Free Chapter of my new Ebook
The Tomb of Hastur
Here is the first chapter of my new Ebook, completely free. Please enjoy and then go purchase a copy on kindle.
My name is Art and I’m a nerdy introvert. It’s Christmas Day, and as usual, I’m alone. I truly don’t mind being alone, especially on Christmas Day. One of the reasons that I maintain Gremlins is a Christmas movie and Die Hard is not is that in Gremlins, the characters actually discuss Christmas, and specific things about the holiday. There is that horrible story about the death of the father dressed as Santa Claus, then there’s a discussion about loneliness and depression during the holidays. It’s important to the meaning of the film that it be set at Christmas, whereas with Die Hard, as great as Die Hard is, it could be set at any time, and nothing changes.
The holidays are a dark time for some people, and Gremlins is one of the few Christmas movies that has the guts to address that, albeit with ridiculous, tiny monsters. It’s also part of the older, darker version of Christmas that we’ve mostly erased in contemporary America. But for me, lonely holidays aren’t that dark. I teach high school lit, like my mom did. My dad taught math. It was practically the family business; my grandparents had also been part of. I often feel lonely the rest of the school year, watching families and my students living life. The holidays are my introvert’s reprieve from people. I sit in my apartment and enjoy being alone. It sounds psychotic to some, but that’s just the way I am. I read, I write, I play solo board games from my massive collection. To me, it’s a time of peace, reflection, and joy.
Every major holiday, I make a point to go to my parents’ graves, and I usually make an afternoon of it. I sit and tell them about how the year is going as if they can hear me. Writing all these idiosyncrasies down like this makes me feel like an odd duck. I’m expressing in such a concrete way the things that make my life bizarre, which makes it impossible to ignore how abnormal it is. But usually, really, it just doesn’t feel that odd to me. Christmas is when I get to be free for a bit. I will see friends at church and a few holiday parties, but I simply don’t seek out the company of others. I like being alone on Christmas. I like the old dark Christmas, not spent in merriment, but spent alone.
I love walking down the street to the movie theater, especially on Christmas Day, to watch a movie by myself. I know many people who can’t seem to do anything alone, so doing things like this, things which are usually a social activity, doing them alone makes me feel liberated. I always get up late on Christmas Day, because I always go to a midnight Christmas Eve service, usually at my Lutheran church. So I always sleep on Christmas Day and then catch a movie when I wake up.
Today, there was a new release I couldn’t wait to see: a trashy horror film about a vampire set during Christmas. The trailers made it look better than it turned out to be, but it was a fun time. I began walking home, thinking about what I might eat for Christmas lunch, when I saw something strange in an alleyway—something that completely took over my introverted Christmas.
I’ve lived in this town my whole life, and I thought I would probably live out my days here. Hasture, Oregon, where my parents died in a bizarre robbery homicide. Their killer was caught quickly and convicted; he resides in a penitentiary nearby. I was in college when it happened. It’s been about ten years. My only real relatives left are my grandparents in Portland. They’re infirm, and visiting them is always difficult for me. I try to see them twice a year, at Easter and during the summer. My one regret about how I celebrate Christmas is not including them. It’s just too draining for me. During the summer, I always spend an entire week with them; it seems like the highlight of their year. But for me, it’s a struggle, not just being around lots of people that week, but because my grandparents and I have so little in common. They’re wonderful people. Incredible people, but we just aren’t friends. Watching them live out their twilight years is hard for me; it makes me feel things I don’t like feeling. Their son should still be here, taking care of them, but he’s not. I’m all they have left, too, and it just overwhelms me.
Hasture is kind of a weird town, even for Oregon. No one feels or acts like it’s unsafe; people regularly leave doors unlocked. The cops are honest and not busy. Yet we have a surprisingly high homicide rate. It’s rarely random violence between strangers, my parents being one of the few exceptions. Most murders in general, not just Hasture, are between people who know each other. And Hasture is no different.
Another wrinkle, and it sounds silly, but it’s true, is that more often than anyone would care to admit, the murders involve Satanism of some kind, especially when people who are romantically entangled are involved. Not the hedonistic atheist kind of Satanism, which is basically just religious libertarianism. No, the old school type that listens to Slayer and steals neighborhood dogs, kind of Satanists. Aka theistic Satanists, or people who think Satan is real and they want to worship him. But they’re never public about it until their actions make it go public. These aren’t outspoken Odinists, they’re secretive.
Our Satanists, Hasture Satanists, seem particularly dedicated to a particular variety of the demonic. Information and dirty details rarely get leaked by the press on these cases, but the information that has gotten out indicates remarkable consistency for the Hasture cult, if you want to call it that. The main thing is a sign, a bit like Antlers, that is usually found somewhere in their homes or tattooed on their bodies. It’s hard to explain what the sign actually looks like; it’s a bit vague and simple, abstract.
Despite this murderous idiosyncrasy, Hasture really is a nice place to live. I promise. There are other high crime rates in bizarre things as well. The evil within this town just isn’t visible. It’s hidden, so it’s easy to go about life here as if there isn’t something wrong with this place. Which is why what I saw in the alley was so surprising. Despite the badness in this place, you just don’t see weird stuff very often. The weird stuff is hidden. People act normal. And they definitely don’t do what these guys were doing.
There’s not really a good way to lead into the events of that day, so I’ll just tell you what I saw. Two men, each wearing swords and shields on their backs, fiddling with a manhole cover. Aside from the medieval weapons, they were dressed normally in jeans and coats, one of them was wearing a Dodgers cap, and the other wore glasses and cowboy boots. They were having trouble getting the manhole cover off. Apparently, they wanted to go down into the sewers. When I saw this ludicrous display, I panicked a little and hid myself at the corner of the alley. I was pressed up against the front window of a small Asian restaurant. I inched up to the edge of the alley wall to watch. This strange sight was utterly fascinating to me. I realized I should probably get a cop; these two were probably mad as hatters, and law enforcement would need to get involved before they hurt anybody.
“I can’t find any place to jimmy it up.” Said the tall, dark one with the ball cap. He was kneeling, feeling with his fingers around the edges of the manhole.
“There’s got to be a lip on it somewhere.” The shorter, older one in cowboy boots was scanning the edges, pacing around the manhole cover. For two men doing something weird, they seemed pretty nonchalant. “I wonder if we can just smash it?”
The other one looked up at him with remarkable incredulity. “Smash it? With what?”
“One of the swords. They are enchanted, sometimes they open stuff, you’d be surprised.”
“The only thing that would surprise me is if you said or did something helpful for a change.” The older one shrugged his shoulders in response. It would’ve felt comical, if not for the swords. Of course, that was the most outlandish part. But somehow they didn’t seem ridiculous, despite wearing jeans. The younger one even had tennis shoes on. It was a ludicrous image, Don Quixote-like. Yet it simply wasn’t funny. These two seemed to be on a quest of some sort, and part of me desperately wanted to join them. But my modernity got the better of me. I decided they must be crazy, and I needed to tell an adult. The idea that I was an adult didn’t really cross my mind. I hurried off down the street to rat them out to the police, the real adults.
They must have heard my steps as I moved away because a few moments later, I heard a voice say, “Where do you think you’re off to?” It was the older one, but his sword and shield were gone.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, eavesdropping, and now heading to the authorities, I bet? Why aren’t you at home with your family on Christmas Day? Wandering around downtown like this is kinda weird, don’t you think?”
The question stung a bit more than I thought it might. No one had ever caught me alone on Christmas before; it had just been what I had done for so long. The sting of getting caught quickly turned to incredulity and anger: “Weird? Weird is running around on Christmas day down alleys with swords and shields!”
“Swords!” he said, feigning innocence. I stared back at him, like I was catching one of my students in a lie. “Look, don’t go running off to the police to tell them you saw two sword-wielding maniacs, alright. It only makes our job more difficult.”
I knew I should feel suspicious; this whole thing was very weird, but for some reason, I trusted him. I looked into the big front window of the Chinese restaurant, as if seeing the Park family hard at work would bring me some comfort. Then I remembered they weren’t Chinese and didn’t work on Christmas. They were Korean Presbyterians, at home with their family today. I looked around, and there was no one but me and this stranger.
I didn’t want to go to the police. I wanted to trust him, I didn’t know why, but I did. A line from The Lord of the Rings sprang into my mind: “I think a servant of the enemy would look fairer and feel fouler.” He certainly didn’t look all that fair or feel all that foul.
“What job is it that you’re doing?” I asked.
The younger guy had appeared next to him now, also devoid of his weapons. They must have hidden them in the alley.
“Would you believe we’re with the sewage department?” the second one asked wryly.
“Obviously, we aren’t city employees,” He looked at the younger fellow. “He saw the weapons.”
“I haven’t been doing this very long, and the whole thing still seems super weird to me, too. I wish we were actually inspecting a sewer.”
The older one asked, “Do you live near here? Could we have a cup of coffee and maybe talk this over before you go running to the cops? Who knows, maybe you can even help us.”
Every man’s heart longs for adventure. Every time I’d heard a weird story about UFOs or Bigfoot, I had secretly desired that the wall between the normal world and the old world of high strangeness would be rent. Every boy grows up hoping that some day he’ll be called on to slay a dragon. What else could these weirdos have been doing with swords and shields in the modern world? Maybe they weren’t looking for a real dragon, but they were definitely looking for something… dragon-like. Why else would they have swords?
“Brother, you’re a Christian, right?” The younger one pointed at my wooden cross necklace.
I nodded.
“Well then, we’re all on the same side,” the older one explained. “That cross, well, it’s basically who we work for. But we can’t say anything more out here in the open, especially on a feast day like this. Too much is happening in the atmosphere if you catch my drift. Just make us some coffee at your place and we’ll explain.”
I looked up at the sky when he said atmosphere, and I could’ve sworn that I felt something looking back. Suddenly, the slightly overcast horizon felt ominous.
After thinking for a few moments, I finally said okay.
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