Grinding Rock

“Grinding Rock” is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Cody Goodfellow that first appeared in Book of Dark Wisdom #5 (2005). It tells the story of a firefighter battling a wildfire near San Diego and the price he learns must be paid for California's paradise.
The title refers to a type of Native American artifact commonly found in the region:
==Characters == 
*Tim Vowles: A San Diego firefighter who comes across an ancient ritual being consummated while battling a wildfire.
*Calvin Loomis: A 69-year-old "retired U.S. Geological Survey engineer afflicted with Alzheimer’s" who carries out a sacrifice that must be made every 20 years to protect California from disaster. He is described as having "soft, sunny, Elmer Fudd features, white crew-cut hair, and freckled, ruddy skin."
==Setting==
The places mentioned in the story--Mission Trails Regional Park,Mission Trails Regional Park, home page. Mount Fortuna,SummitPost, "Fortuna Mountain." the Golden West Concrete quarry,San Diego County, "List of Stone Quarries, Etc." the Navy golf course,Southern California Golf Association, "Admiral Baker Golf Course." the "upscale pseudo-villas and palatial townhouses" of TierrasantaWikipedia, "Tierrasanta, San Diego."--are real locations in San Diego County.
== Connections==
When offering the sacrifice, Loomis mentions N'kai--a fictional underground realm below K'n-yan in H. P. Lovecraft's revision tale "The Mound"--and Ubbo-Sathla, the polymorphous Outer God created by Clark Ashton Smith. Later in the story, an entity that seems to be Ubbo-Sathla manifests:
==Publication History==
After its initial appearance in Book of Dark Wisdom, "Grinding Rock" was reprinted in The Weird Fiction Review (Fall 2010). It was included in the anthology New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird (Prime Books, 2011) and in Goodfellow's collection Rapture of the Deep and Other Lovecraftian Tales (Hippocampus Press, 2016).
==References==
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:Cody Goodfellow works