Cut Corners Volume 1
Author: Ramsey Campbell; Bentley Little; Ray Garton
Date: 2011-09-01 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Anthologies
Description: Peel your eyes open, get comfortable, and let three of the horror genre’s hardest hitters take you for a ride. Prepare yourselves, my friends, for you are placing your sanity in the hands of these masters of the macabre. Three brand new stories from Ramsey Campbell, Bentley Little, and Ray Garton guaranteed to slice open a smile.

Cut Corners: Volume One

Ramsey Campbell

Bentley Little

Ray Garton

Sinister Grin Press

Sinister Grin Press

Austin, TX

www.sinistergrinpress.com

September 2011

“The Address” (c) 2011 by RamseyCampbell

“Conversation Between Two Women Overheard at my Dentist’s Office” (c) 2011 by Bentley Little

“Autophagy” (c) 2011 by Ray Garton

All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without the publisher’s written consent, except for the purposes of review.

Cover Art by Kyushik Shin

www.shinybrush.com

Cover Design by Shane McKenzie

THE ADDRESS - Ramsey Campbell

Fraith did his best to stay amused as long as he could. At the car park into which he wandered almost before realising he had, nobody even knew there was a railway station. Presumably this meant it wasn’t along the road, and he tramped back into the forest, where the rusty colours were starting to lose their appeal. An October wind cold enough for winter met him, and then a muddy couple tugged by two Labradors did. They disagreed over directions while the dogs joined in, and eventually the man tried to send Fraith back to the road. Further down the path that was restless with leaves, the mother of two children about the ages of his daughter’s daughters took pity on him. “Out by yourself today?” she said.

“I very often am. I’m just giving the family a breather.”

“They look after you, do they?”

Fraith wasn’t sure how much of her sympathy was reserved for him. “More like the other way round,” he retorted.

“I know.”

Her tone had turned more soothing, not unlike a nurse’s by a bed. Fraith managed to say only “Can you tell me where the station is?”

“Was that the big place, mummy?” the boy said at once.

“That was a school,” his sister informed him with all the disdain earned by her age or gender.

“There hasn’t been a school for a long time. Be quiet about it.” Since the woman was still gazing at Fraith, he could have thought this was addressed to him. “I’m sure I saw the sign you want,” she said. “Carry on where we’ve come from and I think it’s the next side path.”

“I don’t suppose either of you two saw a train.”

“They haven’t. Not today.” With enough force to be rebuking Fraith the woman added “Just do as I said and you’ll find what you asked for.”

“I hope so.” Fraith could sound like that too. “I need to get back to my daughter,” he said. “She hasn’t anybody else.”

He hoped his return would be as welcome as his decision to go walking by himself had seemed to be. Were there really no walks closer to the house than a train ride away? Perhaps Carla had wanted a few hours by herself with the girls. He was doing all he could to help - enough for two people now her mother wasn’t with them - but perhaps he seemed too interfering. He would ask Carla once the girls were in bed, though she disliked admitting to feelings like those, just as her mother had. Before he knew he meant to speak he said “Have you anyone like me?”

“We had,” the woman said.

“He went to live with all the other granddads,” the boy informed him.

Fraith could do without knowing what this might be a euphemism for. “I won’t be doing that just yet,” he said and strode into the woods.

He must have overlooked the sign she’d mentioned. Though the sun was lying low behind the trees, it wouldn’t be dark for hours. The light transformed foliage into masses of orange flame and spilled between the trees to lend leaves on the path a tinfoil glare. The concrete path wasn’t admitting to its destination; every few hundred yards another curve obscured the way ahead. While he hadn’t counted the bends, it took more of them than he remembered to bring him back to the next junction, where nothing like a signpost was to be seen.

The woman must have mistaken the place, which surely ought to mean the next path wasn’t far. He knew the station wasn’t to the left - he’d come that way earlier - and the trail ahead curved rightwards. He zipped up the last inches of his padded jacket against the wind despite starting to sweat with exertion. “Best feet forward. You’ve a pair each,” he would have said if Carla’s daughters had been with him.

Soon the path straightened out, levelling the sunlight at him. For minutes he was as bad as blind. At last the path strewn with leaves like shards of mirrors veered to the right again, and he blinked his patchy vision clear, to be rewarded by the sight of a junction ahead. Or were those only gaps between the trees on both sides of the track? No, there was a transverse path, but it was entirely unmarked.

He halted at the crossing and stared around him. His skin was as clammy as his mouth was dry, and at first the reverberations of his heart wouldn’t let him think. Where had he gone wrong? He’d set out to follow a circular route from the station, but one of the bridges across the railway had been fenced off, and since then he’d lost the main path. If only Carla had reminded him to take his mobile phone, except that even if he hadn’t left it by his bed he didn’t suppose it would have helped him now. Should he return to the car park while he still knew where it was, in case someone could direct him? He was turning back when he heard voices on the right-hand path.

They weren’t speaking English. Like many people in the street these days - sometimes enough to make him feel he was losing his grasp of his own language - the young men were from somewhere in the heart of Europe. They looked friendly enough, and stopped at the junction when Fraith held up a hand. “Did you come by the railway?” he said.

Two of them smiled while their companions frowned, and all four shook their heads. “Railway,” Fraith repeated to the same effect and pumped his arms like pistons while puffing as hard as he could, only to realise that he could have been portraying an exhausted athlete. “Choo choo,” he tried hooting and shoved his fists out hard enough to pummel an opponent. “Choo choo.”

The men gazed at him as if they wondered where he’d been let out from - as Carla’s daughters did too often while he was exerting himself to amuse them. “Station,” he urged, shading his eyes to peer along each path in turn. “Station.”

Three men shrugged. Their companion, the oldest, sketched a cross on himself before kissing his thumb, and Fraith wondered if this was a gesture to greet the deranged. He’d thought of nothing more to say by the time the men turned along the path he had been following. As he hesitated the oldest man looked back and waved him away. “No,” he said and jabbed a finger at the path to Fraith’s left. “Station.”

He pronounced it so deliberately it might have been two separate words. Surely that could be the right path - if the men had passed the railway they would have figured out Fraith’s performance. All the same, as he turned that way he felt as if he were being dragged by his shadow. His heart sounded like a cheap effect in a film, and his mouth was growing parched again. He’d reached a bend that showed him more path and trees with their tips ablaze - his crooked silhouette was jerking along the unkempt verge, putting him in mind of the second hand of a decrepit clock - when he heard another voice.

Though it was blurred, not just by distance, he knew where the woman was. The man’s voice that had greeted the train at the station had been distorted too. “Keep talking,” Fraith urged and tramped faster along the path.

She fell silent at once. He could almost have fancied she was as contrary as Carla’s girls. His shadow was veering around a bend as if in search of the direction by the time she spoke again. As far as he could make out she was publicising a special service, which seemed unlikely to concern him. Straining his ears only turned his heartbeat up, and he did his best to breathe more evenly as the bend showed him another deserted stretch of path. Wasn’t that the red-brick station beyond the furthest trees? He was halfway to it before he could be sure it was a mass of autumn foliage.

He’d seen no other path since meeting the four men, but he’d begun to wonder if he was still right for the station until he heard the voice apparently announcing the first train due and the next ones. The wind threw the words about like a young animal worrying some kind of toy, so that Fraith couldn’t locate the voice. At least he was closer to it. Surely that wasn’t just an effect of the wind.

He’d passed another extended bend before she spoke again - something about the track and a delay. At least that should give him more of a chance to catch the train, but he kept on almost fast enough to lose his footing on the sodden leaves. As the wind flung the words away from him he could have imagined the treetops were groping to retrieve the message, not necessarily on his behalf. All at once a phrase made him falter. Could she just have announced the last train?

It shouldn’t be due for hours yet. There was still enough light to trap his silhouette among the glistening shadows of trees. He made for the voice almost fast enough to leave his breath behind, though not the uneven drumbeat of his heart. Was he hearing about a mail train now - one that carried sacks? Presumably the public was being advised that it didn’t take passengers. Fraith could see the building through the trees at the next bend, at least until he came close enough to realise it wasn’t solid enough. The distant shape wasn’t overgrown with leaves, it was composed of them. He was almost at the bend by the time the voice spoke again. It was behind him.

It was to his left as well, among the trees. As he strained his eyes to find a path he’d overlooked, he heard a rhythmic clatter and a brief high sound. The mail train must be racing through the station, whistling to warn commuters. He’d thought the voice had just mentioned relaying the track, but this couldn’t be affecting the trains. He was facing the sounds now, and he shouldn’t waste any more time looking for a path.

The way through the trees wasn’t as straightforward as he hoped. The forest was humpy with mounds of earth much taller than he was. None of the trails leading over or between them looked manmade, even inadvertently. The first route he followed brought him into a muddy hollow full of stagnant pools disguised by leaves, and he was on his knees by the time he clambered out of it. After that he did his best to stay on the mounds, no matter how treacherous they proved to be. Would they never let him glimpse the station? He might have thought its voice was mocking his progress, not least since it had grown even less comprehensible. Perhaps the bits of it that reached him on the wind were talking about prices and the next train, but what had it said about some form of support? “Doesn’t matter,” Fraith panted, “just don’t shut up,” and almost lost his balance on a scree of leaves as he laboured up a slope. He grabbed a scaly tree-trunk to haul himself onto the top of the mound, and a soggy lump of bark crumbled in his grasp. He sucked in a breath so as to release it, letting out a sound he would have preferred not to make. He could see where he’d been hearing from, and it had no connection with the railway. The building obscured by trees was a school.

The main building was long and wide and red. Two wings extended from it to enclose a schoolyard, beyond which distant figures stood around the edges of a field, watching others run. At once a great deal made sense. It was a sports day, nothing to do with support. The voice had been talking about prizes, not prices - about a sack race and a relay, and announcing the winners in numerical order.

For an irrational moment Fraith was tempted to retreat to the main path. He’d already begun to feel like a child lost in a maze, and besides, he had loathed sports at school. “Don’t blubber, Blubber,” the gym master took delight in saying, though Fraith hadn’t been especially overweight and had never let anyone see him weep. Only sweat had trickled down his face, not to mention down the rest of him, as he’d panted to the finish in everybody else’s wake, urged on by the teacher’s ironic cheers that too many spectators had emulated. They surely weren’t allowed to treat children like that now, even in a school as remote as this one. If the way Carla’s girls behaved was any indication, there were no longer many rules at all.

Someone at the school would be able to direct him to the railway, and he slithered down the mound. Now he couldn’t see the building, but the announcer - no doubt the games mistress - was still audible with some words about the head. If the organiser of the games was anything like Carla, the competitors would be having an easy time. She could very well be firmer with his grandchildren, but perhaps she thought he’d been too strict with her at their age.

He wasn’t going to risk the shortest route to the school - he couldn’t afford a broken bone or even a sprain just now, if ever - and so he settled for the least hazardous. From the top of a mound the school blocked his view of the playing field. The next time it rose into sight, only the roof was visible above the high thick hedge that boxed the grounds in. He had to find his way around a copse webbed with ivy before he was able to reach the hedge.

A track led beside it, or at least a penumbra of mud that fringed the shadow of the forest. The hedge was several times Fraith’s height and at least twice as thick as the width of his rotund stomach. It was far too thoroughly entangled for even the smallest child to squeeze through, and not just full of vicious thorns but bristling with them. Surely nothing like it would be allowed on school property these days, and he wondered how long ago it had been planted to have grown so much.

Since he couldn’t see the school gates, he made his way along the soggy track towards the field. The windows he glimpsed through the hedge were as dark as the depths of the woods. Either the woman with the microphone hadn’t often used one or her shrillness was distorting the transmission. Perhaps she was pretending to be excited, because Fraith couldn’t see much to inspire her as he came in sight of the field.

The sack race was over. Several man-sized bags were propped against the schoolyard wall. Fraith’s head was swimming with exertion, and he might have imagined that the contestants had stayed in their sacks, which were jerking with the wind. In fact the bags couldn’t have been used in the race - they must be full of rubbish, given how stained they were. He was glad to see that the sports day wasn’t too rigorously organised; some of the young spectators on the far side of the field were playing a game of their own, throwing a ragged rugby ball or baseball to one another. Perhaps the amplified voice had grown shrill in a bid to reclaim their attention for the official event, such as it was. Fraith could see just one runner on the field, dashing along a track composed of muddy footprints in the not especially neat grass. Whatever kind of competition this might be, Fraith hadn’t time to wait for it to finish. “Excuse me,” he shouted through the widest gap - thinner than his thumb - he could find in the hedge. “Can you help?”

Perhaps nobody could see him, but none of the spectators facing away from him turned to look. Surely the hedge couldn’t have made him inaudible. Perhaps the children had been told to ignore anyone outside the grounds. In any case he would do better talking to an adult, and he advanced along the unofficial track. He hadn’t identified a single grown-up, not even the one with the microphone or loudhailer, when he caught sight of the gates past the front of the school.

They were open, though not fully. He would have to make his way around two sides of the grounds to them, but at least he wouldn’t be yelling through the hedge. As he turned away he glimpsed the solitary runner stumble and fall. Half a dozen spectators ran to help him up, quite the opposite of how Fraith would have been treated at school. Fraith was alongside the brick wing that enclosed the schoolyard when he thought he heard the amplified voice calling him back.

It was saying somebody was back at school, although surely not the competitors. Now that Fraith thought about it, the lone runner hadn’t looked too youthful. Might that explain what Fraith had heard earlier? Perhaps this was a special day, the kind schools sometimes put on, where roles were reversed and it was the teachers’ turn to compete. Even the amplified voice might belong to an adolescent boy, since Fraith heard it crack as it enthused about a game of catch.

Sunlight poked jagged holes in the hedge as he came abreast of the front of the school. A drive led through the woods to the gates, but it was blocked by fallen trees. In any case the gap between the spiky wrought-iron gates was too cramped for any vehicle to pass through. Twigs were entangled around the hinges, and the ground was stained rusty where the gates had settled into the mud. Fraith was wondering if he’d chanced upon a reunion at a defunct school, in which case the spectators might well be the children of the pupils, when he was distracted by a rhythmic clatter and a terse shriek that resounded across the field.

It had to be the railway. So it was beyond the far side of the playing field, but he still didn’t know the way to the station. Someone must, and Fraith hurried through the lockjawed gates and up the weedy gravel drive. The low sunlight met him with such a fierce glare that all the windows through which it was shining looked unglazed. Once he was past the front of the school he had to fend off the light with his hand. Even shading his eyes didn’t give him much of his sight back. He blinked like an animal just rousted from its lair as he stumbled alongside the school.

He could almost have fancied the commentator was talking about trains - about laying the track. Perhaps his confusion had lent the voice a mocking quality unless, since it was speaking of teachers now, that was how it actually sounded. Fraith dabbed at his eyes and then held the hand in front of them, but had to raise it to see the field, where another isolated runner was sprinting across the grass. He was heading for a gap between the spectators, some of whom appeared to be edging towards it; no doubt they were preparing to welcome the competitor. Fraith raised his hand beside his face and turned to peer along the schoolyard edge of the field.

He couldn’t see a single adult among the spectators, insofar as he could make them out at all. The large sacks tied up with frayed cord and propped against the schoolyard wall were continuing to twitch, although he couldn’t feel a wind. Not just the sacks but the untended turf around them were stained a colour that he did his best to find autumnal, and he was surprised if not uneasy that the watchers hadn’t moved away from them. He was straining his eyes to distinguish even one face when all the onlookers leaned forward to gaze across the field.

Fraith peered under his hand into the sunlight and still had to narrow his eyes. There was no longer a gap in the mass of spectators along the far side of the field. At first he couldn’t locate the runner, and then he saw a figure sprawled on the muddy grass, apparently having veered towards one corner of the hedge. In a moment several onlookers converged to haul him to his feet and march him out of competition, so enthusiastically that Fraith thought he glimpsed the man’s feet attempting to run in the air.

Were they presenting him with a trophy just for joining in? Someone by the distant hedge stepped forward, holding up a slim item against the sun. A dismayingly familiar sound greeted the gesture - a rhythmic clatter somewhere in the audience. Fraith had to peer about to locate a group of boys who were knocking cricket stumps together in a salute that seemed not merely improvised but primitive. The clatter continued as the pointed object rose high and parted its hefty blades before swooping at the figure held by spectators. The savage drumming ceased, isolating another sound - an exhausted shriek that was cut off at once. Spectators closed around the activity, which appeared to involve a good deal of exertion and repetition. Perhaps Fraith hadn’t been wholly mistaken in thinking of a trophy, because in a while a group of boys darted away, lobbing their prize to one another. It was about as rounded as the other ragged ball had been.

Fraith tried to concentrate on just one thought in the hope it was the truth: that all the onlookers were so intent on the spectacle they hadn’t noticed him. His mouth tasted sour and dusty, every heartbeat seemed to make his entire body quiver, but as two boys dragged a limp incomplete shape to join several more beside the far hedge he managed to free himself of his appalled fascination and set about backing towards the school. He was still in the open when he saw movement by the schoolyard wall.

The metal object glinted as it rose to shoulder height and higher. It was an old loudspeaker held by someone halfway along the line of figures beside the wall. The sunlight must be interfering with Fraith’s vision, since the face behind the built-in microphone had a distinctly makeshift look. Its words were plain enough, despite a shrillness that sounded no less senile than childish. “Teach them,” it screeched while the megaphone added a rusty distortion. “Pay them back.”

At once too much else that Fraith had heard it saying became clearer. Perhaps it was the school rather than the day that was special, though he would rather not learn how. If he’d chanced upon some kind of reunion or revival, it was best left uninvestigated until he could alert the authorities. The sun had started to hide its face behind a forest mound beyond the playing field, and he could have wished it weren’t restoring his eyesight as the figures by the schoolyard grew more distinct. He even had the grotesque fancy that the harsh shrill voice belonged to the megaphone itself, give how temporary the commentator’s mouth looked. As if provoked by the thought, the figure swung the megaphone towards him. “There’s another,” it cried in a voice that seemed to scrape the loudspeaker.

All the spectators along the wall turned to find Fraith, who struggled not to see their ramshackle faces clear, because he had a sense that doing so would leave him unable to move. “I’m not,” he protested, having understood too much. “I’m like you. I was, I promise.”

This earned him a response, not just from all the onlookers beside the wall. He’d never heard anyone laugh in unison before, a piercing noise that sounded as much like a chant as mirth. It almost blotted out the answer of the megaphone. “Aren’t now,” the strident voice said.

Fraith thought he had one chance to run for it, and swung around. Half a dozen former pupils of the school had made their stealthy way behind him. Whoever used to look after the grounds must have had quite a collection of implements, from which the figures waiting for Fraith had brought an impressive selection. If this wasn’t daunting enough, he could see the figures in detail now - their torn muddy clothes, their toothless childish faces that put him in mind of rotten fruit. They weren’t simply in danger of wizening; wrinkles kept appearing and being swallowed up like ripples in a pool, along with patches of discolouration. He backed away, almost falling in his haste not merely to keep his distance but to make a last appeal to the organiser of the events. “I’m only looking for the train,” he pleaded.

He was afraid to hear the laughter again, but silence answered him - how eager or expectant he couldn’t tell. The figure lifted the megaphone without speaking and thrust it forward, indicating the farther left-hand corner of the field. Perhaps that concealed a short cut to the station, invisible at such a distance. Fraith knew only that he mustn’t run, or they might think he was like all those who had. He took a breath that pumped up his heartbeat and parched his mouth, and then he set off along the trampled course across the field. He mustn’t look at the spectators - mustn’t meet whatever they might have for eyes - but he found himself wondering whether Carla’s daughters would have cheered him on if he’d given in to running. If he’d ever been too harsh with them, he prayed he could take it back, supposing that would save him. Then the sun went out, and he felt as if the world had.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO WOMEN OVERHEARD AT MY DENTIST’S OFFICE - Bentley Little

“Hi.”

“Oh. Hi there. Haven’t seen you for awhile.”

“Yeah, well…”

“What are you in for?”

“Just a checkup.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, actually, a checkup and this loose tooth I have here.”

“Wow. How did that happen?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You really want to hear it?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. You know that house over on Olive? That McMansion? The one they’ve been working on for the past three years? I walk by it every day while I’m exercising, and I noticed, I don’t know, three or four weeks ago, that all the work’s stopped. I think the owners ran out of money. There’s weeds growing all over that pile of dirt out front, and the tiles on the roof are only about half done. There aren’t any drapes over the windows, and you can see inside that there’s no furniture.

“Anyway, I was jogging by Wednesday morning, and I saw that there was something tacked to the door, some sort of notice. So I went up the walkway to look at it. Curious, you know? I thought it might say that the house had been condemned or something, but it was just an announcement from the county about fruit fly traps being put in local trees. Then all of a sudden the door opened, and this man was standing there, and he was naked.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Skinny, short hair, a little taller than me -”

“No. What’d he look like there?”

“Oh. He was … hard. It was sticking out at me, pointing at me, and that’s why I stumbled. I took, like, a step back, and there was a brick poking up from the walkway, and my shoe hit it and I started to fall backward. I tried to keep my balance, tried to right myself, but my arms were flailing, and I fell forward instead. I couldn’t quite break my fall, and my jaw hit the ground, and I bit down so hard that I loosened my tooth. When I looked up, he’d come out of the house onto the porch and was … jacking off. He was about two feet away. And he was pointing it at me! If he’d finished, he would’ve done it right on me! I just scrambled to my feet and ran away. Got the hell out of there.”

“Wow.”

“I know, huh?”

“What a world we live in.”

“You said it.”

“Actually, something like that happened to me, too. Well, not exactly like that, but sort of. It was a couple of weeks ago. I was exercising, too. Jogging. Over there on Longmeadow, past the school? I sprinted for two blocks, then paused for a minute to catch my breath. My throat was really dry. I should’ve brought some water with me, but I didn’t. Anyway, this guy’s walking up the sidewalk from the opposite direction. Middle-aged guy. He says, ‘Hi,’ but I know what’s on his mind because he has a bulge. There. We’re in front of this expensive house with a rock garden out front. You know the kind of houses up on Longmeadow.”

“Yeah.”

“So he smiles at me, right after he says, ‘Hi,’ and he pretends like he wants to keep walking down the sidewalk. ‘FUCK YOU!’ I yelled. Real loud. Just like that. ‘FUCK YOU!’ And I picked up a rock from the garden and smashed it in his face. Held it in my hand and just shoved it into his nose. He fell back against a tree, and I kept doing it, kept smashing the rock in his face until he stopped screaming, stopped crying, stopped moving.”

“Oh my God. Was he dead? Did you kill him?”

“Yeah. And you know what I wanted to do? Right then? I wanted to take a knife and cut his dick off. Just slice it off and throw it out in the street and let some car run over it and squish it. But I didn’t have a knife with me.”

“So, what’d you do?”

“I kicked him. There. As hard as I could. I just kept kicking and kicking until his dick and balls were nothing but a bloody fucking mess, until the blood was soaking through his pants, and then I dropped the rock back in the garden. I was afraid someone might’ve seen, you know? So I quickly looked around, but the only cars on the street were parked, and there was no one walking. Someone could’ve been peeking out their windows next door or across the street, but it didn’t look like it.”

“So what happened?”

“I picked him up by his feet and dragged him up the walkway and around the side of the house. He was heavy, and his head kept bouncing over the ground, hitting rocks and the edge of the cement, but I pulled him. At first, I was going to just leave him behind a bush, but I dropped his feet for a second and checked the back gate, and it was unlocked. That was when I got an idea. I opened the gate, picked him up by his feet again and took him into the backyard.”

“The people weren’t home?”

“I actually didn’t know at that point. But I didn’t care. I just kept thinking of that bulge I saw in his pants. You know how disgusting men are.”

“Don’t I ever.”

“So I brought him around back, closed the gate and checked the windows to see if anyone was home. It didn’t look like anyone was, but I knocked on the back door just in case. No one answered, so I left the asshole where he was and went over to the garage. You know how those houses have their garages in the back because there’s that alley that runs behind Longmeadow.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the little garage door was open, and I went inside. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for at first, but then I found this old golf bag leaning against the wall. I took out one of the golf clubs and brought it out, and I used it to hit him in the face. I smashed his face so hard that he had no face left, just a bloody pulp. I knocked all his teeth out, then crushed his gums, too. I was getting tired, but I beat on his hands until his fingers were just squished nubs. So no one could identify him with dental records or fingerprints or anything. I thought that was a good idea.”

“It was. What did you do with the golf club?”

“Oh, I just dropped it in the swimming pool.”

“There was a swimming pool?”

“Yes. Quite a nice one. In fact, I thought about dumping him in there, but he was too messy by this time, and I didn’t want to get blood all over me.”

“And then … you just … left?”

“I finished my routine. Jogged up to Parkview, then headed back toward Hillside. Oh! That’s me. Can you hand me my purse there?”

“Here you go.”

“Well, hey, it was nice talking to you. Don’t be such a stranger.”

“You, too.”

“And good luck with getting that tooth fixed.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

“Bye.”

AUTOPHAGY - Ray Garton

Strange things have been coming out of my body lately.

I’ve been under a lot of stress, and that might have something to do with it. But who hasn’t been under a lot of stress? In this economy? In this political climate? Everybody’s stressed. Everything is falling apart and nobody knows how to deal with it. I haven’t heard anyone else talking about strange things coming out of their bodies. But then, I haven’t talked about it with anyone because it’s … well, it’s just creepy. I’d like to tell someone, but it’s so weird that I’m afraid I’ll sound crazy. And that’s what scares me the most - the possibility that I might be crazy.

Maybe I am crazy. I’ve spent a lot of time considering that lately. They say you’re not crazy if you think you might be crazy. But a lot of the things “they” say are wrong.

I’ve been losing weight, too, and I haven’t been trying. That’s unusual for me. I gain it easily, lose it slowly and I’ve had a sedentary desk job for ten years. I don’t have that job anymore, of course, but do I take advantage of my new free time to exercise? Of course not.

I can’t help wondering if it has something to do with the things that have been coming out of me. It’s almost as if they’re pieces of me. But how can that be when they immediately run away? I try hard not to think too much about that … about those things I’ve seen and heard.

I’ve come close to telling Carly about it a few times, but these days, it’s hard to talk to her about anything, let alone something that bizarre and unbelievable. She’s made comments about the noises in the walls, though, so I know I’m not the only one hearing them. She thinks they’re mice.

I don’t know what they are, but I know they’re not mice.

Things have been … uncomfortable between us for a while. Nothing’s been the same since we found out that I couldn’t get her pregnant. We’d tried for a few years before we found out it was me. Then she started getting chilly. I suggested we adopt, but she wasn’t interested. She wanted to have a child of her own. I looked into in vitro fertilization and found that it was way out of our financial realm. That’s illegal now, anyway, so it wouldn’t be an option even if we could afford it. Carly and I drifted from the subject and never returned to it. And then we drifted from each other.

It hurt, but it didn’t come as a great surprise because I always thought it was too good to be true. She’s so beautiful and extroverted and funny, so sexy and alive. I’m a geek, a computer nerd, a shy, withdrawn guy who was never sure what she saw in me. She brought me out of all that and changed me. In the years after we met, I lost most of my shyness and became a lot more outgoing. Until we found out why she wasn’t getting pregnant and things changed. I’ve been sinking back into my old self since then.

We had no real interest in getting married. We didn’t feel we needed a piece of paper to validate our relationship. But we wanted to have a baby, and that was right after having children out of wedlock became illegal. We’re still together because it’s a lot harder and more expensive to get a divorce now than it used to be. But we’re more like roommates than a married couple. And if I don’t find a new job soon, things are going to get a lot more uncomfortable.

With premarital sex against the law and abortion a capital offense now, people are getting married all over the place. If I were smart, I’d quit trying to get another job in the IT field and learn how to be a wedding planner. That’s where the real money is these days. Well, that and government jobs. But to get a government job, you virtually have to sell your soul, and I’m not that desperate yet.

Before I met Carly, I spent a lot of time feeling lonely. Lately, I’ve been feeling that way again. That’s why I started seeing Amber.

***

After Carly caught a bus to work, I put on my helmet and rode my bike into the city to meet Amber in the park for lunch. Riding a bike through the city isn’t very safe anymore and I don’t do it as often as I used to, but gas is far too expensive to drive a car unless absolutely necessary.

I met Amber at my former job at Sterling Systems. She’d survived the first big wave of lay-offs, and she’d managed to survive the second, although she had to take a sharp cut in hours and pay. She was a geek, like me, but one of those devastatingly attractive and sexy geeks who has no awareness at all of that fact. Petite, almost pixie-ish, with red hair and big green eyes that squinted behind her glasses when she was thinking. Not a conventional beauty, but so striking. I think I had a crush the first time I laid eyes on her. And back then, things were good between Carly and me. One of the worst parts of losing my job was the possibility of losing touch with Amber.

We stayed connected online, but only as friends, I thought. It never occurred to me that she could feel anything for me. But when I began to tell her that things had gone bad with Carly, she opened up about how she felt. It was a big surprise to me. But a pleasant one.

It was the first week of March, but it felt like the worst part of August. The day was hot and muggy and the sun burned relentlessly through a thin layer of clouds.

Soldiers and military vehicles have become more common on the streets since the threat of terrorism - we’ve been told - has increased. A couple of weeks ago, a bomb went off in a car parked in a subterranean garage under a shopping center and six people were killed, several more injured. A few weeks before that, an IED went off in an outdoor caf and killed three, injured a dozen.

But the presence of the soldiers wasn’t very reassuring. On my way to the park, I saw two soldiers beating a man on the sidewalk. That usually happened to homeless people who’ve wandered beyond the boundaries of the tent cities. This man didn’t look like a homeless person, but so many homeless people were decently dressed lately that it was hard to tell who was and who wasn’t. We’d been told that the homeless are likely terrorists because they’re desperate and will do anything for a little money, which made them vulnerable to the offers of Muslim terrorist agents living secretly among us. But the only people the homeless were likely to hurt were themselves. It had been reported that suicides had skyrocketed in the tent cities around the country.

I passed a lot of empty buildings with FOR LEASE signs in the windows and even more with signs advertising going-out-of-business sales, so there would be more empty buildings soon. There seemed to be more of those every time I left the house. The streets weren’t as busy as they used to be with gas prices so high, and the thin traffic gave the city a strange atmosphere. Sometimes it looked like it was in the process of being evacuated, or as if everyone were fleeing of their own free will. The only signs of growth were in the tent cities.

It seemed like this had happened suddenly, but it hadn’t. I remembered when we elected our first black president. It seemed like such a hopeful sign, as if we had finally progressed to a point only dreamed of not so long ago. People wept the day of his inauguration because it seemed we had reached some long fought for goal. So many thought it would heal some of the damage done by the previous administration, which had been so unpopular. But we all know how that worked out. The damage was only accelerated. Then we elected our first woman president, another apparent milestone, seemingly a sign of progress, growth and maturity. Many thought it would usher in a wave of positive changes for our ailing country. Oh, there were changes, all right. Big ones. But they only made things worse.

For decades, there had been growing evidence that no one in Washington, D.C. was working for the citizenry. But we were too busy with our video games and all the fun new gadgets on the market, too busy keeping up with the latest talent competition on TV or the latest scandalized politician or celebrity, or surfing porn, or whatever it is we do instead of paying attention to the world around us. And those who were paying attention were too busy fighting over whose political party had the biggest penis to notice what was being done to the country. The two-party system proved to be an effective distraction. It became more and more obvious that not only were we the people not a high priority, we weren’t even on the list. But it took us far too long to notice. When we finally woke up to the fact that the two political parties we were fighting over were both taking us in the same direction, it was too late.

Those parties never stopped saying the same things they’d always said, but it became pretty obvious it was all scripted - like the phony “reality TV” shows we knew so much more about than the workings of our own government - and nobody really knew who was in charge. We just knew it wasn’t us. And it hadn’t been for a long time.

Everything’s upside down, inside out. We seem to be in the middle of some major construction - the country is being rebuilt, but into what, and by whom? It was allowed to go on so long that … it soon became too late to care.

It was like watching a foreign-language film without subtitles and trying to keep up with events that didn’t make any sense. Just thinking about it all made my head hurt, made my stomach sick. But it kept my mind off of those things that kept coming out of my body. As horrible as the country’s situation was, it was much easier to think about than what those things were that dropped out of me and plopped into the toilet, then scurried out of the bowl and into the walls before I could get a good look at them.

To my right, I heard a woman screaming and I slowed down because the sound was rapidly getting louder. She ran into the road with a police officer close behind. He grabbed her long hair and jerked her to a stop, then raised his baton and hit the backs of her knees with it. She started to go down, but he broke her fall by dragging her out of the road by her hair and back to the sidewalk. She screamed in pain as I rode on.

The only difference between the police officers and the soldiers was the uniform. I didn’t know whose side they’re on, only that it wasn’t ours.

Amber was waiting for me in our usual spot - the bench under the huge old oak tree by the duck pond - with our lunch in a brown paper bag. Behind the bench, I leaned my bike against the tree, wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, then walked around to join her. She was crying.

“What’s wrong?” I said as I sat down beside her.

She quickly tried to compose herself, but couldn’t stop the tears or the small hitching sobs.

“My brother’s been arrested,” she said. Her younger brother Rob was gay. “He’s being sent to one of the therapy centers.”

Therapy centers were places that “cured” homosexuality using reparative therapy, once denounced by every professional medical, psychiatric and scientific organization in the country but now fully recognized and endorsed - even mandated - by the United States government as an effective treatment for homosexuality. The centers were set up in abandoned military bases and state hospitals that had been closed down. There was little information to be found about them and they weren’t covered by the media. Rumor had it that not everyone who went into the therapy centers came out. Those who did weren’t the same.

I got a queasy feeling in my stomach, as if I were in an elevator that had suddenly and unexpectedly dropped. I knew how close Amber was to her brother.

“I’ve been looking forward to this lunch with you,” she said, “but now … this. I feel like … like I’m coming apart. Like I’m just breaking up into little pieces. And it’s not even the worst thing.”

“What else?”

She shook her head hard, sucking her lips between her teeth. “It’s too … I can’t … it sounds so crazy. You’ll think I’m … I don’t know … sick, or something.”

I put my arm around her. Touching her made me queasy, too, but in a good way. We’d done nothing together yet, although we wanted to. Desperately. It just wasn’t safe. “I won’t, I promise. How crazy can it sound? I mean, look around you. Everything’s crazy now. The standard for crazy has changed. I’ve got … some crazy stuff going on in my life, too. Stuff I … keep to myself. Because it sounds so … weird. So I know what you mean. Please tell me.”

She turned to me and moved so close, I could feel her breath on my face. “I just want to be with you right now. Naked, in a bed, where we can hold each other. My plan was to take you back to my apartment so we could be together and just fuck the consequences. You know? But … I don’t know if I can go back to my apartment because … because of what’s there.”

“What’s there, Amber?”

“If I tell you, you’ll think I’m -”

“No, I won’t.” I felt a sense of urgency suddenly, as well as dread. I turned toward her, clutched her upper arms and shook her gently as I whispered, “You have to tell me. Now.”

She struggled to get the words out. “Well, things … strange things … have been … coming out of my body lately.”

***

I was not alone after all. Everything Amber told me was a summary of what had been happening to me.

It had started a few weeks ago with a slightly painful bowel movement, immediately followed by flopping, splashing sounds in the toilet, and when I stood, another splash and the sound of something wet scurrying over the tile floor and out the slightly open bathroom door. It didn’t happen with every bowel movement and followed no pattern. I was awakened in the middle of the night a few times by the sensation of something moving inside my throat and mouth, just in time to feel it scurry over the covers, then hear it whispering over the carpet as it rushed out of the bedroom.

All of the same things had happened to Amber with one difference. She told me - averting her eyes with embarrassment - that while masturbating on her couch one night, her orgasm was accompanied by the sensation of something exiting her vagina, followed by the sound of soft, wet pattering over the hardwood floor of her small apartment.

“Now I hear them in the walls,” she whispered, leaning close to me. “It’s like they’re … gathering. Waiting for something.”

“For what?”

“I … I don’t know. Something.”

“You think they’re going to do something?”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “Maybe when … there’s enough of them.”

That was a chilling thought.

“I took the rest of the day off work. Come home with me. I don’t want to go there alone, and I … I just want to be with you.”

We put my bike in the back seat of her car and drove to her apartment. It was old, small and cluttered but clean. She stopped in the living room, just inside the door, turned to me and whispered, “Listen.”

We remained still for about ten seconds, listening to the silence, until -

Something rustled in the wall to my right.

Amber’s large eyes looked all around the apartment before she whispered, “I hear them every now and then. Moving around in the walls.”

“Me, too. Carly thinks we have mice. I was just relieved that she heard them, too. I thought I was … I don’t know …”

“Losing your mind?”

I nodded.

“Yeah. I was afraid of that, too. Kiss me. Please.”

I kissed her. It wasn’t the first time we’d kissed, but it was the first time in privacy, without the need to be careful or rush. She pulled away suddenly and said, “Wait.” We went to the tiny kitchen and she put the bag and her purse on the counter, removed her cell phone and took the batteries out. Then she went to the living room and unplugged the television and satellite box.

“Call me paranoid, I don’t care,” she said. “If the place is bugged and they catch us, we’ll both go to prison. And it’ll be worse for you because you’re married.”

I did the same with my cell phone and put it on an end table. Everyone took it for granted now that the government was listening, watching and tracking everyone, everywhere. She grabbed my hand and led me to the bedroom, then turned and kissed me as she began frantically unbuttoning my shirt.

“Wait, wait,” I said. “I’m really sweaty from riding my bike in the heat. I’d feel a lot better if I could take a shower.”

“Oh, sure, sure,” she said, catching her breath. “Right through that door.”

I smiled. “Would you like to join me?”

“That shower’s too tiny for two people. You go ahead. I’m gonna clean up in here. Towels and washcloths are on the shelves above the toilet.”

It was an awfully tiny shower; I felt a bit claustrophobic in it. The pipes rattled and groaned and it took a long time for the water to stop being brown, and then to warm up. I found a bottle of body wash, lathered up, then rinsed off.

Amber’s towels were thick, heavy and luxurious. I suspected she’d had them for a long time; they would cost a fortune now. I scrubbed dry, then wondered if I should put my clothes back on or just enter the bedroom naked. It’s the kind of thing that always tripped me up in relationships. Having had so little experience with them, I was always afraid I was committing some kind of breach of etiquette. I compromised by putting on my boxers and my shirt, which I left unbuttoned.

When I entered the bedroom, I heard a strange sound. It was soft but … wet. Amber was lying on the bed. At first glance, I thought she was covered by a thick, rumpled blanket under which she was moving slightly, rhythmically. With the quiet wet sound accompanying that movement, I thought for a brief, titillating moment that she was masturbating. But none of that was true.

I stood there for what seemed a long time, blinking a lot, I think, my jaw slack. Only seconds passed, but it felt like it took a long stretch of minutes to make sense of what I was seeing.

There was no blanket. Amber’s body was covered with small, grey, starfish-like creatures, each about the size of a toddler’s hand. They glistened as they made little humping motions on their body, and each creature made a faint, whispery sucking sound. There were so many of them, though, that the sound was loud enough for me to hear as soon as I entered the room. Beneath the layer of small, moist creatures, Amber’s body lay perfectly still.

They shifted and moved over her, changing places as they sucked, never still, never staying in one place for long. Their movements increased as I watched, as if they were searching for something. When I got a glimpse of two of Amber’s exposed ribs, streaked with blood, I understood that they were consuming her so rapidly that they were moving around to look for more flesh to devour.

Had she screamed? Had she called for help? Shouted my name? I couldn’t imagine her not crying out when the creatures came out of the walls to attack her. But above the rattle of the pipes and the constant hiss of the shower, I’d heard nothing.

My entire stomach seemed to push itself up my esophagus and into my throat as I watched the creatures slowly, one by one, remove themselves from Amber. The sucking sound gradually diminished as they moved to the bed and surrounded her in a pool of moistly glimmering grey. They left behind something that used to be Amber, a blood-smeared figure of bones that had been cleaned of every last bit of tissue. Some of them remained inside - in the abdominal cavity and under the ribcage, still sucking and humping, still feeding. But it wasn’t long before they, too, began to leave the skeleton and join the others on the bed.

I felt a rush of panic as I realized I was standing there, mostly naked, exposed to those creatures. But the fear that they would attack me next passed quickly. They weren’t interested in me. They were done. I somehow understood that their hunger had been for Amber alone. This feeding was what they had been waiting for … in the walls … waiting … waiting for that moment when -

… there’s enough of them, Amber had said.

There was no time to feel anything. I had to get out of there and take with me any sign of my presence.

***

Outside in the heat, I immediately began to feel the itchy sting of perspiration forming on my neck and back. I got my bike from her car and began riding. I took side streets and alleys, avoiding main thoroughfares. As I rode, I had to keep wiping away the tears.

They had come out of Amber’s body, just as they had mine, and secreted themselves in the walls, waiting until there was enough of them to accomplish their goal. And mine - my … whatever they were - waited for the same thing. We couldn’t be the only ones, Amber and myself. There had to be others. Were the walls at home also hiding things that had come out of Carly’s body? Things she hadn’t told me about, just as I hadn’t told her? Things that were waiting to do to her what had been done to Amber … and what would be done to me?

Maybe everyone had them. Maybe they were everywhere, hiding, waiting. And we had been so frightened by their arrival that we blocked them out … occupied ourselves with other things … because we just didn’t want to face up to the truth that something that horrible was really going on.

I rode my bike aimlessly through the city for a while, but then decided to go home. There was no point in putting it off any longer.

Table of Contents

THE ADDRESS - Ramsey Campbell

CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO WOMEN OVERHEARD AT MY DENTIST’S OFFICE - Bentley Little

AUTOPHAGY - Ray Garton