A Mythos Grimmly Read online

  Edited by Jeremy Hochhalter

  Additional Editing by Jaime Will

  Published by Wanderer’s Haven Publications, LLC

  P.O. Box 212, Timnath, CO 80547 United States

  First Edition : June 2015

  ISBN : 978-0-9966938-3-7

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

  All stories are original to this volume, and are Copyright 2015 to the individual authors.

  Illustrations by Abigail Larson.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  Dedication

  Foreword

  The Arkham Town Musicians

  Christine Morgan

  The Magical Fruit

  Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

  Ginger Snap

  Michael Wentela

  A Wisdom That Is Woe, A Woe That Is Madness

  E. Catherine Tobler

  I Am…

  John Claude Smith

  The Apprentice, the Muse, and the Mancer

  Michael Griffin

  L2RH

  B.A.H. Cameron

  The Lost Book of Grimm

  Michael M. Hughes

  The Hound of K’n-Yan

  Jeff C. Carter

  The Case of Virgin Mary Smith

  L.K. Feuerstein

  The Lost Town

  Nick Nafpliotis

  The Witch’s Library

  Tracie McBride

  Boots of Curious Leather

  David J. Fielding

  Donkeyskin

  Brian Kaufman

  The Batrachian Prince

  Robert M. Price

  The Orthometrists of Vhoorl

  Pete Rawlik

  The Hundred Years’ Sleep

  Mary SanGiovanni

  The Wonderful Musician

  William Meikle

  When Light Returned to Karakossa

  Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. & Tom Lynch

  The Sovereign of Fear

  Richard Gavin

  The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot

  Desmond Reddick

  Sticks and Stones, Skin and Bones

  Morgan Griffith

  The House of the Sleeping Beauties

  Jason Andrew

  The Piper In Yellow

  Brett Talley

  In the Details

  Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Black Goat of the Hundred Acre Woods

  James Pratt

  The Dunwich Ball

  J.F. Gonzalez

  Author Biographies

  Kickstarter Supporters

  In memory of J.F. Gonzalez

  Many thanks to the authors and Kickstarter supporters who made this anthology possible.

  Foreword

  I believe that all stories begin with, “Once upon a time…” We may not say it, it may not be in the print, but those four words transport us to another place. It may be the past, present or future. It may be real or imaginary. That is the magic of such a phrase.

  It is, however, only at the beginning of a fairy tale that we expect to see such a phrase. Modern takes on these stories are far lighter (Disney-fied) than their darker origins, but all versions of these tales are thematic. Morality tales meant to help us understand the difference between right and wrong, and the consequences of our choices. Cultures all around the world have such stories, passed down through the years.

  Today, modern culture expects another phrase to accompany these tales. “And they lived happily ever after.” For in these stories, the prince always rescues the princess, the knight always slays the dragon, and the evil queen is always defeated.

  You will find very few of these happily-ever-afters within this book. Here, these morality tales have served as food for other beings, maddening dark things that live in the shadows and the strange geometries outside of our senses.

  In the early 20th Century, H.P. Lovecraft penned many horrific tales that would come to be known as cosmic horror. While he was not a particularly successful author during his time, his works would grow in popularity in the following decades. Indeed, legions of “Lovecraftian” authors now enjoy expanding on his work, and creating their own terrifying tales along the same lines.

  Very rarely does the hero escape unscathed from these tales, and so we come to the crossroads where fairy tales and cosmic horror meet. A Mythos Grimmly was conceived as an anthology where stories told to us as children came together with tales of unknowable entities, horror on a cosmic scale that the human mind cannot fathom.

  So while there may not be happy endings for all, there are always new beginnings. It is here that I leave you alone to travel through the worlds that our authors have brought you to. And, as with all stories, we begin…

  Once upon a time…

  Now, it happened that there were, in the village of Dunwich, a series of strange events and dark atrocities, centering primarily around the Whateley family, and culminating on that most dreadful night when an inhuman voice shouted an unspeakable name from the height of Sentinel Hill.

  But this is not an accounting of those events.

  For it happened that there was, also, a poor and humble farmer who had been on occasion in the employ of the Whateleys. His cattle, in the end, met the same grim fate as most others near-abouts – missing at best, sore-ridden and sucked dry of every drop of their blood at the worst.

  The farmer himself, left further impoverished and shaken all but to madness by what he had witnessed and the tumult following, soon drank himself to an early grave. He was by no means the only Dunwich resident to do so.

  What went forgotten was that the humble farmer had also, for many years, kept as well as his cattle a few donkeys to help with his labors in the fields.

  Or, a breed of creatures that might have been donkeys once … might have begun as donkeys … but had, over time … changed.

  Whether it was from feeding off what grew in Dunwich, or whether something else had responsibility, some hideous cross-breeding that introduced unnatural bloodlines, perhaps as a result of the arts of which old Wizard Whateley was said to have been a practitioner, the farmer could not know. Nor did he care to guess.

  Only one of these creatures was left behind when the farmer died. Though he did not altogether resemble a donkey, it was as a donkey he thought of himself. And so, as a donkey he shall be called.

  After all, he did the work of a donkey. He had the general shape of a donkey, with four strong legs that reached the ground in addition to the myriad centipedal limbs protruding in rippling rows from either side. Where his skin was not mottled pinkish-yellow, the hide was as coarse and grey-brown as any other donkey. If the two long whiplike tentacles that sprouted from his withers were unusual, bristling with hair and ending in reddish sucker-mouths, his tail and stiff mane and upstanding ears were perfectly ordinary. And if the end of his muzzle splayed out into fleshy pink tendrils such as might be found on a star-nosed mole, what of it?

  He was still a donkey, hale and healthy and hearty, and proud.

  But, in time, the donkey had grazed the grass of his pen down to bare stubble, which seemed disinclined to grow back. He had long since finis
hed the oats and corn stored in the hay-shed where he slept. It occurred to the donkey that he could not stay here much longer on his own.

  “Dunwich is done-for,” said the donkey, and brayed a laugh at his joke. But he quickly sobered. “And what of myself, then? My master is dead, and his masters as well. Hard-working though I am, I doubt I would find much welcome among the neighbors. They would not take me in even for all my tireless strength. I am a donkey, yes. But I am, after all, no ordinary donkey.”

  He kicked down the fence of ramshackle wooden sticks and freed himself into the wider world. There, he found more grass, brown and sour and dry.

  “For that matter,” he said, “why should I want to go on toiling at thankless work on a farm? Why should I plod in the mud, pull a plow, draw a wagon? Did I not just say how I was, to be sure, no ordinary donkey? Why, then, should I labor as one?”

  The donkey ambled at his leisure through the blighted fields. He glanced about with interest at the domed hills surrounding Dunwich, and peered down toward the dark, tangled hollow of the glen.

  “No, indeed,” he told himself, “I am meant for greater and better things than this. I shall go forth from Dunwich to make my own way in the world! Perhaps I might become a musician. Yes! Yes, and why not?”

  Here, he hee-hawed at the top of his voice, and found the sound pleasing. He stamped time with a hoof, and when he slid his hairy wither-tentacles one against the other, they gave off shrill, rasping notes like violin strings or a grasshopper’s legs.

  “Why not?” he cried again. “But these country-villages are no place for such a celebrity as I am bound to be. In Arkham-Town, however, I surely will find my fortune and fame!”

  So saying, and very satisfied with his plan, the donkey set out.

  Past scattered houses that wore a uniform aspect of desolate age and squalor, he went, and past the huddled cluster of the village itself until he reached the tenebrous tunnel of a covered bridge where his hoofbeats clop-clopped with hollow echoes.

  The road then curved, dusty and sometimes flanked by crumbling walls of briar-bordered stone, through a landscape of sloping rock-strewn meadows, luxuriant weeds and brambles. In forest belts, the trees loomed too large and whippoorwills chattered. Chimney-ruins and ancient rough-hewn columns poked up through the undergrowth. At boggy places, fireflies danced in abnormal profusion to the strident but dissonant croaking of bull-frogs.

  “They,” said the donkey, scoffing with a snort, “are no musicians, that is to be sure!”

  He brayed forth his own song, shaming the bull-frogs into silence from their raucous rhythms. He trotted over yet more crude wooden bridges of dubious safety, which traversed deep gorges and ravines.

  Not far ahead, knew the donkey, was the junction where Old Dunwich Road met Aylesbury Pike. And only a short while further on from there were the crossroads by Dean’s Corners.

  Ahead, at a spot where water trickled from a cleft boulder to form a pool by the edge of the road, the donkey saw a figure hunched over and lapping at the water. It seemed to him to be some sort of dog, or at least as much dog as he himself was donkey. In truth, the donkey had not known many dogs before; they had been scarce in Dunwich and unwelcome, for it was said they always set off with a terrific baying in pursuit of Lavinia Whateley’s strange son.

  This dog, if dog it was, had corpse-colored fur and loose skin that fell in rugose folds and wrinkles. His hind paws were paws proper, but his front ones gripped the rocks at the edge of the pool with long, narrow fingers. His face, when he raised his head, was oddly squashed of countenance, with an immense dripping scoop-shovel of jaw from which arose yellowish tusks.

  “Good afternoon!” said the donkey, greeting the dog in all good manners and politeness. “How do you fare on this day, Brother Dog?”

  “Wretchedly,” the dog replied, giving its head such a shake that its jowls wobbled and droplets of water sprayed about.

  “Wretchedly?” the donkey cried. “What a shame! Do you not have your freedom?”

  “Oh, I have my freedom,” grumbled the dog in a growl. “I, who was a huntsman’s most faithful companion, I, who might have run pack-mates with the Hounds of Tindalos, I have all the freedom anyone could ever have, and two extra!”

  “Then how is it you seem so displeased? I have only just gained my freedom, and could not be happier!”

  “I’m sure that is fine and well for donkeys,” the dog said. “But I did not gain my freedom. Neither did I choose it. I was, as I said, a huntsman’s most faithful companion. Long years I went by his side into the dark woods. I faced any beast of the forest without fear, even the young of the Black Goat! I was ever loyal, and stalwart, and true!”

  The donkey tipped his head, the centipedal limbs waving all down his sides in consternation. “Did your master, the hunstman, die? Mine did --”

  “No.” The dog snarled, grinding his yellow tusks against his sharp upper teeth. “He married. And his wife, you see, could not stand the sight of me in the house any longer. She feared what I might do to the children. As if I – I! – would bring them any harm!”

  “The huntsman did not send you away!” said the donkey, aghast.

  “Oh, no,” said the dog. “He offered to, but that was not sufficient for her. What if it comes back? she said to him. Even if you led it far into the woods and left it, it could find its way! And so, he, the huntsman, my own trusted master, took up an axe and made to split open my skull!”

  At this, the donkey gaped, then snuffled a breath so that the fleshy tendrils at his muzzle flapped and wriggled. “What did you do?”

  “What could I but run? I would not have bitten him, despite his murderous intentions. So, now, here I am, with no home and nowhere to go.”

  “It is well that we found each other then,” the donkey said. “For I am on my way to Arkham-Town, where I mean to become a famous musician. With a voice such as yours, so rumbling and resonant, you must make a fine singer yourself.”

  The dog considered this for a moment, and agreed that a famous musician sounded to him like a fine thing to be. They fell in most readily together, and soon reached Aylesbury Pike.

  The air took on a fresher fragrance, bereft of the odour of mould so prevalent in Dunwich. Wildlife scampered unseen in damp drifts of fallen leaves. The day was crisp, the sky clear, though heavy clouds built over the hills. They saw no riders or wagons or other traffic, no one at all, until they came to the crossroads.

  There, a signpost pointed in the direction of Dean’s Corner, a sleepy but tidy and well-kept little village. Another arrow indicated Aylesbury itself, the distant smokestacks of mills and factories lost in a murky haze.

  Most interesting of all, however, was the small mound of recently-turned earth where the roads met, marked with a rough wooden cross jutting up askew at an angle. But it was not the cross, nor the grave, that interested donkey and dog so much as what sat nearby.

  It was a cat, large and queenly, of regal bearing. Her sleek coat was of many colors – umber, cream, russet, mahogany and gold. Her eyes were brilliant emeralds. She had a tail like a plume, and gloriously long, curling whiskers. Around her neck, on a silken ribbon, hung a bauble of Egyptian design.

  The donkey greeted her as politely as he had done the dog. “Good afternoon, Sister Cat! How do you fare on this day?”

  She gave a great yawn, showing ivory teeth. She gave a great stretch, back arching, needle-claws digging into the dirt. Then she sat primly again, licked her forepaw, and smoothed her curled whiskers.

  “I am in great distress and despair, Brother Donkey,” she replied. “Your companion does not mean to give chase, I should hope. I’ll scratch him to the bone, if he does.”

  The dog grumbled. “I am a hunter, no chaser of cats.”

  “Good,” said the cat. “For I am a cat of Ulthar, and will bring deadly punishment on any who try to do me mischief.”

  “We mean no such thing,” the donkey assured her. “Brother Dog and I are merely traveling to Arkh
am-Town. But what do you do here? Whose grave is that you sit beside?”

  “That of my mistress.”

  “She must have been tiny,” observed the dog.

  “It is only her head.”

  “Her head?” cried the donkey. “Where is the rest of her?”

  “I will tell you,” said the cat. “My mistress was, on her mother’s side, kin to the Whateleys of Dunwich. Do you know of them?”

  “Indeed,” the donkey said. “I came from there.”

  “Well, after what happened there, her neighbors decided that she must be a witch. They set upon her, and beat her to death with sticks and with staves. Then they used the blade of a shovel to chop her head from her neck. Her body, they threw into the river. And her head, they buried here at the crossroads, so that even if her spirit somehow returned, it would be unable to find its way home.”

  “Barbaric!” the donkey declared, and the dog woofed his agreement of this assessment.

  “They would have done the same to me, if they could,” the cat went on, “for all it is forbidden to kill any cat of Ulthar. But I eluded them, and avenged my mistress.”

  “How so?” asked the dog. “You are only a cat.”

  Her ear flicked disdainfully. “I caught yuggoth-mice, which feast upon the pallid mushrooms in the deep groves. I carried their slick, bloated corpses to the village, and dropped one into each well and rain-cistern.”

  At that, the dog and the donkey exchanged an impressed look. Clearly, the cat was not one with whom to be trifled.

  “And what will you do now?” the donkey asked her.

  The many-colored cat uttered a sigh. “With no warm hearth to curl up by? With no mistress to put down dishes of milk? I have been sitting here all this day, asking myself that very same thing.”