Lovecraft Alive!: A Collection of Lovecraftian Stories by Shirley John

Author:Shirley, John [Shirley, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Hippocampus Press
Published: 2016-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Windows Underwater

Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man

And downward fish; yet had his temple high

Reared in Azatus, dreaded through the coast . . .

—John Milton, Paradise Lost

1. Gilberto Lopez, Lymon Barnes. Summer 2014.

Lymon and Gil, both twenty-one, stood in the shade of the canopy over the festival picnic tables. Gil looked around with disgust.

Summer sunshine, green lawns, the smell of the marshes coming faintly from east of town. Tittering children eating frozen yogurt with sprinkles.

Gil was repelled by it.

“I’m sick of Rowley, man.” He didn’t say it too loud. That dickhead Curston was sitting at one of the picnic tables, maybe forty feet away, jawing about baseball. Deputy Curston was all full of smiles because his Red Sox had a clear road to the playoffs. He’d given Gil at least two completely unnecessary traffic tickets.

Lymon shrugged. “Rowley’s okay.” He was thoughtfully eating his extra-large sprinkled cherry-chocolate frozen yogurt. He was the kind of guy who could eat anything and never get fat. Freckled, “pale as fishbelly, skinny as an eel” was what Lymon’s dad said. He had hinted that Lymon wasn’t actually his kid. True, Lymon didn’t look like his pop. Recessive genes, is all.

Gil was half Mexican, ran to chubby, and was always fighting it. “You got to eat that giant triple cone in front of me?”

“Surrender, surrender to the lure of the fro-gurt, Gil!”

Gil snorted. “Hell, it’s not just Rowley. I’m sick of Massachusetts too. I don’t like the cops, I don’t like the tourists, I don’t like the ocean—especially around here. Water’s too fucking murky and dark. I want to go to one of those islands where the water is crystal clear. You can see whatever’s down there. And there’s some kinda real culture going on. You know? Like in Hollywood.”

“Kind of boring here,” Lymon admitted. “Nothing to do but—”

“But this,” Gil said. He waved a hand at the little tents and canopies and shade structures of the Rowley Arts and Crafts Festival. His other hand was holding a plastic wine glass from the “tasting booth.” Eight dollars for one glass of lame wine from Virginia.

“If you left Rowley where would you go? You got free rent with your folks here.”

“I’d go to California. Maybe L.A. Or San Diego. Get into filmmaking or . . .”

Lymon looked at Gil and raised the red-blond eyebrow that was always half raised anyway. “Filmmaking. Really.”

“Okay, listillo. I’ll start small—work for a videogame company. Do design, maybe direct-cut scenes.” Gil drank some of his wine. “I got an uncle in L.A. He’s kind of a dick, but he offered me a job. I could work there while I was getting my shit together to apply to Pixil Arts.”

“You mean that uncle who has the car repair shop? You don’t know anything about cars either. You’ve been studying to be a pharmacist, man.”

“He’d teach me. I hate being in a classroom. I want to be out doing something.”

“You could go back to work for your Pops.”

Gil made a face. “I don’t want to touch another goddamn fish.

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