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  HIRAM GRANGE

  & the CHOSEN ONE

  Hiram Grange doesn’t believe in fate. He makes his own destiny. That’s a good thing, because Queen Mab of Faerie has foreseen the destruction of the world, and as usual… it’s all Hiram’s fault. He must choose: kill an innocent girl and save the universe… or rescue her and watch all else burn. Just another day on the job for Hiram Grange.

  Hiram Grange & the Chosen One continues the misadventures of the scurrilous boozer and malcontent Hiram Grange. Though afflicted with a laundry list of dysfunctions, addictions and odd predilections, Hiram Grange stands toe to toe (and sometimes toe to tentacle) with the black-hearted denizens of the Abyss, dispensing justice with the help of his Webley revolver and Pritchard bayonet.

  “Hiram Grange & The Chosen One is one of those stories you simply lose yourself in, and hate to have end. From the opening to the final scenes it never lets up with over-the-top action and plenty of dark laughs. I loved it! And want more Hiram Grange, please!”

  DAN KEOHANE, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of SOLOMON’S GRAVE

  “H.P. Lovecraft meets Ian Fleming–and H.P. Lovecraft wins. Lucia delivers non-stop action and shocks from the get-go, with tentacle very firmly in cheek …”

  JOSEPH D’LACEY, critically-acclaimed author of MEAT and GARBAGE MAN

  “Packed with high octane dark adventure and brimming with humor, Kevin Lucia’s

  Hiram Grange & the Chosen One thunders across the pages like a herd of wild horses. This is what cult fiction is all about!”

  J. L. COMEAU, Count Gore’s Creature Feature

  Kevin Lucia

  HIRAM GRANGE

  & the CHOSEN ONE

  from

  Shroud Publishing

  This book is a result of hard work and creative effort. Enjoy it, and celebrate the possibility of all things.

  First Digital Edition

  Copyright © 2011 Shroud Publishing

  All Rights Reserved

  Editor: Tim Deal

  Cover & Interior Paintings by Malcolm McClinton

  Book Design, Copy-editing, Illustrations & Digital Layout by Danny Evarts

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Shroud Publishing LLC

  121 Mason Road

  Milton, NH 03851

  www.shroudmagazine.com

  DEDICATION

  To Abby:

  Thanks for your love, patience, and your toleration of my weird hours and quirky whims.

  To Santino:

  Balance – Order – Harmony

  Thank you.

  Author’s Note

  I’ve taken many liberties with the landscape of Belfast and its waterfronts and universities, while trying to remain as accurate as possible with details that I could. More than likely, those native to Belfast, or familiar with her, will pick up these discrepancies easily. I humbly apologize for anything I wonked up, and if you’re ever my way, I offer a pint of Guinness as recompense. On the house.

  To everything there is a season.

  A time to be born,

  and a time to die.

  Book of Ecclesiastes 3:1

  Lord! What fools these mortals be.

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare

  Be careful when you fight the monsters,

  lest you become one.

  For when long you look into the Abyss,

  the Abyss looks into you.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Part 1

  Thursday

  Belfast, Northern Ireland

  He sat naked in a Sumerian Circle, cross-legged, hands draped over his knees. His thighs burned and his lower back ached. Summoning was an arduous task, not to be undertaken lightly. For weaklings, it proved fatal. Always.

  He wasn’t afraid. He Who Walks in White had shown him what needed to be done, had given him the means. That, and his command of the Old Tongues had grown. He’d tempered himself through pain. Made himself powerful, but that which he strove to bind was powerful, also. Perhaps more so.

  Dozens of small cuts stung his chest. Three slashes on each forearm puckered red and pulpy. Delicious heat filled him. With rhythmic breaths, he harnessed the pain to fuel his will. A chalice sitting in his lap swirled with blood, spit, and urine.

  Summonings carried terrible risk. Bindings, however, carried more. If he proved too weak to control the Summoned, not only would It destroy him, but It would rampage unchecked until someone intervened. If anyone could.

  Ancient symbols powered the Circle, drawn at equidistant points on the floor around him with a fingertip dipped in the chalice’s mixture. Chanting, he bathed in waves of power. He felt something coming. Soon, It would be here.

  “Y’AI’NG’NGAH, YOG-SOTHOTH, H’E – L’GETB, FA’ITRHDOG, UAAH!” He paused. “Come, Yog-Sothoth. I bind thee with my will.”

  The power swelled and pushed against him. He felt Its mind: insistent, angry, hungry. “Y’AI’NG’NGAH, CYAEGHA, H’E – L’GETB, FA’ITRHDOG, UAAH! Come, Cyaegha. I bind thee with my will!”

  He clenched the razor blades nestled in his palms. Fresh pain exploded from each hand as he felt blood squirt between his fingers. He absorbed the pain, brought his fists over the chalice and squeezed viscous red strings into it.

  It fought him. He fought back.

  “Y’AI’NG’NGAH, EIHORT, H’E—L’GETB, FA’ITRHDOG, UAAH! Come, Eihort. I bind thee, with my will!” He opened his eyes and focused on six glossy black-and-white photos of young women laid before him. The faces in each photo had been scratched over with large red strokes.

  “Y’AI’NG’NGAH, NAGAAE, HUR DE EIHORT! Come, Nagaee, spawn of Eihort!”

  On the floor before the photos lay a pewter medallion, in the shape of a great eye sprouting tentacles. It was the sigil of the Summoned. “Y’AI’NG’NGAH, M’NGALAH, Y’AI’NG’NGAH OTHUYEA, FA’ITRHDOG, UAAH! Come, Eternal One, Doom Walker! I bind thee with my will!”

  He dropped the blood-smeared razor blades and began to shake. His head snapped forward and his teeth clicked. It lurked at the threshold. The door shivered open. He cast his will upon the six photos and the medallion before him.

  “Come, one who is called Yog-Sothoth, Cyaegha, Eihort, Eternal One, and Doom Walker … I bind thee with my will! Come, harvest your brood Nagaee. Feed!”

  Something tore free. He swept up the chalice, the contents of which now bubbled, and drank deeply. After a long swallow, he smiled and licked clumps off his teeth. They were coming … and they were hungry.

  Erin Donahue was late. She scrambled around her flat, getting dressed for tonight’s concert. If she hurried, there’d be enough time to practice. God knows she needed it. Not for the first time, she cursed Foster-Mum for the long-winded phone lecture that had made her late to begin with.

  Of course, Foster-Mum could care a less. A professional music career couldn’t compare to settling down and starting a family. She’d never be satisfied until Erin did so, and had spent a good two hours yakking about it over the phone.

  Erin clicked through her flat on black stilettos. Hell with it. I’m not your real daughter, anyway. Why should I listen to you?

  Men found her attractive, and her sexual appeal matched her musical one. She’d entertained many lovers. Most of her couplings never lasted long, but that suited her fine. Foster-Mum could go hang, for all she cared.

  She stopped before a hall mirror and tug
ged at the black, clinging dress that normally looked stunning. Of course, Foster-Mum had yapped so long, she hadn’t time to iron it before dressing. Score another notch in Foster-Mum’s column for making life difficult. She huffed at the mirror’s wrinkled reflection, gave her hemline a last tug, then went into the dining room to practice a few rushed sets before leaving.

  Her gaze fell upon today’s mail on the kitchen table. She hadn’t noticed earlier, but amidst them was a small, padded manila envelope. Her address had been typed. There was no return address. Erin grabbed it, tore it open, and emptied its contents into her palm, a heavy medallion on a chain, made of dull pewter, ringed with strange symbols. In its center gazed an embossed eye, surrounded by what seemed to be tentacles or waving arms.

  Erin stared. Part of her felt sickened, but another part shivered, strangely thrilled. The medallion’s symbols resonated of deep, unknowable things, evoking sensations similar to those invoked by music.

  “A bit odd for my tastes, but why not?” She slipped the medallion over her neck, approaching the hallway mirror for a good look. Nestled just above the swell of her breasts, it contrasted nicely with her black dress. Neither too big nor too small. She regarded herself in the mirror with a raised eyebrow. “Well … don’t I look ravishing?” With a playful swish of her bobbed hair, she turned away. Time to practice.

  The medallion felt warm against her skin. She breathed so heavily from rushing around that the rise and fall of her chest made it seem as if the medallion throbbed of its own accord.

  She’d been struggling to find her rhythm for twenty minutes, playing with one eye on her sheet music, the other on the clock, when her throat tickled mid-note and the trumpet uttered a metallic squeak. She tried to continue, but the tickle exploded into a full-blown cough.

  She jerked the trumpet away. Hand over mouth, Erin coughed, her body bent by sudden gut-wrenching spasms. With each hack, saliva filled her mouth. Her face burned.

  Dammit! I’m not missing this concert! Jan will have my head!

  Another cough. The tickling subsided. She remained bent over for several seconds, savoring the sudden rush of peace. Then she opened her eyes. Blood covered her hand. She tasted a copper-saltiness. Her stomach froze as she looked in the mirror.

  Thick blood covered her lips. Something small and white wriggled at the corner of her mouth. Dazed, she wiped it and touched something slick and wet. When she pulled her hand away, it was coated in red—almost candy-apple red, she thought—and in her palm shivered the thing she’d seen on her face; a white worm. Revulsion filled her. It had come from inside her. It had caused the tickling.

  Horrified, she flung the thing away, but almost immediately her coughing resumed, more violently than before. She doubled over again, but this time didn’t bother covering her mouth. She spewed bloody clots, which painted the floor with bright red starfish patterns. She felt a liquid coiling inside. Her guts squirmed.

  She looked at her trumpet’s mouthpiece and whimpered. Blood dripped from it. She’d bled from her mouth while playing and hadn’t noticed. Her mind teetered when she saw worms poke their heads from the mouthpiece. She gagged, threw the trumpet away, and staggered towards the kitchen garbage to vomit.

  With a rocking leap, the trash bin jerked and she skidded to a halt. A pregnant quiet filled the room. The lid flipped up and down. Something inside batted it, almost playfully, as if taunting her. It flipped up and down again; opening and closing. She jerked every time.

  The medallion burned against her skin.

  The lid flipped open again, but this time something caught it from inside, held it open a crack. Maggots poured out and down the can, to the floor, a blanketing army of whiteness swarming towards her. She swayed as they piled around her feet and squirmed up her ankles.

  She gazed blearily at the garbage can, lid still open a crack, and saw eyes blinking in the can’s darkness. As the maggots burrowed through her stockings and then skin, squid-like tentacles curled over the can’s edge and flicked the air. She stared, mesmerized as fleshy arms slowly unfurled.

  Something heavy and slick rose from the garbage can. Eyes glittered. She screamed as it tumbled from the can, bounced off the floor and flew at her, tentacles weaving, eyes blinking … mouths puckering.

  The man relaxed. It was done. Great pleasure suffused him, for coming soon was the destruction of Hiram Grange.

  It didn’t matter how hard Hiram ran, he could never reach Sadie in time. As his feet pounded against the sidewalk, black hounds swarmed over her, pulled her down. Onyx teeth tore her open as she screamed.

  “Sadie!”

  He reached for the Webley, his fingers feeling nothing but the cold, flimsy leather of his shoulder holster, because …

  Something screeched behind him. Hiram spun about, now in his parents’ bedroom, and saw his mother rising gracefully from her ruined cello. She turned and put the Webley—his father’s Webley, the same gun that later claimed Sadie—to her head. As Hiram struggled, his feet mired in blood, he heard:

  “Damn you, Hiram. Damn you to hell.”

  His mother pulled the trigger. The side of her head blew away in wet chunks.

  Sadie screamed. His mother screamed. He tried to save them, but the thickening blood pooled at his feet, rose past his ankles, and held him fast while their cries tore into his soul. Sadie screamed, his mother screamed and he screamed, because they were all one—joined forever in torment, in the Abyss. They all screamed, over and over.

  Hiram awoke. He felt coated in slime. For a moment, he thought he was in the Abyss, lost forever in darkness.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  “Hey! What the ‘ell are ya doin’? Pitchin’ a fit?”

  Hiram inhaled. He massaged his chest, tried to slow his heart. Perspiration-soaked clothes stuck to his chilled skin.

  “Hey! Ya alright back there?”

  It rushed back. He was bound for London’s Heathrow Airport, on the way to Northern Ireland and his next assignment. He’d fallen asleep in the cab. Blinking, he looked up. Pin-prick eyes glared at him in the rearview mirror. “Well?”

  Hiram didn’t reply. He closed his eyes and ran through a meditation cycle he had learned from monks in Cambodia years ago, when he’d been hunting a jungle daemon in the village of Sang-Li. Slowly the nightmare faded. He pushed the darkness back into its little box.

  Damn you, Hiram!

  “I’m fine. Bloody marvelous, really.”

  The driver focused on the road. Hiram gazed out the window and tried to stop the darkness from morphing into thousands of screaming faces; tried to stop seeing Sadie’s and his mother’s among them.

  The door loomed at the end of a dark hall. Something waited there, but she couldn’t reach it. Otherworldly cries chilled her spine. She ran faster. Her lungs burned, heart hammered, as something powerful built within …

  But she couldn’t get any closer. If she could just get there, open it and run through, she’d be safe. At the last moment, her fingers brushed the doorknob, when something yanked her back into the darkness …

  Therese Fitzgerald bolted upright and stifled a scream. Her legs twisted in sweaty bed sheets. The couch she woke on felt damp, cold. Throwing off the sheets, she sat up and cupped her face in her hands. She hadn’t had that nightmare in months, not since meeting Reggie. Why was it back?

  Because you and Reggie are quits, love. Makes sense, right?

  What a bitch.

  She ran a trembling hand through her long, blond hair, stood up and approached Cassie’s street-side window. Cassie was a friend from University who’d graduated last year. They’d kept in touch, conversing often over lunch or coffee. After her blow-up with Reggie this afternoon, she hadn’t had anyone to talk with. Even after three years at University, she’d made few friends.

  Cassie was one of them, so Therese had rung her up. Cassie invited her to spend the night. Relieved, Therese accepted the offer. It provided a brief sanctuary, but didn’t change the fact she and Reggie were thro
ugh.

  She sighed. As she leaned on the cool glass of the window, she played with a small charm on her bracelet, no bigger than her thumb. It was round, with an upraised slash through it, much like a lightning bolt. One side of the bolt had been engraved with a small quill and book, the other embedded with three small crystals: red, white, and blue. Found on a chain around her neck when she was left at an orphanage just outside Glen Finen, it was the only proof that she’d ever had any family. A nun had kept it until Therese grew older.

  She’d stayed at that orphanage until age ten. After that, the system shuffled her from foster home to foster home until she turned eighteen. Though it sounded trite, at least she’d always had the charm. On lonely nights, it reminded her that, even as she’d been given up, someone had cared.

  Then came Reggie. Sweet, handsome in a rugged way, he wasn’t a college student but a steel worker. His innocence had attracted Therese. To her, the unassuming Reggie seemed perfect.

  Of course, she hadn’t foreseen his insecurities, or imagined he’d become so possessive. Lately, their fights had worsened, and even though he always apologized with wine and flowers, it wasn’t long before something new set him off.

  The night’s chill seeped through the glass. Her thin shirt and boxers poor defense against the cold, Therese hugged herself. She didn’t step away from the window, however. She loved looking at the city lights burning against the darkness.

  Today’s row with Reggie had been terrible. She kept an off-campus post office box for her art correspondence, and Reggie often fetched the mail when he visited. She’d received a very strange package today, containing an odd-looking medallion on a chain. It had no return address or note. Of course, Reggie had assumed it was a gift from a secret lover.