CYÄEGHA

 CYÄEGHA
"The moon split. He realized then that the sky was not a sky, and that the illuminated green thing was not the moon but the eye of an enormous dark shadow which spread as a dark blot between Earth and the real sky. The eye looked down at him with horrible contempt, and for a short moment he obtained a realization of the enormity of the being which hung watching above him."


"The air began moving around the moon, and they saw that it was a gigantic eye staring down at them. Around the eye, the sky split, deep clefts opened through which darkness began to ooze, a darkness blacker than the night, which crawled down as a set of slimy tentacles, taking on more form, more definite shape."

"It turned Its attention to the waiting village now, and from Its outer body a rain of dark shivering tentacles went down to the houses, crushing them and those still inside them, ripping open the roofs and walls, exposing the houses' innards as It even went down into the cellars, hunting for the huddling survivors. Its tentacles found them, as It cracked the houses open like eggshells, and absorbed them and Herbert tasted their small essences in his own extensions, parts of the tentacles of darkness. It melted their bones and fed on the remaining shapeless mess, leaving only wet slimy skins behind."
Eddy C. Bertin, Darkness, My Name Is

GLA'AKI

GLA'AKI

"They shoved me forward to where I could look down into the lake. The ferns and water were unusually mobile tonight, but I didn't realize what was making them move until an eye rose above the surface. and stared moistly at me. Two others followed it - and, worst of all, none of them was in a face. When the body heaved up behind them I shut my eyes and shrieked for help - to whom I don't know; I had a weird idea that someone was in the house here and could help me. Then i felt a tearing pain in my chest, neutralized by a numbness which spread through my whole body. And I regarded the object I had seen rising from the lake with no horror whatever."

"The centre of each picture was, it was obvious, the being know as Gla'aki. From an oval body protruded countless thin, pointed spines of multicolored metal' at the more rounded end of the oval a circular, thick-lipped mouth formed the centre of a spongy face, from which rose three yellow eyes on thin stalks. Around the underside of the body were many white pyramids, presumably used for locomotion. The diameter of the body must have been about ten feet at its least width."

Ramsey Campbell, The Inhabitant Of the Lake

QUADRUPEDAL DEVOLVED HUMAN

 QUADRUPEDAL DEVOLVED HUMAN
"When Dr. Trask, the anthropologist, stooped to classify the skulls, he found a degraded mixture which utterly baffled him. They were mostly lower than the Piltdown man in the scale of evolution, but in every case definitely human. Many were of higher grade, and a very few were the skulls of supremely and sensitively developed types. All the bones were gnawed, mostly by rats, but somewhat by others of the half-human drove."

"Horror piled on horror as we began to interpret the architectural remains. The quadruped things—with their occasional recruits from the biped class—had been kept in stone pens, out of which they must have broken in their last delirium of hunger or rat-fear."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Rats In the Walls

News...

I'm still on my way to draw 100 monsters this year, with 32 monsters posted in the first 3rd of 2015. In keeping with that spirit, I'll be posting three really disparate monsters in the last three days of April, bringing my total for the first four months to 35. We'll have a creature HPL mentioned, a Great Old one from the Ramsey Campbell story The Inhabitant Of the Lake and a Great Old One concocted by Eddy C. Bertin that I drew for the next cover of Cyäegha. I usually like to have a loose theme for a week but this is strictly about numbers people haha! Enjoy!

SEVENTH CHURCH MINISTRIES

Hey everyone! I know it's been quiet on the zine front for a while but here's some big news today...Below is the official list of Seventh Church Ministries releases for 2015....



UPCOMING SEVENTH CHURCH MINISTRIES CONJURINGS!!!! 

INCLUDING James Quigley​'s Goetia Vol 1! Jeanne D'Angelo​'s Unclean Spirits based on the writings of Nikolai Gogol and Jenn Woodall​'s comic adaptaion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper! Not to mentions a mini Illustro Obscurum of Russian folk monsters, a full size Nyarlathotep-based Illustro Obscurum (a collaboration with Jason McKittrick​) and a NecronomiCon Providence​ EXCLUSIVE Illustro Obscurum based on Ramsey Campbell​'s writings!!!!

Stay tuned for exact release dates!

SOFT FROG

 SOFT FROG

"Jaycee saw the reeds spread at their base then spring back as the shape bulged between them. He figured the thing about the size of a baseketball. Capillaries of tiny lightning rippled over the blue-white blob as it moved, making a fitful little humping leap."

"-It's just the soft frogs. They come up from the swamp at night. They're weird but not really dangerous, least not so long as you keep moving anyway. They're not very fast."

"Her theory was the frogs are mutants that evolved to live without skins. Like maybe they got changed by the stuff the big pharmaceuticals are dumping in the swamp."

"So Destiny told us she thought it was the chemicals in the swamp puffed them up nd made them lose their skins, mad them all bubbly and foamy."

"He zigzagged between the flickering blobs."

"He saw beyond a doubt now they had no mouths. Just blunt muzzles of foam and those hateful yellow eyes."

Scott Nicolay, Soft Frogs

Scott Nicolay

 

Tomorrow I'll be posting a monster from Scott Nicolay's

short story Soft Frogs. 

Scott Nicolay has only one collection (Ana Kai Tangata) which was published last year and preceded by acclaim from contemporary weird/horror fiction authors, lauding his surprisingly well crafted debut. As well as being truly weird and filled with believable characters his stories have an amazing sense of place. Having grown up in North Jersey, the stories alligators and Soft Frogs not only seemed familiar but also made me think I'd actually BEEN to some of the places he was describing. Even more amazing, the title story Ana Kai Tangata takes place on Easter Island and, though I've never been there, I got the same sense of familiarity!

I would also like to point out that, along with Gemma Files' Kissing Carrion, Soft Frogs is one of the most disgusting stories I've ever read. Not in an overtly gory way, but in a conceptual nightmare kinda way. Does that make sense? Thinking about it is making me grimace.

Anyway, Scott's a great author. I can't wait to see what else he has in store and you should check out his collection as soon as you can!

News...

Hey everyone! Just some quick housekeeping stuff. There's no new monsters this week but next week I'll have a brand new birthday post from one of my favorite contemporary weird/horror fiction authors. Then, the last week of the month will be a theme-less mixed bag of brand new monsters haha.

I'm also 31 monsters into my year of 100 monsters! I have a bunch more drawn so, hopefully, I'll be able to get to 35 by the end of the month (which is the first third of the year).

For those of you that collect Illustro Obscurum zines, I know it's been a bit of a quiet time but that's because I'm finishing up laying out TWO brand new zines. One of my own and the other is the second release from Seventh Church Ministries. There will be more news on both once I get a solid release date. In the meantime, There are still a few copies of Collections I & II so head over to my Etsy store and pick them up!

Seventh Church Ministries/Yog-Blogsoth will also be tabling at both NecronomiCon in Providence this August and at SPX in Baltimore this September selling Illustro Obscurum zines and related crud. Come meet me there and make an oath to Hecate!

HUMBABA

 HUMBABA

"The dog was a bit on the small side, but it was a definite improvement on Doug and his girlfriend's first try - a week back, when they'd actually tried to fob me off with some store-bought puppy. Through long and clever argument, however, I'd finally gotten them to cave in: If you're looking to evoke a deity who speaks through a face made of guts - one who goes by the slightly risible name of Humbaba, to be exact - you'd probably better make sure his mouth is big enough to tell you what you want to hear."
Gemma Files, The Narrow World

Huwawa (Humbaba) was a monster who guarded the pine forest. His face resembled coiled intestines, and he possessed killer rays." 

Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others

"Humbaba, whose shout is the flood-weapon, Whose utterance is Fire and whose breath is Death, Can hear for up to sixty leagues the sounds of his forest."

Gilgamesh, Tablet III

"He had the paws of a lion and a body covered in horny scales; his feet had the claws of a vulture, and on his head were the horns of a wild bull; his tail and phallus each ended in a snake's head." 

Georg Burckhardt translation of Gilgamesh, Tablet III

"Gilgamesh proposes an expedition to the Cedar Forest and is not put off by Enkidu’s first-hand knowledge of its terrible guardian, the ogre Humbaba." 

A.R. George, The Epic Of Gilgamesh

"Humbaba is the name of a monstrous giant guardian in the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia. Humbaba, also known as Huwawa and Kumbaba, is the guardian of the cedar forests and may originally have been a deity of nature. It was described as having a vast humanoid body with scale plates all over it, with the legs of a lion ending in vulture's talons' on its head were horns like those of a bull; the tail was long and had a snake's head at the end."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

Happy Birthday Gemma Files

This coming Saturday is Gemma Files' birthday so I'll be posting an old world god referenced in her  short story The Narrow World. 

Another Toronto based author, Files has written two collections three novels (in her Hexslinger series) and last year's We Will All Go Down Together (a collection of loosely interwoven short stories). I've read both her collections and I am in the middle of her newest and I can't get enough. She manages to effortlessly meld old world magic with modern day urban despair. Not only that but the story Kissing Carrion is one of the grossest stories I've ever read!

She's had stories reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror and The Best Horror Of the Year as well as having won The Black Quill Award, The International Horror Guild Award and been nominated twice for a Shirley Jackson Award. Not only that, but five of her stories have been adapted for the late 90s tv series The Hunger!

You may also recognize Gemma Files' name because she was one of the authors that wrote for my Nyarlathotep collaborations.

Again, these birthday posts are usually older, mostly dead, authors. However, reading those dead authors have led me to discover some very talented and alive authors that I'd love to help get a little more exposure in what ever small way I can. Gemma's work is very engaging as well as being dark and grimy. Do yourself a favor and pick up one of her books if you haven't already.

SKIPPER THE EYECHILD

 SKIPPER THE EYECHILD

"My name is Dr. Rick Dagless MD. Who would've thought that that giant eye was once a young man. The guy was undergoing experimental gamma ray treatment for mumps when the eyeball of a sex offender got in the reactor chamber with him. But if you sell your body for medical experiments to make a quick buck you've gotta roll with the punches. At least he was a peace now, on account of being dead."

"What I couldn't work out was how he'd managed to make another man pregnant. I guess we'd never know. So, just to restate that is something we'll never know, you're not gonna find out later."

"As I'm sure you people are aware Wonton's gamma radiation mumps program went west and created a horny giant eye on legs."

"Wonton has reason to believe that the giant eye might have fathered a child."

"Now, she's gone, I can think about the eyechild."

"Trust me it won't be harmed."

"It has a name! It's called Skipper."

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Skipper The Eyechild