I woke up really late today, sleeping through most of the day. It’s midnight, and the sound of fireworks is cracking through the weighty darkness of the overcast night sky. Haven’t gotten much work or reading done today. Instead, I’ve watched the final episode of Game of Thrones (meh), the newish Will Ferrell movie The House (meh), and a number of Parks and Recreation episodes. I really enjoy that show. I find it comforting and easy to like. Also, Aubrey Plaza and Rashida Jones both break my heart. And then there’s “Ron Swanson”, who is awesome. Aziz Ansari, Adam Scott, Rob Lowe, “Andy”… it’s just a quality show with one of the better post-Seinfeld sitcom ensembles I can think of. And it’s got a really gentle, positive vibe. Anyway, I’m three seasons in, and I’ll watch through until I’m done eating my leftover burrito, then I’ll read another couple stories from Black Wings, and that’ll be enough of that.
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BLACK WINGS OF CTHULHU 6 (continued)
Twenty-One New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, Edited by S.T. Joshi
“The Shard”, by Don Webb ~ This is a story about James and Bart, two American cousins and SF dorks whose families toured the UK when they were in their teens. Bart’s mom was a musicologist researching the “Birchester Sound”—an obscure late ‘60’s phenomenon overshadowed by the lads from Liverpool, being a mix of psychedelica and something called Severn Valley folk music—so part of their visit took place in Ramsey Campbell’s North Country Mythos setting of (you guessed it) Birchester and the Severn Valley.
One of the mementos Bart brings back stateside is a green and pink slab of tourmaline spar about four inches long. In the years following their UK tour, Bart’s IQ drops from 186 to 86, and his family has him institutionalized. There's no explanation for this sudden change, and James remains his only friend.
Bart dies in 2015 leaving behind a diary with the word “Glarky” written in it thousands of times and that watermelon tourmaline spar. Except that’s not what it was. James, being a scientist with access to labs, scrapes off a bit to test its makeup. Turns out it's mildly radioactive, made of radium mixed with boron silicate and a strange plastic that resembles DNA. Also, it was artificially extruded. And when you fall asleep with it in your hands… you dream. Amazing dreams. So amazing that James becomes a dream junkie, costing him his relationship, his job, etc.
The shard also records memories and plays them back. James goes through all the Bart recordings. Then he goes through recordings made by some British guy in a Birchester Sound band (the Titus Groans) who, while feasting on dreams/memories, decides to stop eating actual food, and slowly starves to death. Then the dream/memories go back farther… and the grand mystery of the shard’s true origin (among other things) is revealed.
See, it all has to do with an advanced alien civilization on a planetoid city with an ancient, titanic, “Class X” god-thing (the Unnamable) being held in a crystal prison of sorts, and the unavoidable residue of four-dimensional beings existing in a ten-dimensional universe, and it involves gravitons and consciousness and the disease called “religion”. Also, tentacles. And, oh yeah! The shard is, like, an alien armpit wart.
Eventually, it turns out the Unnamable was an early form of the being that eventually evolves into the spiny hallucinogenic space-godling called Gla’aki, and the alien whose dreams James is experiencing (now full-on, as though remembering his own past) has succumbed to the Cult of the Unnamable and secretly plans to drill through the Crystal Trap Door behind which Future Gla’aki is being held on his way to an execution that will NOT take place.
The story ends with James’ fate mirroring Bart’s. It’s an okay story, a good, quick read. And so, just for shits and giggles, I thought I’d put together a list of potential band names for practitioners of the fictional “Birchester Sound” (we already have The Titus Groans). If you come up with some names of your own, please include them in the comments section:
The Goatswood Trio
Watermelon Tourmaline
Voice of the Pines
The Syncops
Planet Blink
Paperback Discipline
Canlog'Y
The Herd
Ramsey's Commonplace Band
“The Mystery of the Cursed Cottage”, by David Hambling ~ A locked room mystery set in Seesin’s Copse, a woodsy part of Surrey, England, in the late 1920’s. Granny Attwater, an old lady rumored to be a hundred years old, is evicted from her small cottage home by a new landowner, Mr. Potter. She puts a curse on him then promptly dies. Wanting to prove the curse foolish, Potter publicly vows to spend the weekend alone in the cottage. He locks himself in… and disappears. Now, a police inspector accompanies Mr. Blake, a specialist in paganism, the occult and other such topics, and Mrs. Bellhaven, a Theosophist with “a gift for sensing vibrations”, to the cottage, in order to try and solve the mystery. A series of disturbing events begins with a gruesome discovery that indicates Mr. Potter’s true fate, and culminates with someone meeting their own horrific end, as well as a cameo appearance by the British version of our old friend Brown Jenkin.
“To Court the Night”, by K.A. Opperman ~ By far the best lyric poem of this collection so far (which contains an unprecedented four of them), this Poe-like ode to necrophilia is lush in its imagery and precise in its traditional rhyme-scheme and its flawless iambic pentameter. Great stuff!
“To Court the Night”, by K.A. Opperman ~ By far the best lyric poem of this collection so far (which contains an unprecedented four of them), this Poe-like ode to necrophilia is lush in its imagery and precise in its traditional rhyme-scheme and its flawless iambic pentameter. Great stuff!
