That is not dead which can eternal lie

 

That is not dead which can eternal lie

Written by Glen Colling

Illustrated by Andy Paciorek

My tale starts only 24 hours ago.


One day, that has changed everything.

It was a typical summer morning on Lake Windermere. The sky was a pastel shade of blue that was reflected on the calm waters of the lake. A soft breeze blew from the South keeping the heat down to a comfortable level.

I had come to stay with friends in Bowness only three days previously, hoping to find some peace away from the front line, and had already found a deep love for the area.

Each morning I would rise early, before the crowds, and travel down to the waterfront where I would hire a small boat and coast out onto the lake. There, I would spend many an hour lying back and letting the boat drift where it would as I watched the river birds hover above me.

I had found a solace that was previously missing in my life, and I was trying hard to forget that in another two days I would have to report back to my unit.

The first sign that I was in trouble was easily dismissed.

My boat began to bob up and down on the surface. But, lost as I was in my own thoughts, I passed it off as a passing rower, or a swan landing close by.

It was not until my small boat began to bounce rather wildly that I started to grow concerned.

I immediately sat up and looked around me to discover that I was in serious trouble.

To my right, a violently swirling vortex of water had formed upon the previously still surface and was growing larger. The mouth of the vortex was already two metres wide, spewing a cloud of moisture and causing the waters around it to roil and twist.

I reached over quickly and grabbed my oar as the hungry waters sucked at my craft. Plunging the oar through the rivers surface I began to push against the greedy pull of the vortex.

At first my efforts seemed to come to naught as I was inexorably drawn towards the dark maw of the whirlpool. But slowly, oh so slowly, I began to edge away. Inch by agonising inch I began to hope that I might, just, get away.

But Poseidon was not to be cheated of his quarry so easily and the vortex all but doubled in size. The drag of the swirling tides became too much and though I strained with every last reserve of my strength, I was pulled towards the violently spinning waters.

House of Dark Lanterns, part one.

“The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.”

John Milton

House of Dark Lanterns, part one.

Written and illustrated by Andy Paciorek

The hammer fell on the last sale of the day at the Kendal & District Auction House and as proceedings drew to close and unsuccessful bidders and onlookers filed for the doors, those who’d secured their bids remained to finalise the details of their purchases. Carl Fieldman remained behind, though he was of the former rather than latter group, having been outbid on his efforts to buy a Regency bronze table lamp.

He was friends with the auctioneer and had decided to wander over for a quick chat before heading home. Seeing him, Dewson, the auctioneer, gave a smile.

“Unlucky, Carl.”

Carl replied with no petulance, “Not for you, I bid more for that lamp than it was worth and I was still outbid.”

“Oh, Carl, you know as well as I that an object is worth whatever two or more people bid for it, and if it’s any consolation that solid oak Victorian writing table we had in today and would’ve expected to fly barely crawled to its bottom estimate!”

He continued, “Actually, you could have done us a favour and bid a bit more. Money is of no consequence to your rival bidder and once he sets his mind on something he’ll obtain it, no matter the cost. Anyway, shh, speak of the devil, here he is.”

Carl looked up to see a tall well-groomed man approaching. In his hand he carried a knobbly blackthorn cane of the type sometimes referred to as a shillelagh, but what perhaps would be more correctly termed a bata. Several steps behind him was a rough-looking man with thick side-burns and eyebrows and who was almost as wide as he was tall, solidly built not fat.

“Ah, Mister Dewson and now to business” he said with a smile and extending his hand to shake that of the auctioneer, “Cash, fine I trust?”

“As always, Mr Mordrake,” replied Dewson politely.

The man Mordrake gestured to the squat man behind him, “Mr Soulby, if you will,” and with a plump envelope, containing more than the four thousand, three hundred pounds the item settled on, Misters Soulby and Dewson moved away to conclude the exchange.

Standing alone together, Mordrake nodded in polite greeting to Carl. Carl spoke, “Congratulations, it’s a nice piece. You got a bargain.”

Mordrake looked at Carl curiously, then an expression of recognition passed his face as he realised Carl was his opponent bidder.

“I did think I’d pick it up nearer the three and a half mark, but it is a nice piece, the curious embellishment of the figures of a satyr and a nymph on the base may not be to everyone’s taste but it sets it apart as an interesting object. Together with the other of its pair, which I do happen to already own, I’d estimate the collective value of the pair at perhaps more than ten or even eleven thousand pounds on a good day. Not that I’d resell.”

With that comment, Carl was assured that despite money being no object, Mr Mordrake  was indeed cannily aware of his purchasing.

Mordrake thrust out his hand in greeting, a firm dry shake.

“Lucien Mordrake at your service and I take it sir, that you are a fellow Luciferian?”

The Overlords

The Overlords
Written by Tony F Paulazzo
Illustrated by Andy Paciorek

Who shall call their dreams fallacious / Who has searched or sought

All the unexplored and spacious / Universe of Thought.

‘Trismegistus’

The last days were a mad time when the things walked once again upon the Earth. Caleb and the little band of settlers lived within the subterranean depths of Cumbrian caves, subsisting on lichen, and blind, bleached creatures surviving alongside them in the dark underworld. As they delved deeper below the surface, they found an alien world with its own ecology. They felt constant hunger, constant fear and constant despair, that they were no longer emotive but existing on day to day survival instincts.

You know you’ve fallen from grace when you’re ripping into still bleeding animal carcass, eating a recently deceased relative or friend, drinking brackish water, fucking anything that’s warm just to feel – something. It was scary to think that all religion had been a sham, that mankind were just the failed slaves of an infinitely superior race, themselves cursed from time before living memory by yet another race, who, if they were even aware at all, viewed humanity as less than bacteria.

Jeera, a girl of about his age, stopped moving below him, he looked down, all disinterest to mirror her own face:

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah, you?”

He rolled off her, not even bothering to finish, “Shit! How long we been down this black hole? I’m going out of my fucking mind with boredom. I wanna eat something tastier than those white voles and goddamn worms.”

She laughed, a nasty short bark, “You want we should go back out there and talk-”

“Fuck, we’re an endangered species now-”

“Just fuck off Caleb!”

She stood up, her ribs pointing out of her emaciated body; standing at the cave mouth, looking into another cavern where their small tribe had set up camp. The little light they possessed came from a central fire - their eyes had adapted well in the five years they’d been cowering down here. Her bulging belly was at odds with the rest of her body, but all the females were pregnant, or trying to be; first rule of survival, procreation, even in madness.

The Stones of Pestilence. part one.

The Stones of Pestilence. part one. Written and illustrated by Andy Paciorek. Never, believe me, Appear the Immortals, Never alone.

From ‘The Visit of the Gods’  by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A note to anyone, who may in time, hear or read a transcript of this recording. Please believe I am not mad, lest I think I am not. Though in the few weeks that have passed as I have lain in this bed, it is a question that I have often asked of myself. I now write of the strange occurrences that befell me whilst I am still able, though as I momentarily rest and reflect I cannot begin to rationalise any of it.

Due to the unfortunate events that coincided with my visit to Great Britain, I have omitted specific place names and have changed the names of prominent people, for I do not believe it is fair, after all their misfortune to put the spotlight upon them and potentially attract attention from curiosity-seekers and ghoulish tourists.

I had taken the red-eye flight from Boston to Manchester, and from there I had travelled first by train and then by coach up through north-western England, passing through some quaint towns and villages, and some not so quaint and thought not into Lakeland proper, I did enjoy some mellow British scenery and recoiled at the sight of a large and incongruous nuclear power-station. But that is indeed what I had hoped for, to take the rough with the smooth – to experience all that corner of Britain had to offer.

Ashness Bloody Bridge

Story by Andrew McGuigan

Illustration by Andy Paciorek

A pretentious photographer up from London seeks to capture a rare Lakeland sunset, whilst becoming increasingly irritated by milling tourists, a mocking farmer and problems with the photograph which may be way beyond his control...

SAMPLE STORY SECTIONS

The other so-called photographers had packed up gradually and left long prior to the approaching sunset.
Most had been tourists with easy shoot digitals, or the occasional low spec digital SLR bought by those who think themselves a real artist, but were unable to commit the funds it took to get real results. They would return home and proudly display biscuit tin clichéd landscapes, wowing over the differences one patronising automatic setting made over another.
These philistines thought film was a four letter word.
To Adrian the use of film and producing photographs in the darkroom was real photography. The term was "light writing", an image etched into film, revealed only after careful chemical developing. As he set up he ignored the pointing and the laughter, but did feel a touch of annoyance when he overheard one man estimating the mega-pixel capacity of the Hasselblad as ‘one pixel.’
As sundown approached Adrian was finally alone with space and peace to set up the shots he wanted.
He had the bridge, the Skiddaw hills and an almost florescent orange sky all framed.

***

The farmer leaned down from his seat grinning mockingly.
“Them ones? Nay, they w’ eaten this eftanoon. Live feed.”
“What on earth do you feed whole piglets to?”
“Its fa an environmental restoration project, and I gets paid fa supplying livestock.”
Dick turned off the engine again, favouring Adrian with a proud smile.
“We are involved in t’ scientific re-introduction o’ creatures lang since disappeared fraa t’ fells, aal financed by gen’rous private benefactors.”
“Ah, yes I read about some of that happening in Wales. Re populating rivers with beavers, wild cats and wolves in the forests, that sort of thing?”
The farmers eyes narrowed and twinkled with strange amusement.
“Aye. Aye, summit like that.”

***

The new batch developed at least confirmed one small mercy. There was nothing wrong with his beloved Hasselblad. The problem was within the source.

More than white blobs now, alterations in exposure and development techniques had revealed detail this time. Each white blob looked more like a flower head, albeit one that might have been designed by Pythagoras. Triangular petals, surrounding a diamond angled central bud or head. Thin ribbon like tendrils stretched back from each pale bloom into the impenetrable darkness of the under bridge. There was a plant like quality to the images, but multiple exposures had shown movement between shots.
He would have to check deeper under the bridge and secure or remove any of this reflective debris. Another night spent at Ashness bloody Bridge, freezing his bollocks off.

READ THE FULL STORY IN CUMBRIAN CTHULHU VOL1

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