The Pool

"The Pool" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by the late American author Michael Shea.
==Synopsis==
Set over the course of several nights, a San Franciscan construction worker first bears witness to the surreptitious summoning of a Shoggoth by an occultist masquerading as a contractor. Subsequently, the man begins to receive mental messages exhorting him to revisit the site of the incantation - a newly-installed private swimming pool - and looks on as the creature devours first the homeowner, and then all of the guests at her house party.
==Characters==
*Daryl, an average Joe working several jobs to forge a better life for himself.
*Mike Love, a charismatic general contractor and secret occultist.
*Don, Daryl's friend and coworker.
*Amy Robideau, a wealthy homeowner and sacrificial victim.
==Publication History==
"The Pool" was first published in the February-March edition of Weird Tales. It has also been included in the collections of Shea's own works Copping Squid and Other Mythos Tales (2009) and Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea (2017).
==Trivia==
*At one point during the story, Daryl finds and reads a copy of At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft, suggesting that Lovecraft himself was subjected to the same psychic contact as Daryl has been.
*Daryl is stated to lodge in the Hyperion Hotel in exchange for working the graveyard shift on reception, the Hyperion being a recurrent location within Shea's works.
Category:Michael Shea works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works