The Summoning Read online

  The Summoning And Other Eldritch Tales

  J. F. Gonzalez

  First Digital Edition

  May 2010

  Darkside Digital

  A Horror Mall Company

  P.O. Box 338

  North Webster, IN 46555

  www.horror-mall.com/darksidedigital

  The Summoning And Other Eldritch Tales © 2010 by J. F. Gonzalez

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copy Editor: David Marty

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  "Tattoos"—Originally appeared in 1000delights.com, April 2001. Copyright 2001 by J. F. Gonzalez.

  "Going Home"—Originally appeared in Eternal Night, May 2002. Copyright 2002 by J. F. Gonzalez.

  "The Revenge of Cthulhu"—Originally appeared in Outer Darkness, Summer/Fall '99. Copyright 1999 by J. F. Gonzalez.

  “Holes”—Original to this volume. Copyright 2008 by J. F. Gonzalez.

  "The Man Who Had a Death Wish" (with G. W. Thomas)—Originally appeared in Horrorfind, April 2002. Copyright 2002 by J. F. Gonzalez & G. W. Thomas.

  “The Summoning” (with Mike Baker)—Original to this volume. Copyright 2008 by J. F. Gonzalez .

  The Watcher From the Grave"—Originally appeared in Classic Pulp Fiction Stories, March 2000. Copyright 2000 by Tom and Virginia Johnson. Copyright reassigned to the author on March 27, 2000. Copyright 2000 by J. F. Gonzalez.

  Special thanks to:

  Cathy and Hannah

  Shane Ryan Staley

  Kelli Dunlap

  Jamie La Chance

  Tod Clark

  Bob Strauss

  John Pelan

  Tom and Virginia Johnson

  Brian Keene

  Barbara Higgins

  Dennis Kirk

  Steve Mazey

  G. W. Thomas

  Mike Baker

  Joyce Baker

  Mark Williams

  Apple One

  Del & Sue Howison

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Robert Bloch

  Who was the Opener of the Way for me

  In so many ways.

  Opening the Way: An Introduction

  You can blame Robert Bloch for this book.

  It was through Robert Bloch that I became the writer I am today. And it was Robert Bloch who first introduced me to the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

  The year was 1978. While most of the world had boogie fever, I was just entering my prog rock phase, spending hours in my bedroom immersed in the albums of Peter Gabriel era Genesis, Yes, King Crimson and heavier stuff like Rush and Uriah Heep. While everybody else was reading Erica Jong and Mary Higgins Clark, my favorite authors were Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Ray Bradbury. And some guy named Robert Bloch.

  See, back then Robert Bloch’s name was only familiar to me due to his novel Psycho and two stories—“Sweets to the Sweet” and “Floral Tribute” in a hardcover anthology I owned. Other standouts in that particular volume included tales by William Hope Hodgson, Frank Belknap Long, AM Burrage, and William Charlton.

  So when I came across an anthology in the city library (can’t recall the title now) with a Robert Bloch story called “Notebook Found In a Deserted House,” I immediately checked out the book and rushed home to read it.

  And was instantly hooked.

  If you know the story, I don’t need to explain to you why this particular tale had my fourteen-year-old self spellbound. The mention of that unnamable thing that sloshed in the woods behind the narrator’s home, that huge slithering creature that came over the hill with fingerprints yards long…those images have remained with me for years. The vague references Bloch throws at the reader—Arkham, Innsmouth, Shoggoths—were as creepy as the actual monsters that you never really saw, and I had to experience more of the same. So once the story was devoured, I went back to the library and, after some searching, found more Bloch pieces scattered in various anthologies. Other writers that shared the TOCs of those volumes were unfamiliar to me at first, but were already household names to serious readers of fantasy—Ramsey Campbell, Colin Wilson, Brian Lumley. One volume in particular was the original edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, which finally introduced me to the actual works of H. P. Lovecraft.

  So that was where all that cosmic wonderfulness came from…

  By the time I graduated from high school four years later, I had devoured all the Del Rey editions of Lovecraft (and have since replaced them with the Joshi edited Arkham House editions), but it was the work of his imitators that first drew me to his concepts of cosmic horror. Specifically the works of Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, Brian Lumley and yes, even August Dereleth. The Lovecraftian tale had become trite and cliché by the time I was talented enough to begin writing my own fiction, but that didn’t stop me from making my own contributions to this little sub-genre. Critics be damned!

  Despite that, I wanted to do my best to put my own spin on the mythos, to add something I felt was new. Many of the stories in this volume do that. Others are merely playful exercises in the sandbox Howie built eighty years ago. My sole purpose in originally writing these stories was to entertain myself, to give myself the same kind of pleasure Bloch gave me so many years ago when I first encountered “Notebook Found in a Deserted House.”

  This collection gathers all my Mythos fiction (with the exception of a children’s story I wrote and had privately published for my daughter six years ago) including two stories that appear in this volume for the first time. They run the gamut from serious explorations of Lovecraft’s vision, to pulpy exercises of eldritch horror, to new forays in the old west. There’s even a humorous piece. There’s probably something here for everybody. Much like the type of fiction Robert Bloch wrote during his lifetime. Hence, the dedication.

  I hope you enjoy them.

  J. F. Gonzalez

  Lititz, PA

  May 10, 2010

  Tattoos

  I’ve always been intrigued by tattoos. I think the best ones tell a story or convey a message of some sort that is never immediately evident until one takes the time to really look at them and reflect. One day I got to wondering what would happen if a tattoo aficionado received a tattoo he didn’t bargain for, one that would make him the target of kidnapping due to the reputation and collectible nature of the artist. My original idea was to end the story with the image of the main character’s tattooed hide, tanned and treated by preservatives, mounted on a collector’s wall.

  That didn’t happen. Instead, the story morphed into something else entirely. I’d been reading the updated edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos when I was struggling with that earlier version of this story, when inspiration struck. I sat down, rewrote the story, and the result is what you are about to read. This novelette is linked to “The Watcher From the Grave” by way of Justin Grave, the fictional pulp author who appears in the piece that closes this volume. More stories concerning Justin beckon to be written.

  John Pelan almost bought this story for his Children of Cthulhu anthology, but it was too long (a very different, shorter, non-Lovecraftian version of this story appeared in John’s anthology Dark Arts). “Tattoos” wound up appearing in an online men’s magazine, and later appeared in Maternal Instinct. It’s a favorite among my fans (and some heavy hitters like Bentley Little sent me nice emails and letters about the story too), and I’m please to give it new life in this appearance.

  * * *

  When I walked into our motel room that night I didn’t expect to find my husband missing, his blo
od drenching the walls.

  The sudden shock was immense; like being sucker-punched in the stomach. This feeling was similar, yet with my husband’s blood all over the room it magnified the feeling of dread to immense proportions. With such a wide feeling of darkness looming in front of you, there’s not much chance for escape.

  It seemed that all I remembered in the first two hours of flight from the motel, was all that blood. The room reeked with the coppery smell of it, along with the underlying aroma of stale sweat and a heavier scent, almost a death smell. I probably gaped in shock as I stood there in the room for a good minute, before the realization of our predicament came rushing back. I blinked and stepped back, reality in full focus. Out along the two lane main drag of the town we had holed up in, the hum of scant traffic was faint amid the background noise of neighboring tenants watching TV, talking and laughing, splashing in the swimming pool. It was that which snapped me back to the harsh reality of what had just happened.

  I was out the door and down the steps to our little Volvo without even bothering to look back and see if I was being followed. The only clothes I had were the ones on my back, my only belongings stashed inside my purse. I peeled away from the motel, down Interstate 5, heading south. Not looking back. Putting the distance between Nicholas’s obvious death and my sanity.

  I drove without resting, stopping only to refuel and head back out on the road. I drove for hours at a time, not caring that I was speeding. Distancing myself as far away from the nightmare as possible was the only thing on my mind.

  As I drove I could feel the tattoo on my back itch and burn as it sought new virgin territory.

  I still haven’t found the nerve to expose my back to a mirror and watch the designs taking shape. Just feeling it, knowing it’s taking place, is driving me mad.

  What happened back at the motel is quite simple: Nicholas was alone in the room while I was out getting groceries. We were planning on staying at the little dive for another week before heading farther east, toward northern Nevada and points beyond. The unknown killer, or killers, who had knocked off Ashley in Los Angeles and had come after us, had somehow tracked us there. How, I don’t know, for we used every trick in the book to make sure nobody was on our tail; we didn’t use our credit cards, we used false names, and most importantly, we saw nobody on our tail throughout the drive. How they found us will be something I will probably always grapple with. Whatever happens in the end, though, all boils to the same conclusion: they found what they wanted. And simple means of obtaining what they desired was not in their vocabulary.

  They bashed the front door in (it was the first thing I noticed upon arriving back from the store). What my frantic mind picked out in the few seconds I stood gaping in horror at our refuge, was enough to tell me that Nicholas had been taken by surprise. Our suitcase, still bearing the rumpled clothing of our hurried packing, remained on the dresser. His jeans and white cotton shirt lay sprawled over the chair. A sock lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. From the angle of the blood drenching the sheets, he must have been sitting on the bed, perhaps getting dressed. The wall directly behind the bed was stained with blood and the cheap oak headboard was broken. The mirror that sat above the bureau was shattered, and the reading lamp immediately to the right of the doorway was knocked over. From the amount of blood on the walls, the bed, and the ceiling, I surmised that Nick fought hard. I was afraid they had taken what they wanted right then, judging by the amount of blood in the room. Fortunately for my sanity, they hadn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing Nicholas in the state they would have left him in.

  I can’t stand to see it in my mind now. His face is superimposed there forever. It’s an image I can’t banish no matter how hard I try.

  And through it all, I think about what we heard on the news in the past few days.

  Renewed civil unrest in Asia…

  Increased volcanic activity throughout the world…

  A violent hurricane season in the Caribbean and the eastern seaboard of the United States…

  A recent report that the melting of the polar ice caps have accelerated by as much as thirty-five percent…

  An increase in violent crime worldwide…

  In short: chaos.

  The hum of tires on the asphalt and the rushing scenery don’t provide much comfort as I drive and try to dispel that image of Nicholas from my mind.

  * * *

  What started our life as fugitives on the run was a small article in the Los Angeles Times three weeks ago.

  “Have you read the paper today?” Nick asked me from the white-walled kitchen. The shakiness of his voice made me look up from my coffee and last Spring’s issue of Carpe Noctum.

  “No, I haven’t.” I pushed large, black-rimmed glasses up from the tip of my nose and peered at Nick over the top of the paper. “What’s up? Another gang shooting? Another political scandal involving married men and young female interns?”

  “No, something worse.” His words in unison with the pale pallor of a normally tanned and slender face made me put the magazine down and regard him more strenuously. I picked up the coffee cup and held it to my lips, sipping carefully. Nicholas knew the stance. I was waiting for him to go on.

  “Geraldo Montivaldi died last night,” Nicholas said, tapping the paper with his index finger. For the first time since I’d known him, I saw that he was scared. His features appeared mottled beneath the early morning sun slipping through the French windows. His red satin robe hung loose over his slender, but toned body as he thrust the paper at me. An unseen weight seemed to have settled in his bones.

  He stared at me with nervous green eyes, forever penetrating in their pools of bottomless pain and fear. “He died and he never got to finish…never got to finish what he started.” He stared at me and I stared back, knowing full well what he meant.

  Geraldo Montivaldi had been one of the most prestigious artists to emerge in the last twenty years. Always controversial, always breaking the rules and setting new limits, Geraldo was this generations answer to Goya or Rubens or Bosch, with perhaps a touch of Hannes Bok. Unlike many artists who are held in high regard in the field of fantasy, Montivaldi was a favorite among mainstream critics as well. He won a European Art Festival for a painting—“A Day in the Life Of…”—that depicted a young, pregnant Negro woman hanging clothes on a sagging clothesline in the backyard of a New York Brownstone. Pterodactyls swarmed overhead, dropping large, white eggs that exploded in what appeared to be a noxious, green gas whose mist trailed into a huge mushroom cloud exploding off in the distance. Long reptilian fingers with razor sharp claws parted their way through the opening between the woman’s legs as she almost nonchalantly went about her chores. Clustered around her, and seemingly oblivious to her presence, are four children, presumably hers, screaming in rage. The children’s eyes are a deep, blood red, and the faint nubs of horns can be seen slightly beneath their fine, silken hair, just shy of the hairline.

  When we first saw the piece at Brannigan’s gallery in Encino, Nicholas immediately said that it disturbed him. It didn’t have the same effect on me; I’ve always thought it was a beautiful piece of work.

  Of course my favorite painting was “The Traveler.” It was the portrait of a figure of indeterminate sex, seated in a large, oak chair. It was thin and emaciated, dressed in shabby clothing. The background of the painting was a dark green, the outer edges growing darker until it became black. The features on the figure’s face were withered and sunken, the mouth open and drooling. Its hands were long and bony. It looked up toward its left, as if gazing at some unknown object off to the side. The eyes in its maddened face were completely white.

  As far as Nicholas and I knew, Montivaldi’s rendering of a horror story—that of a tale by Justin Grave from his now out-of-print collection Cloak of Darkness and Others (Mythos Press, 1977) was the artist’s first and only sojourn into the so-called Cthulhu Mythos. Come to think of it, it was the only piece directly inspired by a piece
of horror literature.

  Despite this, the themes in Montivaldi’s art always centered on images of pain and fear, sex and death, eternal destruction and chaos. Equally beautiful and terrifying, the emotions one felt while looking at one of his pieces would often move you to tears or provoke a feeling of utter revulsion, sometimes both feelings rising from the same work. Despite the effect “A Day in the Life Of…” had on Nicholas, he became enamored with Montivaldi’s work.

  We bought a book on his work and poured over it, adding it to our collection of art books in our book-shelved study (a corner of the living room, actually). Despite our love for the man’s work, neither of us could afford a Montivaldi original. Ditto for the prints, which were always limited, numbered and signed, and eagerly grabbed up by collectors.

  Despite our inability to afford the man’s work, our obsession for him didn’t wane. Nicholas continued to bring home magazines and books containing articles and pictorials on the man and his work. The only way to see his work was to pick up the two coffee-table books with photographs of his better-known pieces (Works of a Dark Dreamer Volumes 1 & 2; Overlook Press). Our dream was to some day be the proud owners of a Montivaldi original.

  Then one day, a little over two years ago, Nicholas discovered in an interview in Modern Art magazine that Geraldo Montivaldi had taken up body art and modification as a hobby.

  And it was at that moment when the idea first began to blossom.

  * * *

  “Wouldn’t it be just incredible?” Nicholas exclaimed after he read the article of Montivaldi’s new passion. We were sitting up in bed, the lamps turned on for our evening reading. “Imagine being the sole possessor of a Montivaldi original. And nobody would know about it.”

  I nodded. I had placed the paperback novel I was reading on my nightstand as Nicholas read the magazine piece aloud. The mere thought of it was exciting. “Yes, dear, it would be wonderful. The more I think about it, the more I like it.”