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Authors: Silvia Moreno-Garcia,Paula R. Stiles

She Walks in Shadows

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SHE WALKS IN SHADOWS

edited by

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

and Paula R. Stiles

 

 

Copyright © 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from its author.

Published by Innsmouth Free Press
Vancouver, BC Canada

http://innsmouthfreepress.com

ISBN paperback: 978-1-927990-16-2

ISBN hardcover: 978-1-927990-17-9

ISBN e-book: 978-1-927990-15-5

Cover by Sarah. K. Diesel

All material original to this volume.

 

 

“There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

 

CONTENTS

Introduction

Ammutseba Rising

Ann K. Schwader

Turn Out the Light

Penelope Love

Bring the Moon to Me

Amelia Gorman

Violet is the Color of Your Energy

Nadia Bulkin

De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae

Jilly Dreadful

Lavinia’s Wood

Angela Slatter

The Adventurer’s Wife

Premee Mohamed

Lockbox

E. Catherine Tobler

Hairwork

Gemma Files

The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad

Molly Tanzer

Body to Body to Body

Selena Chambers

Magna Mater

Arinn Dembo

Chosen

Lyndsey Holder

Bitter Perfume

Laura Blackwell

Eight Seconds

Pandora Hope

The Eye of Juno

Eugenie Mora

Cthulhu of the Dead Sea

Inkeri Kontro

Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961

Sharon Mock

The Cypress God

Rodopi Sisamis

When She Quickens

Mary A. Turzillo

Queen of a New America

Wendy N. Wagner

The Opera Singer

Priya Sridhar

Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses

Valerie Valdes

Provenance

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

T’la-yub’s Head

Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas

INTRODUCTION

THERE IS A
paucity of women in Lovecraft’s tales. Keziah, Lavinia and Asenath are his most notable women, even if they never take center stage. Some fans of Lovecraft’s stories have even questioned whether Asenath should be considered a woman, since it is her father who inhabits her body. In a way, Asenath functions as a literary Schrödinger’s cat: She can be interpreted as a man and a woman at the same time. Philosopher Judith Butler would have a field day discussing her and issues concerning the materiality of the body.

In a couple of his collaborations/ghost-writing jobs, Lovecraft seemed to give women more prominent roles. Whether it was because ghost-writing client Zealia Brown-Reed Bishop asked for this is unclear. At any rate, collaborations with Brown-Reed Bishop yielded Marceline and Audrey, the latter the only point-of-view woman Lovecraft ever dealt with. However, in general, whatever women appear in Lovecraft’s stories lurk distantly in the shadows.

The present volume assembles stories about women, by women. Why an all-woman volume? The first spark was the notion, among some fans of the Lovecraft Mythos, that women do not like to write in this category, that they
can’t
write in this category.

Though, for a long time, the Lovecraft Mythos was a male-dominated field and tables of contents by men were commonplace, we have seen in the past decade an increasing number of women creators and fans joining both the Weird fiction and the Lovecraft scene.

Beside long-standing authors such as Caitlín R. Kiernan and Ann K. Schwader, we can find relative newcomers like Molly Tanzer and E. Catherine Tobler. In the arts, Liv Rainey-Smith has distinguished herself with her woodcut creations. Editors such as Paula Guran and Ellen Datlow have assembled more than one volume of Lovecraftian fiction. This year saw the release of the first South Korean film adaptation of a Lovecraft story. “The Music of Jo Hyeja” casts women as the leads, with a woman — Jihyun Park — also directing.

Yet, the perception that women are not inclined towards Weird or Lovecraftian fiction seems to persist. We hope this anthology will help to dispel such notions. We also hope it will provide fresh takes on a number of characters and creatures from Lovecraft’s stories, and add some completely new element to the Mythos. Most of all, we hope it will inspire new creations and inspire more women to write Weird or Lovecraftian tales.

Women have emerged from the shadows to claim the night. We welcome them gladly.

— Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles

 

AMMUTSEBA RISING

Ann K. Schwader

At first, a spectral haze against the darkness,

some apparition less of mist than hunger

made visible afflicts our evening. Stars

within it flicker, fettered by corruption

we sense but dimly. Terrible & ancient,

it murmurs in the dreams of chosen daughters.

Not
it
, but
She ...
Chaos Incarnate’s daughter,

thought-spawned at random from that primal darkness

past memory or myth returns. What ancient

sorceries survive to wake such hunger

in times like ours? What spirit of corruption

endures to threaten these well-charted stars?

Minds blind to science, doubtful of the stars,

accustomed to dominion over daughters

& wives alike, defy this world’s corruption

with ignorance. No curse, but blessed darkness

obscuring every sin — or any hunger

for truth beyond the authorized & ancient.

Above us now, authority more ancient

than mankind manifests. As fading stars

surrender up their essence to a hunger

yet unsuspected by our science, daughters

of ignorance awake. Unveiled from darkness,

they lift their faces. Savor sweet corruption.

Arched like a crime-scene silhouette, corruption

assumes the form of female. Feral. Ancient

opener of all the ways to darkness,

Her mystery eclipses tarnished stars

we kept for wishing on. Perhaps our daughters

will walk in shadow gladly, holding hunger

inside them for a weapon. Nameless hunger

reshaped their spirits: should we fear corruption

in doing likewise? All of us are daughters

denied some truth or other; craving ancient

wisdom like the bitterness of stars

against Her tongue, expiring into darkness.

No dawn remains. O daughters called by ancient

hunger, know the truth of your corruption:

Devourer of Stars, perfected darkness.

TURN OUT THE LIGHT

Penelope Love

 

A re-imagining of the life and death of Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft.


THE OPERATION WAS
a success,” the voice said. “Everything was done to ensure her comfort. Then, during the night, her condition deteriorated. I’m sorry, but early this morning, she died.” The telephone line buzzed and clicked mechanically.

He stood, wrapped in his dressing gown, bare feet on the cold linoleum of the rooming house hall. It was late in the May of 1921.

He had been roused by the ringing of the telephone from lucid and horrible dreams. The dreams were forgotten on waking, but the nightmare aura still clung. He could not take the news in. He became convinced that there was no human on the other end of the line. This was an alien voice, something that only pretended to be human, that stole a human face to speak and human hands to feel.
Prodigious surgical, biological, chemical, and mechanical skill
….

“Everything that could be done was done. My condolences. You’ll want to see her, of course.”

The voice stopped.

“No, not at all.”

The negation shot out before he could think.

“No.” He shrank back, appalled.

He had never ventured inside the building, not even when she was alive.

“Last night,” he blurted out, “the lights were left on? All the time, as per our instructions?”

“Everything was done to ensure her comfort,” the voice mechanically repeated.

“Of course. Yes. My Aunt Lillian will make the arrangements,” he said.

Afterwards, he went back upstairs to his small room. The news sank in at last. His hands shook. They had argued when they last met. He had been angry with her and she had wept. A harsh mechanical voice buzzed in his head. The distance they had struggled with all their lives was now made infinite by death. He took an old, brown and creased paper from his pocket. He hesitated. He examined the childish scrawls. Then he crumpled it and threw it in the bin.

He sat at his desk. He drew pen and paper towards him, and wrote. He wrote as tears blotted paper and blurred ink. He wrote with sudden and desperate furious intensity. He wrote as if words,
mere inconsequential scribble
s, could bridge the abyss between life and death.

“Supper!” Sarah squinted out the front door. “Come in, son.”

It was a bright, hot day, Summer 1910. The rooming house on Angell Street was far from the green shade of College Hill. The glare outside threatened to bring on one of her headaches.

She glanced at herself in the hall mirror, but was aghast at her reflection. She saw an ageing face with a wan prettiness that was fading fast. Her clothes were dowdy. Her hair was merely neat. Her hands, though, were still long and white. They, at least, were still beautiful. “If only I could have run a little business,” she said to her reflection, “I could have supported us.” A shiver ran down her spine at her own daring. She leant closer. “An interior decoration business,” she breathed. She was an accomplished painter, with an artist’s eye. She could turn any house into a stylish nest. The shiver became a frisson. She retreated in fright from herself.

Her crowning rage, however, was that she was not a man ….

She should have been born a boy. A man’s brain was figured differently. If she were a man, she could have taken charge of her inheritance instead of being sidelined by her sister Lillian. As it was, the money vanished when her father died, like a malignant conjuring trick. It was no use wishing. Lillian would never let her work for a living. She was more frightened of Lillian than dying.

BOOK: She Walks in Shadows
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