Selected Stories: Horror and Dark Fantasy
Author: Kevin J. Anderson
Date: 2018-10-15 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Horror
Description: Kevin J. Anderson is one of the best-selling novelists working in the field today, but over the course of his long career he has also produced a steady stream of short fiction, ranging from hard science fiction, to fantasy, to horror, dark fantasy, and humor. He has won or been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, Shamus Award, Colorado Book Award, Scribe Award, New York Times Notable Book, and many others. This first volume of Anderson’s selected short fiction focuses on his science fiction stories, from flash fiction to novella length, written solo or with collabora
Publisher: WordFire +ORM
Rights: Copyright 2018 Kevin J. Anderson. All rights reserved.

Book Description

Though best known for his science fiction novels, #1 bestseller Kevin J. Anderson has also written dozens of darker stories, ranging from eerie suspense, to surprise shockers, to monster encounters, to atmospheric Bradbury-esque tales, from flash fiction to novellas.

In these 29 stories, you will see the nightmarish history of a creepy Wisconsin small town, rock stars raised from the dead, vampires, werewolves, zombies, murderers and sorcerers … and the heroes who battle them.

Includes stories cowritten with Grammy Award-winning singer Janis Ian, and with Neil Peart from legendary rock band Rush.

Selected Stories

Horror and Dark Fantasy

Kevin J. Anderson

Contents

Introduction

Bringing the Family

Church Services

Dark Carbuncle

Solitude

Bad Water

A Glimpse of the Ankou

Age Rings

Cupid’s Arrow

Royal Wedding

We Get What We Deserve: The Pickpocket’s Tale

Family Portrait

Baggage Check

Hunter’s Moon

Rude Awakening

The Fate Worse Than Death

The Circus

Last Stand

Leatherworks

New Recruits

Role Model

Notches

Redmond’s Private Screening

Special Makeup

Much at Stake

Santa Claus Is Coming to Get You

Scarecrow Season

The Sum of His Parts

Torn Stitches, Shattered Glass

Drumbeats

Previous Publication Information

About the Author

If You Liked …

Also by Kevin J. Anderson

Selected Stories: Horror and Dark Fantasy

Kevin J. Anderson

WordFire Press wordfirepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-61475-697-2

Copyright © 2018 WordFire, Inc.

Previous publication information for individual stories at end of book

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Janet McDonald

Cover artwork images by Adobe Stock

Kevin J. Anderson, Art Director

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

Published by
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WordFire, LLC
PO Box 1840
Monument, CO 80132

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Introduction

Creepy-crawlies, ghosts and goblins, things that go bump in the night or slither in the shadows … Monsters have always been a big part of my life. I don’t get scared. I don’t have nightmares. But I do find a shudder delightful.

As a kid I was enthralled with monster movies. This was before such modern technological miracles such as Netflix, or before that DVDs, or before that VHS cassettes. When a monster movie was on, you had to watch it then and there.

In the small Wisconsin town where I spent my childhood, we could pick up the Milwaukee TV stations, but our house also had a high TV antenna with a rotor that could turn it to different angles. If I got it set just right, which often took a lot of fiddling, I could tune in to the weaker Chicago stations. And those were the ones that ran Creature Features late Friday night and Sci-Fi Cinema on Saturday afternoon.

I didn’t differentiate between alien monsters that came out of the sands of Mars, or werewolves, mummies, and vampires. The nuances between the science fiction and horror genres were unimportant to me. Monsters were monsters. And special effects didn’t matter either, because my flexible young imagination got just as excited by the most absurd-looking rubber monster as if I had seen a real monster.

I owned and assembled all the plastic Aurora monster model kits, the ones with separate glow-in-the-dark components. I saved my allowance, and any time my dad would take me to the hobby shop in Racine, Wisconsin, I spent my money to get whichever one was next on the list. The Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, King Kong, Godzilla, the Wolf Man. My bedroom was filled with them.

I know my dad was a little baffled by my obsession with monsters. He wanted to throw a baseball back and forth in the front yard. (I was terrible at it, not only being a scrawny, uncoordinated kid, but also one with thick bifocals, so that the ball’s position jumped whenever I looked up and saw through a different part of the lens.) He set up a slot car racetrack in our basement, and we would race the little humming cars around and around. It was fun enough, I suppose, but I didn’t get the point, any more than my dad understood why I was so upset when he made me go outside and play one Saturday afternoon, even though it made me miss Attack of the Giant Leeches.

My absolute favorite magazine was Famous Monsters of Filmland. I never got to subscribe, but I would sometimes get hand-me-down copies, or find a new issue on a newsstand. I made lists of all the movies I hadn’t seen, important highlights of the careers of Ray Harryhausen or Lon Chaney, Jr. I read the commentary by “Uncle Forry” (Forrest J. Ackerman, who was like a cool, surrogate uncle to me). In fact, many years later, I was not only delighted when our paths crossed and I had breakfast with him in the Green Room of a science fiction convention, I was absolutely starstruck. At the time, I’d had many bestselling novels and had the opportunity to meet rock stars, famous directors, well-known politicians, TV and movie stars. I don’t think I’ve ever been so much of a fanboy as when I got to chat with Uncle Forry himself.

To me, horror and dark fantasy wasn’t just about monsters. As I grew older, I loved the works of Ray Bradbury, especially Something Wicked This Way Comes. I watched reruns of The Twilight Zone every afternoon, soaking up that eerie, twisted sensibility, realizing that sometimes the monsters are in your own mind, sometimes your assumptions are more frightening than any real enemy. So, I began to write those kinds of stories as well.

I also believe that intensity is best tempered with a sigh of relief, and so I wrote many horror stories where the reader would laugh rather than scream. I edited three Blood Lite anthologies that mixed humor and horror, and then launched an entire series of adventures featuring one of my most popular characters, Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.

In these stories you might fidget nervously or swallow in a dry throat, or you might jump at a sudden surprise, or you might snicker out loud. In all cases, I hope you will be entertained.

—Kevin J. Anderson, Colorado Springs, July 2018

I grew up in rural Wisconsin, with all the nostalgia, repression, and cultural baggage that entails. If you’ve seen A Christmas Story, that was my existence. It was a wonderful place and time to grow up, but it also had its own nightmares for an “odd duck” kid who liked to dream, to read comic books and science fiction novels, a kid who wanted to be a writer someday.

Over the course of my career, I have returned again and again to the fictional town of Tucker’s Grove, Wisconsin, with its dark history and even darker happenings. This is the first story, chronologically, in the Tucker’s Grove sequence, with the members of the Tucker family staking their claim in the untouched farmlands of southern Wisconsin in the 1800s.

You’ll see that things don’t always turn out well.

Bringing the Family

Both coffins shifted as the wagon wheels hit a rut in the dirt road. Mr. Deakin, sitting beside his silent passenger, Clancy Tucker, clucked to the horses and steered them to the left.

The rhythmic creak of the wagon and the buzz of flies around the coffins were the only sounds in the muggy air. Over the past three days Mr. Deakin and Clancy had already said everything relative strangers could say to each other.

Clancy rocked back and forth to counteract the motion of the wagon. A sprawling expanse of prairie surrounded them, mile after mile of green grassland broken only by the ribbonlike track heading north. Clancy looked up at the early afternoon sun. “Time to stop.”

Mr. Deakin groaned. “We got hours of daylight left.”

Clancy made his lips thin and white. “We gotta be sure we get those graves dug by dark.”

“Do you realize how stupid this is, Clancy? Night after night—”

“A promise is a promise.” Clancy pointed to a patch of thin grass next to a few drying puddles from the last thunderstorm. “Looks like a good place over there.”

With only a grunt for an answer, Mr. Deakin pulled the horses to the side and brought them to a stop. The rotten smell settled around them. Clancy Tucker had insisted on making this journey in the heat and humidity of summer; in winter and spring, he said, the ground was frozen too hard to keep reburying his Ma and Dad along the way.

Clancy grabbed a pickax from the wagon bed and sauntered over to the flat spot. By now they had this ritual down to a science. Mr. Deakin said nothing as he unhitched the horses, hobbled them, and began to rub them down. These horses were the only asset he had left, and he insisted on tending them before helping Clancy on his fool’s errand.

Clancy swung the pickax, chopping the woven grassroots. His bright, bulging eyes looked as if someone with big hands had squeezed him too tightly at the middle. He slipped one suspender off his shoulder, and a dark, damp shadow of perspiration seeped from his underarms.

As he worked, Clancy hummed an endless hymn that Mr. Deakin recognized as “Bringing in the Sheaves.” The chorus went around and around without ever finding its way to the last verse. Over the hours, between the humming and the stench from the unearthed coffins, Mr. Deakin wanted to shove Clancy’s head under one of the wheels.

When he finished with the horses, he pulled a shovel from between the two coffins and went over to help Clancy. To make the daily task more difficult, Clancy insisted on digging two separate graves, one for his Ma and one for his Dad, rather than a single large pit for both coffins.

They worked for more than an hour in the suffocating heat of afternoon, surrounded by flies and the sweat on their own bodies. Mr. Deakin had run out of snuff on the first day, and his little pocket jar held only a smear or two of the camphor ointment he kept for sore muscles, which he also used to burn the putrid smell from his nostrils.

Mr. Deakin’s body ached, his hands felt flayed with blisters, and he did his best to shut off all thought. He would work like one of those escaped slaves from down south, forced to labor all day long in the cotton fields. Clancy Tucker’s family had kept a freed slave to tend their home, and she had spooked Clancy badly, filling his head with strange ideas. Or maybe Clancy just had strange ideas all by himself.

A month before, Mr. Deakin would never have imagined himself stooping to such crazy tasks as digging up coffins and burying them night after night on a slow journey to Wisconsin. But an Illinois tornado had flattened his house, knocked down the barn, and left him with nothing.

Standing in the aftermath of that storm, under a sky that had cleared to a mocking blue, Mr. Deakin had wanted to shake his fist at the clouds and shout, but he only hung his head in silent despair. He had worked his whole life to compile meager possessions on a homestead and some rented cropland. It would be months before his harvest came in, and he had no way to pay the rent in the meantime; the tornado had crushed his harvesting equipment, smashed his barn. After the storm, only two horses had stood surrounded by the wreckage of their small corral, bewildered and as shocked by the disaster as Mr. Deakin.

His life ruined, Mr. Deakin had had no choice but to say yes when Clancy Tucker had made his proposition.…

“Make it six feet deep now!” Clancy said, throwing wet earth over his shoulder onto a mound beside the grave. Fat earthworms wriggled in the clods, trying to grope their way back to darkness. Mr. Deakin felt his muscles aching as he stomped on the shovel with his boot and hefted up another load of dirt. “What difference does it make if they’re six feet under or five and a half?” he muttered.

Beside him, standing waist-deep in the companion grave, Clancy looked at him strangely, as if the answer were obvious. The floppy brim of his hat cast a shadow across his face. “Why, because anything less than six feet, and they could dig their way back up by morning!”

Mr. Deakin felt his skin crawl and turned back to his work. Clancy Tucker either had a sick sense of humor, or just a sick mind.…

Only a day after the tornado had struck, when things seemed bleakest, Mr. Deakin stood alone in the ruins of his homestead. He watched Clancy Tucker walk toward him across the puddle-dotted field. “Good morning, Mr. Deakin,” he had said.

“Morning,” Mr. Deakin said, leaving the “good” off.

“You know my brother Jerome recently founded a town up in Wisconsin—Tucker’s Grove. Can I hire you to help me bring the family up there? You look like you could use a lucky break right about now.”

“How much is it worth?” Mr. Deakin asked.

Clancy folded his hands together. “I can offer you this. If you’d give us a ride on your wagon up to Wisconsin, my brother will give you your very own farm, a homestead as big as this one. And it’ll be yours, not rented. Lots of land to be had up there. In the meantime, we can loan you enough hard currency to take care of your business here.” Clancy held out a handful of silver coins. “We know you need the help.”

Mr. Deakin could hardly believe what he heard. The Tuckers had no surviving family—Clancy and his broad-chested brother Jerome were the only sons. Who else would they be taking along?

Clancy nodded again. “It would be the Christian thing to do, Mr. Deakin. Neighbor helping neighbor.”

So he had agreed to the deal. Not until they were ready to set out did he learn that Clancy wanted to haul the exhumed coffins of his recently deceased mother and father. By the time Mr. Deakin found out, Clancy had already paid some of Mr. Deakin’s most important debts, binding him to his word.…

It was deep twilight by the time they had two graves dug and both coffins lowered into the ground with thick hemp ropes. They finished packing down the mounds of earth, leaving the rope ends aboveground for easy lifting the next morning. Mr. Deakin built a small fire to make coffee and warm their supper.

He felt stiff and sore as he bedded down for the night, taking a blanket from the wagon bed. Now that the cool night air smelled clean around him, with no corpse odor hanging about, he wished he had saved some of that camphor for his aching muscles.

Clancy Tucker lay across the fresh earth of the two graves. Mr. Deakin grabbed another blanket and tossed it toward him, but the other man did not look up. Clancy placed his ear against the ground, as if listening for sounds of something stirring below.

One of the townspeople had used a heated iron spike to burn letters on a plank. WELCOME TO COMPROMISE, ILLINOIS. The population tally had been scratched out and rewritten several times, but it looked as if folk no longer kept track. The townspeople watched them approach down the dirt path.

The flat blandness of unending grassland and the corduroy of cornfields swept out to where the land met the sky. On the horizon, gray clouds began building into thunderheads.

“Don’t see no church here,” Clancy said, “not one with a steeple anyway.”

“Town’s too small probably,” Mr. Deakin answered.

Clancy set his mouth. “Tucker’s Grove might be small, but the very first thing Jerome’s building will be his church.”

Mr. Deakin saw a building attached to the side of the general store and realized that this was probably a gathering place and a saloon. Some townspeople wandered out to watch their arrival, lounging against the boardwalk rails. A gaunt man with bushy eyebrows and thinning steel-gray hair stepped out from the general store like an official emissary.

But when the storekeeper saw the coffins in back of the wagon, he wrinkled his nose. The others covered their noses and moved upwind. Without a word of greeting, the storekeeper wiped his stained white apron and said, “Who’s in the coffins?”

“My beloved parents,” Clancy said.

“Sorry to hear that,” the storekeeper said. “Not common to see someone hauling bodies cross-country in the summer heat. I reckon the first thing you’ll want is some salt to fill them boxes. It’ll cut down the rot.”

Mr. Deakin felt his mouth go dry. He didn’t want to say that they had little to pay for such an extravagant quantity of salt. But Clancy interrupted.

“Actually,” he looked at the other townspeople, “we’d prefer a place to bury these coffins for the night. If you have a graveyard, perhaps? I’m sure after our long journey”—he patted the dirt-stained tops of the coffins—“they would prefer a peaceful night’s rest. The ground is hallowed, ain’t it?”

The storekeeper scowled. “We got a graveyard over by the stand of trees there, but no church yet. A Presbyterian circuit rider comes along every week or so, not necessarily on Sundays. He’s due back anytime now, if you’d like to wait and hold some kind of service.”

Mr. Deakin didn’t know what to say. The entire situation seemed unreal. He tried to cut off his companion’s crazy talk, but Clancy Tucker wouldn’t be interrupted.

“Presbyterian? I’m a good Methodist, and my parents were good Methodists. My brother Jerome is even a Methodist minister, self-ordained.”

“Clancy—” Mr. Deakin began.

Clancy sighed. “Well, it’s only for the night, after all.” He looked at Mr. Deakin and lowered his voice. “Hallowed ground. They won’t try to come back up, so we don’t need to dig so deep.”

The storekeeper put his hands behind his apron. “Digging up graves after you planted the coffins? If you want to bury them in our graveyard, that’s your business. But we won’t be wanting you to disturb what’s been reverently put to rest.”

Mr. Deakin refrained from pointing out that these particular coffins had been buried and dug up a number of times already.

“You wouldn’t be wanting me to break a sacred oath either, would you?” Clancy turned his bulging eyes toward the man; he didn’t blink for a long time. “I swore to my parents, on their deathbeds, that I would bring them with me when I moved to Wisconsin. And I’m not leaving them here after all this way.”

Seemingly from out of nowhere, Clancy produced a coin and tossed it to the storekeeper, who refused to come closer to the wagons because of the stench. “Are you trying to buy my agreement?” the storekeeper asked.

“No. It’s for the horses. We’ll need some oats.”

Though the graveyard of Compromise was small, many wooden crosses protruded like scarecrows. The townspeople did not offer to help Mr. Deakin and Clancy dig, but a few of them watched.

Mr. Deakin pulled the wagon to an empty spot, careful not to let the horses tread on the other graves. As the two of them fell to work with their shovels, Clancy kept looking at the other grave markers. He jutted his stubbled chin toward a row of crosses, marking the graves of an entire family that had died from diphtheria, according to the scrawled words.

“My parents died from scarlet fever,” Clancy said. “Jerome caught it first, and he was so sick we thought he’d never get up again. He kept rolling around, sweating, raving. He wouldn’t let our Negro, Maggie, go near him. When the fever broke, his eyes had a whole different sparkle to them, and he talked about how God had showed him a vision of our promised land. Jerome knew he was supposed to found a town in Wisconsin.

“He kept talking about it until we got fired up by his enthusiasm. He wanted to pack up everything we had and strike off, but then Ma and Dad caught the fever themselves, probably from tending Jerome so close.”

Mr. Deakin pressed his lips together and kept digging in the soft earth. He didn’t want to wallow in his own loss, and he didn’t want to wallow in Clancy Tucker’s either.

“When they were both sweating with fever, they claimed to share Jerome’s vision. They were terrified that Jerome and I would leave them behind. So, I promised we would bring them along, no matter what. Oh, they wanted to come so bad. Maggie heard them, and she said she could help.”

Clancy didn’t even pause for breath as he continued. “I could see how bothered Jerome was, because he wanted to leave right away. Our parents were getting worse and worse. They certainly couldn’t stand a wagon ride, and it didn’t look like they had much time left.

“One day, after Jerome had been sitting with them for a long time, he came out of their room. His face was frightful with so much grief. He said that their souls had flown off to Heaven.” Clancy’s eyes glowed.

“He left the day afterward, going alone to scout things out, while I took care of details until I could follow, bringing the family. Jerome is waiting for us there now.”

Clancy looked up. He had a smear of mud along one cheek. His eyes looked as if they wanted to spill over with tears, but they didn’t dare. “So, you see why it’s so important to me. Ma and Dad have to be there with us. They have their part to play, even if it’s just to be the first two in our graveyard.”

Mr. Deakin said nothing; Clancy didn’t seem to want him to.

The sun began to rise in a pool of molten orange. Mr. Deakin dutifully went back to Clancy Tucker, who had slept up against a wagon wheel. Mr. Deakin’s head throbbed, but he had not gotten himself so drunk in the saloon that he forgot his obligations, bizarre though they might be.

He and Clancy set to work on the dewy grass with their shovels, digging out the loosened earth they had piled into graves only the night before.

Mr. Deakin looked toward town, sensing rather than hearing the group of people moving toward them. Clancy didn’t notice, but Mr. Deakin halted, propped the shovel into the dirt where it rested against the coffin lid. Clancy unearthed the top of the second coffin, and then stopped as the group approached. He went over to stand by the wagon.

The people carried sticks and farm implements, marching along with their faces screwed up and squinting as they stared into the rising sun. They swaggered as if they had just been talked into a fit of righteous anger.

At the front of the group strode a tall man dressed in a black frock coat and a stiff-brimmed black hat. Mr. Deakin realized that this must be the Presbyterian circuit rider, just in time to stir up trouble.

“We come to take action against two blasphemers!” the circuit rider said.

“Amen!” the people answered.

The preacher had a deep-throated voice, as if every word he uttered was too heavy with import to be spoken in a normal voice. He stepped close, and the sunlight shone full on his face. His weathered features were stretched over a frame of bone, as if he had seen too many cycles of abundance and famine.

The bushy-browed storekeeper stood beside him. “We ain’t letting you dig up graves in our town.”

“Grave robbers!” the circuit rider spat. “How dare you disturb those buried here? You’ll roast in Hell.”

“Amen!” the chorus said again.

Mr. Deakin made no move with his shovel, looking at the group and feeling cold. He had already lost everything he had, and he didn’t care about Clancy Tucker’s craziness—not enough to get lynched for it.

Clancy stood beside the wagon, holding Mr. Deakin’s shotgun in his hands and pointing it toward the mob. “This here gun is loaded with bird shot. It’s bound to hit most everybody with flying lead pellets. Might even kill someone. Whoever wants to keep me from my own parents, just take a step forward. I’ve got my finger right on the trigger.” He paused for just a moment. “Mr. Deakin, would you kindly finish the last bit of digging?”

Mr. Deakin took the shovel and went to work, moving slowly, and watched Clancy Tucker’s bulging eyes. Sweat streamed down Clancy’s forehead, and his hands shook as he pointed the shotgun.

“I’m done, Clancy,” Mr. Deakin said, just loud enough for the other man to hear him.

Clancy tilted the shotgun up and discharged the first barrel with a sound like a cannon. Morning birds in the outlying fields burst into the air, squawking. Clancy lowered the gun toward the mob again. “Git!”

The circuit rider looked as if he wanted to bluster some more, but the townspeople of Compromise turned to run. Not wanting to be left behind, the circuit rider turned around, his black frock coat flapping. His hat flew off as he ran, drifted in the air, then fell to the muck.

Clancy Tucker shivered on the seat of the wagon, pulling a blanket around himself. He had cradled the empty shotgun for a long time as Mr. Deakin led the wagon around the town of Compromise, bumping over rough fields.

“I would’ve shot him,” Clancy said. His teeth chattered together. “I really meant it. I was going to kill them! ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ I’ve never had thoughts like that before!”

Mr. Deakin made Clancy take a nap for a few hours, but the other man seemed just as disturbed after he awoke. “How am I going to live with this? I meant to kill another man! I had the gun in my hand. If I had tilted the barrel down just a bit I could have popped that circuit rider’s head like a muskmelon.”

“It was only bird shot, Clancy,” Mr. Deakin said, but Clancy didn’t hear.

As the horses followed the dirt path, Mr. Deakin reached behind to the bed of the wagon where they kept their supplies. He rummaged under the tarpaulin and pulled out a two-gallon jug of whiskey. “Here, drink some of this. It’ll smooth out your nerves.”

Clancy looked at him, wide-eyed, but Mr. Deakin kept his face free of any expression. “I traded my little silver mirror for it last night in the saloon. You could use some right now, Clancy. I’ve never seen anybody this bad.”

Clancy pulled out the cork and took a deep whiff of the contents. Startled, stinging tears came to his eyes. “I won’t, Mr. Deakin! It says right in Leviticus, ‘Do not drink wine nor strong drink.’”

“Oh, don’t go giving me that,” Mr. Deakin said, pursing his lips. “Isn’t there another verse that says to give wine to those with heavy hearts so they remember their misery no more?”

Clancy blinked, as if he had never considered the idea. “That’s in Proverbs, I think.”

“Well, you look like you could forget some of your misery.”

Clancy took out a metal cup and, with tense movements as if someone were about to catch him at what he was doing, he poured half a cupful of the brown liquid. He screwed up his face and looked down into the cup. Mr. Deakin watched him, knowing that Clancy’s lips had probably never been sullied by so much as a curse word, not to mention whiskey.

As if realizing that he had reached his point of greatest courage, Clancy lifted the cup and gulped from it. His eyes seemed to pop even farther from his head, and he bit back a loud cough. Before he could recover his voice to gasp, Mr. Deakin, hiding a smile, spoke from the corner of his mouth. “My gosh, Clancy, just pretend you’re drinking hot coffee! Sip it.”

Looking alarmed but determined, Clancy brought the cup back to his lips, then squeezed his eyes shut and took a smaller sip. He didn’t speak again, and Mr. Deakin ignored him. Morning shadows stretched out to the left as the wagon headed north toward Wisconsin.

Mr. Deakin made no comment when Clancy refilled the metal cup and settled back down to a regular routine of long, slow sips.

By noon the sky had begun to thicken up with thunderheads, and the air held the muggy, oppressive scent of a lumbering storm. The flies went away, but mosquitoes came out. The coffins in back of the wagon stank worse than ever.

Clancy hummed “Bringing in the Sheaves” over and over, growing louder with each verse. He turned to look at the coffins in the back of the wagon, and giggled. He spoke for the first time in hours. “Can you keep a secret, Mr. Deakin?”

Mr. Deakin wasn’t sure he wanted to and avoided answering.

“I don’t think I know your Christian name, Mr. Deakin.”

“How do you know I even have one?” he muttered. He had lived alone and made few friends in Illinois, working too hard to socialize much. The neighbors and townsfolk called him Mr. Deakin, and it had been a long time since he’d heard anyone refer to him as anything else. Clancy found that very funny.

“Yes, I can keep a secret,” Mr. Deakin finally said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Clancy dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “Jerome lied!” He paused, as if this revelation were horrifying enough.

“And when did he do that?” Mr. Deakin asked, not really interested.

“When he came out of my parents’ room and said that their souls had flown off to Heaven—that wasn’t true at all. And he knew it! When he went into that room, after Ma and Dad were sick for so long, after he wanted to go found the new town so bad, Jerome smothered them both with their pillows!”

Mr. Deakin intentionally kept his gaze pointed straight ahead. “Clancy, you’ve had too much of that whiskey.”

“He did Dad first, who still had some strength to struggle. But Ma didn’t fight. She just laid back and closed her eyes. She knew we had promised to take them both to Tucker’s Grove, and she knew we would keep our word. You always have to keep your word.

“But when Jerome said their souls had flown off to Heaven, well, that just wasn’t true—because by smothering them with the pillow, he trapped their souls inside!”

Clancy opened his eyes. Mr. Deakin saw bloodshot lines around the irises. “What makes you say that, Clancy?” Mr. Deakin asked. He wasn’t sure if he could believe any of this.

“Maggie said so.” Clancy stared off into the gathering storm. “Right after they died, our Negro, Maggie, sacrificed one of our chickens, danced around mumbling spells. Jerome and I came back from the coffin makers and found her inside by the bodies. He tried to whack her on the head with a shovel, then he chased her out of our house and said he’d burn her as a witch if she ever came back.”

“And so Jerome left while you packed everything up and made ready to move?” Mr. Deakin asked. He had no idea what to make of killing chickens and chanting spells.

“I’m the only one who didn’t see the vision. But Ma and Dad wanted to come so bad. Maggie said she was just trying to help, and it worked. That’s why we have to keep burying the coffins—so the bodies stay down!” Clancy glanced at Mr. Deakin, expectant, but then his own expression changed. With a comical look of astonishment at himself, he covered his mouth with one hand, still grimy from digging out the graves at dawn.

“I promised Jerome I wouldn’t tell anybody, and now I broke my promise. Something bad’s bound to happen for sure now!” He closed his eyes and began to groan in the back of his throat.

In exasperation, Mr. Deakin reached over and yanked on the floppy brim of Clancy’s hat, pulling it over his face. “Clancy, you just take another nap. Get some rest.” He lowered his voice and mumbled under his breath, “And give me some peace, too.”

Clancy slept most of the afternoon, lying in an awkward position against the backboard. Mr. Deakin urged the horses onward, racing the oncoming storm. He hadn’t seen another town since Compromise, and the wild prairie sprawled as far as he could see, dotted with clumps of trees. The wagon track was only a faint impression, showing the way to go. A damp breeze licked across Mr. Deakin’s face.

The first droplets of water sprinkled his cheeks, and Mr. Deakin pulled his own hat tight onto his head. As the storm picked up, the breeze and the raindrops made a rushing sound in the grasses.

Clancy grunted and woke up. He looked disoriented, saw the darkened sky, and sat up sharply. “What time is it? How long did I sleep?” He whirled to look at the coffins in the back. The patter of raindrops sounded like drumbeats against the wood.

Mr. Deakin knew what Clancy was going to say but maintained a nonchalant expression. “Hard to tell what time it is with these clouds and the storm. Probably late afternoon …” He looked at Clancy. “Sunset maybe.” A boom of thunder made a drawn-out, tearing sound across the sky.

“You’ve got to stop! We have to bury the—”

“Clancy, we’ll never get them dug in time, and I’m not going to be shoveling a grave in the middle of a storm. Just cover them up with the tarp and they’ll be all right.”

Clancy turned to him with an expression filled with outrage and alarm. Before he could say anything, a thump came from the back of the wagon. Mr. Deakin looked around, wondering if he had rolled over a boulder on the path, but then the thump came again.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the coffins move aside just a little.

“Oh, no!” Clancy wailed. “I told you!”

An echoing thump came from the second coffin. Another burst of thunder rolled across the sky, and the horses picked up their pace, frightened by the wind and the storm.

Clancy leaned into the back of the wagon. He took a mallet from the pack of tools and, just as the first coffin bounced again, Clancy whacked the edge of the lid, striking the coffin nails to keep the top closed. The rusted and mud-specked nailheads gleamed bright with scraped metal.

Mr. Deakin had his mouth half-open, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He kept trying to convince himself that this was some kind of joke Clancy was playing, or perhaps even the townspeople of Compromise.

Just as he turned, the first coffin lid lurched, despite Clancy’s hammering. The pine boards split, and the lid bent up just enough that a gnarled gray hand pushed its way out. Wet and rotting skin scraped off the edge of the wood as the claw-fingers scrabbled to find purchase and push the lid open farther. Tendons stuck out along yellowed bones. A burst of stench wafted out, and Mr. Deakin gagged but could not tear his eyes away.

The second coffin lid cracked open. He thought he saw a shadow moving inside it.

Clancy leaped into the back of the wagon and straddled one of the coffins. He banged again with the mallet, trying to keep the lid closed; but he hesitated, worried about injuring the hands and fingers groping through the cracks. “Help me, Mr. Deakin!”

A flash of lightning split across the darkness. Rain poured down, and the horses began to run. Mr. Deakin let the reins drop onto the seat and swung over the backboard into the wagon bed.

Clancy knelt beside his mother’s coffin. “Please stay put! Just stay put! I’ll get you there,” he was saying, but his words were lost in the wind and the thunder and the rumble of wagon wheels.

One of the pine boards snapped on the father’s coffin. An arm, clothed in the mildewed black of a Sunday suit, thrust out. The fingers had long, curved nails.

“Don’t!” Clancy said.

Mr. Deakin was much bigger than Clancy. In the back of the wagon he planted his feet flat against the side of the first coffin. He pushed with his legs.

The single rotting arm flailed and tried to grab at his boot, but Mr. Deakin shoved. He closed his eyes and lay his head backward—and the coffin slid off the wagon bed, tottering for an instant. As the horses continued to gallop over the bumpy path, the coffin tilted over the edge onto the track.

“No!” Clancy screamed and grabbed at him, but Mr. Deakin slapped him away. He pushed the second coffin, a lighter one this time. The lid on this coffin began to give way as well. Thin fingers crept out.

Clancy yanked at Mr. Deakin’s jacket, clawing at the throat and cutting off his air, but Mr. Deakin gave a last push to knock the second coffin over the edge.

“We’ve got to turn around!” Clancy cried.

The second coffin crashed to the ground, tilted over, and the wooden sides splintered. Just then a sheet of lightning illuminated the sky from horizon to horizon, like an enormous concussion of flash powder used by a daguerreotype photographer.

In that instant, Mr. Deakin saw the thin, twisted body rising from the shards of the broken coffin. Lumbering behind, already free of the first coffin, stood a taller corpse, shambling toward his wife. Then all fell black again as the lightning faded.

Mr. Deakin wanted to collapse and squeeze his eyes shut, but the horses continued to gallop wildly. He scrambled back to the seat and snatched up the reins.

“This weather is going to ruin them!” Clancy moaned. “You have to go back, Mr. Deakin!”

Mr. Deakin knew full well that he was abandoning a farm of his own in Tucker’s Grove, but the consequences of breaking his agreement with Clancy seemed more sane to him than staying here any longer. He snapped the reins and shouted at the horses for greater speed.

Lightning sent him another picture of the two scarecrow corpses—but they had their backs to the wagon. Walking side by side, Clancy Tucker’s dead parents struck off in the other direction. Back the way they had come.

With a sudden, resigned look on his face, Clancy Tucker swung both of his legs over the side of the wagon.

“Clancy, wait!” Mr. Deakin shouted. “They’re going the other way! They don’t want to come after all, can’t you see?”

But Clancy’s voice remained determined. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to take them anyway.” He ducked his head down and made ready to jump. “A promise is a promise,” he said.

“Sometimes breaking a promise is better than keeping it,” Mr. Deakin shouted.

But Clancy let go of the wagon, tucking and rolling onto the wet grass. He clambered to his feet and ran back toward where he had last seen his parents.

Mr. Deakin did not look back, but kept the horses running into the night.

As he listened to the majestic storm overhead, as he felt the wet, fresh air with each breath he took, Mr. Deakin realized that he still had more, much more, that he did not want to lose.

Another Tucker’s Grove story, also dating back to the founding of the town. One theme you will see in many of these tales is the theme of religious fanaticism, the danger and intolerance in those oh-so-sweet little Protestant churches with white siding, tall steeple, and black roof that grace every Midwestern town. When Garrison Keillor wrote about them in his chronicles of Lake Wobegon, he found irony and humor.

I found something much darker.

Church Services

As his shouted prayer reached a crescendo, Jerome Tucker opened his eyes and watched the demon leave the young man.

Inside the canvas revival tent, the blasphemous thing emerged from the teenaged boy’s nostrils and throat like poisonous smoke mixed with a swarm of bees: crackling, buzzing, and writhing. Demonic whispers built to a scream. A trickle of blood followed the thing as it slid and tore its way out of the possessed boy.

The demon had no choice but to obey. Jerome had commanded it with the compulsion of God Himself.

He had lost count over the weeks, but he had summoned and trapped at least a hundred demons on the slow wagon trek through the farmlands of Illinois, across muddy and rutted roads to the wilderness and new homesteads of Wisconsin Territory. In this barely settled land, there were many secrets, many buried shadows of times past. So many demons had been cast out in Biblical times, the evil had to have gone somewhere. What better place to seek refuge than among the heathen in the New World? It made perfect sense.

Inside the large tent crowded with farmers, their wives, their children, and a few shopkeepers from Bartonville (the closest thing that could have been called a town), Jerome raised his hands. His full, rusty red beard stood out like flames on his chin. “Leave this boy, I command you!”

Even after the demon had fully emerged, the teenager continued to spasm and moan, his jaws clenched, lips drawn back. The audience gasped; several women fainted, while others uttered their own prayers. Two lanky farmers swore with coarse language that would not have pleased an eavesdropping God.

“As Jesus Christ trapped the demon Legion in a group of pigs, so I contain you here, Demon, where you can do no further harm.” With an imperative gesture, he stuck out his hand, touched the ornate, pot-bellied clay jar covered with runes and designs—symbols now rusty with dried blood.

The demon struggled and wailed, shifting and convulsing like a tornado of flies, but the crackling black mist was sucked into the containment jar—the holy relic from ancient Egypt, or Babylon, or Assyria (Jerome wasn’t exactly sure which). Like smoke swirling up a chimney in a harsh draft, the indefinable thing vanished into the clay vessel with a last alien howl, and when it was trapped in its new prison, the maddening sound stopped with the abruptness of a slammed door.

“Glory to God on high!” called out Jerome’s wife, Mollie. She dutifully stood beside him at the pulpit, holding open the tattered Bible, knowing exactly which verses Jerome would need for the next step of the process.

The teenager’s weeping mother rushed forward, knocking over one of the thin wooden benches as she came up to throw her arms around her limp son. “Oh, he’s saved, he’s saved!”

Blood dribbled from the boy’s mouth as he groaned; he opened his eyes and stared around with a sparkling awareness, as though he’d been asleep for months. The audience applauded wildly, called out choruses of “Amen!”

Mollie read aloud from the 23rd Psalm, because it was her favorite passage, not because it was especially appropriate. Her high, musical voice gained strength as she read verse after verse.

Jerome was the forceful personality with a passion for his calling, but he couldn’t have achieved so much without Mollie’s help, without her faith. She had followed him from their home, after his fever, after his parents died, leaving everything behind to journey across untamed country, staking her future on him.

Jerome Tucker had always wanted to be a preacher, but he needed a flock. And with so many homesteaders moving west to stake their claims in uncharted lands, those people needed to hear the Gospel. After a near-fatal bout with scarlet fever, Jerome had known exactly what to do. So, he had gathered up whatever money his family had and bought a wagon and horses, a large tent and Bibles, everything he needed.

He went to the land surveyor’s office to study maps of Illinois and Wisconsin all the way to the Mississippi River. The owlish-faced clerk had shown him available plots and claimed areas where farmland was being cleared by hardworking pioneers. Jerome did not want acreage for himself; he just needed to find a large enough group of people who required his services.

He knew he would find the right place. He’d been so eager to grab the plat books that he’d cut his finger on the countertop’s ragged wooden edge. Sucking on the wound absentmindedly, he had turned pages, following the geography up into south-central Wisconsin. By smeary light that passed through flyspecked windows, he stopped to study farmland, roads, and neighboring towns.

A droplet of blood fell and splashed on one particular area, a bold crimson mark on the map. Jerome considered it a sign, a position chosen by his blood. That was where he would go. A place he would call Tucker’s Grove.

As they made their way westward while his brother Clancy took care of details back home, he and Mollie preached to crowds, and Jerome had cast out and captured many demons to purify the population along the way, doing God’s work. The cross-country journey had taken months, over slushy roads and through falling snow, heavy rainstorms, and a miasma of humidity and mosquitoes. He felt as if he and his wife were required to pass through the very plagues of Egypt to reach this particular Promised Land.

Finally, on a low hill that overlooked recently claimed farmlands, sprawling fields of corn, and uncleared trees that marked land boundaries, Jerome and Mollie erected their big tent for the last time. There, he held nightly services.

When the people began to understand that Jerome could truly cast out demons, that he could take away their sins and purify their thoughts, his flock began to grow.…

Now, seeing the teenaged boy get shakily to his feet and collapse in his mother’s arms, both crying, Jerome felt tears roll down his cheeks. He had saved at least thirty people in this area already, and they all owed him a great deal. He would forge them into a community, a town, a new place.

Smiling, he lifted his hands and called out once more. The canvas tent was old when he’d purchased it secondhand, patched and stained—by no means was this an adequate house of worship. Now that Jerome knew with all his soul that this was the place … now that all the people in the revival tent listened to whatever he had to say, he called them together and he made his request.

“I must ask something of you, my friends. This ground has been consecrated with all our prayers. Now, I require your help, your wood, your tools, your labor, and your love. We will build a church here, and then we will establish a town.”

During their journey west and north through Wisconsin, at the edge of a river that drained into the Mississippi, Jerome had found the ancient symbol-bedecked urn that changed his life.

He and Mollie had stopped for the night in a small village where flatboats delivered cargo downriver and brought new supplies back upstream. There, they met a man with clumpy brown hair and three fingers missing on the left hand. His face was weathered and more deeply tanned than could be explained by any Midwestern summer, and his eyes had a distant stare, focused on memories rather than the landscape, as if he had already seen more than his share of wonders and nightmares.

The man struck up a conversation with Jerome but did not introduce himself. He explained how he had traveled the Ancient World looking for oddities and treasures.

Interested in the man’s experiences, Jerome said, “Pharaoh held the Israelites in Egypt. In ancient times.”

“Egypt is an ancient place full of dead things. I’d heard rumors that there were so many treasure-filled tombs scattered across the desert that a man could simply walk along and pick up gold and jewels. There are tombs, all right. The entire land is like a skeleton.”

Jerome knew about wealthy Europeans, gentlemen archaeologists, who explored Egypt and returned with mummies and artifacts, telling ludicrous tales of curses and the revenge of ancient gods. Jerome knew all such stories to be false, of course, because he had read the Bible—carefully—several times.

The man held up his left hand, showing the three stumps of his fingers. “A jackal did this. Bit them clean off, when I tried to retrieve a demon jar from a tomb.”

“What’s a demon jar?” Mollie asked. The man looked at her, surprised that she had spoken.

Jerome had no patience for those who didn’t respect his wife. “What’s a demon jar?” he repeated.

The man opened the large trunk that held his belongings and moved a rolled rug and some cloth aside to extract an ivory-pale urn made of ancient clay; it looked as if it had been cast from liquefied bone. Its surface was stippled with indecipherable writing, odd designs, one of which Jerome recognized as the Star of David; another, prominent in the center, was unmistakably the Cross.

“Moses wasn’t God’s only prophet in Egypt,” the man said soberly. “This jar was created by one such holy man as a vessel to capture and hold the demons that filled the land.” He lifted the lid of the urn and gazed into its dark interior. “It’s empty now—either the demons have escaped over the years, or it was never used. But you can tell by the symbols that it must be a sacred relic.”

Mollie was more skeptical. “If this was created in ancient Egypt or Sumer, that was many years before Christ died for our sins. How could it carry the symbol of the Cross?”

The man regarded Mollie with no small amount of annoyance. “And what is it, ma’am, that a prophet does? Why, he prophesies! He knows the future. Wouldn’t God’s chosen know about the impending arrival of God’s son?” He turned back to Jerome. “If you are a preacher, and if you are truly guided by the Holy Spirit, then you must already know how to cast out demons.”

In fact, Jerome didn’t, though he’d always thought about it.

“Any preacher can cast out demons,” the man continued. “But then what? They are freed from one host and sent to wander the world, where they continue to wreak havoc. With this urn, however”—the man patted the rough clay surface—“you not only withdraw demons from the possessed, you will also imprison them, seal them in this jar, where they can cause no further harm.”

The man sounded tired and disappointed. “To be honest, I have no use for this relic. I am not a holy man.” With a smile he extended it toward Jerome. “Take this as my gift. It is better off in your hands, since you can do God’s work with it.” Suddenly embarrassed or shy, the stranger added, “However, if you could spare some coins, I need to buy passage back home. Thieves in Constantinople took my last money, and I have had to beg my way, working for passage across the sea, on riverboats down the Ohio, then across country, finally to here. My mother has consumption, you see. I am trying to get home, so I can be with her before she dies.”

Jerome felt the earnestness in the man’s voice, and he knew how much good work he could do with this demon jar.

“Whatever you think the jar is worth …” The man left the idea hanging.

Mollie shot her husband a sharp glare as Jerome opened his money pouch and withdrew far more coins than they could spare. Jerome was sure, though, that once he began casting out demons, grateful parishioners would quickly contribute to the offering plate.

“How do I use it?” Jerome asked.

The man regarded him earnestly. “You’ll know. God will show you.”

Late at night, under a buttery-yellow moon, Mollie found Jerome within the framework structure of the nearly completed church. The glass windowpanes had not yet been installed, but the walls were finished, and the roof partially covered. The smell of mingled sawdust and sweat hung in the air, aromas of sweet pine and devoted labor. For the past month, people volunteered their time, several days a week, to finish the great work.

In the large window opening that would soon be filled with beautiful stained-glass panels shipped all the way from Chicago, Mollie could look down the hillside to the silver-lit fields and the small cluster of new buildings, the embryo of the town that her husband had coaxed into existence.

The altar was completed first, covered with an embroidered, lace-edged cloth—a gift from three farmers’ wives who had worked their fingers sore to finish it. In the center of the altar lay the large old Bible next to the pale demon jar. Jerome had held regular services here as soon as the framework was erected, and he had packed away his tattered old revival tent for good. He expected his brother Clancy to bring their parents any time now.

Now, he knelt before the altar in the dark. Unlit candles stood in freshly lathed wooden stands. As Mollie entered the skeletal church, her soft step creaked the new-laid pine floorboards, but he did not stop his prayer. Eyes half-shut, he pulled out his knife, touched the razor-edged tip to his thumb, then sliced. The blood looked like black molasses as it welled up.

Mollie stood behind him, bowing her head, not interrupting the sacred ceremony. Jerome extended his thumb and pressed the warm wetness to the cross symbol that stood out in sharp relief among the other designs. The ancient jar seemed to draw the blood and drink it greedily.

“God will protect us from demons,” Jerome muttered. “God will contain them inside here.”

It wasn’t exactly a recitation from the Scriptures, but the demons could hear him. Trapped in their jar, they would be afraid.

The Scripture had a long tradition of blood sacrifice: just as Abraham had been willing to make a blood sacrifice of his son Isaac, just as Moses marked the lintels of the Jews with lambs’ blood so that the Angel of Death would pass over their homes, just as God had demanded the blood of his own son Jesus to save humanity. So, Jerome was willing to give up a small amount of his blood to strengthen the demon jar, to keep the evil things inside.

He regained his feet, turned to his wife. “Every demon I’ve removed and imprisoned is one less soldier that Satan has for the Final Battle. Not only am I making my new town a pure and holy place, I am aiding the whole world.”

Mollie, though, was concerned. “All the times in the Bible where a godly man casts out demons, he never tries to collect them. He never keeps them like old coins in a purse. And what happens when the vessel is full? Do you know how much evil it can contain? I’m worried about what that jar really does.”

“Why, it imprisons demons, Mollie.” Jerome leaned closer in the deep shadows of the unfinished church. “And when we bless this new house of worship, when my congregation comes from miles around, they will join together and make a similar sacrifice. We’ll purge this area of all sins and evil thoughts. This land, this town of Tucker’s Grove, will become a new Eden.” His eyes were shining in the moonlight. “Yes, I’m sure, Mollie. I’m sure of our future, I’m sure of this place, and I’m sure of my mission. Not a shred of doubt.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” Mollie said with a smile, “because I have news for you as well, joyous news.” She took his hand and a smear of blood went down the front of her palm. “I’m pregnant, Jerome. I’ll have our first child in your new town.”

When the church was finished—when all the siding had been painted white, the black shingles laid down, the bell installed in the steeple that perched like a triumphant hand raised toward Heaven—it was time for a great celebration. The three men who had delivered the stained-glass window from Chicago stayed for the festivities; Jerome hoped they would remain permanently, since the town needed glaziers.

Jerome felt that he had lived his entire life for this day. His clothes were freshly laundered, his hair combed, his beard trimmed. Mollie had sewn herself a fine new dress from a bolt of pink fabric she’d purchased at the general store in Bartonville. She left the waistline loose, because now the curve of her belly was becoming noticeable. Jerome thought she looked radiant.

The bell pealed out a shrill, melodic tone as two young farm boys took turns yanking the rope to set up a clangor that rang from horizon to horizon. The people streamed in: more men, women, and families than Jerome had thought lived in the area. They came to dedicate the church they’d helped to build. Though Jerome had not yet secured a piano to lead the music, they would sing familiar hymns in unison. That was all a church really needed.

Jerome spoke up when everyone had squeezed into the pews. “This place of worship stands on holy ground, for I have made it so. All of your crops will be blessed, and all of your children will be strong and protected from evil. I will make it so. We will make it so. We will be a community, a bastion against darkness.”

He turned to the altar and touched the demon jar. “You have seen me cast out demons. The most powerful and most dangerous of those evil fallen angels are here, trapped inside this urn.” He brushed the surface of the vessel. “They are locked there by the grace of God, by the holy symbols … and by the gift of blood.”

Jerome extended his thumb toward the congregation. “Today, we make one grand final summoning to draw out all the evils and ills that permeate this land, that permeate our hearts. We will draw away the pain and darkness, so that Tucker’s Grove can be a perfect place, a shining example for mankind.”

The people in the church shouted their Amens. Some stood from the pews.

“A drop of blood,” Jerome said, “from me, from you—from all of you, and this town will lock away those evil spirits forever.” With a flick of his knife, he sliced open his thumb once more, this time a little more extravagantly than he’d expected. The blood flowed, and he touched it to the Cross symbol so that the ancient, mysterious urn drank the scarlet liquid. He held up the knife. “Who will be the first to join me?”

The people in the front pew nearly fell over themselves to come to the altar. Each took up the knife, drew blood, and touched red thumbprints or fingerprints to the pale ivory curves of the ancient vessel.

The second row came forward, jostling and pushing one another. Some wept with joy, while others closed their eyes and prayed as they made their offering. This was not like a somber Communion ceremony: they were an army laying siege to the evil things that had troubled their lives.

With Jerome’s command, a great wind of shadows, dark thoughts, evil deeds, frightening memories—the very manifestation of sin—swept up the hills and blew like a quiet winter wind into the church. The congregation could sense how much more darkness the demon jar was drinking, but their blood maintained the seal, trapped the bad things forever.

Jerome felt his heart swell with love for these people, his people. Mollie stood looking preoccupied, maybe a bit worried. He slipped his arm around his wife’s waist. “Why are you so quiet, my dear? This is our finest, most perfect hour.”

Mollie bit her lower lip and shook her head, afraid to answer at first. Finally, she said, “All that blood … Instead of trapping the demons, what if it’s feeding them?”

With a great outcry, the last of the parishioners stumbled back from the urn. The incredibly old Egyptian—or Sumerian, or Assyrian—vessel had begun to glow a faint orange, like fire within an eggshell. The embellished clay walls pulsed in a heartbeat, as if the demons inside were fighting and struggling to break free.

Jerome took a deep breath but could find no words. He had gathered numerous demons from across the countryside on his travels up to Wisconsin, collected them from suffering people over the course of his journey. Victims had come to him from far and wide, and he had torn out the demons and imprisoned them in the vessel, carried them here to his new town.

And they were all furious.

Cracks appeared in the ivory ceramic, then fire belched out of the fissures. The demon jar exploded with a thunderstorm whirlwind of black, screaming voices, buzzing flies. Howling anger and dripping vengeance, they roared out with enough force to snuff a tornado.

Parishioners ducked, throwing themselves onto the pews, onto the floor. The unleashed demons filled the church and swirled around; some streaked through the open front door. A black, smoky jet smashed through the stained-glass window, sending jewel-toned shards flying in every direction.

The evil blackness whistled around Jerome and Mollie. He grabbed his wife, tried to protect her, but he didn’t know how. A murky, miasmic face that was made of fangs rose before them, screaming—a scream that sounded more like laughter.

Mollie cringed. The shadows pummeled her, wrapped about her as though she were being sprayed with mud. She collapsed to the floor, crying in terror.

Jerome balled his fists and shouted, “Begone, I command you all! Begone!”

And the demons fled the church, racing out and away to find new hosts in the vicinity of Tucker’s Grove.

The evil storm subsided just as abruptly as it had begun. The interior of the new church had been shredded, leaving clouds of dust, splinters, and fear. The people were stunned, moaning, touching small cuts and inspecting tattered clothes. As Jerome ran among his people to help, some of them looked away in deep shame, afraid to let him see the shadowed hollows in their eyes, the new darkness that glinted from their gaze.

Jerome felt his bones turn to ice and understood that his dreams were dashed. He had meant to establish a perfect town, to create a new Eden free of sin or evil or hate. Instead, he had brought more darkness to the area and saturated this very place.

He clung to the sharp foundation of his faith. He would not surrender. He refused to leave his town. He had far too much work to do here.

Crumpled and sick, Mollie retched onto the floor, cradling her abdomen. Jerome knelt beside her, helped her to her feet. She swayed against him. “Are you hurt? Are you all right?”

Mollie drew a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. I just felt the baby kick, that’s all.”

He didn’t ask her why she was shuddering.

And she didn’t tell him that the kick had felt distinctly like that of a cloven hoof.

Now for something a little lighter. I didn’t know that legendary folk musician and Grammy Award-winning singer Janis Ian was a science fiction fan until I got to know her. And boy is she a fan! When she walked around wide-eyed at science fiction conventions, I and several science fiction authors took her under our wing and introduced her to other luminaries of the genre. Janis would always insist, “Oh, nobody knows who I am!” until we mentioned some of her songs, and then eyes would pop, and jaws would drop. For nerds and outcasts everywhere, the amazing song “At Seventeen” summed up our lonely and hopeless childhood years. I sang along to it myself in numerous dateless nights in high school.

When I was editing my second Blood Lite anthology, Overbite, I had an idea for a story about desperate fans so in love with a dead one-hit-wonder singer that they wanted to raise him from the dead to perform an encore of his one famous song. With Janis’s background as a famous musician who had performed before huge crowds, I knew she could help as a coauthor. It took some convincing to assure her that I really did want to write a story with her …

I’m also close friends with Neil Peart, legendary drummer from Rush. I have seen them in concert dozens of times, and while I—as part of the audience—revel in hearing my favorite songs, I wonder how a band can tolerate playing their biggest hits at every show for decades. No matter how wonderful “Tom Sawyer” or “Red Barchetta” might be, what does a person think when performing it for the 5,000th time?

Remember this when you keep playing your Greatest Hits.

Dark Carbuncle

(written with Janis Ian)

A graveyard. Night. Lurid branches scrabble across the blood-red moon. Silence, whispers, then a hush of anticipation. Fifteen boom boxes encircle a grave. Giant woofers (removed just that morning from an unsuspecting car) sit with bass ends flat against the massive gravestone.

Here at peace at last lies Thor

Troubled by the Dark no more

The four aging fans in attendance for the midnight show—the ritual—had polished their studs, mangled their hair, added dye where needed and bleach where not. They wore their finest black leather, but left the jackets open to expose too-small T-shirts from concerts past, fabric memories that paid homage to their hero’s mind-blowing shows, when he’d been alive. Thor. The writer of the greatest song in the history of mankind.

“Man, we really should have put a line from ‘Dark Carbuncle’ on his tombstone instead,” Conk said. “I mean, so everybody could see his genius for all eternity.” His given name was William, and he went by the handle of “William the Conqueror” from some impressive historical guy, though most of his friends didn’t get it. They thought “Conk” just meant he liked to bash things.

“Anybody can hear his genius just by playing the song, shithead,” said Kutfist, ending with the sharp sneer he’d practiced all week. “Trust me, we didn’t want to deal with the rights issues.”

“Yeah, but dude, ‘Dark Carbuncle’ is an awesome song, right?” said Dredd, and though he’d said it many times before, nobody disagreed. Especially not on this night of nights.

The lone girl in the group, swaying to the music of a silent song, twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “Kinda creepy, ya think?” Despite the spider web tattooed on her chin, Longshanks was always the first to back away from anything remotely disturbing. “I mean, we’re raising him from the dead.…” Her voice trailed off.

“God, lighten up, ’Shanks. You’ve been this way since grade school. What can he do to us? He’ll be in our power.” Sneering, Kutfist turned toward the others with a shrug. Women. Jeez.

“Yeah, and ‘Dark Carbuncle’ is such an awesome song …” Dredd’s usual sentence trailed off as a cloud covered the moon.

“It has to be tonight, on the anniversary,” said Conk with finality as he connected the last of the speakers. The Wikipedia entry had been very specific on that point.

Kutfist scanned the graveyard in disappointment. “I can’t believe we’re the only ones here. Elvis gets tons of fans on his Death Day every year!”

“Elvis fans don’t know that ‘Dark Carbuncle’ is an awesome song,” Dredd assured him. “Or they’d be here.”

Longshanks tugged harder on her hair. “And what’s he gonna look like with a fractured skull, Kut? I mean, part of his head might be gone. Ecchhh.”

Kutfist pushed his trifocals further up his nose. “Shut up, ’Shanks. The man was a god. That last show we saw was unbelievably amazing. He’d never have killed himself, never. We can finally find out the truth now, so just stop worrying and shut up.”

Nodding, Conk stood up. Brushing leaves off his hands, he pulled a few folded sheets from the back pocket of his jeans and handed them each a paper with the lyric printed backwards phonetically. That was the worrisome part. They knew the lyrics forward well enough to sing them the required seven times, but the backwards part made Conk nervous. “We’ve gotta get it right, or we’ll end up raising Frank Sinatra or something. Seriously, you can’t be too careful with the Dark Side. Don’t screw it up.”

With tears in his eyes and excitement in his heart, he reached down to the nearest boom box and pushed PLAY.

Thor opened what was left of his eyes and knew he wasn’t in the Ritz. It had been a long time since he’d stayed in high-class hotels on tour, and now suddenly he experienced a flashback rush of the last images he remembered.

A motel room, after the show, his ears still ringing from feedback and amps turned up to eleven. Used to be his ears would ring from the screaming fans … used to be all-night parties, used to be groupies and sex—but the groupies were not as attractive now, and Viagra could only do so much. Ditto the gigs, no more backstage excitement when Mick visited, no more telling the roadie to bring the chick from row five back to the luxe hotel. Now, a gig was just a gig, something to get through until he figured out what to do with the rest of his life.

He hadn’t slept a full night in months—years—and now somebody was playing that damned song so loud it echoed right through the walls of this fleabag purgatory of a room. Where the hell was this?

Thorton Velbiss—Thorny to his friends (not many of those), Thor to his fans (not many of those either)—was not having a good day. First, that pounding bass drum was unacceptable. The only noise he wanted to hear with this kind of hangover was the sound of vodka over ice. Second, his fucking hit record from two decades ago was playing, with the bass booming so wide he could swear the damned thing was sitting on his face. The only time Thor would tolerate listening to “Dark Carbuncle” was on stage, during a show, when he lip-synched his way through it for an audience of haphazardly fat metalheads bent on reliving their youth.

I was ferocious back then, ya know? Really fero. And taller, I think. Maybe just skinny. Now I have to wear a corset. Still, I had a hell of a good run. Just one hit, but it kept me in chicks and booze.…

Fuck, no, it’s a horrible song. Piece of shit me and Dirk the Drummer whipped up one night while we were wanking off. Farthest wank got to title the song. He won.

I hate that fucking song.

’Sides, I can’t hit that high note, never could. Brought a ringer into the studio, never thought it’d be a hit. We had great shit on the album, great shit … and all anybody ever wants to hear is “Dark dark dark. Dark dark dark. Dark dark dark, I’m a da-da-da-da-carbuncle.”

Makes you want to puke.

Gotta lip-synch it now anyway, can’t even hit the low notes. At least I remember the words. Stupid effing words—even I don’t know what they mean. Last time I saw the big El, Scotty Moore had to hand him the lyrics to “Love Me Tender.” Speaking of hand … Hand me that vodka, wouldya?

He’d forgotten there wasn’t anybody here. What the hell, he’d serve himself.

He’d been an altar boy in his youth, a good little Catholic, though that was part of his own secret past. The headbangers would never understand it. He hadn’t prayed in … what? Thirty years? Not since he’d picked up a Les Paul, plugged it in, and let wail.

Now, as he felt around for the bottle, trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head, he wondered who’d have the nerve to play that scrotum of a song right on top of his room. Boom boom boom. Trying to shut out the sound, he drifted back to the last gig.

It was like reliving a nightmare over and over again, singing that song every night. His agent said this tour could maybe revive his career (but then, he always said that)—opening for some fifteen-year-old one-hit wonder. At least if there was any justice in the world, it should have been one hit, but the kid was coming off his fourth top ten record. Turned out he was a metal fan, though, and loved “Dark Carbuncle” (and wasn’t that embarrassing) and demanded Thor as his opener (though what his Top 40 demographic would make of it, only God knew).

Thor had checked into the motel under a fake name, just in case anybody noticed. Grabbed a quick nap (not that the fans needed to know about that either!), packed his crotch, hit the lobby. Out by the kid’s tour bus, a few rabid Thor fans began jumping up and down, one paunchy guy with dreadlocks yelling “Dude! Dude! ‘Dark Carbuncle’ is an awesome song!” Thor stopped to see if they wanted autographs and noticed two wore pizza delivery uniforms.

“How should I make this out?” he asked a girl with a weird chin tattoo. Glancing at her nametag, he hazarded a guess. “To Tiffany?”

The girl went beet red. “Uh, no, Longshanks—just make it to Longshanks.”

He smiled inwardly, but outwardly gave her the long, slow, I could change your life, babe! look. She brightened and giggled at her friends. At least he’d made somebody’s day.

On to the show, which sucked. Of course. How the hell can anyone play music at two in the afternoon, under a wide-open sky, looking out at a bunch of hayseeds whose big weekend excitement was probably going to be the pig race? Real waste of Oreos, that one. He sped through the set, not even bothering with the pyro at the end, sneering when people applauded the opening chords of “Carbuncle.” Idiots.

I used to dream about being a Beatle, you know? Back in the day, I played the Garden. Twice. Well, only once as the lead act, but still. Alice Cooper, Ozzie, Rob Zombie, they had nothing on me. Eating a live bat, hell—I used to shove worms up my nose, just to line the coke! Now look at me … playing some friggin’ rodeo for a hundred bucks. Pathetic, that’s what it is.

Why couldn’t I have died young, in a private plane crash? At least that would be a respectable ending.

Afterward, back at the motel—still daylight out!—he drank most of the quart of Stoli that Mr. Four-Hit-Wonderkid had nervously presented him at sound check. Scratching at his empty stomach, Thor decided to surf the vending machines for dinner. Peanut butter cups and a vodka chaser, the perfect road meal.

He barely registered the Muzak droning through the elevator speakers, until he caught himself humming along. Son of a bitch! Bland whiter-than-white harmonies accompanied by easy-listening strings. Dark dark dark. Dark dark dark. I’m a da-da-da-da-carbuncle, hiding in the dark. Unbelievable. His song. That frigging publisher had sold him out, turned him into effing elevator music, music for supermarkets and dentist’s chairs. Fucking asshole. And his agent was probably in on it, too. Scum, they were all scum.

He’d show them. If he couldn’t die young, at least he could die tragic. “Dark Carbuncle” as elevator music—the last straw of all last straws.

Thor stormed back to his room and grabbed the .38 he always carried. Flopping backwards on the bed, he spun the cylinder—five bullets, one empty chamber. Go out like a man, yeah, playing Russian Roulette. They’d all be sorry then, even those stupid pizza-parlor rejects. Barrel to the head, click click and it’s over. Jimi, Kurt, make way for the next dead rock legend.

Thor raised the gun. Winced at the cold feel of metal against skin. Paused. Squeezed.

Click.

Click? A barrel loaded with Super-X 500 hollow points, and all it can do is go click? Unbe-fucking-lievable.

He tried again.

Click.

Hell, how could you lose at Russian Roulette? He hurled the gun across the room, where it skittered to a halt on the bathroom floor. Throwing his legs over the bed, Thor grabbed the vodka, took a long slow drag, and made his way to the bathroom, where he somehow managed to drop the bottle on his toe. Yelling out loud, he jumped—and landed barefooted on the gun, which spun crazily against the tiles while he fell backward.

Sickening crack of his head against the tub. He lay on the cold, hard floor, feeling his life ebb away. Frigging humiliating way to die … for both a former choirboy and a former rock star.

On the other hand, maybe God wouldn’t consider this a suicide. Good news. His last thought was that he’d finally be able to get some effing sleep. Safe in the arms of the afterlife.

Until some fuckheads called him back for an encore.…

Graveyard, night, big speakers booming, a familiar chorus sung again and again with enthusiasm, if not harmony.

Mmm, I ain’t no spoonful

Baby I’m a mouth-full
and I’m gonna tumble,
rumble crumble tumble
your Dark Carbuncle

Dark Carbuncle

Conk, Kutfist, Longshanks, and Dredd sang the beloved words seven times seven (almost as many times as in the actual song), and three times more backward, until they were hoarse with it. Conk finally signaled the end of the ritual by switching off the boom boxes. They reeled in the sudden hush, breathing heavily.

“How long is it supposed to take?” Longshanks whispered.

“Give him a few minutes.” Conk tried not to sound uncertain. The Wikipedia entry had been unclear on that point. “He’s coming all the way back from the dead.”

Kutfist sneered. “He never started the concerts on time either.”

“Yeah, I loved waiting for ‘Dark Carbuncle.’ What an awesome song,” said Dredd. No one disagreed.

Suddenly, the earth began to tremble, and something stirred beneath the leaves. The ostentatious tombstone they’d banded together and paid for all those years ago pulled loose and tumbled backwards, leaving a gaping hole.

Five grime-encrusted fingers pushed through the soil, followed by a hand, then another, clawing at the dirt in slow motion. Finally, a body heaved itself out of the grave. Covered in dirt, putrid clothes, and rotting skin, Thor raised himself up and tried to wipe the crust from his eyes.

The four fans cheered, whistled, and applauded as he swayed. “Omigod, it’s him, it’s really him!” Conk dropped the papers and stared. What a Wiki entry this would make!

Longshanks was jumping up and down. “He looks just like he did on the Avenger’s Revenge tour!”

“He’s staggering like he did on that tour, too,” Kutfist said, without the sneer this time. He looked nervously around. “C’mon, gotta get him to the van.”

The undead rock star lurched and shambled, looking disoriented but not entirely out of character. “Come on, Thor!” Longshanks pleaded. She lifted up her T-shirt to flash her breasts; Thor had never noticed her when she’d done it at concerts, but this time he shuffled toward her, making moaning, sucking sounds from deep in his throat.

“Hurry up, get him into the van!” Conk said in an urgent whisper. “Before some other fans show up. He’s ours!”

“Wait! We can’t leave the speakers—I borrowed them from my uncle’s catering company,” Kutfist said. “He’s got a Bar Mitzvah tomorrow, he’ll kill me!” Fortunately, since Thor was having a hard time orienting himself toward a vertical life, they had plenty of time to retrieve the gear and pack it into the pizza van they’d “borrowed” from work.

Conk started the engine while Kutfist and Dredd turned in their seats to stare at Thor, who was crammed into the third-row seat with Longshanks. “Now he’s with his true fans!” She sniffed, then frowned. “Is he supposed to smell this bad?”

“I think that’s just an old pizza I forgot to deliver last week,” Conk said.

As the van careened out of the cemetery, Dredd leaned over the seat and said earnestly, “Dude, ‘Dark Carbuncle’ is an awesome song!” He extended his hand, then thought better of it and withdrew.

They jabbered excitedly as they headed off to Conk’s garage. “I’m gonna have him teach me guitar. We could do some killer riffs together!”

“I want him to sign some autographs—impress my girlfriend for sure,” Kutfist said. “Hmm, maybe even sell them online.”

Longshanks tentatively nudged one of the scraps dangling off Thor’s ruined face. “Hey, we could sell pieces of his skin. Talk about a real collector’s item!”

Kutfist returned to the sneer. “What are you thinking? Anybody who’d buy Thor’s skin could clone him—then we won’t have the only one.”

Longshanks dropped her gaze. “Well, we’d still have the original. A clone is no better than … a cover band.”

“How about we just sell locks of hair?” Conk suggested. He didn’t want them to argue during this ultimate moment of fannish glory.

As the van pulled up to the two-car garage, the undead legend seemed to be getting his bearings, croaking slightly more comprehensible words. “What … happened? Where am I?”

“You’re with us—your real fans!”

Parking in the dark garage, they opened the doors and helped Thor out of the van. Conk hit the button and closed the garage door, then triumphantly switched on the lights to reveal the setup waiting for them in the other parking space—a small stage, microphone, boom box, and guitar.

Herding Thor forward, Kutfist shouted, “We brought you back from the grave for this, dude!”

Thor automatically stepped onto the stage and into the light, then stared at them in confusion. Longshanks sprang onto the stage beside him and shoved the guitar into his hands. “Omigod, Thor—now you can sing ‘Dark Carbuncle’ for us, night after night after night!”

Thorton Velbiss fell to his knees and screamed.

Surely this was Hell. Surely.

When he’d emerged from the darkness, he’d wondered what the fuck was going on. Why was he covered in dirt? Some super-extravagant part of the stage show he couldn’t recall?

Then he remembered, and now he knew exactly what had happened. This was truly eternal punishment. Every bit of his Catholic upbringing rose in his throat—the priests’ lectures, the nuns’ scoldings, the fear of damnation. It was too much for any man, let alone a dead one.

Rotting ligaments snapped as he dropped to his knees and began to cry. For the first time in years he prayed, and for the first time in his life he really meant it. He confessed, he repented, he begged forgiveness. He reminded God of his years as an altar boy, how he’d been in the soprano choir until his voice had changed. He also pointed out that, technically—though God seemed to have overlooked the detail—he hadn’t committed suicide and didn’t deserve damnation. It was merely an unfortunate accident.

“Just please get me out of here! I want to go to Heaven. I’ll do whatever you say, you won’t regret it! Please!” He put more soul into the request than he’d ever spent on one of his stage performances, but even Thor was surprised when the cluttered garage and tiny group of fans swirled away into mist.

The new place was bright and shining, filled with sunlight and rainbows. He saw smiling beings in white robes with wings gathered on a nearby cloud, and an impressive, bearded man on a gleaming golden throne in front of him.

Holy shit, exactly the pictures the priests had painted, down to the last cliché! Choking back tears, Thor knelt before Him.

“Welcome Thorton Velbiss, my wayward son.” The Almighty smiled with a warmth that made Thor tremble. “I am so glad you are finally among us. We have prepared a heavenly reception for you.”

Thor could only stammer, “Thank you, thank you, Lord!” He didn’t know what else to say. Everything was so … clean. So … cheerful.

“Rise, my son. Rise, and greet your Father.”

Thor rose and moved toward the throne.

“Later, there will be manna, and angel food cake,” God promised, patting him on the shoulder. “But first, I have a small request.”

God seemed almost shy as he said it, and Thor thought I could really like this guy. “Anything, Your Omnipotence. Um, Your Magnificence. Anything you want, just name it!”

Taking him by both shoulders, the Lord turned him toward the nearby cloud, where the choir of angels suddenly pulled back their wings, revealing the electric guitars they wore. One sat behind a drum kit.

Snapping His fingers, God materialized a 1959 custom Les Paul and held it out to Thor. “Play ‘Dark Carbuncle’ for us, my son. I have always loved that song.”

Thor fell to his knees, screaming.

I like to hike, and I am particularly fond of the Utah desert. The area around Moab—Canyonlands and Arches National Parks and other more obscure Bureau of Land Management sections—are breathtaking, clean, isolated. If you pick the right trails, you can avoid seeing people altogether, for days. Those canyons are where Aaron Ralston famously went hiking alone, got his arm pinned by a falling boulder, and had to amputate it with a jackknife and stagger back to civilization.

I know exactly where I would go to hide during a zombie apocalypse.

When Jonathan Maberry asked me to write a story in his V-Wars monster post-apocalypse series, I decided to write about what I knew: Hiding in the desert while the world falls apart. And it was also a good excuse for me to take a “research” trip out to southern Utah, where I wrote this.

Solitude

The monsters hit the RV in the middle of the desert—three hairy beasts, howling, drooling, snarling. Their bodies were bloated with an overabundance of muscles and fangs; their skin bristled with shocks of black fur that would have made a porcupine seem cuddly. As they tore at the metal side of the vehicle, their claws made an awful fingers-on-chalkboard screech. The walls of the big RV didn’t offer much more protection to the people inside than the perceived weak spot of the spiderweb-cracked windshield.

The overlapping chorus of screams was such a loud racket that I couldn’t tell how many victims were inside, but if I had to guess—judging from the make and model of the recreational vehicle—it was probably Mom, Dad, a boy, a girl, and maybe even an obnoxious yap-yap dog. I doubt this was the family vacation they had expected to have.

Yeah, another example of the American Dream falling short. Been there.

The recreational vehicle was one of those big palatial monstrosities, the kind retired people call a “camper,” but is basically a spa on wheels. It was decked out for state parks and fishing trips, not boulders, washouts, and other typical desert undercarriage-killers. This one looked new, with a good paint job, although smeared with the reddish dust from the canyonlands.

I don’t know how the hell they had gotten the RV all the way out here in the deep desert. In this part of southern Utah, a person should know where he’s going. The scenery is bleak but spectacular; the sky is wide and clear and blue, as if washed clean, except for crisscrossing vapor trails of jets going to and from the Air Force bases. The “roads” are faint dotted lines on the map, and in actually they’re little more than ruts and suggestions across the landscape. It’s not a place for blundering amateurs.

As I rolled up on my ATV, in which I don’t feel any obligation to follow roads—dotted lines, or otherwise—I could see the lopsided way the vehicle sat on the rutted desert road. A flat tire, probably a broken axle or universal joint, too.

This was by no means an off-road vehicle; it didn’t have the suspension or clearance to go on roads like this. What was the idiot thinking, driving all the way out here? The only unpaved road that sort of vehicle was rated for is the gravel parking lot of a Good Sam Campground.

Sometimes you have to wonder what people are thinking. Definitely contenders for the Darwin Awards, if anybody still keeps track of those.

In a national park like Arches or Zion, you expect lowest-common-denominator tourist yahoos who don’t know what they’re doing, but here in isolated Bureau of Land Management territory, you almost never see anyone else—and that’s the way I like it.

I love the desert, and I feel I belong out here. The tough and unforgiving environment makes a person strong and self-sufficient, gives you the time and silence to figure out things, or just to have a little bit of peace. The desert rewards those who understand it and punishes those who don’t.

The three monsters—werewolf types, if I had to put a label on them—rocked the RV back and forth, which only increased the terrified screams from inside. I heard a gunshot, and a bullet hole punched through the side door of the vehicle, then another shot blew out the passenger-side window.

At least somebody inside had the good sense to carry a firearm with them; unfortunately, the shooter didn’t have any skill. Both bullets missed. Bad luck.

With the passenger window shattered, I could hear the screams even louder. The three monsters let out a victorious howl. With the passenger-door window shot out, which was clearly a stupid tactical move from the people inside, the werewolves could get a good grip. They tore the door right off its hinges. The racket was deafening.

If I wanted this much noise in my daily life, I could have stayed in Afghanistan.

After coming back from over there, I couldn’t leave my nightmares behind, but I could leave everything else. I threw in the towel, turned my back on civilization, and came out into the isolated Utah desert, where I hoped to find a little solitude. There’s a lot of emptiness in these hundreds of square miles of BLM lands. Once every few months, I’ll make the long trip into Mexican Hat to load up with supplies, and then I head back out. That’s all the contact with people I need or want. I have no TV, no radio—no interest and no cares.

Now it looked like I was going to have to head even deeper into the desert. Why is it so difficult just to be left alone?

My ATV engine is loud enough, especially in the desert silence, but the three werewolves were so intent on their victims, they wouldn’t have heard a full brass band. I roared up to the stranded vehicle, grabbed my weapons from the back—and combat training kicked in.

The monsters were like a comedy routine as they all tried to pile in through the open door at the same time. The victims were trapped inside like fish in a barrel. I heard the tearing of skin and muscles, the sucking and cracking of limbs being torn from torsos, screams of terror taking on a different note of despair and agony.

The third monster lagged behind his buddies, and I killed him as he was trying to climb inside the vehicle to share in the Winnebago banquet. I kicked the carcass aside.

Sensing something wrong, the second werewolf smashed out the whole spiderwebbed mess of the windshield, popping it onto the hood. He sprang out onto the RV’s hood and glared at me with blazing yellow eyes, curling his black lips back to show off his fangs—which might have impressed a dentist or a taxidermist, but I didn’t care. His muzzle was splattered with blood; torn ribbons of flesh and muscle dangled from his mouth. He flexed long, curved claws and coiled his muscles as if he was auditioning for a “don’t let this happen to you” steroid-abuse commercial. He let out a roar and sprang at me.

The monster might have been big and ferocious, but I’m not a soft pink family from the suburbs. I’m used to defending myself. I know how to fight, and I know how to kill. I’ve done it often enough. Sometimes in Afghanistan they were faceless enemies; sometimes they wore terrified expressions. Sometimes they pleaded with me in a language I did not understand; sometimes they spat their hatred at me in the same language. Even without understanding the exact words, you get a feel for what they meant. Regardless, all those enemies ended up dead in the end.

Just like the second werewolf did. Adrenaline, training, and instinct can work wonders.

I tossed his carcass next to his companion’s, then climbed through the gap in the side of the RV where the passenger door had been.

The vehicle’s interior was a bloodbath, limbs strewn about like discarded chicken bones on all-you-can-eat wings night back at the mess hall. At a quick glance, I could see enough body parts to make up a little boy and a little girl, lying about like the pieces from a Mr. Potato Head. There was even a mass of bloody fur—yes indeed, the family yap-yap dog. Do I know how to call it, or what?

I heard a loud crunch and saw the third werewolf bite down on the head of a woman—Mom, I supposed. He crushed the skull as if it were the shell of a hard-boiled egg, then slurped out the brains. I thought zombies were the ones with a fondness for brains, but judging from the bloody mess and the mangled corpses, werewolves were not picky eaters.

He looked up, startled to see me there, with blood and gray matter oozing from his fang-filled mouth. His black fur bristled, his hackles rose; he challenged me as if I might be competition, someone intent on stealing his fresh kill. But I wasn’t interested in his meal, and I wasn’t his competition in the natural order of things. I was a threat, nevertheless.

After all my time out here in the desert, I’ve come to think of this as my territory, and I don’t like anyone intruding on my territory, whether it’s unprepared families in large RVs or big hairy monsters.

I killed the third werewolf and was done with it.

I drank in the sudden blessed silence for a few seconds before tiny background noises intruded: blood dripping from where it had spattered on the walls, the hum and low drone of voices and static from a poorly tuned radio station … then the whimpering groan of one of the victims, not quite dead. The father.

I saw that his forearm had been torn off, noticed a detached hand lying on the floor, still gripping a pistol. The weapon hadn’t done him much good. Dear old Dad was twitching and mangled, half-dead from blood loss and fear.

On the radio, an announcer whose voice had an edge of urgency spoke with breathy words beyond the usual gravitas of a “trusted news anchor.”

I frowned. Ever since I isolated myself in the desert, I haven’t exactly kept up on current events. The world was a cesspool before I left, and it didn’t sound as if it had gotten any better. Good riddance.

The dying father looked up at me, his mouth open and trailing blood. His eyes were glazed. As I leaned over him, he obviously didn’t know where he was. His face buckled in terror, and he lifted his arm to fend me off—but he didn’t have much of an arm left, and the stump wasn’t much of a threat. He gurgled and coughed. Dying people aren’t much for conversation.

The radio continued to talk about an invasion of vampires, werewolves, strange hybrids from dusty old folklore books, but it was all nonsense to me. I switched off the radio so the pure, beautiful desert silence could return. Why ruin it with talk radio?

The father died as I leaned over him, which was a relief for both of us. I didn’t want the responsibility, and he didn’t want the pain.

I climbed back out of the blood-soaked RV under the blue Utah sky. No wonder people came out here for vacation. I could just stare at the surrealistic landscape of red rocks for hours. Despite the similarities of rugged terrain, this did not look at all like Afghanistan, nor did it feel like that place.

Upon closer inspection, I saw that the RV did indeed have a broken axle as well as a flat tire. The driver must have been hauling ass, pursued by the hounds of Hell (which wasn’t far from the truth, I guess). A driver has to exercise care and caution on rugged roads like this. I suppose they had learned their lesson.

Looking at what was left of the dead family, as well as the carcasses of the three werewolves, I pondered driving all the way to Mexican Hat to report what had happened. I didn’t own a sat-phone or CB or any other way to make contact—on purpose. In the end, I decided it was none of my business.

I was pleased to discover that the RV had plenty of supplies, canned and dried food, containers of water, even toiletries. The suburban family had packed up and rushed out to the wilderness to get away from the horrors and complexities of the world. Right idea, lousy execution. Amateur survivalists!

But the RV wasn’t going anywhere, and somebody may as well make use of their stuff. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? I loaded up my ATV with all their supplies, even unwrapped the dad’s dead fingers from the handgun to add it to my own arsenal.

When I had secured the packages, I spun the ATV around and rolled off. I glanced over my shoulder at the wrecked RV, the mangled bodies strewn about. I considered giving them a decent burial or a funeral pyre, or … hell if I know. The Taliban liked to leave dead bodies around as a warning for others to see. Since this was far enough from my camp, I decided to let the desert take care of it. The circle of life and all that. La, la, la.

Even the engine of the ATV grated on my nerves as I rolled off. This wasn’t at all how I’d expected my day to go. It was going to be a long time before I could feel the silence settle inside me again.

On a clear black night without a moon, the stars shine down like a billion bright eyes—and it’s creepy to think about all those things watching you.

Heightened sensitivity, paranoia, PTSD—the military has developed plenty of handy labels, but not many cures. They like to package their cases up in neat categories and write prescriptions for the drug of the month, pat you on the back, assign you a counselor, and applaud themselves for the great job they did.

After Afghanistan, I found my own cure. Solitude works better than any number of pills, no matter what color they are. People, in fact, are the problem—with their noise, hatred, emotions, jealousies, ambitions, vendettas. For me, the best way for a full body-and-mind cleanse was to turn my back on the world, let the VA seal my file, mark it “Case Closed,” and worry about other things.

I know the feel of raw wounds, torn flesh. I’ve seen IEDs up close and personal, watched a buddy get blown apart by a rocket-propelled grenade right when he was in the middle of telling a joke, and I never did figure out the punchline.

I even saw the flash of white teeth in a suicide bomber’s last ecstatic smile before he detonated his vest and headed off to his version of Heaven, some assembly required. And I remember those pearly whites flying at me like projectiles along with gobbets of flesh and blood. It wasn’t bullets that injured me, but the sharp and jagged teeth of a terrorist.

But the Army decided the injuries still counted, so I earned my Purple Heart.

I didn’t just get wounded in Afghanistan; I was changed there. That place, that war, changes everybody, one way or another. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to the way I was, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

I have my place out here in the desert, a shack made of corrugated metal reinforced with wooden walls, set into a natural alcove at the base of a canyon wall. My own private little lair. A long time ago, some uranium prospector or Navajo shepherd had abandoned it, and I fixed it up. I’ve got my sleeping bag, a cot frame, some clothes, plenty of supplies (thanks to the fortunate encounter with the RV today), a folding chair, and my fire pit. That’s all I need.

And solitude.

The dark night smells clean, and the desert has few enough insects to make a bothersome noise. The burning mesquite logs send up tiny sparks like tracer fire, but that crackle is the right kind of sound, and it only adds to the silence. I can spend hours here alone, hands folded, thinking hard and not remembering.

After a while, you get attuned to the desert; you can sense things. I perked up, sniffed the air. I heard movement, something furtively pacing in the darkness beyond the ring of firelight. I heard a skitter of pebbles, claws moving on the ground, then a snuffle.

I levered myself out of the folding chair, which creaked. I stood, shoulders squared, hands loose, ready to flex. I inhaled deeply and let all of my senses broaden. I could sense beasts in the shadows out there, like Taliban. They were circling, probing, exploring … but this was my territory. They could sense that.

They probably knew what I had done to the three werewolves in the RV. They were assessing me, and I stood facing the darkness without a flicker of fear—not provoking them, but letting them know that it wasn’t in their best interest to come closer. I put my hands on my hips, refusing to budge. I stood by my fire and saw muscular, bestial shadows moving out there. I waited, defiant.

Eventually, the beasts went away.

The dawn stillness in the desert is crisp, clear, and with a biting chill. It’s like glass, so intense and transparent that it magnifies the surrounding world. And like glass, it can all too easily shatter.

I woke from a deep sleep that might have been classified as a coma. I had eaten well, rested well, and enjoyed the warmth of my sleeping bag and my extra blanket in my alcove. I boiled water for the morning coffee, rummaged in the supplies I had taken from the RV, and found packets of something called “cinnamon dolce latte mix”—what the hell was that? Amateur survivalists, indeed! It was sweet and not at all like anything I would have called “coffee,” but I had learned how to adapt.

I moved about my camp, hoping for a quiet day. I thought I might explore the canyons before the day got too hot, or maybe I’d just stay here and watch the world, look at the red rocks, admire the endless kaleidoscope of sunlight and shadow on the formations. I didn’t even need to move to get a good show.

Swallows were nesting high up on the slickrock cliff, and I could hear desert mice pattering around in the rock field. Most of all, the stillness had its healing effect on me, and I just drank it in. I was feeling calm and settled enough that I even endured a second packet of that powdered cinnamon dolce latte.

I saw the tiny human figure, a backpacker, making his way across the desert, stumbling through the bed of the wash and heading up into the deeper canyon, straight for my camp. He lurched along, clearly exhausted and in a hurry, but the enormous load on his back made him ungainly.

There used to be a certain camaraderie among hikers and backpackers. Out on the trail for long periods, you rarely saw anyone, but when you did cross paths with another hiker, you were expected to say a polite hello, share information about trail conditions, maybe exchange supplies if you needed anything. It was a brief and tolerable interaction.

This man, though, came directly to my camp. I could hear his breathing from a long distance away, hear the stutter-stumble of his footsteps. A shame. The day had started out so quiet, so pristine. This intrusion was as grating as a dentist’s drill.

I waited for him, wary but resigned, not knowing what to expect but convinced that I didn’t want his company, didn’t want what he was selling. I was not interested in a “backcountry buddy.”

As he came close, I could see he was bearded, dust-streaked, gaunt, as if he’d been living on the run and in constant fear for a very long time. I’d seen that look on the faces of some comrades back in Afghanistan, especially the ones who had served three or four tours.

Some say that when you get that haunted, you’ll never recover. I disagree. Solitude can even a person out. Uninterrupted solitude.

He was bedraggled, sweating, ready to drop as he staggered to my camp. “Thank God!” he said. “I saw your fire last night and I marked where you were, but … I don’t travel at night. I found a safe spot, barricaded myself, and just hunkered down to wait. Did you hear the howling?”

I just looked at him, cold and silent, then finally answered, “I heard.”

“As soon as the sun came up, and it was safe, I made a beeline here. I hoped you wouldn’t leave your camp.”

“This isn’t just a camp, this is my home,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The backpacker looked around, studied my shack, my supplies, my chair. “So … you’re safe here? It’s secure? They leave you alone?”

“Nothing bothers me out here—until recently.” I only have one chair and I sat in it. To make a point.

As if I’d invited him to join me, he unclipped the front straps, groaned, and swung around as he dropped the bulky frame off his shoulders. The backpacker didn’t seem to understand subtleties.

“I see you had the same idea,” he said. “It’s sheer hell out there, and I decided the only way to survive that holocaust was to head out into the middle of nowhere. Be self-sufficient. It’s monster against monster back in the real world, a menagerie of vampires—civilized ones and barbarian ones, all at each other’s throats … and at our throats! We’re just fodder to them—some of them at least.” He shook his head, and, seeing no other chair and receiving no invitation from me, he hunkered down on his pack.

“I try to stay away from all that mess,” I said.

“Me, too! Hole up out here in the deep desert, someplace where no one will find you, and let all those things sort it out back in the cities. Then we can come back when it’s settled down.”

“I’m not going back,” I said. “I’m here for the peace and quiet.”

He unzipped one of the front pouches of his pack, pulled out a sealed envelope of jerky. “I’ve got supplies. We can share. But it’s not safe—some of those monsters have come out here, too. You and me, though … safety in numbers, right? The two of us could stick together, join forces. I’ll watch your back, you watch mine.”

I cut him off. “No thanks.”

He looked crestfallen, then grew more desperate. “You’re dead meat out here if they come. And I can make myself useful. Honest! Let’s just try it for a week or so.” He extended a grimy hand, pleading. “By the way, my name is—”

“I don’t want to know your name. I don’t want to know you. I don’t want you here.” I could feel my blood boiling, my hackles rising. I hate it when someone provokes me to anger. “You don’t understand solitude,” I said. The words sounded rough, like a growl.

The backpacker was slow to realize what was happening, and only in the last instant did he have fear in his eyes.

I dragged his body far from my camp. No need to have the smell of blood and death near where I live.

It took me half the morning to dig a grave deep enough in the rocky, sandy soil so that I wasn’t worried about scavengers. I didn’t mark the grave—what would be the point?

After all that, I was jittery and stressed. I had an edge to my mood. I don’t like being disturbed; I don’t like having my solitude shattered; I don’t like all this nonsense. I went back to my camp, stretched out on my cot, closed my eyes, and just breathed, listening to the air, feeling the silence.

Far overhead I heard the roar of fighter jets, saw the vapor trails of dark aircraft racing across the sky … chasing after some other war. But it wasn’t my war. I’ve already done that, and I left it behind.

I worked hard to calm myself, opening my hands, flexing fingers, making the claws retract. I felt as if I could just wring the silence out of the air, but it eluded me. No matter how long I stay here in the empty desert, it’s hard to control the beast inside me, the one that’s been there since Afghanistan.

At first, I tried to crush it, kill it … but that wasn’t going to happen. Now I revel in the wide-open emptiness, the beautiful red rocks, the deep canyons with guillotine shadows, the painted terrain and the hardy plants and animals that know how to survive in a world that doesn’t make it easy for them.

I like to let the beast out sometimes, but on my own terms, when I can be free to lope for miles, run across the desert and hunt whatever I like, stop and sleep in whatever lair I choose.

In the distance, even during the daylight, I could hear a bestial howl, a call of some other monster. It sounds … lonely. I hope it doesn’t track me down. Kindred beasts or not, I wish they’d just leave me alone.

Another isolated desert story. It seems to be in my blood. Along with several other writers, I was enlisted by the production staff of a Canadian animated television series to write a story based on the manifestations of primal beliefs. With their broad and general guidelines, any imaginative writer could tell an interesting story.

For many years, I made an annual pilgrimage out to Death Valley and spent time there hiking and writing in the desolate canyons and dunes. The stark emptiness of the place, as well as the spooky history of the native Shoshone people, seemed just the right ingredients. Those experiences seeped into my writing.

I actually dictated this story into my digital recorder while driving across the Mojave Desert, on my way to Joshua Tree National Monument. I finished it on the drive, and that night, after I checked into a fleabag motel, I transcribed it into my laptop as I sat at the rickety laminate desktop.

I think it all adds to the veracity of the story.

Bad Water

With the ease of an expert in the ways of the desert, he found a path down out of the rugged mountains the white men called the Panamints. He saw the huge, sparkling white basin of salt and poisonous chemicals. It was a bad place, even though it sparkled white, like the snow that dusted the tops of the mountains once or twice a year. This was not snow, but alkaline crystals puddled with water that bubbled up from underground, terrible to drink … inciting madness.

Any wise person knew not to come here, but not all men were wise, and he came to look upon the strangers and fools.

He had taken the name of Kit Fox, though it was not the original name the Panamint Shoshoni had given him. Some of his people called him arrogant, but he didn’t need them. He had learned well what the Earth had taught him. He knew how to make his way through canyons, how to find private springs, even when the valley seemed filled with nothing but death. Like his namesake, he could hunt, catch lizards or round-tail squirrels; he could gather and grind mesquite seedpods. He could be self-sufficient, and if that made him “arrogant,” then his people simply used a poor choice of words.

No matter what Kit Fox thought of the stodgy and unimaginative Shoshoni, however, at least they were not ridiculous. As he came down into the powdery white basin, he looked upon the fools out there. The white men. They never failed to amaze him with their outlandish ideas and stupid practices.

They had built a camp not far from the edge of the long-dead sea, dozens of men in their hot tents pitched far from the nearest drinkable water at the oasis their people had named Furnace Creek. And worse than their absurd settlement were their giant machines that belched smoke and steam, bubbling up foul-smelling chemical vapors from vats and boilers that cooked down the caked, powdery borax residue scraped from the lake bed. What were these fools thinking?

The white men had come from faraway lands, with their strange culture and impractical dress. They did not belong here—as the desert often harshly reminded them by killing entire groups of wayward and unprepared pioneers, or idealistic treasure seekers looking for a shortcut to the gold fields in California, or merely settlers duped by a promise of paradise just on the other side of the mountains. Kit Fox knew this land: Mother Desert was a stern parent, but fair to anyone who followed the rules of survival. The white men did not take time to learn; they tried to change the land to fit their needs, rather than vice versa.

The men wore heavy, dark clothes, broad-brimmed hats, and thick beards that made them look like animals. And they treated some of their workers as animals, too—smaller people with dark hair and a different yet equally strange style of clothing. Kit Fox had heard that these others were called Chinamen, that they came from even farther away than the white men did. They had come out to the alkaline desert to work all day long in the impossible sun, shoveling the white powder from the ground, building up “haystacks” of borax for the chemical works.

When converted and condensed, the borax was packed into iron-rimmed barrels and stacked high; the loads were so enormous that they required numerous beasts of burden, as many as twenty-mule teams, to haul them over the Panamint Mountains. Why did the white men want the poisonous powder? For what purpose? Maybe they should scrape away all the alkaline salts and make the bad-water lake into fresh water again!

Kit Fox decided to go back and visit his people after all, if only to tell them of the laughable things he had seen. Many of the Shoshoni might not believe him, but he hoped they would come and see for themselves before the desert killed these dirt-scrapers, ruined their camp, and frightened these people away forever. Someday, the Shoshoni would tell stories about the white men who had ventured where they didn’t belong and perished.

He kept to cover, camouflaging himself in the land. As he watched their activities, he laughed silently to himself, wishing they would know that he was having a joke at their expense.

Kit Fox found a shaded spot and waited until nightfall. Under full dark, with just a fingernail of moon, he would leave some sort of sign to show them that he was there. It would be just one more thing about the desert they did not understand.…

The bearded men had their own tents, with bright yellow lanterns and boisterous conversations as they played card games. The larger group of Chinamen was separate, quieter, and the men sat alone with their thoughts instead of raucous games and liquor.

Moving as quiet as a shadow—even though these invaders seemed deaf to the natural world—he completed his task just outside the range of their lantern light. He heard their conversations, their guttural words like rocks clashing together, but he scampered about, gathering stones of his own, laying out a pattern on the parched pale ground, a mocking symbol in his own language. They would never understand it, but the curse was there nevertheless. They would find the sign, wonder what it meant, but Kit Fox knew. And the Earth knew. Before he headed away, he took time to piss on the edge of their camp, then, grinning, he bounded away.

As he moved back to the dry lake bed, Kit Fox saw a silhouette of a lone Chinaman at the edge of one of the shallow seep pools that dotted the surface of the basin; he was smoking a long pipe. Intrigued, Kit Fox crept closer, moving with all the silence of his desert skill. Maybe he could sneak up on this stranger from behind, show him that there were people who belonged in this landscape, and yet the Chinaman lifted a hand in greeting, without turning, even though he couldn’t possibly have seen or heard his approach. Kit Fox hesitated but did not want to give the impression he was afraid.

He barely knew any words of the white men’s language, and he understood that the Chinamen spoke an even more alien tongue. But the stranger offered the pipe—communicating in a language that everyone could understand.

Kit Fox sat next to the stranger, and they both looked at the smooth mercurial pool of alkaline water that had puddled among the hard, white salt. The man looked dry and haggard, overworked, barely a ghost of a human being. With a start, Kit Fox realized he was still a young man—they were almost the same age!

The Chinaman showed him how to smoke the unusual device, and Kit Fox took the pipe and inhaled. He had never tasted such strange fumes before; the smoke made his eyes and his nose sting, and his thoughts went dizzy. Had the Chinaman scraped up some other alien chemical from the desert? He saw what looked like a hard, white ball in the bowl of the pipe.

Kit Fox gathered his courage and demanded, “Why do the white men take all this useless powder?” He picked up a handful of the crumbling borax. He knew this stranger did not speak the Shoshoni language, but he could not ask the question in any other way. “You don’t understand how to live in the desert! This place will kill you.”

As if he had understood perfectly, the Chinaman shook his head.

“And why would you come here? Are you being enslaved? Why would you come here willingly?”

The Chinaman took another draw on his strange pipe and handed it back to Kit Fox, then he picked up a pebble from the ground, considered it in his palm, and gently tossed it so that it struck the mirror-smooth pool. Ripples radiated outward, leaving in the wake … images.

Kit Fox saw steep hills, green valleys, a land unlike anything he had ever imagined. Was this the Chinaman’s home? Then the pool showed crowded villages, skeletal people, starving families, excruciating poverty—a concept that he didn’t understand, even after a lifetime of accepting the austere bounty of what the desert gave him. Kit Fox felt a tug of the man’s responsibility for a large family, the aching hope that by going away to this far-off land in this harsh desert to work with these white men in the borax fields would stop the suffering back home. Kit Fox had never imagined that the Chinamen might have come here because what remained for them there was even worse!

“The white men should go away. They should not be here. They are fools to dig the poison from the dirt. You should leave them—soon they will all die. You are wasting your time. Go back to your family.”

The Chinaman shook his head again, either refusing to go home to his family, or refusing to believe Kit Fox’s conjecture. He seemed to accept the inevitability of what the white men were doing, taking part because it helped him to survive, not because he supported it. How strange! Kit Fox remembered his old grandfather once shaking his head at the boy’s intractability. “If rocks fell and an avalanche came toward you, you would be too stubborn to get out of its path!”

The Chinaman seemed to understand something he didn’t. He waited for Kit Fox to inhale again from the pipe, then he tossed a second pebble into the pool.

The ripples created a new set of images, the first showing the loud and smelly borax works here, then a larger encampment by Furnace Creek, the mule teams hauling loads of borax on rutted paths that became wide roads and then paved roads. The white men didn’t just come to the desert—they were everywhere. Camps became villages, villages became towns, towns grew into great and crowded cities with tall buildings made of glass and stone and metal, stretching higher than the mountains. Their behavior remained foolish and incomprehensible.

Kit Fox had seen the white men as unprepared, with foolish and silly ways that did not respect the earth. And yet instead of being squashed by nature, as would have been right, these visions showed them thriving, ascendant.

It was impossible! Kit Fox understood the smallest secrets of the desert, and yet when he heard guffaws and conversation from the lantern-lit camp tents as the bearded men continued their card games, he felt that these people were now laughing at him.

In the night shadows by the edge of the pool, the Chinaman sat there with his pipe and a faint smile of resignation, not horror at the nightmares he had revealed … simply acceptance of the way the world changed, rising and falling.

Kit Fox lurched to his feet and felt as if he were floating, dizzy. He broke off a large, sharp-edged hunk of dry salt, squeezing so tightly that it bit blood from his fingers. He wanted to destroy the images, and therefore destroy that future. It was a bad omen, a bad dream. Maybe he was smoking some poisoned chemical, and he was succumbing to madness.

He hurled the chunk into the pool, eager to shatter what he saw. But the images remained undisturbed. Instead of a splash in the shallow puddle, he felt the ground crumbling beneath him. Kit Fox swayed but could not get his balance. His head and his body weren’t right—and he fell into the pool.

But it wasn’t just a sheen of standing water. He found himself drowning in it. He flailed and splashed, but the liquid pulled him down, feeling oily and cold. This was impossible! These pools weren’t deep.

Kit Fox did not know how to swim—why would anyone who eked out a living in the desert know how to swim? But no matter how much he struggled, he knew it wasn’t the bad water killing him; it was the implacable future. He tasted the chemical water filling his mouth and lungs, and his eyes burned from it. But what he could not survive was the progress of industry, civilization, population growth, technology. Though Kit Fox struggled with all his might, he would be suffocated in the undeniable reality.

He coughed and choked, and as he went under again for what he knew to be the last time, Kit Fox saw the Chinaman sitting on the shore, much too far away, smoking his pipe.

Back to the creepy town of Tucker’s Grove, but moving forward to a different time period, the 1950s.

In high school, my parents let me subscribe to various Time-Life libraries, the Nature Library, the Science Library, The Seafarers, The Old West, and especially The Enchanted World, twenty lavish hardcover volumes that showcased myths and legends from around the world. Every other month, a new book would arrive in the mail, and I would pore over it. They were beautifully designed and great to read. It was about as exciting as life got in small-town Wisconsin.

One volume of The Enchanted World featured the myths and manifestations of Death, and I was entranced (and horrified) by the French legend of the Ankou, a version of the Grim Reaper who could be seen only by someone destined to die in the next year. The narrative was accompanied by a chilling painting, and I just couldn’t get it out of my head.

I knew I needed to use it in a story someday.

A Glimpse of the Ankou

Ray lit another cigarette, but this time he offered it to Betty, taunting. She steadfastly refused and concentrated on her driving. He watched how her lips pressed tightly together, how her hands gripped the steering wheel almost desperately. Betty had quit, all right—hook, line, and sinker. New Evidence Shows Cigarettes Cause Cancer all the newspapers and all the newsreels screamed. Too bad they hadn’t told him that a couple of years ago—Ray didn’t have much to lose anymore.

Wind whipped around the windshield of their brand-new convertible, a baby-blue 1954 Buick Century. They had bought the car just a few months before, back when Ray had his whole life ahead of him, back when everything was fine and normal. The wind seemed to sting Betty’s eyes and they glistened, brimming with tears. Christ, she was going to have one of her sobbing fits again. He wished she’d stop being so selfish.

Ray leaned back against the passenger side door, tired and cramped from the long drive. His joints ached most of the time now, and he had long ago stopped trying to “keep a stiff upper lip” about it all.

“Ray, will you please put up the top now?” Betty asked.

Grudgingly, he turned around and leaned over the back seat, fumbling with the canvas top to the convertible. His aching joints protested, sending complaints of pain to grate on his nerves. In the back seat, their baby Scotty fussed and whined in his basket, cranky after spending so many hours in the car ignored by both his parents. Scotty had also recently come down with a low-grade fever, the kind that babies seemed to get regularly, just bad enough that it made him fussy and miserable all the time.

Ray finally managed to pull up the convertible top against the resisting wind, locking the struts and fastening it firmly to the windshield. He felt a wetness below his nose and touched it, not surprised to find blood running out of one nostril. “Oh, hell!” he whispered to himself, biting back a more bitter outburst. He yanked out a stained handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed at the blood. If only he had worried about his nose bleeds sooner …

He didn’t really care how many Communists were abroad in the land—Ray knew now that doctors were the ones doing a lot more to destroy the American way of life. Who would have thought that aching joints, a few mysterious bruises, and bleeding gums could come together as this!

One day he had come home from work, grinning from ear to ear. The brand-new Vice President of the bank—Betty hugged him and called him “Big Shot” over and over again. He changed his tie, combed his hair back with a fresh dab of hair cream, and promptly swept Betty off her feet. He gave her only time enough to call Shirley, their usual babysitter, before they went out for surf and turf at the “best supper club in Northern Wisconsin.” Soon after, they had bought the new car, putting themselves out a little bit with a too-large loan, but the Vice President of a bank had to have a new car.

It wasn’t long before he stopped sleeping well at night, and found himself taking hot baths more frequently, trying to ease the soreness in his joints. For a while, he kidded himself that the pressure of the new job was getting to him … and then—

Acute Myelocytic Leukemia

Decreased production
of normal blood

Great excess of
abnormal leukocytes

No Effective Treatment

No Effective Treatment

You’re going to die

Everything was a confused blur in his mind, but it all focused down to one fact. And the damned doctor hadn’t even been able to offer any hope: one month—at best.

Aminopterin. Methotrexate. Thioguanine. All the chemical names were irrelevant—the doctor insisted that some of the treatments showed distinct promise, but for such an advanced case as Ray’s … He suggested that Ray drive to Rochester, Minnesota, check into the Mayo Clinic, and let them do their best.

The doctor was rather young, but he wore an odd monocle in his eye, reminding Ray of the commandant in Stalag 17, which he and Betty had gone to see earlier in the year … back when they used to spend their Saturday nights at the theater. The last big movie they had seen together was From Here to Eternity—and now Ray was on the road to Eternity all by himself, taking an express route.

Before he left the doctor’s office, Ray pulled the wallet from his back pocket and took out a picture of his wife and baby son. The doctor pushed the monocle back into his eye, looking at the photograph in silence. Then Ray got dressed, retrieved his snapshot, and turned to leave.

“There’s something at the University of Chicago called krebiozen,” the doctor said before Ray could open the door. “It’s very new, but their researchers say it’s a painless cure for all forms of cancer. Some other people say they’re just quacks, and that krebiozen does nothing. I simply don’t know. I can’t recommend it. But a man in your position—I can’t tell you what to do. I just wanted you to know about it.”

Ray was too conservative to be a gambler, but only one of the options had a large enough payoff to make it worth risking everything. With only a month to live, he didn’t have time to make mistakes. Krebiozen. Chicago.

They had left early in the morning, taking the convertible out on the web of little country roads in northern Wisconsin, the roads which eventually joined up with Highway 51 and led straight south. They passed through dozens of small crossroads-with-taverns towns, each of which forced them to slow down momentarily before Betty could let the convertible fly down the highway again. The dark woodlands, with their summer-tourist villages and sportsmen’s bars, gave way to farmland as they reached the center of the state. North of Madison, when they reached their last chance to turn west and head instead toward Rochester, Minnesota, to the Mayo Clinic, Ray closed his eyes and made himself concentrate on the way south. Chicago. Krebiozen.

“Do you want me to drive?” Ray asked disinterestedly.

Betty shook her head, making her wavy hair bob back and forth. “Not if there’s a chance you might pass out again. You just rest.”

“I can’t stand sitting here much longer. It’s three more hours to Chicago.” He turned his head to watch the cornfields flicker by. “I think we might have to stop for the night.”

Betty didn’t answer and kept driving. The road was not busy, though occasionally they found themselves stuck behind a slow pickup truck or some farm machinery. Ray concentrated on the optical illusion of the cornfields, as the car rushed past the individual rows so fast they seemed to flash on and off. The fields of alfalfa had been cut and baled into hay, and some of the land looked naked without a crop. Scattered barns and silos surrounded by the wide fields looked like misplaced modern-day castles. The corn itself was bleached brown from an early frost and stood waiting to be harvested. Ray watched the scenery, letting the monotony and the helpless boredom lull him.

The sun had recently gone down, taking the day’s warmth with it as the blue sky faded into burning colors. Ahead, like a black blot on the landscape, one of the cornfields was charred and lifeless. The bronze shadows of sunset fell on the burned field, showing how it abruptly ended against a tree-lined lane that ran straight back into the cropland. The lane was rutted, and partially grown with weeds, and seemed not to lead to any visible house.

Ray sat up to look, feeling a rusty nail of pain in both elbow joints. Where the dirt lane met the road back under the growing shadows of the fence line’s oak and wild cherry trees, he saw a dark man standing by a bulky oxcart, as if waiting for something. For a moment, Ray stared at the half-hidden shapes of the two oxen in front of the cart, surprised at how incongruous they seemed. The two animals appeared massive and powerful, very dark in the failing light, but they were turned away from the road, ready to plod back into the fields, and he couldn’t make out much detail.

Then Ray focused his attention on the man by the cart. He was dressed all in black, with a tight collar like a preacher’s and even black gloves on his hands. The man was gaunt and cadaverous, with his downturned mouth slightly open and showing only a black emptiness, no teeth, no tongue. His nose jutted sharply, twisted, as if broken several times and poorly healed. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that draped a muffled shadow over his eyes, but Ray still could see burning orange slits in the sockets.

Then the man looked directly back at him. Time stopped. Ray suddenly felt a shadow leap out, wrapping around his heart and squeezing it with icy fingers. Ray’s eyes bulged, and he felt the ice in his chest thickening. He believed he was staring at a spectre, haunted by a shadow of Death itself. An unreasonable, gibbering terror mounted his shoulders, making him begin to shake. His lungs didn’t want to breathe any more. Black spots started to swim before his eyes.

The spectral man slowly reached down to lift something out of the cart, a sharp farming tool.

“Ray!” Betty screamed, he realized, for the second time. “It’s Scotty!” The car swerved back and forth on the road as Betty tried to reach to the back seat. Suddenly, Ray heard the little-animal sounds of a baby choking. Scotty was already turning blue in the face, and he writhed with his tiny arms and legs, eyes wide with disbelief and betrayal.

Ignoring the roaring pain in his joints, Ray broke his fascination with the spectral man and snatched Scotty into the front seat, flipping him over his knees, and pounded him roughly on the back. Scotty finally coughed and spit up again, crying and breathing great gasps of air.

Ray pulled a hamburger-stand napkin from the glove compartment and wiped off the baby’s mouth. Scotty had apparently spit up and started to choke, unable to turn over in his basket. Betty’s eyes were glassy and terrified. Her voice fluttered as she tried to shout. “He’s got a fever, Ray. We’ve got to watch him! It only takes a second, and if—”

“He’ll live,” Ray said, and was surprised at the accusatory tone in his voice. Betty shut up almost immediately and looked as if she were trying to keep her tears back. Ray hated it when she cried.

“Did you see that man?” he asked.

“What man?”

Almost fearfully, Ray turned to look back, but they had passed him by.

The ancient attendant turned the crank on the rust-red Conoco pump, ratcheting the numbers back to zero before he began to pump gas into the Buick. As the numbers slowly turned, he massaged the bugs from the windshield, checked the oil, and performed all the typical service station amenities. The station sat at the intersection of two infrequently travelled roads, but “G. DuBay, prop.” seemed to be doing an adequate business with his two gas pumps.

The old man’s house was attached to the station building; several automobile skeletons in various stages of decay littered his back lawn. Somehow, Ray expected to see a mongrel dog pressing its snout up against the weathered picket fence around the yard.

“Ready to close up for the night,” the old man said, wiping his hand on his stained, gray coveralls. His voice carried the ragged ends of a faded French accent. “You jes’ caught me before I started cleaning up.”

Ray avoided looking at the man and sat motionless against the passenger-side door. Twilight had plunged deeply into the sky. He kept looking behind him, where a curve had caused the road to be swallowed up in the darkening cornfields. The gaunt man with the oxcart was back there someplace. Ray felt fear begin to swell in him again, a maddening paranoia that refused to admit any explanation for the spectral farmer other than a supernatural one.

Betty stepped out of the car, stretching her legs and ignoring the mud that splashed on her high heels. “Are you Mr. DuBay?” she asked, nodding toward the sign in the window. A red Coca-Cola machine hummed next to a rocking chair in front of the station’s door. Old newspapers were stacked beside the chair on top of a case of empty bottles, as if the man carelessly read the papers in whatever order he happened to pick them up.

“Yes, ma’am, I am Gillie DuBay,” he answered, grinning at her with a mouthful of perfect teeth, odd in itself for a man his age. He almost held out his hand, but saw the black stains from engine oil, kerosene, and gas embedded into the skin. He tipped a non-existent cap instead.

“Is there any place to spend the night near here?” Ray spoke up, sounding gruff. He didn’t want to be out on the open road, in the dark. The spectral man could be waiting for them around any curve, from any side road, beckoning Ray to climb into his cart. Ray realized what he was thinking, then, and became even more frightened, wondering if the leukemia and the unrelenting fact of his own upcoming death might possibly have squeezed his mind into a dark corner where healthy men could never go.

DuBay pointed down the road. “Tucker’s Grove is not too far, a couple of miles. Jes’ this side of the town you will see one of those motor-hotels, and you may get a room there, sure enough. They might even have a television for you to look at. Red Skelton should be on tonight … or is it Tuesday? I know Fibber ’n Molly will be on the radio.”

“Thank you, Mr. DuBay.” Betty paid him for the gasoline and looked sidelong at Ray, as if to be sure that he wanted to stop for the night rather than continuing for another hour or so.

“DuBay—” Ray sat up and turned to look the old man square in the eye. “About two miles up the road we passed a big burned-out cornfield …” He paused, afraid he would sound ridiculous. Ray had been dealing with the fear of his own mortality almost constantly for the past week, but this fear of the shadowy man was something he couldn’t put a finger on—and that made it much worse.

“That is Sanderson’s place,” DuBay interrupted. “He is a hothead, yes—heard about how Eisenhower was going to remove price supports due to the farm surplus, so he went out and burned his crop to the ground.” He slapped his knee, as if he thought it was funny.

“I saw a man with an oxcart parked in the lane by that field,” Ray continued, fixing DuBay with an intense and frightened stare. “He was all dressed in black and wore a wide-brimmed hat. He didn’t seem to have any eyes—but he looked like Death himself, like the Grim Reaper or something. I never felt so horrified in my life. Do you know who I’m talking about? Does this man live around here?”

DuBay looked at Ray oddly, studying him. Then he laughed a short disbelieving bark. “I think you are pulling my leg, mister!”

Ray began to lose his temper. “Dammit, I asked you a question!”

DuBay frowned gravely. “My Meme, my Granny, used to tell me stories. I cannot imagine how you might know them or know me enough to think I’d be familiar with it.” Hesitantly, he put a grimy finger to his lips. The black semicircles under his fingernails looked like tiny perplexed scowls.

“She talked about a horrible spectre called the Ankou.” His slightly accented voice drew out the last syllable, slurring it. “He is the ghost of the last man to die each year. The Ankou stalks the night, with his scythe in one hand and his demonic oxen pulling a creaky cart by his side; he looks for victims, poor souls to throw into his cart, until the next year brings another Ankou to take his place. Now, I do not mean to scare you none, because it means not a thing. My Meme said any person who catches a glimpse of the Ankou is doomed to die within a month.”

For just a moment, Ray’s blood stopped cold in his veins. Then he snorted at the old man from behind the convertible’s windshield. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

DuBay raised his eyebrows, then looked searchingly at Betty. She remained silent for a brief, hesitant moment, and then seemed to draw strength from her own ability to answer. “My husband has leukemia, Mr. DuBay. He does have less than a month to live. According to one doctor, anyway. We’re going to Chicago for a new treatment.”

The old man appraised Ray with such intensity it made him uncomfortable. But the scrutiny didn’t make Ray feel pathetic, as many other people made him feel when they wept their crocodile tears for the poor, terminally ill man, the martyr to the terrible disease (“only thank God it didn’t happen to Me!”). DuBay came over to the passenger side of the car.

“Maybe you did see the Ankou, then. It is possible, you know.” He leaned down to look Ray in the eye. Ray wanted to slide over the seat to get away from the old man. DuBay spoke softly, with touching sincerity in his voice. “You’ll get used to the dying, mister. I have been doing it for the past forty years.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have quite that much time to adjust.” Ray caught himself on the point of rebuking DuBay for having had so long to see all the places, to do all the things—He cut himself off before the words started to roll of their own accord. That particular sermon had been building up in him for days, and his nightmare was that he would unleash it at Betty, condemning her for having a life ahead of her, that she’d be able to remarry some other bank Vice President, someone else who could watch Scotty grow up, who could go with her to see all the new movies in the cinema, who could hold her hand in the darkness while the Big Screen romance took place in front of them …

“Do not be too sure I have seen all that much in my life,” DuBay said in his mellow way, seeming to understand the anger bubbling beneath Ray’s silence. “But, yes, I have learned to be satisfied with what I have done and seen. It takes a special kind of trick to sit and look at your own yard every sunset, year in and year out. I cannot remember the last time I have left Rutherford County. Some people want to go everywhere and see everything—but I could stare at that field for the rest of my life and still not see it all.”

“Don’t stare too hard, Mr. DuBay—you just might catch a glimpse of the Ankou yourself. Then we’ll see just how prepared for Death you really are.” Unconsciously, Ray flinched and almost looked back over his shoulder again.

“Ray!” Betty cried. DuBay didn’t seem to take any offense, though, and rapped his knuckles on the baby-blue paint of the Buick’s hood.

“Good luck to you.” He smiled with his perfect teeth and pulled at his imaginary cap again. “About that treatment in Chicago, I mean.” As if by a silent agreement, he said nothing more about the Ankou. Ray wanted to be safe behind a locked door for the night.

Ray pulled himself slowly out of the steaming bathwater, trying to make the heat work a moment longer on his body’s pain. His skin was crab-red as he grabbed a scratchy, bleach-smelling motel towel. While in the tub, he had spent most of his time feverishly thinking about death, and about Death personified, whether it be the Grim Reaper or DuBay’s Ankou. The Ankou, the spectral man Ray had seen on a deserted farm lane—Betty said she didn’t remember anyone, but perhaps his own nearness to death made Ray able to see things other people could not. Maybe the vision he had seen was the real Ankou, the real precursor of his own death. Certainly, no ordinary farmer could give him such a case of the creeps.

As he toweled himself off, Ray felt a slow-burning anger grow in him, overshadowing his irrational fear. After all, what did a man like himself have to fear from death anyway? He could not direct his helpless anger at the abnormal white blood cells in his veins, so he lashed out at his wife instead, hurting her because he needed someone to blame for his helplessness. But if the Ankou by the field were real, then Ray could confront him, focus his questions, his fear, his outrage.

What did he have to be afraid of? He was going to die anyway.

Betty had dozed off in the motel room chair, and Ray moved quietly as he dressed, not completely willing to consider the plan already forming in his mind. He slipped into his black shoes, picked up the car keys, and dropped the large motel key in his pocket. Ray stared at his wife for a long moment, remembering her, thinking about her. Betty’s makeup had smeared, and her hair looked as if it needed the curlers, but she appeared peaceful while she slept. He wanted to kiss her on the cheek, but he knew that would wake her up. He didn’t want her to worry about him.

Scotty had also fallen asleep in his basket propped up on the floor. Ray bent over the boy and touched his small forehead. Scotty stirred and squirmed but didn’t make a sound. His fever had dropped a little, and he seemed to be getting better. Scotty’s immune system hadn’t been raped by something it couldn’t handle, like leukemia. But Ray would never be getting better—unless, for some crazy reason, he was able to strike a bargain with the Ankou.

He hesitated for a moment at the door of the motel room, staring one last time at Betty awkwardly asleep in the chair, at Scotty lying contentedly on his back in the basket. He wanted to fix the scene permanently in his mind. Then he quietly shut the door behind him.

Out on the open road, he left the convertible top down, letting the brisk knives of night wind buffet his skin. He breathed deeply, looking up at the magnificent arena of stars overhead, and pushed down heavier on the accelerator before he could lose his nerve.

The burned cornfield was several miles down the road, but Ray knew the exact location. The convertible passed by Gillie DuBay’s darkened Conoco station; he saw that a light still burned in the kitchen window of the old man’s home. Ray kept his eyes fixed on the left side of the road as the semicircle of headlights scooped a path of illumination in front of the car. Soon he could distinguish the short black stubble of the burned field, and he slowed almost to a stop as the trees along the fence line loomed up to block out the stars just beside the narrow dirt lane. The swath of light from the headlights bounced up and down as Ray turned slowly off the road and parked in the middle of the shallow ditch. He switched off the engine and the lights, allowing himself a moment to adjust to the darkness. He heard grasshoppers, crickets, frogs.

Ray suddenly became aware of the spectral man standing in the darkest part of the lane beside his massive oxcart. Ray could see the burning orange of the Ankou’s eyes. He stepped out of the convertible and left the door open; the small courtesy light shed a feeble yellow glow into the shadows.

Taking two faltering steps before he finally remembered his boldness, Ray strode up to the dark man and placed his fists on his hips in an absurd gesture of bravery. The night air around him was cold but suffocating, like the air in a sealed coffin; a sickening stench hung faintly around the Ankou, just barely beyond the range of detection. Ray felt mindless horror building up in him again, making him want to cringe, making him want to run back to the car and laugh insanely as he drove off at full acceleration into a telephone pole.

The Ankou said nothing as Ray stood defiantly terrified in front of him. Ray had no more doubts about the reality of the thing; he could feel his mind stretched and distorted by the wrongness of the spectre, stretched almost to the point of snapping.

“Look, I know who you are,” Ray stammered. “I know I’m dying. I know I’ve got only a month.” The Ankou glanced sharply at him with his blazing orange eye sockets, and Ray almost collapsed then. But he kept thinking to himself, I’ve got nothing to lose, I’ve got nothing to lose. He forced himself not to mumble; he tried to shield himself with thoughts of Betty, of Scotty, of his promotion to Vice President, of the new car that Betty would have to sell once he was gone …

“Why do you have to take me?” Ray realized he had tears in his eyes, and he felt pathetic. “I’ve got a wife, and a son! He’s just a baby—how can you take away his father? And my wife, how can you hurt her? She won’t be able to survive without me!”

The Ankou seemed to show no interest whatsoever and turned slowly to stoop over his cart, reaching down inside. The two massive oxen stood in complete blackness, unmoving, facing away from Ray so that he could see only their bulky backs. The Ankou pulled out a long, gleaming farm implement, a scythe, and gripped it in his gnarled hand with enough force to make the wooden handle groan. He held the scythe for a moment, as if drawing power, then stalked toward Ray.

The man stumbled backward in terror and fell to his knees. “Please don’t take me! Wait! I understand—you have an accounting to make. You have to balance the ledgers, take your proper toll. But if you’re really Death, you shouldn’t care who you take.”

The Ankou stood over Ray and seemed impossibly tall. His glowing orange eye sockets were indeed lifeless. He said nothing and raised the scythe.

“But it shouldn’t matter to you! Take someone else! I can bring you someone else! Please—if I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?”

The Ankou stopped and looked down at him, as if silently considering. Ray pushed himself to his feet, trying to stand on shaking legs. He didn’t feel he had control over his own mind anymore; his brain had changed into a nest of shadows slashing at his sanity. He pushed the issue, repeating himself and praying he could sound convincing. “If I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?”

The Ankou stood rigid like a statue, and Ray backed off one step, widening the distance between himself and the Deadly scythe. The shadows made details of the Ankou’s face uncertain, but Ray desperately wanted to believe he saw a smile form on the cavernous mouth, a slight nod of the leathery head visible under the wide-brimmed hat.

Ray stumbled and fled back to the car, breathing great gasps of air. The Ankou made no move to follow him.

DuBay’s porch light came on the second time Ray pounded the rattling screen door. The old man opened his door and squinted into the light of the harsh yellow bulb. Ray could hear voices from the radio inside, and smelled kerosene from DuBay’s house. “Ah, it is you,” DuBay said, blinking in the direct light, smiling with his bright teeth. “I am closed, you know. But what may I help you with?”

Ray stepped back away from the porch, trying to find the edge of the light. “I’m sorry to come so late, Mr. DuBay. But you know I’m … you know we have to drive all the way to Chicago tomorrow morning. Our Buick’s making some strange noises, and I wondered if you could have a look?”

DuBay stood by the door in slippers that had several large holes in them. He seemed reluctant to leave his radio program. “I can give you a minute or two, but I can certainly fix nothing until the morning. It is the light, you know—my eyes are a bit weak, and I will not do your engine much good in the dark.”

“But you could tell us if it’s something serious or not, if we’re going to break down somewhere between here and Chicago.”

“That I could.” DuBay pulled on an insulated jacket, found a flashlight from somewhere near the door, and followed Ray out into the darkness in front of his station.

Ray sobbed and wheezed as he drove, trying to keep the convertible from weaving off the edge of the road and into the ditch. He couldn’t see straight. His joints screamed in agony, and he knew it would never get better again until he died. But DuBay, Gillie DuBay, that poor old man, oh, God!

DuBay was crumpled and bleeding in the back seat of the convertible, staining the new white vinyl seat covers. He had wrestled the old man’s body there, then tossed the tire iron back into the trunk. Ray’s nose had started to bleed again from the exertion. His head pounded and whirled, making him giddy from the leukemia, from his conscience, from the awed abhorrence at what he had just done.

He tried once more to call up the resentment he felt toward DuBay, who had had seven decades to enjoy life … the frustrating despair that DuBay had all that time to see the world, to do anything he desired, and instead he sat on his porch and watched the sun set night after night. Ray focused on creating hatred for the old man, hoping it would help his own conscience. But the anger wasn’t there anymore, only a stunned horror.

The baby-blue hood of the convertible had been up, DuBay squatting under it to look at the mechanical mass of the engine. “Yes, and what seems to be the trouble?”

“I’m dying, that’s the trouble.”

Ray prayed he had killed the old man with his first blow to the head. He could hear the thud and the squash over and over in his ears, like a skipping phonograph record. He felt like a betrayer, a vile and selfish monster. A murderer—he had killed somebody. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and hide, or scream, or run back to Betty and hold her close. DuBay. DuBay. He had killed DuBay.

If I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?

It was worth it. Even if it meant he had to face the Ankou again. He kept telling himself that a second chance at life would be worth even twice this agony. He was doing it for Betty. For Scotty. For himself.

He parked the Buick in the rutted lane again, and made certain to switch off all the lights, just in case someone might drive by. Betty could be awake now, she might be looking for him, growing more and more worried when she noticed the car was gone. Don’t worry yet, Betty, he thought, I’m going to have a big surprise for you very soon.

The Ankou waited by his cart, blanketed with darkness. Ray wiped the wet blood from his nose and got out of the car, breathing fast, shaking his fear away. He wrestled with DuBay’s heavy body, dragging it out of the car and dropping it on the lumpy dirt lane so he could get a better grip under the old man’s armpits. Feeling anxious, hearing his heart pound like African drums in his ears, Ray heaved DuBay up into a rubbery standing position and draped him half over his back. He stumbled and dragged the dead old man toward the Ankou’s cart.

“I brought you someone else, someone who deserves to die more than I do,” he said breathlessly. “Fair exchange, right? Now you won’t take me, right?”

The Ankou only stared coldly at him, then placed a hand on the rough edges of his cart, and Ray understood immediately. The spectral man watched as Ray shuffled awkwardly forward, pulling the old man to the side of the cart. Ray paused a moment, panting, and then tried to heave DuBay up over the edge.

DuBay let out a loud, agonized groan. He wasn’t dead.

Frantically, Ray pushed his shoulder against the old man, heaving him into the cart. DuBay’s shining white dentures dropped out of his mouth, clattering against the wood before falling to the ground.

DuBay dropped awkwardly into the bed of the cart, limbs flopping every which way—and he kept falling. With one insane glimpse, Ray saw that the cart had no bottom at all, but was a swirling vortex of bottomless stars, extending infinitely like a gaping mouth that was always hungry.

Ray collapsed in numb shock at everything that had happened in the past hour, sliding against the rough wood of the cart wall until he was kneeling on the ground. The Ankou stood over him, holding another sharp farm implement. Ray sobbed and found he couldn’t even try to run.

The two oxen turned toward him at last, and Ray nearly screamed again. Both oxen had grossly distorted human heads wearing idiot expressions, with blunted horns curving out of their foreheads, and blasted eye sockets that had already seen far more than any human eye could bear.

If I bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?

The Ankou shouldered his scythe and turned away from Ray, letting him get back to his feet. Ray stepped backward, afraid to take his eyes from the spectre as the Ankou dropped the implement back into the cart with finality.

Ray suddenly felt the barbed wire of pain unwind from his joints. His head stopped pounding; his bruises were healed. He ran his tongue along his gums, and they felt whole and healthy again. New energy flowed through his bloodstream, and he felt explosively alive. The leukemia fled defeated into the night. Ray laughed out loud until he began to cry, and he kept crying until he managed to get back to the convertible. By the time he had found the keys and started the engine, he saw that the Ankou had vanished. Of course, he thought, starting to laugh again, only dying people can see the Ankou.

And it was all worth it. As he drove off, he laughed heartily because it felt so good to laugh. He filled his lungs with air, raised one triumphant fist above the windshield, and reveled in feeling his body respond as it was meant to respond, without the claws of cancer surging through his bloodstream.

He was euphoric as the Buick flashed down the highway, and he paid little attention to his speed or his driving. Ray purposely didn’t notice DuBay’s darkened home or the deserted gas station as they passed. Back at the motel, he left the convertible’s lights on and the engine running as he leaped over the door in a boyish gesture he hadn’t wanted to do in years. Look at the stuffy bank Vice President now, whooping like a wild Indian! He tossed the motel room key high up in the air and caught it with one hand, then he grinned as he fit it into the lock. Ray was whistling, ready to explode with joy and love for Betty.

He didn’t take me! All’s fair in love and war—and death. He didn’t take me!

As he strode through the door, Ray saw immediately that Betty was not in her chair. Instead, he heard an animal-like sobbing of despair, a heart-torn keening. She hunched over Scotty’s basket, and her body shook with spasms of stunned helplessness.

I recently spent a year taking online classes to complete the necessary credits to get my Master of Fine Arts degree. At age 56, with 150 published novels under my belt, it might seem strange to dedicate the time and expense to getting a degree, but having an MFA is a bureaucratic requirement before I’m allowed to teach grad-level classes in college.

While completing busywork writing to fulfill the MFA requirements, I took every opportunity to write flash fiction that I could actually publish somewhere. The brief story below was written for a Flash Fiction class.

Age Rings

Out in front of Grandma’s farmhouse, the long-handled axe rested on the stump, its blade firmly embedded in the wood. The stump was wider than Aaron’s arms could encompass, but he was only eight. A grownup might be able to reach all the way around.

It was an ancient box elder tree, much like the others in the yard, with drooping branches and knobby bark. This one, though, had been cut down when their own father had been a boy on the farm. The wide stump had served for decades as a chopping block, all of the wood split and stacked up against the farmhouse wall.

His twelve-year-old brother Nate stood looking down at the wide trunk, the weathered gray wood, the numerous scars and notches from the axe. They were both bored, and Nate liked to explain things. Aaron was a captive audience.

“How old do you think this tree was when Grandpa cut it down?” Nate asked.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “A hundred years?”

“There’s a way to tell,” Nate said, bending down. “Look at the stump. You can count the age rings. All of those circles. Each one marks a year.”

“Really?” Aaron bent down, saw the concentric rings tightly packed at the center from when the tree had just been a sapling, then spreading outward all the way to the last shreds of bark. “One … two …”

“The thick rings are from a good year, when the tree grew a lot, and the thin rings are from bad years. Each one leaves a mark, and you can just count.”

Aaron studied the lines, fascinated by this clear method. So many of them! “This tree was really old.” He eventually lost count and gave up.

“Nate,” he asked, “how old do you think Grandma is?”

His brother considered. “I don’t know. Let’s go find out.” He yanked the axe out of the chopping block and headed for the house.

Another exercise for one of my MFA classes, this time for a Romance Fiction course. We were told to write a romance scene centered around a non-apology, beginning with “I’m sorry, but …”

I like to twist the assignment.

Cupid’s Arrow

I’m sorry, but I never claimed to be a perfect shot. You always placed such high expectations on me. There’s something gratifying about being adored, about being placed on such a high pedestal, but a man can’t always live up to that kind of pressure, and now you’re the one suffering for it. Believe me, this really does hurt me more than it hurts you.

I tried to be your knight in shining armor. When we first met, you were the one armed with all the arrows, with your smile, your laugh, your flashing eyes. It was Cupid’s Arrow shot right through my heart. We seemed to have so much in common. You listened to me explain all my hobbies; you laughed at all my jokes, even if I did have to explain some of them to you.

You knew how much I loved hunting, even though only twice in my life had I actually brought home a deer with my bow. I knew you understood when I explained about hunting, the process, the outdoors, getting back to nature. It didn’t really matter whether or not I killed anything. But then, you never understood fishing either, how enjoyable it is just to sit in a boat with a line in the water and spend the day with your thoughts. Even if I didn’t catch a fish, it was still a good day of fishing.

Ah, Cupid’s Arrow! You seemed to love me. We would walk in the peaceful forest, just with our own thoughts, my thoughts of love for you. I never guessed that you were thinking about Brad.

But I saw the flirty messages on your phone, the private date you set up on Facebook, thinking I would never look at your account. I’m sorry, but why did you have such an obvious password? Was it because you trusted me, or because you thought I was a fool? I think it was the latter.

You and Brad met for coffee out in the open where anyone could see you … where I could see you. Leaning close to each other over the small table, laughing, brushing fingertips together. That was an arrow straight to my heart! You caught me like a deer in the headlights. Do you have any idea how much that hurt?

What did I do wrong? Wasn’t I loving enough? What more could you really ask of me? But you didn’t ask—and that’s the thing. We could have worked on it, but you didn’t ask, didn’t try, and that’s your fault.

So, when I asked you to go for a walk in the woods with me, as we so often did in the times I believed our romance was real, I carried my bow and the razor-edged, steel-tipped arrows. “Just for target practice,” I said, as we had done many times before. You didn’t suspect a thing, because you really must have thought I’m an idiot. That still hurts me more than you can imagine.

I’ll never forget the look of surprise on your face when I strung the bow, nocked the first arrow, and told you to run. You just stared in disbelief, even laughed nervously. But I was serious. I am a hunter, whether or not I’m any good at it. I told you I would give you a head start, a fighting chance. I didn’t have to do that, you know, but I still love you. It means a lot to me.

Finally, you did run, crashing in panic through the underbrush with no plan at all, flailing your arms, yelling and crying. I might not be a very good hunter, but you weren’t very good prey.

You gave me a perfect shot, and I let the arrow fly, like Cupid’s Arrow. I meant to shoot you straight through the heart. It seemed poignant, even romantic. I’m sorry, but I never said I was a perfect shot.

Instead, the arrow struck to the left of your heart, punctured your lung, hit the spine, so now instead of a quick, sweet death with me cradling your lifeless body in my arms, you’re going to die slowly and painfully, bleeding out in the middle of the forest, unable to crawl for help. You made it a lot harder than it had to be, and now I’m going to have to live with that guilt. I feel like I’m the one with an arrow through my heart.

But I’m a strong man, and I’ll get over it. Maybe I’ll even find love again, with some other lucky woman.

And one last flash fiction exercise for my Romance class. The assignment was to write a short story with the final line “And they lived happily ever after.”

Well, that all depends on whose happiness you’re talking about.

Royal Wedding

Bells of rejoicing rang throughout the kingdom. Peasants and townspeople were called away from their tasks to line up and cheer the wedding procession of Prince Derek and Princess Lilac. The people wore their finest clothes and tossed flower petals along the path to the castle. Though they had no coins to spare, they spent time and money cleaning the streets, fixing their roofs, painting their homes, making everything beautiful for the royal couple. They cheered as best they could.

Up in the castle, Hedda had worked in the kitchens since midnight to bake wedding rolls, wedding cake, wedding puddings. The silverware had to be polished until fingers bled. Hedda scowled even though she was supposed to be beaming with joy for what was sure to be the prosperity of the kingdom.

“Come now, all of you!” barked the head cook. “We have to prepare a feast for the eternal happiness of our prince and princess.”

“How about our happiness?” Hedda muttered.

“That is not for us to worry about.”

Jack, the scruffy young serving boy, came in with an armload of wood for the ovens. “This’ll take care of the last breads and pies.” He winced as he dumped the wood in the pile. His hands were red and inflamed, and Hedda hurried over to the sweet young man. They had grown up in the village, known each other since they were small children, though neither of them had many prospects.

“Let me see those hands,” she said.

His fingers were blistered, every knuckle swollen. “It’s the bee stings. Can’t help it.”

“You could help it if the royal couple didn’t insist on honey-drenched bumblebees for an appetizer.” On a whim, Princess Lilac had asked for the treat, which meant that someone had to catch jars full of bumblebees, and bumblebees did not like to be caught. Jack had been stung repeatedly, but the appetizers were safe.

With each passing day, Hedda had grown to hate the prince and princess more and more.

“I made a salve for you. I know all the secret recipes.” Hedda’s mother had been an herb woman, a specialist in medicines and folk remedies, and she had taught her daughter every trick.

She gently rubbed the salve into his fingers. Hedda was sweet on Jack, and each night, the two would find a shadowy alcove in the castle and sit together with a meal scraped from the plates of the decadent nobles. Neither she nor Jack could ever scrounge the coins necessary to pay the marriage tax. The closest they would come to a fine wedding would be to hover in the banquet room and wait for the noble guests to demand more wine or another serving of broiled larks.

Hedda knew the other servants felt the same. Everyone was instructed to keep up appearances no matter how much the prince and princess were despised. But she had had enough, and she saw her opportunity with the wedding banquet.

Nobles from across the kingdom would attend, counts, dukes, barons, other titles that Hedda didn’t entirely understand, except they all had to be addressed as “m’lord” and unquestionably obeyed. Hedda was an attractive girl, but too drab and scuffed to draw any nobleman’s lusty attention; fortunately, Jack found her pretty. That was all she needed with the thing they had to do tonight.

She had planned for weeks, digging through forest mulch to find the right kind of mushrooms, the orange spiky ones her mother called Death’s Daggers. The head cook saw what she carried in her basket, and although the cook knew full well what the mushrooms would do, she turned a blind eye and whistled as she scrubbed a cauldron.

None of the other servants admitted that they knew of the plan, but Hedda didn’t need to give them any warning. Finally, when it came time for the meal, the breads, the soup, the roasted boar and venison, every course had a liberal dose of mushrooms, minced up so small as to be unseen. When one serving girl tried to snatch a roll from a basket, the head cook had nearly screamed, swatting the girl’s hand and scolding her never to taste the food of her betters.

Hedda, Jack, and the army of castle servants served the well-dressed and perfumed crowd. The handsome prince and blushing bride were too enamored with each other even to think to compliment the meal, which the guests ate with great gusto. Everyone stuffed themselves, but none of the servants tasted a bite, even though the food seemed luscious.

Princess Lilac was the first to groan and cry out in pain as she hunched over with stomach spasms. She spewed vomit into her plate. Her prince cried out for help, then he too doubled over. Very swiftly, all the nobles were retching, writhing on the floor, their skin erupting in boils, their throats constricted.

The servants waited patiently. The process was longer and noisier than Hedda had expected. Her mother had not given her all the details, but Death’s Dagger was certainly effective.

Even before the victims all were dead, Hedda and Jack scurried about, pulling rings from fingers, snatching jeweled pendants, prying rubies and sapphires from goblets. Gold coins were piled up as wedding gifts, and Jack stuffed his pockets. Hedda filled a sack with necklaces and brooches, while the other servants scavenged their own riches. They would scatter after tonight.

This castle was dead, but now she and Jack could be free. They had all the money they could imagine, even enough for the marriage tax, though she had no intention of paying it. They would be married in their own hearts and rich in their own souls.

In the dark of the night they fled the castle and the dead bodies piled in the banquet hall. Hedda didn’t think about the people she had just murdered. In her mind, they were a different sort of people anyway.

She and Jack ran off, and they lived happily ever after.

My novel Clockwork Lives, written with Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, is like a steampunk Canterbury Tales filled with different stories braided together in an overall framework.

This is the darkest tale in the book, a chilling story featuring one of our favorite scamp characters, Guerrero, based on a young man Neil met in his younger days as a struggling musician. I was faced with the challenge of developing a sympathetic, heart-wrenching story about a character who manipulates and takes advantage of people. Why would the reader care about someone like that? But, as one of my creative writing professors taught me, “No bad guy ever thinks he’s the bad guy.”

Rush fans will find numerous Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the prose in this story.

We Get What We Deserve: The Pickpocket’s Tale

(written with Neil Peart)

When you steal, what is stolen from you?

It was a necessary lesson, but not everyone learns a lesson in time—or at all.

I had been warned not to break into the old man’s house. The other pickpockets on the streets of Poseidon City were terrified of the place. “That old man is a necromancer,” one of them told me when I mentioned my plans. “He’s an evil alchemist. And dangerous.”

I laughed bravely, making the other boy feel like a fool. It is easy to laugh bravely when you are safe and far away … and before you do a stupid thing.

“The Watchmaker in Albion is an alchemist, and he has more gold than any person can imagine. So, I hope the old man is an alchemist.” I narrowed my eyes. “You will all remember the name of Guerrero. Oh, you’ll never forget me!”

My friends were not laughing. “We’ll remember your name, when we tell stories about what happened to you.”

I brushed them off and made my own plans to break into the necromancer’s house and rob him blind. I had been wanting to do that for a long time.

When I was just a boy, my father taught me how to steal, and he tried to teach me how to kill. He said I had great potential.

We were abandoned on the streets of Poseidon. My mother had died of a fever when I was but five years old—at least that’s what my father said. He thought I didn’t remember her, but I could recall my mother’s face very clearly. I remembered a screaming fight, her shouting at my father, calling him worthless, and then she had stormed off. She left me there with him, and I never saw her again.

I don’t remember her dying of any fever, but my father clung to that story with all the desperation of a broken man clutching his last few copper coins at the gambling table.

We lived on the streets, and I was always hungry. When I begged him for food, my father scowled at me. “If you want food, you have to hunt for it. Out in the wild there are predators and prey.” He gestured to the crowded marketplace, the inns, the small houses of working people, larger houses of merchants in the hills that rose from the harbor. “Everything around you is for the taking.”

He took me along the bustling streets, told me to keep my hands to myself but my eyes alert. “In the wild, a lion has to hunt his prey in order to eat. Do you want to be a lion, Guerrero?”

I didn’t feel like much of a lion with my empty stomach and my dirty clothes, but I nodded.

So he taught me how to hunt marks in the city. I had heard him complain that I was an impossible burden on him, but he learned how to make use of me, too. He explained that some animals hunted alone, some hunted in packs. And we were a pack—him and me.

We would walk quietly together, studying the marketplace and the individual stalls. At first, because it was relatively safe, he would have me dart in and steal portyguls, pomegranates, or apples from Albion. I learned how to be fast and reckless. I could grab fruit and race away while the merchants bellowed after me (if they noticed me at all).

About half the time I got caught, and as I struggled and thrashed, sometimes dropping the fruit I had stolen, my father would come charging up, looking indignant and upset. “My boy, what have you done?” He would groan at all the onlookers. “Didn’t I teach you better than that?” He would strike me on the side of the head, graciously return the stolen fruit, and drag me away from the fuming merchant. “I’ll make him learn his lesson, believe me!” my father would growl, and we would get away with it.

And I did learn my lesson—I learned how to be more nimble and more adept at dodging pursuit.

If I escaped unscathed with my booty, we would meet in a prearranged alley. I’d hand him the fruit, and he would cut it into pieces, giving me my share, which was about a quarter of the take.

When my father needed to steal something more valuable, such as a stall vendor’s daily money chest or a metalworker’s jewelry, we used a different ploy. I would wander into the marketplace where jewelers sold gold chains or tourmaline pendants, pearls from the northern coast, fire opals from the alchemy mines. I’d wander in innocently, skipping along, then let myself grow confused. When I reached the proper spot, I would suddenly start wailing for my father. The “lost and panicked little boy” was an extremely effective diversion.

When the jewelers and the city patrol rushed to help the poor, terrified child, my father would snag a few gold chains or amethyst brooches. He showed restraint, taking only one or two amulets so the merchants didn’t even notice they’d been robbed, at least not right away.

We learned the underside of Poseidon City, hidden places that no one saw, and no one knew about, except for people like us. There were abandoned buildings, empty basements, snug and sheltered alleys. Every night a different home.

“It’s because we are free, Guerrero,” my father said. “A new roof whenever we like, a warm home, and then we move on and find another.” I learned later that we had to keep moving to avoid being caught. The justice of the city patrol was swift and meted out with clubs.

We would look at the lighted rooms above the shops, where families lived in their permanent homes. My father would laugh at how they were caged, and how we were free. But I thought the houses looked nice. Part of me longed to have a place like that of our own, but my father cuffed me when I mentioned it. “I didn’t raise my son to be a fool. Worthless dreamers are prey, not lions.”

But he started to gaze at the private dwellings as well, the mansions in the hills, and his eyes held a new gleam. We paid attention to the houses of the merchants, the landlords, the city’s elite, and we resented the rich people who built extravagant dwellings and sprinkled gold on their food to flaunt how superior they were to people like us.

He grew excited when he learned that some of those mansions were unoccupied, filled with food and possessions that were left to gather dust while the landowners went to vacation in the countryside to lead decadent lives. Breaking into those houses was easier than stealing from marks on the street, with a far smaller risk of being caught. We would locate one of those empty homes, break a low window. I was still small enough and young enough to worm my way through the hole, then unlock the door and let my father in.

I remember that first house—I had never had such a feast! We ate salted ham, pickled eggs, cheeses, preserved fruit, honey, and smoked fish. My father found grime-encrusted bottles of wine so old he insisted they were valuable, so he opened one for himself and one for me, making me drink it. I don’t remember much beyond feeling awfully sick and him laughing at me as I vomited on the rich merchant’s sofa.

One looming house was set apart from the others on a steep slope—it looked ostentatious yet sinister, and as we watched night after night, we never saw more than one hooded light moving from room to room; occasionally, colored and stinking smokes wafted from rooftop vents. The house wasn’t empty, but it seemed to exude mystery.

I looked at it with curiosity and fear, hoping my father wouldn’t suggest we try to spend the night there. To me, the house looked haunted, or cursed. My father, however, looked at the mansion with avarice in his eyes.

We knew other street people like us—not friends, not colleagues, not even competition. They were a source of knowledge, however, and my father began asking them about the house. Most of them shuddered. “Dangerous, too dangerous! That man is a monster,” said one. “A wizard,” said another, while a third called the owner “an evil necromancer with magic prism eyes.”

My father was not frightened, though. He stared at that mansion with an increasing hunger, and I knew he would not let go.

He obtained a large sharp knife—stole it, no doubt, although he said he purchased it—and he got a smaller knife for me. After he gave me the blade, he took me to where we could look up at the supposed necromancer’s mansion. He said, “You’re not ready yet, Guerrero. I need to teach you the next thing.”

“You know how to steal, but it’s long past time you learn how to fight,” he said. “Because sometimes the prey fights back.”

I was scrappy, but fighting was never the preferable tactic because sometimes the prey might win. Sometimes a lion was killed.

For my deeper training, we preyed upon weaker people in the streets. We would linger behind taverns and strike men who were so drunk they could barely walk. We rolled them and stole from them, but most had already spent the bulk of their money in the tavern. My father robbed several of them to show me how it was done, and then he made me do it by myself. In the garbage of an alley they were easy pickings, and I didn’t see how this was preparing me to fight an evil necromancer (who was probably just an eccentric old man anyway).

Sometimes our targets yelled for help, and I learned to dodge and dash away, running with all my might before the city patrol came. Once, when I ran away with a disappointingly thin sack of coins, I bolted between buildings and emerged in a narrow side street with my father puffing to catch up. Unexpectedly, I ran into another gang of street kids who surrounded me—five of them—as if I had sprung a trap. They were predators too, hunting the weak, but these were a different kind of predator. Not lions. More like hyenas.

They reacted swiftly, viciously, when I burst in among them. Working together they grabbed me; one snatched the stolen coins out of my hand, and another shoved me against a brick wall, knocking the wind out of me.

“We’ve seen you,” said one of them. “Don’t like you.” He punched me in the stomach with the force of a battering ram. I doubled over, coughed and retched. They took turns hitting, slapping, slamming me against the bricks. I flailed but could not land a blow. One punched me in the face, and blood poured into my eyes so I could barely see.

When I looked up, I saw my father come running up between the buildings. I knew I was saved. But as the boys kept beating on me, my father just watched.

After they had taken the few coins from me, I had nothing left for them to steal, and I provided little sport against five of them, so they eventually grew bored and went away, leaving me bleeding and groaning in the gutter.

My father stood over me, frowning in disappointment. I tried to speak through swollen lips, but there was too much blood in my mouth. I finally managed, “Why didn’t you help me?”

He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to my feet, despite my outcry of pain. I was sure several of my ribs were cracked. “You have to learn how to fight. Be a lion.” My father wasn’t sure I had learned my lesson, so he got even harder. “You have too many boundaries, Guerrero. We have to make them go away.”

I think he was looking for the right opportunity.

Several days later, we attacked a staggering sailor who wandered the wrong direction away from a tavern. He looked like a poor mark, not quite inebriated enough to make him defenseless, and he was larger than the two of us together, but my father pushed me forward, made me try to pick his pocket. The sailor fought back; he bellowed as I grabbed his money purse.

My father rushed in to join the fight. “Stop him from shouting!”

I saw a flash of steel—his large blade—which he plunged into the sailor’s side. The drunken man gasped and choked, initially in disbelief, and then the pain hammered into him. My father ripped the knife free and plunged it in again, higher, then withdrew and stabbed a third time. The sailor’s screams were hoarse now, mere gurgles. He slithered to the ground as I backed away in horror, but my father wasn’t finished; he was just building momentum. He pushed the sailor to the garbage on the ground and stabbed him more times than I could count. When the victim lay bloody and twitching, my father grabbed the money pouch and tossed it to me. When I caught it, blood got all over my hands.

“You … killed him,” I said, stupidly.

Sneering, he yanked my arm, and we ran away from the corpse. “And what do you think a lion does to his prey? He kills! That’s what you have to learn—be a hunter, not a victim.”

When we were in an open street under a full moon sky, he grabbed me by the shoulder, turned me, and pointed up at the looming house of the necromancer. It still looked so tantalizing on the hill, a shadowy hulk with a glimmering light in one window. “There! Remember that. You have to learn to do anything for that.”

Our lives were focused toward that goal, but as he built the eccentric old man into a greater and greater nemesis, my father made my training harsher. Desperation leads to justifications.

Each day and with every scavenged or stolen meal, he reminded me that we were free, that we made up our own rules—but it was my father who made up the rules, and he forced me to do things that I did not wish to do.

After the third man he murdered in front of me, I realized that he liked using his large knife, and he egged me on, forcing me to draw my knife whenever we attacked, just in case I might need to use it.

On the last time, late at night, I was with him while he brooded, planned, and grumbled, searching for a new victim. A thin man with a small valise left a shop and locked it, turning down an empty deserted street. He was a tailor, I believe, not our usual victim, but my father grabbed him, dragged him into an alley. The man yelped. “I have nothing.” He flapped his hands, dropped his valise. “Take my papers, that’s all I own.”

My father didn’t want to believe him. “Hold your knife, Guerrero. Be ready.”

I drew the knife as instructed, not sure what my father wanted. “But, he’s no threat to us.”

“Help me,” the tailor wailed.

My father let go of the victim and shoved me toward him. “Kill him—you have to kill him, Guerrero!”

The thin man cringed. I had the knife, but I froze. My arms were shaking. “No,” I said.

My father slapped me in the back of the head. “You have to kill him! He knows your name. He’ll call the city watch.”

But I’d had enough. I knew how to survive in Poseidon City, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I would survive living with my father.

“Kill him! Be a lion.”

I whirled with the knife and jabbed it at my father’s face instead. “You want to feel my claws?” I darted the blade back and forth, as I yelled to the tailor out of the side of my mouth. “Run!”

He scrambled out of the street, arms and legs bouncing like a scarecrow blown away in the wind.

My father reddened, and he grabbed for his own large knife, but I slashed with my dagger. This time the blade bit more than just the air. I sliced across his cheek, leaving a bright red line. He had taught me to steal and tried to teach me to kill, but I chose to be a coward rather than a murderer.

I jabbed my knife at him again, and he backed away, shocked. As he pressed his palm against his bleeding face, I fled. My father had said it many times before, but now I felt the difference. Now I was free. Now I was truly a lion.

I survived on the streets, as I knew how to do so well. I used what I had learned from my father, and also the opposite of what he had taught me. I never spent time with him again. Didn’t want to. Didn’t need to.

I made friends, shallow ones, because I didn’t know how to do anything else. Some friendships lasted months, some only a few days, but they were like bright burning stars. I left them when it became necessary. Fundamentally, though, I was alone—and meant to be that way.

I learned how to get what I wanted. I fought occasionally, but mostly I escaped. I was swift. I was clever. I was a survivor instead of a victor, and that was enough for me. Whenever I found a safe, empty house, I would slip inside, take from those who had too much, and use things that would never be missed.

But as the years passed, I kept looking at the old man’s house. My friends on the streets also avoided the place. They told stories that reinforced the fears my father had … but the wild and specific details were so similar that I realized they were simply repeating rumors my father himself had started. I laughed them off, because I knew the stories weren’t true, and I knew what sort of man my father was.

In time, though, I realized I would have to prove it—as another way to be free of my father. The mansion crouched on the hillside like a hoarder hunched over some ill-gotten treasure. It was a sinister, intimidating place, and every night I saw that eerie glow wandering from window to window.

Then the necromancer’s house went mysteriously dark, empty, silent—for weeks. I watched for several more nights. A chill went down my spine as I made concrete plans, for it is a frightening thing when a fantasy becomes an actual possibility. The necromancer had vanished, or died, or maybe been trapped in some terrible misfire of a spell.

I had to make my move.

I chose my night carefully, waited for the dark of the moon, when the necromancer’s mansion was one looming architectural shadow. Holding my sharp knife and ready to fight, I broke in as I had done countless times at other homes, but this felt different. Infinitely different.

Dangerous … and tantalizing.

The gloom inside the mansion was oppressive, like a strangler’s silence, but as I crept forward I could see that this strange and mysterious man, whoever he was and whatever his powers, was as inconceivably wealthy as my father had claimed. That part of the legend at least was true.

Urns were filled with gems, as if for mere decoration. Gold glimmered from all furnishings; mirrors hung on the walls with gilded frames and blank pearlescent faces that looked like moonstone, rather than silvered glass. There were statues and candlesticks, many made of gold, but others of even rarer silver or platinum. Chandeliers hung from the arched ceilings, sparkling with memories of light that came from nowhere within the mansion itself. A polished marble fountain was filled not with trickling water, but with long quartz crystal prisms that showed rainbows in a spectrum of black.

With so much fabulous treasure, how could I be afraid? I could just grab an armload of gems and gold and run grinning into the night. But I didn’t. I should have known better.

Breathing fast, I climbed a wide river of stairs that flowed from the upper level. I should have grabbed an armful of treasure and fled, but that wasn’t why I had come. Though I resented him, my father had prepared me for this. If the evil wizard lunged out at me, I would stab him with the knife and dash away.

I moved cautiously, eyes alert, ready to run if I encountered some slavering monster or crimson-eyed litch intent on stealing my soul. I doubted I could fight a necromancer (if he was a necromancer, instead of just an eccentric old man).

When I reached the upper level, I found an immense gallery with fountains and basins, empty frames on the walls that seemed to be waiting for portraits. And more mirrors, including one large looking glass on a stand. I heard a muffled voice, a desperate cry that seemed to come from far away.

The voice came from inside the looking glass.

As I stared, a figure appeared on the other side of the mirror, a kindly looking old man with long gray hair and a voluminous gray beard. He was inside the reflecting pane, an image without an afterimage. “Help!” he said, but his cry was muffled through a thin pane of glass and however many dimensions there were between us.

I was startled. I wanted to grab coins, jewels, and golden candlesticks and run away, but curiosity got the best of me.

The old man pounded from behind the looking glass, and I heard only small vibrations. “Help! Please!” His eyes lit up when he saw me. “I’ve been trapped for so long.”

A lion would not run, no … but would a lion help?

“Are you the necromancer?” I asked, holding up the knife as if to impress him.

A look of alarm crossed the old man’s face. “Is that what they call me? A magician, a sorcerer? I always thought of myself as a researcher in the arcane sciences. I constructed this mirror with alchemy, coated it with a sheen of quintessence, a recipe described in the most secret research from lost almanacs. The spell was designed for purity and hope, but something went wrong, and I became trapped in here. You must let me out. Only you can let me out.”

I was afraid to take a step closer, remembering all the wild stories I had been so quick to discount. On the streets, I knew when to run from a fight. “Why should I do that?”

Desperation leads to justifications. The old man said, “If you free me, you could have all my wealth.”

“You are in no position to bargain.” I faced the mirror, straight-backed and cocky. “If you’re trapped, I can take all your wealth anyway.”

His expression became somber. “But could you live with yourself?”

When you steal, what is stolen from you? I hadn’t learned that lesson yet.

I shrugged. “Probably. What does this mirror do?”

His voice remained distant. “It’s a reflecting glass designed to trap evil, to drain it from the person who gazes into it. It’s a cleansing spell, but I became trapped inside.” He reached out to the edge of the mirror. “Just take my hand, pull me out.”

The old man looked so desperate. His voice trembled. My father had painted him as a fearsome monster, and I felt I had to prove that he was wrong, as he had been wrong in so many other things. I was torn. Was I a lion? Was I prey? I steeled myself. I was human. And I wasn’t afraid.

Hesitant and skittish, ready to jump away if necessary, I reached out to touch the mirror at the point where the old man’s hand met the reflecting glass. “I can pull you out,” I said.

As my fingertips brushed the surface, though, it was as if I had popped the membrane of a soap bubble. His fingers folded around mine—and then the mirror glass folded around my hand as well. The necromancer’s grip became like a claw. “Or I can pull you in!”

He seized me, refused to let go. With a rushing astral wind, I felt something being drained out of me, as if an artery of my soul had been severed and the mirror was siphoning off the evil parts inside me.

“Let go!” I struggled, dug in my heels, but some part of me was gushing into the mirror, pulled through to the other side of the reflection. The mirror was designed to steal a person’s evil … and it had stolen the entire presence of the necromancer. Now it was draining me. Would there be anything left on this side of the mirror?

I thrashed and yelled, not caring if anyone out in the streets heard the struggle. The necromancer held tight, dragging me farther into the mirror. My hand already felt dead, my bones and skin turned to ice. His grip was like a manacle far more secure than any wrist-shackles the Poseidon City guard used on a criminal.

I yelled and kicked. The tall mirror wobbled but remained rooted to the floor. I could not break free, and I used all my strength to pull backward, to drag this evil man out into the real world again—or would that only be worse?

Dark rainbows flashed from the old necromancer’s eyes, and a wicked grin stretched his wrinkled face as he tugged harder, trying to draw me the rest of the way into the mirror. I felt weaker every second, diminished. My entire existence was being drained away, flooding to the wrong side of the reflection.

As I fought and yelled, I heard another muffled voice and twisted my head to see a second mirror hanging from the wall, a golden frame around a silvered moonstone glass. My father’s face was behind it—I could even see the scar on his cheek from where I had cut him. He pounded and cried out from far away, but he was lost inside the mirror—as I would be any minute now. My knees were already watery, trembling; my strength was waning.

“I am a lion!” I said in a ragged shout.

Somehow, I found the strength to lift my sharp knife. My hand had plunged inside the mirror, and the necromancer refused to release his grip. Crying out, not daring to think, I swung the knife down and hacked at my own wrist. It was the only way I could survive, before any more of my arm was pulled into the hellish looking glass. The sharp, bright lightning of pain gave me the strength to jerk harder, and the necromancer recoiled. But it wasn’t enough. Another blow, and the pain was impossible, an explosion of brilliant agony through skin, tendon, bone. I don’t know how many more times I chopped before I fell backward into the room, collapsing onto the floor with my wrist spouting blood.

I crawled backward, reeling, unable to think. The old man, still trapped in the reflecting glass, howled—and my instinct was to flee screaming into the night. But I had to stop the bleeding, and I struggled out of my shirt, wrapped the sleeve around my wrist and pulled it tight, trying to cut off the flow.

When I got back to my feet, wanting only to lurch away, I knew I had one last thing to do. Tucking my bloody arm against my chest, I used my good hand to grasp the frame of the looking glass, throwing my weight against it until I wrenched it off balance. The evil mirror fell face forward and shattered on the floor, breaking the trapped necromancer into a thousand sharp shards on the floor. I don’t know if it killed him or just imprisoned him there forever.

I was gray and sweaty, ready to collapse, but I had to get out of there. Dripping blood and cradling the severed wrist, I staggered away.

From behind the mirror on the wall, I saw my father’s face, furious then wheedling. He pounded on the glass. “Free me!”

But I didn’t know how to do that, nor did I care to find out. If I shattered the mirror, it might kill him. Or maybe not.

Before I fainted, I drew a breath, swayed in front of him, and held up my bloody stump before the reflection. “You taught me, Father,” I said in a voice made hoarse from screaming. “I am a lion.”

When you steal, what is stolen from you?

I staggered down the steps and out of the necromancer’s mansion, unable to think straight, foolishly neglecting to take so much as a golden candlestick or any jewels from the fountains. I fled the evil place, barely able to stand upright because the pain was so great, leaving the echo of my father with all eternity to reflect on what it really meant to be trapped.

This is one of the first really ambitious stories I ever wrote, an almost Lovecraftian modern horror story inspired by a family vacation out to the Black Hills of South Dakota. In structure and tone, it’s a lot like a Stephen King story.

The original draft of this came out of my typewriter (yes, a typewriter!) when I was 23 years old, and I’ve rewritten it several times since, publishing versions of “Family Portrait” in small press magazines and even taking the core storyline as the basis for a two-issue X-Files comic story. I think I’ll stop revising it now.

Family Portrait

Henry Franklin’s testament, recounting the events of February, 1944:

“Finding the mysterious camera was no accident, and it wasn’t luck. The camera found me.

“The war sounds outside began to die down. I had hidden in the corner of a ruined building during the bombing raid, and now I could smell the smoke of fires outside. I would dearly have loved to warm my hands over one of them. Snow started to fall in the night, and that made the silence seem deeper. I could hear an occasional moan from wounded people still trapped in the rubble.

“Then I saw a very odd thing. An old man dressed in a baggy gray business suit came striding over the broken debris in the street, with an ancient camera on a wooden tripod tucked under his arm and carrying a black leather satchel in his right hand. His left arm dangled by his side, and the left half of his face sagged in paralysis, his eye squinted shut—like he’d had a stroke or something. Despite the partial paralysis, though, the old man moved surprisingly well with his awkward burden. Agile—that’s the word I’m looking for.

“As I watched, he set down the camera box and his leather case, snapping open the tripod with a flick of his wrist. The camera was one of those old monstrosities where the photographer has to hunch under a cloth and take pictures on heavy glass plates. Despite its age, the camera was in beautiful condition, a lovely antique … and I had always had more than a passing interest in photography.

“Then the photographer bent over several bodies, some of them crushed beyond hope of life and others still quivering and moaning. Then the man adjusted his camera and took a photograph of the victims—like a parasite, a ghoul, trying to capture the death and pain around him on film. For his scrapbook? Christmas cards, maybe? Something in me thought it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen. I was very naive then.

“I lifted my rifle, lining him up in my sights. I was supposed to shoot Germans, and looters—that would make me a good soldier. I was already hardened to the many horrors I had seen … but something else repulsed me about this old man. I wanted to kill him. That feeling made me hate myself, and I had a sudden terror that I was becoming one of those ‘combat barbarians,’ like Sam, who actually enjoyed the war and found it exciting. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

“The camera came into focus in my rifle sights, and I could see how beautiful it was—a Stradivarius of cameras. I wanted to have it, badly, and without any discernible reason. I didn’t know what I was doing.

“A few scattered shots bounced around the night from fighting in the streets—and I fired my rifle. The old man jerked and fell backward to the rubble, clutching at the camera for protection. The camera wobbled on its tripod but regained its balance. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

“Silence returned, and I crouched low as I ran from my hiding place to the camera. In the sparse light of the dying fires, I looked like no more than a flickering shadow, a cat stalking a downed bird. I smelled the blood, the dust, the snow. I licked my lips.

“The old photographer sprawled on the ground next to one of the wounded. The expression on the dead man’s face—the frozen left side an emotionless mask of rubbery skin, the right side twisted into an impossible expression of surprise—was so unnatural that it made my skin want to crawl off my bones and go back to where I had been hiding.

“All of the victims on the ground—the old man’s photographic subjects—had died. They had been alive only moments before when he’d taken a picture of them.

“The camera itself called me, and I ran my fingers over the wooden veneer on the box. Strange symbols had been etched around the lens. In the leather case at the foot of the tripod I found a stack of coated glass plates wrapped in black paper and some jars of chemicals, one of which glowed with a sickish warmth, like a fever. The old photographer’s equipment was more desirable than anything I had seen before. When you’re fighting a war, the animal instincts come closer to the surface, and rational thought doesn’t always enter into the making of decisions. I was trapped, and such a perfect trap that I didn’t realize it until decades later.

“Suddenly, I felt naked out in the open. I snatched up the camera and the leather case, scurrying into one of the ruined buildings. Already I began thinking of how I could bring the camera and the equipment home with me.

“Why did I ever see the cursed thing in the first place?”

Will Steiger stared at the five framed photographs on the wall of Uncle Henry’s cottage, raising his eyebrows in appreciation. The photographs seemed so real, hypnotic, so lifelike despite the blurred sepia tone. Will had seen many antique pictures in old family scrapbooks, the faded brown-and-white portraits where nobody ever smiled and everybody dressed up in funeral costumes. Like for Uncle Henry’s funeral.

Three of the five framed photographs showed gruesome detail of wounded World War II soldiers. Uncle Henry had been in Europe during the War—had he taken pictures of people lying in the rubble of a bombed-out street? The photographs seemed to ooze pain and suffering, striking at a gut level. Will felt uncomfortable just looking at them.

Nancy would take them down, without a doubt, when she packed and sorted through all the old photographer’s things—the pictures wouldn’t bother their young son Chet, with his macabre interest in such things, but she would insist it was a “bad influence on the children.”

The other two framed photographs were portraits. One showed an old, elaborately dressed woman, decked with gaudy jewels and wearing a sour expression on her face. The portrait next to hers showed a thin, middle-aged man dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform—he seemed to be gazing toward the old woman’s photograph with something like lighthearted tolerance. But Will could see much more in the photographs: satisfaction from the chauffeur, but a gnawing hopelessness of knowing he’d never do anything else in his life; the rich lady seemed to be lonely, and not happy that she was forced to wear a stern mask in front of the chauffeur with whom she wanted to be friend as well as employer.

Will was delighted. Though he knew a little about photography himself, he could not discriminate how Uncle Henry had captured so much “depth” in the pictures. He’d had an incredible rapport with his camera.

“Dear Mr. Steiger, We regret to inform you that your uncle—” the letter had read.

Imagine dying all alone. Isolated in a cottage deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota—with a heavy wooden beam fallen across your back. Waiting, paralyzed, without a friend in the world to come look for you … it must have taken a week for him to starve. And how many more weeks before someone found him? And what had Uncle Henry been thinking about all that time?

Will put it out of his mind. Again. But the gruesome death kept echoing in his head.

The fireplace stood cold and empty next to a wall full of bookcases. Will ran his index finger along the spines of some of the books, bemused. The origins of things intrigued him. Now with Uncle Henry’s estate, maybe he could afford to go to grad school, get his Master’s in history. Nancy had already begun to talk about how she wanted to plant a garden and make pickles and learn to quilt and sew and raise her children. All that from an uncle Will had never known because his mother refused to talk about him.

Dropping everything to pile in the car and drive across country to the Black Hills had made his whole family run ragged. A mile back in deep forest they found the deserted cottage surrounded on all sides by tall dark pines.

Baby Beth slept through their breathless exploration of the rooms, content simply to be out of the car for the time being. Nancy had changed her diaper, propped Beth’s basket against the diaper bag, and left her to coo happily into a deep doze. Nancy found a brown grocery bag and dropped the disposable diaper in it, then set the bag outside the screen door. Will watched her do everything in an efficient but rushed manner, as if she were anxious to get back to inspecting the cottage.

Chet had made a quick trip to the bathroom before dashing back outside to go “exploring.” Will almost went with his son, but ultimately decided he didn’t have the energy to go bounding around the yard. Nancy automatically called, “Be careful,” but Chet gave no indication that he heard.

One entire wing of the cottage had been converted into a photography studio. As he entered the sparsely furnished room, Will noticed the massive wooden beam fallen from the rafters, lying in a hulk on the floor. An ancient camera stood poised and erect on its spindly tripod, staring with its Cyclopean lens at the hardwood floor.

Will moved forward in grim fascination—Uncle Henry had died here, trapped and immobile, all alone. Henry had stared at these barren walls, at the camera, for a week. Had he even been able to blink his eyes? Will swallowed the thickness from his throat. The eight-inch-thick oak beam had snapped cleanly for no apparent reason. Impossible. On the phone, the lawyer called it a “freak accident.”

The fallen beam had barely missed crushing the antique camera. Will forced himself to stop looking at the floor—there didn’t seem to be any blood—and felt a strange attraction from the camera. He smiled as if seeing a new toy. It was in such beautiful condition. The lens pointed down, perhaps waiting to take a snapshot at the moment of Uncle Henry’s death? Beside the camera rested a black leather case containing two glass plates, each wrapped in black paper.

The old camera couldn’t be too difficult to use: complicated photography attachments had not been invented until after this one’s time. It looked so easy—focus the lens, place the plate in the camera, open and close the shutter by hand. Perfect.

The darkroom entrance waited on the other end of the studio. Will flicked the red-light switch on the outside before he zigzagged his way through the light baffle—three black wooden partitions staggered so that light couldn’t get through. Inside the shadowy room red light flooded all the corners but washed out most of the detail. A narrow shelf ran above the developing tanks, cluttered with jars of chemicals—more than just the materials needed for developing and fixing the photographs. Will realized that Uncle Henry would have needed to coat his own glass plates, too.

As he disturbed some of the jars on the shelf, Will thought he noticed a sparkling glow in one of them, scintillating in the red light. But it vanished quickly, and he convinced himself that the darkroom had been playing tricks on his eyes.

He found his way back out of the light baffle and blinked his eyes in the harsh light of the studio. Nancy was calling him from the kitchen to come eat a lunch she had pieced together from their leftover camping supplies and Uncle Henry’s canned soup. Beth still slept, but Chet had come in, messed up and flushed from running around outside. But his hands were clean—Nancy had seen to that.

“Well, Chet, find anything interesting?” Will pulled up a chair across from the boy and met him eye to eye, man-to-man.

Chet’s eyes sparkled. “I found a secret hiding place! With two mummies inside—they were real ugly, but it was neat! And they were dressed up in funny clothes. And I found some Bigfoot tracks in the woods, and a giant spider in a tree!”

Nancy shot Will a sharp look, scowling, but he refused to meet her gaze. He knew what she was thinking, and they had had the “discussion” over and over again about Chet’s obsession with monster movies and creepy-crawly things. Nancy insisted it was unhealthy for her son to have such morbid preoccupations, but Will reacted strongly to parental quashing of anything in which the boy showed an interest, as Will’s own parents had tried to do to him. The argument still simmered, unsettled, but Will was too tired now to make a comment. Besides, their tempers were both short from the wearying trip and they might end up saying too much. Will began to eat his soup with careful concentration.

Henry Franklin’s testament, recounting his photography business in Deadwood, South Dakota, 1948-1968:

“My studio was an enormous success, but they could all see I wasn’t happy. Thank God nobody cared enough to find out why. All alone in the shop, I had only the camera—I made and developed the glass plates myself. Sarsaparilla Studios always got popular in the summer. I could prey on Black Hills tourists coming to see Mount Rushmore, or the mines left over from the Black Hills gold rush, the old west, Boot Hill, or the saloon where Wild Bill Hickok got shot. The tourists look so petty, so unhindered by care or conscience, so defenseless. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself like they do.

“My prices were high, but Sarsaparilla Studios was more than just a photography place. Look what you got for $29.95 and a little piece of your soul! With the camera I could capture their portraits on old glass and print them in sepia tones so that the pictures looked like antiques. The tourists thought it was great fun.

“Physically, I haven’t aged since that day decades ago when I shot the half-paralyzed photographer—I feel energetic, but my vitality doesn’t do me any good. I have no friends (for my own protection and theirs) and I’ve become hardened. The pathetic victims didn’t even know they’ve had their souls assaulted, part of their lives sucked away. But I do have a conscience, no matter how many people call me a bitter old grouch. They’d be bitter too. My conscience just isn’t strong enough to fight the incubus.

“The hardest part was severing all ties with my family. Imagine trying to convince them that I had grown grim and cold, that I was smugly successful and didn’t need them anymore. It’s easier to keep away from people who think they hate you. Dear Addie, my sister, used to forgive just about everything I did—but what relief I felt when she finally refused to speak to me unless I changed back to my old self. But that was already impossible ten years ago. At least Addie stopped threatening to come out and visit me. What if she had asked me to take her photograph with the camera? I don’t know if I could have stopped myself.

“That sort of thing gives me nightmares.

“I couldn’t help but feed the incubus. It uses the camera as a tool to suck out the life energy of its victims, taking little sips from the soul, a bit here and a bit there, so none of the customers knows. The incubus and I seem to have a symbiotic relationship: I feed it by taking photographs with the camera, and it gives me health and success in return. But I can see now that I was manipulated from the first moment I saw the camera. I thought I was using its powers to advance myself—it’s laughable to think that I didn’t even see the puppet strings on my own arms.

“Meanwhile, my customers came and went, a steady stream, paying a much higher price than any traveler’s cheque. And with each photograph I took, the incubus grew stronger and stronger. I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

“Chet, can you move a little closer to Mommy?” Will crouched under the tent-like cloth behind the old camera, watching through the lens as Chet tried to squirm closer to Nancy. Baby Beth bawled her lungs out in the crook of her mother’s arm.

“This is going to be great!” Will kept fiddling until he felt satisfied with the focus.

“Hurry up, Daddy!” Chet called from between his teeth clenched into a forced grin. Will removed one of the black-covered glass plates and pulled it up under the dark folds of cloth. He had only the two plates Uncle Henry had left behind—no margin for mistakes. He had checked the darkroom and found the chemicals he needed to develop his first shot. “Family Portrait #1” by Will Steiger. He’d had to insist that Nancy refrain from changing her clothes, making herself up, cleaning the children.

Unfortunately, Will resigned himself to being excluded from the picture. This camera was from before the days of devices to trip the shutter automatically. Offhand Will wondered why he’d never seen a photograph of his Uncle Henry.

In the dimness, Will peeled the black paper from the coated glass and slid the plate into the camera. “Ready … hold very, very still now—”

Beth let out a loud yowl, as if to spite him. Will opened the shutter by hand, waited an instant, then closed it again.

Beth fell silent, as if someone had snipped her vocal cords.

Both Chet and Nancy winced simultaneously as if a cold claw had hooked into their stomachs, tearing something from them. Will fumbled with the plate under the dark cloth covering and didn’t see them.

“Is that all, Will?” Nancy asked, sounding exhausted. She looked down at Beth and smiled. “Look at this—she’s sleeping like a rock! All that yelling must have pooped her out.”

Chet yawned and stretched with almost comic seriousness. “I’m tired, too, Mommy.”

Nancy stood up off the bench, pulling Chet to his feet. “Of course you are, honey. You’ve had a rough day.”

Will poked his head out of the tent cloth. “I think you could use a nap, kiddo.” Chet didn’t object, which Will found odd, since the boy always hated taking a nap.

Nancy rubbed her eyes. “I’m going to lie down, as long as the house’ll be quiet. Wake me up when it’s finished.”

Will nodded and went into the darkroom.

Henry Franklin’s testament, recounting the end of his photography business and his resultant seclusion, 1968-1979:

“For nineteen years I watched the incubus feed on the souls of others. I guess that made me a parasite, too. But then the incubus grew bolder, greedier.

“A young girl, all bright-eyed and full of tourist awe, sat down in front of my camera, the camera, while her parents stood back and watched, amused. I remember the girl wore a little western outfit, a miniature Calamity Jane. Let’s have a big smile, little girl, for your special portrait. Parents always need to have something for their scrapbook. She smiled into the lens. I opened the shutter and closed it, like the wink of an infernal eye. The girl shuddered and collapsed, deathly pale.

“The parents urgently took her back out to get some fresh air, babbling to themselves about ‘too much excitement.’ I put the ‘Closed’ sign in my window and padlocked the door, vowing never to open the shop again.

“I couldn’t destroy the incubus, not then or now—even if I were strong enough, I didn’t dare risk it. Now, at least it is contained in the jar—I can’t take the chance that I might set it free.

“But I refused to keep feeding it!

“Clammy chills broke out on my skin, and my head pounded. My hands shook as I turned to leave. All my nerves were going off like firecrackers. But I had seen the little girl’s eyes through the lens, and I kept holding that memory up like a shield—and I won my first test of strength. I managed to turn my back from the shop. I took everything with me into seclusion, deep in the Black Hills.

“I fell violently ill for days—but the incubus couldn’t let me die. We needed each other too much, especially now that I had taken away its prey. In the following years, I began to lose the unnatural health I’d had for so long. But I wondered if I was getting my own soul back, if the incubus was releasing me in disgust. I realized with a kind of terrified joy that if my health was fading, the incubus must be dying. It had to be. I had a chance—imagine the ecstasy that simple idea brought to a man who has been without any real hope for thirty years!

“And then I felt cheated, outraged, in despair, when the old woman and her chauffeur arrived. Like misguided sacrificial lambs.

“The wealthy old lady had seen one of my Sarsaparilla Studios photographs and sought me out. She insisted that I take her portrait, as a surprise gift for her husband. She had secretly come out to South Dakota while he went away on business. How convenient. Nobody knew she had come, nobody could trace her here. I should have denied her, thrown them out of my house, anything. I refused to photograph her. I insisted that I would never stand behind the lens again. But she would not be turned away, and the ravenous incubus stole my will like a rug out from under my feet.

“As if watching from a distance, I saw myself become a cordial man in front of the victims. I insisted on taking a free photograph of the chauffeur as well, a gift for such a devout fan who would come so far just to find little old me.

“The incubus was ravenous. In the tourist-filled photography shop, it could feed many times each day, like a spider with so many insects in its web that it needs only a drop of blood from each. Then, it could afford to sip a bit from each victim and let them go, none the wiser. But now the starving incubus dug in its psychic fangs, forging a permanent link through the camera. The incubus sucked up the life force of the old woman and her chauffeur like a glutton, draining them dry.

“They were both dead in hours, shriveled and empty. And to my horror I found that I felt nourished, too—vibrant and alive. The thought made me physically sick. If the incubus has discovered a taste for killing, then it will never end.”

The glass plate was still wet, but in the dim red light Will could tell his family portrait had come out even better than he’d hoped. He used a squeegee to wipe off the excess water, dabbed the plate with a soft cloth, then zigzagged his way through the light baffle and out of the darkroom. He held the edges of the plate with his fingertips and grinned, proud of himself.

He strutted to the bedroom, eager to show Nancy the photograph. Will paused at the door, frowning first and then smiling. She lay sound asleep on the bed with Chet curled up next to her, looking as if they could sleep through the end of the world. They had forgotten even to take off their shoes. Will shook his head fondly, then glanced in the other bedroom to see Beth sleeping peacefully in her crib with one small hand curled around her nose.

He set his still-wet photograph on the nightstand and moved closer to the baby. A nightmare skittered up and down his spine. His eyes focused with tunnel-vision on his baby daughter’s face, her mouth.

Beth didn’t appear to be breathing. He watched her in petrified silence for a brief moment before he let the words “My God!” fall one after the other out of his mouth. Beth’s skin looked dry and lifeless, and Will was unable to stop his hand from reaching out to touch his daughter’s forehead. The skin was rough and stiff, like a dry leaf; her eyelids seemed to be cracked, as if about to shatter.

“Nancy!” His voice twisted in his throat like a stinging bullwhip. He felt Beth’s chest with his fingertips, frantically trying to find a small heartbeat. “Nancy!” Why the hell wasn’t she answering?

He stumbled into the other bedroom. Nancy and Chet still slept undisturbed. “Nancy!” Will began shaking her. Her skin felt strange to his touch, stiff instead of pliable. She began to respond, groggy, listless, like a record player switched down to a lower speed. Her eyes opened, milky and confused.

“What is wrong with you?” He took her limp arms and hauled her into a sitting position. She tried to shake her head to clear cobwebs from her brain, but she could not. Will wondered for a paranoid instant if his family had been drugged or poisoned. He tried to slap her on the cheeks, but she did not respond … and her pasty skin didn’t even show a red blotch where he struck her.

Time moved in slow motion for him. None of this could be real. It was impossible, simply impossible. Things had been going too well only an hour ago. He ran back to Beth’s room, hoping he had somehow been mistaken, knowing that Beth was alive. She had to be alive.

The baby had changed, and Will halted himself in horror. She had collapsed in on herself, withered away, shriveled up to leave only a dried and empty husk of skin behind. Her face was puckered and folded, like one of those hideous dried apple dolls he had seen at country fairs … or like a mummy.

A mummy? Hadn’t Chet said something about mummies?

Then he was back in the other bedroom shaking the boy, all the time muttering things that didn’t make sense even to himself. Nancy had fallen back into unconsciousness on the bed.

“Chet! Where are the mummies? Chet!”

The boy woke more easily than Nancy had. Will scooped him up in one arm and ran to the bathroom, turning on the cold shower. He pulled his son with him under the icy water, letting the cold shower blast at his pores and making his head pound. He shook Chet, praying for him to wake up, and laughed out loud when he saw the boy’s teeth begin to chatter.

“Chet! Tell me where the mummies are! It’s important!”

The boy had trouble working his mouth, forming the words. But he sensed Will’s urgency and he genuinely tried until his voice finally came out in a brittle whisper. “In back, Daddy … by the dump … there’s a trapdoor.”

Will propped him up against the back of the bathtub and let the cold water continue to spatter down on him. Will jumped out of the shower and sprinted across the floor, leaving slops of water from his dripping clothes and soaked tennis shoes. He dashed out of the house, flinging water out of his eyes.

The afternoon was filled with hulking shadows thrown by the steep bluffs and the old pines and Will confused his bearings for a moment. In frantic impatience, he looked around and finally saw a pile of garbage in back of the cottage where Chet would have wandered during his explorations. Will ran to it, seeing the trash Uncle Henry had collected during his years of seclusion: rusted cans, decaying paper packages, broken jars and bottles.

He had no intention of calming himself. He felt adrenalin now and did not want to let it peter out before he could find something to help him, to help his family. What would Chet’s vivid imagination call a “trapdoor?” He found some old boards set into the ground and held together by three thin crossbars nailed to the top.

Will snatched at the construction and yanked it upward so forcefully that some of the boards splintered and pulled away from the rest of the door. Below, he found a pit that must have been a root cellar. He saw shapes inside and dropped down into the shadowy pit without hesitating. Beth was already dead; Chet and Nancy were dying—he didn’t dare risk being cautious.

Musty smells of earth and mold, and something else, hit Will’s nostrils. But he ignored them as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Chet had been telling the truth—two “mummies” were propped up in the small dirt cellar, withered and dry, as if their lives had been sucked out of them.

Will had no time to gape in horror—this was no match for the horror that was happening to his own family. From the photographs in the library, he recognized the shriveled chauffeur and the rich old woman. They both looked dried and empty, like baby Beth.

And suddenly, like a battering ram in his head, Will connected the family portrait he had taken, the photographs of these victims, even the strange old camera with the symbols etched around the lens. “What the hell!”

Then he noticed a sheaf of papers on the lap of the rich old woman, lying on the mold of her dress. He snatched at it and saw in the dim light that it was something of Uncle Henry’s. Will needed answers if he was going to help his family. Nancy! Chet! What’s wrong with the camera? He leaped back out of the root cellar and sat down on the ground, tilting the handwritten papers into the slanted afternoon light, feverishly skimming page after page.

Henry Franklin’s testament, final entry:

“I don’t care anymore what happens to me. I don’t have much left inside to fight the incubus with—so I had better make my stand now. The worst that can happen is that I’ll die. At least I hope that’s the worst.

“I’ve been planning this for a while now, getting up my nerve, writing everything down in this … confession? Testament? The incubus doesn’t seem to be able to make the connection between cause and effect, and it does not stop me from writing everything here. Maybe I should mail this stack of papers to the police? No, I certainly don’t want to risk having others come up here looking for proof. What if I lost my challenge? What if the incubus made me take a group photograph of the police? God, no.

“Why don’t I just leave this paper on the kitchen table, out in plain sight? If I could think of a valid reason, I would state it here. But I can’t think of anything, except that I can’t leave it in an obvious place. Maybe the incubus is stopping me. Perhaps the sight of the shriveled husks here in the root cellar will make a reader more likely to believe my crazy story.

“No, I don’t know where the incubus comes from. Did the half-paralyzed war photographer summon it, looking for a way to regain some of his vitality lost in the crippling stroke? I had no chance to ask questions before I shot him. What if some lost deer hunter out in the hills right now is aiming his rifle at me, urged on by the incubus looking for a new caretaker?

“I’ll have to stay away from the windows.

“I don’t know how to destroy the incubus. I’ve searched in old archives, dug through pop-culture paperbacks on black magic, but nothing tells me what I need. My only clue is the camera. It doesn’t live in the camera—but uses it as a tool, a point of contact to form a link with its victim, like a straw to siphon off life energy. A soul vampire?

“But if I can destroy the camera, break the link, then the incubus will no longer be able to feed. I’d be taking away its fangs. It can’t escape from its glass prison, and it can’t get any new victims. The thing will starve slowly on its shelf … and I hope I can control it in the meantime.”—Henry Franklin.”

Will flipped through the handwritten pages, skimming some parts again, then scattering the papers into the dim root cellar.

“So, what the hell is an incubus?” he shouted. His words refused to echo from the damp earth walls. “And where is it if it’s not in the camera?” He glared into the dim shadows of the pit as if the mummies inside could tell him. “On a ‘shelf’ somewhere?” A rock ledge on one of the bluffs? And what the hell was a “glass prison?”

A jar? A jar on a shelf? In the darkroom!

Will sprinted back to the cottage, cold and clammy in his soaked clothes. To the studio, the darkroom. His eyes blazed. Will’s adrenalin was going to run out soon—he knew it. He didn’t dare stop even for a second because then he might realize how tired he was.

Will staggered through the light baffle, back and forth, until he confronted the eerie contrasts of the red-lit darkroom. “All right, where the hell are you!”

He snatched jars from the upper shelf, dropping some in the water-filled sink, shaking some, opening some. He had almost cleared the shelf when he noticed one jar half-hidden in the shadows of the back corner, glowing out of his reach. Will showed his teeth in a half-smile, half-snarl of triumph. He stood on his toes, grabbed the jar with his fingertips, and drew it toward him. “Gotcha!”

The dark brown glass felt heavy, warm to the touch. He tried to peer through the side and saw dimly swirling sparkles, like a thousand incandescent lights spiraling in nothingness. The glow brightened as Will watched—it was feeding on Chet and Nancy, drawing strength. It had already killed Beth. And Uncle Henry.

“Go back to wherever it was you came!” With both hands Will hurled the jar at the cement floor of the darkroom. But as he released it, half-skimmed words from Henry Franklin’s testament flashed across his mind—“Now at least it is contained.”

The glass jar struck the floor and erupted in an explosion of fire and blinding light. The incubus let loose an unearthly roar just beyond the range of Will’s hearing as it burst free from its long imprisonment, seething and filling the darkroom with its presence.

Will found himself lying on the floor, staring up at the incubus as the dazzle faded from his eyes. The thing was a throbbing cloud of fire and smoke, writhing tentacles of gas strewn with random arcs of blue lightning. The air felt charged with static electricity, like a thunderstorm ready to burst. One tendril of flaming smoke touched the darkroom shelf with a violent discharge of lightning that blasted the wood from the wall. Then the incubus began moving forward, toward Will.

On his knees, he scrambled to the light baffle, to escape. His movement triggered something in the incubus and it rushed forward. Will stumbled through the black partitions of the light baffle trying to move faster through the maze. He burst into the bare studio, but he didn’t know where to go.

Behind him came an explosion, and he turned to see shards of black-painted wood blasting outward from the darkroom as the incubus cut a straight path through the light baffle. Some of the wood caught fire. The incubus paused for a moment. It hovered and pulsed in the air as if glaring at Will. It came at him again.

Will threw papers and boxes at it, but they incinerated on contact with the thing. He stumbled backwards over the beam that had fallen on Uncle Henry … trapping the old man, paralyzing him. The incubus had somehow caused that to happen, too.

Then he saw the camera pointing like a specter at the wreckage the incubus had caused. If he destroyed the camera, as Uncle Henry had attempted, the thing would be unable to feed—in fact, it would break the thing’s contact with Chet and Nancy, stop it from sucking away any more of their lives. The incubus would eventually starve—but Will didn’t have quite that much time.

On an inspiration, Will leaped for the camera. The thing rushed at him roaring like all the tornadoes in Kansas. He snatched up the one remaining glass plate in the leather case and ripped off the black paper casing as he rammed the plate into the camera. The incubus hesitated a moment, giving Will time to focus, then it charged forward again.

“Say cheese!” Will thought of the paradox, the contradiction, the infinite loop, the incubus forced to feed on itself. He opened the shutter on the old camera with the strange symbols etched around the lens.

The incubus gave an unearthly shriek as it was sucked into the camera. Will leaped away from the wooden tripod. The incubus died into echoes and glimmers of light as it vanished inside the lens. Trapped. Paralyzed.

Before he could let the fear overcome him, Will reached under the dark cloth and yanked the glass plate from the back. The glass was burning hot in his hands, but he held onto it, gritting his teeth against the pain. His legs felt like lead as he ran back into the ruined darkroom. He dropped the plate into the tank of developer and gasped, stumbling backward and coughing as the developing fluid began to boil and steam.

An image appeared on the plate, but Will couldn’t bear to look at it: a horrible smoking, writhing thing. He was afraid it would be moving, even when trapped on the glass emulsion. The image darkened, grew more intense like a frozen roar, and then Will looked again, watching the blackness creep in from the edges. The developer continued its work, finally turning the glass plate completely dark. The acrid smell of photo-chemicals burned his eyes and nostrils. He waited an extra minute, then plunged his fingers into the developing tray, pulling the dripping plate out. The glass was still hot and weirdly black all the way through, like obsidian.

Careful not to drop it, he stepped through the wrecked light baffle and into the light of the studio. Moving like an automaton now, Will removed the lens from the camera and threw it with all his might, watching the glass shatter against the cinderblock walls of the studio. He didn’t know if the incubus was dead, or inert, or just trapped in the black plate. But it could no longer feed. He tipped over the camera’s tripod, then stomped on the wooden box, crushing it to splinters.

Later, he was going to take a long walk, deep into the forest out back; Uncle Henry must have a shovel somewhere, and he would bury the glass plate far down under the sandy Black Hills soil.

Will’s legs refused to support him any longer, and he collapsed in an awkward position on the cement. His skin turned white, tears and terror came to his eyes, and he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking.

Sometime later he forced himself to his feet and fearfully went to see Chet and Nancy. The shower still pounded down. The boy was sound asleep in a puddle of water on the bathroom floor—but it seemed to be a natural sleep of exhaustion and nothing more. The incubus had been tied to itself, forced into a psychic moebius strip—Will hadn’t dared to hope, but apparently the thing’s other ties, to Chet, Nancy, had been broken. His wife and son would be weak … but they would recover.

Will picked Chet up and carried him to the bedroom, laying him neatly beside Nancy. He shook her, and she came slowly awake, looking alarmed but too tired to show it much. “Will? What happened?”

His throat refused to respond to the words he had to say. It was too soon. He couldn’t tell her about the incubus, about Beth … it was too soon.

“Just rest now, Nancy.” She closed her eyes and seemed perfectly willing to comply. Will sighed and stood looking at her for a long time before he finally sat down in a chair and fell asleep.

Early in my career, one of the best small press magazines in the horror/dark fantasy field was The Horror Show, edited by David B. Silva. I loved that magazine and published a lot of my favorite creepy stories there. Here is another one of them.

Sometimes, to do a horror story right, you don’t need a lot of words.

Baggage Check

The suitcase felt like a bag of cement mix as he lugged it up to the baggage counter. It made an unpleasant soft thump as he slid it across the scratched metal threshold.

“Just one bag to Washington, Mr. Danvers?” the airline attendant asked after a cursory inspection of his ticket.

Danvers nodded, directing his gaze at the floor. He didn’t dare risk an idiotic smile—he just wanted to keep most of the tension from his face. God, he hoped the baggage compartment would be cool enough to preserve his wife’s body during the long flight to Washington, DC.

The attendant punched buttons on her antiquated computer terminal, searching for a place to seat him. “Smoking or nonsmoking? Can I get you a window seat or an aisle today?”

He mumbled back at her, trying to make sure he said the right words. “Uh, non-smoking, please. As close to the baggage compartment as you can get.”

She raised her eyebrows, and he inwardly winced at his stupid answer. Cool it, Danvers! he thought, You’re going to blow this whole thing. He motioned nonchalantly at her and made a strained laugh. “Never mind. Just a joke. Wherever you find a spot will be fine.”

“You must not fly much, Mr. Danvers,” she said with an “understanding” tone in her voice.

“I guess not.” He swallowed, sensing his heart thumping. Danvers stared at the TV monitor that listed all the arriving and departing flights. Less than an hour and he would be out of here, escaped, free as a bird … People bustled around. The scratchy unintelligible voice of the intercom seemed to be calling his name, accusing, every five minutes. It would be good to get out of San Francisco.

“Everything’ll be just fine, Mr. Danvers,” the attendant said. “Have a nice flight and come see us again.” She stapled his baggage claim check to the flap of the ticket envelope, handing it back to him. The attendant grunted as she hauled his suitcase onto the conveyor belt. “Wow, what’ve you got in there? An elephant?”

He swallowed in a dry throat. Lillian? An elephant? “I guess I like to pack everything but the kitchen sink.”

Danvers double-checked his gate number again, and as he turned to go, he suddenly noticed the conversation from another traveler at the counter, a man in the Frequent Flyer line.

“We must have 24 hours prior notice, sir,” the worn-looking attendant was explaining to him. She looked like a burned-out stewardess. “They have to make arrangements for pressurizing the baggage compartment ahead of time. We can’t just put your dog in there.”

The other man was thin and in his late forties, with a tweed jacket and pince-nez glasses, making him look like a professor. Color rose in his cheeks as he tried to keep his temper in check. A slate-gray poodle paced restlessly in a small cage by the baggage counter, growling and barking every time the man raised his voice.

The man’s words seemed cultured but with an edge of annoyance, as if he were explaining things to a small child. “I am sorry, madam, but I telephoned two days ago. I spoke with a woman named Jackie at your toll-free number.”

“The number is based in Denver, sir. Sometimes these mix-ups happen.”

“Well, then you’re in a good position to fix it this time. Rimbeaux and I must get to Washington DC. He has to come with me now, because no one else can take care of him. I think you’d better call someone in higher authority. Call the captain, perhaps. I’m sure he’ll understand.” He gestured to the telephone, and then impatiently reached over the counter to pick it up, handing it to her. Exasperated, she dialed three numbers.

“We’re going to Our Nation’s Capitol, Rimbeaux,” the professor said to his dog, poking his fingers through the cage. The dog began to lick them.

Danvers cursed under his breath, lightheaded with frustration. No! Bad luck—not now … everything was going so well! If they pressurized the baggage compartment for that damned dog, then they would have to heat the area, too. A dog would freeze so high up, wouldn’t it? He thought of Lillian for a moment, crammed into the suitcase, unmoving—uncooperative, as she had always been. The flight would take only five hours—would that be enough? Would it be too much? Why the hell did the professor have to be on his flight? Why did he have to own a dog? Why did something have to go wrong now!

Danvers felt his heart sink as the other man finally nodded in satisfaction; the attendant reluctantly hauled the barking poodle behind the counter. She called a baggage handler on the telephone as the professor waved to his dog. “Bye, bye, Rimbeaux!”

As if fleeing, Danvers scuttled away from the ticket counter. He didn’t want to see, he didn’t want to know—he wished all of this would just be over. Five more hours … a little longer, and then he’d be in Washington for a fresh start, a new chance, a slate wiped clean, bright and shining. That’s real optimism, isn’t it?

He forced the professor and the obnoxious poodle out of his mind. Danvers shuffled uneasily past the generic gift shops, all of them selling inane last-minute “San Francisco” souvenirs. He bought two rolls of antacid tablets and chewed the tablets one after the other, trying to ease his restless stomach.

He looked at his watch. Waiting, killing time. Yes, it had been “killing time” a day ago—that’s what had gotten him into this mess. He walked into a coffee shop, stared at the prices on the menu, and left again. Although nobody seemed to be noticing him, he tried to look nondescript, like a businessman or a slightly overweight tourist.

Danvers had let himself get out of shape lately. He and Lillian had often played tennis late at night, having the court to themselves under the harsh sodium lights. But she always beat him—it was another one of her annoying habits, showing off her superiority. She never thought about his feelings, about how much he might like to feel like a winner just once.

Danvers sat motionless at his gate, waiting for the plane to arrive. He twiddled his thumbs, and wrinkled his nose at a fat man smoking a brown-wrapped cigarette in the non-smoking area. He got up to buy a cup of coffee at the bar but stopped himself—he was too keyed up already, no need for more caffeine. He sat down in a different chair, and fidgeted …

Finally, after the boarding call for his flight, Danvers shuffled down the walkway, finding his seat by the window. He sat back, closing his eyes and breathing through his teeth. Almost gone, almost over.

He rubbed his chin and grimaced at the stubble he found there. Damn! He had forgotten to shave—that was stupid, call attention to yourself, let them all see that something’s bothering you. Danvers let out another long sigh and swallowed.

He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself not to look as two baggage carts wheeled up, driven by one man and one woman—both, apparently, failed race car drivers. Danvers didn’t want to watch the rough handling, didn’t want to imagine what would happen if his suitcase tumbled off the baggage compartment, if it struck the pavement and split, spilling out Lillian’s cold body. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Or, even worse, what if they had mislabeled his baggage, sending it off to the wrong city, where it would be stored in some unclaimed baggage area … until Lillian began to—

After takeoff, the Bay Area cities dropped away below him at last, and Danvers heaved a huge sigh of relief. The sun and the plane fled in opposite directions across the sky, and twilight fell within an hour. People flicked on their reading lights, but Danvers sat in the dimness, sulking in the chill of his own sweat. He had already thumbed through the in-flight magazines half a dozen times anyway.

In the middle of the flight he heard a strange thump beneath him, somewhere under the floor. The baggage compartment? The plane had just passed through some mild turbulence … in his mind he pictured his own suitcase, piled on top of others, sliding, suddenly dislodged, to come tumbling down. Would the suitcase hold? What if the locks and the zipper broke? Maybe it would fall and squash the professor’s gray poodle—ah well, he could hope.

Danvers began to chew his nails.

When the plane finally landed, hours later, Danvers could see the bright lights of the Dulles terminal stabbing out into the darkness, shining on the light snow sifting down from the sky. A rush of gooseflesh crawled up his back. He had arrived safely, so far. Only a few more minutes, then he would get the bag containing Lillian’s body. Washington, DC.—far away from all the memories, all the crimes on the west coast.

He tried to push his way down the aisle out of the plane, but the other passengers blocked the way, occupying themselves with tugging too-big suitcases stuffed into overhead compartments, guitar cases, even skis and ski poles. Feeling giddy with impatience, Danvers fidgeted and listened to his heart pound.

At last, he rushed out into the terminal, bustling out of the carpeted security area and onto the worn linoleum tile. Danvers walked with his head craned high, turning where the signs directed him toward the baggage claim area.

He forced himself to slow down, to take a deep breath. He stopped in the men’s room and splashed water on his face. In the mirror, his expression looked appallingly haggard, and his skin had a grayish tinge. He swallowed, looked at his watch, and rushed out of the bathroom, still dripping water down his cheeks. God, this waiting was punishment enough for any crime!

Down in the lower levels, he found the baggage claim, and quickly identified the proper carousel just as the conveyor groaned and began to turn. Other passengers crowded around, ready to grab for their luggage, but the conveyor turned for many minutes until suitcases began to emerge pell-mell from some mysterious pit far below. As he stood, cold with anxiety, Danvers saw the professor with his pince-nez glasses, clutching a briefcase and waiting by the outside door for the baggage attendant to present his gray poodle.

Other passengers snatched up their luggage, but the crowd did not seem to diminish. Danvers waited, tense, ready to push them aside. Then, almost with a groan of reluctance, the conveyor belt spewed the large suitcase up and out until it rolled over like a dead thing and began its shuttling journey around the carousel.

For almost an entire second, Danvers couldn’t move. Painfully apparent in one corner near the zipper oozed a bright patch of thickening blood, staining the fabric of the suitcase, and even leaving a faint smear on the scuffed metal of the carousel. His insides turned to ice. Blood! Surely everyone could see that! Didn’t they notice?

Apparently not. Most of the passengers gave the large suitcase only a cursory dismissal and then hung waiting for their own luggage. Danvers bit his lip and pushed his way through, chasing the suitcase until he finally grabbed the handle and hauled the bag off onto the floor. He paused, panting for a breath, then heaved again, dragging it after him as he tried to escape. Almost done, almost over. Just get out of the airport, find a nice hotel, reassess everything, get a good day’s rest.

He saw the door up ahead, sliding automatically open as people passed the electric eye. Puffing, he pulled the suitcase along.

A keening wail made Danvers stop in his tracks: a man’s voice, but high-pitched and twisted into a womanish scream of shock and despair. For an instant, all noise stopped in the baggage claim area. Danvers turned to see the professor standing stricken, his eyes and mouth wide open. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but his expression cried out with shocked disbelief. He seemed ready to faint.

A confused and sick-looking attendant stood holding up something Danvers recognized as the cage that had contained the gray poodle. But the cage had been wrenched open forcefully, destroyed. Blood spattered the floor, and clumps of fur and scraps of torn meat clung to the jagged hinges of the cage.

The baggage attendant said in an inane voice, “I just don’t know what could have happened, sir …”

Danvers felt as if all his internal organs had knotted themselves together. With a great exertion, he yanked at the suitcase and tugged it after him. He had to hurry, had to get away, now more than ever. His knees felt ready to collapse. He was exhausted, and he kept breathing, deeper and deeper. He had to get her out of here.

“Why couldn’t you have waited!” he cursed at the bag, low enough so no one would hear him. He made as if to kick the suitcase in anger, but he stopped himself, partly out of fear. “Why can’t you ever have any consideration? Do you know how much trouble you’re putting me through?”

Danvers gasped, exasperated. The automatic doors slid open as he approached them. “It’s a big city. There’s plenty of other people here—fresh ones. Just learn to control yourself!”

As the commotion grew behind him at the baggage claim area, Danvers pulled his suitcase through the doors and out into the night.

Back to Tucker’s Grove. This is one of my favorite tales set in the town, a Halloween story. It evokes so much of what I remember about empty barns, blighted fields, and weird old farmers living alone with mysterious pasts (I focused on another such character in my story “Heroes Never Die” in my collection Selected Stories: Fantasy).

This is also one of the first Tucker’s Grove stories I wrote, which set the tone for the series.

Hunter’s Moon

Pinfeathers spurted into the air, and the sparrow’s song fell silent. The wings continued to twitch after the bird struck the ground.

Clinton Tucker cracked open the shotgun and reloaded it with birdshot. He squinted in the afternoon sunlight but couldn’t find any more sparrows. Birds didn’t stay much by his farm any more.

Tucker stepped off the dusty porch—no one bothered to sweep up now that Angela had left him. He carried the shotgun around back to where a few ancient trees stood around the white farmhouse. The leaves would turn color soon in the coming autumn: red and yellow and brown. As a boy, Tucker remembered jumping into mounds of colored leaves in the farmyard.

He frowned at himself, then locked away the boyhood memories where he was safe from them.

He looked down the long hill, tracing the path of the dirt road to the buildings and whitewashed fences of Tucker’s Grove. Though Clinton Tucker’s great-grandfather had founded the tiny town back in 1820, sixty years before, the townspeople scorned Clinton, and he scorned them right back. He didn’t have much good land and not much help to farm it, though harvest time was near. The big barn stood behind the house, snoring softly in the wind through its cracked and peeling boards, empty except for some years-old straw in the loft.

Tucker spent many nights outside by himself, walking under the stars like some nocturnal predator. He had been lonely once, but now even that feeling was dead. He could remember a time when he might have asked for help from the townspeople and given it freely in return. But not anymore. He had no desire for false friendship, to be hurt again. Better to hold tight to his bitterness after what Angela had done to him.

He had tried to love her, he had let down his wall for her—but she only used that to expose his vulnerable spots. And now she had deserted him. His face flushed, and his teeth ground together. Angela. Bitch!

He fired his shotgun into the air and listened to the echoes bounce around Tucker’s Grove. What had she been thinking of? How could she dare leave him?

Night. Angela pounds on the door to the parsonage, panicked. Where is Mrs. Litch? Why is it taking her so long to answer the door? Angela’s legs tremble, unaccustomed to running.

—Why, Angela! Malcolm, it’s Angela Tucker!

—Help me! He’s so cruel, Mrs. Litch! He has fits! He hits me.

—Come in, Angela. Come in. We’ll get you a glass of warm milk. You’re in a terrible state!

She enters. The door closes. Safety. Safety? Clinton never cared for the Methodist minister personally, nor the church in general. Safety?

—Tonight, he slapped me, and I ran! He’ll know where I am! You have to hide me. You don’t know how he is! He thinks he’s seeing wolves again.

—There, there, Angela … Malcolm, are you getting this poor girl some milk?

The minister’s wife pats her on the back. Comfort.

—You know what they say about your husband, don’t you, dear? That he had a high fever when he was a boy? Made him wrong in the head. Uncontrollable.

The minister hands her a glass of hot milk.

—Wolves? he asks, then shakes his head.

She sips the milk, burns her tongue, almost drops the glass. She is trembling. Mrs. Litch takes the milk away.

—You’ve had a bad fright, Angela. You’ll stay with us here tonight. No question about it. I’ll get some blankets out right now. Don’t you worry. Everything will be all right.

A pounding at the door. Loud shouts.

—Angela! I know you’re in there! Get away from those people and come back home where you belong! Now!

Terror. She clutches her hands together, kneading them. Eyes wide. Her voice a high-pitched whisper.

—Hide me! Please!

Mrs. Litch rushes her to a small bedroom and closes the door. The pounding continues.

—ANGELA!

The door bursts open. Clinton Tucker storms in, glares at the minister and his wife. Death in his eyes.

—I’ve come for my wife.

Mrs. Litch drops the milk. Tucker looks around the room quickly. Nothing. Sees the closed door, starts toward it, pounds on it.

—Angela! You’d best come out! NOW! Before I get angry!

No answer. Pounds again. Tries to open it. Locked, from the inside. Fury. Throws himself against the door. It cracks, splinters. He breaks in.

The room is empty. The window is open. Curtains float mockingly in the breeze. The night is dark, and he can’t see her. He clenches and unclenches his hands for several moments until he speaks again.

—I hope to hell the wolves got her.

Some men have good cause to bury their boyhood memories.

Young Clinton Tucker rode with his parents in the wagon, eyes drowsy after a hectic day—traveling for hours to reach neighboring Bartonville, then errand after errand, and now making ready for the long trip back. Indian summer had come and gone, leaving the mornings covered with frost and filled with white breath. Dusk came on quick and cold, making the stars shine out like ice chips.

The wooden wheels of their wagon rattled on Bartonville’s one cobblestoned street, then grew muffled as the horse trotted onto the dirt road toward the forest. The end of October lit the trees in flaming colors, but darkness made the forest seem thicker, like the wide-open mouth of a monster. The air hung thin and chilly upon them, ready to trace patterns of frost on the world. Clinton could see his white breath and pretended he was smoking a cigar, as Mr. Harrison the blacksmith did.

His parents sat in a comfortable silence next to each other on the driver’s board. Clinton took the seat blanket and crawled back into the wagon bed. He huddled among the packages in the corner, trying to sleep. Overhead, the ominous branches passed by in the darkening forest. The rocking wagon along with the increasing warmth of his blanket lulled him to sleep. He smelled the musty blanket, the wood and dust of the wagon, the cool dampness of the forest. Clinton lost his sense of time.

Then he heard his father shout something. The horse made a loud, frightened noise. Clinton looked up to see glinting eyes in the forest, moving shapes. “Go on! Get!” his father yelled into the trees, waving his hand. Then he cracked the whip to keep the horse moving. “Can’t figure why they don’t run from us.”

Clinton heard a howling, and his wide eyes focused on the lurking forms, sleek gray fur, pointed muzzles. He had never seen a wolf before, but he knew from the stories his mother told him. Normal wolves shouldn’t be following so close to the wagon.

“Are they sick?” his mother said, frightened. “Is it the rabies?”

The horse rolled his eyes and snorted in terror, trying to strain out of his harness. “Jeesus!” Clinton’s father said, wrestling with the reins. The horse charged ahead into the gloom, away from the smell of wolves in the air.

One of the wagon’s wheels smashed into a boulder, breaking the spokes. Two wolves loped beside the wagon, barely visible in the trees and the dimness. The wagon bounced violently up and down on the broken wheel. Clinton jammed his legs against the corner, trying to keep his seat. Packages jostled around him. His mother made no sound but scrambled to keep her hold on the driver’s board. Clinton’s father stood up, balanced precariously, and tried to throw all his weight into controlling the horse.

One wolf, its fur patchy with tangles of cockleburs and mud, stepped out of the trees onto the road directly ahead of them.

The horse reared. The wagon crashed into a tree at the side of the path, rode partway up the trunk on its broken wheel, then hung poised for an instant before toppling back, upside-down.

Clinton’s mother tumbled on top of his father—and the hard and heavy edge of the wagon crunched down on top of both of them.

Dragged by the weight of the wagon and held in place by the rigid shafts on either side, the horse toppled sideways. The traces snapped, the shafts splintered and broke through into the horse’s ribcage. Bright blood splashed into the murky forest.

Clinton found himself buried in packages, flour, and supplies, and trapped underneath the shelter of the overturned wagon.

In sudden and total silence.

He waited and shivered, afraid to whimper, afraid to move or to make a sound in the stifling darkness.

Finally, groping with his outstretched hands, he tried to find his parents. His mother’s skirt and torso were with him under the wagon, but her neck and one arm remained outside. He felt her chest, but the rhythm of breathing had ceased.

He found his father’s boot, then something wet. He could see nothing. Dirt and tears clung to his face.

Clinton waited, still silent and still shivering, wrapped in the blanket, but it gave him scant comfort. His ears burned as he listened to the quiet noise of the leaves, the settling of dust, unable to do more than breathe and blink his eyes. He wondered if the wolves were still out there. The air under the wagon bed was thick. He smelled the perfume of the packages, the oiled wood of the wagon, leather, blood. He thought he smelled wolves, but he wasn’t sure.

A quiet growling sound outside made him stiffen in terror. For just a moment, his mother’s body jerked rhythmically as if she were alive and struggling, then she became motionless again.

Clinton crouched down, shuddering but not daring to whimper out loud. Tears ran down his cheeks. His heartbeat thudded in his ears.

He heard something sniffing around the wagon, pacing just on the other side of the wooden walls. The wolves could smell him. Hear his breathing. Feel his trembling. They knew he was there, alone, helpless, trapped.

Seconds, minutes, hours.

He couldn’t move. He sat on a sharp rock, trying to ignore the cramping in his arms and legs, too terrified to shift to a more comfortable position. He heard nothing …

The darkness of his shelter leached away into a soft glow. Faint light seeped through cracks and knotholes in the wood. The Hunter’s Moon, first full moon after the harvest, rose like a big eye into the night, lifting itself over the edge of the forest.

Clinton held his breath. He hadn’t heard the wolves for hours. A knothole near his head let in just enough air to breathe. He wanted to see, but he couldn’t move his head. Something in him refused, until his neck muscles felt like snapping. Finally, with painful slowness, he craned his neck to look out the tiny hole, searching for the night sky through the crowded trees. He wanted to look at the moon, to see light again. Holding his breath, he peered out.

Straight into the eye of a wolf.

Clinton sat frozen, transfixed, unable to move. They stared at each other. Then the wolf howled, alone in the night. Clinton felt the wolf’s cry steal his soul—

It was dawn. He didn’t know how the time had passed: his mind had refused to accept the night any longer. He heard the sound of horse hooves, then an outcry. A single shot. Clinton could hear the new horse snorting in fear at the smell of blood and wolves. A deep voice exclaimed in horror and disgust. Footsteps traced a path around the overturned wagon, just as the wolves had done all night long. Clinton could not whimper, could not cry for help. He couldn’t.

He listened for a long time as the rescuer moved about; then finally the wagon lifted. Sunlight flooded into the shadows. He saw the silhouette of a large bearded man staring in.

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

The man propped the wagon on its side, but still Clinton refused to move from his shelter. Outside, he saw one dead wolf, shot through the heart, whose glassy eye seemed still to stare at him …

He remembered nothing else until days later, when his older brother Walter began taking care of him on the farm. But Walter Tucker went off to fight in the Civil War, leaving Clinton barely old enough to tend the farm by himself. And Walter never came back.

Now, years later, both Clinton Tucker and the Tucker farm were falling into decrepitude. He walked at night, hypnotized by the past and how it had cheated him, and imagined ways that he could get back at his own life.

Elizabeth Billings knew she would never make it home in time. Nightfall had come before she realized it. At fourteen years old, she claimed to be her own girl, but not too old—according to her father—to be taken across his knee and have her buttocks livened.

Her parents had left Tucker’s Grove in the morning, traveling to Bartonville to visit her Uncle Henry who had been jailed for assaulting a man. They refused to let her come along, even though Uncle Henry had always been her favorite uncle—it would be a bad experience for her, they said. Be good. Take care of yourself. We’ll be back around nightfall.

There was a boy, Tim Miller, whose father’s farm lay half an hour’s walk outside of town. Tim had worked hard to finish his evening chores early, had met her behind the barn. He and Elizabeth watched the sun slip under the horizon as they enjoyed a twilight stroll down the tree-bordered farm lane. The night was warm for late September. The crops stood ready for harvesting, or so said the Harvest Moon rising above the eastern horizon. They hadn’t had the first frost of autumn yet, and the plants still looked healthy and green.

Elizabeth ran back home in darkness lit only by the full moon darting among patches of thin clouds. Her pale green dress wrapped around her legs as she ran, and weeds lashed her bare calves. She was going to get a whipping tonight.

Dew spattered Elizabeth’s feet as she took a desperate shortcut across Clinton Tucker’s back fields, through his large and weedy garden. She saw shadowy plants, blighted potatoes, beans, a huge mound of pumpkin vines. Something warned her to stop running, to move more quietly. She became uneasy, wondering if she might have been better off just to accept her punishment … She had heard stories about crazy and mean Clinton Tucker.

“D’you know you’re trespassing?”

She whirled. He stood there, outlined by the light of the Harvest Moon clambering higher into the sky. Tucker stood tall and gaunt, dressed in old clothes and clasping a rusty, wicked-looking pitchfork whose handle had been polished from years of palm-sweat.

He stepped toward her. She tried to run, but he anticipated it and reached forward to grab the shoulder of her dress, knotting his clawlike fingers into the material.

“This is private property, young lady—and I don’t take kindly to people who don’t respect that.”

In her mind, all the stories she had ever heard about Clinton Tucker became real: the man who lived in the haunted house of Tucker’s Grove, alone up on the hill, a violent man, a monster. Children dared each other to run up at night and touch the side of his house …

Elizabeth Billings struggled to break free of the man’s grip, but his fingers were entangled in the green fabric of her dress. As she jerked back, the cloth tore in a long gash, exposing one of her small breasts.

The Harvest Moon emerged from the wispy cloud cover, shining down on the garden with its wan light, sharpening the features on Tucker’s face, glinting in his eyes.

Elizabeth fumbled with the torn cloth, trying to pull her dress back up to cover herself. But Tucker stopped her, grabbing the material and ripping it farther. He looked at the green print, seemed to recognize it, and smiled.

She stared down at his hand, confused and very afraid. He slapped her across the face with enough force to knock her into the billowy mountain of the pumpkin patch. Prickly leaves folded over her, seeming to swallow her up in their jaws. She thrashed, trying to stand up again. Tucker leaned over her, but he seemed to be seeing something else, as if she had walked into a nighttime reverie, a prop for him to act out his memories under the stars.

“You are my wife, Angela, and I will do with you as I please!”

The moonlight penetrated the splayed pumpkin leaves, as if eager to watch. Tucker undid his trousers, slid to his knees in front of her.

“You’re lucky you came back, else I might have gotten angry at you.” His breathing came rapid and shallow. “You know how I get when I feel angry.”

She whimpered, tried to squirm away from him. Scratchy pumpkin vines clawed at her bare skin, and a round orange pumpkin pressed hard against her back. Tucker yanked her dress completely off.

“You’re not being very cooperative—”

She felt the scream exploding out of her throat, but he slapped her again and settled on top of her, prying her legs apart. Then he grabbed her shoulders and brutally thrust into her, digging his dirty fingernails into her skin. She couldn’t make a sound. He pushed again and again; his eyelids didn’t close tightly enough to hide the line of staring white as his eyes rolled upward. He went rigid, uttering a long, low sigh. Then he opened his eyes to look at her.

And saw a fourteen-year-old girl.

Tucker withdrew quickly, backing away, stumbling and looking down in horror. She couldn’t control her ragged sobs. A thin line of blood clung to the insides of her thighs, running slowly onto the ground. But he saw her for only an instant.

The light of the Harvest Moon struck the blood on the earth, and Tucker became a boy again, trapped under the wooden wagon bed as the wolves prowled about. The full Hunter’s Moon shone down on his mother’s blood. He saw her move again—her shoulder jerked and jerked, striking the wooden wall as the wolves tugged. Clinton’s terrified heartbeats pounded in his chest. He longed for something to protect himself with, felt something hard in his hands—he wanted to strike at the wolves, kill them! But terror locked his muscles. Something called him, a compulsion, forcing him to turn, to bring his eye over to the knothole, to look directly into the demon’s eye of a wolf staring back.

He screamed.

She screamed.

And the wolf’s eye became the bulging eye of Elizabeth Billings. The handle of the pitchfork still quivered in his hand. By the light of the moon he saw the pitchfork thrust through her chest, one tine through her heart and two others through her lungs. Droplets of red stained the large green leaves, the orange pumpkins.

Panic tore at him with sharp teeth. What should he do now? Confess? Tell someone? Maybe they would forgive him. Forgive him? They would crucify him! Destroy his farm! Burn his house! His farm, Tucker’s farm—all he had left. He couldn’t lose it! He wouldn’t let them take it. No—he had to hide her. Somewhere. Only temporarily. Until he could think of something else.

Think!

His barn! He had old, dry straw ten feet deep up in his loft!

He’d HAD to kill her!

He could bury her there, in the straw.

She would have told everyone!

She would keep in the dry straw. No one would ever find her.

Ruined him!

Forever.

Forever!

Someone rapped on his door, timid and yet insistent. Tucker scowled and moved through the dim kitchen. He could see through the window, recognized the pinched face of the Methodist minister, Malcolm Litch. Tucker sucked on his teeth to swallow away the bad taste in his mouth.

He pushed on the door. It flung outward, almost hitting the minister not unintentionally.

“Ah, good day, Mr. Tucker!” Litch beamed. The voice held a false tone from years of practice talking to people who didn’t particularly like him.

Tucker frowned at the hawk-faced man and said nothing.

“Um, it’s almost Hallowe’en, you know, Mr. Tucker …”

A long pause. “So?”

“And, uh, it is traditional—the Hallowe’en barn dance. Of Tucker’s Grove?”

“You can’t use my barn this year, Mr. Litch.”

The minister looked flustered. “But your wife always—”

“I have no wife, Mr. Litch. She ran off … or don’t you remember?”

The minister seemed to swallow his lips as he fidgeted. Then Litch steeled himself, wrenching the conversation back to his business. “Please, Mr. Tucker—yours is the only barn around that isn’t being used.”

Tucker narrowed his eyes, guarded. “And what makes you so sure my barn is empty, Mr. Litch? Have you been out there, snooping around?”

“Why, no!”

Tucker continued to glare at him, relentless. Litch shuffled his feet. “The dance does bring in some money, Mr. Tucker … if that makes any difference to you. The town council has decided to let you keep half of it this year, for allowing us to use your barn, as usual.”

Tucker snorted. The minister filled his eyes with a plea that somehow lacked sincerity.

Tucker suddenly wanted to get rid of this man, this parasite. Make him leave. “All right, Mr. Litch, but you damn well better clean up your mess! And don’t let me see you around any more than I have to.”

Litch beamed. “And the pumpkins?”

“What pumpkins?”

“It is also traditional for the Tuckers to donate the pumpkins for the jack-o’-lanterns. The children, you know. I’m sure your wife … uh, I’m sure you have some planted in your garden.”

“You can have the damned pumpkins! Send someone around with a wagon tomorrow and we’ll load them up.” Tucker drew in a deep breath of disgust. He stood in the door frame, but the minister seemed reluctant to leave.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Litch?”

The minister pursed his lips, as if trying to put himself at ease. “A shame about Elizabeth Billings, isn’t it?”

Tucker leaned back into the shadows. “A girl from town, is she? What happened to her?”

Litch shrugged. “Nobody knows. She just vanished. Her parents came back from Bartonville one night two weeks ago, and she was gone! Young Timothy Miller is almost frantic—he says he spent time with her, secretly, at sunset. Then she left for home … and nobody ever saw her again!”

Tucker frowned in distant thought. “Maybe the wolves got her.”

“Wolves? But there haven’t been wolves in these parts since—” Litch suddenly looked alarmed, uncomfortable.

“Good day, Mr. Litch.” Tucker slammed the door and stepped deeper into the house, watching through the curtain as the minister stood confused for a moment, and then left.

That night the first frost of autumn struck Tucker’s Grove. It crept up from the ground, snaring the fragile roots of plants. It emerged from the air, etching its signature on windowpanes. A portent. The year was nearing its end. Things would die soon.

Hauled by one old horse, the wagon creaked as it passed down the dirt path to Tucker’s garden in the bright, cold morning. Pastor Litch rode with the owner of the wagon, a burly farmer named Wilson. Clinton Tucker sat in silence, gripping the wooden edge of the wagon bed. He didn’t like wagons much.

The edges of the plant leaves curled together from the shock of the frost. Tomato stems drooped, potato plants looked stunned and passing into death.

Wilson drove the horse up next to the pumpkin patch. The mound of giant leaves had fallen in upon itself, a tangle of crushed, watery vines. Wilson pulled the horse to a halt and left the beast to stand placidly, looking tired, or maybe just old. The three men climbed down from the wagon and went to pick the pumpkins.

“Hey! Look here!” Wilson snapped the stem of the first pumpkin and held it up.

Splotches of bright red covered the shiny orange skin, like fresh, wet bloodstains trickling downward.

Tucker’s mouth gaped. It couldn’t be. He had checked, cleaned, straightened everything. It had been three weeks.

Wilson brushed through the large leaves, and Litch searched with him. “Funny! Every one of ’em is stained like that! Never seen such a thing!” Wilson ran a thumbnail into the reddened skin of the pumpkin. “It goes deep, too—ain’t just a stain.”

Litch broke a pumpkin off the vine and handed it to Tucker, who stood motionless beside the wagon. “No matter. The children are going to carve them up anyway—they won’t care if the pumpkins got blight.”

Tucker took the pumpkin and set it in the wagon. He felt numb. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. He tried to rub the red off with his own hands; but the stain held its own, mocking him. All the pumpkins. The other two men began to pick, and Tucker loaded the wagon bed.

“I wonder what could have done that, though,” Litch said.

Wilson grunted as he twisted a thick stem. “First frost of autumn sometimes does funny things to plants.”

Tucker grasped at the explanation. “Yeah,” he managed to say, “that must be it.”

Tucker sat on the porch before dusk, cradling his shotgun on his lap as the sun died on the horizon. Birds sometimes came out to sing at sunset.

He watched the moon rise. Within another few days the obese Hunter’s Moon would make its annual appearance.

She was still in the loft, smothered in the dry straw with the bugs and the field mice and the spiders. It had been nearly a month.

Something made him stare at the rickety, gap-toothed barn—a calling from inside, wordless, lost, some kind of perverted siren song drawing his attention. Was it her voice? He had never heard her voice, he suddenly realized, not while she was alive … except for that final, sharp scream.

Tucker’s breathing came in quicker, shallower gasps. She had made the pumpkins look bloodstained. Now she was calling to him.

With all the people going in and out of his barn, setting up for the Hallowe’en dance, he needed to move her soon, soon. But he couldn’t bring himself to. He wouldn’t go to her while she whispered to him in the twilight wind. He couldn’t!

Tucker raised the shotgun and fired a round of birdshot at the side of the barn.

The voice stopped.

The Hunter’s Moon rode high among the stars, lord of the night sky. A cold wind whistled a dirge among the trees. The night before Hallowe’en.

Tucker had to move her. Now.

The door slammed behind him.

He was afraid.

He took the shotgun with him and filled his pocket with shells. Not birdshot this time. He walked toward the barn, carrying his lantern.

He’d have to bury her before the Hallowe’en dance—out in the fields somewhere. Everything had been harvested. No one would notice a little more overturned earth.

As he entered the maw of the barn, his lantern blew out, plunging everything into momentary darkness. With matches in fumbling fingers he relit the flame, but this time the jerking light only sharpened the shadows.

He cursed in a trembling voice as he stood in front of the open barn door, not certain of what to do. But the interior of the barn glowed faintly with an eerie light. The wan illumination of the moon oozed through cracks and knotholes in the barn’s dilapidated sides. Like moonlight shining into an overturned wagon bed …

Setting the lantern on the floorboards, he gripped the shotgun and entered the barn. The floor had been swept clean for the upcoming dance. He reached the rickety ladder leading to the upper loft. His hands were sweaty. He climbed upward.

The floor of the loft seemed weak and flimsy, covered with straw. Tucker groped forward, feeling with his hands in the deepest part of the straw, digging around until he felt something cold and sickeningly stiff. Pushing the straw away, he grabbed what must have been her arm, lifting her out into the pale moonlight.

Her skin was splotched and desiccated, decomposing but half-mummified from the dry straw. Her hair and fingernails had grown an alarming amount. Tucker winced, but his stomach reacted more strongly. He clenched his teeth together and forced the bile back down.

As the Hunter’s Moon shone beams upon her face, the bulging eyes opened wide. And she smiled at him. Her jaws were filled with canine fangs. Her eyes were green-yellow and slitted, like the wolf’s staring at him through the knothole in the overturned wagon.

The scream latched onto the inside of his throat as he jerked backward, stumbling to the edge of the loft, falling. He landed roughly, twisting his ankle. His eyes were wide and dry because he had forgotten how to blink.

He looked around in the barn, but the Hunter’s Moon and the lantern by the door cast strange shadows as pointed as long fangs. He saw her face in the corner, and again along the wall, and again behind him, all with eyes wide and mouth open—faces, screaming, mocking faces, her face. She was surrounded by the distorted faces of wolves, jagged mouths filled with fangs, slitted animal eyes in the corners of the barn, on the floor, up near the wall. Faces wild, covered with blood dripping toward the floor, screaming. Coming to get him at last, because he had escaped them so long ago.

Now he could hear the cries of pain pounding around him—her screaming face in every corner, everywhere he looked. And the howling of wolves. Everywhere.

Tucker raised the shotgun and fired at one face. It exploded into red-orange fragments of skull and flesh. He fired at another one, and another. His hand fed shells into the gun and spat the empty ones onto the floor.

He continued to fire, but heard her voice screaming louder and louder with each face he destroyed. And the howling. As he fired, he added his own screams to hers.

Malcolm Litch stepped out of his house, followed closely by his wife. In the town of Tucker’s Grove, others opened their doors, gathered on the street, looking up toward Clinton Tucker’s house on the hill. Gunshots sounded as if a great battle were taking place.

They listened in horrified silence to a long series of shots, then a long, long pause, then one final shot. Murmurs ran through the crowd until someone yelled, “Come on!” A few men fetched their horses and galloped down the street; the rest ran after, following as best they could.

Tucker’s house stood dark and empty with the door unlocked—and they knew Tucker always locked his doors. Litch and the farmer Wilson met together, carefully entering the dark and empty house, calling Tucker’s name. They heard shouts from the old barn and ran out of the house as the others converged there.

Somewhere off in the fields, a chorus of wolves howled loudly, then fell silent. Litch felt a shiver go down his spine.

Tucker’s lamp stood at the entrance to the barn. Litch and Wilson entered, feeling the hush upon the others.

On the cleanly swept floor lay Clinton Tucker with the back of his head blown away and his hands still on the shotgun stock. Piles of empty shotgun shells lay strewn about him like mourning flowers.

“My Gawd,” someone shouted from the upper loft. “Is Ted Billings out there? We got something he should see.” Then a long pause. “Or maybe he shouldn’t.”

Malcolm Litch looked around the barn in a daze as they brought the body of Elizabeth Billings down from the loft. He mumbled to himself as he tried to fit the events together. Tears hovered in his eyes, and the minister’s face looked baffled. “It’s crazy. Just plain crazy.”

Burly Wilson put a hand on Litch’s shoulder, but the minister did not notice. He spoke in a very small voice. “With all this, I just don’t understand why, why did he have to ruin them all?” He blinked his eyes and looked at the farmer. “Why did he have to shoot all of the children’s jack-o’-lanterns?”

When I edited the three volumes of Blood Lite, I emphasized the idea that horror and suspense could also be funny. In this story, I wanted to show a different twist on a standard Hitchcock model—a character thrown into a sudden crisis situation, not knowing what is happening to him. “Who is this guy, and why is he trying to kill me?!” Who can forget the classic Far Side cartoon of the terrified bear hiding behind a tree and trying to figure out why the hunter wants to shoot him?

Now, try it with a vampire.

I hope Hitchcock would be proud … if he were undead, of course.

Rude Awakening

I was resting in peace and surrounded by warm red dreams when the lid of my coffin flew open. A madman brandished a pointed wooden stake and a heavy mallet. When I saw the murderous gleam in his eyes, I knew he was trying to kill me.

“Foul demon!” he shrieked with such passion that spittle flew from his lips.

His challenge gave me a fraction of a second, and I snatched a handful of the native soil in the bottom of my coffin and hurled it into the killer’s face. The spray of dirt caught him in the eyes, and he lurched backward.

I flung myself out of the coffin on its raised pedestal, careful not to snag my cape. I may be undead, but my heart was pounding. Who was this man? What did he have against me?

No time to think; just react.

As soon as I touched the flagstones of my castle’s main vaulted chamber, I sprang to my feet and bounded away from the coffin. My attacker was already rubbing the soil from his eyes, still clutching his mallet and stake. I knew that wouldn’t stop him for long.

I felt a chill as I saw several lengths of chain he had curled next to my coffin. My blood ran even colder than usual. He could have chained me up inside, imprisoned me forever.

What a jerk!

As I stumbled away, I felt sluggish, lethargic after being awakened from a deep sleep, made even worse by the fact that I’d fed well the night before. I felt bloated, not as fast as I should be. Damn it!

It had been such a good and satisfying dinner. I had sampled the rich blood of a tavern wench, who unwisely went out after dark to get washing water from the well. I also sipped from a stable boy and a traveling tinker. It was like a sampler platter, and I didn’t drain so much that anyone would complain. I knew that my three beautiful vampire brides had also shown restraint, though they were a bit rash by choosing to slip in and feed upon the women in the local nunnery. It had been a fine night, a full moon, a lingering mist on the ground.

And now this nightmare.

“I will send you back to hell, foul bloodsucking monster!” the madman howled. I heard him gathering his implements of death, coming relentlessly after me.

My thoughts spun with panic and confusion. Who was this man? Why was he trying to kill me? How had he found me?

He had broken into my castle in broad daylight, my most vulnerable time. I could never escape outside or I’d be roasted by the purifying rays of the sun. Long black velvet curtains covered the castle windows, blocking the bright sunlight, but I could see the fiery golden lines. It must be noon.

I had only one choice—hide in the lower levels, the dungeons and the catacombs. I ran across the torch-lit chamber to the arched entrances leading into the deeper dungeons. I could escape there. I entered a shadowy catacomb and the shadows deepened, but my night vision intensified.

But when I reached the first of the descending passages, I came to an abrupt halt. My stomach churned, nauseated. The attacker had spread garlic across the threshold—a dozen bulbs blocking my way with a smelly impenetrable barrier!

I spun, raced to another passage, and again I came upon garlic. Then I noticed to my horror that he had draped strands of poisonous bulbs around the windows and the other deep passageways. This killer had left nothing to chance. He meant to stalk me, toy with me. I was trapped—in my own castle!

With a loud whistling sound, a wooden crossbow bolt struck the stone wall next to me and clattered to the floor. He was trying to shoot me through the heart! I swirled my cape to distract his aim, ducked, and bolted away from the garlic, so dizzy I could barely see.

“Today you will die, Count Ordoff!” He fired several more crossbow bolts in rapid succession. Two pierced my cape and one grazed my side. I felt a flash of pain before I rapidly healed, but I didn’t waste breath returning his challenge. I needed all my faculties to think of a way I could escape. How was I going to get out of this alive?

Why was he trying to kill me? Think! Think!

But I recalled how many of my closest vampire friends had disappeared over the years. There had been dark and frightening rumors about a serial killer on the loose, an insane stalker who tracked down our safest daytime resting places, who broke into our homes to slaughter us while we slept. So far, he had eluded justice.

Now he was after me.

My castle should have been a fortress, a safe place I could go to ground, have quiet time with my three lovely vampire brides. I had let my guard down. I had been deceived by my pursuit of happiness, my pleasant unlife, my fine home, my fortune.

My brides are exciting women; Ashley, Tiffany, and Sienna—each one carefully chosen. We’d been together for half a century, but it still felt like a honeymoon. We could play card games. Tiffany liked to dabble with watercolors. I toyed with writing my memoirs.

And this monster had shattered our peace! But together, we could fight him off. I had to get to them.

Another chill made my cold skin crawl: my brides had their own darkened chamber with three separate coffins draped with frilly lace—especially Sienna’s. She was the youngest, just a teenager when I’d turned her, and she still liked girlish decorations.

Were they all right? What if the stalker had gone to them first? I hurried.

As another crossbow bolt ricocheted against the stone walls, I reached the bedchamber of my three brides. I saw the sickening sight—their coffins were open, and empty. Ashley’s had been toppled off its pedestal, as if she had fought back. A stake inside Sienna’s coffin protruded from a pile of ashes in the vague outline of a female form surrounded by diaphanous fabric. I recognized one of my favorite negligées.

“No!” I howled.

On the floor another mound of ashes filled the bright red nightgown that Tiffany liked to wear. I clutched at the garment, lifted it up. Ashes trickled onto the flagstones. I wailed again. He had slain my beloved wives, one by one. The bastard!

Anger welled up inside me. Now I didn’t want to just survive. I wanted to kill this awful man who had brought such tragedy to my peaceful home. Curling my lips back to show my fangs, I rose up, cast Tiffany’s red nightgown aside, and turned to find the hunter standing there, grinning. He was a cruel-looking man with a thin face, a goatee, deep-set eyes, and a crooked nose.

“Aha, I have you!” He splashed an open vial of liquid at me, and I barely dodged in time. Holy water! Several droplets smoked and sizzled on my hand, seeping through the sleeve and burning my arm.

But I didn’t care. I looked at Ashley’s toppled coffin. “You killed them!”

“And this time they’ll stay dead,” he said with a laugh. “Next, I’ll kill you!”

Using my vampire strength, I hurled Sienna’s coffin at him, knocking the serial killer backward. I bolted past, running back into the main chamber where a curving stone staircase led to the upper gallery from which hung my favorite tapestries and the black velvet curtains that masked the windows. My coffin was still down in the main chamber, its lid open … the place where I had been so peacefully sleeping not long before. It had been quite a rude awakening.

The stalker raced after me, discarding his crossbow with a clatter because he had spent all his bolts. He still brandished his mallet and his stake, though—and no doubt he carried an arsenal of other sadistic weapons.

I bounded up the stairs because it seemed the most likely escape, though it was not a tactically wise thing to do. The madman panted but kept up with me.

“There are many ways to kill a vampire,” he said, as if trying to frighten me. “A wooden stake through the heart, that’s my preference. I like to watch a vampire writhe and scream as he turns to dust. But there is also exposure to sunlight, to cremate you under the harsh light of day. I could drown you in running water, but your castle is so old, it doesn’t have running water. Or, there’s my favorite—cutting off a vampire’s head and stuffing his mouth with garlic. That’s always amusing.”

I kept running, up and up, not deigning to respond. My initial conclusion was reaffirmed. This was an evil, insane man.

“Or, in a pinch,” he said, “I could just wrap chains around your coffin and trap you inside for all eternity. One of those alternatives is going to work today.”

I reached the top of the landing in the gallery only to find that he had placed more garlic up there, blocking my way. I couldn’t go any farther—I was trapped at the top of the staircase. I faced him ascending the steps, and the hated garlic cutting me off from the other direction … and the long drop-off to the flagstones of the main gallery below. I had no place to go. He was closing in.

Pulling out his stake and mallet, he advanced toward me, sure that I couldn’t escape. Instead, I fell backward off the bannister and into open air.

Unlike what you’ve read in stories, vampires can’t actually transform into bats. I fell with my cape flapping around me, and I crashed onto the hard flagstones. That really hurt.

From high above, the stalker glared down at me before his gaze flashed to the black velvet curtains. With an evil leer he leaped outward and grabbed the velvet, using his own weight to dislodge the curtain rods, tearing the fabric as he fell away from the castle windows. Blazing streams of golden sunlight poured in, and I scrambled out of the way, blinded. The air itself turned into an unbearable oven.

I crawled out of the direct beam, but I could still feel my clothes and my skin smoking. My coffin sat open on its pedestal in the middle of the room. I wasn’t thinking straight, but I knew it was shelter, the only protection I could see. Trying to avoid the direct sun, I staggered around the edge of the room, looking for a way to the coffin.

But by the time I reached it, the killer had gotten there first. He stood in front of the open lid holding up a heavy wooden crucifix like a shield. Blocking my way.

After all my years of being an undead, though, I was for the most part an agnostic, and such symbols didn’t have the effect on me as they once did. The fact that I was blinded by sunlight and could barely see the crucifix made it possible for me to resist.

I knew what I had to do. With this serial killer on the loose, I would never be safe in my castle again, even if I found a hiding place. I had to get rid of this bloodthirsty man who had murdered my three brides and likely dozens of my vampire friends over the years. No one would be safe until this man was destroyed.

I bent low and charged forward fast enough that the sunlight wouldn’t sear me too much. The killer looked startled as I struck him in the center of the chest with my lowered head, driving him backward. He squawked and flailed, dropped his wooden crucifix. Out of his pockets the wooden stake and a heavy mallet also clattered on the floor. I didn’t care about those.

I knocked him backward into the coffin. He fell, sputtering, startled, and I slammed the lid down, trapping him inside. The ambient sunlight scorched my skin, but I endured the pain. I had to stop this madman before he struck again.

I could hear him pounding, struggling. He tried to push up the coffin lid, but he couldn’t fight against my strength. I could only endure the sunlight for a few more seconds, but I had to make sure. I seized the lengths of chain he had left on the floor. The killer had intended to trap me, but instead I wrapped the chains around the coffin, one loop, then another, and I secured it.

The killer struggled inside the coffin—my coffin. He pounded and shouted, but his muffled voice sounded as if he had a lump of dirt in his mouth. Maybe he did. But he was secure for now, trapped and out of the way.

The sunlight was too bright, and I had to get out of there. I staggered away from the main gallery and into the blessed shadows. Thankfully, he hadn’t put garlic on my secret, hidden passageways, and I made my way toward a small secondary crypt where I always kept a spare guest coffin, just in case a friend stayed over for the day.

I could rest and recuperate there in healing darkness. After my terrifying ordeal, I would be safe at last, and I could recover from my terror … and deal with my grief over the loss of my loved ones.

Come nighttime, though, when I was strong again, I intended to go back to the chained coffin and deal with this stalker. Poetic justice. I was sure a stake through the heart, or the decapitation with a seasoning of garlic—would be just as effective on a human monster.

And then we could all sleep easy.

The idea behind “Rude Awakening” was just too good to do only once, especially when my coauthor, Guy Anthony De Marco suggested a completely different approach. Here again, we meet a vampire feeling secure in his fortress castle, just trying to get a good day’s sleep, when an intruder messes everything up.

The Fate Worse Than Death

with Guy Anthony De Marco

Lying in the dark in a perfectly restful daytime nap, feeling sated with fresh warm blood (Type O Negative, his favorite), Vlad sensed the intruding presence even before the silent alarm triggered his vibrating watch. The watch buzzed against the mahogany wall of his cozy coffin, warning him.

Always interruptions! Someone was trying to break into his fortress, probably up to no good. “Rest in peace” was harder to achieve than he had ever imagined.

Vlad was a light sleeper, had been for centuries, and even modern sleeping aids like Ambien or Lunesta didn’t help. But even with his powers, it was good to remain alert. Careless vampires didn’t stay immortal for very long.

He hit the snooze button on the annoying vibrating watch and sighed, not willing to crawl out of the snug coffin just yet. After all, why did he have all those defenses? The intruder should be taken care of without him needing to lift a sharp fingernail.

Vlad couldn’t remember the last time someone had bothered to track him down with evil intent, so he doubted this would be a vampire hunter. It was broad daylight, but his mansion was quiet, apparently unoccupied; it was probably a common burglar trying to score some quality electronics. People didn’t realize most burglaries happened during the day. And burglars didn’t realize how much trouble they would be getting into if they tried to steal from Vladimir Dracul! Especially if they woke him up during daylight hours.

Eight hundred and eighty-two years of existing among those who feared his presence had jaded him. The burglar would be inept, with no idea of the disaster he was about to face. Vlad sighed again and stretched as far as the confines of the coffin would allow. Too bad, he thought, I actually feel depressed that there’s nobody left with the guile and fortitude to challenge me.

He wriggled to a more comfortable position and began to doze. The electric blanket kept him toasty, even though his blood remained cold. The blanket reminded him of his childhood, and he stifled an urge to suck his thumb, remembering the embarrassing previous time, when he’d painfully impaled his thumb on a sharp tooth.

Just as he was drifting off, the alarm watch buzzed again—more urgently this time, to inform him that the intruder had eluded the expensive paramilitary guards and breached the second perimeter of his fortress. Vlad woke further. That was interesting, but the paramilitary guards were flash and dazzle, rather than substance. The intruder was in for an even bigger surprise.

He smiled as he imagined the look of fear and despair that would spread over the hapless thief as he came face-to-face with one of Vlad’s true guardians. Still feeling sleepy, he settled deeper into his comfortable memory foam. He listened carefully, sure he would hear the sounds of rending and feeding any moment, accompanied by a few delightful screams.

The thought of so much blood and raw meat made him contemplate breakfast after sunset. He didn’t always drink blood; that was just a special treat, and—with his vampire metabolism—could actually be fattening. Pork chops, he decided … yes, he would have pork chops. Maybe with some applesauce and a nice baked potato. He felt blessed that he never needed to worry about high cholesterol. Blessed! The thought made him chuckle, which sounded especially loud inside the coffin.

Minutes went by, and he heard no sounds of a struggle, no shouts or growls, no wails of despair. Vlad frowned severely enough that the tips of his fangs protruded from his lips. How had the intruder gotten past his hellhounds? The creatures of the night that prowled his middle sanctum were hungry, fast, and angry at being locked indoors. The three monstrous beasts were the second, third, and fifth most dangerous beings within a mile in any direction (the fourth being the bloodthirsty and sadistic mafioso who lived three estates to the north). Humming the Jeopardy! theme song, he cocked his ear to catch any hint of noise from outside his coffin.

Then the lid began to creak open, slowly, tentatively. Startled, Vlad jumped and whacked his head—fine mahogany was definitely a hard wood. Calming himself, he lay back and settled, trying to appear dead and harmless, while he kept his eyes open a slit. The groaning hinges of the lid droned on with painful slowness, and Vlad had to stifle an urge to shout, “Get on with it!” or push the cover open himself.

“Good afternoon, sir,” said a lone figure looming over the coffin. “Sorry to interrupt your nap, but we have important business, you and I.”

Giving up his slumbering ruse, the vampire sat up to look at his guest while rubbing the small knot growing on his forehead from where he had hit the coffin lid. The intruder was a thick-bodied nerd type with round glasses and a faded Jethro Tull T-shirt. He held a black Evangelion anime backpack in his left hand and wore a black leather belt full of pouches emblazoned with yellow Batman logos.

So, Vlad thought, not the typical burglar—or vampire hunter.

“Good afternoon to you,” said the vampire in a thick Transylvanian accent. He had lost his accent over the centuries, but sometimes it seemed appropriate. “Why, may I inquire, are you in my bedchambers at this ungodly hour?”

Usually, when an intruder broke into his fortress, subdued his defenses, and pulled open his coffin, the routine involved sharp sticks and mallets.

The pudgy young man shifted nervously, swung his backpack to one side, and backed away to let the vampire swing his legs out of the coffin. Vlad knew he was intimidating as he stood up to his full six-foot-eight height. He slapped dust from his black tuxedo jacket while observing the intruder.

From behind his round glasses, the man’s eyes went wide. “Gosh, you’re bigger than I thought you would be.” He blinked a few times and then remembered the rest of his manners. “My name is Marvin. Marvin Drake. I’m a computer forensics and security expert. Glad to finally meet you, sir. It was quite difficult to track you down.”

Vlad gave a slight bow to his guest. “Then you must know full well who I am. I will, of course, have to deal with you in the usual manner, but your methods intrigue me. I need some answers.” He extended a hand, curled the fingers. “I can glamor you into revealing—”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary, sir. I came here to talk.” Marvin pulled out a gallon baggie filled with a mushed-up yellowish goop. He opened the top to release a pungent smell. “And I did not come unarmed.”

Laughing, Vladimir dipped his index finger into the mixture, swirled it around, and pulled out a taste of the garlic and onion. He popped it into his mouth. “Mmm, tasty, although it does need some cilantro and a dash of salt. Did you bring any chips?”

Normally, when he demonstrated that he was impervious to the usual defenses against vampires, his adversaries would react with intense fear, but Marvin Drake smiled with delight, showing off crooked, unbrushed teeth. It reminded Vlad of Renfield. Ah, Renfield … The poor man spent years in rehab trying to kick his habit of eating flies.

“Good, sir. Just checking. How about this?” He yanked out a gold cross from his utility belt and pressed it close to Vlad’s face.

Moving faster than humanly possible, since he was no longer human, he snatched the cross out of Marvin’s hand and inspected it with a practiced eye, turning it over in his hand. “Gold-plated. I really have to start spreading rumors that only solid gold or silver crucifixes work. At least they’re worth something.” He tossed the cross back, and Marvin juggled to catch it.

The young man’s spreading grin made the vampire pause. There was something wrong with the situation, or with this oddball young man, but Vlad couldn’t put a cold finger on what it was. He glanced around at all of the meticulous cobwebs strung along the walls and ceiling—just props, but much easier to maintain than real cobwebs; the ornate candelabras, the suit of armor, the medieval weapons on the wall, all to make his current dank castle feel just like home.

The intruder cast a glance to the heavy, black velvet curtains that hung over the black-painted windows. “Should I even bother opening the curtains to let in the sunlight? I don’t suppose that would make you catch fire and explode?”

“No, but the bright light might give me a headache at this hour, and you’ve been annoying enough already. What is it you want?”

Marvin seemed satisfied to have the preliminaries dispensed with. “May we sit, sir? I really need to have a talk with you.” He indicated a small café-style table a few feet away, where Vlad had his coffee after waking up.

The vampire apprehensively took a seat opposite the strange visitor, who was not at all the typical vampire killer. “You’re not going to lunge at me with a wooden stake, are you?”

“Would that kill you?”

“No, but it would ruin my favorite ruffled silk shirt, and then I’d have to get truly medieval on you.”

“Thanks for the warning, sir. I don’t think we have to bother. I have a business proposition for you.” Marvin looked puppy-dog hopeful.

“I need answers first.” Vlad leaned over. “I want to know how you found me, and how you got in here. Obviously, I have flaws in my security.”

Marvin leaned back in his filigree metal chair, adjusted his Jethro Tull shirt. “As I said, I’m a computer forensics and security specialist. I’ve been tracking you for years. With all of your quirks, Mr. Dracul, you leave a fairly large data footprint for anyone who knows where to look. Pretty easy, if you know how to do forensic research.” He rummaged in the backpack and removed his smartphone.

“For instance, your method of obtaining real estate through a particular set of shell corporations let me keep up with your movements. You typically stay at one location for three to six years before moving on. You tend to stay in Victorian or castle-type estates, which limits your pool of available homes. You prefer colder climates, probably because it resembles the Carpathian Mountains.”

“That, and I don’t want to get moldy,” Vlad said, but he was impressed with what the intruder said. His summation was quite accurate. The centuries had made him complacent, and he forgot that technological advances allowed people to process huge amounts of data in near real-time. “Very clever, Marvin. That explains how you located me. But what about my paramilitary guards? My mercenaries?”

“I was able to track down their personal cell phone numbers and sent them all a YouTube video of a kitten playing with a crocodile. They were so entranced, I walked right past them.” He smiled. “You really should watch the clip. It’s very funny.”

“Seen it already.” Vlad frowned. “But my true supernatural guardians are relentless in their pursuit of intruders. How did you get past the hellhounds?”

“Easier than expected,” said Marvin. “They’re just giant dogs with a bigger appetite. I tossed them each some pork chops laced with LSD and a large ball of peanut butter.” He grinned. “Right now, their mouths are stuck shut, and they’re watching pink Hello Kittys ride purple unicorns.”

“Where did you get the pork chops?”

“From your freezer, sir. They looked fresh.”

So much for his planned breakfast.

“And how did you know beforehand that all of the traditional vampire-repelling techniques wouldn’t work?”

Eager, Marvin pressed his chest against the metal tabletop, and Vlad could physically feel the pounding of his guest’s youthful Mountain Dew-fueled heart. “I did my homework, sir. Two years ago, when I was bored, I did an analysis of all of the classic books in the public domain. Starting with Bram Stoker, I found that many of the great writers of the last century had some subtle literary commonalities that were statistically improbable. I created a surgically precise literary model that uses a simulated aggregate English professor modeled after personality profiles from more than a thousand arrogant college literary department heads. According to my deep analysis, all of those literary works over the centuries appeared to be written by the same person. I assumed that you were the person who wrote Dracula to feed people the wrong methods to defeat you. But you were writing long before that. You created all those books, didn’t you?”

Vlad was embarrassed. “I’m impressed that you could figure it out. The creative writing bug bit me a lot harder than the ancient vampire who turned me. I’ve been … dabbling for a while, yes. But I gave up on critique groups back in the eighteenth century.”

Maybe this young man would take a look at his poems. No, those were too personal.…

Marvin enthusiastically bounced on his chair, his greasy brown hair flapping up and down. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my favorite classic stories and novels were actually ghostwritten by an immortal vampire under numerous pen names! Now I know how you can afford all those castles and mansions with all those royalties!”

“All my big sellers are in the public domain,” Vlad pointed out.

But Marvin was too excited to hear. “All the top writers in the history of literature were really one … ummm, person. Speculative fiction, romance, erotica, historicals, New York Times bestsellers, award winners, and all of them are on my bookshelves.”

Vlad felt uncomfortable and exposed. It was hard enough to keep his secret as a vampire, but maintaining a host of pen names was even more of a challenge. He would probably have to kill this intrepid man anyway.

“What’s to keep me from reaching across this table and draining you dry?” He felt his senses go alert, his claws itching to tear flesh and spill blood, his fangs ready to plunge into a pudgy throat … forget the pork chops.

“Nice gambit, but I was the school chess champion from 2006 to 2009. I took precautions. You don’t dare harm me.”

“And I was the national chess champion in 1782. I played against George Washington, a fellow vampire. He lost a bet and forfeited his fangs, which is why he used wooden teeth.” Vlad sneered. “Let me guess, you told a friend where you were going, and they’ll call the authorities if you go missing.”

Marvin squirmed in his chair, glancing at a large black spider that sat on the table, unmoving. “No, I did something more … drastic. I have an automated post that will go out on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, Google+, and every other social media website—including the undead ones like Myspace. The post gives explicit directions on how to find you and where you are now.” He nudged the smartphone on the table in front of him. Pointing to a toothy icon on his screen, he said, “Heck, there’s even an app for that.”

Vlad waved his hand in dismissal, though he was uneasy. “That would only bring a convenient meal for me. I should thank you for arranging breakfast in bed, or casket, as the case may be.”

It was Marvin’s turn to lean across the small table. “Oh, it’s far, far worse than that, sir.” He looked into the vampire’s red-rimmed eyes and whispered, “Unless you do as I demand, the post will tell everyone that you sparkle when you sleep!”

If it was possible for Vlad to look paler than his normal self, he hit a new level of waxy pallor. “You wouldn’t dare!”

Marvin flipped the spider over on the table. It had a stamp that said made in China. The spider web was nothing but fake Halloween-store cotton strands. Looking around, Marvin indicated all of the faux spooky objects in the coffin chamber. “For you, it’s all about appearances, Mr. Dracul. I know that about you, and that’s why the sparkly vampire defense is my endgame.”

Vladimir sat stiffly in his chair, breathing heavily at the thought of being chased by every pre-pubescent young lady and their mothers, no matter where he hid. “What … what do you want from me? You wish me to turn you into an immortal vampire?”

“No, nothing like that.” Marvin bent over, reached into his backpack, and produced an enormous stack of dog-eared papers. “Your words inspired me to become a writer. I want you to be my literary mentor.” He slid the manuscript across the table. It was titled The Ears of Argon, Volume 1 of the “Body Parts of Argon Saga.”

Vlad was appalled. “Read amateur manuscripts? I’d rather die—and I have done that already.”

“More than that, sir. Let me cowrite a short story with you for my favorite humorous speculative fiction anthology series.” Marvin’s voice had an edge. “Either you can help me make my prose sparkle, or …”

The vampire shuddered uncontrollably. “You’re insane!” He saw with dismay that the manuscript was marked as Part One of Volume 1. The title was in all caps, Old English letters. Marvin’s backpack had even larger stacks of paper inside.

Marvin leaned back, looking at him eagerly. “Go on, start reading. I’ll sit here quietly, I promise. I just want to watch your reactions.”

Vlad picked up the first page, dreading that even an immortal lifespan would not be long enough … but he would do anything—anything—to stop that message from going out.

I almost never have nightmares. Many people are tormented by night terrors, waking up in a cold sweat from a horrific dream. Not me. I often can’t get to sleep because I have so many ideas and stories running through my head, but once I drop off, I’m in a sound, dreamless sleep until morning. My parents and teachers were concerned about my fascination with monster movies and horror fiction, sure that it would ruin my delicate personality and curse me with nightmares. I think the opposite occurred: the fact that I spent so much time with horrifying things during my waking hours meant that I was untroubled by nightmares while sleeping.

That’s only mostly true, and a long diversionary tactic to introduce “The Circus,” which is one of my only tales based on a nightmare. I wrote it down as a story, which was terrible, but I kept thinking about it, and when I finally wanted to produce a new Tucker’s Grove story, it fit right in.

The Circus

Sunset was accompanied by strange shadows, and galloping on them came the black horse, hooves chewing up the dirt main street of town, leaving its imprint bold among the other crowded tracks. A small, ugly figure crouched on the horse’s back—a hunchbacked dwarf, dressed in a brilliant blue tunic and a scarlet cap.

The dwarf held a rolled sheet of paper in the crook of one arm as he guided the black horse with his other hand. Past empty storefronts, past the saloon where gas lamps were just being lit, past the three old men who sat on the boardwalk every afternoon at five o’clock to talk about the weather—the dwarf pulled his horse to a halt in front of the old gallows. The gallows had never been used, though every town needed them, if only to scare away the riffraff.

The dwarf unrolled the paper he carried, smoothing out the wrinkles, and without dismounting he tacked it to one of the wooden beams of the gallows, displaying his poster. Finished, he spurred the horse into motion again with his polished black riding boots and was gone.

The sunset continued without him.

People hesitantly began to gather, led by their own curiosity and the three old men whose never-changing discussion had been so rudely interrupted. They circled the gallows-post, pushing closer to stare at the poster as a murmur rippled slowly through the crowd.

“Collier and Raven’s Traveling Circus”

ONE NIGHT ONLY

Bordering the poster were little cameo sketches of clowns, tightrope walkers, trapeze artists, a fire-eater, and a knife thrower. But the center picture held everyone’s attention, dominating the poster: a tall black woman, dressed in dark flowing robes, her eyes staring out of the paper, piercing through the ink. Flowing lions surrounded her, snarling at something only they could see, dodging the caress of the whip she held.

“From Abyssinia—Ramonza, Mistress of the Lions.”

The crowd hushed, gazing at the poster. A fat man, originally from Boston, muttered, “A circus! About time we had something out this way!”

Isolated in the South Dakota wasteland, the town rarely drew attention. Its founders had named it “Miracle Bluff,” although the desolate flatlands made any references to a bluff, or even so much as a hill, just wishful thinking. Some said they could see California on a clear day; others said the Rockies got in the way.

The town was a clump of people who had lost their momentum on the Black Hills gold rush. They had somehow run out of stamina and decided to settle down in the lazy emptiness of monotonous grass and grass and grass. Miracle Bluff was already well on its way to total extinction, asleep, perhaps in a coma.

And now a circus was coming to town.

The tents set up just outside Miracle Bluff. People gathered to watch, almost desperate for something to break the monotony of their existence, but the circus recruited no help. Someone sold balloons; stores closed as if it were a holiday; more posters were tacked up around town, though they were unnecessary; a preacher cried out that circuses were evil, but nobody listened; the dwarf sold tickets; and people smiled. Miracle Bluff had begun to come alive again.

At nightfall the town was empty, but not the circus tents. The townspeople were scattered among rickety wooden benches that had the words “Collier and Raven’s Traveling Circus” burned into the boards. It wasn’t a very big crowd, but Miracle Bluff did the best it could.

A hushed silence greeted the ringmaster as he stood before the audience and introduced the first act. The people applauded as a fire-eater performed, but always before their imagination was the haunting picture of black Ramonza with her powerful lions that threatened to leap from the poster. Suspense built as the tightrope walkers, clowns, trapeze artists all paraded before the crowd; but they wanted more.

The lights dimmed. The ringmaster stepped into the spotlight again.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Collier and Raven’s Traveling Circus is proud to present, from Abyssinia, at the heart of darkest Africa—Ramonza, Mistress of the Lions!”

The ring was dark and filled with shadows; nobody saw her appear, but suddenly she was there, standing in the midst of her lions, light reflecting off her ebony skin. The five lions, two males and three females, flowed around her, unchained, snarling at the audience.

The crowd hushed itself with joyous fear, then began to applaud wildly. Ramonza searched the faces in silence, deeply scrutinizing the people of Miracle Bluff; she reached out to snap her fingers at the lions, and they quickly fell into a neat row.

Turning away from the crowds, Ramonza motioned to the cats, and her lions performed. The people applauded as the animals jumped through a ring of fire, then made a pyramid of themselves. For a time, they rolled large, brightly colored balls about, and chased after clowns; but Ramonza had yet to finish her act. Once again, she snapped her fingers and the lions lined themselves up on the far side of the ring, sitting down on their haunches, warily keeping their slitted amber eyes on the crowd.

Ramonza faced the people, stepping forward as she coiled the whip in one hand. For the first time, she spoke, her voice thick and resonant inside the tent. “For my next and final act, I require a volunteer from the audience.”

The crowd fell silent, suddenly frozen in time. Nobody dared move, afraid one of their actions might be misinterpreted. Ramonza stood, running the braided leather of her whip through her fingers.

Grunting to himself, the fat man from Boston lifted a chubby hand and stood up, swinging his girth as he pushed past people to descend the rickety wooden benches. “All right, all right,” he muttered. He looked at the faces around him, then walked out to meet Ramonza.

She looked at him with dark eyes, spreading lips in a smile that showed off glistening teeth. “Yes, you’ll do fine.”

She told the fat man to remain where he stood; then she backed away to stand behind the neat row of lions. The cats tensed, gazing at the volunteer. Ramonza muttered something only he and the lions could hear.

“Kill.”

The lions rushed forward, muscles rippling. The smug grin on the fat man’s face quickly dripped away; he turned to run; then the lions were upon him.

The crowd hesitated in an awesome silence for a long moment, hearing nothing but the lions feeding; then slowly they began to applaud …

When I was in college, I took a family vacation with the neighbor family, the McGlauchlens: mom, dad, three kids, and me. As a young man eager to see the country, I tagged along when they loaded up the woody station wagon with suitcases and sleeping bags, and we did a great American road trip from Wisconsin all the way out to Seattle, then up into British Columbia. I wanted to see the country other than the rural Midwest and couldn’t pass up the opportunity, and they were happy for the extra driver and an extra hand setting up camp each night.

Among the many wonderful places we stopped was the Custer Battlefield National Monument in Montana. The National Park Service ranger took us on a guided walk through the grassy hills, and he explained step by step the catastrophic events that converged in Custer’s last stand and the massacre of all those people (many of whom, admittedly, deserved it, if not through maliciousness then at least through stubbornness and ineptitude). Standing on that old battlefield site was a profound experience, and I became interested in the history of the event. I knew I had to turn it into a story somehow. “Last Stand” is also loosely connected to the Tucker’s Grove series.

Last Stand

MASSACRED

Gen Custer and 261 Men the Victims

3 Days Desperate Fighting by Maj. Reno and Remainder of the Seventh

—Bismarck Daily Tribune [Dakota Territory]:

July 6, 1876

“The [steamer] Far West arrived this morning, bringing terrible news from the expedition and 38 wounded men for treatment in the hospital. Genl. Custer with his command met an overwhelming force of Indians on the Little Big Horn … and five companies … were completely cut to pieces, not one man being left.…

“This has been a very gloomy day at the post. There are 24 women here who have been made widows by the disaster.”

—Medical Journal of Assistant Surgeon J.V.D. Middleton, Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory. July 6, 1876

Kenner is coming back from the dead to kill me. Tonight. And I can do nothing but wait. The vengeful sorcery which animates my former comrade has already slaughtered the other three, one by one, during the rotten core of the night.

Tucker, the first, knew nothing of his fate and lay mangled by the riverbank with his face a frozen expression of soul-bursting fear. But at least he did not have to endure these hours of horrified waiting. Darby is murdered. Barrett is murdered. How am I to fight against an obsidian-clawed ghoul turned against his friends by Sioux hatred and magic?

I can hear the hushed expectancy of the river, feel the lulling sway of the Far West as it fights against the ropes tying it up during the blackest hours of night. The pungent smell of old, rain-soaked hay seeps into the night, placed on the deck here to “brave fighters.” I don’t complain—after that night on Reno Hill surrounded by screaming victorious Sioux, feeling our parched and festering throats and having nothing but horse blood to drink … how could I complain about mere crowdedness?

Captain Marsh has pushed the Far West admirably, but I doubt if any steamer could move faster than Kenner’s murderous spirit. I could have fled the boat this morning at the Powder River Depot. Hoping for safety. No, not even the massive stockade of Fort Pease had stopped Kenner from shredding Darby like confetti.

So I wait, awake in the darkness on the Far West, knowing that I have not run far enough or fast enough. Tomorrow, perhaps, the steamer will reach Bismarck and civilization … but by then my body will have been rended by obsidian claws.

And Kenner is coming.

“After we gained the bluffs we could look back upon the plains where the Indians were, and could see them stripping and scalping our men, and mutilating the bodies in a horrible manner. The prairie was all afire.”

—John M. Ryan, survivor of the Reno Hill battle, as recollected in the Hardin [Montana] Tribune, June 22, 1923

Details regarding events on Reno Hill, submitted to Montana State Historical Society by Lieutenant Edgerton. Ultimately rejected, August 1896, “due to obvious implausibility.”

“God, I’m thirsty!”

Three hundred and fifty beaten men huddled in the darkness atop Reno Hill, waiting in baffled terror and wondering when the thousands of vengeful Sioux warriors would finally swoop down to complete the massacre.

“Goddamn Indian cowards!” Kenner cursed, digging his knife into the baked ground. He probably would have spat in disgust, as was his habit, if his throat hadn’t been so parched.

Murderous shadows hid in the wicked moonlight; huge bonfires burned in the village below, and capering warriors shouted and danced their victory.

“If they’d come here one at a time I’d take them all on, man-to-man, and see who’s the better fighter!” He stuck his knife up to its hilt into the ground.

“They don’t have to,” Barrett said, more calmly than any of them felt. “They can just wait us out. We’re almost out of ammunition. Almost out of water. All they have to do is watch the creek. With this heat we’ll be dead in a few days.”

“God, I’m thirsty,” Tucker whined. His thin and skittish voice matched his physical build exactly.

“Shut up, Tucker!” Kenner growled at him.

“You’re only making it worse.” Edgerton spoke soothingly, as if to make up for Kenner’s anger. “Maybe Custer’ll still come.”

Kenner laughed. Barrett frowned skeptically. Tucker didn’t seem to hear. Darby, once so proud of the tomahawk he had taken from a dead Indian, now sat in silence, hammering the tomahawk at the ground as if he could kill a Sioux with each blow to Sioux land.

Custer had charged off with his own battalion early in the afternoon, ordering Reno to attack the village which turned out to be ten times larger than any of them had suspected. Reno had charged into the howling hornet’s nest of Indians, expecting aid from Custer … aid which never arrived. Custer had disappeared. Reno had fallen back into the forest beside the creek, and, when that proved untenable, he had led his men in a desperate charge across the creek to the dubious safety of the bluffs on the other side. A costly retreat, leaving the bodies of many fallen soldiers behind.

Now, at night, the outnumbered survivors cringed like animals waiting to be slaughtered, each dealing with the terror in his own way. Some wailed, some prayed to God, some cursed Him for allowing this to happen, some curled up on the ground and did nothing.

“Wilson’s dead by now,” Edgerton said flatly, letting the words hang in the air. “When Weir retreated, I left him wounded and hidden in a gully. I promised we’d organize a skirmish to come back and get him. I promised. We never did. And I promised.” The silence sobbed around him for a moment.

“We were supposed to be the Romans, bringing civilization to this Godless land. But now the barbarians are destroying us.”

Barrett smiled wryly. “Not godless—they’ve probably got their own demons to pray to.” He paused, and continued quietly. “Judging from their success so far, the Indian gods seem to be more effective than our own.” He removed his spectacles and vigorously polished the dry dust from them. Firelight glinted on the lenses.

“Doesn’t anybody have anything to drink?” Tucker said in a cracking voice.

Kenner banged his empty canteen as evidence. “You’re welcome to make a run for the creek if you want to fill it up.”

Tucker swallowed hard and sat back in silence. Darby whacked his tomahawk on the ground, gouging out a deep chunk of dirt. In the distance, the Indians let out a loud whooping cheer, and the victory fires burned brighter. Moans from the wounded drifted on the sluggish night air, and dying animals uttered sounds which made the pain of the men seem like nothing.

“Doc Porter’s keeping all the water for the wounded.” Barrett’s nonchalant tone was taut with strain. “Doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die anyway.”

“Shut up, Barrett,” Edgerton and Kenner snapped in unison, then glared at each other. Edgerton had never gotten along well with the burly Kenner—to him, the often brutal and over-zealous trooper was one small step above a savage. Edgerton was educated, had a family back in Bismarck, and kept himself scrupulously honest. Kenner, on the other hand, couldn’t read, claimed to have a woman waiting for him at every fort along the Yellowstone, and did everything he felt he could get away with.

“There’s juice in the tins of fruit on the pack mules,” Barrett continued. “But Reno said he’d shoot anyone who tries to get them. It’s only a matter of time.” No one had the energy to tell him to keep quiet.

“They say the Indians drink blood.” Darby finally spoke up, holding his tomahawk so tightly his knuckles whitened.

“Plenty of that around here,” Edgerton mumbled.

“Yes, there is, isn’t there?” Kenner said quietly, with disturbing sincerity in his voice.

The maniacal silence of the night filled their ears for a long time.

“You’re crazy,” Edgerton finally said.

“Ah, the trappings of civilization cling to the very end, don’t they?” Barrett looked directly at Edgerton. Edgerton knew that Barrett considered himself well-educated in his own right, but instead of feeling close to the spectacled man, he felt an uneasy sense of competition.

“Oh, Lordy, I’m almost thirsty enough to do it. I wish I was home.”

“Well, go home then, Tucker! It’s only a year’s walk to Wisconsin,” Kenner snapped.

“I’d love to try this on the neck of one of them Sioux horses.” Darby swung the tomahawk again. “Bet it’d bleed like hell.”

Barrett licked his dry lips.

“Is … is anybody else gonna drink if I do?” Tucker asked.

“Shit! I’m gonna drink even if you don’t.” Kenner grabbed an empty cooking pot from one of the packs.

“You’re crazy.…” Edgerton said, less forcefully now. It felt as if the sun itself burned down his throat.

The troopers normally killed a wounded horse to put an end to its misery. But since this horse had been owned by a Sioux, a Sioux responsible for the deaths of at least two white men, some of the soldiers insisted that the horse be left to die in its own long and painful fashion. Several bullets had shattered its spine, and it moved sluggishly with its forelegs, dragging the useless hindquarters behind in a slow madman’s trail in the dust. It had finally collapsed near the perimeter in the dying heat of the day, not knowing that its bulky body made an effective barrier for the crouching men.

Kenner and Darby crept up to the horse, eager with the cooking pot and tomahawk; Tucker, Barrett and Edgerton followed closely behind. The horse knew they had come for blood, as if it could smell the intent on bodies too parched even to sweat. In the awkwardly reflected firelight, Edgerton caught a glimpse of the horse’s wide and defiant eye. It was green and reptilian with a slit pupil, like the eye of a poisonous snake just waiting to give the gift of venom. Edgerton suppressed a shudder.

The horse glared at them but lay still as Kenner carefully placed the pot next to its heaving neck. Darby grinned and swung the stone hatchet, chopping through veins and laying open all the liquid any desperate man could hope to gorge himself on. Tucker scrambled forward eagerly, and bright foaming blood sprayed in his face, dripping warm and wet down his chin. Crumbling remnants of civilization tugged at his instincts, making him spit the blood from his mouth.

“Jeezus!” Kenner shouted.

“Quick! Get that pot under it before it stops spurting! You’re gonna lose all of it!” Barrett seemed to be trying to control the excitement in his voice as he sat back and watched the others.

The horse made no sound as its life gushed from the wound. Its reptilian eye seemed to focus on all of them at once.

In the village below, the Indians suddenly fell silent. The victory fires continued to burn, sending demon-smoke writhing up into the shining night.

Kenner slurped from the pot, drinking deeply as if to show he had no qualms whatsoever. He passed it to Darby, who closed his eyes as he drank. Tucker snatched the pot and gulped, letting a thin, clotting trickle run across his razor stubble. Barrett drank, watching Edgerton as if this were a challenge for the two of them to meet. Edgerton finally took the near-empty pot, hesitated, looked at the remaining pool of blood as it oozed from the open wound on the now-dead horse. Thirst clawed at the inside of his throat. He couldn’t be expected to put up any kind of fight against the Sioux if all he could think of was his miserable thirst. His very survival depended on this. Survival.

He held the warm metal to his lips and sipped at the stale-copper taste.

“Hey! Anybody religious? We got one hell of a communion going here!” Kenner shouted.

“Keep quiet, you bastard!” Edgerton growled.

But Kenner seemed to be possessed, as if distant lightning were coursing through his veins. He leaped to his feet, straining against the shackles of his body and baring his teeth as he faced the silent burning fires in the Indian village. His eyes seemed filled with molten lead, and a bizarre energy surged through him.

“Dammit!” he howled, “I could run down there right now and kill them Indians with my bare hands!” He clawed at the air in a disturbingly animal gesture.

“Kenner, would you keep down! Shut up!” Barrett hissed.

Edgerton could feel the hot blood he had drunk, like glowing iron piercing his gut. He wanted to vomit, but couldn’t.

Another trooper, a Captain, parted the shadows and came forward, calling to no one in particular. “Doc Porter says we have to have water. Major Reno is asking for volunteers to make a dash to the creek. Anybody interested?” His voice sounded tired, as if he were asking only in order to fulfill a duty and did not expect an answer.

“Hell, yes!” Kenner jumped toward the Captain, startling him. “What a way to get even with those Indian snakes! Gimme two pots and I’ll fill ’em! Hurry!”

Kenner grabbed the pots and made a dash for the edge of the bluff as if he needed to burn away the energy bubbling through him. For an instant, Edgerton thought the burly man would leap headfirst off the bluff, but then Kenner found the steep and narrow buffalo trail worn down the river bank. He disappeared into the shadows below.

A few moments later Darby stood up. “I’m going, too.”

The Captain looked as if both men had lost their minds in the hot battle that afternoon; but he gave Darby a pot and sent him down the trail as well.

Tucker scrambled to the edge and lay on his stomach, peering over into the darkness. “Holy cow! Kenner’s at the creek already!”

A few scattered gunshots rang out down below. “They missed him. He’s got the water, and he’s coming back up!”

“He probably wouldn’t feel it even if they did hit him,” Barrett said to Edgerton. Blood dried around the spectacled man’s lips. Self-consciously, Edgerton wiped his own mouth.

“Is Darby to the creek yet?” Edgerton asked.

“Can’t see him.”

Kenner appeared at the top of the bluff and handed two brimming water pots to the dumbfounded Captain. “Don’t just stand there! Get me two more pots—come on!”

The Captain scrambled to obey.

Impatiently, Kenner picked up a large rock and hurled it over the rim into the night. At that moment a shooting-star blazed overhead, and it seemed almost as if Kenner had thrown it.

Kenner snorted. “Ain’t anybody else coming?” He took two more pots and scrambled down again. More frequent gunfire bounced and skittered along the creekbed below.

“Darby’s coming up,” Tucker announced. A few moments later the other man lurched over the rim carrying a canteen filled with barely a cup of water.

“Good thing those Sioux are lousy shots,” Darby gasped. Edgerton noticed a bleeding wound on the man’s arm where a bullet had grazed him. “I’m not going down there again.”

“They’re just toying with us,” Barrett mumbled. “Cat and mouse. Isn’t it fun?”

“That idiot!” Tucker gasped. “Kenner’s down there, up to his knees in the water, jumping up and down and cussing at the Indians!”

“What the hell!” Edgerton, Barrett, and Darby knelt beside Tucker, searching for the burly man somewhere below. The gunfire had stopped, but they could hear the sudden intakes of silence, the quiet patter on stone as the Indians shot arrows. Below, Kenner stopped shouting. He jerked and fell backward into the water.

The Captain stood at the rim. “Is anybody going to go down and get him? See if he’s still alive? Or, for the sake of mercy, rescue his body from the Indians? You saw what they did to the ones we left behind this afternoon!”

“Why don’t you go get him, Captain?” Barrett asked. “He fetched your water.”

“He was your friend,” the Captain snapped.

“I’m not going down there again!” Darby insisted.

“He wasn’t my friend,” Barrett said.

“You’re not making me do it!” Tucker whined. “I’m too scared. If you threw me over the edge I wouldn’t even fall down there ’cause I’m so scared.”

“He wasn’t my friend either,” Edgerton mumbled.

“It’s ironic, even laughable now. But at the time we could imagine no greater terror than that night on Reno Hill.… Our imaginations have grown since then.”

—Lieutenant Edgerton’s journal.

In the back of my mind I believe I had always known this war to be far more than a mere conflict between two armies. No, it was a battle of trained soldier against painted warrior, civilization against bloodthirsty savagery, modern military techniques against arrow and tomahawk.

By all rights we should have won!

Perhaps civilization just doesn’t belong here.

There are those who claim the Indians have a right to commit their atrocities. But you would be hard-pressed to find one such man among the survivors of Reno Hill, the ones who watched in the settling dust of a bloated afternoon as the Sioux women gleefully ran over the battlefield, slitting the throats of wounded troopers. Or the warriors who stripped and mutilated the bodies of our comrades so that—as the Sioux believe—the spirits of the fallen enemy will find no peace in heaven.

Before any man tells me the Indians have a right to do this, I will tell him to go back and look at the graves, to reflect for a moment that not one unmutilated body lies buried there, thanks to the cruel knives of the bloodthirsty Sioux. I will ask him to believe that the souls of hundreds of American soldiers now wander aimlessly and in anguish because the doors of heaven are closed to them.

He will not believe me.

He hasn’t seen Kenner.

Nor has he seen Darby’s murdered body within the security of Fort Pease, with the heavy doors ripped apart and bullet holes from Darby’s pistol dotting the walls … and not one man at the Fort having heard a sound all night long. Nor does he have Barrett’s flag-wrapped body here beside him on the deck of a haunted boat in the middle of the night. Barrett’s eyes had been torn out, perhaps so he couldn’t see his own blood spilling over the deck rail into the quiet river. But his gleaming spectacles remained completely untouched on his face, as if for an ironic joke. Tomorrow, when the Far West reaches Bismarck, they are going to give Barrett a full military burial.

Put a man through all this, and then ask him to be objective about the Indians.

I took Darby’s tomahawk with me, perhaps to give to his sister as a keepsake, if ever I see her, and if I survive. I have my pistol loaded at my side, but it gives me no comfort because I remember how effective Darby’s own pistol must have been in Fort Pease.

I am sweating.

On the riverbanks all the insects suddenly stifle their sounds, extinguished like a fire. The river fails to make any sound against the Far West. The quietly snoring troopers on deck cease to breathe.

Kenner has drawn a curtain of night silence around us, to shelter himself from any prying eyes.

A loud thump strikes the deck behind me, as of something heavy settling there.

“Your turn, Edgerton,” Kenner says.

“The nightmares of children are as nothing compared to the nightmares of men … and at times even the nightmares of men pale before reality.”

—Lieutenant Edgerton’s journal

June 27, 1876: explanation of Walter Tucker’s death, as told by Lieutenant Edgerton. “Purely conjecture, and purely preposterous!”—evaluation by Montana State Historical Society, written in red ink.

They stared at each other, quivering like pudding as the aftershocks of terror ran through them and then vanished. Tucker looked at Barrett, Darby, and Edgerton—the four of them had survived. Many of the other men were weeping. The Sioux had fought for most of the following day and then, after setting the prairie afire, they took their women and children and departed.

Brigadier General Terry’s rescue column arrived the next morning, too late to do much more than help find and bury the mutilated dead. Custer’s entire Seventh Cavalry lay among those dead, but Tucker was hard-pressed to consider himself “fortunate.”

All fighting had stopped, but still it felt like a battlefield. The dry grass moved in the silence, suggesting that there must have been a breeze although the hot sun denied it. Flies and stench hung in the sluggish air as hundreds of bodies began to bloat. Terry’s men were appalled, and many of them would sleep with their noses on the wet river bank to distract them from the smell. Terry had offered a hundred-dollar bonus to any volunteers willing to carry a message downstream to the Far West, asking Captain Marsh to prepare to receive casualties.

“I’m going to see if I can find him,” Tucker said. He had rinsed his mouth with fresh water again and again, but still the hot coppery taste of stolen blood clung to his tongue.

“Who?” Edgerton asked.

Barrett scowled at him. “Who the hell do you think?”

“You weren’t too anxious to go looking for him two nights ago, Tucker,” Darby remarked.

“Well, neither were you!”

“Let him go. If he can’t find Kenner, maybe we’ll help look,” Barrett suggested.

“I, for one, don’t know if I can stand the sight of another corpse today. Besides, it’s almost dark,” Edgerton said.

“Scared of the dark, are you?” Barrett asked sarcastically.

“I don’t know what I’m scared of anymore.”

“Well, I’m going.” Tucker gave a disgusted snort. “That bastard made us drink blood—now we’re no better than the damned Indians.” He turned his back on the other three and began picking his way down to the riverbank.

The sun hung close to the horizon, tingeing the sky and shadows with a coppery color. The creek bed was rocky and filled with broken brush, and the shallow, slow-moving water had succeeded in washing most of the battle from its memory. The landscape looked dry-brown and barren, with rises and dips affording hundreds of hiding places for hostile Indians. Arrows, tattered shreds of uniforms, personal possessions dropped in panic as Reno’s men had furiously splashed across the creek to the safety of the bluffs, all lay scattered on the riverbank. And a few bodies. One of them would be Kenner’s. Tucker felt sick inside; tomorrow, Terry would want them to spend hours in the hot and stinking sun identifying and burying the hundreds who had fallen. Tucker didn’t know if he had the stomach for it.

He slogged up the creek to where he had seen Kenner fall, and began to dart his eyes into the shadowy corners where a dead man might hide. Within a few moments Tucker found him, halfway up the bank as if he had crawled there to outrun death. Kenner’s body lay in the gray outline of a shadow, one shoulder up against a rock and the other arm stiff and outstretched. His blue uniform was torn, and his mouth had been bruised and smashed, grinning with jagged, broken teeth. Both of Kenner’s eyes were gone, taken away by the birds or the Sioux, and the torn-meat sockets stared at Tucker like gaping, blood-filled mouths.

“Serves you right, Kenner,” Tucker sneered, alone with his bravado. Of the soldiers, Tucker believed he disliked Kenner the most. “Ah, the times you poked fun at me, beat me up, pushed me around, made me feel like a worm in front of the others, but you got yours. Now who has the last laugh?”

Tucker kicked the dead trooper and forced a high-pitched nervous laugh. Suddenly his flesh crawled on his spine, and it seemed as if Kenner’s head had moved just the slightest bit, focusing the torn and empty eye sockets on him. Around him all noises seemed vanquished, and even the water in the creek ceased to move; he had the strangest feeling that the sun had stopped setting. Then he noticed that Kenner’s nails were black and glassy, curved into claws like knives.

“I’ve got the last laugh, Tucker,” Kenner said, as he sat up and reached out with a fistful of obsidian claws.

When they found Tucker’s flayed and staring body the next morning, somebody said the Indians must have gotten him. And nobody ever found Kenner.

“Don’t tell me it’s not possible! You weren’t there! You sit behind your desks and think your civilized preconceptions had significance then. Well you’re wrong, gentlemen. Dead wrong.”

—Letter from Lieutenant Edgerton to Montana State Historical Society, September 1896.

All through the blistering heat of the afternoon the following day, Terry’s men and Reno’s survivors did their best to identify and bury the dead. An almost maniacal gloom hung over everyone, and most of the soldiers worked slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, as if their brains refused to accept what their eyes told them.

Anxious to flee the battlefield, Terry ordered the men to set out at 6:30 that evening, trudging along and carrying the wounded on hand-litters. They struggled and gasped and sweated. In five and a half hours they had covered four miles.

The next day, some of the more resourceful troopers helped design and construct both mule-litters and travois. The others tried to find shade and rested as sweat-beads popped out on their foreheads, waiting for the heat of day to fall into death.

“What do you suppose really happened to Tucker?” Barrett asked.

“Indians got him,” Darby answered automatically.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We all know the Sioux trotted off into the hills a day before Terry even got here. There weren’t any Indians by that creek.” Barrett wiped the lenses of his sweat-streaked spectacles.

“Nobody ever found Kenner,” Edgerton whispered.

Darby and Barrett held their silence. Barrett took a flask of whiskey and drank deeply. He wiped his mouth, then spat. “Even whiskey doesn’t burn the taste from your mouth.” He drank again, offered it to Darby (who refused), and then tossed the flask to Edgerton, taking him by surprise. Edgerton fumbled for a moment but caught the flask. He drank, too.

They set out again at 5:30, after the waves of heat had wakened heavy thunderheads in the sky. Nightfall came with the fanfare of thick rain and pitch darkness. They slogged through the water and muck, carrying the wounded and pressing forward as if they were enjoying the clean rain. Shadowy couriers found their way through the storm, bearing the message that the Far West lay ready and waiting for the soldiers. But the rain turned to hail and showered them as heavily as Indian arrows. The hail lay on the ground in white stinging pellets, like dead men’s teeth.

And through it all, Edgerton felt an oppressive fear prickling at the back of his neck. Some deadly leviathan stalked them through the darkness, biding its time, waiting. “Do you feel it?” Edgerton called to Darby as quietly as he could through the storm.

“You better believe it. God, I can’t wait until we get to Fort Pease. I’m gonna crawl under a bed and hide for a week.”

Kenner found Darby at Fort Pease, ripping the door to shreds in the middle of the night. Darby’s hand still gripped his empty pistol even though his knuckles had split. Bullet holes burned into the walls, but Edgerton and Barrett found no indication of any blood on the floor other than Darby’s own.

Two days later, after Captain Marsh had launched the Far West on its breakneck journey to Bismarck, Barrett lay draped almost casually across the deck-rail, with his face mutilated but his spectacles remarkably clean and untouched, still resting on the stubs of his ears.

That left Edgerton all alone. And terribly afraid.

“Mister Edgerton, our very detailed records of the Battle of the Little Bighorn make no mention whatsoever of the grisly murders you describe, or of a soldier named ‘Kenner.’ You are obviously given to unfortunate flights of fancy. It was for this reason two years ago that I refused to let the Society publish your own Sioux War memoirs. Even the name of the villain in your fantastic story is a rather clumsy attempt to discredit me personally. Be warned that any further communication from you will be viewed upon as slander.”

—W. B. Kenner, director, Montana Historical Society

Kenner stands in front of me on the silent deck of the steamer, staring at me with gaping eye sockets which see more than his eyes ever could. He rips away the tattered top of his blue uniform and casts it over the deck rail, as if it pains and offends him. He does not taunt me, as I had expected him to do, but comes forward with a confident, wickedly rolling stride.

“You always were a bloodthirsty one, Kenner. This doesn’t hardly surprise me at all.” I can barely believe the words which come from my lips—this is the last statement from a man doomed to suffer a horrible death?

The words bring Kenner up short, and he stops.

I hold my pistol rigidly in front of me, though I suspect the bullets will have no effect. Darby was a good shot. But here I must make my last stand. Maybe I can club Kenner with the gun.

“Is it going to stop with me, or do you plan on ripping apart every trooper you can find, and from there go into Bismarck and prey upon shopkeepers and their wives?”

“Bloodthirsty,” Kenner said. “An interesting choice of words.”

I can see him clearly in the moonlight, and his outline has a vague and wavering quality, as if my eyes are not able to see him completely. I say nothing more. He still hasn’t answered my question.

“It’ll end with you, Edgerton. And I will end as well.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t you enjoying yourself enough?” My instinct tells me to keep him talking, that perhaps he must depart with the dawn or something. But then I remember that time has stopped around us. It is useless.

“No! I have no part in this.”

“Then why are you doing it? You murdered Tucker —and Darby—and Barrett! Do you hate us so much? Because we didn’t risk ourselves to go down and rescue your body? Is that it? Well, I am sincerely sorry. If we thought you were still alive, maybe one of us would have tried. But even you cannot be foolish enough to expect us to get killed for a man who was already dead. You wouldn’t have done it yourself.”

My voice cracks a few times, and I doubt if I will ever fully believe the bravado that has come over me.

“No, I wouldn’t have done it myself. Nor do I blame you.”

My delicately constructed rationalization of irrational events tinkles and breaks around me. Kenner continues to speak, and for that I am thankful.

“There’s a different war going on here, Edgerton. Civilization is poking its nose in where it has no business being. We’re pulling our way of life up like a weed and trying to transplant it here. It’s not just the Indians who are fighting—it’s the animals, the plants, the water, the insects, the land itself! Can’t you hear how everything has hushed in anticipation of our meeting? Even time is holding its breath. You have stolen something and are trying to flee to the boundaries of civilization with it. I can’t let you do that.”

My mind reels—what is it he wants? I look at Darby’s tomahawk at my belt, and I can think of nothing else I have taken from the wilderness. Those men died because of a tomahawk? But why didn’t Kenner take it from Darby’s room at Fort Pease?

“It’s the blood, Edgerton. We all drank the blood of a Sioux horse. While it pulses through your veins, I can’t let you leave here. I can’t let you pass across the boundary into civilization. Even now I can feel the blood screaming, crying out to be released from the body it finds so abhorrent. The pull was so strong it set fire to my veins and pulled me back to the borderland of life. The blood has a soul of its own, and it beseeches me to free its kindred from the bodies of civilized men. I must pour your blood back to the earth so that the wilderness may reclaim what you have taken. And when I have done my work, the blood will burn out of my own vessels, turn my heart into a lump of ash, and leap from my body back into the embrace of the land.”

He steps forward, holding forth the knives of his hands in an almost placating gesture. I shout and shout for help, but rouse no one. My grip on the pistol becomes steadier.

“You were always something of a milksop, Edgerton. Frankly, I’m surprised you are going to resist. I had expected you to whimper, like Barrett did.”

My fingers clench convulsively, and the pistol fires. The bullet ricochets off one of the rails behind Kenner. I could not have missed. I fire five times in all. The shots wake no one. And Kenner walks through the bullets. I hurl the pistol at him and watch as it passes through his chest and clatters on the deck.

“My body does not recognize your civilized weapons. The burning blood will have nothing to do with them. Relax, Edgerton. I still remember you—the death itself will be quick. And perhaps this time the blood will not demand mutilation.”

I remember the bullet holes in the walls around Darby. And I remember how Darby’s battle had ended. “Barrett’s spectacles! That’s how you clawed his eyes but didn’t so much as scratch the lenses.” I hope this will make him pause. It doesn’t.

He draws back an arm, preparing to swipe at me with his obsidian claws.

The self-preservation drive bursts within me, breaking down the walls of reason and unleashing purely animal instinct. I tear Darby’s tomahawk from my belt and howl maniacally as I lunge forward, splitting Kenner’s breastbone and driving the primitive stone axe into his dead heart. The tomahawk strikes something as firm as gelatin, and hangs suspended in Kenner’s flayed chest.

Kenner stops cold and begins convulsing like a man in contact with a Galvanic battery. Beads of red sweat burst from his pores and begin trickling together, running in rivulets up his chest, against the pull of gravity. The blood reaches his forehead and leaps into the night air like a narrow river of fiery droplets, whirling together in a cyclone of blood as it moves against the night toward shore.

Kenner falls over the deck rail and lands in the silent river with a splash like a thunderclap. Suddenly I can hear the night sounds again; the river laps up against the sides of the Far West.

I collapse to the deck, shaking, drenched with sweat, and feeling utterly ill. Kenner is gone, and I have survived. But he, and the bloodthirsty wilderness, have had their victory as well. No logic, or careful planning, or rationalization has saved me this night—it was pure animal instinct. I butchered a former comrade by swinging a stone hatchet into his chest and reveled in the feeling of conquest.

Never again will I consider myself a civilized man.

Sickness rises up explosively in my gut, and I lurch to the rail. Bending over, I retch so violently that small blood vessels burst in the whites of my eyes.

Red wetness spews from my mouth and vanishes overboard into the night.

Blood.

Every writer has to do a Nazi story at least once in his career. This one is short, and twisted, and it may or may not be just a “crazy person” story. I should note that when I wrote this, my girlfriend’s father was a shoe repairman with a small, dingy shop just like the one in the story, but I really did like the guy. He has nothing to do with the character in this story. Honest.

Leatherworks

The frequent puddles were muddying his only other pair of black, patent leather shoes, and the constant gloom outside was making him annoyed by it. He strode across the rain-washed street carrying a briefcase in one hand and wielding an umbrella in the other. His manner, his tie, and his crisp pale-blue suit seemed to shout out “This Man Has A Degree In Business, And Is Damn Proud Of It.”

He looked up once to make certain that he had found the proper address on the side street. “Goldmann’s Shoe Repair and Leather Artwork.” He frowned at the latter part of the sign as he snapped his umbrella shut, shaking loose the excess rainwater and checking that the folds were neat.

“I’m J. Francis Schmidt,” he announced as he pushed his way through the door. “And I’m here to pick up my shoes.” The jangling of a bell attached to the door almost drowned out his words.

The shop was unlit, except for the small amount of murky light the gloom outside grudgingly allowed through the shop windows. As his eyes adjusted, Schmidt heard a rhythmic tapping which paused briefly, then started again. One quick step brought him to the counter, and one quick slap of his palm struck the “Please Ring Bell for Service” bell. Then he saw the small, wiry man sitting at a workshop area behind the counter, a heavy wooden mallet in one hand, a fistful of gleaming silver tools in the other, and a wallet-sized rectangle of leather spread out on the table before him.

The other man peered up at Schmidt through horn-rimmed glasses, then squinted back at his work. “If you would indulge me, please, for a moment, I will be with you shortly. I need to finish this pattern.” The words halted Schmidt’s hand on the downsweep of its arc toward the service bell again. He glanced at his watch, saw he still had eleven minutes before his bus would arrive for its customary 4:32 stop.

“Do I recognize you … Mister Schmidt?” Goldmann—yes, it must be Goldmann—said, without looking up from the leather.

“That would be unlikely. A friend dropped off my shoes, and I have not done business with you before.”

“Ah.”

Schmidt looked at his watch again, then craned his head over the counter to see if he could decipher the older man’s craft. He became caught up in the rapidity with which Goldmann’s silver tools flashed in the dexterity of the leatherworker’s fingers, only to be returned to the cache of his palm in exchange for another tool. The staccato pounding commanded, and the leather responded by lifting itself, writhing into new forms—a stylized flower, a feathery leaf. With each stroke of the mallet, a vein appeared in a leaf, a seed appeared at the center of a flower, smooth leather became textured, rough edges became smooth.

Purses, wallets, belts, checkbook covers, all lay on shelves or hung on wooden pegs around the walls of the shop. Schmidt looked at the completed items, nodding in approval; looked at the prices, shook his head with a scowl.

“You do nice work, Mister Goldmann, although your prices are unrealistic.”

The leatherworker ignored the comment for a moment until he had finished the work he had intended, and stood up from the creaking chair, gathering his mallet, tools, and newly carved leather and bringing them all to the service counter.

“But isn’t all artwork expensive, Mister Schmidt?” He dropped his silver tools with a clatter on the glass countertop and beckoned the other man to look at the wallet he was making. “You see, it is almost like sculpture, carving and molding and manipulating the flesh into forms which please me. That is why I call myself a Leather Artist. But still, if you knew anything about leather you would not find my prices out of line. See that purse … there?”

Schmidt reached for it, grasped the price tag. “Seventy dollars.”

“Just the raw leather cost me thirty-five dollars, not to mention the lace, stain, and lacquer … or the twenty hours of work I spent on it.”

Schmidt released the price tag, as if he had grudgingly conceded the point. “Still, it is very beautiful.”

Goldmann smiled strangely, and a small fire in his eyes seemed to be focused through the thick glasses for the sole purpose of burning holes in Schmidt’s body. “There are others who do not look at leatherwork with such kindness. They see me as something worse than a killer, taking the skins of innocent creatures and—not content with the original murder—warping that flesh to my own ends, contorting it into forms it does not wish to hold. You might think it beautiful, but would the original owner of the skin look at it that way? Tortured flesh … perhaps that’s all it is.”

In an effort to make him look less disturbed by the subject matter, Schmidt looked at his watch again. “My shoes, Mister Goldmann, if you please.”

Goldmann reached under the counter and found a brown paper bag but failed to extend it across the counter. Schmidt saw black numbers tattooed on the older man’s arm and asked, “What’s that?” before realizing his mistake.

Goldmann stiffened and recited briskly. “Bay vier acht comma sieben drei null null eins! A sample of the leatherwork the Nazis performed.” His eyes took on a distant glaze. “They were masters of leatherwork, they were. Making us march up and down, molding our flesh, contorting our minds to the designs which delighted them. Not content with simple death, they had to make soap of our meat, take silver and gold from our teeth, take the souls from our bodies before they took the flesh from our bones!” Goldmann looked at the numbers on his arm.

Schmidt reached for the paper sack; the leatherworker moved it deftly out of reach.

“But even master leather-draftsmen make mistakes. The Nazis made a mistake, yes, they did. They took me for a fine cowhide, but I had the skin from an entirely different breed. They wanted smooth Jew skin, tough Jewish hide—but all they found on the man named Goldmann was a poor Lutheran. Not Jewish, as the name implies—curse my forefathers! I am a Lutheran—I AM NOT A JEW! I tried to tell … I shouted it over and over again—but the lying Jews shouted the same words, and nobody believed me. I kissed the cross, quoted every passage I knew from the New Testament. It amused them. It did not convince them.”

Goldmann glared across the counter at Schmidt, and suddenly his expression changed. “Are you a veteran, Mister Schmidt? Do you remember the war, the camps like Dachau? You do, don’t you?”

Schmidt blinked his eyes in confusion. “Why, no. I wasn’t even born until ten years after the end of World War Two. Surely I don’t look that old?”

Goldmann laughed, “Come now, Herr Schmidt! With a name like yours? Look at you—tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned! Perfect Aryan material!” He extended his arm in front of him. “Sieg heil, Herr Schmidt!”

“Now wait a minute! Just because my name—” He reached forward to snatch the brown-paper bag from the leatherworker’s fingers. “I’ll take my shoes now, sir, and leave!”

He saw that a large black swastika had been drawn across the back of the bag, and he tore it open. His fine black shoes were mottled with dozens of swastikas cut deeply into the leather. Schmidt looked up in horror at the other just as the heavy wooden mallet crashed into his right temple. He crumpled slowly. The shoes landed on the counter … he landed on the floor.

Goldmann spat at him, then came quickly around the counter. “Dirty Nazi! You think I wouldn’t remember you?” He pulled on Schmidt’s limp arms, dragging the blond-haired man into the back room.

He made ready a stretching rack and his tanning materials.

Then he looked around for the skinning knife.

I never much liked history in high school, finding it dry and boring. But when I entered college I discovered professors who had a genuine passion for ancient times and places. They made it interesting.

Though I was a Physics/Astronomy major, I became so interested in history courses that I ended up with a minor in Russian History. In one of my Russian History classes, I discovered a few off-hand references to the horrific work camps established during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. These camps were run by the brutal General Arakcheev, with the blessing of the normally gentle Tsar Alexander I. Immediately, I sensed material for a dark fantasy story, and when the professor handed out a term paper assignment, I decided to use that as an excuse to do my research.

Unfortunately, Arakcheev’s workcamps were so obscure that virtually no books had been published on the subject, and few scholarly articles had been written. Nevertheless, I found enough details and all the material for a great horror story. When I delivered the term paper, the professor was quite pleased; he said he had learned a great deal about the concentration camps and that he had never read such details before.

I smiled and said, thinking like a fiction writer, “Then I should make up my information more often.”

He was not in the least amused.

In any event, as accurate as I could make it, here is my story of what might have happened in those obscure Russian encampments.…

New Recruits

April 28, 1825

My dearest Tania,

In the military colonies of our beloved Tsar Alexander I, circumstances do not often grant me an opportunity to write you a personal letter—a truly personal letter which none of them have read beforehand. Things are still in a state of confused shock here after the tragedy—some of the buildings are still smoldering, and Lieutenant Goliepin has assumed temporary command; but he has not had us drill for two days now—and I am taking these precious moments of solitude to write you what I fear will be a rather lengthy letter.

Perhaps you may understand the reason for my prolonged silence once you realize the daily routine we undergo here. General Ursov, who was our commanding officer, believed that perfect discipline is the highest achievement any man can hope to accomplish in his lifetime. Thus, we spend three days a week in intense military drill from 6 am to 11 am and then again from 2 pm to 10 pm. But then, Tania, you are not accustomed to the slavery of clocks, so these numbers probably mean nothing to you. On alternate days we erect new buildings since Ursov insists that “building is the best means of ensuring that one’s name will be remembered after one is dead.” We also drain the land, dig ditches, and clear the stumps and stones … and we attempt to reclaim the swamp near which our colony is situated, which turns into a deathtrap mire every spring when the snow melts.

I believe the peasants, though, have it even worse than we soldiers do. They must rise two hours before us to care for the cattle, wash down the sidewalks, sweep the streets, sand the paths, or clean the latrines. And they must also drill with us in the morning, before going out into the fields to till the soil, in uniform. Even their six-year-old boys are required to drill. If only the Tsar knew what it was like—surely, he’d change things.

Tsar Alexander said that he wanted these colonies to be places where we soldiers could settle down in times of peace, grow our own food, and live with our families. All I know is that I have been here almost a year—and you, dear sister, and the rest of my family are still not with me. It almost brings tears to my eyes when I think of the day I was conscripted. How you and Mother wept, how the rest of the village already mourned me as dead. Twenty-five years of military service! I might as well be dead. I remember how Father and I drank too much vodka, for it was expected that I overindulge on the last night of my freedom. And then the next morning, riding in the lurching wagon along the muddy, pitted road, my head throbbing and my insides churning, and adding my own groans to those of the other new recruits riding in the crowded back of the wagon. I remember it rained that day—a light, misty rain … a gray rain.… That was over a year ago.

I am writing this letter myself, Tania, for I have perfected my knowledge of how to read and write here. I am hoping you will know to take this to Father Paniskii—how is he? Is he still alive?—and he will read it to you. Father Paniskii always liked me—he was always so kind. I first learned from him how to read, remember? He was going to send me to one of the church schools, but I was taken into the army before I had finished my lessons from him—barely enough time for me to learn to manage by myself. Old Endovik says that I am lucky to have a priest that I love, for he says the only priest he remembers from his village was a mean, unfriendly man. Endovik has been in the army so long.

Endovik is the man I live with—lived with; I still cannot believe he is dead. But his death was the means for me to get this letter to you—you shall see. I must tell all this in order, lest I lose my sanity by going off on too many tangents. You know me, Tania, as does Father Paniskii, so you know I am not a liar or a storyteller. And I sincerely hope that you will show this letter to no one else, for they will surely not believe me—especially after the “official statement” of what happened here is released. You must believe me—you will see.

It was spring, and wet, and miserable—perfect for the outbreak of cholera which struck our camp. Over one quarter of our population died from the disease, in throes of vomit and diarrhea which brought about the exhaustion which killed them. The peasants suffered worse than the soldiers did—and while both Endovik and I escaped the sickness, both of our peasant hosts died within hours of each other. They were a childless peasant man and wife, who had been kind to us and looked on their two soldier “lodgers” as the children they had never been blessed with. When we weren’t drilling, Endovik and I helped them with their chores. They died, with the last words of each asking how the other had fared. “Regaining strength,” we had said. “Coming along nicely.”

We were taken to new, hastily erected barracks which were crowded with all the refugees from other cholera-stricken households. Every home which had encountered cholera was abandoned, and due to the strict, almost vicious measures of General Ursov, the epidemic was contained within one section of buildings.

No one can say what Ursov intended to do with the abandoned buildings. In all sensibility he should have burned them to the ground—everything a cholera victim has touched or even gazed upon should be destroyed as a precaution against further spread of the disease. But the General’s stubborn … one could almost call it worship of the things he had accomplished, which would not allow him to destroy the buildings erected under his command.

The houses are symmetrically arranged along the main road—a watchtower stands for observing the fields; the chapel and the fire station are in the center of the village, surrounded by the officers’ quarters and other administerial buildings. One entire block of houses along the road stood empty, waiting for new occupants.

General Ursov had ordered new recruits from the Tsar in St. Petersburg, and he worked us survivors harder to make up for the loss of workers—and still he did not relax our military training. “Discipline is more important than rest,” Ursov had said. I’ll add my curse to all those others who have cursed him at one time or another, for one reason or another.

Even before it seemed possible—only four days after Ursov had sent his request to Tsar Alexander—the new recruits arrived. It was not possible that a message could have reached St. Petersburg, that the Tsar could have arranged for new troops and sent them to our colony in only four days. Yet they were here, and we looked on them as a blessing. A blessing! At the time we did see them as such. I think of them differently now.

The rain had stopped in order to make way for the heavy fog which had rolled in, wet and gray. The soldiers were standing in ranks for our military drill which had already gone on for several hours. We were wet and cold and exhausted—but if we had let any of it show we would have been given an extra part of an hour of practice. Endovik doesn’t have to drill much with us—he’s a veteran; he had survived his twenty-five years of military service. Endovik was a tough old man. He had been conscripted in 1799, before Tsar Paul I was assassinated, then served under our Tsar Alexander. He had fought against Napoleon at Borodinó in 1812, and he helped erect this military colony in 1818, almost exactly seven years ago to the date. He had survived his term of service—one of the few, for twenty-five years of discipline like Ursov’s is not easy to survive—and now the army, by its own promises, was forced to take care of him, begrudgingly. Tsar Alexander doesn’t know how bad things are—I am sure of it.

But, I promised I would not digress. We were standing in the fog, drilling monotonously, when we saw someone marching down the main road, spectral figures silhouetted in the fog. Now, these military colonies are isolated, and no one is allowed in—not government officials, not police—without the express permission of the commanding officer. We didn’t know what to think of the strange figures in the fog, until they emerged.

A young corporal, dressed in an old, dusty uniform, marched at the head of a column of twenty peasants, all thin and covered with scanty, tattered garments in the cold and wet. Their skin was pale, and their eyes were blank and staring as if they had had their very souls wrenched from them. They made no sound—no speaking, no shuffling of feet, simply quietly stepping as they marched past the troops standing at attention in the midst of our drilling.

Ursov watched as the corporal marched up to him. The General frowned, as if he vaguely recognized the other man but could not place him. Ursov seemed troubled.

The corporal halted in front of the General, saluted, and presented himself and his column of peasants. “General Ursov,” he said, “I am Corporal Belidaev. I have brought you these new recruits, as you requested, to replace some of the colonists who fell in your tragic epidemic.” Belidaev gestured to the vacant-faced peasants, allowing his words to sink in. Then he spoke again. “They are from the village of Vendeévna.”

Ursov’s eyebrows shot up, and it seemed to me that he paled rapidly. The General fidgeted, and the expression on his face seemed not to be able to decide which final form to take, as if he could not enforce the discipline on his own emotions which he demanded of his troops.

Belidaev stood placidly, matching his stare with those of the peasants. Ursov endured it uncomfortably until he turned to Lieutenant Goliepin. Goliepin is Ursov’s little servant who does everything the General tells him to. Goliepin isn’t very bright and that’s why the General likes him. In fact, I think I have a sharper mind than the Lieutenant—and it is very shocking, believe me, the first time you realize that you are truly more intelligent than your superiors are!

Ursov snapped to Goliepin, “Lieutenant, see to it that these new recruits are placed in the empty buildings.”

“The empty buildings, sir?”

“You are standing right next to me, Goliepin—has the fog gotten into your ears?”

Goliepin dug a finger into his left ear, seeming to take the General’s question seriously. “No, sir. But the empty buildings are—”

Ursov’s temper was rising. “I know full well which buildings I am talking about! If I didn’t know about them, I could hardly suggest them, now could I?”

“But—”

“GOLIEPIN!” Ursov roared, his face livid, all traces of his former pallor gone. “Am I not the commanding officer here? Do I not give the orders? And are you not to follow them? Without question! I leave this matter in your hands—I trust the new recruits will be settled adequately.”

Ursov turned and stormed away toward his private quarters. He was very upset and did not look at Goliepin standing confused in his wake, nor at Belidaev and his peasants. We soldiers were all very mystified. Belidaev was grinning to himself.

The atmosphere of the barracks in the evening always contains a mixture of different emotions. After a long session of drilling, which encompasses most of the afternoon and all of the evening, the prevailing mood is exhaustion. And the next day we would have to labor in the fields, or out in the swamp trying to “reclaim” it.

We were crowded in the hastily erected barracks, and the noises of many men drifted through the air, mingled with the odors of sweat and dirt. Some of the newer soldiers could be heard whimpering in their sleep, dreaming of wives or families or villages left behind for the next twenty-five years. Endovik says that the ones who whimper never survive the term of service. I wonder if I whimper in my sleep. A dim lantern stood in the center of a small wooden table, surrounded by four soldiers attempting to play a game about which no one could remember the rules precisely, but that didn’t seem to bother them much. They couldn’t cheat if no one knew the rules anyway.

Endovik’s bunk was next to mine—technically he was a farmer-colonist now that he had retired, free to till his land and be self-sufficient. But many things had been changed in the crisis of the epidemic. Many of the men lay wide awake in their bunks, staring and trying to find whatever they wished for. That’s the funny thing about exhaustion—it is harder to sleep if you’re completely exhausted than it is if you aren’t tired at all. By the time your muscles and nerves relax enough to permit sleep, it is time to wake up anyway. Oh well, not even the Tsar can change that.

Endovik usually stayed awake to talk with me, since he knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep for some time. Those were the times when I missed you the most, and also the times when life in the military colonies was the most bearable. Endovik and I became great friends during those quiet conversations. Poor Endovik.

I told him about the new recruits, and Corporal Belidaev, and Ursov’s reaction to the name of Vendeévna.

“Vendeévna?” Endovik said, and I looked at him to see that he was frowning, searching his memories. “Vendeévna was the name of the village that was here—before the colony. General Ursov had us tear it down to erect the colony.…”

“Why would Belidaev say his peasants were from Vendeévna then? Could there be another village with that name near here?”

Endovik pursed his lips and scratched his cheek by the mole under his ear. “Maybe you should know more about our General Ursov, Alexis,” he said to me.

I lay on my back and listened—Endovik was good at telling stories.

“Ursov was the fifth son of a nobleman and entered the army in the hope that his family name might bring him more success than the family fortunes would have. He fought against Napoleon at Borodinó under Field Marshall Kutuzov—and was the only survivor of his company because he hid in the dark corner of a ruined peasant home as soon as the heavy shooting started. Instead of being hung for cowardice as he should have been, Ursov was promoted. He had noble blood in his veins. I fought at Borodinó too—I was even shot in the arm.”

Endovik fumbled with his shirt, but it was dark, and I had seen the scar before anyway. “If only the Tsar knew …” We both sighed. Endovik continued.

“That was the time when I was half-finished with my term of service. The memories of my family were just numb spots in my mind, and the anticipation of getting out of the army was a dream, endlessly far away.

“After the wars, Ursov was given a soft administerial position in the military, right where he could embezzle money which was supposed to buy better food and uniforms for the soldiers. Then the Tsar started his program of military colonies and transferred Ursov out of his easy desk job and dropped him here in the wilderness to establish a new colony!” Endovik allowed himself a small chuckle. I was beginning to suspect that he was making much of this up, but I didn’t know how much, nor did I really care.

“Tsar Alexander had selected this piece of land to be the site of Ursov’s colony—out in a muddy swamp—where stood a generations-old peasant village named Vendeévna. It was common practice in erecting a military colony to raze the existing village, level it to the ground, and build a new military colony on the site, each building constructed according to a master plan. However, the peasants of Vendeévna had lived in their traditional village for as far as their memories stretched into the past—and they realized that Ursov was a lazy desk-man who had gone to fat in the previous few years.

“The peasants of Vendeévna rose up and refused to allow the construction of the colony, saying that the document of authorization from the Tsar had been forged—even though none of them could read—because the Tsar would never do such a thing.

“Then Ursov changed into a completely different person. He was like a raving, bloodthirsty general. He resented being here even more than the soldiers did and decided to make things even more miserable for the rest of us. Perhaps he saw a chance to make up for his cowardice at Borodinó—although he would probably make me run the gauntlet if he knew I had suggested he has a conscience—maybe there were other reasons. The General had us soldiers take out our weapons, fit the bayonets. We were to put the peasants in their places by violence.

“I remember one of our soldiers … I can’t remember his name … was originally from Vendeévna, and he refused to fight against his own townspeople. Ursov shot him dead right in front of all of us and ordered the rest of us to attack—our muskets and bayonets against sticks and pitchforks … we had seen what would have happened had we disobeyed the General’s orders. What could we do? The soldiers had been worn thin from Ursov’s discipline—and he unleashed them to burn and pillage. I don’t know how many peasants were killed before Vendeévna surrendered. Ursov sent the survivors out into the steppe, without provisions, with orders to travel to the nearest military colony, which was about a hundred versts away, with no villages in between.” Endovik sighed, “We never received word if any of them reached their destination.…”

The old man drew a heavy breath. Many of the other soldiers had already gone to sleep. I was startled by the sudden darkness as the gameplayers extinguished their lantern and got up from their table, groping in shadows to find their bunks.

“But why would anyone claim to be from Vendeévna seven years after that village was leveled?”

Endovik was silent for a short while, then spoke. “I just tell the stories—don’t ask me to explain them.”

Three days a week we practiced our military drill. On alternate days we worked. Hard. Since it was springtime, most of the soldiers and peasants were out working in the fields, plowing and planting. Lt. Goliepin had taken Corporal Belidaev and his twenty peasants out into the swamp to try to “drain” it. Nobody really knew what they were doing out in the swamp—Goliepin least of all—but they were kept busy sloshing in the mud, skirting the deep and treacherous muddy pools, and digging random trenches that led nowhere.

I had been assigned to sweep the streets and sidewalks, due to the cholera-inflicted shortage of peasants. This was the first time I had done this job, but I found it much more tolerable than working in the swamp, or even in the fields. Ursov is very imaginative, I must admit, for he can find tasks which absolutely must be done that no one else would even think of doing. Such as sweeping the trunks of trees.…

It was midmorning, and I had been working for five hours. I had swept most of the main street clean, and I was working on the walk in front of General Ursov’s headquarters. I was tired, but I dared not rest so close to the General’s watchful eye. I kept working, and it was very quiet.

But peace doesn’t last very long in the colony. I heard a horse coming and looked up to see Goliepin galloping down the street toward the General’s headquarters. Goliepin looked agitated, and his horse, covered up to its belly with globs of mud, looked angry at him for being so stupid as to bring a horse into the treacherous swamp. I watched the lumps of mud the horse left in its wake to mark its hoofprints, standing out in a bold trail down the center of the street I had just spent five hours sweeping.

“General! General!” Goliepin cried as he charged up the walk. I had to leap out of the way or be trampled. “There’s been an accident!”

Ursov burst out of his office, a half-crumpled piece of paper in his hand. Goliepin tried to catch his breath, but Ursov would have none of it. “Well, what’s happened? Have you—”

“One of the peasants is drowned! He fell into a deep pool of mud in the swamp and sank under! We tried to get him out, but … the mud must be softer than I thought—we couldn’t find him! Not even his body! And the other peasants just … just stood there!”

Ursov reacted strangely to the news of the death. He appeared almost happy for a moment, or relieved may be a better word. Then he suddenly turned angry and snapped at Goliepin. “You shouldn’t have left them alone out in the swamp just to tell me about the death of a peasant, you fool! They’re in your command! You aren’t a messenger boy, Goliepin! Now make the rest of them work harder for their carelessness!”

Goliepin looked confused for a moment, then seemed to think better of being confused; he saluted, turned his horse, and rode back down the clean street, laying down another set of hoofprints. I looked at the mud and sighed. One doesn’t complain.

We stood rigidly in our ranks, enforcing absolute discipline on ourselves. Our faces betrayed no emotion, our bodies allowed no movement whatsoever, not even a shiver in the cold night. It was time for the final roll call before retiring to our barracks; Ursov seemed to find it helpful to our sleep that we each get a good chill before turning in. Our uniforms were old and thin and did little to keep out the cold wind.

All the colonists stood in neat lines, facing the General who stalked back and forth in front of the ranks, hands clasped behind his back. Goliepin went carefully down each column, counting with his fingers, and losing track more than once so that we had to stand in the cold longer while the Lieutenant corrected his error.

Goliepin went to the single line of the twenty silent peasants under the supervision of Corporal Belidaev. Belidaev stood serenely as Goliepin counted his charges. Once again, the Lieutenant’s voice broke out in a half-whine of surprise. “General!”

Ursov had been watching Belidaev intently, and strode over as Goliepin shouted again, abruptly lowering his voice as he realized the General had stepped closer. “The new peasants are all here!”

Ursov frowned, “And should they not be? They were under your command.”

“No, sir, General! I mean they’re all here! Even the one who drowned! Well, he didn’t drown if he’s here—I mean the one we thought had drowned! The one I thought—”

Ursov pushed past the babbling Lieutenant and moved slowly down the column of peasants, glaring at each one of them. He came to the man, an old man, caked with mud, his clothes, his hair—mud dried even on his eyes and lips, in his mouth and teeth. He stared at the General with unblinking eyes and made no sign that he saw anything.

It took a supreme effort for the rest of us soldiers not to break discipline and turn our heads to watch the silent conflict. We could feel the tension crawling in the air, and we were certain that much more was here than we were aware of.

“Excuse me, General.” The voice startled Ursov in the silence, and he snapped his head up. Belidaev had spoken. “I did not mention this before, but I believe you knew my sister?”

It appeared as if someone had physically struck the General. Ursov stormed up to Belidaev, and his face was terrible to see, yet he also appeared helpless at the same time.

“Surely you must remember her, General?” Belidaev continued, his voice mildly taunting. “She had long brown hair in braids. And a mole on her left cheek?”

Ursov seethed, and Belidaev raised his voice, almost shouting into the General’s face: “A mole on her left cheek!”

Something snapped in Ursov, and he let out a cry of rage as he struck Belidaev a blow across the face which would have toppled a horse. Belidaev stood firmly.

“Tomorrow morning you shall endure the knut!” Ursov roared, and he stormed off to his private quarters, but it seemed almost as if he fled.

Belidaev smiled.

When we finally retired to the barracks, generally with more noise than was necessary (but then we needed some release from the amount of control Ursov’s discipline forced on us), I found Endovik already in his bunk. I spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. I frowned, knowing he couldn’t be asleep with all the commotion the soldiers were causing, and upon bending closer to him I saw that he had a strange pallor. He was shivering.

“Endovik?”

His face had a tight expression of pain and discomfort, and when I touched him, his skin had a clammy feeling. Tears swam in front of my vision.

“Endovik?” I asked again.

He opened his eyes and sighed heavily. “I know.…”

We both had seen enough of the epidemic in the past weeks that neither of us could have any doubt. We had watched the same thing happen to our peasant hosts. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t. Not from Endovik.

“Could you help me to the infirmary, please, Alexis?” Endovik looked up at me; and I helped him out of his bed.

That was the bravest thing I have ever done in my life—it required more courage than any battlefield would have. I remember stumbling across the compound, together in the darkness, Endovik leaning heavily on me, his steps uncertain. At any moment I waited for the fatal germ to cling to my clothes, to be inhaled in each breath, wondering if I had already contracted cholera, if I was already doomed. Endovik was shivering all the way, or was it me?

When I finally returned to my own bed, I lay shaking for a long time, listening to the silence which Endovik’s breathing normally filled.…

A heavy feeling of tension, uneasiness, filled the air as we filed out of the barracks early the next morning to witness the punishment of Belidaev. The sun had just risen, and the air was still chill as we marched to the plaza where we normally drilled at the center of the colony.

Ursov sent a group of soldiers with bayoneted muskets to the cholera houses to bring forth Belidaev and the peasants. The General’s face was bright and smiling in anticipation of the event. Ursov seemed to feel that since he was in a position of importance he was required to strike back viciously at anyone who questioned his authority, to fight back at anyone who fought against him. He knew he had not earned his rank—especially after his cowardice at the battle of Borodinó—and perhaps he felt he had to struggle harder to keep it, as he had against the insurrection of the original peasants of Vendeévna. And now Belidaev and his peasants were frustrating the General because they seemed to be taking care to do nothing Ursov could fight against. They were like ghosts from his past who had come—not to haunt the General—but to let him haunt himself.

Two of the soldiers reappeared, stiffly resting their guns on their shoulders, flanking Belidaev as he marched toward the General. Behind them came the column of twenty peasants, also closely guarded. I could see no reason for this and I am certain I wasn’t the only one mystified, since neither the peasants nor Corporal Belidaev had ever shown any form of resistance whatsoever.

Belidaev, however, did not seem to be disturbed in the least when he walked up to Ursov, even pulling slightly ahead of his guards (which we found to be one of his strangest actions yet, since each of the other colonists lives in mortal terror of the knut).

“Good morning, General!” he said.

Ursov’s face went livid with rage, and he angrily barked orders for Belidaev’s two escorts to strip the Corporal of his shirt and to bind him to a sloped wooden post sticking out of the ground at an angle. Dried blood stained the post and the ground around it, for we were forbidden to scrub this reminder of past punishments while we were forced to keep the rest of the colony so meticulously clean.

Belidaev rested against the post and did not struggle as the soldiers lashed his wrists together—more tightly than they had to, but they had no wish to incur the General’s rage. The peasants of Vendeévna stood silently, looking on with their staring eyes.

Ursov removed a long rawhide lash from his belt, holding the sweat-polished handle in one hand and caressing the braided leather thongs with his other. For the occasion he had added several sharp metal barbs to the end—I had not seen him do this for any other’s punishment.

“Before you whip me, General, aren’t you going to announce my crime?” Belidaev called, his voice pitched to draw the greatest irritation from Ursov. “You do remember my crime, don’t you, General?”

This evoked a brief murmur from the onlookers, almost a murmur, before they caught themselves and remained silent. Indeed, none of us understood exactly what Belidaev was being punished for.

Ursov responded with a violent crack of the whip, striking across the Corporal’s back. Belidaev didn’t wince or show any outward sign of pain; but a thin red line of blood appeared on his back.

“Hah! So you do bleed!” the General cried out, as if this were some odd sort of victory.

“You sound as if you expected otherwise, General?” Belidaev spoke calmly. Ursov whipped him again, and again.

And again, for a full hour. The pattern of interlaced red lines on Belidaev’s back had been obliterated by the flow of blood—but still the Corporal showed no pain, nor did he ask for any release from his punishment. He seemed to be drawing strength from the very ground his feet were touching, from the air he breathed, from the place that was Vendeévna.

The General too was drawing strength from his own reservoir of anger and bitterness, from some wellspring within himself which poured forth hatred for this Belidaev with a greater intensity than I have ever before seen, in any man!

At last Ursov, exhausted, had to pause for a moment. He wiped sweat off his forehead and his upper lip, reaching inside his coat for a silver flask of vodka. He filled the capful, took a small sip, then downed the rest in a gulp. The General replaced the flask and wiped his sweaty palm on his pant leg before gripping the whip handle again.

Ursov continued the beating for another hour, leaving us to wait and watch when we would normally be practicing military drill. The peasants of Vendeévna remained silent, looking on with their staring eyes. The General was trembling and seemed incapable of continuing.

Belidaev himself finally looked weakened; his eyes were closed, his back was shredded, and the flesh hung in bloody strips. As Ursov watched, the Corporal slowly slid down the post slippery with his own blood and fell to his knees.

Ursov seemed to draw strength from this and shouted for the doctor to bring smelling salts. The doctor seemed to have been waiting for this and passed the smelling salts in front of Belidaev’s face, reviving him. The doctor was a particularly uncaring man, with rough patches of stubble always scattered on his chin, as if he never shaved but could not grow a beard. His eyes were dull and tired. As Belidaev struggled to get to his feet, Ursov continued the beating again until the Corporal collapsed once more.

Like a wolf pouncing on his fallen prey, the General removed some small metal spikes from his pocket and savagely branded Belidaev on the forehead and both cheeks, leaving ugly, raw wounds. Smiling, he rubbed gunpowder into the bleeding facial wounds so that the scars would be permanent; then Ursov stepped back to inspect his work.

Belidaev was silent, huddled against the post. Ursov turned smartly to glare at the peasants, as if to find some signs of despair or compassion for the Corporal. The General seemed furious when he failed to find any. He strode up to the peasants, glaring at them, slowly pacing before each one of them, gloating.

“You see, filth, I command here! My word is power in this colony, and your resistance has no effect. Belidaev is weak—you are all nothing! My command comes directly from the Tsar—” The General stopped before the old man who had vanished into the swamp mire; the peasant was still caked with dried mud which clung to his hair, his lips, his eyes. “And my every action is sanctioned by him!”

Abruptly, the mud-covered peasant spat full in Ursov’s face. The General looked as if his throat would burst as his roar tried to charge out of his mouth.

“SOLDIERS! I want every person in this colony to form two columns! GOLIEPIN! See that every man has a rod or whip! Every one of these accursed peasants will run the gauntlet! With a full thousand men on a side! I will see their blood run on the ground!”

“Haven’t you seen that already, General?” A hoarse voice—Belidaev struggling against the ropes that bound him to the post. Ursov stormed over to him and kicked him savagely in the left kidney.

“You seem not to care about your own pain, Belidaev; I hope you find the punishment of your peasants more enjoyable!”

The gauntlet was formed rapidly. Ursov clapped his hand on certain soldiers as he passed, indicating that they were to lead the peasants between the two lines of soldiers armed with sticks and whips. Each soldier, when chosen, went up to a peasant, bared the peasant’s back, and pointed the bayonet of his musket at the other’s chest, lashing the peasant’s hands to the barrel of the gun. The peasants offered no resistance whatsoever.

A long stick like a broom handle was thrust into my hands, and I knew what I had to do. I stood uneasily in line, waiting for the peasants to be led past. I saw the doctor kneeling by Belidaev, and I was angry for a moment, wondering why he had left Endovik. And then the peasants began to march between the two columns of soldiers.

It is a strange thing to have to beat someone you hold nothing against, someone you don’t even know. Yet with Ursov watching us, we had to strike the peasants with all the strength we could manage—or we would end up running the gauntlet ourselves. As the peasants filed by, the soldiers holding their muskets were crouched and wary, lest they be struck themselves as they moved slowly backwards.

The blows fell, and the peasants didn’t seem to mind. They uttered not one sound, and I struck with all my might, for Ursov stood near me. An old peasant woman was led past me, but she did not flinch when I tried to crack her skull with my wooden rod. My arm was numb from the force of the blow, yet an old woman did not feel it!

The peasants were taken through the gauntlet, and none of them fell. Not one, not even the oldest and frailest among them. They waited at the end, and Ursov was livid. He stormed forward and grabbed the man who stood next to me. “You! You weren’t striking hard enough! Send them through the gauntlet again!” the General shouted, “And you will follow them through as punishment for your laxness!”

Then Ursov pointed at me, and my blood froze in my veins as I thought I would be forced to run the gauntlet myself. But then I realized I was to lead my companion through. His hands were stiff and trembling as I lashed them to my musket, pointing the bayonet at his chest. His eyes were wide, and I could not tell if he hated me for doing this. I didn’t even know his name—that made things easier.

We followed the peasants of Vendeévna through the two columns of throbbing sticks and whips. The man I led winced and cried out and stumbled as each blow fell—but the peasants made no sound. About halfway through the long column, my companion collapsed and would not get up again as his blood oozed through bruises and smashed skin. Ursov ordered for a flat sled to be brought, then made me slide the almost unconscious man on it. I then continued to drag the man through the lines as the other soldiers beat his motionless form.

I was drenched with sweat, both from exertion and anxiety, as I emerged from the end of the lines; the other soldiers who had led the peasants looked in a similar condition, far more distraught than the peasants themselves were. The peasants were unscathed. The doctor nonchalantly shuffled forward to look at the bloody man on the sled as Ursov bellowed for the peasants to run the gauntlet again.

The soldiers all groaned—not aloud, of course, as they were too afraid of the General for that—but I could sense their dismay. “Not this one, General,” the doctor said, indicating the man I had led. “He won’t survive it.”

Ursov scowled. “Take him to the infirmary, then.” He glared at the peasants, as if to say “How dare you emerge without a scratch while one of my men undergoes half what you have and almost dies.” That look was so filled with hatred that I know I would have shriveled up right there if it had been directed at me.

“Belidaev, too?” the doctor mumbled, breaking Ursov’s silent anger.

“No! He can lay in the barracks!” Then the General, at the peak of his frustration, dismissed the troops. He turned his back to all of us and strode off toward his office, looking for all the world like a mighty man who had just had his own impotence held out before him.

It was dark and silent in the barracks; most of us were asleep, and even the sounds of the men were muted as they went deeper into their dreams, or their nightmares, or the day’s strange events. I was thinking about Endovik.

The door burst open, striking the wall to which it was hinged with a flat crack, waking us in an instant. Ursov stood alone, framed in the doorway, silhouetting himself with the glow from the lantern he held in his left hand. The General entered the barracks, his boots making his footsteps loud on the wooden floor. He was fully uniformed, carrying a pistol in his belt and his whip in his right hand.

“Up! Up!” he shouted hoarsely. Ursov strode among the bunks, rapping them with the wooden handle of his whip as the soldiers struggled to their feet. “Up, scum! You have a task to perform! Dress yourselves as quickly as you can! Hurry!”

We did so, at first muttering among ourselves in our weariness; and then, remembering our fear of the General, we placed our clothes on in silence, hastily buttoning enough buttons to make us look dressed. Then Ursov ordered us out of the barracks and into three lines.

We were marched across the compound to the three buildings where Belidaev and the peasants of Vendeévna were housed, standing next to the other cholera-emptied buildings.

“Another case of the cholera sickness has been reported,” the General spoke to us. “To prevent another epidemic, the doctor has placed the victim in the strictest isolation and will not allow even the medical staff to tend him, lest they pass along the disease.” Rage filled me, and I almost flung myself at Ursov. Endovik! They weren’t even tending him!

“We must burn these plague buildings and everything in them to prevent another epidemic!”

Ursov ordered us to gather straw and pile it up around the buildings, so that we could set them on fire. We worked uneasily, and the General became increasingly impatient.

Finally, one of the soldiers spoke up. “General, sir, shouldn’t we … shouldn’t we get the peasants out first?”

Ursov snarled and cracked his whip across the soldier’s back. “You will follow my orders! Without question! I command! Do I not control this colony and everything in it? By the order of the Tsar!” The soldier was cowed and went back to work; the General turned and muttered quietly, almost to himself, “We will see if they are demons or not.”

Next, we were ordered to gather up hammers, nails, and pieces of wood with which to board up the doors and windows of the three occupied buildings. Each of us worked rapidly, afraid, and the three buildings were quickly secured. The strangest thing, to me, about the entire business was that the occupants of the buildings never stirred, never shouted, never tried to break out, not with all our sounds of hammering, and Ursov’s shouting. An eerie, unnatural sensation filled all of us. Perhaps the General was right—maybe the peasants of Vendeévna were unholy demons. Enough had happened since the new recruits had arrived that none of us was certain what to think any more.

Ursov’s voice was laced with fear as he ordered the straw set on fire, as if he knew he finally had to confront Belidaev in an unearthly duel but did not know what the outcome would be. The fires were set first on one of the buildings, then the next, and finally the third building where the bleeding form of Belidaev had been taken earlier that day.

The wood burned quickly, as if eager to cleanse itself, hungry to be purged of the cholera and of the spirits within. Each of us waited, fascinated by the flames, waiting with dread to hear the first screams of the peasants within. But they never came. The wood cracked and spat as it was consumed, and the fires began to climb the walls.

Belidaev’s building was in flames—and the door was suddenly flung open, the boards barricading the door shattered as if they did not exist. Belidaev stood in the doorway, framed in flames—all his lashes and bruises were healed, even the brands on his cheek and forehead had vanished. He stepped out of the burning building and turned to face Ursov, glaring at him with eyes made of shattered pain and ice.

“Good evening, General,” Belidaev said.

Ah, Tania, the horror as I write this!

Ursov used a mask of rage to cover his fear, and he lashed out at Belidaev with his whip. The General gasped in pain of his own and let the whip fall, looking in astonishment at the line of torn cloth across his chest, as if he himself had been whipped. Belidaev was untouched. Ursov fingered the sticky blood on his chest.

“You see, General, you continue to bring about your own punishment.”

Ursov stood speechless, his fear forming its own discipline.

Belidaev crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you know what night this is, General? This is our anniversary. Do you remember what happened seven years ago, General?”

Ursov clenched his fists into tight balls, but he seemed too much afraid to take any direct action.

“The peasants of Vendeévna rose up against you and your military colony—but you had them put down with your muskets and bayonets. You ordered your soldiers to pillage and burn—Vendeévna had to be razed anyway, you said, to establish the military colony here. One of your soldiers, a Corporal Belidaev, had been born and raised in Vendeévna before being drafted into the Tsar’s army. When he tried to speak out to protect the people of his village, you shot him in front of the other soldiers to show them what would happen if they disobeyed the great General Ursov who had fought so bravely at the battle of Borodinó. Do you remember shooting poor Corporal Belidaev, General?”

“You are lying!” Ursov shouted.

“And after you had turned your soldiers loose on the village to rampage, you went through the people yourself like a wolf. You raped my sister Marta, General—do you even remember? She had long brown hair, braided—and a mole on her left cheek. You told her you would shoot our parents if she did not submit—and even though in her fear she cooperated with you in every way, still you rammed your bayonet into her throat when you had finished with her! Do you remember? You thought you had no conscience, General—I am here.”

“You can’t know! You were dead!”

“The village of Vendeévna was here for generations, General. The peasants farmed here, sweated and died here—for generations. You don’t think you can remove all that by tearing down the buildings and erecting your own? Your military colony, General, is like a thorn in the skin of the earth, which is being pushed outward. The time has come, General—the splinter will be removed.”

Ursov turned to us with a strange, wild expression in his eyes. “Lies! They are not true!”

The building roared in flames behind Belidaev, but he didn’t seem bothered by the heat. He beckoned to Ursov. “Would you care to enter the fires of Hell a few moments sooner, General?”

Ursov grabbed the pistol from his belt and pointed it at Belidaev. “You will die, demon!”

“Yes!” Belidaev hissed. “The demon will die!”

The General fired—and fell to the ground with a bullet hole in his chest, and shock on his face. His blood soaked into the soil of Vendeévna to mingle with the peasant blood he had spilled there so many years ago.

Belidaev laughed and turned to step inside the burning building, vanishing in the flames.

Just this morning, when some of the soldiers ventured into the still-smoldering wreckage of the cholera buildings—under direct orders, since no one had willingly ventured into them since the night of the fires—they found no bones or any other remains of Belidaev or the peasants of Vendeévna. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

I went to visit Endovik this morning, but he had already died. The doctor wouldn’t even let me say goodbye to the body of my friend. It was too risky, he said. However, Endovik’s death is allowing me to send you this letter. Lieutenant Goliepin has the command now, and he is very confused with all the new duties thrust upon him. I have told him that Endovik had a sister, and I asked him if I could write her a letter of consolation. Goliepin was happy to have one small duty taken from him and he quickly waved me away. He won’t have time to read this letter either, and so I will trust that it reaches you uncensored.

I believe that the “official” story states something to the effect that Ursov died of cholera, and the buildings were routinely burned to remove the threat of pestilence. Officially, we never received any new recruits from Vendeévna.

Give my love and greetings to Father, and I will write you again if I can, but it may not be possible for a while. Know that you are with me and that you are my strength to endure twenty-five years of military service. I love you all, and God’s blessing upon you.

Alexis

I can’t possibly have a horror/dark fantasy collection without featuring one of my most popular characters, Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. Dan has starred in five novels and more than a dozen short stories. This is one of my favorites, and I have used it many times at readings for science fiction conventions. You’ll see why.

Science fiction conventions, comic cons, and pop-culture expos have been a major part of my life, and I know them inside and out. I pulled on a lifetime of experience to get these details right.

Role Model

A Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. Adventure

I

Come on, Shamble—it’ll be fun,” said Officer Toby McGoohan, my best human friend. He acted as if he’d gotten season tickets to his favorite sports team.

I was immediately suspicious, sure that this would not be typical police business. “I don’t even know what a cosplay convention is, McGoo.”

He had met me outside the offices of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations, seemingly by happy coincidence as he walked his beat, but we both knew it wasn’t an accident. He’d been waiting for me.

“Cosplay—costume playing. It’s when people dress up as characters from their favorite movies, TV shows, comics, video games, whatever.” He had looked it up online, so he considered himself an expert.

“Oh. Trick or treat for grown-ups.” Every day in the Unnatural Quarter, I saw a parade of werewolves, mummies, vampires, zombies, ghosts, witches, and second-string monsters, so I wasn’t going to be impressed by a few interesting costumes.

“A lot more than that. These people think they are the characters. It gets a little intense. And weird. And fun.”

It didn’t sound any stranger than my usual cases, and McGoo and I often helped each other out. “So why do they need a zombie detective?”

He seemed exasperated that I was spoiling his fun by being such a hard sell. “They don’t need a zombie detective any more than they need a beat cop, but the hotel manager is nervous about having such big crowds—naturals, unnaturals, all those people running around in costumes. Thought he might need some extra security.” McGoo flashed one of those grins that had, over the years, convinced me to do things that would get us both in trouble. “Besides, he gave us two free passes to the con.”

He’s a redhead with a round, freckled face and a rough sense of humor (to put it mildly). We’ve been friends for a long time, even back when I was still alive, and our friendship had survived me coming back as one of the walking dead. If a friendship can survive that, it can survive anything (though he still makes jokes about the unsightly bullet hole in my forehead).

My caseload at Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations was light at the moment, so I shrugged and agreed to go. I had already been to the Worldwide Horror Convention when it was held in the Quarter last year. I assumed this would be the same sort of thing.

So, that was why the two of us found ourselves in the lobby of the Motel Six Feet Under and Conference Center standing next to two clattery silver-armored Cylons from the old Battlestar Galactica TV show. They gleamed and hummed, red optical sensors in their helmet visors drifting to and fro.

“CosplayCon security,” one said in a vibrating synthetic voice that I could barely understand. He took his helmet off to reveal a young man with dark sweat-plastered hair. “Whew, those things get hot after awhile! Thanks for joining us, but I doubt you guys’ll be needed. We don’t expect any trouble. Everyone has a good time at the con.”

As I looked around the lobby and common areas, I saw Klingons with wicked-looking bat’leths, masked ninjas with curved swords, Star Wars stormtroopers with heavy blasters, Lord of the Rings orcs with large battle-axes.

“How could there possibly be trouble?” I asked. “Nothing looks harmful at all.”

“All the weapons are peace-bonded,” said the Cylon. When I gave him a blank look and McGoo didn’t seem to recognize the term from his extensive Wikipedia research, the Cylon security guard said, “Zip-tied. Everything’s strapped down, so the bladed weapons are perfectly safe. And, of course, the blasters are just molded resin props. The Jedi lightsabers are neon tubes.” The Cylon put his helmet back on and told us in his monotone robotic voice, “Have fun—and stay in character,” then marched off with a clatter of silver armor.

Tables had been set up in the hall with volunteer staff doing their best to register attendees. This was the first year of CosplayCon in the Unnatural Quarter, and they were glad for the added attraction of real monster attendees as well as cosplayers.

A banner over the registration area proclaimed, “We are all someone else inside!” and the program book cover said, “Find your inner YOU!” as if this was a therapy session. Maybe it was—costume therapy.

At the motel front desk, a lone vampire clerk shook his head at all the costumes. He muttered, “Bunch of weirdos,” then went back to a magazine he was reading. I didn’t see why costumed fans were any weirder than the socially acceptable sports fans who put Viking helmets or cheese wedges on their heads.

Normally on a slow Saturday I might have walked around the Quarter with my ghost girlfriend Sheyenne or helped my lawyer partner Robin Deyer finish paperwork on cases. Like any workaholic, I had “fun” by doing my job—solving cases and helping clients. It was my reason for living, in a loose definition of the term.

More than a decade ago, a ridiculously improbable alignment of planets, coincidences, and real-world events had caused the Big Uneasy—a magical phenomenon that brought legendary and supernatural creatures back to the world: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ghouls, gargoyles, mummies and, yes, zombies. The unnaturals tended to gather in this section of the city where they were accepted, where they felt right at home.

But they still had problems, just like anyone else. While most unnaturals lived perfectly normal everyday lives, some were criminals; others wanted a divorce; others needed to find lost family members. A detective working in the Quarter had the same sort of cases as a mundane detective on the outside, but the clientele was a little stranger.

Back when I was living, and trying to make a living, I’d hung out my shingle and partnered up with young firebrand Robin Deyer. I had a good run, a successful business, before I was killed. But, as I said, I like doing what I do. So, when I came back from the dead, I just got back to work.

In the Unnatural Quarter, being a zombie is no handicap to being a detective, though I insist on maintaining my physical appearance, bathing regularly, going for scheduled top-offs at the embalming parlor, even seeing to it that I receive my monthly maintenance spell. I won’t let myself turn into one of those slobbering shuffling embarrassments that make polite society turn up their noses at zombies.

I’m accustomed to seeing monsters in my everyday life, but I had to admit these costumes were amazing, even a little intimidating, when I started to think about the obsessive time and effort the fans had put into making them.

A squad of white-armored Star Wars stormtroopers marched past, representing the 501st Legion, led by an impressive black-caped and wheezing Darth Vader impersonator.

A group of Klingons had taken over the motel’s woefully inadequate coffee shop and sat around the tables, pounding fists and demanding more coffee. They grew louder and more unruly by the minute, while a harried-looking mummy waitress tried her best to serve them.

A drunk furry fan was coming on to a full-furred werewolf busboy, who didn’t know how to react to all the unwarranted and unwanted attention.

“See, told you this would be fun, Shamble,” McGoo said. “Look over there, it’s the Doctor. How many can you name?”

I looked around, but only saw a random assortment of eccentric-looking men. “Who?”

McGoo rolled his eyes. “Let’s not get into the Abbott and Costello routine. Dr. Who. The first one there with short dark hair—he’s the David Tennant Doctor. And the one with the scarf—you gotta recognize him—it’s a Tom Baker lookalike, probably the most classic Dr. Who. And the one with the bow tie—Matt Smith.”

Even after all this time, I was surprised to learn something new about my friend. “I didn’t know you were a fanboy, McGoo.”

“Not to this extent,” he said, gesturing around. “But I’ve got a TV, and I am culturally aware.”

One tall beanpole fan peered over the crowd, trying to reach the information table. Finally, he gave up and just yelled, “What time is Van Helsing going to be on stage?” Some of the vampire attendees booed.

“Five o’clock in the main ballroom,” yelled an unseen person from behind the desk.

Four skinny guys in clinging red shirts from classic Star Trek walked by, and someone yelled in mock panic, “Look out, it’s redshirts!” I couldn’t see why they posed any kind of threat; in fact, the tight shirts emphasized how scrawny their arms and chests were. If that was the kind of security available to Captain Kirk and crew, no wonder the old show got canceled after only three seasons.

For my own part, I wore my usual sports jacket with crudely stitched-up bullet holes and my fedora—it’s my trademark, and what P.I. would be without one? McGoo wore his blue beat-cop uniform, and everyone seemed to think he was playing a part from an old police show. Several fans came up with very clever guesses from obscure programs that I hadn’t heard of in years. One fan marched up with a sneer, poked a finger at McGoo’s chest, and said, “T.J. Hooker—not Shatner’s best,” then walked away without waiting for a response.

Suddenly, we heard yelling from the mezzanine open area and the sounds of a growing altercation. McGoo glanced at me. “This is what we’re here for, Shamble. Come on.”

We ran up the stairs (and I use the term “ran” loosely, since my joints are stiff enough that it takes me awhile to get up to speed). A group of rowdy Klingons yelled, “Star Trek is better!” One heavyset Klingon woman had the loudest voice of all.

Across the room, the 501st stormtroopers, who had made an uneasy alliance with costumed Jedi Knights and Mandalorian bounty hunters, took offense. “Star Wars is better!”

“Star Trek!” insisted the Klingons.

“No, Star Wars!” The intellectual debate continued in that fashion for a few more exchanges before the groups ran forward and clashed in an all-out brawl. The Klingons struggled to draw their bat’leths against the peace-bonding ties. The stormtroopers punched and pummeled with a clatter of white plastic armor. The Jedi Knights lit their fluorescent-tube lightsabers but were careful not to damage them.

Before McGoo and I could break up the fight, the group of redshirts rushed into the fray, trying to drive the combatants apart. Eventually, the Klingons brushed themselves off and the 501sters adjusted their body armor. Somehow, the only ones genuinely battered, bruised, and injured in the fight were the redshirts.

“You’re right, McGoo. This is fun.” I smiled.

Wandering about to get the lay of the con, we walked past large and small panel rooms, costuming workshops, and autograph tables featuring bit actors from long-canceled programs. One large room hosted a “robot smash” where model-builders pitted a remote-controlled R2D2 against a more ominous-looking Dalek. The two machines clashed, with the Dalek crying in a synthesized voice, “Annihilate, Annihilate!” while R2D2 responded with a series of incomprehensible but clearly rude beeps and squeals.

Primarily, though, people wanted to show off their outfits (or lack thereof, in the case of some of the very scantily clad barbarian princesses).

A hard-faced Asian woman wearing a COSTUME JUDGE badge blocked my way. As she ran her critical gaze up and down my appearance, she looked as if she’d had her sense of humor surgically removed. In an officious voice, she said, “I’ve seen one or two of you already at the con, but your costume isn’t up to snuff.” She clucked her tongue, then tugged on the front of my sport jacket. “Wrong number of bullet holes on the left. That exit wound in your forehead is at least a centimeter off. And that makeup is terrible. It should be blended more.”

“But I’m the real one,” I said. “I am Dan Chambeaux.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right, keep telling yourself that. Getting into character is important, but you have to take the costume seriously, too. After a decade as a cosplayer, trust me, I know what I’m talking about. If you’re going to be a zombie detective, at least do it right.” She walked off muttering.

Loud enough to slice through the background noise came a bloodcurdling scream—and not the good kind of bloodcurdling scream. We hurried toward the source, as did all the other attendees, as if the shriek somehow signaled free beer for everyone.

McGoo and I shoved our way toward a small second-floor panel room, but a crowd had already clogged the door. We tried to jostle people aside, but they reacted as if we were just fellow costumers. So, we got more aggressive and finally made it through the door.

A stormtrooper lay sprawled on his back on the floor—with a wooden stake protruding from his chest. It had been pounded right through the white armor plate.

A burly Klingon stood over him, raising both hands. His bronze skin was flushed, and his mouth drawn back in panic. “I just found him like that!”

A young woman in the back of the room—a motel employee holding a pitcher of water for the next panel—screamed again for good measure, although her first scream had already accomplished whatever a scream could do.

By now, all the formerly brawling Star Wars and Star Trek fans had made their way to the crime scene. The man in the Vader suit came huffing up behind them all, gasping with real exertion that was louder than the sound of his respirator voice box. The stormtroopers reeled when they saw their murdered comrade. One of the troopers looked through the open door and cried out, “Oh, no! It’s TK-9399!”

I asked, “You can tell that just at a glance?”

The helmet turned toward me. “Of course, look at the red shoulder pauldron. It’s very distinctive. That’s TK-9399 all right.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” I turned and called out, “Is there a doctor in the house?” The David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Tom Baker Whos arrived, drawing sonic screwdrivers and looking eager to help. I revised my shout. “Somebody call an ambulance.”

McGoo drove the spectators away. “Out of the way, all of you. This is a crime scene.”

“I didn’t do it!” yelled the Klingon, unable to tear his gaze from the body on the floor. “I didn’t touch him!”

McGoo turned to him. “I’m Officer Toby McGoohan from the UQPD. I need to ask you some questions. What’s your name?”

The Klingon composed himself and said proudly, “I am Ach-gLokh Heqht!”

McGoo had drawn a pad from his pocket, poised to take down the information, but didn’t know how to spell it. “Is that a name, or are you coughing up phlegm?”

“That is how I got my name!”

“Ach-gLokh Heqht didn’t do it!” claimed a loud and busty Klingon woman. “I was with him at the time.”

“No, you weren’t,” I said. “I saw you in the altercation up on the mezzanine just a few minutes ago.”

“You would call me a liar?” The Klingon female strode forward as if she meant to tear my limbs off.

I’ve already been through having a limb torn off, though, and found it unpleasant. I backed away, trying to be calm. “Just stating a fact, ma’am. It won’t do for an alibi.”

The Klingons regrouped and tried to come up with something else. McGoo and I bent over the staked stormtrooper.

“Take his bucket off,” called one of the troopers in a sad voice. It took me a minute to realize that he meant the helmet.

McGoo shook his head. “Nothing gets removed until the Coroner examines him.”

“What if he’s not entirely dead?” I asked. “Never can tell these days.”

Though it went against normal police procedure, McGoo couldn’t argue with that. “Right, Shamble. Better make sure.” He and I carefully lifted off the victim’s helmet without disturbing any other part of the armor.

Then we discovered an even greater surprise. The dead stormtrooper TK-9399 was a vampire.

II

The ambulance and the Coroner’s wagon arrived together with a dueling set of screeching their tires in the motel’s designated “Coroner” and “Ambulance” parking spot. (The two spots saw frequent use.)

McGoo had called for UQPD backup, and now half a dozen uniformed officers swarmed through the Motel Six Feet Under and Conference Center … which was even more confusing because some of the cosplayers wore similar—some might say better executed—uniforms, including one dressed up as the T-1000 from Terminator 2.

The Klingons had commandeered the coffee shop again, where they demanded goblets of warm bloodwine to celebrate the life of TK-9399, whose soul had now gone off to some place called Sto-vo-kor … which sparked a lively discussion as to whether Star Wars fans could even go to Sto-vo-kor, or if that was exclusively limited to the Star Trek franchise.

McGoo and I went to the Con-Ops room, just off the registration area. We met the pot-bellied and balding con chairman named Phil Somerstein. He looked bleary-eyed, harried, and overworked with management details. The murder of one of the CosplayCon attendees seemed just one more hassle he had to deal with.

McGoo said, “This is an active investigation, Mr. Somerstein. I’m going to have to impose a lockdown. The murderer is likely still in the motel, and until we’ve had a chance to talk to everybody, we’ll need your help in insuring that all of your attendees stay put.”

Somerstein wiped a sweaty palm across a sweaty forehead. “Officer McGoohan, you don’t understand—this is con weekend. Nobody’s leaving the motel, with or without a lockdown.”

The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open to reveal two uniformed trolls from the Coroner’s office. They wheeled a gurney on which rested the zipped-up body bag. They had placed TK-9399’s white bucket on his chest like a memorial, and as they rolled the gurney past, the other 501sters stood in a solemn honor guard, their heads bowed. Darth Vader also hung his helmet, flicking off the respirator in a sign of respect.

One of the stormtroopers shook his white helmet. “He never stopped trooping.”

The crime scene techs had swarmed in with their kits, taking the necessary photos, although many of them spent too much time taking additional photos of sexy Xenas and Wonder Womans (Wonder Women?) who posed for the shots. The police detectives conducted interviews. Off in a quiet area they were taking statements from a Batman and an Indiana Jones.

McGoo looked overwhelmed already. “I may need your help with this, Shamble.”

“The cases don’t solve themselves,” I said. “And you did promise me this would be fun.” I was already starting to formulate a plan.

Ach-gLokh Heqht was the obvious suspect, and I’ve been a detective long enough to know that the obvious suspect usually isn’t the guilty one in the end. Besides, if all these cosplayers were really into their characters, why would a Klingon kill someone by pounding a wooden stake through the chest? TK-9399 was a vampire, however, so the murderer’s options had been limited. Still, I would have expected a Klingon to, say, decapitate him with a bat’leth and stuff his mouth full of garlic. Then I realized the white bucket would have posed a challenge to the garlic follow-up.…

“I can help,” said a cheery voice. “It’s what I do.”

I turned, and faced myself—or at least a reasonable facsimile of me. He extended his hand. “Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.”

I was taken aback—he had the fedora, the bullet hole in his forehead (though shifted a centimeter closer to center than mine was), and his skin was pallid. His sport jacket had prominent stitched-up holes. His facial features even bore a strong resemblance to mine. “You dressed up as me?”

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Shamble. I’ve read all your books.”

“They’re not actually my books,” I said. “Someone else writes them, and they’re just loosely based on my actual cases.” In fact, I found it embarrassing that Howard Phillips Publishing kept releasing comedic horror mysteries that featured the cases of a fictitious zombie detective, based on me. “Just as long as you remember that I’m the real one.” I paused to consider. “I’ll call you Fanble.”

He seemed disappointed. “But I have to believe I’m the real Dan Shamble. It’s cosplay. I’m in character. Cosplay means you are that character, not just dressed like him. It’s all about finding the real me inside.”

“Right. I saw the program book.”

McGoo looked from Fanble to me and back to Fanble again. “Usually one Shamble’s enough, but we have a lot of potential witnesses and a lot of potential suspects.” He raised an eyebrow, as if about to give a test. “Hey, Fanble, have you heard this one? A skeleton walks into a bar, says to the bartender, ‘Give me a beer … and a mop!’”

Fanble managed to stay in character by not laughing any more than I did. McGoo has an unfortunate repertoire of bad jokes.

McGoo shook his head. “Yeah, Shamble, he’s just like you.” He started off down the hall. “Let me talk to the crime scene techs to see what they found.”

I nodded. “Meanwhile, I’ll go meet with the stormtroopers, learn more about the victim.”

“We’re on it, McGoo,” said Fanble. “The cases don’t solve themselves.”

III

After TK-9399 had been hauled away in a body bag, CosplayCon got right back into swing as if nothing had happened. The attendees waited all year for this event, and they worked on their costumes with obsessive attention to detail. They weren’t going to let a simple thing like a murder ruin their fun.

I didn’t know what to think about Fanble. He seemed earnest and more serious about being “me” than I was. He took great care to imitate my movements, my mannerisms. It was like having my own portable 3D mirror walking alongside me. I decided to accept the help, though. Two heads are better than one when trying to solve a case.

The 501st troopers were nowhere to be found. I looked around, frustrated. “How do you hide a bunch of fans in identical white armor or a tall man in a Darth Vader suit?”

Fanble responded, “It’s our job to find out. We are detectives, after all.”

As we walked down the hall, other con attendees gave admiring glances and complimented us on our realistic costumes. When I assessed Fanble again, I realized that the bullet hole in his forehead was in the correct spot after all. I must not have noticed it before. We looked like twins.

But the grin on his face made him appear immature and idiotic. Did I really look like that? “Don’t smile so much,” I said. “It’s out of character.” He immediately resumed a stern “I’m a P.I. and I’m at work” expression.

A young man impersonating Edward from Twilight—who didn’t look like any real vampire I had ever met in the Quarter—asked us if we knew when and where Van Helsing would be giving his talk. Fanble gave him the Crown Ballroom number, then asked if “Edward” knew where we could find the 501st members. I wouldn’t have expected a character from Twilight to pay much attention to Star Wars personnel, but the imitation sparkler directed us to an unused panel room that the stormtroopers had commandeered.

Fanble and I looked at each other. “Do you think they’re discussing the case? Maybe working out a retaliation against the Klingons?” he asked.

“Maybe they’re holding some kind of memorial for TK-9399,” I said. We found the door and pulled it open without knocking. In detective school I was taught that it’s best to surprise your suspects.

The surprise wasn’t exactly what I’d intended, though, because we came upon a group of half-undressed stormtroopers. Definitely not something I’d ever intended to see.

“Oh, excuse us,” I said.

Fanble added in a gruff, no-nonsense voice, “We’re investigating the murder of a Mr. TK-9399.”

The troopers had taken off their helmets and shucked out of their white resin armor. They stood around in skintight body gloves while they adjusted boots, butt plates, greaves, and shin plates.

“Come on in, but close the door,” said the troop leader, who identified himself as TK-6370. “We’ve got an important troop in an hour, lots of exposure, lots of attention. We wanted to check our kits.”

“I’m sorry about your fallen trooper,” I said. “We’re trying to determine who killed him and why.”

The stormtroopers grew solemn. “Poor TK-9399. Even after he died and came back as a vampire, nothing changed. I’ve never seen a fan so dedicated. Star Wars is a way of life.” That trooper identified himself as TK-7246.

Another trooper, TK-9754 , said, “I’m going to miss TK-9399. Sure, he was a fan. Sure, he was a vampire. But he didn’t let that change who he was. TK-9399 always used to say, ‘Star Wars is my life, and now it’s my unlife.’” He picked up a piece of white plastic and turned to the person beside him. “Help me with my codpiece, will you?”

The man in the Darth Vader suit flicked his respirator box on and off, fiddled with the sound effects, then unsnapped a compartment on his wide utility belt to remove a roll of menthol cough drops. “TK-9399 caused quite a stir by trooping as a vampire. He was an activist, even wanted to form an Unnatural Quarter garrison. He tried to round up Star Wars fans among the werewolves, mummies, and ghosts.” He tugged on his black gloves. “He thought it would be cool to have a real ghost Obi-Wan and Anakin, maybe even a troll dressing up as Yoda. TK-9399 didn’t expect to cause trouble by expanding the fanbase.”

TK-6370 chimed in (and I was proud of myself for remembering the name/number), “Star Wars is a pretty diverse universe. Think of the cantina scene, or Jabba’s Palace. Gamorreans and Jawas, Twi’Leks and Trandoshans, Gungans, Ithorians—even Chiss and Khomms and Dathomiri.”

TK-5794 snorted. “Chiss and Khomms and Dathomiri are from the Expanded Universe. I hear even Disney’s dumping those now.”

“They still count,” insisted TK-6370.

“And don’t mention Gungans. I want a Jar-Jar free convention,” said another trooper; I was starting to lose track of the numbers.

“Point is, everybody gets along just fine. Why can’t vampire fans and human fans share a love of Star Wars? But TK-10625 certainly didn’t like it. He claimed it was ruining the purity of Star Wars, to which we all said, ‘Excuse me, Star Wars Holiday Special?’”

“And Greedo shooting first? Like that’s pure?” piped up another trooper, to a general groan of assent.

“TK-10625?” I asked, looking around.

“What really bothered TK-10625 was that TK-9399 had to wear a modified stormtrooper suit and armor once he became a vampire. Added sun protection so he could troop out in broad daylight as long as he wanted,” said TK-5470. “But TK-10625 said the modifications made the armor an unofficial variant and therefore non-canon.”

Several troopers groaned simultaneously. “Let’s not get into the canon discussion again.”

“But TK-10625 can be a stubborn and angry man. He didn’t like the idea of an Unnatural Quarter garrison at all, and he made no secret about that.”

Fanble stepped up. “Where is TK-10625 now? We’d like to talk with him.”

“Not here,” said TK-6370 with a sigh. “Just after the con started, he and TK-9399 got into a huge argument. TK-10625 stormed off, and we haven’t seen him since. I was surprised TK-10625 agreed to troop at CosplayCon in the first place.”

I glanced at Fanble, then looked at the troopers. “A huge argument? And TK-9399 was murdered right after that?”

The man in the Vader suit frowned. “Sure, but a lot of things happened right around then. I mean, the con was getting into full swing.”

TK-5794 glanced at the wall clock. “Time’s tight. Better get ready to troop.”

TK-6370 nodded. “Happy to help with the investigation, but we’ve got to be on stage in a few minutes.”

Fanble also looked anxious. “I have to go, too, Mr. Shamble.”

“It’s Chambeaux,” I said. “You should know better. What’s so important?”

“Van Helsing is about to take the main stage. Who wants to miss that?”

I had intended to miss it, but I let Fanble go, and he dashed off so he could get a good seat. The 501sters finished adjusting their armor components. TK-6370 said, “Buckets on!” and they all donned their helmets. I was now in a room full of identical stormtroopers (although one of them seemed a little short). The man in the Vader suit flicked on his respirator, seated his black helmet in place.

“What is this important troop you’re doing?” I asked.

Between gasping breaths, his words garbled by the cough drop, the Vader impersonator said, “We’re escorting Van Helsing in the main ballroom.”

“And … how can you tell each other apart?”

“We are supposed to be clones,” said one trooper, and they marched out.

IV

Out in the common area, a Heath Ledger version of the Joker was comparing notes with a Cesar Romero version of the Joker as the crowds made their way toward the ballroom, ready for the main event.

Since I was alone for the moment, I took a few minutes to call the office—not because I had any important pending cases, but because I wanted to talk to Sheyenne. “Sorry, Spooky, this was our date day,” I said. “You would’ve enjoyed hanging out at this cosplay convention.”

I could picture her ethereal spectral form as she sat at her desk in Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations. She would hold the phone, smiling, her sparkling blue eyes lighting up. “You always take me to interesting places, ’Beaux.”

“Interesting … right. This time a murder’s gotten in the way. Star Wars fan dressed up in a stormtrooper outfit found dead with a stake through his heart. Turns out he was a vampire. We’ve got a Klingon as our main witness.”

“Oh, another one of those,” Sheyenne said. “Are we on the case?”

“I’m here helping McGoo. The motel’s on lockdown, but no one seems interested in leaving anyway.”

“Let me know if you need our help. Robin and I are here for you.”

“I’ve already picked up an unexpected sidekick,” I said, looking around for Fanble, but I didn’t see him among the crowds. “I’ll explain later.”

After I said goodbye to Sheyenne, McGoo came up, red-faced and harried. “I tell you, Shamble, this is turning out to be a full-fledged cluster-frack.”

“Cluster-frack? That’s a new one.”

“From the new Battlestar Galactica, Shamble. Get with it.” He mopped his forehead. “Ach-gLokh Heqht has gone missing—and the rest of the Klingons aren’t talking. He was our only suspect.”

“We might have another person of interest.” I explained about the internal dispute between TK-9399 and TK-10625.

McGoo looked interested. “All right, let’s have a talk with him. Is he with the other stormtroopers?”

“Unfortunately, no. He’s gone missing as well.”

“How do you lose a Klingon and a stormtrooper in the same day?” McGoo asked, then looked at the chaos of convention-goers and answered his own question.

I said, “I’m going to the main ballroom to see Van Helsing’s keynote speech. Since the man’s known for killing vampires, it’s worth a look.”

McGoo, meanwhile, had to get back to the crime scene. The techs had promised some preliminary results.

I entered the Crown Ballroom, where hundreds of chairs were spread out—and every one was occupied. I worked my way through the costumed and uncostumed fans, many of whom were unnaturals: curious zombies and werewolves carrying comic book issues and limited-edition action figures. A burly, bent-over hunchback clutched a pack of Magic: The Gathering cards, and a mummy held a first-edition papyrus scroll covered with hieroglyphics that he claimed was the “real” ashcan version of Action Comics Issue 0, available only in Ancient Egypt. He was excited at the prospect of getting it signed by one of the ghost comic creators.

Vampires comprised the majority of the seated audience, apparently having a love-hate relationship with Van Helsing.

Over the ballroom PA system, loud music started playing the thunderous notes of the Imperial March. The audience applauded and booed simultaneously as the costumed Darth Vader strode out from backstage, his black cape flowing, boots pounding on the rickety raised platform, respirator chugging. He reached the podium, lifted his black gloves, and waited for the crowd noise to die down. In his best James Earl Jones impersonation, the suited Vader said, “Some consider me a bad guy, a person who took a walk on the dark side of the Force and enjoyed it. But I did get better in the end.”

Several fans in the audience grumbled. I couldn’t tell if they disliked his original villainy or his epiphany.

“My exploits are nothing, however, compared to the man I’m about to introduce. The greatest villain known to monsters … the bloodiest serial killer in all of vampire history.”

The crowd grew more raucous. They screamed, yelled, and hissed. The vampires in the audience rose to their feet, shaking their fists.

“CosplayCon is proud to present our special guest: For one day only—Honest Abe Van Helsing!”

Vader turned and extended an arm in a dramatic gesture to the curtains at stage left. The vamps screamed and roared, then werewolves joined in, and finally everyone in the audience shared in the hate.

With a clatter of plastic armor, the stormtroopers marched in as an honor guard around a man in a trench coat and floppy hat. He had a narrow face, long dark hair, stubbly beard. I wasn’t familiar with this incarnation of the character, but he seemed to exude predatory evil and bloodlust. His eyes were close-set and blazing.

When Vader yielded the podium to the guest of honor, Van Helsing just stood there in silence, spreading his glare across the audience and basking in the anger he provoked. “Thank you for the warm welcome. It makes my blood boil, seeing all of you disgusting creatures out there. You think you’re safe. You think CosplayCon is harmless fun.”

A ghost in the audience yelled, “Boo!”

Van Helsing parted his trench coat like a lecherous flasher to show dozens of sharp wooden stakes tucked into his belt, as well as long knives and a bandolier of garlic bulbs across his chest. “I’ve only got an hour, so I’ll just hit the highlights of my career. Let me reminisce about some of the scumbag bloodsuckers I’ve slain over the years. Ah, there are so many.… Good times!”

The vampires howled so loudly they sounded like werewolves.

“Dracula was the one I killed most often, but that guy’s like a Timex watch—takes a staking and keeps on sucking!” He laughed at his own joke. A few audience members groaned. Van Helsing rattled off his favorite impalements, beheadings, or solar overexposures.

As the crowd grew angrier, I wondered if they remembered that this was just a guy in costume, a fan playing a character. Van Helsing seemed to be really getting into the spirit of his cosplay. Find your inner YOU!

Thinking of that, I looked around for Fanble, since he’d been so interested in the speech, but I couldn’t spot him in the packed ballroom. I did see a couple of other Dan Shambles, though not as well executed as Fanble’s costume.

Even so, I realized that Fanble’s preoccupation with me as an alter ego was nothing more than innocent fun. Van Helsing’s role-playing seemed deadly serious. If this guy truly believed his mission was to kill vampires, and if he happened to find a vampire stormtrooper alone in an empty panel room, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to resist.

I needed to find out if one of his wooden stakes was missing.

After the hour-long panel was over, the crowd filed out of the ballroom, while a few people rushed the stage to mob Van Helsing with questions and curses. Since I had a few questions of my own, I pushed forward, too. “Excuse me, coming through—zombie detective, coming through! Official business—zombie detective.”

When I finally reached the front, fans were pushing program books at Van Helsing for him to autograph while Cylon security guards tried to herd people into an organized signing line. When I was within earshot, I introduced myself, which got Van Helsing’s attention. Although he had a grudge against vampires, other types of undead didn’t knot his undies quite so much. “Are you aware there’s been a murder here at the con, Mr. Van Helsing?”

“Doctor Van Helsing.”

“Whatever.” I decided to let him stay in character. “A vampire stormtrooper was murdered with a stake through his heart.”

“Murdered?” Van Helsing raised his dark eyebrows. “If he was a vampire, wasn’t he already dead? I’d call that house-cleaning, not murder.”

The gathered vamps spewed more hatred, but Van Helsing ignored them. He looked me in the eye and said, “Vampires everywhere are fair game—even at a cosplay convention. They’d better watch out.”

His comment was greeted by more venomous ire … yet somehow his autographing line got even longer.

V

The initial report from the crime scene techs did not contain any good news. McGoo let out a sigh. “Whenever I have a case like this, why can’t we just turn up a simple clue and an obvious explanation?”

“Whenever you have a case like this? When do you ever have a case like this?”

“When I’m around you, Shamble, more often than not.”

The crime scene techs had dusted the wooden stake from TK-9399’s chest but found no fingerprints. McGoo tried to draw conclusions. “That means it could have been another stormtrooper—they all wear gloves.”

“So does the Darth Vader guy,” I pointed out, then attempted to remember whether the Klingon Ach-gLokh Heqht had worn gloves as well. “And so do the Cylons. And so do half the cosplayers here. And why limit it to that? Many con attendees are unnaturals, and a lot of them don’t have fingerprints at all.”

“Yeah, I guess the lack of fingerprints doesn’t limit the suspect pool by much.”

As McGoo and I talked, two full-furred werewolves walked by, laughing and bumping shoulders. Each wore a Jayne hat, an odd-looking orange-and-brown stocking cap that looked as if it had been knitted by a blind but well-meaning grandmother. The two were immediately adopted by a group of similarly chapeau’ed Browncoat fans of Firefly, the long-ago canceled show from which the style derived. I realized that everyone seemed to be part of one big happy fannish family. All fun and games, until someone gets murdered.

The Motel Six Feet Under was still on lockdown, with uniformed police officers at all doors, but the attendees didn’t seem distressed, or even interested in leaving. As McGoo and I contemplated our next step, Fanble strutted up, looking as if he had just won some kind of costume contest. “I got a break in the case,” he said.

McGoo looked at me. “How did he figure it out before you?”

Fanble adjusted the fedora. “Never underestimate Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. I had a hunch and, getting into character, I convinced the con chairman to let me see the registration records. He thought I was you.” He nodded toward me, then continued his summary. “I discovered that Ach-gLokh Heqht and TK-10625 both registered under the same street name! They’re the same person in real life.”

McGoo looked at me. “Now that’s unexpected.”

Fanble nodded again. “Indeed. Crossover fandom doesn’t typically happen.”

I said, “The Klingon and the stormtrooper were our two most likely suspects. If they’re the same person, then it sounds like a slam dunk.” I grudgingly added, “Good work, Fanble.”

Fanble grinned before he remembered to get back into character. “The cases don’t solve themselves.”

“So, what’s his real name?” McGoo asked.

Fanble showed great pride as he revealed the identity of our likely perpetrator. “John Doe.”

Just knowing the suspect’s name didn’t help much, though. We had no idea what John Doe really looked like, not that anyone really “looked like” themselves at CosplayCon. Find your Inner YOU!

If Ach-gLokh Heqht/TK-10625 knew he was wanted for detailed questioning, however, maybe he would hole up where he wouldn’t be seen.

“Let’s check with the front desk and get his room number,” I suggested. “We might find some clues there.”

The desk clerk stood behind the front counter, using it as a protective barricade against the costumed fans. McGoo meant business as he strode up and flashed his badge. “UQPD. I need you to let me into a room.”

To show that I meant business, too, I held out my official private investigator’s ID card. “Zombie detective. I’m with him.”

Fanble flashed a fake ID, which, I had to admit, looked pretty good. “Zombie Detective II, Cosplay Edition. I’m with them.”

The motel desk clerk, a rabbity little vampire who looked as if he currently regretted his choice of employment, fluttered his hands, mumbled, and turned the computer screen toward him. “And what name is it under?”

“John Doe,” McGoo said.

The desk manager keyed it in. “Yes, we do have a John Doe. He’s in room 1013. May I see your search warrant?”

McGoo smiled benignly at the officious request. “It’s a … welfare check, not a search. We have information that someone may be injured.”

“Oh dear, of course! I’ll make you a duplicate key.”

The three of us waited for an elevator. And waited. And waited. Each elevator stopped at every single floor. The doors finally opened at lobby level to disgorge a throng of cosplayers.

McGoo waved his badge and said, “Police business, we’re commandeering this elevator.” I pushed the button for 10, and we began to ride upward, but of course we stopped at every floor on the way up. Soon the elevator was jammed with imaginary characters. It was a relief to get off on the tenth floor.

McGoo pounded on the door of John Doe’s room. “Police! Open up.” When we received no response, he slipped the magnetic card into the key slot and opened the door. “Okay, we’re coming in.” Before entering, McGoo drew his revolver, and I pulled out my .38.

I was surprised when Fanble also pulled out an identical .38. “Is that real?”

“Part of the costume, for that added bit of realism.”

McGoo frowned. “Shouldn’t it be peace-bonded, like they said?”

He looked too much like me when he responded, “It would be if they knew about it.”

Together, we entered John Doe’s hotel room. The shades were drawn. A suitcase was open on the luggage rack. Clothes lay strewn around the floor and furniture, but the room was silent.

“Looks like nobody’s home,” McGoo said.

“Records showed that only one person checked in here.” I glanced at all the clothes.

“Fans often share a room at cons to save money,” said Fanble, picking up a long Dr. Who scarf draped over the back of a chair. “Maybe John Doe is more than one person.”

McGoo bent over to inspect a half-open black suitcase that contained all the components of stormtrooper armor. “There’s not enough normal stuff here, though. Only one suitcase of street clothes.”

I found a complete Klingon outfit tossed roughly in the corner. Behind the chair, McGoo was startled to come face to face with a polished silvery Cylon suit.

Fanble was amazed. “You know, we never did see any of those characters together at the same time.”

“How could you tell?” McGoo went into the bathroom and studied the vanity counter—saw only one toothbrush and a set of basic toiletries. “No makeup here, no prosthetics or wigs. How did he manage that whole turtle head for his Klingon outfit, or the mop of hair for Dr. Who?”

As I went to the closet, I felt a sense of dread. Normally in the Unnatural Quarter you might find skeletons in any random closet, but this time I found something else. When I slid the door aside, I saw the complete Van Helsing outfit hanging there—the trench coat, the bandolier of garlic bulbs, the floppy hat, the belt loaded with wooden stakes.

And yes indeed, one of the stakes was missing.

VI

TK-9399 had somehow made himself a target for either Ach-gLokh Heqht, or TK-10625, or Van Helsing. An intersection of motives. And if the killer had an entirely flexible murderous intent, then CosplayCon was full of potential victims.

We had to find John Doe—and soon. And among hundreds of disguises.

Fanble had had the bright idea to cross-check the registrations, discovering that the various suspect characters were all under the same street name. I had the equally brilliant idea of flipping that around: we could look up any registrations submitted by “John Doe” and find out what other characters he intended to play. Since we’d already found the Klingon, stormtrooper, Dr. Who, and Cylon outfits discarded in the hotel room, John Doe had to be wandering around the con dressed as someone or something else.

As precious seconds ticked away, McGoo, Fanble, and I waited for the interminable elevator. Each time the doors opened, the car was going up, not down. Finally, when another upbound elevator opened on Floor 10, two of the costumed fans motioned us in anyway. “Dude,” said a Star Trek redshirt, “you have to go up to go down.”

So, we rode the elevator up to Floor 14, then back down to the lobby (again, stopping at every floor). When we reached the lobby, McGoo bolted out, and the two of us zombie detectives—both the fake one and the real one—followed him to the con registration desk.

CosplayCon was in full swing, with attendees preparing for the evening’s big masquerade, though I couldn’t see how an official “masquerade” was any different from the rest of the day here. Natural and unnatural fans were grinning. Werewolves got their pictures taken with Wolverines and a too-scrawny-looking Thor.

We had a case to solve. I could enjoy the con after we captured the murderer.

The registration desk wasn’t busy this time of day, since everyone already had their badges and set about to enjoy the convention (at least those who hadn’t been murdered or were considered suspects). No one was going in or out of the Motel Six Feet Under because of the lockdown.

A woman sat behind the information table, happily knitting, while a forlorn cat sat in a zipped-up pet carrier beside her. The woman looked up. “How may I help you?”

“We need to cross-reference your database,” McGoo said. “One of the con attendees, Mr. John Doe, registered as several different cosplay characters. We need to know the full list, so we can track him down.”

She frowned and set down her knitting close to the cat carrier; inside, the feline batted at the sidewalls, trying to catch the yarn. “Our computers are down right now, but fortunately, we rely on a more efficient analog system.” She pulled out a large plastic recipe box full of colored index cards. “I have every one of the attendees listed here. I can look up your John Doe and pull out his entries.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “How long is that going to take?”

“As long as it takes. I’ll flip through the cards and pull them out.”

“Aren’t they organized alphabetically?” Fanble asked.

“No, chronologically. By date of registration.” She began flipping through the cards one at a time, starting at the front. While we waited, I looked at the large banner at the doorway: “We Are All Someone Else Inside!”

Right, I thought. And one of the people here is a murderer.

A group of rowdy Klingons stormed through the lobby, chasing after a Captain Jack Sparrow who had insulted them somehow. A Mandalorian Boba Fett bounty hunter sneered at a colorful figure of Kenny from South Park, saying, “He’s no good to me dead.”

I picked up a spare program book at the registration desk. “Find Your Inner YOU!” Killing time, I flipped through the program listings. McGoo fidgeted, waiting.

Fanble seemed optimistic. “We’re on the verge of solving this case, I know it—and I’m proud that I could help. Is there any better way of getting in character?” He grinned, then remembered his serious expression again. I had to admit, he was doing a decent job.

The registrar’s fingers must have been nimble from her knitting. She flipped through all the cards quickly, pulling out every one that listed John Doe. “That’s all of them.”

McGoo, Fanble, and I turned as she spread the cards as if they came from a Tarot deck. “All these were submitted at different times, all registered to a John Doe. He’s a very ambitious costumer.” She flipped one down. “Klingon, name of Ach-gLokh Heqht.” I was impressed by how well she pronounced the name.

“501st stormtrooper, designated TK-10625. And a Dr. Who—Tom Baker Incarnation—oh, we have several of those here at the con.” She kept flipping down cards.

“Old series Cylon, toaster variety.” She pursued her lips. “Hmm. Honest Abe Van Helsing … one or two of those at the con as well, but he claims to be the real one.” She rolled her eyes, “Don’t they all? And …” She held up the last card, squinting down at it. “This is strange … he’s also dressed as Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.”

McGoo looked at me. “What’s that all about?”

A cold dread rose within me as I turned to look at Fanble. “You?”

Startled, Fanble raised his hands. His fedora was askew. “No, not me! How could think it was me? It was one of those other guys!” He shook his head as if having a seizure. “That was someone else! They were all someone else!”

“But you’re the one who called attention to John Doe in the first place,” I said, though I liked to think I would have figured it out myself sooner or later. “If you’re the murderer, why would you put us on the trail?”

“Because that’s what Dan Shamble would do.”

McGoo pulled out his handcuffs, crouched, and prepared for a fight.

Fanble lurched away. His shoulders jittered, his arms flapped. His bullet-ridden sport jacket whipped about as he thrashed. His face blurred like melted putty, fuzzing, reshifting. He shook his head. “No, not me! Gotta stay in character … all the voices in my head!” He clapped both hands to his temples, knocking off the fedora. “Too many personalities. So many expectations!” His features shifted, twisted.

Ever since the Big Uneasy, just about every form of legendary creature had returned to the world, from basic garden-variety vampires, werewolves, et cetera, to the more exotic mythical beings. I had even solved a case when Santa Claus hired me to find his missing Naughty-and-Nice list. After all my years of investigating in the Quarter, I was beyond being surprised when I figured it out. “You’re a shape-shifter.”

“That would explain all the different characters,” McGoo said. “John Doe, you are under arrest on suspicion of the murder of TK-9399.”

Fanble backed away, still twisting and writhing. Somehow, he found the energy within himself to snap back into character so that his features looked just like mine again. He reached inside his sport jacket and drew his .38—which I suspected was very real.

The con chairman, Phil Somerstein, ran forward with an angry and annoyed look on his face. “Hey! That’s not properly peace-bonded!”

A large number of cosplay fans had gathered in the main lobby, many in costume, everyone excited for the impending masquerade. They gasped to see Fanble wave his gun. He pointed the .38 at me again.

I took a chance, though. I saw how determined Fanble was, how hard he worked. His features were so eerily similar to mine it was like confronting myself in the mirror. Holding my hands up, trying to calm him, I stepped closer.

Fanble yelled, “Don’t come any closer. I’ll shoot!”

“I’ve been shot plenty of times.”

Then the shape-shifter swung the gun toward the fans in the crowd. “Then I’ll shoot them.”

I took another step forward. “But if you’re truly in character, as me, then you know I’d never shoot innocent people. Not humans, not unnaturals.”

The crowd grew thicker around the tableau: redshirts, numerous incarnations of Dr. Who, Klingons, stormtroopers, Cylons, Jedi Knights, Browncoats, Visitors, and countless anime, superhero, and videogame characters, even another faux Van Helsing, whose costume was much less impressive than the one I had seen on stage—the costume John Doe had worn.

And it wasn’t just the cosplayers. The unnatural attendees from the Quarter were also caught in the crowd: real vampires, werewolves, even the dedicated mummy fan with his hieroglyphic Issue 0 Action Comics ashcan edition.

Fanble’s .38 wavered. He swung it around the gathered crowd, then seemed to sulk like a marionette with the strings cut. “You’re right—Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. would never do something like that.” He dropped the .38 on the floor, then shucked the sport jacket, stomped on the fedora—and his features began to morph in an extravagant transformation.

As the flaccid flesh, skull, and facial features reorganized themselves, Fanble shifted through Tom Baker, then into a burly Klingon, thrashed about, and finally settled on a powerful and murderous character, someone who would not hesitate to harm innocent fans: Van Helsing—Honest Abe, ruthless vampire serial killer. His eyes flashed, his dark hair writhed. He drew his lips back to expose his teeth in a snarl. “I’ll kill you all!”

But despite his facial features, he didn’t have his full costume, didn’t have his tools or props.

Before McGoo and I could bolt forward to seize him, though, my doppelganger lunged toward the crowd like a quarterback in a game. The fans yelled, trying to scramble away.

Then I saw where he was headed. Van Helsing leaped toward the other Van Helsing cosplayer, knocking him to the ground and ripping at the wooden stakes thrust into his belt. He drew back, holding up one of the sharp projectiles.

Trying to get away, the vampires in the crowd screamed, “Watch out! He’s got a stake!”

Van Helsing’s hands blurred as if they were rapid-fire crossbows. He hurled his sharp projectiles at random into the crowd, and somehow every stake struck and injured a Star Trek redshirt, all of whom dropped to the ground, bleeding.

Drawing my own .38, I yelled at McGoo. “As Van Helsing at least he’s human. We can take him down.”

Realizing his vulnerability as a human, Van Helsing blurred and took on a different form, sprouting fur and massive muscles. His face elongated into a fang-filled canine muzzle and he became a powerful bull werewolf.

I hesitated before I fired, but McGoo didn’t. He drew one of his two service revolvers. “I’ll just wing him,” he said.

McGoo’s shot struck him in the shoulder, which flung the shapeshifter backward to the floor of the lobby. He thrashed about like an earthworm on a hotplate.

“It’s just a flesh wound. I was careful—nothing to worry about.”

The shapeshifter didn’t react as if it were a minor injury, though. He wailed and spasmed, clearly dying.

“What did you hit him with, McGoo?” I asked.

“Uh-oh. Looks like John Doe picked the wrong cosplay creature this time.” He looked down at his service revolver. “This is the one loaded with silver bullets in case I get in a shootout against unnaturals.”

The shapeshifter moaned and jittered, shed his werewolf persona, and lay twitching—a formless thing like a store mannequin whose features had melted away, gasping out of a round toothless mouth.

He said something, and I bent close, still feeling a certain connection to the man—to the being—who had known and imitated me so well. John Doe gasped, “I couldn’t stand the pressure … I just wanted to be somebody … to be everybody.”

With a last writhing rattle, the shapeshifter lost even its featureless humanoid form and dissolved into a puddle of organic goo that seeped into the StainGuard carpet of the motel lobby.

I stood next to McGoo, and he shook his head. “I didn’t mean to kill him. Now there’ll be a lot of paperwork.” He sighed. “I can honestly say I’ve never seen a shapeshifter before.”

I turned to him. “How would you ever know if you had?”

The Cylon con security guards came forward to help wrap up, and McGoo decided there was no further need for a lockdown. I realized that it was a good thing McGoo had coaxed me here in the first place.

I felt sorry for Fanble. He had been so earnest, wanting to be the best “me” he could be. I often wondered who I really was inside, just an undead guy who liked to solve cases—was that enough? I had a wonderful (if ectoplasmic) girlfriend in Sheyenne, a great partner in Robin, a true friend in McGoo. I didn’t have a need to be anybody else. Zombie detective suited me just fine.

Phil Somerstein announced that the CosplayCon Masquerade would take place in fifteen minutes, on schedule. He called out, “Photo opportunities in the side hall.”

McGoo looked at me, adjusted his cap, and I adjusted my fedora. Both of us had to remain in character, of course. “I told you this would be fun, Shamble. Thanks for your help solving the case.”

“It’s what I do,” I said. Maybe I’d call Sheyenne after all. She might enjoy this with me. The event ran all weekend.

As people passed, Phil Somerstein handed out pre-registration cards for next year’s CosplayCon. Almost everybody took one.

So did I.

Another short thriller that I published in The Horror Show magazine, quick, a little sexy, with a nice surprise. Decades after this was published, I took a Flash Fiction class for my MFA, and I submitted it as a class assignment. Apparently, the work still held up.

Notches

What are all these notches for?” The young man fingered one of the thirteen marks carved in the wooden bedpost. He stretched, but clutched the sheet, shyly hiding his nakedness. The smell of sweat and sex hung in the air. The house was silent in the afternoon, a private time when they could slip away, when she could teach him the things he had imagined, even obsessed about, but never known. He lay flushed, embarrassed, still not sure of his prowess, but with a puppy-dog expression on his face.

“I think you know what they’re for.” The war widow looked at him with a slight smile that was hard as cement. Parchment-colored light seeped through the drawn shades. She sat naked on the corner of the bed, smoking a cigarette. She was ten years older, much more experienced, lonely and broken since the death of her husband … but not without options. Not in this town.

The young man grinned stupidly and, trying to seem more worldly than he was, fumbled with the pack on the nightstand, lighting up a cigarette of his own. He clearly wasn’t a smoker. He was still trying to impress her, holding the cigarette in his fingers as he had seen actors do on TV. She waited, knowing it would be only a moment before he started to cough and choke on the smoke. She was right.

The young man had been timid, overeager, terrified and clumsy, giving her no pleasure at all. He had stared at her body in awe, the curve of her breasts, the pale skin, but she had needed to be proactive, to take this shy boy’s hands and show him what to do. A novice, a fool, a disappointment … Did he even know what harm a person like him could cause?

She drew in another lungful of smoke. For long months she had mourned the death of her husband over on a harsh desert battlefield, killed by an inexperienced American soldier too frightened to know the difference between enemy and ally. Oh, she had loved him, and he had been the perfect lover for her, passionate, skilled, attending to every detail like an expert.

And he had come home in a box.

But she was young, attractive, golden-haired. She missed her husband’s touch, his kisses, his hard body, but memories did not satisfy her appetite. She had bounced back with a vengeance, and word passed through the grapevine with astonishing speed, alerting young inexperienced men of her willingness to help them into manhood.

He seemed fascinated by the notches in the wooden bedpost. “Are you going to make a notch for me? Number fourteen?” he asked timidly. Sweat plastered his hair against his freckled face.

She slithered across the bed, sliding against him again. “And where would you like me to put it?” She leaned over him to reach the nightstand. She reached into the drawer with all the paraphernalia she needed for her liaisons and removed a long-bladed jack-knife. She could see his nostrils flaring as the sluggish air of the bedroom drifted her body’s musk toward him. With her red-painted fingernail, she flicked open the knife.

“Right here.” He traced a line on the bedpost with his fingertip, then lay back languidly on the damp sheets, watching her. His pants, his shirt, his belt lay pooled on the floor.

She held the long knife and looked at him.

Young, inexperienced, frightened, clumsy men. The type that had killed her husband. Friendly fire. Frightened amateurs.

On the bed, he turned away from her, reaching for his pants and belt lying at the side of her bed.

Now her pulse raced more than when the young man had actually been inside her, groping, proving his dangerous clumsiness. Just like the others. She figured twenty of them would give her sufficient vengeance. The other thirteen lay outside, buried deep in the empty lot where they would never be found.

As he reached down to the side of the bed, innocent and unaware, she moved. With a quick flick of her wrist, she thrust the knife at him, the long steel blade aimed for his smooth back, the kidney, for a swift killing blow.

But he was already moving, bringing up the sweat-damp sheets like a net, swooping the fabric and tangling her arm. When he brought her forearm viciously down on his knee, a muffled crack signaled the snapped bones of her wrist. The jackknife fell silently to the mattress. Her mouth made an outraged “O,” shocked even as the pain rushed to her face. It was his turn to smile coldly at her.

She couldn’t recover quickly enough, lifting her useless broken arm to fend him off as he lifted his leather belt and encircled her throat, drawing it tight. “Slut! Just like all the others.” He gave it a harder yank.

As her eyes bulged, and black speckles appeared in front of her vision, she noticed marks on the leather, up near the belt buckle.

Six notches.

In college I took a Japanese history course and closely studied the background of the samurai, and because I was a bloodthirsty young man, I was particularly interested in the practice of seppuku, which was quite different from the portrayal of “harey carey” in bad films and TV shows.

In a short story or a novel, you might start with one idea and run it into the ground, but what really makes a plot expand into something remarkable is what I call a “collision idea,” a completely unrelated concept that lights the story on fire. Take the idea of cloning dinosaurs, for instance, and add the collision idea of an amusement park. What could possibly go wrong?

When I realized that the last days of the samurai overlapped with the early days of Hollywood, and the discovery that actual snuff films had been made almost as early as film was produced, that became the perfect collision idea for “Redmond’s Private Screening.”

Redmond’s Private Screening

Sharper than any barber’s straight razor, the edge of the samurai blade nicked the skin, drew blood. The director hissed in surprise, frowning at his cut finger, then laughed at himself. “How’d you like to slice that across your belly, Mikey?”

As his assistant Michael Kendai watched, Redmond held the blade up to the bright California sunlight that streamed into the makeshift studio though open windows and a cobwebbed skylight. “The katana is real, sir, a century old. More than just a prop.”

“Forged in 1811, eh?” He didn’t sound impressed. “It’s just a sword.”

Outside, the muffled sounds of motorcar traffic echoed along the dirt streets. One of the rattling vehicles backfired, and someone shouted obscenities in coarse Italian. Horses clopped by, pulling a late-morning milk cart. In his tiny warehouse studio, Michael knew that Redmond never noticed any outside distractions. He was too caught up in finding interesting things to shoot with his motion-picture camera, and he would never believe the doomsayers who claimed that nickelodeon audiences were tired of seeing marvels on celluloid film.

“Where did you get this samurai Taka-what’s-his-name?” Redmond spoke as if the young Japanese man and his elderly parents weren’t already right there beside him. The immigrants spoke no English, remained apart from the conversation; but they knew full well the business matters being discussed. “And how did you talk him into doing Harry Carry in front of the motion picture camera?”

Michael folded his hands together, frowned at Redmond’s unkempt appearance, mussed red-brown hair, and pungent cologne. He gave the director a look that plainly said Not many people try my patience, but you are one of them. “Akira Takahashi came to me of his own free will and volunteered his performance of hara-kiri.”

He looked around the small back-room studio, not eager to begin, but they would lose the best sunlight soon. The glass cyclopean eye of his hand-cranked movie camera stood watching the young samurai. A spare camera (which didn’t work anyway) leaned against a corner.

Takahashi sat in bright robes, cross-legged on the white blanket he had spread out for him on top of the sour sawdust. His pate had been shaved in the traditional fashion, his straight black hair gathered in a ponytail at his neck. The old father, holding a worn, nicked sword of his own, squatted stony-faced beside his son, staring straight ahead. Only the wrinkled mother showed fear and anger, flashing tears at Redmond.

Michael explained, “Mr. Takahashi wishes to book steamer passage back to Japan for his parents, and he can think of no other way to raise the money. He considers it a fair exchange.”

Redmond laughed nervously. His face had too many freckles, his skin was too pasty, his personality too slippery. “A lot of people are trying to get into this new movie business, but not usually by killing themselves on film.” He sheathed the blade and handed the slim katana back.

Michael frowned at how low he himself had fallen, how disappointed the spirits of his own dead family must be. “Most directors do not wish to photograph such a spectacle either, and most patrons do not wish to see the result. But there are exceptions everywhere.” He gave Redmond a cold stare. “You and I know how to find them.”

The director raised his chin, pontificating. “Fifteen years ago, people flocked to nickelodeons to see a man sneeze, to watch a waterfall or a running horse. Today, we’ve got to give them something more for their money, eh?”

“I’m sure we do.”

With a deaf ear for his assistant’s sarcasm, Redmond strutted around the floor, looking at the natural light, at the position of the white blanket, but Michael had already set everything up perfectly. The three Japanese followed the director with their eyes, like animals in a cage.

“If they liked it so much in Japan, why’d they come to Hollywood in the first place, eh?” Redmond whispered, as if he didn’t want the family to hear.

Michael drew a deep breath. “Many well-to-do samurai families were ruined in the overthrow of the last Shogun in 1868. Akira’s father tried to earn a living in the new Japanese National Army, but he could not tolerate the army’s lack of traditional honor. His eldest son, Akira’s brother, entered the Japanese navy and was killed five years ago in the Russo-Japanese War. Akira and his parents then fled to America, but they found no opportunities here. Now they are destitute and wish only to go home to die.”

“Well, we’ll help them out then, eh?” Redmond removed a folded piece of paper from his trouser pocket. “I drew up a simple contract for Mr. Samurai. Get him to sign it, and we can start shooting.” He looked critically at the slanting daylight in the studio. “Read it to him, if you like.”

Michael glanced over the contract; it looked as if Redmond had done the typing himself. He formally presented the samurai with his sword, then spoke rapidly in Japanese, explaining the contract and its purpose. The young man drew himself up, glared at Redmond, and answered Michael sharply.

“He doesn’t understand the need for a contract.” Michael turned to Redmond. “He asks if you are questioning his honor, if you doubt he will do as he has promised.”

“What?” Redmond was oblivious to nuances. “The contract’s for his protection, not mine.”

Michael relayed the information. The old mother spoke quickly, while her son stared down at the curved sword in its sheath. “They ask why they should not trust you. Are you not an honorable man?”

Redmond made an exasperated sound. “Mikey, just explain to them I need to have it in writing that he’s fully aware of what he’s doing, that he offered his services willingly, and that I did not seek him out. What does he care anyway, eh? He’s going to be dead.”

Michael considered for a moment, then spoke in Japanese again. “I told him it was our custom to require such agreements. They have a great respect for customs and traditions.” Finally, Takahashi took the contract and signed.

Redmond rolled his eyes and tucked the signed paper into his pocket. He clapped his hands for attention. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”

Michael took up his position behind the tripod, checking the lens, making sure the celluloid reel was loaded properly. Due to the questionable legality of his projects, Redmond involved as few people in the productions as possible. Michael had become accustomed to cranking the camera himself.

Sunlight poured through the flyspecked skylight, flooding the blanket spread on the floor. Akira Takahashi blinked in the glare. The handle of the katana looked like molten silver. Redmond didn’t have to tell anyone what to do.

The old mother moved out of the light to where she could watch. The elder Takahashi drew himself taller, holding his own sword in one hand. He waited just behind and to the right of his son.

“Mikey, what’s the old guy doing with a sword?” Redmond asked.

“He is the kaishaku.” Michael paused just long enough to emphasize how little Redmond understood about what was going to take place. “During hara-kiri, a samurai is permitted to have a close friend stand beside him. Once he has succeeded in cutting open his belly, the friend is allowed to strike off his head, releasing him from the terrible pain.”

Redmond’s eyes widened. “You mean the old man is going to chop off—oh, fantastic! You didn’t tell me that before.”

Michael scowled, then erased the expression. By participating in this heinous act, he felt as if he was betraying the Takahashi family—but he was giving them what they wanted. Even with his rationalizations, he disgusted himself.

Michael looked through the camera and signaled to Takahashi that everything was ready. The young samurai held the gazes of his parents for a long moment, then he took up the sword. Michael began to turn the crank, recording every second on the clicking ribbon of film.

Takahashi pulled the katana from its sheath, never taking his eyes from the steel. The traditional samurai sword had been crafted by one of the finest Zen sword makers, displaying an edge that consisted of half a million layers of folded steel, so sharp it seemed to slice rays of sunlight.

Takahashi took a white cloth from his father and wrapped it around the blade close to the hilt, leaving five inches of naked metal. He placed the wrapped katana on the blanket in front of him so he could proceed without taking his eyes from it. He never blinked while he undid the sash of his ceremonial robe, baring his chest. His stomach muscles were firm and tense.

Maintaining an even, smooth motion, Michael turned the camera crank as queasiness built within him. If a blade had plunged into his own belly, a swarm of butterflies would have emerged.…

Takahashi stared into space. Moving by itself, his hand picked up the katana again, flipped it around so that its point rested against his abdomen. Michael saw the smallest of tremors in his throat, as if he were trying not to swallow.

For long moments he did not breathe. Everything stopped, like a still from a motion picture. The father stood like a statue behind his son, sword raised and waiting. The ancient mother stared wide-eyed but made no sound.

Redmond fidgeted. “What’s he waiting for?”

“Shut up, Redmond.”

Takahashi uttered an animal sound and thrust five inches of the blade into the left side of his abdomen. He made an astonished, coughing sound. He sat rigid, frozen again.

Crimson soaked into his bright robe, dribbled onto his leg. Spasms flickered across his face, betraying the pain. Takahashi’s hands became slippery with blood, but he managed to keep his grip on the handle.

He used both hands against the back of the blade to push the cutting edge across his stomach in a gash that grew wider like a grotesque smile. His face turned gray and wet, and his breathing had no rhythm at all.

Michael continued to turn the camera crank. Redmond stared, silent with awe and fascination.

Takahashi’s body shuddered as the blade cut below his navel. He gave another, weaker cry and wrenched the blade the rest of the way across.

Michael’s world turned red and fuzzy. Black things swam in his stomach and his eyes; sweat trickled down his forehead. His knees turned to water, but at least he didn’t topple the camera. Redmond saw him faint, muttered a curse, and pushed him out of the way. He began cranking the camera himself.

Takahashi’s body convulsed as if he were trying to vomit, and intestines spilled out into his lap like gray, white, and red eels. His eyes pushed away their glassy bleariness and widened upon seeing all that had been kept neatly inside of him. He made a gurgling sound.

“Seppuku!” the old man cried and brought down his sword, striking off his son’s head. The dead samurai collapsed into a heap of blood and mismatched flesh. The old man fell to his knees.

“Perfect!” Redmond said and stopped filming.

Two days later, Michael found Redmond waiting for him in a booth at the back of the café, adding too much sugar to his mug of coffee. Michael felt bone-weary and ragged. “The funeral pyre was very difficult to arrange, Redmond.”

The director scowled up from his plate of fried eggs. “I don’t care how hard it was, Mikey, you’re not getting any more money for it. We’ve got a written agreement.”

Michael let out a disgusted sigh as he sat down. “I was merely stating a fact.” Seeing Michael’s Japanese features, the waiter ignored him.

Redmond stirred his coffee, oblivious to how his spoon clanged against the mug. He whistled for the waiter to bring coffee for Michael. “So why did you go to all that trouble, if it was so difficult? That part wasn’t written into the contract.”

The waiter brought a silver pot over, then left scowling when Michael ordered tea instead. Michael leaned across the sticky tabletop. “Redmond, we killed their son. We owed it to them.”

“What is someone with a conscience doing in this business?” Redmond tried to laugh, then took a bite out of his jam-smeared toast. “Besides, we didn’t kill the guy. If his parents didn’t want him to do it, they could have stopped him at any time.” He slurped his coffee, then spooned in more sugar.

“Not in Japanese culture, Redmond. Once a son comes of age, the parents must follow his wishes. Mr. Takahashi decided to send his mother and father home. They had no choice in the matter.” The waiter returned with Michael’s tea. Absently, after the man had left, he took a sugar cube and laid it on his saucer, crushing it with the rounded bottom of his spoon, then tapped the sugar into his tea. “Their steamer should have departed for Japan at dawn today.”

“You haven’t heard yet, eh?” Redmond snickered, another bite of toast poised halfway to his mouth. “The old man was so excited that he dropped stone dead on the dock. Spilled Junior’s ashes all over the place. Can you imagine the expression on the old lady’s face?”

Michael stopped stirring his tea and looked straight into Redmond’s muddy green eyes, searching for some sign of a practical joke. “How do you know this? Why did no one tell me?”

“Nobody could find you! As far as I know, you disappear off the face of the Earth when you don’t want to be found. I got a telegram from a flustered delivery boy. Seems he’d been running all over Hollywood looking for you.”

Michael remained silent for so long that Redmond began to fidget. The family had already been through so much. Michael finally muttered, as if speaking to himself, “Their eldest son died fighting the Russian navy for Liaotung Peninsula. On his last birthday, after he’d been gone for months on the battleship Miyako, the family set out an extra bowl of rice to honor him. And the son sent his spirit across the sea to join them for the meal. They laughed and talked, but with moonrise the spirit returned to the ship.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “That night, the Miyako struck a mine in the Sea of Japan and sank.”

Redmond took another bite of his runny eggs. “You mean the ghost appeared even before the son was killed? Just what were they doing for their little celebration? Smoking opium pipes?”

“Opium is from China, Redmond, not Japan.” With an effort, Michael regained his patience. “Vengeful ghosts are common in our tradition. Anyone who dies violently is certain to haunt those who caused him to suffer. But the Japanese don’t believe a person needs to be dead to send his spirit wandering. The family Takahashi truly believes they dined with the elder son on the eve of his death.”

“Aww, tug my heartstrings.” Then Redmond narrowed his eyes at Michael. “Oh, I see, you’re trying to scare me that Mr. Samurai’s ghost is coming to get me. Forget it, Mikey. He volunteered. You brought him to me.”

Michael didn’t bother to respond. He stood up, leaving Redmond to pay for his unfinished tea. “Is that all you wanted to see me about?”

Redmond smiled. “I’ll be screening my samurai picture in three days, and I need you to run the projector. I’ve found a private room and five men sufficiently bored with the nickelodeons. They’ll pay ten dollars each, if I can deliver what I’ve promised. Some are worried it might be trick photography, like George Meliés might do.”

“Meliés never showed a man disemboweling himself.” Michael let no ironic expression show. “Besides, Redmond, who could question your honesty?”

Redmond grinned, then scowled, then drank his coffee.

Redmond insisted on keeping the door locked and the screening room dim, lit only by tasteless red lights behind incense burners. Even more tasteless was his decision to use Takahashi’s white blanket—laundered to remove most of the bloodstains—as a projection screen.

Michael mounted the single celluloid reel on the projector as Redmond ushered his clients to flimsy wooden chairs in the room. The director wore a ridiculous Japanese robe, as if to create the proper ambiance.

Michael inspected the five men, who didn’t bother to notice the Japanese-American assistant. One looked bored, two were fidgety (wearing obvious disguises); the remaining two frowned with skepticism while tugging on their identical muttonchop whiskers.

Michael wondered what type of lives these men led. Did they beat their wives, or harm their children, or frequent prostitutes—or did they derive enough pleasure just from watching gruesome motion-picture shows?

Of the six pictures on which he had worked with Redmond, this had been by far the most dissatisfying. The first had been a beautiful study of a ballerina’s dance; then he had photographed sultry naked women. What might come next after ritual suicide—Redmond killing a baby, perhaps? Michael felt the shame in his involvement, even if Redmond didn’t care.

After this evening’s spectacle, Michael had made up his mind to disappear, as he had done so many times before, simply cover his tracks. He had enough skill and connections to find work elsewhere, even with his Japanese heritage. Perhaps he would go to New York City, though the majority of filmmaking had shifted toward the Los Angeles area with its variety of scenery.…

As Michael fed the celluloid film into the projector and checked the bulb, Redmond began to explain, inaccurately, the traditions and lore behind hara-kiri. Michael considered leaving the room after he started the projector, just to avoid seeing Takahashi die yet again, but decided against it. He would see this project through to the end, then be away from Redmond for good.

“Gentlemen, please enjoy the first screening of Redmond’s Scarlet Sword.” The director placed his hands together to imitate a Japanese bow, then stepped away from the bloodstained screen. As the projector began to flicker and whir, a sepia image of Akira Takahashi appeared on the screen. Michael focused quickly.

The five men in the audience watched as the grim young man sat cross-legged in his robes, staring at his sword. The film was intensely sharp and remarkably clear, showing too many details.

Takahashi withdrew the katana from its sheath and took the cloth from his father’s gnarled hand. The clicking projector made the only noise in the room. The men leaned forward to watch; Michael was reminded of crocodiles lurking on riverbanks, alert for prey.

Takahashi placed the point of the sword against his stomach. He drew a deep breath, ready for the thrust.

Along the top of the screen appeared a deep crimson line, startling in its intensity against the black-and-white world. The red line widened, covering about a quarter of the screen before it began to drip like thick blood down the screen.

The five men muttered in amazement at Redmond’s technique, how he’d been able to superimpose such a brilliant color onto the dull sepia tone.

“Mikey!” Redmond said, his voice a confused growl.

On the image, Takahashi stared down at the curved sword, oblivious to the thick red streams oozing across the screen and obliterating everything.

Feeling a growing horror, Michael tapped the projector lens. A shadow of his fingers should have fallen across the stained-blanket screen, but it didn’t. Droplets popped out of the movie reel itself, like juice from a pomegranate seed. Michael touched the film feeding into the projector. His fingers came away wet and sticky.

The five men in the audience began to grumble. The crimson blot prevented them from seeing what the samurai was doing. Redmond swallowed several times; his freckled skin looked a sick gray in the red light.

The curtain of blood spilled to the bottom of the screen and covered the entire picture.

A roaring wind numbed Michael’s ears, making him giddy. His vision went fuzzy, and then an empty coldness swept over him. The wind stopped abruptly, and a surreal fuzziness filled the screening room.

“Mikey!” Redmond’s voice cracked like a pubescent teenager’s.

The projector had stopped, though the screen still glowed like a window onto a scarlet landscape. Michael stood beside the motionless reel of film, but he could not move. Neither did the men seated in the wooden folding chairs. It was as if time had stopped, as if the apparatus projecting their lives had frozen on a single frame.

Except for Redmond, who stormed back and forth. “What the hell is going on here?” He seemed to know the answer, but could think of nothing else to say, no other way to pretend having command of the situation.

Will Vengeance suffice? It wasn’t a voice. It wasn’t even words. Michael heard Japanese, but the other men in the room seemed to understand as well.

Redmond made a strange sound between a gulp and a scream. “What do you mean? I did everything I promised!” He paused, as if spinning through his memories of everything Michael had told him. “I kept my honor!” Michael could not react, or move, or say anything to help him.

You are a man fundamentally without honor. Writing promises on paper to ensure that you will keep them, profiting by the suffering of others. These five will receive enough blood for their tastes, and my own. Such men deserve to die as common criminals.

The men sat frozen in their seats, but Michael watched as their heads slumped, one by one. He thought he heard a squelching sound and then a haunting series of screams echoing in the air. Michael felt like a helpless bystander, watching and wondering if he himself might be next.

Redmond, you shall have an opportunity to regain your honor.

The crimson covering the screen thinned and began to drip away, revealing a new image of a freckled man dressed in gaudy Japanese robes. He sat cross-legged and holding a samurai sword against his bared abdomen.

“You can’t do this!” In the room, Redmond swatted at his robe as if trying to knock away the touch of a phantom sword. The image of Redmond on the screen sat contemplating the blade about to pierce his stomach. “We had a contract!”

I made no contract with you.

“Yes! You signed it, and I fulfilled my part, just like I promised. I didn’t cheat you. Look, I’m sorry your father died, but I had nothing to do with that. I can’t help it he spilled your ashes on the dock. Please!”

Michael tried to call out to Redmond, but his vocal cords had snapped like so many spiderwebs.

You have me confused with my son, fool. He is content with the bargain he made and with the price it cost him. I am the one who demands vengeance.

On the screen, another robed figure stepped behind the image of Redmond, holding a second sword. Takahashi’s old mother, taking up her position to be Redmond’s kaishaku.

I am the one suffered most. My sons both gone, my husband. I am left with nothing, and I demand retribution.

“You can’t be a ghost. You’re not even dead!”

On the screen, the old woman smiled and raised the sword. Why must a body be dead for the spirit to roam free?

She nodded to the image of Redmond in the film. He looked into space as if in a trance, then drove the sword into his belly.

The film broke, and the projector bulb burst at the same time. Michael snapped off the machine, and as silence returned he heard a brief remnant of a scream disappearing into time. It sounded like Redmond’s voice.

He fumbled for the main light switches. Redmond sprawled on the floor clutching his stomach. The other five men slumped in their folding wooden chairs, arms dangling at their sides.

Michael touched Redmond. The director’s skin was cold and rigid. He checked the businessmen, and they were dead as well. He could find no blood anywhere. The sticky redness had vanished even from the film and the projector.

The shock crept up on him, paralyzing him. Why had the old woman’s ghost spared him? He himself had arranged for her son’s death. But Michael had not deviated from the old woman’s conception of honor, as Redmond had. That did not mean Michael was an honorable man. He still had to deal with his own shame.

Shame. The traditions of Michael Kendai’s culture had taught him how to cope with shame. Was the old woman’s ghost expecting him to follow the traditional course? Redmond had the excuse of ignorance; Michael did not. Would she come after him if he did not kill himself to atone for his crime? But he was too much of a coward.

He rewound the film before he removed the reel. He vowed that no one else would ever watch Scarlet Sword. He would destroy it. He knew where Redmond kept prints of his other films, and he mounted the ballerina reel onto the projector. The police would be very confused.

Michael would be long gone before anyone discovered the bodies and turned their eyes toward a convenient Japanese scapegoat. Michael could cover his tracks. He was good at that.

New York looked better and better.

Fighting down the feelings of fear and shame within him, Michael left the screening room. He tried to keep from running as he fled into the street.

Another horror story about the film industry, but this one is a little bit lighter.

When I was asked to write a werewolf story for an anthology, I didn’t see any reason not to do a funny one! I’ve always been a fan of old monster movies, and for this tale I drew upon my years of diligently studying Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. I always told my mom that it was important for me to watch those old black-and-white Creature Features. At least I got a story publication out of it.

Special Makeup

The second camera operator ran to fetch the clapboard. Someone else called out, “Quiet on the set! Hey everybody, shut up!” Three of the extras coughed at the same time.

“Wolfman in Casablanca, Scene 23. Are we ready for Scene 23?” The second camera operator held the clapboard ready.

“Ahem.” The director, Rino Derwell, puffed on his long cigarette in an ivory cigarette holder, just like all famous directors were supposed to have. “I’d like to start today’s shooting sometime today! Is that too much to ask? Where the hell is Lance?”

The boom man swiveled his microphone around; the extras on the nightclub set fidgeted in their places. The cameraman slurped a cold cup of coffee, making a noise like a vacuum cleaner in a bathtub.

“Um, Lance is still, um, getting his makeup on,” the script supervisor said.

“Christ! Can somebody find me a way to shoot this picture without the star? He was supposed to be done half an hour ago. Go tell Zoltan to hurry up—this is a horror picture, not the Mona Lisa.” Derwell mumbled how glad he was that the gypsy makeup man would be leaving in a day or two, and they could get someone else who didn’t consider himself such a perfectionist. The director’s assistant dashed away, stumbling off the soundstage and tripping on loose wires.

Around them, the set showed an exotic nightclub, with white fake-adobe walls, potted tropical plants, and Arabic-looking squiggles on the pottery. The piano in the center of the stage, just in front of the bar, sat empty under the spotlight, waiting for the movie’s star, Lance Chandler. The sound stage sweltered in the summer heat. The large standup fans had to be shut off before shooting; and the ceiling fans—nightclub props—stirred the cloud of cigarette smoke overhead into a gray whirlpool, making the extras cough even when they were supposed to keep silent.

Rino Derwell looked again at his gold wristwatch. He had bought it cheap from a man in an alley, but Derwell’s pride would not allow him to admit he had been swindled even after it had promptly stopped working. Derwell didn’t need it to tell him he was already well behind schedule, over budget, and out of patience.

It was going to take all day just to shoot a few seconds of finished footage. “God, I hate these transformation sequences. Why does the audience need to see everything? Have they no imagination?” he muttered. “Maybe I should just do romance pictures? At least nobody wants to see everything there!”

“Oh, God! Please no! Not again! Not NOW!!!” Lance couldn’t see the look of horror he hoped would show on his face.

“You must stop fidgeting, Mr. Lance. This will go much faster.” Zoltan stepped back, large makeup brush in hand, inspecting his work. His heavy eastern European accent slurred out his words.

“Well, I’ve got to practice my lines. This blasted makeup takes so blasted long that I forget my blasted lines by the time it comes to shoot. Was I supposed to say, ‘Don’t let it happen here!’ in that scene? Hand me the script.”

“No, Mr. Lance. That line comes much later—it follows ‘Oh, no! I’m transforming!’” Zoltan smeared shadow under Lance’s eyes. This would be just the first step in the transformation, but he still had to increase the highlights. Veins stood out on Zoltan’s gnarled hands, but his fingers were rock steady with the fine detail.

“How do you know my lines?”

“You may call it gypsy intuition, Mr. Lance—or it may be because you have been saying them every morning before makeup for a week now. They have burned into my brain like a gypsy curse.”

Lance glared at the wizened old man in his pale blue shirt and color-spattered smock. Zoltan’s leathery fingers had a real instinct for makeup, for changing the appearance of any actor. But his craft took hours.

Lance Chandler had enough confidence in his own screen presence to carry any picture, regardless of how silly the makeup made him look. His square jaw, fine physique, and clean-cut appearance made him the perfect model of the all-American hero. Now, during the War against Germany and Japan, the U.S. needed its strong heroes to keep up morale. Besides, making propaganda pictures fulfilled his patriotic duties without requiring him to go somewhere and risk getting shot. Red-corn-syrup blood and bullet blanks were about all the real violence he wanted to experience.

Lance took special pride in his performance in Tarzan Versus the Third Reich. Though he had few lines in the film, the animal rage on his face and his oiled and straining body had been enough to topple an entire regiment of Hitler’s finest, including one of Rommel’s desert vehicles. (Exactly why one of Rommel’s desert vehicles had shown up in the middle of Africa’s deepest jungles was a question only the scriptwriter could have answered.)

Craig Corwyn, U-Boat Smasher, to be released next month as the start of a new series, might make Lance a household name. Those stories centered on brave Craig Corwyn, who had a penchant for leaping off the deck of his Allied destroyer and swimming down to sink Nazi submarines with his bare hands, usually by opening the underwater hatches or just plucking out the rivets in the hull.

But none of those movies would compare to Wolfman in Casablanca. Bogart would be forgotten in a week. The timing for this picture was just perfect; it had an emotional content Lance had not been able to bring into his earlier efforts. The country was just waiting for a new hero, strong and manly, with a dash of animal unpredictability and a heart of gold (not to mention unwavering in Allied sympathies).

The story concerned a troubled but patriotic werewolf—him, Lance Chandler—who in his wanderings has found himself in German-occupied Casablanca. There he causes what havoc he can for the enemy, and he also meets Brigitte, a beautiful French resistance fighter vacationing in Morocco. Brigitte turns out to be a werewolf herself, Lance’s true love. Even in the script, the final scene as the two of them howl on the rooftops above a conflagration of Nazi tanks and ruined artillery sent shivers down Lance’s spine. If he could pull off this performance, Hitler himself would tremble in his sheets.

Zoltan added spirit gum to Lance’s cheeks and forehead, humming as he worked. “You will please stop perspiring, Mr. Lance. I require a dry surface for this fine hair.”

Lance slumped in the chair. Zoltan reminded him of the wicked old gypsy man in the movie, the one who had cursed his character to become a werewolf in the first place. “This blasted transformation sequence is going to take all day again, isn’t it? And I don’t even get to act after the first second or so! Lie still, add more hair, shoot a few frames, lie still, add more hair, shoot a few more frames. And it’s so hot in the soundstage. The spirit gum burns and ruins my complexion. The fumes sting my eyes. The fake hair itches.”

He winced his face into the practiced look of horror again. “Oh, God! Please no! Not again! Um … oh, yeah—don’t let it happen here!” Lance paused, then scowled. “Blast, that wasn’t right. Would you hurry up, Zoltan! I’m already losing my lines. And I’m really tired of you dragging your feet—get moving!”

Zoltan tossed the makeup brush with a loud clink into its glass jar of solvent. He put his gnarled hands on his hips and glared at Lance. The smoldering gypsy fury in his dark eyes looked worse than anything Lance had seen on a movie villain’s face.

“I lose my patience with you, Mr. Lance! It is gone! Poof! Now I must take a short cut. A special trick that only I know. It will take a minute, and it will make you a star forevermore! I guarantee that. You will no longer suffer my efforts—and I need not suffer you! The people at the new Frankenstein picture over on Lot 17 would appreciate my work, no doubt.”

Lance blinked, amazed at the old gypsy’s anger but ready to jump at any chance that would get him out of the makeup trailer sooner. He heard only the words, “it will make you a star. I guarantee that.”

“Well, do it then, Zoltan! I’ve got work to do. The great Lon Chaney never had to put up with all these delays. He did all his own makeup. My audiences are waiting to see the new meaning I can bring to the portrayal of the werewolf.”

“You will never disappoint them, Mr. Lance.”

Without further reply, Zoltan yanked at the fine hair he had already applied. “You no longer need this.” Lance yowled as the patches came free of his skin. “That is a very good sound you make, Mr. Lance. Very much like a werewolf.”

Lance growled at him.

Zoltan rustled in a cardboard box in the corner of his cramped trailer, pulled out a dirty Mason jar, and unscrewed its rusty lid. Inside, a brown oily liquid swirled all by itself, spinning green flecks in internal currents. The old man stuck his fingers into the goop and brought them out dripping.

“What is—whoa, that smells like—” Lance tried to shrink away, but Zoltan slapped the goop onto his cheek and smeared it around.

“You cannot possibly know what this smells like, Mr. Lance, because you have no idea what I used to make it. You probably do not wish to know—then you would be even more upset at having it rubbed all over your face.”

Zoltan reached into the jar again and brought out another handful, which he wiped across Lance’s forehead. “Ugh! Did you get that from the lot cafeteria?” Lance felt his skin tingle, as if the liquid had begun to eat its way inside. “Ow! My complexion!”

“If it gives you pimples, you can always call them character marks, Mr. Lance. Every good actor has them.”

Zoltan pulled his hand away. Lance saw that the old man’s fingers were clean. “Finished. It has all absorbed right in.” He screwed the cover of the jar back on and replaced it in the cardboard box.

Lance grabbed a small mirror, expecting to find his (soon-to-be) well-known expression covered with ugly brown, but he could see no sign of the makeup at all. “What happened to it? It still stinks.”

“It is special makeup. It will work when it needs to.”

The door flew open, and the red-faced director’s assistant stood panting. “Lance, Mr. Derwell wants you on the set right now! Pronto! We’ve got to start shooting.”

Zoltan nudged his shoulder. “I am finished with you, Mr. Lance.”

Lance stood up, trying not to look perplexed so that Zoltan could have a laugh at his expense. “But I don’t see any—”

The old gypsy wore a wicked grin on his lips. “You need not worry about it. I believe your expression is, ‘Knock ’em dead.’”

Lance sat down at the nightclub piano and cracked his knuckles. The extras and other stars took their positions. Above the soundstage, he could hear men on the catwalks, positioning cool blue gels over the lights to simulate the full moon.

“Now are you ready, Lance?” the director said, fitting another cigarette into his ivory holder. “Or do you think maybe we should just take a coffee break for an hour or so?”

“That’s not necessary, Mr. Derwell. I’m ready. Just give the word, see?” He growled for good measure.

“Places everyone!”

Lance ran his fingers over the piano keyboard, “tickling the old ivories,” as real piano players called it. No sound came out. Lance couldn’t play a note, of course, so the prop men had cut all the piano wires, holding the instrument in merciful silence no matter how enthusiastically Lance might bang on it. They would add the beautiful piano melody to the soundtrack during post-production.

“Wolfman in Casablanca, Scene 23, Take One.” The clapboard cracked.

“Action!” Derwell called.

The klieg lights came on, pouring hot white illumination on the set. Lance stiffened at the piano, then began to hum and pretend to plink on the keys.

In this scene, the werewolf has taken a job as a piano player in a nightclub, where he has met Brigitte, the vacationing French resistance fighter. While playing “As Time Goes By,” Lance’s character looks up to see the full moon shining down through the nightclub’s skylight. To keep from having to interrupt filming, Derwell had planned to shoot Lance from the back only as he played the piano, not showing his face until after he had supposedly started to transform. But now Lance didn’t appear to wear any makeup at all—he wondered what would happen when Derwell noticed, but he plunged into the performance nevertheless. That would be Zoltan’s problem, not his.

At the appropriate point, Lance froze at the keyboard, forcing his fingers to tremble as he stared at them. On the soundtrack, the music would stop in mid-note. The false moonlight shone down on him. Lance formed his face into his best expression of abject horror.

“Oh, God! Please no! Not again! Don’t let it happen HERE!!!” Lance clutched his chest, slid sideways, and did a graceful but dramatic topple off the piano bench.

On cue, one of the extras screamed. The bartender dropped a glass, which shattered on the tiles.

On the floor, Lance couldn’t stop writhing. His own body felt as if it were being turned inside out. He had really learned how to bury himself in the role! His face and hands itched, burned. His fingers curled and clenched. It felt terrific. It felt real to him. He let out a moaning scream—and it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t part of the act.

Off behind the cameras, Lance could see Rino Derwell jumping up and down with delight, jerking both his thumbs up in silent admiration for Lance’s performance. “Cut!”

Lance tried to lie still. They would need to add the next layer of hair and makeup. Zoltan would come in and paste one of the latex appliances onto his eyebrows, darken his nails with shoe polish.

But Lance felt his own nails sharpening, curling into claws. Hair sprouted from the backs of his hands. His cheeks tingled and burned. His ears felt sharp and stretched, protruding from the back of his head. His face tightened and elongated; his mouth filled with fangs.

“No, wait!” Derwell shouted at the cameraman. “Keep rolling! Keep rolling!”

“Look at that!” the director’s assistant said.

Lance tried to say something, but he could only growl. His body tightened and felt ready to explode with anger. He found it difficult to concentrate, but some part of his mind knew what he had to do. After all, he had read the script.

Leaping up from the nightclub dance floor, Lance strained until his clothes ripped under his bulging lupine muscles. With a roar and a spray of saliva from his fang-filled jaws, he smashed the piano bench prop into kindling, knocking it aside.

Four of the extras screamed, even without their cues.

Lance heaved the giant, mute piano and smashed it onto its side. The severed piano wires jangled like a rasping old woman trying to sing. The bartender stood up and brought out a gun, firing four times in succession, but they were only theatrical blanks, and not silver blanks either. Lance knocked the gun aside, grabbed the bartender’s arm, and hurled him across the stage, where he landed in a perfect stunt man’s roll.

Lance Chandler stood under the klieg lights, in the pool of blue gel filtering through the skylight simulating the full moon. He bayed a beautiful wolf howl as everyone fled screaming from the stage.

“Cut! Cut! Lance, that’s magnificent!” Derwell clapped his hands.

The klieg lights faded, leaving the wreckage under the normal room illumination. Lance felt all the energy drain out of him. His face rippled and contracted, his ears shrank back to normal. His throat remained sore from the long howl, but the fangs had vanished from his mouth. He brushed his hands to his cheeks but found that all the abnormal hair had melted away.

Derwell ran onto the set and clapped him on the back. “That was incredible! Oscar-quality stuff!”

Old Zoltan stood at the edge of the set, smiling. His dark eyes glittered. Derwell turned to the gypsy and applauded him as well. “Marvelous, Zoltan! I can’t believe it. How in the world did you do that?”

Zoltan shrugged, but his toothless grin grew wider. “Special makeup,” he said. “Gypsy secret. I am pleased it worked out.” He turned and shuffled toward the soundstage exit.

“Do you really think that was Oscar quality?” Lance asked.

The other actors treated Lance with a sort of awe, though a few tended to avoid him. The actress playing Brigitte kept fixing her eyes on him, raising her eyebrows in a suggestive expression. Derwell, having shot a perfect take of the transformation scene he had thought would require more than a day, ordered the set crew to repair the werewolf-caused damage so they could shoot the big love scene, as a reward to everyone.

Zoltan said nothing to Lance as he added a heavy coat of pancake and sprayed his hair into place. Lance didn’t know how the gypsy had worked the transformation, but he knew when not to ask questions. Derwell had said his performance was Oscar quality! He just grinned to himself and looked forward to the kissing scene with Brigitte. Lance always tried to make sure the kissing scenes required several takes. He enjoyed his work, and so (no doubt) did his female co-stars.

Zoltan added an extra-thick layer of dark-red lipstick to Brigitte’s mouth, then applied a special wax sealing coat so that it wouldn’t smear during the on-screen passion.

“All right you two,” Derwell said, sitting back in his director’s chair, “start gazing at each other and getting starry-eyed. Places everyone!”

Zoltan packed up his kit and left the soundstage. He said goodbye to the director, but Derwell waved him away in distraction.

Lance stared into Brigitte’s eyes, then wiggled his eyebrows in what he hoped would be an irresistible invitation. He had few lines in this scene, only some low grunting and a mumbled “Yes, my love” during the kiss.

Brigitte gazed back at him, batting her eyelashes, melting him with her deep brown irises.

“Wolfman in Casablanca, Scene 39, Take One.”

Lance took a deep breath, so he could make the kiss last longer.

“Action!” The klieg lights came one.

In silence, he and Brigitte gawked at each other. Romantic music would be playing on the soundtrack. They leaned closer to each other. She shuddered with her barely contained emotion. After an indrawn breath, she spoke in a sultry, sexy French accent. “You are the type of man I need. You are my soul mate. Kiss me. I want you to kiss me.”

He bent toward her. “Yes, my love.”

His joints felt as if they had turned to ice water. His skin burned and tingled. He kissed her, pulling her close, feeling his passion rise to an uncontrollable pitch.

Brigitte jerked away. “Ow! Lance, you bit me!” She touched a spot of blood on her lip.

He felt his hands curl into claws, the nails turn hard and black. Hair began to sprout all over his body. He tried to stop the transformation, but he didn’t know how. He stumbled backward. “Oh, God! Please no! Not again!”

“No, Lance—that’s not your line!” Brigitte whispered to him.

His muscles bulged; his face stretched out into a long, sharp muzzle. His throat gurgled and growled. He looked around for something to smash. Brigitte screamed, though it wasn’t in the script. Tossing her aside, Lance uprooted one of the ornamental palms and hurled the clay pot to the other side of the stage.

“Cut!” the director called. “What the hell is going on here? It’s just a simple scene!”

The klieg lights dimmed again. Lance felt the werewolf within him dissolving away, leaving him sweating and shaking and standing in clothes that had torn in several embarrassing places.

“Oh, Lance, quit screwing around!” Derwell said. “Go to wardrobe and get some new clothes, for Christ’s sake! Somebody, get a new plant and clean up that mess. Get First Aid to fix Brigitte’s lip here. Come on, people!” Derwell shook his head. “Why did I ever turn down that job to make Army training films?”

Lance skipped going to wardrobe and went to Zoltan’s makeup trailer instead. He didn’t know how he was going discuss this with the gypsy, but if all else failed he could just knock the old man flat with a good roundhouse punch, in the style of Craig Corwyn, U-Boat Smasher.

When he pounded on the flimsy door, though, it swung open by itself. A small sign hung by a string from the doorknob. In Zoltan’s scrawling handwriting, it said “FAREWELL, MY COMPANIONS. TIME TO MOVE ON. GYPSY BLOOD CALLS.”

Lance stepped inside. “All right, Zoltan. I know you’re in here!”

But he knew no such thing, and the cramped trailer proved to be empty indeed. Many of the bottles had been removed from the shelves, the brushes, the latex prosthetics all packed and taken. Zoltan had also carried away the old cardboard box from the corner, the one containing the jar of special makeup for Lance.

In the makeup chair, Lance found a single sheet of paper that had been left for him. He picked it up and stared down at it, moving his lips as he read.

“Mr. Lance,

“My homemade concoction may eventually wear off, as soon as you learn a little more patience. Or they may not. I cannot tell. I have always been afraid to use my special makeup, until I met you.

“Do not try to find me. I have gone with the crew of Fraankenstein of the Farmlands to shoot on location in Iowa. I will be gone for some time. Director Derwell asked me to leave, to save him time and money. Worry not, though, Mr. Lance. You no longer need any makeup from me.

“I promised you would become a star. Now, every time the glow of the klieg lights strikes your face, you will transform into a werewolf. You will doubtless be in every single werewolf movie produced from now on. How can they refuse?

“P.S., You should hope that werewolves are not just a passing fad! You know how fickle audiences can be.”

Lance Chandler crumpled the note, then straightened it again so he could tear it into shreds, but he didn’t need any werewolf anger to snarl this time.

He stared around the empty makeup trailer, feeling his career shatter around him. There would be no more Tarzan roles, no thrilling adventures of Craig Corwyn. His hopes, his dreams were ruined, and his cry of anguish sounded like a mournful wolf’s howl.

“I’ve been typecast!”

I went through a heavy Dracula phase, reading the original Bram Stoker novel (which is really quite good), watching all the movie versions, from Nosferatu to Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, and an excellent but underrated version with Jack Palance, which actually tied the Dracula character with the historical Vlad Dracul, the Impaler.

I wanted to know more about the real “Dracula” and I imagined what a fascinating meeting it would be to see the historical Vlad the Impaler with Bela Lugosi, the man who made the most famous portrayal of Dracula. And when I learned that Lugosi himself was a heroin addict later in his crumbling career and prone to hallucinations, that was the collision idea I needed for the story …

Much at Stake

Bela Lugosi stepped off the movie set, listening to his shoes thump on the papier mâché flagstones of Castle Dracula. He swept his cape behind him, practicing the liquid, spectral movement that always evoked shrieks from his live audiences.

The film’s director, Tod Browning, had called an end to shooting for the day after yet another bitter argument with Karl Freund, the cinematographer. The egos of both director and cameraman made for frequent clashes during the intense seven weeks that Universal had allotted for the filming of Dracula. They seemed to forget that Lugosi was the star, and he could bring fear to the screen no matter what camera angles Karl Freund used.

With all the klieg lights shut down, the enormous set for Castle Dracula loomed dark and imposing. Universal Studios had never been known for its lavish productions, but they had outdone themselves here. Propmen had found exotic old furniture around Hollywood, and masons built a spooky fireplace big enough for a man to stand in. One of the most creative technicians had spun an eighteen-foot rubber-cement spiderweb from a rotary gun. It now dangled like a net in the dim light of the closed-down set.

On aching legs, Lugosi walked toward his private dressing room. He never spoke much to the others, not his costars, not the director, not the technicians. He had too much difficulty with his English to enjoy chit-chat, and he had too many troubling thoughts on his mind to seek out company.

Even during his years of portraying Dracula in the stage play, he had never socialized with the others. Perhaps they were afraid of him, seeing what a frightening monster he could become in his role. After 261 sell-out performances on Broadway, then years on the road with the show, he had sequestered himself each time, maintaining the intensity he had built up as Dracula, the prince of evil, drawing on the pain in his own life, the fear he had seen with his own eyes. He projected that fear to the audiences. The men would shiver; the women would cry out and faint and then write him thrilling and suggestive letters. Lugosi embodied fear and danger for them, and he reveled in it. Now he would do the same on the big screen.

He closed the door of the dressing room. All of the others would be going home, or to the studio cafeteria, or to a bar. Only Dwight Frye remained late some nights, practicing his Renfield insanity. Lugosi thought about going home himself, where his third wife would be waiting for him, but the pain in his legs felt like rusty nails, twisting beneath his kneecaps, reminding him of the old injury. The one that had taught him fear.

He sat down on the folding wooden chair—Universal provided nothing better for the actors, not even for the film’s star—but Lugosi turned from the mirror and the lights. Somehow, he couldn’t bear to look at himself every time he did this.

Inside his personal makeup drawer, he reached up and withdrew the hypodermic needle and his vial of morphine.

The filming of Dracula had been long and hard, and he had needed the drug nearly every night. He would have to acquire more soon.

Outside on the set, echoing through the thin walls of his own dressing room, Lugosi could hear Dwight Frye practicing his Renfield cackle. Frye thought his portrayal of the madman would make him a star in front of the American audiences.

But though they screamed and shivered, none of them understood anything about fear. Lugosi had found that he could mumble his lines, wiggle his fingers, and leer once or twice, and the audiences still trembled. They enjoyed it. It was so easy to frighten them.

Before Universal decided to film Dracula, the script readers had been very negative, crying that the censors would never pass the movie, that it was too frightening, too horrifying. “This story certainly passes beyond the point of what the average person can stand or cares to stand,” one had written.

As if they knew anything about fear! He stared at the needle, sharp and silver, with a flare of yellow reflected from the makeup lights—and Van Helsing thought a wooden stake would be Lugosi’s bane! He filled the syringe with morphine. His legs tingled, trembled, aching for the relief the drug would give him. It always did, like Count Dracula consuming fresh blood.

Lugosi pushed the needle into his skin, finding the artery, homing in on the silver point of pain … and release. He closed his eyes.

In the darkness behind his thoughts, he saw himself as a young lieutenant in the 43rd Royal Hungarian Infantry, fighting in the trenches in the Carpathian Mountains during the Great War. Lugosi had been a young man, frightened, hiding from the bullets but risking his life for his homeland—he had called himself Bela Blasko then, from the Hungarian town of Lugos.

The bullets sang around him in the air, the explosions, the screams. The air smelled thick with blood and sweat and terror. The mountain peaks, backlit at night by orange explosions, looked like the castle spires of some ancient Hungarian fortress, more frightening by far than the crumbling stones and cobwebs the set builders had erected on the studio lot.

Then the enemy bullets had crashed into his thigh, his knee, shattering bone, sending blood spraying into the darkness. He had screamed and fallen, thinking himself dead. The enemy soldiers approached, ready to kill him … but one of his comrades had dragged him away during the retreat.

Young Lugosi had awakened from his long, warm slumber in the army hospital. The nurses there gave him morphine, day after day, long after the doctors required it—one of the nurses had recognized him from the Hungarian stage, his portrayal of Jesus Christ in the Passion Play. She had given Lugosi all the morphine he wanted. And outside, in a haze of sparkling painlessness, the Great War had continued.…

Now, he winced in the dressing room, snapping his eyes open and waiting for the effects of the drug to slide into his mind. Through the thin walls of the dressing room, he could hear Dwight Frye doing Renfield again, “Heh hee hee hee HEEEEE!” Lugosi’s mind grew muddy; flares of color appeared at the edges.

When the rush from the morphine kicked in, the pleasure detached his mind from the chains of his body. A liquid chill ran down his spine, and he felt suddenly cold.

The makeup lights in his dressing room winked out, plunging him into claustrophobic darkness. He drew a sharp breath that echoed in his head.

Outside, Dwight Frye’s laugh changed into the sound of distant, agonized screams.

Blinking and disoriented, he tried to comprehend exactly what had altered around him. As if walking through gelatin, Lugosi shuffled toward the dressing room door and opened it. The morphine made fright and uneasiness drift away from him. He experienced only a melting curiosity to know what had happened, and in his mind, he questioned nothing. His Dracula costume felt alive on him, as if it had become more than just an outfit.

The set for Castle Dracula appeared even more elaborate now, more solid, dirtier. And he saw no end to it, no border where the illusion stopped and the cameras set up, where Karl Freund and Tod Browning would argue over the best way to photograph the action.

The fire in the enormous hearth had burned low, showing only orange embers; sharp smoke drifted into the great room. He smelled old feasts, damp and mildew in the corners, the leavings of animals in the scattered straw on the floor. Torches burned in iron holders on the wall. The cold air raised goosebumps on his morphine-numbed flesh.

The moans and screams continued from outside.

Moving with a careful, driven gait, Lugosi climbed the wide stone staircase, much like the one on which he met Renfield in the film. His shoes made clicking sounds on the flagstones, solid stones now, not mere papier mâché. He listened to the screams. He followed them.

He knew he was no longer in Hollywood.

Reaching the upper level, Lugosi trailed a cold draft to an open balcony that looked down onto a night-shrouded hillside. Stars shone through wisps of high clouds in an otherwise clear sky. Four bonfires raged near clusters of soldiers and drab tents erected at the base of the knoll. Though the stench of rotting flesh reached him at once, it took Lugosi’s eyes a moment to adjust from the brightness of the fires to see the figures spread out on the slope.

At first, he thought it was a vineyard, with hundreds of stakes arranged in rows, radiating from concentric circles of other stakes. But one of the “vines” moved, a flailing arm, and the chorus of the moans increased. Suddenly, like a camera coming into focus, Lugosi recognized that the stakes contained human forms impaled on the sharp points. Some of the points were smeared with blood that looked oily black in the darkness; other stakes still shone wicked and white, as if they had been trimmed once again after the victims had been thrust down upon them.

Lugosi gasped, and even the morphine could not numb him to this. Many of the human shapes stirred, waving their arms, clutching the wounds where the stakes protruded through their bodies. They had not been allowed to die quickly.

Dim winged shapes fluttered about the bodies—vultures feasting even at night, so gorged they could barely fly, ignoring the soldiers by the tents and bonfires, ignoring the fact that many of the victims were not even dead. Ravens, nearly invisible in the blackness, walked along the bloodstained ground, pecking at dangling limbs. A group of the soldiers broke out in laughter from some game they played.

Lugosi winced his eyes shut and shivered. Revulsion, confusion, and fear warred within his mind. This must all be some illusion, a twisted nightmare. The morphine had never affected him like this before!

Some of the victims had been hung head down, others sideways, others feet down. The stakes rose to various heights, high and low, as if in a morbid caste system of death. A rushing wail of pain swept along the garden of bloody stakes, sounding like a choir.

From the corridor behind Lugosi, a quiet voice murmured. “Listen to them—like children in the night. Do you enjoy the music they make?” Lugosi whirled and stumbled, slumping against the stone wall; the numbness seemed to put his legs at a greater distance from his body.

Behind him stood a man with huge black eyes that reflected tears in the torchlight. His face appeared beautiful, yet seemed to hide a deep agony, like a doe staring into a broken mirror. Rich brown locks hung curling to his shoulders. He wore a purple embroidered robe lined with spotted fur; some of the spots were long smears of brown, like dried spots of blood wiped from wet blades. His full lips trembled below a long, dark moustache.

“What is this place?” Lugosi croaked, then realized that he had answered automatically in the stranger’s own tongue, a language as familiar to Lugosi as his childhood, as most of his life. “You are speaking Hungarian!”

The stranger widened his eyes in indignation. Outside, the chorus of moans grew louder, then quiet, like the swell of the wind. “I speak Hungarian now that I am no longer a prisoner of the Turks. We will obliterate their scourge. I will strike such fear in their hearts that the sultan himself will run cowering back to Constantinople!”

One of the vultures swooped close to the open balcony, and then flew back toward its feeding ground. Startled, Lugosi turned around, then back to face the stranger who had frightened him. “Who are you?” he asked.

The Hungarian words fit so naturally in his mouth again. Lugosi had forced his native language aside to learn English, phonetically at first, delivering his lines with power and menace to American audiences, though he could not understand a word of what he was saying. Understanding came much later.

The haunted stranger took a hesitant step toward Lugosi. “I am … Vlad Dracula. I bid you welcome. I have waited for you a long time.”

Lugosi lurched back and held his hand up in a warding gesture, as if reenacting the scene when Van Helsing shows him a box containing wolfsbane. From childhood, Lugosi had heard horrible stories of Vlad the Impaler, the real Dracula, rumored to be a vampire himself, known to be a bloodthirsty butcher who had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Turks—and as many of his own people.

In the torchlit shadows, Vlad Dracula paid no attention to Lugosi’s reaction. He walked up beside him and stood on the balcony, curling his hands on the stone half-wall. Gaudy rings adorned each of his fingers.

“I knew you would come,” Dracula said. “I have been smoking the opium pipe, a trick I learned during my decade of Turkish captivity. The drug makes my soul rest easier. It makes me open for peace and eases the pain. I thought at such a time you might be more likely to appear.”

Vlad Dracula turned and locked eyes with Bela Lugosi. The dark, piercing stare seemed more powerful, more menacing than anything Lugosi had mimed in his performance as the vampire. He could not shirk away. He knew now how the Mina character must feel when he said “Look into my eyes …”

“What do you want from me?” Lugosi whispered.

Vlad Dracula did not try to touch him, but turned away, speaking toward the countless victims writhing below. “Absolution,” he said.

“Absolution!” Lugosi cried. “For this? Who do you think I am?”

“How are you called?” Dracula asked.

Lugosi, disoriented yet accustomed to having his name impress guests, answered, “Bela Lugos—no, I am Bela Blasko of the town of Lugos.” He drew himself up, trying to feel imposing in his own Dracula costume, but the enormity of Vlad the Impaler’s presence seemed to dwarf any imaginary impressiveness Lugosi could command.

Vlad Dracula appeared troubled. “Bela Blasko—that is an odd name for an angel. Are you perhaps one of my fallen countrymen?”

“An angel?” Lugosi blinked. “I am no angel. I cannot grant you forgiveness. I do not even believe in God.” He wished the morphine would wear off. This was growing too strange for him, but as he held his hand on the cold stone of the balcony it felt real to him. Too real. The sharp stakes below would be just as solid, and just as sharp.

He looked down at the ranks of tortured people covering the hillside, and he knew from the legends about the Impaler that this was but a tiny fraction of all the atrocities Vlad Dracula had already done. “Even if I could, I would not grant you absolution for all of this.”

Vlad Dracula’s eyes became wide, but he shrank away from Lugosi. “But I have built monasteries and churches, restored shrines and made offerings. I have surrounded myself with priests and abbots and bishops and confessors. I have done everything I know how.” He gazed at the bloodied stakes but seemed not to see them.

“You killed all these people, and many, many more! What do you expect?” Lugosi felt the fear grow in him again, real fear, as he had experienced that war-torn night in the Carpathian Mountains. What would Vlad Dracula do to him?

Some of those victims below were Lugosi’s own countrymen, the simple peasants and farmers, the bakers and bankers, craftsmen, just like those Lugosi had fought with in the Great War, just like those who had rescued him after he had been shot in the legs, who had dragged him off to safety, where the nurses tended him, gave him morphine. Vlad Dracula had killed them all.

“There are far worse things awaiting man … than death,” the Impaler said. “I did all this for God, and for my country.”

Lugosi felt the words catch in his throat. For his country! His own mind felt like a puzzle, with large pieces of memory breaking loose and fitting together in new ways. Lugosi himself had done things for his country, for Hungary, that others had called atrocities.

Back in 1918, he had embraced communism and the revolution. Proudly, he had bragged about his short apprenticeship as a locksmith, then had formed a union of theater workers, fighting and propagandizing for the revolution that thrust Bela Kun into power. But Kun’s dictatorship lasted only a few months, during which Romania attacked the weakened country, and Kun was ousted by the counterrevolution. All supporters of Bela Kun were hunted down and thrown into prison or executed. Lugosi had fled for his life to Vienna with his wife and from there, penniless, Lugosi had traveled to Berlin seeking acting jobs.

And now Vlad Dracula thought he was doing this for his people, to free Wallachia and the towns that would become great Hungarian cities. Lugosi had scorned the weak American audiences because they proved too weak to withstand anything but safe, insignificant frights—but now he didn’t believe he could stomach what he saw of Vlad the Impaler.

“I fight the Turks and use their own atrocities against them. They have taught me all this!” Vlad Dracula wrung his hands, then snatched a torch free from its holder on the wall. He pushed it toward Lugosi, letting the fire crackle. Lugosi flinched, but he felt none of the heat. It seemed important for him to speak to Lugosi, to justify everything.

“Can you not hear me? The Turks held me hostage from the time I was a boy. To save his neck, my father Dracul the Dragon willingly turned me over to the sultan, along with my youngest brother Radu. Radu turned traitor, became a Turk in his heart. He grew fat from harem women, and rich banquets, and too much opium. My father then went about attacking the sultan’s forces, knowing that his own sons were bound to be executed for it!”

Vlad Dracula held his hands over the torch flame; the heat licked his fingers, but he seemed not to notice. “Day after day, the sultan promised to cut me into small pieces. He promised to have horses pull my legs apart and hold me where I could not struggle while he inserted a dull stake through my body the long way! Several times he even went so far as to tie me to the horses, just to frighten me. Day after day, Bela of Lugos!” He lowered his voice. “Yes, the Turks taught me much about the extremes one can do to an enemy!”

Vlad Dracula hurled the torch out the window. Lugosi watched it whirl and blaze as it dropped through the air to the ground, rolled, then came to rest against a rock. Without the torch, the balcony alcove seemed smothered with shadows, lit only by the starlight and distant fires from the scene of slaughter on the hillside.

“After I escaped, I learned that my father had been ambushed and murdered by John Hunyadi, a Hungarian who should have shared his loyalty! Hunyadi captured my father and my brother Mircea so he could gain lordship over the principalities my father controlled. He struck my father with seventy-three sword strokes before he dealt a mortal blow. He claimed that he had tortured my brother Mircea to death and buried him in the public burial grounds.” Dracula shook his head, and Lugosi saw real tears hovering there.

“Mircea had fought beside John Hunyadi for three years and had saved his life a dozen times. When I was but a boy, Mircea taught me how to fish and ride a horse. He showed me the constellations in the stars that the Greeks had taught him.” Dracula scraped one of his rings down the stone wall, leaving a white mark.

“When I became Prince again, I ordered his coffin to be opened so that I could give him a proper burial, with priests and candles and hymns. We found his head twisted around, his hands had scraped long gouges on the top of his coffin. John Hunyadi had buried him alive!”

Vlad Dracula glanced behind him, as if to make certain no one else wandered the castle halls so late at night, and then he allowed himself to sob. He mumbled his brother’s name.

“Just a few months ago, in my castle on the Arges river in Transylvania, the Turks laid siege to me and fired upon the battlements with their cherrywood cannons. One Turkish slave forewarned me, and I was able to escape by picking my way along the ice and snow of a terrible pass. My own son fell off his horse during the flight, and I have never seen him again. My wife could not come with us, and so rather than being captured by the Turks, she climbed the stairs of our tallest tower overlooking the sheer gorge, and she cast herself out of the window. She was my wife, Bela of Lugos. Do you know what it is like to lose a wife like that?”

Lugosi felt cold from the breeze licking over the edge of the balcony. “Not … like that. But I can understand the loss.”

In exile from Hungary back in 1920, Lugosi had left his wife Ilona in Vienna, while he tried to find work in Berlin in German cinema or on the stage. He had written to her every other day, but she had never replied. He learned later that her father, the executive secretary of a Budapest bank, had convinced her to divorce him, to flee back to Hungary and to avoid her husband at all costs because of the awful things he had done against his own country. In the ten years since, Lugosi had already married twice more, but he still did not feel he had found her match. Dracula’s wife had chosen a different way out.

Outside, Lugosi heard distant shouts and the jingling of horses approaching at a gallop. He saw the soldiers break away from their tents, scattering the bonfires and snatching up their weapons. The Impaler seemed not to notice.

“I do not know who you are, or why you have come,” Vlad Dracula said. “I prayed for an angel, a voice who could remove these demons of guilt from within me.” He snatched out at Lugosi’s vampire costume, but his hand passed directly through the actor’s chest.

Lugosi shrank back, feeling the icy claw of a spectral hand sweep through his heart. Vlad Dracula widened his enormous dark eyes with superstitious terror. “You truly must be a spirit come to torment me, since you refuse to grant me absolution.”

Lugosi did not know how to answer. He delivered his answer with a stuttering, uncertain cadence. “I am neither of those things. I am only a traveler, a dream to you perhaps, from a time and place far from here. I have not lived my life yet. I will be born many centuries from now.”

“You come not to judge me, then? Or punish me?” Vlad Dracula looked truly terrified. He looked down at the hand that had passed through Lugosi’s body.

“No, I am just an actor—an entertainer. I perform for other people. I try to make them afraid.” He shook his head. “But I was wrong. What I do has no bearing on real fear. The acting I do, the frights I give to my audience, are a sham. That fear has no consequences.” He leaned out over the balcony, then squeezed his eyes shut at the scores of maimed corpses and those victims not fortunate enough to have died.

“Seeing this convinces me I know nothing about real fear.”

In the courtyard directly below, shouting erupted. Marching men hurried out into the night. Someone blasted a horn. Lugosi heard the sounds of a fight, swords clashing. Vlad Dracula glanced at it, dismissed the commotion for a moment, then locked his hypnotic gaze with Lugosi’s again. The anguish behind the Impaler’s eyes made Lugosi want to squirm.

“That is all? I have prayed repeatedly for an apparition, and you claim to have learned something from me? About fear? All is lost. I have been abandoned. God is making a joke with me.” His shoulders hunched into the fur-lined robe, and he reddened with anger.

Lugosi had the crawling feeling that if he had been corporeal to the Impaler, Vlad Dracula would have thrust him upon a vacant stake on the hillside. “I do not know what to tell you, Vlad Dracula. I am not your conscience. I have destroyed enough things in my own life by trying to do what I thought was right and best. But I can tell you what I think.”

Vlad Dracula cocked an eyebrow. Below, a clattering sound signaled a portcullis opening. Booted feet charged across the flagstone floor as someone hurried into the receiving hall. “My Lord Prince!”

Lugosi spoke rapidly. “The Turks have taught you well, as your atrocities show. But you have perhaps gone too far. You cannot undo the things you have already done, the thousands already slain. But you can change how you act from now on. Your brutal, bloodthirsty reputation is already well-earned, and mothers will frighten their children with stories of Vlad the Impaler for five hundred years! Now perhaps you have built enough terror that you no longer need the slaughter. The mere mention of your name and the terror it evokes may be enough to accomplish your aims, to save Hungary from the Turks. If this is how you must be, try to govern with fear, not with death. Then your God may give your conscience some rest.”

Vlad Dracula made a puzzled frown. “Perhaps we are together because I needed to learn something about fear as well.” The Impaler laughed with a sound like breaking glass. “For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you are a wise man, Bela of Lugos.”

They both turned at the sound of a running man hurrying up the stone steps to the upper level where Lugosi and Vlad Dracula stood side by side. The messenger scraped his sword against the stone wall, clattering. He swept his cloak back, looking from side to side until he spotted Dracula in the shadowy alcove. Sweat and blood smeared his face.

“My Lord Prince! Why did you not respond?” the man cried. A crimson badge on his shoulder identified him as a retainer from one of the boyars serving Vlad Dracula.

“I have been in conversation with an important representative,” Dracula said, nodding to Lugosi. Surprised, but falling back on his training, Lugosi sketched a formal bow to the messenger. But the retainer looked toward where Lugosi stood, blinked, and frowned.

“I see nothing, my Lord Prince.”

In a rage, Vlad Dracula snatched out a dagger from his fur-lined robe. The messenger blanched and stumbled backward, warding off the death from the knife but also showing a kind of sick relief that his end would be quick, not moaning and bleeding for days on a stake as the vultures circled about.

“Dracula!” Lugosi snapped, bringing to bear all the power and command he had used during his very best performances as the vampire. Vlad Dracula stopped, holding the knife poised for its strike. The retainer trembled, staring with wide blank eyes, but afraid to flee.

“Look at how terrified you have made this man. The fear you create is a powerful thing. You need not kill him to accomplish your purpose.”

Vlad Dracula heard Lugosi, but kept staring at the retainer, making his eyes blaze brighter, his leer more vicious. The retainer began to sob.

“I need not explain my actions to you,” he said to the man. “Your soul is mine to crush whenever I wish. Now tell me your news!”

“The sultan’s army has arrived. It appears to be but a small vanguard attacking under cover of darkness, but the remaining Turks will be here by tomorrow. We can stand strong against this vanguard—many of them have already fled upon seeing their comrades impaled on this hillside, my Lord Prince. They will report back. It will enrage the sultan’s army.”

Vlad Dracula pinched his full lips between his fingers. He looked at Lugosi, who stood watching and waiting. The messenger seemed confused at what the Impaler thought he saw.

“Or it will strike fear into the sultan’s army. We can use this. Go out to the victims on the stakes. Cut off the heads of those dead or mortally wounded—and be quick about it!—and catapult the heads into the Turkish vanguard. They will see the faces of their comrades and know that this will happen to them if they fight me. Find those whose injuries may still allow them to live and set them free of the stakes. Send them back to the sultan to tell how monstrous I am. Then he will think twice about his aggression against me and against my land.”

The retainer blinked in astonishment, still trembling from having his life returned to him, curious about these new tactics Vlad Dracula was attempting. “Yes, my Lord Prince!” He scrambled backward and ran to the stone steps.

Lugosi felt the walls around him growing softer, shimmering. His knees felt watery. His body felt empty. The morphine was wearing off.

Dracula tugged at his dark moustache. “This is interesting. The sultan will think it just as horrible, but God will know how merciful I have been. Perhaps next time I smoke the opium pipe, He will send me a true angel.”

Lugosi stumbled, feeling sick and dizzy. Warm flecks of light roared through his head. Dracula seemed to loom larger and stronger.

“I cannot see you as clearly, my friend. You grow dim. Our time together is at an end. Now that we have learned what we have learned, it would be best for you to return to your own country.”

Lugosi tried to shake the thickening cobwebs from his eyes. “The morphine must be wearing off.…”

“And I can barely feel the effects of the opium pipe anymore. But I must dress for battle! If we are to fight the sultan’s vanguard, I want them to see exactly who has brought them such fear! Farewell, Bela of Lugos. I will try to do as you suggest.”

“Farewell, Vlad Dracula,” Lugosi said, raising his hand. It passed through the solid stone of the balcony wall.…

The lights flickered around his makeup mirror, dazzling his eyes. Lugosi drew in a deep breath and stared around his tiny dressing room. A shiver ran through him, and he pulled the black cape close around him, seeking for some warmth.

Outside, Dwight Frye attempted his long Renfield laugh one more time, but sneezed at the end. Frye’s dressing room door opened, and Lugosi heard him walking away across the set.

On the small table in front of him, Lugosi saw the empty hypodermic needle and the remaining vial of morphine. Fear. The silver point looked like a tiny stake to impale himself on. Morphine had always given him solace, a warm and comfortable feeling that made him forget pain, forget trouble, forget his fears.

But he had used it too much. Now it transported him to a place where he could see only the thousands of bloodied stakes and moaning victims, vultures circling, ravens pecking at living flesh. And the mad, tormented eyes of Vlad the Impaler.

He could not guess where it would take him next, and the possibilities filled him with fear—not the fear without consequences that sent shivers through his audiences, but a real fear that would put his sanity at risk. He had brought it upon himself, cultivated it by his own actions.

Bela Lugosi dropped the syringe and the small vial of morphine onto the hard floor of his dressing room. Slowly, with great care, he ground them both to shards under the heel of his Count Dracula shoes.

His legs ached again from the old injury, but it made him feel solid and alive. The pain wasn’t so bad that he needed to hide from it. What he found in his drug-induced hiding place might be worse than the pain itself.

Lugosi opened his dressing room and saw Dwight Frye just leaving through the large doors. He called out for the other actor to wait, remembering to use English again, though the foreign tongue seemed cumbersome to him.

“Mr. Frye, would you care to join me for a bit of dinner? I know it is late, but I would enjoy your company.”

Frye stopped, and his eyes widened to show how startled he was. For a moment he looked like the madman Renfield again, but when he chuckled the laugh carried delight, not feigned insanity.

“Yes, I’d sure like that, Mr. Lugosi. It’s good to see you’re not going to keep to yourself again. The rest of us don’t bite, you know. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Lugosi smiled sardonically and stepped toward him. The pain in his legs faded into the background. “You’re right, Mr. Frye. There is nothing to fear.”

I’ve written a lot of Christmas stories to celebrate the holiday season. For several years I was part of a group of writers who gathered every Christmas Eve to read our new stories aloud as we sat around the fireplace. Some of mine were warmhearted and charming.

Some were not.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Get You

’Twas the night before the night before Christmas, and all through the house little sounds were stirring … creeping, whispers of noise, echoes of things better left unseen in the darkness, even around the holiday season.

Jeff stared up at the bottom of his little brother’s bunk. Ever since Stevie had gotten rid of the night light, he always feared that the upper bunk would fall on top of him and squish him flat.

A strong gust of wind rattled the windowpane. Wet snow brushing against it sounded like the hiss of a deadly snake, but he could hear that his brother was not asleep. “Stevie? I thought of something about Christmas.”

“What?” The voice was muffled by Stevie’s ratty blue blanket.

“Well, Santa keeps a list of who’s naughty and nice, right? So, what does he do to the kids who’ve been naughty?” He didn’t know why he asked Stevie. Stevie wouldn’t know.

“They don’t get any presents I guess.… Do you really think Mom and Dad are that mad at us?”

Jeff sucked in a breath. “We were playing with matches, Stevie! We could have burned the house down—you heard them say that. Imagine if we burned the house down … Besides, it doesn’t matter if Mom and Dad are angry. What’ll Santa think?”

Jeff swallowed. He had to get the ideas out of his head. “I gotta tell you this, Stevie, because it’s important. Something a kid told me at school.

“He said that it isn’t Santa who puts presents out when you’re good. It’s just your Mom and Dad. They wait until you go to sleep, and then they sneak out some presents. It’s all pretend.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Think about it. Your parents are the ones who know what you really want.” He pushed on in a whisper. “What if Santa only comes when you’re bad?”

“But we said we were sorry! And … and it wasn’t my idea—it was yours. And nothing got hurt.”

Jeff closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see the bottom of the upper bunk. “I think Santa looks for naughty little boys and girls. That’s why he comes around on Christmas Eve.

“He sneaks down the chimney, and he carries an empty sack with him. And when he knows he’s in a house where there’s a naughty kid, he goes into their bedroom and grabs them, and stuffs them in the sack! Then he pushes them up the chimney and throws the bag in the back of his sleigh with all the other naughty little boys and girls. And then he takes them back up north where it’s always cold and where the wind always blows—and there’s nothing to eat.”

Jeff’s eyes sparkled from hot tears. He thought he heard Stevie shivering above him.

“What kind of food do you think Santa gets up there at the North Pole? How does Santa stay so fat? I bet all year long he keeps the naughty kids he’s taken the Christmas before and he eats them! He keeps them locked up in icicle cages … and on special days like on his birthday or on Thanksgiving, he takes an extra fat kid and he roasts him over a fire! That’s what happens to bad kids on Christmas Eve.”

Jeff heard a muffled sob in the upper bunk. He saw the support slats vibrate. “No, it’s not true. We weren’t that bad. I’m sorry. We won’t do it again.”

Jeff closed his eyes. “You better watch out, Stevie, you better not cry. ’Cause Santa Claus is coming to get you!”

He heard Stevie sucking on the corner of his blanket to keep from crying. “We can hide.”

Jeff shook his head in despair. “No. He sees you when you’re sleeping, and he knows when you’re awake. We can’t escape from him!”

“How about if we lock the bedroom door?”

“That won’t stop Santa Claus! You know how big he is from eating all those little kids. And he’s probably got some of his evil little elves to help him.”

He listened to Stevie crying in the sheets. He listened to the wind. “We’re gonna have to trick him. We have to get Santa before he gets us!”

On Christmas Eve, Dad turned on the Christmas tree lights and hung out the empty stockings by the fireplace. He grinned at the boys who stared red-eyed in fear.

“You guys look like you’re so excited you haven’t been able to sleep. Better go on to bed—it’s Christmas tomorrow, and you’ve got a long night ahead of you.” He smiled at them. “Don’t forget to put out milk and cookies for Santa.”

Mom scowled at them. “You boys know how naughty you were. I wouldn’t expect too many presents from Santa this year.”

Jeff felt his heart stop. He swallowed and tried to keep anything from showing on his face. Stevie shivered.

“Oh, come on, Janet. It’s Christmas Eve,” Dad said.

Jeff and Stevie slowly brought out the glass of milk and a plate with four Oreo cookies they had made up earlier. Stevie was so scared he almost dropped the glass.

They had poured strychnine pellets into the milk and put rat poison in the frosting of the Oreos.

“Go on boys, good night. And don’t get up too early tomorrow,” Dad said.

The two boys marched off to their room, heads down. Visions of Santa’s blood danced in their heads.

Jeff lay awake for hours, sweating and shivering. He and Stevie didn’t need to say anything to each other. After Mom and Dad went to bed, the boys listened for any sound from the roof, from the chimney.

He pictured Santa Claus heaving himself out from the fireplace, pushing aside the grate and stepping out into the living room. His eyes were red and wild, his fingers long claws, his beard tangled and stained with the meal he’d had before setting out in his sleigh—perhaps the last two children from the year before, now scrawny and starved. He would have snapped them up like crackers.

And now Santa was hungry for more, a new batch to restock his freezer that was as big as the whole North Pole.

Santa would take a crinkled piece of paper out of his pocket to look at it, and yes, there under the “Naughty” column, would be the names of Jeff and Stevie in all capital letters. He’d wipe the list on his blood-red coat.

His black belt was shiny and wicked looking, with the silver buckle and its pointed corners razor-sharp to slash the throats of children. And over his shoulder hung a brown burlap sack stained with rusty splotches.

Then Santa would go to their bedroom. Jeff and Stevie could struggle against him, they could throw their blankets on him, hit him with their pillows and their toys—but Santa Claus was stronger than that. He would reach up first to snatch Stevie from the top bunk and stuff him in the sack.

And then Santa would lunge forward with fingers grayish blue from frostbite. He’d wrap his hand around Jeff’s throat and draw him toward the sack.…

Then Santa would haul them up through the chimney to the roof. Maybe he would toss one of them toward the waiting reindeer who snorted and stomped their hooves on the ice-covered shingles. And the reindeer, playing all their reindeer games, would toss the boy from sharp antler to sharp antler.

All the while, Santa stood leaning back, glaring, and belching forth his maniacal “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

Jeff didn’t know when his terror dissolved into fitful nightmares, but he found himself awake and alive the next morning.

“Stevie!” he whispered. He was afraid to look in the pale light of dawn, half expecting to find blood running down the wall from the upper bunk. “Stevie, wake up!”

Jeff heard a sharp indrawn breath. “Jeff! Santa didn’t get us.”

They both started laughing. “Come on, let’s go see.”

They tumbled out of bed, then spent ten minutes dismantling the barricade of toys and small furniture they had placed in front of the door. The house remained still and quiet around them. Nothing was stirring, not even a mouse.

Jeff glanced at the dining room table as they crept into the living room. The cookies were gone. The milk glass had been drained dry.

Jeff looked for a contorted red-suited form lying in the corner—but he saw nothing. The Christmas tree lights blinked on and off; Mom and Dad had left them on all night.

Stevie crept to the Christmas tree and looked. His face turned white as he pulled out several new gift-wrapped boxes. All marked “FROM SANTA.”

“Oh, Jeff! Oh, Jeff—you were wrong! What if we killed Santa!”

They both gawked at the presents.

“Jeff, Santa took the poison!”

Jeff swallowed and stood up. Tears filled his eyes. “We have to be brave, Stevie.” He nodded. “We better go tell Mom and Dad.” He shuddered, then screwed up his courage.

“Let’s go wake them up.”

Dipping back into my enigmatic Wisconsin small town again, this was an early Tucker’s Grove story, and it was published in an obscure small press anthology. I still have a copy, but I doubt anyone else does.

Many years later I was invited to contribute a story for another dark fantasy anthology. The editor wanted a story from me and was very insistent, but I didn’t have time to write something new within his time frame (too many novel deadlines). But I remembered this story, and I knew it was a solid, original idea, even though the original writing wasn’t quite adequate to the concept. I offered to rewrite it, and the editor agreed. (Nobody remembered the original publication anyway.)

This is the new version, much improved, and I still think it’s quite creepy. Be careful what you wish for …

Scarecrow Season

The scarecrow hung on a crossbar in the Indian Summer sun, clutching at the last threads of life. Crucified. His clothes were tattered, his hair tangled and askew, his skin sunburned and blistered.

He had endured endless days and nights while he sweated away his body’s water until he was little more than a dry corn shock. For a long time, he had stared at the acres and acres of waving cornfields that stretched out in front of him. Then the crows came to peck out his eyes, and he saw nothing else.

Blood crusted his wrists. On the first day, he had struggled to wrench himself free of the ropes that held him to the rough, nail-scarred crossbar. He knew with a sick sadness, and also relief, that he wouldn’t last another day.

A broad, flat fragment of bloodstained altar stone rested against the foot of the upright support bar, just beneath his bare feet. Nearby, in the branches of an ancient oak along the fence line, he could hear the deep croak of a huge crow with fathomless black eyes. The crow had perched motionless in the tree, watching him as he hung helpless. The crow barely moved its head, eyes shining in the sun, watching, waiting. Like a demon.

The man’s last thought was a gibbering curse at the person who had done this to him. Elspeth Sandsbury.

Exhaustion, hunger, and thirst drove him miles deep into unconsciousness, so deeply that he did not even realize it when that awful woman came to finish him off.…

Elspeth whistled a bright melody as she marched down the weed-tangled lane to the back field, the one far from the road leading to Tucker’s Grove. She swung the newly sharpened sickle in her calloused hand.

Elspeth Sandsbury was a hefty woman—“big bones,” she always said. A farmer’s wife needed to be strong and healthy. Most people didn’t suspect just how strong she had become after years of doing the farm work by herself, after her husband had died. When Elspeth decided to use her strength, it took most of her victims completely by surprise.

Seeing the gray, drawn skin on her new scarecrow, she hurried, hoping she hadn’t arrived too late. The Dark Ones would not be pleased if he died too soon; she doubted They could be fed with any but living blood. “Don’t you go and perish on me before I can properly conduct my sacrifice, Mister!”

A quick touch to the man’s bound wrist reassured her that his heart throbbed stubbornly, but weakly. Barely alive. No time to waste!

She quickly recited the prayer she had devised. “Dark Ones! Hear me! I swear my solemn devotion to you. Hallowed be Thy Names. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow, Thy will be done. Blessed be the farmers … for we worship Thee and bring Thee sacrifices like Thou used to get.”

She reached up and drew the scythe blade across the scarecrow’s throat as if she were carving a Thanksgiving roast for her dead husband Jaacob. The razor-edge parted beard-stubbled skin, sinew, and blood vessels all the way to his neckbone.

Blood gushed from the scarecrow’s jugular and splattered on the rune-carved altar stone at his quivering bare feet. With a contented sigh, Elspeth propped the scythe against the altar stone and flung some blood in the air for good measure. With a fingertip, she traced a cross of blood on her forehead and continued her chant. She no longer needed to go to the church in Tucker’s Grove.

“And we know that Thou makest my crops to grow with great abundance and ensure that my stomach is full and I am warm and well. When Thou sufferest the sacrificial Lamb to come unto me, I shall deliver him up to Thee right quick. Amen.”

The large crow stared at her, as if it knew just what she was doing. Elspeth watched the bird, acknowledged its presence with a nod, then grunted as she knelt before the altar stone.

With the fresh blood, she drew strange symbols on the stone. The runes were different with each sacrifice, things she had seen on barns and graves, or just designs she made up. She didn’t think the Dark Ones minded: They had never shown her the right way to conduct the ritual, after all. As long as she was sincere and did her best, she knew the Dark Ones would settle for what they got.

When the sacrifice was done, Elspeth cut the ropes holding the scarecrow to the crossbar and caught the body as he fell forward. It seemed appropriate to wait for the first sunset of the night of the full moon, but she had timed this one close … too close. At least the man was unconscious when she’d cut his throat. She hated when they screamed and gurgled.

The black crow flew off silently.

As she lifted the ragdoll body over her shoulders, she made a mental note to do the washing as soon as she got back to the farmhouse, or else the blood would never come off her dress. She plodded down the lane toward the garden, where she would bury him with all the others in the tangles of the melon patch. Elspeth grunted with the burden.

Walking back to the house, she paused by the only two marked graves on the Sandsbury property. One rude cross said, “Isaac Abraham Sandsbury: Beloved Son.”

He had limped home with a gunshot wound in the leg after a stupid hunting accident. Elspeth had taken Isaac to a hydropathist, who advised her to rinse her son’s injured leg and soak it in warm water. He instructed that Isaac should drink only water, that he must be surrounded by steaming pots of water. And after the hydropathist took his fee and departed for Bartonville, Elspeth had been helpless as her son’s gangrene spread and spread.…

The other cross, cruder than the first because Elspeth had done it all by herself, read, “Jaacob Jonah Sandsbury: Beloved Father and Husband.”

An insanely religious man, Jaacob had accepted his smallpox as no more than a Job-like test from his All-Powerful God. Jaacob had died, writhing and screaming, his flesh roiling with stinking pustules. He praised his Lord with his dying breath, neglecting even to say goodbye to his wife of twenty-five years.

Then the barn had burned down. And Elspeth, in anger and determination, stalked out to do the spring planting by herself, hitching their one horse to the plow and taking out her despair by tearing into the Earth.

But the plow struck something hard and immovable, long-buried in the dirt. The unexpected obstacle made the horse lurch forward and break its foreleg.

Rain had poured down as Elspeth unearthed the broken altar stone with her bare hands. The flat fragment was etched with strange runes and brown markings that looked like long-dried blood. Elspeth couldn’t decipher the symbols, but in a flash—a vision—she understood the truth.

No God, not even Jaacob’s God, could possibly be so cruel as to let her suffer all that had happened to her, not without good reason. And now Elspeth had found that reason. While everyone else went to the town’s Methodist church to sing hymns to some gentle, peaceful deity, the Old Ones were lying here in the ground, forgotten. And they were not too happy about it.

As the altar stone showed, others had known the truth long ago, and they must have appeased the Dark Ones with sacrifice and worship. Now, even though they were all but forgotten, the ancient gods remained hungry for the sacrifice.

Elspeth had been given a second chance. She could appease them. She would be the one to gain their favor, no one else. The Dark Ones did exist; she knew it. Finding the altar stone in the midst of her tribulations had to be a sign!

And so, she made sacrifices. First was the horse with its broken leg, right there in the field. Then the dog, Jaacob’s surly old mutt … then rabbits and squirrels. But nothing seemed to have any beneficial effect on the crops.

She needed a better, bigger sacrifice.

Then that traveler had stopped, asking for directions.…

Elspeth had never really kept a record of how good the crops were when Jaacob did the field work, but she was certain the yield had increased dramatically since she began making the human sacrifices. The Dark Ones wouldn’t neglect their faithful servant. Why should she doubt them?

Besides, she had enough trouble just watching over the Grossnetz boys who came to do her harvesting. She took down the scarecrow pole when it was time for them to come, of course, and hid the altar stone, but Elspeth didn’t want them to become too nosy. She was confident that even if the Grossnetz boys discovered anything dangerous, the Dark Ones would strike them down, but she was afraid the D.O.s (as she called them when she didn’t think They were listening) would also punish her for being careless.

Back at the old farmhouse she washed her hands at the well. Since it was such a nice day, with enough of a breeze to chase away the worst of the heat, she decided to forego the washing chores. She discarded her bloodstained dress and changed into a fresh, clean flower print.

The weathered rocking chair creaked on the front porch as she settled her bulk into it. She rocked back and forth, humming a tune that vaguely resembled “Amazing Grace,” but with words she had altered to suit herself. Elspeth wondered how long it would be before the Dark Ones sent another victim to her.

Maybe she would do some embroidery in the meantime.

He came striding down the dusty road that passed in front of the Sandsbury house. Long-legged to the point of being gangly, he wore rumpled city clothes in the noon heat. The grin on his bespectacled face made him look foolish, even from a distance. He waved to her in polite greeting, and Elspeth waved back.

He took it as an invitation and veered from the road to walk up to the house. “Can you tell me if I’m anywhere close to the town of Tucker’s Grove, ma’am?”

She waited for him to come to the porch before she answered. “Tucker’s Grove? Well, how close you be depends on how far you’ve come, now doesn’t it? It’s about an hour’s ride from here, a day or thereabouts if you’re walking.”

He held out his hand, flashing a broad smile. “Andrew Danforth Johnson, ma’am.” He bowed. “Dentist.”

“Elspeth Sandsbury … farmer’s wife.” She took his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Johnson. Would you care for a cold glass of water?”

Elspeth started for the well pump before he could answer. She drove the pump handle until a stream of cold water poured from the spout. She lifted the ladle toward the thin stranger, and he drank, thanking her more enthusiastically than was necessary.

He sat on the step of the porch after she had resumed her seat in the old rocking chair. “Tell me, Mr. Johnson, what brings you on the road to Bartonville, and walking, yet! Where do you hail from?”

“All the way from Boston, ma’am. I heard that these parts of Wisconsin are quite pleasant, especially the small towns. Just having finished my schooling as a dentist, I thought it’d be a good idea to come out here to set up my practice.”

“You came from Boston to get to Tucker’s Grove? Well, mister, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, that’s about the most pure idiot thing I ever heard of!” She smiled at him disarmingly, she hoped.

He laughed. Elspeth clapped her hands together suddenly, as if she knew exactly the thing the dentist was waiting for. “Say, have you ever tried gooseberry wine, Mr. Johnson?”

“Can’t say that I have, ma’am.”

“It’s just what you need to improve your stamina, heighten your spirits, and get you primed for the last leg of your journey. Besides, it’s the hottest part of the day out there. You just set here in the shade while I go pour a glass.”

“Aren’t you having one yourself, ma’am?”

“I don’t drink spirits, Mr. Johnson. Not since my husband died, anyways.”

She disappeared into the house, then returned with a crystal goblet of a murky, purplish wine. “Here you be, Mr. Johnson. Just the thing.” She handed it down to him. “Drink up.”

Then she rocked back in the creaking old chair, glancing down the road to make sure no one else might be coming in the hot, lonely afternoon. With a smile, Elspeth saw the comical shock on the dentist’s face as the potent sleeping powders hit him.

Andrew Danforth Johnson pitched forward into unconsciousness. Elspeth grabbed his collar and deftly caught him just before his face grazed the dusty porch. It would have been cruel to let the man break his spectacles that way.

She took a long drink from the well herself, quenching her thirst, then turned to her new victim. Time to get to work.

After she had mounted the dentist up on the scarecrow bar, Elspeth spent the night in the intimate company of nightmares—visions of dark wings and expressionless ebony eyes, ominous shadows. She was convinced she’d received an honest-to-goodness sending from the Dark Ones but was at a loss to understand its meaning. She found it confusing.

Why didn’t the Old Ones just speak in plain, simple English that a body could understand? They always sent murky images, dreams, flashes of inspiration … if she hadn’t known better, she might have thought they were just products of her own imagination.

Elspeth woke at dawn, her ample body tangled in damp sheets that weren’t half as twisted as her stomach felt. She wondered if she had eaten something bad the night before. Or maybe the D.O.s were upset about something. Elspeth swallowed hard, trying to figure out how she could appease them. She’d better make the new sacrifice quick.

The man would be awake by now, stiff from hanging on the crossbar all through the night. When she had hoisted him up the day before, she noticed with some curiosity that all the crows but the big one, the leader, were watching from the oak boughs.

The dentist’s gangly arms had flopped and flapped in all the wrong directions as she wrestled with his limp body. The strong sleeping powders had turned his bones to rubber. Nailing his wrists with more vehemence than was warranted, Elspeth had spat out some curses that would have offended her husband, if his ears hadn’t been well insulated by layers of earth.…

Now, as she dressed herself, her head pounded an independent rhythm to the queasiness of her stomach. With this headache, and the confusing flock of nightmares … yes, something was definitely peculiar. The Dark Ones were not happy with her.

Maybe They were just hungry again. She usually let each scarecrow hang for a few days so that the old gods could have a good look at the offering before she spilt its blood (and also so the sacrifice wouldn’t struggle and make too much of a mess).

But she had timed that last victim too close. Maybe the blood of a man so close to death contained no tonic for thirsty Gods. Maybe They needed healthy, fresh blood. That would neatly explain her throbbing headache, her black nightmares and twisted stomach. She had to fix it.

“Well, Mr. Johnson, there’s one quick way to satisfy a herd of hungry Gods. At least it’ll be quick for you.”

She retrieved the sickle from the kitchen wash-bucket, put on an apron to cover her clean dress, and strolled out into the early morning sunlight.

As she walked the lane back into the cornfield, Elspeth stopped in shock as she neared her garden. My, the D.O.s had been busy during the night!

The two crosses that marked the graves of her son and husband had been torn from the earth and impaled upside down in the center of the graves. The unruly grass covering the mounds was now black and leprous. “Oh, dear.”

All the plants in her garden were hunched over, withered and coated with dripping icicles, as if blasted by the arctic breath of the Dark Ones. Her neat rows of beans, peas, and carrots all lay destroyed. The rotting leaves of potatoes and turnips sent a foul stench into the chill air.

Elspeth swallowed hard, and she felt a cold fist wrench her stomach, as if the ancient gods were prodding her. Then the pain subsided, and she hurried to finish up the sacrifice before the D.O.s got any angrier.

But she got no farther than the melon patch, where the once-healthy vines lay dry and wasted over the unmarked graves of her previous sacrifices. The broad fan-shaped leaves stirred as round shapes moved beneath them. Elspeth put a hand to her mouth.

The firm, green melons she had nurtured all summer had now transformed into the severed heads of her victims. The round, grimacing heads sat propped on the ends of dead stems from the vines, mottled with decay. Each one of the heads turned to face her, watching her with ebony eyes that had somehow escaped putrefaction. They didn’t blink—just stared with venomous accusations.

Elspeth gulped and waddled down the pathway. The dead eyes followed her as she ran.…

Andrew Danforth Johnson was awake and wide-eyed as she approached him with the curved, razor-sharp harvesting blade. The lanky dentist looked none the worse for his night on the crossbar or the nails through his wrists, but he seemed to have lost his voice, for he said nothing as she approached. Maybe he was too frightened to whimper.

Elspeth looked up at the big oak on the fence line, where the crows still huddled. She was a bit disappointed that the big crow wasn’t there to watch, but she had a feeling it was close by, waiting.

“All right, no time to waste, Mr. Johnson.” With her bulky form, she began to dance around the crossbar. She chanted a dissonant song, imploring the Dark Ones to accept this new sacrifice and to make her headache and stomach distress go away … and, if it wasn’t too much trouble, to return the graves and her garden to their former conditions.

She halted in front of the crossbar and placed her plump hands on her more than generous hips. The gangly dentist just looked at her, his expression sour, more disgusted than afraid.

“Your blood is going to be swilled by the meanest, darkest Gods on the face of this Earth, Mr. Johnson. Aren’t you afraid?”

She brandished the sickle in his face, but instead of the spasms of terror she expected, he just looked at her sadly. Disturbed, she drew back the blade to strike. When he simply flashed his foolish smile at her, she sliced hard, laying his throat open to the vertebrae.

But rather than bright arterial blood, molten yellow fire spat out from the wound. The cut healed itself before her eyes with a line of sparks like flames dancing along a firecracker fuse. Elspeth cried out and dropped the sickle, then sucked her burnt, smoking fingers.

“You’ve damned yourself to the last, Elspeth Sandsbury,” the man said. His voice was husky and wolflike now. Not even a scar remained from the wound in his throat.

She gawked at him as the ropes binding him to the crossbar suddenly caught fire and burned to ash without marking his skin or scorching his clothes. The nails in his wrists shot away like lead pellets into the cornfield.

Andrew Danforth Johnson dropped lightly to the ground, straightening and dusting his black clothes before taking a step toward her. “Poor Elspeth—if the Dark Ones were as powerful as you imagine, do you really believe that They would have allowed Themselves to be forgotten?”

He didn’t look at all frail anymore. The stranger seemed to possess a power that could have felled an oak tree. His black hair had become iridescent in the sunlight.

“Did you never think that there might still exist high priests in the world? Priests who carry out the proper rituals in the proper ways—and with the proper sacrifices?” He loomed closer, and Elspeth shrank back. “Did you think the Dark Ones would take kindly to an ignorant usurper like yourself, who knows nothing of Them, nothing of the old ways, yet does not hesitate to shed blood in Their names? If there’s one thing the Dark Ones hate, it’s amateurs!”

The stranger started toward her. She couldn’t run. She tried to speak to him to offer up an explanation, but her tongue could only manage gibberish.

He caught her by the front of her dress and lifted her bulk off the ground with one hand. She squirmed, but a cold hand in her gut crushed her resistance, twisting her innards.

The dark man slammed Elspeth against the crossbar. He seemed much taller now, for he held her against the wood with his shoulder as he lifted one of her thick arms against the bar. He cupped one hand, and with the other drew a long strand of shiny barbed wire from the recesses of his fist, like a magician’s endless handkerchiefs from his sleeves. He bound her arms to the crossbar with the barbed wire.

Elspeth whimpered, then gibbered, begged, and wept, until she finally collapsed so deeply inside herself that she could do nothing but watch and listen.

“Elspeth, hear me now. The time for violent rituals and bloody sacrifices is over. The Dark Ones have had to adapt to survive to the modern age. They’ve had to become more compatible with mankind’s need, more accommodating to a civilized way of life.” He smiled at her as she hung helpless, bound by shining barbed wire. “But even so, They do still enjoy an occasional, special sacrifice.”

He bent down and picked up the broken altar stone as if it belonged to him and easily tucked the heavy fragment under his arm, though it had taken Elspeth ropes and a lever to move it.

The stranger turned and walked away down the lane without a backward glance.

From the fence line the crows set up a loud, squawking racket. The big crow, their black leader, joined them at last, but this time, instead of just watching, the birds flew down to feast.

“Much at Stake” drew from my interest in Dracula, but my real fascination ever since childhood was with the Frankenstein monster, not just from countless movie incarnations, but from reading and rereading the Mary Shelley novel numerous times. In 2006, my friend and mentor Dean Koontz asked me to work with him on the novel version of a script he had written, a modern retelling of the Frankenstein story, which was published as Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son. It sold a million copies in its first year.

As part of my work for that novel, I developed a back story of where all the monster’s pieces came from. The hands, the heart, the body, the brain … and how did Victor Frankenstein come to possess them? We didn’t end up using any of the material in the novel, but all the components came together in a wonderfully braided story. Dean graciously gave me permission to publish this story as an original work of my own, something I just stitched together …

The Sum of His Parts

Lightning turns the castle tower into a silver silhouette. Energy collects in metal rods, floods into crackling apparatus. Sparks fly from wires connected to a bandaged figure composed of cadaverous tissue assembled with thick sutures.

The doctor studies his creation, the mismatched parts, the thick sutures.

Spiderwebs of electricity flow like white-hot blood into the patchwork body, awakening the components like embers under an insistent puff of breath. The reattached hands twitch, the fingers flex. Transplanted lungs expel fetid air, unleashing a flood of memories.

He drew a deep breath of the open air. The snow-capped Alps framed the fragrant meadows where his sheep roamed. He preferred to be alone in the mountain vales, away from his brother Stefan and his flock; he didn’t like the sound of talking. In fact, he didn’t like sounds at all.

The wind spoke to him with breezes that whispered in his ears and taunted him like the hot breath of a wolf. The waving grasses hissed and rustled.

One afternoon during a thunderstorm, he huddled next to a rock, wrapping his hands around his ears, but the thunder made his head ring. The wind was all around, plucking at his clothes, gasping, wheezing, shrieking. He abandoned his flock, ran to his hut, and slammed the rickety door. The wind moaned through the cracks, slipping inside to get him. Plugging his ears with beeswax only amplified the sounds of his own breathing, the blood pounding inside his head. There was no escape.…

When it was time for the two brothers to join their flocks and take them to market in Ingolstadt, he and Stefan climbed a pass that separated their grazing fields from the valley. His brother was lonely, loquacious, and pestered him with constant conversation, to which he received no reply. As the two hiked up the steep slope, Stefan began panting, louder and louder, breathing so heavily that he could not even keep up his inane patter.

The shepherd squeezed his eyes shut but couldn’t block out the sound of the awful heaving breaths. Each loud inhalation and exhalation was like the thunder, until he could stand it no more.

He spun and wrapped his hands around Stefan’s throat. His brother struggled frantically while he squeezed, but the shepherd focused only on stopping the noise, smothering it. When he let his brother’s limp body tumble down the steep path, the world was peaceful for a time. A few moments of blessed silence. Then the wind picked up again.

He fled toward the valley. When the shepherd reached Ingolstadt and left his sheep in the market pen, he passed an old woman sitting in front of her candle shop. She coughed incessantly, hacking, wheezing; she spat a mouthful of phlegm into the gutter and started coughing again. The sound was like hammers pounding on his nerves. The old woman breathed and coughed and wheezed and coughed and breathed—until he knew he had to silence her as well.

She stood on creaking legs and tottered into the dimness of her shop, still coughing and coughing. Without hesitation, the shepherd stalked after her. She turned, no doubt thinking him a customer, and before she could speak, before she could cough again, he wrapped his callused hands around her thin throat. His muscles were strong, and he clamped down harder and harder until her struggles stopped, and the silence came back.

When he reeled outside again, the streets of Ingolstadt were a storm of people, a constant din, far too much noise. He had to escape back to the high mountain meadows, but before he could run from the square, a town crier began to bellow at the top of his lungs, announcing a tax that old Baron Frankenstein had imposed. The crier’s words broke through the air like cannon shot.

The shepherd wanted to scream for silence. He needed the crier’s mouth to stop opening and closing, to stop spewing words. Unable to control himself, the shepherd threw himself upon the man, shutting off the breath and the voice. It took four grown men from the astonished crowd to pull him away. The crier squawked and gasped, but his throat was so damaged he could no longer speak.

After the strangler was dragged before the magistrate, he was convicted of killing the old candle shop woman and his brother Stefan, whose body had been found by another shepherd. In addition, several children around Ingolstadt had disappeared over the years, and (since he was in custody) he was accused of killing them as well, though he denied that. He did not, however, deny the rest.

While the shepherd sat in his cell, the mocking wind stole through chinks in the wall and laughed at him. One blustery night, he watched the Baron’s son, Victor Frankenstein, come to talk to the jowly jailer. From where he huddled sullenly in his cell, he could overhear the conversation. Victor had an edginess and a calculating intelligence. “I am here on behalf of several medical students from the University. We are woefully short of cadavers for dissection.”

When the jailer’s breathing quickened, it set the strangler’s teeth on edge. Victor looked at the pot-bellied and splotchy-skinned jailer; distaste was clear on his face, as if he dismissed him as a potential specimen. “If we are to become physicians, we must have material with which to practice.” He indicated the miserable prisoner. “This madman is penniless and without family. He will be hung tomorrow. I would like to purchase his body afterward. At present, I have a particular need for a pair of hands and a set of lungs.”

The jailer pretended to be offended. “That’s highly illegal, sir!”

“But quite commonly done—as you well know.” Victor pulled out a pouch of gold coins. “Perhaps this will salve your conscience?”

The jailer looked at the coins, looked at the Baron’s son, then sneered at the strangler in his cell. “Done.” Victor’s breathing was calm with satisfaction. Outside, the wind scraped past the walls. It never stopped.…

The following day, when the shepherd was brought to the gibbet in the town square, he heard the mob shouting, breathing.

As the rough noose tightened around his neck, the strangler realized that the loudest sound that had haunted him all his life came from air passing through his own throat from his own lungs. Every waking moment he had been forced to listen to each breath whistling in and out of his mouth and nose. Finally, that noise would cease too!

When the hangman hauled on the rope, lifting him into the air to dangle under the gibbet’s crossbar, the noose squeezed off the sounds he made. All of them. The straining pulse grew to a roar in his head—and then he fell into blessed, total silence.…

Until now.

Storm electricity floods the muscle tissue. The bandaged legs twitch, as if remembering how to run.

“Just nerve impulses,” Victor says, checking his apparatus. The legs spasm again, trying to break free and bolt from this hellish place.…

He loved to run. As a servant in Castle Frankenstein, he preferred being sent to town to perform errands for the old Baron. He was fleet as a deer, and his muscles sang with the satisfying ache of tired legs after a long and glorious run.

His main duties were to tend Baron Frankenstein’s menagerie of exotic animals on the castle grounds: peacocks, a wildebeest, an aardvark, a spotted ocelot, even a lemur. The Baron’s noble friends marveled at the private zoo, while his son Victor studied the creatures with a scientist’s eye. The Baron also indulged the boys and girls from Ingolstadt who sneaked onto the estate to look at the animals.

The runner was a happy-go-lucky man with many flirtations, and the young women did not mind his attentions, especially the innkeeper’s plump daughter. The old Baron paid his servants well enough, but coins did not stay long in the servant’s purse. He cheerfully bought food, wine, and friendship for his companions, though the generosity usually went only one way.

The innkeeper’s daughter chided him for his spendthrift ways, especially in the evils of gambling, but he simply laughed her off, then pinched her substantial bottom. He frequented the dicing tables, invoking the name of his master to gain special privileges or to increase his line of credit.

Unfortunately, his luck was never good, even in the best of times. Finding himself out of money and in debt, he assumed that his fellow gamers (who had been happy to accept his coin when he bought food or bottles of wine) would be sympathetic to his plight. But his supposed friends vanished like smoke, and the gambling house proprietors demanded repayment.

Twice in the past four months, the old Baron had lectured him to be careful. “Because you work for the House of Frankenstein, you have a responsibility not to cause shame and scandal.” So, the servant knew he could never ask his master for a loan. Baron Frankenstein was a hard man, not unjust, but not softhearted either.

Owing so much money, the runner didn’t know what he could do. Collectors had cornered him in an alley, describing in great detail what they would do: First they would tie a gag around his mouth to stifle his screams, then they would beat his boots with iron clubs until his ankles shattered. Afterward, they would slowly pull off his boots, drawing out the pain. Once his broken feet were bare, they would take a set of curved tongs stolen from the local blacksmith, and twist his toes one by one, bending them backward and up until the bones snapped. He would never run again.

He could not allow that to happen. He couldn’t! Therefore, when the old Baron went off to be alone in his isolated hunting lodge deep in the forest preserve, as was his habit, the runner slipped into Castle Frankenstein. He bundled up four silver candlesticks and hurried out the servants’ entrance, beyond the squawking and grunting creatures in the menagerie, and ran down the path to Ingolstadt as fast as his legs could take him.

The candlesticks were more than enough to pay his debt, but his tormentors showed no sympathy. They accepted the stolen silver and looked at him as if they knew he would gamble again, that this was only the first theft he would be forced to commit. But they had their money, and the servant was free of his tormenters. Relieved but not at all interested in the pleasure of running, he stayed the night with the innkeeper’s daughter, who did not know of his troubles. In the morning, shaky with both relief and guilt, the runner went back up to the castle, glad to have a fresh start.

When he arrived, the household staff members were distraught, and young Victor Frankenstein glared at him with angry eyes. His voice was cold. “We know what you’ve done. Those candlesticks were my mother’s heirlooms, fashioned out of the purest silver from the mines of Transylvania.”

“I … I did nothing. I didn’t take them.”

“You were seen!” cried the head housekeeper, her face streaked with tears. “I saw you, and so did two others!”

Victor said, “You are hereby discharged from service.”

The runner stood aghast. “I will make up for it, sir. I’ll pay you back. Please don’t tell the Baron!”

“I am in charge while my father is away. You cannot repay this debt. You have stolen from us. You have betrayed people who trusted you. Leave Castle Frankenstein, before I call the magistrate.”

The runner went dejectedly to town. Hearing of his disgrace, all those who had laughed and played games with him, all those who had delighted in his generosity, now did not wish to be seen in his company. Very hungry, he begged the innkeeper’s daughter for food, and she scolded him for gambling despite her warnings. She slammed the door in his face.

As he left the inn, the runner turned into a narrow, dim street where he hoped to curl up and sleep undisturbed. At first, he didn’t see the shadowy man following him, but once in the alley, the stranger came close. He had sharp eyes and a broad face with a thin dueling scar on his left cheek. The man said, “I have a gift for you from Victor Frankenstein.”

The runner felt a sudden irrational hope. Perhaps he was forgiven after all! Then he saw a long stiletto with an ivory hilt. With a swift jerk of his arm, the other man slashed his throat. “There, not a scratch on the rest of the body, especially the legs. Exactly as ordered.”

The runner gurgled, feeling hot blood pumping onto his skin, his shirt, and the cobblestones. The assassin leaned over him with a feral smile. “Now Victor says your debt is paid.”

The heels of the young runner’s boots beat an erratic drumbeat on the ground. His legs stuttered, then stopped running forever.

The thump is faint at first, then louder. Stronger. No other sound is such a powerful symbol of life. Victor lifts his head from the bandaged chest, raising his triumphant voice to the storm. “One of the hearts is beating!”

Thump. The blood begins to circulate through quiet blood vessels. Thump.

With a loud thud, the silver smile of his sharpened axe bit deep into the trunk. Pine chips sprayed as the woodcutter swung again, using his mighty biceps. The impact rang through his hands and wrists, up to the shoulders, absorbed by a sturdy chest. His heart was pumping heavily.

His old clothes carried the healthy smell of sweat earned through hard work. The axe handle was stout oak polished by the sweat of his palms, smoothed by years of use. His muscles ached after a day of such labor, and it was a good soreness.

Five more swift strokes, and the gouge had gone to the core. The woodcutter checked the angle, judged where the tree would fall, then struck again. Splinters flew. With a groan of wood and a whisper of scraping boughs, the pine toppled. He stood back with satisfaction, then guided the old horse and cart around fresh stumps to the site of the felled tree. With a saw and a hatchet from the cart bed, he trimmed the branches, then cut the trunk into smaller pieces. He could sell the load in Ingolstadt. He would never become a rich man, but he had a cottage in the forest, food to eat, and a beautiful wife, Katarina. She was the most important part of his life.

He’d been gone from home for weeks, chopping wood in the dense and untraveled forests near Baron Frankenstein’s isolated preserve. The loneliness of the forest only made the time sweeter whenever he went back to Katarina. When he was home, he liked to carve little animals out of scraps of wood. Since he and his wife had not yet been blessed with children of their own, he gave the toys to girls and boys in town. The woodcutter loved children.

As night fell, he saw the glow of a nearby fire. Wanting company, he came upon a clearing where another man had stopped his wagon and built a camp. “Y-y-you are w-w-welcome to share my f-f-fire,” the stranger said, his words slurred both by a severe stutter and a foreign accent. “I h-h-have vegetables, but no m-m-meat.”

The woodcutter offered some smoked venison that was chewy but edible. “I can add this to the pot.”

The other man was a tinker named Goran, from Budapest. His wagon was full of oddities, pots, tools, trinkets, and five cages of birds (three doves, two songbirds). A gray wolf circled the campsite, making the woodcutter uneasy, and Goran introduced his pet, named Odin after a Norse god.

As they ate their stew, the woodcutter talked wistfully of Katarina. “I met her in Ingolstadt, a dark-haired beauty. Her eyes are the color of roasted chestnuts, her lips as full as fresh berries, and they taste as sweet when I kiss them. I don’t understand how such a beautiful woman could have married a man like me. But one does not spit in the face of good fortune.”

“N-n-no, my friend,” said Goran.

The lonesome woodcutter inspected the tinker’s wares, hoping to find a special treasure for Katarina. His eyes settled on a fabulous gold medallion etched with a wide-armed cross and trimmed with ruby and sapphire chips. Making up his mind, he went to his cart, where he had two stout axes, both of the finest manufacture. They had served him well. He gripped the wooden handle of his best one, lifted it from the cart, and stepped toward the tinker. “I can trade you this for the medallion. To give to Katarina. It’s not gold but made of sweat and wood and iron.”

The tinker smiled but shook his head. “N-n-not for s-s-sale. A special k-k-keepsake.” Goran explained with halting sentences that a kind priest had recently given him the jeweled cross as a reward for driving off a robber in the woods. The tinker could never part with his treasure.

Downcast, the woodcutter returned his axe to the cart. He knew that the forest was not safe from highwaymen and assassins.

While the wolf prowled around the campsite, the woodcutter slept, dreaming of Katarina. He wished he could find some way to show her how much he loved her. The quiet cottage life did not suit a fancy woman like her. While he was away, Katarina spent most of her time in Ingolstadt with her best friend Greta. He didn’t begrudge her that. He wanted his wife to be happy.…

After he and Goran parted company, he spent two more weeks cutting and piling wood that he would sell throughout the winter. When he returned home at last, calling Katarina’s name, the empty cottage only answered with silence. It took him only a moment to guess that she had gone to stay with Greta in town.

Grinning, he decided to surprise her. His horse pulled the loaded cart down the rutted trail into Ingolstadt, where he sold his load of wood in the square, ignoring the jeers and catcalls from the gibbet, where a mad strangler was being hung. Earlier, there had already been a beheading. The woodcutter didn’t care about such spectacles. He used the money to buy all the supplies they needed and found he had enough left over to purchase some sweet pastries he could share with Katarina.

He tied the old horse and the now-empty cart in front of the half-timbered town home where Greta and her husband lived. With a spring in his step, he went to the door, surprised that the windows were shuttered even in the warm afternoon.

As he approached the loose shutters, he heard laughter, muttered conversation … and the sounds of exertion, groans, a gasp. His brow furrowed as he identified Katarina’s sweet-husky voice and Greta’s musical timbre—and the thin nasal voice of Greta’s husband. He heard rhythmic sounds, heavy breathing, a wooden bedframe creaking under strain.

The woodcutter’s blood ran cold as he peered through a crack. He saw a crowd of arms and legs on the bed, naked flesh, a patchwork of intertwined bodies. He recognized both Greta and Katarina cavorting with a lean man: Greta’s husband. He had long dark hair, a wide face, and feral eyes; a thin dueling scar traced his left cheek. His lips were drawn back in a smile so deep it was almost a grimace. In the candlelight, all three were sweaty and panting, as if they’d been exerting themselves for some time. By the coordinated way they moved together, shifted positions, and pleasured each other, they seemed quite well practiced at their ménage a trois.

The woodcutter couldn’t feel his arms or his hands, the muscles that had ached from swinging the axe and lifting heavy wood. He realized he wasn’t breathing. Before he could tear his gaze away, he saw something else: Next to the candle on the fine lacquered nightstand lay the beautiful cross medallion fringed with sparkling chips of sapphire and ruby. Two weeks earlier, the tinker had refused to sell it to him, but somehow Greta’s husband had gotten it.

The woodcutter’s heart dissolved, leaving only a cold vacuum in his chest. Conscious and rational thoughts vanished with an inaudible pop like a bubble bursting. He walked leadenly back to his cart, where he selected his sharpest and stoutest axe. He lifted it in one well-muscled arm; for good measure, he took the second axe in his left hand. Holding both, he strode back to the door.

With a single blow, he smashed the latch and the crossbar. Sparks and splinters flew. The sounds abruptly stopped. He kicked the ruined door inward, then stepped inside, raising both axes.

The two women scrambled backward on the crowded bed. With just a flicker of his conscious mind, the woodcutter realized how beautiful Katarina was, her pale skin flushed, her dark and sweaty hair thrown back behind her shoulders. Her lips—yes, as red and full as fresh berries—were now open in a faltering scream.

Greta’s husband sprang off the straw mattress and into a crouch, not caring that he was naked. He grabbed a long ivory-handled stiletto from the nightstand, knocking the medallion aside in his haste.

Katarina and Greta continued to cry out as the woodcutter waded forward, one axe in each hand. As he swung them, their sharp silver smiles whistled through the air. Greta’s husband danced with the knife, twirling the tip in the air as if performing some sort of embroidery. He seemed as familiar with his stiletto as he was in fornicating with Katarina. He didn’t even seem afraid.

But the woodcutter had no need for knife play. Without finesse, he swung his axe, and a single blow severed the man’s forearm, which fell to the wooden floor, fingers still clutching the knife. A second broad sweep decapitated him more cleanly than he deserved. The head fell to the floor, eerily undamaged, and rolled so that his wide-open eyes could watch the rest of the spectacle.

Then the woodcutter turned his axes upon the two women until they were no more than red kindling.

Drenched in blood, he stood with both axes leaning against him. His muscles ached as they did after a day of hard work, and it was a good soreness.

The screams had drawn a horrified crowd, many from the strangler’s hanging. The woodcutter did not resist as the constable and the town guards came to arrest him. He did not explain his horrific actions, though the answer was obvious for anyone who could piece together the myriad body parts.

He did not speak a word in his own defense. In fact, he never uttered another sentence throughout his trial, sentencing, and swift execution.

Bandages shroud the broad, firm face. Victor touches the creation’s head like a lover’s caress, placing both hands on the stranger’s cheeks, one of which is marred by a thin scar from a knife fight.

“Can you hear me? Are you there?” he says in a voice full of hope.

His head hurt from sharing one-too-many bottles of wine the night before, and the thin scar on his cheek throbbed again, as it often did … but if the wine and fine food kept Greta and her friend Katarina happy, he would gladly pay the price.

The thrill of the crowd in the town square buoyed him up. Two executions in a single day! He was particularly interested in the beheading of the foolish stuttering tinker. He stood close to the block, one woman on each arm, all three of them watching with intent amusement.

The mad strangler’s hanging would take place later in the day, but by that time, he expected that the two lovely women would be entertaining him in bed, enjoying their good fortune. Life was good.

More than a simple cutpurse or highwayman, he took any job that paid well enough. He was known in local taverns as a man who could accomplish difficult tasks that must remain quiet: eliminating debtors, traitors, spies … even rich old uncles who needed to die so families could have their inheritance. Recently, Victor Frankenstein had hired him to slit the throat of a servant who had stolen some family silver to pay off a gambling debt. In his work, he had been cut in knife fights, slashed in the face, even endured the pain of a lead musket ball in his ribs. Thus, the ache of a hangover was nothing.

He had a fondness for good wine and brandy, dice and cards, stylish clothes, and especially women. Greta was as lusty as he was, and both of their appetites extended to her friend Katarina as well. For appearances, Greta’s friend had married an unlettered and oafish woodcutter, who was gone most of the time. Doting on Katarina, the oaf gave her trinkets that were small in comparison to what Greta’s husband provided.

One time, a month ago, as a masked highwayman, he had waylaid a plump and red-faced priest who carried a jeweled medallion among his treasures as he traveled through the forest. The medallion would have fetched an excellent price, but before the highwayman could complete his robbery, a meddling tinker and his pet wolf had come upon them and driven the robber away. Some days later, dressed as a fine dandy, he encountered the tinker again and learned that the red-faced priest had given the stuttering foreigner his medallion out of gratitude!

Incensed and wanting it for himself, the now-undisguised highwayman tried to buy the medallion for Katarina and Greta, who were both with him. They ogled the treasure from the tinker’s cart, but the stuttering idiot wouldn’t part with it. So, they had gone back to Ingolstadt with a concocted story. Weeping, Greta reported that the stranger had stolen her dear aunt’s jeweled cross, and then raped her and her friend. The constable and town guard rushed out to arrest the tinker straightaway.

Once the medallion had been “returned” to them, and the tinker got the punishment he deserved, Greta and Katarina went back home with the handsome highwayman, arm in arm, where they all engaged in an afternoon of celebration. Everything was going so well.

No one had expected Katarina’s husband to find them, or his axes to be so swift.

After his head fell to the floor, the highwayman’s vision faded swiftly. He couldn’t feel his body, which lay much too far away. Thoughts, and blood, drained out of him.

Once the second heart begins to beat, the creation is close, very close to real life. Another jolt, and the muscle clenches, pumps, stutters to life. Stutters …

The memories flow smoothly, without the logjam of words that had always caught in his throat.

As a tinker, he loved to make pieces fit together, to fix things that were broken. He owned a wagon full of pots, pans, prisms, swatches of bright cloth, and assorted treasures from foreign lands. Though alone, he had animal friends to keep him company. He whistled to his caged doves and songbirds; his pet wolf followed the cart like a dog. None of them cared about his stutter.

Once, he and his wolf had driven off an evil highwayman who was trying to rob a priest on the forest road. In gratitude, the kindly priest had given the tinker a jeweled cross medallion, one of the tinker’s most prized possessions. Not long ago a muscular woodcutter wanted to buy it as a gift for his beloved wife. Another insistent would-be customer was a well-dressed man with a dueling scar; the man was accompanied by his wife and her friend (both of whom clung to him so adoringly it wasn’t clear which was the wife and which was her friend). With halting, tangled words he tried to sell them something else, but the three had stalked angrily down the road.

A day later, to his astonishment, the constable and a group of guards came to arrest him. Sensing danger, the pet wolf attacked, trying to defend his master—and the guards shot the beast dead. The tinker wailed in grief for Odin, unable to find words in any language.

He was thrown into jail, appalled to learn that the scar-faced man and his two female companions had accused the tinker of stealing the medallion from them; both the wife and her friend wrung their hands and swore that the tinker had raped them. His denials were vehement, though inarticulate. With growing terror, his stutter became worse.

Distraught parents, including the town’s blacksmith, came forward to point fingers of blame, suggesting that the stranger must be responsible for Ingolstadt’s missing children. A baby had vanished only the day before, and ten other young sons and daughters had disappeared in as many years. A mad strangler had also been recently accused of the crimes, though no one truly believed him to be the criminal. Now, despite the fact that the tinker could not possibly have been in the area for that amount of time, the poor man was a convenient scapegoat. Once someone in the crowd voiced the suspicion, many others took up the cry.

Since he had been seen talking to birds and consorting with a wolf, the tinker was convicted as a warlock. He had stolen a holy artifact, no doubt to be used in some Satanic ritual (which must involve the blood of the babies or innocent children). The townspeople demanded that he be burned at the stake. The loudest voice came from the blacksmith’s young apprentice, whose family had perished in a forest fire years before. The boy seemed hungry to smell the smoke of burning flesh.

Oddly enough, Victor Frankenstein begged for mercy. “Ingolstadt is a civilized town and should not bow to superstitions.” But the crowd wanted some medieval touch of justice for such heinous crimes, and they already had an upcoming hanging. Very reasonable and persuasive, the Baron’s son suggested, “Perhaps the headsman’s axe should be brought out of retirement? The chopping block could be set up in the town square, as in olden days.”

This sated the bloodlust of the people. And so, the old executioner’s axe was sharpened by the vengeful blacksmith, who fervently believed the tinker had stolen and killed his daughter Maria.

Hands tied behind his back, the falsely accused tinker was brought out and forced to his knees. As his neck was stretched across the bloodstained block, his frantic gaze caught a last glimpse of one man in the crowd. Victor Frankenstein looked intensely interested, a scientist studying a specimen. The tinker felt the ripple of a completely different kind of fear. Why was the Baron’s son looking at him so … hungrily?

Because the headsman’s axe was razor-sharp, and the cut exceedingly swift, the flash of pain seemed as gentle as a feather. The stutter of his heartbeat stopped.

Victor checks the machines, adjusts the electrical flow, then hurries back. He presses down on the cloth windings of the sturdy chest. “Live!” he shouts, as if the dead parts will hear him and obey his command. “Live!”

Victor hammers his fist down on the sternum. The torso is thick, muscular, like a suit of armor around the two implanted hearts … a blacksmith’s chest.

His broad chest was always smeared with soot and smoke from the forge, his hair singed from sparks and cinders. His arms were strong from pounding on an anvil, pumping the bellows.

He had a good wife and fine children, whom he loved more than anything else. But his oldest daughter, Maria, had disappeared a year ago while picking mushrooms in the woods. Many boys and girls had vanished around Ingolstadt—yesterday, even a baby had gone missing! When Maria had been lost, the blacksmith and his wife spent agonized days combing the hills, calling the girl’s name, praying for her safety … and then, resigned, weeping for her soul.

To fill the emptiness, the blacksmith adopted a new apprentice, an orphan boy whose parents were killed in a forest fire. Though the boy worked hard in the smithy, no one else’s son could make up for lost Maria.

A traveling tinker had been arrested and charged with the crimes. The blacksmith and his wife were both convinced he had abducted their little girl. Even next to the blistering heat of the forge, the blacksmith shuddered to imagine the things the stuttering foreigner must have done to Maria.…

Sparks flew from the grinding wheel as he sharpened the headsman’s axe. The monstrous criminal would pay the price the following day. The bitter but unsatisfying taste of vengeance bubbled like bile in the blacksmith’s throat.

He closed his eyes, quoted scripture to himself, and prayed for forgiveness. His wife often came to sit with him in the smithy, to comfort him by reading aloud from the Bible while the apprentice boy continued the daily work, hovering close to the blazing fire.

Lately, instead of words of consolation, he was more interested in stories of demons, how the darkness of Satan was a shadow over the land—such as the rituals the guilty tinker no doubt performed with the blood of children while his wolf, his demon familiar, watched.

The blacksmith could not get Maria’s musical laughter out of his head. She had loved to ride on her father’s broad shoulders as he walked down the streets. She had played with other children, plucking flowers from the meadows, even running up to Castle Frankenstein where the old Baron showed them the exotic animals in his menagerie.

Now she was gone. The damned tinker had done terrible things to her!

When the blacksmith saw the fiery forge and the sparks flying from the grinding wheel, he thought of Hell’s inferno where this razor-sharp axe would send the evil tinker. He intended to stand so close to the chopping block that the hot and satisfying blood would splash onto his face.

Finished, he lifted the sharpened axe from the wheel, but it seemed very heavy all of a sudden. The blacksmith tried to stand. His apprentice came closer, looking worried.

Though his chest and arms were strong, the blacksmith’s heart was weak. The thudding sounded hollow in his chest, the slowing blood flow faded to a faint roar in his ears. He found himself falling. As the executioner’s axe dropped to the ground, his last thoughts were of his wife, his daughters. How would they survive without him?

Then he clung to the vision of lost Maria, her large blue eyes, her laughter. He collapsed dead to the smithy floor, unable to watch the execution after all.

At last, with the bandages removed, the dull yellow eyes open. The lids flutter, the transplanted eyes flick from side to side, seeing the grandeur of the lightning storm outside, the frenzied apparatus in the laboratory. Flashes, sparks, little fires.

He liked to stare into the flickering flames and watch the hungry elemental spirit devour wood. His eyes had an unhealthy yellow tinge, as if part of the fire’s glow hovered there.

He had lived with his family in a cottage near old Baron Frankenstein’s hunting preserve. The summer was dry, and a lightning strike started a nearby fire, which raged in the night. He awoke, smelling bitter greenwood smoke in the air, then crept outside to watch the swift fire come like a marching army. He went far from his house, to a high rock outcropping where he could sit and watch. The hypnotic flames enraptured him so that he did not even think about his family trapped inside the cottage as the fire engulfed it. He had never seen the house look so beautiful, so bright and cheery and ablaze.

Then the flames curled in a different direction—maybe the wind changed, or maybe the fire simply chose to avoid him. When the villagers found him later, they considered it a miracle that the boy had survived, while his family was overcome by smoke.

Though an orphan, he was old enough to be taken in as the blacksmith’s apprentice, where he loved to toil near the blazing heat of the forge. When he pumped the bellows, he made the heat blossom like a flower. He was accepted by the blacksmith and his family, who were grieving over their missing daughter. They thought they understood the boy’s “loss.”

The young apprentice went alone into the forest—an excuse to build secret fires, some of which (not unintentionally) got out of hand. One of his blazes nearly burned down the Baron’s hunting lodge.

Later, he was the loudest voice demanding that a tinker, convicted of being a warlock, be burned at the stake. The apprentice wanted to see a person tied to an upright log, the flames consuming clothes and flesh. He was furious when Victor Frankenstein insisted that the man be beheaded instead. Why did the Baron’s son have to meddle? The fire would have been so glorious, a spectacle he could have remembered for the rest of his life!

It was either irony, or divine justice, that the vengeful blacksmith had died while sharpening the headsman’s axe. Now, the apprentice did not know his future. He was too young to work the forge himself, and he feared the distraught widow would sell the business and turn him out into the streets.

The future did not concern him. The apprentice saw one way to make everything right. On the night after the tinker’s head was chopped off, he lit a flaming brand from the blacksmith’s forge and set the smithy building on fire.

But that was only a start. He went to the jail and then the magistrate’s home, setting them alight as well. It was sure to be the greatest fire in the history of Ingolstadt. The apprentice made no attempt to hide what he was doing. While the alarms rang, and people rushed out to help douse the fire, angry men chased after him.

The arsonist ran. One of them shot him in the back with a musket, and the ball lodged just beneath his shoulder blade. The pursuers were coming closer, shouting for his blood, carrying torches as they hunted him down. He staggered into the Baron’s hunting preserve, until he reached a swollen, fast-flowing stream. He tried to cross it, but he was too weak. When he stepped into the icy, rushing water, he could barely keep his footing.

The pursuing mob shot at him again. Another musket ball shattered his leg, and he fell into the water. As he was swept downstream, he caught a glimpse of Ingolstadt and the smoke rising into the air. He hoped his fire would burn for a long time.

His head was dunked under the fast current, and he couldn’t breathe. As the musket shots drained the life’s blood out of him, the apprentice gulped frigid water, praying for fire, yet the spark within him was extinguished. The darkness was cold and wet, but finally his eyes saw a spark again, lights … life.

The mosaic of a monster is alive, functioning, but without a mind it does not truly live.

Victor attaches an electrode, unleashes a flood of condensed lightning. A sharp shock pours into the head, like a musket touching off a flash of gunpowder, the last surge of memories. A mind adrift, separate. Thoughts run like raindrops down an uneven pane of glass.

Despite his wealth and bloodline, he had never been a strong man, the runt of the litter. His younger brothers—even his sister—spurned him, though the noble title was his by birthright. Years ago, as a boy, he had turned his feelings of inferiority against small animals—secretly killing cats, clubbing puppies. The young, helpless ones were the most gratifying.

Copying the more eccentric European nobles, he had purchased exotic animals from foreign lands, darkest Africa, South Sea islands, the Americas. He kept a menagerie on his estate, and though the miserable creatures did not live long, he replaced them with other specimens as fast as they died. His son Victor delighted in having so many dissection subjects for his medical studies.

The Baron’s fondness for strange animals made him popular among the children. Generous and benevolent, he would let them stare at the creatures, even pet the tame ones.

Most of the time he could control his urges. Most of the time.

And when it became imperative that he follow his obsession, he had a special private hunting lodge deep in his forest preserve with secure doors and stout shutters. After he lured the children out to the cabin, just like in the story of Hansel and Gretel, he would lock them in so he could have his way with them over and over; then he would kill them and bury them out in the forest.

All the servants at Castle Frankenstein were familiar with their master’s habit of slipping off for solitude. No mere peasant would dare to accuse, or even suspect, Baron Heinrich Frankenstein. A wandering band of gypsies or a suspicious stranger could always be blamed for the latest disappearance. Over the years, many were arrested; a shepherd had been hung and a tinker had been beheaded that very day, both accused of the same crime, providing a convenient excuse for the little “lamb” he had just stolen.…

Back at the Castle, he regularly told the cook to prepare veal, suckling pig, a fine tender lamb, or fresh kid spitted over a fire. Innocence seemed to give the flesh a better flavor. Thus, once a new idea had occurred to him, he couldn’t drive it out of his head. What might be the taste of another sort of tender flesh?

Only two days ago, he had wandered the streets of Ingolstadt in a filthy disguise, until he saw the chance to snatch an infant, still breast-fed. After roasting all day over a slow fire, the flesh would be succulent, better than veal.

Now, as the forest darkened around the hunting lodge, the Baron was glad to be away. The meat was still on the spit over the fire, almost ready for an evening feast, when he heard the shouts of searchers outside, musket shots. From the window of his cabin, he looked down the steep slopes to Ingolstadt. The city itself seemed to be on fire!

Alarmed, the Baron went to the door and threw it open just as the constable and six guards rushed up the path. “My Lord Baron, beware! There is an arsonist in these woods. We are hunting him—”

Then the constable saw what was on the fire. One of the guards cried out in horror before he began to retch. The old Baron could not slam the door quickly enough.…

Locked in the jail—the same cell that had held a strangler only two days before—the Baron confessed. Despite his admission, the torturers still wanted to break his arms and scourge him. The townspeople howled for his blood, ready to lynch the old Baron, and only a contingent of guards reluctantly prevented them from doing so. His noble rank would not save him. The magistrate had no choice but to sentence him to death by a slow garotte in the public square.

Victor—now the new Baron Frankenstein—came to see him. Oddly, the intense young man showed no revulsion at his father’s crimes, no greed for the position of power he now held. He looked at the older man clinically, as if he was already making plans.

Victor turned to the jailer. “It is a pity what my father has done. He always had such a fine mind.”

The beating hearts grow stronger. “He’s alive!” Victor cries. “Alive!”

The yellow eyes are open, the patchwork body twitches and trembles. Victor unwinds the gauze to reveal the scars on cadaverous flesh. He unstraps the restraints binding the arms and legs. The creature is awake now, aware.

“I made you. You will be greater than the sum of your parts!” He looks at his creation with pride. “Can you hear me? Do you know who you are?”

Yes, the pieced-together man knows who he is: the hands and lungs of a strangler, the legs of a thief, the head of a hired assassin, the torso of a vengeful blacksmith, the eyes of an arsonist, one heart from an axe murderer and the other from a wrongly executed man, the mind of a child molester and baby killer.

Voices clamor through him, so many identities roiling in a single body. Fusing the cacophony into a consensus, he remembers the Bible he read in his blacksmith persona, a particular verse from the Gospel of Mark. The other converging memories and lives know it as well, and they all agree.

His voice crackles out like a dry wind. Victor, face shining with perspiration, leans closer to hear.

“My name is Legion,” the creation says. “For we are many.”

He grabs Victor’s throat with the hand of a strangler. With all the lives inside him, he finds it very easy to squeeze.

The second Frankenstein-inspired story in this collection. Christopher Golden asked me to contribute to his theme anthology The Monster’s Corner for HarperCollins, stories with a sympathetic perspective on classic monsters. I always found the Frankenstein monster to be far more sympathetic than his creator, so that was my natural choice.

Here, the collision idea was taking the long-lived monster to an oppressive Jewish ghetto in Nazi Germany just before Kristallnacht. The monster had always been misunderstood, persecuted, with people afraid of him because he was different—just the sort of treatment the European Jews endured. Perhaps the monster could find sanctuary among them …

Torn Stitches, Shattered Glass

A tiny silver needle, sharp point. My large fingers have grown nimble over years of practice and delicate concentration, and I could glide the moistened end of the thread through the needle’s eye on the first try, then pull the strand tight. I completed the first stitches, neat ones, no excuse for clumsy black sutures such as a mortician would use after an autopsy.

The needle dipped into the end of the torn arm socket, then emerged, and I pulled the strong thread through, binding the detached arm to the shoulder. I immediately saw that I should have used white thread, because it would have shown up less. I made certain the ends were neatly aligned and continued my stitching.

I sat in my dim tailor shop in the ghetto of Ingolstadt. Some called the place cramped; I found it cozy. I was accepted here, though I wasn’t Jewish—what religion would accept someone like me? The people welcomed outsiders, understood them, and did not ask awkward, probing questions. It was 1938, and I’d been here for many years. I did not look forward to the day when I’d have to move on again.

I finished stitching around the stump of the arm, then snapped off the thread after tying a solid knot. I turned toward the little girl with rich brown hair and a bright mind, who sat watching me. I handed back her repaired ragdoll. “There, little Rachel—all fixed.” I propped up the doll, moving both arms with my fingers. “She doesn’t hurt.”

Rachel Schulmann was far wiser than she appeared. “She doesn’t hurt because she’s just a doll, Franck.” The child sounded as if she needed to explain to me. “She’s made, not real.”

“Of course.”

In their insular ghetto, the Jews had been suspicious of me at first—a large man with rough features and a scarred face, like a boxer who had lost too many fights. I kept to myself, showing no warmth or friendship, but posing no threat. I was tired of running, and I had almost given up on humanity because of how people hated things they didn’t understand, how they despised strangers and vented their anger by lighting torches, grabbing pitchforks. But here in the Ingolstadt ghetto, I was patient, helpful, with few needs or ambitions. I became a tailor because I liked to stitch things together, making certain the pieces fit. Ironic, that.

As Rachel took the doll from me, my sleeve accidentally slid up my arm. Normally, I chose to wear bulky jackets with thick cuffs, but now the girl’s eyes widened as she saw the line that encircled my wrist, the still-prominent scars from the old sutures where the hand had been attached—someone else’s hand, someone else’s wrist, the first two pieces in becoming me.

“Does that hurt?” she asked, more fascinated than frightened.

I gave her a quick, reassuring shake of my head. “No, child. It’s just the way I’m made.”

Now that the important work was done—repairing the girl’s doll—I could turn to the other work she’d brought me. Her father, the rabbi, had sent his jacket, a dark old suit that had been carefully but inexpertly patched many times over the years. Given a few days, I could have fixed flaws that the rabbi or his wife pretended not to see, tightened the stitches, trimmed the frayed cuffs and collar. But the damage was more severe, more disturbing. As soon as I looked at the torn fabric at the shoulder, the mud stains, the dried blood, I recalled what had happened. No one could keep secrets here in the ghetto.

The Nazis—three of them—had beaten Rabbi Schulmann in the streets. Laughing, they had pushed him down into the mud, and he had not challenged them, had not cursed them—but he had retained his dignity. Unwise. When the Schutzstaffel district officer Schein and two members of his Staffeln decided that the Rabbi did not look sufficiently humiliated, they had knocked him into the gutter and pummeled him with nightsticks. Some of the people gasped and moaned, helpless, while others watched in horror. Rabbi Schulmann cringed, accepted the blows, and soon enough Staffelfuhrer Schein and his two thugs grew tired of their sport and departed.

“They attack us because we’re different,” the Rabbi said aloud to the stunned people who rushed to help him. “To them, we’re easy targets.” He was bruised and bleeding, and they helped him to a doctor.

I had watched part of the incident from behind the smeared glass windows of my tailor shop. The Jews pretended that bad things didn’t happen. They cleaned up all sign of the incident, erased any marks the Nazis left, as if that was the way to survive.

Now I had the Rabbi’s damaged and stained jacket. I inspected it, poked my thick fingers through the tear, studied the dried blood. My dark lips formed a smile. “Tell your father I can fix this, Rachel. I promise it will be as good as new by tomorrow evening.”

“Thank you, Franck.” She pulled her doll close to her chest. “When you bring it over, my mother and father would like you to join us for dinner. Tomorrow night?”

“I’d be happy to, Rachel.” I was genuinely pleased. The people rarely invited me into their homes.

Outside, in the street, I watched the Jews nailing boards across their shop windows, which were shattered the previous day when Schein and his entire Staffeln of ten men had hurled bricks at any business they didn’t like—an accountant, a piano teacher, a baker. I knew the shopkeepers had already placed orders with a glassmaker in the city, wanting to repair the windows as quickly as possible. Within a day, the ghetto street would look just as it always had—until the next time. But inner scars did not so easily go away.

How could I not be angry?

As Rachel went to the door to leave my shop, she suddenly paused in fear. I heard the rumble of a staff car drive down the street and placed a warning hand on the girl’s shoulder, holding her there to make certain she didn’t run out in full view.

Staffelfuhrer Schein sat in the back of the staff car as his driver cruised slowly down the street; he glared as the people ducked into doorways or drew the shades of their windows. The staff car rolled by, wafting silence along the shops like a hushed breath.

“Why have they come back?” Rachel whispered.

“Because they like you to be afraid, child.”

We watched as the Nazis drove out of sight, but they caused no damage … today.

Ingolstadt was still a small city, far from the rest of the war, with an insignificant Jewish quarter, which made Schein and the few men in his Staffeln all the more desperate for attention. But they wouldn’t get it from me. I had learned long ago not to draw attention to myself if I wished to survive.

When the typical noises began to reappear in the street and people emerged from their shops with a nervous sigh, I let the girl run back to her parents. “Tell your father I’ll bring the jacket tomorrow night.”

In the past century, much had changed in Ingolstadt.

Because I hadn’t come alive the way a normal person did, neither did I age or die as a normal man would. Most children have only dim memories of their early childhood, but I can remember the vivid flood of images and sensations from the moment I opened my dull yellow eyes on the table, surrounded by lightning, to see the face of Victor Frankenstein, my creator … my father … the man who was so horrified by me that he had cast me out.

Victor hated me because I was different, even though he had made me that way. What choice did I have but to hate him in return?

In a hundred years, the townspeople had done their best to forget, or at least to pretend ignorance of, the history of their town. The ancient castle was gone, torn down stone by stone at the turn of the twentieth century. The old mill had burned long ago, then was rebuilt, only to be abandoned again. It was now an ancient wreck on the hill above the town.

I had traveled the world, gone to the frozen ends of the earth in pursuit of Victor, where I’d strangled him aboard a ship in an icy sea. It should have been my vengeance, my victory, after I’d leapt overboard to drift away on a detached ice floe, but I had learned much since then.

Now I had come back home to the small German city that was my birthplace. My Jewish neighbors accepted me without asking too many questions, sometimes looking at me with pity, sometimes with a hard swallow and dry throat, as they saw my scars, my lumpish features. But I have done nothing to make them fear me. I was no longer the vengeful clumsy monster, but rather just someone trying to fit in. I felt I had a chance … but I didn’t think the Nazis would let anyone live peaceably and unnoticed.

After the girl was gone, I took the Rabbi’s jacket and used gentle strokes of a bristle brush to clean the mud and chemicals to soak out the bloodstains. Then, with tiny perfect stitches, I began to repair the damage.

I toiled all night long by lantern light, and I had the Rabbi’s jacket cleaned, repaired, and even pressed well before sunup. But I couldn’t allow myself to do things that were too mysterious. If I did my work too quickly, too perfectly, there might be stories about me dabbling in dark magic, being a secret outcast sorcerer hiding in the ghetto of Ingolstadt. Rumors are easy things to start.

Since the Nazis openly blame the Jews for every perceived crime, one would think the people here in the ghetto would not be so quick to cast suspicions themselves, but it is part of the way humans are made, scars they don’t even see inside themselves.

Because I don’t need sleep—one of the gifts that Victor forgot to include when he gave me my life, like a missed stitch—I sat up and read the newspapers until dawn, when I would be able to venture into the streets again without looking like a fearsome, hulking shadow.

I had one paper from Berlin, one from Salzburg, and even a weekly Yiddish edition (though my grasp of the language was still uncertain). The date was November 9, 1938, and the political situation in Germany was grim. By reading the slanted stories, I could sense a brewing storm on the horizon—a storm that would not bring the spark of life, like the one that had reanimated me. All of Germany—maybe even all of Europe—seemed to be full of peasants carrying torches, looking for a target.…

When the ghetto began to bustle in the morning, I helped an old silversmith across the street re-hang a splintered door that the Nazis had damaged during their previous escapade, and he was grateful for my help. I had little else to do; a pair of trousers to alter, a few buttons to reattach. I walked the length of the ghetto, without any particular aim. A dark cloud seemed to hang over the people, as if they knew something terrible was about to happen, but they pretended it was just another day.

That evening I brought the repaired jacket to the rabbi’s house, which was adjacent to the synagogue, and also carried a sack with four apples I had purchased from the cart on the corner. Rachel was delighted to see me, and the rabbi thanked me for my help. He tried on his repaired jacket, pronounced it perfect.

His face looked as battered and discolored as mine had once appeared, the purple bruises from his recent beating now turning yellow at the edges. When he caught me looking at them, he said, “They will heal. We must give thanks that no greater harm was done. They have had their fun. Staffelfuhrer Schein and his men are like angry, unruly children.”

The rabbi’s wife was furious on his behalf. “And you think because you let them beat you that they’ll be satisfied now?”

“What would you have me do?” the rabbi said in frustration.

Rachel quickly held up her doll, smiling at me. “Could you make me another one, Franck? You’re so good at stitching.”

“Rachel, that’s not a polite request to make,” her father admonished.

My dark lips formed a smile. “But a perfectly reasonable one, Rabbi. I may have some scraps of old cloth left and a few rags. Would you like me to make a husband for your stitched-together woman?”

“Yes, please.”

She had no idea how much that thought hurt me. If Victor had done that one thing for me, we would never have needed to become enemies. But Victor Frankenstein was a terrible man. And the peasants called me inhuman!

Frau Schulmann had made a fine meal with whatever was available. She even simmered the apples I had brought with a pinch of cinnamon and some sugar.

After we ate, the rabbi invited me to smoke a pipe with him as we listened to the world news on the radio. After the tubes had warmed up, he tuned to the strongest radio station, which was playing Wagner. The rabbi sat back contentedly, puffing smoke.

I felt relaxed, remembering another old man, a blind man alone in a cottage who had befriended me and taught me many things, showing me the kind side of the human heart for the first time. I missed that blind old man; I’d seen too few people like him in all of my years.

When the radio announcer read the news in a terse, incensed voice, the Rabbi and I both listened. Tensions in Germany were already strained. Many Jews, feeling displaced and victimized, had already fled the country if they had the means to do so. They lost their homes, their wealth. They tried to find someplace to hide.

But today the situation grew much worse. In Paris, a German diplomat had been assassinated by a Polish Jew, a young man incensed by how the Nazis were persecuting his people. The assassin had been driven to violence out of despair and helplessness, but as I listened to the angry news announcer, I knew that the young man’s actions would only aggravate the situation for the Jews. In fact, I was certain things would rapidly get worse. The announcer added at the end, as if it were a foregone conclusion: “Investigators are certain this is part of a much larger Jewish plot to overthrow the government.”

Rabbi Schulmann turned gray and shook his head. “Oh, no.” He uttered a quick prayer. “This is just the excuse the Nazis have wanted for a long time.”

From the kitchen where she washed the dishes, his wife looked at him with wide eyes, frightened by the news. Rachel played with her doll in the room, and she surprised us again with her perceptiveness. “Are we in danger, Papa? Will the bad men come hurt you again?”

Rabbi Schulmann heaved a long sigh, pained by what he had to admit to his daughter. “We must pray it won’t happen, my dear.”

The girl was grim and serious. “We should have a golem to protect us, just like in Prague. Then we can be safe.”

“That’s just a story, child,” Rabbi Schulmann said.

But the girl was indignant. “You said it was a true story.”

The rabbi looked up at me with weary eyes, explaining, “It is a frightening tale, my friend—a good tale, but I can’t guarantee its veracity. In Prague in 1580, Rabbi Loew fashioned a large and muscular being out of clay, a golem, to protect our community from a Jew-hating priest who incited hatred from the Christians. When the mob came to the ghetto, Rabbi Loew’s golem stood strong and protected the Jews, preventing a pogrom. But then the golem ran amok, threatening innocents, causing great damage. Rabbi Loew was forced to remove the spark of life, rendering the golem lifeless again.” He turned to his daughter. “It is meant to be a lesson.”

“I still think we need our own golem,” said Rachel. “But without the last part of the story.”

Outside, we heard growling engines, screams, gunfire … then laughter accompanied by the sounds of shattering glass.

Fires began to start quickly. Staffelfuhrer Schein rode imperiously in his staff car with two of his men, flanked by two more Staffeln on motorcycles. His men threw rocks and bricks, smashing every intact window on the street. When some of the shopkeepers and families ran out, begging them to stop, the Nazis threw rocks at them instead.

The old silversmith whom I had helped flailed his hands and stood in front of the door we had just repaired. One of the Staffeln grinned, hefted a broken brick, and hurled it with deadly aim, smashing the center of the silversmith’s forehead. He collapsed, surely dead.

The men fired their rifles into the air, but I was sure they would choose other targets soon. When the rotund baker shook his fist and cursed them, the Staffelfuhrer turned in his seat in the staff car, raised his Luger, and shot the baker in the chest.

“Burn the synagogue,” Schein ordered. “That’s where they plot against us!” His men tossed kerosene lanterns against the synagogue door, smashed more windows.

Rachel ran into the street, crying, screaming in her little-girl voice for the Nazis to stop. The terrified rabbi grabbed her and pulled her back, but she’d already drawn the Nazis’ attention. They spotted, and recognized, the man they had beaten only days earlier.

“Please don’t hurt her!” Rabbi Schulmann cried, but the Nazis raised their guns.

I had seen mob hatred before, had faced it and barely survived. The Nazis were destructive and dangerous, more organized than unruly town peasants and capable of causing far more damage. I would have preferred to stay in my tailor shop and not get involved; that would have been the smart thing to do.

I may be large, I may look ungainly, my hands and limbs stitched together from mismatched parts, but Victor had done his work well, and I could move with predatory speed and power. I lunged forward to place myself in front of the rabbi and Rachel.

The Nazis opened fire.

I felt the impact of three rifle bullets and a much smaller caliber handgun bullet. My chest caught the deadly projectiles, preventing them from harming anyone else. The hot bullets damaged skin and muscles, but my body had already been dead once and would not so easily be brought back to death.

The Nazis had fired first. Now it was my turn.

Paying no heed to the spreading fires, the astonished crowd, or the arrogant sneer on the Nazi faces, I was upon the nearest SS man. I grabbed his rifle and yanked it free with such force that three of his fingers snapped; I heard a sickening pop as his shoulder dislocated.

I brought the butt of the rifle down so hard in the center of his face that it caved in his skull, just like the old silversmith’s. Then I swung the rifle hard sideways and shattered the spine of a second man.

I charged over to the two Staffeln who were now scrambling off their motorcycles. With one hand on each, I grabbed them by the lip of their helmets, yanked them up—I think one neck broke instantly. The other soldier flailed and thrashed, but I slammed them down to the street. Then I picked up one of the motorcycles, raised it high over my head, and brought it down onto them, crushing both. In moments, I had dispatched all the Staffeln, none of whom had a chance to fire another shot.

Last was Staffelfuhrer Schein. He stared at me with round eyes and gaping mouth. I think he had shot his Luger at me several times, but I hadn’t even felt the bullets. I grabbed the pistol and the hand that held it and turned the weapon. I meant to bend Schein’s arm at the elbow but bent the middle of his wrist instead. It didn’t matter. I jammed the Luger’s hot barrel up under his chin and crushed my fingers around the trigger, firing off another shot that went through the top of his head.

Only fifteen seconds had passed.

Though the fires continued to burn in the synagogue and chunks of broken glass fell out of the smashed windows, the silence around me seemed deafening. I turned. There were several bullet holes in my own garments, but they could be easily repaired with a few neat stitches.

What I could not fix, though, was the fear and horror with which Rabbi Schulmann and his people now regarded me.

“What have you done?” the rabbi asked softly.

“Saved you.” How else could I respond?

“Maybe … maybe not.” The rabbi shook his head, as if paralyzed by a nightmare. “What are you?”

Now my own hiding of the truth, my own erasure of my unnatural past, was laid bare before them. They saw my ugliness, saw the scars, and quickly classified me as “not one of us.” Even though I had helped them, stood against their enemies, saved them from the attack of these monsters, they regarded me with fear. Even Rachel.

“He’s the golem,” she said.

“You killed the Nazis,” said the rabbi. “Now they’ll come back for us and take their vengeance tenfold. They will retaliate, kill us all.”

I knew, though, that Ingolstadt had only a small Nazi garrison, a minimal presence, and I had killed them all. It would take days, perhaps as much as a week before the district leader began to wonder what had happened to Schein and his men. We would have time … if the people let me.

I glanced up at the murky dark sky. There was no moon tonight. I had to hope that the other citizens of Ingolstadt wouldn’t take it upon themselves to attack the Jewish quarter in retaliation for the news of the recent assassination.

“I have an idea,” I said. “We will need blankets to cover them.” As if they were no more significant than the doll I had repaired for Rachel, I picked up the dead Nazis and tossed them into the staff car, piling them like cordwood. “We can dispose of the bodies, get rid of the car and motorcycles. No one ever has to know.”

“We all know,” the rabbi said.

“And you’ll be alive to know it.” I looked down at Staffelfuhrer Schein, who lay atop the pile of bodies. He reminded me too much of how Victor had looked after I’d strangled him up in the frozen sea. I felt no satisfaction, no relief, barely even a sense of justice.

Frau Schulmann was sobbing, as were several others in the street. Finally, some went to fight the spreading fires and save the synagogue. Others went to tend to the bodies of those the Nazis had killed.

“This will get much worse for us,” the rabbi said, his voice hollow. “If you were a real golem, I could remove the bit of Scripture that reanimated you, the spark of life.” He shook his head. “But I don’t have that power. I don’t know where you come from. I can only ask you to go away and leave us alone. We don’t want you here—you’re too dangerous.”

The Jews were afraid of me, but at least they didn’t have pitchforks and torches. I would do them one last favor, then I would be gone to find someplace up in the rugged mountains.

I looked once more at Rachel, but the little girl did not look back at me. Her rag doll had fallen onto the street.

I gathered every remnant of Staffelfuhrer Schein and his men, then drove away in the staff car, out of Ingolstadt and up the rutted dirt road that led to the abandoned, creaking mill where winds whistled through broken windows. I piled the bodies inside the old mill, then set fire to the old structure. I do not like dangerous, unpredictable fire, but this brought more satisfaction than terror. As the windmill blazed into the dark sky, it seemed very appropriate to me—a different sort of ending. This time, I had torched the place, winning my own victory against superstition, prejudice, and fear. Even though it would never end there.…

I set off in the staff car, driving away into the rugged mountains, far from Ingolstadt. I never intended to return—although I had said the same thing a century before. Hours later, when the car was nearly out of gas, I found a pull-off by a steep cliffside, tossed the motorcycles off the cliff and pushed the empty vehicle over, where it tumbled off into the darkness. Even if the wreckage was eventually found, no one would ever know the answers.

Still feeling no pain from where I’d been shot, no weariness despite the labors of the night, I trudged up into the empty high valleys and isolated crags. I didn’t care about the cold glaciers or windswept basins. I just needed to find a place where I would be alone … where I belonged.

Early in this collection I showcased a rock-inspired horror story written with Janis Ian, and I’ll end it with another one written with Neil Peart. On several epic trips, Neil bicycled around Africa, often on his own, and he would send me lavishly detailed travelogues of his journeys, the sights he saw, the villages that welcomed him, the people he met. He even self-published some of those accounts in very limited books for his friends.

I had an idea for an ominous, atmospheric story featuring a rock drummer taking a similar bicycle trip across Africa, but I had never been to the continent and I didn’t have the descriptions I needed. After brainstorming with Neil, I wrote the story and embroidered it with all the amazing details he had so meticulously documented in his essays. Everything came together smoothly.

“Drumbeats” is one of my favorite stories.

Drumbeats

(written with Neil Peart)

After nine months of touring across North America—with hotel suites and elaborate dinners and clean sheets every day—it felt good to be hot and dirty, muscles straining not for the benefit of any screaming audience, but just to get to the next village up the dusty road, where none of the natives recognized Danny Imbro or knew his name. To them, he was just another White Man, an exotic object of awe for little children, a target of scorn for drunken soldiers at border checkpoints.

Bicycling through Africa was about the furthest thing from a rock concert tour that Danny could imagine—which was why he did it, after promoting the latest Blitzkrieg album and performing each song until the tracks were worn smooth in his head. This cleared his mind, gave him a sense of balance, perspective.

The other members of Blitzkrieg did their own thing during the group’s break months. Phil, whom they called the “music machine” because he couldn’t stop writing music, spent his relaxation time cranking out film scores for Hollywood; Reggie caught up on his reading, soaking up grocery bags full of political thrillers and mysteries; Shane turned into a vegetable on Maui. But Danny Imbro took his expensive-but-battered bicycle and bummed around West Africa. The others thought it strangely appropriate that the band’s drummer would go off hunting for tribal rhythms.

Late in the afternoon on the sixth day of his ride through Cameroon, Danny stopped in a large open market and bus depot in the town of Garoua. The marketplace was a line of mud-brick kiosks and chophouses, the air filled with the smell of baked dust and stones, hot oil and frying beignets. Abandoned cars squatted by the roadside, stripped clean but unblemished by corrosion in the dry air. Groups of men and children in long blouses like nightshirts idled their time away on the street corners.

Wives and daughters appeared on the road with their buckets, going to fetch water from the well on the other side of the marketplace. They wore bright-colored pagnes and kerchiefs, covering their traditionally naked breasts with T-shirts or castoff Western blouses, since the government in the capital city of Yaounde had forbidden women from going topless.

Behind one kiosk in the shade sat a pan holding several bottles of Coca-Cola, Fanta, and ginger ale, cooling in water. Some vendors sold a thin stew of bony fish chunks over gritty rice, others sold fufu, a doughlike paste of pounded yams to be dipped into a sauce of meat and okra. Bread merchants stacked their long baguettes like dry firewood.

Danny used the back of his hand to smear sweat-caked dust off his forehead, then removed the bandanna he wore under his helmet to keep the sweat out of his eyes. With streaks of white skin peeking through the layer of grit around his eyes, he probably looked like some strange lemur.

In halting French, he began haggling with a wiry boy to buy a bottle of water. Hiding behind his kiosk, the boy demanded 800 francs for the water, an outrageous price. While Danny attempted to bargain it down, he saw the gaunt, grayish-skinned man walking through the marketplace like a wind-up toy running down.

The man was playing a drum.

The boy cringed and looked away. Danny kept staring. The crowd seemed to shrink away from the strange man as he wandered among them, continuing his incessant beat. He wore his hair long and unruly, which in itself was unusual among the close-cropped Africans. In the equatorial heat, the long, stained overcoat he wore must have heated his body like a furnace, but the man did not seem to notice. His eyes were focused on some invisible distance.

“Huit-cent francs,” the boy insisted on his price, holding the lukewarm bottle of water just out of Danny’s reach.

The staggering man walked closer, tapping a slow monotonous beat on the small cylindrical drum under his arm. He did not change his tempo but continued to play as if his life depended on it. Danny saw that the man’s fingers and wrists were wrapped with scraps of hide; even so, he had beaten his fingertips bloody.

Danny stood transfixed. He had heard tribal musicians play all manner of percussion instruments, from hollowed tree trunks, to rusted metal cans, to beautifully carved djembe drums with goat-skin drumheads—but he had never heard a tone so rich and sweet, with such an odd echoey quality as this strange African drum.

In the studio, he had messed around with drum synthesizers and reverbs and the new technology designed to turn computer hackers into musicians. But this drum sounded different, solid and pure, and it hooked him through the heart, hypnotizing him. It distracted him entirely from the unpleasant appearance of its bearer.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Sept-cent francs,” the boy insisted in a nervous whisper, dropping his price to 700 and pushing the water closer.

Danny walked in front of the staggering man, smiling broadly enough to show the grit between his teeth, and listened to the tapping drumbeat. The drummer turned his gaze to Danny and stared through him. The pupils of his eyes were like two gaping bullet wounds through his skull. Danny took a step backward but found himself moving to the beat. The drummer faced him, finding his audience. Danny tried to place the rhythm, to burn it into his mind—something this mesmerizing simply had to be included in a new Blitzkrieg song.

Danny looked at the cylindrical drum, trying to determine what might be causing its odd double-resonance—a thin inner membrane, perhaps? He saw nothing but elaborate carvings on the sweat polished wood, and a drumhead with a smooth, dark-brown coloration. He knew the Africans used all kinds of skin for their drumheads, and he couldn’t begin to guess what this was.

He mimed a question to the drummer, then asked, “Est-ce-que je peux l’essayer?” May I try it?

The gaunt man said nothing but held out the drum near enough for Danny to touch it without interrupting his obsessive rhythm. His overcoat flapped open, and the hot stench of decay made Danny stagger backward, but he held his ground, reaching for the drum.

Danny ran his fingers over the smooth drumskin, then tapped with his fingers. The deep sound resonated with a beat of its own, like a heartbeat. It delighted him. “For sale? Est-ce-que c’est a vendre?” He took out a thousand francs as a starting point, although if water alone cost 800 francs here, this drum was worth much, much more.

The man snatched the drum away and clutched it to his chest, shaking his head vigorously. His drumming hand continued its unrelenting beat.

Danny took out two thousand francs, then was disappointed to see not the slightest change of expression on the odd drummer’s face. “Okay, then, where was the drum made? Where can I get another one? Où est-ce qu’on peut trouver un autre comme ça?” He put most of the money back into his pack, keeping 200 francs out. Danny stuffed the money into the fist of the drummer; the man’s hand seemed to be made of petrified wood. “Où?”

The man scowled, then gestured behind him, toward the Mandara Mountains along Cameroon’s border with Nigeria. “Kabas.”

He turned and staggered away, still tapping on his drum as if to mark his footsteps. Danny watched him go, then returned to the kiosk, unfolding the map from his pack. “Where is this Kabas? Is it a place? C’est un village?”

“Huit-cent francs,” the boy said, offering the water again at his original 800 franc price.

Danny bought the water, and the boy gave him directions.

He spent the night in a Garouan hotel that made Motel 6 look like Caesar’s Palace. Anxious to be on his way to find his own new drum, Danny roused a local vendor and cajoled him into preparing a quick omelet for breakfast. He took a sip from his 800 franc bottle of water, saving the rest for the long bike ride, then pedaled off into the stirring sounds of early morning.

As Danny left Garoua on the main road, heading toward the mountains, savanna and thorn trees stretched away under a crystal sky. A pair of doves bathed in the dust of the road ahead, but as he rode toward them, they flew up into the last of the trees with a chuk-chuk of alarm and a flash of white tail feathers. Smoke from grassfires on the plains tainted the air.

How different it was to be riding through a landscape, he thought—with no walls or windows between his senses and the world—rather than just riding by it. Danny felt the road under his thin wheels, the sun, the wind on his body. It made a strange place less exotic, yet it became infinitely more real.

The road out of Garoua was a wide boulevard that turned into a smaller road heading north. With his bicycle tires humming and crunching on the irregular pavement, Danny passed a few ragged cotton fields, then entered the plains of dry, yellow grass and thorny scrub, everywhere studded with boulders and sculpted anthills. By 7:30 in the morning, a hot breeze rose, carrying a honeysuckle-like perfume. Everything vibrated with heat.

Within an hour the road grew worse, but Danny kept his pace, taking deep breaths in the trancelike state that kept the horizon moving closer. Drums. Kabas. Long rides helped him clear his head, but he found he had to concentrate to steer around the worst ruts and the biggest stones.

Great columns of stone appeared above the hills to east and west. One was pyramid-shaped, one a huge rounded breast, yet another a great stone phallus. Danny had seen photographs of these “inselberg” formations caused by volcanoes that had eroded over the eons, leaving behind vertical cores of lava.

Erosion had struck the road here, too, turning it into a heaving washboard, which then veered left into a trough between tumbled boulders and up through a gauntlet of thorn trees. Danny stopped for another drink of water, another glance at the map. The water boy at the kiosk had marked the location of Kabas with his fingernail, but it was not printed on the map.

After Danny had climbed uphill for an hour, the beaten path became no more than a worn trail, forcing him to squeeze between walls of thorns and dry millet stalks. The squadrons of hovering dragonflies were harmless, but the hordes of tiny flies circling his face were maddening, and he couldn’t pedal fast enough to escape them.

It was nearly noon, the sun reflecting straight up from the dry earth, and the little shade cast by the scattered trees dwindled to a small circle around the trunks. “Where the hell am I going?” he said to the sky.

But in his head he kept hearing the odd, potent beat resonating from the bizarre drum he had seen in the Garoua marketplace. He recalled the grayish, shambling man who had never once stopped tapping on his drum, even though his fingers bled. No matter how bad the road got, Danny thought, he would keep going. He’d never been so intrigued by a drumbeat before, and he never left things half-finished.

Danny Imbro was a goal-oriented person. The other members of Blitzkrieg razzed him about it, that once he made up his mind to do something, he plowed ahead, defying all common sense. Back in school, he had made up his mind to be a drummer. He had hammered away at just about every object in sight with his fingertips, pencils, silverware, anything that made noise. He kept at it until he drove everyone else around him nuts, and somewhere along the line he became good.

Now people stood at the chain link fences behind concert halls and applauded whenever he walked from the backstage dressing rooms out to the tour buses—as if he were somehow doing a better job of walking than any of them had ever seen before.…

Up ahead, an enormous buttress tree, a gnarled and twisted pair of trunks hung with cable-thick vines, cast a wide patch of shade. Beneath the tree, watching him approach, sat a small boy.

The boy leaped to his feet, as if he had been waiting for Danny. Shirtless and dusty, he held a hooklike withered arm against his chest; but his grin was completely disarming. “Je suis guide?” the boy called.

Relief stifled Danny’s laugh. He nodded vigorously. “Oui!” Yes, he could certainly use a guide right about now. “Je cherche Kabas—village des tambours. The village of drums.”

The smiling boy danced around like a goat, jumping from rock to rock. He was pleasant-faced and healthy looking, except for the crippled arm; his skin was very dark, but his eyes had a slight Asian cast. He chattered in a high voice, a mixture of French and native dialect. Danny caught enough to understand that the boy’s name was Anatole.

Before the boy led him on, though, Danny dismounted, leaning his bicycle against a boulder, and unzipped his pack to take out the raisins, peanuts, and the dry remains of a baguette. Anatole watched him with wide eyes, and Danny gave him a handful of raisins, which the boy wolfed down. Small flies whined around their faces as they ate. Danny answered the boy’s incessant questions with as few words as possible: did he come from America, did black boys live there, why was he visiting Cameroon?

The short rest sank its soporific claws into him, but Danny decided not to give in. An afternoon siesta made a lot of sense, but now that he had his own personal guide to the village, he made it his goal not to stop again until they reached Kabas. “Okay?” Danny raised his eyebrows and struggled to his feet.

Anatole sprang out from the shade and fetched Danny’s bike for him, struggling with one arm to keep it upright. After several trips to Africa, Danny had seen plenty of withered limbs, caused by childhood diseases, accidents, and bungled inoculations. Out here in the wilder areas, such problems were even more prevalent, and he wondered how Anatole managed to survive; acting as a “guide” for the rare travelers would hardly suffice.

Danny pulled out a hundred francs—an eighth of what he had paid for one bottle of water—and handed it to the boy, who looked as if he had just been handed the crown jewels. Danny figured he had probably made a friend for life.

Anatole trotted ahead, gesturing with his good arm. Danny pedaled after him.

The narrow valley captured a smear of greenness in the dry hills, with a cluster of mango trees, guava trees, and strange baobabs with eight-foot-thick trunks. Playing the knowledgeable tour guide, Anatole explained that the local women used the baobab fruits for baby formula if their breast milk failed. The villagers used another tree to manufacture an insect repellent.

The houses of Kabas blended into the landscape, because they were of the landscape—stones and branches and grass. The walls were made of dry mud, laid on a handful at a time, and the roofs were thatched into cones. Tiny pink and white stones studded the mud, sparkling like quartz in the sun.

At first the place looked deserted, but then an ancient man emerged from a turret-shaped hut. An enormous cutlass dangled from his waist, although the shrunken man looked as if it might take him an hour just to lift the blade. Anatole shouted something, then gestured for Danny to follow him. The great cutlass swayed against the old man’s unsteady knees as he bowed slightly—or stooped—and greeted Danny in formal, unpracticed French. “Bonsoir!”

“Makonya,” Danny said, remembering the local greeting from Garoua. He walked his bike in among the round and square buildings. A few chickens scratched in the dirt, and a pair of black-and-brown goats nosed between the huts. A sinewy, long-limbed old woman wearing only a loincloth tended a fire. He immediately started looking for the special drums but saw none.

Within the village, a high-walled courtyard enclosed two round huts. Gravel covered the open area between them, roofed over with a network of serpent-shaped sticks supporting grass mats. This seemed to be the chief’s compound. Anatole held Danny’s arm and dragged him forward.

Inside the wall, a white-robed figure reclined in a canvas chair under an acacia tree. His handsome features had a North African cast, thin lips over white teeth, and a rakish mustache. His aristocratic head was wrapped in a red-and-white checked scarf, and even in repose he was obviously tall. He looked every bit the romantic desert prince, like Rudolf Valentino in The Sheik. After greeting Danny in both French and the local language, the chief gestured for his visitor to sit beside him.

Before Danny could move, two other boys appeared carrying a rolled-up mat of woven grass, which they spread out for him. Anatole scolded them for horning in on his customer, but the two boys cuffed him and ignored his protests. Then the chief shouted at them all for disturbing his peace and drove the boys away. Danny watched them kicking Anatole as they scampered away from the chief, and he felt for his new friend, angry at how tough people picked on weaker ones the world over.

He sat cross-legged on the mat, and it took him only a moment to begin reveling in the moment of relaxation. No cars or trucks disturbed the peace. He was miles from the nearest electricity, or glass window, or airplane. He sat looking up into the leaves of the acacia, listening to the quiet buzz of the villagers, and thought, “I’m living in a National Geographic documentary!”

Anatole stole back into the compound, bearing two bottles of warm Mirinda orange soda, which he gave to Danny and the chief. Other boys gathered under the tree, glaring at Anatole, then looking at Danny with ill-concealed awe.

After several moments of polite smiling and nodding, Danny asked the chief if all the boys were his children. Anatole assisted in the unnecessary translation.

“Oui,” the chief said, patting his chest proudly. He claimed to have fathered 31 sons, which made Danny wonder if the women in the village found it politic to routinely claim the chief as the father of their babies. As with all remote African villages, though, many children died of various sicknesses. Just a week earlier, one of the babies had succumbed to a terrible fever, the chief said.

The chief asked Danny the usual questions about his country, whether any black men lived there, why had he visited Cameroon; then he insisted that Danny eat dinner with them. The women would prepare the village’s specialty of chicken in peanut sauce.

Hearing this, the old sentry emerged with his cutlass, smiled widely at Danny, then turned around the side wall. The squawking of a terrified chicken erupted in the sleepy afternoon air, the sounds of a scuffle, and then the squawking stopped.

Finally, Danny asked the question that had brought him to Kabas in the first place. “Moi, je suis musicien; je cherche les tambours speciaux.” He mimed rapping on a small drum, then turned to Anatole for assistance.

The chief sat up startled, then nodded. He hammered on the air, mimicking drum playing, as if to make sure. Danny nodded. The chief clapped his hands and gestured for Anatole to take Danny somewhere. The boy pulled Danny to his feet and, surrounded by other chattering boys, dragged him back out of the walled courtyard. Danny managed to turn around and bow to the chief.

After trooping up a stairlike terrace of rock, they entered the courtyard of another homestead. The main shelter was made of hand-shaped blocks with a flat roof of corrugated metal. Anatole explained that this was the home of the local sorcier, or wizard.

Anatole called out, then gestured for Danny to follow through the low doorway. Inside the hut, the walls were hung with evidence of the sorcier’s trade—odd bits of metal, small carvings, bundles of fur and feathers, mortars full of powders and herbs, clay urns for water and millet beer, smooth skins curing from the roof poles. And drums.

“Tambours!” Anatole said, spreading his hands wide.

Judging from the craftsman’s tools around the hut, the sorcier made the village’s drums as well as stored them. Danny saw several small gourd drums, larger log drums, and hollow cylinders of every size, all intricately carved with serpentine symbols, circles feeding into spirals, lines tangled into knots.

Danny reached out to touch one—then the sorcier himself stood up from the shadows near the far wall. Danny bit off a startled cry as the lithe old man glided forward. The sorcier was tall and rangy, but his skin was a battleground of wrinkles, as if someone had clumsily fashioned him out of papier mâché.

“Pardon,” Danny said. The wrinkled man had been sitting on a low stool, putting the finishing touches to a new drum.

Fixing his eyes on his visitor, the sorcier withdrew a medium-sized drum from a niche in the wall. Closing his eyes, he tapped on it. The mud walls of the hut reverberated with the hollow vibration, an earthy, primal beat that resonated in Danny’s bones. Danny grinned with awe. Yes! The gaunt man’s drum had not been a fluke. The drums of Kabas had some special construction that caused this hypnotic tone.

Danny reached out tentatively. The wrinkled man gave him an appraising look, then extended the drum enough for Danny to strike it. He tapped a few tentative beats and laughed out loud when the instrument rewarded him with the same rich sound.

The sorcier turned away, taking the drum with him and returning it to its niche in the wall. In two flowing strides, the wrinkled man went to his stool in the shadows, picking up the drum he had been fashioning, moving it into the crack of light that seeped through the windows. Pointing, he spoke in a staccato dialect, which Anatole translated into pidgin French.

The sorcier is finishing a new drum today, Anatole said. Perhaps they would play it this evening, an initiation. The chief’s baby son would have enjoyed that. From the baby’s body, the sorcier had been able to salvage only enough skin to make this one small drum.

“What?” Danny said, looking down at the deep brown skin covering the top of the drum.

Anatole explained, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world, that whenever one of the chief’s many sons died, the sorcier used his skin to make one of Kabas’s special drums. It had always been done.

Danny wrestled with that for a moment. On his first trip to Africa five years earlier, he had learned the wrenching truth of how different these cultures were.

“Why?” he finally asked. “Pourquoi?”

He had seen other drums made entirely of human skin taken from slain enemies, fashioned in the shape of stunted bodies with gaping mouths; when tapped a hollow sound came from the effigy’s mouths. He knew that trying to impose his Western moral framework on the inhabitants of an alien land was hopeless. I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to check your preconceptions at the door, he thought jokingly to himself.

“Magique.” Anatole’s eyes showed a flash of fear—fear born of respect for great power, rather than paranoia or panic. With the magic drums of Kabas, the chief could conquer any man, steal his heartbeat. It was old magic, a technique the village wizards had discovered long before the French had come to Cameroon, and before them the Germans. Kabas had been isolated, and at peace for longer than the memories of the oldest people in the village. Because of the drums. Anatole smiled, proud of his story, and Danny restrained an urge to pat him on the head.

Trying not to let his disbelief show, Danny nodded deeply to the sorcier. “Merci,” he said. As Anatole led him back out to the courtyard, the sorcier returned to his work on the small drum.

Danny wondered if he should have tried to buy one of the drums from the wrinkled man. Did he believe the story about using human skins? Probably. Why would Anatole lie?

As they left the sorcier’s homestead to begin the trek back to the village, he looked westward across the jagged landscape of inselbergs. At sunset, the air filled with hundreds of kites, their wings rigid, circling high on the last thermals. Like leaves before the wind, the birds came spiraling down to disappear into the trees, filling them with the invisible flapping of wings.

When they reached the main village again, Danny saw that the women had returned from their labor in the nearby fields. He was familiar with the African tradition of sending the women and children out for backbreaking labor while the men lounged in the shade and talked “business.”

The numerous sons of the chief and other adults gathered inside the courtyard near the fire, which the old sinewy woman had stoked into a larger blaze. Other men emerged, and Danny wondered where they had been hiding all afternoon. Out hunting? If so, they had nothing to show for their efforts. Anatole directed Danny to sit on a mat beside the chief, and everyone smiled vigorously at each other, the villagers exchanging the call-and-response litany of ritual greetings, which could go on for several minutes.

The old woman served the chief first, then the honored guest. She placed a brown yam like a baked potato on the mat in front of him, miming that it was hot. Danny took a cautious bite; the yam was pungent and turned to paste in his mouth. Then the woman reappeared with the promised chicken in peanut sauce. They ate quietly in a circle around the fire, ignoring each other, as red shadows flickered across their faces.

Listening to the sounds of eating, as well as the simmering evening hush of the West African hills, Danny felt the emptiness like a peaceful vacuum, draining away stress and loud noises and hectic schedules. After too many head-pounding tours and adrenaline-crazed performances, Danny was convinced he had forgotten how to sit quietly, how to slow down. After one rough segment of the last Blitzkrieg tour, he had taken a few days to go camping in the mountains; he recalled pacing in vigorous circles around the picnic table, muttering to himself that he was relaxing as fast as he could! Calming down was an acquired skill, he felt, and there was no better teacher than Africa.

After the meal, heads turned in the firelight, and Danny looked up to see the sorcier enter the chief’s compound. The wrinkled man cradled several of his mystical drums. He placed one of the drums in front of the chief, then set the others on an empty spot on the ground. He squatted behind one drum, thrusting his long, lean legs up and to the side like the wings of a vulture.

Danny perked up. “A concert?” He turned to Anatole, who spoke rapidly to the sorcier. The wrinkled man looked skeptically at Danny, then shrugged. He picked up one of the extra drums and ceremoniously extended it to Danny.

Danny couldn’t stop smiling. He took the drum and looked at it. The coffee-colored skin felt smooth and velvety as he touched it. A shiver went up his spine as he tapped the drumhead. Making music from human skin. He forced his instinctive revulsion back into the gray static of his mind, the place where he stored things “to think about later.” For now, he had the drum in his hands.

The chief thumped out a few beats, then stopped. The sorcier mimicked them and glanced toward Danny. “Jam session!” he muttered under his breath, then repeated the sequence easily and cleanly, but added a quick, complicated flourish to the end.

The chief raised his eyebrows, followed suit with the beat, and made it more complicated still. The sorcier flowed into his part, and Danny joined in with another counterpoint. It reminded him of the Dueling Banjos sequence from Deliverance.”

The echoing, rich tone of the drum made his fingers warm and tingly, but he allowed himself to be swallowed up in the mystic rhythms, the primal pounding out in the middle of the African wilderness. The other night noises vanished around him, the smoke from the fire rose straight up, and the light centered into a pinpoint of his concentration.

Using his bare fingers—sticks would only interrupt the magical contact between himself and the drum—Danny continued weaving into their rhythms, trading points and counterpoints. The beat touched a core of past lives deep within him, an atavistic, pagan intensity, as the three drummers reached into the Pulse of the World. The chief played on; the sorcier played on; and Danny let his eyes fade half-closed in a rhythmic trance, as they explored the wordless language and hypnotic interplay of rhythm.

Danny became aware of the other boys standing up and swaying, jabbering excitedly and laughing as they danced around him. He deciphered their words as “White man drum! White man drum!” It was a safe bet they’d never seen a white man play a drum before.

Suddenly the sorcier stopped, and within a beat the chief also quit playing. Danny felt wrenched out of the experience, but reluctantly played a concluding figure as well, ending with an emphatic flam. His arms burned from the exertion, sweat dripped down the stubble on his chin. His ears buzzed from the noise. Unable to restrain himself, Danny began laughing with delight.

The sorcier said something, which Anatole translated. “Vous avez l’esprit de batteur.” You have the spirit of a drummer.

With a throbbing hand, Danny squeezed Anatole’s bare shoulder and nodded. “Oui.”

The chief also congratulated him, thanking him for sharing his white man’s music with the village. Danny found that ironic, since he had come here to pick up a rich African flavor for his compositions. But Danny could record his impressions in new songs; the village of Kabas had no way of keeping what he had brought to them.

The withered sorcier picked up one of the drums at his side, and Danny recognized it as the small drum the old man had been finishing in the dim hut that afternoon. He fixed his deep gaze on Danny for a moment, then handed it to him.

Anatole sat up, alarmed, but bit off a comment he had intended to make. Danny nodded in reassurance and in delight he took the new drum. He held it to his chest and inclined his head deeply to show his appreciation. “Merci!”

Anatole took Danny’s hand to lead him away from the walled courtyard. The chief clapped his hands and barked something to the other boys, who looked at Anatole with glee before they got up and scurried to the huts for sleeping. Anatole stared nervously at Danny, but Danny didn’t understand what had just occurred.

He repeated his thanks, bowing again to the chief and sorcier, but the two of them just stared at him. He was reminded of an East African scene: a pair of lions sizing up their prey. He shook his head to clear the morbid thought and followed Anatole.

In the village proper, one of the round thatched huts had been swept for Danny to sleep in. Outside, his bicycle leaned against a tree, no doubt guarded during the day by the little man with the enormous cutlass. Anatole seemed uneasy, wanting to say something, but afraid.

Trying to comfort him, Danny opened his pack and withdrew a stick of chewing gum for the boy. Anatole spoke rapidly, gushing his thanks. Other boys suddenly materialized from the shadows with childish murder in their eyes. They tried to take the gum from Anatole, but he popped it in his mouth and ran off. “Hey!” Danny shouted, but Anatole bolted into the night with the boys chasing after.

Wondering if Anatole was in any real danger, Danny removed the blanket and sleeping bag from his bike, then carried them inside the guest hut. He decided the boy could take care of himself, that he had spent his life as the whipping boy for the other sons of the chief. The thought drained some of the exhilaration from the memory of the evening’s performance.

His legs ached after the torturous ride upland from Garoua, and he fantasized briefly about sitting in the Jacuzzi in the capital suite of some five-star hotel. He considered how wonderful it would be to sip on some cold champagne, or a scotch on the rocks.

Instead, he lifted the gift drum, inspecting it. He would find some way to use it on the next album, add a rich African tone to the music. Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel had done it, though the style of Blitzkrieg’s music was a bit more … aggressive.

He would not tell anyone about the human skin, especially the customs officials. He tried without success to decipher the mystical swirling patterns carved into the wood, the interwoven curves, circles, and knots. It made him dizzy.

Danny closed his eyes and began to play the drum, quietly so as not to disturb the other villagers. But as the sound reached his ears, he snapped his eyes open. The tone from the drum was flat and weak, like a cheap tourist tom-tom, plastic over a coffee can.

He frowned at the gift drum. Where was the rich reverberation, the primal pulse of the earth? He tapped again, but heard only an empty and hollow sound, soulless. Danny scowled, wondering if the sorcier had ruined the drum by accident, then decided to get rid of it by giving it to the unsuspecting White Man who wouldn’t know the difference.

Angry and uneasy, Danny set the African drum next to him; he would try it again in the morning. He could play it for the chief, show him its flat tone. Perhaps they would exchange it. Maybe he would have to buy another one.

He hoped Anatole was all right.

Danny sat down to pull the thorns and prickers from his clothes. The village women had provided him with two plastic basins of water for bathing, one for soaping and scrubbing, the other for rinsing. The warm water felt refreshing on his face, his neck. After stripping off his pungent socks, he rinsed his toes and soles.

The night stillness was hypnotic, and as he spread his sleeping bag and stretched out on it, he felt as if he were seeping into the cloth, into the ground, swallowed up in sleep.…

Anatole woke him up only a few moments later, shaking him and whispering harshly in his ear. Dirt, blood, and bruises covered the boy’s wiry body, and his clothes had been torn in a scuffle. He didn’t seem to care. He kept shaking Danny.

But it was already too late.

Danny sat up, blinking his eyes. Sharp pains like a bear trap ripped through his chest. A giant hand had wrapped around his torso and would squeeze until his ribs popped free of his spine.

He gasped, opening and closing his mouth, but could not give voice to his agony. He grabbed Anatole’s withered arm, but the boy struggled away, searching for something. Black spots swam in his eyes. He tried to breathe, but his chest wouldn’t let him. He began slipping, sliding down an endless cliff into blackness.

Anatole finally reached an object on the floor of the hut. He snatched it up with his good hand, tucked it firmly under his withered arm, and began to thump on it.

The drum!

As the boy rapped out a slow, steady beat, Danny felt the iron band loosen around his heart. Blood rushed into his head again, and he drew a deep breath. Dizziness continued to swim around him, but the impossible pain receded. He clutched his chest, rubbing his sternum. He uttered a breathy thanks to Anatole.

Had he just suffered a heart attack? Good God, all the fast living had decided to catch up to him while he was out in the middle of nowhere, far from any hope of medical attention!

Then he realized with a chill that the sounds from the gift drum were now rich and echoey, with the unearthly depth he remembered from the other drums. Anatole continued his slow rhythm, and suddenly Danny recognized it. A heartbeat.

What was it the boy had told him inside the sorcier’s hut—that the magical drums could steal a man’s heartbeat? “Ton coeur c’est dans ici,” Anatole said, continuing his drumming. Your heartbeat lives in here now.

Danny remembered the gaunt, shambling man in the marketplace of Garoua, obsessively tapping the drum from Kabas as if his life depended on it, until his hide-wrapped fingers were bloodied. Had that man also escaped his fate in the village, and fled south?

“You had the spirit of a drummer,” Anatole said in his pidgin French, “and now the drum has your spirit.” As if to emphasize his statement, as if he knew a White Man would be skeptical of such magic, Anatole ceased his rhythm on the drum.

The claws returned to Danny’s heart, and the vise in his chest clamped back down. His heart had stopped beating. Heart beats, drumbeats—

The boy stopped only long enough to convince Danny, then started the beat again. He looked with pleading eyes in the shadowy hut. “Je vais avec toi!” I go with you. Let me be your heartbeat. From now on.

Leaving his sleeping bag behind, Danny staggered out of the guest hut to his bicycle resting against an acacia tree. The rest of the village was dark and silent, and the next morning they would expect to find him dead and cold on his blankets; and the new drum would have the same resonant quality, the same throbbing of a captured spirit, to add to their collection. The sound of White Man’s music for Kabas.

“Allez!” Anatole whispered as Danny climbed aboard his bike. Go! What was he supposed to do now? The boy ran in front of him along the narrow track. Danny did not fear navigating the rugged trail by moonlight, with snakes and who-knows-what abroad in the grass, as much as he feared staying in Kabas and being there when the chief and the sorcier came to look at his body in the morning, and no doubt to appraise their pale new drum skin.

But how long could Anatole continue his drumming? If the beat stopped for only a moment, Danny would seize up. They would have to take turns sleeping. Would this nightmare continue after he had left the vicinity of the village? Distance had not helped the shambling man in the marketplace in Garoua.

Would this be the rest of his life?

Stricken with panic, Danny nodded to the boy, just wanting to be out of there and not knowing what else to do. Yes, I’ll take you with me. What other choice do I have? He pedaled his bike away from Kabas, crunching on the rough dirt path. Anatole jogged in front of him, tapping on the drum.

And tapping.

And tapping.

Previous Publication Information

“Bringing the Family,” copyright © 1993, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Ultimate Zombie, ed. Byron Preiss and John Betancourt, Dell, 1993.

“Church Services,” copyright © 2009, WordFire, Inc., first published in Dark Delicacies III: Haunted, ed. Del Howison and Jeff Gelb, Running Press, 2009.

“Dark Carbuncle,” with Janis Ian, copyright © 2010, WordFire, Inc. and Janis Ian, first published in Blood Lite II: Overbite, ed. Kevin J. Anderson, Gallery Books, 2010.

“Solitude,” copyright © 2014, WordFire, Inc. first published in V-Wars: Blood and Fire, ed. Jonathan Maberry, IDW, 2014.

“Bad Water,” copyright © 2016, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Book of the Emissaries, ed. Emily C. Skaftun, Every Day Publishing, 2016.

“A Glimpse of the Ankou,” copyright © 1987, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Horror Show, Winter 1987.

“Age Rings,” copyright © 1988, WordFire, Inc., first published in Grue Magazine #7, revised 2017.

“Cupid’s Arrow,” original to this collection, copyright © 2018, WordFire, Inc.

“Royal Wedding,” original to this collection, copyright © 2018, WordFire, Inc.

“We Get What We Deserve: The Pickpocket’s Tale,” with Neil Peart, copyright © 2015, WordFire, Inc. and Pratt Music, Inc., first published in Clockwork Lives, by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart, ECW Press, 2015.

“Family Portrait,” copyright © 1989, WordFire, Inc., first published in 2AM Magazine, Summer 1989.

“Baggage Check,” copyright © 1988, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Horror Show, Spring 1988.

“Hunter’s Moon,” copyright © 1991, WordFire, Inc., first published in Obsessions, ed. Gary Raisor, Dark Harvest, 1991.

“Rude Awakening,” copyright © 2017, WordFire, Inc., first published in Fiction River: Pulse Pounders: Adrenaline, ed. Kevin J. Anderson, WMG Publishing, 2017.

“The Fate Worse Than Death,” with Guy Anthony de Marco, copyright © 2014, WordFire, Inc. and Guy Anthony de Marco, first published in Unidentified Funny Objects 3, ed. Alex Shvartsman, UFO Publishing, 2014.

“The Circus,” copyright © 1984, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Horror Show, Winter 1984.

“Last Stand,” copyright © 1991, WordFire, Inc., first published in Weirdbook 26, Autumn 1991.

“Leatherworks,” copyright © 1984, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Horror Show, Fall 1984.

“New Recruits,” copyright © 1990, WordFire, Inc., first published in Weirdbook 25, Autumn 1990.

“Role Model,” copyright © 2014, WordFire, Inc., first published in Fiction River: Fantastic Detectives, ed. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, WMG Publishing, 2014.

“Notches,” copyright © 1985, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Horror Show, Winter 1985.

“Redmond’s Private Screening,” copyright © 2001, WordFire, Inc., first published in Realms of Fantasy, April 2001.

“Special Makeup,” copyright © 1991, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Ultimate Werewolf, ed. Byron Preiss, David Keller, Megan Miller, and John Betancourt, Dell Books, 1991.

“Much at Stake,” copyright © 1991, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Ultimate Dracula, ed. Byron Preiss, David Keller, and Megan Miller, Dell, 1991.

“Santa Claus Is Coming to Get You,” copyright © 1991, WordFire, Inc., first published in Deathrealm, Fall/Winter 1991.

“Scarecrow Season,” copyright © 2011, WordFire, Inc., first published in Tucker’s Grove, Arc Manor, 2011.

“The Sum of His Parts,” copyright © 2007, WordFire, Inc., first published in Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest, Issue 9, 2007.

“Torn Stitches, Shattered Glass,” copyright © 2011, WordFire, Inc., first published in The Monster’s Corner, ed. Christopher Golden, St. Martin’s, 2011.

“Drumbeats,” copyright © 1994, Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart, first published in Shock Rock II, ed. Jeff Gelb, Pocket Books, 1994.

About the Author

Kevin J. Anderson has published 150 books, 56 of which have been national or international bestsellers. In 2012 he launched his humorous horror series of mysteries featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I., who has starred in five novels and numerous short stories, even a graphic novel. Anderson has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, Dune, and DC Comics universes, as well as unique steampunk fantasy novels Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, written with legendary rock drummer Neil Peart, based on the concept album by the band Rush. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, and the Saga of Shadows trilogy. He has edited numerous anthologies, written comics and games, and the lyrics to two rock CDs. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press.

If You Liked …

Selected Stories: Horror and Dark Fantasy, you might also enjoy:

Selected Stories: Science Fiction, Volume 1

Selected Stories: Fantasy

Death Warmed Over

Clockwork Angels

Also by Kevin J. Anderson

Other WordFire Press Titles by Kevin J. Anderson

Alternitech

Blindfold

Climbing Olympus

Clockwork Angels: The Comic Scripts

Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.

Death Warmed Over

Unnatural Acts

Hair Raising

Slimy Underbelly

Working Stiff

Tastes Like Chicken

Gamearth

Gameplay

Game’s End

Hopscotch

Million Dollar Writing Series

Million Dollar Productivity

Million Dollar Professionalism for the Writer

Worldbuilding: From Small Towns to Entire Universes

Writing As a Team Sport

Resurrection, Inc.

Selected Stories: Science Fiction, Volume 1

Selected Stories: Fantasy

Selected Stories: Horror and Dark Fantasy

The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances

The Saga of Shadows: Whistling Past the Graveyard

By Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason

Assemblers of Infinity

Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction

Craig Kreident #2: Fallout

Craig Kreident #3: Lethal Exposure

Ill Wind

Lifeline

The Trinity Paradox

By Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta

Collaborators

Crystal Doors #1: Island Realm

Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm

Crystal Doors #3: Sky Realm

Star Challengers #1: Moonbase Crisis

Star Challengers #2: Space Station Crisis

Star Challengers #3: Asteroid Crisis

By Kevin J. Anderson & Neil Peart

Clockwork Angels

Clockwork Lives

Drumbeats

Our list of other WordFire Press authors and titles is always growing. To find out more and to see our selection of titles, visit us at:

wordfirepress.com