Minnis FROM ARKHAM TO KADATH

6 novellas and stories
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-7487-7531-7
Verlag: BookRix
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 178 Seiten

'There was no wind to move the eerie matter, and with growing horror Connor realized that it must be alive itself. There was no other explanation for the way it could otherwise wriggle forward and coil around the coat rack like a black snake until it threatened to swallow O'Reilly's arms. Blind white eyes erupted like boils on the black surface, rolling back and forth madly. O'Reilly's mouth contorted, his jaw drawing almost silently. He looked helpless, but continued to hold the coat rack tightly in his hands. But it wasn't the thing that resembled a black snake that made him scream. It was something else that flowed through the portal like slime; a murky mass that flooded the attic, boiling and bubbling like sulfuric acid.' Michael Minnis has subordinated many of his stories and novellas entirely to the cosmos of H. P. Lovecraft, and he succeeds in doing so in a workmanlike manner. The novellas and stories included in this volume reflect the author's interest in Lovecraft's spaces, times, and places, whether they come across as dark fantasy or as tales of the early days of the Wild West. Kadath, Leng, Arkham or Innsmouth - Michael Minnis takes the reader by the hand and leads him to the settings of his great role model.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Minnis, Michael

Leseproben

  THE BEAST DRIVES A RED FERRARI
    Where do I start? In the end...we became animals. That works.  Small mammals.  Little creatures perpetually alert, forever in flight.  Dying.  The return of the Cretaceous Era.  Huge beasts lumbering about.  Slouched beasts?  Better.  Like the poet asked, what rough beast slouches toward Bedford-Stuy? The center will not hold.   Or Central Park, anyway. That’s where I live now when I’m feeling fairly safe, The Metropolitan Museum of Art when I’m not.  It’s a good place to hide.  Better than most. The trick is to keep off the main trails, like the Big Loop.  I also stay away from the reservoir.  I don’t like the way the water looks.  For a while I was getting water from the fountains, filling up my buckets during the day, but the fountains stopped working a while ago.  Days or weeks, I’m not sure.  I’ve lost all track of time.  I know summer’s getting on into autumn, and that the days are getting shorter.   Might rain today.  Sky certainly looks moody.  It’s always moody now.  Last year’s leaves tumbling through the grass only adds to the scene – cue Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  War.  Pestilence.  Death.  Famine.  I am somewhat worried about that last one, though I shouldn’t be.  I’ve got enough canned goods and dried stuff stashed away in little caches here and there to get me through this winter, at least.  Sick to death of it, actually: Slim Jims and salted cashews and tinned sardines.  Pseudo-food with a half-life.  Everything else has gone to rot. I tried hunting for turtles in Turtle Pond, once.  I had a baseball bat – I was going to bash the first one I saw, maybe make him into soup.  But I didn’t see a single turtle all day. The pond’s empty, as empty the Guggenheim, Times Square, and Chinatown, and the turtles, like the people, are all gone.   If this were a Hollywood flick, I’d be decked out in a leather jacket.  Boots.  Shades.  Maybe a sawed-off shotgun and a bandoleer of shells. I’d be six-foot something and built like a kickboxer.   Actually, I’m five foot nine and 165 pounds.  I wear a windbreaker, dirty cut-offs and a sweatshirt.  The only detail that’s congruent with celluloid fantasies is that I wear sunglasses.   I do carry a couple of guns, a .38 and a .30-06.  Got them from a gun shop.  No one was there. I’ve only fired them a couple of times, more out of fear than anything.  I’m a pretty lousy shot. Though I did shoot at someone, once. It was while I was out foraging two weeks ago, looking for real food.  I had this idea I might be able to find it, if I looked hard enough.  You could get real food before this all happened, oranges and apples.  Potatoes.  Ice cream.  Softshell crabs. I was ready to kill for a cheeseburger.   That isn’t why I shot at that guy, though. If you go by day, you’re usually pretty safe.  Night is dangerous, especially since the power grid is down for good.  I watched it die out over several days, block by city block going dark. You might run into rats now and then - they’re a lot bolder now - and roaches, of course.  They run the Big Apple now.   But, like I said, it’s unusual to encounter anything bad by day.  If you play it smart.  It’s pretty easy, to be honest, but not always.  Especially with that guy I shot. Funny thing was, he didn’t look like one of them.  He looked like one of us.  Basic tourist type: slightly overweight, sunburned, Madras shirt, loafers.  Middle-aged and comfortable, or he should have been.  Actually, he was fairly loud and harried. Hey! he shouted at intervals, Hey, is there anyone here?  Hey!   He looked everywhere for anyone: abandoned cars, empty windows, the shattered storefronts of what were once fancy boutiques and cafes and bookstores and jewelry outlets.  Places he would have visited in better times, probably with a chunky wife and two point three kids in tow. I heard him before I saw him.  Is anyone here?  His thinning hair in windblown disarray, dirt and soot on his clothes, his face, his beefy arms.  Hey, is anyone here?   He looked winded, tired.  Like me, he had a weapon, a short length of pipe.   He didn’t look like one of them.  I know them on sight: the dead hollow reptilian eyes, the clumsy clockwork-puppet movements.  They’re alive, but barely.   Sometimes they speak, in voices cracked by smoke and dust, but I never listen to them.  I shoot at them.  I should kill them, but I can’t.  The noise usually scares them off.  They scream and babble and stumble and stagger away from the Thunder God. Speaking of which, looks like we might get some today... They’ll trick you sometimes, you know.  They’ll look all right.   I saw it in his eyes as he got closer, coming up Fifth Avenue, through the gridlock of empty cars and taxis and SUVs and vans and delivery trucks.  I’d drawn a bead on him by then from the cover an overturned armored personnel carrier.   Closer and closer he came, still shouting.   Goddammit, will somebody answer me? He saw me.  How, I don’t know, I thought I was hidden pretty well.  Maybe light glinted off my sunglasses or the rifle barrel.  Who knows?  All I know is that he came toward me, shouting: Hey!  Hey, you!  Somebody over there?  Say something! That’s when I fired my first shot at him, wide and to the left.  It blew out the front windshield of a taxi in an explosion of glass.  The report reverberated through the still air.   Now if Pipe Guy had had any sense, he would have fled at that point.  Instead, he went into a defensive crouch.   Hey, he said.  He wasn’t shouting as loudly as before.  Don’t shoot.  Don’t shoot.  Here.  Watch.   He laid the pipe down, gingerly, as if it were spun glass or fine bone china.  See?  His movements were painfully calculated, hands open.  Slowly he rose to his full height.  Pretty big guy.  Sounded like he might be from out West.  Here.  Watch.  See?  I put it down.  I don’t want no trouble, OK? He started toward me again.  Big mistake.  I fired again. You fuckin bastard cocksucker, I said I didn’t want trouble, you fuckin deaf or something?  Asshole sonofabitch!   He even threw the pipe at me.  It fell short and bounced off the hood of a car.   Crazy-ass motherfucker!  Pipe Guy sounded close to tears as he ran away, like a little boy.  I’ll get you! I should have shot him but I let him go.  He was one of them, but I hadn’t quite settled into this line of work yet.   A car actually makes for a fairly comfortable seat. The sky bothers me, these days.  I’ve seen very little of the sun.  Just overcast most of the time, like January, but rather more...tempestuous is the word, I think.  It’s a thunderstorm perpetually on the verge of breaking, a cumulus reef of deep, dull blue-gray that at times takes on very singular formations.   I’ve seen everything in those clouds.  Phantom cities.  Vortices miles across, spiraling upward into the unknown.  Other things.  Light flickers within the clouds occasionally, like sickly yellow-green summer lightning.  Thunder, too, but it hardly ever rains, just an occasional spattering of fat cold drops.  Some sort of atmospheric disturbance, I imagine.  Reminds me of those old nuclear winter theories the scientists used to bandy about when I was a kid.   If it gets weird enough, I hide out in the art museum.  Lot of hidey-holes in that old place, closets and offices and back rooms.  Perfect for Chickenshit Little.  I just don’t like the way the sky is, sometimes, the way the clouds shift and twist and roil in the air, in the countless blank windshields and windows, all the sinuous movement.  Suddenly everything...slithers, just a little. Does that sound right? The windstorms are worse, dust devils tearing through the streets, miniature hurricanes of discarded paper, dead leaves, plastic and other garbage.  Sometimes the wind’s high up in the sky, and strong.  Outside it’s a dull roar.  Inside it’s a thin glassy shriek pressing against the windows and walls.  Not a good thing to hear when you’re alone like me. Other people like to band together.  Safety in numbers, I guess.  Not me.  I think it just makes it easier for them to find you.  It’s harder to hide when you’re with someone else.  They all got picked off pretty quickly, the other ones.   The others, hell, they were doing all sorts of crazy things right up to the end.  Walking into the sea.  Swallowing poison.  Looting.  Setting fire to buildings.  Fighting with the cops and soldiers, trying to get out of here.  Mass hysteria, just mass panic. I have - had - an uncle up in Shenectady, and he called during the worst of it to tell me they were digging big long trenches out in the woods with bulldozers.  »You know what those are for,« he tells me....