Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time

T he inspiration for this anthology came to us easily. We have an interest in history and historical fiction. One of us has completed a PhD in Medieval History on the Knights Templar (Paula) and the other spends a vast amount of time reading about Prehispanic Mexico and the Tudor period (Silvia). And history, of course, is an important element in Lovecrafts stories, whether it comes in the shape of the Necronomicons false provenance or allusions to New Englands 17th-century witchcrazes. To Lovecraft, a tainted past is the rotten core from which present-day horror germinates.

Lovecraft comes from a long line of New England writers of dark fiction, both before and after him, including the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and Stephen King. New England of his time possessed a sinister history full of paranoid Puritans, hatchet-wielding daughters, dour and isolated farmers, and Cape Verdean whalers with connections extending across the seven seas (hence his obsession with the ocean). Lovecraft was also fascinated by the long view of weird fiction that was popular in his time, extrapolating frightening pasts for humanity that extended back to the Paleolithic and even further.

In this volume, we decided to take that interest in history, in the past, which Lovecrafts stories show, but to jump back in time instead of anchoring the tales in the present.

We received vast amounts of tales set in Victorian England, because that seemed the setting de rigueur, and at one point, despaired that we might have to change the title of this volume to Cthulhu With a Cravat and a Top Hat. Soon, however, stories with other locations and time periods began to trickle in. Eventually, we assembled 26 stories, two of them translations from French and Spanish, set in ancient Egypt, Prehispanic Peru, Stalins Russia, and many more places, and ranging from the Neolithic to the early 20th century.

The result is a collection of stories that span the world and the centuries, and which we hope Lovecraft and historical fiction enthusiasts alike will find as unique and exciting as we do. Enter our eldritch time machine if you dare.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles

Andrew Dombalagian

W hen I found him, flies were buzzing across Marduks vacant face. He sat without shade by the rivers bank. He stared down at the sand around him. Already, the hot morning had begun to bake his back into a reddish sore. My brother would not know to move out of the heat, even if his skin began to blister.

Marduk did not twitch a single muscle until I stood right next to him. He turned his dim, grey eyes towards me. After slow, grinding thought within his head permitted him to remember who I was, he cracked a simpletons grin. When his mouth opened, two gadflies flew out, freed from their toothy prison.

Tigranes, look. Look what I make.

He pointed to the squat heap of silt and clay before him. I could not recall anything that had ever excited Marduk as much as the terraced hill built at his feet.

Mother was worried that wild dogs had eaten you, her idiot son, and here you are, playing in the sand like a child.

From my dreams, Tigranes. Gods showed me. Showed me big villages. Full of temples. Like this. This one.

Why would the gods bring visions to a fool who burns his eyes by staring at Utus radiance in the sky? You could not see a serpent crawling towards you, much less visions from the gods.

The shapes. Gods show me shapes. Cant make them. Hard. Hard to make. I cant copy. They look scary. Have you seen, brother? Do gods show you? Do you see cities?

What are you babbling about now, Marduk?

I belong to gods. Oonana says that. She says I belong to gods. That why they show me. They show me cause I am theirs.

The crazed crone had spread more nonsense to his feeble mind. The gods had allowed Oonana to live to eat the bread of forty-and-two harvests. Our neighbours claimed that her withered body stored the grain of wisdom. All of her ravings were inane and fit only for an unfit mind.

The truly wise ones were the ones who had abandoned Marduk in the rugged uplands. Father should never have brought Marduk into our home. He should have left him on the hillside for the dogs and vultures.

Mother always commanded me to bring him along when I guarded Fathers flocks with sling and staff. I would leave Marduk on the grassy hill and tell him to brain any wild dogs that came near. I told Marduk that the wild dogs were brown and that fathers hounds were grey. No matter how many times I told him, his thick head would not remember. Marduk had once smashed the skull of fathers favourite she-hound.

Come on, now. We need to get to the square.

I hauled Marduk to his stumbling feet and set him walking home. As he shambled up the verdant hill rising from the river, I looked down at his trivial construction on the bank. Marduk had piled and shaped the clay into a series of heaped squares. Each level was smaller than the last, creating a series of tiers that escalated to the pinnacle. At the top was perched a mockery of our village altar, left empty of its rightful shrine.

From the top of the hill, Marduk called out for me. He did not see that my foot had trampled his temple into nothingness.

The nomadic traders had come early from the cedar forests to the west. Traditionally, our village would have reaped the harvest before the traders arrival. There would be stores of grain, animal skins, dried meat, and pots of fermenting beer to offer. In exchange, we would get tools of sharp stone and exotic woods, preserved fruits, and goods that had seen the distant sea.

But harvest was still days away. There was little to barter with and everyone was in a rush to amend this plight. Alongside our neighbours, my entire family was hurrying in the fields to reap, slaughter and store so we could trade before the caravan departed. With our family so busy, we were sent to market to barter for a few important things.

My eldest sister, Ishara, admired herself in the polished surface of the obsidian mirror held by one of the nomadic traders. She turned and posed, coaxing the string of blue stones around her neck to look their most appealing. The cloth she knelt upon cradled nothing but useless adornments and trinkets.

These are not the things our family needs.

Tigranes, I have already gotten the flint blades, dried figs and salt that father asked for. I finished my tasks, even with Oonana bothering me.

What did that hag want?

She was casting warnings about a man travelling with the caravan. She claims he is a wicked sorcerer from far to the south. He carries a long blade that brightly shines, but it is not made from flint or obsidian. Oonana says he walks with wild beasts that kneel before him and lick his feet like servants.