Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror Read online

  Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events or organizations in it are products of the author’s imaginations or used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved.

  Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror © 2015 Dark Regions Press.

  Shadows of the Evening © by Joyce Carol Oates.

  First published in Century magazine (1998). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Genesis Mausoleum © 2015 by Colleen Douglas

  The Woman in the Hill © 2015 by Tamsyn Muir

  The Face of Jarry © 2015 by Cat Hellisen

  Our Lady of Arsia Mons © 2012 by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  First published in Sirenia Digest #82 (2012). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  First published in Sirenia Digest #81, August 2012

  The Body Electric © 2015 by Lucy Brady

  The Child and the Night Gaunts © 2015 by Marly Youmans

  All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts © 2015 by Sonya Taaffe

  Every Hole in the Earth We Will Claim As Our Own © 2015 by Gemma Files

  But Only Because I Love You © 2015 by Molly Tanzer

  Cthulhu’s Mother © 2015 by Kelda Crich

  All Gods Great and Small © 2015 by Karen Heuler

  Dearest Daddy © 2015 by Lois H. Gresh

  Eye of the Beholder © 2015 by Nancy Kilpatrick

  Down at the Bottom of Everything © 2015 by E.R. Knightsbridge

  Spore © 2015 by Amanda Downum

  Pippa’s Crayons © 2015 by Christine Morgan

  The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward © 2012 by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette,

  first published as a podcast; http://www.drabblecast.org

  From the Cold Dark Sea © 2015 by Storm Constantine

  Mnemeros © 2015 by R.A. Kaelin

  Published by

  Dark Regions Press, LLC

  6635 N. Baltimore Ave., Ste. 245

  Portland, OR 97203

  United States of America

  DarkRegions.com

  Edited by Lynne Jamneck

  Cover image, Interior Images, Cover Design © 2015 by Daniele Serra

  Interior Layout by Cyrus Wraith Walker

  Interior Design by Mandy Cramer

  First Trade eBook Edition

  ISBN 978-1-62641-111-1

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Lynne Jamneck

  Shadows of the Evening

  Joyce Carol Oates

  The Genesis Mausoleum

  Colleen Douglas

  The Woman in the Hill

  Tamsyn Muir

  The Face of Jarry

  Cat Hellisen

  Our Lady of Arsia Mons

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  The Body Electric

  Lucy Brady

  The Child and the Night Gaunts

  Marly Youmans

  All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts

  Sonya Taaffe

  Every Hole in the Earth We Will Claim As Our Own

  Gemma Files

  But Only Because I Love You

  Molly Tanzer

  Cthulhu’s Mother

  Kelda Crich

  All Gods Great and Small

  Karen Heuler

  Dearest Daddy

  Lois H. Gresh

  Eye of the Beholder

  Nancy Kilpatrick

  Down at the Bottom of Everything

  E.R. Knightsbridge

  Spore

  Amanda Downum

  Pippa’s Crayons

  Christine Morgan

  The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward

  Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette

  From the Cold Dark Sea

  Storm Constantine

  Mnemeros

  R.A. Kaelin

  Author Biographies

  About the Editor

  Editor’s Notes

  Our Campaign Supporters

  Introduction

  Lovecraftian.

  What is it? What is it not?

  This can be a difficult question to answer. Certainly, a Lovecraftian narrative may include the places, spaces, people and Things that Lovecraft himself wrote about in his short fiction, novellas and poems. But despite the label that has been so intrinsically linked to one writer in particular, beyond Lovecraft lurks something more ambiguous, more ineffable, more uncanny than even Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep. After all, no matter how difficult these names might roll off the human tongue, the creatures they describe have still been made concrete, rendered identifiable things and as such, we can quantify them.

  The stories in “Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror” attempt in different ways to access this beyondness and relay it in a manner that can partially reveal the shadows that dwell on the periphery of our subconscious minds. In doing so, these twenty stories reveal that a ‘Lovecraftian’ story might not include any of the traditionally recognizable components we have come to expect from such a tale (though they do make brief appearances; as a bonus, you will also find out exactly who watches over The Tentacled one while he sleeps).

  The cosmological nature of Lovecraft’s work allows authors to employ subject matter that is wide in scope. Nonetheless, throughout the stories in “Dreams from the Witch House”, it becomes clear that, in contemporary Lovecraftian narratives, one aspect has become particularly terrifying – that’s right, look in the mirror, you will see it there. Of course, perceiving ourselves as our own worst enemy is not a psychically easy task. Just like Danforth in “At the Mountains of Madness”, we place ourselves at risk of psychological schism when we dare look at what is behind us, or more presently, inside us.

  Why a collection of contemporary Lovecraftian stories written by women? The evidence for answering this question is there for anyone to see; simply review the Table of Contents from Lovecratian-inspired anthologies over the past number of years (and there are many) and it becomes evident that the bulk of contributions published in these collections were written by men. Here, some draw what seems to them an obvious conclusion – women simply don’t write Lovecraftian fiction. Of course, anyone who has consistently read both Lovecraftian and horror fiction in general will know that this is not the case.

  Perhaps it is simply that women write the Lovecraftian differently than many of their male counterparts traditionally have. There is something extremely human about the stories included here and in Lovecraft, the focus has often been on the non-human; even in stories where tentacled and many-eyed gods only make their appearance on the last few pages, stories often doggedly build toward the reveal of these creatures from the very start, making this essentially their raison d’être for being told.

  The stories in “Dreams from the Witch House” celebrate humanity, both the good and bad.

  Fear, greed, curiosity, uncertainty, terror, revulsion – all of these traits and more arise within the stories contained here. Yet they evidence confrontations with terror and the subsequent outcomes of these conflicts that in many ways feel more decisive than Lovecraft’s penchant for having his protagonists succumb to madness. What is more terrifying—giving in to insanity, where the mind erects a protective wall between reality and psyche, or processing terror rationally and accepting it as part of reality?

  Bela Lugosi was purported to have said, ““It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed
on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.” This female feeding-on and return to the horrific is another interesting notion for reflection where Lovecraft is concerned. Consider that ultimately (with some exceptions), the Lovecraftian seeker after truth often finds himself inevitably overcome by insanity, an affliction that can be viewed as a final separation of what it means to be human. In Lovecraft, as verified by the Providence writer’s masterful use of intensifying dread toward an inevitable narrative conclusion, a return to horror is not a willing one; and when such a return does occur, it is generally as something no longer human, as in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. It is therefore interesting to note that the kind of “gibbering madness” so often found in Lovecraft is not in evidence here; characters do question themselves, their behaviours and motives, but the slip into uncontrollable madness is much less obvious here. Do women have a greater capacity for absorbing the horrific? Interestingly, among the stories here, a story that comes closest to exemplifying Lovecraft’s blend of insanity is told from a male perspective…

  As noted, not all of the stories collected here are told from female perspectives and this offers yet another thought-provoking diversion in terms of how Lovecraft approached the Weird; we know he rarely included female characters in his stories, and even when he did, they were at best underdeveloped, serving mostly as catalysts for the horrific elements that would come to bear themselves out on the male psyche. Did Lovecraft intentionally eschew female perspectives in his work (for whatever reason), or had he simply not known how to write them, how to project their perceptions of the horrific within the context of his own mythos?

  Regardless of such speculations, some of the most exciting Lovecraftian fiction is currently being written by women. Contemporary Lovecraftianism is moving away from the Elder Old Guard who – though they will always remain an essential backdrop to Lovecraft’s expanded universe – are perhaps in some ways becoming as stifling to diverse perspectives of the unnameable as Lovecraft’s own views on a number of topics. “Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror” aims to magnify the scope in which writers can express terror when paying homage to “The King of Weird”, as Joyce Carol Oates refers to Lovecraft in a 1996 essay. The cultists have moved into the 21st century where new horrors await. The grimoires need updating, or we face the prospect of fighting horrors that we may have been able to defeat, were it not for a case of short-sightedness.

  Lynne Jamneck

  October 5, 2015

  Shadows of the Evening

  Joyce Carol Oates

  1.

  In the late winter of 1928, when she was sixteen years old, my mother’s mother Magdalena Schön journeyed alone by train from the Black Rock district of Buffalo, New York, five hundred miles eastward to the seaport of Edmundston, Massachusetts. Never before had the shy, inexperienced girl traveled anywhere by herself; rarely had she ventured out of the German-Hungarian neighborhood in which she’d been born, to immigrant parents from southern Germany; she spoke accented English which felt to her, in the presence of strangers, like a speech impediment or a physical deformity. She was terrified of leaving home but had no choice: there were seven children in the family, too many to feed and clothe and care for, and an eighth soon to be born, so her parents had decided to send her to live with an elderly aunt of her father’s, a widow with no children who was bedridden after a stroke and terribly homesick for someone from the family, who lived by herself in Massachusetts. But why must I go, why must I be the one? Magdalena protested, and her mother said, smiling, as if this were an answer, Your aunt Kistenmacher married a rich man, she will leave us money.

  In a state of shock mistaken for acquiescence Magdalena was put on a crowded New York Central coach car with a single battered suitcase and a satchel containing sandwiches and drinking water and a prayer book and a rosary; she’d been cautioned Don’t speak to anybody, not even the train men. Just give your tickets. Stiff and upright in her seat beside a sooty window Magdalena gritted her teeth against the train’s lumbering and lurching and ceaseless vibrating; she dared not look at anyone, least of all the brusque, uniformed conductor who took her ticket; for most of the first day she stared sightlessly out the window or shut her eyes, her lips moving in silent prayers to the Virgin Mary she came to know, less than one hundred miles into her journey, were useless. She did not cry though from time to time bright tears glistened on her cheeks like raindrops. For crying, too, was useless.

  She was thinking My mother doesn’t want me! My mother sent me away.

  For of the myriad facts that might be said of Magdalena Schön, this was the cruel, inescapable fact, the fact she would recall for the remainder of her life which would be a long life My mother didn’t love me but sent me away.

  The coach car was uncomfortable, overheated, jammed with travelers, most of them men who gazed upon Magdalena with interest. Some stared at her without knowing what they did, like men dreaming with their eyes open; others were more deliberate. Magdalena gave no sign, of course. She had long learned, since the age of twelve, never to meet the eyes of strangers even by chance. She was an attractive girl of moderate height who looked as if she’d grown swiftly in the past year. Her skin was fair, healthy, lightly freckled; her eyes were wide-set and thickly lashed, a deep, placid blue; her wavy wheat-colored hair was dense as a horse’s mane and had been neatly plaited and wound in two coils around the sides of her head, like a telephone operator’s earphones. On her lap was the satchel into which she looked repeatedly, as if checking to see what might be lost. She hadn’t any appetite for the food her mother had packed for her, which had begun to smell rancid, but could only sip from a jar of lukewarm water, to ease her parched mouth, and then she burst into a spasm of coughing, with a sound like hoarse weeping. She wore rust-colored clothes that might have been handed down from an adult woman, and old-fashioned leather shoes, or boots, with complicated laces. She looked, not like 1928, but like 1918. In school she’d been one of those children of immigrant parents so shy and uncertain of themselves they were considered “slow”; at home, she’d been made to feel there was something wrong with her that justly provoked impatience in others. She wore a perpetual expression of chagrin and vague embarrassment. When someone, usually a sister, came to her defense saying Leave Magdalena alone, she can’t help it, Magdalena was stricken with emotions of gratitude and shame as if she’d swallowed something delicious the wrong way.

  A man seated across from Magdalena did speak to her, as the train came clattering and shrieking into the Albany station that evening, asking if she’d like to join him for dinner in the dining car; but Magdalena, staring out the window with dolorous eyes, her rosary twined through her fingers and her lips silently moving, seemed not to hear. The clumsy satchel was on her lap. She had ceased thinking and in a haze of oblivion sat prepared to be hurtled eastward into the deepening night to a fate so vast and incomprehensible she had ceased trying to consider it as she’d given up considering the geometry problems certain of her boy classmates at school solved so readily. Thinking, as the train wheels rolled, She sent me away. Sent me away. My mother didn’t love me but sent me away.

  And then at dawn to her surprise Magdalena woke stiff-necked and dry-mouthed from a night of patchy, disturbing dreams to see a slow explosion of light at the horizon; an unknown river creased and sparkling in the darkness and broad as the Niagara. The train was rushing over this river on an elevated bridge Magdalena could see curving dizzily ahead, a skeleton bridge on stilts. In the distance was a city built on a peninsula that must have been Edmundston, her destination. Overhead the sky was still partly darkened, rippled and ridged with cloud. Wind made the train rock. Magdalena bit her lower lip in panic, or was it excitement?—never had she been so far from home, never could she have found her way back. Far to her right the hilly, rocky land fell away and there emerged a vast body of water, choppy and glittering with light. Magdalena rubbed her eyes, she’d never seen anyth
ing so beautiful. It seemed to her suddenly that the world was luminous before her; the future lay ahead, welcoming; the world behind, of dismal Black Rock, the airless crowded tenement flats, the endless winter of icy, snow-locked streets, the stink of factories and the soot-blackened walls and air singed with smoke that caused people to cough and choke until tears ran down their cheeks—all that was behind her, diminished and narrowed and rapidly retreating like a tunnel that has the power to terrify while you are in it but is forgotten as soon as you merge into daylight.

  The sun lifted from the horizon and broke through a dense bank of cloud. Shafts of light fell obliquely earthward. To Magdalena’s right, the vast stretch of water shifted suddenly to dark greeny-blue, near its surface transparent as cut glass. Magdalena exclaimed in childlike wonder, “Oh, what is that” and a man seated across from her said, proud as if it were his own possession, “That, miss, is the Atlantic Ocean.”

  The Atlantic Ocean! Magdalena’s parents hadn’t told her that Edmundston was on the ocean. All Magdalena knew of the Atlantic Ocean were horror tales of her parents’ terrible stormy crossing years before her birth, a crossing her pregnant mother had barely survived. Magdalena’s brothers and sisters had been imbued all their lives with a sense of the ocean’s terror, not its beauty. But the Atlantic Ocean at which Magdalena stared was beautiful—and immense!—like nothing she had ever seen before. She hoped that her great-aunt’s house was near the water so that she could stare and stare at it forever.

  2.

  Now came the time of surprises. Now Magdalena was continually surprised, like a child wandering in a hall of marvels.

  Her first surprise was at the Edmundston train station. It had been arranged that she would be met there by her great-aunt’s driver and so, stepping down uncertainly from the coach car, struggling with her suitcase and satchel, she glanced quickly about. The confusion and commotion of so many disembarking passengers, so many strangers, threw her into a panic. What if no one is here? What if this is a mistake, a dream? They have sent me away to be rid of me. Then she saw a dark-uniformed man with a vizored cap standing on the platform calmly holding a sign—Kistenmacher. It took Magdalena a moment to realize that Kistenmacher, a stranger’s name, now referred in some crucial way to her.