Free Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paula R. Stiles

could not be seen completely, as if it undulated without moving.
    Suddenly, Satindra turned and wrapped his arms around me, crushing me to his chest. His hand held my head against his shoulder. He mumbled something as he held me hard against his robes. I didn’t struggle at first, thinking that perhaps he was frightened and hugging me against him in fear, but soon, I ran out of breath. Crushed against his chest, I could not inhale, so I fought him. Taller and stronger than I, Satindra won easily and, as I thrashed against him, he chanted softly in my ear, “Don’t look, Little Brother. Don’t look at it!”
    I awoke some time later back in the village. Satindra sat beside me, guarding me from the possessed villagers lest they return, his eyes wide and unblinking as he stared into the darkness. When I asked him how long I had been unconscious, whether we should go back to the monastery, whether we had any food, his only reply was to repeat his bleak chant: “Don’t look, Little Brother. Don’t look at it!”
    These were the only words Satindra spoke throughout our journey back to the monastery in Gandhara. The trek was dismal. Satindra was no longer an inspirational young monk, but instead, a mad, sorrowful man who sometimes screamed at strangers and other times wept uncontrollably for hours.The weather turned foul and we trudged through mud up to our calves. We both grew pathetically scrawny, bones showing through our skin, but the other travelers shunned us because Satindra still moaned his disturbing mantra. We survived on will alone and the rare, meager donations of those truly generous followers of Amitabha who knew their duty, even if the monks to whom they gave alms were dirty and mad.
    We arrived on the Guru’s doorstep shells of our former selves. The Guru could get nothing sensible out of Satindra, of course, so eventually, he came to me to ask what had befallen us in the terrible wilds of the Empire of Han. I could make no words in reply.
    Now, knowing that death awaits me soon, at last, I can write about the events that occurred, though they seem so much like a dream after so many years. Even now, however, there are parts of the story that I cannot reveal, which I will take to the funeral pyre. These horrors destroyed poor Brother Satindra, who died muttering his cursed phrase to the last, mere days after our arrival in Gandhara. He left me alone to carry the burden of the horror and now, at last, I will be free of it, for perhaps in death, I will at last no longer see the jade crane when I close my eyes, blotting out the stars with its vastness, or hear the chanting of the mad acolytes dancing naked at its feet. There was a time when I sought the peace of enlightenment, but now I seek only the silence of death, where these terrors may be obliterated in nothingness.
    Sarah Hans is a resident of the Airship Archon, currently docked in Columbus, Ohio, though on the weekends, she can be found at science fiction conventions across the Midwest. She primarily writes horror and steampunk stories, and you can follow her convention schedule, or read more about her work, at www.sarahhans.com.
    The author speaks: Many of Lovecraft’s stories explore the idea of outsiders from a more-civilized realm, often Men of Science, exploring a more primitive, less-enlightened world, where they find themselves doomed by ancient and unfathomable gods. I used Buddhist monks because I am, myself, a Buddhist and I rarely have the opportunity to write about Buddhism in a horror/science fiction/fantasy setting. Inescapable insanity is my favourite of the horror themes Lovecraft mastered and this story was born as an attempt to combine all these elements.

THE CHRONICLE OF ALIYAT SON OF ALIYAT
    Alter S. Reiss
    I t was in the fifteenth year of the reign of Aliyat son of Aliyat son of Obedagon, of the line of Callioth, that a stranger came to the city of Ashdod, an exile from the kingdom of Judah in the hills.
    The guards at the gate made