Pierce Mostyn | CW Hawes

Pierce Mostyn – Paranormal Investigator

Pierce Mostyn fighting inter-dimensional beings. Photo from a secret OUP file.

The other week I ran across a magazine called The Occult Detective Quarterly. Since the occult detective is a relatively new interest of mine, I loaded a couple issues onto my iPad for a read.

I’m about halfway through the first issue and I can honestly give the zine a big thumbs up! I hope they get the money they need to publish issues 5 and 6.

The occult detective has a long and venerable history. I outlined a bit of that history in a previous post. I also noted that it was Seabury Quinn’s occult detective, Jules de Grandin, that saved Weird Tales magazine from going under very early in its history.

Today I’d like to focus attention on my own occult, or paranormal, investigator creation: Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena.

I’m a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos, vampires, werewolves, re-animated corpses (whether they be creations of Dr Frankenstein, Herbert West, mummies, or old-fashioned zombies and zuvembies), and, of course, ghosts. Pretty much anything supernatural gets my vote, and even a few things that aren’t exactly supernatural but can be classed as weird.

Pierce Mostyn, paranormal investigator extraordinaire, and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena, led by uber-mysterious Dr Rafe Bardon, are America’s ultra-secret fighters whose mission is to stop and destroy those things it is best for us not to know they exist.

In Nightmare in Agate Bay, Mostyn and his team meet an off-shoot of the Esoteric Order of Dagon in backwater Agate Bay, Minnesota. Which Order was the same mysterious cult that plagued poor Innsmouth. We meet fish people and a shoggoth. Some of our favorite paranormals.

Mostyn’s next adventure, Stairway to Hell, takes him and his team to the subterranean world of K’n-yan. Where we find a super-race of fickle and sadistic beings, who just so happen to be worshippers of Cthulhu and his buddies.

In K’n-yan, while trying to find a way to escape, Mostyn encounters the beautiful and seductive H’tha-dub, who gives him a Faustian choice that could save his team and at the same time destroy his budding romance with team member Dotty Kemper. Duty or love, that is Mostyn’s choice. The choice should be easy. But is it?

We all know that while Cthulhu is a pretty gargantuan bad guy, he isn’t the only monster on the block. In Terror in the Shadows, Mostyn and his team encounter a family that has degenerated beyond the classification of human. A family that has undergone reverse evolution. The classic term for such a being is abhuman. And Mostyn encounters lots of them in the hills of Appalachia. For their part, the abhumans recognize a good protein source when they see one.

And if the monsters of natural degeneration aren’t enough, there’s Van Dyne’s Vampires — the product of modern science and the laboratory. Mostyn and team must face hordes of these lab-cultured demons who’d just as soon chomp your liver as suck your blood.

Evil never rests. After all, if it did, what would we paranormal writers write about? Which brings me to the upcoming Pierce Mostyn paranormal investigation: The Medusa Ritual. As an experiment, I intend to serialize the working draft of this short novel here on the website prior to its publication in book form this summer. But more on the serialized novel and The Medusa Ritual in the next couple weeks.

The first Pierce Mostyn investigation went public a year ago. And in the 12 months since I’ve had great fun getting to know the central gang: Mostyn himself, Dr Dotty Kemper, Willie Lee Baker, DC Jones, Helene Dubreuil, Dr Rafe Bardon, and the newest addition, Kymbra NicAskill.

I encourage you to take a look at my interpretation of the occult detective. You’ll find everything you love about the paranormal and good stories in the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations. There be monsters here!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Van Dyne’s Vampires

A writer is a little bit like a god. Gods in all religions are creators. They are responsible for the world as we know it, and for the world we cannot see.

Writers create worlds, both seen and unseen, every day, along with myriads of people. Like gods, writers are creators.

The act of creating is, for me, exhilarating. It is the most exciting part of writing. Someday I hope to have enough money so I can hire someone to do all the other aspects of the writing business so I can just write.

The first audience of a writer is himself. If the story doesn’t interest him, it won’t see the light of day. And it might not even see completion. After all, writers basically write about what they know and they write a story they find interesting. That’s what keeps them going. I suppose the same can be said of deities: they do what pleases them.

Yesterday was supposed to be the official launch day of Van Dyne’s Vampires (Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations, Book 4). However, Amazon is having hiccups in their KDP processing. Consequently, Van Dyne isn’t showing up on the Pierce Mostyn series page and the price (as of this writing) is still listed at 99 cents, which is what I offer as a special deal to my reading list folks. However, since the book is still 99 cents — grab a copy before the Zon finally gets its act together and raises the price to $2.99.

The Pierce Mostyn stories have been a joy to write. More and more I’m growing to truly love Mostyn and company. I’m anticipating a long relationship with him and his world.

Van Dyne’s Vampires is a bit of a departure from the previous three stories, where I riffed on a story by HP Lovecraft. Van Dyne is my own creation. Although characters of his ilk abound. Van Dyne is the Moriarity, the Zeck, the Fu Manchu of Pierce Mostyn’s world. The human evil genius. Never mind that Mostyn also has Cthulhu and his buddies to contend with.

Cthulhu and friends, however, don’t care about us. We are to them as ants on a sidewalk are to us. That is the horror of the Mythos: in the vastness of the universe, we don’t matter. We are nothing. Whether human beings and our little world continue to exist doesn’t even register in the minds of entities greater than ourselves.

The true horror of our quest to meet other intelligent life is that they will be superior to us and not care if we live or die. And maybe for them, things would be better off if we were dead. Be careful what you wish for.

However, for some, the fear of the Mythos might be a bit remote. So I created someone we all can relate to: namely, the bully; the person who uses others to satisfy his or her own needs. Valdis Damien van Dyne is that bully on a mega-scale. He is that egotist who thinks nothing of others — other than how they can best serve his needs.

We’ve all been bullied. We’ve all dealt with users. And when that bully or user has power over us, there is fear we feel deep in our gut. It is far more visceral than the fear of being nothing.

And just as we hope someone will come to our rescue, there is Pierce Mostyn and the OUP. A little bit of the cavalry coming over the hill just in the nick of time. And we like that.

You can get Van Dyne’s Vampires at Amazon, or read it for free if you are a KU member. Enjoy!

Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

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Pierce Mostyn Investigates Again

Pierce Mostyn came into being, as with most if not all of my fiction, out of thin air. Like Athena springing fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.

Technically creatio ex nihilo is reserved for gods; and since I’m not one, there were embryonic thoughts and influences swirling around in my mind which eventually coalesced into Pierce Mostyn. I mentioned a few last week.

Mostyn is a professional paranormal investigator, employed by the Office of Unidentified Phenomena; which is a dark and shadowy and mysterious federal agency. The office’s director, Dr Rafe Bardon, is an equally mysterious and shadowy character.

The X-Files, Twin Peaks, and Stranger Things were undoubtedly the immediate stimuli for Mostyn. Before those shows there was, of course, HP Lovecraft. The federal government’s interest in suppressing what was going on in that ancient seaside town of Innsmouth is a key factor in lending the story an air of authenticity.

Many of Lovecraft’s stories are written as an exposé of suppressed truth. A device The X-Files, Twin Peaks, and Stranger Things all made use of. And since I grew up in the 50s and 60s, I’m very familiar with accounts of government suppression of information some bureaucrat thought was too dangerous for us to know. That theme even found its way into Indiana Jones.

Of course, Mr Snowdon helped us realize that the government is in fact actively suppressing the truth, lying to us, and spying on us. In spite of what the socialists, and big government liberals and conservatives say — government is not our friend. A theme I allude to in Van Dyne’s Vampires.

Next week, if all goes well, Van Dyne’s Vampires, the fourth Pierce Mostyn paranormal investigation, will be available for your reading pleasure. Mostyn and company will encounter some new enemies. There is also plenty of action, and a healthy dollop of humor, along with that good old-fashioned paranormal horror.

If you haven’t yet discovered Pierce Mostyn, take a look at the series page. Some good reading awaits you!

Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

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The Paranormal Investigator

Last week we took a look at the paranormal phenomenon in literature. The week I want to focus on the occult detective. Or in today’s parlance, the Paranormal Detective.

Edgar Allan Poe created the detective genre with his amateur sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin. It can easily be said that mother and son writing team, E. and H. Heron created the occult detective sub-genre with their Flaxman Low stories.

After Low’s introduction, a steady steam of occult detectives appeared on the literary scene. Some of them are:

Dr John Silence, created by Algernon Blackwood

Thomas Carnacki, created by William Hope Hodgson

Aylmer Vance, created by Alice and Claude Askew

Moris Klaw, created by Sax Rohmer

Jules de Grandin, created by Seabury Quinn

Steve Harrison, created by Robert E Howard

John Thunstone, created by Manly Wade Wellman

Dr Alex Caspian, created by Joseph Payne Brennan

Dirk Gently, created by Douglas Adams

Repairman Jack, created by F. Paul Wilson

The occult detective has also appeared on TV in shows such as Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Penny Dreadful, Twin Peaks, Angel, and, of course, The X-Files.

Twin Peaks and The X-Files gave a little twist to the occult detective genre by having the investigators FBI agents. The government was now involved, one way or the other, in the investigation of supernatural occurrences.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s. The UFO scare and the talk of government cover-ups was news. I remember reading of sightings, or watching reports on TV, along with the usual government “explanation”. I read books on UFOs “proving” their existence. Circumstantial evidence to be sure. But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck…

Consequently, since writers write mostly about what they know, it was only a matter of time before my Muse gave me Pierce Mostyn and the Federal Office of Unidentified Phenomena. A Federal uber-secret agency whose purpose is to investigate and determine the threat level of those things that go bump in the night, and eliminate them if need be.

And what greater terror can there be, the greatest of those things that go bump in the night, then the Great Cthulhu and his ilk?

Lovecraft, in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, intimated that the Federal government was indeed interested in and sought to cover-up the existence of The Great Old Ones.

Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena are a natural riff on Lovecraft and the government investigations and cover-ups alluded to in Lovecraft’s stories, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files. Along with being more action-oriented than those three predecessors.

Today, if you search Amazon, you’ll quickly see that the current crop of writers use the terms paranormal detective, or paranormal investigator.

The occult and supernatural are out, and the paranormal is in — at least as far as being a category identifier is concerned. So if you’re a writer writing about the occult and supernatural, just call it the paranormal and you should be alright.

Before I go, I do want to shine a spotlight on two excellent paranormal investigator reads. They are Herkimer’s Nose and Tony Price: Confidential (which is all three Tony Price volumes in one book). Richard Schwindt is an amazing storyteller. You won’t regret spending the 3 bucks to get these books.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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The Paranormal

I’m taking a bit of a break in our series Good Books You Probably Never Heard Of to talk about the Paranormal. Mostly because later this month I’ll be publishing the fourth Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation. And I want to share with you some thoughts regarding this category.

Back in the dark ages when I was growing up, we didn’t use the word “paranormal” all that often. We used “supernatural” and “occult”. I’m still inclined to use those words rather than “paranormal”. But I also want to sell books. And if the “in” word is paranormal – then, so be it.

Hence the series is about Pierce Mostyn’s Paranormal Investigations and not his Occult or Supernatural Investigations.

The times move on and language with them.

Today, we have paranormal everything. Just key the word paranormal into the Amazon search box. You’ll get paranormal romance, paranormal mystery, paranormal dating agency, paranormal cozy mystery, paranormal police department, paranormal PIs, paranormal reverse harem (what????), and all those shifter romances.

The paranormal, with or without magic, is hot. One of the reasons I started thinking about writing my own paranormal series last year.

A writer basically has two options when it comes to deciding what to write. Either write about what you love. Or learn to love what you write about.

I tried the latter approach a few decades ago with romance novels. What I learned was I was not going to learn to love writing about love. In fact, I hated it! And subsequently gave up on the idea.

Today, I write what I like or love to read. And that works for me.

I enjoy writing. And I make some sales and get some KU page reads along the way. Which is also nice.

I probably won’t get rich from writing because what I like to read isn’t what is hot. I’ve accepted that. But I haven’t yet thrown in the towel on the idea that I can make some kind of livable income from writing. Which for me is basically a nice supplement to my retirement income. After all there are lots of writers who aren’t on the bestseller lists who make some decent money from their pens.

The idea for Pierce Mostyn came about while I was watching the first season of The X-Files on Netflix. The thought came to me what if there was an uber-secret government agency whose mission was to save us from… From what? I like the Cthulhu Mythos, so why not those bad guys?

The more I thought about it, the more I decided the concept worked for me. And thus Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena was born.

My first inclination was to call the investigations “occult”. Then I told myself, No, they have to be “Paranormal” if you want a chance to make some coin. And so the series became the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations.

Occult and supernatural literature – or paranormal in today’s parlance – has been popular from the beginning. Stories of monsters, demons, and ghosts. And we are still telling these stories today.

It’s great fun working in an ancient storytelling tradition with a modern twist.

If you haven’t read the Pierce Mostyn series, I urge you to give them a try. I’m quite proud of the books. As one reviewer noted, they’re, “…entertaining and action packed.” And if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you don’t have to pay a cent. Such a deal!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Terror in the Shadows-Sneak Peek 2

Yesterday, Terror in the Shadows (Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations, Book 3) went live. Pick up a copy or read for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

I have mixed feelings about having most of my books exclusive on Amazon. But the one thing that is difficult to argue against is making more money. All of my books except for The Rocheport Saga are exclusive to Amazon. Hopefully one day soon I’ll be able to figure out how to make as much money going wide as I do now being exclusive to Amazon. But until that day, exclusive it is.

If you have an iPad, you can get the Kindle app to augment iBooks. That’s what I’ve done. There are also ways to read Kindle books on Nook and Kobo devices. A little Internet research will show you how to do that.

Last week I gave you a sneak peek from chapter 1 of Terror in the Shadows. This week’s peek is from Chapter 6. Enjoy!

***

When the big black SUV pulled into the lot, Mostyn and Kemper saw a big old Pontiac a short distance away, not far from the tree line. The car was bouncing, the squeak of the springs just barely audible.

“Looks like someone’s going for a ride,” Mostyn said.

“Idiots.”

“What? You never did that, Kemper?”

“A car? You’ve got to be kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Forget it. Now what?”

Mostyn put the SUV in park and shut off the engine. “Let’s go for a walk.”

They exited the vehicle, flashlights in hand. The old Pontiac stopped bouncing.

“I guess he scored,” Kemper said.

“Hope they don’t regret it.”

“Now who’s the cynic.”

“Just saying. Babies you know.”

“Gotta point there, Mostyn.”

“This way, Kemper.”

Mostyn cut across the lot on a path that would give the occupants of the Pontiac their space. Kemper was next to him. Their flashlight beams illuminated the asphalt, and when the asphalt ended, the short strip of grass before the woods.

Just before the trees, Kemper hesitated. “Awfully dark in there.”

“That it is. And there may or may not be a bogeyman in there.”

“Yeah, right.”

Mostyn and Kemper carefully picked their way into the woods. Behind them, in the east, a golden moon began coming up over the treetops. They heard the Pontiac start and drive out of the lot.

“Bet they’re wondering whose SUV that is,” Mostyn said.

“Probably scared shitless someone was spying on them and will tell their parents.”

Mostyn chuckled. “Probably.”

Out of the darkness a rock knocked Kemper’s flashlight out of her hand. Mostyn turned his off and they dropped to the ground. All around them they heard grunting and feral sounds. Neither one said a word. Whatever was making the sounds, and there had to be several of them, they were obviously looking for Mostyn and Kemper.

Mostyn touched his pistol to Kemper’s hand and then touched her hand with one finger, followed by a second, and then a third.

Kemper wrote “OK” with her finger on Mostyn’s hand and pulled her pistol out of the fanny pack.

Mostyn tapped Kemper’s hand once, twice, three times. They jumped up, and fired into the darkness.

Several rocks came flying in their direction and Mostyn grunted when one connected with his thigh. And then all was quiet.

Mostyn turned on his flashlight and panned the light and his pistol in a circle around them. Nothing. There was nothing but trees and darkness beyond the flashlight beam.

He squatted down and played the beam of light around until he found Kemper’s flashlight. He picked it up and tried the switch.

“Must’ve broken the bulb.”

He heard Kemper say, “Let’s go.”

He stood and they made their way out of the woods. In the middle of the parking lot, Kemper suddenly stopped.

“What is it, Dot?”

“You know those sounds they were making?”

“A lot of grunts.

“Some were. But most of them…?” She paused, her voice tinged with fear, and turned to face Mostyn.

“Go on.”

“They followed the pattern of speech.”

***

I hope you enjoyed the snippet. Comments are always welcome! And, until next time, happy reading!

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Terror in the Shadows – Sneak Peek

The third Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation — Terror in the Shadows — goes live next week. And today I thought I’d give you a sneak peek. Whet your appetite, so to speak.

Terror in the Shadows draws inspiration from the world HP Lovecraft created for his story “The Lurking Fear”. And as I explained last week, Lovecraft utilized the American Gothic fiction theme of the abhuman for the basis of his story.

The term “abhuman” was coined by William Hope Hodgson in his Carnacki stories, among others. The idea itself growing out of Darwinism. If we came from beasts, how are we not beasts? What is it that makes us human? And can we return to the bestial? Or maybe we simply are beasts hiding behind a veneer of civility.

Today’s sneak peek is from chapter 1 of Terror in the Shadows. Enjoy!

***

Mostyn looked out the window. The country through which they were driving could be described as nothing less than idyllic. Yet in all of the United States there are areas no more remote or unknown than parts of Appalachia. In spite of the relatively low height of the mountains, the region possesses some of the most rugged and nearly inaccessible terrain on earth.

From the beauty of the passing scenery, Mostyn once again turned his gaze back to the report. From the Catskills to Georgia, the same occurrences of cannibalism and human carnage. As abruptly as the Georgia horror had begun, in the 1940s, it had ended, news reaching the Federal government too late for war-stretched agencies to do anything about it. Then thirty years later, in the same area, bizarre tales of cannibalism and of the inhabitants of several small communities being torn apart on dark, storm tormented nights. Only blood and body parts being found in the morning.

And once again, as abruptly as the atrocities began, they ceased, news reaching Federal ears too late for any kind of government intervention. These accounts, along with many others, were passed on to the OUP when it was created. This time, however, word reached Doctor Bardon’s ears almost before it had reached the media. And when it did, Doctor Bardon jumped on it.

Mostyn read about the three reported incidents that had occurred so far this year in West Virginia, the four that had occurred last year, and the one the year before that. Brutal murders. Evidence of cannibalism. Vague reports of hairy, beast-like creatures that walked upright with an oddly human gait.

Around him were the sounds of Baker’s camera, Kemper’s and Cashel’s discussion, and Jones softly singing some ‘80s song. Somewhere out there, in the lush greenery of the hills they were passing through, was a hidden horror, a lurking fear that was terrorizing the people in the vicinity of the hamlet called Heirloom, West Virginia.

Four days ago, in the middle of a wild nighttime thunderstorm, was the most recent occurrence. In the little unincorporated village of Shiloh, located several miles to the southeast of Heirloom, a witness reported seeing at least half a dozen shapes, “things” the witness had called them, come out of the dense forest. That’s all the person saw because he’d found his missing dog and was on his way home.

The next day, however, the entire community quickly became aware of the disaster that had struck in the night. The Ardilla and Bosk families had been murdered in their sleep and eaten. Raw. The perpetrators showed no concern about hiding the dead or of concealing evidence. The county sheriff got numerous fingerprints, handprints, and casts of bare feet. Samples of hair were also collected. The forensic analysis concluded the hair was human, as well as the teeth marks on the bones.

And that’s when Doctor Bardon stepped in and claimed jurisdiction. Mostyn looked at Bardon’s small neat script and read his conclusion:

The incidents in the Catskills and those that occurred in Georgia in the 1940s and 1970s are too similar to these current incidents to ignore. Your mission is to determine the source, assess the danger level, and take appropriate action to eliminate the threat, if a threat exists, to the United States of America.

Mostyn’s gaze returned to the scenery outside his window. Somewhere out there was a horror that had been quietly at work for nearly a hundred years. Perhaps more. A horror hidden in the shadows of this beautiful paradise.

***

I hope you enjoyed the snippet. Comments are always welcome, and until next time — happy reading!

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HP Lovecraft — His Influence

Lovecraft primarily saw himself as a poet. Fiction was, for him, a sideline; something at which he made the occasional buck to supplement his meager inheritance, which he shared with two maiden aunts. Yet, the literary impact of that fiction is huge. As a poet, though, he was mostly mediocre.

The very first Lovecraft story I read was “The Colour Out Of Space”, which Groff Conklin included in his fabulously wonderful Omnibus of Science Fiction. A truly outstanding sci-fi anthology. I read “The Colour Out Of Space” sometime back in the early 1960s when I was in elementary school. And it captured my imagination.

The next time I ran into Lovecraft was in my senior year in high school when I bought the Beagle Books reprints of the Arkham edition of Lovecraft’s fiction and Ballentine’s Fungi from Yuggoth & Other Poems.

One of the first stories I read in those paperbacks was “The Lurking Fear”, which plays on the classic American gothic theme of the abhuman. The abhuman is the degenerate, bestial human. The human that has regressed to a point where he or she no longer functions as a human, but as a beast.

At that time, the theme was new to me and I was fascinated by it. Reverse evolution, as it were. But there’s also the metaphysical question of just exactly what is it that makes us human. Are we angels that are prone to sin? Or are we beasts with but a veneer, a mask, of civility?

In Terror in the Shadows, I explore the abhuman theme by building on Lovecraft’s story. And I give one possible explanation for why the abhuman might come into existence. I’ll give you a hint: it doesn’t have anything to do with a mother’s love, or lack thereof.

There is a wide range of opinion as to Lovecraft’s storytelling ability. There are those who place him second to Poe. There are those who think he wrote drivel. I’m somewhere in the middle. When Lovecraft was firing on all cylinders, he knocked the ball out of the park. The problem is, he didn’t always fire on all cylinders. In fact, a lot of the time he didn’t. He was quite inconsistent as a writer.

From early on, I maintained that Robert E Howard was consistently a better writer than Lovecraft. But when Lovecraft was on top of his game, he was second to none. That’s why I think Lovecraft developed such a devoted following. Other writers saw his rare genius and also saw him as an approachable person, which allowed Lovecraft to share his opinions with other writers and hopeful writers. HPL was one of the 20th Century’s great epistolarians.

I appreciate Lovecraft from the perspective of a reader as well as from the perspective of a writer. Possibly his single most important contribution to the craft of writing is his emphasis on atmosphere. When reading one of Lovecraft’s stories, one cannot escape the mood, the feelings, the details, the colors that all lead to a general feeling of dread. For Lovecraft, the atmosphere was everything. Without it, the tale of terror would be nothing.

But atmosphere is important in all genres of fiction, because it sets the scene. It lets us know what we see and touch and taste and smell. The atmosphere instills in us a general feeling, whether of happiness or terror, joy or dread. Whenever a writer can create an atmosphere that lets me see and touch and smell, I thank Lovecraft.

If character is king in storytelling, then atmosphere has to be the queen.

HP Lovecraft was a literary giant who produced but few gems. But the ones he did produce blind us with their light. I think I’ll stop now and go read once again “The Colour Out of Space” — the story that for me started it all.

Comments are always welcome, and, until next time, happy reading!

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Stairway to Hell is Live!

Stairway to Hell, the second Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation, went live officially yesterday.

I did a soft launch over the weekend to my VIP Readers. They got a reduced price bonus. If you want to get in on future Pierce Mostyn extras, become a VIP Reader!

So what’s all the fuss about Pierce Mostyn anyway? And what’s so special about Stairway to Hell? I’m so glad you asked!

Special Agent in Charge Pierce Mostyn works for the Office of Unidentified Phenomena. The OUP actively works those X-File cases, and Mostyn is one of their top agents. Unlike Fox Mulder, Mostyn has the support of the bureaucracy. Well, at least those very few bureaucrats who even know the OUP exists. Because officially it doesn’t.

After all, in its infinite wisdom, the US government deems it’s in our best interest that we remain ignorant of the potential threats and dangers to us from what’s out there.

But what is out there? To learn that, my friends, you’ll have to stay tuned to this channel. The only channel bringing you this super classified information. Because the people have a right to know!

So where exactly is this hell that the stairway leads to? Conforming to tradition, hell is down. It is beneath our feet. It is in the subterranean world of K’n-yan.

What’s more, the K’n-yanians, while “human”, aren’t homo sapiens. In fact, they aren’t even from this planet. Or even this dimension. There distant ancestors were the original worshipers of The Great Old Ones. Those insane blasphemies of unwholesome anti-physics.

HP Lovecraft, before he died, got hold of an account of someone who’d been to K’n-yan. Lovecraft disguised fact as fiction, as he often did, in a story called “The Mound”.

Now, decades later, another entrance to K’n-yan was discovered. Stairway to Hell is the account of Mostyn’s detainment, along with his team, in the subterranean world. And, following Lovecraft, I’ve disguised truth as fiction. Which is simply a safeguard, because we all know the truth is out there.

Get Stairway to Hell on Amazon.

The truth will set you free.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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“Stairway to Hell” – Sneak Peek #2

Stairway to Hell, the second Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation, goes live Monday, February 26. Three weeks ago I gave a sneak peek into the story and I thought I’d do the same this week.

Pierce Mostyn and his team are in rural Oklahoma investigation an ancient stairway, accidentally uncovered, that leads deep into the earth. Construction workers have disappeared, and some have been found with their entire personality gone.

This is definitely a job for the Office of Unidentified Phenomena, but something doesn’t want Mostyn and his people to come anywhere near the stairway. Here’s today’s sneak peek.

***

Shortly after sunrise, Mostyn and his team were peering into the excavation site. At the bottom, on one end, was the uncovered stairway.

“From here, the workmanship of the stone looks to be pretty advanced,” Zink said.

Baker took several photographs of the stairway, the large pit, and the surrounding area. The staircase was about twenty-five feet below the surface of the ground.

“Let’s go down and take a closer look,” Mostyn said.

On one end of the excavation, was a ramp leading down into the large hole in the ground. The team walked down the ramp. Four Rangers and two military police remained above. There were no construction workers. They’d been sent home pending the outcome of the investigation conducted by Mostyn and his team.

“What was that?” Doctor Slezak said, her voice betraying a trace of fear.

“What was what?” Kemper called out.

“I felt something push against me,” Slezak replied.

“That was Jones trying to get into your panties,” Kemper shot back.

“I felt it, too,” Doctor Beames said. “Perhaps there are spirits here.”

“Ghosts?” Kemper said, her tone of voice taunting.

Beames stopped. “Don’t you feel it?”

The others stopped and looked at her.

Beames continued, “The evil, the malevolence.”

“Yes,” Slezak said softly.

A wind sprang up, swirling dust and dirt around the group.

“Something’s pushing me,” Slezak cried out.

DC Jones rushed to her side, and the wind ceased as abruptly as it started.

“This isn’t normal,” Beames said, “There are evil spirits here.”

Kemper guffawed. “Evil spirits. You can’t be serious.”

Beames was angry. “I am serious, Doctor Kemper. There is something very bad here.”

“Alright, ladies, now is not the time to argue,” Mostyn said. “We have a mission to accomplish.”

Mostyn started walking towards the opening where the stairway was located. Almost immediately a wind sprang up.

“Good God,” Zink blurted. “It’s as if something’s trying to deliberately stop us from going to the stairs.”

Kemper muttered, “Superstitious twits”, charged ahead, pushed past Mostyn, and suddenly fell backwards.

He rushed to her side, and at the same time a shot rang out. Behind him he heard, “Did you see that?” And, “A ghost. I saw a ghost.” Mostyn stood and looked up at the MP with his rifle trained on the stairway opening.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded of the soldier.

“I saw a white shape, sir. It pushed, or seemed to push, Doctor Kemper.”

Dirt and small stones were swirling about the opening. And then Mostyn himself felt as though something took hold of his wrist and was pulling him away, pulling him back the way he came. He shook his arm and took a step back. Dotty stood and went to his side, where both felt invisible hands, as it were, pushing against them. They looked at each other and then Mostyn gave the command to fall back.

Slezak and Beames ran up the ramp and out of the excavation site. Zink and Baker followed. Jones waited, pistol in his hand, until Mostyn and Kemper were halfway up the ramp and then he, too, followed, walking up the ramp backwards. Once everyone was at the top of the ramp, the wind in the hole ceased.

***

I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into the next Pierce Mostyn adventure. Comments are always welcome, and, until next time, happy reading!

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