"Pickman's Modem"

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

originally published Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February, 1992

George Polushkin hangs out on message boards, wasting way too much of his time.  Another frequent flyer is Henry Pickman, an inarticulate schlub without much of a life.

Pickman drops off for a bit due to technical difficulties, but returns once he acquires a new 2400 baud (!!!!!) modem - an off-brand, second-hand made by Miskatonic Data Systems, serial number RILYEH.

Strangely, after acquiring this modem, Pickman's postings suddenly become eloquent and sophisticated.  He also gets into endless flamewars which he dominates with his verbal acuity.

George drops in on Pickman and finds him just as dumb and hopeless as always, and can't figure why his posts have become so intelligently-written.

Then Pickman drops off again.  One night, George gets an e-mail from Pickman, this time with his usual lack of grammar and bad spelling.  Pickman complains that his modem - which he has unplugged (he's using a borrowed one) is angry with him, and watching him!  Soon after a fire wipes out Pickman, his apartment, and the evil modem.

I'm sorry but this is just plain a silly tale, competently told but pointless.

"His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood"

by Poppy Z. Brite
originally published Borderlands, Maclay and Associates, 1990

Louis and his unnamed buddy hang out in Louis' inherited Louisiana plantation mansion (crumbling of course) and live an idle life of forbidden pleasures including but not limited to Goth music, heavy drinking, heavy drug use, sex with anything and everything that moves, grave-robbing and dabbling in black magic.

One night Louis leads them to a graveyard where they dig up a corpse with a curious amulet around its neck.  They take the amulet.  

By the next night, a dried-out, mummified corpse of a young woman has turned up.  Louis and his bud meet a particularly fascinating young androgyne at a nightclub and take him home.  The next morning, our narrator awakes to find Louis now a mummified corpse.  And he knows their one-night-stand, and the amulet, had something to do with it.

This is obviously a blatant re-write of HPL's "The Hound".  Whether its a ripoff or a "reimagining" depends on your taste for it.  My own is a bit mixed.  Brite writes well - a wedding of Clark Ashton Smith and Anne Rice, that, in less skillful hands, could have been embarrassing.  Still, the way this thing sprays around Goth/Anne Rice clichés borders on comical - ooooh - hallucinogenics! Gay sex! Straight sex! Bestiality!  S&M! Dark nightclubs with booming Goth music and heavily made-up demimonde!  Shit, the instigator's even named Louis!

Brite pulls it off - but just barely.

"Shaft No. 247

by Basil Copper
originally published New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House, 1980

Driscoll and Wainewright are security, watchmen in some vast underground installation - in which survives an entire civilization, possibly millions of people.  The watchmen sit for hours monitoring a large dashboard that detects movement or presence in the many shafts and tunnels of the installation.  Driscoll is a stolid, level-headed fellow but Wainewright seems wound a little too tight for his own good, overreacting to minor readings in the monitors.

Driscoll's superior hints that Driscoll should poke around and find out what's eating Wainewright.  Driscoll goes to visit Wainewright (a breach of protocol).  Wainewright tells him he's been in a weird state ever since his friend Deems went A.W.O.L., so to speak.

It seems Deems had noted an unusual amount of activity in one of the shafts (No. 247 - SURPRISE!), and, further, that the powers-that-be seemed to be aware of this, but were covering it up.  One night, Deems went and entered the shaft, and left through it, going "outside" (the surface world, one assumes?), and was never seen or heard from again.  He left behind a phony-looking note, urging Wainewright to come out there with him, and some glob of gray, icky-smelling stuff.

One night soon after, Wainewright loses it and also goes "outside".  Driscoll too finds a phony-looking note inviting him to come too.  And a glob of gray, icky-smelling stuff.

Driscoll becomes obsessed with Shaft 247.  One night he enters.  He is overwhelmed by what may be hallucinations: "Driscoll knew what had fascinated Wainwright and his friend Deems before him. The heady odour had something in it that reached back deep into his roots. He saw green fields; a blue sky; corn waving in the breeze.”  It becomes unclear whether Driscoll's experiences are hallucinations or somehow actual events.  Something outside, with Driscoll's help, is attempting to enter the shaft...

This is one weird story, and if it weren't published in a specifically Cthulooey collection, I might not even assume it to be such a beast.  Yet here it is.  And, if one reads closely enough, the Lovecrafty elements are very skillfully implemented.

In many ways, this recalls 50's science fiction, such as Lester del Rey's "Nerves", more than HPL.  The Dystopian, Orwellian subterranean society is unsettling, even moreso because its never clear where, or when this is happening.  Or how much these people even know of the world outside.  Or why they live in tunnels.

The story is intensely subtle and carefully crafted.  The nature of the society is revealed gradually, but unambiguously, over the space of several pages.  The ambiguities come in the end (what, exactly, is happening to Driscoll - and what is trying to get in), but are also clearly intentional.  And while the nature and intent of whatever is "outside" is not really known - it sure as hell doesn't feel right!

All in all this is way above Copper's usual level of quality, and while there are Cthulhu stories I've enjoyed more, its impossible not to admire his craft.

"The Barrens"

by F. Paul Wilson
originally published Lovecraft's Legacy, Tor, 1990

Kathy McElston, aka "Mac" (at least the narrator isn't nameless for a change) is born and raised in the ultra-rural, ultra-redneck Pine Barrens of NJ, but ends up graduating from Rutgers and starting up her own accounting firm.  She's left that world behind her until one day, her one-time college boyfriend, Jon Creighton calls her out of the blue.

Jon, a drifter, seeker, and all-around flake, wants her help.  It seems he ended up at Miskatonic U., and now he has several grants to write a book tracing the origins of certain Amurrican folk legends, including the Jersey Devil.  He wants Mac to be his guide and liaison to the Pineys.  Divorced and at loose ends, she agrees.

Mac and Jon make their way into the Barrens in a fully-outfitted Wrangler, where they first meet Jasper Mulliner, a distant relative of Mac's, who sends them on to Gus Sooy, a moonshiner who lives in an intensely remote part of the Barrens.

Sooy is helpful at first, but when Jon asks too many questions about the "pine lights" - will-o-wisp-like apparitions known to the locals, Sooy turns hostile.  Things get more complicated when Mac and Jon get lost trying to get back to civilization, and their jeep gets stuck in a sand pit.  That night, a bizarre encounter with the "pine lights" leaves Jon with a badly burned arm.  But its also clear that Jon knows more than he's letting on and has a hidden agenda.

The next morning a band of deformed, inbred pineys helps free the jeep, and shows Jon their ghastly village.  More importantly, they show him "the place where nothing grows", a barren patch of sand in the middle of the woods, with no vegetation and no sign of animal presence.  Jon is enraptured.

Back in civilization, Mac does her best to avoid Jon.  But when a state trooper comes looking for him, and it turns out he's stolen something from the MU "restricted" collection, and that there are no grants, Mac goes looking for him.

She finds him holed up in a motel and looking sick.  She also learns that Mac has been researching "nexus points", places where, at the equinoxes, the veil between our illusory reality and the true reality is thinned, and where seekers may be able to look behind the curtain into the true nature of reality.

And it's just about time for the fall equinox. 

Mac arrives in time to find Jon in the middle of the barren patch, slowly transforming into a tentacled potato-thing.  She has a glimpse of the true reality before he shoves her off into the woods.

Creighton is gone.  Mac returns home, shoots her answering machine, loses all interest in her business and makes plans to visit the nexus point next equinox.

This is overall a superior story, with very effective atmosphere and buildup.  It's a truly Lovecraftian story that doesn't read anything like HPL, yet clearly follows his ideas about structure and orchestration.  And very successfully so.

On the downside, I found Mac's final confrontation with Jon to be distinctly unimaginative and a letdown. Perhaps an author with a more surreal imagination could have come up with something more potent.

A very good story with a superb buildup, but a slightly disappointing climax.