Alan Loewen: Author, Storyteller, Dreamer

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

A Wisp of a Cloud (Inktober, Friday, October 2)

For Inktober, October 2, 2020. Prompt word: "wisp." Tuckerization: Ryan Laughman

A Wisp of a Cloud

by Alan Loewen

Ryan watched the tree line for the cloud. It was hot, muggy, and windless, but he had learned the day before that the cloud moved independently of the wind, and yesterday’s carnage had proved it. Around him lay the ruins of an old automotive junkyard in the middle of nowhere. Behind him lay the still form of a middle-aged man securely tied to an old, rusted carcass of a 1973 Pinto.

With a last look at the horizon, Ryan spun about and knelt before the man. Firmly, Ryan slapped his cheeks. “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” he taunted.

With a groan, the man stirred and shook his head. Suddenly, his eyes widened in surprise, and began fighting his bonds.

“Sorry, Mr. Pyre, but when I tie a knot, it stays tied.”

Pyre glared at Ryan. “So you survived yesterday?” he asked.

“Barely,” Ryan sneered. “Two of my work crew didn’t.” He stood and dusted off the knees of his jeans. “All this because I shut down your little scam?”

Pyre sneered. “Scam. You call my little pet a scam?”

“Well, I’ll give you a point there. It seems you have a little more credibility than what I assumed. Anyway, the police are still looking for you. You shouldn’t have stolen my aunt’s retirement.”

Pyre shrugged. “Your aunt gave it to me willingly. And you just said I have some actual power. Now, I recommend you let me go.” He nodded his head toward the far horizon. “My rescuer’s appeared.”

Ryan looked up to see a small cloud, just a white wisp of condensation moving across the treetops toward them. He turned around to face Pyre.

“I’m not running. I’ve decided to try an experiment. Yesterday when that cloud came into the parking lot, it made a beeline for me, but two of my people were in its way.” He involuntarily shuddered. “I saw what it did to them.”

Pyre’s eyes widened when Ryan took out a knife and flipped it open. “Relax,” Ryan said. “I need you alive.” He quickly cut the one rope that bound Pyre to the car. “Now, stand up.”

Ryan roughly made his prisoner stand and walked him ahead to a spot of dirt bare of wreckage. “Now you just stay there and let’s see if it’s willing to go through you to get to me.”

Pyre spun about his face contorted with contempt. “Idiot! I’m its master! It is only interested in you.”

Ryan shrugged. “Yeah, I thought as much.” He reached in his hip pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “Thanks for the keys to your home. I figure that book you got in your study, the one you read to your so-called disciples might have some info on this thing.” Ryan looked up. The small cloud had cleared the treetops and was descending toward them. “Anyway, I know I can outrace it on my motorcycle. It’s not that fast. I’ll get to your home well before you and your pet. That is if you don't get eaten first.”

Pyre looked nervously up at the descending cloud. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let me go, and I’ll dispel it for you.”

Ryan shook his head in the negative, and Pyre quickly began to run. There was a loud bang, and Pyre fell to the ground, his right knee a bloody ruin.

Ryan slipped his Glock 43 back under his jacket into his waistband. “One of the people your cloud turned to bloody mist yesterday was my best friend. No deals.”

Looking up, the wisp of a cloud was now just twenty yards away. Ignoring Pyre’s screams, Ryan moved into position so the cloud would encounter the wizard first.

“Come and get me,” Ryan said calmly.

Fifteen minutes later, Ryan rode his motorcycle away from the junkyard. Behind him, a bloody stain was all the remained of cloud or wizard.

To Ryan’s relief, without Pyre the cloud dissipated, and Ryan sped toward the wizard’s home. His aunt told him Pyre’s grimoire was in Latin, a language he was unfamiliar with. Still, Ryan was a quick learner, and man-eating clouds could be a handy tool in the right hands as long as one didn’t stand between the cloud and the intended victim. And who knew what other interesting secrets waited to be revealed.

Ryan smiled to himself as he flew down the rural road.

Behind him, a small wisp of a cloud slowly followed.

Leviathan (Inktober, Thursday, October 1)

For Inktober, October 1, 2020. Prompt word: "fish." Tuckerization: Louis Williams

Leviathan

by Alan Loewen

“Looks like you don’t have your sea legs yet, Tristian,” Louis called from the bow.

His friend growled in response as he held onto the deck railing. “If you weren’t paying for this trip, I would have stayed at home. I’m just glad I’m keeping my breakfast down. It would help if the waves weren't so choppy.”

Louis laughed. “Admit it. You’re having the time of your life. Just stand with your legs further apart, and your knees bent. You don’t want to go overboard here, or you might end up as fish food.”

Louis had wanted to rent a yacht more massive than the 92-foot Viking, but he had to take what was available. The armored boat could still do 32 knots, and though it was small enough to feel the motion of the waves, it was suitable for the job. And Louis was determined to give Tristian a good time and stay safe on top of it.

He turned and shouted up at the bridge. “Captain, are we there yet?”

The captain gave a thumb up through the cockpit window and turned to speak to his two crew members. Five minutes later, the two men began dumping buckets of chum from the stern, staining the waves crimson in the boat's wake.

The yacht turned about in minutes and remained still with its engine idling. One of the crew members came forward. “Stand clear,” he said, “We’re raising the guns.”

There was a vibration Louis felt through his soles as two sets of sliding doors on the deck slid back and two guns armed with harpoons rose and locked into place. The five-foot-long titanium harpoons were each tipped with large blades designed to penetrate scales and flesh and stay imbedded.

The crewman mentioned Louis to stand behind one and motioned for Tristian to man the other. “Now,” the crewman said, “we play the waiting game.”

They did not wait for long.

Within ten minutes, the leviathan breached the surface of the water, the sunlight shining brightly off its armored back. Louis and Tristian both gasped at its sheer size, at least twice as long as the yacht.

“Ach!” the crewman said, “It’s a small one. Do you still want it?”

“Yes! Louis said, yelling in his excitement.

“Okay,” the crewman said. “Remember all the practice you had on land.” He slapped Tristian on the shoulder. “You’re going first. Remember to hit the tail end. He’ll instinctively dive. Mr. Williams, when he breaches again, you shoot, and then we’ll go for a spirited ride as he drags us along as he runs until he tires. Now here he comes.”

The creature broke the surface, red water sluicing from its jaws. There was a loud report as Tristian fired. The harpoon zipped through the air striking the fish in its side. Immediately, it dived.

“Stand back and let me reload,” the crewman said. “Mr. Williams, stand ready.”

However, the creature did not breach again. Instead, the line on Tristian’s harpoon went slack.

Louis’ jaw dropped at the sheer speed the line cut through the water toward the yacht. Urgently, he tried to scream that the beast was headed for them.

It never broke the surface but impacted the bow with a collision that sent the crewman and Tristian over the side. Only Louis’ iron grip on the gun’s triggers kept him stable. As if he stood far away, he heard himself scream, “Men overboard!”

The harpoon line cut through the water again as the creature swam away from the boat and then reversed as the great fish swam back to the yacht … and the men floundering in the water.

Louis tried to breathe normally, and the creature breached, straight for the two men in the water. For a moment, when the fish was only 20 yards away from the boat, Louis felt time suddenly stand still. He looked deep into its large, black eye behind its open jaws, a creation of silver scales, fangs, and hate.

He felt the gun shudder in his hands, and the harpoon impaled the large black eye.

An hour later, the boat headed back toward the harbor, the great fish lashed alongside. Down below, Tristian sat in dried clothes and lots of hot coffee while above, Louis stared at his prize.

He would not be able to take it back to Earth, of course. It’s sheer size notwithstanding, there were strict protocols about what could be transported between parallel universes. Still, he and Tristian would each receive a huge scale of the leviathan’s body sealed in Lucite as their trophy.

Louis smiled to himself. He heard there was one universe where he could hunt cosmic horrors with tanks.

He wondered if Tristian would be up for it.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

A Venture into Inktober

Because I don't have the brains of a mud stump and only half the common sense, I will be participating in Inktober.

I participated two years ago and ... well, let's just say I think I broke something in my head.

Anyway, these words are story prompts for each day, and with my schedule, it'll be flash fiction.

If you want tuckerized into a story, leave your name in the comments. And tuckerization means I use your name in the story. The character will not be you, just using your name.

And, no, volunteers cannot pick the word. I will assign those. As of this writing, I have randomly assigned 16 names to the first 16 words. I still have 15 openings.

Any takers?

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Paleomythic: Role-Playing in the Age of Stone and Sorcery

Role-playing games (also known as tabletop games or RPG's) have always been a favorite activity of mine, having played Dungeons and Dragons way back in the late '70s before it became cool. Since then I have branched out into Traveller and Call of Cthulhu with small asides to The Morrow Project and It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show.

Unfortunately, due to progressive hearing loss, my role-playing days have gone to the wayside much to the chagrin of the small cadre of faithful players I have accumulated over the years. Yet, that may soon all change.

Having been to an audiologist, I am in the process of getting hearing aids and my hope is that by the end of September/early October, I will have raised enough money ($7,000.00) to purchase them and end my exile from indulging in one of my favorite past times.

Recently I purchased a new RPG that came out of Osprey Publishing. Paleomythic: A Roleplaying Game of Stone and Sorcery is a beautifully illustrated, but bare-bones role-playing system, that emphasizes play and storytelling over rules. With a nod more toward Conan the Barbarian than Lord of the Rings, the advertising blurb for the book says:

Paleomythic is a roleplaying game of grim survival and mythical adventures in the land of Ancient Mu, a harsh prehistoric world full of mysterious ruins and temples to explore, huge and terrible creatures that roam and spread fear across the land, and nefarious mystics and sorcerers who plot dark schemes from the shadows. It is a world of biting cold winters, of people hunting and foraging to survive, and tribes that wage relentless war.

The game is clearly meant to be fantasy, but it does give a casual nod to archeology, especially the late Pleistocene era, about 12,000 years ago.

And as I work my way through the Paleomythic RPG book, I'm fascinated they missed one fascinating aspect of the time era they selected. In the late Pleistocene era, modern man (Homo sapiens) could theoretically have rubbed shoulders with "hobbits" (Homo floresiensis), and "dwarves" (Homo neanderthalensis) and if I can stretch the timetable a little, I can even introduce "orcs" (Homo erectus). I think this would have made J. R. R. Tolkien squeal with glee.

More and more I am becoming excited to be able to rejoin my role-playing gang and in our imaginations plumb the mystical and mythical worlds of the Pleistocene.

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Cinematic Interpretations of H. P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space

2012 illustration by Ludvik Skopalik

Written in March, 1927, H. P. Lovecraft's novella, The Colour Out of Space, is a science fiction/horror tale about a meteorite that lands on the Gardner farm near its well. Scientists from Miskatonic University travel to the isolated farm in the Massachusett hills to discover the meteorite has strange qualities and is shrinking. They find a clear globule they pop by accident releasing a color that lies outside the known spectrum. The well becomes infected and the water becomes insidiously poisonous.

Over the next three years, the vegetation around the farm including the animals and eventually even Nahum Gardner, his wife, and his three sons become affected by the residual effects of the Colour.

The Colour appears to be something akin to a living being inimical to terrestrial life and if you wish to read the story in its entirety, it is available here free and legal.

Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to bring the story to the silver screen, some more effective than others.

The first attempt was made in 1965, when Die, Monster, Die, directed by Daniel Haller, was released in both the United States and Great Britain. Starring Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, and Susan Farmer, the plot is based only loosely on Lovecraft's story.

The existing plot point is a radioactive meteorite lands near the mansion of Nahum Witley who discovers it has strange effects on plants and animals. Unwisely bringing it into his house, the residents began to mutate as well with predictable results and all does not end well except the hero managing to escape with Witley's beautiful daughter.

Critics did not have a lot of praise for the film, but it still deserves a fair following from those fans of early horror films, especially fans of Boris Karloff. I personally found the story interesting enough to maintain my attention and the final transformation of Witley was passably horrifying by the level of special effects available during that time period.

The second film to attempt bringing the Color to the big screen was The Curse (1987) starring Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Claude Aikens who plays the role of Nathan Crane, the stand-in for Lovecraft's Nahum Gardner. Unlike Gardner, Crane is a caricature of a religious zealot who exists only to make life miserable for Wheaton's Zack. As the entire family is composed of nothing more than bullying hypocrites, they exist only to die in hideous ways and one could care less.

Still the story is more true to Lovecraft's original story, but in my humble opinion it is not as entertaining as Die, Monster, Die in spite of the latter's shortcomings.

I confess I have no praise at all for Colour From the Dark (2008), an offering from Italian director Ivan Zuccon. This time the color is not an interstellar wanderer but is just something that dwells within the earth and ends up in the family's well. As the color begins to affect the family, crucifixes melt into sludge, and a priest who comes to bless the house meets an untimely end. As one reviewer stated, the story is not so much cosmic horror but a bad retelling of The Exorcist.

The next film to tackle Lovecraft's tale is Die Farbe (The Color). Directed by Huam Vu, I agree with S. T. Joshi that "this is the best Lovecraft film adaption ever made." The decision to set the story in Germany in the 1940s and not Arkham, Massachusetts, and film it in black and white adds to the film and does not detract. The color itself does appear as a pinkish-purple color and the contrast it makes in a black and white film when staring out of the sockets of a skull or appearing above the well is shocking with its contrast.

As of this writing, Die Farbe is available for those who have purchased Amazon Prime and I believe is worth the investment of time.

I must confess a guilty pleasure for last year's offering, The Color Out of Space starring Nicholas Cage and Joely Richardson. Taking place in the modern era, Nahum Gardner (Cage) and his wife, Theresa (Richardson) move to a farm with their three children. Set near Arkham, Massachusetts, the everpresent meteorite crashes near their well and before you know it, insects and plant life begin mutating and Cage does what Cage does best, chewing the scenery as he and his family descend into madness and body horror as the color sucks out their life and vitality. By the bye, Tommy Chong makes an appearance in the film and plays a wonderfully lunatic follower of conspiracy theories.

Though not as thoughtful or as slowly paced as Die Farbe, Richard Stanley straps the viewer in for a wild ride and a wild ride it is. Again, I believe it is well worth the investment of time in spite of its shortcomings and wanderings from the original storyline.

The best news about this moving is that the director has promised that this movie is the first of a trilogy of Lovecraft films, the next one being an adaption of The Dunwich Horror.

I can hardly wait.

The Toss of a Coin: A Super Short Story

For the first time in months, my monthly group of writers met and as is typical we were given the exercise of a writer’s prompt and fifteen minutes to create a story, essay, or poem. The prompt was, “the toss of a coin.”

After staring at my blank tablet for a few minutes, I began to write and what follows, with some limited editing to correct mistakes and add some clarification was my offering for the evening.

We sat around the campfire, a quartet of old friends. The sun had set hours ago, and an easy friendship fed by years of similar gatherings had always given us the freedom of transparency.

“I remember when I based a life decision on the flip of a coin,” Daryl said. He laughed to himself. “And I can promise you, Harold, that it was to determine a decision far more important than yours.”

Our attention turned to Daryl as he ran his fingers through his gray hair. “After Alexa passed away after five decades of marriage, I couldn’t bear to go through her personal papers, but after a year of mourning, I was able to steel myself to open her side of the desk we shared and begin clearing out the papers. I found something that reminded me of that coin toss.

“Fifty years ago when I was at college, I was foolishly dating two girls at the time, but as they were from different towns I was able to maintain my scandalous secret. However, I got caught by both of them and they confronted me together. They demanded I make an immediate choice between them. The truth was I truly loved them both. Alexa insisted that if I couldn’t make up my mind then it was to be left up to fate and a coin toss.

“As the other girl agreed Alexa handed me a half dollar. She called heads. The other girl got tails and I tossed the coin in the air.

“It came up heads."

“Did you ever regret the toss of that coin?” Fred asked.

Daryl laughed. “That’s between me and my priest, but going through my wife’s personal papers, I found that coin.” He reached into his pocket. “Here. Take a look.”

The coin was passed around the group and we remained silent as we inspected the coin.

It had heads on both sides.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Greengate Prologue

What follows is the prologue of an old WIP. I touch on Greengate and its locale in a number of my stories. Enjoy.

PROLOGUE TO GREENGATE

Greengate haunts me still in memory and dream.

I was five years old playing in the backyard as my mother watched me through the kitchen window.

Our house was one of ten clustered around the crossroads that we shared with a general store and an old stone church. To the north and east sprawled the gently sloping hills of Pennsylvania, endless orchards of apples and peaches and cherries. Cows grazed in the fields where limestone boulders jutted through the earth like giant broken teeth. To the south and west, the grassy knolls turned into woods of oak and maple that crept up the sides of large steep hills. The range stood to the east, running north and south as far the eye could see. Named South Mountain; it's stream-carved valleys, runs, and roads bore such imaginative names as Dead Woman's Hollow, the Devil's Racecourse, the Black Andes and Horsekiller Road.

Engrossed in my play under the shade of the old oak, I ran my Tonka trucks over the tree roots that broke through the surface when I looked up and saw the face.

It was a man's face created out of the leaves and branches of the oak, and it looked down at me without any emotion in its green eyes. With it came the overpowering realization that I was not watching it as much as it was watching me.

I blinked my eyes and rubbed them to make the illusion go away. I thought it merely a trick of sunlight among the branches. I looked up again, and the face was still there. I felt a gentle breeze at my back, and the eyes blinked as the leaves gently swayed.

More puzzled than scared, I turned to look at the house where my mother's head stood framed in the window as she bent over her dishes. I looked back at the face, and I looked up at nothing but leaves, branches, and bright sunlight where nothing looked back.

It is one of the clearest memories of my childhood in Greengate.

Another memory.

Years later, Peter Mackey and I sat on a limestone boulder near the base of South Mountain, sharing penny candy we had bought at Echon's General Store. Peter and I were ten, and we talked about topics such as baseball, our fourth-grade teacher who had paddled Keith Bream in front of the whole class, and the new Johnny Quest cartoon show on television.

The light dimmed as the sun sank below the Blue Mountain range to the west, its shadow slowly spreading across Greengate.

Our conversation suddenly stopped when out of the small patch of woods to our right came a stag.

The woods around Greengate and South Mountain are home to white-tailed deer, and they were a common sight in the fields and orchards, but this was like no deer that Peter and I had ever seen. At least seven feet at the shoulder, Its beauty filled our hearts with joy and awe.

Our mouths open, not speaking, we stared goggle-eyed at the creature. It walked right by the rock where we sat as if we were invisible. Maybe we were. We watched it until it disappeared in the woods that lead up the slopes of South Mountain.

Peter and I went home and never mentioned it then or ever again.

And yet, another memory.

I am eighteen years old, still feeling cocky from my high school graduation just the previous Friday.

"This is for real, right?" I ask Ken once again. "The night before your wedding, you drag me out to an old orchard?" The clouds race against the full moon while Ken Wright stands in rapt attention, searching the darker shadows of the apple trees. The night is alive with a choir of crickets accented by a chorale of fireflies.

"Do you believe in fairies?" he asks. He smiles at my look of stunned surprise. "Not the ones we see in Disney films or in the children's tales. I'm talking about the fey folk who live between reality and dreams."

I shrug my shoulders and lie. "I don't have much of an imagination."

He turns his face to the full moon which had washed him clean of color. "Years ago, I saw her. I was eight years old and wandering through the orchard, and I saw her running among the trees. Her hair was as red as autumn apples, and her clothes looked like they had been knit from autumn leaves.

"When she looked at me, her eyes were wild and dark. I think I fell in love with her then, and at night she still runs through my dreams."

I sadly shake my head. "Tonight is your last night as a bachelor. We should be at a party. We should be drinking your father’s beer, not haunting an apple orchard looking for a will-o'-the-wisp."

My friend continues as if I haven't spoken. "I've remembered her for years, and before I take those vows tomorrow and spend the rest of my life with a woman of flesh and blood, I wanted to put this final dream to rest."

I clap him on the shoulder. "It's late. You have other dreams to dream." He ignores me.

"You will want to be well-rested for tomorrow night," I smirk.

I leave him standing in the moonlight among the apple trees.

The next morning the wedding party waits nervously at the old church for the bridegroom, his beautiful bride almost in tears. Excusing myself, choking back the mounting fear, I return to the old orchard where I had left my friend the night before.

I find Ken's body half-fused into the ancient bark of an apple tree, taken in a wooden embrace.

A gentle smile is his sole expression.

The next day, I left Greengate and did not return until almost two decades later.