The Coming of the Old Ones

Three Lovecraftian tales that while all offer three very different ideas share the general idea of another dimension overlapping and partially entering into our own and people who try to use this to their advantage in some way, or at least attempt to maintain some sense of normalcy.

Around the Corner - A man who lives in an apartment complex notices his building shifting and a strange purple light, and seeing these things often gives him a headache. He has a bad past that involves a “deprogrammer”. He meets a new woman who though he is at first attracted to, is soon turned off by her possibly cultlike ways... It's a well written and done story, but if you are familiar with this stuff you know where it is all going from page one.

I did love the comments on apartment life, about how the smells and sounds are and just generally living around so many people in a close space and found them very relatable, minus of course the Lovecraftian stuff. (Maybe.)

After the Fall - A wind storm goes through the entire world all at the same time, and when it is through and visibility is restored the sky becomes filled with the remains of gigantic strange looking creatures that can barely be comprehended. We follow a husband, who is thinking of divorcing his wife. He wants to go to his side of the family's BBQ get together, but his wife finds this ridiculous because of the huge monster things in the sky. He says life must go on as normal everywhere until something happens, and while we go along with him there is much musing on life and cosmic horror. I really enjoyed this one, it just hits the themes all so well.

Scrimshaw - This is an alternate history story set in 1851, which I had to take that right from the store page because I didn't completely understand that while reading it, it was incredibly odd. Giant creatures yet again overlap into our world, this time called the Fallen. They are harvested by sailors and the way they do that is not unlike whaling I suppose. They find strange items on these creatures that they use for all sorts of purposes. The only problem is, the creatures have begun to start screaming in pain, and they keep getting louder and louder...

The main character is a worker aboard one such ship, and he also falls in love with the beautiful wife of the very jealous captain of the ship, which of course causes problems...

This one is also incredibly well written and done, but I had a hard time making sense of it at times, and imagining the scenes harvesting on the Fallen were difficult for me. But I enjoyed the strangeness of it and it was certainly original.

I had a lot of fun with the weirdness of this collection and trying to imagine some of the otherworldly creatures that can't be comprehended. It also offered quite an intelligent look at people trying to cope with the usual themes of cosmicism in their own ways.