The Shadow Over Chamberton

Noah Nathan Hale

Young Kris Holloway goes back to school in the sleepy coastal town of Chamberton for his second year, having ‘wasted’ the previous When he discovers the internship he'd counted on was given to someone else he takes a job as nightwatchman at the mysterious historical landmark, Coxcomb Tower, while it’s being renovated. under the direction of the intimidating-yet-cheerful caretaker, Thom Joans.

As Kris strives to keep his promise to his parents, concentrating on his studies, covering shifts for fellow interns who seem to keep disappearing, and assisting Joans and his gang of creepy community boosters prepare for the reopening of the tower while townspeople go missing. Dr. Judson Harkrider, Kris’s would-be mentor regarding arcane knowledge and magic, warns him about his new workplace even as Kris's professor, Delacourt Klein, and Fran Vidal, an art student whose work he’d once throw up upon both press him to give them access to the tower.

As the grand reopening of Coxcomb Tower approaches, Kris keeps to his goals, rebuffing the warnings, threats, entreaties, and even going so far as denying his ‘frivolous’ passions and indulgences, shunning his friends and eventually selling his gaming and fantastical paraphernalia.

Finally, Kris comes close to meeting a fate as horrible as those met by his missing fellow interns and townsfolk when he discovers the tower is the accidental prison of an extradimensional entity worshipped by Joans and the boosters. Kris seeks the help of the friends and people he had shunned and refused, as well as the secretive sub-community of townsfolk who, themselves, worship an altogether different deity, Dagon. Kris and company free the evil entity from its prison and lure it to a place where Dagon can destroy it.

The entity destroyed, Kris goes forward having finally learned to embrace the gifts and abilities which grew out of the passions he had denied.