a thrilling and colorful Lovecraftian adventure - Harrison Squared by Daryl Gregory

From award winning author Daryl Gregory comes a thrilling and colorful Lovecraftian adventure of a teenage boy searching for his mother, and the macabre creatures he encounters.

Description:

Release Date: March 24th, 2015

From award winning author Daryl Gregory comes a thrilling and colorful Lovecraftian adventure of a teenage boy searching for his mother, and the macabre creatures he encounters.

Harrison Harrison—H2 to his mom—is a lonely teenager who’s been terrified of the water ever since he was a toddler in California, when a huge sea creature capsized their boat, and his father vanished. One of the “sensitives” who are attuned to the supernatural world, Harrison and his mother have just moved to the worst possible place for a boy like him: Dunnsmouth, a Lovecraftian town perched on rocks above the Atlantic, where strange things go on by night, monsters lurk under the waves, and creepy teachers run the local high school. 

On Harrison’s first day at school, his mother, a marine biologist, disappears at sea. Harrison must attempt to solve the mystery of her accident, which puts him in conflict with a strange church, a knife­wielding killer, and the Deep Ones, fish­-human hybrids that live in the bay. It will take all his resources—and an unusual host of allies—to defeat the danger and find his mother.

EXCERPT

TOUR SCHEDULE

What I remember are tentacles. Tentacles and teeth.

I know that those memories aren’t real. I was only three when my father died, too young to understand what was happening. So later I filled in the gaps with snippets from monster movies and nature documentaries, with half-forgotten visits to dim aquariums, with illustrations from my mother’s grad-school textbooks.

This is how the brain works. It makes up stories out of whatever odds and ends it finds. Sometimes they’re scary stories.

But there are gaps I can’t fill. Like, the sound of my father’s voice. I can’t remember what he sounded like, even though I can picture him calling to me. In my memory I simply know that he’s yelling my name. He’s lifting me up out of the water, and there’s something trying to pull me back down. It’s black as oil and I can feel its teeth, digging into my leg. In my memory I’m screaming, but I don’t hear that either.

We’re in the ocean, and it’s night, and the waves are lifting us and throwing us down. Somewhere nearby, a boat is up- side down, showing its white belly. We’re getting farther and farther from it. (How would a toddler know this? Well, he wouldn’t. These are “facts” I’ve layered on over time, like newspaper on a papier-mâché piñata.)

Some images, however, are so clear to me that they feel more true than my memory of yesterday’s breakfast. I can see my father’s face as he picks me up by my life vest. I can feel the wind as he tosses me up and over the next wave, toward that capsized boat. And I can see, as clearly as I can see my own arm, a huge limb that’s risen up out of the water.

The arm is fat, and gray, the underside covered in pale suckers. It whips across my father’s chest, grasping him—and then it pulls him away from me. The tentacle is attached to a huge body, a shape under the water that’s bigger than any- thing I’ve ever seen.

And then nothing. My memories end there, with that fro- zen moment.

I know there’s no such thing as monsters. Yes, we were out on the ocean, and the boat did flip over. But no creature bit through my leg to the bone—it was a piece of metal from the ship that sliced into me. My mother swam me to shore, and kept me from bleeding to death. My father drowned like an ordinary man.

Don’t feel bad for me. I barely remember him. I certainly don’t remember the infection that nearly killed me, and the series of surgeries, and the months I was in the hospital. Those memories are gone with the sound of my father’s voice.

But I do know this: My parents saved me. My brain can make up all the scary stories it wants to, but I know that much is true.

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About the author:

Daryl Gregory is an award-winning writer of genre-mixing novels, stories, and comics. His most recent work is the novel is Afterparty (Tor, April 2014) and the novella We Are All Completely Fine (Tachyon, August 2014). His first novel, Pandemonium, won the Crawford Award and was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. His other novels include the Philip K. Dick award finalist The Devil’s Alphabet and Raising Stony Mayhall, which was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal.

Many of his short stories are collected in Unpossible and Other Stories, which was named one of the best books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly. His comics work includes the Planet of the Apes series, and Dracula: The Company of Monsters series (co-written with Kurt Busiek). He lives in State College, PA, where he writes programming code in the morning, prose in the afternoons, and comics at night.

Where you can find Daryl:

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