
Ancient Mysteries
Pulp Winds
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PULP WINDS, the long-awaited collecton of short fiction, verse, and Forteana by TGS author Wm. Michael Mott, has been unleashed for mass consumption! With introductions by Walter Bosley, Brad Steiger, and Gerald W. Page, these tales will take you from the antediluvian world to lost cities beneath the earth, onward to other planets around distant stars, and even to the Dark Ages, the Old West and the High Seas. New twists on mythos and madness are intermeshed and presented in these yarns of terror and adventure!
************** Walter Bosley
Whenever I read an exciting short story by Wm. Michael Mott or see one of his fabulous covers depicting hidden caverns, strange creatures, or sword-and-sorcery wizards and soldiers of fortune, I feel I have received special magical powers that will take me into a portion of my past that I greatly miss. What is more, that same portion of my own past that stirs so much nostalgia within me, is a segment that has largely vanished from our culture and is only kept alive by the talent of such individuals as Mott.
Brad Steiger
I urge you now to turn the page and go on to the feast of the fantastic contained inside this book. Mike is a strong writer of unique outlook and rich talent. While it is true that in some stories you may find elements from Lovecraft, Shaver, Robert E. Howard and James Branch Cabell, in others you will find no influence at all except the mind and imagination of Wm. Michael Mott.
Gerald W. Page
************** --From "Fisticuffs of the Damned,"
Tulruhk darted in and out repeatedly, like a striking snake, burying his longsword again and again in folds of flesh. Fearful yet furious, the thing danced with him, until finally a giant hand-like appendage jerked him up by one leg and lifted him high into the air. He threw his shortsword downward, burying it to the hilts in the top of thing, which began screaming and thrashing, swinging him around wildly as it dug at its upper regions with its other arm. Tulruhk began chopping as best he could at the arm which held him aloft, but the flesh was scaly and tougher than the flesh of the main bulk. Like glimpses from a nightmare, he saw Bress' tear-stained face looking up at him, the bloody top of his adversary, the limbs of the pulfer-tree-he grabbed at the thorny branches with his free hand, just as the thing began to pull him toward its fetid maw. Ignoring the biting of the thorns in his flesh, he engaged in a tug-of-war, his body taut and hard as a bar of iron. --From "The Towers of Nosberoigne,"
--From The Testimony of Peabody: HER
Naoleen shuddered, a look of shock momentarily on her face, then moved closer as well, the other two Adlans crouched right behind her. "
They're mounting some sort of major offensive. Look, see those long formations hanging from the ceiling? Nutrient-clusters, probably used to be human and animal life. Shoggoths feed on those if they have to, and I'm sure that the siblings of that thing you killed could do so as well... But not the dholes, I'm guessing. Our histories indicate that they prefer living meat---."
--From Cask of Ages,
MIST IN DEAD MYRYX
Profusely illustrated, and reminiscent of pulp fiction and verse of a bygone era, PULP WINDS is a literary adventure of a type scarcely seen today! These literary gems are not in the modern vein of politically correct, emasculated tales of slow pace and boring introspection so common today, but are fast-paced, pulse-pounding accounts of action, horror, love, hate and gore! Presented in a large-format for easier reading and for viewing of the artwork, the design is reminiscent of the pulp magazines of an earlier, bygone era.
Those of you familiar with Mott's non-fiction Fortean research will find familiar themes from the realms of the unknown interwoven into, through, and beneath these stories, like the currents of a deep black subterranean river of mystery, glimpsed and occasionally revealed in all its weirdness and terror, before plunging beneath the surface again. Also included is an article on Fortean matters along the lines of the research presented in Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures, Mott's definitive non-fiction opus on high strangeness, hidden beings, and real-life mysteries. Some of the stories and poems in Pulp Winds have also appeared in Lost Continent Library Magazine, Planetary Stories, and elsewhere, but have never been gathered together into a single collection before now.
If the reader finds occasional hints of the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Book of Skelos, the Eltdown Shards, the Necronomicon, and yes, even the mad musings of the Shaver Mystery in these tales... It is no mere happenstance!
BLOOD AND THUNDER has returned to the literary realm. PULP WINDS will satisfy your cravings for fast-paced, haunting adventures across time and space!
Introductions:
I know a man who seeks out strange and unsettling things and lives to write about them. Maybe you've heard of him, maybe you have not. You will never forget him after this offering to the eldritch gods of that hoary tradition known as pulp. At first glance, this man seems like any other. But look closer...
STORY EXCERPTS
Excerpt 1:
When I hit that feller, I din't axspect his head to axplode. Ya see, I been in plenty o'knuckle-dusters, and smashed many a mug with my big horny fists from Shanghai to Brooklyn, but I ain't never seed a feller's head just pop like that-like a big, red tomater, with bone and brains and teeth all mixed in.
I'd jest got back to the waterfront in Galveston, after takin' some leave to see the old folks in Cross Plains. The schooner I 'uz shippin' on was the Sea Sprite, a wallowin' tub that hauled rum and cotton, tobacco and molasses, from one side of the Gulf to the other, and up and down the Eastern Seaboard. It was a cranky, groanin' tub, but it was home, and I was already three days late gettin' back. I knowed that Old Ironpants would dock my pay, and probably holler and yell and slobber some too-but he wouldn't hit me with no more belayin' pins, not since he broke one on my skull in Jamaica and riled me some, and lost his best false teeth when I throwed him into the bilge.
Took him three weeks to hire a new crew after I'd whupped a passel of the boys. I still felt right bad about that, as some of them fellers was my friends, and they was just doin' what Old Squint told 'em ta do after all. So I was horryin' along like a whupped dog, dodgin' drunks and harlots in the dark, when I heerd this scream. It cut the air like the squall of a catamount, and brought me up cold.
It was a woman's voice, and when she yelled agin, I knowed she warn't singin'. It came from a dark alley to my left, which warn't no surprise, and as I paused I could just see in my imajee-nation old Cap'n Smithers pacin' the deck a-lookin' fer me, since I was the best bosun he'd ever had, after all. I hesitated about a second, then said a few delykate words and headed for the ruckus. It stank down in that alley, like fish, and piss and rotten stuff. The ramshackles to each side leaned inward as if they'd fall in on me at any time, but ahead I could see a smear of light, so I headed fer it. I almost tripped over a big rat, booted it out of sight, and busted out o' the dark and into a open area, kinda like a Mexican plazzer but smaller.
In the middle of this place they was a commotion goin' on. Three roughnecks had a gal down on the ground, and was tryin' to drag her away by her hair, whilst she kicked and cussed and fought like a wildcat! An' let me tell you, she was a beauty! Her hair was thick and black, and she had curves like a Filipino knife-blade. Her green eyes flashed even in the dusk as she kicked and squirmed, and I let loose with a beller and charged in. I've heerd that one of my bellers can curdle cream or make a growed man piss hisself, and there must be somethin' to it, 'cause them three apes let go the lady's hair and arms and laigs and jumped back like they'd touched a live wire. One of 'em half-pulled a big curved knife, but he was too slow an' my rush forrerd hit him like a sweepin' boom.
where bare-knuckle boxing meets Lovecraftian horror
Excerpt 2:
The face loomed near and he slashed, slicing deep into an eye. With a thundering roar Piondoth's son flailed him about and he lost his grip as leaves, thorns and berries came loose in his hand and he was swept back and over the beast. Discarding the longsword, he grabbed the hilt of the shortsword tenaciously as he swept by, and the thing roared anew, flailing with its other arm and releasing its grip on his leg.
Suddenly he was on top of the creature, clinging to the handle of his short sword, being tossed wildly from side to side. The blade slid free-With a mighty shove, he thrust his other hand, still holding the crushed fruit of the unnatural tree, deep into the gaping wound. Something soft and yielding met his fist, and as his hand sank into its brain, he realized that it had no skull. He opened his hand and slid it out, pushing himself backward.
A Tale of the Last Plateau
Excerpt 3:
(The reader will recall that, trapped in a buried antediluvian city, T. Monroe Peabody is the sole survivor of a doomed expedition. -Ed.)
Entry 3002, May/June 1922.
The weight of the darkness is the weight of the countless tons of rock above and around me.
It is an oppressive weight, a claustrophobic threat that nearly crushes one by implication alone. Yet it is the most jarring method I have at my disposal to snap my mind back to reality, to the facts of my circumstances and situation.
Occasionally, when I tear myself away from the non-corporeal realities in which I've lost myself for hours, days, perhaps weeks-I stagger away from the buried city, the sunken metropolis of eerie, artificial light, and into one of the side tunnels, into honest darkness, that I might relieve myself of the sense of unreality that has come to pervade my mind and threaten my sanity. The cool breeze from the depths, vaguely sulphurous yet somehow sweet, like baking bread, ruffles my hair and brings me back to my full senses, at least for a time.
This darkness, these cold stone walls, these tunnels leading down to depths as yet unguessed, awaken in me again the sense of who I am and where I am, of what has befallen me. It is then that I gradually recall that I am still T. Monroe Peabody, Professor of Archeology and Ancient Languages at the Pawnee Institute of North American Studies, and that I am buried alive in a pre-human or proto-human city of the damned.
Now that I have my senses back-but for how long, I have to wonder?-I will return to the softly glowing chalcedony and granite city, the city that I've come to learn is named Arguaralla. How I came to know this I do not recall, but it came to me in one of the many immersive journeys I've made into the records of the vanished Ancients. Once back within the walls, I will carefully measure how much food and water I have left in the expeditionary supplies-perhaps enough for another six months if rationed carefully, but no more-and then I'll sit through the eternal twilight and put to paper the latest marvels I've witnessed, re-lived and experienced, by virtue of the reality-capturing rock-books of the ancient race that built this place.
I do not sleep anymore. My circadian rhythms are no longer disrupted and elongated; they are gone entirely. As near as I can ascertain, the unknown spans of time I spend, locked in the lives of men and women long dead for ages gone, or even from ages yet to come, have left me bereft of the need for sleep. They are like dreams, in a way, these immersions in an ancient record-keeping system; but they are like nightmares at times, and are more real, more vibrant, more intense than any event or experience I've ever had in the modern world above: the world of mid-1922, as near as I can calculate.
From a robust one-hundred and ninety pounds, I've dwindled to an estimated one-hundred and ten. Hours, often days without nourishment, locked within the grip of the mind-addicting "
play-back stones"
of the Atlans, have left me in a sorry state, physically speaking. It's a good thing that I have not yet had to defend myself against foes or predators in this silent, unnatural grave of a world, as I would be hard-pressed to put up a fight, now. The rock-books are the cause of my situation, of course; and only too late did I realize their addictive nature, the unnatural craving that has sprung into existence inside of me, for the exotic, extinct realities, the vibrant sensations of pleasure, love, rage, violence, vistas, that the records of the Ancients offer to a bookish, scholarly man such as myself.
To make matters worse, I have come to suspect that I am not alone.
Excerpt 4:
"
The Adlans have fought the dholes, many times over the ages. The Earth is in for a major assault-they're up to something big. Shub-Niggurath herself must be there,"
she nodded toward the citadel, "
and the dholes are being called up from deeper parts of the subterranean and other-dimensional regions. We must be somewhere in the vicinity of Y'qaa, well beneath the site of the dead volcano Voormithadreth-which would, in this age, be greatly altered, if not gone entirely. We should be under massive glaciers, and possibly even a frozen inland sea."
"
Greenland is right in the middle of Old One territory, so they're getting ready for an offensive,"
I said. "
But against which region? My guess would be Boston-it's already an island of humanity in a largely-lost zone. Or maybe something bigger---."
Below us there was movement, as roiling, clattering shoggoths began to enter the cavern from other tunnels and head for the citadel. They looked like black clouds, like elongated black tumbleweeds at this distance. Naoleen shook her head.
"This is bigger than taking one human city! Listen-if we are near Y'qaa, that would explain both the theft of your fragment and their-insistence-on finding and holding the container that we seek. Somewhere below us, probably not far, Ubbo-Sathla the Primal One lies, guarding in his chaotic idiocy the Elder Keys, which even the Old Ones require and cannot yet obtain! Those Keys hold the secret to an ultimate power, an ability to completely transcend all space, time, and dimensional barriers-to master and rule not just this universe, but all universes!"
It made sense, in a way. It explained much. "Maybe that's why the Old Ones came to the Earth in the first place," I whispered. "To find these Keys and use them."
a tale in which the Cthulhu Mythos meets Galactic Culture
Excerpt 5:
1. The Man from the North
Down from the highlands before Nod the river ran, from the peaks of stone-fortressed Dranderoum and to the plains beyond Shin-Ar. Some said it ran even further, that it split and fed the headwaters of smaller rivers, those which cut the plain of mud-hutted Shin-Ar like twin scars, to run for thousands of miles southward to the veldt and savannas at the edge of the Sea of Li-Mhu, or to eventually turn westward and fall off the edge of the world.
The glacier-fed river Gihon, wide as a small sea in the highlands to the far northeast, was a torrent of rage for most of its thousand-mile length, becoming even wilder as it narrowed and deepened downstream. Jackdar-Sund had followed it for most of that length, following a geas laid on him by his own restless nature, by his penchant for swift violence and later regret, and by a number of blood-feuds left steaming in his wake. He'd left his tribe the Dan-Aryas and his homeland of Ay-Dan, with little ceremony other than a split skull or twelve, and howls for his blood.
A few women had shed tears to see him go, but a greater number howled for his blood with the rest, the lives of their husbands, sons, and lovers still red on his hands.
So much for strong drink and the casting of gaming-stones. He'd have to swear them both off, one of these days.
He paused now atop the foothills of the Cauzakis mountains, at the southward rampart of the region of Dranderoum, and gazed with wonder at the rolling green hills below. A warm, wet breeze tousled his thick blonde mane, and the westering sun sparked from his grey-blue eyes.
At his hip was a long broadsword of hammered iron of his own making, and a dirk was in his belt alongside his pouch. His costume was the simple and light one of a man constantly on the move: green-dyed, coarse-woven breeks that allowed both swift running and the riding of a variety of beasts, and a gold-tinted sleeveless shirt of worn doeskin. His calf-high boots were of tough aurochs-leather, made by the leathersmith artisans of the Yumas-Aryas, a rival people of similar type to his own.
His build was striking, but not exceptional for his race or tribe. He was tall and rangy, yet built mightily with long, rolling muscles that contained greater strength than many would think-as many a foe, in fact, had found out to their brief dismay. He moved with a swift celerity of motion, an economy of movement that had nothing extraneous or superfluous to it. He moved like a wolf of the high plains, or like the white tiger that was the totem of his clan.
And like a tiger, he eyed the hills and plains below hungrily. He had heard of civilization, of the excesses and decadence, and the riches, of those things called cities. Once he had thought to travel to the east, to those lands of Vindia that were ancient before the last great cataclysm, when the moon fell and the oceans rose like walls to strike the stars. But circumstances had driven him westward instead, and he was resigned to see it through. No sense in wasting a trek of a thousand miles or more, much of it on foot! His pursuers had finally either given up the hunt or died beneath his steel, and he was now on the verge of a new world.
Vindia could wait until later. Perhaps after things cooled off a bit, and if he ever made it back to the lands of the Darz-Aryas, he would join one of those groups of marauders from the Aryan tribes which had begun to invade and plunder that ancient and mysterious land, just as his ancestors, the half-mythical Vener and Esir, had done throughout most of the lands to the far north and west. He did not often plan far ahead-life was too fraught with peril, often too brief, to even bother with long term ambitions. The thought was a passing fancy, though, one which he occasionally entertained.
**************
Author Biography:
Wm. Michael Mott has been Creative Director for a national toy and manufacturing company, a high-performance software company, the Art Director for a city newspaper, and has worked as an artist/designer for Fortune 500 companies, as well as for an NSF Engineering Research Center and for a variety of freelance clients such as book and magazine publishers. He is also a freelance artist and writer, and writes both fiction and non-fiction. His artwork and writing have appeared or been featured in many publications, such as Computer Graphics World Magazine, Computer Artist, IEEE Computer, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Syllabus Magazine, PHOTO/Electronic Imaging, DRAGON Magazine, FATE, NEXUS, World Explorer, Undaunted Press, Lost Continent Library Magazine, Planetary Stories, and elsewhere. He has created artwork and graphic design for mass-market book covers, posters, brochures, packaging, CD-ROM covers and art collections, and digital/web-based media, and has won several design awards, from regional Advertising Federation awards for printed material, to awards for web site graphics and design. His artwork has been featured in the exhibition "In Dreams Awake: Art of Fantasy" at the Olympia and York Gallery, NYC, 1988; at the 1987 World Fantasy Con, Con*stellation, the DragonCon 2001 art show, several one-man exhibits, and digital galleries in various venues. He also researches and writes on Fortean, folklore, and comparative religion, and paranormal topics. He is available for contract illustration and design work, particularly book cover artwork, maps, and interior illustration, or creative writing projects.
His published writings, artwork and numerous radio interviews can be seen at http://www.mottimorphic.com, and he is also the author of the satirical fantasy novel Pulsifer: A Fable and its sequel, Land of Ice, A Velvet Knife (both soon to be re-released in one omnibus edition from TGS) as well as the non-fiction books Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures and This Tragic Earth: The Art and World of Richard Sharpe Shaver.
Other books by Wm. Michael Mott published by TGS:
Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures
This Tragic Earth: The Art and World of Richard Sharpe Shaver
Pulsifer: A Fable & Land of Ice, A Velvet Knife (the Saga of Pulsifer the Rogue, Omnibus Edition)
Quick Link to all Wm. Michael Mott's Books