Fear’s Accomplice

EDITED BY
T M McLEAN

NoodleDoodle
Publications

Fear’s Accomplice

T M McLean

Copyright © 2014 NoodleDoodle Publications

Cover Artwork Copyright © 2013 Luke Spooner

Published by NoodleDoodle Publications

Kindle Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the respective authors or the publisher.

This book contains works of fiction.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

‘A Small Problem’ by Diane Arrelle was previously published in Freezer Burn Magazine in 1997.

‘Mr Bronze’ by Phil Voyd was previously published in Escape Clause in 2009.

‘Censored!’ by David Perlmutter was previously published in Deep Space Terror in 2010.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ONE REMAINING WISH – Tim Jeffreys

PROGRESS COMES TO DAIRYTON – John Grey

SECOND CHANCES – T Fox Dunham

THE FAMILIAR AND THE STRANGE – Jenny Knox

MR BRONZE – Phil Voyd

THE SHADOW CAST BY THE WORLD – David Court

MR DeMUNN – Kristal Stittle

RITUAL OF REBIRTH – T M McLean

WRITER’S RETREAT – Noel Osualdini

WHEN THE WEATHER IS JUST RIGHT – Kerry G S Lipp

CRIMSON SNOW – Matthew Lett

CENSORED! – David Perlmutter

THE SCREAMING TREE – Bruce Tanton

WHY ALWAYS ME? – Nicholas McLean

A SMALL PROBLEM – Dianne Arelle

SWEET AND SOUR – Florence Ann Marlowe

SAFE – Tony Conaway

NIGHT SWIMMING – Justin Hunter

UNDERNEATH – J M Perkins

EDITOR’S NOTE

INTRODUCTION

Fear is a peculiar thing. It can be difficult to define. One thing that is certain is that fear cannot exist without a trigger. Something must be present to initiate the feeling of terror.

For many people fear is helped along by natural occurrences: by a spider spindling its way across the carpet, or by standing near the edge of a tall cliff, looking down at the rocks as the sea water bashes them into tiny particles. The person standing there knows that the rocks below were once part of the cliff, and they know that if the rocks can fall, then a person could easily tumble down to join them.

Some fears are less rational. Picture a small boy lying awake at night, too frightened to move in case the unseen thing under the bed notices that he’s there and decides to snatch him. Similarly, a strange shape on the curtain, visible only when the room is dark, spooks a young girl to tears. She can’t bring herself to cry, however, because the sound might well alert the horrors of the night. Instead the tears run silently down her cheeks while she shivers and waits for morning. The dark is the catalyst of fear in these circumstances, coupled in a loving embrace with the overactive imagination of childhood.

Whatever the cause, fear does not exist without help: an accomplice, if you will. And that is what you’re looking at right now. Prepare to face your nightmares . . . welcome to Fear’s Accomplice.

T M McLean

ONE REMAINING WISH
Tim Jeffreys

“Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ, Liz!”

Having halted a little way into the wood to consult the map she was carrying, Liz now looked back at her husband, Barney, whom she had assumed was following along behind her. He had strayed off the paved path and got his feet stuck in the reddish mud alongside it. She watched, allowing herself a small smile, as he waved his arms in the air and struggled to get free. When he managed to liberate one foot she saw that his new white running shoes were smeared with the red stuff. Raising his eyes, he glared at her.

“I did tell you not to wear those,” she said.

“Yes, but you didn’t tell me you were dragging me into a fucking swamp! Christ, look at my shoes. They’re ruined.”

Feeling a sudden chill, Liz cast her eyes around the branches overhead. Just for a moment she thought she’d heard voices whispering, but it must – she decided – have been a breeze blowing in the leaves. Indeed, everything about her looked pleasant enough, with the sunshine breaking through the branches overhead and lighting up patches of the damp red earth. Still. . .

“Fuck!” Barney said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Liz sighed. “Do you have to talk like that? This is supposed to be a holy place, remember? There used to be an ancient chapel somewhere around here.”

Barney freed his other foot and came striding along the path towards her, glowering. “Don’t tell me you’ve got religion all of a sudden. That’s all I need.”

“No, but it doesn’t hurt to show a bit of respect. You never know.”

“Balls!” he said, halting by her side. He lifted his feet. “Look at my fucking shoes, will you? Do you know how much these cost?”

“It’s not my fault. Why didn’t you stay on the path?” Sighing again, she glanced back the way they had come. She could just see their silver Volvo parked at the entrance to the woods, sunlight glinting off its boot. “Do you want to go back?”

“No, no. If you want to see this fucking wishing well, let’s go and see this fucking wishing well. Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. What’s the point? It’s just a hole in the ground.”

“The point, Barney, is that while we’re in Devon I want to see things! I’m interested in the history even if you’re not.”

Subdued by her sudden burst of anger, Barney relented. “Fine,” he said in a calm voice. “Let’s go.”

Turning her back on him, and shifting the weight of the pack she was carrying, she continued on along the path. The ground remained flat. There were no dips or hillocks to navigate. At times there were puddles of muddy reddish water to pick their way over, and Liz heard Barney grumbling about his shoes again and cursing. At times like this she thought she hated him.

As they walked further into the woods, the trees grew denser and the branches closed in around them so that they had to duck and weave. The sunlight still managed to break through in places, shafts of light cutting through the gloom, giving the wood a magical quality. Liz felt her anger dwindling.

“Isn’t it lovely here?”

Barney made a small sound of contempt. Glancing over her shoulder, Liz saw him squinting into the trees overhead as if he saw something there that bothered him.

“What’s the matter?”

“Thought I saw movement.”

Liz followed his gaze up into the trees, but could see nothing there. She consulted the map again. “It shouldn’t be too far now.”

“Great,” he said in a dull tone. “Can’t wait.”

Liz chose to ignore this.

After they had walked a short while longer the trees broke onto a small clearing, on the far side of which Liz at once saw the well. It was a pool roughly six feet in diameter and edged with paving. The grass in the clearing had been mown short. As Liz stepped out into the sunlight, she felt such tranquillity in her surroundings that she knew at once that it was the perfect place for a picnic.

“It’s so quiet here,” Barney said, making her think he’d had the same thought. But then he added: “Gives me the fucking creeps.”

Again, Liz chose to ignore him. Crossing the grass, she saw how most of the paving around the well was broken and mossy. There was a granite wall built on the far side of the well on top of which a cross – made from the same granite – was mounted. There were two short flagstone piers, one of which Liz walked on to. Peering into the water, she smiled to see the array of coins littering the floor of the well, clearly visible in the bright sunlight.

Barney stood solemnly on the other pier, looking into the well also, his hands in his pockets.

“How deep do you think it is?” he said.

“A meter, maybe. Meter and a half?”

“There’s a lot of money down there.”

“Those are people’s wishes. Are you going to make one?”

“No,” he said.

Shrugging, and turning back to the well, Liz reached into her pocket and found a coin. She thought a moment about what to wish for.

I wish I could get rid of Barney.

The thought surprised her. She glanced up at her husband. He stood watching her, an impatient look on his face. Perhaps she did hate him. Over the course of their marriage he had turned from a charming man who did everything in his power to please her into this . . . this . . . What was he now? This aggressive bully. Yes. That was the only way to describe him. He was a bully. And he made her feel exhausted. He was a weight on her. He wore her down. She hesitated a moment, the coin in her hand poised over the water, startled by these sudden revelations. I could wish for him to be gone, she thought. Is that really what I want? She glanced again at Barney. He was now wiping his shoes in the grass at the edge of the well, tutting and swearing under his breath. Yes, she thought then. I want him gone. I want to be free. Free to meet someone else. I want someone else. Someone who doesn’t make everything such hard work. She closed her eyes and opened her hand. She heard the coin land with a soft plop in the water. At this sound Barney stopped what he was doing and rushed to her side, staring into the pool.

“A pound? You chucked a pound in? Are you mad?”

Satisfied, she turned to Barney with a grin on her face, feeling a little guilty, easing the pack off her back as she did.

“You hungry? Shall we have our picnic here? It’s so lovely.”

“Might as well,” he said. “I’m bloody starving.”

She kneeled down in the grass and began to unpack the fruit and sandwiches from the bag. Barney sat watching her, occasionally glancing back the way they had come, towards the trees.

“The landlady at that bed and breakfast acted a bit weird this morning. Don’t you think?”

“Weird? How do you mean?”

“When you asked her about the well, she got all cagey.”

“I think she was just busy with the breakfasts.”

“Busy, my arse. She didn’t want to tell us how to find it. And what was it she said? Be careful of that wood, or something. Oh yeah, and when she saw us leaving she said something like: Don’t stay at the well too long.”

“Well, it’s pretty isolated around here. I suppose she was worried something might happen to us.”

“And when I said people must be stealing the money from the wishing well quite regularly she looked horrified!”

“Well, that’s not a nice thing to say, Barney. People don’t steal other people’s wishes. That’s bad luck. It means they don’t come true.”

“Oh, come on. You’re telling me there isn’t a local drunk who gets short of a bit of beer money now and then and comes down here to fish out all the coins you suckers have been chucking in there? That’s where your pound’s going, Liz, down some old drunk’s gullet.”

“I don’t know, Barney. There was a lot of money in there on the bottom. It doesn’t look to me like anyone’s stealing it.”

Barney opened his mouth to reply, but then he fell silent. He looked thoughtful. His eyes shifted towards the well. “There was, wasn’t there.”

They ate in silence. Liz was enjoying the sun on her skin. After eating, she lay back in the grass, watching Barney through her half–closed eyelashes and thinking about the wish she’d made. Could that really be the way she felt, after only four years of marriage? As she mulled this over, without realising it, she fell asleep.

When she opened her eyes again, the sun was lower in the sky, sunk down behind the trees. She rubbed at goosebumps on her arms. Barney was no longer beside her. Looking around for him, she heard splashing from the direction of the well. Looking that way, she started and her mouth fell open.

“Barney!”

He stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. There was a huge grin on his face.

“Liz, you won’t believe this!”

“What the hell are you doing? Get out of there! Get out!”

“Liz, check it out. Look at some of these coins. They must be hundreds of years old. They must be worth a fortune!”

In dismay, she got up and walked over to the well. Barney was in the water, stripped of his clothes, leaning in and grabbing the coins from the floor of the well, then tossing them into a pile on the paved edge. Liz looked and saw that some of the coins were indeed old, some looked ancient.

“We’re going to be rich, Liz.”

“You can’t do this. It’s wrong. Those are people’s wishes.”

He laughed at her. “Who’s to know? Some of these coins should be in a museum, not sitting at the bottom of a well! Get the backpack. We’ll put them in there.”

“No,” Liz said. “Get it yourself.”

She turned away. She felt like crying. Once more, Barney had ruined her day. All she’d wanted to do was look an old wishing well, and he had to get undressed and dive into it and grab all the coins from the bottom. I do hate him! she thought. I do hate him! I want him gone!

Looking over her shoulder she saw Barney climbing up out of the well. When she met him he’d been a trim man of thirty. Now she saw clearly in the last of the sunlight that he was getting fat. He’d let himself go. She felt repulsed by the sight of his nakedness. She watched as he shook himself dry and dressed again. Not meeting her gaze, he crossed the grass to grab the backpack, then returned to the pile of money by the well and began throwing it into the bag. He also took handfuls of coins and shoved them into his trouser pockets. Liz glanced around, feeling goosebumps on her arms again.

“What if someone’s watching?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous. There’s no one around, is there? Okay it’s done. We can go. Happy?”

“Of course I’m not happy.”

Watching him walk towards her, throwing the backpack—now heavy with coins—over his shoulder, she thought: My wish is in that bag too. Does that mean it won’t come true? But then Barney was grabbing her arm and leading her quickly back towards the path through the trees. The woods seemed darker now, with no sun breaking through the branches. They had only gone a short way when Liz felt something catch in her hair. She was so surprised that she let out a little scream. She tried to look back, but Barney pulled at her arm.

“What the hell’s wrong with you? Come on!”

“I’ve got a bad feeling, Barney. I think we should put the money back.”

“Like fuck!”

The light was fading fast. It was almost dark under the trees. They hurried along the path until Liz felt a catch in her hair again and she was jerked painfully to a halt. Spinning around, she thought she saw a face looking down at her out of the branches above. Again she gave a little scream.

“Liz, what the fuck . . . ?”

When she turned to look at Barney, she saw what looked like a pale arm reach out of the gloom and snatch at one of the straps of the backpack. He took a jerking step backwards.

“What the . . . ?”

“Barney, please, let’s put the money back. Please!”

“Relax, Liz, will you? I got caught on a branch, that’s all.”

Behind him she saw, clearly now, a white face, full of fury, leer out of the gloom between the trees. She screamed again, and he stared at her like she was a madwoman.

“Run!” she said, suddenly hysterical. “Run, Barney!”

Alarmed by the change in her, he didn’t argue. They began to run, but now Liz noticed that she could no longer see the path. A moment after the realisation, she felt her feet catch in the mud and she fell forward with a cry.

“Liz!”

He ran on ahead of her and stopped.

“Liz, come on! Get up!

“I’m stuck. Help, Barney! Get me out!”

“I can’t! I’m . . . oh shit! I’m stuck too!”

“Barney!”

An arm had reached down out of the trees and grabbed at his hair, dragging him backwards. As Liz reeled around in shock, she saw that the trees above them were alive with faces and grasping limbs. Hands snatched at her face. She could hear a noise, like many hushed voices. She could hear Barney screaming now. Other hands were clutching at her, fists grabbing her hair, cold fingers getting under her collar and shirtsleeves. She felt herself being lifted upwards, but then, with a desperate effort, she managed to heave herself free of both the grasping hands and the mud. Immediately, she started to run again. When she saw Barney, whirling around and fighting with unseen assailants, she grabbed hold of his arm and yanked him along with her.

People in the trees! she thought madly. There’s people in the trees! How can there be people in the trees!?

She ran on, sobbing, her heart pounding, feeling like it was going to explode out of her chest, not caring if Barney was behind her or not. She just wanted to get out of the wood. She could hear the whispering in the trees. It pursued her. She thought she heard the word thieves being repeated over and over. That’s what the voices were saying: thieves thieves thieves thieves. Over and over. She was running blindly in the dark now, half crouched to avoid the hands that grabbed at her out of the trees, the whispers that pursued her, the awful faces hanging above her in the black. Then she slammed into something and realised it was the Volvo. In panic, she searched her pockets for the keys. Barney appeared beside her, his face white and stricken.

“Come on, Liz,” he said. “Open it! Open it!”

She unlocked the car and they both jumped in. She slammed the key into the ignition, jammed her foot on the accelerator and the car tore forward onto the road. It was some moments before she realised she was breathing in little hitching breaths, her body tense over the wheel. She glanced around at Barney and saw to her disbelief that he was sitting back in his chair and laughing.

“What?” she said. “What? We almost . . .”

He went on laughing. “Oh, Jesus, Liz, we spooked ourselves good back there. You started screaming and it was dark and we thought the trees were attacking us! We shit ourselves bad!”

“Barney? The . . . the trees were attacking us. Or . . . something in the trees. You saw them, didn’t you? There was something in the trees. Faces. I saw faces.”

Barney wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Oh, Liz, you really are a silly bitch sometimes.”

This was as much as Liz could take. She brought the car to a screeching halt that jerked them both forwards in their seats and started screaming at him.

“All that was because of you, Barney! Because you couldn’t leave that money where it belonged! Because you’re so selfish and you always have to ruin things! Those were people’s wishes that you stole! And one of them was my wish! And do you know what I wished for? I wished for you to be gone out of my life! I want you out of my life, Barney! I hate you! I want you to fucking disappear! But now you’ve stolen my wish and it won’t come true, and I’m stuck with you for the rest of my life! I’m stuck with you and I hate you!”

When she finished yelling at him she was breathing hard and on the verge of tears.

“Jesus, Liz,” Barney said in a soft voice, staring at her.

Liz put her forehead against the steering wheel, and spoke in a small voice: “That’s what I wished for, Barney. You might as well know how I feel.”

He was silent a moment. Then he said: “Liz, what do you take me for? Of course I didn’t take your wish. I left your pound in there.”

She lifted her head around and looked at him. “What?”

“I wasn’t going to take your wish, Liz. I wouldn’t do that to you, would I? I wish I had now though! Fuck me. You’re my wife and I love you. I never knew you feel that way. How could you wish for something like that?”

Liz couldn’t say anything. She could only stare at him.

Then, abruptly, the passenger-side door popped open, making her jump, and before Barney could even turn around, pale hands reached into the car and took hold of him. He shouted in surprise as he was dragged sideways out of the car. It happened so fast that he was gone in a matter of seconds. Liz was frozen with terror. She saw him vanish, then listened to him screaming and yelling outside the car. The sounds he made were moving away, growing rapidly distant. After a while—she didn’t know how long—she reached across to the passenger side and pulled the door closed. Then, numb with shock, not thinking about what she was doing, she reached down and started the car again. As she drove away she was shaking, but she did not dare to look in the rear-view mirror

I got my wish, she thought. I got my wish.

ABOUT TIM JEFFREYS

Tim Jeffreys is the author of five collections of short stories, the most recent being ‘The Lucky Penny & other stories’, as well as the first two books of his ‘Thief’ saga. His short fiction has also appeared in various anthologies and magazines. His stories are best described as a mix of horror, fairytale, black comedy, and everyday life. Originally from Manchester, UK, Tim now lives in the South West of England, where he can be found either working at his day job, taking care of his daughter, haunting libraries, or sitting at his desk, writing.

Visit him online at http://www.timjeffreyswriter.webs.com

PROGRESS COMES TO DAIRYTON
John Grey

I was ten when news of the brand new supermarket caused such a stir in the Bentley household and our quaint northern Vermont village of Dairyton. It was unquestionably the biggest sensation of that year. Lloyd Frimage might have been a bigger story but, despite all our expectations, he failed to even make it onto a single A Roster of the Chicago White Sox, despite his .600 average for the high school.

Mega-Mart, it was to be called and its grand opening would be May 31st. My mother’s excitement was palpable. My father merely shrugged the whole thing off with his, “Does this mean lower grocery bills?”

“I can do all our shopping in the one place,” she exclaimed. “No more milk truck. No more bread van. No more arguing with the butcher in the doorway over whether there’s too much fat on those rump steaks. And no more having to deal with Hannigan’s. If you know how sick I am of brushing flies away from their rotting fruit selection and dying from the heat inside their store in the middle of summer.”

“So what does this do to all these small businesses in town?”

Dad was the manager of Dairyton’s only bank. He’d extended loans to the likes of the butcher and the Hannigans. They struggled to repay them now. What would it be like when the supermarket came along and wiped out so much of their trade? When he expressed these concerns to my mother, she merely laughed it off.

‘There’s some in this town who won’t have anything to do with the supermarket. Just you wait and see. Old Mrs Juster, for example. If it wasn’t for the delivery men, she’d have no social life. And you know that Mr Morrison hardly ever leaves his house. And what about the Salazars from across the street? I spoke to Anna and Frank only this afternoon. They don’t want anything to do with any new–fangled supermarket. You’ll see. Everyone will do just fine out of this.”

But it was obvious that someone in town didn’t think so. Twice, during construction, vandals tried to torch its framework. Whoever it was did enough damage for the supermarket company to assign guards after hours. There was no more arson. And the supermarket did open on May 31st as planned.

I can remember my mother’s beaming face that Saturday afternoon when she returned home from her very first time shopping at Mega-Mart. She looked radiant.

“Jeez, Helen, I haven’t seen you looking like this since we . . .”

He noticed I was in the room and he didn’t finish his sentence. But my mother didn’t stop grinning until she’d put all the groceries away: meat pre-packaged and frozen, milk in cartons (no need to deal with empties any more) and, best of all, bread pre-sliced and wrapped. She sat down at the kitchen table, made herself a cup of tea with a teabag. In her mind, the future had arrived. Dad studied the receipt like it was an income statement. Even his mouth moved slightly sideways into a kind of smirk.

It was a week into my summer break; my parents were still arguing over whether or not they should send me off to camp when the news broke regarding the attack on old Mrs Juster. Now Dairyton, for as long as I lived there, was hardly a hotbed of crime. The police station shared space with the town clerk and the historical society. The small cell was merely an occasional Saturday night layover for one of our local drunks.

From my bedroom window, I could see the police car pull up outside Mrs Juster’s tiny cottage. But it wasn’t until Maggie Grace called my mother that we heard the details of the incident. At least, my mother informed my father, and I pressed my ear against my bedroom door and listened in. Someone had bashed Mrs Juster over the head with a milk bottle. My pal Rocky said he heard it was a full bottle. But my other buddy, Ernie, said, “Nah, it was empty.”

Our telephone rang a lot that day and late into the evening. For some reason, whenever folks heard more revelations, they figured it was important that my dad be notified right away. Being bank manager, he was someone with position and clout in Dairyton.

So I got the story in dribs and drabs and not all of it accurate: Mrs Juster was in a coma. No, she just had minor bleeding. Her skull was cracked. No, she’s up and about and talking to the cops. It was a tramp. It was kids. No, it was Lloyd Frimage, all pissed off ‘cause the White Sox released him and he got drunk as six skunks.

Slowly the truth emerged. Joe Dyer, the milkman, had been arrested and charged and transferred from Dairyton police station to Montpelier. When Joe delivered Mrs Juster’s milk that Saturday morning, she was there to greet him as always. But this time, before they could settle into their usual chat, she informed him that she was cancelling all future deliveries. Apparently, she had not been the first to do so since the supermarket opened. In fact, Joe Dyer’s customer base had dwindled, in less than a month, from just about every house in town to a mere handful. Even Joe’s sister, Amy, stopped her orders.

For those relatively infirm like Mrs Juster, the Mega-Mart offered free delivery. And Mrs Juster kept hearing, from all her friends, how much they loved the new cartons. When she asked Joe, “What should I do with tomorrow’s empties?” he suddenly went berserk, grabbed a bottle (full or empty, nobody ever said) and smashed it over the old lady’s head. Luckily for both of them, she survived.

“This is just the beginning,” I overheard my dad say to mum as they went up the stairs to bed that night. “The bank will end up foreclosing on the Dyers. That milk run’s been in his family for four generations.”

My mother said nothing in response. She was having too much fun shopping at Mega–Mart, with its wide choices and cheaper prices than the likes of Hannigan’s. I had no opinion one way or the other. I didn’t care much for Mrs Juster. She gave me a hard time more than once for riding my bicycle on what she called ‘her sidewalk.’ But I didn’t like to think of her lying in her doorway with blood trickling from her forehead.

That Monday morning, as dad was getting dressed for work and mum was poking around in the freezer admiring her steaks and ice–cream buckets, the phone rang. Dad picked it up in the parlor and I, as always, tried to eavesdrop.

“What?” I heard him exclaim. “Mr Morrison? No, that’s impossible. Found choked?”

“Who is it dear?’ my mother called out from the kitchen.

My father didn’t reply. I heard the click and then saw him emerge from the parlor, his face totally drained of its usual bright pinkness.

“It’s Jeb Morrison.”

“He died? Well he was getting on in years.”

“He’s been murdered.”

My mother slammed the freezer door shut. Then she gave me one of her ‘why don’t you leave the room’ looks. I reluctantly obeyed. I made enough noise on the stairs to suggest I’d ascended to the second floor when, in fact, I stopped halfway so I could catch what was being said.

“How did it happen?” my mother asked.

“He was suffocated.”

“Oh, the poor man.”

“Someone shoved a fresh loaf of bread down his throat.”

That truly staggered me, the word ‘fresh’ most of all. Would Mr Morrison have survived a stale loaf of bread? I didn’t ask my mother for details, though it was an intense topic of conversation between Rocky, Ernie and me later that day.

We met over at Ernie’s. His mother suggested it would be better if we played inside that day. That suited me fine. Instead of me listening to my mum and dad’s phone calls at home, all three of us could gather up our information from Mrs Trent’s loud conversation with her eldest daughter.

It didn’t take the cops long to nab the culprit.

“Bob Humphrey, you say? That’s terrible.”

The Humphrey and Son van was a regular at our house until Mom called and cancelled any future visits. I can still recall the logo painted on the side, a loaf of bread bursting apart with the word’s ‘fresher than fresh’ emblazoned in a bright red.

It took a day or two before Mr Humphrey fully confessed. I stole a glance in Dad’s newspaper for the gruesome facts.

“He said he didn’t want any more from me,” said Humphrey. “He’d tried the bread at Mega-Mart and he preferred it to mine. I told him mine was fresher. Just baked. And that stuff Mega-Mart sold probably came from Montpelier or even interstate. He didn’t care. He said he liked it sliced. Made it much easier to prepare his cheese sandwiches. I told the damn fool I’d slice his bread myself if that would make him happy. But he just kept saying no. He wanted to cancel the order and that was that. My family’s been selling that old idiot bread for seventy years. And he cuts us off, just like that. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed a loaf of bread in one hand, gripped his bony arm in the other, and squeezed that fresher than fresh Humphrey and Son special into his toothless laughing gear. I’m all done. I don’t care what happens to me now.”

Dad was upset that week. Humphrey and Son had been a good bank customer for a number of years. My mother just kept saying how there was something in the air. “I don’t remember reading about blacksmiths going around slaughtering car salesmen,” was one of her favorite homilies.

That following Friday will stick in my memory long after first kisses and home runs with the bases loaded have faded. For a start, dad must have been feeling especially generous. Instead of my usual two dollar allowance, he plunked a five spot into my hand as he left for the office. I shoved it in my hip pocket and began making plans on how I would spend it. My mother hurried through breakfast, said to me: “I have to run out to Mega–Mart for a minute. I won’t be long. You okay on your own?”

I reckoned, at the age of ten, I was big and brave enough to handle being by myself in a small ranch house in Dairytown for an hour or two. As soon as she left, I dashed up to my room and dug out my comic books from under the bed. I was barely three pages into the latest Tales from the Crypt when there was a knock at the front door.

It was broad daylight, you understand, a Friday morning. Nothing ever happens in broad daylight on a Friday morning. As I went to answer the knock, I was already rehearsing, “My mother’s not home.” But when I opened the door, I froze. There, on our step, stood Mr Benson, the butcher.

First thing I noticed was his hair, unruly, not neatly matted down like I remembered. And his eyes were red and bulging, his mouth contorted. I thought maybe he was ill and that he wanted to use the telephone. But then I saw the cleaver swinging in his right hand. And his familiar blue and white striped apron was splattered with blood. Blood on a butcher’s smock was not all that unusual. But it’s not usually in such great dollops. And certainly not on his chin and down his arms.

“Need any meat?” he snarled.

“I . . . I . . .”

My body was shaking. My head felt dizzy like I was going to pass out. I had seen Mr Benson many times before but not this scary, not this threatening. Suddenly, I remembered my five dollar note.

“Answer me!” he shouted.

He suddenly lifted his chopper high in the air.

“Yes, we need meat,” I blurted out. I showed him my money. “What can I get for five dollars?”

He grabbed the cash from my hand and then stormed off to his van, trailing blood on the floor, the steps and my fingers. He swung open the back of his vehicle, slipped inside. I could hear the loud slapping of blade against flesh. I considered running but he was bigger and faster than me and besides, he had wheels. And closing and locking the door was no use. With that weapon of his, he could easily break down the door or bust through a window.

Instead, I stayed there frozen to the spot as he stomped up the path with a bundle of something half-clasped to his chest, half-wrapped inside his bloody apron.

“Here,” he growled.

He slammed his bundle into my small hands and half of it dropped to the step. Then he turned and exited our house, crossed the street and entered the Salazars’ front yard. I finally found the nerve to examine my purchase. They were pigs’ trotters and they were smothered in blood. I gathered them all up and ran back inside the house. By the time my mother came home, the street was a maze of cop cars and ambulances and I was still shivering under the bed.

It seemed like it took a weekend’s worth of baths for me to finally get all of that blood off me. The cops took the pigs’ trotters as evidence. Saturday, all of Dairyton, and especially our street, was swarming with reporters. There were even some from Boston and New York. Dad chased a couple from our front yard.

When the corpses were finally tallied up, Mad Butcher Benson, as the papers called him, had sliced and diced seven, including three of the four Salazars. Jenny Salazar, the youngest daughter and only survivor, had overheard her mother informing Mr Benson she’d be buying her meat from Mega-Mart from that day forward.

I won’t say that’s my favorite childhood memory. But it sure is one I can’t shake. The Hannigans closed up shop eventually but I don’t remember them bashing or choking or chopping any of their old customers. Dad even bought us our first TV the following year. Mr Price who ran the local movie theater didn’t come after him with a six gun. I put down that rash of homicides in my little town of Dairyton as being just one of those things.

I live far away from there now. I’m married and I have two little boys. Every weekend afternoon in summer, the Mister Jimmies Ice Cream truck comes by, playing its familiar ‘Greensleeves’ melody. Now, my wife always keeps the refrigerator amply stocked with ice cream during the hottest times, but I still run out to the street with the boys, buy them a cone or a pop. I can’t help but peer into the truck, see the freezer with its heavy steel door and its ominous latch. No way I ever want to find my boys frozen inside that sub–zero coffin.

ABOUT JOHN GREY

John Grey, an Australian born writer, works as financial systems analyst. He has been published in Weird Tales, Tales of the Talisman, Futuredaze and the horror anthology, What Fears Become, with work upcoming in Clackamas Review, Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Osiris.

SECOND CHANCES
T Fox Dunham

“I drank all the people who love me out of my life,” Sam said. “I destroyed them.”

“Well don’t worry then,” The Good Doctor Sullivan said. Sam fidgeted, trying to get comfortable, naked on the stainless steel table. “Be still now, Mr Hanson. Just a little nap, and you’ll be better. You’ll be so much better. You’ll be picking daisies from the fields of life. I promise. I swear by all the power in their darkness. You’ll have a family again if you wish.” Doctor Sullivan looked him over with gentle eyes, soft gray clouds in the sky. The surgical mask over his face wrinkled as he smiled beneath, and it dawned on Sam that he’d never seen him without the mask—always going to surgery, passing his room on the oncology ward wearing green scrubs. He did love his eyes.

The anaesthesiologist pulled Sam’s IV tube, tugging on the tape securing it to his arm. It pinched his skin, and Sam flinched. The lights burned white on the counters and stainless steel trays covered with sharp instruments that sliced and cut and jabbed, violating the temple of his skin. “Count back from ten,” Doctor Sullivan said. Sam thought him such a good doctor, so kind. His arm burned from the sedative forced into his blood, and the surgical staff pressed his arm down, securing it with a strap. It took several moments before he lost consciousness, and during the surgery to remove the wild cancer growths in his liver—cancer he’d caused with his addictions, his just punishment—his mind shot awake; yet his body remained paralyzed. He tried to bend his arms or legs, yet he could not command his muscles to move. His heart raced, and he panicked, trying to twist. His perception pierced through the mud, and he gazed up into the burning light above the hospital table, unable to shut his eyelids. Needles pierced his eyes from the burning white, and he felt pressure on his stomach as the surgical team slit open his abdomen and drove cold instruments into the hot places of his body.

A breeze brushed on his forehead. Sam’s mouth hung open and dried, and his tongue slipped to the side and dried out, merging into the flesh of his open mouth. A shadow approached above, cutting through the light as if the lamp hung twenty feet over above his head. Wings flapped the sterile cold air of the operating suite. The creature hovered over him, and from its knobby head and beak, a slender tongue unspooled and curled down. He struggled against the dead weight of his body, but still it kept dead and numb. The tongue of the flying imp slipped into his mouth, brushing sticky brown skin over the dried membrane of his lips and against his teeth. Why weren’t the doctors doing anything? This couldn’t be sterile! He choked when it slipped into his throat, and pressure squeezed down his oesophagus. He vomited yellow bile around the tongue, spilling out onto his chin. One of the surgical nurses inserted a plastic wand into his mouth and sucked out the vomit, then she changed devices and squirted saline down his throat. He drowned as the saline drained, and his mind burst with anguish as he tried to scream against the wall with no doors and windows in his head. Then in a moment of mercy, he spotted the doctor plunge another syringe into his IV, and he slipped away into the darkness.

∞

“Come back to us, Sam,” The Good Doctor said. His gentle words drew him back to the waking world. “Only the dead sleep forever, and you are far from dead.” Sam lifted his arm and waved his fingers, checking his mobility. His stomach churned from the residual nightmare images.

“Demons,” Sam said. “I saw demons like when I’d have my wild, wild nights.”

“One should only see beautiful things in this life,” The Good Doctor said. “Perhaps your vision is obscured. It’s a matter of perception.”

“Just a dream.”

“Yes,” The Good Doctor said. “Indeed.” He offered Sam a cup of water, and Sam nodded. Then he lifted it to his soft lips and poured the cool water down his mouth. He swallowed against sore and swollen tissue. “My throat is sore.”

“We had to intubate you during the surgery. Perfectly normal. A precaution really. You mustn’t die on us. We’re going to plant sunflower seeds in you.” He grinned again from beneath the hospital mask, and the paper flexed. Sam imagined he had big lips as he shifted the mask.

“Did you . . . get it all?”

Doctor Sullivan took Sam’s wrist and took his pulse. “We will have to fire up the old crystal ball, in this case a CT scanner, and take a gander. But I’m pretty confident in my work.”

Sam sighed, and cold sweat dripped down his neck. He felt the old groundhog digging into his stomach, the animal that could only be slaked with at least ten beers. “You’re a miracle worker, doc. That other guy was a quack. He said I had six months at the least and surgery or treatment could only slow its progress. Can you imagine that? Dead so young?”

“I have unorthodox methods,” the Good Doctor said. “If you trust me. If you let me take you on a journey and you’re willing to change, I promise you that you will live. You will live a long, long time.”

Sam reached up and took his hand, and in the handshake came the promise of a future that Sam had nearly squandered. Sam drank most of his adolescence to piss, didn’t study at college, ruined good relationships and his short marriage for meaningless nights of sex, and being diagnosed with liver cancer through the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania had him begging for a second chance. He’d done this to himself, destroyed his liver, so when he got hepatic cancer, it devoured him. They’d told him he had to be realistic, and in desperation, he’d searched the web for cancer centers that promised unrealistic miracles. He’d found it in the Family Cancer Treatment Center, but they couldn’t confirm him as a patient for their experimental treatment unless he qualified. After two weeks of exhaustive and downright bizarre tests—often psychological or even mystical in nature with crystals and weird chants and being read by spiritual counsellors—he’d been invited into the program. The staff had obsessively investigated his family to make sure he had no living relatives. Sam didn’t understand the technical terms of the treatment. They did it with lasers or mirrors or something. Very thorough.

“I’ll let you get your sleep,” the Good Doctor said. “You’ll need your rest. Big changes are coming. A new life!”

“Thanks again, doc.”

“Sleep now.” And he slipped from the door, still wearing his scrubs.

Sam turned on his side and tried to sleep. He dozed off briefly, and he woke to dimmed lights. A stomach cramp interrupted his sleep, and he rolled onto his back. He reached for the remote tethered to the bed and clicked on the small television hanging on the wall. Each channel showed a distorted background of snow and by some fault of the device, a red ichor dripped through the image, mixing among the white and black motes. He ran through the channels twice, but still he could find nothing watchable. He’d call maintenance in the morning and ask them to fix it. Sometimes, you had to pay a fee.

Sam rubbed his fingers over the bandage bulging under his hospital gown. A tendril slithered beneath the cotton, and his stomach pulsed. He pressed his hand to the bandage and his gut, and his stomach pressed back, pressing through the skin. Sam lurched over and vomited on the floor. Pain pulsed through his lower body and legs, burning into his groin, and he pissed himself. He raked the bed, looking for the button to call the nurse and found the device. Black bile poured up his nose, and he banged the plastic remote.

A nurse ran into the room. He must have called her from surgery or an isolation room, as she still wore a mask over her face. She grabbed his arms to steady him, and another nurse followed her with a syringe. They rolled him over, pulled up his robe exposing his bum then drove the needle into the flesh. His body relaxed.

“What the hell?” Clouds filled his mind from the morphine, and the pain didn’t assuage; however, he didn’t notice it as much. He closed his eyes and felt his stomach stroking in waves, back and forth.

“I’m sorry for this,” he heard Good Doctor Sullivan say.

“Is this medicine?” Sam slurred.

“It’s just a side effect. Not unexpected. This is an experimental treatment.”

“I used to believe in a God,” he said. “And it made me drink more.”

“Get some sleep now,” The Good Doctor said. “You have a CT scan early tomorrow. Just after the rise of your beautiful sun.”

Sam obeyed.

∞

After the CT scan, Good Doctor Sullivan came into Sam’s room. He held monochromatic section films at the sallow light from the ceiling and studied each. He wore a full suit with jacket and plaid tie, yet he still covered his mouth with a surgical mask.

“Is that a policy in the hospital to prevent infection?” Sam asked. His stomach had eased in the night and no longer turned.

“Something like that,” The Good Doctor said. He studied the films. “I’m afraid we weren’t quite successful with your treatment. I’m sorry about this. Who can read the wiles and the mind of the gods?”

“What does this mean?” Sam asked.

He folded them back into the envelope. “Another round under my skilful hand, and the transference should take effect. Don’t worry now. Not one bit. We’ll have this put right, right as rain.”

“There’s no other way? I woke up during the surgery.” This first time had been jarring, and he told himself it would be all over after that. He could go on with his life, correct the mistakes he’d made in his youth. He had no family, all dead, and no woman could tolerate him for long, especially his wife. He would fix that.

“You might be one of the rare few who are tolerant to the Midzolam,” he said. “We’ll push a bit more next time. How unpleasant. Say it with me. Midzolam.”

“Midzolam.”

The Good Doctor’s eyes lit up, and Sam guessed he was smiling. “You should have a family, Sam. A man needs a family. I have a great family, many cousins. We fly together. Oh yes. Little ones on the way, beautiful children.”

“From Europe or something?”

“I’ll schedule the surgery for this evening. Don’t fret now. It’ll all be done soon, and you’ll have a long life and a great family. Many cousins. A second chance.”

∞

“A double shot of Midzolam,” Good Doctor Sullivan ordered. “We’ll try a bit more this time.” As before, they set him naked on the gurney and ignited bright lights over his face that blinded him. He soon fell into a medicinally induced coma – into darkness.

The medicine failed him again, and he regained awareness, drifting through the black ether. Sam stared ahead, unable to look in any other direction. A pressure clamped down his chest, and his ribs ached. He could almost scream, breaking it from his throat, and in his mind he yelled; however, still no sound left his lips. He tried speaking, whispering, pleading, and he recited in mind the phrase his ex–wife had said to him before she left him for that woman online: I will be reborn and be with family. Screw the bitch. She had been the one that failed him. He had a problem. He needed help. She’d abandoned him to the bottle, and he swam in liquor for months, losing his apartment, living on the street. He’d wandered the filth and lived among and in the darkness between the alleys; he’d seen dark flyers on wing.

He sobered up after that and a brief stint in jail. Then, he’d suffered stomach pains and went to the local clinic. A week later, an oncologist with blank eyes explained to him that he wouldn’t survive the year. To hell with that. And to hell with his ex–wife.

A presence interrupted the light stinging his eyes. A dark angel opened his wings above him over the table. His body chilled, and the rancid scent of a roadkill skunk gagged him. Tears wet his eyes. It had to be a nightmare. He lived the nightmare and awoke in sleep. The nightmare angel hovered low, and its four eyes glowed azure, somehow soothing, enchanting. The creature rocked and swayed like a mother singing her child a lullaby.

Sing me home.

It lowered its head down on a neck that extended like an old TV antenna and rubbed its pointed chin along Sam’s cheek. Then it split its beak and several pink tendrils spilled from its mouth. They wiggled in the air like worms in the grass and fell onto his face, then the sticky ropes slithered up his skin, leaving a sticking residue. They met his lips, pushed in like a lover’s kiss and drove through his mouth and down his throat. He gagged on the tendrils, and they sewed and sutured in his chest. Blood oozed out his mouth, and he tasted copper and salt, yet something sweet like old orange juice. He tried to jerk his body, but the flyer did its work with impunity. It flapped above him, blocking the light and lowered closer to his chest. He felt the surgeons removing chunks and lifting them from the gap in his chest. From the bottom of his vision, he watched them lift pink flesh and feed it to the creature. Each time they removed a piece of his body, the flyer lowered down to the gap in his chest and deposited a flexing maggot. It dropped and burrowed into his body, and his blood flashed hot.

Was this some sort of New Age treatment? Holism? He’d heard of maggots eating away dead flesh. Dead flesh composed him. How he’d destroyed himself. They’d devour him to the bone. Were they eating the cancer? Anything to survive. He’d give it all to live again, to have a second chance. Let the maggots chew him to the bones.

Before falling away, visions flooded his memory of that in the alley, looking up at the sky and watching dark flyers on wing scouting the city.

He returned to the darkness.

∞

Sam awoke in the hospital bed in the surgical ward of the Center. Rain slammed the windows, and wind played at the joins, rocking the frames. Water spilled down the cracks and pooled on the tiled floor. A chest tube fed into ribs under the flimsy hospital gown, and his ribs ached. He pulled open the gown and followed his fingers along the tube. His skin had healed over the tube so fast, folding scar tissue over the wound and plastic. His jaw ached, and he searched his gums with his tongue, over the broken gaps and missing teeth. The pain drilled into his face.

He knew the hospital was hiding something, perhaps experimental medicine or diabolic rituals. What he’d seen couldn’t have been a hallucination. It twisted inside of him. He raised his arms, but straps and cuffs secured his limbs to the bed. Sam reached for the call button but knocked it to the floor. The straps wrapped around his upper arms and chained his wrist, and he yanked against them. He gritted his teeth and pulled, pushing his arms. He tasted the sweet orange juice again, and one of the straps tore. How the hell did he do that? With his arm free, he undid the other and turned his legs over the side of the bed. He shouldn’t have been able to move after surgery, but his body felt strong, vigorous, like the man he was ten years and fifty gallons of booze ago.

Sam stood up and fell to the floor. The chest tube tore free, spilling black ooze onto the floor. He pressed his hand to the wound, and skin sealed the breach. His stomach pulsed, and pain surged through his abdomen. A snake pressed against his flesh and slithered under his skin. He punched it, trying to kill it, and he fell to his hands, palms on the floor, and wept. Vomit poured out of his mouth and splattered on the tile. Tiny worms wiggled in the yellow and bloody puddle, and Sam pushed himself up and got to his feet then slipped pillows under the sheets to mimic his body. He stopped at the door, turned off the light and spied the hall. Most of the lights had been turned off, and darkness obscured his vision. A light bulb dangled from a wire over a filthy nurses’ desk. Sam tied the back of his robe, but the robe was too small and still exposed his bum. A breeze blowing from the vents chilled him, and he slipped into the hall, staying close to the wall as he searched the ward. His feet gathered dirt as he walked, and he searched other patient rooms, finding them mostly empty or filled with old equipment. Wires sparked. Shredded tubes wheezed atmosphere. He was going to die alone in this derelict house.

An animal screeched in the next ward, through double doors that had broken off their hinges. He nearly ran, his heart pounding against his ribs, but he had to know what they’d done, what the shit was they’d stuck in his body. He took down one of the doors, set it on the floor and walked into the ward, following the screeching, the cries of aerial creatures.

“Home again. Home again. Jiggity jig.” He whispered to himself. His body tingled, strength filling his muscles. He felt incredible. His jaw still throbbed, and he checked again his gum line then spit out a rotting tooth shard that fell out from the light pressure of his tongue. A new tooth grew in behind it, pushing through. It had to be an experiment.

At the end of the derelict hall, he spotted light. He leaned in from the side and watched through the space between the door and frame. Stainless steel slabs furnished the room, but no freezers or autopsy gear; so it couldn’t be the morgue. A large woman lay out on the closest table, and a nurse and an unknown doctor, both concealing their mouths with hospital masks, sliced off body parts with a surgical saw. Three dark flyers perched on the tables and whipped their many tongues into the air. They screeched through face slits, and the staff threw chunks of human meat and bone at the flyers like they were feeding pigeons in a park. The flyers slurped down their sundries and chirped in pleasure. They screeched again, and Sam’s throat twisted and squealed, joining in choir. He lifted his head and joined their song, and he clamped his palm to his throat. The staff spotted him and dropped the butchered arm.

“Mr Hanson. What are you doing here? Are you in the pink? Feeling keen?” Sam backed into the wall, knocking over stacked dirty bed pans and vomit basins.

“I’m not your crazy experiment,” Sam said and turned to run. The male jumped across the room with single effort and grabbed Sam by his shoulders. He thrashed at the guy, but he pushed Sam onto the floor and held him down.

“Page Doctor Sullivan,” he said, and the nurse ran off.

“When you chop me up for sausage and feed me to those things, take my heart first. Then my stomach. Just get them out of me.”

After a few minutes, The Good Doctor Sullivan arrived, carrying an umbrella and wearing a yellow raincoat. He still wore the mask, even coming from out of the hospital. “Now take it easy,” the Good Doctor said. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. We create most of the stress in our lives, and I assure you what you see here can only be of benefit to you. We’ll cure you. We’ll give you a new life.” The flyers screeched in unison after he spoke.

“What’s in the darkness?” Sam asked, giggling. He felt the dying burning need for a rum and coke. His mind nearly snapped. “I saw you there with burning blue peepers.” The Good Doctor took out a syringe, an antique needle woven of metal around a glass tube.

“We’re an old species, Sam.”

“Sure. Very old.”

“We offer you a choice.”

“Did she have one?” Sam pointed at the remains of the woman.

“She did, and she chose death. Don’t worry over this one, son. She was a goner! She would have been pushing up the daisies by now. She could have lived for centuries. That’s what we offer. Long life. A dark vision. You’ll see worlds and fly over boiling seas. We are a flock. We are a family. Aren’t you tired of being alone?”

“I’m going to die alone,” Sam said.

“You will, or you can live as one of us.” The Good Doctor knelt by him and pulled down his surgical mask. When Sam saw his missing chin and the swarm of pink tendrils spilling out the hole, he lurched backwards into the wall and hit his head. His ears rang, and another tooth popped into his jaw.

“I feel so hot and alive. It kicks ass. This isn’t experimental medicine?”

“We will welcome you into the family. This is how we propagate. We’re replacing you bit by bit, rebuilding you. It’s an upgrade. You’ll be beautiful. You’ll never be alone.”

“And if I don’t want to be one of you?” Sam asked. The Good Doctor Sullivan nodded at the dead woman on the buffet table. “The cancer would kill you anyway. You’ll feed us.”

“I’m tired of being alone. That scares me more than dying. Nothing left for me in the world. No one remembering me. Maybe it’s justice.”

“The family would miss you. The family would love you. We’re coming soon, very soon to this world. We flock the worlds and feed. So much meat here in this world; so we can have more young.”

“Sounds like a cool gig.” The Good Doctor stuck the needle in his arm, and Sam slipped into the darkness. The Good Doctor’s words comforted him.

∞

The young flyer soared above the strange city—the place alien yet familiar, a place of rage and comfort. The flyer knew the streets, had tasted the grit, and he screeched in rage at the settlement below. A thousand of his brethren flew in flock with him, filling the sky and blocking the light. Flocks across the world flew out of portals opening above the dense meat pens below, and the mass raided the city, swooping down and feeding at will. They whispered and sung in his mind, and it comforted him. He loved his family, and they would always protect him, keep him safe and warm. He’d live for centuries in the flock. He’d devour worlds across space and time.

He joined in the first wave, the young riding first. Brief frissons of memory reminded him of a time of limbs, of arms and legs, of a human heart. The elders whispered to him to forget these nightmares, these old dreams of the time before for they’d only bring him pain. He dove onto the street, to the mass of running meat and tangled one of the humans in his tongues. He pulled her body into the air and bit down into her shoulder, savoring the flesh and hot blood. Other flyers sung out, and he joined his family in their joyful song.

ABOUT T FOX DUNHAM

T Fox Dunham resides outside of Philadelphia PA – author and historian. He’s published in nearly 200 international journals and anthologies. His first novel, ‘The Street Martyr’, was published by Gutter Books in October, 2013, followed by ‘Professional Detachment’, a literary erotica from Bitten Press. His upcoming book, ‘Searching for Andy Kaufman’ will be published by PMMP in 2014.

He’s a cancer survivor. His friends call him Fox, being his totem animal, and his motto is: Wrecking civilization one story at a time.

Site: http://www.tfoxdunham.com

Blog: http://tfoxdunham.blogspot.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tfoxdunham

Twitter: @TFoxDunham

THE FAMILIAR AND THE STRANGE
Jenny Knox

The pain in Susanna’s hands stirred her into an unwelcome consciousness. Her fingers were a dangerous hue of blue-gray. They itched and burned savagely in spite of the cold. She had been lying on an icy iron bench, and the aches in her back and the pain in her legs told her she must have been there for some time. She struggled to sit up, and every movement brought new agony. Her thoughts were slow, as though she was searching for them through thick mire. She didn’t recognize the bench, or the tiny frost–covered garden at her feet. She didn’t know how she got there, or when. The familiar peaks of Whiteface rose in the distance, but they looked alien in the fading daylight. She had lived in the shadow of those mountains her entire life but they now looked foreign and strange to her.

She rubbed her hands together and pulled her thick wool cardigan closer to her body for warmth, tucking her hands inside its oversized sleeves. The powder blue cardigan tickled a faint memory: Susanna pictured herself pulling the sweater off of the chair in her living room and tying it around her waist just before she walked out of her front door. When? She tried to focus on the memory, to force the details to grow vivid, but the minutia faded away into the recesses of her mind.

Susanna rose to her feet, feeling the frozen ground through the cracked soles of her worn boots. Her damp and threadbare cotton socks did little to soften the earth’s icy touch. She was tired, so tired, but she had no place to rest. And even if she had a place, she wasn’t in the right mind for rest.

A small white house stood at the end of a short dirt path ahead. Were it not for the warm orange glow of a light in itswindow Susanna would have guessed from its peeling paint and patchy roof that it was abandoned. Help is inside. Susanna’s thoughts sloshed around her head, foreign and cumbersome, thick and unwieldy. She ambled toward the house, her body stiff from the cold. The light inside was so inviting, so comforting. Susanna pushed herself forward, willing her body to move, one step at a time, until she reached the small casement window. She looked inside and choked back a scream.

Something was very, very wrong.

She sat down on the frost-covered grass under the window and hugged her knees to her chest. Her hands were starting to warm, but instead of relief she felt pain, electric tingles worming up and down her fingers. She closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. She had to be mistaken. Susanne needed to take another look through the dirty window pane. She needed to know that she was wrong, that her mind had tricked her into believing an illusion. Whatever she saw would be clearer this time. She would see her mistake and realize that everything is fine and that she was just a little confused. She would find her way home, get some rest, and all would be well. It had to be well. She mustered her courage.

Susanna rose to her feet and peered into the cottage. She meant to look for only a moment, just long enough to clear her suspicions, but to her horror her eyes locked on the gaze of the woman whose face was now pressed up against the glass.

Susanna’s own face stared back at her.

She crumpled to the cold ground. Her head spun as her heart pounded in her chest. Who was that woman? Susanna knew that wasn’t the right question. She knew who it was. She squeezed her eyes shut again as though that small act could fix this terrible wrong. As if by shutting out this world she could be safe inside of herself. But she knew that couldn’t be, and she knew she had to do something. Anything.

She looked up at Whiteface. The mountain range that had encircled her entire life like a friend’s embrace was now cold and mocking. Its peaks and shallows veered at all the wrong angles, a jagged, toothy mouth of the sky. She tried to orient herself, to plan her next move. The house and the menace inside were at her back. To her left was a thick stand of pine trees, and to her right a dirt road wound into the horizon. The click of a door latch and a familiar voice calling “hello!” into the night sent Susanna running onto the road. Her feet pounded out a rapid beat as her boots kicked up dust and gravel.

“You! Come back! I saw you looking in my window!”

The voice echoed behind Susanna as she ran and ran and ran. She couldn’t keep up the pace for long, but her adrenaline took her far enough. She looked over her shoulder and saw nothing in the darkening distance. When she was certain that she wasn’t being pursued she let her body slump into the tall grass by the side of the road. She clutched her chest as she tried to catch her breath. Her whole body was damp with sweat and her clothes clung to her skin. Her legs shook, maybe from fear, maybe from exertion, probably from both. She willed herself back onto her feet and adrenaline surged through her guts as she realized that Whiteface was gone too. The mountain range should have been visible for miles but now it was no more, as though she had imagined the whole thing. Only the endless stretch of dirt road reaching to each horizon remained.

Dazed and disoriented, Susanna struggled to make sense of it all. How did she end up here? She again saw herself pull her blue cardigan from the back of her chair, tie it around her waist, and then leave her house, closing her door behind her. But then what? What happened? Why did that memory keep coming back? Susanna closed her eyes again, seeking that brief respite from her reality, but now the vision behind her eyes was far worse: she saw that face, her own face, staring back through the window.

Susanna tried to focus, to clear her mind. She needed a plan and had none. She pushed her exhausted body down the dirt road to oblivion. She plodded on and on with nothing but trees and cold and the ever-growing darkness for as far as she could see. The only sound she heard was her footfalls on the road’s loose gravel and her own ragged breath. She walked for minutes, hours, more.

By the time she saw the dim amber glow in the distance, Susanna was exhausted. She wasn’t at all convinced that it was anything more than her imagination playing a cruel trick on her tired mind. Her pace had slowed to a crawl and while she willed her body to sprint it responded with a slow, lumbering stride. The glow in the distance gradually grew to two lights illuminating a small cottage. Susanna didn’t know what to expect, but she was compelled to go inside. She knew she’d be safe there, or at least safer than she was outside in the cold in her crippling state of exhaustion and confusion. She timidly peered into the cottage’s small front window, recalling the terrible face she had seen in the previous house. The night frost obscured her view of the inside. She rapped her knuckles against the red door. Once. Twice. Footsteps inside, the slide of a deadbolt, and the door swung open.

Susanna gasped, choked, and coughed hard. She was again face to face with herself: her face on her body, wearing her clothes. She wanted to run—run!—but her legs wouldn’t move. She willed them to go, demanded them to move, but they refused. Her entire being was recoiling in horror, yet her body was torpid. She stood frozen, face to face with her own self.

“Can I help you?”Susanna at the door asked Susanna the trembling and terrified.

Susanna shook her head. She wanted to speak, she wanted to ask questions and demand answers, but her throat was paralyzed and her mouth clamped shut.

“Is something wrong? Can I do something for you?” The woman touched Susanna’s arm. Her skin was warm, alive. It was real.

She doesn’t recognize me, Susanna thought. How does she not see what’s going on here? Susanna’s mind reeled. She was too afraid to ask this familiar stranger for help, but too afraid to go back out into the unknown. She needed to go in.

“I’m. . . I’m so cold,” Susanna said. Her words sounded like they were being spoken by someone else. Her mouth was dry and her tongue thick cotton.

“Come in, please, come in.” The woman, the other Susanna, put her arm around Susanna and pulled her into the small cottage. Embers glowed in a stone fireplace in the corner of the room and Susanna’s face stung as the cottage’s warmth wrapped itself around her body.

“Let me make you some tea. Please sit, rest.” Susanna nodded even though the woman had already turned away. Susanna sat heavily on a well-worn leather chair near the center of the room. It took all of her will not to close her eyes and collapse into exhausted slumber. But she needed to remain on guard. She examined the room as though something there might offer a clue as to her strange existence. It was sparsely decorated: a squat white shelf against one wall, a tall narrow shelf against another. A tall unframed oil painting rested against the wall next to the fireplace. The painting appeared to be a rendition of the very cottage she was in, only in a more grandiose form: there was no mistaking the cottage’s distinctive red door, but in this depiction the whole building was much larger, with a grand bay window in the front and a courtyard to the side. A woman stood in the courtyard.

No. Susanna stood in the courtyard, blue cardigan tied around her waist. There was no mistaking it. The woman in the painting was Susanna.

Susanna vaguely heard her host, the impostor Susanna, asking her something about her tea, but she gave no reply. Her hands, though still cold, were moist and clammy. Her legs trembled as she rose to her feet. Her legs quaked and threatened to buckle underneath her. The room became impossibly small. She had to get out, she had to escape. Susanna sprung towards the door, gave it a hard shove and ran back to the endless dirt road. The icy air was harsh after the comfort of the cottage, but Susanna ran anyway. She ran through the exhaustion and the pain. Her body was an empty husk, yet she ran on anyway. The peaks of Whiteface, familiar and right, rose into view as she ran and ran. Countless steps later, Susanna found something else she recognized.

Home. Her own house. Her little white stucco two–story with the red brick walkway and red trimmed windows. Her own lamp glowed warmly in the front window. She was home. How did I get here? She wondered. No matter: everything would make sense at home.

Exhaustion and relief were taking over. One step at a time, and Susanna trembled as she approached her familiar front steps. The brass doorknob was warm and pleasant to the touch. She turned the knob and pushed her door open to the familiar clang–clang of the bells that hung on her door. Comfortable smells enveloped her and welcomed her home. She closed the door behind her and took a deep breath, taking in all of the beautiful familiarity.

She was wanted to make sense of the day’s events, but she was completely drained. She wanted nothing more than to climb into her bed with its clean, warm comforter and familiar pillows in their well-worn covers. And sleep. She wanted to sleep for days. Things would make more sense when she had some rest. Fatigue was setting in hard and fast as she made her way to her bedroom. She took comfort in all of her mundane things that she passed on the way: her comfortable red chair, the painting of a Spanish Galleon that hung by the staircase, the cuckoo clock hanging high on the wall, the long hall mirror.

Susanna stumbled backwards as she saw her reflection in the mirror. The face of a stranger looked back at her with hollow, unblinking eyes.

“Who’s there?” A voice echoed from upstairs and Susanna froze in absolute terror. There was someone in her house. Cautious footsteps came down the staircase and Susanna ducked behind the sofa to hide from the intruder.

“Hello?” the voice called again. Susanna’s pulse raced and her heart hammered in her chest. She squeezed herself as close to her overstuffed brown sofa as she could manage, willing herself to hide, to disappear. The footsteps paced close to her, then stopped, and then padded away across the room. After a moment of unbearable silence Susanna crept to the edge of the sofa to get a look at the intruder on the other side. Her head spun. Her pulse throbbed in her ears and her vision narrowed to a slit. Just before losing consciousness she saw herself pull her blue cardigan off of the back of her living room chair, tie it around her waist, and walk out her front door.

The pain in Susanna’s hands stirred her into an unwelcome consciousness.

ABOUT JENNY KNOX

Jenny Knox is a freelance writer who has not yet quit her day job.  She lives in the land of the North American endless winter, sometimes known as ‘Wisconsin’, with her husband, son, six chickens and a parrot.  When she isn’t working or writing she fills her time by running distance races and weightlifting. She tweets at: https://twitter.com/JennyKnox13

MR BRONZE
Phil Voyd

Two slim, blonde women. Both cute.

“Hi,” Ben said, flexing his abs as he jogged past them.

“Nice butt!” said one of them.

“Thanks! Been workin’ my glutes!”

“Keep up the good work, big boy!” They both laughed.

Ben smiled as he jogged on. Everybody noticed him now that he was Mr Bronze.

Halfway through his morning run, he stopped at one of the drinking fountains that dotted the bicycle path next to the canal. A father was helping his little boy get a drink. The boy finished, and his father set him down.

“Look, Daddy,” said the boy, “that man has six stomachs!”

The father smiled an apology at Ben and directed his son away from the fountain. Ben bent to drink. He heard the father as the two walked away. “Those aren’t stomachs. They’re muscles.”

“But how come they’re on the outside, Daddy?”

Ben strained to hear more but they were too far away. He bent to drink. Something under the nearby hedge caught his eye. After he had finished drinking, he went over to the hedge, squatted down and reached under the leaves. He pulled out a photo album with fancy writing on the cover: Memories are the Inhalations of Life. He opened it. The first page had only one photo, a blowup of a painting with neat printing beneath it: Don of the Lover, Donald Gough. The painting was a portrait of a man with thick glasses and a puffy beard covering most of his face. There was something about the painting. . . a special trick. Sort of like those 3D pictures he’d seen that changed from a squiggly wallpaper pattern if you looked at them right.

He brought the album close, until he could only see paint strokes. He moved it out to arm’s length. Back and forth, side to side, upside down. But he couldn’t get the trick. He needed to relax. He closed his eyes and concentrated on flexing each separate muscle group. Calves, hams, quads. His usual routine. Glutes, abs, lats. Pecs, delts, traps. Biceps and triceps. When he was relaxed, he opened his eyes and looked at the painting and—

Got the trick.

There was another picture, a kind of silhouette behind, or inside, the portrait. In the second picture, Donald Gough’s glasses and puffy beard were gone. His hair was made of fire, flowing daggers of flame. He was embracing a woman with short hair, kissing her passionately. No, it wasn’t a woman. Donald Gough was kissing another man.

Ben turned the page, hoping for a chance to figure out another trick painting. The next page had a blowup of a portrait of a pretty young woman: Sahara, Sarah Prescott. This painting also had the trick. He closed his eyes, flexed each muscle group, opened his eyes. He almost dropped the album when he saw what was behind the portrait. Sarah Prescott was made of sand. Barren, glittering eyes, heat and dust for skin, bleached bone hair.

A sharp pain in his knees. He realized he was still squatting down by the hedge. He stood up and massaged his knees. He would skip the rest of his run. The album was too important to leave here. He started for his apartment, going through the rest of the album while he walked. There were no more portraits. He was surprised at how disappointed he felt. He had never looked twice at a painting before.

Photos of scenery filled the rest of the pages. A tree growing through a hole in the roof of an old cabin. A canoe with a broken paddle beside it. A bungalow surrounded by a cedar hedge.

An angry car horn blared.

“Watch where you’re going, Arnold!”

Ben smiled at the car.

He looked back down at the album. He realized that he really wanted to buy one of the paintings. That surprised him too. But he could hang it in the Physique Boutique office and challenge his customers to see the trick. He flipped through the pages. He got to the photo of the house with the cedar hedge. Could that be the painter’s house? It was on a corner, the street name barely visible behind a cedar branch. Melwood Avenue. The house number was easy to read, which was lucky since the hedge was so overgrown.

Tomorrow was his day off. He would return the album first thing in the morning. He gently closed it. Memories are the Inhalations of Life. He liked that.

∞

After a breakfast of orange/carrot/rutabaga juice, four whole wheat pancakes, two bananas, six scrambled egg whites, and his special vitamins, Ben wrapped the album in a plastic bag and put it in his knapsack.

He ran to Melwood Avenue. It was about eleven kilometers from his apartment, but he didn’t mind. Six kilometers had to be made up from yesterday’s run, and he was feeling good today. He had figured out the trick paintings and how to find the painter’s house. Maybe he should have another go at his old Rubik’s Cube.

∞

The cedar hedge around the bungalow was even more out of control than in the photo. The doorbell chimed a song that Ben didn’t recognize but thought was pretty cool. Better than his friends standing on the sidewalk and yelling up at his second–floor apartment, “Hey, dummy, hey, bonehead, you up there?”

A deadbolt clacked, and the door opened until the chain was pulled tight. An old guy leaned his white head around the door.

Ben used his extra–polite work voice. “Good morning, sir. Sorry to disturb you, but I’ve found a photo album that I think might belong to you.”

“Are you selling something, young man?”

The old guy was wearing a brown cardigan, black turtleneck, and huge glasses that made his face look too small. The whites of his eyes were the same color as old newspaper.

“No, sir, I’m not selling anything. I found a photo album by the canal yesterday.” He held up the album. “There’s a photograph of this house in it, so I thought it might be yours.”

“My word!” The chain rattled, and the door was thrown open. The old guy tottered forward to take the album.

“I can’t thank you enough, Mister . . . ?”

“Marlin, but please call me Ben.”

“Thank you so much. I didn’t think I’d ever see this again. But do come in, I’ve forgotten my manners in all the excitement.”

It was a typical old person’s living room, cluttered, and kind of smelly. The old guy straightened his glasses and waved towards a green velour sofa. “Please sit down, Ben.”

The sofa was as hard as the weight benches at Physique Boutique.

The old guy held out a large hand. “Peter Throckmorton. It’s a pleasure to meet such a nice young man.”

The old guy’s hand was like warm, dry steel. Ben wondered how he would score on the Grip–O–Meter.

“I saw all those paintings in your album, Mr Throckmorton, and was – “

“I insist you call me Petey.”

“All right, uh, Petey.” Seemed like a dorky name for an old guy. “I was just wondering if you had any paintings you might want to sell?”

Throckmorton was chuckling. “Not Petey, P.T., as in Peter Throckmorton. And to answer your question – no, I’m sorry, I don’t sell my work. Although I am very flattered at the inquiry.”

“Oh,” said Ben. “That’s too bad.”

Throckmorton sat down on the sofa next to him and placed the album on the coffee table.

“Your paintings are so . . .” But Ben couldn’t bring himself to talk about the trick. His words never came out like his thoughts.

Throckmorton adjusted his huge glasses. “Please continue. An artist is always anxious to hear reactions to his efforts.”

“They’re so . . . great!” Why had he said that? He had sounded like a moron. Great! Just like Tony the Tiger. He stood up. “Anyways, I should get going. It was nice meeting you.”

Throckmorton got up from the sofa, looking worried. “Are you off already? I haven’t even offered you tea yet, or coffee. I believe I also have a can of ginger ale.”

“No, thank you. I really should be going.”

“Then would you like to see the actual paintings, Ben? The ones in the album?”

“Yeah, wow. That’d be grea— amazing.”

Throckmorton smiled and clapped his hands together. “Wonderful. My studio’s this way.” The old guy shuffled through a doorway. He was wearing black–and–red checked slippers. Ben followed him. The slippers had more holes than material. Throckmorton stopped at an open door. “I was loath to make a studio in the basement. The lighting is abysmal. But there wasn’t enough space in any other room.” He sighed comically. “Art commands extortion.” He started down the stairs.

The studio took up almost all of the basement, with whitewashed concrete ceiling, walls, and floor. There were paintings everywhere—hanging on walls, leaning in corners, stacked under the stairs. Throckmorton stopped in front of one that was slightly crooked. “One of my earlier works, when I was first developing my technique.”

The painting was a portrait of a pouchy, faded woman: The Neverdancer, Dorothy Habel. Ben closed his eyes, flexed each muscle group, opened his eyes. He could see what Throckmorton meant. The trick wasn’t quite as good in this painting—the shadow inside the portrait was less real, harder to bring into focus. It looked the same as the overlying portrait, except she was dressed differently, like a ballet dancer. Her short, round body made the sleek material of the black tights bulge and protrude. She would never be a dancer. Ben closed his eyes. He remembered what it was like to have a worthless body.

Something stung his left arm.

“Ouch!” He looked at Throckmorton. “Something stung me.” He looked around the studio. “Is there a bee or something in here?”

“No, not a bee,” said Throckmorton, chuckling. “That was the first frisson of revelation.”

“What?” What did freesong of revelation mean?

Ben couldn’t move his arms or legs. Now he knew what had stung him; he had felt it before, many times. A needle.

Throckmorton said, “I can see you’re straining against the chemical. Believe me when I say your struggles are in vain.”

“What’s going on?” He could only move his mouth and tongue, eyelids, his fingers. “What’s happening to me?”

“You must calm down,” said Throckmorton. “The chemical isn’t lethal.”

A thought slithered through Ben. Throckmorton drugged young men and–

“Why? Why are you doing this? I brought back your album.”

“The album?” Throckmorton waved a hand dismissively. “I’ve scattered dozens of the things throughout the city.” He took off his glasses and flung them into a corner. He did the same with the brown cardigan. “As to why I’m doing this . . .” Throckmorton leaned close. He chuckled. “I just want to get to know you.”

Ben pushed against the poison inside him. It felt like he was at the bottom of the ocean.

“You really must calm down,” said Throckmorton.

Ben pushed and pushed. Throckmorton wasn’t going to trap him in this smelly house. That was for skinny wimp losers. He was Mr Bronze.

“It is essential you relax,” said Throckmorton, patting Ben’s shoulder. “I’ve found that restless models taint my work.”

He was stronger than the poison. He would shove the pervert bastard’s needle down his throat. “Get away from me, Throh . . . Throckmorton.” He could barely open his mouth. His lips were slabs of rubber.

Throckmorton shook his head. “Ah, testosterone. What a wonderful brew.”

“Fuh you.”

“Look at you!” Throckmorton backed away a step. “You’ve actually managed to move your legs. Your musculature looks positively godly.” He raised the needle. “But it’s time to end this. We can’t have you suffering what the medical establishment so eloquently refers to as a cerebral aneurysm.” He chuckled. “I’ve never been adept at still life.”

The needle moved towards his arm.

“Geh awah froh ee!” He knocked the needle away.

Throckmorton’s eyes widened. “Remarkable. All my previous models collapsed shortly after the chemical was administered.” He slipped a scalpel from a pocket of his pants, flicked its blade out. “I am also a sculptor, Ben.”

The tiny, curved blade of the scalpel looked impossibly sharp, almost invisible when the light wasn’t reflecting off the crescent of metal. It would slice through his muscles with ease, as if they were as soft and temporary as pudding. The scalpel swept towards his arm. He screamed and broke through the poison, locking both of his hands around the hand with the scalpel.

“Absolutely incredible!” said Throckmorton. “However”—his other arm swung—“I’ve had enough of this nonsense.” The needle sank deep into Ben’s shoulder, bringing a knot of intense pain. He shoved Throckmorton away. The needle was stuck in his shoulder.

“You have the constitution of a horse,” said Throckmorton. “But I can see even you are succumbing.”

It was true. The poison was crushing him to the floor. He couldn’t stop it.

Throckmorton dropped the scalpel back into a pocket. “A valiant effort, if hopelessly optimistic.” He shook his head. “I can’t think of a more Icarian task than fighting the chemical.”

Ickarrion task?

Ben fell, the needle came out.

What? What did it mean?

Throckmorton kicked off his slippers, picked up Ben’s legs, and dragged him across the floor. “You’re a heavy brute.”

“Leh ee ga.” Ben pushed against the poison but only managed to drool on himself. “Plee leh ee ga.” He pushed and pushed. More and more drool.

“I have a name for the noises you just made.” Throckmorton chuckled. “Dentistspeak. After so many years, I had hoped to be fluent.”

They stopped at the wall opposite the Neverdancer portrait.

Throckmorton noticed the drool. “What have you done to yourself, you fool?” He crouched over Ben, his furious, wrinkled face looking like a hole in the whitewashed ceiling. He wiped at the drool on Ben’s chin with an old handkerchief. It wasn’t drool. The hankie came away from Ben’s face red and shiny as satin.

“This is my final warning,” said Throckmorton, throwing the handkerchief away. “Stop your absurd struggles against the chemical or we shall do a little bit of sculpting right now.” He leaned in close, kissing distance. “Do you understand or are you an utter dolt?”

“Nah a dolh!” Ben wrenched an arm through the poison and grabbed Throckmorton’s neck. He would show the crazy bastard why he had the highest score on the Grip–O–Meter in the history of Physique Boutique.

Throckmorton pulled at Ben’s fingers. Purple splotches appeared on the wrinkled face. One of Throckmorton’s hands fell away. Ben squeezed harder. Throckmorton’s hand came back with the scalpel. A flick of the tiny, curved blade and Ben’s thumbnail was scooped off. He watched it float through the air, pulling its train of blood and skin. There was no sound when it landed, only the roar of agony that echoed off the floor and became his existence. Then there was no sound anywhere as he followed his fingernail down to the floor.

∞

His clothes were gone. The clammy air of the basement coated every inch of exposed skin. His body was spread-eagled against a rough concrete wall, wrists and ankles shackled in what felt like heavy leather belts. The agony was gone, with only a remote throbbing in his thumb to remind him of the possibility of its reality.

“Ah, I see you’ve decided to rejoin us.” Throckmorton’s voice was hoarse.

Ben hoped the crazy bastard’s throat hurt like hell. He opened his eyes.

Throckmorton was naked. He was standing beside an easel, smiling. A small table piled with tubes, cans, and brushes was next to the easel.

White gauze, soaked red, was taped over the top of Ben’s thumb.

“No one,” said Throckmorton, “has defied the chemical before. You’ve done so twice. I salute you.” He touched a finger to his forehead. “Mister Bronze.”

Mr Bronze? Had he been talking while he was unconscious? Raving?

Throckmorton chuckled. “No reason to look so green around the gills, Ben. I’ve given you an analgesic. You shouldn’t feel any discomfort while I finish your portrait.”

Ben pushed against the poison. It felt like he was under all the oceans and seas and lakes in the world. He pushed and pushed. Some of his fingertips shook.

“You truly are magnificent.” Throckmorton picked up the easel and turned it towards him. “Cowering behind your glorious suit of muscles, consumed by self–loathing.”

Ben stared at the painting on the easel.

“What do you think of it so far?” Throckmorton folded his arms and admired the portrait. “The underpainting is only half-finished, but I think it’s going to be my masterpiece. I’m going to call it Ben in Bronze.”

He was hideous in the portrait. His skin was made of pale bronze. His muscles were gone.

“How long have you been taking steroids?” said Throckmorton. “What do you call them?” He chuckled. “Your special vitamins? How rich.”

Ben stared at the painting. The obscene absence of muscles. The starved, ruined body. His knees were the thickest part of his legs. His ribs were angry curved blades stabbing through the bronze skin. His cheeks were bruised craters. He tried to look away, couldn’t.

He pushed against the poison while he stared at the painting, feeling something fill his muscles, something more than strength. He had never felt it before, didn’t know what it was, but knew Throckmorton would have a name for it. A word like ickarrion or freesong.

“Pardon?” said Throckmorton, head cocked as if listening to something. He snatched the scalpel off the table beside the easel and ran to the line of portraits on the other side of the basement.

Ben pushed and pushed. The concrete wall behind the shackle around his right wrist started to give. He felt a drizzle of powder on his forearm, heard a deep, sliding noise in the wall. He stopped pushing. He knew he could rip the shackle out of the wall. But one free arm would be useless. He couldn’t budge the other three shackles. He needed to be able to reach Throckmorton, to bring him close.

Throckmorton stopped in front of the Neverdancer. “Be quiet, Dorothy.” He slashed at the painting’s face, cutting around the painting’s mouth, and then ripped the canvas mouth out of the painting.

Ben knew how to bring Throckmorton close. He pushed, keeping his right arm relaxed, straining against the other three shackles. Warm blood bubbled over his lips. He forced it down his chin, kept pushing until blood trickled over his chest and dripped onto the floor.

“That’s much better,” said Throckmorton as he walked back to the easel, waggling a finger at the rest of the paintings. “Let’s all be on our best behavior, shall we?”

Throckmorton noticed the blood. “You stupid, stubborn idiot!” He raised the scalpel as he strode towards Ben. “I warned you.”

Ben ripped the shackle out of the concrete wall and grabbed Throckmorton’s neck, his eyes opened wide in shock, then confusion, then, after Ben had started to squeeze tighter, fear. The scalpel swarmed over Ben, slashing his hand, arm, chest, cheek. He ignored it, using what was more than strength in his muscles to crush skin and tendons and bone. He stared into the old newspaper eyes and saw the secret picture behind them. A cold, little creature with countless hands and skittering claws and contorted limbs grasping for warmth, needing to suck it dry.

“Ew ah pahehik.”

Throckmorton’s neck broke. The scalpel fell to the floor. Ben let go, and the cold, little creature hit the floor. Ben waited, expecting Throckmorton to jump up and finish painting Ben in Bronze, broken neck resting on one shoulder.

He tried to rip the other three shackles out of the wall but the more than strength was gone.

He looked at his portrait.

He bled.

After a while, the painkiller Throckmorton had given him wore off. The agony from the scalpel cuts took him away from the basement, the portrait.

∞

The agony brought him back, too.

He strained against the other three shackles again, but his muscles were hollow now. Light and empty.

He tried not to look at the portrait.

He bled.

∞

He counted the paintings in the whitewashed basement. There were twenty-nine, including his own. Nine of them had their mouths cut out. He didn’t look at any secret pictures.

He realized his body wasn’t going to die for a long time. It was too strong. He pushed against the other three shackles. Not strong enough.

He was still bleeding, but it had slowed. His body was healing itself. He thought about the name of the process. Coagulation. It reminded him of other processes. Starvation. Ruination.

A long time to die.

He tried not to look at the portrait.

∞

The Neverdancer was the first painting to talk to him. Dorothy Habel, the one from her secret picture, was standing in front of him.

“Can I dance for you?” she said.

∞

Donald Gough talked about everything—music, his favorite novels, old black-and-white movies—except the one thing Don of The Lover wanted to say. I want to touch you.

∞

The pretty young woman from the Sahara, whose name he couldn’t remember, wanted him to run his fingers through her bleached bone hair.

“Geh awah,” he said to the secret pictures. “Plee.”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Sahara, resting a hand of heat and dust on his blood–caked arm.

He closed his eyes. A long time.

∞

The silence brought him back to the basement.

He opened his eyes. The studio was empty. He looked at his portrait, didn’t let himself turn away. He remembered the fancy writing on Throckmorton’s album. Memories are the Inhalations of Life. He inhaled, held the breath as long as he could, until sad years had traveled through his lungs, and he knew who he was. He exhaled.

“You saved the next one,” said his portrait, Ben in Bronze, gazing down at Throckmorton’s corpse.

Ben tried to lift his right arm. He wanted to touch his portrait, but couldn’t lift his arm. It was heavier than agony. He closed his eyes and pushed. Not against the shackles or the poison. He pushed against himself, with his calves, hams, and quads. He pushed and pushed, abs, glutes, and lats. A soft tug in his head. The whitewashed basement became a haze of red.

His portrait smiled, caressed Ben’s cheek with a soft bronze finger. “You saved the next one and all the rest after that.”

He pushed. Not against the shackles or the poison. He pushed, against himself, with his pecs, delts, and traps. Biceps and triceps. Another soft tug and the haze wasn’t red anymore. It was the deepest blue, like all the oceans and seas and lakes together.

“There would have been so many more,” said Ben In Bronze.

Nothing could hold him, not even his own body because he was Ben In Bronze now, too.

“Thank you,” he said.

He pushed harder. He didn’t know what ickarrion or freesong meant but he knew what aneurysm mea—

ABOUT PHIL VOYD

Phil Voyd started writing fiction while living in Osaka, Japan in the mid–1990s (there’s only so much karaoke one person can stand). He has received a couple of Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His werewolf story, ‘Having a Drink’, was recently made into an independent short film. He firmly believes that Do Sheep Dream of Woolly Androids? would be a great title for a SF novel. More info about Phil’s writing can be found at http://www.philvoyd.com

THE SHADOW CAST BY THE WORLD
David Court

I consider myself a patient and tolerant person, but do you know what I really hate about the homeless? The fact that they’re always feeling so bloody sorry for themselves – and that the very last person they’ll blame for the position they’re in is themselves. You want to hear some of them—they’ll blame their ex-wives, the police, cosmic-bastard-rays, absolutely anything—all conveniently forgetting the fact that they’re more than likely an alcoholic with a lengthy police record, a medium sized gambling problem and a short temper.

I speak with some authority on this matter because I’m one of them and have been for the past two years. Although I don’t blame society, fluoride in the water or even Tory Britain – I’m solely responsible for my own fate and I’d be an idiot to argue otherwise, although truth be told, I’m an idiot anyway. I’ve got what they call an addictive personality (“Aye, addicted to being a scumbag” my gargoyle of an ex–wife would bleat) which is where all my problems stem from. I can’t turn down a drink or a bet when there’s still money in my pocket, or there are people around to borrow money from—and over time those people dwindle in number because you’re simply not somebody they like (or trust) enough—to hang around with any more. And then your life crumbles like parchment. You lose your job, then your car, friends and wife. And finally hope.

I said I didn’t blame anybody else, but I never said I wasn’t allowed to feel sorry for myself. I’ve got so little left, you can at least afford me that dubious luxury. Soon I won’t even have that left.

It was the early hours of yesterday morning that I found myself staggering drunkenly out of A&E, having been hurriedly patched up once again. A throbbing from my bandaged temple reminded me that some scumbag had knocked me to the ground for the handful of winnings I’d just collected from the bookies, taking the very last thing I owned in the world other than the clothes I was wearing. Some kind-hearted Samaritan had scooped me up from the gutter and dumped outside the hospital, and here I was, several hours later, clumsily wobbling down the street, high on a heady cocktail of exhaustion, cheap booze and possible concussion.

I needed somewhere to collapse, and even in my confused state knew that in these dawn hours all the usual haunts would be occupied. I staggered down random alleyways and paths, my course dictated by seemingly nothing other than whichever direction I drunkenly slumped towards with every crossroad or junction. And, by chance and the magical powers of my beer compass, I found myself leaning against the wall of a long abandoned factory.

A rusted sign bearing a 20 year old telephone area code warned me of the security firm guarding the premises, so naturally I ignored it. A convenient gap in the rusted metal railings allowed me access to the premises and it took only minor effort to prise loose a length of warped and damp plywood, allowing me into one of the buildings. With only the merest hint of the rising sun shining through my makeshift entrance, I staggered towards a far darkened corner and with my last vestige of conscious effort hoped that fate would be on my side to protect me from injury—and I pitched myself forwards.

My last thought then was one of relief. My fall was met by the corner of the room and, as I slid slowly down it towards the floor, consciousness faded.

I recall stirring at certain intervals, conscious of the concrete floor on my cheek, the sound of my laboured breathing and the scent of decay and rust in the air. And another sound—unusual but not enough to cause alarm to sufficiently rouse me from my semi-comatose state—the sound of rubber being strained, of something membranous—something animate—moving and fluid in the pitch darkness.

Progressively the fog in my head dissipated and I began to wake from my slumber. I had only vague recollections of staggering here, the briefest of remembrances about where I was and the happenings of the evening before. I slid upright, the concrete wall against my back for support. The room was in absolute and complete darkness. I could vaguely hear the sound of daily activity outside but not a dot of sunlight could be seen. I was pretty sure I hadn’t gone blind, so I’d been either moved in my sleep or even the plywood I’d removed to gain entrance must have been replaced.

Unsteadily, I stood up and listened carefully. The sound of birdsong outside and the distant sound of rush–hour traffic and—straining to concentrate—that anomalous sound again that I’d heard through my slumber. It sounded as though somebody was faintly rubbing their finger across the surface of a balloon—that, and a barely audible sound of something bubbling.

I needed to find a way out of here. I turned to the wall and placed both my hands against it and began slowly walking towards my left. My fragmented memories vaguely recalled how I’d entered the room in the first place. Within moments I found my path blocked by something waist height—probably a workbench of some kind—I’d knocked something metallic from it which clattered noisily on the concrete floor. I gingerly placed my fingers on the benches edge and slowly followed it around until I was back at the wall. I continued with my delicately slow journey for a few minutes until I recoiled in surprise from the wall. What had been cold concrete had suddenly become crusted with something moist, something organic. I sniffed my fingertips—the scent was not unlike moss, but with a bitter coppery taint.

I steadied myself, cursing myself for being so skittish. This was an old damp and abandoned building—it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of reason that there would be mould or moss on the walls. I took a deep breath and replaced my hands on the wall, and continued onwards. The walls were damp but not overly so, the surface felt a little like peach fuzz beneath my fingertips. Even through my boots I could feel that the floor had adopted a similar texture. And then I found myself treading on something that popped noisily under my feet.

Something liquid sprayed out, and the air was filled with the hideous aroma of something bilious. I found myself gagging on the scent and I found myself retching and trying desperately to hold back vomit. My hands moved from the wall to clutch my stomach, which was now churning violently. The sensation passed after a few minutes and I frantically breathed in deep mouthfuls of air despite the nauseating fragrance still present.

Hands were on my shoulders and I found myself being dragged backwards, a grubby oily hood pushed over my head. I hadn’t even had time to acknowledge what was happening before my hands were tied behind my back and I was pushed to the floor. I kicked out a foot and connected with something that cried out in pain, and tried to shuffle backwards. Something heavy struck my face and I fell back, and then my legs were tied.

Barely able to struggle now, I found myself being dragged by my ankles across the room. Despite the pitch darkness, my captor navigated with ease. I could feel myself moving past objects—my prone body clipping the odd thing briefly—and then the surface I was being dragged across changed from concrete to rough carpet and I was thrown against a wall.

I heard the sound of a heavy metal door closing, a light switch being flicked on—and then dull brown light permeated through my hood. At least I wasn’t blind, I remember thinking. The very tiniest of the most infinitely minuscule of small mercies, all things considered.

I sensed somebody approaching and the hood was unceremoniously ripped from my head. I blinked, my eyes unaccustomed to the light. A silhouette stood above me, details becoming clearer as the uncomfortably silent seconds passed. It was a tall and thin man, clad in a featureless navy blue boiler suit. His hair was short, white and neat, his face angled and gaunt, eyes hidden behind a blindfold which he slowly and carefully unwrapped from his head.

The blindfold now fully removed and carefully placed into a pocket, he crouched in front of me. His eyes were small, the pupils a piercing grey.

I craned my neck and looked beyond him at the room. We were in a long abandoned windowless office, bereft of any furnishings save a torn Playboy 1993 calendar (July, Brunette, Fake breasts) hanging from a cracked eggshell-blue wall. The room had two solid doors, one of which led back into the room I’d just been unceremoniously dragged out of. Both doors looked relatively new in comparison to their surroundings.

I watched in silence as he got back to his feet and removed a large padlock from his pocket, walked over to the factory door and fastened it securely. He switched off the light in the room we were in and I heard him push on the door a few times to check the effectiveness of the padlock. A murmured sigh, and then the lights were switched back on.

I hate uncomfortable silences. I tend to have the habit of breaking them by blurting out the most inappropriate things, but this was an odd position to be in. What’s the acceptable etiquette for knowing what to say when one has been bound and dragged around a room? I could bear the silence no longer.

“Who the FUCK are you?” I screamed, struggling to free myself from my tight bonds.

“I’m the caretaker”, he replied in a dull monotone that betrayed not a speck of emotion, “and you’re a trespasser.”

“I’m sorry I broke in, but . . . but I needed somewhere to sleep,” I muttered. “And I thought this place was abandoned. Call the police, if you have to, and I’ll get out of your hair. I was attacked last night and I wasn’t thinking straight . . . I could—”

His hand leapt to my collar and in a single effortless move. I was hauled up and pushed against the wall. He quickly leaned in, his face next to mine, angry mouth flecked with spittle, a hateful expression on his face.

“Did you see them?” he roared. “When you broke in . . . DID YOU SEE THEM?”

“I didn’t see anything. It was dark when I broke—when I came—in. I was pretty much dead to the world so I . . . anyway, did I see what?”

The caretaker relaxed his grip and I slumped back against the wall. He turned his back to me, straightened himself, and stared at the padlocked door.

“Compared to us, they’re quite new here”, he said, his voice now perfectly calm. “But they thrive in the dark places. They grow there, but they’re quite vulnerable until—until they’re ready. If you even see them, they’ll die. They only continue to exist through our ignorance. They arrive here in the unseen places—the cracks between the worlds—and gain their sustenance by existing in the places that we do not know, the places where we do not look.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, now convinced that the caretaker was quite insane. “What are new here? What’s growing?”

“Given time, they emerge,” he continued, apparently oblivious to the fact that I had even spoken. His expression was that of a man reciting well–rehearsed lines, his forehead furrowed in concentration. “They’re quite beautiful, it’s been written. And they will harvest us all—and Man will wish that he had paid closer attention to the world around him. To the wasted unseen places. And these beautiful specimens are so very nearly ready.”

There was silence for a few moments. He stood there, his back to me, and I sat there—confused and afraid. An uncomfortable silence again, but one which I felt I was incapable of breaking. I simply didn’t know what to say. And then, at once, he was on me. A glimpse of a raised fist above me and then darkness again. Unconsciousness and I seemed to have become quite familiar friends in the past few hours.

I awake, still in darkness, a cold unforgiving concrete floor beneath me, the familiar violent bilious scent filling my lungs. My hands and feet are now untied and my fingertips drag across something damp and warm. It feels like a sheet of thin rubber, the surface contoured with thin veins. I drop it, and then hear the sound: shallow breathing from somewhere in front of me, and then from behind. And to my left, and to my right. The sound of claws being scraped across metal workbenches.

And just before they are upon me, I think of the abandoned places in the world. The factories, the flats, the railway buildings, the basements and the sewers. The ignored places where man does not look.

The places where man will soon not dare to look.

ABOUT DAVID COURT

David Court was born and resides in Coventry, UK with his patient wife and his three less patient cats. A few years back David achieved minor internet notoriety under the pseudonym FoldsFive for his animated GIFs telling the entirety of the Star Wars Trilogy, a fact that he’s still jolly well proud of and insists on telling anyone at any opportunity. When not reading, blogging angrily on http://www.foldsfive.co.uk, drinking real ale, writing software for a living or practicing his poorly developed telekinetic skills, he is working on his debut novel ‘Version Control’ which he plans to release in 2014.

MR DeMUNN
Kristal Stittle

He believed his son was an angel.

When Dominic was born, William DeMunn couldn’t have been happier. His baby boy was beautiful, and he gave meaning to William’s life. He made all the struggles and long hours worth it.

But that’s not the kind of angel William was thinking about.

On a perfect July day, while William was at work, Dominic’s basketball had rolled into the street. His babysitter hadn’t been paying enough attention, and didn’t see Dominic running down the driveway until it was too late. So many lives were destroyed that day when Mrs Lincoln, a doddering but kind old lady from up the street, couldn’t stop her car in time when she saw Dominic appear from around the hedge.

“You’re not dealing with your son’s death,” William’s psychiatrist, Dr Harris, told him.

“He’s an angel.” William couldn’t understand why nobody else saw this. Or why they couldn’t just leave him alone about it.

“You understand that means he’s no longer with us?”

“Angels are always with us.”

Dr Harris sighed and scribbled something on his notepad. This was a conversation they had had many times before and he knew exactly how it would end. He looked at the ticking clock on the wall. William turned his head to look as well. Seems their session was over.

William rose from his seat to leave.

“Mr DeMunn?” Dr Harris rose as well.

“Yes?”

“I would like to start seeing you two times a week.”

“I can’t afford that.”

“I know you can. And I really think it would help.”

“I can’t afford it.”

Dr Harris sighed again. He seemed genuinely concerned, as though he really wanted to help William, but he didn’t understand that William didn’t need any help. He had everything under control. He knew what he was doing.

“I’ll see you next week then.” The good doctor held out his hand and William shook it.

Back at home, William’s wife was sitting at the kitchen table. It was unusual to see her out of bed these days. What was usual, however, was that she was crying. William walked past her and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Although he wasn’t normally a drinker, he found he always needed a beer after seeing Dr Harris.

“How’d it go today?” She didn’t even stop crying to talk to him. Her voice hitched and broke. Catherine, the regional beauty queen as a teenager, was ugly when she cried. The normally vivid, crystal blue eyes were bloodshot. The pale, smooth skin was an irritated red. Snot ran from her nose, which she either wiped on a well–worn tissue in her hand or sucked back up with a disgusting snork.

“Same as all the other days.” William stood facing the fridge as he cracked open his beer, not wanting to turn and look at his wife.

“Dr Harris called after you left. He said he wants to see you twice a week. Why did you tell him we can’t afford it?”

“‘Cause we can’t.”

“You have—”

“We can’t,” William cut her off. He turned and headed for the basement.

“You have to deal with this!” Catherine shrieked after him. “You can’t just keep hiding!”

He shut the door at the top of the stairs, cutting off any further words. She held the same opinion as the esteemed Dr Harris. A lot of people did; practically the whole town did. What did everyone expect William to do? What did they want from him? Was he supposed to fall apart like his wife? To cry, non–stop? Maybe he was supposed to become a recluse like old Mrs Lincoln, or put on suicide watch like Bethany, the babysitter?

Dominic was with him.

And William was going to see him again.

He flipped on the lights as he walked down the steps. The basement was his sanctuary from the town folk. Whenever he went out—to buy groceries, get a cavity filled, top up the car with gas—people looked at him. The pity he saw in their eyes repulsed William.

The basement had been finished by William himself. On one side were leather couches, a massive flat screen TV, and a solid oak coffee table. Many sports games and action movies had been watched there, both alone and with his buddies. A wall, with a door and windows, separated the other side of the basement. That was William’s workshop. He had closed it off to keep sawdust from covering the rest of the basement, but had put windows in the wall so he could watch TV as well. He went into the workspace that smelled pleasantly of wood shavings and tools. Many hours had been spent in that room, making custom furniture. A stool in the corner sat empty, where Dominic used to sit and watch his father. William was certain that it wasn’t really empty, that Dominic was still watching.

William was quite the carpenter. He had a day job as a construction worker, which paid well, but he made a hefty sum of money building furniture for over half the township. He understood why both Dr Harris and Catherine thought he could afford more sessions, but they weren’t aware of his project.

He walked up to the tool rack at the very back of the workshop. There, William picked up a nail from a jar full of them and inserted it into one of the many holes on the pegboard. He pressed and was rewarded with a click. A section of the wall popped out. William grabbed the edge and pulled, opening the secret door. Catherine was the only other person who knew about the secret room. It was a large, fireproof safe where they kept emergency cash and all their valuables. William’s father had been a collector of very rare and very old things, most of them books, which William had inherited on his passing. Once, the room had been stuffed full of his father’s objects; thousand dollar items used to sit on every shelf. Now, most of it was gone. William had traded a lot of it away, unbeknownst to Catherine. He had bartered many of his father’s things for items that were even rarer, that held even more value. The DeMunn bank account had taken some severe blows in William’s quest to acquire these items.

A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling, activated by the opening of the hidden door. William flipped a switch so that the light would stay on once he closed the vault behind him. Although Catherine hadn’t attempted to go downstairs since the accident, William didn’t want her just walking in on him. She wouldn’t understand. At first, he thought he might be able to let her in on his discovery, but then found out she took the same stance as everybody else.

No matter, he could do this on his own.

William picked up the package he had left on a shelf. It had arrived in the mail that morning, but he hadn’t had time to open it due to the appointment with the psychiatrist. Being very gentle, William took off the brown paper, which was covered in German stamps and “Fragile” warnings. He then sliced open the box and picked out the packing peanuts, one by one. At last, the delicate glass figurine was uncovered. Putting on a soft pair of gloves, William lifted the item out of the box. The light from the bare bulb shone through it, casting rainbow hues on the shelves and walls. The hollow glass figure was in the shape of a crucified man, but instead of a cross, his arms were pinned to a large pair of wings. It was beautiful. No one was able to tell William who had made it, just that it was very old. That didn’t matter to William, so long as he was able to get his hands on it, he didn’t care.

Barely daring to breathe, William carried the figurine over to his altar. Everything else he had bought and bartered for was already set up there. The large slab of marble from Rome, the death shroud of a saint from Spain, the wooden bowl made from an ant tree from the Amazon, the candles, rocks, and jewels from other places around the world. There were even a few very old bones in a pile with dried plants. The figurine was placed among other figures like it, depicting men in different poses with different parts of animals nailed to them. Rarely had they all been brought together. Several of them William could only borrow for a defined period of time, and would soon have to return them to the museums. That was okay, because his last two packages were expected to arrive tomorrow, and then he wouldn’t need any of this stuff anymore.

Once the figurine was placed, William sat on the cold floor. He lifted the most important item, one of his father’s books, off a low shelf. It was the book that had taught him how he could speak to his son again. Even before Dominic had passed into the other realm, William had been working with specialists on weekends to get it translated; it was written in several different languages. If the sacred items hadn’t wiped out his funds, then greasing the palms of the specialists to work faster had. At least he had time to do all of this, what with his employer refusing to let him come in. That was the one advantage to everyone thinking he wasn’t dealing with Dominic’s death right: all the free time.

It was hours before William went upstairs again. His wife was no longer in the kitchen. When he checked the second floor, the door to their bedroom was closed. William pressed an ear to the door and heard no sounds come from inside. She had probably cried herself to sleep again.

William cooked his own dinner that night, not bothering to wake Catherine. He ate alone, shovelling the food in autonomously. In his head, he constantly went over the words and their pronunciation. He needed to get them right.

So far, William had been disappointed. When he said the words aloud, he didn’t feel anything. He didn’t feel a surge of power, a sense of mystery; no lightning struck, and nothing trembled. Perhaps it would be different when he said all the words together, alongside the objects. The objects were also a bit of a disappointment. Although rare, everything outside of the figurines was rather lacklustre.

William didn’t notice Catherine walk into the kitchen. She sat down across from him, red–faced but silent for once. She watched as William ate, staring down at his food, his mind far away.

“I’m going to my sister’s,” she finally spoke.

William looked up, scraping the last of his peas onto his fork.

“I’m going to my sister’s,” she repeated as if William hadn’t heard her the first time.

“Okay.” William looked back down at his food again, directing the forkful to his mouth.

“I’m going tomorrow. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

William didn’t respond.

Catherine shot up with a huff, knocking her chair to the floor. She stormed out of the room, furious, tears running down their familiar tracks on her face.

William slept on the couch that night. He didn’t even try to get into bed with Catherine. He hadn’t slept next to her in some time, as he was usually too busy studying or tracking down things to be able to sleep. She could be angry all she wanted. She didn’t understand, but when William was done, she would. He would show her, and they could be happy again.

Dr Harris had said that William was closing himself off from people, that he needed to open up, let his feelings out. William had two words for the concept: fuck, and that. He had tried to be open with them, they just hadn’t listened. They weren’t believers.

Due to his excitement, and the fact that his body had adjusted to getting very little sleep, William slept only in fits. He dreamed of Dominic’s smiling face, and while awake, he looked at the family photo hanging across the room, above the fireplace. He hated the family photo. Dominic was dressed up in a little suit and his hair was all smoothed and flattened. It wasn’t like him. The photo had more in common with the boy’s corpse than with the living, breathing child it was supposed to represent.

He was awake when Catherine came back downstairs. The sun was rising, casting a soft light through the semi-transparent curtains that covered the front window. She was dressed, although a lot more rumpled than she normally allowed. At least she had finally put on something other than pyjamas. Behind her, was her wheeled suitcase, bulging with who-knows-what.

“I’m off,” she said.

William sat up and looked out the window, through the same semi-transparent curtains that let in the light. Catherine’s sister’s car was idling at the curb. She must have gotten up very early to be here at this time.

“I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Okay.”

“If I’m not back by next week, remember to go to your appointment with Dr Harris.”

“Yup.”

“I’ll call every day.”

“Okay.”

“Please consider going to more sessions with Dr Harris.”

William didn’t respond to that one.

Managing to hold herself together, Catherine opened the door and stepped out into the sunshine. William watched her walk to the car. Her sister got out to take her bag and give her a hug. It was less than a month since William had last seen the woman at Dominic’s funeral. She had already dyed her hair again: red this time. The women got into the car together and drove off. William lay back down on the couch, planning to catch a few more winks.

The next time William awoke, it was from the doorbell ringing. He sprang to his feet, immediately alert. William glanced out the window and spotted the FedEx truck before rushing to the door. He ripped it open, startling the deliveryman with his frantic energy.

“I have two packages here for a Mr DeMunn?” the deliveryman told him, taking in his appearance. William had slept in his clothes and no doubt looked like a wreck, or at least very dishevelled.

“That’s me.” William took the electronic board, swiped his credit card, and signed his name. He much preferred getting his packages from the FedEx people than through traditional mail. His regular postman would always start conversations with him, which had gotten pathetic since the DeMunns’ loss. Also, everyone was no doubt curious about the packages. The same person didn’t always deliver the FedEx packages, and they came from a different township, so no one could harass the deliverymen for information. No one but William could say for sure just how many deliveries he had received lately, and that wasn’t including the few items he had personally picked up from the airport.

“Thanks,” the deliveryman said, taking his board back. He picked up two boxes off the ground and handed them to William through the door.

William took the boxes and shut the door before the deliveryman had completely turned away. Finally, he had everything he needed.

As he hurried toward the stairs, the telephone started ringing. William paused for a moment, his natural reflexes wanting to walk to the nearest phone and pick it up. Then he remembered that it was probably just Catherine, calling to say she had made it to her sister’s. He ignored the phone and made for the stairs once more.

Down in the basement, in his secret room, William tore into the boxes. The first contained natural chunks of glass: glass that had been created when lightning struck sand. These he laid around the figures. The second box contained the easiest and cheapest items, but they were the oddest in William’s opinion: the box was full of dried–out insect carcasses. The book hadn’t said what kinds of insects were needed, so William had just gotten an assortment. He probably could have saved some money by finding and killing the insects himself, but that would have taken too long. The insect bodies went into the bowl, and the plants and bones were carefully arranged on top of them.

William was ready.

He didn’t know what to expect when the ceremony was completed, so William first went around the room and tidied up. He made sure what remaining treasures he had were secure, and then stood before the door, trying to decide if it should be left open or closed. In the end, he decided to leave the heavy door open. If the power went out, he’d need the natural light peeking through the basement windows to see by.

William stood before his altar, the bowl in front of him, and the book propped up on the wall at the back. He began to read the words.

Still, he felt no power in them. They were just words. Words that he wasn’t even sure the exact meaning of. They were just jumbled sounds pouring out of his mouth. At the right times, William lit the candles, drew the chalk symbols, dripped the wax, and finally pressed his hand into the bowl of plants, bones, and dead bugs. The final syllable was spoken.

Nothing happened.

Again, no lightning, no earthquakes. The air didn’t thicken or drop in temperature. The bare bulb didn’t even flicker.

William sighed and removed his hand from the bowl, flicking the dead bugs off of it. At least the bugs were dried–out and he didn’t get any of their little guts on him. Maybe he should try again, with fresh bugs. And maybe he’d cut his fingers with a knife first. This seemed like the kind of thing you would need blood for. Disappointed, William turned around to leave the room.

“Hello.” A man stood in the doorway.

William startled. He hadn’t heard the man come in. The man’s eyes roved around the room, taking in what few items were on the shelves. He was a very average–looking man, unfamiliar to William.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” William asked.

“You called me here.” The man leaned sideways and pointed at the altar behind William. “Didn’t you?”

William immediately straightened up. He hadn’t expected him to look like this: to be so plain.

“Well, aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” he asked.

“William. William DeMunn.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr DeMunn.” The man stepped forward and held out his hand.

William stepped back, bumping into the altar. He was frightened. Apparently, way down deep, he hadn’t expected this to actually work. At least not like this. The confrontation chilled him.

“Step back!” William told him. “Satan, I order you to step back!”

The man sighed and dropped his hand. He stepped closer.

“You’re supposed to do as I say when I use your name!” The book had told William that he would be in control.

“That is true. But Satan isn’t my name.” He stepped forward again.

William stepped sideways, toward the corner, the only place he could go. The man took one more step and stood before the altar, looking it over.

“Wow, you really went all out, didn’t you?” He bent over and inspected the items. “You really needed only a figure or two. And the candles! You actually got the proper ones, the old ones. Your household candles would have worked as well, although I do appreciate the work.”

“Lucifer.” William remembered the name the book used.

“That’s me.” He straightened up and smiled benignly at William.

“Lucifer, I order you to step back to the doorway.”

With the smile still sitting on his lips, Lucifer stepped backward until he was in the doorway again. He noticed a golden cross on a shelf nearby and picked it up. There was no burning, no melting, no reaction of any kind. He just seemed to admire the craftsmanship of the cross, and then returned it to the shelf.

“I expected you to be different,” William told him.

Lucifer looked down at himself. “Yes, most do. I find this form results in a lot less hysterical screaming. I can choose a different form if you wish. There’s the old horns and hooves bit that people expect, or I can form wings, which is closer to my true form.”

“No. No, this is good.”

“So, what is it you called me for? I’ve never known anyone to call me away from my duties just to order me about the house. You want something.”

“I want the ability to see angels,” William told him. “To talk with them, touch them.”

“You can already do that.”

William frowned, confused. He had never seen an angel. He hadn’t seen Dominic since his death.

“You think they’re on some higher plane of existence, don’t you? That they’re all around us, just invisible, like ghosts.”

William nodded. He had gotten it bang on.

“Well you’re certainly not the first to think this. Angels are flesh and blood, however. They aren’t invisible, they just aren’t here.”

“Where are they?”

Lucifer paused for a moment, thinking over his words. “Someplace else.”

“Can you bring them here?”

“Sure, I can open the door. It’s not advisable, though.”

“Open the door.”

“You know, I have to tell you that they’re behind it for a reason.”

“Lucifer, I command you to open the door, and let the angels into this world.”

Lucifer sighed. “This is one of those things that you can’t just command me to do. There has to be a trade–off.”

“Your freedom.”

“That’s a given. For angels, I need something more.”

“Like what?”

“What do you have to offer?”

William thought. What could one possibly offer to the devil? He wasn’t going to give up his soul; that would defeat the purpose of seeing his son.

“I got it.” William was suddenly struck with an idea. “I have all the figurines. You said you need at least one or two to summon you, right? What if I gave you all of them? Then no one could summon or control you again.”

Lucifer smiled. He had a surprisingly pleasant smile, without malice. “Wonderful. You have yourself a deal. If you’re sure that the angels are what you want?”

“I’m sure.” William was going to see his son.

“Very well. Give me the figurines.”

William gently picked up each one and placed it in one of the boxes nearby. He carried the box over to Lucifer and held it out to him. Lucifer took the box and counted the figurines. They were all there. Surprising William, he furiously threw the box onto the ground. The delicate glass was instantly shattered. Just to be sure, Lucifer started stomping on the cardboard box, turning the glass inside to dust. His face was lined with rage as he did it.

Once everything was crushed, Lucifer’s expression turned benign again and he looked up at William, who was stunned into silence by the display.

“So, do you have a particular spot you want the door to be opened?” Lucifer asked, calm as could be.

William swallowed. “I want to see it open.”

“Shall we go outside then?” Lucifer turned and walked out into the workroom.

Trembling with fright and anticipation, William followed after him.

The pair left the house and walked out into the quiet street. It was a Wednesday afternoon, most people were at work. The children, off from school for the summer, were either playing down by the river or else hiding within their air-conditioned homes from the heat of the sun. Lucifer walked to the centre of the street, looking up and down the road. There were no moving cars in sight. The only living soul to be seen was a teenager, sitting several lawns away. A bike lay on the ground next to her, and she drank from a water bottle, probably taking a rest from a hard ride.

Lucifer turned to William, who stood next to him. William hadn’t even bothered to put on shoes or sandals, and stood in his bare feet.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Mr DeMunn? Angels aren’t what you think they are.”

“Do it!” Being so close to his son was making William impatient and agitated by the repetitious question.

“Very well.” Lucifer knelt on the ground, facing perfectly west. This made him slightly offset from the street.

Placing his hands on the ground before him, Lucifer started to speak. The words made even less sense to William than the ones he had spoken to call the fallen angel. In fact, he couldn’t even be sure he was hearing the words; it was like he was feeling the words, or smelling them. They infected all his senses leaving William disoriented.

The ground before Lucifer suddenly split. The pavement ripped open with an awful tearing sound. The crack speared out, heading west. When it reached the curb, it continued to split its way up through a lawn. Then it reached a house. William watched as the corner of a neighbour’s home was torn off and separated from the rest of the building.

The teenager up the street rocketed to her feet. She could see what was happening, could hear it. This was real, this was really happening. The teenaged girl stood as shocked as William.

The fissure sliced through the ground for about two blocks in length before stopping. Then it deepened. William could hear sewer pipes rip in half, as rocks and bits of asphalt tumbled down the sides. A couch from the house was in two pieces and as one side overbalanced and fell, it completely disappeared from sight. The crevasse seemed to be of infinite depth.

Everything went still. No birds sang, no bugs chirped. Lucifer rose to his feet, the expression on his face unreadable. The girl finally reacted, pulling out her cell phone, calling the police.

William stepped toward the gaping hole. He looked into it, but couldn’t see very far before it was too black.

Lucifer placed a hand on his shoulder and gently pulled him back from the edge. A bright light began to fill the gap, starting at the bottom and working its way up.

“Remember,” Lucifer said to him. “You asked for this. You’re the one who opened the door. I did my duty and tried to warn you.”

Before William could say anything, a . . . being rose up out of the light. It was hard to look at, both for its brightness and its shimmering effect. It alighted on the ground in front of Lucifer and William. William sensed malice being directed toward him. The being shifted and became the form of a massive golden man with six silver wings.

“Lucifer,” it spoke with the same senses–assaulting voice that Lucifer had used to rip open the earth.

“Michael,” Lucifer spoke normally for William’s benefit. “Welcome back.”

The giant golden man, Michael, leaned down over William. “You have sinned.”

“He opened the door,” Lucifer told him. “Well, made me open the door.”

“Then he shall be the last.”

Michael touched William’s head. It was both hot and cold, and made him feel sick. Michael then turned away from him, toward the teenaged girl. She stood with her mouth agape, her cell phone on the ground where it had slid out from between her fingers. Before William could blink, Michael was standing in front of her.

“You have sinned.” Even at a distance his voice was clear as a bell. He drew a fiery sword from nothing, and before the girl could scream, plunged it down through her shoulder and into her torso.

Michael was then gone, leaving the girl’s dead body to drop to the ground. William turned back to the hole. More beings were rising up and out of it. Some took on small forms while others became giants. They were human, or winged, or monsters, or shapes that William didn’t have names for. They were golden, silver, obsidian, jade, or so normal–looking as to be forgotten the moment they were seen. Some disappeared, like Michael had, while others ran, flew, or even just walked. The beings, the angels, moved in all directions, entering or passing through houses. Many of them looked at William and Lucifer before moving on.

William turned to Lucifer. “My son, where is my son?”

“What?”

“Dominic!” William turned, shouting into the glowing fissure, his eyes immediately tearing up from the light. “Dominic! Daddy’s here!”

“But he is not.”

William wheeled on Lucifer. “What?”

“Your son, he is not here.”

“He has to be! He’s an angel, he has to be here!”

“No, he is not. Your son is not an angel. He is a corpse, rotting in whatever grave you put him in.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“I want my son!”

“Then you should have asked for your son!” Lucifer’s face suddenly twisted with rage. “You asked for angels, not your son! The fault is your own!”

William looked all around him, distraught. He could hear screams coming from other streets, from the insides of houses. He could feel voices talking about sin.

“What is happening?”

“The angels. They are not the benevolent creatures you took them for,” Lucifer explained. “They are warriors. Now, they will destroy all who have sinned, which I have to say, is a lot of you.”

“Why?”

“Because that is what they do. Why do you think they were locked away? You humans were too full of sin, you couldn’t survive in the same place as the angels. I was left behind to watch over the door, which you opened. And I have to say I’m glad.”

“Glad?” William was having a hard time comprehending. His mind was crumbling.

“I’m an angel too. I’ve been commanded not to kill, but it’s still in my nature to want to. You people always thought I was the guardian of a place called hell and that the angels were in a place called heaven. You never realized the places were the same, that guarding one was guarding the other.”

William fell to his knees. “Can I stop it?”

“Stop it? You brought on your people’s apocalypse, it can’t be stopped. I would have been able to, but you let me destroy the figurines. Good luck finding more of those.” Lucifer was smiling again, only this time there was something dark in it, something insane. Old, twisted, and incredibly insane.

“Everyone is going to die,” William whispered, finally understanding.

“And it’s all your fault,” Lucifer rubbed it in. “And you heard Michael, you’ll be the last. You’ve been touched by him. The other angels won’t dare harm you now. You won’t even be able to harm yourself. You’ll live until Michael decides it’s time to kill you.”

“How long will that be?”

“Oh, it could take centuries. Depends on how many humans alive right now haven’t sinned, and out of those, how many can continue to live and populate the earth without sinning. Whatever happens, you’ll be the last human left alive.”

William’s mind broke. It began to retreat into itself. It tried to go to a place where he could be with his son.

“Oh no you don’t.” Lucifer placed his hand on William’s shoulder.

William was shocked back into the real world, the dying world.

“I may not be able to partake in the killing, but I can certainly make sure you watch.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why not? Maybe I didn’t like that Satan remark.”

William watched as more and more angels poured forth from the crevasse. There were so many.

“I’m going to stay with you, Mr DeMunn. I’m going to stay by your side and keep your eyes open. I’m going to remind you, over and over again, how I couldn’t open the door without your say so; I needed a human’s permission to do it. You’re going to know what it’s like to walk this earth, alone, outcast, wanting to die but being unable to. You’re going to become the new me.”

William could do nothing but watch.

ABOUT KRISTAL STITTLE

Early in 2013, Kristal had her first novel, ‘Survival Instinct’, published by Severed Press, and its sequel, ‘Adaptive Instinct’, was released recently. She’s also had short stories published in a handful of other anthologies, the most recent being Another 100 Horrors, put out by Cruentus Libri Press.

RITUAL OF REBIRTH
T M McLean

Three days had passed since Carl first found out about the strange activities at Foxy’s Pond. According to Tommy, Carl’s best friend, a group of older kids had taken to performing peculiar rituals that involved dunking each other under the smelly water. Tommy told him that when they re-emerged, they had special powers. Magic Powers.

Carl didn’t believe him at first, but Tommy swore that it was true. His own brother, he said, was one of the older kids. Tommy explained that they had found a book of magic spells, written in a peculiar language, and that’s what they used to perform their ceremonies.

“They’re probably just getting drunk down there,” Carl had pointed out. “It’s not magic, it’s alcohol.”

“I’m telling you, man, I’ve seen Charlie drunk plenty of times. When he comes back from Foxy’s Pond he’s different. It’s like he can read my thoughts.”

“Anyone can read your thoughts; all you think about is food.”

Tommy was a fat kid and he didn’t argue. “This is different, you’ll see. When we camp out in my garden at the weekend we can sneak down and have a look.”

Carl was dubious but he was excited too. He liked nothing more than going on expeditions in the middle of the night with Tommy. Their parents assumed that they just told each other ghost stories before going to sleep in the tent. They had no idea that Tommy set an alarm to wake them up just after midnight so they could wander the streets, looking for anything that might be interesting. Sometimes the two boys would stay awake all night, so that they could steal the bottles of fresh orange juice and chocolate milk left on the doorsteps of the houses in the neighbourhood. Not that night. That night they’d look for magic.

The night air was chilly, despite it being the middle of August. Carl shivered as he crawled out of the tent. All the lights in Tommy’s house were off. Carl knew that Tommy’s parents would be fast asleep, they never stayed up late. Not even at the weekend. “It’s freezing, Tommy,” he said. “Let’s just get back into our sleeping bags. We can set the alarm for five o’clock and grab some juice from Mrs Henderson’s.”

“You’re joking, right?” Tommy was halfway out of the tent and clearly wasn’t keen on that plan.

“No, I’m not joking. I don’t even have a jacket.”

Tommy’s face lit up and he crawled backwards into the tent. A moment later he was back, a huge grin spread across his face. “Here, I brought a spare.”

Carl took one of the jackets from Tommy and slipped it over his shoulders. It was huge, almost hanging down to his knees. Tommy pointed at him with his left hand; his right was planted to his mouth while he let out an exaggerated laugh.

“What you laughing for?” Carl snapped. “I’m normal size; it’s your jacket that’s stupidly massive.”

“Ssh, you’ll wake my dad!”

“Oh, right. So if I talk I’ll wake people, but your stupid howling is okay?”

Tommy shrugged. “Come on, let’s get a move on.”

The boys left Tommy’s garden by climbing over the wall. Carl had to help Tommy get over it, but despite the extra effort, it was still a better route than going through the rusty gate. It was in desperate need of a good oiling, and its awful screech could have woken the entire street.

Foxy’s Pond wasn’t too far away. All they had to do was walk along the old railway lines and they’d be there in less than twenty minutes. There was no chance of encountering a train on the way; the lines were almost completely out of use. A few times a year the local railway museum charged people to ride along the tracks on an old steam engine, but never in the middle of the night.

“Why do they call it Foxy’s Pond?” Tommy asked.

“No idea. I suppose it belongs to some bloke called Foxy.”

“Maybe it’s a woman,” Tommy’s face brightened again. “A woman so sexy that everyone just calls her Foxy.”

“It’s possible.”

“Do you think we’ll see her there? Maybe she’ll want to do it with us.”

“Do what?”

“You know: the business.”

“Maybe.” Carl laughed. He felt sorry for his friend. Even if there was a sexy woman called Foxy down there waiting for potential lovers, he doubted that she’d be willing to settle for a hugely overweight fourteen-year-old . . . although he rated his own chances slightly higher, but he figured it was best to keep quiet about that. “How many people will be there with your brother?”

“Dunno. Five, maybe. It’ll just be him and his mates.”

Carl didn’t like Tommy’s brother, or his friends. The prospect of meeting them at the pond wasn’t a good one.

“Don’t worry about them, though,” Tommy said. He must have sensed Carl’s thoughts. “We’ll just hide in the bushes and see what they get up to.”

The area was pitch black, there weren’t any street lights around the track, only bushes and open fields. Luckily the moon was out, lighting the way. The boys joked as they walked. Tommy was still dreaming of bumping into Foxy, the gorgeous woodland babe. He reckoned she’d probably just give him a blow job, rather than lying down in the dirt to do it. They both knew that neither scenario was particularly likely, but it passed the time as they strolled along.

Foxy’s Pond lay at the bottom of a steep hill, just to the side of the railway tracks, hidden from view by a small wooded area. From the top of the hill, Carl could see all of the surrounding countryside, swathed in darkness. Occasional dense patches of bright lights marked out the towns and villages that nestled on the rolling hills. Everything seemed calm and beautiful from that distance.

Despite the dark and the distance, Carl noticed that smoke was rising from the area of the pond, and an occasional flicker of light could just be seen through the tiniest gaps in the foliage.

Tommy saw it too. “They’ve already lit the fire,” he said. “Come on, we’re going to miss it!”

They both started jogging to get closer to the trees around the pond. It didn’t take long before Tommy began to flag and his breaths became increasingly heavy.

“Hurry, Tommy, this was your idea.”

Tommy stopped and rested his hands on his knees. “Go on without me, I can’t make it.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Carl said. “We’ve only jogged about thirty metres. Just give it a minute and we can walk the rest of the way.”

Carl took a moment to look around while Tommy recovered. They had left the railway tracks and were now on a simple dirt path that led directly through the trees. From there they could conceal themselves in the bushes, a perfect vantage point to spy on the magical activity around Foxy’s Pond.

“Right, I’m ready,” Tommy said, although his face was still red and he hadn’t quite managed to calm his breathing. They walked along the path carefully. The smell from the fire was obvious and they wanted to cause as little noise as possible now that they were getting close.

They reached the trees and left the path. This would be the trickiest part. Leaves and twigs littered the ground and any wrong move could alert the gathering around the pond. Fortunately there seemed to be a lot of laughing coming from Tommy’s brother and his friends. Carl hoped that it would be enough to drown out any mishaps they had with the bushes.

Tommy was a dependable guy. If you needed someone to trip on a log or stumble into a bush, then he was definitely your man. Barely a moment passed when he wasn’t whinging about thorns scratching his legs or spider webs covering his face.

“Shut up, Tommy!” Carl hissed at him. “Do you want Charlie and his mates to find us or something? You’re stomping about like a bloody buffalo. Just pack it in! Follow me and step where I step.”

“You don’t have to be cross.”

“You’re a proper baby. Let’s see this magic and then we can get some juice.” Carl had had enough; he was close to leaving Tommy behind and going back to the tent. He felt as though he always had to help Tommy out, as though he was incapable of doing anything without assistance. But he was his best friend, and Carl knew that he could rely on him if he ever needed to. It was just annoying to always be the one giving help rather than receiving it.

Tommy didn’t cause any more problems after Carl’s outburst, and they soon found themselves in the perfect spot. They took up positions, lying on their bellies, and watched the bizarre events around the pond.

Tommy’s brother and another kid sat beside a campfire, both wearing only shorts. Two more people were in chest–deep water in the pond, and another stood with a book, chanting foreign words that Carl had never heard before. The boy with the book raised his free hand and then dropped it suddenly. “Karra-lamm!” he screeched, and the two boys in the pond ducked their heads under the water.

They stayed under for about ten seconds before they shot back above the surface, bellowing with delight. Carl couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it was clear that they were excited. One of them dashed for dry land and started shouting when he reached it. He was flexing his muscles and jumping up and down. The other boy remained in the water, looking thoughtful.

“They’re just idiots,” Carl whispered to Tommy. “All they’re doing is clowning around.”

“Ssh, let’s keep watching.”

Tommy’s brother got up from his seat by the fire. Carl noticed that he wasn’t wearing shorts at all, he was in his underpants. “Do the Charlie Special for me,” Tommy’s brother shouted to the boy with the book as he waded into the dark water.

The boy flicked through a few pages and started to read, his low voice easily carried through the still air. “Kum Kallar Ra. Eegut Kallar Ra. Eegut Kaa–Kallar Ra.” He raised his arm and again screeched, “Karra-lamm” as he dropped it.

Charlie vanished beneath the water. The other boy in the pond grinned. A few moments passed and Charlie reappeared, his arms stretched out above him. He looked as though he was about to shout but he twitched suddenly and stared directly at Carl and Tommy’s hiding place. “Who’s there?” he called.

Carl felt like he was going to wet his pants. They’d been discovered, but how? It was way too dark for Charlie to be able to see them amongst to vegetation.

A sly smile spread across Charlie’s face. “I can hear you, Piggy-boy,” he said.

“Shit!” Tommy got up suddenly and made to run back to the track. Carl couldn’t believe it. The moron had completely given away their position.

Charlie let out a triumphant whoop and ran towards the hiding place, the other boys followed. The one who had been jumping about and flexing his muscles was the fastest by far. He overtook Charlie and was rapidly closing the gap. Tommy disappeared into the trees.

No point running, Carl thought. He stood up and waved down to the approaching boys. “All right, Charlie?”

It didn’t take long before Charlie and his friends reached him. They formed a circle around Carl, all of them dripping wet and reeking of pond water.

“Well, well,” Charlie said. “If it isn’t Piggy-boy’s little girlfriend. I don’t remember inviting you.” Charlie was nothing like his brother. He was tall and powerfully built, even for a seventeen-year-old. The other boys with him were equally large and Carl didn’t recognise any of them. Their stares were unmistakable, though. Carl knew he had to think fast if he wanted to avoid a beating.

“Tommy said you were hanging around down here, so we thought we’d come and join you.”

“You mean you weren’t making love in the bushes? Look, he’s even wearing Piggy’s clothes. How sweet,” Charlie said, making the others laugh.

Carl chose to ignore that. “How did you know we were here?”

“At least Piggy hasn’t given away all of our secrets, but I’ll tell you anyway. I can read your mind, Carl, and Tommy’s. Everyone’s thoughts are in my head. You’re scared like a little girl. What do you think we’re going to do? No, wait, don’t tell me. You think we’re gonna fill you in!”

He was right. Although Carl didn’t think that the knowledge came from any special ability, his fear must have been plastered all over his face.

Charlie turned to the right. “Come out, Tommy. Even if I couldn’t read your mind, your whimpering alone tells me you’re just behind those trees.”

Tommy emerged from his hiding place, his head hanging low. “I’m sorry, Charlie, I just wanted to see the magic.” He had tears on his bloated cheeks.

“Oh, you’ll see some magic, don’t worry about that,” Charlie told him. He turned back to the other boys. “Grab lover-boy and hold him still.”

The boys rushed at Carl and held him secure. He didn’t resist. The smell of the pond water was sickening and he tried his best to breathe through his mouth to avoid gagging.

Charlie went for Tommy and swung a powerful blow at his head. Tommy staggered but his bulk saved him from toppling onto the ground. He clutched his hands to his face and cried.

“Come on, Charlie, you don’t have to do that,” Carl said. “We’re not doing anything.”

“Oh, but I do have to. Piggy-boy needs to learn his lesson, don’t you, Tommy?”

“No . . . please,” Tommy whimpered and dropped to his knees. “Please, Charlie, I didn’t mean to ruin your—”

A swift kick to the gut cut him off. The air blasted from Tommy’s lungs and he collapsed forward onto the ground. Carl struggled to get loose but the boys held him tight. They were all laughing. “Leave him alone, he hasn’t done anything to you!”

“Hasn’t he? He’s a little shit and now he’s gonna pay.” He kicked him again and again, focusing on Tommy’s legs. Each blow brought a cry of anguish. Charlie suddenly turned to look at Carl, venom in his gaze. He’d completely lost control. “You want to save your boyfriend, don’t you?” he laughed.

“He’s not my boyfriend. Just let us go and we’ll leave.”

One of the other boys spoke for the first time. “It’s too late for that. You’ll have to be initiated into the club. Can’t have you blabbing about the book.”

“I don’t want to be in your gay club,” Carl snapped at him. “I just want to get some chocolate milk and go home.”

“Gay?” Charlie was outraged. “You two are the gay ones! Wait till I tell everyone that we caught you sucking each other off in the bushes down at Foxy’s Pond. I’ll even tell dad.” The last bit was aimed at Tommy who was still crying on the grass.

“No,” Tommy managed between sobs. “Don’t do that!”

“Let him say what he likes,” Carl said. “We’re not the ones parading around in our underwear and rubbing pond scum on each other.”

“I like this kid,” Charlie smiled. “Maybe you can be in the club.” He spun around and stamped hard onto Tommy’s left leg. Carl thought he heard a snap and, judging by Tommy’s high–pitched scream, he knew that the leg was broken.

“Fuck, you’ve done it now, Charlie!” the boy with the book said. “How are we gonna explain this?”

“What? He fell. Didn’t you, Piggy?”

Tommy was clearly in agony, his squealing made him more pig–like than ever.

“I said, didn’t you, Piggy?!”

“Yeeees! I fell!” he writhed on the floor. “I fell. I fell. I’m fat and clumsy and I fell!”

“See, everything’s fine.” Charlie gestured towards the fire. “Let’s take our new member down for the initiation ceremony.”

Carl swallowed, despite his dry mouth. There was nothing he could do to help Tommy and he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Charlie’s rage, so he went with the boys to the edge of the pond. They left Tommy behind on the grass without a second glance. I’ll come back for you, Tommy, Carl thought. I’ll take you to a hospital.

“Forget about Piggy-boy,” Charlie hissed. “He’s on his own. Let’s talk about your initiation. We’ve been thinking about trying a new spell, but the book says it’s dangerous. It doesn’t say why, but it recommends that it shouldn’t be tried . . . something about making the subject uncontrollably ravenous. Sounds interesting, eh?”

“Not to me,” Carl told him.

“Everyone has their own power. Mine is mind-reading, so I already know you’re going to go through with the ritual. Anything to save your bosom buddy, Piggy, isn’t that right?”

It was right. If going into the pond would help Tommy, then Carl was prepared to do it. He didn’t believe that the boys gained any power from their stupid book. It seemed like all it did was turn them into arseholes. And they probably managed that without magic.

The boy with the book looked apprehensive. “I don’t know about this,” he said. “The book says never to do it. It’s the most powerful spell, it might never wear off.”

“Bollocks to that,” Charlie said. “Carl doesn’t mind being hungry forever, do you? Anyway, he doesn’t even believe that it’ll work.”

Maybe he can read my mind.

Charlie told Carl to get himself ready by taking his clothes off, unless he didn’t mind them getting drenched. As Carl undressed, Charlie and his friends huddled together and spoke in hushed voices. Carl looked back at Tommy, he was still lying on the ground and crying, but he was watching the events with intense interest.

“I don’t give a shit about that,” Charlie shouted suddenly. “I want to see what happens!”

Carl swallowed again and started walking into the water. It was freezing and he began to shiver uncontrollably as his feet sunk into the stinking mud.

“You’ll have to go deeper than that,” one of the boys said. “You have to put your whole body under the water.”

“It’s too cold!”

“Just fuckin’ get in there!” Charlie seemed close to losing control again, so Carl waded in.

He stopped when the icy water was up to his shoulders. “Hurry up then, I’ll get pneumonia if you don’t read your stupid words.”

The boy with the book looked nervous and licked his lips as he positioned himself at the pond’s edge. The others moved away, beyond the fire. He flicked through the pages and looked at his companions for reassurance. After an encouraging hand gesture from Charlie, he began to read the strange words on the page.

“Upsilla Kaa. Kum Kallar Ra. Eegut Upsilla Kaa. Eegut Kallar-upsilla. Kaa Kallar Upsilla.” He raised his right arm. “Karra-lamm!”

His arm dropped and Carl submerged himself in the foul water. As he held his breath, Carl was overcome with a sudden euphoria. Everything became clear to him. Powerful surges of pure joy flowed through his entire body. He felt as though he was the real Carl for the first time in his life, as though he had merely been a shell of a person throughout his first fourteen years on the planet. Everything was better now. And he knew what he had to do.

He broke the surface in a whoosh and heard himself shout as though from a great distance. The boy with the book stumbled backwards in shock and ran away. He heard Charlie’s voice, distant but distinct, “Fuckin’ hell, his eyes are glowin’!”

Carl looked around as if taking in the world for the first time. He was hungry like never before. Charlie and his friends were running away, up towards the railway tracks. They left their clothes behind by the dwindling flames of the campfire.

A thought suddenly occurred to Carl: Yes, there is another. He spun and saw Tommy lying in terrified agony on the grass. Carl rushed out of the water and advanced on him, salivating.

“It’s time for you to help me for a change. Time for you to give me your delicious flesh.”

He barely heard Tommy’s scream as he sank his teeth into the rolls of fat.

ABOUT T M McLEAN

T M McLean (Tim to his friends) lives in Germany with his wife and son. His debut novel, ‘The Sword of Gomar’, a children’s fantasy story, will be released early in 2014 by NoodleDoodle Publications. Two short stories are also set for release in 2014: ‘Time Will Tell’ in Tales from the Perseus Arm Volume 2 and ‘Tie Bride’ in Terror–Tree’s Pun Book of Horror, which will be published by SGA Publications and Fringeworks, respectively.

Should he ever find himself in the unfortunate circumstance of being made part of a Human Centipede, Tim sincerely hopes that he’ll be the one at the front.

WRITER’S RETREAT
Noel Osualdini

A five day retreat for budding horror writers, held in an abandoned asylum.

The rules were simple: no loud music, no wandering about on your own, no disturbing the other residents. Just sit in your room and write all day. There was a promise of evening lectures and meetings with famous published writers, though she hadn’t managed to meet any yet. She tapped on her laptop keyboard and wrote a thousand words between arriving and going down to dinner.

The first lecture had been on characterisation.

“Let your characters live,” was the advice. “Make them living, breathing human beings.”

That night, she heard the squeaky wheel of a laundry trolley in the corridor outside her room and imagined the porter, still in the Halloween garb in which he’d greeted her: a plastic axe through his head, crusted blood running down one temple. He’d taken her to her room as if to a cell, and when she’d spoken to him, he’d opened his mouth to reveal a pool of fake blood which dribbled down his chin. She was led in silence down the hallway by this man, or a woman in the rotted tatters of a strait jacket, whenever she needed the bathroom.

I guess they’ve got to follow the rules too, she mused, contemplating that this must be a great gig for the actors who’d been hired to add atmosphere to the retreat.

Retreat: she tried to think of other words, and wished she’d brought a thesaurus. Retreat, shelter, asylum. The majestic old building had once been just that, a place where lunatics had screamed through the night. Other than a couple of suitably attired staff, the speaker at the lecture and the few attendees at that lecture, she hadn’t seen anyone since arriving. She’d spoken to only one other guest, a tall blonde man who’d identified himself as G when they’d happened to arrive at Reception at the same time. She and this strange man had exchanged only the first letters of their names, and at the poorly-attended lecture he’d sat at the back and said nothing.

She considered names beginning with G: it could stand for Glenn, Greg, Garry. Garrison, she thought. Garrulous. Gregarious. Greybeard.

Goat, gargantuan, glorious, gorgeous, gonads.

He must be somewhere down the hall, perhaps in the next room even. She pressed her ear to the wall, and thought she heard the sound of an old–fashioned typewriter: a Remington, or perhaps an Underwood, the sort she’d learned to type on at school.

But surely nobody used typewriters any more.

Maybe Garry did, she told herself.

Gorgeous, gregarious Garry from the glen, with the gloriously gargantuan gonads.

Alliteration.

Giggle.

She’d introduced herself as V, and thought of all the words he might think of. When she’d tried to start up a conversation, though, he’d held a finger to his lips and said “Shh.”

Anything but gregarious.

She imagined him, perhaps next door, sitting at a table tapping away on his keyboard, and strained to hear. Other than the sound of typing, though, the silence was overwhelming.

Meals were served in what must have once been the staff dining hall – she couldn’t imagine they’d ever have let the lunatics out there—by a man with a rope of intestine hanging from his bloodied shirt. She’d been expecting Dracula, Frankenstein, Pennywise, a wolfman, but they were no longer the horror flavours of the month.

And nowadays, good-natured, altruistic vampires even sparkled!

Since when did evil sparkle?

Thinking about the superseded monsters, she realised the asylum would make a great movie set. The zombies were here already; all they needed now was a young female protagonist, pretty enough to hold the audience and scared enough to run screaming down the long halls, pursued by faceless, shuffling monsters. Maybe pee herself in fright.

She could use that, she thought. She made a mental note to rewrite what she’d started. The girl arrives in a—wait: how had she gotten here? It occurred to her that she couldn’t remember arriving. She’d come in a car, she was sure, with someone else. A man, her boyfriend, he’d dropped her off. Or had she driven herself?

She spotted G across the dining hall, but he was poised over a note pad, apparently deep in thought. Remembering the rules not to disturb fellow guests, she chose a table on the other side of the hall, and tried to concentrate on the slop of reconstituted potato mash and something that might once have been pork. She wasn’t sure which part of a pig resembled part of a human foot, but it certainly tasted like pork.

On the second evening, for which there was no booked seminar, she managed to get free from the ragged woman zombie long enough to glance through a window so high she had to jump to reach it. Perhaps if she could see out, she’d spot her own vehicle in the car park. She couldn’t remember the registration number; suddenly she realised she couldn’t even recall its make or colour.

What she saw through the window, though, disturbed her: instead of glimpsing the car park, she saw a papery white that didn’t look like padding, but like—well, nothing. It was as though the scene hadn’t been written in yet, and was still awaiting a playwright’s hands. Maybe it was just backstage, and didn’t need to be filled with a scene.

The sound of scratching came from beyond the walls of her room, interspersed with the rapid gunfire of an ancient manual typewriter. Rats? she wondered. But if there were rats in the walls, surely this place would never have been permitted to hold week-long seminars, let alone keep guests.

She dreamed of a grassy field, something from outside, and those long, luscious blades of grass turned into the villi of the lower intestine, waving fingers gathering in nutrients.

Tripe, she thought when she woke, and then remembered that tripe was from the stomach, not the intestines.

That reminded her that she was hungry, thirsty, in need of a shower. She wondered about the time: there were no clocks, and she couldn’t recall exactly how long she’d been here.

Breakfast was porridge, and she was thankful that the only other person in the dining hall was G, sitting across the other side, for she hadn’t had time to wash.

It seemed odd later, when she walked out of the shower cubicle with a towel around her, that she found the zombie woman in the strait jacket stationed just outside. The woman was deaf to V’s questioning.

Although she sat with G in the afternoon—again the only person in the dining hall, other than staff in fancy dress—she couldn’t get him to talk.

“Are you a writer too?” she asked. She was going to add “like me”, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate. She wasn’t sure.

He was scribbling on a notepad, and occasionally turned away as though something had occurred to him which he needed to explore in his mind. She tried to glance at what he was writing, but couldn’t make out the words.

He kept his hooded eyes down, ignoring her. Perhaps he didn’t want to break the rules. Maybe he didn’t want to embarrass her by telling her how many books he’d already had published, while she was just starting out. Perhaps, for some reason, he just didn’t like her.

The zombie woman shuffled her back to her cell, and she sat down at the laptop. She regarded the walls; they were no longer padded, as once they might have been, but they were, nevertheless, four walls, a cell. There should be inspiration enough in that, but nothing came for her fingers to tap into the computer.

She remembered now: she’d come on a bus. That’s why she hadn’t seen any cars outside. But she hadn’t seen anything outside. There had been other passengers on the bus. Surely there’d been other passengers. But where were they now? Why was the dining hall always empty? What had happened to Professor—and Mrs—she was surprised she couldn’t recall their names, not a single one. Even her memory of their faces was vague.

By the fourth day, she was practically climbing the walls.

That night, she heard screams from down the hall. No doubt they were part of the ambience—so much for not disturbing the guests—but even so, she found herself sitting in a corner of the room, hands over her ears, rocking on the balls of her feet.

Something touched her.

She sprang away, turning. A dozen arms had burst through the walls, reaching out for her through the broken wood panel and exploded plaster. There were two smudged footprints in the cover of dust where she’d been only moments ago. She stifled a scream, and turned to pound on the door.

When it opened, the man with the rope of intestines hanging from his shirt was there, looking even more dishevelled than she recalled from the dining hall. She tried to escape the room, but he was in her way. She pointed back at the wall frantically, wanting to shout into his face that there was something there, that she was scared, that she didn’t want to be here anymore.

But no words came out. There was only an unintelligible, blubbering sound, as though her tongue had been cut out.

He shook his head, and responded with a grunt. She followed his eyes back into the room, to the wall where she’d been crouching, and to her shock saw that there was nothing there but the bare timber panelling. He pointed now, indicating the laptop she’d placed—how many days ago?—atop the low wooden table, the only furniture that had been provided other than a bed and chair.

Was that it? Had she fallen asleep and dreamed about a scene she’d been writing?

But the screen of the laptop was resolutely dark: it wasn’t even turned on.

His meaning was clear, though: she should return to her desk and write about it.

Against her protests, the man with the rope of intestines hanging from his bloodied shirt pushed the door shut. Before it closed, though, something dropped into the room and hit the floor with a wet, smacking sound. She looked down and screamed: rotten and maggoty, it was his jaw.

∞

She woke to the sound of tapping. Definitely a typewriter. She’d slept curled in the centre of the cold, concrete floor in the white shirt and trousers that the woman zombie had provided after her most recent shower. She’d protested that she had her own clothes, but found that they were no longer where she’d left them hanging just outside the shower cubicle. The woman had ignored her pleas, waited while she dressed, and led her back to her cell.

She pummelled the walls with her fists, but the sound of typing continued.

“Help me!” she cried. “I need to get out! My name is–” and suddenly realised she couldn’t remember. “It’s—it starts with V.”

There was no response from the next room. She lay on the floor and tried to recall what came after the V in her name.

She must have fallen asleep again, because she jolted to awareness when something ran over her face. She swiped at it and sat up in horror as a dislodged cockroach scuttled across the floor.

When they came to take her to her next meal, she was leaning against the padding that had, oddly, replaced the wood panel on the wall while she slept. The linen shirt was stained with her own fright-induced drool, the regulation white trousers wet and marked from the dirt on the concrete floor, and it wasn’t until the door was opened to fresh air that she recognised the odour she’d been breathing was that of her own urine.

Jawless was in the doorway, his intestines bulging even further out of his body. She backed away; she didn’t know how he’d achieved the illusion of having lost his jaw, but the tongue lolling in empty air was gross. She backed into the cell, watching him, and crouched again in the corner. The woman in the tattered strait jacket came in and patted and caressed her soothingly, calming her at least a little, until V agreed to rise to her feet and allowed the two of them to push her out into the corridor.

It was only then that she noticed the man with the axe through his head, fresh stage blood glistening wetly in the shaft of sunlight that came in across the hall. He was holding out a strait jacket for her. She tried to pull away, but they would not allow it. As her arms were guided into the white sleeves, she spotted G, standing in a doorway only metres from her own. He had a notepad in one hand, and a pen over an ear. Her mouth hung in disbelief while she felt the straps of the jacket being tightened, her arms drawn upwards towards her shoulders. G, without comment, took the pen from behind his ear and, lowering his eyes to the pad, started to take notes.

She screamed.

G, the writer, looking up at the sound, put a finger to his lips and said: “Shh.”

ABOUT NOEL OSUALDINI

Noel Osualdini has worked as a television station technician, public servant, and customer service officer. His non–fiction has appeared in local newspapers, public service pamphlets and magazines, and in the college newspaper he helped design. He is a member of the Australian Horror Writers’ Association (AHWA) and Chelsea Dark Writers’ Circle. His stories Skin and Night Escape received honorable mentions in the AHWA 2013 Short Story and Flash Fiction competition, and Night Escape was recently published in US horror anthology 100 Doors to Madness. Noel lives with his partner of 23 years, Joanne, and their four children, in southeast Victoria.

WHEN THE WEATHER IS JUST RIGHT
Kerry G S Lipp

I promised Clifford I’d take him deep-sea fishing when we went to the beach this summer, but I lost my job. Now we couldn’t afford our vacation to Hilton Head. His mother was gone, not by choice. She died a couple years back.

He tried real hard to hide his disappointment and I’m proud of him for that. But he couldn’t hide it all. He didn’t get angry. He understood but I knew it hurt him.

So I made other plans. We lived in Wheeling and I canceled in time to save most of our money. I told Clifford I’d make it up to him and I set about some research. I found a nice fishing spot called Big Ditch Lake outside of Cowen about 3.5 hours south instead of the 10 or so to get to Hilton Head. Just what we’d save in gas would give us a chance for a nice dinner or two and maybe even ice cream afterwards.

After apologizing to Clifford again, I told him what I’d planned for us and bless his damn heart he said, “It’s ok dad. Really.”

“A promise is a promise even if I can only meet it halfway,” I said having no idea what that meant, but it sounded good and he smiled.

“Ok then,” he said. “Where we going?”

I’d found a brochure and website online and I showed both to him.

“It’s supposed to be home to freshwater jellyfish,” I told him.

He looked puzzled.

“That’s what they say,” I said putting my hands up and laughing. “One of those no-one’s-ever-seen-them-but-everyone-says-they’re-there kind of things.”

“Like Bigfoot?”

“Like Bigfoot,” I said.

“Cool,” he grinned. “I’m bringing my camera.”

∞

Eyes wide and words fast Clifford told me all about freshwater jellyfish on the drive.

“They say,” he said as we continued on a desolate patch of highway, “that when the weather’s just right, the freshwater jellyfish conform, they all suck into each other and create on massive, gigantic jellyfish lake monster. They call it Medusa.”

“Who says?”

“The internet.”

“So the internet says that Big Ditch Lake is home to the world’s only known aquatic Transformer?” I asked.

“C’mon dad,” he punched me in the shoulder. We laughed. “They say it only happens when the weather’s just right. But no one really knows.”

“Nothing like small town folklore filtered through the internet.”

“Yeah. I’m not counting on meeting the big one, but I’d love to get a couple pictures of a freshwater jellyfish. The net says even finding a normal one is rare. Wouldn’t it be something if we caught one? Can you even do that? Catch a jellyfish with a fishing pole?”

“You haven’t changed since you were three years old,” I said. “Always asking questions I don’t have the proper answers to.”

We arrived at our motel, a shoddy job, but the best I could afford, just before dusk. We checked in and got our key. It was the kind of place that still used keys. Then we dropped off our bags and went out for dinner.

We found a diner. A quaint place. The kind you can’t fathom making any money, but never going out of business. Big portions, cheap food, atmosphere almost clean, and a long–time, local friendly staff.

A nice older woman with energetic eyes and an authentic smile took our order. We ordered cheeseburgers, fries, and water.

She came back and Clifford surprised me.

“Hey,” he said to the waitress, looked at her nametag, “Hey Deb.”

She paused, smiled, looked at me. I shrugged.

“Yes sir,” she said with a grin.

“You lived around here your whole life?” Clifford asked.

“You could say that,” she said.

“You ever heard of the Medusa?” He asked.

“Well who hasn’t?” she fired back.

“Ever seen it?” I asked, playing along.

“No one’s ever really seen it,” she said. Then added, “at least not that lived to tell about it.”

“Well they say that out there on Big Ditch Lake, when the weather’s just right, the freshwater jellyfish all gather and tangle up together, sort of like the people that Clive Barker story . . .”

“In the Hills, the Cities,” Clifford and I said together.

You could’ve knocked Deb flat with a bubble.

“I usually have to explain all that,” she said.

“I’m raising him to be a reader, just like his dad, and his dad loves the horror.”

“You just stay on that path young man,” Deb said.

Clifford smiled.

“So tell us the story,” he said, “about no one living. Sounds like a good one.”

“Don’t think you’ll find that one on the net,” Deb said.

The bell rang and a group of six walked in.

“I’ll have to give you the quick version,” she said. “They’re gonna keep me busy.”

“Quick version would be great,” I said.

“Ok. So about fifty or so years ago and bunch of people were out swimming and fishing and just enjoying the lake. A beautiful day. The weather was just right. And local legend says, that at about four in the afternoon, when the sun was in the perfect spot, the splashing and the screaming started.”

Clifford’s mouth dropped open. Creepy, but I wasn’t buying it. Every place has stories like this. Back in Ohio there was one about a lady who threw a baby off a bridge that still cries during full moons or something.

“So then what happened? Did they all die?” Clifford asked, hopeful. I might need to talk to him a little about sensitivity.

“Some say they all drowned,” Deb said. “Some say the freshwater jellyfish converged into this gigantic thing folks call Medusa, and ate them. No one knows for sure, but seventy people disappeared that day, all without a trace. They even searched the bottom of the lake and found nothing. No boats no fishing rods, no bodies. Nothing left but towels and coolers and such on the edge of the water.”

“Wow,” Clifford said. “So nobody knows what happened?”

“Nope,” Deb said. “Keep in mind I was a little girl when all this happened, but I can tell you this. I’d been to Big Ditch Lake before that incident. And I been there after. And since that day, the water’s been tinged with a red that’s faded over time, but never gone away.”

“Blood from all those people?”

“Maybe,” she said handing us our check. “Gotta go.”

I paid and even though we didn’t have much extra money, I tipped her well. I couldn’t remember anything exciting Clifford like that story, and I enjoyed it too.

On the ride back to the motel Clifford wouldn’t stop talking about Big Ditch Lake and Medusa. I didn’t even find it the slightest bit annoying. His excitement sparked something in me. This was going to be a great trip after all.

And even though it wasn’t in that night’s budget, we stopped for ice cream on the way back to the motel.

Clifford nibbled his brownie sundae making it last, he didn’t get them often. He kept gesturing to his camera.

“We may not see the ‘aquatic transformer’, but maybe we’ll see some of those jellyfish. Wouldn’t it be something to catch one of those and think, maybe this is one of the pieces of the giant monster Medusa that devoured all those people?”

I hid a smile and shook my head at my son’s morbid statement and the gleeful way that he stated it. Maybe seventh grade was a little too early to introduce a boy to Clive Barker.

The ice cream worked on both of us and we fell asleep in our motel during the first episode of a Pawn Stars marathon.

∞

Morning, bright and beautiful and even though we had the tattered curtains pulled, the sunlight didn’t care and shoved itself into the room. Dust flitted through the air like snowflakes in the streams of bright light.

Clifford was already up and showered and ready to go before he woke me up. I couldn’t imagine why he didn’t wake me right after he woke up but then I saw the book in his hands, Deeper by James A. Moore. I smiled. He was really into water monsters.

I hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed when we didn’t see one today.

“Ready?”

He patted his pockets, unzipped his backpack, checked.

“Yep,” he said. “Got my camera to take pictures, an video, I got snacks, and I got my book, just in case they aren’t biting.”

“Excellent. I’ll get some ice for the cooler and we’ll get out there.”

Yellow sun and warm summer air greeted us as we packed up the car. Stone crunched under tires when we backed out and drove over to Big Ditch Lake.

I parked the car and within 30 minutes we were skimming the lake in our little boat, poles in the water, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company.

We anchored and sipped chilled Pepsis. Clifford munched a sandwich, tossing a few crumbles of bread into the water to see if he could attract birds or fish or the unlikely jellyfish. The boat didn’t even rock on the calm water.

Neither of us had been deep–sea fishing before, but I imagined it a hell of a lot more stressful than this. I stared out at all the other boats, some fishing, some swimming, some just floating and soaking in the sun.

Clifford and I just sat without poles in the water, sodas in our hands and a soft breeze blowing on our lightly sweating skin. We both nodded and waved to a passing boat, as was custom.

I sat back, took a long drink and propped my feet up on the edge of the boat as I stared at the water and all the people enjoying it.

“You know,” I said to Clifford. He looked up but I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses.

Call it genetics, call it chance, call it telepathy, call it whatever you want, but he finished my next sentence with me: “The weather’s just right.”

And immediately the splashing started. Then the screaming. Barely visible forms began darting underneath the water, moving fast, leaving bubbles trailing in their wake. Clifford looked at me aghast as our boat started to rock. Swimmers screamed fighting to stay above water but swallowing face-full splashes of rippling lake water. People on boats shrieked in horror watching it all.

Clifford didn’t hesitate. Even scared, he had his camera out filming while our boat jostled. I kicked the motor on and had us burning water back to shore fast as I could.

The jellyfish converged and created a giant-tentacled monster that rose from the middle of the lake.

Medusa.

With tree-trunk tendrils flailing, it sunk boats and swiped at swimmers. Boats exploded and bodies flew and the water turned a deep red as the liquid and pieces that make up people spilled into the water.

We hit sand and I jumped out. Clifford stood at the stern still filming the chaos. I darted back onto the boat and snatched him just as a giant tentacle throttled the place he’d just been standing. The boat splintered and the camera flew. He flailed as I threw him over my shoulder and jumped to the beach.

“I got it. I need my camera!”

I tossed him in the grass just off the shore, and saw his camera, intact, on the shoreline. The tentacle that shattered the boat saw me coming.

Four thoughts flashed through my mind in a second. I thought about being jobless. I thought about this chaos. I thought about my son. And I thought about what we could do with that recording.

The tentacle stared, daring, beckoning.

And I stared back.

I looked at Clifford, curled like a fetus in the tall grass. Saw the challenging tentacle waving. I saw our future and our lack of future fold into one. I dashed for the camera amid a chorus of dying screams.

I grabbed the camera just before Medusa swiped at my face and turned to see Clifford stumbling to his feet. Surging with unbelievable adrenaline, I hefted him over my shoulder and ran. A quarter mile or so later I collapsed and we skidded to a stop on the blacktop, tearing up our knees and elbows but we got to the car and got the hell away.

Clifford stayed silent, his body just quivering. He wasn’t physically hurt, but the intensity of what he’d seen put him into some kind of shock. I drove straight to the hospital. I called the police on the way.

The doctors checked Clifford and kept him overnight. Still too keyed up to sleep, I paced around the room while Clifford slept.

Finally exhausted, I sat and remembered the camera. I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch, but I did. What I saw rocked me all over again.

I watched a few minutes of Clifford’s shaky hand and goofy narration before all hell broke loose.

The last thing I heard was Clifford and I saying, “The weather’s just right.” The audio cut out. Thank God. I never wanted to hear so many screams again.

Then the video did something weird. Water started splashing all over the place, but I couldn’t make out any of the tentacles. Surely something thrashed the water. In the worst cases there was nothing, in the best a fuzzy, watery shadow that wasn’t really evidence of anything.

The camera jerked throughout our frantic escape. Oddly, there were no people visible on the video. Either they’d all disappeared like that ridiculous legend, which didn’t seem so ridiculous now, or Clifford just never had them in the camera’s crosshairs.

Eerie, but true.

All in all the video wasn’t too terrifying.

Until the very end.

And what I noticed in the last few seconds froze my blood. While the lake violently geysered up from grainy, unseen forces all around; I watched the water change. It went from that sweet, lakey water—the color of tranquillity that relaxed us so well—to pure blood red.

I wondered how long it would stay that way. If that waitress was any authority, it would probably fade slowly over the next fifty or so years, until the weather was just right. And like fifty years before, I didn’t expect them to find any bodies or any survivors, save for my boy and me. That puzzled me, but I’d rather be alive and confused than dead or disappeared.

The police came sometime after I’d drifted off to sleep. They woke me and I told them my story. They wanted to talk to Clifford, but I wouldn’t let them wake him up. I never told them about the video. I wanted to keep that. I thought that it might be a great opportunity to compensate for my recent unemployment. And if I could get Clifford back on the horse, it might even pay for a deep-sea fishing trip next summer.

ABOUT KERRY G S LIPP

Kerry G S Lipp has published stories all over the place in the last year and a half. The most noteworthy are in the anthology DOA2 from Blood Bound Books and two appearances on The Wicked Library podcast.

CRIMSON SNOW
Matthew Lett

It was in the year of our Lord of 1845 when a blizzard blew into the innocent township known only as Hickory Creek. It came in fast and strong like a white stallion; great drifts of snow and ice piling up against the shuttering establishments and houses of Hickory Creek, threatening to bury not only the homes, but the town itself.

But for a few folks in Hickory (as the town was often referred to), the storm was the least of their worries.

There were children missing; a half dozen at last count, and more were feared. Lost out there somewhere in the ever mounting walls of snow, blind and freezing to death in the howling wind.

A search party was gathered; two teams of five men who would work in rotating shifts while the womenfolk waited vigilantly at Hickory’s one and only church, Christ the Savior, praying and weeping for a miracle from God.

But God hadn’t been listening that day, and if He had, then He wasn’t answering. Hours crept by, men combing the surrounding trees and shrub brush for any signs of the children, rotating in and out of the small clapboard church for cups of hot coffee and to warm themselves beside the glowing pot-bellied stove; the women continuing in their vigil of prayer.

Soon, though, frustration settled in like a malignant cancer; tempers flared, and friendships were momentarily forgotten. Voices were raised, and if not for a few prevailing cooler heads, Hickory might have been lost to a civil war. As it turned out, a civil war would have been a blessing.

“What do you mean I haven’t been out there looking, Amos? I was the first one out there, you fool!”

“It’s so cold out there. Dear God, where can the children be? I wonder if . . .”

“You sure weren’t looking very hard, Charles, that’s what I saw. A blind mule could’ve . . .”

“Maybe the next group will find something. Anything. Some sign or . . .”

“You shut your mouth! You hearing me, old man? Just shut it! Or I swear I’ll flatten you! You dare to . . .”

“Hey! Back up from the stove. You’re gonna catch fire to yourself and burn the damned place down! I need to warm my fingers, they’re numb . . .”

“Please, Father . . . watch over our children and lead them safely home in your loving arms of protection . . .”

And on it went. Dusk eventually gave way to dark, shadows growing long across the sharp angles of Hickory’s ice-encrusted roofs; the snow in its merciless fury a demon of nature that seemed insatiable in its desire to destroy.

The search was called off, and a night watch was set up of two men inside the church. They would rotate in shifts as before, a pale lantern in the window as a signal, and a pair of rifles in case the wolves came down from out of the mountains in search of a midnight delicacy. They would be hungry this time of year, ravenous, and though not usually bold, a wolf could sense when his quarry was weak and scared, vulnerable. The citizens of Hickory Creek knew from painful experience that nothing short of a bullet between the eyes would stop a determined, starving wolf.

But, unbeknownst to the hapless citizens, the children were near, very near indeed; not more than a mile away through the snow-laden boughs of the forest, where they’d become lost and trapped by the intensity of the storm. They’d been foraging for roots, nuts and berries, maybe a mushroom or two, anything that might have been considered edible and utilized in the preparation of a hot meal.

The harvest last spring in Hickory had been disappointing, and although not starving as the wolves were bound to be, the folks of Hickory were already fighting back the dogs of hunger baying in their bellies.

They had already gone through all their livestock—all except for one brown-speckled cow for fresh milk—and if the supply of squirrels and rabbits in the forest began to dry up, they’d have to start in on the horses. It was an idea, an unfortunate option, which no one cared to think about.

∞

Currently, the children in question were standing beneath the canopy of a massive oak, its ancient arms of wood and bark creaking under the brunt of the falling snow. They stood huddled in a circle for what little warmth they could find, their heads down as if in silent prayer. Something lay on the forest floor in the middle of their little band, and they stared at it solemnly as flakes of snow the size of quarters drifted off their eyelids.

The oldest of their group, Jake Hanson, finally broke the frigid silence. He was shivering, as they all were, his yellow teeth chattering against the wind. “Wh–wh–what do you w–w . . . want to do with her, guys?” he asked.

Jake was fifteen. He was tall for his age, with deep brown skin from endless hours of helping his father tend the fields. A son of the earth, his father called him. His hair was an unruly mop of bright red, and when the sun was right a person could see the smatter of freckles on his cheeks and nose in perfect contrast to his royal blue eyes.

Jake’s question went unanswered. What he’d been referring to was the body of Charity Woods, lying there on her back in the frozen earth. It looked as though she’d been trying to make a snow angel. Her skin was the color of dirty alabaster, her lips parted and tinted with an ugly blue that looked like bruises. A mess of auburn hair lay across her neck, matted with snow. She had been dead for the better part of an hour; Nature’s latest victim ensnared in the deadly trap of its elements – wind, snow, and ice—of which Charity had been caught unaware in her simple brown frock and bonnet. She was only eleven years old and had never known the luxury of a snug, fur-lined coat. Momma and Poppa Woods had just never had the money for such items. Times were hard.

The snow continued falling in diamonds of sparkling ice, the forest around the children now silent and forbidding in the long shadows being thrown by the army of trees surrounding them. The moon had risen, struggling in its open face to penetrate the curtain of night, but it was feeble at best. Night had fallen, and night was here to stay, and those denizens of the woods not already burrowed underground in their cozy dens, were now hunting. Distant, echoing from a remote valley, a lone wolf cried its sentient howl.

Jake repeated his query. “Wh–what are we s–supposed to do with her?” His feet were growing numb inside his wet leather boots, his toes slowly stiffening into ten little ice cubes. Silence followed, except for the throat of the storm. Then: “I w–wanna go home, Jake. Please? I’m late and I’m cold! Pa is g–gonna hide me when I g–get home!”

It was Eva Stillings, staring at him with wide pleading eyes. She was thirteen years–old, and had volunteered to help the other children only if they promised to have her home before dark. It appeared she was going to be a little late. Pa wouldn’t be pleased, and there would be a stropping in store, for sure.

Jake glared at her. “And leave Charity here?” he demanded. “We c–can’t get home, anyhow! We’re lost, Eva. Lost!” He looked futilely around, the woods marching up on all sides. Something large crashed through the brush ahead, and then was still. “Lost,” he repeated, and then as an afterthought, added, “and hungry.”

“Then what do we do, Jake?” Eva asked. “We c–can’t just stand here all night. We’ll f–freeze!” She emphasized this by stamping her feet in the snow and rubbing her mitten-covered hands up and down her arms.

The temperature dropped another degree.

Jake glanced around the huddled group. “Does anyone have anythin’ to eat?” He was hoping, praying, that maybe one of their numbers had found something earlier and had forgotten it in their pockets. But no one had anything to say. There was no food, and even if there was, it’d been buried hours ago under silent white drifts.

“How about a fire, Jake?” a small, gangly boy asked. He looked nervous under his brown eyes, trembling, but it was nothing but the chill of the wind rattling his bones. His name was Willie Edwards. A poor boy from a well–to–do family who’d been given up for adoption by his parents at the tender age of one. Willie had a deformed right hand that twisted in on itself, the bones of his wrist large and prominent that stuck out in embarrassing knobs of flesh. He was thirteen and living with his grandpa now who reminded him on a daily basis that he was worthless around the farm.

“What good was a boy that couldn’t milk a cow?” his grandpa would ask. “Or plow the field for harvest? Or bring in the eggs from the chicken coop without breaking half-a-dozen?”

“What good are you, boy?” Willie’s grandpa would demand, shaking his vein-wrinkled fist in front of Willie’s despondent face. “Huh? What good are you? I’ll tell you what you’re good for, boy! Nothing! That’s what you’re good for . . . Nothing! You should have never been born, boy! Never!”

And then his grandpa would stomp off in his heavy work boots, kicking up whorls of dust, as the ugly scars of Willie’s self-esteem grew longer and deeper. He knew from that child–like perception why his real parents had given him up—he was damaged goods, faulty—but had no earthly idea why his grandpa had ever taken him in.

“C–can we build a fire, Jake?” Willie asked. “Huh? Can we?”

Jake looked at him, his eyes slits against the driving snow. “We can’t, Willie,” he said. “We tried that, remember? The wood is all wet and green, and even if it wasn’t, we ain’t got anythin’ to start it with.”

Willie shrugged as if to say ‘It was worth a try’ and then went back to his study of Charity Woods’s corpse.

The storm increased in its ferocity; the snow now falling in tiny needles of sleet, the frigid wind in its savagery driving the stinging pellets into the faces and hands of the children. The forest was a silent prison, cold and sterile. A clump of snow fell from a tree branch high above and landed bedside Jake with a muffled thump.

“I’ve got an idea,” a small voice said.

Jake turned his head with the others to see who it was. It was Philip O’Donald, his sister Allie, standing beside him. They were hugging each other in a desperate embrace, shivering. Philip’s hair was encrusted in snow, giving him the appearance of an old man who’d forgotten how to age properly. He was fourteen, and due to be fifteen come springtime, when he’d be a full three years older than Allie. The thought always gave him a perverse sense of pleasure.

“But . . . but you guys might think it’s weird or something,” he added.

“What is it, Phil?” Willie asked.

“Yeah, what is it?” Jake joined in. “Tell us.”

Still staring at the lifeless corpse of Charity, her face now wreathed by a halo of snow, Philip said, “Well, Grandpa told me a story one time. He said it was a story from way back in the old days. He’d gone huntin’ with his father, and some friends of his father. Grandpa said—”

Allie suddenly pushed violently away from him, almost knocking Philip back into the snow. Pin-wheeling his arms, Philip caught himself against the base of a giant elm. “Hey!” he cried indignantly. “What the heck was that for?”

Allie was glaring at him, her pretty wind–reddened face a mixture of horror and disgust. “Don’t you dare tell that story, Philip O’Donald!” she ordered her older brother. “It’s disgusting, and besides, it ain’t true!”

Philip was brushing snow off the sleeve of his jacket, only to have it replaced a second later. “Is so,” he said. “Are you calling Grandpa a liar?”

“I’m not!” she insisted. “But it’s a lie! Momma said so. Momma said Grandpa wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and hit him on the head with a skillet.” She stuck her tongue out at him, and managed to catch a few snowflakes.

Unruffled, Philip smiled at her. My younger sister trying to show me up, huh? “Dad said it’s true, too,” he said smugly. “Does mom think he’s a liar too?”

Allie stood there, the wind whipping locks of her sunny blond hair about her face and neck. Her hands were at her side, clenched into fists of frustration. Tears were threatening the corners of her eyes, but she wouldn’t allow them. Philip was just being dumb, she told herself. Dumb and mean! Just a big ol’ meanie, like he always was. She would tell Ma what he said when they got home, and then he’d get a whooping.

And with the satisfaction that her brother would be duly punished for teasing his younger sister, Allie turned her back on him and the others, her arms crossed against her chest in a defiant gesture.

Philip turned his attention back to the group, dismissing his sister with a snort. “Don’t worry about her,” he said, “she’s just a kid.”

The others nodded uncertainly, the snow continuing in its incessant rain of white. The blackness of night had settled in like a dark shroud around the shoulders of the lost and shivering children. Deep in the forest something screamed, the sound of a lonely soul in search of its mate, and then all was at peace.

“Anyways,” Philip was saying, dusting snow out of his hair. “Grandpa and those other men got lost one winter while they were out huntin’. Three days, he said. No food to speak of, and one of the men had been attacked by a grizzly. Tore him up real bad, too. Grandpa said the guy lasted one night before he finally croaked, but they didn’t bury him like they should have, you know. Another man in their party said they needed the dead guy. My Grandpa told me the man was an Indian, come from some tribe that lived up in the mountains.”

Philip paused, his dark eyes glittering in a filter of moonlight. The children were watching in rapt attention. To them Philip no longer appeared cold or hungry, far from it. He looked excited, like a child trying to suppress an enormous secret that’s threatening to bust if it doesn’t get out.

Philip said, “The Indian was a magic–man according to my Grandpa. Said he –”

“You mean a medicine man, don’tcha?” Jake cut in.

Philip fixed him with one baleful eye, his breath like steam streaming from his nostrils.

“Yeah . . . a medicine man, I guess. Okay? Does it matter? Can I go on with my story before we all freeze to death out here?”

Jake nodded, a little stung by Philip’s sharp words. He’d only been trying to help. And if he hadn’t been so cold at the moment, he would have walked over there and punched the little bugger right in the nose.

“Anyways,” Philip continued with snow swirling about his head like grits of sand. “Grandpa said this Indian knew how to do magic. Powerful magic, but it was dangerous, too.”

“What sort of magic?” Eva breathed. Her eyes were wide and frozen, and for the moment she’d even forgotten the fury of the storm snarling around her.

“Ancient magic,” Philip informed them. “The Indian told my Grandpa and the other guys that they’d have to drink the blood of another man if they hoped to survive and make it back home.”

“Eww!” Eva whined. “Blood? Human blood? B–but why?”

Philip shrugged. “The Indian said that it’d give them enough strength to get through the snow and back home. That they wouldn’t have to worry about food or finding their way back through the woods.”

“Did it work?” Eva asked. The temperature slipped another notch, as an owl screeched a warning into the night and took flight in search of a better roost. The winter moon, silent in its guard, looked on impassively.

Philip barked with sardonic laughter. “Of course it did, dummy! My Grandpa told me the story, didn’t he?”

“But what was the magic? What did the Indian do?”

“I don’t know,” Philip replied. “Grandpa never said exactly what the Indian done, except that he mumbled a bunch of funny sounding words and waved his hands around over the dead guy. After that, Grandpa said the Indian left the party.”

“He left the party?” Jake said incredulously. “Why in the heck would he go and do a fool thing like that for?”

Again, Philip shrugged, snowflakes falling in slow motion from the perch of his shoulders. “Grandpa said he didn’t know. Said the Indian was strange, anyway, and that he told them he couldn’t be around when they drank the guy’s blood. That it was an abom . . . abom . . .”—he struggled to find the word his Grandpa had used—“an . . . an abomination. That’s it! That it was an abomination to the Great Spirit in the Sky, or something like that.”

“Wow,” Eva said breathlessly, her hazel eyes wide. “You think it’s true, Philip? Do you really think your Grandpa and those other men drank that dead guy’s blood to get out of the forest?”

Philip nodded, a contemptuous smile forming on his quivering lips. “Of course it is!” he snapped. “You’re starting to sound like my little sister over there. My dad swears it’s true. Grandpa told him stories all the time, and when my dad tells you the same story, it’s the truth!”

He suddenly pointed at the stiffening corpse of Charity Woods. She lay there, lifeless, certainly no longer suffering from the effects of the ice and snow.

“Like Charity there,” Philip said. “Did you know that her mother’s a witch?”

Eva gasped. “Take that back, Philip!” Jake demanded. “She is not! I’ve known Charity all my life and she ain’t never done nothing to nobody! Now take it back!”

Philip crossed his arms. He was a few inches shorter and few pounds lighter than Jake, but didn’t seem to mind the challenge of the older boy. “I’m not taking nothing back, Jake Hanson,” he declared. “And besides, I didn’t say Charity was a witch, I said her mother was. Dad told me.”

“And how would he know?” Jake demanded. His eyes were flashing with fury, threatening a pounding if Philip didn’t explain himself. A vein began to pulse along the sharp line of his jaw, throbbing in tune with the degree of his hot temper.

“He didn’t say,” Philip answered, honestly. “But he did ask me what I thought about all the farms drying up. And what about our cows and chickens and pigs? Most of them died of disease before we even had a chance to eat ‘em! What about that, Jake? Huh? And now winters’s come early, and look at us! Dad said Hickory’s wilting like an old flower, and with a witch in the town, there’s not a thing we can do about it.”

Jake snorted, his face sullen with disbelief and confusion. “Your dad can’t prove anything,” he said. Nothing but lies. Lies he’ll go to hell for.”

Branches from a snow burdened pine seemed to creak in agreement as Jake advanced on him. His hands were curled into fists; thoughts of Philip’s face being brutally beaten dancing merrily in his head like savages around a bonfire.

“STOP!” a voice suddenly rang out. “Just stop it!” The voice was weak, but surprisingly loud in the swirling night air. It was Willie, now standing between the two would–be combatants with his arms outstretched. “Hold on you two!” he cried. He looked small between the two boys, but determined. He had one hand resting on Philip’s shoulder, his crippled one on Jake’s chest.

“This isn’t going to help anything, guys,” Willie said. Snowflakes dangled in his close-cropped hair. “We have to stick together. If we don’t, we’re gonna die out here. And I don’t wanna die, do you?” He looked at Jake and then back to Philip, his eyes solemn and earnest.

Jake took a step back, lowering his fists. But Philip, unperturbed, remained where he was, his round young face a lesson in cold tranquillity.

“Okay, okay,” Jake relented. He was still angry with Philip, but had himself under enough control to think straight. “So whatta we do?”

Philip smiled bitterly, as a night bird cried out somewhere in the trees. “You want to get out of here, Jake?” he asked.

Jake nodded. “Of course I do.”

“Then I think you know what we have to do.” Philip turned his head toward the inert form of Charity.

Jake took another step backward, Willie still between them like a snow–covered referee in case of trouble. Blanching in perfect unity with the falling snow, Jake tried to speak around the tight knot that had suddenly lodged in his throat.

“You . . . you mean . . . Charity?” Jake stammered. He couldn’t believe it. It had to be a mistake––A misunderstanding. “You want us to . . . to . . . drink her blood?”

Philip nodded grimly in the frigid wind beating about his neck. It was getting colder by the hour, and soon the point of no return would be upon them, as it had little Charity. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“That’s sick, Philip!” Eva Stillings said in a choked voice from behind the trio of boys. Her fingers were almost numb, and she’d lost contact with her feet almost thirty minutes ago. She was scared and hungry, like the rest, but the thought of drinking the blood of a girl she’d considered a good friend was nothing short of appalling. It was ridiculous and nasty. It was an abomination like that Indian had said, whatever that meant.

Philip regarded her for a moment, his black shoe button eyes glimmering like pieces of flint. A thin runnel of mucus had collected on the end of his nose and frozen there. “You have a better idea?” he asked truculently. “Because if you do, Eva, you’d better tell us now before it’s too late.”

Eva didn’t answer, not immediately. She was lost in thought, the whistling of the wind a high keening noise in her ears like a distant warning. Death was out here. Nothing else. Death wrapped in the guise of a white monster that was a stranger to both fear and remorse. Eva knew it would eat her alive if given the chance, and realized with growing dismay that she had no other choice – no matter how awful – but to agree with Philip.

“Well?” Philip said impatiently. “Do you or not?”

Eva shook her head, unsure if she could go through with it, but helpless not to. “No,” she said in a tiny voice. “I don’t. I . . . I just don’t . . . I just don’t know if I can do it, Philip. You’ll have to help me, because I—”

“What?” Jake shrieked, causing her to jump and duck her head. “Are you crazy, Eva? Have you lost your cotton-pickin’ mind? You can’t drink a person’s blood! It’s . . . it’s—”

Willie suddenly turned on him, ferociously. “Shut up, Jake!” he snarled. He was trembling, his eyes haunted and desperate. “Just shut up, okay? Listen to Philip, because it might be the only way out of this mess!”

Jake’s mouth shut with a snap, staring at the younger boy. He’d pound him too, if he had to. But the kid was just scared, he decided—hell, they all were—and beating him to a pulp wasn’t going to solve anything. But still . . .

“He’s right, Jake,” Philip said, his voice rising above the wind. “It may be our only chance. I know it, they know it, heck, everybody knows it, except you!”

The snow continued falling in thick pretty flakes, covering the forest ground in which it would sleep until springtime. Drifts rose and fell against tree trunks mindlessly, struggling for a toe–hold. The moon had shifted in its celestial poise, and was now peering through the gaps in the canopy of treetops.

The temperature in its valiant but losing battle fell back another line.

“What about Allie?” Jake demanded, pointing out Philip’s kid sister. “What about her?”

Philip considered the question a moment, tiny diamonds of ice decorating his raven black hair. Then: “What about her?” he answered. “If she wants to live, or at least get a chance at it, then she’ll drink with the rest of us. If not, then I—”

“I’ll do it,” Allie spoke up. Her voice was weary, but filled with stubborn conviction. She turned, facing the group. The front of her thin wool coat was coated in snow and ice crystals, her normally pink cheeks were an ashy-white color that foretold of frostbite. She’d be dead within the hour. Maybe less.

“I’ll do it,” she repeated, “but I’m telling mom when we get home.”

Philip rolled his eyes, but smiled nonetheless. “Great. Let’s do it.”

∞

Under the eye of a watchful and complacent God, the snow continued to fall in its chilly white blanket. The wind had ceased in its violent temperament, giving the forest an almost hallowed feel in its eerie silence. A few woodland creatures poked their furry heads out of their dens to test the air. Danger was lurking. They could sense it, but had no way of knowing in what form it would appear, and scrabbled back into the safety and warmth of their burrows.

The children were huddled again into a tight circle, the body of Charity Woods lying at their feet. Her skin had taken on a waxy sheen, stiffening, wan in the narrow spears of moonlight. She looked peaceful. Nothing more than a little eleven year–old girl who’d gotten tired of playing and decided to rest for awhile beneath the comforting arms of an elderly oak tree. She was only asleep now and dreaming endless dreams that only the dead can interpret in their long slumber.

“Give it to me, Jake,” Philip said. He was kneeling beside Charity’s body, his face set and determined.

Jake felt around in the back pocket of his coveralls and produced a jack–knife. His grandfather had given it to him as a present on his thirteenth birthday, and made Jake promise that he’d be careful with it and keep it clean, because one day it might just save his life. That day had arrived sooner rather than later.

Jake handed him the knife. Its blade was small but sharp. Philip pulled open the knife, and said, “Okay, guys, now listen and watch.”

He lifted up Charity’s right arm, her skin like seasoned wood beneath his fingertips. He grimaced, his stomach doing a lazy roll, and went on talking in the still of the shadows. “I’m going to cut her arm, here,” he pointed with the tip of the blade just inside the crook of Charity’s elbow, “and here.” He ran the blade down the length of her arm until it came to rest just above her wrist. The tiny blade glimmered in the moonlight, winking coldly at the children.

“I’m going to start squeezing her arm then,” Philip went on, “so the blood starts running. After that, I want—”

“What about the words?” Eva interrupted. She was standing, still shivering, just to the left of Philip. He looked up at her blankly.

“You know, Philip,” she insisted, “the magic words that the medicine man used on that dead guy before they drank his blood. You said your Grandpa said that he said some words. What were they?”

Philip shrugged, still holding the limp right arm of Charity. “I don’t know. Grandpa didn’t know either, I guess. He just said they were funny sounding words that he couldn’t understand. The Indian was just probably talking in his own language. What’s the difference?”

Eva stared at him as if he’d suddenly gone stupid. Another mound of fresh snow fell from the treetops, landing with a soft crash in the underbrush. “Well,” she said, “suppose we have to know those words, huh? Then what? Suppose this won’t work without the magic words of the medicine man? We’ll drink Charity’s blood and still freeze to death!”

The other children were silent as Philip thought about it. A trickle of fear spiked his heart at the thought of ending up like Charity. He didn’t want to freeze to death out here anymore than anyone else did, but Eva had a point. What if it didn’t work? What if they really needed the words? Black doubt clutched at his mind. He secretly wished Eva would have kept her fat mouth shut. Things had been going just fine until now, he thought, at least until the death of Charity.

And that was a funny thing, wasn’t it? Why had Charity been the first one to die? he asked himself. Out of all of them, Charity had fallen first. She’d just stopped there in a foot of snow, her threadbare scarf fluttering about her cheeks, and fallen face first into a snow–bank as if someone had pushed her from behind.

Maybe she’d been sick, Philip told himself. Or maybe she’d hurt herself earlier and was afraid to tell anybody for fear of slowing up the group. Philip chewed on his numb lower lip, thinking. Or maybe . . . maybe . . .

An idea suddenly came to him just as clear as a crystal bell.

“We don’t need any magic words,” he told the huddled group confidently. “Or any other magic, because we already have it.”

“What are you talking about?” Jake asked. His cheeks were near frozen, and his chest hurt as his lungs struggled for oxygen against the frosty night air.

Philip offered him a humorless smile. “Right here,” he said, wiggling the arm of Charity Woods’s arm back and forth. “She’s a witch.”

Jake visibly stiffened, his mouth set in a hard straight line. He still wanted to pound on Philip’s face for his earlier words and Willie had stopped him. But now . . .

Eva cut Jake off on his path to senseless violence. “You said her mother was a witch,” she told Philip. “Not Charity. She’s just a kid.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Philip answered stoically. A puff of wind caught his hair and blew it over his eyes. He brushed it back. “If her mother is a witch, then she is, too,” he explained. “That’s what I remember dad telling me. Said it’s in the blood, and can be passed down through an entire family.”

“So what?” Jake challenged him. “That doesn’t mean spit!”

“Does so, Jake!” Philip shot back. His voice was beginning to tremble in its frustration at trying to make Jake understand. “Don’t you get it? There’s magic in her blood. Charity’s mother is a witch, and witches do magic! So we don’t need . . .”

Slowly, understanding dawned like melting ice over the country-boy face of Jake, as he finished Philip’s sentence: “. . . any magic words,” he whispered.

Philip sighed in relief. Jake understood. Finally. But would he do it? Philip didn’t know, and didn’t have the time to argue the point. The temperature was slipping away into the darkness, and if they didn’t do it now they never would.

“Ready?” Philip asked, looking around the circle. All of them nodded, all of them that is, except for Jake. His face was impassive, his eyes staring far away into the moonlit night.

“I’m not doing it,” Jake said. His head was held high, as if he were facing a firing squad instead of a group of cold children he’d known most his life.

“Why not, Jake?” Eva cried. “Why?”

Still staring into nothing, the jack–knife’s blade poised just inside the pocket of Charity’s elbow, Jake answered, “Because it ain’t right, Eva. That’s why. It just ain’t right. You all go ahead. I’ll wait.”

The wind picked up rustling the snow heavy leaves above them. A branch broke with the snap of .22 rifle in an early morning meadow, and Philip had had enough.

“Forget him,” he said. “If he hasn’t got the sense that God gave a goose, then forget him. If he dies, he dies.”

And with nothing else left to say, Philip made the incision on the inside of Charity’s arm. The blood was immediate, but sluggish, like fresh sap being drawn from a maple tree. Philip began to squeeze the arm just above the elbow in timed clutches. The blood flow thickened and then increased in its velocity; the children watching in dreadful fascination.

Forming his fingers into a makeshift cup, Philip collected a handful of blood as it ran weeping down the length of Charity’s outstretched arm. He did this carefully, almost tenderly, his dark eyes focusing on the open wound he was currently milking.

In a short time, where no one had dared breathe a word—not even Jake—Philip’s ‘cup’ was full. He drank from it, emptied it, and then repeated the process once more with the same care and attention that a mother cat would bestow upon her kittens.

Sated, Philip rose to his feet, his knees grimy with dirt and snow. His lips were the color of roses in bloom; a strange warmth creeping throughout his belly in fingers of delicious heat. Noticing the others, and licking the last of Charity’s blood from his palm, he asked, “Next?”

∞

In the end, they all drank, all except for Jake. He stood away from them, mute, his face an unmarked page in an empty book. And although silent, he was thinking inside, watching as the others knelt beside the body of Charity Woods, drinking to the end of their childhood innocence.

Something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong. What it was he couldn’t have said, but Jake knew it was true just the same. He wasn’t a bright boy by nature, but something was screaming inside him, some primordial instinct that he’d never touched on before, insisting that he flee, and flee quickly, into the woods.

But Jake didn’t run, not just yet. Maybe it was in the way the children were acting. They’d all knelt beside Charity’s corpse one-by-one, drank (although Allie had been crying)—Philip furiously pumping Charity’s arm like a water pump—and then moved aside to allow passage for the next child.

But it was after they had their fill that was bothering Jake. They weren’t talking amongst themselves. No murmuring in low tones, or nervous giggles, or outright laughter when Willie tripped over a frozen root and fell face first into the snow. They were just standing there like statues of stone, staring at him. It was creepy.

Secondly, Jake’s mind pointed out, the children no longer appeared cold or frightened. They seemed serene in the falling snow, unconcerned by the elements surrounding them or by the noises stealing out of the dark woods. They were at peace.

Something began to shine around the faces of the children. Jake froze, watching as a numbing terror crawled slowly up his spine. It was their eyes, the eyes of his friends. They were glowing like hot embers leftover in a fire gone to ash. They were grinning now, their ruby–stained lips pulled back in masks of dark knowledge. As one, they advanced on him.

They’re still hungry, Jake thought distantly, standing there in the piling snow. It was almost dreamlike, staring into their fathomless eyes, watching as his friends approached him with their arms outstretched in undulating waves of grey. He noticed he was no longer cold, either, and that his pains of hunger had abated. His mind felt free and easy, and that nothing could hurt him, especially his friends.

Philip was a pain, sure, but he was a nice enough guy. He could throw a rock a country mile and catch a catfish with one arm tied behind his back. And Willie? So the kid had a messed up hand, so what? Jake remembered earlier wanting to pound on Willie’s face, but now the memory seemed utterly ridiculous, and even the thought of it somehow saddened him.

They were all his friends, and they would never hurt him. They would grow up together and have children of their own. They would . . .

“You think too much, Jake,” Philip said pleasantly. His voice had taken on the tone of an older and wiser man. A man of culture and breeding; a man who knew the way of the world and the secrets within it. He was only a few feet away from Jake, his bloody hands almost within grasping reach.

Jake’s paralysis snapped. It had been the sound of Philip’s voice in his ears. A greedy voice full of hunger and desire; a voice that was dead to the love of life and what served only to a higher, darker power: Witchcraft.

“You should have listened to me, Jake,” Philip said, his eyes smiling. “I told you there was magic in the blood of that child. I told you, but you didn’t want to listen, did you?”

Jake broke for the snowy cover of the forest. The snow was deep, thigh high in places, his legs churning through what felt like mounds of wet cotton. Low hanging branches, like wooden snipers, whipped across his cheeks and forehead drawing thin lines of blood. His heart was hammering painfully within his chest, his arms pumping in a piston-like fashion in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between himself and the pursuing children. They were gaining, their feet light and skimming across the frozen landscape. Jake dared not turn around to check their progress.

Jake stumbled. A root—a seemingly traitorous root—not quite asleep beneath its blanket of snow had reached up with its twisted fingers and snagged his foot. Jake fell, his mouth open in surprise, his eyes wild with fear, snow pushing oppressively in his face. He tried to turn over, to regain his feet and run for his young life, but it was useless.

Small, powerful hands seized him from behind, pinning him to the cold earth. “You foolish child,” Philip’s man-voice hissed in his ear. “You can’t outrun us. No one can.”

The children fell on him as the moon slipped behind a low level line of scudding clouds.

∞

“What is that out there?” Josh Hoyt said to no one in particular. He was staring out the single window of Christ the Savior church, his hands cupped around his eyes, his nose smashed against the glass.

“What are you talking about now, old man?” Amos Baker answered him. Amos was standing beside the pot-bellied stove, rubbing his hands together. He was 58 years–old, and if it were possible, it was getting colder outside, and he was beginning to feel it in the ache of his bones.

“Out there!” Josh shouted, tapping the glass with a gloved hand. “There’s . . . there’s somethin’ out there, I think.”

Amos sighed, not knowing whether to believe the old coot or not. The church was currently empty, save for the two of them, the rest having left for the warmth and comfort of their homes to await news of the lost children. Amos figured the womenfolk had done prayed themselves senseless, and there was nothing left to do now but wait. And of course, as it always was in life, waiting was the hardest part.

“Well, what does it look like, old man?” He was only three years younger than Josh, but any chance to rib the old man about his age was a point in his favor.

Outside the wind was whistling beneath the eaves, the church groaning like an old woman dreaming of the grave. The moon was out, casting its glare on the township known as Hickory to its residents. Many of them were still awake, watching the snow fall from inside their houses, praying for it to stop before it was too late. Praying for the children. Praying for their children.

“I don’t know, dammit!” Josh answered irritably. He was tired and wanted nothing more than to go home and get warm beneath the covers. He was an old man, for Christ’s sake! And if Amos Baker didn’t quit reminding him about that very fact every two minutes, then by God, he might just have to show Amos what an old man could do!

Amos and he were currently two hours into a four hour rotation shift on watch for the children. The storm hadn’t let up a bit, and Josh was beyond certain that one of them would end up having to go outside and wake up their relief. The thought sent a shudder down his spine. Not because he minded waking someone up in the middle of the night, or the wolves that were undoubtedly keeping a watchful eye on the town, none of that bothered him. What bothered him was how ungodly cold it had gotten. It would be a storm to remember.

Still looking out the window, Josh said, “I’m not sure . . . but . . . well . . . it could be . . .” He squinted against the shine of the falling snow in the moonlight.

“Well?” Amos said, still warming his hands over the stove. He would have to feed it another log soon, provided they had one. If they didn’t, they’d have to start busting up the pews into kindling. “Are you gonna tell me what you see, or are you gonna stand there all night flapping your gums?”

Josh bit painfully into his lower lip. One of these days, Amos, he thought darkly. One of these days that mouth of yours just might getcha into trouble. So I’d keep it shut! “Give me a minute, why don’tcha?” he hollered over his shoulder. “It’s snowing too damn–blasted much out there! A man couldn’t see a hoot n’ holler if he had to! And when I do see something . . . I’ll –”

Josh suddenly went silent, his rheumy red–rimmed eyes widening in disbelief and astonishment. For a moment he couldn’t talk, his tongue planted against the roof of his mouth, and when he finally found his voice it was breathless and rocky: “It’s the children,” he gasped. “My God in Heaven, I do believe it’s the children.”

Out beyond the window that Josh was currently peering through, a dirt road led out of town. It intersected with a rickety bridge that had been named after one of the founding fathers of Hickory Creek: Miller’s Pass. And on this bridge stood four silhouettes wavering like steam above an open wound, their shadows long and forlorn like spectres from the twilight. They seemed neither lost nor confused, but content to stand there at Miller’s Pass, watching in the stillness of the witching hour, waiting . . . waiting . . .

“Get a signal for ‘em!” Josh cried. “Hurry it up! They’re probably near dead from frostbite!” The snow continued in its torrent; the temperature now all but lost.

Amos suddenly couldn’t decide what to do. Flustered, he ran around the confines of the small church, his mind short circuiting, searching for anything but finding nothing. “Are you sure, old man?” he asked. “That could be anything out there in the storm! It could be a pack of wolves for all . . .”

“Just get out there, you damned fool!” Josh ordered. “Grab the lamp and your rifle and go!”

Amos found his rifle leaning against one dusty corner. He grabbed it, his mind moving in a blur of excitement, and then found the oil lamp perched on the windowsill next to Josh. Having both in hand now, he started toward the front door.

“Be careful out there, Amos,” Josh advised him. “Just step outside that door and wave that lamp back and forth. And keep an eye out for wolves while you’re at it!”

Amos only nodded, his hands trembling in agitation to get to the children, and opened the door.

The fury of the storm hit him like a mule kick as soon as he stepped out. Amos put a hand to his eyes, the snow and wind striking his face in bitter slaps. He looked up toward Miller’s Pass and saw what Josh had been caterwauling about: Four small shapes against a blinding background of freezing white.

“My God,” he whispered to the night, as he began to rock the lamp from side–to–side. “Save the children, Lord. Save the children.”

Amos held the lamp up higher, its flame sputtering in the driving wind. “Over here, kids!” he bellowed. He knew the storm would battle him for each and every word. “This way! Over here!” He waved the lamp harder, and then fired a single shot into the night air with his rifle. “Come on! Hurry up! Over . . .”

∞

The children had no problem at all in hearing the cries and pleas of Amos Baker. In fact, his voice came to them as if the wretched fool were standing right beside them, clear and distinct.

None of them spoke. There was no need to. The chore of voicing one’s thoughts had become obsolete. The children were one now in body, mind, and spirit. They were hungry, ravenous, like the wolves, their brothers and sisters in a kindred spirit living in the mountains and woods.

Hickory would be a good starting place, they thought, watching Amos—a man that they all knew—pendulum the lamp back and forth through the snow. He would be the first of many to come. Jake had been nothing more than a sacrifice to his own ignorance, his short-sightedness, his youth.

And after that, there would be so much more. Feast upon feast; blood orgies of death and destruction. A decade of decadence.

Two miles south of Hickory lay the rambling little village of North Oaks, poor people with a hard work ethic. Population: Seventy.

And to the west was the town known as Abbey’s Ford, its location a paradise nestled in the green grass of a sprawling valley with clear running springs. Population: Fifty–four.

Past Abbey’s Ford, not more than five miles as the crow flies, stood the inhabitants of Apple Tree, gentle folk who were always willing to take in a stranger. Population: Thirty–two.

The towns and cities within reach were too numerous to count or mention, but the children would find them, they would hunt them down. They would feed.

With the snow still falling in its soft caress, the group of children who’d been thought lost and feared dead, crossed over the bridge of Miller’s Pass and entered the township known only as Hickory Creek. Population: Fourty-one.

The solitary howl of a faraway wolf announced their arrival.

ABOUT MATTHEW LETT

Matthew Lett currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his wife of twenty–seven years and two daughters. The author of several novels, novellas, and short stories, he stays busy (when not writing full-time) by watching football, playing video games, and waiting for the perfect horror film to be made.

CENSORED!
David Perlmutter

We got the first reports of the disturbance soon after we boarded the space station, one of the last so-called ‘gifts’ the human beings left for us after they were liquidated by nuclear war in 2100. Turns out, there were some other unpleasant ‘gifts’ that they left behind for us, too—that we were soon to find out about to our great disadvantage.

To start off with, I was extremely grateful to be chosen to be among those embarking, so to speak, on the first voyage of the canine race into deep space. When the humans were killed off, we stayed behind, since our outer fur gave us the perfect resistance against the extreme heat of the nuclear winter. That, and the fact that they had made us pretty much like them – with spinal cords, advanced intelligence and the like—while keeping our essential subservient ‘dog’-like traits in place to make sure they were able to control us, helped us to survive when they didn’t. The joke was sure on them for that one.

Like I said, I was grateful to be part of the first space exploration team of our race. We’d had to clean up the conflict between us and some of the other stragglers from the other ‘races’ that were left behind by the nuclear activity before we could even think about taking the humans’ place in space, but, now that things were pretty much under control to our liking on Earth, we could think about space related things with a clearer head. And we really had to now. Since the humans were gone, the alien races of the galaxy were much bolder in making their presence known among us, but, unlike them, we had no intention of seeing ourselves as their superiors in any way. In that way of thinking lies the supreme kind of madness.

Of course, there were the usual problems with politics in my trying to get on the shuttle in the first place. Me being a whippet, and a girl, and all that, there were size and sex and other issues that needed to be addressed. But I proved to them I was physically and mentally worthy of being in such a prestige environment, and now I was here. Both as a small dog and a girl, I was the only one of my kind aboard, but the fellas quickly accepted me as one of their own, and we went ahead with our task of trying to connect with the aliens and prove to them we meant no harm.

At least, that was what we tried to do. Because it was just after that that the trouble began . . .

∞

There had been rattlings and rumblings among the contents of the engine hold, and these quickly began to undermine the station’s stability as soon as we got aboard. Just as quickly, we decided that something had to be done about it. Not wanting to antagonize me—or anyone else—by some sort of biased display of prowess of a gendered kind, we chose the simple act of drawing straws to see who would be responsible for confronting the creature in the hold, if it was some sort of corporeal being. I got the longest, and Jason, a tall, intelligent brown–furred mongrel who happened to be my bunk mate, and whom I was only slightly attracted to, got the next longest, so we ended up being the ones being chosen.

Given what happened next, I’m sorry that we were.

The rattling continued and increased as soon as we approached the hold with our flashlights. As we got closer and closer it increased in intensity, and, much to my embarrassment, I started showing more signs of fear than I would have liked to. Fortunately my fur was already white, otherwise all of those mysterious noises might have turned it that color artificially. Jason noticed this, as he usually does, and got in my way chivalrously just before I could open the door to the hold.

“You know, Cheryl,” he said, “if you’re feeling too scared to do this, I can just—”

“Who are you calling ‘chicken’?” I flared. “We’re in this together, Jason! Remember that! I can handle this thing, whatever it is, without your help, if that’s necessary!”

Jason flushed with embarrassment. Even though we were pals, he knew it was a bad idea to cross me, and he’d just done that to his regret.

“Sorry,” he said contritely. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

“I know you didn’t!” I said, playfully knocking my paw onto his shoulder. “But I mean it when I say we’re in this together. And the sooner we get this thing over with, the better. We’ve got hard and serious work ahead of us, and we can’t let a thing like this interfere with it.”

“Right,” he said seriously. “Let’s do this.”

Using his pass card, Jason swiped us in past the security system. Then we were inside. However I soon found out, to my shock, that the lights were out.

Really out.

“Ow! Damn it!” I shouted as I knocked my foot against a barely visible pipe. “What kind of idiot leaves the lights off in the engine room of a space station? That’s the most irresponsible . . .”

“It probably wasn’t a person who was responsible for it, Cheryl,” Jason said as he turned his flashlight back on and shined it in my face. “This pile of space metal has been floating around since the humans died. It’s a miracle the thing is still floating to begin with. The power source that was fuelling the lights here probably just died out before they were able to change it. If they remembered to do it.”

“You’re right,” I answered as I turned to shine my own flashlight in his face. “The humans did forget about a lot of things, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but we haven’t got time to talk about their faults right now,” said Jason. “We got work to do.”

“Sure, like stopping that damn rattling!” I said, shining my light into what looked like a supply closet in the back corner. “It’s bugging the hell out of me!”

We avoided the mass of pipes and the giant radiator in the center of the room and advanced towards the closet.

“It sounds like somebody’s locked themselves in there,” I said. “By accident. Otherwise, why would it sound so frantic and be so consistent?”

“Right,” he said. “All the more to reason to get whatever it is out of there.”

We got to the closet door. Jason held it in check while I kicked it into submission. Even though I’m small, my limbs are powerful, and can do sufficient damage if allowed to. Sure enough, I managed to strike a weak part of the construction of the door, and it splintered open, revealing . . .

A human being!

∞

Jason and I staggered back in surprise upon seeing the thing at first, but then our cool reasserted itself and we re–approached it. That was when we were able to turn on our flashlights again and get a closer look at it.

It was a woman; that much I could tell. She was obviously in her middle fifties based on the silvering shade of her hair and her relatively conservative style of dress. She had a big pair of horn–rimmed spectacles on her face as well, which she proceeded to adjust before finally addressing us with speech. As with her dress, her voice was something I recognized immediately from watching old DVDs of human–produced films and television programs. It was a hazy voice, studded with what appeared to be the effects of considerable vice.

“‘Bout time you got me out of here!” she said with a flourish. “You know how long I been cramped up in that damn box?”

“Well,” said Jason, genuinely thinking she wanted an answer to the question, “The humans disappeared about a century ago, so—”

She slapped him. The echo reverberated through the cramped quarters of the chamber.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Don’t you know that nobody answers back to me when I’m talking?”

She was prepared to slap him again, but I grabbed her wrist tightly before she could make that move.

“Look here, lady!” I growled confidently. “I don’t how you got here, or who sent you, or whatever, but you can’t act like you’re in charge simply because you’re a goddamned human being! We’re in charge here now, and you’re gonna do what we say if you wanna stay alive! And that means . . .”

Before I could say anything further, she broke my grip, pulled out a purse or satchel or some such thing, and opened it, retrieving a small white package with some little bands of a silver substance wrapped in gold and white paper inside of it. She pulled one of these objects out of the box and lit the end of it on fire with a small object made out of red plastic. The acrid scent given off by the object immediately irritated the sensitive nostrils of Jason and myself, and we instinctively covered our noses and mouths with our paws.

“Can you stop doing that?” I demanded petulantly.

“What?” she demanded back.

“That . . . whatever you call it. Those fumes are horrible!”

“What is wrong with you?” she snapped. “Don’t you . . . ‘people’ do this?”

“No!” Jason said angrily. “Whatever it is, it—”

“Smoking is something that a lot of us humans do, or did!” she answered. “You’ll put up with this, and like it!”

“Oh, will we?” Jason growled. He tried to lunge towards her, but I held him back with a paw.

“Look,” I said to the woman, “suppose you knock off the high and mighty crap and treat us with some respect? We dogs have done a lot more in the past century to improve the world and make it a better place than you humans ever did!”

“Is that so?” she retorted.

“It is!” I responded.

“And you did this without anybody regulating you, checking over your behavior and whatnot?”

“We did!”

“Well, you’re gonna get regulated now, and like it!”

“We are, huh? By who? You?”

“Exactly. I’m a CENSOR! Or, at least, I was before I got shut up here!”

“And what exactly,” Jason interjected, “is a CENSOR?”

The woman laughed an evil and threatening laugh that was cut short by a coughing spell caused by a sudden rush of phlegm to her throat, caused by her aforementioned ‘smoking’.

“How can you dopes not know what a CENSOR is?” she spat. “Look, you guys still got movies and television and music and theatre and that kinda stuff, don’t ya?”

“Uh–huh,” Jason and I said together.

“Well, ain’t you got anyone who tells the people who make those things when they’re morally out of line? When they’re getting too sexy, or too political, or too confrontational? Anyone who tells them to calm down when they push too far?”

Jason and I looked at each other, and I then stated our position.

“Our media is not based on the principle of outside regulation,” I told her, point blank. “The dogs who produce it will not bend to outside influence, restrict what may be said or produced, or circumscribe the telling of important stories that need to be told. We believe fundamentally in the principles of artistic integrity and respect for all beings. Besides which, there is no way that somebody like YOU could hope to influence or interfere with it, so you should just–”

“DAMN IT!” she interjected. “What the hell’s going on here? No CENSORSHIP? You ain’t at all concerned about the negative influence of the media?”

“The what?” said a genuinely confused Jason.

The woman’s mouth took on an appalled expression. Then she snapped it shut into one of anger.

“Well,” she said, restraining her emotions, “since you don’t you know jack about what I do, I’ll have to explain myself.

“You see, back when my folks were still on Earth, things weren’t operated on those principles of ‘freedom’ you seem to cherish so much. I worked for a television network, and the only freedom that existed there was the freedom of the bosses to collect as much in salary and fringe benefits as possible! That was particularly true for the children’s cartoons that I was in charge of regulating. NOBODY got past me on ANYTHING! And you’d be pretty damn surprised at what those dope peddlers tried to get away in those miserable excuses for entertainment they had the nerve to call ‘programs’. Say anything about how they had to make one little change in a script and they’d turn beet red and call you a FASCIST! Well, I guess I was, but I was no Hitler, I’ll tell ya that!

“I spent most of the ‘70s arguing with them idiots and then I was ready to quit. Fortunately, the ‘80s came along, and the toy companies wanted to make shows. I liked their attitude, so I stayed on. Their attitude was, the cuter and blander the characters were, the more the kids would dig them. So they gave me a gift to help me make the programs the way they wanted.”

She reached into the closet and pulled it out what was perhaps the longest and most powerful gun either Jason or I had seen in our lives.

“The Cuteness 10,000,” she said, without either of us asking her exactly what it was—nor did we want to. “Designed to turn the most threatening and damaging fictional characters into harmless, big–eyed creatures, fit only for entertaining the stupidest idiots in the world, which pretty much describes kids in the ‘80s. Boy, I used this sucker a lot in ways you wouldn’t believe. Especially on people and things that crossed me. You understand? Of course, it had to come to an end. The damn network stopped producing cartoons as soon as the ‘90s began. Seems they couldn’t make any more money off of ‘em, or at least that was the stupid excuse they gave me!

“They wanted me to give it up, but I wouldn’t! I went out and made a couple people cute with it, and they figured I was a menace to society. The hell I was. It was them who were changing. I was keeping up with the status quo! So they sent me up here where I wouldn’t make no trouble, so they said. I’ve been here, alone, since then, ‘til you folks showed up. You were just lucky I locked myself in the damn closet trying to fix the lights, or else you woulda met me beforehand and all that!

“But all that don’t matter now. You’re in my territory now, pups, and you’ll do what I want if you want to stay alive!”

“Is that so?” I demanded. “And what exactly will you do to us if we don’t?”

“THIS!” she shouted. And she fired the Cuteness 10,000 directly at us!

With agility on my side, I was able to make it out of the way in the nick of time. Not so Jason. The beam from the gun hit him squarely in the gut. I could only watch in horror at what unfolded next. First, he shrunk to a third of his original size. Then, his eyes became enormous, consuming a full third of his face, which likewise was shrunk to a mere fraction of the original. When the process had concluded, he was no taller than the bottom half of my leg, and, what was worse, he displayed all the intelligence and guile of an infant. A human infant, no less!

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM?” I blazed at the woman, my anger overtaking my fear for a moment.

“I made him cuter!” she said matter-of-factly. “Just like I was paid to do back in the day!”

“But why?” I said with the fear now returning to me, in a voice full of astonishment. “Why subject someone to such an obscene practice?”

“Because that’s how people want to see each other!” the woman said. “At least, that was how they used to, before those damn kids took over the business and ruined everything! But on here, that’s how it’s gonna be! I told you, I didn’t let nothing get past me, then or now! I don’t stand for nothing sexy or threatening or flatulent or even the tiniest bit politically motivated in talk, speech or action! And I knew that you two and your friends weren’t gonna be like that the moment you opened your mouths! So I had to do it to you!”

“You can’t get away with this!” I said defiantly, again trying to mask the fear in my voice. “I’ll get help, and you’ll . . .”

“Oh, shove it!” she said dismissively. “Get her!”

Tiny Jason toddled over towards me, and, with surprising and horrifying force, pulled me by the lapel of my jacket towards his mewling face.

“You and me is gonna be pals,” he drawled, “and we’ll play nice and good and sweet!” Then, with a satanic edge, he then growled: “OR ELSE!”

I screamed with a yell that would have woken everyone up if they were sleeping. Bad protocol, I know, but this was fast becoming an emergency, and anything goes under those conditions! I managed to wrench myself free from Tiny Jason’s grasp and made a bolt for the door. Not bothering to sign myself out with the card, I ran right through the doors, creating a couple of embarrassing holes in them in the process.

“Try to run, girl!” the censor warned as I departed the room. “I’ll get you soon enough!”

∞

I only had one chance left. Quickly making my way upstairs to our quarters, I knew I needed to tell the other guys about what was going on and what had happened to Jason. If I could only just tell them, they’d help me and maybe get the woman to change Jason back, if that was at all possible.

“Fellas?” I called out as soon as I got to the top of the stairs. “We got a situation here! I need HELP!”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t to get it. Because, as it turned out, the censor had been there already. I don’t how, and I don’t know when, but all of them had been turned into facsimiles of the . . . thing Jason had become. ALL OF THEM!

I figured this out when I saw our pilot, Archie, come out of his quarters. What I thought might have been Archie, anyway. He had his orange red fur and blue eyes, all right, but he was now the exact same size and shape as Jason, with the same size eyes and body mass. He waddled over to me as soon as he heard me, and I screamed again as soon as I saw him.

“Don’t be ‘fraid, Cheryl!” he said in that same deceptively benign little kid voice. “I just wanna PLAY with you!”

“NO!” I shouted in horror. “I outgrew your kind of play years ago! And I don’t want to go back to doing it AGAIN!”

I outran him but I soon found myself surrounded by the other guys. Jim, Rob, Charlie, Tom, Greg, Mel – all of them, they were the same little satanic . . . beasts Jason had become! I just hoped they weren’t going to become contagious, because then I’d become one of them, too!

Quickly I ran to my room and barricaded the door with what I had available. They surrounded it as soon as they could, with the censor and Jason soon joining them. And that’s the predicament I’m in now.

I know it’s probably going to be a long shot for this little paper airplane to get down to Earth in time to prevent me from becoming eternally cute, but I have no other choice. They’re pounding on the door now, and I have only seconds to act! So, please, if anyone finds this, please send help up to the space station above Earth as soon as possible! IT’S A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH!

ABOUT DAVID PERLMUTTER

David Perlmutter is a freelance writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The holder of an MA degree from the Universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg, and a lifelong animation fan, he has published short fiction in a variety of genres for various magazines and anthologies, as well as essays on his favorite topics for similar publishers. He is the author of the upcoming books America Toons In: A History of Television Animation (McFarland and Co.) and The Singular Adventures of Jefferson Ball (Chupa Cabra Press).

THE SCREAMING TREE
Bruce Tanton

Dark clouds scudded across the sun and cast fleeting shadows that danced over the hills on the opposite side of the valley. High above it must have been blowing a gale judging by how fast those clouds were moving; yet here at ground level there was only a mild breeze which barely rippled the leaves of the forest’s trees overhead. And Pete and I were well and truly lost in that forest.

An hour or so ago our orienteering exercise had been thrown out of whack when our compass needles went berserk and spun crazily around their dials. We agreed that it must have been a heavy presence of iron ore in the ground, but that information didn’t make us any less lost. Soon we would have to make camp we knew, but so far we hadn’t found anywhere acceptable. We’d just have to slog on through the forest and hope for the best in finding somewhere appropriately clear, flat and level.

When we stumbled into the clearing and saw the gnarled, ancient tree with its mighty spread of branches dominating the centre, we could hardly believe our eyes. It was a totally incongruous find which looked like a film set for The Lord of the Rings, dark and sinister, somehow. It was easy to see that the tree that stood alone in the clearing and was significantly different from the others around.

“This’ll do us fine,” declared Pete. “Look, it’s got everything we need.” He pointed to a small stream on the other side of the clearing which gurgled down from the hills—hills that we’d just spent the last two days tramping over.

When we stepped under the spread of the trees leaves and approached the ancient trunk, I noticed that my compass needle had settled down and behaved normally again. “This is crazy,” I said, tapping the compass’s glass face. Pete just shrugged when I looked at him.

I think it was at that point when I first began to feel a strange sense of foreboding which deepened as we neared the massive trunk. Beneath the spread of leaves the air, to me, held a hint of menace, an inexplicable threat which I couldn’t explain. I tried to ignore it and, as a distraction, I rhetorically asked Pete, “What sort of tree is this?” It was unlike any other tree

I’d seen. Its size and shape, the texture of its bark and the spread of its branches resembled an oak, but the leaves were an odd spear–shape. Their colour seemed unnatural, too. There were rust-coloured veins running through the base olive green of the leaf.

Pete shrugged. “Who cares? It’s a great tree to camp under.” So saying he let his back pack fall to the ground. It struck the earth with a soft, dull thud and the air seemed to swallow the sound.

Sound? What sound? I thought. Under these branches there was a deep, almost eerie silence.

I’ve always been fascinated by reports of supernatural events and/or ‘gifted’ people. Stories of clairvoyants helping the police find missing people or their bodies intrigue me, but I absolutely know I have no such powers whatsoever. So when a chill of fear suddenly shivered through me, to my own surprise I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Pete, I don’t like it here. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place. Let’s move on.”

“What?”

“I . . . I don’t know what it is. It just feels, er, bad.” I stammered lamely.

“Don’t talk crap!” he scoffed, “it’s a perfect place for a camp site. It’s got running water nearby and even if it rains we’d be dry enough here – which saves us putting up the tent.”

“Yes, but . . .” I tried, but he cut me off with . . .

“Look, it’s a top camp site, but you don’t have to take my word for it. What about all these other people who’ve been here before us?

“What other people?” I asked not knowing what he was talking about.

“These other people,” he answered and pointed at the gnarled trunk just out of my line of sight.

I moved closer and, for the first time, looked closely at the tree’s trunk. To my surprise I saw the dark scars of initials carved into the wood. There was K.W. 1961, D.P. 1953. C.T. 1999 B.& R. S. ‘48.

“Well?” scoffed Pete derisively with a grin on his face.

“OK, OK,” I said. Pete’s discovery and mocking tone made me feel stupid so, to hide my embarrassment, I dropped my pack and stalked off to the stream with my near-empty canteen in hand.

Amazingly, as soon as I stepped from beneath the branches the oppressive and uncomfortable feelings vanished. The air seemed lighter and easier to breath and the twittering of birds underscored the music of the stream’s running water. I had stepped back into another world, a real world and the relief I felt was enormous. Knots began to untie themselves in my guts and the constrictive band around my chest loosened.

At the stream I drank my fill and then replenished my canteen before looking back to see Pete at the trunk busily working at something. I grabbed my canteen and returned, but not too quickly, I admit. Again, under the dark foliage I was filled with that dread feeling which I had hoped may have gone away or at least diminished while I was at the stream. The silence was just as heavy and ominous as before. Pete was so engrossed with what he was doing that he didn’t hear my approach and it was only when I said, “Pete, what are you doing?” did he realize that I had returned and looked around.

He stepped back from the trunk with a satisfied smile. “Just finished,” he said proudly. “What do you think?” He pointed his knife at a spot on the tree.

My heart sank at the sight of his knife. It was obvious what he’d been up to and, sure enough, there was P. R. 2013 carved deeply into the bark. Reddish sap dribbled sluggishly from the bottom of the letters and numbers looking all the world like tears of blood. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. Even as I said it I realized that my words had no effect on my friend.

“Oh, give me a break,” he retorted. “I had to. Do you realize that we may well be the first people to come to this spot since C.T. carved his initials in 1999? I had to leave my calling card.”

“But it’s wrong,” I protested.

“Look, I haven’t ring–barked the bloody tree!” he snapped. “What’s the matter with you all of a sudden? You’ve been acting like a frightened rabbit ever since we got here. For God’s sake, lighten up.!”

“Don’t you feel it?” I almost screamed. “Can’t you sense there’s something very wrong here, something really spooky? Just stop and listen,” I pleaded.

“Listen to what?” he retorted with a puzzled frown.

“Shut up and listen,” I demanded.

So we stood for a moment or two with Pete eyeing me as though I’d gone mad. “I can’t hear anything,” he said at last in exasperation.

“That’s my point!” I cried. “Under this tree you can’t hear anything. Under this tree everything’s so . . . so . . . dead.”

“Give me a break! Of course it’s dead,” snapped Pete. He pointed upwards. “The leaves are so thick that no sunlight or rain can get through. That foliage makes a perfect sound barrier, too, you idiot! Haven’t you ever been in a pine forest? It’s much the same. You’re just imagining things, that’s all.”

I had to admit that there was some truth in what he said, but only some. Naturally I’d been in a pine forest, but the effects Pete described were nowhere near as exaggerated as they were under this tree. I shook my head sadly. Pete simply couldn’t feel it and wasn’t prepared to listen to any more garbage from me.

Almost defiantly he began to undo the straps on his rucksack that held his sleeping bag. Over his shoulder he said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to make camp. It’ll be dark soon and I intend to be all set up before the sun goes down.”

I shrugged, defeated.

∞

I have to admit that when darkness fell I felt a little easier being under the tree. Somehow the silence seemed more natural. Our little gas stove burned nicely and created a safe cave of flickering light beyond which I couldn’t see the sinister trunk. We boiled our kettle and drank tea. We heated up a couple of tins of Irish stew which was delicious and filling. Tactfully Pete didn’t mention my earlier fears.

As the evening wore on our conversation faded and the lapses of friendly silence grew longer. The fatigue of a hard day’s trekking had taken its toll on us both and by nine o’clock we were rolled into our sleeping bags . . .

I had an awful night!

It was a night wracked by terrible dreams. One, in particular, frightened the crap out of me. I was in a cold, dark cave or a prison cell and my wrists were chained to the damp wall. I felt frightened, trapped and in terrible danger. I sensed a movement close in front of me, but could see nothing. Then gradually, from the darkness, two somethings began to materialize. I tried to concentrate, but my pounding heart distracted me. Then slowly, oh so slowly, what I was looking at became clear . . .

Eyes! I was looking at surreal, blood–shot eyes! Eyes that transfixed mine. Beseeching eyes. Eyes that filled me with the utmost terror. Eyes that suddenly glared at me with malice and intent. I jerked awake bringing some of that terror with me. Several times during the night I thought I’d heard weird noises, too, but in my half–awake state the sounds lost their reality. This, for some reason, really troubled me . . .

I woke in pre-dawn greyness and sat bolt upright bathed in sweat. But it was cold out of the sleeping bag so I quickly shrugged into my jacket and pulled on my boots. It was only when I was lacing them up did I realize I couldn’t see Pete anywhere. At first I thought he’d moved to the other side of the tree trunk. That made sense if my troubled night had disturbed him, but when I looked he wasn’t there.

I took a detailed look all around me, but there was no sign of Pete. He had simply vanished along with all his gear! Blood chilling fear washed over me. “Pete?” I yelled. “Pete?” My calls were sucked up by the strange, terrible silence I remembered so well, and I could feel yesterday’s fears building up within me again.

Just then the sun burst through the clouds and sent shafts of light slanting along the valley. Suddenly the world around me was ablaze and my eyes were drawn to the tree trunk where all the carved initials seemed to be weeping fresh blood.

Then I saw them!

Outlined in the wrinkly, textured, bark above every initial was a carved face—a face hideously contorted in a silent scream of terror and agony.

I bit back a scream of my own and shut my eyes to the gruesome optical illusions which had been created by the dawn. Yet when I opened them again the loathsome faces were still there. Above P.R. 2013 was Pete’s face. It was Pete, beyond doubt. Yes, it was my friend with blood oozing from his staring, terror-stricken eyes. Blood was also seeping from his nostrils and even more running from the corners of his contorted, screaming mouth. “Pete!” I choked in horror, but his appalling expression didn’t alter.

Slowly the awful gargoyle of my friend began to fade as the light within the clearing lost its brilliance and, as the sun clawed higher, so the other terrible faces began to fade away, too. For a moment I remained stunned and motionless, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to tear my eyes away from the trunk which had fleetingly displayed its ghastly gallery of pain.

A low, cold wind moaned up the valley and filled the clearing with a death-like chill. The leaves over my head waved sluggishly in response. Then I heard the noises. Not leaf rustlings, but far away screams—human screams. Screams of incredible pain. Screams of the eternally damned, writhing in hell forever.

It was too much!

I took to my heels and fled from the tree, and once beyond the clearing, kept going! I ran like a madman and, as I left the valley and ascended the hills, the sound of those dreadful screams tormented and followed me on the wind . . .

Two days later, I was near to dropping from exhaustion, when I staggered into the National Park’s car park. I clambered into my van and drove straight to the nearest police station. I didn’t dare tell them of what I’d seen at the Screaming Tree. If I had they would have had me committed me to a loony-bin on the spot. So I just told them that that was where I’d last seen Pete. I don’t think they really believed me . . .

I couldn’t find that tree again. I had tried to lead the Police Rescue and Emergency Services in the hunt for Pete, but it was useless. He was officially declared ‘LOST. PRESUMED DEAD’ after an intense and fruitless month of searching, and his name joined the list of others who had become lost and were presumed to have perished in the National Park.

There was, Brian and Russel Stanley in 1948; David Preston in 1953; Kevin Winter in 1961; William Brice in 1970; Collin Townsend in 1999, and now Peter Ryan in 2013 was added. I couldn’t remember any of the other initials I saw carved into that tree, only Pete’s, but I’ll bet anything that they were the ones on that list.

Whatever happens I’ll never give up my search for that tree. I’ve made myself and Pete that vow. Sod using an old fashioned map and compass, I’ll use my G.P.S. and find it, and when I do, I’ll destroy it. I’ll ring-bark that bastard tree. No one else will join those gruesome portraits on that hideous trunk. No one else will hear those terrible, terrible screams.

ABOUT BRUCE TANTON

Bruce Tanton was born in England in 1946.  At the age of ten his family migrated to Adelaide, South Australia.

He began his working life as an apprentice plumber but gave that up to train as a psychiatric nurse at the age of twenty – a career which he continued until 2010 when he retired.

In his time he has enjoyed activities such as amateur theatre, cliff climbing, scuba diving and paragliding, but has now settled down to write.

In the early ‘90s he had three young adult novels and a couple of short stories published in Australia and, although he has always enjoyed writing, family matters took priority until recently.

Now he plans to focus on his writing and, like every other author, has a couple of “Best Sellers” tucked away, ready to go, in the bottom drawer of his writing desk.

WHY ALWAYS ME?
Nicholas McLean

James’ mother told him he had nothing to fear from the dark. But James knew better. Every night they came for him . . . every night.

It was early, Tuesday morning. James’ mother came to wake him up for school like every other weekday morning.

“Come on lazy bones! Time to get out of your pit, Jamie!” James’ mother called from his bedroom door.

“OK, OK,” James replied in a tired voice. He hadn’t slept much; at least he didn’t think he had. He was very tired, and on the edge of his mind was the memory of a nightmare that he couldn’t quite piece together. Disturbing images of large eyes and small gangly shaped bodies floated around his mind, it meant very little to him at that precise point in time, he had to get ready for school. It was going to be a very busy day.

James’ mother looked at him. He was just sitting at the breakfast table staring at his bowl of Rice Crispies, not eating them. He looked pale and had dark circles under his eyes. Guiltily she hoped that her music hadn’t kept him awake. She needed her music . . . and her alcohol in the evenings.

“Hurry up and eat your breakfast!” she shouted at him from the sitting room couch.

“I’m not hungry, Mam.”

“Eat it anyway, or do you think the cereal is free? Maybe it grows on trees? You asked for that rubbish, now eat it!” She was getting annoyed now, her hangover kicking in.

At length he finished his bowl of cereal and left for school, relieved to be out of the house. He became aware that his clothes smelled of smoke now that he was out in the fresh morning air. His mother was always smoking, always drinking and always annoyed.

James always liked this time of day, even when it was wintry cold as it was on this February morning. At this time of day he had the longest possible time on his own, away from his mother, away from the closeness of the oppressive smoke that lingered everywhere in his home. He would spend the morning on his own, keeping out of reach of the bullies who ran the yard at school.

∞

School was dull and long. He was bored at school, as he always was. James was not liked by many of his classmates, who often teased him because they thought he was weird and poor. He didn’t enjoy sport at all and mostly kept to himself, listening to cassettes on his walkman at break and lunch time. Every hour seemed to last an eternity. James was alone with his thoughts a lot, thinking about being afraid later, when the lights aren’t on and he was by himself in the quiet darkness.

Why am I like this, he wondered. Why can’t I be normal, why can’t people just like me?

School finally ended at 3:15pm and he headed home, walking slowly. His mother would probably be taking a nap still, and he didn’t want to wake her up. She didn’t usually stir till around 4:00pm. It was only a ten minute walk from school to his front door, but he made it last forty minutes . . . still early. He risked the door anyway, it was locked. That was not a good sign. He took his key from his pocket and unlocked the door with extreme caution, he did not want to disturb his mother and send her into a rage.

The lock opened with more noise than James would have liked and it creaked as he pushed his way through.

“For Christ’s sake, Jamie! Can’t you ever just let me have five minutes to myself, boy?” Came the inevitible yell from his mother’s bedroom.

“Sorry, Mam,” he called back, close to tears.

“You always are,” his mother said in a spiteful voice. She almost seemed to spit the words at him.

Sometimes he hated her. Mostly, he really hated her. He wished his father was still alive. He missed him immensely.

James went upstairs once his mother had got her dressing gown on and made her way downstairs, eager to avoid her mood. She stank of stale cigarette smoke; the whole house reeked of it.

∞

He went to his room and got changed, glad to be rid of his school uniform for the rest of the day. After getting his clothes on, James felt strange, a knot in his stomach, something about the curtain disturbed him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was exactly, but the movement of the curtain filled him with dread. He stood, quite still, looking at it. He couldn’t take his eyes off it for some unknown reason. An image was almost in his mind, but not quite. Like a memory on the tip of his tongue. It annoyed James for a minute or so and he was also frightened by what he couldn’t remember.

“Dinner time! Are you deaf? I’ve called you three times already,” his mother’s shout from downstairs startled him.

James went downstairs, dressed in shorts and T–shirt; he liked to dress this way, no matter how cold it got in the house. He felt comfortable . . . loose and free.

“What are those marks on your arm, Jamie?” his mother asked him.

“Huh?” he replied.

“Those three marks there at the top of your arm.” His mother was pointing with her stinking nicotine stained finger at the top of his right arm, just below the shoulder. James could see there were three angry looking red puncture marks arranged in, what looked to him, to be a prefect triangle shape.

“I don’t know, Mam. Maybe I got some mosquito bites,” he replied.

Mam grunted in response and seemed to lose interest in the marks. James sat quietly and ate his dinner, which he actually enjoyed for the first time in a while. It was his favourite: ham and mushroom pizza with some extra cheese added before it went in the oven.

“Thanks, Mam. That was lovely.”

“Glad you enjoyed it. Now, upstairs, get your homework done, then you can have an hour on the computer before bed.” His mother seemed in a good mood, even though he had earlier disturbed her sleep. This was very unlike her, but James was pleased and headed off upstairs to do his homework.

James went to his room and got out his homework book. He had mathematics homework to do this evening . . . he hated maths with a passion, but it was best to get it done rather than face the wrath of Mr Robinson, and in turn that of his mother tomorrow.

Sitting at his work desk, his homework lain out in front of him and listening to one of his father’s old cassette tapes, he was drifting away into his own mind, escaping the boredom of adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing numbers which meant nothing to him. He had no idea what the song was that played, but he liked it. Something about painting a door black. His father had only written one word on the cassette cover: ‘Oldies’. James liked this tape of ‘oldies’ and listened to it whenever he could.

∞

Daydreaming, thinking, imagining . . . it’s what James liked to do best. He went back in time in his own mind, back to a happier time; a time when he wasn’t afraid of the darkness, a time when his father was still there. James was living over his last happy memory again, his sixth birthday party, 1984, what a wonderful year. His father was with him, his mother was happy and smiling, enjoying spending time together – he longed for those days . . . but even now, at the age of ten he knew those days would never return.

In the depth of his daydream an image from last night’s nightmare came back to James. Staring, unblinking black eyes, gazing into his own tear–filled and frightened eyes. They seemed to be penetrating his mind, reading him, listening to him as though he was a cassette tape. The nightmare was even scarier as it took place in James’ own bedroom, where he should have felt safe and secure. He recalled the fear, unable to move away from those eyes. This was not the first time he’d had this dream, he’d been having it regularly since his father died, just weeks after James’ birthday party back in ‘84.

Were they just dreams? Was it his father coming back to see him from Heaven, perhaps? James wasn’t sure about this, he didn’t really believe in God, Heaven and Angels, although he told himself that he did . . .

The more he thought about his nightmares, the more real they felt.

James decided it might be time to discuss these nightmares with his mother, although he really didn’t want to. James decided to knuckle down and finish his maths homework, then go and see his mother and tell her about his dreams, his fears.

At length James described his dreams to his mother, described his fear, the closeness of the dark around him. His lack of sleep. Even as he was telling her about the weird small creatures with the big black staring eyes that came to him at night, he knew it sounded utterly lame and ridiculous. He felt that his mother was barely even listening to him. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she was already drunk. Her cheeks were flushed, and the ashtray was full of cigarette butts.

“Come on now, Jamie, you are ten years old, and you’re frightened of the dark? Frightened by some bogie man with a big black eye?” She took a sip from her can of beer.

“You want me to leave the toilet light on for you, like a baby?” she coughed and stared at James.

“No, Mam, I’m sorry.”

“You always are . . .” his mother replied.

James wished he had a brother, or a friend who he could share his room with. He would feel so much better if he wasn’t all alone . . . and maybe, just maybe, the nightmares would go away if he wasn’t so afraid the whole time. He felt isolated, abandoned. Why did his father have to get the cancer and leave him all alone with his mother? Why did she always have to be so cold? James was lost and alone, an outcast to all who knew him.

James thought that maybe if he kept himself busy with his favourite computer game before bed he would stop thinking about the fear that was to come that night . . . to come soon—it was already 7:30pm, just an hour to bedtime.

James booted up his Commodore 64 and loaded his latest favourite game. For the next hour he became a pirate captain; raiding shipping, capturing Spanish towns and treasure fleets.

∞

“Bed!” his mother shouted up from downstairs.

It was that time already, the time he had been dreading since waking up that morning. His fear had been forgotten for the last hour, but immediately came flooding back, as James had known all along it would.

He took his clothes off and got ready for bed. As was usual, he whipped his T–Shirt off as quickly as he could, because you never know what might come at you in that short time when the shirt blocks your vision. Once he had his pyjamas on, James went into the bathroom to have a quick wash and to brush his teeth, deliberately taking as long as possible to remain in the safety of the lit up bathroom. James hated brushing his teeth, but felt it was worth the effort if it meant putting off bedtime, even if it was just for a minute or two.

He heard steps on the stairs and felt a shiver run down his spine. What was it? Who was it? He stood frozen in the bathroom, waiting for the steps to go away, but they only came closer to the bathroom and the door began to creak open. He anticipated a set of large black eyes staring at him, peeping through the crack in the door, which was now getting wider and wider.

“You’re still in here?!” it was his mother’s voice.

“Yes, sorry, I’m just finished.” He replied.

“Well hurry up and get out of here, I need to use the toilet!” James could smell the beer and stale smoke coming off her breath.

He knew that his mother was sad, that the beer and cigarettes somehow made her feel better. As did the loud music she liked to listen to in the evenings. She, like him, missed his father. James understood that.

“OK. Night night, Mam.”

“Goodnight, Jamie,” she gave him a kiss on the top of his head as he headed out the door. This made him feel better; she hadn’t done so in a long time.

James was utterly exhausted. He felt a glow inside of him, his mother had given him a kiss—his fear of the dark was forgotten. James felt great and settled down to sleep in no time at all . . .

James woke up with a start. He had no idea what time it was. There was a noise coming from downstairs, the familiar thumping noise he had grown accustomed to over the last few years—music. It was pitch black in the room. James could see nothing at all. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He wanted to look at his watch, which was in the heap of clothes by the bed but he dared not move. Fear gripped him. He was sweating, his right leg was itchy but he didn’t dare move to scratch it. He felt any movement might give him away to whoever, or whatever, might be lurking out there in the dark.

He scanned the room, his night vision taking effect. Everything looked normal. James looked at his door and got a shock—he thought he had seen a man standing by the door . . . it was just his dressing gown hanging on the back of it. His heart was thumping, almost bursting out of his chest. He calmed himself, reminding himself that at least his mother was still awake downstairs, so he was OK for now. Unless she’d fallen asleep down there. Too much beer, maybe. He had found her down there on more than a few occasions, when he got up for school (late, as no one had been there to wake him up). He hoped she was awake, at least then would be safe. For now . . .

As he lay there letting the minutes go by, he could hear the song coming from downstairs more clearly, it was “Why Me” by Kris Kristofferson, one of his mother’s favourites. Why me? James thought. Why is it always me?

James lay awake, he had no idea how much time went by. Music kept playing downstairs, then there was a bright light at the window. James glanced up, glad for the life that the passing car’s headlights breathed into the darkness of the room. The light was very bright. James closed his eyes for a few seconds. Oddly he thought, I can’t smell smoke for once. When he opened his eyes once more, he looked towards the window. The curtain seemed to twitch, his heart lurched. No, it wasn’t twitching; it was quite still, as it should be. The light from the car was fading now. James detected movement at the edge of his vision and glanced in the direction of the window. He went cold and felt sweat on the back of his knees. A hand was holding the curtain. A spindly hand, connected to a long, pale arm that made James think of a spider’s leg. It was attached to a small, pale body. It was the creature from his nightmares. Big black eyes were staring at him. James didn’t know if he was awake or asleep, he knew only one thing . . . the fear he felt was real.

Utterly real.

ABOUT NICHOLAS McLEAN

Nicholas ‘Nick’ McLean is in his thirties and lives in the North–East of England with his wife and son. ‘Why Always Me?’ is his first publication.

A SMALL PROBLEM

Diane Arrelle

Sylvia Potter was definitely shrinking.

As she stood on her toes to look in the mirror while brushing her long, damp hair, she felt her bracelets slide down her wrist and off her hand. “This is absurd,” she sighed and kicked the jewelry out of her way. Then she stretched and reached for her make–up. Sylvia thought about calling in sick, again.

She knew she was the talk of the office. She’d even replaced Mr Edison’s affair with Barb from the accounting department. Just the other day in the ladies’ room, she’d overheard two of the other secretaries discussing her. They hadn’t noticed her sitting in a stall, her feet dangling just above the floor.

The first girl said, “Did you notice poor Sylvia?”

“Who hasn’t?” asked the second.

“It’s too bad, shrinking so young.

“Maybe she has a back problem.”

“But to shrink that much?”

“Well maybe there are midget genes in her family, and they just became dominant,” the second one said with a giggle.

“Then that makes us an equal opportunity employer!”

Sylvia could still hear the echo of their cruel laughter, even now, in the sanctuary of her own bathroom. She felt her cheeks flush, but there was nothing she could do about her size or the catty bitches she had to tolerate.

Sylvia thought about how delighted she’d been when she first noticed that her clothes were a little large. But then, her shoes started to slip off in midstep, her panties started to slide down as she walked and her bras had to be stuffed again, just like back in junior high.

Her family physician, Dr Jameson, after the usual blood tests and tongue clucking, said, “Sylvia, I think you should be admitted into the hospital, just for observation and a few tests. You do have insurance, don’t you?”

Sylvia nodded, suddenly scared that maybe she was really sick. She’d spent three days confined to a hospital bed with tubes sucking from her veins and even more tubes refilling them. She grimaced with the remembered pain and gritted her teeth at the worst part: the tests showed nothing at all. Not one thing wrong! Not one reason for her regression. But during that time, she hadn’t shrunk a centimeter. Funny, how as soon as she returned home, the problem had begun again.

She finished applying her make–up and left for work. Left for another day of torment. All day she tried to meet the too quickly averted eyes of her co-workers, and she tried to ignore the whispers that were always just out of earshot anyway.

She handled it, just like always. After all, she was used to the cruelty of others. She worked at the computer on her desk, typing letter after letter, to keep obliviously busy. She kept watching the clock, counting the hours until she’d be able to see and hear the Holy Reverend Alexander. Knowing that tonight she’d see him made another unbearable day, bearable.

As the clock struck five, Sylvia dashed from the building and to the bus stop. Boarding the crowded commuter, she stood and waited patiently. Soon she’d see Him and all would be well. She stood and wished she could reach a handhold. But she was too short so she held onto the back of the seat next to her. The tightly packed crowd slowly thinned, and she gratefully sat and watched as the grime–encrusted brick buildings gave way to open fields and abandoned farms.

Half-an-hour later she stood reverently before the shabby, patched tent planted in an overgrown field of weeds. Paying her seventy-five dollar donation, she entered the dim, smoky, canvas church. She found an empty seat and waited. Every Tuesday night for the last six weeks his hellfire and brimstone sermons made her feel alive, made her burn with secret shame and passion. She knew he was the one, the one who was going to save her from herself. He said he would melt the sin from his flock and if anyone could wash away her sinful burden, Sylvia was sure it would be The Holy Reverend Alexander. If he cleansed her soul, she’d finally be able to live a normal life.

She thought about the financial drain of these meetings, but knew that sacrifice was important when getting healed. In fact, the Holy Reverend said sacrifice was good, and she knew he only spoke the Truth.

Sylvia mused about the years she’d spent looking for the answers to questions she’d never known how to ask. Now, she finally found someone to tell her how to live her life. It didn’t matter that the Reverend was under investigation and his followers were being ridiculed as fools. She believed in him and knew that the truly divine were always persecuted.

At seven-thirty a hush fell over the small group of people. Sylvia woke from her reverie and noted, with dismay, how the crowd was dwindling each week. She feared, no dreaded, the day when she’d come out here to find the tent packed up and the Reverend gone, gone in search of the real true believers. What would become of her then, she wondered?

The podium lights came on and she shivered in the heat. He strode out to greet his flock. Sylvia listened in devoted awe, her hands clasped tightly and her throat dry.

“This is an evil world,” he said. “Modern life can only bring grief. Each generation is more selfish than the last. And unrepented sin carries from the parent to the child.” He spoke the same words every week and Sylvia absorbed them as if for the first time.

“Yes. Yes!” she mumbled, her nails digging into her palms. “Sin carries.” She wanted to cry out, to ask how to relieve herself, but all she could do was sit and mumble as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

Finally he took out a handkerchief and wiped his reddened face. “Remember, my children, the burden is getting too heavy for the next generation. We must clear our souls before we pass on the weight that will crush the world. We need a flood to purify the world again!”

He turned to leave, then stopped to stare into the audience. “I can help you and all your children that follow. Help to lift the burden from yourselves, my children. Give your earnings that are tainted with sin, give it to Heaven. Start the flood with a tidal wave of sacrifice. Greed is a sin, sacrifice is the raft of salvation!”

His minions passed baskets and Sylvia took out a five dollar bill. She stared at the green wrinkled bill and put it back. She took out a twenty instead, a dirty grayish rectangle with blue ink scrawls on the edge. She read the handwritten words: Hey baby, call me 604–3332 and threw the filthy thing into the basket. Yes, yes. Too much sin, she thought.

The next day after getting out of the shower, she studied her four-foot-ten figure in the full length mirror. “At least I’m shrinking in proportion. Besides, I’ve always dreamed of wearing a size two.”

Dressing, she glanced at the closet full of clothes that were for a much larger woman. A wave of hopelessness washed over her and she moaned, “Ah shit. Why me?”

She walked to work slowly, being careful not to slip out of her size five shoes. She worried how much more she would dwindle. I can’t afford to buy a new wardrobe every week, she mused. Last month I was five-foot-seven. This can’t really be happening.

“At this rate I’ll be shopping in the children’s department next week,” she said aloud then glanced around quickly to see if anyone on the crowded sidewalk noticed. “All right, I’m not only minimized, I’m nuts too. Yep, everyone look at the crazy, short lady in the bad–fitting clothes talking to herself. All I need to complete this picture is the shopping cart full of dirty paper bags.”

At the office she tried to ignore her dilemma and concentrated on work. After typing a letter, she reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a moist towelette to wash her hands. It was a ritual she performed at least eight times a morning.

After work she caught a cab to her analyst whom she’d been seeing since her diminishing size became obvious. Sylvia walked in the waiting room and greeted the receptionist. “Hello Jane, ready for me?”

Jane smiled and got up. “Got my tape measure right here,” she said and motioned for Sylvia to stand next to the wall. Sylvia had to be measured every time she saw the doctor.

A few minutes later Sylvia walked into Dr Cohn’s office.

“Sylvia, this shrinking is certainly not in your head, you’ve lost another two inches this week,” the doctor told her. “I know that this must be very hard on you.”

“It is, Doctor, it is!” Sylvia said starting to sniffle.

“I’ve been thinking about your case. This is obviously a physical phenomenon, but maybe something emotional is triggering it. Some physical problems have their roots in the mind.”

“Really Doctor!” Sylvia snapped in surprise. “I’m paying you a lot of money to help me adjust to being a sideshow attraction, not to make up silly reasons for my problem.”

“Now Sylvia, you’re not a freak, but you are obviously angry.”

“I’m not angry. I’m frustrated. Let’s not talk about what may be causing this, all right?”

“What would you like to talk about, Sylvia?”

She thought for a moment, “I’m tired of being stared at, I’m tired of the whispered jokes and the fact that I can’t find a truly clean man to date. I don’t even have a friend to share a movie or dinner with. But of course, nobody goes out with anyone innocently. Everyone wants something.”

Dr Cohn said nothing.

After her session, Sylvia made another appointment for the following week, but before leaving she asked, “Would you like me to pay for next week now?”

Looking puzzled, Dr Cohn asked, “Why?”

“Well, I’m afraid I may be a little short,” Sylvia said, looking at the floor to hide a pained smile.

She could hear Dr Cohn chuckling softly as she left the office.

Once in the safety of her apartment, Sylvia took a long, hot shower. The steaming water beat on her flesh, soaking into her, washing away all the painful memories. If only the shower could wash them away forever, she thought, feeling tears mix with the water on her face.

She knew that all those shared showers during her childhood could never be erased with soap and water but she continued to try. Daddy may be long gone but he would haunt her forever. Each time she scrubbed herself, she hoped the memory of his touch would be rubbed into oblivion.

When her skin was so wrinkled that her fingers were almost numb, she turned off the spraying water and collapsed exhausted on her bed.

In the morning she woke feeling better and made breakfast before taking her morning shower. Putting on her new size five dress, she noticed that it was too large and her feet were lost in her shoes.

She belted and bloused the dress to make it fit and stuffed her shoes with tissues.

She took a sick day and she went to Dr Jameson’s office, where she was measured and then sent in to see him.

He got right to the point: “Sylvia, you’ve lost four inches this week. You measured in at four-feet-eight this morning. I wish that I could tell you something encouraging. Damn it, I wish I could tell you something, anything!”

Sylvia remained silent and thought, that’s two inches since last night!

The doctor continued, “We still haven’t a clue. All I can suggest is that you return to the hospital. Something there arrested your shrinking. Now you’ve started again, and it’s rapidly accelerating. I can get you a bed this afternoon.”

Sylvia hesitated then said, “Dr Jameson, I. . .I just can’t go back to the hospital so soon. Please, give me another week.”

“Sylvia, a week may be too—”

“Too late? Maybe, but I’ve lasted a month so far. I just can’t get hooked up to those tubes again. I just couldn’t stand it! Let me have a day or two to think about it?”

“Well, it’s against my better judgment, but I can’t force you to go.”

Sylvia rushed back home and called Dr Cohn. “I need to talk to you!” she sobbed.  “Sylvia? Calm down, I can see you in an hour.”

At two o’clock she was sitting in Dr Cohn’s office. “I just don’t know what to do!” Sylvia cried. “I can’t go into the hospital again. They’ll hook me up and run hundreds of tests. Oh, Dr Cohn, tell me what to do!”

“First of all, calm down,” Dr Cohn said soothingly. “I can’t tell you what to do, you know that. But I can help you make your decision. I still feel that you are, somehow, doing this to yourself, Sylvia.”

Sylvia stopped crying and asked, “How, and why? I’m not making myself shrink. Do you think that I wanted this to happen? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“Frankly, I think that on some level you do want this, or you wouldn’t be shrinking.”

“Then prove it to me!” Sylvia pleaded. “Prove it!”

“Let me hypnotize you and we will see what we discover.”

Sylvia, feeling utterly defeated and with little hope, consented.

After a few minutes, Dr Cohn started asking questions. “Sylvia, what did you do when you left here last night?”

“I took a shower and fell asleep.”

“Fine, and what did you do this morning after you woke up?”

“I made breakfast, took a shower, tried to get dressed, then went to see Dr Jameson.”  “How tall were you at the doctor’s office?”

“I was four feet, eight inches.”

“After you called me, what did you do?”

“I took a hot bath to relax, then dressed and came over here.”

The doctor stopped her questioning and looked at her chart. “Sylvia, do you know that you have shrunk one and a half inches since this morning?” she asked. “Did you shower or bathe in the hospital?”

“No.”

“Why do you shower so much?”

“I want to be clean.”

“Don’t you believe that if you showered once a day, you would be clean?”

Sylvia hesitated, then said, “No, I wouldn’t be clean inside. I must be clean all the way. I cannot stand to be dirty.”

“Why do you think you are dirty?”

“I am filthy with sin!”

“Sin? What makes you think that?”

“The Holy Reverend Alexander. He said that we are all sinful, inside and out. He said we

take the sin from our parents and we must cleanse ourselves, or burn.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“I’ve heard him preach every week since last month. I believe in him. He’s righteous and holy. He speaks Truth!”

“Sylvia, listen to me, he doesn’t want you to shrink. You cannot wash away life’s dirt by melting away in layers. You are not a bar of soap! Do you understand? The Holy Reverend Alexander does not want you to shrink anymore.”

Sylvia felt herself begin to shake. She jumped up and screamed, “I must wash away my sins! I must become clean!”

“Sylvia, you will feel calm now. Tell me, why do you consider yourself so dirty? What have you done that you believe is so terrible?”

“I . . . I’ve been a good girl,” Sylvia whimpered. “I’ve never let other boys touch me there, only Daddy.” Sobbing uncontrollably, Sylvia blubbered. “Daddy was so angry at Mommy for dying that he ma–made me take her pl–place!”

Dr Cohn forced Sylvia to calm down, then brought her out of the trance. “You are not responsible for your childhood. You were abused, you are not the guilty one. I’m going to call your doctor immediately and this Reverend Alexander, too. Go home, wait for Dr Jameson’s call, and whatever you do, don’t shower anymore!”

Sylvia went home. She waited a few minutes for Dr Jameson’s call, then packed her suitcase. She was going to met him in the hospital in half an hour. He told Sylvia that the Holy Reverend Alexander would be there to speak with her. Closing the suitcase, she looked at the clock and muttered, “I have to be clean for the Holy Reverend. One quick shower won’t hurt.”

She ran into the bathroom, stripped and turned on the water. She sighed, “After all, I’ll be quick and if I shrink a little, well, so what’s another inch?” She grabbed a new bar of soap and climbed into the bathtub pulling the curtain closed.

With the water caressing her body, she closed her eyes and lathered up. “Got to get clean, got to get clean,” she chanted.

As she rinsed the soap off, she opened her eyes and stared at the bathtub ledge. She had shrunk too fast! The huge drops of water were starting to hurt as they hit her flesh.

She waded through the hip deep water as she tried to get to the spigots. She reached for them, stretched for them, but the knobs were too high. Panic rushed through her. She felt weak, shaky. She fought the urge to faint knowing that to pass out would mean death. She looked around, trying to slow her panic. “I need to think!” she said, hoping that using her voice would help. “I have to climb out!”

She tried to pull herself over the rim of the tub. Grunting with effort, holding onto the shower curtain, she pulled herself up; but the swift current of the emptying water tugged at her and she crashed back.

She struggled to get her footing and found that she was standing waist deep in a rushing torrent. “Oh God, please let me stop shrinking. I don’t want to die! Please God, save me!” she half screamed, half sobbed.

Somehow she managed to keep her grip on the shower curtain so that she wouldn’t drown. She knew that when she didn’t show up at the hospital, someone would come looking for her. All she had to do was hold on and stop growing smaller. She clung to the fabric and the rushing water pulled at her, the big drops beat on her, and the loud gurgling was almost deafening.

She sobbed, and began to lose all hope. No one was going to save her. She knew she was going to die. Defeat started to loosen her grip on the curtain when she suddenly heard a loud crash outside the bathroom.

The faint voice of Dr Jameson filtered through the shower’s roar, “Sylvia? Sylvia, are you here? Why didn’t you come to the hospital?”

Sylvia heard Dr Cohn scream, “Oh no! I hear the shower! Quick, into the bathroom!”

Sylvia felt a swell of hope bubble through her. She tightened her grasp on the curtain and yelled, “I’m here! Help me!”

“Sylvia! Sylvia, where are you? Open this door if you’re in there!”

Sylvia realized that the shower had drowned out her tiny voice. She cupped her hand to yell again, and the water swept her from the curtain.

She fell under the water and she realized that the water was over her head. She couldn’t push herself up to the surface. She was caught in the rush toward the drain and she was drowning.

All of a sudden she found herself swirling in circles with her head bobbing above the water. She choked and gasped, finally able to breathe a little, but then she saw that she was caught in the whirlpool, speeding to oblivion. The drain gaped below her, and the water swirled around her, trying to suck her down into the darkness.

“No,” she screamed. “I’m not going to die this way!”

Her strength renewed by the adrenaline rush, Sylvia struggled to grasp the metal crossbar in the center of the drain. Using all her fading strength, she managed to wrap her legs around it as she braced herself with her arms.

The gurgling water was so loud that she barely heard the bathroom door being broken in, or the voices calling to her. She sat precariously on the metal cross as the vortex of the water swirled around her. “I’m here!” She desperately yelled. “Help! Help!”

The shower curtain was shoved aside, and Sylvia saw the giant heads looking down.

“Oh no!” Dr Jameson cried with pain, “We’re too late, she’s gone!”

Sylvia shouted, “No, no! I’m not gone. I’m right here in the drain!”

“A tragedy!” Dr Cohn sighed deeply, as both faces moved out of sight.

“No, wait, I’m not dead!” Sylvia shrieked, struggling to hold on with her legs and wave her arms.

The water, swirling around and around, caught her and knocked her off her perch.

Sylvia was swept away toward the sewers . . . finally and totally clean.

ABOUT DIANE ARRELLE

Diane Arrelle, the pen name of South Jersey writer Dina Leacock, has been writing for more than 20 years and has sold almost 200 short stories and has two published books, Just A Drop In The Cup, a collection of short–short stories and Elements Of The Short Story, How to Write a Selling Story. She is proud to be one of the founding members as well as the second president of the Garden State Horror Writers and is also a past president of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. When not writing, she is a director of a municipal senior citizen center. She lives with her husband, sometimes her sons and of course her cat on the edge of the Pine Barrens in Southern New Jersey (home of the Jersey Devil). You can visit her at http://dinaleacock.com

SWEET AND SOUR
Florence Ann Marlowe

There it was again, for the fourth time that day: the sound of something crashing to the floor somewhere in the store. I glanced over at my Dad who was scanning the aisles as if he could sense where the noise came from.

“Paul, go see what that was,” he said without looking at me.

I sighed and grabbed a roll of paper towels from under the counter. I already knew what it was—one of them knocked over something they shouldn’t have been touching to begin with and broke it. Judging from all the grunting and moaning I guessed I’d find it in the condiment aisle.

And there he was, shambling around a big broken jar of pickles, one of those plastic orange baskets hanging over his spindly elbow. What the hell was he doing with pickles? None of them had any business in the condiment aisle anyway! There were two whole aisles just for them.

Shit, nothing was the same since the friggin’ Dead Heads moved into town.

I tried to shoo him away from the mess. This one wasn’t as fresh as the others had been. His earlobes were all raggedy and his nose had completely fallen off, exposing his skull and part of his teeth where his upper lip was torn away. He started waving his arm at me, desperate to show me his wristband. I could care less who he was – I just wanted to get that mess off the floor before a real person slipped on it.

I don’t know who hated them more—me or my Dad. My father protested the naturalization law back in ‘23. He went to every single council meeting for six weeks and spoke against the new zoning ordinance that allowed zombies to live in town next to the living. But the council said there was nothing they could do about it. It was state mandated that zombies had to be given the same rights as living people ever since the Zombie Equal Rights Amendment was passed. Only you can’t call them zombies anymore – they’re called the living challenged or officially the “non-living.”

Of course there were more colorful terms for them that you could only say out of ear shot of the more socially conscious sensitive types: like Shufflers, Shamblers, Zombots, Brain–nommers, or my personal favorite: Dead Heads.

I had to push past this particular Dead Head who still kept trying to show me his wristband. I waved him off and yelled as loudly as I could without shouting.

“There’s nothing here for you! Go to one of your aisles. YOUR AISLES! BRAINS! Mmmm! BUH–RAINS!”

Last year the law required all grocers to put in a refrigerated section just for the ‘living challenged’. It was freezing down there! It kept the smell down and the aisles were filled with frosty treats like animal brains and buckets of guts that the Shufflers lived on. But the law says they can shop wherever they want for whatever they want. Some of them still bought things they remembered buying when they were alive.

This one kept grunting and moaning. He was trying to talk to me. I kinda rolled my eyes. Nothing worse than an educated Shuffler. The government set up naturalization classes for them to rehabilitate them. They showed them how to behave around the living, tried to teach them to speak, write. They gave them those wristbands with their names and addresses on – not because they wanted to keep tabs on them, but to help the living understand who they were. I didn’t care who they were, all I knew was they weren’t people.

I started to pick up the broken glass and got up to get a bucket. The Dead Head kept shuffling around trying to face me, get in my way. I stopped and looked him in his yellowy, bulging eyes and said, “Wha–AAAT?”

He finally stood still and met my gaze. His jaw worked for a few seconds and he said very slowly, in that guttural zombie–speak they use, “Sor–rree.”

He was sorry. Big fucking hairy motherfucking whoop.

I shoved past him and said, “Doesn’t change the fact I gotta clean up your fucking mess!”

The whole zombie rights thing started about two years after the zombies started showing up in hospitals. They were people then—dead people. It was some kind of super bug—a bacteria or something that had developed in the hospitals and reanimated anyone who died there. Well, some super sensitive type in Washington went nuts when her mother got reanimated and she wanted a cure. There is no cure—so she decided the next best thing was to make sure the civil rights of every fucking Shuffler was respected.

They started promoting the idea that zombies had feelings and memories and shit, so first they made it illegal to kill zombies on sight—even if he was noshing on your grandmother’s face. That was the Zombie Protection Act of ‘21. After that they started developing all these social services for the Shufflers: housing, financial assistance, charity medical care.

I cleaned up the pickles and headed back to the front to tell my Dad. There was a woman fighting with a female Shuffler in the produce section. The Shuffler kept taking cantaloupes away from the lady and the lady kept taking them back.

“You don’t even eat this stuff! Give it to me!”

The Shuffler didn’t seem at all excited. She would let the woman take the melon and then she’d pull it back as if it were a game.

My Dad was going to be pissed if he saw that she was handling the produce. I had to pick through the produce every hour or so to make sure there weren’t any dead bits of skin stuck to the vegetables.

“No! This is FRUIT. Go get BRAINS—in the COLD aisle!” I shouted at the zombie bitch as I took the melon off of her and handed it to the lady.

The Shuffler just looked at me as if I’d ruined all her fun and then turned away. I turned and apologized to the lady and wiped the cantaloupe with my apron. She gingerly put it in her cart and I turned around only to see another female Shuffler waiting for me.

This was a young girl, probably about the same age as me. She didn’t look familiar so she didn’t go to Marlton High. I knew there were a lot of Shufflers at school now. I had one in my English lit class. He never said anything and the teacher didn’t call on him. He just sat staring at the pages of his book. I didn’t even know Shufflers could read.

Even with her gray skin and the way her lower lip sagged at the one corner, this zombie was pretty. She must have been pretty fresh. I mean she was actually clean. Zombies aren’t known for bathing. The water shrivels up their skin. There were products on the market to condition the ‘non-living complexion’ and stuff, so I’m guessing she used that. Her hair was dusty, but it was blonde and pulled back from her face with a head band. The outfit she had on was obviously new. There was a price tag still attached to the sleeve of her sweater. I was completely caught off guard. We stared at each other for a few seconds. She was the first one to speak.

“Muhm.”

I shrugged. I had no idea what she was trying to say.

“Mah Muhm.”

I was staring at her breasts. They looked full and firm under her sweater. Not saggy and empty like a lot of the zombie chicks I’d seen. She even smelled different from the other Dead Heads—like vanilla with a sour, oniony note somewhere underneath.

“I don’t know—what?” I felt really uncomfortable.

“Mah Muhm,” she said again and swung her one arm in the direction of the zombie bitch who had been manhandling the melons.

I was pretty shocked. “That’s your Mom?”

Her eyes were pale gray and intense. She kept her gaze fixed on me and nodded once.

“O–kay,” I said. I still didn’t know what she wanted.

She pointed to the bin of cantaloupes and said, “mah Muhm wann zat.”

It took me a minute and then I got it. “Your Mom wants cantaloupe.”

She nodded and held her hands out. Without thinking I picked up a good size melon and handed it to her. The side of her mouth that didn’t sag twitched and I think she was trying to smile.

“Tahnk koo.”

She hefted the melon under one arm like a football and held out her other hand, bending her wrist so I could read the wristband.

“Lydia Meyers?” I said.

She nodded and again without thinking I said, “I’m Paul.”

Her lip twitched and this time I could see it was a smile. Not a half bad smile for a dead girl. She then walked over to her mother who was hanging onto the handle of her shopping cart like it was a safety bar.

Now if she had left the store and I had never seen her again at that time everything would have just gone on like it was supposed to—but she didn’t, so it didn’t.

I was stacking the cases of Alpo when my Dad calls for me over the speakers. He interrupted a moldy oldie about a hotel in California and asked me to come to the front. So I hurried to the front and there she is with her Mom trying to check out.

One of the things the government did for the Zombots was make them eligible for financial assistance in the form of a special kind of food stamps. They were given provisional cash that looked a helluva lot like Monopoly money. We call it Dead Dollars. It was brightly colored because zombies have poor vision. They have to attend classes to get the money so they can tell which color was worth how much. My Dad never took that course and he was having trouble figuring out their bill.

I got behind the counter and started sorting through the woman’s crayon colored bills. Lydia’s Mom was holding a fan of too many dollars in both hands and waiting for me to pick the ones I needed. I just started grabbing a couple of yellows, a couple of greens, a few blues and a red when Lydia, the zombie chick, lifted a hand up and said very clearly, “wait.”

I stopped and looked up at her. She was looking down at my handful of money.

“Wahn boo, no red.”

She was right. I had taken too many blue dollars. Now I knew why I didn’t see her at Marlton High. She was too busy going to zombie school and getting herself rehabilitated. Smart zombie.

I gave Lydia the receipt. Her mother still stood there, offering every Dead Dollar she had to her name. Lydia gently took the bills from her mother and stuffed them into the flat purse hanging from her mother’s shoulder.

They scooped the bags off the counter and shambled out of the store. I watched them leave. My Dad was straightening up the magazine racks as they left and he blew a disgusted breath over his lips.

“Goddamn Brain-nommers. Those dead bastards cause more trouble than they’re worth.”

I nodded as I tucked the Dead Dollars under the change tray in the cash register.

“I’d like to see them all blown up with a flame thrower.”

Any time the topic of the zombies came up my Dad’s face would get all hot and red. His skin looked like a radish.

“Did you see what she had in her cart? Fruits and vegetables! Who the hell do they think they are?”

“They had a package of cow brains in there too,” I said.

“Friggin’ cow brains. Disgusting shit I have to carry in my store because of those friggin’ Brain–nommers? I hope they wind up with Mad Cows Disease.”

This made me laugh.

My Dad let me leave early because of midterms all week and I was walking home in the dusk when I saw Lydia again.

She was trying to ride a bike. It was obviously a girl’s bike, white with a wicker basket hanging in front. I’m sure before she got zombified she had ridden it often, but now she was having trouble staying afloat. She couldn’t grasp the rhythm of the pedals. She’d start out all right—one foot on the pedal, the other pedal coming up to meet the other foot completing the circle—the wheels moved forward and she’d lose her footing. Both feet would slam to the ground, the bike bucking beneath her as she came to an abrupt stop. It was ugly to watch—a pretty girl and a pretty bike—no grace, just a jarring start and stop.

I called out to her.

“Hey, Lydia!”

She turned at the sound of her name. Honestly, I never thought of a Shuffler having a name before. I thought those wristbands were just like dog collars with identification tags. I walked up to her and she surprised me again.

“Paw–uhl.”

As I got closer I smelled that same vanilla, sour oniony smell. I liked it. She was staring at me with her pale gray eyes and I felt weird. It wasn’t like looking at the face of another Shambler. I felt like she was really seeing me, not looking through me.

I couldn’t really help her with the bike. I mean, it wasn’t like I could teach her to ride a bike like a normal person no more than I could teach her to walk like a normal person. I wound up walking the bike next to me as we walked.

We talked. We had an actual conversation.

I didn’t have much to add to the conversation.

“I didn’t know you—you people—could eat fruit. You like cantaloupe?”

She nodded. “I’s sahft. Sweet.”

“Soft? Is that why you like tomatoes?”

This time she shook her head. “Nah me. Mah Muhm.”

“Your Mom isn’t like you, is she? I mean she doesn’t understand things like you.”

She shrugged. “Sh’ gess confoozed.”

We talked about how she was going to zombie school and how when she was done she’d have the equivalent to a high school diploma. I learned that zombies – the Nonliving – had a ton of rules they had to comply with before they could live in the living communities. Most weren’t able to meet the requirements and they had to live in the restricted areas. Lydia and her Mom lived three blocks from me. My Dad would hit the roof if he knew that.

It was slow going, but we established that Lydia was the first one to come back. She developed pneumonia after having a chest cold for three weeks and died in the emergency room. Her Mom freaked and slit her wrists, winding up in the same emergency room. Lydia came back the next day and her Mom showed up three hours later. Lydia’s Dad couldn’t handle it and he took off, leaving them to fend for themselves. Lydia was the one who applied for assistance for both of them and they moved to Marlton.

We stopped in front of a really small house with broken windows; its screen door hanging by one hinge. We stood there in silence for a moment and Lydia swung one arm at the dilapidated shack.

“Mah howze.”

I nodded, really reluctant to let her go. I wanted to keep talking, to ask her more stuff. I did ask her one thing.

“Lydia, do you remember—you know, before—I mean, when you were living?”

Her intense gaze suddenly went soft. She slowly turned her face away as if she was searching for something far off. Finally she looked up at me. Her lower lip trembled before she spoke.

“Some. Nah’ all—Nah’ allatime.”

Her voice was distant, longing.

She staggered into the bike and quickly recovered. Taking her bike from me, she walked it down the stone path leading to the swinging front door.

I called after her. “Hey, Lydia! You wanna hang out sometime?”

She stopped and glanced over her shoulder and yelled back.

“Yah!”

She left her bike leaning against the vinyl siding of the sad little house and went inside. A few minutes later her mother swung the door open, nearly falling out, head first. She stared at me with that disjointed gaze. I waved and she abruptly slammed the door shut.

It kind of freaked me out. I mean, I wanted to see her again. I actually liked her. I don’t know, maybe I was just curious, but I really did want to talk with her again. I just didn’t want anybody to know. My friends would have wanted to tag along and watch. I couldn’t tell anybody—except my thirteen-year-old brother, Ryan.

At first I don’t think he believed me. He said, “you’re shitting me!”

I was sitting on the bean bag chair in his room. He was sprawled out on his bed with this huge grin on his face, his eyebrows all scrunched up waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m serious, Ryan. You can’t tell anybody about this.”

“You’re seriously going to go out with a zombie chick?”

“Yes and promise me you won’t tell anybody—ANYBODY!”

He snorted derisively and slapped his hand to his forehead. “Aww, come on! I gotta tell Jonesy!”

“Especially not Jonesy!” Jonesy was my brother’s best friend who thought every single thing in life could be incorporated into a fart joke.

Ryan sighed dramatically. “Come on, Paul! Where you going to take her? It’s like you can’t take her to the movies—or out to dinner!”

He was right. The movies were out. Zombies react badly to the flickering lights in the dark. And you just can’t take a zombie to a restaurant. Most restaurants had a grandfather clause so they didn’t have to comply to the equality law. They’d lose all their business otherwise. You can’t have living people sitting next to a family of zombies ignoring the silverware, eating handfuls of raw animal brains.

“I just figure we’ll hang out together and talk.”

Ryan nearly fell off the bed. “Talk? You can’t talk to a Dead Head! What’re you gonna talk about—Buh–raaains?”

“Shut the fuck up! She can talk. She makes sense—she’s different.” I realized just then that I’d never thought about it before. She was different—maybe they were all different in their own way.”

“Dad’s gonna have a fit,” Ryan said.

“Don’t you ever tell Dad about this!”

“Paul, think about it! You can’t go out with a Dead Head! You two’ll be making out and next thing you know she’s eating your face!” He broke up into a series of uncontrollable snorts and guffaws.

I shuddered.

“We’re not going to make out. We’re just going to hang out and talk. That’s all.”

Ryan stretched across his bed and let his arms hang down to the floor.

“Yeah, okay. But if she eats your face, I’m getting your room.”

Lydia showed up at the store about fifteen minutes before closing the next day. I waved at her from the window and waited until Dad was counting receipts to slip out. She was wearing brand new jeans and turtleneck. Her hair was down, curling around her face. Her lips were twisted into that weird little smile and I could see that she had been really pretty—before. I could imagine her cheeks rosy and her lips shiny and moist. The one thing that was alive was her eyes—those pale soft gray eyes. They weren’t yellowed or bloodshot or dried up looking like the eyes of most of the nonliving. They moved slowly and took a scant second too long to focus, but I could see her soul in those eyes.

We walked down to the park. We tread circles around the pond and talked—slowly. She liked music, especially slow songs with violins and piano. We talked about our parents; how my Dad was so old fashioned and her mother got lost going to the mailbox. She didn’t remember her Dad, but she remembered how he taught her to ride a bike and that’s why she liked riding her bike. She hoped it would help her remember.

And I kissed her.

There was a park bench facing the pond and I was tired. Lydia could have kept walking until dawn, but I needed to sit for a while so we sat. The moon was out and she was staring at it, her lips slightly parted. I sat close to her and that sweet and sour aroma was strong, more sweet than sour. A car went by and the radio was loud, we caught the snatch of a popular song.

“Ah used ta dance,” she said.

I said, “You could still dance.”

She shook her head. “Can’t.” She lifted her hands up and then dropped them back to her side. “Shuff-luh.”

I laughed. “We could dance to heavy metal music. You’d do great in a mosh pit.”

She laughed. She actually laughed, a sweet bell like titter. Her shoulders shook and she turned to me, a genuine wide smile on her face.

I leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. They were cool and very smooth. It was kind of like—kissing a doll. She did respond, she even touched my knee with her hand. When we stopped I realized her eyes had been open the whole time.

I really, really liked her.

I walked her home and we held hands. That was a little weird. I never held a girl’s hand like that before. Lydia’s hand was small, like a child. It was cold, but after a while the warmth of my hand warmed hers.

The light was on over the front door of Lydia’s little house. The screen door had been completely removed. It was leaning against the side of the house next to Lydia’s bike. As we approached the walk up to the house the front door opened and Lydia’s mother peeked out. Then a shadow fell over and a man shouldered past her.

The average life span of a zombie, depending on how they died and how old they were when they died, was about eight years. This guy had to be close to eight or maybe even nine. The skin on his face hung in tatters and was the color of old newspapers. His eyes were yellow orbs set deep into his skull. His lips had shrunk way back from his teeth. He was dressed in a formal black suit and he didn’t look friendly.

I whispered to Lydia, “who is that?”

Lydia shrugged and shook her head.

Lydia’s Mom stood in the doorway, but the guy shambled down the walk towards us. He extended his arm, his finger accusatorily pointed at me. His jaw was working and I realized he was shouting at me.

“Staaay ah–waaay from huh!”

I was completely confused. I put my arm around Lydia and shouted back at him.

“What the hell is your problem, Man?”

Lydia’s mother was wailing and waving her arms in wild circles from the doorway. I felt Lydia stiffen in my arms.

“Ah gah go,” she said, pulling away from me.

She pushed past the angry Dead Head who was still coming at me. Her mother wrapped her arms around Lydia and pulled her inside.

And suddenly he was in my face.

I realized I knew who this guy was—he was a pretty famous zombie.

I’d seen his picture in the paper a few years ago. I remembered him because he reminded me of that old film with Lon Chaney—The Phantom of the Opera. This guy actually worked at City Hall and was a councilman. He was an activist for the Non-living. I couldn’t think of his name at the time, but later on I looked it up online. Thor Barton, one of the founding members of ANLMT (Advocates for the Non-living in Marlton Township).

His voice was guttural, but loud and clear. He was a well-educated zombie. He bellowed at me.

“Y’staay uh–waay fum Ly–dee–uh! Keeep ta yo own kind!”

I backed away from him, not because he intimidated me, but because he reeked of rotten flesh. The older ones stunk the worst—all those gases and secretions building up over time. I didn’t want him to think I was scared of him.

“This is none of your business, zombot!” I yelled and immediately regretted it. I stole a glance at the front door. Lydia was nowhere in sight, but her mother was there. In the shadowy light she looked even more dead than the last time I saw her.

Thor retreated back up the walk, shaking his fist at me in a jagged stabbing motion. “Lizs–zen ta mee! Keep ta yo own kind!”

He pushed Lydia’s mother into the house. I could feel his deep set, ghoulish eyes burning into my back as I trudged home, my hands jammed into my pockets.

A few days passed before I saw Lydia again.

My Dad left early to have a couple of beers with his buddies from the fire department. I had just counted the receipts and was shrugging into my jacket when I looked out the window and saw Lydia. She had been watching me. Her hair was swept forward and she was holding the corners of her jacket collar with one hand. Soon as she realized I’d seen her she started off in a jerky fashion, like a marionette in a hurry.

I ran out the door and called to her, but she kept walking. It was easy enough to catch up to her.

“Hey!” I was hurt. After all those days worrying about her, she wouldn’t even look at me. “What the hell? You mad at me?”

She finally turned and looked up at me. Her hair slid back from her face and I could see what she was hiding. There were several shiny, blotches along one side of her face, stretching down to her neck. Just below her cheek, she had tried to peel it off, but it ripped her skin away and she must of realized it was better to leave it alone.

A scary, cold calmness came over me and my voice became really low and quiet.

“Who fucking did this?”

It could have been one of the neighbors or even any one of my friends. Only last year we thought it was a riot to get those religious candles that come in glass jars, light them up and wait until the liquid wax wells up and then fling it at some Dead Head walking by. The wax dries instantly and they can’t get it off without tearing up their dead skin. And a zombie with no skin isn’t going to last very long.

Lydia touched her face with a delicate patting motion. I couldn’t take my eyes off those shiny, plastic patches glued to her pale skin and that puckered edge where she’d tried to remove it.

“Tell me who did this?”

Her sad gray eyes turned up to me and she said, “T’or.”

Thor. The guy who was protecting her. The Dead Head advocate for zombie rights – that guy splashed her with wax?

It was a punishment—and a warning. We’re not one of them and they’re not one of us—don’t even think you can be like them. This is what they’ll do to you—if we don’t do it to you first.

When she spoke I could see how the wax clung to her face, pulling at her skin.

“Ah wissh ah could crah-ee.”

But the Non–living can’t cry. They have to eat, they have to rest—I don’t know if they sleep, but they do have to rest—they’re just like us, only not living. When Ryan and I were younger and the age difference didn’t mean so much we used to share a bedroom. We had something called a trundle bed. It looked like one bed, but you pulled another mattress out from underneath it and suddenly you had two beds. After my Mom died we moved to Marlton and my brother and I got our own bedrooms so my Dad put the trundle bed in the basement. That’s where I took Lydia.

I held her in my arms, stroked her hair and kissed her. She responded and we really got into it. Once I got her moistened up with my own saliva it was good. Her tongue warmed in my mouth and she held onto my shoulders. Next thing I know she pulled off her top. Her nipples were like icicles, but her breasts were soft and full. Her skin wasn’t exactly silky, but it felt good—like really smooth leather.

I honestly don’t remember taking my pants off, but there I was—there we were—naked with our legs entwined, our arms wrapped around each other. That vanilla and onion aroma filled my head making me dizzy. I don’t remember thinking about what we were doing; I was basically running on instinct. I’d had sex a few times before, but that was just to say that I did it. This was different. I wanted her – I wanted to make love to her. She clung to me and made breathy little sounds and I realized this was probably the first time she’d ever been with a guy – living or otherwise.

I was jolted – by the coldness. It was cold. It was like—sticking it in the cavity of a frozen Thanksgiving turkey, cold. I didn’t need any lube, because it was pretty moist—but moist and cold aren’t necessarily a good combination. A few seconds in I was ready to stop, but then Lydia moaned and said, “Oh, Paw–uhlll,” in the softest, gentlest whisper and it felt better.

I kissed her face, careful to avoid the waxy spots. In the dim light of the single bulb of the desk lamp next to the bed, her nipples were like little gray pebbles. When I looked at her face, she was smiling. Not twisty lips, just a blissful, happy smile.

I wouldn’t let her go home. Let them come looking for her. I went upstairs to get her something to eat. We had some cantaloupe in the fridge and I sliced it up into small sections. She had told me that she also liked bananas so I sliced up a banana into little coins and placed them all on a paper plate. Just as I was headed down to the basement with Lydia’s plate in my hand, my father staggered in through the front door.

I had a quick flashback to a day months after my Mom died. My father stood in the doorway, one hand clinging to the doorknob, the only thing that kept him from falling on his face. His eyes were bloodshot and his face looked bloated and flush. He had the same mix of anger and hurt in his eyes as he had back then.

His eyes pinned me.

“What the hell did you do?”

I flinched a little.

“Tell me it’s a lie – what they’re all talking about.”

I shrugged. “What who’s talking about?”

He swung one arm at me, finger pointing. “Don’t get cute with me! You been hanging around some friggin’ zombie girl?” That hurt in his eyes—it was begging; it was pleading. He wanted me to lie.

“Dad, listen—” I started to explain, but he barreled towards me, still pointing that accusatory finger.

“What the hell is wrong with you? They’re all talking about you—and some friggin’ Brain-nommer—is this some kind of friggin’ joke?”

I was still holding Lydia’s plate of fruit. The blood was pounding in my ears—it sounded like some kind of rhythmic chanting from far away.

The gassy smell of beer wafted from my Dad’s pores. He was right on top of me.

“The whole town is talking about my kid—my son—hanging around a Dead Head! What the fuck—you desperate to get laid?”

That kind of woke me up. “Jesus! Dad!”

Just then Ryan came tearing down the stairs. He was in his pajamas and bare feet.

“Holy shit! There’s a whole mess of them coming!”

I turned to look at my brother. His face was so white; his freckles looked like they were popping off his skin.

“There—see?” My Dad shouted in my face. “Those friggin’ Dead Heads are all riled up! The whole town’s talking! What the hell did you do?”

“Nothing!”

Ryan pulled the curtain back from the big window in the living room. The pounding in my head was chanting – chanting from the mob of Dead Heads marching up to our house.

When I was a kid I’d seen the old tapes on the news of the lumbering crowds of zombies wandering aimlessly while living folks cowered in their homes. That was years ago when the Brain–nommers were still searching for brains to eat. Right outside my front door there was a gyrating mass of them—cleaner, well dressed—organized and angry. And leading the pack was Thor—the famous zombie, defender of zombie rights—the bastard who spattered hot wax on my girlfriend.

“Pull back that friggin’ curtain!” My Dad sputtered. “You outta your mind? You got no idea what those Dead Heads will do!”

I figured I could reason with Thor. He was probably waiting for the friggin’ news van to show up anyway.

“Dad, it’s okay. I’ll explain everything later . . . what the hell?”

My Dad had gone into the cubbyhole closet under the stairs and pulled out his shotgun. I hadn’t seen that thing in years.

“Paul, you and Ryan get upstairs.”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Panic filled my mouth.

My father had a box of cartridges and he was loading the gun.

“Friggin’ Brain-nommers. Bastards should have stayed in the morgue where they belong.”

“Dad! Put that thing away—we’ll just call the police if things get out of hand!”

“Both of you get upstairs!”

The mob outside was loud, a jumble of guttural bellowing and grunting—not that I could make out what they were saying.

I just wanted him to calm down; I wanted him to stay inside. I didn’t really think he’d use the gun. Hell, I’d never seen him shoot it even when we went hunting at my uncle’s farm upstate. He knew how to load it though.

Ryan’s face was pressed up against the window, his hands shielding his face.

“Holy shit! The cops are out there!”

As if on cue sirens wailed over the manic chanting of the crowd.

I turned to my Dad and reached for his gun.

“See? It’s gonna be all right, put that thing away.”

And that’s when the basement door creaked open and Lydia stumbled into the kitchen.

My father swung around and it was like a bolt of lightning hit the roof, filling the house with thunder. Maybe I went deaf, but I didn’t hear anything else after that.

I didn’t see Lydia’s head explode. I just saw her body drop to the floor.

So . . . that’s how the Zombie Justice Wars started. A lot of people blamed my Dad, but it was really my fault. I should have left her alone. She just wanted to be – just to be Lydia. Not a zombie, just Lydia. She knew she was a person and she wanted to keep being that person.

It’s been quite a while since I lost Lydia and the Living and the Not–so–living are more separated than ever. The streets aren’t safe at night. I spend most of my time at home, taking care of my brother, waiting for my Dad’s case to come up.

And every once in a while I either get a whiff of the sweet fragrance of vanilla or that sour, oniony smell and they both make me think of Lydia.

ABOUT FLORENCE ANN MARLOWE

Florence Ann Marlowe has been published by E-magazines and hard copy publications such as Macabre Cadaver, Demon Minds, Psuedopod, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Death Head Grin, Fantastic Horror and Wiley Writers. Her stories have also appeared in the anthologies Reflux, Peep Show Volume 2, Fantastic Horror's Temptations and Other Sins, The Pulpateers and the upcoming Don't Look Back.
Florence lives in southern New Jersey, in the same neighborhood where the Jersey Devil was born. Rumor has it, he lives next door.

SAFE

Tony Conaway

WARN

I know what a happy family looks like. I see them when I look in windows at night.

I know Simon isn’t happy. He said so on Facebook, on Twitter, on his blog.

It’s hardly a family at all—just Simon and his stepfather. Mother dead, father dead.

Like me.

Simon has no one left except a stepfather.

A stepfather is not blood. He could leave at any time. Put Simon into the system.

Like I was.

And I won’t let that happen to Simon.

No matter who tries to stop me.

SIMON

I give Brice what he calls ‘the stinkeye’. It has no effect.

“So I guess that’s a ‘No’ on going fishing this weekend, huh?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I force myself to eat another spoon of oatmeal.

Brice is done eating already. “Are you still planning to join the Marines when you turn 18?”

“Of course. I’m going to finish my father’s mission.”

My father died in Afghanistan six years ago. Three years ago my mother, for reasons I will never understand, replaced him with Brice.

Then my mother gets the cancer that half the women in her family seem to get. She died and left me alone with Brice the butthead.

“Well, you have to be in shape to join the Marines. I read that they reject over half the applicants because they aren’t in good enough physical condition.”

For once, Brice says something that interests me. But I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. Instead, I shovel another spoon of tasteless glop into my mouth.

“You don’t do anything except read and play on your computer, Simon. You need to do something physical if you’re going to be in shape for the Marines.”

“I’ll join a sports team.”

Brice doesn’t say anything, but I know what he’s thinking. I grew two inches since my last birthday, and since then my coordination is gone. Sometimes I trip just going up the stairs. None of the teams at Smedley Butler Middle School would let me join, even if I tried out.

“Dan and Vinnie are starting an inter–mural gym hockey team.” Dan and Vinnie are my best friends. “They asked me to join.” I didn’t say that I already turned them down.

“That’s a start. Now get ready for school.”

I put my dish, spoon and glass in the sink—I’d hear about it if I didn’t—and think, “Swell. Now I have to play the stupidest sport ever invented.”

WARN

My mother named me Warren. Two syllables: WAhR–EN. But most people don’t say both syllables. It comes out like a single syllable, like this: WAhRn.

So I decided to call myself Warn. W–A–R–N. War plus N.

Now that I’m out in the world again, I can call myself whatever I want.

By ‘out in the world’, I mean out of foster homes, out of juvie, out of jail, out of the mental hospital. Out of the system.

They had to let me out of juvie when I turned 18. I got arrested a few more times. Sometimes I went into treatment in a mental hospital instead of doing time. But none of my adult arrests were for anything serious. Trespassing and possession of stolen property, mostly.

Look, if you don’t want me to take your stuff then lock it up.

And if you don’t want me to watch you at night, close your curtains.

SIMON

Ice hockey is this really neat game where guys speed around on ice, slam a puck into a net, and get in fights. And when they fight, the only punishment is that they have to go sit in the penalty box. How cool is that?

Gym hockey is a bunch of kids huffing and puffing as they run around the gym. No skates, just sneakers. This game has light plastic hockey sticks and a felt puck, so no one can get hurt. And there’s NO contact allowed. No checking.

There are fewer injuries in gym hockey than there are in girl’s field hockey. No lie. That’s how lame it is.

And you know what’s even lamer? I suck at it.

I’m just so uncoordinated, anyone can fake me out. I swear, if they put a big mirror up, I’d get faked out by my own reflection.

After our first few practices, coach decided that I should play goalie. That’s not because I’m good at it, it’s because the goalie doesn’t have to run much, so there’s less chance of me falling down. And I’m one of the tallest guys on the team, so I stand a better chance of blocking a goal shot.

The absolute suckiest part is this: there is so much demand to use the gyms, we have to practice before school! Real sports, like basketball, get to use the gyms after school.

And the weird thing about it is, it’s not that bad. Even though I suck. Even though I have to get up early. But I’m with Dan and Vinnie, my friends. So it’s OK.

WARN

A guy with my record has trouble getting work. My parole officer got me a job with a landscaping crew, mowing lawns alongside Mexicans. Illegals, most of them. The pay was low.

I was on supervised release, living in a halfway house.

So I kept my eye out for empty houses where I could squat. And for better jobs.

One day we were mowing lawns next to where a tree–trimming company was working. I made my move – I climbed to the top of a tree, much higher than any of the guys who worked for the tree-trimmers. I was always good at climbing.

Then I yelled at them, “Hey! I can climb! Hire me!”

They did. It’s dangerous, so it pays better.

The next morning I started with the tree-trimming company. I used a fake ID and Social Security number, which I’d gotten from the same guy that the Mexican illegals got theirs. I didn’t give notice to the landscapers, and I never went back to the halfway house. I spent that night in an empty house that was next to one that the landscapers mowed.

As far as the system knew, I’d just dropped off the map.

SIMON

It’s Saturday. Dan, Vinnie and I are watching a backhoe dig a big pit in my back yard.

“So, they’re digging up, what? A septic tank?”

I explained it once already, but Vinnie isn’t the brightest kid in class.

“No,” I said. “This house is over 125 years old. They didn’t have indoor plumbing when it was built. They’re digging where the outhouse was. They usually used the outhouse as a trash dump, so Brice hopes we’ll find something valuable in there. Old bottles, for instance.”

“Won’t it stink?” Dan asks.

“Brice says it won’t, not after 125 years. Dan, your mom has a compost pile in your backyard. That doesn’t stink too bad.”

“That backhoe must cost a lot to rent. Will the stuff you find be more valuable than that?” For Vinnie, that was a brilliant question.

“Not if we were paying for it. But Brice works construction, and the backhoe guy is a buddy, doing him a favor.”

The backhoe was dumping piles of dirt all around the pit, like a moat in reverse. Brice said that it would be like a kind of fence, keeping anyone from falling into the pit.

He said that building an actual fence would probably cost more than the bottles (or whatever) would earn.

Profitable or not, it was the first cool thing that Brice ever did.

WARN

There was no electricity in the house where I squatted, but I had a stolen laptop. My Wi-Fi came from an old woman next door. I recharged my laptop every day by hiding it in the bushes next to her house and plugging it into an outside outlet. I put it inside a plastic bag in case it rained.

Everyone needs a purpose in life. Mine is finding unhappy children.

When I find the right one, I fix things. Take him away, and keep him safe.

In my own way

SIMON

Intra–mural season ends with playoffs. Instead of being held before school like the rest of our games, the school schedules an assembly at the end of Thursday and Friday. So there will be spectators to see us get creamed.

Four intra–mural gym hockey teams. Each team plays all the others.

It’s weird having spectators. There were several hundred eyes on you. I guess real athletes get used to it, but it’s a new feeling for me.

And I guess the being–watched feeling lingers, because I still feel it Thursday night when I’m home alone with Brice.

WARN

Since I’m not paying rent and don’t own a car, I save a lot of my salary. I can’t open a bank account—my ID isn’t good enough for that—but a check cashing outlet turns my weekly paychecks into cash (they charge a high fee, too).

The house I’m staying in is in probate. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I know that the owner’s dead and no one ever stops by.

The water is off in the house, but I have the entire outdoors as a bathroom. For bathing, I joined the local YMCA and take showers there.

I work at trimming trees as much as they let me. (They don’t like to pay overtime.) At night I troll the internet.

First, I Google-search for pictures of the local schools.

I find a picture of three boys in front of the Smedley Butler Middle School. The names of the kids are posted.

I search under those names. One of them, Simon, has an open blog. Bingo!

There are some other kids I consider. But Simon, pretty, skinny Simon, is the one. He’s so unhappy. An orphan, like me.

I soon find out where he lives. Then, one clear night, I visit him.

SIMON

When I get home, I find Brice outside, lying underneath the mud room. He has a tarp laid out to protect him from the cold ground.

When he hears me, he shouts, “Come look at this!”

The mud room extends out from the house, supported by big wood posts. Brice shows me that the posts are rotting. So is the underside of the mud room.

I should mention that, when my mother died, both Brice and I didn’t want to live in our split-level house any more. Too many bad memories. So Brice found this old, falling-down, three-story house in what they call a “marginal” neighborhood. The building had been divided up into five apartments. We lived on the ground floor and half the second floor – in fact, Brice let me have those three front rooms on the second floor all to myself. The rest of the place was empty. Little by little, Brice was fixing the place up. He worked construction, and there wasn’t much he couldn’t fix. Since there wasn’t much new home construction going on in this economy, Brice was often home all day, working on the house.

(That’s also why money was tight. If Brice worked more than half the days in a month, that was a good month. And the bottles we’d found so far in the outhouse pit weren’t very valuable.)

“This whole mud room is a loss. I’ll have to rip it out.”

Brice and I slide out and stand up.

“For the time being, don’t use this entrance. It could collapse any minute. I’m going to order a dumpster to throw the wood in when I dismantle it.”

“You can order a dumpster?”

“Rent. Sure. We’ll put it in the driveway, and I’ll park in the street.” He gathers up his tools. “Did you just get home? I thought I heard someone earlier.”

“I was over at Dan’s house.”

Brice puts his tools into a toolbox, and slides it inside the mud room. “Let’s get dinner,” he says. We enter the house through the kitchen door, not the mud room.

The smell of rot seems to follow us inside.

WARN

I stand at the foot of Simon’s bed, watching him sleep.

When I found the house where he and his stepfather were living, I knew immediately that this was a bad place. This is not a good neighborhood.

Simon deserves better. The house where I’m squatting is in a much nicer neighborhood.

But there’s one good thing about this old building – it has a whole unoccupied third floor.

I’m off work for the next three days. Until I figure out how to bring Simon back to the house where I’m squatting, I’ll stay here. On the third floor.

I entered while Brice was working on the mud room. Brice carried that large tarp out the basement door, and left it wide open. I went right in, and explored the whole house while he was working.

When Simon came home, I listened to him and Brice through a hot air grate. It carried sounds very nicely.

And now, here is Simon. Sleeping soundly.

If I have to kill Brice, best to do it when he’s sleeping. Brice is a big man, a construction worker. I’m strong, but Brice may be stronger.

But even with Brice out of the way, how do I get Simon back to the house? He’s taller than I thought. I can’t carry him far, and he might misunderstand and fight me. I’ll have to think it over.

I mouth the words, “Not tonight, Simon.” Then I go up to the third floor and sleep.

SIMON

Somehow, although I went to bed early, I’m still sleepy when Brice wakes me up. It’s like I was restless all night.

And yesterday’s clothes are folded neatly. I always leave my dirty clothes on the floor. Brice must have folded them.

Whatever. It’s Friday. We have our final intra–mural tournament game today.

WARN

Today, I have this whole house to myself! Simon’s at school, and Brice is at work.

I shower leisurely in Simon’s bathroom. It feels good. Safe. The last time I showered at the YMCA, I spotted my parole officer there. He didn’t see me, but he was looking for me, showing my picture around. So I haven’t been back.

In their kitchen, I make myself a hot breakfast.

Around noon I go out. Today is payday.

I get on a bus and go to the tree-trimming company. I get my paycheck and something else I need. Next, I take the bus to the check cashing place. Then the bus, one last time, back to Simon’s house. It’s all coming together.

SIMON

We lose our final intra-mural championship game, then watch the two best teams play each other. They’re both good. We never had a chance.

WARN

These slow buses are eating up the day. I should have started out earlier. The last thing I want is for Simon or Brice to get back before I do.

As I get off the bus and walk up to Simon’s house, an unmarked car pulls up. It can’t go up the driveway because there is a dumpster there now, but it parks on the street. I turn to watch.

And my parole officer gets out.

He’s a fat, red–faced man named Gruber. He always looks angry.

“So this is where you’ve been living, Warren? I knew I’d find you.” He has his hand on the gun in his waist holster as he approaches.

“Let me guess. You staked out the check cashing place?”

“There are only two in town. And I spotted your face on their security tapes.”

He gets out a pair of handcuffs. “Let’s do this the easy way.”

I nod—then bolt into the house. I had left the kitchen door unlocked. Gruber curses and follows.

I make sure he glimpses me, then run out through the narrow mud room. Brice had torn out the floor supports after dinner. I brace my hands on the windowsills and vault over the rotted floor. I kick the rotting door open and tumble out, down three steps to the sidewalk.

Gruber, with all the grace of a water buffalo, blunders into the mud room. And falls right through the rotted floor.

I rise and look in the mud room, carefully. Gruber is standing, stuck in the hole. Both his arms are trapped, too, though he’s trying to get the hand with the gun loose.

Brice’s toolbox is right there. I find a utility knife.

And move in to slash Gruber’s throat.

SIMON

The last person I expect to see in the school gym is Brice. He never came to anything I did at school.

Though, come to think of it, I never did anything before that he could come to see.

“Good job,” he says.

I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.

“C’mon. School’s over. I’ll drive you home.”

WARN

It takes Gruber several minutes to bleed out. Fortunately, he’s well hidden in the mud room.

I have a plan. It’s not hard to find someone who sells drugs. There’s a guy, a dispatcher in the tree–trimming office, who deals. I saw him this afternoon. Now I just had to get these roofies into their food. When they were both out, I can kill Brice and take the sleeping Simon in Brice’s truck.

But I need to hide Gruber’s corpse. I try to lift him out so I can put him in the dumpster, but he’s too heavy.

I’m trying to pull him down, through the hole, when I hear two car doors slam.

It’s too late. Brice and Simon are home.

I have to improvise.

SIMON

As we get out of the truck, a strange man with wild hair appears from the back of the house.

“Help!” he says. He doesn’t say it very loud. “Help me, he’s hurt.”

Brice runs over to him. I follow. The man points into the mud room.

“He’s badly hurt. I was trying to get him out, but—”

Brice leans over and feels for a pulse. “Who is he? And who are you?”

The strange man says, “I just moved in, over there. This man came to your door. I think he’s a process server.”

Brice says, “He’s not breathing. Simon, go inside and call—”

And then the stranger picks up the crowbar and brings it down on Brice’s head.

WARN

Gruber had died so easily. Not Brice, though.

When I hit him, he collapses. His bulky upper body falls into the mud room. But he isn’t fully unconscious, and I can’t reach his head to hit him again. I swing the crowbar, blindly, and only manage to hit Gruber’s corpse.

And Simon is moving.

I turn towards Simon. How am I going to convince him I’m on his side?

“Simon, it’s OK. Everything’s OK. You’re safe.”

I walk slowly towards him, but he circles around to the other side of the dumpster.

SIMON

This all happens so fast that I have trouble processing it.

I had gotten out of the other side of the pickup, so I was already a half–dozen steps behind Brice. I hadn’t actually seen the dead guy in the mud room. I was about to phone for help when the freaky guy hit Brice. It was the last thing I expected. I froze.

Then Freak–O comes for me. I finally move, keeping the big dumpster between us. But now he’s between me and the house. He’s also between me and Brice’s truck—my cell phone is in my backpack, in the truck. And there’s no one on the street.

Freak–O is muttering about how I’m safe. Yeah, sure.

I was about to run away when I hear Brice moan. Brice is hurt. If I leave him, the freak would make him Dead Guy #2.

So I bolt for the pit instead.

WARN

Simon is scared. That’s natural. If he runs, I might not catch him.

But when he runs, he just goes to the mounds of earth in the back yard. I follow.

SIMON

I have a plan. The pit was about 15 feet deep, and Brice left a 20 foot wooden ladder across the mouth of the pit. I scramble up the mound of earth around the pit.

I’m not religious, but I pray then. “God, please don’t let me trip!” And I run across the rungs of the horizontal ladder.

Somehow, I don’t fall.

Now, will Freak–O follow me? Or just circle around the pit?

WARN

I smile. Simon doesn’t know that I climb trees for a living. I’m used to ladders. I walk confidently across.

Halfway across I realize his plan.

SIMON

As soon as he’s too far to jump back to solid ground, I kick at the ladder. It moves a little, but it’s made of heavy wood, and the freak’s own body weighs it down more. The guy stops to get his balance, but doesn’t fall.

So I do what I have to do. The ladder rests on a soft mound of excavated dirt. I brace my feet against one side of the ladder, put both hands on the other side, and pull with all my strength.

As I fall backwards, the ladder flips up. Some of the earth shifts underneath—if the ladder had rested flat on concrete, I probably wouldn’t have been able to move it.

But it does move, enough to tip Mr Crowbar Freakazoid into the pit.

And then the damn ladder keeps tipping, until it flips over on top of my legs. I scream as it hits my right knee.

WARN

Clever boy!

When he tips the ladder, I fall into the hole.

I toss the crowbar as I fall, so I won’t land on it.

The earth is soft. The impact doesn’t do more than knock the wind out of me. I’ve fallen further out of trees.

But it’s a hole, and it’s too deep to climb out of easily. The walls are nearly vertical, dug by a backhoe.

I find the crowbar, and use it to start digging handholds so I can climb out.

SIMON

My knee hurts worse than anything! But I can hear the freak scuffling around, so I can’t just lie here.

From this angle, I can’t move the heavy ladder. So, with my hands, I frantically dig away at the mound of dirt. A fingernail bends back, but it’s nothing compared to the pain in my knee.

Soon I have enough room to slide out from underneath the ladder.

I probe my knee underneath my jeans. No blood, but the right kneecap is in the wrong place, off to the side. Ow!

I crawl over to the lattice of the grape arbor. It isn’t far. I use the lattice as handholds to pull myself up.

I find that I can hop on my left leg without causing too much pain.

I hop over to the pit. Freak–O is digging handholds into the side. He’s already about four feet off the bottom.

He doesn’t see me, though—he’s concentrating on holding on.

Fine. Now it’s a race.

Brice has a cell phone. I hop back towards the house. I only fall a few times. After the first time, I learn to protect my right knee when I fall.

I get to Brice. He’s unconscious now, but still breathing.

I get his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. And I call 911. The operator says to keep the line open, and that the police and an ambulance will be here shortly.

But I can hear the guy in the pit getting closer to the top.

There’s a shovel with Brice’s tools in the mud room. I pick it up.

I use the shovel as a crutch, and limp back to the pit. When I look in, the guy is almost to the top.

I look around. No cops yet.

Now he has one hand over the edge of the pit.

I shout, “Hey, Gollum!”

He looks up at me.

And I hit him full in the face with the shovel.

This time he makes a nice thump when he hits the floor of the pit. I don’t hear any more from him. Then the police arrive and take charge.

∞

They want me to ride on a gurney in a second ambulance. I say, “No way! I’m going with Brice!”

So, after they cut my jeans and look at my legs, an EMT just pops my kneecap back into place. It hurts so bad I almost pass out. But afterwards, I can bend my knee and sit in the first ambulance with Brice. The second ambulance takes Creep–O, after they get him out of the pit. Sadly, he isn’t dead.

Apparently, getting knocked out isn’t like in the movies. When Brice wakes he throws up. The EMTs give me the job of holding a vomit bag for him.

Brice runs out of puke as we get near the hospital. He says, “You should’ve just run. Leave me and save yourself.”

I think about saying something icky, about how he’s all I’ve got, or how I’m sorry I always give him such a hard time.

Instead I say, “I had to save you. Who else is going to make me breakfast?”

He smiles.

ABOUT TONY CONAWAY

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Tony Conaway has written (or ghostwritten) everything from blogs to books. He has co-written nine business books published by McGraw–Hill, Macmillan and Prentice Hall, among others. His fiction has been published in two anthologies and numerous publications, including Clever, Danse Macabre, Linguistic Erosion, qarrtsiluni, and the Rusty Nail.

NIGHT SWIMMING
Justin Hunter

Timothy downshift the Ford Sedan as he took a sharp turn off the narrow two–lane highway and onto the dirt road that led to Kelly Lake, Wisconsin. The car fishtailed slightly as the back tires attempted to obtain traction on the ill-used route to the lake. Timothy ignored the unsteady feel of the road and pressed the accelerator, making the Ford’s Flathead V–8 roar. The Sedan lurched forward as the tires found some drag. The car stabilized. Timothy smiled and took a long drag off his Lucky Strike cigarette.

“Keep driving like that and you can drop me off at the next stop,” Stephanie said.

“Relax,” Timothy said. “I know these roads. I grew up here.” He passed the cigarette over and Stephanie took it. Timothy put a hand on her thigh just below where her bright yellow sundress ended above the knee. She slapped his hand away.

“Pay attention to the road,” Stephanie said.

“No eyes in my hands,” Timothy said. “I can let them explore.” He touched her again. Stephanie held the cigarette in front of his face.

“Eyes on the road. Hands on the wheel,” She said. “Touch me again and I’ll put this out in your opisthenar.” Timothy removed his hand from her thigh and took back his cigarette.

“Opisthenar?” He said, “Getting pretty smart at your nursing school. Mind telling me what that is?”

“Get grabby again and you’ll find out,” Stephanie said.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Timothy said.

“That’s the problem,” Stephanie said. “You never mean anything by it.” Timothy smiled gunned the Ford down another dirt road. The densely tree-lined, seldom used track was just one strand of networking roads that spider-webbed the sparsely populated Northern Wisconsin area. A non-local wouldn’t have dared drive over twenty miles an hour down a slippery track artery like this, let alone the sixty Timothy was averaging, but he knew the road. He had driven down it countless times. He could make each hairpin turn with his eyes closed.

The road took a sharp dip. Timothy felt his stomach rise in a welcome rush between queasiness and adrenaline. Stephanie cursed and grabbed the inside door handle for support. Timothy drove around an easy bend and slowed the Ford. He couldn’t see it with the distance blinding reflection of the darkness off his headlights, but he knew they were close to his father’s cabin. The road narrowed even further. Heavy pines huddled close together and draped themselves over the road. They could hear the sharp needles scrape across the roof of the car. Stephanie was silent. There was something about the crowding nature against the seemingly palpable denseness of the country night that oppressed any more talk.

Timothy gently pressed the brake. The Flathead slowed to a stop. Stephanie put a hand behind Timothy’s head and stroked his hair.

“Are we here?” She said. Timothy depressed the floor switch with his left foot and the Ford’s brights came on, revealing his father’s cabin in a shadow of rotten siding, a broken front window and crumbling concrete steps. Stephanie didn’t think the cabin reflected Timothy’s description of it. It was far gone from his meandering reminiscence of youthful nostalgia. What he spoke of as a place of family gathering, peace and long summer days. The small piece of the building she saw was cold and threatening. It looked like a dwelling lonely and forgotten. It made her feel like they were the only people on earth. It made her scared, like they shouldn’t be there.

“We’re here,” Timothy said. He turned off the brights and they were again in their dim shroud of existence in the car. Stephanie regarded the trees looming over them. Their machine of roaring metal, baby blue paint looked alien among the dominant fauna.

“You sure you want me to leave you here?” she said. “You could come with me to the Halloween party. People have started to wonder what’s become of you.” Timothy shrugged off her caress.

“Just bring back the car tomorrow,” Timothy said. “I would prefer it in one piece.”

“I don’t plan on driving like a maniac like you do. I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

“This was my father’s car,” Timothy said.

“Still no reason to be an asshole,” Stephanie said. “You don’t have to let me borrow it.”

“Just help me get my stuff out of the trunk and get out of here,” Timothy said. He opened his door and got out of the car. Stephanie opened hers and was bombarded by the loudness of the forest around them. A myriad of insects sang a thousand songs of love at an ear splitting volume. Timothy was pulling his bags out of the trunk. She walked around the car and took out his sleeping bag and pillow. She placed them on the ground next to his bags. Timothy closed the trunk. Stephanie reached out and grabbed his hand. She didn’t want to leave him almost as much as she didn’t want to stay. She pulled him close and kissed him gently.

“Come with me please,” she said. He pulled away from her and handed her his keys.

“See you tomorrow,” Timothy said. He took the pack of Luckies out of his shirt pocket and lit another. He offered her one from the pack. She plucked the one from his mouth and held his hand.

“Opisthenar,” She said as she gently pressed the glowing cigarette against the back of his hand. Timothy didn’t take his hand away. He let her draw a small burn line in a jagged diagonal from his knuckle to the back of his wrist. He looked into her eyes which seemed to glow in the darkness. He saw anger and fear in them. The pain from the burn stung, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop her. No matter how hard he tried to emotionally pull away from her, she wouldn’t let go. She knew she was losing him just like everyone else. She knew that she was his last real contact with the outside world. Love doesn’t let go easy. The burn was her mark and claim. It was her last effort to keep him as her own, reminding him of her love with pain. Sometimes nothing else can get through.

Stephanie looked into Timothy’s eyes. She saw kindness in those eyes. She saw a man who would never hurt her. She saw a man with a good heart. Stephanie frowned in the realization that she had to look too deep to find those feelings. Covering all that goodness in the man that she loved was a shroud of disregard. Stephanie wanted so much to be first in his life, but realized that she never would be. It was at that moment that she became honest with herself and admitted that he would never fully love her. Stephanie denied the feelings of her heart and let him go.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow,” she said.

“Have a good time at the party,” Timothy said. He picked up his bags and started toward the cabin. Stephanie got in the Ford and eased the beast into a Y–turn and left Timothy in solitude. He unzipped one of his bags in the all encompassing darkness and brought out a large flashlight. He turned on the flashlight and pointed the beam at the cabin. He grimaced at its decrepit nature. Timothy spent many long summer days here with his father when he was younger. The bright yellow asbestos siding of the cabin was cracked, peeling and dirty. Parts of the front porch were caved in. The front door was open and Timothy thought he could see a tree growing up through the floorboards in the front room. The cabin was a bright and cheerful place when he was a child. Neglect was natures ally in takeover. Timothy’s mother was never at the cabin. Her idea of camping was a four star hotel with room service. She enjoyed life only if she was perfectly comfortable. Timothy’s father didn’t mind.

“A little time apart can help a marriage,” His father used to tell him. “Never more than two days. One day isn’t enough to forget what irks you about your partner. Two days you’ve forgotten all the bad things and you miss her like hell. Three days and you start wandering away from your promise. Men have short memories and many lies they tell themselves when they think about fooling around. Trust me, two days, then go home.”

After his father died his mother left the place in purgatory. She couldn’t bring herself to sell something her husband loved so much and wouldn’t keep the place in good repair. She owned the property and left it to rot. Timothy spent much time at the cabin since his father passed away, but he left it as it was as well. Without his father, the place was empty and depressing. He also couldn’t bring himself to remove the last traces of his father’s life. The Falcon tobacco pipe from his last smoke was probably still sitting on the end table next to his bed in the back bedroom. His tackle box was left open upon the coffee table. Timothy didn’t even throw out the half–eaten ham sandwich he left in the refrigerator. The cabin was a final memento, but nothing lasts forever. Even leaving things as they were couldn’t deny the fact that his father was gone and nature eventually takes over all.

Timothy didn’t enter the cabin. He stripped down to his boxer shorts, folded his clothes and put them next to one of his bags. From the bag he brought out an old olive–green vest made of drill cloth. He shrugged the vest on and bent back down to the bag. Taking out six metal plates, he placed them in the pockets of the vest and buttoned it closed. Timothy considered himself thin, but the vest barely fit across his chest. It was a trophy taken by his father from a Japanese infantryman during World War Two. The thin metal plates of the vest covered his stomach like fish scales. The armor on the lower right of the vest dug into his ribs. This was the spot where his father stabbed into the soldier with his bayonet. This thin metal armor didn’t protect the man and the Japanese soldier died.

His father didn’t speak much about the war, but Timothy knew he had fought in many bloody and vicious battles, ranging from the island of Okinawa to the liberation of concentration camps in Poland. His father had a knack for taking trophies from wherever he fought and managed to bring most of them home with him. Timothy checked the vest to make sure it was secure, then brought out a rusted canister from the bag and strapped it to his chest with an old roll of green duck tape. He dropped the roll back into the duffel bag and shined his flashlight on the canister. Seeing the skull and crossbones under the boldly typed Zyklon–B across the front of the container always made him feel uneasy. Timothy turned off the flashlight and walked around his cabin toward the lake behind the property.

Kelly Lake was named after an old Irish family who immigrated to Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Forty years later, the land was still mostly uninhabited and very affordable to own. The lake was typical for Northern Wisconsin. The bugs were bad. The fishing was good. The water was clean. The weekend population of this part of the state was steadily rising as cities like Milwaukee and Madison Grew larger. Suburbs were swallowing up hunting and fishing areas and those looking for that type of recreation looked north. Kelly Lake was northern enough that people hadn’t fully discovered it yet, but soon enough every square inch around the lake would be purchased, built on and used. For now, it was quiet and peaceful. Timothy was alone as he walked through the tall grass behind the cabin and stepped onto the small rocky beach where the lake began. He couldn’t feel the ticks biting into his flesh, but he knew they were there. He could hear his father’s voice even now, “You can’t walk ten feet in Wisconsin woods without taking on a passenger or two. It’s as sure as sunrise.”

Even in the dead of night, walking from the dense, overlapping evergreens onto the cold rocky shore always made Timothy squint. Going beyond the cover of the trees would reveal the arching night sky, brilliant with stars. He always took a moment to stare into that beautiful sky. His father had imbued him with the habit. When Timothy was a boy his father would take him out, doing what he called ‘night swimming’. He would stand with his father at the edge of the Lake, undressed and ready to swim, and they would look at the sky.

“There isn’t much in this world that I’m afraid of,” his father told him once while they gazed upwards. “I’ve spent too much time doing things that many people wouldn’t dream of doing. Fear is usually just another term for inexperience. Things that are unexplained or unknown cause people the most fear. It’s like how you were scared of the high–dive at the pool until you took that first leap. Then what happened?”

“I wasn’t scared anymore,” Timothy said.

“Exactly right. You’re mother and I couldn’t keep you off that thing after that. Your experience of your fear led you to the realization that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of.”

“What are you afraid of?” Timothy said.

“I’m afraid of swimming in the lake.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid of what’s in it,” his father said. “Don’t give me that look. Why do you think I look at the stars? It gives me courage. We’re finding out more about space every day. I bet we’ll have a man on the moon pretty soon, you mark my words. The water is a different story. The world is almost all water and we can’t get too far below the surface to explore it. We want to visit other planets, but there’s a whole world right below us that we know next to nothing about.”

“You swim because you’re afraid?” Timothy said.

“I swim to prove that the water isn’t a big deal,” his father said. “I’m giving myself experience.” They stayed quiet for a few moments and watched a star fall from the sky.

“You know that I killed people in the war?” his father said.

“You don’t talk about it.”

“There’s not much reason to,” his father said. “I hope the Good Lord spares you a war in your time. There are so many things that I had to do that no man should ever have to. That’s why I don’t fear much. Fear and I have been bosom buddies for a long time. Let’s go.”

They stepped across the stone beach and into the lake. The frigid water numbed Timothy’s toes. He wanted to dive in headlong and get the temperature shock over quickly but his father forbade the practice, telling him that taking it slow would ease the burden of the cold on his heart. Timothy forced himself to gentle cadence, pumping his legs toward his chest to get the blood moving. When the water was up to his waist he could wait no longer and plunged into the surf. He swam out toward the middle of the lake in an easy frog stroke. They would be out for an hour at least and it paid to conserve energy. The water was fickle and played tricks on the eyes. What looked like a small distance was anything but. The current could push against every stroke you made, making progress minimal and sapping the strength from your muscles as fast as working the oars on a slave ship. Timothy felt comfortable in his frog stroke that ate up miles and was easy on his body. He cut forward in two-foot strides. His arms swept water behind him while his legs did a powerful thrust. His rhythm was perfect. He barely made a ripple in the water as he swam.

His father’s way of swimming was a direct contrast to his own. He chose an arm plunging breaststroke at a speed that leant an observer to think that he was being chased. Timothy never could understand how his father could keep up that pace. There was nothing elegant about it. His father was never a strong swimmer. There was too much wasted movement without gaining much distance. That night, Timothy thought about what his father said about fear. If fear was a definite factor in why his father was out that night, maybe the urgency of his swimming was in direct correlation to how much he was afraid. It wasn’t strength that pushed him on, it was fear. They swam on. Timothy’s joints felt like they were burned with acid. His muscles felt like torn elastic. All at once his father stopped. He tread water and looked up at the brilliant stars above. They were in the middle of the lake. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

“Sometimes the only peace man can find is when he’s in the middle of his fears,” his father said. He smiled, and then thrust upwards five feet above the water, his arms stretched toward heaven in a gesture of supplication and fervent pain. A leathery tentacle ending in a two foot spike had rammed through his father’s breastbone. The tentacle coiled around his father, turning him in midair like a fatted calf on a spit. Just as suddenly as the tentacle appeared, it vanished. The creature pulled his father beneath the waves. Timothy was alone. He screamed and beat the water. He called for his father, but knew there was no hope of ever seeing him again. He thrashed until he was half–crazed. Only dropping beneath the waves and finding that he had little strength to return to the surface quieted him. His body ached. Tears streamed down his face, but the fear had returned. The quiet of the night was menacing. Timothy tried to turn on his stomach and swim but his body hurt too much. He found that the only way he could make progress was to float on his back and gently paddle with his feet. Even this easy swimming manoeuvre was almost too taxing on his spent energy and time after time he nearly gave into allowing his body to just sink below the surface. His lungs would almost welcome the water that would replace the life giving air. Timothy found the human spark for survival that overcame the edges of endurance and kept kicking. Hours passed. He watched the stars that were now his alone. Every moment of those hours he expected the tentacle to rise again and pierce his own body. It would drag him down like it did his father. He wondered at what the beast below would look like and if he would have a chance to see it before it ended his life with jaws or beak.

Timothy felt his back scrape the rocks. He was almost to shore. He stood. His frigid legs almost gave way beneath him. He stumbled onto dry land and passed out. He awoke to the bright sun of the next day. His face covered in mosquito bites. He cried deep tearless sobs.

He woke from his reverie like an infant breathing real air for the first time. Timothy checked his vest straps and shifted the Zyklon–B canister on his chest. He waded out into the water and began to swim. Nights in the northern Wisconsin woods blend together in a tapestry of incalculable sameness. Children become men, then old men beneath the never changing trees and stars. Timothy felt like his father had died only yesterday, not years ago. The darkness was the same. The water moved as it always had, motion with no memory. The stars blinked in their lonely clustering as they had since time began. They care nothing for me, Timothy thought. And I care nothing for them. There is nothing but the creature in the lake. My life ended with my father’s.

Timothy pushed his arms forward and swam an easy frog paddle. He made his way to the center of the lake and waited. His muscles didn’t ache like they did that night. His body felt simple and easy like a machine. He didn’t save energy for the swim back, because he didn’t think there would be one.

Timothy treaded water for what seemed like hours, but he couldn’t be sure. The moon had only moved slightly across the sky, belying its usual nature of seeming to follow you as you moved. Only when a person stopped and took notice could he see that everything moved and changed. Nothing would wait for the laggard.

The jolt came as he knew it would. The breath left his lungs. Pain lanced through his ribcage on his left side. He rose from the water just like his father did. He felt his body punctured. He looked down to see the spike had lodged itself in the vest. He armor had broken. The spike from the creature’s tentacle had broken a metal plate of the vest but didn’t stab through him. The cut came from a piece of the severed metal. Being held above the water made him feel like he was being served up to the gods like a sacrificial lamb. The tentacle turned, wrapping around him and pulled him beneath the water. Timothy felt like his limbs were being rent asunder from the force of the beasts pull. The murky water showed him a vague vision of many tentacles waving around him, culminating in an immense dark mass. It was too dark to make out much, but the body of the creature was moving towards him, looking to feed. A mouth opened in the middle of the dark mass revealing a gaping maw surrounding a three pronged beak as white as new fallen snow. Timothy snapped off his vest. The creature sensed its grip was compromised and stabbed another long-bladed tentacle at him, slicing through his thigh. Timothy slammed into the creature’s beak, shoving the poison filled canister and vest before him. The creature bit down and whipped about violently as it recoiled, biting into hard metal instead of soft flesh. Timothy kicked with his good leg. He hit the canister hard, jamming it deeper into the mouth of the beast. His efforts made the creature whip its tentacle hard and fling him out of the water again in an arc like a beaching whale. The tentacle spike snapped in half against his femur from the force of the throw. Timothy lay stunned in the water. His leg throbbed with a pain the likes of which he’d never felt before. The wound in his chest made it hard to breathe. He waited for the killing blow to come, but it never did.

Timothy lay on his back in the water, floating like he had done years before. He kicked with his good leg for what felt like hours until his back scraped the rocky shore. He couldn’t drag himself to shore this time. He rolled with the easy lapping of the small waves. He didn’t know if what he did had killed the creature. He didn’t know if it had swallowed the poison. None of that mattered much to him now. There was a moment when he was suspended above the water, in that killing embrace, in his sacrificial offering, where he finally felt peace. The bone of the creature stuck out of his thigh, reflecting the light of the moon.

Unconsciousness took him.

ABOUT JUSTIN HUNTER

Justin Has sold several works to horror/thriller anthologies such as upcoming releases from JWK Fiction’s Bones: The Anthology, The Ugly Babies Anthology (1 and 2), The Cellar Door Anthology, Cellar Door 2 Anthology, Indiana Horror Review 2013, Robertson’s Demonic Visions: 50 Tales of Horror (1 and 2), Emby Press Blood Trails: Monster Hunter and Strangehouse books’ Strange Fucking Stories. Justin has sold a dark comedy/apocalyptic novel to Severed Press – Chet & Floyd vs. the Apocalypse: Volume 1. He also has another literary work being pitched by an agent.

UNDERNEATH
J M Perkins

All the hairs on the back of Travis’ neck stood on end. He listened, fidgeting. The lumpy black bag he was supposed to be dumping rustled in the breeze. When he was sure there was nothing more to hear, he walked up to the can and tossed the trash in. Travis moved back to the door, jumping up the steps.

Uuuaaahhh came from the basement, up through the slatted boards of the deck. Travis ran inside, fast as his legs could carry him. His fingers fumbled to close the door and fasten the three locks: quickset, deadbolt and chain. Even though the locks had been set low in the door for him, he still had to tippy toe strain to reach them all. Chest heaving, he leaned against the washing machine . . . trying to calm himself.

Travis didn’t want Mommy to see him scared. She always told him that the cellar noise was nothing, just the house breathing. As for the banging, that was nothing more than an opossum rooting around and looking for rubbish to eat. He wanted to be a big boy. He didn’t want to be afraid anymore. Over the minutes, his breathing slowed.

∞

Mommy sat on the plastic coated sofa in the living room. She wore reading glasses and had a big thick book open in her lap. Without looking up from her page, she asked. “Did you take out all the trash?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Even the bathroom trash?”

Travis would’ve cursed to himself if he’d known any of the words. Instead he thought: Ah, how could you have been so stupid, and would have smacked himself except Mommy was watching.

“No, ma’am.”

“Well then isn’t there something you need to do?”

Travis’ head slumped. He gasped, doing his best not to sob.

“Aw, baby, come over here.”

Travis looked up and his Mommy was looking at him now. She had pushed her glasses and the thick book aside. She opened her arms for Travis.

“Come here.”

She engulfed him in her arms. He smelt her shampoo green–soap smell, nestled his face against her.

“Did you hear the bad noise again?”

Travis cried a little as he said, “Yes, mommy. Yes, ma’am.”

“Aw, but, baby, I’ve told you it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just the wind.”

The little boy’s cheeks flushed. He tried to push away from her a little, but she hugged him close.

“But always remember: don’t go in or near the basement. Never. Never ever. It’s dark and you might slip, and there are rats and they might have rabies’ but nothing in there can bother you if you stay away. It’s alright, I will take out the trash tonight for you.”

Travis fell asleep in her arms.

∞

Travis woke up as Mommy was putting him to bed. He kept his eyes closed and stayed limp. He liked to find out how Mommy acted when she thought he was asleep. She tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead, turned off his light on her way out. Travis listened to her move through the small house, to the soft metallic scraping of Mommy undoing the backdoor locks. He felt more then heard her steps across the deck. Silence. The heavy locks clacked as they struck concrete. Then the faint step–step–step of Mommy’s feet on the concrete stairs.

If Travis didn’t know better, he would have thought he could just barely hear Mommy yelling. The house breathed, something hard hit something soft and then silence reigned. Travis didn’t drift back to sleep until Mommy re-entered through the back door, till the locks scraped back into place.

∞

Travis woke from a dream he couldn’t quite remember. Moving towards the bathroom, he saw Mommy sitting at her desk, ordering and sorting all the paper with figures and exercises for today’s lesson. Really, Travis wanted to go to real school . . . but his mother told him home school was better. Travis had learned to stop asking for it.

After taking care of his business in the bathroom, Travis said, “Good morning, ma’am.”

“Good morning, Travis, have you brushed your teeth?” She asked, as she always asked.

“Yes ma’am,” He had always answered.

Mommy kissed him good-morning.

“Now run along and get ready, today we have your math and French lessons.”

The day crept by like all the others, Travis doing his best to keep his mind on the lessons and failing. His imagination flew and flitted about. He thought about being on an adventure, or having a golden retriever puppy to play with, or trading sandwiches with Jimmy who was his best (imaginary) friend at real school not home school. But something stalked around in the shadows of the daydreams; he kept thinking about the thirteen iron locks lying on the ground. Travis caught his breath, Mommy ‘harrumphed’ and he fixated himself again on the lesson. But soon enough, he drifted back away from his French lessons.

∞

That night Travis woke up outside, his hand on the door to the backyard. He trembled. He should have been in his own bed’ Mommy had told him about sleep walking. Travis hadn’t believed her, then. He glanced back and forth, his little breaths growing quicker and quicker. Then he heard it. The moaning that wasn’t supposed to be. But it was moaning, Travis knew it. But he didn’t know why mommy had lied to him.

A scratching noise resounded loud in the silence, something like skittering rat feet across cockroach shells. Travis put his hand back to his side quickly as though he had had a spasm, as quickly as though he had been touching fire. Liquid spread out between his legs. He backed away, and the sound seemed to back away too till it was inaudible. He ran back to his bed. He pulled the covers over his head and trembled.

He stayed that way for most of the night.

The next day Mommy saw the stain on his pants, and instructed him to put all his clothes and beddings in the washer.

∞

Travis woke, the basement door in front of him. He discovered his right hand clutching at one of cellar’s locks. The moaning grew louder now, and the little boy ran crying back to his bed.

∞

At the table the next morning, his mouth stuffed with crust-less Peanut Butter and Jelly triangles, Travis said, “Mommy what’s in the basement?”

“Nothing is; nothing except rats and mice and bats maybe.”

Travis chewed his lip. “Then why do you go down there, ma’am?”

“I never go down into the basement, Travis, you know that.”

Travis looked away, cheeks reddening from the lie.

“What, what are you thinking? Look at me’ Look at me Travis,” She pushed her plate across the polished wood of the table as she clutched at Travis with her other arm. Travis didn’t look at her eyes.

“Did you go? Did you go to the basement!?! Were you a bad boy Travis!!!” She hit him, with her open hand. “Did you, did you???” Mommy said, striking him again. “Don’t you ever, ever go into the basement, don’t you ask about it! Don’t you dare think about it!” she said and sobbed as she smacked Travis again and again and a third time, bloodying his nose. She pulled Travis to her, and hugged him. She cried ragged gasping sobs till her son began to cry with her.

∞

Travis did his best to be a good boy. He tried not to think about the basement. But through all his thoughts—like a background soundtrack—he heard the moaning and the murmuring, the skittering and the whispering from underneath. Travis realized then that he was going to go into the basement.

Travis had read a book once, about how when Injuns (Native Americans he heard his mother’s voice correcting) needed to get up early they drank lots of water. He glugged down an extra glass with dinner, and since it was his turn to wash the dishes he kept bringing more handfuls of tap water to his lips. He swallowed still more as he brushed his teeth. Travis went to bed, closing his eyes.

∞

His eyes opened four hours later, crossing his legs as he ran for the toilet.

Travis couldn’t wake Mommy, he had to be careful slow. He wiped a dribble of snot with his forearm. Travis reached with small fingers up to the knob of the door to his mother’s room, and clasped his hand about it. He turned the knob.

Mommy slept on her bed, whispy curtains hanging all around her. She didn’t snore, but Travis heard her grinding her teeth and saying sleep things in a low voice. Moving through the ten steps to the bureau, Travis stood on his tippy top toes to look. With hesitantly eager fingers, he reached into the key dish for the jangling ring that would allow him to undo the basement locks.

Something was wrong: no noise. Silence. He froze, realizing he couldn’t hear Mommy breathing; tensing every muscle and tendon till he was deer in the headlights still. Mommy had caught him. Mommy was waking up. Mommy would keep him inside for a month again, and she’d order the groceries online and he wouldn’t be able to even see the other children playing through the car windows. Why was Mommy still laying in the bed, staring at him without saying anything?

Travis turned, fighting himself every inch. His neck didn’t want to twist, his back didn’t want to pivot. Most of all, his eyes didn’t want to look.

Mommy still lay in the bed. She snorted, turned on her side away from him and proceeded to mumble more dream talk. She’d been asleep the whole time. Relieved, Travis stopped wasting time. He snatched at the keys and ran, keeping them tight between finger pudge so they wouldn’t clink and clank. Outside, the shadows and hungry quiet surrounded the little boy.

A slight uuuughhhhhhh wafted from the basement. Another uuuuuuggghhhhh came, and Travis’ resolve broke. He scurried back inside, not as cautious about noise now. In his hurry, he almost forgot to replace the keys.

∞

Travis said nothing about it, but he knew that Mommy suspected . . . something. He threw himself into his lessons and his chores, hoping for penance and distraction. He found neither. Dark circles looped and spread beneath his eyes. At night, he stared at the ceiling, clutching his blanket to himself so it didn’t quite cover his eyes. Travis had to keep awake, even if it meant facing the swirl of the taloned silhouettes the tree branches cast across his walls. He tried so hard to ignore what he heard and he tried even harder to ignore what he thought he heard . . .

Mommy tried to coax it out of him, tried to berate it out of him; but when these tactics failed she simply accepted it. Travis was a good boy, and hadn’t done anything as far as she knew. If he didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering him, she couldn’t do anything about it.

∞

A week after his first attempt; Travis once again snuck out of bed, stole the keys and came face to face with the door and 13 iron locks. The backyard was silent for once and Travis was grateful for it. He couldn’t do this otherwise. He inserted the first key, dreading the slight scratch of metal on metal.

The crescent moon leered down at Travis as he tried key after key on the different locks. They were different kinds and he spent eternal minutes till he’d fumbled them all open. He grunted, struggled to lift the basement door. Travis hesitated, wanting to turn back. He put a foot on the first gray step leading down.

The humid air plucked at him; everything wet, and black and sweetly decaying. The little boy trailed fingers across the concrete walls, probing for a switch and finding only spider webs. A mass of string hit him in the face, and he almost screamed. He caught his mouth with his hands, lung heaving. He realized that this was the switch he’d been looking for. He pulled it and filled the world with yellow light.

Squeaking things scuttled away from the bulb, glare at Travis from the recessed darkness. In the farthest corner, Travis something big breathed. The thing was just outside the pool of light, but Travis could see it was pale. Metal chinked and limbs bound by chains and locks came into view.

“Hu-hello?” Travis said.

“Hello?” Travis said again. A man’s laughter answered him, laughter dry and hoarse as noon day spit on high desert rock.

Travis backed towards the stairs, towards escape. He ordered himself not to sprint off, screaming and blubbering for Mommy. The man’s laughter turned to weeping, and his bonds clanked and slid across the concrete floor. Travis could just see the form of an emaciated, man.

“Hello, son.”

∞

Travis’ father relaxed as best the chains would allow, his son squatting across from him so as not to dirty his footy pyjamas. Daddy had an eye patch—like a pirate—except it was brown instead of black, and seemed moist around the edges. Bruises and scabs covered Daddy, and the slightest breeze seemed to make him shiver.

Daddy talked in a placative whisper.

“I loved your mommy once. But then you were born’ and she went a little crazy. She wouldn’t let me see you much’ she said. . .”

Daddy stopped, stared up at the house’s floor. A change in sound of the floor boards made Daddy and Travis both tensed, trying to hear if Mommy was up and moving. No more sounds came, so Daddy continued: “. . . She said I was crazy. But I, I didn’t know what she was capable of.”

“She put me down here, and then . . . I didn’t know she was like this, that she was just using me to . . . to have you.”

Daddy sobbed. Travis reached over and hugged the dirty, foul smelling bundle of rags and skin. Daddy scooped up Travis into his arms, lifting him and taking comfort in his warmth. Wiping the tears away from his eye, Daddy put Travis back on the floor.

“I don’t want to Travis, but I have to ask you. I have to get out. She’ll kill me if I don’t. Any day now she’s going to snap, she gets worse every day. You have to help me get free. Will you help Daddy?”

∞

The next day ground on, a finger nail pulled slowly over a chalk board. Travis flitted between paranoia, rage and hysteria as he thought about doing what he’d have to do for the plan. But he had to be strong, Daddy needed him to be strong.

Travis hid the clothes, guilty muck from the basement smeared across them. He folded them underneath the clean socks in his dresser. When Mommy woke him up 7:15 Travis almost screamed. He covered it with a cough.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I feel a little sick.”

Mommy felt his head, clucked her teeth.

“Well you do feel a little warm’“

“I can still do the lessons Mommy.”

Mommy smiled, “You’re a good boy, Travis.”

Travis smiled back.

∞

Travis had to pay attention through the long day, listening to lessons on multiplication and geography as his mind drifted ever downwards, towards Daddy and the plan. Countless eons passed till evening came. He waited through dinner, watching until Mommy had finished the glass of orange juice. Travis asked: “Would you like more Mommy?”

Daddy had said the plan might not work tonight, and that he could wait. But oh how Travis hoped it would.

“Why yes Travis, thank you for asking.” Mommy said, handed off the cup.

Travis tried very, very hard not to run to the kitchen. From there he veered to the bathroom, left the cup by the sink. He found the brown bottle without a label in the medicine cabinet. Travis shook three pills out into his hand. Daddy had told him to use three . . . but he shook out another two. Five. He had to be sure.

Travis made a tight little fist around the capsules, flushed the toilet and turned on the faucet for the time it would have taken him to wash his hands. Sliding over the linoleum of the kitchen, he opened the door of the refrigerator with his left hand and took out the orange juice. He glanced back, Mommy hadn’t moved. Travis ground up the pills between his fingers to let all the white powder fall into Mommy’s glass. When all the dust had clumped to the bottom of the glass, Travis poured orange juice in.

The little boy walked back to where Mommy leaned back in the couch, lost in some thick book. If Mommy found out, she would hit him again and might not stop. But if it worked Daddy would be free, and he and Daddy could leave. They would get help for Mommy, that’s what Daddy had told him.

Travis offered the glass to Mommy. She nodded and said, “Thanks” as she turned back to her book. She took a sip, pinched her face. After another small drink, she turned to Travis.

“Hmmm, does this taste little funny to you, Travis?”

“Uh, I think it said it expires on the 17th.”

Mommy pursed her lip “Not bad funny . . . just . . . hmm, well, different. Here. Try a little.” Travis brought the liquid to his mouth, letting none of it get past his lips. “Tastes fine to me, ma’am.”

He wanted to kick himself. He should have listened to Daddy. He should have trusted Daddy. Now everything would fall apart and it would all be his fault.

Satisfied, Mommy returned to reading. Travis did his best not to stare at every drink she took from the glass. She stood, staggering a little.

“I . . . I’m going to get scome neew orange juice, maybe the glass was dirty.” She dropped the glass. “Wha’ hrmmm? What’s . . . oh, Travis, wait. Oh, n-not those pills, not thss pills, Twavis. You don’ know what you’re doing.”

Mommy fell to the floor. Travis lifted her head up, snatched the necklace with the key to Daddy’s chains off her. He ran to get the other keys from the dish, so he could let Daddy out.

A jumble of metal and little boy fingers later and Travis had managed to open the basement door. By the time he reached Daddy, he was weeping. Daddy cried too. Daddy said “I want to do this together,” With Daddy’s hands on his, Travis put the key into the last lock; the one that kept Daddy down here. The chain slid off.

Outside, Daddy stared up at the moon as he rubbed the part his wrist that had once been held by a steel cuff. “I feel like a new man up here. I feel whole again.”

“Trr-wavis. Get away from him!”

BOOM!

A bullet passed through the air above and to the right of Daddy’s head. Daddy jumped and rolled off into the shadows of the back yard. Mommy flipped the security lamp on, but all it managed to do was create a circle of blindness around her, illuminating the deck and ruining her and Travis’ night vision.

“Trawvis, Trawvis darlin’, honey, yo-you don’t undertsand. He’s . . . he’s a bad, bad man. I had to lock him away, had to! Now stop hiding, you son of a bitch.” Mommy fired into the night.

“Looks like you couldn’t hit me even if I was still chained down . . . darling.”

Mommy shot into the blackness where she had heard the voice, hitting fence. Daddy laughed. Mommy pointed at the laughter, screaming words Travis had never heard before. A bush rustled and Mommy pivoted and fired again. The backyard filled with a cry of pain, “Yarrraaahhhhh!” Mommy walked away from the door and light, towards the noise. As her eyes adjusted, she began to see the outline of what she had hit, rustling in the bushes. A stray cat, a shell exploded out the back of one of its legs, was lying, hissing and bleeding and dying. Callused feet moved swiftly over the cobblestones behind her. She turned, quick enough to just see the rock and the hand that wielded it coming towards her. The stone arced down, smashing and cracking into her skull. Mommy fell, hitting the cobblestones, wet.

Her gun clattered away.

“Hello, darling.”

Mommy responded with something incoherent. Daddy squatted next to her so he could whisper into her ear. Travis, blubbering, barely heard what he said.

“. . . Dreamed of reconciliation. That’s right, for the first three years I dreamed and fantasized that we could be a family again. And then, and then you poured bleach into my eye. You always wanted everything so clean and perfect.”

Daddy removed his eye patch to show a shallow pit, a leaking red hole where the eye was supposed to be.

“And after the bleach, I started to have a different dream. The dream that I would be squatting over you, telling you this. And then Travis wouldn’t be our son, that he would be mine.”

Daddy noticed his son. “Travis, put your hands over your eyes. I don’t want to see this.” Daddy said as he picked up the rock again. “I love you,” Daddy said to Mommy. Travis covered his eyes. Crunch, crunch, crunch; Mommy stopped breathing. Tears kept falling from behind Travis’ hands.

∞

Travis kicked his legs back and forth as he sat on the edge of the motel bed. After . . . after Mommy, Daddy had told him to run to the car. The boy had complied, sobbing the whole time. Daddy followed soon after, dragging two heavy garbage bags.

Daddy explained how everything was going to be fine now, how they were all going to be together again. Travis felt a little better. And now he waited in the motel room, the hefty bags from before sat across from Travis. Daddy emerged from the bathroom and asked, “What do you think?”

Daddy looked like a whole new person. He had shaved and trimmed his hair, put on new clothes that weren’t ragged and didn’t show his sores or bruises. Daddy had a new eye patch he’d just made out of an old shirt, and it looked better.

“Daddy . . .”

“Yes, Travis?”

“Well, I just . . . it was just so mean of Mommy to lock you up in the basement.”

Daddy stroked his chin, looked down at his son.

“Yeah, but I can’t even blame her overmuch. She had her reasons. She always told me I was a very, very bad man; and in my time I did some things to Mommy that were almost as bad as what she did to me. But I did even worse things to other women, just not Mommy. But they always deserved it.”

Daddy flicked out a knife and cut open one the hefty bags. Inside a woman’s face stared up at him. Though the head had caved from the rhythmic beating of a cobblestone, the Travis could still recognize that this was Mommy. Daddy began to talked, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of ripping plastic.

“But women never do really understand men, Travis. Always remember that. I’ve got so much to teach you, we’ve lost so much time. Now fetch me my tool bag, boy, we might as well start tonight.”

Travis did as he was told.

ABOUT J M PERKINS

J.M. Perkins writes Science Fiction, Action Horror, and whatever else will pay the bills.  He spent the first 14 years of his life preparing to flee to the wilds of Canada to escape the forces of the Antichrist. Since then, he's graduated UCSD, worked at a candy factory, and performed a variety of unsanctioned sociological experiments. He's had over a dozen of his short stories sold, published, printed and adapted. In 2012 he used a successful Kickstarter Campaign to publish his first novel, CHEMO: How I Learned to Kill. He co-hosts the podcast ‘John vs Patrick.’ J.M. Perkins lives in San Diego with his roller derby playing photographer wife and his dog.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Thank you for purchasing Fear’s Accomplice, I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed compiling it.

I must also thank the contributing authors for their support and much needed words of wisdom. Without their enthusiasm this anthology would never have been published. Further thanks go to my wonderful wife, Helen, for her patience and unending support.

This anthology is intended to be a showcase for the authors so, if you enjoyed their work, then I encourage you to seek out their other publications. A simple search with an online bookseller should help you to find more great stories from these excellent writers.

It seemed best to leave all stories in their original forms. So the keen-eyed among you may have noticed that there is a mixture of British and American English. Perhaps it would have been simple to make everything uniform, but I feel that reading the tales as the authors intended has its own charm. No doubt some things slipped through the radar and perhaps the auto correct feature changed some of them. Unfortunately any spelling or grammar errors are my fault. With any luck I didn’t miss anything vital.

If you liked Fear’s Accomplice then please leave a review of it on your favourite online site, such as Amazon or Goodreads.com.

For information on upcoming projects please visit the NoodleDoodle Publications website at:

http://noodledoodle.tk

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Further updates can also be found on Twitter @NoodleDoodlePub

Be sure to look out for Luke Spooner’s artwork. You can find more of it here: www.carrionhouse.com
www.hoodwinkhouse.com

All the best

Tim
(T M McLean)