Welcome to another edition of the Carnival of Calamity’s Backstage Pass! This edition is a little lighter than editions prior to due to a missing column—House is being renovated, in a manner of speaking. You can read about it in the House brief below.
In last week’s edition, we were very excited to present the first cosmic horror story in the Backstage Pass, with Robert Bloch’s The Shambler From the Stars. This week, we’re excited to share another work of cosmic horror, this time from the author who worked tirelessly to define the genre: H. P. Lovecraft.
Our elder vampire, Edgar, works with focus to uncover what happened to his coven, and we move further into the Manor with he and Isabelle in this search. Keep up with them in this week’s installment of A Vampire’s Vengeance.
Our cinematic picks this week celebrate both Halloween and clever heroine’s in the aptly named Good for Her! list. Read the review, and then settle in with Haunt once you’ve finished treating the neighborhood tricksters.
And last but never least, we bring you the latest from the bus driver. The journey through infected-infested is nigh upon our passengers, and we have front row—well, driver’s actually—seat to the coming action.
Let’s get into it →
I will have you know that this week was spent in much the same way prior weeks have been spent: in development. Backstage infrastructure. Story infrastructure. Backstage and story communications. An inter-vault network. Revising the existing content management system. Learning how to make better use of existing tooling for task management. In short, a whole lot of boring stuff. But that’s part of what Backstage is about: insight into the processes and story-making progress that makes the Carnival of Calamity possible.
In this hyper-online day and age, it’s no longer enough for a writer to just write. We have to market. We have to sell. And none of that is effective without a system. So that’s what is in priority development right now: systems.
More updates to come as progress is made!
Normally, we would post a link to the next chapter of House. However, it has come to our attention that Meta, Inc. uses content in posts to train their AI. This is distasteful to us here at the Calamity. We are considering moving the serial to the Backstage Pass site, but are undecided on this course of action. Keep an eye on this space for future developments.
There’s a reason A Vampire’s Vengeance was relegated to its own column, and not featured in serial in the Backstage Pass. This is a slow burn. But it’ll be worth it, we promise! Come catch up with Edgar and Isabelle as they uncover more ground in the Manor and we learn a little bit more of the Column.
What is this, another story of cosmic horror? Why, that’s two in a row! The Festival is not Lovecraft’s response to Bloch’s The Shambler From the Stars, but it does share some eerie and baffling themes. What terrors lie beneath the places where we sleep?
Horror films are notorious for leaving survivors barely hanging on to what shreds of sanity remain to them once the terror is over. What we have prepared for you is something just a little bit different: survivors who turn around and kick ass. Dive in to this weekend’s picks in our Calamity on Cinema feature.
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A patron falls prey to the whimsical magic of a touring artist. Currently only available on Apple Books.
Welcome back to Bus Driver! When last we traveled with the bus driver, we were privy, sort of, to a basic exercise of infected roundup and elimination. Well, sort of, because we didn’t get to actually see it, we just got the quick and dirty run down from the bus driver himself. If you haven’t already, you can catch up with Part VIII here. Now that they’re well on their way, what will they come upon next? Let’s find out.
The bus arrived at the base of the pass and climbed into the mountains without any issue or encounters. This should have been a blessing, but the bus driver could not escape the feeling of rising dread due to the idea that the longer they traveled in peace, the more problematic their journey would be later on. Out of superstitious habit, the bus driver crossed himself.
This gesture did nothing to ease the growing dread. The Cajon pass was a break in a mountain range that provided a major defensive position for the southern settlements; infected from the beyond the mountains rarely ever wandered over and across them. And with communications mostly locked close to traveling byways, there was no knowing the full extent of the infected in the central and northern regions of the state.
The bus driver paused a moment in his mental wandering. State. Strange to think of the land in such irrelevant terms. Older generations maintained references to states and counties, but they mattered little. The epidemic had destroyed most of civilized society. What remained of infected prevented attempts at reorganization and redistribution. Some called it California, though in truth it was nothing more than land and settlements. The United States, Canada, Mexico ... the entire social fabric in the western hemisphere had been ripped apart, leaving little more than pockets of survivors and large swaths of radioactive territory, both of which continued to be plagued by infected.
Victorville. Calico. Las Vegas. Namesakes for larger settlements that managed to hold together in spite of the carnage following the initial epidemic. There were others spread out across the continent, though it was more common that survivors hunkered down in spaces much smaller than the cities they once were a part. The bus driver checked himself; Victorville and Las Vegas hadn't managed to maintain their locales out of a unified effort. They were free and clear of infected due to the constant clashes between local gangs and militias. These groups only paused their bickering long enough to eliminate a swarm or pick off the occasional wanderer. Otherwise, they were constantly at each others' throats.
The bus driver took a deep breath in and sighed. If all went well, they would be driving through Victorville in another hour or so. This thought did nothing to ease the rising dread and panic. The closer they moved to the crest of the pass, the more intense the anxiety the bus driver felt. There was no way of knowing what they would come upon as they approached the high desert town. He had only been told and reassured that measures had been taken to provide the bus a safe route through. He didn't know what that meant.
Moments later the bus came around a bend and they began to descend. The land below seemed to stretch away far beyond what they could see. At first, it appeared to be a land at peace. Houses and buildings hunkered quietly at the foot of the pass where they remained standing. Following the line of the highway, a number of settlements appeared, though as the bus driver focused on them, he noticed they were blown out. At this recognition, the tenuous peace melted away. Movement in his peripheral caught his attention, and he turned his head to find a large dark lake ebbing and flowing far off to the northwest. As his eyes adjusted to the distance, he figured out it was no lake he was looking at. Water didn't move like that.
"What the fuck." One of the passengers had noticed it too. The terror spread among the remaining passengers as they all came to realize what that giant pool really was.
The bus driver and his passengers were looking at a swarm.
His heart leapt into his throat, and his reaction was to recoil, to find some way to turn the bus around. But there was no turning back. Even as his fear fought to achieve its desire to escape, to run, to return, his rational mind still maintained enough control to keep him seated and set on the forward course. He knew when he took this job that he ran the risk of encountering a swarm. But never had he seen one, or even heard of one, so massive. Such was life in the old urban centers, and now he knew better. There was much to fear in the outer realms, and he was staring at its largest oppressor.
Ooooh, are we going to encounter a swarm? Oh goodie! Finally some fucking action, JFC. Amirite? There’s the swarm and then there’s Victorville. Or is it, perhaps, Victorville and then the swarm? Hell, we don’t even know how far out the swarm is. The bus driver thought it was a lake at first, after all. Any way, we’re sure to encounter the infected in mass quantities sooner or later, right? This is, after all, a zombie story. Only one way to find out though! Come back next week!
The Calamity continues to evolve! Sure, we’ll have setbacks from time to time, but that’s what this entire publication is about! We are building the Calamity and you are watching it come to life. You too can assist in its creation! We are open to and welcome your feedback. Simply reply to this email or use any of the buttons in the survey below. We look forward to hearing from you!
Cordially,
Mad Alex
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