2006
DON’T
JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS TITLE
Ash
Williams travels to France, searching for the Necronomicon.
Ash reached out to several people in the paranormal community for
leads on the book, including some Ghostbusters in New York and an
elderly Frenchman called the Sâr
Dubnotal. Inside the cabin where he believes the Necronomicon
to be, he drives off a creature called Baal, ending its alliance with
the vampire Countess Irina. Irina’s giant servant says the book Ash
seeks is the Necronomicon
Ex Mortis,
while the book Irina holds is the First
Necronomicon,
written by the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. When Irina asks if he is “the
one destined to fight the forces of darkness,” Ash responds, “The
same…although I did hear something about a girl named Buffy who
hangs out with the band Slayer, I think.”
Short
story by Matthew Dennion in Tales
of the Shadowmen Volume 11: Force Majeure,
Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2014;
reprinted in French in Les
Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 16),
Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Rivière Blanche, 2015. Ash
Williams and the Necronomicon
Ex Mortis are
from the Evil
Dead film
series. Although this story supposedly takes place in 1993, shortly
after the third Evil
Dead
movie, Army
of Darkness,
this cannot be correct. In the CU, the films take place from
1982–1983,
and Ash spent over twenty years in a mental institution after the
events of the comic book miniseries Army
of Darkness: Shop ‘til You Drop Dead,
only to escape in 2005, as seen in Army
of Darkness vs. Re-Animator.
Furthermore, 1983 would be well before Buffy Summers (from the movie
and TV series Buffy
the Vampire Slayer)
discovered she was the latest in a long line of Slayers. Therefore, I
have placed this story in 2006, a year after Ash escaped from Arkham
Asylum in Massachusetts. The Ghostbusters in New York are from the
movie Ghostbusters
and
its sequel, as well as the cartoon The
Real Ghostbusters.
The animated series Extreme
Ghostbusters is
set in the 1990s, and features a younger group of investigators who
have taken up the mantle of the retired original Ghostbusters. Ash
probably contacted the latter-day team. The Sâr Dubnotal is an
occult investigator who appeared in a French pulp series. Baal is
from Renée
Dunan’s novel of the same name, which has been translated by Brian
Stableford for Black Coat Press. Countess Irina Karlstein is from the
film Female
Vampire.
In the movie, which was made and takes place in the 1970s, Countess
Irina is mute. How she gained the ability to speak is unknown. The
Necronomicon
penned
by Abdul Alhazred is from H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, of
course.
