CHM December 2021
Author: CHM LLC
Date: 2021-11-19 23:19:16+00:00

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Copyright © 2021 by CHM LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover: Pietro Rotelli / www.pietrorotelli.com

“Chimeras & Grotesqueries”: Maxwell Marais

“Dark Wanderers They Were”: Alvaro “AlvarInk” Maldonado

“The Magi” & “Pernkopf’s Fifth”: Desmond Rhae Harris

The Festival: Luke Spooner / Carrion House

Cosmic Horror Monthly
www.cosmichorrormonthly.com

Greetings Dear Reader,

‘Twas the night before Yuletide and all through the ice

All the shoggoths were stirring, I heard them shriek twice

The zealots awaited by the chimney with care

In the hopes that Cthulhu soon would be there…

Welcome, friends to this December edition of Cosmic Horror Monthly. We get it, the holidays are scary. But those aren’t the sort of chills you’re looking for, are they? Well, fret not! For you hold in your hands the most terrifying collection of short stories that we have ever assembled at CHM.

We begin with a Lovecraftian tale about a dark and mysterious feline species in “Dark Wanderers They Were.” Then, a bone chilling reprint from Matt Cardin called “Chimeras and Grotesqueries.” Moving along, we’ll encounter a holiday themed bloodbath in “The Magi” that will have you questioning the very fabric of reality before another shot of dark mystery hits you in “Maw Judy.”

We were lucky enough to get an exclusive interview this month with the incomparable Nicole Cushing. Then, another holiday inspired tale with a twist of terror in “O Unholy Night.” A couple of doctors discuss a peculiar new publication with dire consequences in “Pernkopf’s Fifth.” At last, a chilling examination of grief and the afterlife in “Burning Death Amid the Mile-Long Shelves in the Library of Forbidden Knowledge,” before we go down to the crypt for the quintessential holiday cosmic horror tale: “The Festival.”

Enjoy.

Welcome to Cosmic Horror Monthly

A monthly tome of terrifying tales, lovecraftian, cosmic, and weird.

Dark Wanderers They Were

By John C Adams

Neville’s ankle tormented him, but that was nothing to the terror that gnawed into his soul when he thought of what lay ahead for him. For Neville had heard tell of Ulthar...

The cats of Winfield had been tormented by Neville Jones for too long. One night, gathering in a stealthy counsel up on the roof of the inn amid much howling and mewing, they formed a strategy and elected a leader from among their number to see that it was carried out. The answer, according to the old ginger mouser who’d seen more than fifteen winters, lay in prayer to the spirit of the black kitten.

The black kitten was legendary in Winfield for reasons the old ginger mouser could well remember. He confidently assured his brethren that their evocation of the little one’s spirit would be answered, if they put their incantation in precisely the right wording and accompanied it with the correct blood offering. For the spirit of the black kitten who opened the way to the greater Feline Gods was particular as to every detail, and many was the exhortation that had been received in unresponsive silence for lack of the right ceremony to accompany it.

This would not be easy to achieve, bearing in mind that Neville’s parents loathed cats as much as their eighteen-year-old son did, the old tabby who adorned the cat basket in the post office warned them all. Mr and Mrs Jones were known to trap any cat that strayed into their garden, and woe betide one that jumped up onto the sill or into their kitchen.

The cats of Winfield arranged to meet seven-night hence, on the passing of the Old Night at the Year’s End, but before they could wait a week, events overtook them. Neville responded to the disappointment of a particularly bad set of A level retake results delayed by snow during the Yule period, by capturing a two-year-old black and white female cat alive. She was carrying six kittens, the matronly tortoiseshell from the inn informed them, though the exact identity of the father was unknown. Her pitiful cries for rescue had drifted across from the Jones’s house on the afternoon breeze in between bouts of heavy snow.

The cats sent a scouting party to reconnoitre the Neville’s home led by a Burmese Blue and White Cross, tastelessly named Randy by his owners when he was still whole and they found his romantic antics amusing. The party reported back that the chances of rescue were terribly slim.

Neville had slammed his bedroom window after realising that the captive’s plaintive cries for help could be heard outside. His parents were tucked in warm by the fire, staring at the flickering television with blankets spread across their knees and with all the doors inside the house firmly closed against interior draughts. Even if the cats did find a way in, it would be impossible to move around freely and attempt a rescue with so many closed doors in their way, Randy told them.

The cats washed their paws as they ruminated about what to do next. Finally, the tabby insisted that they ask the spirit of the black kitten for help immediately.

The tortoiseshell and the ginger caught a mouse apiece and carried them tenderly in their mouths to the most sacred place in Winfield: the site of the last prayer offered up to the spirit of the black kitten by the ginger mouser. An offering must be made, he reminded them, if they were to have any hope at all of attracting the spirit’s attention. And it must be a blood offering, absolutely fresh. The other cats nodded thoughtfully. The spirit of the black kitten would be drawn by the smell of blood and nothing else. It was known.

The two cats laid their offering upon the flat stone, a kind of altar in the odd language of their people, down by the dairy at the Gleaning farm. The scent of fresh milk appealed to the spirit of a kitten long gone from his own world beyond the river Skai, just as much as it did to the cats who still dwelt upon the earth of Winfield.

Under the leadership of the ginger mouser, the cats mewed strange prayers that seemed to drift up into the cold January night and swirl around them in the falling snow. They fell into a soft rhythm that felt to them not unlike purring, bursting forth from their chests and keeping an easy pace that would not tire them, even if they went on all night.

At length, their prayers were answered.

A white light descended through the falling snow and hovered above the spot where the fresh mice had been laid as an offering. Two tiny drops of blood had fallen onto the flat stone from one mouse’s neck and the other’s chest where the fatal wounds had been inflicted. The drops had spread out across the slate and dried in the cold night air.

The spirit of the black kitten manifested itself ephemerally. This unnerved the younger cats, but the doughty warriors who had seen many a winter and much odder things than this in Winfield took it in their stride.

The kitten’s aura led the cats marching two abreast back to Neville’s home, and they stealthily crept through the garden and over to the ivy growing up the side of the house. The power of the kitten had greatly augmented their number and their determination to succeed. They swarmed up the ivy, digging their claws into its hoary old branches and surging up onto the wooden windowsill.

The ginger mouser traced a circle just big enough to fit a human body through around the windowpane. The power of the kitten had made the ginger’s claws unnaturally long, and they penetrated deep into the glass. Not a hint of a screech escaped, but a perfect hole was crafted and the circle of glass fell with a tinkling crash into the snowdrift below Neville’s window.

The graceful marauders froze, lest this slight sound alert Neville’s parents on the floor below (staring at their television and crunching on popcorn as they discussed the show), making them come to investigate. But their inane comments did not miss a syllable, and the cats gave thanks to their guiding spirit from Ulthar for coming to the aid of one of their number.

The young cat had to be rescued as a matter of urgency, and the pack surged through the circle as one. Neville entered a trance at the sight of them bounding onto his carpet and gathering menacingly around him. They played, patting him with their paws. Then the claws came out, right enough. His pathetic voice whined that he’d only meant a bit of fun and that they’d made their point.

The motherly tortoiseshell roused the prisoner with a wash from her rough tongue. They snuck out onto the sill and slid down with scraping claws.

Neville was lured out of the window and down the ivy in the same trance. He fell the final ten feet and landed heavily in the snowdrift, spraining his ankle. The cats scratched at his feet and knees until he crawled out of the snow and dragged himself up. His eyes were sunk in with the pain, but the cats, remembering many an instance of torment to their number, forced him on all the same.

They crossed the bridge by the inn in a single-minded mass of sleek bodies, marching Neville on and ignoring his feebly weeping requests to rest a while until his ankle hurt a bit less. When he slyly suggested they return home and talk it over in the warm over a saucer of warm milk in his kitchen, the cats clawed his thighs until he limped on.

Old Mrs Forrest lived in a quirky little house of uncertain geometry just over the bridge. The septagenarian hardly left home and relied almost entirely upon her young black and white cat for company in the many hours when her family were busy with work and friends.

The ginger mouser howled at Mrs Forrest’s door until the deaf old woman finally heard and came to investigate. An expression of total joy spread across her face at the sight of her beloved Janet returned at last. Posters had been up all around the village ever since Janet had disappeared.

Mrs Forrest carried Janet inside and wrapped her up in a blanket in her basket by the fire. She seemed hardly to notice the fifty cats weaving in between her legs and lolling on all her best upholstery as she tearfully welcomed her darling home. But her glowering at Neville was not lost upon the lad, nor upon the protective felines.

They almost decided to leave Neville to Mrs Forrest’s merciless punishment, but the spirit of the black kitten had become a part of them that night. He miaowed that the sacrifice of the two mice and the milk from the dairy had been a promising start to their offering, but could never represent the entirety of it. The spirit of the small black kitten had found its way to Winfield at their behest, and now they must give him his reward in thanks.

The cats acquiesced, for the spirit of the small black kitten was very kind on the surface but there was an iron strength beneath that almost frightened the younger among them and inspired an awed reverence from the older cats of the village. None dared challenge him when he insisted that Neville was his, to dispose of as he wished at his leisure back home beyond the river Skai.

The spirit expanded into a white cloud, shining out over the tiny cottage, the old stone bridge and the ancient inn. Neville limped into it with barely a murmur and the cats lolled on the bridge, washing and feeling very smug at all the good they had done tonight, watching him go.

Neville squeaked out his thanks to the spirit of the black kitten for rescuing him from the nasty cats of Winfield. The old ginger mouser purred out in satisfaction that Neville’s gratitude was entirely misplaced: the spirit of the black kitten was heading home to a place where not one iota of cruelty to cats is ever tolerated.

The boy’s brown eyes grew wide as he shrunk to the size of a dog, then a rat and finally just a tiny mouse. He sat on his haunches, petrified at the cats stalking him, stammering that he was sorry.

The spirit reassumed the form of a real kitten for an instant. It told Neville that repentance might wash out in the world of trusting, naive humans, but that their fierce species was not so weak as the creatures that warmed their milk and fed them scraps of roasted meat from their own plates as they stretched out on fluffy rugs before the fire.

They floated away together, leaving this world of men far behind. Neville’s ankle tormented him, but that was nothing to the terror that gnawed into his soul when he thought of what lay ahead for him. For Neville had heard tell of Ulthar and its ways, but he had still been reckless enough to torment the cats of Winfield even so.

At length, Neville reached the ground. As the cloud subsided, he found himself surrounded by intrigued felines not quite like those he had terrorised back home.

The black kitten pushed Neville forward into the middle of the group. They were huge and bestial, their brutality barely concealed beneath their elegant exterior.

“Welcome to your new home. We are many, and my friends are always hungry.”

Six weeks later, the young black and white cat safely gave birth to a litter of black kittens, each lithe of body and bestowed with knowing dark eyes that awed but also unsettled everyone who saw them. The identity of the father was never established, though the cats of Winfield forever after swore that the spirit of the black kitten had been the culprit, for the offspring looked just like him.

End.

* * *

John C Adams is a nonbinary author and critic of horror and fantasy fiction, reviewing for Horror Tree, British Fantasy Society and Schlock! Webzine. They’ve had short fiction, reviews and articles published in many anthologies from independent presses, on the Horror Addicts blogsite and in various magazines including the Horror Zine, Sirens Call Magazine, Lovecraftiana Magazine, Devolution Z Magazine and Blood Moon Rising Magazine. You can read their blog twice weekly at John C Adams Reviews.

They have a Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, and they were longlisted for the Aeon Award twice. John’s latest horror novel ‘Blackacre Rising’ is available now on Smashwords.

Chimeras & Grotesqueries

By Matt Cardin

UNSIGNED PREFACE TO THE UNPUBLISHED AND UNFINISHED MANUSCRIPT “CHIMERAS & GROTESQUERIES” BY PHILIP LASINE

I realized early on that it would be necessary for me to introduce the following manuscript with a brief preface explaining my involvement in bringing it to light. I can only hope that the unorthodox nature of this involvement will not cast doubt on the manuscript’s authenticity or, worse, detract from its impact by distracting the reader from its profound implications.

For years I tried to explain to myself the unearthly influence that Philip Lasine exerted over me with his writings. My fascination with his bizarre, horrific, outlandish, and thoroughly transformative stories revolved largely around the fates of his protagonists, who, speaking in the first person, encountered things they could not explain—nightmarish things, awful eruptions of unearthly monstrousness in circumstance, event, person, and entity—and were invariably destroyed in the end. Bu they were also, somehow, transformed and preserved in a permanently shattered state from which they could meditate eternally on the impenetrable mystery of their own doom.

Lasine’s success in depicting such things and conveying their full, devastating emotional and philosophical impact was an authorial feat of sheer, shocking genius that I tried to emulate in my own stumbling way by writing stories that aped his signature style of marrying narrative prose fiction to Montaigne-like essayistic explorations. Eventually, and fortunately, I recognized my singular lack of literary talent in this vein, and decided to aim my desire for spiritual depth in another direction. A philosophy degree, training at a respected Protestant seminary, and an ordination to a ministerial career as a Methodist pastor were swiftly forthcoming.

But still, Philip Lasine had assumed for me the status of a distant master, and even when I grew up and out of my childhood attitude that imparted a permanent mystique to the authors of books, and finally came to understand that real people with real lives and bodies and voices and histories really do stand behind all of those printed and bound volumes—as witnessed by the fact that I myself wrote and saw published a number of modestly successful books of Christian theology—Philip Lasine still seemed an iconic presence, a beacon of impossible literary perfection shining like a star from the peak of some intra-psychic Sinai. I could not keep from regarding him as an embodied archetype, and found myself thinking of him from time to time and feeling, even though I knew it was childish, that the author of those books could not possibly be a real, living, breathing man with a real physical appearance and a concrete geographical location. He had to be a myth, a nexus of daemonic-divine power that had somehow focused into the form of a man for long enough to produce that perfect and powerful body of work, after which the body dissolved and the power withdrew back to the astral plane. This was my private fantasy, which I never actually articulated to myself, holding it as a kind of half-belief that surfaced occasionally into conscious awareness, at which times I observed it with an attempt at ironic amusement and made certain that I did not breathe a word of it to my parishioners.

Here my preface ends, for the spiritual and artistic relationship between Philip and me is more important than the later, more literal one that arose. There is also the fact that this literal relationship resulted from such an outlandish set of coincidental circumstances, and was of such a bizarre nature (especially considering my longstanding literary worship of the man), that I would not blame the reader for disbelieving it and therefore doubting the authenticity of what follows. When a man finds himself standing beside the deathbed of his idol, having been summoned there in an official capacity because he is a professional clergyman, he may begin to mistrust even his own perceptions and memories, and would not want to impart these doubts to his readers by giving too detailed an account of things that may or may not have happened exactly as he recalls them.

Here, then, is Philip Lasine’s last story, which is especially striking for being both like and unlike his other writings. I do not know whether it was meant to be self-contained or part of a longer work. I do know that it is clearly unfinished in its current state. I will admit to indulging in the thought that I might try to finish it myself, so close was I to its author when he died and bequeathed it to me, and so intimately do its ideas resonate not only with my thoughts but with my very being. But in the end I have decided to present it exactly as he left it, on the suspicion that some sort of hidden conclusion resides within the work as it stands. I have limited my editorial involvement to the minor expansion of a few key passages that were embryonic in their received form. The reader may well recognize these passages by their heavy-handedness and overly expository tone; I did not seek to emulate Philip’s style but to clarify the vision he was incompletely expressing as he wrote by hand while lying on his death bed.

The story as a whole may be intended as an allegory of sorts, although the grounds of its metaphors are obscure. Then again, they may not be as obscure as they appear; they may only seem so because of their extreme spiritual intimacy to us all, the repercussions of which I have not yet begun to work out for my ministerial vocation.

This last suspicion is at least partly verified by the experience that I have just had between writing the preceding paragraph and the present one. I paused in my work to step outside and rest my eyes. It is a frigid December night, and I stood perfectly still in the icy air, gazing up at the panorama of the night sky, which bristled with stars. As I watched, they seemed to take on the imprint of a vast human face—not looking down at me, but pressing outward, as if the entire glittering expanse were the inner surface of a cosmic mask.

The experience was invested with a clear visionary character, as opposed to a merely hallucinatory one, and I am not nearly as ashamed as I would have expected when I admit that after the celestial monstrosity had receded and the stars had returned to their normal configuration, I reached up to feel my own face with a sense of quickening dread.

CHIMERAS & GROTESQUERIES [unfinished]

by Philip Lasine

Just when it had first occurred to me to start assembling monstrous human effigies from the garbage that littered the alley floor outside my grotto, I could not say. I only knew that this was how I spent most of my waking hours, the ones not otherwise devoted to scrounging for food and drink in the wasteland of alleyways and trash bins that made up my world.

Occasionally there were other activities to distract me. I was obliged at times to fend off, flee from, or otherwise respond to the vicious attacks of the animalistic young men who in recent years had found a new form of entertainment in beating and sometimes killing street dwellers like me. But I was more fortunate than many of my fellows, since my appearance and demeanor effectively deterred would-be assailants. Perhaps it was my size, for I was tall and hulking, and made for a singularly imposing figure as I stalked the streets in the frayed tweed overcoat that I had fished from a dumpster one icy-wet New Yearâ€™s Day.

Or perhaps it was my face with its striking disfiguration, like the soft pink remains of a melted rubber mark. The feral youths who ventured downtown to the back alleys in search of their brutal amusements maintained a respectful distance from me, and I suspected it was as much their horror at my appearance as their caution at my size that kept them at bay. On the two occasions when a group of them had approached me with clubs and broken bottles in hand, I had simply stood to my full height and raised my face to greet them, freezing them in their tracks and then turning to reenter my solitude.

The heart of that solitary existence was the pointless rigidity of my daily routine. Each morning I awoke in my grotto and lay motionless beneath my covering of newspapers until hunger or thirst impelled me to move. Then I crawled into the alleyway, climbed to my feet, and went in search of food. After that I wandered the streets for a few hours, following a circuitous path dictated by impulses that I could not fathom. People gave me a wide berth whenever I emerged, as I sometimes did, from the labyrinth of side streets and alleyways into the brightness and broadness of a sidewalk bordering a well-traveled boulevard or avenue.

After each dayâ€™s travels I returned to my alley, where I scraped together heaps of trash, seated myself against the wall, and began to assemble doll-like, human-shaped figures. These were always grotesque in one way or another. A mass of grimy, shredded newspaper, impaled on the neck of a broken beer bottle, became a head whose fluttering fringe recalled the monstrous Medusa of ancient mythology. Oily flaps from the peel of a rotten banana, when attached to holes punched in the sides of an old cracker box or tobacco can, suggested arms like octopoid tentacles. The effect was especially vivid when the box or can was topped with a moldy, withered orange to serve as a head whose distorted face formed a miniature parody of my own. Sometimes I secured the pieces together with bits of string or wire. Other times I simply propped the assembled figures against the wall or laid them gently on the concrete floor of the alley in concentric half circles around the entrance to my grotto, where they ffoften remained intact for hours or days before a stray breeze began to scatter them back into their original, unpersonified parts.

I spent endless hours assembling these shapes, which I began to think of as my â€œlittle ones.â€ The activity seemed strange even to me, for whom it was so very familiar, and I could only imagine what it must look like to my fellow derelicts, who, on the rare occasions when our paths crossed, regarded me with expressions of fear and awe.

It was only the unfamiliar ones, the ones who were either new to this part of the city or new to street life itself, who ever dared to venture near the entrance to my alley. And there were also the ones the others referred to as “the crazies,” the mentally muddled and addled, who muttered or ranted at the empty air, who soiled themselves and twitched with various tics and convulsions. I sometimes wondered what the other street-dwellers were thinking during our occasional brief encounters, which invariably ended with their flight and my resumption of my perpetual solitude and miniature demiurgic activities, and I was especially curious about the crazies with their fractured perceptions and diseased mental processes. For I thought it would be fascinating, and in fact grand, to see myself through their eyes, and to discover what their faulty faculties made of me and the domain I had created for myself.

* * *

When I tried to calculate the span of my rootless existence, I could not remember whether my memory encompassed a month, a year, or longer. At the far point of my recollection there was only a blankness, a gray and featureless barrier like a plaster wall. Or sometimes instead of a wall it carried the imaginal appearance of an inner absence or emptiness, as if I were missing a psychic organ or limb, or as if an anterior network of branching corridors in my soul had been demolished and buried beneath a mountain of dead earth. Occasionally I had the impression, so intense it bordered on a physical sensation, that behind my eyes and brain there existed a gaping hole. At such times I would reach around and probe the back of my head to verify the intactness of my skull. Then I would touch my face, brush my fingers over its smooth, pink rawness, and contemplate with wonderâ€”never with despairâ€”at the source and meaning of this strange disfiguration.

Other psychological dislocations occurred as well. I would start occasionally from a light doze or reverie to find myself confused and disoriented. If it were night and I had crawled into my grotto to sleep, I would emerge and gaze at my surroundings: the alleyway with its bleakness and grit, my little ones scattered sleeping all around, the strip of dark sky shining down from between the high brick walls. And although I knew this was the shape and these were the circumstances of my life, besides which I had never known any other, I would intuit deeply and sharply, with a burst of unaccountable longing, that somewhere there existed another, truer mode of existence for me.

Then the feeling would fade, and I would know there was only this life on the streets, this bulky body with its grotesque glyph of a visage, and this dark alleyway that I called home, where an incomprehensible inner compulsion drove me to assemble an ever-widening congregation of miniature monsters to worship at my feet.

* * *

At the far point of memory, I had first awakened while staggering through the streets of the city, dressed in the same rags that I later continued to wear, and filled with a fluttering sensation in my breast, a strange electrical exhilaration of joy and terror, while my face burned with an agony like acid and flame.

After what might have been hours or days of this half-blind odyssey through the city streets, I had blundered into an alleyway formed by the rough outer walls of two brick buildings, where the shadowy coolness felt like a balm. A battered grey garbage dumpster squatted next to me at the entrance. All manner of refuseâ€”scraps of paper, shards of glass, strips of metal, the rotted remains of rats and insects and what had once been foodstuffs for humansâ€”carpeted the alley floor. At the far end a wall of pitted wooden planks formed a barrier past which I could see nothing but distance and dimness, crossed by coils of mist.

I felt the contours of my soul expand instantly to claim and conform to this blissful haven, and my sense of belonging received further confirmation when I crept forward into the alley and sighted a promising feature ahead: a hole punched through the base of the right-hand wall. It proved to be three feet high and wide, with chalk-jagged edges where the bricks had shattered. Without a momentâ€™s thought, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled inside.

My gropings revealed a cramped, square-cornered cave formed by three rough concrete walls. I brushed away the chunks of brick and mortar on the floor and then lay down, finding the cave just large enough for me to stretch to my full length.

I lay there for hours, listening to the faint murmurings of the city and reaching up from time to time to touch my face and wonder at its rapidly vanishing pain. This was my home, my grotto, as I instantly thought of it in a burst of inspiration that was as incontrovertible as it was unaccountable.

* * *

The uncanny metaphysical breakdown in the world at large, which took over the life of the city soon after I awoke to my strange existence there, was heralded by a brief outburst of what the newspapers, quoting the solemn verdicts of psychiatric professionals and government offices, dubbed â€œmass hysteria.â€ It took the form of what one prominent mental health authority described as a â€œhallucinatory disfigurationâ€ of the cityâ€™s religious architecture.

For a period of two minutes on a weekday afternoon, the cityâ€™s human inhabitants saw the faÃ§ades of churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, and meditation halls transmogrified into humanoid faces frozen in expressions of horror. The event made itself known in a ripple of panic that radiated outward from those buildings and through the crowds like waves on a lake. Every person who laid eyes on such a structure at that moment saw the alteration occur, and all were overcome by a frenzied psychosis in which the witnessed the world turning to nightmare.

Some blanched and stared in mute shock. Others groaned and screamed and covered their heads. Still others fell to their knees or fainted. Some vomited and went into convulsions. Later, the story that emerged from these tens of thousands of witnesses was uniform in its assertion of the unearthly influence those impossible visions had exerted. The sheer spectacle of the grotesquely twisted visages had, as one man phrased it, â€œflooded my eyesâ€ and â€œrotted my gut.â€ Countless people told the same story of experiencing an overpowering sense of mingled terror and revulsion that seemed to bloat their visual sense and then â€œspillâ€ or â€œburstâ€ or â€œfloodâ€ into other parts of their bodiesâ€”stomach, bowels, genitals, limbsâ€”and bring with it an excruciating illness.

The vision vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and in the ensuing days and weeks, more than one artist attempted to paint or draw a semblance of those spectral faces. Invariably, the attempts fell short, at least according to the people who had seen the originals. I examined several of these drawings and paintings myself, as I leafed through the scattered pages from newspapers that came fluttering down the street and creeping on stray breezes into my alley, and they were indeed hideous in the extreme, with mouths, eyes, brows, nasal ridges, and underlying skeletal structures displaying a strange perversion of proportion that rendered them utterly noxious. The exact qualities that achieved such a striking effect proved impossible to isolate. In some of the pictures the eyes were blank and white, staring blindly without irises or pupils. In others they were rendered demonic by pupils in the shape of serpentine slits or goat-like wedges. Still others featured the bulbous black eyes of an insect or the berry-cluster eyes of a spider. In all of the pictures, the mouths gaped wide in screams of torment, but again the details varied. Some revealed reptilian rows of fangs, others a foul nest of mucous tissues lined with rotten sores like leprosy. In others throat behind the tongue was replaced by a strange stone tunnel with an arched entrance, suggesting a coiling journey downward, inward, toward a pit of inconceivable darkness.

Of all those who stood within sight of a religious structure when the visions struck, I alone failed to see the faces. It happened while I was out on one of my daily tours of the city, following the unfathomable but undeniable dictates of that inner leading, which seemed designed to send me shuffling on a different route each day for the purpose of taking in the city sights in a different spatial and temporal configuration, and which on that day had brought me out of the back streets and into the open, on a sidewalk populated by many pedestrians and bordering a great, black-paved avenue. It ran past a great, gray, stone cathedral, and I was standing directly before and beneath the faÃ§ade of the sacred structure, watching the crowd part around me with averted eyes, when they all began to scream and clutch their neighbors. Curious but strangely unmoved, I looked to their faces to learn the source of their panic and found them all staring wild-eyed at the church. A glance at it myself showed only the same spires and arches rearing toward the pale blue sky, and the same massive mazework of stained glass glinting in the afternoon sunlight. But it was evident that the individuals around me were seeing something much more, something far other, something that was even then causing them to fall and thrash, to gasp and retch, writhing in fits of supernatural sickness. And still I saw nothing. Within seconds I was the only one left standing, a rag-wrapped figure surrounded by shuddering, supine forms that struck me as wormlike and obscene.

For many nights afterward, when the newspapers had begun to report on what had happened and offer their useless interpretations and assessments, I pondered this event as I lay inside my grotto and felt the darkness breathe. I could not divine whether my failure to see the faces indicated a deficit or a surplus of spiritual sight. Many times I reached up to feel my forehead, cheeks, eyes, and mouth, and each time I was seized by the mental image of that great cathedral shuddering and twisting and transforming itself into a polished mirror upon whose silvery surface I saw my own reflection screaming in unbounded horror.

* * *

Not long after the appearance of the faces, the breakdown in things was signaled in more personal fashion by the incident of the man who bled to death through his eyes. It occurred during my daily journey, when I was at one of the farthest points away from my alley and tracing an unwonted path through a part of town where people wore newer clothing and drove shinier vehicles, and where the tall buildings gleamed with the freshness of new-cut stone and polished glass.

It was the screams that drew my attention and initiated the event. They came in a male voice, ragged and piercing, and were so very sincere in their expression of frantic horror that I thought they would surely shred the throat of whoever was voicing them. Like everyone else within earshot, I turned to look, and quickly located a man in a gray business suit standing at the open door of a taxicab and clutching his face with both hands. Blood spurted from between his fingers, which were capped over his eyes.

The sight exerted a preternatural power over the crowd, mesmerizing them into frozen silence. They stared as he shrieked in agony and horror. They gaped as he doubled over and vomited on his black leather shoes. They remained motionless as he fell into the crook of the cab door and began clawing at his eyes while his legs kicked spastically.

Then they heard the sound, the one that had been obscured by the initial commotion and the manâ€™s screams. It was a whispery hiss, like the melting of ice on a bed of hot coals, and it suffused the atmosphere of the avenue with an unnatural volume and vividness. After a moment, its source became evident.

The blood from the manâ€™s eyes was sizzling and burning like acid. It was eating at the flesh of his hands and face, the fabric of his suit, the leather of his shoes, even the yellow paint on the door of the taxi. Where it had spattered on the street, it bubbled like oil in a hot skillet, emitting a curling white plume of smoke and carving bowl-like indentations for itself in the pavement.

Pandemonium ensued. The explosion of panic that had been temporarily held in abeyance by horrified awe now detonated with all the more force. People fled with shrieks and shouts. I alone stayed near to watch what happened as the manâ€™s body began to collapse in on itself.

* * *

Later, when I arrived back at my alley, I crawled inside my grotto and lay there motionless for the rest of that afternoon and deep into the night, letting the events of the day replay again and again in the theater of my mind’s eye. While the stars were still out and visible in the strip of sky above, I crawled out and gathered materials to make a new congregant in my church of little ones. A discarded length of rubber tubing, strapped to a body made from a rusty old gasoline can, produced the appearance of entrails protruding from a metallic abdomen. Holes punctured in the top of the can with a nail formed black, empty eyes gazing ever upward in agonized awe and a mouth screaming eternally and soundlessly in perpetual torment. I arranged the ugly figure with his fellows and settled back against the opposite wall to let them return my gaze while my mind wandered where it would, tracing the contours of a bottomless mystery that invaded the conditioned human self and corruptible human form with an absolute reality that it could not contain or abide.

* * *

More such events began to multiply throughout the city in the ensuing weeks. Even I, in my seclusion, caught wind of the horror that had begun to spill into the world through every crack and seam.

On a bitterly cold morning, when a crust of ice coated every exposed surface, an unknown variety of flower sprang up and bloomed in the cityâ€™s largest public park. A policeman watched it erupt from the frozen sod, staring in astonishment as the strange shoot broke through the icy crust and rose to a height of two feet before unfolding velvety black petals clustered around a lemon-yellow core. He approached in wonder, removed a black glove, extended his hand, and brushed the petals with trembling fingers. He died later that day of a raging fever, but not before telling a doctor that the flower disintegrated into ash upon contact with his skin.

A few blocks north, a car ran over a blind manâ€™s dog, injuring it grievously. The man fell to his knees and cradled the dogâ€™s head in his lap, weeping wretchedly as his canine guide shrieked in agony. But then the bestial shrieks underwent a shocking alteration and became a human voice issuing from the inhuman mouth, begging the man not to let the dog die there in the street, howling an obscenity of mangled speech formed by lips, tongue, and throat that were never intended for such a purpose. The man strangled his dog in a burst of horrified fury, and then sobbed over and over to the shocked onlookers, “It couldn’t live. It couldnâ€™t live.â€

These and other such events began to play on everyoneâ€™s lips, even those of the street-dwellers whose life I shared. They began congregating outside the entrance to my alley, first in twos and threes and then in a growing throng, and as I eavesdropped on them, I could hear that many of the saner among them had begun to sound like the crazies as they anxiously discussed the crisis that was unfolding, while the crazies themselves came to seem positively magisterial in the intensity and sincerity of their expressed delusions. Meanwhile, I continued to read the scraps of newspaper that came my way, and I found they had come to sound unhinged in a manner formerly reserved for the tabloids, as their pages were now filled with tales of impossible occurrences. In a hastily published pamphlet that circulated by hand and word of mouth throughout the city’s populace, and that was roundly denounced by religious and civil authorities, a putative and anonymous scholar who specialized in what he or she described as “an occult branch of philosophical theology” suggested that all of these disruptions confirmed his or her thesis that “the godhead is insane, and the supernatural is its insanity.”

Over time, the scale of the events grew greater, surpassing their former status as mere news of the bizarre to reach heights of grotesquery and hallucinatory horror that led otherwise sober commentators to speculate in all seriousness that something had come unraveled at the heart of things.

A woman entering a clothing shop on a busy avenue was killed when the plate glass window above the door suddenly came loose from its frame and fell upon her with unnatural force like a guillotine, hitting the crown of her skull broadwise and cleaving her head cleanly in half before exploding on the floor in a cascade of crystalline fragments. Her face thus remained untouched, and when she fell to the floor, her eyes remained open, rolling wildly in their sockets with an expression of panic while her lips worked silently. Compounding the astonishment and horror onlookers were the half-dozen clumps of pulsating feathers that came spilling out of the woman’s split cranium. These landed on the polished tile floor and whipped instantly into motion, unfurling to reveal themselves as enormous black birds that someone described as misshapen crows. They took flight and dashed madly about the interior of the store in a squawking hurricane of oily wings, crashing into light fixtures, knocking over clothing racks, and wounding a number of the store’s patrons with slashes and gouges from jagged beaks and black talons, and then, as if possessed by a single, demonic mind, they shot through the open front door and out into the street. A dozen witnesses saw the screeching black shapes flap high into the air and then out of sight past the edge of a skyscraper.

In another part of the city, a young woman was attacked in her apartment by her four-year-old daughter. Two college students who lived in the adjacent unit came running in response to the screams and found the girl buried neck-deep inside her motherâ€™s torso, which was split open like a fish. She told the police later that she had been trying to â€œget back inside mamaâ€™s belly.â€ One of the students told a journalist that when he and his roommate arrived, the girl pulled her head out of the bloody vertical wound and turned to gaze at them with â€œblack, burning eyes.â€

As I walked silently through the city streets and byways in my ever-widening and constantly evolving circuit, and as I sat propped against the wall of my alley in pursuit of my demiurgic work of monstrous creation, my thoughts kept circling round to the inner state of those who had witnessed and participated in such prodigies. Again and again, I returned to meditate on the sense of unreality that must have overtaken them. Dwelling upon this for endless hours, I would frequently experience an inner upwelling of giddiness, like the onset of cosmic vertigo, which would, if I happened to be standing at the time, oblige me to reach out to steady myself against a wall or lamppost. My eyesight would flicker and grow dim, as if my surroundings were lit only by the glow of a guttering candle, and I would hear the faint sound of a muted, hollow roar, like the shrieking of some vast metallic gate swinging open. If this came over me while I sat in my alley pursuing my calling, I would stare curiously at the little unfinished creature in my hands, and at the others strewn about the alley floor. And all of the repressed knowledge of my nature, of my origin and reason for being, would tremble at the far edge of consciousness.

* * *

I awoke in the dead of night with the buzzing awareness of some unknown visitation lying heavily upon me. The presence was receding even as I came to wakefulness and crawled out of my grotto. Something about my alley was different, and I stood blinking in the starlight for half a moment before realizing the nature of the change.

My little ones were gone. I had ended my day by setting out what was by far the largest array of them that I had ever assembled. The concentric curved rows had radiated outward from the entrance of my grotto like a veritable rainbow of deformity, reaching all the way to the facing wall. But now, several hours later, the alley floor was bare, swept clean even of its usual carpet of garbage, all of which I had used as the raw material for my creative act. Nothing remained but a thin coating of dirt.

Peering more closely, I saw a multitude of miniature indentations flowing in a path toward the alleyâ€™s entrance, which, I realized, had now become an exit. Even now the receding whisper of a collective scuttling tickled my ears.

The screams began to arrive a little later, as I sat against the wall in my usual spot. First were the voices of my fellow street people, barking out in terrified surprise. Then came the sounds of panic and horror riding the frigid night air from all over the city. Hundreds of thousands of voices shrieked in a collective nightmare, and continued to shriek even after their owners had met their doom.

I rose to my feet and peered intently upward at the strip of night sky between the abandoned buildings whose outer walls defined my world. It bristled with stars. As I watched, they seemed to take on the imprint of a vast and deformed human faceâ€”not looking down at me, but pressing outward, as if the entire glittering expanse were the inner surface of a cosmic mask. I reached up to touch my own face with a sense of quickening elation and dread.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Here the manuscript ends. It was discovered along with its anonymous preface, lying on the front porch of an abandoned Methodist rectory in the American Midwest.]

3rd Place: Non-Compliance Notice

By Thea Meave

The fourth one today. Joshua slouched so far into his seat he thought he might crash through the floor until he burrowed six feet deep. Were the cubicles smaller than before? No. Well, maybe. He couldn’t tell. But he could have sworn he had more space when he first started here.

“Lovely day today.” Marci was back from lunch. He didn’t know much about her role, Empowerment Team Leader, aside from terrorizing the other employees.

Nobody responded to her. The most she got was a “yeah” from Cindy.

Outlook pulled up another notification. Another Non-Compliance Notice. Failure to follow up with a prospect sixty times in a month.

This time, he swore the cubicles did move. They were notably smaller. Had to be. A genius idea came to him. He ripped a small piece of paper and slid it on the outside corner of the partition.

“What are you doing?” Cindy asked. Joshua stopped at her boobs before looking all the way up. She was a bombshell. And suddenly, he was embarrassed. What was he doing, exactly?

“Nothing,” he said, his face reddening, then hustling to his seat.

“You’re fucking weird,” Cindy said before walking to the bathroom.

Another Non-Compliance Notice. This one from Marci. Failure to correct previous NCN within a 24 hour period. Click the link.

“Marci, I did correct this already.”

“Not according to our system,” she said in her sunshine voice.

“Well, I did.”

“Okay,” Marci said. “Just make sure it is updated now.”

Sitting at his computer, he found notifications coming in rapidly. Twelve unread emails in the NCN folder.

“What the fu--?” He pulled up the folder. Fourteen now. All from Marci. Eighteen. Twenty-Seven. Forty. He couldn’t keep up.

“Marci. What is this?”

Both his shoulders were bumped together. The cubicle walls now squeezed against him, like a lover cuddling up to him, or a boa refusing to let him escape.

“Lovely day today,” Marci said behind him. But he couldn’t turn around.

The NCNs were over a thousand now and the numbers spun upward like a slot machine. His shoulders caved in and the cubicle walls were against his ears. Blood and organs leaked onto the floor. The last thing he heard was a slurping from behind him, as if Marci was sucking his body up through a straw. And she was.

Her tongue formed a long, thin straw, curling around in Mickey Mouse loops before arriving at the back of Josh’s neck. His body, if it could be considered a body any longer, funneled into Marci’s tongue, until the workstation was perfectly clean and ready for the next employee.

Cindy came back from the bathroom, hardly glancing at Marci before sitting in her chair.

“Hi Cindy, I just want to let you know,” Marci said. “Josh is no longer with us.”

“Cool.” Cindy popped a mint in her mouth while opening the Non-Compliance Notice in her email.

End.

The Magi

By Joe Haward

Tom vomited into the Barker’s kitchen sink, bile and mucus painting the white porcelain. Initially it was the god-awful stink that made him retch. A deep metallic smell danced along the back of his throat in an unholy alliance with the stench of shit, pulling at his taste buds until he puked. He had read somewhere that when people died they emptied their bowels. He wasn’t sure if that was true, until now. He’d never seen a dead body before, let alone four of them. His head was pounding. It had been all day. He always had a migraine on Christmas Eve. He shook his head in the hope that, when he opened his eyes, everything would be different. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he stood up from the sink and looked again. Ten seconds later the last contents of his stomach swam down the plughole, a brown and yellow river of despair.

He had only come over to drop off Maisie’s Christmas present, as he did every year, before both his family and hers set off for the Christmas Eve church service. He had noticed the front door ajar, which didn’t come as a surprise as he knew they were expecting him. Knocking, and calling out, he walked into the house expecting to find the Barker’s at the kitchen table, finishing dinner. They were at the table, only they were staring blankly and silently ahead, their eyes completely removed.

Tom didn’t think that checking their pulses was going to be of much use. Partly because he had no idea how one did it, but mainly because each of the Barker’s no longer had a heart beating in their chests. Someone had ripped them clean out.

Maisie, like her parents and younger sister, sat upright, her body held in position by the onset of rigour mortis. The bloody black holes where her eyes used to be threatened to swallow Tom, consuming him until everything that he was collapsed in upon itself. He stepped backwards, heading for the door when he noticed his shoes were sticky, as though someone had put glue on the soles. He looked down and saw the bright crimson blood across the kitchen floor. It shined under the stainless steel hanging ceiling lights, an almost luxurious sheen that invited Tom to take a dip and swim in its beauty. He shook his head again.

As he turned for the door, he noticed something in the middle of the kitchen table, which was otherwise completely bare. The dark wood of the table was splattered with blood, swallowing the redness within its own deep brown. Tom stepped closer and saw that it was a cell phone, sitting there, on its own. It was the same model iPhone that he owned. The same case too. And color. Instinctively he reached into his jeans pocket to retrieve his own cell phone. It wasn’t there. Checking his back pockets and jacket he realised he didn’t have it on him.

“Where the hell is it?” he muttered to himself. He never went anywhere without his phone. Ever. After he had patted himself down for the fifth time, he looked back at the one lying on the table.

“It can’t be...” he whispered. He felt his pulse rise with the avalanche of sustained dread. He knew he needed to see the phone properly, but it also meant leaning over Mr. Barker to get it. Slowly, stepping closer, he started to reach for it, trying to hold his breath as the foul odors pummelled his senses, making his eyes water. As he grabbed the phone, images of Mr Barker jumped to life, reaching into Tom’s chest and pulling out his heart to fill the cavity that now sat where his own used to beat.

Quickly stepping back, Tom rushed into the hallway, standing by the front door, breathing hard. Red, green, and white Christmas lights from the street outside flashed in random sequence, beaming through the porch window, lighting the dark hallway in a kaleidoscope of color. Far in the distance he heard carolers lifting their voices in Christmas songs. He wanted to run out of the house, to scream for help, but then he saw his bloody footprints, and his own hands smeared in blood from where he had picked up the phone. Looking at it, he realised that it was definitely his phone. The lock screen had a picture of Daniel Kaluuya’s iconic stare. Get Out was his favorite movie. The slight chip in the glass screen on the bottom left hand corner confirmed what he already knew.

“What the fuck?” Tom quickly opened it and was met with a photo that had been taken and left open before the phone was locked. It was of Maisie, sat at the table, alive and unharmed, her face frozen in fear. He swiped to the next photo. This time Maisie was missing an eye, blood pooling in the socket and running down her face onto her cream sweater. Tom started to feel sick again.

He swiped again. Maisie without any eyes.

Again. Maisie without her heart.

He threw the phone. It hit the living room door and landed on the floor.

Tom felt a wave of panic reach up into his throat and pull him in. He hunched down onto his knees, breathing fast and shallow, trying to control his body as it shook with fear. Cold evening air blew in through the front door that still stood slightly ajar, winter hands reaching in and up his back. After a few moments he composed himself, trying to think about his next move.

I’ll phone the police, tell them I had nothing to do with it, that I just found the Barkers like that. They’ll believe me wouldn’t they? What about the photos? I’ll delete the photos. Yeah, just get rid of them. That will sort this mess out. Get rid of the photos and get out of the house.

As he stood up he noticed a line of light breaking out from under the living room door. Then a shadow moved across it, from inside the room. He jolted backwards. The Barker’s didn’t own a dog, and he knew they didn’t have anyone staying for the holidays.

Get out. Get out. Get out.

Everything in his body told him to leave, to escape this madness. But like a moth to a flame, he found himself edging closer and closer to the living room door. He bent down and picked up his phone, finding his grip on the handle of the door, turning it slowly, so achingly slow, imagining a creak that didn’t exist as he pushed it open.

Sat on Mr Barker’s brown leather armchair, framed by the wooden bookcase behind, was a man. That was Tom’s first thought. It’s a man. His crossed legs were painfully thin, as was his entire body. His pale, gaunt, pointy face was like the lustre of the moon, and his deep-set green eyes shimmered with an unnerving knowingness. His black hair sat disheveled and scruffy, a strange contrast to his immaculate white shirt, charcoal suit, and matching tie. He was holding up a small golden ball with one hand, inspecting it closely, peering at it as though it held a deep and important secret. He looked up and smiled at Tom, thin red lips stretching even thinner as glistening, white, pointy teeth were exposed. It’s not a man. It’s not a man.

“Ah, Thomas, so lovely to see you.” His voice was deep and gravelly, low and forceful.

Tom blinked. He found himself surprised by the sound of the stranger’s voice. It doesn’t match what he looks like. Tom remembered when he was younger and would go and play at Karl’s house. Tom always thought Karl’s dad had a voice that didn’t suit his face.

“Don’t just stand there my boy. Come in, shut the door, take a seat.” The stranger waved his hand towards the beige sofa that sat in the middle of the room.

In a daze, Tom did as he was asked and began to walk over to the sofa, before suddenly stopping and looking down in horror at the pale carpet. Faded red footprints followed him into the room. He had never noticed before how pale everything in Masie’s house was.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. Trust me, that’s the least of your problems.” Those thin red lips stretched once more into a smile.

Tom sat down, hands on his knees, looking blankly at the stranger. “W-who are you?” he stammered. “What’s going on?”

The stranger uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “My name is The Magi, I am a traveller, of sorts, and a connoisseur.”

“A connoisseur? Of what?”

“Why, of people like you, my boy. I see you had a lot of fun with the Barkers.”

Tom leapt up and backed towards the door, scrambling with his phone. “What the fuck are you talking about? I had nothing to do with this! I-I’m calling the police.” Tom’s hands were shaking and he dropped his phone. As he leant forwards to pick it up he felt a colossal blow into his stomach. He collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath, writhing in pain. Through watery eyes he watched as The Magi walked back to the armchair and sat down again.

“My dear boy,” The Magi began, “calling the police would be a monumental mistake.”

Tom crawled to his knees and looked up. “Why?” he painfully choked.

“First of all, I have the ability to conceal myself. It’s an old trick I’ve had to learn over the years.” As The Magi spoke, Tom lost sight of him. The creature faded in and out of view before his very eyes.

“What the hell—” Tom murmured, wiping his eyes in disbelief.

“So,” The Magi continued. “If the police turn up, they would find you, on your own, in the Barker’s house, the family murdered in their kitchen. Second, and more importantly, your DNA is all over the place. It really is... what do you call it? Ah, yes... a forensic slam dunk.” The Magi let out a giggle, seemingly pleased with his choice of words.

“But that’s impossible,” Tom countered. “I wasn’t even here!”

“Thomas, listen carefully. Your fingerprints are all over the crime scene. Your vomit is in the sink. Forensics will find your skin, hair, and blood on the Barker’s bodies, like a flashing signal. And to settle it, your seamen has violated the body of that delightful Maisie.”

Tom stared at The Magi in wide-eyed horror. “T-that’s impossible,” he repeated, the words stumbling and catching in his throat.

The Magi spoke on, “If you call the police you will condemn yourself to a life in prison. And do you have any idea how a young, pretty boy, such as yourself, will fare in prison?” The Magi grinned, savoring each word as though they carried scent and taste. “Why, you’ll be the Riz à l’impératrice, a veritable feast for prison gangs.”

Tom was shaking, shock and anxiety ripping through his body, making his head want to explode. “I don’t understand.”

The Magi stood up and walked over to Tom, crouching down in front of him. Tom winced as The Magi’s breath washed over him, a putrid, acidic smell that burned his nose. The Magi took Tom’s phone from his hand, unlocked it, then swiped the screen a few times. He handed the phone back. Tom stared at The Magi, the creature’s face a mystery to him, and then looked down at the phone. Nausea rattled his body again, cold sweat tracing a line down his back as his world began to tumble down the rabbit hole. The photo was of Tom’s back, his underwear around his ankles as he lay on top of Maisie, her bare legs visible, the gaping holes where her eyes used to be staring back into the camera. Tom dropped the phone and ran his dark hands over his shaved head, trying to remember and make sense of what was happening. “No, no, no...” he whispered over and over, his body unconsciously swaying in the storm of his anguish.

The Magi put his hand on Tom’s shoulder, a gentle, almost fatherly touch. “Come sit back down Thomas,” he said lightly, “and I can tell you how to make this all go away.”

Tom looked up, tears cascading down his cheeks, a glimmer of hope appearing behind the wild, wet, panic that threatened to overwhelm him. “Really?” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his arm. “You can make this go away?”

The Magi nodded and helped Tom to his feet. They both walked over to the sofa and sat back down. The Magi held the golden orb up with his fingertips, turning it in the light. With every turn Tom saw strange markings fading in and out, cryptic symbols and letters that vanished from sight whenever he tried to focus on them.

“This is my Khrusos,” The Magi said. “It enables me to travel from place to place, to move between time and space with ease. But it has its limitations.”

“What limitations?” Tears still tracked a path down Tom’s face.

“I can’t use it to travel on my own. I need a companion, someone who acts as the guide. A star in the East you might say.” The Magi smiled, the sharp teeth making Tom shudder. “You will be my guide.”

“How? I don’t know what to do?”

“Oh, it’s very simple my boy. All that is needed is for you to imagine someone. Picture a girl, a family, sitting around their table, sharing dinner together. Bring them to mind and the Khrusos will do the rest.”

“What do you mean? Picture someone I know? A family I have met?”

“No, no, Thomas, don’t be so dull. This is where you use your inventiveness and artistry. Allow yourself the freedom to picture anyone from the deepest recesses of your insight and ingenuity.”

Tom blinked in confusion. “How will doing that change any of this.” He pointed to the door and the massacre beyond.

“Once we leave here, the Khrusos will endow you with a gift, and make this entire nightmare disappear.”

“And I won’t go to prison?”

“I promise you Thomas, you won’t go to prison.”

Tom looked into The Magi’s green eyes, the way they glistened with a penetrating knowing, as though he knew Tom far deeper than Tom knew himself. “So I just try and imagine someone, a family, and then what?”

“Then all this will be over Thomas.”

The Magi stood up and held out his white, boney hand. Tom looked warily at it, and then took it, standing up. The Magi placed the golden orb in Tom’s upturned palm, and then covered it with his own. “Close your eyes and imagine them. Think about what they look like, the way their home smells, what dinner they are sharing together.”

Tom nodded, disbelief turning to desperation, and shut his eyes. Images of the Barkers flashed across his mind, their bloodied, eyeless faces gawping at him, silently screaming for mercy. He shook his head, the distant throb of his headache increasing in pain with every passing moment. He tried again.

To his amazement he saw the face of a girl he’d never seen before, her light brown hair falling elegantly over her shoulders. She looked at him with deep blue eyes, and smiled. He saw her family, the five of them gathered at the table, holding hands and saying grace. The dad looked worn and weathered, like he had worked too much and seen his family too little. The mom, a kind face that radiated understanding. Twin brothers, around ten years old, praying in unison, a small family tradition that was uniquely theirs. Tom thought of his own mother, how she had always called him Tiny because of how small he had been when he was born. Family idiosyncrasies. He saw them eating together, the smell of roast ham and garlic filling his nose. Tom could feel the joy this small act of sharing brought them, how each person valued this time. But pain had also lived in this home. Tragedy and disappointment has walked with them. Tom sensed its lingering impression. This meal was like a moment of healing, an opportunity for redemption. Somewhere, far off in the distance, Tom could hear The Magi muttering, “Good, good,” over and over.

Like ash in the wind, Tom felt something brush past his face, as though a window had been left open and a winter breeze had kissed his cheek. He opened his eyes and began to let out a cry. The Magi clamped his hand over Tom’s mouth and raised his finger to his lips. They were no longer standing in the Barker’s living room. Tom scanned his surroundings and saw that they were now in a large and unfamiliar hallway, Christmas decorations lining the staircase. The panelled wooden floor shone as the golden orb glowed, before growing dim once again. Tom could hear the chatter of a family, the clink of cutlery on plates, the ting of wine glasses being filled. The Magi stepped back from Tom, and straightened his suit, before walking off in the direction of where the noises were coming from.

There was a scream and a shout before everything fell utterly silent. Tom slowly stepped out of the hallway and through the entrance, into the large, bright kitchen. His mouth fell open in disbelief as he saw the family he had only a moment ago imagined in his mind. Here they sat, around the same table, sharing a meal together. But the scene was now different from what Tom had pictured. The Magi stood behind the dad, his long fingers resting upon the larger man’s shoulders, like white spider’s legs waiting patiently in its web. He was watching with delight as the golden orb spun in the air above the centre of the table. The family sat there, frozen, visibly unable to move, their faces locked in an expression of horror. Tom could hear them breathing hard, straining to find a way out of their invisible chains. The orb somehow held them.

“I don’t believe it.” Tom’s voice cracked as the shock of what was happening dawned upon him.

“Well done Thomas, my clever boy. Welcome to the home of the Hill’s. This is Anthony.” The Magi patted him on the head like a pet dog. He moved around the table. “Here we have mom Ashley. These little rascals are Russell and Bobby.” He squeezed their cheeks as a doting uncle would. “And last, but by no means least . . .” The Magi came to a stop behind the girl Tom had first pictured, the girl who’s face had brought them here. “This is Julia.” He stooped down next to her, resting his folded arms on the table. “Isn’t she delightful,” he smirked, stroking her face with his cold, sharp fingers.

“Where the hell are we? Why are we here?”

“We’re here because you wanted a way out.”

“How is this a way out? You promised to make everything right? How is this making everything right?”

“Think carefully boy, what did I promise?”

“That you’d sort it all out, that I wouldn’t go to prison. So why are we here?” Tom was raising his voice, panic once again setting in.

“And you won’t go to prison. Does this look like prison?” The Magi chuckled, amused by the conversation, like he was speaking with an inquisitive child. “And I distinctly remember, Thomas, that you were the one who gathered us to his place, with this family.”

“But you tricked me. I panicked and didn’t know what else to do, or what I was even doing!”

“Oh, tut, tut my boy. Don’t play that game with me. You wanted a way out, and would do anything to find it. Well here we are.” The Magi stood up, and picked Julia’s fork up from her plate, licking the residue gravy from it. “Now, we haven’t got all day, and I need to eat. Look at me, I’m wasting away!” The Magi let out a sustained laugh, a wild mania settling upon his face. He walked over to Anthony, whose face was fixed forwards, unable to move or even blink. His eyes were turning red as they were bathed in sustained tears. His body shook slightly as he tried to free himself, a small trickle of blood running from his nose because of the effort. Slowly, and with an almost deep sensuality, The Magi pushed the fork into Anthony’s right eye. The man groaned from somewhere in the back of his throat, yet could not scream or cry out. Carefully, The Magi pulled Anthony’s eye out, holding it up and turning his fork to inspect it. He then placed the eye into his mouth, holding it on his tongue as though he were examining the palate from a glass of wine. Quite suddenly he then greedily chewed it, unable to contain himself any longer, swallowing it with a sigh of joy.

“Oh my god. Oh my fucking god.” Tom backed away from the table, fear and revulsion wrecking his insides.

“They say,” The Magi began, licking his lips, “that the eyes are a window to the soul. I can safely say...” He paused, looking up from Anthony, and staring at Tom with a fearsome malevolence. “It is true.”

The Magi forced his fork into Anthony’s left eye, the initial savouring of the moment now lost in a frenetic hunger. Tom watched with horror as The Magi’s face was writ with ecstasy after each bite, his tongue snaking out the side of his mouth, as pointed as the teeth that filled his mouth. As the creature moved to the mom, Tom could stand it no longer. He felt his mind and body losing control, reality giving way to monstrous delusions that threatened to consume him forever. Spotting the carving knife by Anthony’s frozen hand, Tom ran forwards and grabbed it, diving across the table and plunging the blade deep into The Magi’s side. Plates and glass smashed onto the floor, the chime of silverware ringing out as it connected with stone tiles.

The Magi shrieked in pain and fury. He took hold of Tom by the neck, who was desperately trying to roll off the table, and lifted him up, his thin body betraying an enormous strength. Tom swung his arms, trying to break free, his legs dangling in the air as he was restrained with ease. The Magi squeezed Tom’s throat, slowly choking him. His vision began to cloud as consciousness slowly left him, his limbs growing heavy and numb.

The Magi drew Tom’s face close to his own, stretching out his long, pointed tongue, and licked his cheek. “Well done Thomas, that was a fine effort,” He whispered. Tom watched The Magi draw back his free fist, and a moment later, everything went black.

* * *

He opened his eyes and shook his head, another pounding headache. Why do I always have a migraine on Christmas Eve? Tom glanced down at his hands and saw the Christmas present, and then looked up at the front door, slightly ajar. The snow crunched under his feet as he walked up the steps, the melody of carolers somewhere off in the distance, the moon making the white world glow. Christmas lights flashed all around as he knocked on the door and pushed it open.

“Hey Julia,” he called out. “It’s Tom. I just wanted to drop your Christmas present in.”

End.

* * *

Joe Haward is an eighth generation oyster fisherman, ordained Reverend, husband, dad, and lover of cats. The published author of two books, a horror writer, book reviewer, and freelance journalist, his work has featured online and in print across multiple platforms, anthologies, and sites. You can find him on Twitter @RevJoeHaward.

Maw Judy

By John M McCormick

The tenor of the voices continued to rise, discordant and alien, accompanied by a furious light storm that illuminated the entire inside of the house in the green and purple hues that spilled from around the parlor door

Jack Collins was 8 years old when his dad got sent to prison. His mother was left alone with him then, and she never was much count according to the folks that lived in the town of Inkwell. Inkwell wasn’t much more than a couple rows of coal camp houses one either side of a creek in a narrow holler [holler is Appalachian vernacular for hollow] in those remote Appalachian hills of southern West Virginia. Each house was built to the same tiny standards. They looked nearly identical, minus differences in paint and the structure of the porches, which were built and rebuilt by the generations of owners that lived and died in that tiny community. The community couldn’t boast for much. There were the houses and the creek and the railroad tracks. At the head of the holler was the Baptist church, and at the mouth was the entryway to the worked-out mine that had been laying the population of Inkwell off in small but increasing numbers every year.

Jack walked the narrow two-lane road that cut through the town every day of the summer. His mother didn’t much want him around, and he didn’t much care to be around her, either. She was real interested in booze and drugs, and when she wasn’t drunk or high she was selling herself in the back bedroom of their rundown trailer home so she could get drunk or high. So, Jack spent his time out on the street, hungry more often than not. There were a lot of good folks living in that old coal camp, mostly older folks that had seen the height of the coal industry in the area in the 70s and retired before the strikes and recessions of the 80s started putting men out of work almost as fast as the advances in mine technology.

Most, but not all, of these older folks liked Jack and they’d call to him from their porches. He’d shuffle on over in his dusty jeans and ratty striped shirts and they’d come down to open the chain-link gates to give him entry into their postage sized yards. Most of the people there were too proud to talk about charity or to accept it, so they played a game where they pretended to have urgent business for Jack to take care of and they’d trade him a meal of pinto beans and cornbread or a fried bologna sandwich for his trouble. At dark Jack would walk reluctantly home and sleep wherever he could find something clean enough to lay down on, and if he couldn’t find something suitable then he’d sneak over to his neighbor’s house, scuttle over the chain link fence, and lay down in the doghouse with the hound dogs.

One morning in early June of 1987, Jack woke up before his mother, which was most often the case, and hit the road. School was out for the summer, and his world shrank considerably then. Every day through the summer was another day in the holler. Most of the families with young children were young themselves, and the holler, like the mine, was last-in first-out. Younger men lost their jobs first, and they were the most likely folks to take their families away from Inkwell Holler to search for greener pastures. The kids that were left were mostly older and had little interest in playing with Jack. He couldn’t quite keep up on the ball court next to the mine office, and he was too young for most of the pastimes that those older kids had gotten themselves involved with. Jack didn’t quite understand what the teenagers were up to, but he knew he wasn’t wanted, and so he aimed to spend his days finding enjoyment on his own, or in the company of the kindly older folks that meandered about their tiny yards trying to maintain appearances in a dying town.

Jack walked through the town at a leisurely pace, glancing at different houses, hoping that someone might offer him something to eat for breakfast, but it looked like no one was outside this morning. He walked himself up the holler to the company store and turned on the outside water spigot usually reserved for the coiled up garden hose hanging messily from a hook on the side of the store. He took several long drinks of that earthy well water that served the whole town, hoping to drown out both the heat of the sun and his hunger as the heat of the day grew more intense.

With his stomach tricked into thinking it was full for a little while, Jack skirted over the bank at the company store and down to the winding little creek that cut its way through town. He waded in the water with the assurance that the sun would dry his raggedy shoes and pants when he was done. He made cairns of stones and picked up big flat rocks looking for those dull gray water snakes that occupied the creek. Sometimes he’d find a good one and it’d slither away into the creek and he could watch it wind like a ribbon through the water. He’d toss rocks at them just to see if he could hit them in their escape, and sometimes he could. Time passed, and Jack watched the sun in the sky. He had no clock in his house and no watch to carry, but he was a fair guesser when it came to time, and he figured that it was getting on to be about 10:30am. Near lunch time, but not quite.

With nothing better to do, Jack took a quick run up the weedy bank and started walking down the road, back toward home. He’d make that trip a time or two until someone noticed him, but he was hopeful someone would be out now. His shoes squeaked and sloshed across the dusty pavement, remnants of his creek adventure drying out in the wet footprints he left behind. He hadn’t gone too far when he heard a voice call out to him from a small white company house on his right.

“Aye, boy! Boy! C’mere, boy!” called the voice. Jack stopped in his tracks and looked over at the source of the voice. It was an elderly woman that Jack had seen in town many times, but she had never spoken to him that he could recall. She was wiry thin and wore a cardigan despite the heat. Her hair was in that poofed up old lady style. Just about all the old ladies wore it. She was staring at Jack with glassy eyes, half blind by the looks of her. Jack stopped in his tracks. He regarded her for a moment, and then said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Jack walked up to her gate and undid the metal U-shaped latch that held it closed. He closed the gate behind him and trudged up the small concrete walkway toward the woman’s porch. The walkway, steps, and porch were all adorned with the same well-worn outdoor carpet. The stuff was thin and gamey, never quite getting clean no matter how many times it was pressure washed or rained on. Of course, living in a coal town one had to get used to the dust from the trucks that would run the roads hauling loads of coal. More than once those trucks had almost hit Jack, but he had learned to move out of the way when he heard that familiar rumble coming up the road.

The old woman regarded Jack for a moment, and then said, “Boy, d’you know my name?”

“Yes, ma’am. You are Mrs. Carlisle,” he said. Something about the woman was disarming, but he still felt a caginess about her that he couldn’t quite settle. The sort of company his mother kept played with his mind, and he was just old enough to feel it when something was off about someone.

“Aye, aye, aye, that’s good, boy,” Mrs. Carlisle said. She shambled closer., Jack stood firmly in the center of the top step of the porch. She mustered a smile, and he stared as it revealed what looked like loose-fitting white dentures ready to fall right out of her mouth. Unnatural white, Jack thought to himself, but he didn’t say such things aloud. That would be rude, and the older folks were awful cranky about rudeness. Instead, he simply smiled back. Mrs. Carlisle shuffled even closer, closing the distance between them. She placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder, and said, “Son, you can call me Judy, if you’d like.”

“Thank you, Miss Judy,” replied Jack.

Miss Judy leaned in, still gripping Jack’s shoulder, and said, “Well, aren’t you just the sweetest little fellow? Let me ask you, son. Are you looking for something to do today? I sure do have a few things that could be done, and I would be obliged to pay you a little bit for each and every one of them.”

Jack considered her for a moment. There was no doubt that he’d take on the work. The idea of having a little money and buying some snacks at the company store appealed to him. There was astrangeness about this woman, though, and Jack couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It wasn’t a scary feeling, but something was tugging at the back of his mind telling him that this was different from his usual interactions with the rest of the town’s old folks.

On that first day with Miss Judy, Jack found himself employed in a number of different enterprises. He poured grass seed on a barren patch of earth in Miss Judy’s back yard. He walked through the house and picked up the dog’s leavings, leftover accidents from overnight when Miss Judy was unable to get up and let the dog out. Her back wouldn’t allow her to bend over too well, she explained with just a hint of embarrassment as the boy picked up the hardening excrement that the dog had left on the thin living room carpet. He pulled weeds from the flower bed and used a small spade to dislodge stubborn dandelions from cracks within the sidewalk. For each of these tasks she paid the boy a sum of thirty-five cents, which Jack noted was exactly how much money it would cost to get a can of pop out of the RC cola vending machine in front of the company store.

None of these tasks took particularly long, but the interim time between them was punctuated by Miss Judy talking to him about any number of things. She told of her sons that had gone off to war in Vietnam and not returned, and of her husband who had gone off to war in World War II and experienced an assortment of adventures. She even showed Jack some of the letters he had written from his time overseas, and let him put on the battered helmet that her late husband had kept on the top shelf of her home. She whispered conspiratorially to him, saying “don’t tell no one,” but Jack wondered just who aside from her dead relatives might care about such things. Still, he swore an oath to be quiet about it.

Throughout the day, Miss Judy fed Jack. She fumbled through her kitchen making sandwiches and offering him buttery crackers and cubes of cheese. Jack gladly accepted each gift he was given, appreciating the meals more than even Miss Judy may have realized.

There was something mighty puzzling about Miss Judy, though. Periodically, whenever Jack seemed to be halfway through a longer task, Miss Judy would call Jack up to the porch and bid him to sit down at a tiny patio table she kept on her porch. It was a metal table with a glass top surrounded by two wicker chairs. They each took an open seat around the table, and on the table sat three glass bottles of lemon-lime soda, one of which would sit unopened until both had dispensed with their drinks, and then would be placed back in the refrigerator. Jack relished these brief interludes. There was something comforting in seeing the old woman enjoy her soda. She closed her eyes and sipped on the cold beverage, sometimes regaling Jack with anecdotes about how it just tasted better from a glass bottle, but that a can would work in a pinch. “Never,” she would say to him. “Never buy a plastic bottle. Just ain’t the same.”

Jack wondered about that third bottle that rested on the table each time he took a break, but he also knew to be cautious about offending the older folks in town. Sometimes they saw his questioning as impertinence, and once or twice asking questions about things had gotten him shoo-ed out of the yard without anything to eat. Those occurrences were rare enough, but it had taught Jack to be somewhat apprehensive about questioning peoples’ peculiarities. By the end of the day, though, Jack just couldn’t hold it back anymore. He looked at Miss Judy as the first hints of dusk started to set in and said, “Why is it that you always have that third bottle up on the table?”

Miss Judy smiled politely, and leaned in close to Jack’s ear, whispering, “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise to keep it a secret. I think I can trust you. Can I trust you, boy?”

Jack nodded enthusiastically so that the half-blind woman could see the movement of his head.

“Promise?” she implored one more time.

“Yes, ma’am, I do promise.”

Miss Judy seemed satisfied with that response, and, still leaning close, said, “Well, let me tell you, that third bottle is set out for a very dear friend of mine. He is called Mister Scratch, and I never do know when he might stop by, so I always bring out an extra bottle, just in case he might come by looking for a drink to escape the heat.”

Jack hadn’t heard of any Mister Scratch, but he took her word for it. Maybe he lived outside the holler somewhere, or up on Crowley Mountain on the outside of town. Jack didn’t know, and he didn’t ask out of sheer politeness. He figured that if Miss Judy wanted him to know, she’d tell him, and that was that.

Days passed, and then weeks, and then months. Each day was much the same. Jack would walk his way over to Miss Judy’s and she would have a list of chores for him. Most of them were the same day to day. She got to trusting Jack with helping her count out her pills, dial the phone to make phone calls when she couldn’t make out the numbers, bringing in the mail and paper, fetching her house shoes, and cleaning up after the decrepit dog that trailed through the house after her, barking lamely at passersby. For each of these tasks she’d give Jack his thirty-five cents, and eventually bought him a glass piggy bank to be kept at her house so his mother wouldn’t keep taking his change when he was asleep. It was near the end of August now, and school was about to start back up. Jack and Miss Judy had grown close, and he saw in her what he imagined that a grandmother figure would be like. One day he sheepishly asked if he could call her Maw Judy from now on, since she was acting a lot like a maw-maw to him, and she smiled and said that would be fine. Occasionally Jack would work up the nerve to ask if he could stay the night at her house, but despite her fondness for him, Maw Judy never would acquiesce to that one demand. That is, until the last day of August.

Jack had gone home and found his mother had a male caller. Jack had come in to see what his mother was doing, and he found her in a state of undress along with a balding, obese man that he knew from town only by his nickname from the coal mine where he worked, Spuds. When Jack walked in his mother shrieked at him to get out, but Spuds regarded him for a moment and said, “I’ll pay extra if you let the boy watch.” His mother looked at the man, and then looked at Jack and screamed, this time with more urgency, for him to get out. Spuds protested, shouting, “Come back little guy, you can come in!”

Jack didn’t understand exactly what was going on with the man and his mother, but he felt deeply upset by it. He turned and walked through the fading light back toward Maw Judy’s house. He felt confused, unwelcome, and like he had been in some danger back there, but he couldn’t put his finger exactly on why that was. It was dark by the time he got to Maw Judy’s house, and he knocked on the door and listened for long moments as Maw Judy shuffled her way to the front door. She had been genuinely surprised to find him there and having been his confidant for all his boyish notions and ideas, she listened intently as he described the scene at his home. Tears welled in Jack’s eyes. He couldn’t explain why he felt as he felt, but he felt like there was something dangerous about being at home and asked if he could stay the night there with Maw Judy. This time she agreed, but she said there was one rule that Jack must follow if he were to stay. Jack nodded his head in affirmation, saying that he’d gladly do whatever she wanted if he got to sleep over.

“Boy, I will put you on the recliner chair tonight and you can sleep there, but whatever you do, whatever you see, whatever you hear, you are not to come into my bedroom or the parlor. Is that understood?”

Jack considered this for just a moment and then agreed. He knew these older folks enjoyed their privacy, especially where children were concerned.

“And one more thing, boy,” Maw Judy said. “We don’t talk about nothing that goes on in the house, do you understand?”

Again, Jack agreed. Maw Judy patted the boy on the head and said, “Now go on in there and get you a bath, young feller. I don’t want you dirtying up my good furniture.”

* * *

Jack had been sleeping soundly in the recliner chair when something woke him. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness of the living room as he came to a realization as to where he was. The door to Maw Judy’s bedroom was ajar, and the room was dark. The door to the room she called the parlor, which included little other than a comfortable sitting chair, a few bookcases, and a heavy wooden table, was closed. Strange lights were emanating from around the door, alternating in greens, blues, and reds. Periodically a gust of wind would leech out from under the door, and the fine coal camp dust that settled on every surface in the house would jump and swirl in the ethereal light. Jack should have been terrified at the strangeness of it all, but there was some force soothing his mind and soul, telling him it would be all right. He watched the lights as they flickered and danced in the outline of the door, and he heard muffled voices coming from the room. Voices. Fear nearly took hold of him then, but there was that force, that presence that kept telling Jack it would be okay, even as the voices joined into a series of repetitive chants in what must have been several different languages. The tenor of the voices continued to rise, discordant and alien, accompanied by a furious light storm that illuminated the entire inside of the house in the green and purple hues that spilled from around the parlor door. He could hear the wind as it whistled under the door, and papers stuck to the refrigerator with magnets in the tiny kitchen adjacent to the living room whipped in a terrible frenzy. Mail piled on top of the countertop microwave fluttered and spilled into the floor. Jack pulled the blanket up to his chin and closed his eyes to the light. He heard a rattle at the door, and then sounds that reminded him of television static waning in and out as someone fiddled with the antenna.

Then there was darkness. The winds died, and the light faded. Jack’s eyes began readjusting to the lack of light and in that pitch blackness Jack heard a man’s voice call out in a husky, distorted tone, “It will be done.” The voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away. It had a muffled quality that put Jack’s mind on trying to yell out to someone across the creek when the train was going by. There was a rumbling wall of sound that seemed to serve as a backdrop to the voice. It took an effort to carry that voice, and an effort to hear it properly.

The parlor door opened after a few short moments, and Maw Judy walked out. She stopped in the tiny area between the living room at kitchen, looked at Jack, and said “sleep.” Jack faded from consciousness within seconds, drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

Jack woke the next morning to a terrible din. Neighbors were gathered outside, their faces pallid and concerned. Jack poked his head through the screen door to listen. He heard snippets of the story, pieces of a tale that had shaken the small town.

“…of course, the conductor couldn’t stop, not that quick, and it was too late by then.”

“He laid his neck right on the train track, like he wanted ‘is own head to be cut off!”

“That drunkard Maynard that lives down by the church house said he heard Spuds yelling and screaming, ‘get this witch off my back!’ ‘Course the train conductor saw it all, and Spuds was alone there on that track. No one near him. Damn tweaker.”

“Why in the hell would he have done something like that? He must have got into the good stuff last night.”

Jack had not heard Maw Judy approach and didn’t know she was there until her hand landed gently on his shoulder. Her usual congenial expression was gone. She now stared at Jack with a stony, cold stare. It went unspoken between them, but Jack intuitively understood that Spuds wasn’t really alone at the railroad tracks last night.

* * *

When school took back up Jack had to ride the bus out of the holler every day instead of going to go see Maw Judy. He still visited her in the evenings, where she would give him a cold lemon-lime soda and encourage him to go do his homework in the parlor. She continued setting out the extra lemon-lime soda each time, but it never was opened.

One Friday in late in September, Jack got off the bus and started his daily journey up the holler to see Maw Judy. When he arrived, he noticed that there was a glass bottle waiting just outside her fence at the edge of the road for him, and two empty bottles sitting on the table. He heard voices, ever so muffled and familiar, coming from inside. Jack shivered a bit, picked up the bottle, and kept walking. If Maw was busy, he reckoned, he’d go to the company store and maybe buy a couple fireballs or root beer candies, whatever was on special. He wandered back by Maw’s house on the way home, plucking the fireball out of his mouth to cool the burning sensation left by the cinnamon candy. He stood there in front of the gate, fingers sticky. He could still hear the voices. He took a few steps back into the middle of the road. From that vantage point he could see Maw Judy through the screen door. She was still talking to someone, but he couldn’t see anyone else. Jack made his way home rather than get mixed up with the grown-ups.

The next day Maw Judy was dead. Jack had found her. He got up early and headed to Maw’s house, intent to spend Saturday with her. He knocked on the door and no one answered, so he let himself in. Maw Judy was hard of hearing as it was, so she didn’t complain when he’d come in to look for her. Today, however, she was sprawled out in the floor in that area between the kitchen, living room, and parlor. She lay on her side, her mouth agape and jaw drooping toward the floor so that her face looked disjointed and wrong. Her cloudy eyes were open and fixed, staring lifelessly into the parlor. Her dog, decrepit with age, lay next to her, its head down and whimpering slightly. Jack’s whole body seized-up, he couldn’t move. He regarded the sight with horror and his eyes released streams of flowing tears. He had never seen death before, but he knew it now. He finally gathered himself enough to run back out the front door and he screamed for help. The neighbors were startled, and several came running, but they only confirmed what Jack had already known. Maw Judy was dead and gone, and now Jack was alone.

* * *

The funeral had been a poor affair. Much of the town turned out but it was a short service. She didn’t have much family to speak of. Jack’s mother was supposed to get him something nice to wear but she got drunk instead and so Jack walked to the church in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, ashamed of being so underdressed for such an important occasion. There was talk of “old age” and “her heart went out” but there was no official cause of death. When someone is that old there’s rarely a question as why they went, just some assumptions and an understanding that we all have an expiration date. Jack cried freely. Some of Judy’s neighbors came to him, knowing they had that special relationship, and assured him that he’d see her again in Heaven one day. Jack was puzzled by this. He’d never attended church, and he wasn’t quite sure that there was a Heaven to begin with. A thought began tugging at the back of his mind, burrowing in like a worm. He heard a tiny voice in his mind say, “What if she’s somewhere else?”

* * *

Weeks passed, and the end of October was creeping up on Jack. He had been pre-occupied by thoughts of death. Seeing Maw Judy’s corpse was traumatizing but seeing her in the casket was perhaps even more disturbing. It felt unnatural. What he found in the house that September morning was natural. Terrible, but natural. In the casket Maw Judy’s eyes were sewn shut, mouth sewn shut, and she was covered in make-up. They did their best to make her look like she was alive, and it set Jack on edge. His sleep had been marred by nightmares, alternating scenes of Maw Judy dead on the floor and dead in the casket. He tried to talk to his mother about it one night after waking from a particularly disturbing dream, but she was fading in and out of consciousness, a needle still hanging from her arm as drool started to dribble down the side of her lip. She managed to spit out a few baleful words before passing out, saying, “Let the old bitch rot in peace you little shit.” Jack regarded her for a moment and then went back to bed. That night he dreamed of Maw Judy’s face in the casket. She was awake, but the flesh had been rotting off her bones. What was left wriggled with worms that shifted and undulated through the gray-green meat of her face. One worm, white and enthusiastic, slithered across her glassy right eye and deftly bored into the flesh under her disintegrating eyelid.

Jack woke with a start, his heart pounded. He instinctively reached for his face, hands trembling at the thought of the worms taking their share of his flesh. He walked into the living room, stepping over bottles and empty chip packages on his way to the kitchen. There wasn’t much in the fridge. The milk was bad. Behind a greasy, molding fast food container was a glass bottle of lemon-lime soda. Jack regarded it for a moment, and then drank it down enthusiastically. He headed back to bed, where he covered himself up with a heavy counterpane that he’d pulled out from a Goodwill bag someone had tossed off on his mother’s porch. He had just about drifted off to sleep when he heard the familiar voice of Maw Judy. It sounded like it was coming from far away, from somewhere else.

Maw Judy’s disembodied voice said, “Boy, you listen to me. It ain’t like that, what you saw in your dream. The body dies, but the ephemeral form, boy, it lasts. I done spent my life in service to Mister Scratch and his boss, and his boss’s boss, as it were. Old Scratch, he’s gone by a lot of names over the years. He’s been the poor man’s Devil and the learned man’s Nyarlathotep. He shows up in many places as many things, but he and all the other eldritch things are playing second fiddle to the great Dreamer that lies dead on the ocean floor. Boy, there ain’t much time. There’ll be a coming in your lifetime. They’ll wake the Dreamer and congregate here, and the world will burn up to ash, but you don’t have to suffer it. I have a place for you, here, with me. Do you want to come be with me on the other side of death’s sleep?”

Jack felt compelled to answer truthfully. He was silent for a beat, and then in the darkness he answered her, saying “Yes, Maw, I wanna be with you.”

Jack could hear the excitement in Maw’s voice as she said, “Then, boy, we’ll be reunited. Come on out to the graveyard where I’m buried-dead and it’ll all be settled out.”

* * *

Jack walked the long mile to the graveyard in the moonlight. It was situated on a flat on the hill behind the church. The small cemetery was half overgrown and surrounded by trees. He thought he’d be scared when he got there, but that same presence he felt in the living room of Maw Judy’s house the night Spuds was killed overtook him. He didn’t have the words for it, but it poured into him, and he felt an easiness about him. Jack felt like he might float away at any given time. When he got to the grave-site he found that it had been dug up. Three bottles of lemon-lime soda sat atop Maw Judy’s headstone. Despite the coolness of the air, the bottles dripped with heavy perspiration. Jack heard a whisper on the wind, saying “Bring ours on down, boy.” Jack carefully walked around the gravestone and plucked up two bottles, leaving the third atop the tombstone. The grave was dug deep, and the walls were steep. Jack sat at the edge of the grave, dangling his feet over the side, and then shimmied himself down, landing with a hard thud on the casket. He still had the two bottles tucked safely under his arm. Dirt from above sprinkled down on his shoulder from the edge of the grave, and in the pitter patter on his shirt he heard a distant voice say, “Open it up.” Jack did the voice’s bidding. He sat the sodas down on the bottom half of the casket, their tops leaning into the grave dirt. He pulled hard on the top of the casket. It had been nailed down, but there seemed to be a strength from within helping to push it open. He looked into the open casket and saw Maw Judy. She was thin, pallid, but surprisingly worm free. For the briefest of moments, a shadow that seemed to be cast by a very tall man fell over them, blocking out the bright rural moonlight. Jack instinctively grabbed the two bottles and climbed inside the casket, feeling even more at ease now. He grabbed at the satiny fabric on the inside of the coffin’s lid, and pulled it closed behind him.

The moment passed. Jack felt as though he was fading into a deep sleep, his eyelids heavy, his ears growing accustomed to the silence of the grave. The last thing that Jack heard before drifting off was the sound of an empty glass soda bottle thudding atop the casket, the gentle tinging of the metal lid that followed it, and the heavy thump of the first shovelful of dirt plodding onto the top of the casket.

End.

* * *

John M McCormick lives in Greenbrier County, West Virginia with his wife and four children. His work has previously appeared in the Walpurgisnacht 2019, Halloween 2020, and Lammas Eve 2021 editions of Lovecraftiana: The Magazine of Eldritch Horror.

2nd Place: Chainsaw Diary

By Emmie Christie

March 30

The chainsaws do not stop.

Perhaps they can’t. Maybe hell contracted them to torture me, otherwise I might enjoy an average purgatory week working from home with just the yappy dogs next door to superimpose irritation.

* * *

March 31

The workers chopped the tree down, yet the angry machines continue. I glare at them and slam the cookie tray down on the porch table. I pray the scent of chocolate chips wafts out to them, so they know the extent of my revenge. I eat seven in full view. Petty?

Yes.

* * *

April 1 (Day 3)

The neighbors across the street now want their tree cut down. The crew toils on like Sisyphus, buzzing, always buzzing. Do their hands grow numb? Do their ears give out? I am giving out. I am wearing down, a nail filed down too far by this sandpaper sound. The edge of my sanity scrapes down to the bleeding nail bed.

* * *

Day 4

I trek over to the house—which one? I don’t know; the chainsaws have infected most of the yards on the street—and the workers stop like crickets when I reach the yard, as if shy of my flyaway hair, my bloodshot eyes. “How much longer?” I ask, forcing the words from my introvert lips.

“Almost done,” they say. They do not meet my eyes. “Tomorrow, probably.”

* * *

Day 5

I now measure the days by the sound of the saw. I mutate into the woman in the yellow wallpaper, and I crawl along the ceiling to inspect the spiders. Even they have packed their webs and moved to another house, somewhere that doesn’t echo with the incessant—oh! It’s the exact color of fluorescence—you know, the startling light in the hotel bathroom after a night of not sleeping?

* * *

Day 21

The trees grow back every seven days, wherein a new chainsaw crew descends like a murdering of hope. A flock of crows wearing orange vests. How did I fall to hell without knowing?

Only I remember that they have cut these trees before, and that they will once again.

End.

Nicole Cushing

Interviewed by Carson Winter

Nicole Cushing, in my opinion, is the most underrated author in weird horror. Novels like Mr. Suicide and A Sick, Gray Laugh aren’t just good, they’re genre defining. But for those of us in the know, it’s hardly a surprise.

That’s what you get with a two-time Shirley Jackson award nominee and Stoker award winner. Cushing writes visceral, challenging fiction that is as incisive as it is unsettling. And if you’re a fan of weird horror, the books she writes are an immediate must-read. Her latest novella, The Half-Freaks (Grimscribe Press), is one of those rare novellas that manages to take Ligottian ideas and meld them with a unique, vicious, and often-times hilarious perspective that defies mere comparison.

We were lucky enough to talk to Cushing about transgression, influences, the power of the novel, and much more. Readers, we beg you, follow everything she does.

CW: Between A Sick Gray Laugh and Mr. Suicide, you often get labeled as a transgressive horror writer. What is it about transgression that you find appealing and how do you make sure you’re transgressing in a way that doesn’t unintentionally harm the reader?

NC: Let me start with a clarification: I don’t write transgressive fiction because I find transgression appealing. I write transgressive fiction because I have no other choice. I’ve experienced trauma, poverty, mental illness, and alcoholism. I’ve spent years with therapists and doctors dealing with those issues. I’ve lived much of my life in sketchy places, surrounded by sketchy people who did sketchy things. My reality has been transgressive. Therefore, my writing is too. I refuse to gentrify my work.

Now, to the second part of your question. A whole essay could be written on this subject. Anything I say here will be incomplete. But, having acknowledged that caveat, I’ll share my thoughts.

I’m offering the reader an aesthetic experience, not a moral experience and certainly not a didactic experience. I depict violence, but depiction doesn’t imply approval. I depict suicidal ideation because that’s been part of my experience. Again, depiction doesn’t imply approval. I’m describing, not prescribing.

There was a time in my own trauma journey when I stopped reading certain books half-way through because they were just too much for me. The Bell Jar is one example. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is another. The scenes of sexual violence in those books sickened me. They set loose a welter of mourning and momentarily put me in an anxious stupor.

But can I say Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou harmed me? Even unintentionally? I don’t think so. A dude harmed me, back in the mid-‘90s. The blame falls on him, not on Plath or Angelou or their publishers. I don’t think it’s right to hold novelists or memoirists responsible for the psychological wellbeing of their readers. I know this opinion might not be shared by other trauma survivors, and that’s okay. I do hope they understand where I’m coming from, though: blame the perpetrator, not the artist.

CW: I thought Mr. Suicide was an instant classic, but I rarely hear people talk about it. Can you talk a little about the genesis and influences of this book?

NC: I was a suicidal teenager in a working class family, so that certainly served as an inspiration for the book. A creepy boy I knew in high school served as another inspiration, as did various other people I’d met through the years.

Thomas Ligotti tops the list of literary influences, but Jack Ketchum and J.D. Salinger aren’t far behind. The Jay McInerney novel Bright Lights, Big City served as a stylistic influence. (McInerney’s novel is also written entirely in second person point of view.)

Unlike most authors operating in the modern Weird circle, you’re more known for your long fiction rather than your short stories. What do you think the novel has to offer Weird fiction writers in terms of function and form that short stories don’t?

First and foremost, nuance. A quote from Milan Kundera comes to mind: “The novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity. Every novel says to the reader: ‘Things are not as simple as you think.’ That is the novel’s eternal truth.” Kundera is speaking of a certain flavor of literary novel: the novel written in the playful tradition of Cervantes, the novel willing to embrace thematic contradictions. In A Sick Gray Laugh, The Half-Freaks, and everything I’ve written recently, I’ve been trying to bring Kundera’s vision of the novel into the Weird.

We need the Weird novel, because (in my opinion) the Weird short story can sometimes devolve into a philosophical bumper sticker. I have great respect and admiration for the work of Thomas Ligotti. I probably wouldn’t even have a writing career if it were not for his example. That said, I can no longer agree with his notion that “existence equals nightmare”.

In my experience, existence equals nuance. It’s a nightmare, yes, but it’s not just a nightmare. It’s also a million other things. It’s a freak show in which we’re both the audience and the exhibits. It’s the funniest joke you’ve ever heard. It’s a vertiginous orgasm. It’s tenderness and worry and selfishness and arthritis all at the same time. A short story writer has only so much space, and as a result can only depict so much nuance. A novelist working in the spirit of Kundera, on the other hand, has not only the room but also the obligation to explore contradictions and ambiguity. There’s a unique beauty that can be conjured from such an approach, a polyphonic harmony.

CW: While much is made of transgression and pessimism in your work, there’s also a vein of cosmic horror. What is your relationship to cosmic horror and are there any works that have personally influenced you?

NC: I became interested in cosmic horror about ten years ago. A lot of smart people were working in the area, and I wanted to join them. That said, I hadn’t read Lovecraft until I was well into my thirties. I never fell in love with him the way a lot of Weird writers fell in love with him, probably because I didn’t latch onto him in adolescence. I felt no warm glow of nostalgia when I read him.

I admire his imagination, though. I admire Clark Ashton Smith’s imagination, too. Ligotti blew my mind, but I’m not certain I’d call his approach “cosmic horror”. Ligotti’s approach seems more neuroscientific than cosmic. It’s not so much about the meaninglessness of humanity in the vast scheme of the cosmos. It’s the horror of human consciousness, the horror of the puppet who thinks he’s a real boy. If Ligotti were ever to write a Cthulhu story, Cthulhu would be every bit as insignificant as we are. He, too, would be a puppet who thought he was a real boy.

In any event, my current take on cosmic horror isn’t particularly Lovecraftian, Smithian, or Ligottian. I don’t look up at the night sky and see the vastness of space, populated by entities a thousand times more intelligent than homo sapiens. I live in a blue collar subdivision near a small city, so the night sky is polluted by streetlights. If I look up at the stars at all, I’m more annoyed than awestruck. They’re so faint and smudgy where I live. They’re like dead white bugs smeared across a black windshield. The night sky is just another layer of ugliness in which we’re encased, another filthy blanket piled on top of us (underneath of which we experience vertiginous orgasms).

In his novel Cosmos, the Polish modernist Witold Gombrowicz writes: “There is something like an excess of reality, its swelling beyond endurance.” That’s the sort of cosmic horror that makes sense to me, these days. Gombrowicz wasn’t a horror writer, so it might not be accurate to call his approach “cosmic horror”. It’s probably better to call it cosmic claustrophobia or cosmic annoyance at the cosmic burden. The stars are like shabby Christmas decorations left up by a neighbor all year round. Why doesn’t someone take them down?

CW: Which of your works do you think is most successful at executing your vision and why?

NC: Of my published work, probably The Half-Freaks.I think I nailed the depiction of foulness in that book. I refer not only to Harry Meyers’ personal foulness, but also the foulness of his family relationships, the foulness of the funeral business, the foulness of his town, and the foulness of the cosmos. At the same time, I wasn’t being a doctrinaire nihilist. I had empathy for Harry, and I think it showed. The book is transgressive, but also tender. And it may just be my most humorous book.

A Sick Gray Laugh did a good job of executing my vision, too, though. The Half-Freaks is just a teensy bit better.

CW: As anyone who follows you will know, you also have a YouTube channel where you discuss writing. What’s the single best piece of advice you ever got as an upstart writer?

NC: “Read every day, write every day.”

I know that advice has been disparaged over the last few years. Some feel it’s elitist. Not everyone has the time to read and write every day. In response, I’ll just say that I work a day job now as a bookseller. I write about an hour a day, typically generating around three hundred words in the process. I read for anywhere between thirty minutes to an hour a day. Some of this reading and writing occurs during my (unpaid) lunch hour at work.

I don’t do this literally every day. There might be a day or two each month where, for whatever reason, I can’t. If so, I don’t punish myself. Those are the exceptions, not the rule. As long as I’m reading and writing the vast majority of days, I’m meeting my goal.

There are some tradeoffs that come with making this commitment, of course. I don’t watch television and only rarely watch movies. I love playing softball and I’ve had to give that up for the time being. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I’d like to do, so I focus on what matters the most.

I offer this advice because the inertia of society will always try to tug you away from the creative life. It takes daily effort to swim against that tide. Also, the more you read and write the more your brain becomes familiar with all the nooks and crannies of language. You don’t have to practice piano every day to play the piano. But I suppose that if you want to be the best pianist you can be, daily practice is essential. The same goes for any instrument or endeavor. If you want to be a professional athlete, you’ll practice or run laps or lift weights every day or almost every day. Why would writing be any different?

CW: The Half-Freaks, from Grimscribe Press, is another one of my favorites of your work. I recently listened to Thomas Ligotti’s The Small People and couldn’t help but notice parallels to The Half-Freaks. Was The Half-Freaks written in a sort of direct dialog with The Small People?

NC: No. At least, not consciously. Harry Meyers came barging into my imagination demanding to be heard. He tracked the notion of “half-freaks” in with him.

CW: Finally, do you have any upcoming projects coming down the pipeline readers can look forward to?

NC: I’ve completed a new novel. I sent it to a publisher in early September. I’ve become interested in urban legends and the paranormal. This new book reflects that interest. If Mr. Suicide was the thesis and A Sick Gray Laugh the antithesis, this book might just be the synthesis. I hope to be able to share more details about this project in early 2022.

O Unholy Night

By Buck Weiss

There was a whale song quality in the depth of its abyss. Not beautiful, but terrifying as if Jeffrey was hearing the voice of a leviathan funneling through the mouth of a thirty-year-old woman.

“The weather outside is frightful and delightful,” said Jeffery as he stepped out of the bathroom. He laughed at himself and felt a long-needed smile cross his face. He was in love with an amazing woman, they had actual friends over for a Christmas party, and he had an engagement ring in his pocket. As he walked down the hall, he hummed along with the holiday stylings of the Squirrel Nut Zippers Christmas album. It was amazing that just a year ago he had been about to end it all.

“They’re cut into hendecagons.”

Jeffrey stepped into the kitchen just in time to hear Glenda, the love of his life, drop an impossible proclamation.

“What did you say?” he said. He had only stepped into the bathroom for a few minutes. Their “friends,” he couldn’t believe that he was calling them that, Trey and Andrea, had asked their plans for the holidays and he, in a very un-Jeffery like move, had invited them over for a holiday meal.

The whole thing had prompted Glenda to ask, “Are we becoming normal?”

Jeffrey had replied, “We might have to set the departure date back another year.”

“At least until after Halloween,” Glenda said, laughing.

The two couples had been drinking for hours and the dining room table was still filled with the turkey and fixings that Jeffery had bought from a restaurant specializing in holiday dinners. Trey and Andrea had both come dressed in sweatpants and hoodies over shorts and t-shirts. They were prepared for how hot Jeffery kept the heat in the house. Way hotter than most people, even during the harsh Illinois winters.

“I don’t care if you did grow up in Alaska,” Trey was fond of saying. “You’re in Illinois now, man. It’s too darn hot.”

Jeffrey had not grown up in Alaska, though he had told them that. He also did not keep the heat on just because he was always cold, though his life had chilled him in ways that his friends would never know.

His fourth beer had swollen his bladder to almost bursting, he stepped out for a moment. The guest had started to talk about desert as he stood over the toilet. How could that lead to what he could have sworn he heard Glenda say?

“What was that again, hon?” He crossed the threshold into the kitchen.

Glenda had her back to him. She was hunched over the counter, chewing on what he could only assume was a Christmas cookie. Their best friends, Trey and Andrea, owned the local Bakery down the street. It had the generic moniker of The Bake Shop, but their deserts were the best he had ever had, even better than the places he grew up with in Oregon, or the places he frequented when he hid out in New York City for a few years. He never thought he would find the world’s best snickerdoodle and the love of his life in the middle of nowhere, Illinois. But here he was.

“Hon…”

“The cookies,” her voice sounded hollowed out and garbled. It was as if she had a mouth full of water and she was trying to talk around it. “They’re hendecagons.”

Jeffrey’s body halted its forward motion. It understood the warning before his mind could catch up.

“Where have I heard that term before?” Glenda raised a hand up to her head as if she was straining to remember something just beyond her reach. As she pulled her hand away, a thick liquid stuck between her hand and her hair. Some of her dark brown strands slid off to rest on her shoulder. “It’s not one that I should know. Never had a mind for math…”

“Oh lord,” Jeffrey said as he started to step back.

He could see her changing now, the light tan of her skin was sliding to a sickly grey, and her hair was losing any tone as if she had been a picture and the filter had shifted to revenant.

Jeffrey turned to face the open double doors that opened to the TV room. He could hear the woman in the Christmas movie saying that she had to find her man and tell him how she felt. Andrea’s tan skin and hair had also shifted to wan grey. She sat there eating her cookie, her eyes staring past the screen. Beside her on the couch sat Trey. His cookies and plate had dropped to the floor. One eleven-sided cookie with mistletoe green icing sat on his jeans, where it fell. Trey’s head was bent back, and one of the kitchen knives from the block on the bar stuck out from his neck just below his Adam’s apple. Blood poured down the front of his shirt and Jeffrey could hear a low “Huck, Huck, Huck” as his new “best friend” tried to get his breath.

“You’re a hard man to find,” Glenda’s voice was even more garbled now as if she was impossibly speaking from the bowels of an underwater cave. There was a whale song quality in the depth of its abyss. Not beautiful, but terrifying as if Jeffrey was hearing the voice of a leviathan funneling through the mouth of a thirty-year-old woman.

Jeffrey turned back to find Glenda had moved toward him. She held the kitchen scissors in her right hand, the finger guards cupped in her palm, the blades sliding between her middle and index fingers like makeshift claws.

“We are incomplete. We have searched the Seen and Unseen for the eleventh vessel. The severed appendage, so that we may be whole and alive.”

“We did not think we would find you here.” Andrea was suddenly at his side. Her clothes were wet with a viscous grey mucus that was leaking from her eyes, nose, and mouth. She smelled of the ocean, the brine of the depths, and blood.

His mind went back through the years and found itself in a sea cave on the coast of Coos Bay, Oregon. A Christmas exploration that led to discovery. An ancient text promising power and vengeance against all who had done them wrong. Parents, teachers, bullies, and exes. The blasphemous geometry promised them all something in exchange for their servitude, for their help releasing the ancient god trapped in the hendecagon.

“Do you love this suicidal whore more than you loved me?” said Glenda as she raised the scissors to her own throat.

The voice had the same resonation of the dark liquid, yet he knew the petulance of that statement.

“No, Van.” He raised his hands to add force to the words. “Please, don’t hurt her.” Glenda was suicidal, like him, she wanted all the pain she felt in the world to stop. Jeffrey saw the scars on her wrist as she held the scissors to her throat. But they had found love in the midst of the misery. As long as they had each other, there was one more holiday to celebrate, one more possible friendship to cherish, and always there was each other. That was something real to fight off the outer darkness.

Jeffrey tried to see Vanessa Fergusson, his first love, in the thing that Glenda was becoming. Van had been there when they had found the eldritch tome. He had been Dominique Dryer then. Highschool loser and wannabe warlock. They had ravaged each other through the ancient rites and rituals that were bound in the work. It had been glorious. Sex and blood and sights that he could never put into words. They thought it was the greatest Christmas gift that they had ever been given. It was never enough.

She had been the one to suggest that they gather others to the cause of releasing the immortal creatures. No, he could not blame her alone. He was only too willing to agree.

The thing inside Glenda smiled a profane open-mouthed grin, and the grey liquid poured out as she did. “Ah, you do recognize your lost love.” She stepped forward. “Come, give us a kiss.”

He stepped back, and Andrea’s hand came up to grip his shoulder.

“Do not hurt her,” he repeated as a mantra.

The thing controlling Glenda stopped. “No real harm will come to her,” Van said through Glenda’s wet lips. “As long as you agree to finish your task and join us in the Unseen, to fully abate the walls of the hendecagon.”

“We only killed the other,” said the voice from Andrea. “Because the ritual of visiting the Seen demanded it. You remember the profane elements, Dom. The symbology, the recitation, and the drawing of blood. Always the drawing of blood.”

Andrea leaned into Jeffrey’s neck and pulled in a long, gurgling sniff. “Though,” she said with a smile. “I am not averse to the slaying of these vessels or any others. A soul sacrificed to our god through the mingling of blood and water finds favor in his innumerable eyes. He is known as the fiend of slit wrists and stillborn water births for a reason. It would seem that your woman knows about one of those if not both.”

“Potts,” said Jeffrey as he removed Andrea’s hand from his shoulder.

The creature inhabiting Andrea’s body only half smiled, but Jeffrey would recognize that smugness and lust for blood anywhere. Potts was one of their first converts. An older man originally drawn in by the promise of eternal life and sexual rites with young girls. The two only knew that they needed eleven. They did not care much about the character of those who joined them. It was not a youth group or a temperance organization. They were trying to free an ancient death god after all.

“Vanessa and I have become closer during our time in the depths,” said Potts through Andrea’s voice. “The pleasures of the new flesh and the pneuma are divers.”

If Potts thought he would get a rise out of him, he was wrong. It was Van’s lust for pleasures of all kinds that had laid the seeds of disgust in his heart in the beginning days of the project. He was all for the gifts that the unnamed god would bestow, but he had not wanted to share them with anyone but Van, neither did he want to share her with anyone. Van had told him and shown him that she and their new god did not feel the same.

Jeffrey turned back to Glenda. She was covered in the mucoid grey of the ancient god and Jeffrey noticed that it was starting to harden to a thick clay in places on her arms and shoulders. “You are not saying that you won’t kill her. You mean that she will be with me in the Unseen?”

“This world will change with the apogee,” Van said. “She will be safer with us in the god’s unholy favor than among the cattle. The oceans are already rising. The time of krakens and leviathans is at hand.”

“What am I expected to do?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

* * *

The snow had turned to a soft rain as the group walked the two blocks to The Bake Shop. The sky was as grey as the creatures that had Jeffery by both arms. No one drove by. The windows of houses they passed had dim lights, but no one moved behind the shades. Everyone in the small town was huddled in soft light behind their locked doors, fat from their Christmas feasts, tired from the day with their families. All were safe from the knowledge that something malevolent walked the streets.

He had never thought to ask why Trey and Andrea had not given the bakery a catchier name. As people, they were a little bland. Maybe they just never wanted the kitsch of Bake it till you Make It or Kookies!. Those were the names that he and Glenda had come up with after visiting the bakery for the first time. He and Glenda were all about the kitsch.

The Bake Shop was in the rejuvenated husk of an ancient gas station where Glenda had gone to eat lunch and buy cigarettes during her last year of high school.

He took a moment to look over at his love. He knew she was still there under the domineering presence of Van. Glenda was his everything. He had dated other women since leaving Oregon, but he always knew that he could never get close. Always felt the million hendecagonal eyes of the unknown god searching the Seen for the one who had ruined the ritual. Glenda was everything he needed in a woman, and she came along just as he was ready to give it all up. He was drunk in a park last Christmas Eve screaming, “Here I am! Come get me!”

She’d walked up and said, “I’ve come for you.”

Holding a gun and pointed it at him. “I was debating over whether I should shoot everyone I see or just myself. What do you think?”

He had held up a half bottle of Tennessee whiskey. “I think we should sit here and drink this. Sooner or later a death god will be by to collect me and the world will die anyway.”

They woke next to each other on Christmas morning. He asked her over for pancakes and she never left. The sun rose the following day and they’d never been apart since.

To create The Bake Shop, Trey and Andrea had renovated a rundown old gas station on the edge of Main Street. They had done an amazing job. The place had a classic 1950’s feel that first sparked up the conversation between the two couples. The facade of the bakery was covered in Christmas lights and garland. The owners had known how to embrace the joy of the season. Seeing the place made Jeffery a little more heartbroken for his friends. The Open sign, much like the owners, was dead.

The two possessed bodies shambled along beside Jeffrey as he stepped up to the building. The bell chimed as he held the door for them as if he were taking his lady friends out for dessert.

Potts laughed through Andrea as they all surveyed the scene that greeted them inside the bakery. On a normal night, two rows of small square tables would be to the left, filling the floor space. Now, the tables were shoved into a back corner. Trey and Andrea had lined every wall with Christmas trees decorated in different colors. Those trees were lit, and their flashing bulbs provided enough light to see the surrounding carnage.

Dead and dismembered bodies littered the floor. Jeffrey had known some of the people. The Parkers who owned the local grocery were piled in a bloody heap, first dad, then mom, with their youngest girl on top. He saw their teenage son, Robert among the gathered possessed. The Drowned of the Hendecagon had been busy moving through local houses this Christmas night. According to the lore, they only needed to kill one person to release their god from the Unseen. They had killed most of the block. Not just murdered, he could tell from the cuts, the blood splatter, the crimson covering the gathered, that they had enjoyed taking the ritual to the extreme.

Many of the people that he and Van had assembled to call up the dark god were repugnant human beings, but this was beyond anything he thought them capable of. Their time as appendages to the trapped fiend had turned them into macabre demons who gained pleasure through the pain of others.

The room was freezing as well. In their preparation for the ritual, the creatures had turned on the air conditioning in an effort to capture the ice of the depths where they had dwelled the past decade.

In the center of the room, drawn in the blood of the detrital dead, was a hendecagon. This would be the place where they would release the god and sacrifice the world to its hunger. It had none of the splendor or the poetry of the first ritual so long ago. Jeffrey knew he’d changed since then and still he saw this place as too unclean and too mundane for such an unholy act.

“Yooou have de-decided to finaaally join usss, Dom,” said a grey woman with a chef’s apron over her floral dress. The apron had the saying, “This mamma kissed Santa Claus!” written on the front. It was stained with blood.

In life, this woman had been Beth Smith, owner of the flower shop next door, but Jeffrey knew that she was now Margo, one of the more outspoken of the members. Her lightning fast hand struck his face. He shook his head and reached up to brush a trickle of blood from his nose.

“He has love for this woman,” said Van.

Margo smiled. “I always knew you were the weakest of us. I wish I could kill her now as punishment for what you have put us through. But we need no more delays. We must raise the nameless god once and for all.”

All the faces in the room turned toward Jeffrey. “Once and for all!” they chanted as one.

For a moment, Jeffrey was back at the original ritual. They had gathered in the sea cave where he and Van had found the ancient book. The tide was coming in. The ritual was sound and strong. They stood on the sides of the hendecagon and chanted the ancient rites as the water rose. They reached the penultimate moment of the ritual, used sacrificial knives to draw blood, and the sea water rushed in to drown them, providing the sacrifice that would link them to the god and release it from its prison. Yet, he had underestimated his will to live. His body and lungs had been shaped by cliff diving and swimming in the harsh ocean near Coos Bay. As the rest went to their watery grave, he kicked out and pushed himself through the mouth of the sea cave. As he rose, he felt the tentacled arms reaching for him from the depths, but they couldn’t stop him. He hit the surface, got in his car and didn’t stop driving until he had hit New York City.

The ritual setup in The Bake Shop was a mockery of that night. The eleven started to gather around the symbol. Margo handed each a large kitchen knife.

“How is this supposed to work?” Jeffery said.

“At the crescendo of the ritual, we will stab our bodies in the throat,” Van said. “The blood will drain into our lungs and drown us, completing the steps needed to release our god from his prison.”

Jeffrey was a little impressed. It wasn’t the worst plan for raising an ancient god of the ocean depths in the middle of Illinois.

His mind raced for a way out. Just as Margo handed him a knife and turned to step to her section of the hendecagon, he jumped left and hooked his arm around Glenda’s throat, grabbing her knife hand in the process. Then, he quickly pulled her backward past the counter of the bakery and into the kitchen.

He heard the creature inhabited bodies shriek as one when he slammed the door. The Bake Shop was not like other restaurants in many ways, but one large one was the fact that they did not have swinging metal doors into the kitchen.

The old gas station had a large steel-reinforced door with a sliding lock to keep burglars who broke into the garage from getting to the register. As the door shut, Jeffrey pushed the lock. It slid into place, just as the first fists started to hammer on the outside.

“What are you doing, Dom?” Van screamed as he pulled her back further into the small room.

He had to move fast. They would be through the door eventually. The back wall of the room was taken up by a large convection oven. He pulled the grey body of the only two women he had ever loved over to it and pulled down the door.

A blast of heat wafted out, and he smiled. He had hoped that they had turned up the air in the restaurant and not worried about the turning off the oven. He knew that Trey had lit it early that day because he was coming in early in the morning to start baking bread for the early risers.

“No! No!” Van started to gurgle as Jeffrey grabbed the knob and turned up the heat as high as it would go.

The digital gauge read “500 F.”

Jeffrey lifted Glenda’s head and forced it closer to the open oven. The slick grey gloss that covered her skin began to crisp up and flake.

“Let her out, Van!” Jeffrey said. “I need to talk to Glenda.”

“Okay!” Van was in agony. “Okay, Dom?” The ripple and warble of the Unseen slid away, and he could hear Glenda’s voice. “Jeffrey? What is happening? Where are we?”

He pulled her into an embrace, and they slid to the concrete floor of the kitchen.

“I’m so sorry,” he said as he kissed her face and brushed her tears. He looked around the room and found the exit door just as the beating started from the other side. They had moved around back of the building as well. There were no windows. There was no escape.

“Jeffrey,” Glenda had stopped crying and took his head in her hands to steady him. “Everything you said was real.”

He had told her the story of his life, the ancient book, and the dark god on nights where their shared darkness and resentment of the world had felt like a weight that would crush them. He had always known she had seen it as fantasy, metaphor for all the horrible shit that had driven Dom east and shaped him into the Jeffery that she loved.

She believed everything now as the evidence was beating down the walls. The door between the kitchen and the main room had started to buckle. They would be in soon.

“So,” she said. “What do we do?”

Jeffrey picked up the kitchen knife and handed it to his love. “The ritual can’t be performed without me. You’re going to have to kill me.”

“What?” Glenda started to cry.

“Once I’m dead the appendages will be pulled back into the Unseen. They will release their vessels, and you will be safe. They will not harm you.”

“Not harm me!” She placed her hand on his chest. “They will have taken the one thing that matters in this world from me. They will have separated me from you. No, I can’t!” She moved her hand up to his face. “No! I won’t do it! I can’t.”

They sat there for another moment just staring at each other in the heat of the kitchen. The door bent in at the top, and grey hands started pushing their way in.

“No one ever loved me but you,” she told him.

He thought of how her father had abused her, how her mother had turned a blind eye. How the coach of her high school volleyball team had said that he loved her, and how other teachers and students had treated her like she was to blame when he was finally fired. How everyone that was supposed to help her, to love her, to show her that she was amazing had shit on her.

His life had not been much better, drugged out and abusive parents, bullies who humiliated him for laughs. Then, the death cult and the running. They had both been in that park that night to end it all. It was only each other that had kept them from doing it every day since.

All they had, the only thing that made sense in the world, was each other. He pulled his eyes up to hers, and she pulled him in for a long passionate kiss.

“It’s the only way to save the world.” He tried one more time, but there was no will in it.

“Fuck the world. What have they ever done for us?” she said.

Jeffery pulled the ring from his pocket and held it up to Glenda. “Will you be my wife?”

Glenda held out her hand and Jefferey slid the small band on her finger. “Forever and always!”

They kissed again. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too!” She held him close.

Holding hands, they stood and moved to the kitchen door. Jeffrey reached up and slid the latch. “Wait!” he said as the ghouls moved forward.

Down the block, the old Methodist Church marked the hour with a handbell rendition of “O Holy Night.” Jeffery noticed through the windows that the rain was really coming down now. It would never end.

Within moments they were all gathered around the symbol once more. Each held a knife for the sacrifice. Glenda and Jeffrey intertwined the fingers of their free hands as the chanting started.

“Let’s live happily ever after in the thrall of a god of death,” He said.

“And watch the world drown,” she replied.

The knives were driven home, and as the eleven drowned, the doors of the hendecagon broke asunder. The great leviathan rose from its prison, and the world was bathed in blood and water.

In the millennia after the submerging, when the arms of the ancient god rose up from the lower depths to survey its conquered world, two would forever be intertwined. Supplicants would hang baubles from their hendecagon wreaths and tell their newts the legend of the lovers who chose each other and plunged the human race into watery doom.

End.

* * *

Buck Weiss (he/him) is a writer and American Literature professor who lives in Chattanooga, TN. His work appears in Violent Vixens: An Homage to Grindhouse Horror (Dark Peninsula Press), Wretched Creations Magazine, Scary Snippets: Easter Edition, Carnacki: The New Adventures, Machina Mortis: Steampunk’d Tales of Terror, and in Encounters Magazine. He is also the author of the graphic novel, Son Chasers: Hitler’s America (Pilot Studios). Follow him on Twitter @WhyBuckWhy.

Pernkopf’s Fifth

By Rob Francis

A dark shadow stood behind the old man, elongated out of proportion, stretching up almost to the ceiling. And from the shadow stretched a slender arm, the fingers of its hand splayed and embedded in Morton’s skull.

The cul-de-sac was shadowed and silent in the December gloom, early evening turned almost midnight-black. Even the commuter rush, so pronounced across the city, seemed to avoid this street that led nowhere, people and traffic alike giving it a wide berth. The streetlamps were on, though it was hard to tell from the meagre light they shed.

Rufus steadied his breathing. He was close now.

A soft light shone from the highest window of the end house, illuminating the Victorian eaves but only emphasising the darkness that cloaked the rest of the building. That was good. Dr Morton must be in his study. Perhaps the old man was holding the fifth volume of the Atlas even now, tracing its detailed illustrations with his wrinkled fingers. Revelling in the secrets within.

With a last deep breath cold in his throat, Rufus crossed the narrow street to the portico and the heavy black door it sheltered. The iron knocker sounded dully against the wood.

It was opened almost immediately by one of the tallest women Rufus had ever seen. Long silver-blond hair spilled over her thin shoulders, a sharp contrast with the trim black suit she wore. A cream blouse and purple-ink velvet tie completed the ensemble. She assessed him through narrowed eyes.

“Hello.” Her mouth twisted in what might have been a smile. “Do you have an appointment?”

Rufus fished a business card from his jacket pocket and cleared his throat. “Oh. No, but…” He passed the card across. “I’m Rufus Pryce, from Senate House. I’m a professor of medical ethics and philosophy. Might Dr Morton give me a few minutes, do you think?”

She took the card, her eyes never leaving his face. “Right now?” She paused as if thinking deeply about the question. “Yes, I think so. Follow me.” She stood aside as Rufus stepped into a large foyer, the gleaming wooden floor reflecting lights from a series of wall lamps and the small chandelier that hung above, as well as the glazed surfaces of half a dozen oil paintings of sombre forested landscapes. A wide staircase stretched to a landing from which two narrower flights projected left and right.

The woman closed the door and moved to stand at the bottom of the stairs, the faint scent of wood polish reaching Rufus as she drifted by. He followed.

She didn’t move. Just stood, waiting, her gaze fixed on the steps before her.

After a long, awkward moment, Rufus started to ask whether he should go on up alone but was silenced as the woman took his hand. Her fingers were long and bony, her palm warm against his skin.

They ascended.

Rufus’s face burned. He focused on trying to keep pace with the woman, who was so much taller than him that he felt like he was being led like a child, hand elevated at an odd angle. He hoped he wasn’t starting to sweat and that the woman wouldn’t be repulsed by his touch.

As he often did when the world acted in ways he wasn’t expecting, Rufus filed away the moment so he could tell his husband later.

She held my hand all the way up the stairs, Marcus. I don’t think I’ve ever held a woman’s hand that long!

Marcus would be wondering where he was. He should’ve called when he’d left work, but explanations would have cost time. And he was so close, now. The end of decades of waiting.

At the first floor landing, the woman turned to the left and Rufus discreetly tugged away, trying to break contact, but her grip only tightened. He sought desperately for something to say.

“A lovely house.” His voice cracked, his mouth dry.

The woman smiled. “Yes. It has a lot of corners.”

Rufus murmured an appreciative noise and made a show of peering about the coving, the alcoves, the doorframes they passed as they climbed, crossing the second and third floor landings and continuing to the top of the house, up a dark final flight that was so narrow that they had to go in single file, the woman’s hand dangling behind her, his stretched out in front, as helpless as a paralysed bird in the grip of a predatory tropical spider. The steps ended at a door. The woman turned to peer down at him.

“The doctor’s study.” She released his hand and knocked.

Rufus examined his fingers surreptitiously, as if to check there was nothing on them. But what would there be? An absurd thought. He wriggled his fingers, jabbed his hand into his pocket, then took it out again.

The woman nodded, opened the door so that light spilled into the stairwell, and slipped by him, heading downstairs without a word.

Beyond the threshold, Dr Morton sat at a large desk piled high with books. More volumes lined the bookshelves that covered two walls of the study, the others sporting leaded windows large enough that someone standing before them could gaze across the rooftops of London all the way to St. Paul’s to the south and the Houses of Parliament to the west.

Dr Morton sat behind the desk, peering through a magnifying glass at a small book bound in brown leather. As Rufus poked his head tentatively into the room, Morton carefully placed the glass on the desk and hooked a thin pair of spectacles over his ears.

“Ah,” he said, scooting his chair back a little and standing. He was a short man, but broad-shouldered and with a somewhat blockish head topped with a grey widow’s peak. He smiled, showing two rows of neat white teeth.

“Ms Portia fetched you up, did she? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

Rufus strode to the desk, his shoes sinking almost out of sight in the thick carpet pile. Morton’s hand was as dry and warm as the woman’s—Ms Portia’s—had been.

“Rufus Pryce.” Rufus returned the doctor’s smile. “I’m a professor at Senate House. Apologies for calling unannounced like this. Your lady… I mean, Ms Portia was it? She, well, yes, she brought me up.”

“Did she hold your hand all the way?” His eyes shined as at some private joke.

Rufus nodded.

“You’ll have to excuse her. She’s a bit of a recluse, you know. Doesn’t socialise much. But I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s quite a boon to me, especially now I’m retired.”

“Yes.” Rufus glanced at the book Morton had been studying, but he was sure it was too small to be a volume of the Atlas.

Morton caught the glance and, still smiling, closed the book.

“So. What can I do for you?” He leaned his head back, as if to study Rufus more clearly through his small lenses.

“You’re a retired surgeon, Dr Morton? Spent the last twenty years at St Thomas’s Hospital?”

“Yes.” Morton sat once more, and motioned Rufus to another chair facing the desk. “I’ve performed thousands of procedures during my career. Alas…” He held up a hand that trembled slightly. “Retirement became inevitable.”

Rufus looked around the room, letting his gaze linger on the bookshelves.

“You have quite a collection of medical volumes, I assume?”

“Of course.”

“Some of which are very specialist, meant only for surgeons?”

“Yes.” A pause. “What are you driving at?”

“My field is medical ethics. I’ve interviewed several surgeons over the years who have copies of Pernkopf’s Atlas.”

Morton shrugged. “I see. That’s nothing special, really. Even if the books are frowned upon, they are still used. Their accuracy is not diminished by their… tarnished origins.”

“They’re no longer published for a clear reason. Pernkopf’s team mapped the nervous system of the human body using the corpses of executed innocents. Jews, homosexuals, minorities, the disabled.” He lowered his pitch, which had climbed higher than he had intended. “All victims of the Reich.”

Morton nodded sadly. “Yes. But the science can be separated from the morality. The books save many lives today. They should not be discarded. They aren’t banned, after all. Just discontinued, a decision made solely by the publisher.”

“If I may ask, Dr Morton, which printing of the Atlas do you own?”

Morton drummed his fingers on the desk. “An early printing.”

“Why?”

The old man shrugged. “They were the ones I picked up when I was a young student. From a second- hand medical bookshop.”

“Really? Because I spoke to an antiques dealer in Soho a few days ago, after some considerable trouble getting hold of him. And persuading him to talk. Johannes Köhler. He specialises in… well, let’s say war memorabilia. He says that you’ve bought a few things from him over the years, including some very early editions of the Atlas. Two unfinished volumes, in fact. Books One and Three. Penned by Pernkopf himself, and purchased for a fair sum. I wonder why that is?”

Morton smiled and adjusted his glasses again. “I have an interest. Comparison of early drafts with the published versions, that sort of thing.”

Rufus turned to the window, though he was unable to see anything in the darkness beyond. He couldn’t trust himself to look Morton in the eye. He clasped his hands together to keep them still.

“The Atlas has four volumes. The fourth was completed after Pernkopf’s death.”

“Yes.”

“Are you familiar with the rumour that there was a fifth volume? One that went… deeper than the others.” He watched the old man’s reflection in the glass.

Morton’s smile didn’t waver.

“Yes, of course. A common rumour. Without foundation, I’m sure.”

“That’s interesting. Because Köhler told me that until very recently he had Pernkopf’s final work. Acquired it from an estate sale over in the Chilterns, some Austrian collector of medical arcana who passed away a few years ago. Köhler had it in storage for some time. Until he sold it to you.”

The smile finally wilted. Morton sat back in his chair. “I see. How much did that information cost you?”

“A lot more than a typical research grant would cover, certainly.”

“Damn Köhler. Such a vulture. I swear he didn’t even know what he had until he saw my interest.” Morton took off his spectacles and carefully polished the lenses on a cloth, then put them back on. “So why are you here? Because you wish to see it?”

“Yes. I need to see it. I want to know if the rumours are true. That Pernkopf somehow found a way to make a metaphysical Atlas. To see something beyond the biology. I’m sure it’s nonsense, but… I must know. I’ve been looking for so long.”

“Even if the knowledge was obtained from the violated bodies of innocents?”

“Yes,” Rufus said quietly. “Not to act on the knowledge, or to show to anyone. Just to know. It’s what all scholars pursue, after all.”

“Quite. Well. There are some gaps in your knowledge. Some things you should know.” Morton walked to one of the windows and a little table that stood by it. Atop the table stood a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Rufus wondered if Morton had been expecting a visitor, or if the glasses were for him and Ms Portia. Dr Morton poured the wine slowly and passed a glass to Rufus. It was dense and silky against his tongue. Just the type he liked.

“Pernkopf had help. With the Atlas.”

Rufus took another sip. The wine was really very good. “Of course. Many students and researchers in Vienna, illustrators to draw and colour the plates…”

“Not that kind of help. Not with his final work. The sort of help that could be considered even more unethical than peeling back a thousand layers of fine, innocent skin.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Metaphysical help. For a metaphysical topic.”

Rufus snorted. “You mean… otherworldly? Daemonic?”

Morton grinned as if delighted at a superb witticism. “A benighted man might put it like that, I suppose.”

In his jacket pocket, Rufus’s phone buzzed. It would be Marcus calling, asking when he was coming home, ready to discuss what they were going to have for dinner. He ignored it.

“You can’t expect me to believe that.”

“Is it any more outrageous than the idea that Pernkopf had mapped something beyond the nature of biophysical reality? Is it so hard to consider that something from beyond our reality had helped him? You’re a scholar of philosophy, after all. Philosophise.”

“What does the book show?”

“Book? Oh, the final part of the Atlas isn’t a book. Something as complex as a soul, as the world beyond, can’t be expressed in two dimensions. Difficult enough to represent it in three dimensions, in fact. As meaningless as a dot on a page.”

“Can I see?”

“Yes. If you are willing to look. But I must caution you. Once you look, you become Caesar, crossing the Rubicon. Once you have seen, nothing can be the same.”

Rufus’s phone buzzed again.

“Would you like to answer that, before you decide?”

“No.”

“You are willing to see?”

“Yes.”

Morton took the spectacles off once more and placed them on the desk. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes for a few moments, then motioned to the spectacles. “There you are.”

“The glasses? These are the fifth volume?”

“A lens, carefully crafted with the right tools and instruction, can show much more than lines on a page ever could. See for yourself.”

The spectacles were almost weightless as Rufus lifted them to his face. There was a jarring moment of pain and disorientation as his eyes adjusted to the lenses, but as he looked around the room he saw nothing different. Until he returned his gaze to Morton.

A dark shadow stood behind the old man, elongated out of proportion, stretching up almost to the ceiling. And from the shadow stretched a slender arm, the fingers of its hand splayed and embedded in Morton’s skull.

“Do you see it now?” he whispered. “Die Marionette und der Meister.”

Now, with these lenses, Rufus recognised Eduard Pernkopf. This was the man whose likeness he had seen on the internet and in countless books on medical history. Pernkopf, who had died almost seventy years ago, aged sixty-six, yet sat before him in this study, surely the same age, his appearance altered only slightly. How had he not seen it before?

The shadowy fingers flexed and Morton – Pernkopf – smiled.

“Only the work matters, my friend. You understand this, of all people. Work will set you free.”

Something whispered against the carpet behind him and Rufus spun to see Ms Portia standing before the door. A vast white spider loomed over her, its bony, hairless legs anchored in the corners of the room, tiny pink eyes watching him carefully. A faint mist steamed from its fangs.

Rufus ripped the spectacles from his face and flung them to the floor, and once more it was just Ms Portia standing before him, her face expressionless.

He ran, prepared to barge straight through the woman if she tried to stop him, but she stepped to one side to let him pass. He stumbled through the door and lost his footing as he passed from thick carpet to polished wooden steps, tumbling down, knocking his head, shoulders and knees as he went and still not stopping as he reached the lower landing, just scrambling up and racing on, taking the steps three or four at a time.

He reached the foyer and, after a moment’s frenzied fumbling, trying to get his fingers to work the latch, he ripped the front door open and fled into the winter night, sweat cool against his forehead.

House fronts passed on either side as he ran aimlessly, concentrating on putting distance between himself and the house, his breath scratching hard against his cold throat, the creep of blood harsh in his mouth. He reached for his phone, but it was gone. Dropped, when he tumbled down the stairs. Left behind with Morton and Portia.

He stopped, shuddering for breath. He should get on the tube, make his way home. Find Marcus and tell him what had happened. But it seemed impossible, somehow. Like something that he might have done before, in another life, but not an option now.

St Paul’s churchyard stretched before him, the illuminated front of the great cathedral looming on his right. He’d run all the way, mindless, and ended up here.

Exhausted, he stumbled to the great stone steps that led to the western door and slumped down, ignoring the coldness, watching his breath steam in the night air.

He sat on the steps of the cathedral, staring at the statue of Queen Anne on her pedestal, oblivious to the couples that wandered past the cafes and restaurants or posed for photos nearby. The sky was cloudless, the moon bright. Limned in its light, he could see a thin line of silvery silk stretching from his hand into the darkness of the side streets. It was tight around his fingers, and unspooled whenever he moved. He knew instinctively that he would never be able to outrun it.

Every so often, he could feel it pull.

End.

* * *

Rob Francis is an academic and writer based in London. He mainly writes short fantasy and horror, and his stories have appeared in magazines such as The Arcanist, Apparition Lit, Metaphorosis, Tales to Terrify and Weird Horror. Rob has also contributed stories to several anthologies, including DeadSteam by Grimmer & Grimmer books, Under the Full Moon’s Light by Owl Hollow Press, and Scare Me by Esskaye Books. He is an affiliate member of the HWA. Rob lurks on Twitter @RAFurbaneco

1st Place: Our First Embalming

By R. Wayne Gray

Casey flicked at the goatee of the man lying naked on the slab. “Nice beard. What is this guy supposed to be, royalty or something?”

Brad threw a switch on the embalming machine. It hummed to life, its various tubes and reservoirs vibrating as if alive.

“Mr. Johnson said he was some sort of magic guy,” Brad said. “You know, card tricks, rabbits, shit like that.”

“Ah, like a clown,” Casey said. He held up a long metal tube, florescent lighting flashing off it like a light saber. “You sure you remember how to do this?”

Brad’s hand hovered over a large red button on the machine, then slid over a few inches. Brad frowned, and slowly pushed the yellow button.

“I think so. How crazy is it that we’re hired, have five minutes of training, and are embalming a guy. All in one afternoon!”

Casey lifted one of the dead man’s arms and let if flop back on the table. “Pretty crazy. Our first embalming.” He walked slowly around the table, keeping a careful watch on the corpse. “Should we sew the eyes shut or something? It’s like they follow me.”

Brad leaned in close, closing one of the corpse’s eyelids with a finger. It snapped back open. “My uncle has a Jesus painting like that. Wherever you are in the room, Jesus is watching.” The embalming machine pinged, and Brad hefted a second metal tube from a plastic sheath on the machine’s side. “Eyes? Who knows. We’ll ask Mr. Johnson when he gets back from lunch. Right now, it’s stick him and fill him time. Any last words, tricks dude?”

They both stared at the body. Several quiet seconds went by. Neither moved. Casey finally shook his head. “I think these chemical fumes are starting to get to me. OK, you stick him in the leg, and I’ll stick him in the… the neck, right? I think. If not, we’ll just switch them.”

Casey plunged his tube into Brad’s neck. Brad dropped, but not before slamming his own tube into Casey’s leg, severing the femoral artery. Blood arced from both wounds, spattering against walls, equipment, and the corpse.

From his position on the floor, Brad gave a weak thumbs up. Casey hobbled over to the embalming machine and cranked the machine’s sole dial all the way to the right. He hit the machine’s green button, and the machine geared down to a throbbing, sucking sound. Casey slid down next to Brad, his eyes losing focus.

“We are so, good, at this, job,” he whispered, the floor pooling red.

* * *

Brad and Casey lay slumped against the embalming machine, small smiles on their pale, slack faces. A shadow briefly lingered on them, tall, the chin coming to a point. Droplets of blood on the two ran towards the shadow and evaporated.

“The term is mesmerist, you morons,” a deep, soothing voice said. The shadow slid over the boy’s faces and was gone.

End

Burning Death Amid the Mile-Long Shelves in the Library of Forbidden Knowledge

By Bernard McGhee

His arms were too long, hands hanging past his knees. He opened his extra-wide mouth and smiled, showing a set of tiny writhing black tentacles where his teeth should have been.

Sometimes there’s no box to check when the person who died was just your best friend. So I helped put Quentin in the ground, gave myself a few minutes to cry and then reported for my evening shift at the Library.

Of course, no humans were allowed to read the books there. They didn’t call it the Library of Forbidden Knowledge to be funny. But the Librarians needed people who still had physical bodies to shelve the books, handle new ones that came in and do other little odd jobs. That’s where clerks like me came in.

I tried to smile when I saw Drake in the coatroom but I was hoping to not have to talk to anyone else that day. His shift over, he was zipping up his lunch box and getting ready to leave.

“I finally did it today, Alex,” he said, straining to keep his face straight. “I read one of the books. I’m serious this time.”

“And what did you learn?” I asked, not looking at him. It was a running joke we had been batting around for the last few months. Obviously, he hadn’t actually read any of them. He probably wouldn’t be standing there if he had.

“I learned that no matter how hard you try, you’re never going to be able to make that denim jacket look cool,” he said and looked at me, waiting for a comeback.

Quentin had been with me when I bought the jacket last year. He always teased me about it too. I knew I was supposed to laugh or say something back. Instead, I remembered how Quentin’s face twisted in mock disapproval as I paid for the jacket. He could be such a dick sometimes. It was funny.

Drake frowned. “You okay?” Then his eyebrows jumped. “Oh shit. I completely forgot your friend’s funeral was today. I’m sorry. How are you holding up?”

“No problem. I’m fine. It was a nice service.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He mumbled something about being available if I needed to talk and hurried out. I was relieved when I heard the Library’s heavy double-doors open and then shut with a loud echoing thud, locking automatically to anyone who wasn’t a clerk.

In the dark, empty lobby, my footsteps echoed on the black marble floor. I pushed through another set of doors and was standing on an iron catwalk that overlooked a fluorescent-lit underground sea of bookshelves that stretched beyond what I could see. The cool air smelled of dusty old paper.

I looked around. As far as I could tell, none of the Librarians were nearby. I took in a deep breath, held it, and let it out in a slow sigh. After a long day of tears and condolences, it was just me and the stacks now. I sat in an armchair by the door and closed my eyes. All I had to do was wait in the silence for a new book to come in. Wait and not think about Quentin.

I didn’t have to wait long. On the floor under the catwalk, a conveyor belt came to life with a whir. I walked down the rickety metal stairs to the stone floor and waited at the end of the conveyor, which came out of a square hole in the stone wall. A blue, leather-bound book wobbled down the conveyor belt and stopped when it reached my waiting hands. I never knew what was at the other end of the conveyor belt or where the books came from.

The writing on the cover appeared first as strange symbols and drawings. But after staring at it for a few seconds, the lines blurred into letters. These books wanted to be read. The cover now showed the title: “What Kerchulger Did.”

“That would probably sound more interesting if I knew who the heck Kerchulger was,” I said to no one. “I guess that part’s forbidden too.” I sat behind the steering wheel of a golf cart parked a few feet away. “Now to find a Librarian to tell me where to put this.”

The air around me got colder. “Or they’ll find me,” I muttered.

A tall, ghostly figure hidden under a red shroud appeared in front of me.

“Where do you want it?” I asked, holding up the book.

“The Forgotten Deities section,” a soft, raspy voice that seemed to be coming from all around me said.

I almost missed what it said. I was remembering how when we were kids, Quentin and I would stay up late to watch bad horror movies we weren’t supposed see. We would have loved a movie where the monster looked like the Librarians.

“Can you tell me what happens to people after they die?” I blurted out. But the Librarian was already gone. “The Forgotten Deities section then,” I said and drove the golf cart into the sea of shelves.

It took nearly 30 minutes to drive to the Forgotten Deities section. Some of the shelves really were about a mile long, with ladders built into them at various spots for clerks to climb up, walk along the top of the shelf and climb down on the other side without having to go all the way around. I never knew exactly how big the Library was. Sometimes I’d find a wall at the end of a row of shelves. But the next day, that wall would be gone and there’d be more shelves packed with books.

Drake said a clerk once got lost in the shelves and they found him starved to death six weeks later. I always had my doubts about that story but I also kept a map on me that illustrated roughly where each section was.

When I got to the section, I stopped the golf cart and stepped out. Far away from the conveyor belt and without the hum of the cart’s motor, the Library was deathly quiet. Every movement I made sounded too loud as I scanned the shelves for an empty spot to put the newest book.

About 20 feet down the aisle, a young girl in a tattered, blue dress was crouched on the floor with her back to the bookshelf, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked up at me through strands of filthy brown hair. Her eyes were filled with terror. I looked away and when I looked back, she was gone. From the next aisle on the other side of the bookshelf came a burst of manic laughter in a man’s voice. Then silence again. Phantoms. The Library was full of them. The rules said to ignore them.

I slid the book into an empty space next to one titled The Talking Shadows and froze. What if Quentin ended up in a place like this? Was he wandering around in an endless maze of shelves stacked high with books no one would ever read? Was he yelling for someone to find him? Or was he in a worse place? What if he hadn’t gone to church enough? What if some of his jokes were too mean? What about the time we snuck into his parent’s closet to look at the porno magazines his dad hid there?

Tears blurred my vision as I walked back. I stopped. Someone was standing a few feet behind the cart. I jumped back, wiping my eyes to see them clearly.

The gray, naked man looked at me with white, pupil-less eyes. His arms were too long, hands hanging past his knees. He opened his extra-wide mouth and smiled, showing a set of tiny writhing black tentacles where his teeth should have been.

“I can help you,” he said in a cavernous voice.

Another phantom. I got into the cart and started driving away.

“I can help you find your friend named Quentin,” he called out behind me.

I slammed on the brakes. In the back of my mind, a part of me was screaming not to talk to him, that it was against the rules to acknowledge him in any way. I ignored it and stepped out.

“What do you know about him?” I demanded. “How do you know anything about him?”

“Knowledge is not the only thing the ones you call ‘Librarians’ keep locked away here,” he said. “I am one who finds unmet desires… fascinating. It makes my existence inconvenient to them.”

“Who are you?” I asked, taking a step back.

“I am someone who wants to help you know,” he said. “I don’t have a name; only many nicknames.” He lifted one of his long arms toward the shelves around us. “There is a book here that can tell you what you want to know.” He looked back at me. “You just have to read it.”

For a second, just a second, I imagined myself taking a book off the shelf, opening it and looking at the pages. My heart jumped in my chest.

I glared at him. “That’s against the rules and you know it.” I turned my back to him, got in the cart and drove away, keeping my eyes forward until I had turned the corner where the row of bookshelves ended and headed back toward the conveyor.

I should have kept looking forward as I drove past shelf after shelf. But movement in an aisle to my right caught my eye as I drove by. A man in the middle of a cloud of wasps staggered down the aisle. For a few seconds, his screams and the wasps’ buzzing drowned out the sound of the cart’s motor. Then I was looking at another shelf and the next aisle. I stopped. Everything was quiet again. I reversed the cart back to the aisle. There was nothing there. But the screams and buzzing still rang in my ears.

“That wasn’t Quentin,” I told myself. “That’s not happening to him. He’s in a better place.” But was he? Why do we all just assume that if there’s life after death, it’s a life you’d want?

I tried to call up a memory of us sneaking into R-rated movies or the hours we’d spent playing video games together. All I could see was him screaming and flailing under a swarm of wasps that covered him like a second skin. I closed my eyes and threw my head back as hot tears rolled down my cheeks. I could still hear the buzzing. I could still hear the screaming. I banged my fist on the cart’s dashboard. A dull pain blossomed in my hand. It wasn’t enough. Quentin was still screaming in my mind. I brought my fist down again, harder. And again, this time feeling something slick on the dashboard. I opened my eyes and looked at my bleeding hand. It still wasn’t enough.

I looked down the aisle again and the gray man was standing there. His white eyes shined like two lanterns in the dark as he smiled at me with his tentacle grin.

“You still want to know,” he said.

I hid my bleeding hand behind my back and stepped off the cart. “What you’re suggesting would break the most important rule of this place, the only rule that really matters here,” I said. “It would probably get me killed.”

“But you would know,” he said.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I had no answer to that. I looked over my shoulder at the cart. If I got back on it now, I could make the long drive back to the conveyor belt and the armchair on the catwalk and forget this ever happened. But in that moment, the thought of spending the rest of my life wondering about Quentin terrified me.

“Okay, assuming I believe you, which book is it that I’d have to read?”

“Follow me,” he said. He jumped up, grabbing the top of a bookshelf with one hand and vaulted over it, disappearing as he went down onto the other side.

I sprinted to the nearest ladder and scrambled up it to the top of the bookshelf. I got to the top just in time to see him jumping over the next shelf.

“Wait,” I yelled. I climbed down the first few rungs of the ladder to the next aisle, then jumped down, turned and ran across the aisle to the next ladder. This time, when I got to the top and looked down, he was running down the aisle. I ran across the top of the shelf, keeping him in sight. The shelf ended at an intersection of aisles between four shelves. He took a left and then another right into another row of shelves; out of sight.

My head swiveled around. I’d have to backtrack to get to the nearest ladder and that would let him get farther ahead. I crouched down, dangled my legs over the side of the shelf and jumped down. I fell to my hands and knees when I landed, sending a spike of pain into my right knee. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I got up and chased after him.

He was already halfway down the aisle when I started running down it. “Hold on for just a second,” I huffed but he didn’t seem to hear me. He turned and turned again as I struggled to keep following, barely keeping him in sight. I didn’t even know where I was in the Library anymore. All around me were just rows and rows of bookshelves I couldn’t remember having seen before. I thought of the clerk Drake said got lost in the stacks. Would I be able to find my way back before starvation made me too weak to walk? How long would it take for someone to find my emaciated body? Did these shelves ever end?

I looked ahead and slowed down. He had stopped in the middle of the aisle and turned around to face me. I stumbled to a halt, nearly limping now on my throbbing knee. He held his hand over the spine of one of the books on the shelf, his fingers stopping just half and inch before touching it.

“Here,” he said. “This book will tell you what you want to know.”

He stepped back as I walked up to it. I started pulling it off the shelf, then stopped. In three years of working here, I had never once taken a book off a shelf. I realized I never really knew when the librarians were or weren’t around. Never really knew when they were or weren’t paying attention. I took a deep breath, pulled the book the rest of the way off the shelf and held it in my hands. Nothing happened.

Of course, the cover just showed strange runes and symbols. They blurred and I looked away and then up at the gray man. His smile was even wider now. His empty, white eyes were wide with anticipation.

“Hold on a second,” I said. “What do you get out of this? Do you just want me to open a book to see what happens?”

“Never,” he said. “You wanted something. I helped you fill that want. Your satiation will be nourishing to me.” He opened his mouth and licked the air with a long, dark green tongue. “But there is one more thing you should know. When you get farther out into the universe, you will find that time becomes a… subjective thing.”

“What does that mean?” For an instant, the book quivered in my hands.

“You will understand when you read it,” he said.

I looked back down at the cover of the book. The symbols shifted and slithered across the surface, becoming still when they formed the words: “The Galaxies After Flesh.”

So far, all I had done was read the title. No big deal. We always read the titles. The librarians seemed fine with clerks knowing all the general topics we weren’t allowed to know more about. I could still put the book back and walk away.

Where was Quentin?

I opened the book, resting it on my inner forearms, and stared at the page. More strange symbols, written in red on light-brown parchment. The book got warmer in my hands as the symbols unraveled and moved across the page. Like I said, these books wanted to be read. The lines glowed and floated off the page, twisting in the air. A drop of sweat ran down my forehead. So much heat was radiating from the book.

Quentin whispered “shhh” then tiptoed out into the den, which was dark except for the glow of the TV screen. His mother was asleep on the sofa An old action movie played on the TV. Hopefully, the gunshots and explosions from the movie would be enough to cover any noise we made as we took cookies and potato chips from the pantry. I looked around, waiting for the moment when I would snap out of this memory from when we were 10 years old. But all I could see was Quentin, crouching down and crawling behind the sofa. I wasn’t holding the book anymore, just the gym bag we were going to use to hold our stash of purloined snacks. The room even smelled the way I remember the inside of his house smelling when we were kids.

“Come on,” Quentin hissed at me, impatiently beckoning me to follow him past the sofa.

I was back in the Library. The lines from the page swirled in front of me, moving faster and faster. The book was getting so hot I wanted to drop it.

Quentin glanced over to make sure his mother was still asleep. Then he stood up and waved his arms in elaborate kata motions. His impression of a ninja. He dashed toward the kitchen and dropped down into a baseball slide across the hardwood floor.

The smell of smoke filled my nose. How did I not notice how much hotter the book was getting? I opened my mouth to scream.

“Go on and talk to her,” Quentin said, yelling to be heard over the blaring music at the dance club. “Take a risk for once in your life.” The woman at the other end of the bar was talking to her friend and hadn’t notice me looking at her. I had forgotten how pretty she was in that purple midriff top and black leather miniskirt. “What’s the worst that could happen?” Quentin continued. “You have to shoot if you want to score.” I remembered that I did eventually go talk to her. I think she said her name was Tonya. I didn’t get her phone number that night, but Quentin had been right. He usually was about such things.

Back in the dim light of his parents’ house, he glided across the floor on his leg, foot extended out as he continued his slide. I could tell he’d practiced it. His mother was still sound asleep.

I didn’t know how long I had been screaming. The book was white hot against my hands and forearms but somehow I was the one on fire.

Raindrops tap against the windshield as Quentin drives down a city street. The song playing on the radio just came out a few months ago. Why don’t I remember this moment? He’s wearing a black and gold skull cap. I remember the last time I saw him wearing it and a knot forms in my stomach. A screech of tires pierces the air. Headlights spring up outside the driver’s side window. Quentin’s side of the car crumples in a burst of broken glass and bits of metal as the world outside his windshield turns sideways. Then upside down. Quentin’s arm wrenches at an unnatural angle. His head slams into the ceiling and then comes down onto the dashboard like a falling meteor. The gear shift handle punches into his torso. Then he’s thrown to the side. Blood fills the air.

“Why am I seeing this?” I wail, but no one hears it. I don’t even hear it.

The car comes to a rest on its side. Quentin lands in the passenger seat, looking like a ragdoll that’s been thrown down a flight of stairs. He twitches for a few moments. Then he looks up with eyes that aren’t seeing; eyes that aren’t blinking.

Light explodes around him. He shoots up into the air. He’s above the rain-soaked smoking wreckage of his car and falling upward into the sky. His eyes are alive again. He looks around, confused. The city looms beneath him for a second and then sinks under a field of clouds. Quentin reaches with both hands back toward the ground. He doesn’t want to go but even the sky is falling away from him. Everything around him is black. He’s still struggling to swim back to the earth that’s getting smaller below him but he’s moving away even faster now. Asteroids and planets zip past. Then stars and nebulas. He tumbles through space going far beyond light speed. He’s lost sight of Earth. Lost sight of anything in the heavens he might recognize.

When he finally stops, he looks all around at the endless, cold void of stars that surrounds him. I can see in his face that he knows it’s hopeless. Earth could be in any direction now. He could float alone out in space forever. He cries out. I feel even sadder than I did when his sister called me in tears to tell me Quentin had been in an accident.

Flames from my chest tickled my neck. The sickening smell of burning meat was so thick, I could taste it through the heat sizzling the inside of my mouth. The book was still in pristine condition. The lines were still dancing and swooping above the page.

Quentin was still in the middle of his baseball slide across the floor as the movie watched his mother sleep. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to go back to the days when our biggest worry was getting caught sneaking junk food from the kitchen.

The pain was too much. The flames ignited my hair, turning it into a crown of fire. I had made a huge mistake. Nothing was worth this. I let go of the book but it didn’t fall. The fire had fused it to me. The lines on the page were coming together, beginning to form a picture. I didn’t know how I was able to see it. I was pretty sure the liquid running down my cheeks was what was left of my eyes.

Quentin is walking along a rocky beach as blue and purple waves splash along the shore. His back is to me. Ahead of him, the sun is setting, making it easy to see the two moons in the twilight sky. One moon is green. The other is orange. Quentin turns to me and says something I can’t understand.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Where is this?”

“Come on, man,” Quentin says. “You’re not going to be able to have a conversation with anyone on Atra if you don’t learn the language.”

Why don’t I remember this moment? I struggle to remember it. Then I realize. Tears fill my eyes and a smile sprouts on my face. Time becomes subjective. This is a memory that hasn’t happened yet.

“But I saw you lost in space,” I say. “What happened?”

“Honestly, I just picked a direction and started moving,” he says. “A lot happened. I visited some really crazy places. There’s stuff out there you can’t even imagine. And then I found you floating around. But I still don’t think you’re supposed to be jumping ahead like this.”

He says something else but I couldn’t hear it. I was burning on the inside and outside. Melted eardrums kept me from hearing anything. Crisped vocal cords kept me from screaming. I couldn’t even see the book anymore. Just a searing haze of orange and black. And yet, the fire didn’t hurt that much anymore.

Back in his house, 10-year-old Quentin finished his slide into the kitchen. The tip of his foot stopped just before the door to the pantry. He spun on his backside and jumped to his feet. Very ninja. I had to hand it to him, it looked pretty cool. I gave him a thumbs up.

The book fell to the floor amid a cascade of smoking ash and blackened bones. It would probably be Drake who’d have to clean it up and put the book back. I wondered for a split second if the gray man was still around. Before I could look, a white light filled my vision and then I was surging into the sky. I tried to keep track of where Earth was but realized how silly that was. I had already lost sight of the star that had been the sun.

I didn’t know how long I was flying through space. It might have been hours. It might have been years. When I finally slowed to a stop, I looked around. Cold darkness in every direction, even above and below. But also stars and planets. Asteroids and moons. And somewhere out there, also everyone else who had ever died.

For a while, I was lost. For a while, I was scared. Then I picked a direction and started moving in it. I had no idea where I was going but it was okay. I was armed with the knowledge that I would eventually see my best friend again.

End.

* * *

When not writing fiction, Bernard McGhee works on the editing desk of a busy newsroom, which provides a constant source of inspiration for horror and other stories of unusual mayhem. He was raised in the New Orleans area but has lived all around the country. He currently lives in the Atlanta area with his wife and son and is looking ahead to the next death metal concert. You can follow him on Twitter at @BMcGhee13

The Festival

By H.P. Lovecraft

Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1925

“Efficiunt Daemones, ut quae non sunt, sic tamen
quasi sint, conspicienda hominibus exhibeant.”

—Lactantius.

I was far from home, and the spell of the eastern sea was upon me. In the twilight I heard it pounding on the rocks, and I knew it lay just over the hill where the twisting willows writhed against the clearing sky and the first stars of evening. And because my fathers had called me to the old town beyond, I pushed on through the shallow, new-fallen snow along the road that soared lonely up to where Aldebaran twinkled among the trees; on toward the very ancient town I had never seen but often dreamed of.

It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten. Mine were an old people, and were old even when this land was settled three hundred years before. And they were strange, because they had come as dark furtive folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and spoken another tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue-eyed fishers. And now they were scattered, and shared only the rituals of mysteries that none living could understand. I was the only one who came back that night to the old fishing town as legend bade, for only the poor and the lonely remember.

Then beyond the hill’s crest I saw Kingsport outspread frostily in the gloaming; snowy Kingsport with its ancient vanes and steeples, ridgepoles and chimney-pots, wharves and small bridges, willow-trees and graveyards; endless labyrinths of steep, narrow, crooked streets, and dizzy church-crowned central peak that time durst not touch; ceaseless mazes of colonial houses piled and scattered at all angles and levels like a child’s disordered blocks; antiquity hovering on grey wings over winter-whitened gables and gambrel roofs; fanlights and small-paned windows one by one gleaming out in the cold dusk to join Orion and the archaic stars. And against the rotting wharves the sea pounded; the secretive, immemorial sea out of which the people had come in the elder time.

Beside the road at its crest a still higher summit rose, bleak and windswept, and I saw that it was a burying-ground where black gravestones stuck ghoulishly through the snow like the decayed fingernails of a gigantic corpse. The printless road was very lonely, and sometimes I thought I heard a distant horrible creaking as of a gibbet in the wind. They had hanged four kinsmen of mine for witchcraft in 1692, but I did not know just where.

As the road wound down the seaward slope I listened for the merry sounds of a village at evening, but did not hear them. Then I thought of the season, and felt that these old Puritan folk might well have Christmas customs strange to me, and full of silent hearthside prayer. So after that I did not listen for merriment or look for wayfarers, but kept on down past the hushed lighted farmhouses and shadowy stone walls to where the signs of ancient shops and sea-taverns creaked in the salt breeze, and the grotesque knockers of pillared doorways glistened along deserted, unpaved lanes in the light of little, curtained windows.

I had seen maps of the town, and knew where to find the home of my people. It was told that I should be known and welcomed, for village legend lives long; so I hastened through Back Street to Circle Court, and across the fresh snow on the one full flagstone pavement in the town, to where Green Lane leads off behind the Market house. The old maps still held good, and I had no trouble; though at Arkham they must have lied when they said the trolleys ran to this place, since I saw not a wire overhead. Snow would have hid the rails in any case. I was glad I had chosen to walk, for the white village had seemed very beautiful from the hill; and now I was eager to knock at the door of my people, the seventh house on the left in Green Lane, with an ancient peaked roof and jutting second story, all built before 1650.

There were lights inside the house when I came upon it, and I saw from the diamond window-panes that it must have been kept very close to its antique state. The upper part overhung the narrow grass-grown street and nearly met the overhanging part of the house opposite, so that I was almost in a tunnel, with the low stone doorstep wholly free from snow. There was no sidewalk, but many houses had high doors reached by double flights of steps with iron railings. It was an odd scene, and because I was strange to New England I had never known its like before. Though it pleased me, I would have relished it better if there had been footprints in the snow, and people in the streets, and a few windows without drawn curtains.

When I sounded the archaic iron knocker I was half afraid. Some fear had been gathering in me, perhaps because of the strangeness of my heritage, and the bleakness of the evening, and the queerness of the silence in that aged town of curious customs. And when my knock was answered I was fully afraid, because I had not heard any footsteps before the door creaked open. But I was not afraid long, for the gowned, slippered old man in the doorway had a bland face that reassured me; and though he made signs that he was dumb, he wrote a quaint and ancient welcome with the stylus and wax tablet he carried.

He beckoned me into a low, candle-lit room with massive exposed rafters and dark, stiff, sparse furniture of the seventeenth century. The past was vivid there, for not an attribute was missing. There was a cavernous fireplace and a spinning-wheel at which a bent old woman in loose wrapper and deep poke-bonnet sat back toward me, silently spinning despite the festive season. An indefinite dampness seemed upon the place, and I marvelled that no fire should be blazing. The high-backed settle faced the row of curtained windows at the left, and seemed to be occupied, though I was not sure. I did not like everything about what I saw, and felt again the fear I had had. This fear grew stronger from what had before lessened it, for the more I looked at the old man’s bland face the more its very blandness terrified me. The eyes never moved, and the skin was too like wax. Finally I was sure it was not a face at all, but a fiendishly cunning mask. But the flabby hands, curiously gloved, wrote genially on the tablet and told me I must wait a while before I could be led to the place of festival.

Pointing to a chair, table, and pile of books, the old man now left the room; and when I sat down to read I saw that the books were hoary and mouldy, and that they included old Morryster’s wild Marvells of Science, the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvill, published in 1681, the shocking Daemonolatreia of Remigius, printed in 1595 at Lyons, and worst of all, the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin translation; a book which I had never seen, but of which I had heard monstrous things whispered. No one spoke to me, but I could hear the creaking of signs in the wind outside, and the whir of the wheel as the bonneted old woman continued her silent spinning, spinning. I thought the room and the books and the people very morbid and disquieting, but because an old tradition of my fathers had summoned me to strange feastings, I resolved to expect queer things. So I tried to read, and soon became tremblingly absorbed by something I found in that accursed Necronomicon; a thought and a legend too hideous for sanity or consciousness. But I disliked it when I fancied I heard the closing of one of the windows that the settle faced, as if it had been stealthily opened. It had seemed to follow a whirring that was not of the old woman’s spinning-wheel. This was not much, though, for the old woman was spinning very hard, and the aged clock had been striking. After that I lost the feeling that there were persons on the settle, and was reading intently and shudderingly when the old man came back booted and dressed in a loose antique costume, and sat down on that very bench, so that I could not see him. It was certainly nervous waiting, and the blasphemous book in my hands made it doubly so. When eleven struck, however, the old man stood up, glided to a massive carved chest in a corner, and got two hooded cloaks; one of which he donned, and the other of which he draped round the old woman, who was ceasing her monotonous spinning. Then they both started for the outer door; the woman lamely creeping, and the old man, after picking up the very book I had been reading, beckoning me as he drew his hood over that unmoving face or mask.

We went out into the moonless and tortuous network of that incredibly ancient town; went out as the lights in the curtained windows disappeared one by one, and the Dog Star leered at the throng of cowled, cloaked figures that poured silently from every doorway and formed monstrous processions up this street and that, past the creaking signs and antediluvian gables, the thatched roofs and diamond-paned windows; threading precipitous lanes where decaying houses overlapped and crumbled together, gliding across open courts and churchyards where the bobbing lanthorns made eldritch drunken constellations.

Amid these hushed throngs I followed my voiceless guides; jostled by elbows that seemed preternaturally soft, and pressed by chests and stomachs that seemed abnormally pulpy; but seeing never a face and hearing never a word. Up, up, up the eerie columns slithered, and I saw that all the travellers were converging as they flowed near a sort of focus of crazy alleys at the top of a high hill in the centre of the town, where perched a great white church. I had seen it from the road’s crest when I looked at Kingsport in the new dusk, and it had made me shiver because Aldebaran had seemed to balance itself a moment on the ghostly spire.

There was an open space around the church; partly a churchyard with spectral shafts, and partly a half-paved square swept nearly bare of snow by the wind, and lined with unwholesomely archaic houses having peaked roofs and overhanging gables. Death-fires danced over the tombs, revealing gruesome vistas, though queerly failing to cast any shadows. Past the churchyard, where there were no houses, I could see over the hill’s summit and watch the glimmer of stars on the harbour, though the town was invisible in the dark. Only once in a while a lanthorn bobbed horribly through serpentine alleys on its way to overtake the throng that was now slipping speechlessly into the church. I waited till the crowd had oozed into the black doorway, and till all the stragglers had followed. The old man was pulling at my sleeve, but I was determined to be the last. Then I finally went, the sinister man and the old spinning woman before me. Crossing the threshold into that swarming temple of unknown darkness, I turned once to look at the outside world as the churchyard phosphorescence cast a sickly glow on the hill-top pavement. And as I did so I shuddered. For though the wind had not left much snow, a few patches did remain on the path near the door; and in that fleeting backward look it seemed to my troubled eyes that they bore no mark of passing feet, not even mine.

The church was scarce lighted by all the lanthorns that had entered it, for most of the throng had already vanished. They had streamed up the aisle between the high white pews to the trap-door of the vaults which yawned loathsomely open just before the pulpit, and were now squirming noiselessly in. I followed dumbly down the footworn steps and into the dank, suffocating crypt. The tail of that sinuous line of night-marchers seemed very horrible, and as I saw them wriggling into a venerable tomb they seemed more horrible still. Then I noticed that the tomb’s floor had an aperture down which the throng was sliding, and in a moment we were all descending an ominous staircase of rough-hewn stone; a narrow spiral staircase damp and peculiarly odorous, that wound endlessly down into the bowels of the hill past monotonous walls of dripping stone blocks and crumbling mortar. It was a silent, shocking descent, and I observed after a horrible interval that the walls and steps were changing in nature, as if chiselled out of the solid rock. What mainly troubled me was that the myriad footfalls made no sound and set up no echoes. After more aeons of descent I saw some side passages or burrows leading from unknown recesses of blackness to this shaft of nighted mystery. Soon they became excessively numerous, like impious catacombs of nameless menace; and their pungent odour of decay grew quite unbearable. I knew we must have passed down through the mountain and beneath the earth of Kingsport itself, and I shivered that a town should be so aged and maggoty with subterraneous evil.

Then I saw the lurid shimmering of pale light, and heard the insidious lapping of sunless waters. Again I shivered, for I did not like the things that the night had brought, and wished bitterly that no forefather had summoned me to this primal rite. As the steps and the passage grew broader, I heard another sound, the thin, whining mockery of a feeble flute; and suddenly there spread out before me the boundless vista of an inner world—a vast fungous shore litten by a belching column of sick greenish flame and washed by a wide oily river that flowed from abysses frightful and unsuspected to join the blackest gulfs of immemorial ocean.

Fainting and gasping, I looked at that unhallowed Erebus of titan toadstools, leprous fire, and slimy water, and saw the cloaked throngs forming a semicircle around the blazing pillar. It was the Yule-rite, older than man and fated to survive him; the primal rite of the solstice and of spring’s promise beyond the snows; the rite of fire and evergreen, light and music. And in the Stygian grotto I saw them do the rite, and adore the sick pillar of flame, and throw into the water handfuls gouged out of the viscous vegetation which glittered green in the chlorotic glare. I saw this, and I saw something amorphously squatted far away from the light, piping noisomely on a flute; and as the thing piped I thought I heard noxious muffled flutterings in the foetid darkness where I could not see. But what frightened me most was that flaming column; spouting volcanically from depths profound and inconceivable, casting no shadows as healthy flame should, and coating the nitrous stone above with a nasty, venomous verdigris. For in all that seething combustion no warmth lay, but only the clamminess of death and corruption.

The man who had brought me now squirmed to a point directly beside the hideous flame, and made stiff ceremonial motions to the semicircle he faced. At certain stages of the ritual they did grovelling obeisance, especially when he held above his head that abhorrent Necronomicon he had taken with him; and I shared all the obeisances because I had been summoned to this festival by the writings of my forefathers. Then the old man made a signal to the half-seen flute-player in the darkness, which player thereupon changed its feeble drone to a scarce louder drone in another key; precipitating as it did so a horror unthinkable and unexpected. At this horror I sank nearly to the lichened earth, transfixed with a dread not of this nor any world, but only of the mad spaces between the stars.

Out of the unimaginable blackness beyond the gangrenous glare of that cold flame, out of the Tartarean leagues through which that oily river rolled uncanny, unheard, and unsuspected, there flopped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember. They were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings; but something I cannot and must not recall. They flopped limply along, half with their webbed feet and half with their membraneous wings; and as they reached the throng of celebrants the cowled figures seized and mounted them, and rode off one by one along the reaches of that unlighted river, into pits and galleries of panic where poison springs feed frightful and undiscoverable cataracts.

The old spinning woman had gone with the throng, and the old man remained only because I had refused when he motioned me to seize an animal and ride like the rest. I saw when I staggered to my feet that the amorphous flute-player had rolled out of sight, but that two of the beasts were patiently standing by. As I hung back, the old man produced his stylus and tablet and wrote that he was the true deputy of my fathers who had founded the Yule worship in this ancient place; that it had been decreed I should come back, and that the most secret mysteries were yet to be performed. He wrote this in a very ancient hand, and when I still hesitated he pulled from his loose robe a seal ring and a watch, both with my family arms, to prove that he was what he said. But it was a hideous proof, because I knew from old papers that that watch had been buried with my great-great-great-great-grandfather in 1698.

Presently the old man drew back his hood and pointed to the family resemblance in his face, but I only shuddered, because I was sure that the face was merely a devilish waxen mask. The flopping animals were now scratching restlessly at the lichens, and I saw that the old man was nearly as restless himself. When one of the things began to waddle and edge away, he turned quickly to stop it; so that the suddenness of his motion dislodged the waxen mask from what should have been his head. And then, because that nightmare’s position barred me from the stone staircase down which we had come, I flung myself into the oily underground river that bubbled somewhere to the caves of the sea; flung myself into that putrescent juice of earth’s inner horrors before the madness of my screams could bring down upon me all the charnel legions these pest-gulfs might conceal.

At the hospital they told me I had been found half frozen in Kingsport Harbour at dawn, clinging to the drifting spar that accident sent to save me. They told me I had taken the wrong fork of the hill road the night before, and fallen over the cliffs at Orange Point; a thing they deduced from prints found in the snow. There was nothing I could say, because everything was wrong. Everything was wrong, with the broad window shewing a sea of roofs in which only about one in five was ancient, and the sound of trolleys and motors in the streets below. They insisted that this was Kingsport, and I could not deny it. When I went delirious at hearing that the hospital stood near the old churchyard on Central Hill, they sent me to St. Mary’s Hospital in Arkham, where I could have better care. I liked it there, for the doctors were broad-minded, and even lent me their influence in obtaining the carefully sheltered copy of Alhazred’s objectionable Necronomicon from the library of Miskatonic University. They said something about a “psychosis”, and agreed I had better get any harassing obsessions off my mind.

So I read again that hideous chapter, and shuddered doubly because it was indeed not new to me. I had seen it before, let footprints tell what they might; and where it was I had seen it were best forgotten. There was no one—in waking hours—who could remind me of it; but my dreams are filled with terror, because of phrases I dare not quote. I dare quote only one paragraph, put into such English as I can make from the awkward Low Latin.

“The nethermost caverns,” wrote the mad Arab, “are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”

End.

Dear beloved reader,

I hope you found the chills you were looking for. Perhaps while entrenched in the pages of this issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly, you questioned both your own sanity and your place amongst the malevolent whims of our cold universe. If so, let not your thirst for more cosmic terror go unquenched. Simply visit COSMICHORRORMONTHLY.COM/SUBSCRIBE and offer your tribute to the old ones at a reduced rate!

Again, thank you for taking the time to read our fiction. I hope we meet again soon.

Charles Tyra

Editor

Table of Contents

- Dark Wanderers They Were
- 3rd Place: Non-Compliance Notice
- The Magi
- Maw Judy
- 2nd Place: Chainsaw Diary
- Interview: Nicole Cushing
- O Unholy Night
- Pernkopf’s Fifth
- 1st Place: Our First Embalming

- Burning Death Amid the Mile-Long Shelves in the Library of Forbidden Knowledge

- The Festival