This isn't exactly just a horror novel. Its an historical adventure with horror and fantasy elements. It's very pulpy adventure. The second book in my Julius Corbin series, following "Secret of the Amazon Queen".
A young Scotsman finds purpose in life on a journey to find the fate of his long lost father. Hoping to impress a beautiful girl back home, the young man takes up on an adventure through lost corners of South America with a maverick archeologist seeking an entrance to the hollow Earth, a possessed man, and the intrepid adventurer Julius Corbin. Pursued by an amorous and forbidden lover, the young Scotsman endures the darkest journey he ever imagined. Set in 1881, adventure, horror, sexual situations
This uses two short stories of F Marion Crawford and expands upon them
Excerpt
The wind screamed just over our heads, calling us out. I sensed Corbin would be looking to proceed on this mad hunt, and I was correct in that intuition. He went to his pack and unsheathed an American Winchester rifle of a god-awful caliber, a machete, a Bowie knife. He then provided me with a long barreled forty-five caliber Colt pistol, the machete and another Bowie knife. “I mostly expect you to stay out of the way of the fight,” he told me, “I may have you provide obstructions, but only at my commands. These weapons are to give you a fighting chance, should anything happen to me. In that event, get your ass back to the tunnel and high-tail it to the canal. South.”
I was trying not to be overwhelmed, “Why south?”
Corbin eyed me with concern and then softened a little, “’Cause that’s likely the direction your daddy went. That’s your reason for being here. Don’t let it get away from you, if we get separated.”
I understood clearly, though I hoped it would not be under that circumstance.
We exited our cozy little cul-de-sac and once more withstood the cold crying wind of the high Patagonian plain. Our goal was the southernmost extremity of the range, where the giants were said to live. As we made our way in that foreboding direction, I fought the icy breath beating against my face and watering my eyes, as I recalled something I had read in the Book of Genesis when I was a boy: “There were giants in the earth in those days…”
You say to me now that we live in an enlightened age, and that we understand such things more confidently. Surely, you may tell me, it is a silly superstitious notion to believe there actually existed giant people. Dismiss what you will, but continue on with my tale and learn what we found as we turned the corner at the bottom tip of the Patagonian Andes.
The wind grew ever more fierce as we stepped from east to west, its wailing force whipping what little dry grass there was, surviving as it barely did in that dry, crumbling soil. I considered what a chilled grave that soil would provide, and a shudder passed through my limbs. And then, there it was before us: the sheltered abode of those you would not believe walked the earth.
A cyclopean structure, as David Hathaway would no doubt describe it, of very large blocks of no uniform size nor shape, yet each and all fitted together so damnably perfect and lasting. Cut and dressed in unbelievably straight lines and edges equally so smooth, the grey stone blocks were astonishing. The entry of the house was trapezoidal, as were the windows adorned with wooden shutters that dropped into place when closed, as they were on our first sight of the place. The roofing was thatched with some natural materials I did not recognize, brown in color. By design, the structure was likely intended for a single occupant -- making its size unsettling. The door alone must have been twenty feet high, the roof over twenty-five feet at its peak, and the rock chimney reached at least thirty feet into the sky at its lightly smoking top. As much as I wanted to, I could not doubt my eyes, for there it was not twenty yards from the rocky foothills.
The smoke whisping into the sky from the rock chimney raised the most concern, for it implied that the resident was at home.
From the concealment of a stand of rocks, Corbin and I watched the stone hut silently for a long moment, and then Corbin said, “All right. We draw him to high ground.”
That is exactly what we did. I scaled one hundred feet to a plateau of a flat boulder overlooking the house below. Meanwhile, Corbin removed the wax seal from a metal vial he had been carrying inside his vest, and went about dripping the contents here and about between the rocks and the door of the hut, and likewise all along his climb up to meet me on the flat boulder. Looking down upon the house – which still appeared oversized even at a hundred feet! – Corbin produced a flint and steel kit then labored to ignite an oily strip of cloth he had tied around a ten-pound rock. I asked, “What was in the vial?”
“Blood,” he answered, “Human blood. It’ll draw them out.”
And draw them out it did, but a mere moment after Corbin had managed to ignite the cloth and then hurl the flaming rock down onto the thatched roof of their house. Lucky for us the flames caught quickly and spread across the dry roof, igniting the entire covering in a burning rage. I was, however, more in awe of what my eyes witnessed.
There emerged from the house a man wearing a large grey animal skin and crude leather sandals that tied over knee high fur leggings. His hair was long and dirty and black as coal. This monstrosity stood in the doorway with barely two feet of headway to spare! His dogged face was bearded and he moved his shaggy head side-to-side, sniffing undoubtedly at the scent of blood, but suddenly startled by the flames licking at him from just above the doorway. Then he called out in a very rough voice, in a language I have never heard elsewhere nor ever again, to whomever else was inside. Thus suddenly was I astonished a second time, for there appeared another shaggy dirty man of roughly same stature and appearance, except he was naked. His body was hairy and his privates jangled all about as he darted and leaped at the scent of the blood and the fire destroying the house. The two giants grumbled to each other in their rough language, both gesticulating wildly about the fire, and a rather comical sight it was to see them cackling ineffectively like two old hens. I could not suppress laughter.
But then Colonel Corbin fired a shot with his pistol and my humor dissipated instantly when the giants were suddenly looking right up at us. I exclaimed “What on God’s earth?!”
Corbin holstered his pistol then reached for his rifle, “Here we go. Get up higher, into the rocks.”
“What are you going to do with two of them?” I queried nervously, “Did you know there were two?”
Corbin shook his head, “Not until I saw inside the door.”
His calm alarmed me. That they were inside seemed to me an opportunity spoiled, “Why didn’t we just burn them while they slept?”
“They weren’t sleeping,” Corbin said, as he kept his eyes on the giants keeping their eyes on us. Something in his voice insinuated their activity was notable.
“What were they doing?” I admit I was curious.
Corbin chuckled, “A certain iniquitous hobby they are known for.”
That was when I recalled what else Genesis said of the giants and the reason it claimed God destroyed their kind in the flood. They were the wicked offspring of fallen angels and human women. Murderous, they took to eating their victims, ultimately developing a taste for little else but human flesh. Because their females either died giving birth to their numbers or because the males ate them, they took to all manner of sodomy with each other. Lord, I thought, was there no end of buggery in this world?!
The Patagonian duo was climbing up toward us, thirsty for our blood and hungry for our flesh. At eighteen feet tall, the distance to us was not as far as for us, for their stride and reach made it much closer for them. Corbin sat patiently with his rifle at the ready as the shaggy giants climbed ever closer to our perch. When the two monsters were within fifty feet of us, I had my first good look at those living relics of a time most academic authorities deny ever happened. They were hideous. Wild, bloodshot dark eyes, prominent brows like ridges, oversized ears and ugly piggish noses. Their mouths were the worst, wide and armed with pointed teeth they filed with stones to make them even more terrifying. Salivations drooled forth over their lips and down their beards as they grunted in desire to crush our bones in their jaws, shred our flesh with those sinister incisors, and gulp our warm bloody mortal remains deep into their bellies. I could smell the rancid breath as they taunted us loudly in their arcane tongue. My disgust at these creatures reached an apex when the naked of the two reached down and grabbed its sweaty member and pulled it to and fro, his giant testes jiggling freely in their hairy sack.
I decided then that I would hurl myself from this mountain, as I blew my brains out with a pistol shot before allowing these abominations to lay finger upon me.
The fortunate inherit riches, prestige, positive notoriety. Those not so lucky bear legacies filled with poverty, infamy or, worse yet, the unhinged insanity and murderous urges of their ancestors.
