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My inspirations were books about supposedly true hauntings and the fact that there was a “haunted house” in my neighborhood . . . right next door, as a matter of fact. But I actually was a big fan of science fiction, and I was doing those kind of stories too, as well as “war stories” starring kids in my classes. Those made me fairly popular because everybody either wanted to survive or die as heroes, and I had their fates in my hands.
The story owes pretty much its entire existence to the Stuart Gordon film Dagon. While watching it, I felt like I finally got what Lovecraftian fiction was all about, a feeling I hadn’t gotten from any other story, or even any of Gordon’s other Lovecraft-inspired films. It really is horrifying, it never quite crosses that line into gross or silly, and the resulting madness the main characters fall into feels genuine rather than contrived. I just loved it. But of course, given my own quirks, I wasn’t interested in the main characters’ story, I was interested in the villagers, and how they got to where they are from what they had been before.
Soufiane Idrassi is a twenty-two-year-old freelance digital artist from Meknes, Morocco. Four years ago, Soufiane began teaching himself Adobe Photoshop—still his weapon of choice for his creations—and has become expert enough that his technique was explored in the January 2013 issue of Advanced Photoshop Magazine. He is currently expanding into 3D character creation and 2D concept art with his startup company, CG Pro Technology.
You can choose to ride the train, and once on it seems impossible to get off, or you can turn away from the depot. But the God also represents the darker desires of humanity, a kind of built in self-destruct. From what I can tell, we don’t learn much from history, or at least we seldom learn.
When we think of Lovecraftian horror, or the Lovecraft Mythos (as it exists in Lovecraft’s works alone), we need to differentiate those stories from what has come to be called the Cthulhu Mythos, a name invented by August Derleth. Lovecraftian horror incorporates aspects of the Cthulhu Mythos (which oozed forth from Lovecraft’s influence), but Lovecraft’s horror fiction is much more than cosmic entities that filter to our planet and corrupt our dreams and sanity.
In a horror story, there’s always the choice to reveal the monster, or monstrous, or leave it to the imagination. I chose the latter as one’s imagination will often supply a far more dire vision than a cold description on paper. If nothing else, whatever is under the tarp signifies the narrator’s connection, and obeisance, to a dread and awful power.
This month, we have original fiction from Lynda E. Rucker (“The House on Cobb Street”) and Carrie Vaughn (“Fishwife”), along with reprints by Laird Barron (“Shiva, Open Your Eye”) and Joe R. Lansdale (“God of the Razor”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with all of our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and a feature interview with Robert McCammon.
The story came from a few different places. One was an actual hypnagogic hallucination I had—which I am normally not prone to. I “woke up” but was frozen and I could hear creepy little girls whispering behind me, and could picture them as well.
Q: You once said, “There’s a true innocence about monsters.” Is there something innocent about the monsters (vampires) in 30 Days of Night? A: In a way, I suppose. They are very pure and honorable among their own kind. They have about as much respect for us as we do cows, so killing humans doesn’t make them any less innocent than us for eating cows and chickens. I think animals and children under two years old are the only innocents left in this world. Monsters are often treated like animals, so . . .
In [the] story, the moment of horror, people just sort of chug along with the story, and then the first moment they become uncomfortable is the moment that they realize that the observation has gone beyond simply the observation of somebody standing and having an unrequited love. The moment they realize that the person talking has been in your room, has been looking on your computer, the moment in that letter where the narrator, the letter writer starts talking about “Your password is . . .” and people realize Oh my god, you’ve read all their emails.
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