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When the Elder Gods extend an invitation, be wary of the strings attached
While browsing in a rare book store in Arkham, Sean finds an occult book with an ad seeking an apprentice sorcerer, from a newspaper dated March 21, 1895. Even more intriguing, the ad specifically requests applicants reply by email.
Sean’s always been interested in magic, particularly the Lovecraftian dark mythology. Against his best friend Edna’s (“call-me-Eddy-or-else”) advice, he decides to answer the ad, figuring it’s a clever hoax, but hoping that it won’t be. The advertiser, Reverend Redemption Orne, claims to be a master of the occult born more than 300 years ago. To prove his legitimacy, Orne gives Sean instructions to summon a harmless but useful familiar—but Sean’s ceremony takes a dark turn, and he instead accidentally beckons a bloodthirsty servant to the Cthulhu Mythos god Nyarlathotep. The ritual is preemptively broken, and now Sean must find and bind the servitor, before it grows too strong to contain. But strange things are already happening in the town of Arkham….
You can purchase Summoned at the following Retailers:
I was born in Troy, New York, but I currently live just outside Providence, Rhode Island, at the head of beautiful Narragansett Bay. New England has long been my spiritual home, and the region informs much of my fiction. One day I hope to find Lovecraft’s portals to his mythical towns of witch-haunted Arkham and Kingsport, shadowed Innsmouth and accursed Dunwich. Until then, I’ll just have to write about them..
I am a member of SFWA and HWA and a rabid Austenite. Don’t those three always go together?
Apart from writing, I like gardening, swimming, king cobras, jumping spiders, and cats. No cobras or cats at the moment, but the jumping spiders are always with us. In spite of maintaining a mental age of between twelve and sixteen, I have just married my partner of more than thirty years. Thanks to the RI Legislature for finally living up to Roger Williams’ philosophy of crabbing at people he disagreed with but never denying the primacy of the personal conscience.
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Excerpt...
Every occult Web site agreed: For
weird-ass books, Arkham was the center of the New England universe, and
Horrocke’s Bookstore was the black hole at the center’s heart. Dad said that
Sean had enough crazy stuff to read, since Uncle Gus had given him his Lovecraft
collection. But Uncle Gus had also spilled that Cthulhu (aka Old Squid-Head)
wasn’t just a monster Lovecraft had invented, he was a god in a totally
legitimate mythology way older than the Egyptian and Greek ones. Since then,
Sean had been nuts to go to Horrocke’s and get the real dope on Cthulhu, and so
when Dad drove to Arkham to price a window restoration Sean and Eddy hitched a
ride. Eddy insisted on sightseeing first, but once they hit the bookstore and
found the weird-ass section even she had to admit the place lived up to its
reputation. “Little Shoppe of Mysteries” was what TrueTomes.com called it.
Hokey but accurate, because as Sean pulled a thick volume off the Cthulhu
Mythos shelf a mystery ambushed him.
Like its neighbors, the book he
pulled (Infinity Unimaginable)
was glossy new. The book that dropped, that he just managed to catch, was old
as hell; even at arm’s length, it exuded the smell of an open tomb. Not a nasty
mildewy rotting-flesh kind of tomb. More like a tomb in the desert, a Pharaoh’s
crib, all cloves and ginger and—what was that other spice thing, the bitter
one?— yeah, myrrh.
Sean shifted Infinity
Unimaginable under
his arm so he could inspect the mummy-book. It was in decent shape, the black
leather spine intact and the stamped gold title only a little rubbed out. The
Witch Panic in Arkham by
Ezekiel Greene Phillips. Sean and Eddy had probably seen the guy’s grave in the
Lich Street Burial Ground, where everyone was an Ezekiel or a Hepzibah or a
Zacharias or some other Puritan name with a z in it.
He got a better armpit grip on Infinity and opened The
Witch Panic. Paper fluttered to the floor, but thank you, Jesus, it
wasn’t a page from the book. The fallen bit was a newspaper clipping someone
had used as a bookmark a hundred years ago, from the look of its brown and
brittle edges. Sean parked both books and picked up the clipping. He’d been
close on the hundred years. In fact, the clipping was older: At its top, he
could make out ham Advertiser, March 21, 1895.
“Ham” had to be Arkham. The city’s newspaper was still the Advertiser;
dumb name, made you think the paper was one big classified section. Speaking of
which, a couple columns of classified ads was what he lifted closer to his
face, squinting at the minuscule type. One ad was circled in faded red:
Wanted, an apprentice in magic and
in the service of its Masters. For particulars, apply to the Reverend Orne,redemption@RevOrne.com.
That “apprentice in magic” part
was freaky enough. It took Sean a second reading before he got the true
freakiness of the ad. You were supposed to apply to the Reverend Orne by e-mail?
In 1895?
“Eddy!” he said. Okay, he kind of
yelled.
Her voice came from the back of
the store. “What? God, tell the world.”
Sean grabbed his finds and
threaded through stacks of new and used books to the locked cases that housed
the really old stuff, the tomes. Eddy had been drooling
over them since they’d arrived. She hadn’t run out of saliva yet, judging from
the way she crouched in front of the current case, fingertips to carpet, a
sprinter ready to explode out of the starting blocks and right through the
protective glass.
“Look,” she said without turning
to him. “This is like a wizard’s library.”
The case guarded books in Latin
and German and French, in Greek and Arabic, in English rendered undecipherable
by some kind of curly-swirly Gothic type, and the whole bunch of them were beat
up with age. Sean would have been dripping spit, too, except what he had in his
hands was even more exciting. “Eddy, check it—”
“Keep it down, will you?”
What, were they in church? He
lowered his voice. “Check it out. I found this book.”
“One we can afford?” Eddy tapped a
discreet price list posted on the glass, and there was nothing under a thousand
dollars. She stood up, sighing.
“This one about the Cthulhu
Mythos.” He glanced inside Infinity Unimaginable. “It’s
only twenty bucks.”
“Let’s see.”
“Wait, here’s something cooler.”
He had put the newspaper clipping back in The Witch Panic for safekeeping. He eased it out.
“Read that ad.”
“This is crazy old.” Eddy handled
the clipping gingerly. “‘Gentleman recently graduated from Miskatonic
University seeks position as tutor.’ ”
“No, the circled one.”
“‘Wanted, an apprentice in
magic—’” Eddy shut up. Sean watched her eyes dart over the rest of the ad, then
dart to the top of the clipping. Back to the ad. Then she turned the clipping
over, but all it showed was a woman in a dress with sleeves a mile wide and
waist about an inch around. Finally Eddy looked up, her forehead corrugated.
“Where’d you get this?”
“When I got down the Mythos book,
another book fell off the shelf. The ad was inside.”
Eddy relinquished the clipping and
took The Witch Panic in Arkham. “This old book was
with the new stuff?”
“Yeah. Only I didn’t see it until
it fell. I guess it was stuck behind the other one.”
“Like someone hid it there?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
She leafed through the pages.
“This was published the same year as the newspaper. Except the clipping’s got
to be fake. Like a hoax. Or not even a hoax, because who’d believe in an e-mail
address from 1895? Somebody made it for a joke.”
“It’s a damn good fake. It even
smells old.”
“That’s because it’s been sitting
in this smelly book.”
Leave it to Eddy to come up with a
reasonable explanation. She had to be right, but Sean teased her a little. “I
bet a time traveler went back to 1895 and put the ad in the newspaper, except
he forgot how there wasn’t any Internet yet.”
Eddy kept leafing. “We better give Witch
Panic to Mr. Horrocke.
It probably belongs with the rare books.”
“And then the time traveler was
all, ‘How come nobody’s answering my ad?’ ”
“Shove it.”
“And so he sends the ad into the
future in Witch Panic, and it lands on
the shelf behind Infinity just as I’m taking it down.”
“No, because if that happened, the
book and the ad would be new.” Eddy had reached the index and was trailing her
finger down the page. “There,” she said. “That’s what I thought.”
“What?”
“The guy in the ad,
redemption@RevOrne? Redemption Orne’s mentioned in this book. He was married to
Patience.”
And Patience Orne was a total
rock-star witch. Sean had been reading her name on historical markers all day.
Here’s where Patience Orne lived. Here’s the courthouse where Patience Orne was
tried. Here’s the gallows on which Patience Orne swung. He shook his head. “But
if Redemption’s from Puritan times, how come he’s advertising in 1895?”
Sean had walked into it, and Eddy
pounced without mercy. “Because he’s a time traveler?” she said.
“Ouch.”
“Got another explanation?”
“No, but you do.”
“Because some crazy Redemption
Orne fan boy stuck a fake clipping in the book?” Eddy handed Sean The
Witch Panic. “It’s almost five. We’ve got to meet your dad. Are you
buying Infinity?”
“I’m buying them both.”
“You won’t have enough money for
the old one.”
Probably not, but he was going to
try. When a book jumped at you from a shelf, what else could you do?
In the front room at Horrocke’s,
where a college girl stood behind the counter and the smell of hazelnut coffee
filled the air, books wouldn’t have the nerve to jump at customers. The back
room was a whole different world. First off, you came in through a door with a
brass plaque that read: QUISCUNQUE QUERAT, INTRA. According to Eddy, who’d just
aced her sophomore year of Latin, that meant “Whoever seeks, enter” or, in
plain English, “Looking for something? Get your butt in here.”
They had gotten their butts in,
and they had been rewarded with row after row of enticingly labeled shelves. No
self-help, general fiction, or cookbooks here. It was alchemy, astrology,
cabalism, necromancy, voodoo, wicca, and more. Lots more, including the cases
of tomes beyond which Mr. Horrocke sat, dwarfed by his mahogany desk, sipping
espresso from a tiny white cup.
Horrocke had been sipping from the
cup when they’d first ventured into the back room. For someone who put away so
much caffeine, he looked amazingly sleepy. He was a skinny old guy to begin
with, in a navy suit with a red silk handkerchief in the breast pocket. The
handkerchief looked like the tongue of a smart-ass who’d been sucking a cherry
Popsicle. Even creepier, Horrocke’s own tongue was Popsicle red. As Sean and
Eddy approached, he touched it to his lower lip and set the tiny cup on a tiny
saucer. Under the desk, his jittering feet clicked on the floorboards as if he
wore tap shoes. Maybe after they had gone, he would dance it up around the
stacks.
The idea of Horrocke getting down
almost made Sean lose it. Good thing Eddy started the talking. It sounded like
she’d already made friends with the old guy, probably while he was mopping up
her drool with the red handkerchief. “Hey, Mr. Horrocke. I think Sean’s found a
book he wants.”
On cue, Sean put down Infinity
Unimaginable.
“Ah,” Horrocke said. “An excellent
choice, Edna. I always recommend Professor Marvell’s books. He’s chief
archivist at the Miskatonic University Library, you know. One of the world’s
foremost authorities on the Cthulhu cult. Indeed.”
Would Eddy explode at Horrocke’s
use of her real name? Though, duh, if Horrocke knew her real name, she must’ve
given it to him. Sean stopped holding his breath and said, “That’s great, Mr.
Horrocke. There’s this other book, though. I found it behind Infinity.
It kind of fell on me.”
“Indeed? I hope it didn’t hurt
you.”
“Ah, no,” Sean managed. “I caught
it all right. I don’t think it got hurt, either.” He put The
Witch Panic down next
to Infinity.
Horrocke drew the old book toward
himself using a pencil hooked over its top. Before he opened it, he put on
white cotton gloves. Oh man, and here Sean and Eddy had been pawing it with
their grubby hands. Delicately, Horrocke turned pages. “The Greene Phillips,
1895, first edition,” he murmured.
First edition. Bad. Read: expensive.
“In good condition. Minimal
foxing, sound text block.”
Better. At least Horrocke couldn’t
accuse them of having foxed the crap out of the book, whatever
that meant.
Horrocke had come upon the
newspaper clipping and balanced it on his gloved fingertips. While he read,
Sean again caught himself holding his breath. If anybody could explain the
circled ad and how the clipping had been faked, it had to be Horrocke. You
didn’t throw around words like foxing and text block if you didn’t know all about books and
documents and forgeries.
Horrocke studied the clipping even
longer than Eddy had. A couple times his Popsicle-red tongue touched his lower
lip. A couple times he glanced toward the cases and the stacks, as if he
expected to see someone there. Once he stared straight up at the ceiling, as if
he followed the progress of something across it. Sean looked for a fly or
spider. He saw nothing. Maybe the old guy had overdosed on espresso after all.
At last Horrocke gave up on the
invisible bug. He tucked the clipping back into the book, closed it, and pushed
it toward Sean. “Indeed,” he said.
Indeed what? Sean and Eddy waited,
but Horrocke seemed lost in contemplation of his gloved hands.
“So is that newspaper ad a crazy
joke or what?” Eddy asked.
Horrocke started taking off the
gloves, finger by finger. “I have no opinion of the advertisement, miss.
However, I can tell you that I don’t have a first edition of The
Witch Panic in Arkham in
stock at the moment, only modern reprints. I don’t know how the book came to be
on the shelf.” He looked at Sean. “Since I don’t own it, I believe the book is
yours.”
His? That easy? “That doesn’t seem
right, Mr. Horrocke.”
“On the contrary, it’s exactly
right. The book came to you of its own accord.” Horrocke’s laugh sounded like
somebody playing a botched scale on a flute. “I imagine it’s your destiny.”
The Witch Panic in Arkham? As
destinies went, that didn’t sound too hot. But who could argue with free?
“Well, thanks, Mr. Horrocke, if you’re sure.”
“I’m quite sure.” Horrocke had
folded his gloves. He put them back in his desk and took out a notepad and pen.
On the top sheet, he wrote: “NO CHARGE FOR THE GREENE PHILLIPS, N. Horrocke.”
He handed the sheet to Sean. “Give that to Miss Anglesea at the cash register
when you pay for the other.”
Sean grabbed both books off the
desk. “Okay, thanks. I guess we better go now. We’re supposed to meet
somebody.”
Horrocke’s lips stretched in what
he probably meant as a smile. “I imagine you are, Sean. Indeed. I hope you
enjoy your books.”
Sean couldn’t get out of the
bookstore fast enough. As soon as he and Eddy were through the door, he started
laughing. It was part victory laughter—he’d scored a free first edition! Uncle
Gus would flip when he heard about that.
It was also part freaked laughter.
“That was insane,” Sean said.
“What, Mr. Horrocke?”
“Him and getting this book for
nothing. Got the fake ad for nothing, too!”
Eddy’s cell phone rang. “Text from
your dad. We’re late.”
She took off up High Lane, toward
the old railroad station that had been converted into a boutiquey mall. The
college-girl cashier had tucked Sean’s books into a navy-blue plastic bag, and
he shot a quick look inside to make sureThe
Witch Panic hadn’t
bailed now that it had seen him in the light of day.
Dad was parked outside the station
Starbucks when Sean and Eddy ran up. “I was about to call you again, Sean,” he
said. “No, wait. I was about to call Eddy, since you forgot your phone.”
Dad had griped about the AWOL
phone the whole ride from Providence to Arkham. “We were at the bookstore,”
Sean said. He showed him the bag.
“Say no more. I know how Eddy is
around books. You guys want anything here, or do we go to the pizza place in
Kingsport?”
“I vote pizza,” Eddy said. She and
Sean piled into the backseat of the Civic. “How’d your consultation go, Mr.
Wyndham? What was Ms. Arkwright like? Scary?”
The consultation must have gone
well, because Dad only snorted at Eddy. “Why should Ms. Arkwright be scary?”
“Because her house is. We walked
by it when we were doing the witch tour. How about that big old plaque? The
Arkwright House. Anything that’s the Blankety-Blank House has to be haunted.”
“I didn’t see any ghosts,” Dad
said. He had pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto Garrison Street. As
they rattled over the bridge, Sean saw the tops of the ailanthus trees that
choked Witch Island. “No ghosts, just plaster dust and rippedout wiring. As for
Helen Arkwright, she looks like she’s about twenty years old and too nervous to
say ‘boo.’ ”
“Maybe she’s nervous because of
the ghosts,” Sean said.
“More likely because she’s trying
to renovate that whole monster at once. She said the uncle who left her the
house lived in the library and let the rest go.” Dad shook his head. He didn’t
believe in letting stuff go. “That’s where the stained-glass windows are, in
the library. They’re in rough shape, but they’re spectacular. You’d like them,
Sean. One of the panels has the Devil in it.”
“What, like Satan?”
“Ms. Arkwright called him the
Black Man. I guess that’s what the Puritans called him. He didn’t look like a
devil to me, though. He was in this Egyptian getup, no horns, no hooves, no
tail.”
Sean leaned in between the front
seats. “So, are you going to restore the windows?”
“I think so. Big job. I’ll have to
take them out and do a full refabrication, new support system, the works.”
“So you’ll have to come back to
Arkham?”
Dad grinned; Sean saw it in the
rearview mirror. “Which would mean you can come back to Arkham. You have that
good a time?”
“It was awesome. This place owns
Salem for witches. We went to the Witch Museum, and the Witch House, and the
courthouse where they had the witch trials, and Witch Island—”
“We only saw the Island off the
bridge,” Eddy cut in. “Sean wanted to swim out to it, but I wouldn’t let him.”
“No, I didn’t. I wanted to rent a
kayak and paddle out to it.”
“Only there’s like three
waterfalls between the Island and the kayak rentals. Then we hung out on the
University Green for a while. I so want to apply to Miskatonic now.”
“I’m applying for sure,” Sean
said. “Then we went to the bookstore.”
“I see you bought something.”
“This book about mythology, that’s
all.” And it was all that he’d bought. No need to
mention the Witch Panic book and the newspaper clipping. It
was too complicated, and Dad had just inched into the jam of cars on Main
Street. Dad hated traffic. The only way he could deal with it was by turning on
the classic rock station from Boston, which he did now. “Jumping Jack Flash”
blared. Dad joined in without missing a snarl.
End of the interrogation,
excellent. Eddy had already snagged Infinity Unimaginable and was slumped comfortably, reading.
Sean pulled out The Witch Panic and let it fall open to the clipping.
“Wanted, an apprentice in magic and in the service of its Masters.” If it only
said “an apprentice in magic,” that could mean it was hocus-pocus, saw-the-lady-in-half
magic. Stage stuff. But it also said “and in the service of its Masters.” With
a capital M. That made the whole business sound more serious. Who were the
Masters of magic, anyhow? And why did the guy who’d faked the ad call himself Reverend
Orne? Sean checked the index. He found a listing for “ORNE, Redemption, husband
of Patience, minister at the Third Congregational Church.” The Reverend was a
big enough deal to appear on a dozen pages.
“Hey, Eddy.”
She kept reading. “This book is
wicked. Can I borrow it?”
“Sure. But listen. Maybe I’ll
write to this Reverend dude.”
That made Eddy look at him over
the top of Infinity. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He must be pretty
cool, coming up with this ad and getting it to look so real. And I can ask him what
the hell he’s talking about, apprentices and Masters of magic and all.”
“Yeah,” Eddy said. She bugged her
eyes out and got sarcasticbreathless. “You better do that right away. You know
what Mr. Horrocke said. He said, ‘It’s your destiny, Luke.’ ”
Of course she did the Darth Vader
imitation just as the Stones segued into a discount furniture ad and Dad dumped
the radio volume. “What’s whose destiny?” he asked.
Eddy knew better, but she was on a
roll. “It’s Sean’s destiny to be an e-mail wizard’s apprentice. See, he found
this ad at the bookstore—”
She’d propped her feet up on the
back of the passenger seat, so Sean couldn’t kick her. Shut
up shut up shut up, he willed in her direction.
Either his telepathy worked or
Eddy came back to her senses. She knew how paranoid Dad was, especially about
Internet freaks. Like they were after geek-boys, not the girls hanging their
boobs out on Facebook.
“What ad?” Dad prompted. The
traffic was so tight, the Civic might as well have been parked; Dad was able to
turn around and look at them. Sean hustled the clipping into the book, the book
into the map pocket on his door.
“This dumb joke ad,” Eddy said.
She’d switched voices from breathless to bored. “Apply to be a magic
apprentice. Nothing much.”
Dad’s eyebrows vanished into the
shock of hair that fell over his forehead. “You didn’t really think about
answering an ad like that, Sean.”
“God, Dad. I was just kidding
Eddy. I can’t believe she took it seriously.”
Eddy put her feet down and gave
Sean a kick to the ankle, as if he were the one who deserved kicking. He
stifled a yell.
“Because that would be stupid,”
Dad said. “You know how many scammers and predators there are on the Internet.
I don’t have to tell you.”
Not more than ten times a day. “I
know, Dad.”
The cars ahead started moving. The
cars behind started honking. Even so, Dad gazed at Sean for what felt like a
whole minute before he faced forward and drove. “I would hope you know by now.”
Sean had signed up for an online
ghost-hunting course (with Dad’s Visa) four years back, when he was twelve, a
kid. Dad might forgive, but he never forgot. “I do know,” Sean said. “Besides,
I don’t even have the ad. It’s back at the bookstore.”
He got his feet up before Eddy
could kick him again. He kept them up until she glared, shrugged, and went back
to reading her book.
Once off Main, the Civic cruised
unimpeded toward Orange Point. Tour buses at the Hanging Ground Memorial slowed
them down again. They’d checked out the Memorial that morning, or Sean would
have asked to stop. The sun had dropped low enough to spill pale gold over the
ocean and the cliff-top grasses and the tombstones of hanged witches. It looked
like a movie scene the special-effects crew had colorized to make everything
pop. Sean craned around to see the path that led to Patience Orne’s grave.
She’d been such a bad-ass witch that they’d planted her away from everyone
else, in a little clearing surrounded by scrub blueberries and dune roses. The
edge of the cliff was a few steps from her splintered stone. Sean pictured the
stone new, and Redemption standing over it. Maybe he’d gotten so worked up
mourning, he’d thrown himself over that convenient edge. Except he couldn’t
have. He’d lived long enough to put an ad in the 1895 Advertiser.
Sean laughed.
“What’s up?” Dad asked.
“Nothing. Except I was thinking we
should get double anchovies on the pizza. And pineapple.”
Dad and Eddy went into bouts of
bogus retching. As they began the descent into Kingsport, Sean slipped The
Witch Panic from
the map pocket and hid it under Dad’s seat, where it and the newspaper clipping
could stay safe until he got a chance to do something about them.
I loved the excerpt. This sounds like a really good story. Thank you for the giveaway and congrats on the new release! :D
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