of the Black Brew and planned his zuvembie apocalypse. It will make COVID look like the common cold.

Make sure your hearing protection works, because you’re going to need it in two weeks.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy monster hunting!

Where Ideas Come From

The world is an amazing place. It is filled with unlimited stimuli for our senses and our minds.

Something so simple as the wind moving the pine tree in an impromptu dance can bring forth images from other times, other places. Or that pine in the wind can be a soothing balm for our eyes and mind.

To my way of thinking, the thing that separates a writer from a non-writer is the ability to take the thoughts, patterns, and images we experience around us and see a story in them. The non-writer simply experiences the world. The writer not only experiences, but sees the stories that are there.

For 30 years I worked in county government and hated it. Yet, that job provided me with the seed idea for my first mystery, Festival of Death, gave me experiences and information and insights that I’ve used in many poems, short stories, and novels.

One morning a sentence popped into my head: Today I killed a man and a woman. A provocative sentence that! Must’ve had a bad day at work! That sentence, though, grew into my post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophe The Rocheport Saga.

The job isn’t the only source of ideas, however. Story ideas are everywhere.

The Pierce Mostyn series has a genesis that goes back decades. In the early 70s I became a member of a Minneapolis-based horror and pulp fiction fan group. I met Donald Wandrei, Carl Jacobi, Weird Tales artist Jon Arfstrom, and Jack Koblas, who went on to became a noted regional historian and biographer.

That fan group also introduced me to The X-Files, although many years passed before I actually watched the show.

Then sometime in 2017, after watching a few episodes of The X-Files, I got the idea for a mash-up between The X-Files and the Cthulhu Mythos. I liked the idea of an FBI agent hunting monsters and aliens. And what’s not to like about Cthulhu and his ilk?

After that idea took hold, it was a simple matter of a few broad brushstrokes to create the Mostyn world, and I was in business. But what stories would I tell about Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena?

The first three Mostyn tales were heavily inspired by HP Lovecraft’s stories “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, “The Mound”, and “The Lurking Fear”.

The next Mostyn stories, however, drew inspiration from a variety of sources: Van Dyne’s Vampires from cryptozoology (the chupacabra and the Jersey Devil in particular); the seed idea for The Medusa Ritual came from the Heald/Lovecraft story “The Man of Stone” and the Medusa myth; Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” and the movie The Mummy gave me the launch pad for Demons in the Dunes; and the forth coming Van Dyne’s Zuvembies makes use of Robert E Howard’s creation which appeared in his story “Pigeons from Hell”.

There is nothing new under the sun, the writer of Ecclesiastes declared. And he’s right. Everything plays off of everything else. Someone may come up with a unique and memorable way to express the thought, but most likely the thought itself is not unique. Someone said or wrote something like it before.

All one has to have are the eyes to see the stories, the many stories, that are all around us. If you have those eyes, you’re a writer. If you don’t, perhaps you can learn.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy creating!

The Empty Quarter

One of the most lonely places on the planet is the Rub’ al Khali, or the Empty Quarter — that vast expanse of towering sand dunes that has an area greater in size than the country of France.

A few Bedouin tribes live on the edge of this immensely beautiful wasteland. Virtually nothing lives in the desert interior.

The Empty Quarter is part of the greater Arabian desert, which is the eastward continuation of the Sahara. And it is the setting for the newest Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation adventure.

For quite some time now I’ve been fascinated with the Empty Quarter. I’ve never been there, and at my age may never get there. But I have been to a place that will give you a little taste of the Rub’ al Khali. And that place is Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.

The dunes look like a great big pile of sand that some giant left behind. The sand covers about 30 square miles and are the tallest dunes in North America, towering upwards of 750 feet. They give one a hint as to what’s in store for them should they visit the Empty Quarter.

In writing Demons in the Dunes, I tried to give the reader a picture and feel for what it is like in the Empty Quarter. My main source book was Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed the area twice in the late 1940s.

Of course, Demons in the Dunes is fiction. A Lovecraftian-flavored adventure yarn that is perhaps closer to something Robert E Howard might have written than HPL. Regardless of influence, the story draws upon the legend and mystery of the lost city of Iram, adds a dollop of the Cthulhu Mythos, a bit of seasoning from The Mummy, and a whole lot of sauce from my overactive imagination.

You can get Demons in the Dunes here — and I truly hope you enjoy it. I’ve been told it’s the best Mostyn yet, and that makes me very happy.

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

Demons in the Dunes

Next week Pierce Mostyn and the OUP gang ride again, in another terrifyingly action-packed tale of cosmic horror.

The Rub’ al Khali, or the Empty Quarter, is a fascinating place. I find it almost as intriguing as Antarctica.

What makes the Rub’ al Khali so interesting? It is the largest sand desert in the world. It covers some 250,000 square miles of the southern Arabian Peninsula. The desert is larger than France and somewhat smaller than Texas.

This vast expanse of sand is home to the lost city of Iram, which is mentioned in the Qur’an, and may have been an important city in the ancient frankincense trade.

The Empty Quarter is the setting for Lovecraft’s story “The Nameless City”, and is also the setting for Demons in the Dunes, Pierce Mostyn’s newest adventure.

Did Lovecraft’s story play any part in the origin of Demons in the Dunes? It did. HPL’s story gave me the idea to set an adventure in the Empty Quarter, with Iram as the focal point.

However, the Nameless City of Lovecraft’s story is clearly not Iram. Consequently, the story line of Demons has no direct influence from Lovecraft. Although it is Lovecraftian to a degree.

Little is known about the actual city of Iram. It may have been located on the frankincense caravan route. Legend has it that it was built by giants to challenge God by creating a paradise on earth greater then God’s paradise. God, of course, destroyed the giants and the city.

Iram is called Iram of the Pillars, but we don’t know why. One Internet source, attributed mystical connections to the city. According to this view, Iram actually occupies several planes of existence, and, in accordance with the mystical position, an alternate reading of the city’s title is Iram of the Old Ones. No self-respecting Cthulhu Mythos aficionado can walk away from that tidbit of info and not have the cogs whirring in his brain!

Out of those seeds, Demons in the Dunes grew. I had great fun writing it. I hope you have great fun reading it.

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

Pierce Mostyn in The Medusa Ritual

Pierce Mostyn, that intrepid foe of the things that go bump in the night, last appeared in Van Dyne’s Vampires, published October of last year.

Next week he will appear in a new adventure, his fifth: The Medusa Ritual.

The germ of the idea for Mostyn’s latest adventure can be found in the Hazel Heald and Lovecraft collaboration “The Man of Stone”. Collaboration, though, is a generous term; for, according to ST Joshi, Heald seems to have contributed virtually no prose to the story — based on textual evidence.

Thus, Heald probably only provided a story idea for Lovecraft to run with. Which he did, and that story then provided me with the idea for The Medusa Ritual. So thank you Hazel for that original idea!

However, while “The Man of Stone” got the wheels turning for The Medusa Ritual, there is nothing of the earlier story in the later one other than people being turned to stone.

While Van Dyne’s Vampires focused on what is essentially a mad scientist and his monsters, in Mostyn’s new adventure we return to the world of cosmic horror. That world where the terror originates from the realization that in the big picture we are completely and totally insignificant. A realization that can easily drive us to despair, madness, or self-destruction.

Nietzsche’s answer to achieving this awareness and its accompanying despair, was for the person to become a creative individual. To become as a god, in other words, for gods create; and in creating, the individual can thereby bring meaning to his or her otherwise meaningless life.

Nietzsche’s answer was essentially an existential one. We are in command of our fate. Counter the meaninglessness of existence by creating your own meaning.

Lovecraft, on the other hand, retreated into antiquarianism, and racial and cultural identity. The old days are good. The old ways are known and comfortable. My own kind are known to me. The foreigner is unknown, a mystery, and therefore suspect.

In Lovecraft’s fiction we see his philosophy play out in his vision of our world having been invaded by alien monster beings who have no regard for us. In strange, swarthy, and dark foreigners who do the bidding of these monsters. And in the insignificance of us Westerners and our science in the face of these ancient beings and their magical rituals. HPL’s conclusion is that it’s best if we don’t know too much of what is really out there, or know any of it at all.

When I come away from reading Lovecraft, I have the feeling that ignorance is bliss. In being ignorant, I can live my life in the delusion that this is a world of meaning and purpose. That I have essential meaning and purpose.

In “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, the narrator comes face to face with the horror of the curtain being pulled aside to reveal what truly is. He has looked into the abyss. In the end, when he realizes that he too will eventually join those monstrous denizens of the deep, rather than end his life, he resigns himself to his fate. For Lovecraft, once we know the truth, we either surrender to it, or go mad, or destroy ourselves. There is no Nietzschian optimism in Lovecraft.

Pierce Mostyn, knowing the truth, doesn’t go mad or destroy himself, but he is weighed down by the understanding that in the end all of his actions are futile. He resorts to duty to keep on going. Much like the ancient Roman Stoics. Duty gives him purpose and meaning in what is an otherwise meaningless and chaotic universe.

Now all of the above is a heck of a lot of philosophy. But don’t worry. It’s all in the background. The Medusa Ritual is not a philosophical treatise. It’s a tale of cosmic horror with plenty of action, adventure, monsters, and daring do. Just what we want to read. Right?

And it will be available, Amazon willing, on July 29th for your reading pleasure.

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

Still More Suggested Reads

This is my fourth list of suggested books and authors with which you can while away those lazy summer days, or hunker down and wait out inclement winter weather if you’re south of the equator.

Banana Sandwich by Steve Bargdill

Actually anything by Mr Bargdill is well worth your money and your time. For example, here is a story that is a superb example of show, don’t tell: http://www.tingemagazine.org/left-with-the-moon/

In Banana Sandwich, Carol is mentally ill. After a stint of being off her meds, she decides to start taking them again and get better. And then the world goes crazy on her.

This is a masterful novel. It’s funny. It’s sad. It’s dark. One of the best works of contemporary literary fiction out there.

Don’t miss this one. I own all of Bargdill’s published work. He is one awesome writer. Incredibly awesome.

Hotel Obscure by Lisette Brodey

This book is billed as a collection of short stories. Nix that. I mean they are, technically speaking, short stories. However, Ms Brodey has written the stories around a theme and they are to be read in the order they appear in the book. So to my way of thinking, Hotel Obscure is something of an episodic novel rather than just a short story collection.

Having worked in public assistance, I could easily relate to the characters in this book, because only the down and out go to the Hotel Obscure.

The book, however, lives on a much grander scale. Because it is about people, and living, and dying, and the meaning of life.

Hotel Obscure is a fabulous book. I highly recommend it.

Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations by CW Hawes

Hey! Wait a minute! I know that guy! Okay, maybe I’m cheating, but this is my blog and I want to do a little promo for the Pierce Mostyn series and the new Mostyn adventure that is coming out at the end of this month.

I’ve been very pleased with the good things that have been said about the Pierce Mostyn books.

Here’s an excerpt from a review of Nightmare in Agate Bay:

CW Hawes, author of the fantastic “Rocheport Saga”, has done it again putting together a well-crafted story that slowly builds in tension. Trust me, you won’t want to put it down! Hawes has managed to capture that Lovecraftian atmosphere that so many get wrong, superbly managing to weave a contemporary thread to the shadowed tapestry of the past. Bravo indeed!

Now if comments like that don’t warm an author’s heart, nothing will.

I serialized the working draft of The Medusa Ritual, the fifth book in the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, on this blog and if you read the blog installments, thank you!

If you decided to wait for the book to come out, good for you. Because good things come to those who wait.

I got good feedback on the book and all those improvements will be in the book version. So even if you read the serial — the book will be even better.

Keep your eyes peeled. Watch this blog, my Facebook page, and my Twitter account for the publication announcement.

Or better yet, sign up for my VIP Readers list. You’ll be the first to know, get exclusive offers, and you’ll get “The Feeder” which is a Pierce Mostyn novelette exclusively for my VIP Readers.

Here is another review excerpt, this one for Terror in the Shadows:

Terror in the Shadows, the third book in the adventures of Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena, picks up where Stairway to Hell left off. …to investigate strange sightings and attacks in a rural countryside. The investigation leads Mostyn's team to an abandoned mansion, where things quickly go from bad to worse as a certain family history turns out to have gone downhill... if not down the gene pool.

Terror returns to territory Hawes traveled with Nightmare in Agate Bay, where he explores HP Lovecraft stories in a more modern setting. In this case, Hawes plays homage to Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear” (there’s a brief reference to the title in the first chapter - don’t miss it!). The idea of “regression” is well explored in the storyline, and is well explained in contrast to evolution. The climax of the story is especially exciting, like a strange cross between Lovecraft’s original narrative and the climax of the original Assault on Precinct 13.

If you haven’t read the Pierce Mostyn series, you can check it out on Amazon. But remember: there be monsters here!

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

The Medusa Ritual - Installment 17

The Medusa Ritual

A Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation

by

CW Hawes

Will Pierce Mostyn make it in time to save Dotty Kemper from the sacrificial knife?

The adventure continues!

Chapter 22

Mostyn shrugged out of his backpack, took out a stun grenade, and hurled it onto the dais. The flash-bang caused instant pandemonium. Mostyn and NicAskill charged down the steps that led from the balcony to the main floor, across the auditorium and up the steps to the dais.

The women who had been holding Dotty were screaming their panic at being unable to see or hear. The man with the knife had vanished.

Mostyn picked up Dotty, who looked as though she’d been drugged, and headed back towards the steps leading up to the balcony.

A couple of the men who had been chanting tried blocking Mostyn’s way and were shot down by NicAskill. Up the stairs the three went, and once on the balcony, Mostyn laid Dotty down and tried to rouse her. NicAskill dispatched two more of the men who’d been chanting as they climbed the stairs.

“Can you get her awake, Boss?”

“She’s pretty much out of it. Keeps mumbling something about a Chinese woman, but I can’t make out the words.”

“We’re going to have to get a move on, they’re getting ready to mount a counterattack.”

“Alright, NicAskill, let’s go.” Mostyn slipped into his backpack and hoisted Dotty up over his shoulder and moved into the tunnel.

NicAskill fired a thermobaric grenade into the auditorium and then joined Mostyn. “That ought to slow them down, Boss.”

“Take the lead, NicAskill.”

“I can help carry her.”

“No, one of us needs to be ready for action.”

“Yes, sir.” NicAskill moved passed Mostyn, taking the lead, as they walked down the tunnel.

Two men appeared in the tunnel entrance, and NicAskill dropped them before they got off a shot. She sprinted ahead and at the tunnel entrance, Mostyn saw gun flashes and heard the firearm reports. He carefully lay Dotty down, and once again tried to rouse her. All he got was incoherent mumbling about the Chinese woman.

Mostyn stood and saw NicAskill hurl a grenade. The explosion was deafening in the confined world of the tunnel. And even where he was standing, his ears were ringing.

NicAskill yelled, “All clear for the moment,” and moved out into the intersection of the five tunnels.

Mostyn picked up Dotty and followed NicAskill into the intersection of the tunnels, where he saw that they were surrounded by armed men in black suits.

***

It hadn’t taken DC Jones long to figure out that Mostyn and NicAskill would soon be out of range and he’d lose contact with them. He made a call to Sumer Base and managed to relay through the static that Langston needed to send him the holographic map that he’d sent to Mostyn. Langston sent the map and now Jones had the tunnel system and also the little blinking dots from the sub-dermal trackers indicating where Dotty, Mostyn, and NicAskill were in the pile of spaghetti that was the tunnel system below Los Angeles.

Dr Otto Stoppen was the slowest moving in the group, which frustrated Jones to no end, as the doctor’s slowness prevented the team from making good time. However, with Langston’s guidance, Jones’s group was able to take a couple shortcuts that got them into Chinatown fairly quickly.

“Alright, Jones,” Langston began, “now that you’re under Chinatown, we’re going to be dependent on your eyes and ears. Our maps are close non-existent for this part of the tunnel system.”

“Roger that, Langston,” Jones replied, and began a running monologue of the tunnels as they passed through.

Fifteen or so minutes into the monologue, Jones said, “Okay, we’re coming up to a ninety degree left turn.” There was a brief pause, before Jones continued, “I’ve made the turn. There’s another tunnel coming in at a right angle… What the hell?”

Baker snapped a picture, at the same time saying, “Oh, my God, it’s the lizard people!”

Everyone came to a halt. In the tunnel joining the one Jones and the team were in, there were four strange looking beings. They were humanoid in form. Their skin had the texture of a lizard’s, and their heads were block-shaped, with the jaw protruding somewhat. They had two slits instead of a nose, and their ears were small and lay flat to the head. The creatures appeared to have no hair, or clothing.

Jones regained his composure first. He held up his hands, and said, “We won’t hurt you. We’re looking for our friends.”

Two of the creators looked at each other, then turned back to Jones. Into his mind popped images of Mostyn and NicAskill.

“Yes, yes!” Jones said, and smiled.

Next came an image of Dotty Kemper.

“Yes!” Jones said, and once again smiled.

A third image came into Jones’s mind, that of the masked man.

Jones shook his head, put on an angry face, and said, “No! He’s not our friend.”

The two creatures faced each other for some time, then one turned to Jones and in Jones’s mind a picture formed of him and the team following the creatures.

Jones smiled in reply and said, “Yes.”

“What’s going on down there, Jones?” Langston asked.

“Just made contact with the lizard people.”

“Lizard people? Are you serious?”

“Yep. Baker even snapped a pic. The lizard people know about Mostyn, NicAskill, and Kemper. If I understand them, they’re going to take us to them.”

“Sounds too good to be true.”

“We’ll find out.”

“You sure they aren’t a product of sewer gas? You know. You’re imagining them.”

Jones chuckled. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

The team followed the lizard people down the tunnel. The passageway made several turns and after the last one Jones saw light and heard voices, voices he recognized. The voices of Pierce Mostyn and Kymbra NicAskill.

***

“We’re a bit outgunned, Boss,” NicAskill said, “so what’s our game plan?”

“I thought you said it was all clear?”

“It was when I said it. So now what?”

Before Mostyn could answer, from out of one of the tunnels stepped the masked man. Next to him was a beautiful Chinese woman.

“Special Agent in Charge Pierce Mostyn, we meet again,” the masked man said in his ethereally sibilant voice. “Although you and your Dr Bardon did have me fooled. However, my accomplice,” he turned and gave a slight nod to the Chinese woman, “was able to extract much useful information from Dr Kemper. Now I know who you are and what you want. Unfortunately for you, you and Dr Bardon will not succeed this time.”

The masked man motioned with his hand and two men stepped up to Mostyn and took Dotty Kemper from him. As they were doing so, Dotty muttered, “Chinese woman, bad.”

“The conflagration you unleashed in my temple, Special Agent NicAskill, only delays the inevitable. However, I will now have you to sacrifice with Dr Kemper which will insure my success.”

The masked man made a movement with his hand and two men approached NicAskill. At that moment, a high-pitched cry, almost outside the range of human hearing, sounded, the bulbs in the flashlights and lanterns burst, and the tunnel went black.

To Be Continued!

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