Best Little Witch-House in Arkham features 25 weird and wild tales of Lovecraftian horror.
Welcome to the Best Little Witch-House in Arkham. In this midnight den of dread and doom, you will find twenty-five rooms, each with a story of its own to tell. Here you will enjoy a delectable variety of otherworldly nightmares and blasphemies ... enough to satisfy even your most eldritch desires.
Here you will find evil pop-stars longing to devour their fans. You will learn the vile secrets of Kugappa, the writhing octopus-god, and Ghattambah, a grotesque insect deity whose soul dwells beyond time.
You will smell the unhallowed stench of the Odour out of the Terrible Old Man. You will drink the creamy Milk of Time, an unholy substance which flows through the depths of a forbidden house of horrors known as Der Fleischbrunnen. You will even travel through deep space to a futuristic restaurant for alien connoisseurs, where you will sink your teeth into the monstrous specialty of the house.
You will find all of these horrors, and so much more ... in the Best Little Witch-House in Arkham.
Excerpt
An excerpt from the Lovecraftian horror story, "The Embrace of Kugappa"....
He brought the plate closer, and finally recognized, with a sting of dismay, the fruity aroma.
Decay. Rot. A bad meat smell.
A cold wetness touched his chin. To his horror, he realized he’d brought the plate too close to his face. But that close? He wondered, in a mad rush of absurd panic, if the substance had somehow jumped onto his face.
He wiped his chin on a sock he found on the floor. He threw the sock in the trash can. Then he took the plate into the kitchen and rinsed it off in the sink with hot water. He wondered what to do with the plate. At last he tossed it in the garbage. When in doubt, throw it out.
He went back into his office and grabbed the Arkham phonebook. He could not find Megamega in the listings – but then, it had to be a pseudonym. No one could actually be born with a name like Vyvyka Megamega. And really, what could he possibly have to say to the woman? He wanted to scream something at her – but he wasn’t sure what.
It then dawned on him that he hadn’t washed his chin off. He should have done that first! He went into the bathroom and washed his whole face with bar soap and the hottest water he could stand. Then he rubbed his skin with an astringent – he always kept some on hand because he had oily skin, though he hated the vanity behind worrying about such things. He looked at his chin in the mirror.
His chin had a tiny cut on it, from shaving that morning. Oh God. Did any of that goo get onto the cut? He looked up into the reflection of his eyes. They were completely dilated. His heart was beating like a jungle drum. He was right in the middle of a full-blown anxiety attack, and he usually passed out when that happened.
And that’s exactly what he did.
- - -
Jasper always knew when he was dreaming, and yet the realization never woke him up, like it did most people.
He dreamed that he was on the beach of an island with bone-white sand, and before him stretched a horizon of dark green sea.
Sinuous – vines? – stretched up out of the water, huge vines overgrown with many smaller vines, and all those vines held an abundance of small, squirming things.
One of the vines swirled up out of the water close to shore, and he saw that it wasn’t a vine after all – how silly, how stupid, vines didn’t grow in oceans. It was a huge tentacle, overgrown with smaller tentacles, and those had even smaller tentacles on them, and so on in a sort of bio-fractal progression.
He knew he should be afraid, but he wasn’t. Not really. Because.
Because they.
They wanted.
Wanted him to be happy. Yes, the Great Old Ones wanted him to be happy, and Kugappa was one of the Great Old Ones, and the best way to be happy was to be like them.
Be.
Like.
Them.
Who’d told him that? Who’d told him about the Great Old Ones? He giggled – the initials of that spelled ‘goo.’ Why, that was who had told him. The goo had told him.
Before he knew it he was swimming in the dark green sea, even though he didn’t know how to swim, and tentacles and tentacles-upon-tentacles were handling him, exploring him, sliding into every part of him, even into his pores, infiltrating his cells, embracing his soul –
-- "The Embrace of Kugappa" is one of the 25 Lovecraftian tales in BEST WITCH-HOUSE IN ARKHAM. Find out what happens next by picking up the Kindle version (also available as a trade paperback): http://www.amazon.com/Best-Little-Witch-House-Arkham-McLaughlin-ebook/dp/B00DAJEODW/
Professional Reviews
H.P. Is Rolling Over & Giggling In His Grave
Back then, H.P. Lovecraft was plying his stories to the pulp market and centering their locale around the eldritch haunted town of Arkham, just another writer trying to make his fortune. He built up a following around some of the best writers in the horror business including the likes of Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and many others who fashioned their stories around the Old Ones, those monstrous beings seeking to return and impart their own version of madness. He died and his stories almost died with him except for the devoted determined to keep alive the cult of Cthulhu, Nyarlethotep, the dreaded Necronomicon, and Arkham University. Today, almost every horror writer seeks to add his own story. Most of the stories are serious in writing about the Hounds of Hell, haunted witch houses, midnight rituals, and the mysterious inhabitants at Innsmouth. And now, let me present to you Mark McLaughlin's additions which promises, no lie!, to make you giggle, guffaw, and snort milk out your nose or which ever potable you're drinking. The humor in the book may see spurts out your ears. Isn't that an image?
Mr. McLaughlin's Best Little Witch-House is a collection of 25 stories taking what we have today, mixing in that little swirl of H.P. and coming up with the likes of Cthulhu Royale (Bond), Hound-Dog McGee (Scooby Doo), Tony Tar-Pit and Monkey-Face Joe (the Flintstones), When We Was Flab (the Beatles). You'll run across a wonderful place to stay, Pickman's Motel. Attend the healings at St. Toad's Medical Center (you've seen the commercials). Try this title on for size: The Slivering Quiver of the River Lizard's Twisted Liver-Blisters. I have nothing but Praise for the stories in this collection. These are stories mixed with the serious and take a left turn into the absurd. If it was possible, H.P. Lovecraft would be involuntarily giggling. Download this treasure. The stories don't run long. For the true fans of Lovecraft out there, The Best Little Witch-House is one bringing out your laughter. For those unacquainted with his works, check out the genre and get a good laugh yourself. You will not go wrong in downloading this book.
Un-Holy Horrific Hilarities Are Zing!
A psychedelic mind bender of Lovecraftian tales, where the horror and the humor never let up. These stories are addicting. I found myself wanting to read the next story immediately just to see what kind of monster and hilarious word amalgamation Mark McLaughlin had coming next. The monsters in Best Little Witch-House in Arkham are hysterical and terrifying, most are playful renditions of Lovecraft's classic entities and Outer Gods and Old Ones, but McLaughlin also brings his own brand of star-spawn abominations to the table like the fowl god, from the poem, The Pecker in the Passageway, and Bug'zha Bhun-Yeh from The Hopper in the Hayfeild--a Cthulhuvian rabbit hybrid monster-god--a story that mixes the Necronomicon with Warner Bros. Classic cartoons.
First and foremost, this book is fun and should make the most militant Lovecraftian giggle when they see familiar Lovecraftian themes and monsters dropped into the world of James Bond, Scooby Doo, and...Pokemon?--yeah, things get weird here.
With this book Mark McLaughlin has solidified himself as one of the most imaginative and original voices in horror fiction. Great book, by a great author, and I had a blast!
Giggling Like a Loon
The tone of this volume of loosely-related short stories can be best described as Douglas Adams meets Lovecraft. The author crams as many inside jokes, unveiled references, and knowing winks into each story as he possibly can, and weaves them into his plots deftly.
The tales can be read as satire or as send-up. Either way, they work. Some work better than others, though the quality of the writing isn't uneven. It's just that some jokes are better than others.
There's considerable knowledge of Yog-Sothotherie displayed in this volume, and a very good understanding of plot and structure. It's played for laughs, but sometimes you catch the foetid odour of serious intent behind all of the ritual masks.
Immensely enjoyable. My favorite was Pickman's Motel...which I think is somewhere on Miracle Mile. Recommended.
Chris has been fostered at the Crowley boot camp since he turned seven. At sixteen, he is finally ready to run away because his foster father is an abusive person who works Chris and the other children to the point of exhaustion. All he has left of h
