valarltd | On the Fourth Day of Fiction

My pusher gave to me
Werewolves in a Lovecraft Pastiche.

Miskatonic Mistletoe is available for reading or download.

http://www.brooksandsparrow.com/MiskatonicMistletoe.pdf

~~~

It is thirteen miles by Interstate from the insane asylum at Danvers to Route 113, which takes the
traveler into the ancient city of Newburyport. The old coast road through Innsmouth, Rowley and
Ispwich is longer, older and much narrower. The sprawling Boston metroplex sends out
squamous suburbs, growths that threaten to swallow the whole of the state. Already, the twisting
streets and oddly uniform houses creep down Highway One to Providence and up Route Three to
Nashua. The world seems very small and urban and hardly the place for fear and the unnameable. The Space Age and Information Age have both come and gone.

So, of course, no one would have believed the two older men who stepped out of the little Ford
wagon, on this gorgeous spring morning of the Lower Miskatonic Valley, were anything other
than human.

“I don’t like it, elf,” Corin Faw growled at his half-Sidhe mate as he looked up and down the
street of Arkham, Massachusetts. “It smells wrong. All kinds of wrong.” He sniffed again.
Under the smells of spring melt and damp earth, under tulips and hyacinth and green leaves and
pear blossoms, he scented decay and death and something that whispered of seas and stars and
things best left undisturbed at the bottom of them.

Cian O’Brian came around the car to his mate. “Aruhn, my own sweet wolf, it is wrong. There is
ancient evil here. Here is where we are needed.”

“Aye,” Corin growled, his nose still twitching. He unlocked the hatch. “We’re to fight evil from
a tea shop. And not just a tea shop, but Miska-Tonics Tea and Herb Shoppe.” He pronounced
the extra p and e with scorn.

Still, he had to admit that there was nothing wrong with the two-story frame building whose
gambrel roof butted back against a hill, almost to the point where a person could climb the hill
and right onto the roof. The colorful sign on the veranda, the daffodils and hyacinth dancing in
the flowerbed and the lace curtains in the windows gave the place a cheerful air, even if it did
look a bit like that place in Amityville which was on the market suspiciously cheaply. The spring
woods, just showing the first yellow-green leaves, came right to the back door.

“Love, you know the Sight is not always clear. It took us to Memphis for Danior and now it
brings us here. Take what comes.”