Erogrendel (novel)
| File:EROGRENDEL cover kindle.jpg First edition cover | |
| Author | Nathaniel J. Nelson |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | |
| Cover artist | Daphne Frizzle |
| Country | United States |
| Genre | Horror novel Monster story |
| Publisher | Amazon NATRON Books |
Publication date | November 5, 2016 |
| Pages | 261 |
| ISBN | 1539560279 Search this book on  . |
"Erogrendel" redirects here. For the original monster from the epic poem Beowulf, see Grendel. For the novel by John Gardner, see Grendel (novel)
Erogrendel, often stylized as EROGRENDEL, is a 2016 horror novel by Nathaniel J. Nelson,[1] the son of renowned maritime fiction author James L. Nelson.[2] It tells the story of twenty-three-year-old widow Olivia Cambridge as she is pursued by the eponymous beast and discovers a host of supernatural abilities within herself.
Plot[edit]
Prologue[edit]
The prologue is set in an ancient Scandinavian mead hall. Though most of the drinkers are now unconscious, one of them begins telling the story of Beowulf and his mighty deeds, although he refers to the hero's enemy as "Erogrendel," rather than simply "Grendel."
Part One[edit]
Following the death of her unofficial fiancé a year before, Olivia Cambridge lives alone in her Boston apartment, working a dead-end job at the faceless Dark Side Enterprises. One day, while on her lunch break, Olivia is hit on by a self-assured pick-up artist, who she promptly shoots down. Later, walking to the tram station, Olivia is attacked by the same man, who attempts to rape her in an alleyway. Before he can, however, he is dragged off into the shadows by unseen forces. Olivia tries to escape, but is stopped when the dead body of the rapist is dropped to the ground in front of her: broken, bleeding, and crawling with small, brown spiders. Olivia passes out on the ground, from either exhaustion or terror.
When Olivia wakes up the next morning, she is in an unknown room, similar to those found in hospitals. She is confronted by a muscular man who identifies himself as Mark Tenant. Mark introduces herself to an older man named Richard Marvin, who introduces himself as the regional manager of Seventh Circle, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching the paranormal. The two men explain to Olivia that her rapist was killed by an unidentifiable monster that last appeared in 2006; before that, 1990 and 1955. They beg Olivia to take their claims seriously, but she leaves the Seventh Circle headquarters and returns to her apartment.
Olivia spends some time at her apartment, then leaves for work. On her way, she notices Mark Tenant, watching her from across Haymarket Station. Rather than continuing to work, she follows him to another station, which he manages to clear of all people. Olivia and Mark exchange a few words, before a harsh scraping sound, similar to that of a rusted chainsaw or a howling animal, interrupts them. Mark tells her that the monster has come to find her, and the two escape to street level. They immediately return to the Seventh Circle headquarters, where Mark and Richard show Olivia all the evidence they have of the monster's existence. But before they can finish their discussion, the monster finds them again. Mark and Olivia escape the building, but the beast's arms reach through the floor and begin destroying the building, which alerts hundreds of bystanders to its existence. The two of them take a taxi to Logan Airport, where they catch a plane to New York.
In New York, the two get a hotel room. Mark insists that they unwind by attending a strip club, a suggestion that Olivia is not too fond of. They do, and Olivia tries to have a good time — until the beast's roar is heard beneath the music, and they realize that it has managed to follow them all the way to New York. Olivia panics, but Mark insists that there's nothing they can do besides wait.
The next morning, Mark sends Olivia to buy them both some extra clothing while he acquires a gun. Back at their hotel room, they get a call from Richard, who says that he has been brought to the Pentagon for questioning by a secret division of the US Government that has always hated Seventh Circle for publicly revealing alleged paranormal secrets. He tells Mark and Olivia that their best course of action is to take a plane to England, based on the assumption that the monster can only move underground. Olivia decides to heed his advice, but Mark insists on remaining in the United States and killing the beast, as an act of revenge for what it had done when it was last present, in 2006. He explains to Olivia that he had been there, on the Nebraska farm, when the monster had last attacked. It had killed a little girl and her stepfather, as well as paralyzing one of Mark's coworkers.
Mark and Olivia make their way to JFK International, where they plan on parting ways. The monster attacks again, killing two security guards. Mark manages to fend it off, but it escapes underground. Olivia and Mark make themselves scarce, deciding to take a train to Nebraska and stay on the very farm where the monster had last appeared. Mark theorizes that it can only travel in sewer systems and underground train lines, neither of which are present in the small midwestern town. On the train, Olivia begins having thoughts involving the word Erogrendel, which she theorizes could be the beast's name.
When they arrive in Semper, Nebraska, they take a rental car to the farmhouse, where they are greeted by Dana Holman: an elderly woman who lives by herself, also the wife / mother of the beast's victims a decade earlier (the story is implied to happen around 2015 or 2016). Mark immediately becomes depressed, insisting that the deaths had been his fault. Dana tells him that she doesn't blame him, so he shouldn't blame himself. The three of them retire to bed: Olivia and Mark in separate rooms on the second floor, and Dana on the forbidden third floor. Olivia dreams about her mother, then wakes up and slips into Mark's room. They talk for a few minutes, then begin kissing and apparently have sex.
Part Two[edit]
Part Two begins with Olivia at fifteen years old. She lives with her single mother, Emma Cambridge, who was abandoned by Olivia's father on their wedding night, apparently due to his involvement in illegal activities.
One night, Olivia and her best friend attend a high school party, where Olivia gets drunk for the first time and loses her virginity to the host, a twelfth-grader named Jimmy. He pretends to have hidden feelings for her as a way of getting her into bed. She falls for his trick and sleeps with him, passing out at some point. When she wakes up, she discovers him pulling the same thing on another girl and realizing that none of it was real. This apparently turns Olivia off men for some time. At several points during this night, Olivia feels surges of various emotions which appear to coincide not with her mood, but with the mood of people around her. She writes this off as a product of her intoxication.
Three years later, Olivia graduates from high school. Her mother was unable to attend, as she was working; Olivia doesn't care too much, as she resents her mother for her constant drunkenness and depression. After the ceremony, Olivia is given a ride home from her statistics teacher, Donna Strackowski, who suggests that Olivia meet up with her brother Julian Strackowski, who is an admissions officer at the University of Vermont. Olivia asks if they can go see him right then, to which Donna responds negatively. Olivia gets quite upset inwardly, depressed at the thought of returning home to face her mother. Donna has an uncharacteristic reversal of opinion, and takes Olivia to meet Julian. During the meeting, Julian tells Olivia that her grades and her lack of application will make it virtually impossible for her to enroll at UVM. When Olivia begins to despair, Julian, too, seems to completely change his mind for no reason at all, offering her a full scholarship.
When Olivia is a freshman at UVM, her roommate asks her to go on a snack run for her and her group of fake neo-hippies. Olivia does so grudgingly, walking to Mike's Convenience Store, where she meets the titular Mike and his attractive son, Nick.
Nick and Olivia begin dating. A year later, they get a Burlington apartment together.
A while later, Olivia goes to visit her estranged mother. Emma Cambridge has completely given over to her alcoholic side, and does nothing much aside from sitting alone and drinking. Olivia tells her that she needs to get help, to which Emma scoffs and reminds Olivia that, if she really cared about her mother, she would have come to visit more often. Olivia gets angry and the two begin yelling at each other, until Emma suddenly stops and, like Julian and Donna, has a total reversal of opinion, picking up the phone and calling Alcoholics Anonymous.
Later, Olivia graduates from UVM. She and Nick move to Boston, where she gets a job at Dark Side Enterprises. Nick is diagnosed with breast cancer, and dies in October, four years to the month since they met.
Part Two ends a year later, with the same scene depicted in the opening pages of the book.
Part Three[edit]
Part Three opens in the present day, with Mark and Olivia having coffee at Dana's house. Mark, checking the Internet on his iPhone, tells Olivia that more and more employees of Seventh Circle have been rounded up by the Government. Later, Dana has the two of them do some yard work, although this is quickly interrupted by the arrival of two Government agents. Mark and Olivia hide in the forbidden third floor, which they now realize has been entirely converted into a shrine to Dana's late daughter, Lilian Holman. Dana talks back to the two agents, though they still search her house. They insist that she unlock the third story, shooting and killing her when she refuses. The men break into the shrine and immediately drop dead for no apparent reason.
Mark and Olivia burn the bodies, along with their cell phones and all forms of identification. They decide to only go by their pseudonyms, Elizabeth Marlowe and Martan Kent. Olivia takes one last look around the third floor, where she discovers Lilian Holman's diary, from which she learns that Dana's late husband had molested the little girl on multiple occasions.
"Martan" and "Elizabeth" take Dana's rackety old pickup truck into the civilized portion of Semper, Nebraska. They are too late to catch a bus, but are just in time for the town's annual Halloween festival. Mark enjoys himself, buying a cup of beer and stepping into what is apparently a miniature strip club housed in a tent. Olivia wanders off by herself, slightly annoyed at Mark's piggishness. She plays a game of cards with a game vendor, realizing to her shock that she knows exactly which cards he has at any given time. She beats him, taking his cowboy hat and the Jack of Hearts as a prize. As she continues to wander around the festival, she realizes that she can feel the emotions of everyone around her, just as she had at age fifteen.
A storm breaks out, including lightning and torrential rain. Mark enters a moonshine-drinking contest against a man dressed as Superman, a man dressed as Freddy Krueger, and a man who looks like the archetypical farmer. The men in costume both pass out, and Olivia tries to invade the farmer's mind like she had with the game vendor. The stress causes her to pass out.
When she wakes up, the tent is empty but for the prone body of "Superman" and a semi-conscious Mark. Olivia recognizes that he is trying to focus on the situation, but is extremely intoxicated. She exits the tent to find the entire population of Semper running in fear from Erogrendel, who is perched atop the Ferris wheel. She uses her newfound powers of influence to acquire a gun from a police officer, with which she shoots at Erogrendel as he charges her. Her shots do nothing, and as the monster is right on top of her, she passes out again.
Olivia finds herself lying with Nick in the back of his pickup truck, somewhere in the forests of Vermont, just as they had done once many years before. Nick explains to her that she's "special": she's one of the few remaining human beings who have not lost the power of the sixth sense, referred to now as simply The Sense. Nick says that humans were supposed to communicate with thoughts, rather than words, but this power was lost as the more primitive form of communication came into practice. It is Olivia's Sense that allows her to feel the emotions of other people. The Sense is also what allows Erogrendel to exist: the monster cannot choose a target that doesn't have the Sense. Finally, Nick tells Olivia that she has to return to the "real world," saying that she won't be able to see him again.
When Olivia wakes up, she is lying on one of the unmoving Ferris wheel cars, with Erogrendel still on top of the ride. The fairgrounds are now completely abandoned. As she watches, Mark appears, brandishing the gun he bought in New York. He is still extremely drunk, and hardly able to talk, let alone shoot. Erogrendel crawls off the Ferris wheel and confronts Mark, who continues trying to fire his gun but failing. Erogrendel picks him up, holding him for Olivia to see, and tears him in half.
The next morning, the Semper police force find Olivia sitting alone on the Ferris wheel car, shivering and clutching the Jack of Hearts between her fingers.
Part Four[edit]
Olivia sits alone in her apartment, not eating and not sleeping. The FBI bursts in and carts her off. She does not resist. They take her to a secret Government facility in Boston, where she is reunited with Richard Marvin. He explains to her that after Mark's death, the Government will not be able to pin what happened in Boston and New York on Seventh Circle. Olivia is then taken to a torture chamber and introduced to Xavier Collin Potts, an albino Government employee assigned to give her shock therapy so as to draw in Erogrendel. He electrocutes her, and she goes into a series of what are later referred to as "Sense visions."
Her first vision is of a young Viking woman named Odilia arriving at Heorot, where she is greeted warmly by King Hrothgar. It is revealed that her father has recently died, and Hrothgar is allowing her to stay in his home.
The second vision is of the following night, when Hrothgar and his men are having a great feast, similar to the one seen in the prologue. Thanks to the Sense, Olivia is able to understand the Vikings' language, and it is revealed that Hrothgar ordered Odilia's father to be killed. It is implied that he did so with the intention of sleeping with the girl.
Olivia's third vision is of one night over a year later. The men of Hereot are again passed out drunk, and Odilia slips outside the hall, dashing into the forests. Olivia follows her, and finds the girl carving a spider into the bark of a nearby tree. She prays to her dead father to save her from a life as Hrothgar's prostitute, and is rewarded by a sound that Olivia recognizes as the cry of Erogrendel. A slightly different version of the monster (with fingers and teeth, unlike the present-day incarnation) bursts through the trees, attacking Heorot and slaughtering several men.
The fourth vision is only a decade before the current day, and is set in the bedroom of Lilian Holman. She is lying on her bed, crying. Olivia notices a piece of paper hanging on the wall, on which is drawn the same spider that Odilia carved into her tree. Just then, Lilian's stepfather comes into the room, apparently drunk, and lunges for the girl, who cries out. Again, the sound of Erogrendel is heard as the vision ends.
The fifth vision is of two men sitting in a restaurant, discussing the younger man's relationship with an unknown pregnant woman. The younger man plans on marrying his girlfriend and abandoning her, which he sees as better than just leaving her silently. The older man wants them to get an abortion, but the younger man says that his girlfriend refuses to do so. Olivia realizes that the young man is her late father.
The final vision is of a dark alleyway, similar to the one in which Olivia was almost raped. Olivia's father appears, running from an unnamed assailant, who shoots and kills him.
Olivia is then privy to every appearance of Erogrendel at the same time, finally recognizing the similarities: Erogrendel's target is always a female, with the Sense, who is in some sort of trouble involving sexual assault or toxic masculinity. Olivia realizes that every time Erogrendel appears, he is really a different entity: the soul of his target's dead father.
Finally, Olivia wakes up in the torture chamber. Xavier Collin Potts reveals that Erogrendel has appeared in Boston, as evidenced by the sounds coming from the street above. Xavier disappears, leaving Olivia alone, but she is able to take control of a federal agent's body to release her. She runs to the center of Boston, where she finds the city deserted but for a small army of Government agents harnessing what look like science fiction weapons. They shoot at Erogrendel, who crawls across several different skyscrapers, but to no effect. Olivia walks directly up to the monster and repeats a quote that Nick had once said to her. Erogrendel wraps his body around her, just as the army fires everything they have, killing the beast.
A week later, Olivia meets Xavier in his office. She tells him that her Sense is greatly depleted. He explains that Seventh Circle is going to be absorbed into his secret division of the Government, and that Richard has already been given a job. He offers her a job, which she accepts. A funeral is held for Mark, Dana, and everyone who died in Boston.
Epilogue[edit]
One year after Erogrendel's death, a little girl named Lilian is playing alone in her yard. Her single mother calls her into the house, but she pauses when a dirty, bearded man approaches her. He asks if she wants to shake his hand, calling her pretty. She suddenly begins to feel his emotions, something she doesn't quite understand. She looks down at her bouncy ball, noticing its spider pattern for the first time. When she looks up, the man is gone.
The next day, the police find the man's body in the alley beside Lilian's house, broken in half and crawling with spiders.
Characters[edit]
• Olivia Cambridge / Olivia McMann / Elizabeth Marlowe: a twenty-three-year-old blonde living alone in Boston, Massachusetts, following the death of her unofficial fiancé, Nick. Born Olivia Cambridge, she took Nick's surname after his death. Olivia has the power of the sixth sense, which all humans once had, but lost through evolution. Her pseudonym, Elizabeth Marlowe, is taken from a character in James L. Nelson's trilogy of pirate novels.[3]
• Mark Tenant / Martan Kent: The assistant regional director of Seventh Circle's Boston division. Mark holds a grudge against Erogrendel for killing Lilian Holman, although it is implied that the grudge is really a manifestation of his own guilt. Mark's pseudonym is an anagram for his real name.
• Nick McMann: Olivia's late boyfriend. The two met when she was a student at UVM, and he worked in his father's convenience store. He died of breast cancer a year before the story begins.
• Dana Holman: an elderly resident of the fictional Semper, Nebraska. She lost her daughter and husband to Erogrendel, although it is later revealed that the girl's death was an accident.
• Richard Marvin: the regional director of Seventh Circle's Boston division. He is elderly, heavy, and bearded. Early in the novel, he is seen smoking Morley cigarettes: a fictional brand that is used in many different mediums.[4] Later, he appears to have switched to nicotine gum.
• Emma Cambridge: Olivia's mother. Earlier a fairly supportive mother, she devolved into alcoholism and depression over Olivia's teenage years. It is left ambiguous whether "Cambridge" is her maiden or married name.
• Xavier Collin Potts: part of a secret division of the United States Government, one that mainly involves the paranormal and supernatural. In the book, Xavier is tasked with giving Olivia shock therapy so as to draw in Erogrendel. Xavier is implied to be an albino, and wears sunglasses consistently, even in the dark torture chamber.
• King Hrothgar: a character in the epic poem Beowulf, depicted in Erogrendel as a sinister character who had Odilia's father murdered so he would be able to frequently sleep with her.
• Odilia: a young, beautiful Viking woman. Her father was murdered by King Hrothgar's men, and she became the ruler's prostitute. Later, she calls for her father to help, and he appears in the form of the original Erogrendel. Unfortunately, as depicted in Beowulf, he is slaughtered before he can avenge his daughter.
Connections to Beowulf[edit]
The name of the novel, and subsequently the name of its main antagonist, is a portmanteau of ero, a type of pirate spider, and Grendel, one of the three monsters from the epic poem Beowulf. In the novel, it is revealed that "Erogrendel" and "Grendel" are one and the same, although the difference in names is never addressed. King Hrothgar, one of the supporting characters in Beowulf, appears in Erogrendel, although his motives appear to differ significantly. While in Beowulf he seemed primarily concerned with the safety of his people, Erogrendel depicts him as a merciless killer whose primary goal is sleeping with Odilia.[5]
The prologue of Erogrendel takes place several hundred years after the eponymous creature's first appearance, and depicts a mead-hall similar to that of Hrothgar, in which one man begins to tell the story of the hero Beowulf. His dialogue is very similar to the opening lines of the real-life poem of the same name, and it is left ambiguous whether or not he believes these events to have actually occurred.
References[edit]
This article "Erogrendel (novel)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
