Occult Detective Magazine Mythos Special #2

Welcome to the second of our occasional Mythosian Special Issues. Once again we blur the lines by not only including certain Lovecraftian concepts, but also including tales related to Robert W. Chambers’ ‘King in Yellow’ sequence, a brooding sandpit in which a number of Mythos writers have often played.We’ve actually increased the number of brand new offerings this issue. Nick Marsh opens with ‘The Bibliophile’, a dark reflection on identity, which features the return of a character first seen in his excellent novel, The Express Diaries.We close with our second completely new story, Marni Scofidio’s full-on, tongue-in-cheek venture into deep Mythos territory, ‘Beyond the Wall of Sheep’.‘The Lights Beneath the Sea’, Aaron Vlek’s tale of her regular arcane character Geoffrey Vermillion (ODQ #4, ODM #7), with echoes of Innsmouth, is also new in that it has only previously appeared in an online magazine, in an unedited form.This issue offers a range of new tales and reprints which we found of particular interest. We span the centuries, going from Ed Erdelac’s tale of summoned horror, ‘The Unrepeatables’ in ancient Rome, through Josh Reynolds story of Shakespearian dread, ‘A Tiger’s Heart, A Player’s Hide’, and up to the present-day with Paul StJohn Mackintosh and his bleak contemporary story of cosmic horror and subversion, ‘Drones’.Along the way, you will find Brandon Barrows’ period story of that classic occult detective Carnacki, and his encounter with a certain forbidden play, in ‘The Madness of Arthur Malbrey’. Slipping further into the twentieth century, we present Mike Chinn’s ‘Sailors of the Skies’, featuring his own recurrent adventurer Damian Paladin (ODQ #2, ODM #0), whilst Gordon Linzner’s ‘Only the Dead’ includes the return of a particularly unpleasant human character from one of H P Lovecraft’s own works.Which brings us at last to our other contemporary offerings – Erica Ruppert’s disturbing ‘Ex Astris’, James Lowder’s ‘Morning in America’, and Alice Loweecey’s ‘The King in Gray’, in which a hat shop owner is visited by a stranger, who has a message from his dead Aunty Em.We hope that such a range once more intrigues, shivers, or amuses you.

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