Up for preorder from Dark Regions Press is Tales From Arkham Sanitarium.
There are things man was not meant to know and knowledge that burns those that learn it. As H.P. Lovecraft himself once said, “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall…go mad from the revelation…” Knowing too much, getting a glimpse of the truth behind the curtain we call reality, casting aside the bliss of ignorance and succumbing to the insanity that follows in the pursuit of damnable truths, is at the core of many of the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. Insanity is central to Lovecraftian horror, so there is no wonder that in his witch-cursed and legend-haunted town of Arkham, a cathedral devoted to mending broken minds was raised. Arkham Sanitarium. Where the screams and cries of the damned are commonplace. Where those that have seen the faces of cosmic entities gibber with regret over their curiosity. Where men and women are cosigned to never ending purgatory for knowing too much. The machinations of the Old Ones are beyond the mental capacity of mankind, and these are the tales of those who learned that too late.
This is one I’ve been waiting for. Peep the lineup!
The Crying Man by Tim Waggoner
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation by William Meikle
Malformed Articulation by W. H. Pugmire
Bit by Bit by Don Webb
Let me Talk to Sarah by Christine Morgan
The Hunger by Peter Rawlik
The Colors Of A Rainbow To One Born Blind by Edward M. Erdelac
The River and the Room by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Veteran of the Future Wars by Orrin Grey
Folie et déraison by Nick Mamatas
Red Hook by Glynn Owen Barrass
Clicks by Stephen Mark Rainey
…& My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You by Edward Morris
Forbidden Fruit by Cody Goodfellow
Stained Glass by Jeffrey Thomas
Some good friends and great writers! I’m particularly honored to be sharing a TOC with the last offerings from the late great Joe Pulver and Willum Pugmire, two deservedly respected Lovecraftians whom I admired, and were just all around good folks to boot.
My story, The Colors Of A Rainbow To One Born Blind is one of my own personal favorite Lovecraftian offerings, about a shooting at Miskatonic University.
Here’s an excerpt….
He walks the crowded halls of Misktatonic U between classes, mind blazing brightly as a taper with unthinkable thoughts. His life is a fast dwindling wick. The light behind his eyes casts the other students with long shadows.
He avoids those shadows, shuddering when he must pass through them, knowing each is a dogged, stalking menace, ready to turn at any moment in suicidal rebellion on its originator.
The librarian taught him that, whispering in the lonely rasp of turning pages and the venerable book smell of almond, vanilla, and grass, scratching in the late night cathode flicker of his dark room.
He watches his own shadow very closely, and keeps a flashlight in his pocket as insurance against the black ghost which trails and mimics his every step. He stops and turns suddenly in an attempt to catch it moving independently.
He hasn’t caught it yet, not in plain sight, but he knows that the observer effect applies. The very act of studying the shadow alters its appearance, helps it hide its true nature.
His witless schoolmates know nothing of their danger. They are unaware of the things which wait with the patience of a hunter crouched in the dark, angled recesses, unaware of those things which hunt between the blinks of the unquantifiable observer. They are ignorant of how facilely the doors to tenebrous realms may be unlocked, ignorant of the ring of keys residing on their own campus, every hide bound book, every crumbling scroll under glass more deadly than any of the guns in his knapsack. The Miskatonic library is an arsenal of mass destruction tended by buffoons, as benighted to the destructive potential of their charges as the average beer swilling fraternity point guard is to the half-conscious woman who sighs beneath him.
‘Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Make You Free.’ – John. 8:32.
The motto above the doors of the hated library mocks him as he passes it on the quadrangle. The twittering of the chickadees among the chestnut boughs is indistinguishable in his thrumming ears from the chatter of the lounging students. It all mocks him, unbearably oblivious in the pregnant shadow thrown across the commons by the library’s clock tower. The laughter of the coeds is the lowing of cattle in the slaughter chute.
The clock tower above the library stands like an antenna, poised to broadcast terrible truths out into the fragile world of dripping ice that all he had ever known and once loved inhabits.
Love.
What is love, and who is he to think of it? But for the love of his late father he has been denied it all his life. Women have ever shunned him, turning their sweet faces away to share in the petty glories of dull, unworthy boys who make meaningless playground games the focus of their existence, and who will one day grow like overfed bulls into dull, unworthy men.
But they will not get the chance.
Delirium Tremens 
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