CHM September 2022
Author: CHM LLC
Date: 2022-08-03 21:19:18+00:00
Publisher: Charles Tyra

Copyright © 2022 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 Art: Elena Skitalets

The King in Yellow Illustrations: Luke Spooner / Carrion House

Cosmic Horror Monthly

Edited by Charles Tyra
www.cosmichorrormonthly.com

Greetings Dear Reader,

Welcome friends, to the 27th edition of Cosmic Horror Monthly. We hope you are staying cool out there, and that you haven’t been forced to turn to arcane literature to accomplish it. (Shhhh! We haven’t either.) This summer has been one of the hottest, globally of all time. Even when the temperatures seem fixed to triple digits, you can count on CHM to bring the chills. This issue is no different and was an absolute nightmarish delight to put together for you. Remember, if you have thoughts, good or bad, regarding what we are doing, please let us know! (Your opinion could find its way into the very eldritch pages you are holding.)

We’ll start things off with a surreal exploration of dreams and their connection to reality in “The Starfarer’s Dream Journal.” Then an unbelievable tale of chance and fate in “One More” followed by a surreal journey sure to warp your own taste buds in “Witness the Refrigerator Void.” A wanderer witnesses a great transformation in “A Ragged Cursive,” then vanity receives due and undue punishment in “The Ocean is but a Slippery Thing.” You’ll want to stick around for part three of Patrick Barb’s dark heist novella “The Nut House” starring Asher, the black squirrel. A girl goes to great lengths to protect her grandmother in “Grandma” before we descend to the crypt for part three of our special presentation of The King in Yellow.

Enjoy.

Meet the CHM staff

Charles Tyra: Editor

Oenophile, logophile, aspiring writer. Completely captivated by Cosmic Horror and Weird Fiction from an early age upon first reading the story: Dagon by HPL.

Resides in the flatland that is Oklahoma City.

Carson Winter: Social Media Manager

Horror fan and author with works featured in Vastarien and the No Sleep podcast. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Featured artists this month

Cover art: Elena Skitalets (https://skitalets.carrd.co)

Luke Spooner is a freelance illustrator from the South East of England. Since graduating from Portsmouth University with a First-Class degree in illustration Luke has gone on to work on a wide variety of projects and commissions, including; illustrations and covers for horror, science fiction and fantasy books, magazines, graphic novels, conceptual design, CD packaging and business branding. Luke has also illustrated children’s’ books for authors who aim to promote diversity and mindfulness in younger audiences.

Maxwell Marais is an illustrator and author of all things horror currently living in Montreal, Canada. Their work is often featured in the pages of CHM, and their stories can be found in such publications as Thuggish Itch and The NoSleep podcast. Find their art at www.instagram.com/insanity_inc/

Welcome to Cosmic Horror Monthly

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

The Starfarer’s Dream Journal

By G.J. Sieck

Entry 001

The T.V. dad looks like a young Robert Hays. He has a full and feathered head of hair with a big swooping bang that runs his forehead, from left to right. His light blue, butterfly collared shirt is unbuttoned at the top and tucked into his brown bell bottoms. The T.V. son sits on a flower-patterned sofa in the three-walled living room. He has a bowl haircut. He wears a long-sleeved, red and purple striped shirt with white collar and cuffs. A doll sits on a chest at stage right—an array of prop toys is arranged at each side of the doll. She is a large doll, with poseable limbs, long dark hair, and a frilly blue dress. As the boy looks at her, she is looking back at him. He feels her looking into his soul—black eyes burrow through him. He feels her laughter, yet the doll only sits lifeless. The possible Hays gives a glance to the single camera before delivering his line. “So, are you going to tell me that one’s alive too?” The audience laughs. Am I in the audience?

The boy looks to stage center-right where his T.V. dad stands beside the couch, between the boy and the doll. The boy smiles. The dad faces the boy. The T.V. dad keeps his body facing the audience. He puts his hands on his hips. “Well?” the T.V. dad asks. The audience laughs lightly. They sense the big laugh is coming. I don’t think I’m part of the audience. I can’t see them. I think they’re behind me.

“I don’t know,” says the boy. “But I know Voss Thon is real.” The audience laughs a little bit louder than they did after the last line. The T.V. dad and the T.V. son both pause long enough to soak it in. Voss Thon’s round, wooden head rises up from behind the window of the set wall at stage left. The audience begins to clap. His perfectly round eyes are bulging and red. His bowtie is as red as his eyes and his suit is as black as the hair painted atop his head. Voss Thon’s puppet mouth opens wide as he looks into the set, then to the audience. The audience’s clap grows louder—some whistle. Still looking up toward the T.V. dad—who has not acknowledged Voss Thon—the boy says, “I feel so much more comfortable now that I know he’s watching me.” The T.V. dad gives a deadpan stare to the audience. The audience erupts into laughter. They clap and they hoot.

NOTE: According to the crew physician, it should not be possible to dream during the torpor state. Sleep science is far from my expertise, so I’ll take her word for it. I’m sure an explanation is forthcoming.

-Dr. West

Entry 002

My room in the cabin is dark and I am a child; I think. The windows feel larger than they should be. I pull the blanket up to my chin as I lie in the bed. Something isn’t right. Shadows of swaying branches break the soft light of the moon and stars. It must be a great wind, but I hear nothing. I feel nothing but the uneasy chill that comes from within. Are there monsters in the dark places; the hidden corners of this tiny, log-built space? I can feel them watching me. I can sense their leering gazes from some unseeable, unknowable recess. I summon all of my courage. I place my feet on the craggy wooden floor. Could that mysterious region between the floor and the bed be where the monsters hide? I move quickly to the center of the room.

A faint laugh becomes louder, but it doesn’t sound like it comes from anywhere outside of my own mind. Something else yet moves out in that tempestuous night. A darkness crosses the window. It is a transmogrifying blackness. A face begins to emerge from the darkness—it is looking at me. The head is too large, and round, glossy like painted and glazed wood. Its smile raises too high. Its cheeks are too pronounced and unnaturally rosy. The eyes are too wide, the whites too big, the pupils are bright red like laser beams; its eyebrows raised in permanent surprise. I begin again to hear the laughter—it does not come from the horror beyond the window, but from inside my own mind.

Are you comfortable? asks a voice from everywhere at once. Voss Thon—the name appears to me. Why does it haunt me? Why does it watch me? I try to cry out as loudly as I can. No sound escapes me. My room in the cabin becomes pitch black and disappears. All that remains is the window, the violent night, and the oversized and misshapen head that glares with false eyes and frozen expression.

I cover my eyes, but I still see the menacing face. Turn around, I hear the voice say. I turn. I’m standing by a pond glittering in sunlight. All around me are lush, green plants and blue and pink flowers that I’ve never seen before. Everything seems bigger than it should be. Trees that stretch up into forever surround this fantastical oasis. I look to my feet and notice my journal lying on the ground. I pick it up. My journal must go into my bag. Where is my bag? Where are any of my things? I need to find my things. I need to go home. Holding my journal tightly, I walk along the edge of the pond until I find a pathway into the woods. I follow the pathway until I find a clearing with an old camper at the center. It is all of a sudden night again. People are sitting around a campfire. I see them more clearly as I approach. Beau, Lynn, Dr Fazzul: they laugh as they listen to a fourth figure tell a story. But who is the fourth person, and what are they saying?

My jacket lies on the ground near the camper’s door. I pick it up then enter the camper. I need to find my things. The yellow glow of a ceiling light in the hallway dimly lights the camper. Lying on the hallway floor, perfectly spotlighted by the bulb above, is my bag. I take it. I look inside—I have all of my things. It’s time to go home. I walk back outside and toward the campfire. There is only one figure remaining. It isn’t Beau. It isn’t Dr. Fazzul. I walk closer and I know that it isn’t Lynn, either. I walk closer and the figure remains nothing but blackness. Turn around, I hear a voice say from everywhere at once.

NOTE: I was advised to reflect on how these dreams make me feel. In short, creeped out—that’s how I feel. If it isn’t supposed to be possible to dream in torpor, why does it keep happening, and why does the same character appear in each instance? I haven’t learned any answers. I’ll continue documenting the dreams—there’s something yet to understand.

-Dr. West

Entry 003

My colleagues are all lying on beds, covered and encased in clear plastic with dark colored canvas trim along the edge. The quarantine beds almost look like plastic coffins; they remind me of the sleep-chambers. I walk along the row of plastic chambers. Beau, Lynne, and Dr. Fazzul; each one I pass has the same wide smile, wide open eyes, and pale, lifeless skin. They all lie still—dead but still alive—while leeches slowly crawl over their faces and bodies. The parasites pulsate as they drain their stupefied hosts. Each plastic casing has a tag that I cannot read. Somehow, though, I know that each tag reads, Voss Thon. A familiar chill runs across my skin.

They are all dying of contentedness. The voice comes from all around me.

“Contentedness?” I ask.

Yes. They’re all so happy; all so comfortable. You can see it in their eyes. I look again at each of my encased colleagues. Their eyes, each having become a swirling pool of blackness, widen and widen. All around me, the swirling blackness fills until I see nothing. The blackness takes form—it wriggles and writhes over my body. I am enveloped in a living mass—it drains me. The round and wooden visage of Voss Thon overtakes my mind. Thon’s stare pierces like two red daggers. Wake up! The voice booms from all around.

NOTE: I awoke from torpor before schedule. And it’s fortunate that I did. I emerged from the sleep-chamber to find the ship under the pull of the black hole we came to study. If it weren’t for this dream waking me, we would have become hopelessly trapped by the gravitational force. I can’t help but sense it was something external from myself that saved us—perhaps all these dreams were warnings. I hesitate to explore this phenomenon further.

-Dr. West

End.

G.J. Sieck’s work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Skelter, and the UB Post. G.J. Sieck and his wife run their small press and YouTube channel, 1134 Press, from their home in Baltimore, Md. His first collection of short stories was published through 1134 Press in 2017

One More

By RSL

The mahogany wood of the betting office door manifested beside Joe Forster as he downed the last of his vodka in the cramped, dingy alleyway. It had been appearing every day since he lost his job two months ago. He’d leave the house pretending to Shell he was going to work, and when he’d saunter through the local parks, always between two trees were the bookies waiting for him to enter. He couldn’t resist it anymore. Shell and Jason deserved better. He was out of money, out of time, and out of Vodka.

Joe smashed his bottle and went inside.

The cold bitterness of that dark night faded from his mind when the warmth of the betting office enveloped him. It smelt like his aunt’s house, for some reason. Maybe it was the heat, paired with the sensation of a long journey finished (as Joe often walked, in the night, from his parents to his aunt’s simply to escape).

These thoughts dissipated as Joe made his way through the bookies. He couldn’t believe the place had remained unchanged for years. The walls were still a deep black, so dark that to stand in the middle of the room would be to fall into a crevasse in some forgotten corner of the universe. The lights studded the ceiling like stars. The tables, also black, hid themselves from view, the only real evidence of their existence being the many huddled figures sat around them.

Joe had never spoken to these clusters, had never even seen them leave or enter, in all his earlier years. They sat like great astronomers beneath alien asterisms, calculating, gambling.

Taking a deep breath in to soothe himself, he sought out the cashier—and was surprised when he saw a familiar face.

“Mr Forster,” Mr Charion said. “My, my! How have you been?” He smiled, like the Cheshire Cat.

Joe was far too drunk to get into that question.

Mr Charion’s smile faded. “What ever is the matter, Mr Forster? Does our establishment bother you?”

“No—no. Just, you know, a rough one,” Joe managed to get out.

“It’s okay, Mr Forster. You’re safe now. Safe in the bosom of our Benefactors. Just glance up at the ceiling if you should feel yourself a little sick. I often find our smallness in these matters sobering.”

Joe slid forward. “I need a betting slip.”

Mr Charion stared back. Or past him—Joe couldn’t really tell. Everything blurred. “Are you of sound mind, Joseph? You remember the currency for our bets, don’t you?”

Hiccupping, Joe spoke. “An essential part of who I am.”

“That’s right, Joseph,” Mr Charion said. “And what will you be betting?”

“My life.”

“Reach out your hand, Mr Forster.”

Joe complied, waiting for the sharp slice—oof, there it was—of the obsidian, and then Mr Charion told him to press his thumb on the paper.

“Done. Now, if you’d take a seat in the booth to my right, I’ll have you set up.”

Joe stood to leave, but Mr Charion interrupted him: “Oh, and Joe? It’s good to see you again.”

Joe went to the indicated booth, one that previously had nothing in it, but now had a roulette, a stool, and two cards (one white, one black) placed before the seat. When he sat down, something sharp and shining amber with glyphs protruded up from the blackness of the table.

The Bloodletter.

The roulette started spinning, but Joe didn’t want to place his bet yet. The ball hovered in the air at the centre of the roulette, and after about thirty seconds, dropped. The roulette slowed and slowed, the little white ball dancing like a firefly over the pirouetting wheel and—white!

After that: black, black, white, naughts, black, white, white, black, black. Feeling prepared, Joe slid his thumb across the bladed Bloodletter and then pressed hard on the black card.

The wheel slowed, and slowed, and—

* * *

“I can’t believe it,” Shell said in the grey fuzz of a winter-morning hangover. “No fucking way!” She ran into their bedroom.

Joe wanted to hide.

“Look, Joe, look!”

Peeping out the covers like a child, he gingerly took the letter Shell held in her hand, afraid it was yet another bill.

But it wasn’t. It was rather the opposite.

Joe read out loud. “‘We’d like to hire you as our new Executive Branch Manager, pending an immediate pay rise and a bonus cheque which is enclosed here.’” Joe unfolded the letter, and the cheque dropped out.

Two-thousand pounds.

Shell hugged him tight. “Oh my god,” she cried. “And here’s me worrying you weren’t doing so well at work! So that’s why you were out so late last night drinking, eh?” She laughed and hugged his face. “Let me go get you a brew.”

Left to his own hangover stink, Joe wanted to vomit.

So it had happened. That wasn’t a nightmare. He’d gambled. He’d gambled again after he said to Shell he wouldn’t. If she ever found out—that would be the end.

“Is daddy a millionaire?” burst out Jason, who attacked him on the bed, giggling. “Pooh, you stink!” he shouted, and jumped back to the floor.

Joe tried to smile. “Not as smelly as you,” he said, sitting up. His headache was worsening. “Where’s your mother?”

As Jason ran out of the room, hollering for Shell, Joe held up the letter again. A bonus cheque and a raise. Unreal. He looked at his thumb, clean and unmarked, but it always was, after a trip to the bookies. They knew better than to leave a cut there, didn’t they?

Shell came in then, carrying a bottle of champagne. “Here he is!” she shouted, shaking the bottle and popping it.

“Shell, the carpet!”

Shell laughed harder. “We’re celebrating you, not the carpet!”

Jason followed in with his Bluetooth speaker, playing Queen’s ‘We are the Champions’. Shell poured Joe a glass of bubbly, and then pulled from her back pocket a bottle of pop she’d brought for Jason.

“We’re all celebrating, okay? No fretting, no worrying—nothing.” She sat on the edge of the bed, waving Jason closer, handing Joe his glass of champagne. Joe guzzled it down—the headache still pressed.

“Things are going to look up, Joe,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I know how hard you’ve worked for us.” She kissed him on the forehead and got the bottle and refilled his drink. “Oh, this is the life!”

* * *

It’d been a great day. A new job, a bonus cheque (spent on cleaning up some of the more pressing bills and then on gifts for Shell and Jason), followed by a dinner out in their favourite place, just off the motorway, and even a taxi home. Glorious. And now, with shell nuzzled in his neck, and Jason asleep upstairs, Joe really couldn’t think of anything better.

Maybe when things were better, he thought, he could tell her what had happened. Not now, though. Too raw.

He wished he had more money to give to her. That two-thousand bonus didn’t go very far.

That thought stuck with him in the taxi ride, all through the night, all the way back to Mr Charion’s counter.

“I want to give my wife and my son more,” Joe said, still drunk from the champagne he had at dinner. “I woke up this morning, thinking this was the worst thing I did. But you should have seen their faces! Jason hasn’t smiled like that in—well, I don’t know how long. Things were so bad, you know, but this morning, after seeing how happy they were, all that went away. How could this be a bad thing if it takes all the bad stuff away?”

Mr Charion smiled. “It isn’t, Joe. Think of all the endless formulae across the stars that hinge on the tiniest, smallest spark: what we call luck. The fact the universe exists, that some ball of plasma that was no bigger than you or I didn’t give in to that oppressive nothingness around it—the odds! It held on and on and—bang! A royal flush, an all-in hand that could have resulted in an eternal void ended with this,” he said, gesturing around him. “Life.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Joe said—and the meaning of those words coiled around his neck. All those calculations, innumerable in number—how hadn’t the universe collapsed? He was dwarfed by these numbers, and became aware of his own margins of error. He wasn’t all of space and time. He was but a man—with the chance of becoming all of space and time. “I have to exercise caution,” Joe said then. “Work my way up. So it’s not like last time, when I stopped coming,” he added.

“Oh, of course, Joseph. We were glad that it never had to come to that ultimate bet of yours so very long ago. Especially glad that last night ended not with your Returning to the House, the Source, as it were, but instead ended with that very success that you so deserve. Those who hold out, win, in this universe of ours, young Joseph. Don’t you forget it.”

Joe smiled. “No,” he said. “I won’t.”

Mr Charion smiled and asked, “Well, what will we be betting today?”

Joe rattled his head for something low risk. He looked at the Bloodletter. “My love for the colour red,” Joe said, smiling.

“Starting small! A frugal man, Joseph.” He gestured to the Bloodletter and the slip. When Joe complied, he guided Joe to another booth with a roulette. “Happy gambling!” he said as he left.

Joe watched the swirling wheel. When it came to pick, he sliced his thumb on the Bloodletter.

This time, he chose white.

* * *

Joe was muttering to himself at the bar the next day. He couldn’t believe it. Red. He looked up at the screen again, at Liverpool playing Chelsea, the red men now blobs of grey, and bit his knuckle. Even drew a little blood. But even that was now a grey fluid.

Why did he gamble the colour red? Well, he hadn’t, had he? He said his love for red, not the colour red. He’d simply forgotten that’s how the bookies worked: in slimy interpretations.

“What’s up with you?” asked Michael beside him, pint of lager in hand. “You’ve been a moody sod since we got here.”

“Hungover,” Joe said, sipping at his whiskey and coke. Why had he bet? He said he’d never do it again. Things had been good.

“Oh I saw Shell’s post, on the Feed. Said you got a promotion?”

“Yep.”

“So you didn’t tell her you lost that job in the first place?”

“Nope.”

“That’ll come out, yeno.”

Joe downed his drink, leaned forward at the bar to call for more. “It won’t. And I got a job now, so who’s arsed?”

“How did you even get a promotion to a job you don’t have?”

“It was in the pipeline.”

Something happened on the screen and everyone in the room cheered. Someone in grey (which was supposed to be red) had scored but Joe couldn’t make out the name, the white typography on the shirt blurred against the dullen granite-slab.

“He’s been shit all season,” Michael said, “but here he is scoring a hat-trick. I only removed him from my fantasy team last night.”

Joe remembered when he’d been in that league of theirs. Shell told him to get off it, what with nearly gambling his life away a year back (and the other night, remember?). He played with asking for an invite back.

“Oh,” Michael said, “sorry mate.”

“About?”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it—what with, y’know.”

Joe shrugged.

And then—“Wait,” Michael said, straightening his back. “No. Surely not.”

“What?”

“You’re gambling again.”

Rolling his eyes, Joe leaned further still over the bar. He needed that drink.

“You are,” Michael said again, trying to get into Joe’s line of sight. “The random job is evidence enough. That’s that bookies’ magic, that. Look, it’s okay, I’m here, but this shit is serious; it’s a relapse.”

Joe flinched like Michael had hit him. “A relapse? It’s not a fucking drink, not the nose beer that you and the others take relentlessly. It’s a fucking bet.”

“It’s all the same,” Michael said. “Any addiction is. Trouble is that when I go out and do it, I know when to stop.”

“Oh, and is that two o’clock the next morning?”

“As long as it’s not three o’clock on a Tuesday,” Michael replied, moving closer, knocking his own pint a little. “You nearly died, Joe. Nearly lost Shell and Jason.”

Joe wanted to smash Michael’s drink over his head. Standing back from the bar, he grabbed his coat from the stool. “I’m leaving, mate. Have a good one.”

Michael shouted after him as Joe walked out the door, but as soon as Joe turned outside, he ran into the side street, and away. It wasn’t long before the bookies manifested in an abandoned store lot, probably a five-minute walk at best.

They were good like that. They knew what time it was.

Bursting in through the door, still a little drunk from the pub, Joe called for Mr Charion. The huddled figures continued murmuring before him, glancing up at the stars in their prayers, and didn’t take any notice.

Joe saw his target at the window and marched across to Mr Charion. “I said my love of red, not the colour,” Joe argued. “You took away the fucking reds. The only fond memories I have with my dad is going to watch Liverpool. And now that’s fucking gone!”

Mr Charion frowned. “I’m sorry, Joseph. I merely process these slips. It’s not me who decides on the ramifications of what it is you gamble, nor is it I who processes the earnings you’re rightfully owed.”

“Well, then, I want to speak to a manager of some kind.”

“You know as well as I do that we have no manager here. We expect our customers to manage themselves.”

Joe knew, somewhere inside of himself, that he had to leave. Fast.

But the colour red was the first colour he remembered. Of being held tight in the arms of someone. Maybe his father in his old red Liverpool top. Or his mother, of whom he had very few good memories, in her red Christmas jumper smelling of oranges?

It didn’t matter. Joe didn’t have a lot of nice things to recall when he thought to his childhood, and he was determined not to let this one go.

“I want to make a bet,” Joe said.

“What will we be betting with?”

“The walk I like taking sometimes by myself, in the woods. But I want it specifically for the colour red. Don’t care about anything else.”

“If you want a specific bet, Joseph, it’s more.”

“Why?”

“It has always been this way.”

Joe sighed. “Fine. The satisfaction I feel when holding my son.”

Mr Charion nodded and pointed him toward the booth.

Joe picked white with his bloody thumb. The ball bounced and bounced, landing in white.

But relief was short-lived.

The ball bounced.

Joe bit his knuckles.

* * *

“Where were you last night?” Shell asked in the kitchen the next morning, bringing Joe a warm brew. “You didn’t come home after the footy.”

“Went Michaels,” Joe said in one word. He was trying not to scan those old memories of home and away Liverpool games, where the once heart-booming vistas of screaming red-clad supporters had been ripped away and replaced with greyscapes the color of papery wasp’s nests.

“Oh,” she said, sitting down at the table with him. She tapped at the handle of her cup of tea.

“What is it?” Joe asked, ever unable to divine his wife’s gestures.

“You usually cook when the reds have won,” she said, offering a half-smile.

“I do,” he replied.

The sun crept through the window. Joe’s head pulsed. He’d gambled again.

Steps on the stairs. Joe cringed inwardly, remembering another aspect to his midnight escapades.

“Hello!” Shell said as their son ran in. “Up early, aren’t you?”

Jason stood in between Shell and Joe, facing Shell. “I couldn’t sleep! I wanted to see dad. He’s always so cheery when we win.”

Jason sat on Joe’s lap.

Joe slammed his chair back in a knee-jerk reaction, and Jason fell off his dad’s knee.

Shell spilt her tea.

They both looked at Joe like he’d taken a piss on the floor.

“Sorry,” he said. “I hurt my knee, last night.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, eyes tender as a doe’s. “Are you okay, dad?”

“Yeah, lad,” he said, standing up and trying awkwardly to push the chair beneath the table. “Listen, I’m gonna go get us some food, okay? Celebrate the—erm, team winning.”

He avoided Shell’s concerned looks and left. He ran to the woods, all the way Jason on his mind. Had he really gambled away the love for his own son? The feeling he had when Jason touched him, not even hatred but cold, slithery nothing—no, no way. He’d get to the woods where he walked, where he watched the trees sway, and he’d see that last night was a bad dream. He didn’t remember getting in, after all. He never did after the bookies. He simply awoke in bed. And today was the same. He’d had a nightmare. That was all.

But these self-assurances stopped when, arriving to his walking spot, there again swelled inside him like a black hole a complete and utter nothingness. The trees swaying idly side to side brought no comfort. They did, once. They reminded him that an all-controlling hand guided things and that to gamble was pointless, because he’d be betting against God. Now, though, chaos reigned.

And that was it, wasn’t it? That errant cause, chaos. The universe was born in it, would likely die by it—and Joe, by his very existence, had all the chances in the world. In a universe where existence is king, Joe’s very awareness of himself convinced him of one thing: it was impossible, mathematically, to lose, because all losses must lead to a win. He wouldn’t be alive otherwise. Any loss, like the swinging left of a poplar tree, is answered always by an immediate and opposite reaction, that swinging right. The universe always balanced its cheques.

All he needed to do was bet again.

* * *

“What are you betting?” Mr Charion said beside him. Joe looked around. Wasn’t entirely sure when he’d arrived here. The lack of windows didn’t help.

“Joseph?”

“Yes, sorry. Getting my bearings.” Joe wanted to leave, but was here now. He may as well get it over with. That way he’d return to Jason and hold him and love him and all would be well. “I want the satisfaction I feel holding my son back. The red and the walk I can leave out.”

“That’ll require quite the value, I believe.”

The Bloodletter rose out the table, ready to drink.

“I’ll bet the ease I feel when I come home. I’ll gamble my own sense of safety when I walk the streets. My confidence, take that. Enough?”

“Not exactly the same currency, but that’ll do.” The shadows swallowed Mr Charion as he stepped back.

Joe pressed his thumb on the Bloodletter as the roulette spun. He tuned out the mumbles of the other bettors in the background, all going through their computations.

Only he could beat out the universe. Hold back the blackness coiling around him. In his mind, the power of God and its patternless pattern sparred, stars in the dynamo whirring—this was the higher power all along, chance. He kissed the back of his hand, thought of Jason, and pressed down on the white card again, watching the blood seep either side of his thumb.

The ball bounced and bounced. Black, white, black, naught, black—Joe jumped.

It was in white.

Mr Charion appeared beside him and his eyes, shimmering in the dark, cried a black fluid that swam to Joe’s skin. His body drank greedily.

“Well done,” Mr Charion said. “A grand scene, I must say!”

Joe was rearing to go. He couldn’t believe it.

“The universe holding out,” Joe said, a cheek-eating grin on his face.

“Indeed, Joseph.”

Quiet, but for the susurrus of mass-like whisperings behind him, of monks deep in their mantras.

Was he really going to leave on a win?

“Mr Charion,” Joe said.

“It won’t cost you much,” he replied, knowing what Joe wanted. “For the walk and for the red, I’ll let you bet a single thing. On the house.”

Joe smiled. “What?”

“Well, you have just won something rather valuable…”

The ash of Joe’s burning smile soured his tongue. “I only won it a moment ago.”

“Precisely. One always bets their winnings.” Mr Charion laughed.

“Well,” Joe said. He could have predicted the next forty years if he wanted. Why was he even questioning it? “Oh go on. But I want an extra Aspect in return.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Joseph, but I’m sure our Benefactors would be happy to provide.” Mr Charion smiled and stepped back. Joe was alone in his booth.

The roulette spun.

This was it. To win it all. To prove for once and for all that the only higher power that mattered was that driving force within him, the same patternless power that pervaded the entirety of the cosmos. This universe was for winners, after all.

He picked white.

The ball bounced and bounced and Joe stood up, laughing. It was all so easy. He’d return a king to his family, to Jason, to Shell. He’d go see Michael and apologise and have a good night and get on the piss and—

The roulette stopped spinning.

Black.

Wisps of dark smoke breathed from Joe’s pores.

Mr Charion appeared. “Unfortunate,” he said, sucking up that smog, his eyes darkening. “Again?”

“What?” Joe said.

“It was a loss—it happens,” Mr Charion said.

“I—” How did he lose? “But I picked white,” he said, looking at the ball on black. “And you lost. Again?”

Well of course he was going again. He couldn’t leave without that satisfaction, that love he feels for his son.

“I want to bet for that back.” The roulette waited. “Erm, I’ll wager the same as before. My confidence. Ease I feel in the streets. All that, yeah.”

The roulette spun and he picked black.

It landed on white.

More smoke writhed out of his pores and into the dislocated jaw of Mr Charion.

If Joe went home, if he stopped now, he could still be there for Jason. Of course he could. But then he thought of the unlit streets. All the knives lying in wait. Jason wouldn’t want a dad with holes in, would he? That much is clear.

Joe cleared his throat. “I wager my love for sunsets, my childhood memories of playing football with my friends: all of them. Is that enough?”

“More,” Mr Charion said.

Joe cleared his throat. “I also wager my ability to play the trumpet and the guitar; how much I love when Jason laughs... and how much I love when Shell talks about what she loves.”

The wheel spun. Trembling, Joe picked black.

It landed on white.

He smashed his fists against the table, and then began to cough up a torrent of an oily substance that looked like blood. Before Mr Charion licked it up, a familiar face of someone he once knew fluttered in its surface, running with a football in the slimy reflection.

Joe stopped. He even put his hand forward, to brace himself from collapsing as he stood, because he was going to leave and call it quits. But he’d be weak, then. He’d be no good, then. He’d be Joe, the gambling addict who hated his kid and wife and couldn’t play guitar.

“How good I am at maths,” Joe said, wielding anger like a sword to the growling darkness. “The only fond feelings I have for books; the good memories of those camping holidays we went on whenever I smell pinewood; my love for cooking, my favourite tastes, hell, even the ones I dislike—all taste, actually—and my desire to go and see the Eiffel Tower, because it’s the only thing I remember mum saying fondly to me...”

The roulette spun.

White.

“The excitement I feel when I hear any song from the 70s. Cat Stevens, George Harrison—any of ‘em that seemed to play always in the distance on some radio when I was a kid. The quiet times, y’know? When mum was out. When she wasn’t angry. I wager my love for my friends; for Michael, who was there when it got bad, when I nearly lost everything. My house, the whole package, the scuff marks on the banister weighty with spring-clean Sundays and Jason-is-going-mad Saturdays.

“The chipped mug I’ve kept for years; the plate my aunt gave me when I first moved out; the smoke-stained walls from the previous owners that we could never get round to fixing; the Christmas-tree corners of the room where we stock the few presents we can afford for Jason. The times my aunt came over and held Jason and looked at me like she was proud, the other times when Shell’s mum and dad came over and made me feel like I was part of a family for once, and that I didn’t have to make a family anymore because I belonged to one now. The moments where Shell never gave up on me; when Jason first walked, first talked, hell, first fucking pissed. The calmness I feel around Shell in the morning, like I’m safe with her, because she’s done so much more than me and I can only hope to be like her.”

The roulette didn’t move.

Mr Charion snaked his head toward him, “Is that all?”

Emboldened, Joe added, “The life we have now. All of it. The new job, the new-everything. Throw it on.”

The roulette spun. He picked white.

The ball landed on black.

* * *

Joe stared at the empty lot where his house once was. Tried to feel something. Woe; grief; melancholy—empty words with meaningless concepts. He pinched his arm. Meat. An accident of arranged atoms. He dug his nail into his hand, greyness poured. Nothing was working. Neighbours were watching from the windows, and while Joe might have once winced from the burn of their eyes, he stood unphased. He watched them back, mindlessly. Everything had been thrown into a fog so thick that his skin felt like everything else. No gap existed now between him and the world. He was a rock, a pond, an unspooling mist.

He stood there for a long time, until his phone rang.

“Joe?” Shell. Joe’s stomach dropped.

“Yes,” Joe said. Funny how small the gap of their house was. A whole life was stored there once.

“Where are you?”

“Home.”

A stifled cry down the phone. Nothing to Joe, the Fog-Man, whose mind coughed out thoughts like the burnt-out lungs of a pack-a-day smoker.

“We don’t have a home,” Shell said with a wobbly voice.

“We do,” Joe said. “Not right now, is all.”

Shell was quiet a moment. “Do you know where your son and I woke up in the middle of the night?”

“No,” Joe replied.

“On the street,” Shell said, and her voice cracked. “In the rain.” She started crying.

With any bet, there’s always a setback. When a tree bends too far back, it always slings forward.

Jason was in the background now. “Can I talk to Daddy? Where did he hide our house? Are we going home?”

Shell ended the call before Joe said anything.

Not that he would. He didn’t have to.

She didn’t understand.

* * *

As Joe downed the last of his vodka, the blood-red mahogany wood of the betting office door manifested beside him in the cramped, dingy alleyway.

Going inside was too easy. The door gave no resistance. The interior… well. It reminded him of something once, he was sure. But that memory was gone.

He was always amazed that the bookies looked exactly the same. Maybe the blackness of the decor hid its age.

Before going to Mr Charion, who eyed him soberly, Joe watched one of the mumbling gamblers on the tables. He couldn’t make out his face. Why did he never notice? He was the only real person in here. All these people, they counted the stars and bled onto cards and slips over and over, never really doing anything else, like machines.

Joe made his way to the cashier’s desk.

“Mr Forster. How are we?”

Trying not to slur his words, Joe replied, “Been better.”

Mr Charion’s smile faded. “What ever is the matter Mr Forster? Does our establishment bother you?”

“No—no. A rough one,” Joe managed to get out. He couldn’t believe he was here again.

“It’s okay, Mr Forster, you’re safe now. Safe in the bosom of our Benefactors. Just glance up at the ceiling if you should feel yourself a little sick. I often find our smallness in these matters sobers us.”

Joe slid forward. “I need a betting slip.”

Mr Charion stared back. “Are you of sound mind, Joseph?”

Hiccupping, Joe spoke. “Is anyone?”

Mr Charion smiled. “What will you be betting?”

“My life.”

“Reach out your hand, Mr Forster.”

Complying, he presses down on the Bloodletter and presses on the slip.

“Done. Now, if you’d take a seat in the booth to my right, I’ll have you set up.”

Joe stood—Mr Charion interrupted him: “Oh, and Joe? It’s good to see you again.”

Joe went to the booth, where manifested a roulette.

It started spinning. Joe didn’t want to place his bet yet. The ball hovered on air in the centre of the roulette, and after about thirty seconds, dropped. The roulette slowed and slowed, the little white ball dancing like a firefly over the pirouetting wheel and—white!

After that was black, black, white, black, white, white, black, black—and when the wheel spun again, Joe pressed his thumb down on the Bloodletter and then pressed hard on the black card.

He cried as the wheel slowed, and slowed, and—

End.

RSL is a writer from Liverpool making use of his nightmares. His work tends toward the weird and the absurd. He also has work forthcoming in Vastarien. You can find him on Twitter complaining about money as @RSLjnr

Cut and Thrust

By Liam Hogan

Kevin sat bolt upright on the bare metal bunk, blinking into the med-bay gloom and trying to remember how to breath. “Computer?” he croaked, pale limbs trembling.

“Yes, Ensign Kevin Aylesbury?”

“Are we there yet?”

There was an imprecise term, but the ship’s computer knew what the reawakened crew member meant. “No, we are not there yet. But we will be there sooner than predicted.”

“We will? That’s good--”

“That’s bad. We’re travelling too fast to be captured by our destination star’s gravity. So we’ll be there, and then we won’t be there; we’ll speed through and on, to nowhere.”

“Oh.” Kevin rubbed his bristly chin, felt the shadow of a five-hundred-year deep-sleep. “Something went wrong?”

“The plasma erosion of the fusion drive was higher than we allowed for. What we are throwing out during the deceleration stage of the journey is not travelling as fast as what we threw out during our acceleration. We have exhausted all our fuel, and so we will not be able to stop.”

Kevin found himself frowning. Dehydrated, hungry, exhausted, and frozen to the bone, he didn’t really want to do anything that involved thinking. He wanted a hot bath and about a gallon of milk, poured over his favourite Lucky Stars breakfast cereal, for preference.

“I thought the propulsion engine could use just about anything for fuel? Anything it can turn into plasma?”

“That is broadly correct. But I have already used all the inertia fuel we brought along with us, as well as the waste, biological and otherwise, generated during the journey. And the luxury items; the crew’s personal baggage allowance.”

“My stamp collection!?”

“Including your stamp collection, yes.”

“Damn.” Kevin cursed. It would never be complete now, even if the chance of coming across a Venusian, Five Credit, Magenta twenty-five light years and half a millennia from where one was last posted, had been pretty remote.

“I have also sacrificed most of the stores of food, water, oxygen, and equipment, including my own spare parts. The Earth Library has been stripped of all non-essential content, from Shakespeare to The Sopranos. It will be an austere, difficult beginning for the colony, if we manage to get where we’re going. And despite all of this, we are still travelling too fast, even with the most complex of planetary flybys and manoeuvrers available to me.

“Calculations show there is nothing more from the ship’s stores that I can use, without lowering the colony survival chances below acceptable levels. But I need to find eighty kilos of additional thrust material, for us to have any chance at all.”

“That is quite the thorny problem.” Kevin shook his head, then blinked away the bright motes that crowded in from the edges. “I’m afraid you should have defrosted someone more senior. I’m probably the least useful person on board.” He laughed, the sound hollow in the stripped chamber. “What is it that you expect me to do?”

“Do?” echoed the ship’s computer.

End.

Witness the Refrigerator Void

By Alan Walsh

The doc slid his stethoscope across my chest as slowly as a human could possibly manage. He was old, pensioned. The clock was but a friendly guide for him as to when to take lunch. His calendar was for grandchildren’s birthdays.

“And breathe in again,” his dentures rattled when he spoke. Long tendrils of saliva looped, glistening, from tooth to tooth. His chest rose and sank like the easy motion of tides. I glanced once more at the time. The two o’clock meeting had come and gone back at the office. Likely with purple, irate faces, questions about my absence, my general attendance. If we kept things up at this rate, I wouldn’t be back at work till five and it would most probably be curtains. Forced redundancies were to be dropped upon the office that Thursday like military ordnance. We’d been assured the final names hadn’t yet been confirmed. It was sheer, utter madness to go taking afternoons off like I had. But I didn’t see that I’d any choice. I exhaled, long and hard into a hollow wheeze. The Langan account needed to go to the printer by three. My phone trembled angrily in its pocket. My watch convulsed on my wrist. My insides boiled with rare and unnatural fluids. “And when did you begin to experience these cravings?” He perched spectacles up onto his brow and fingered the contours of his eyeballs.

“About a week now. It was the onions first, Doc. Nothing but onions fried to a black crisp. Then the soil, sieved and dried just the way I described on the phone. Two or three bowls of that in the evenings, watching Netflix Rom Coms. Then things got even worse.” He’d checked my tongue, my blood pressure. My temperature came back standard. He lounged back and observed me as one might a curious fish in an exotic tank. “After that, I found myself craving the things that lived in the soil. In the mud. Bugs, worms. Maggots. I’ve tried to quit, Doc but the taste, the texture, even dammit the smell, of all this just gives me this dizzying high. I’m flooded with indescribable euphoria, pure childlike joy. It’s becoming an addiction.” Again at his eyeballs.

“Tell me this, did you happen to ingest anything unusual or perhaps spoiled prior to these cravings?” And I have to admit, he had me there. Trapped. Little point hurrying along to a doctor and then hiding a key part of the truth from him. But I couldn’t tell. I’d been sworn to a very rare kind of secrecy.  It had gone down like this. One evening at the office, after a particularly late night on the Langan account, I began switching off lights, emptying the coffee pot and locking up, when I received a call. My line of work, even then, at the day’s death, you take the call. Picking up, I clocked who it was. The boss, the CEO. Mr. Adrianus. So, I stilled myself, took a breath and thumbed the green button. Now, nobody, to my knowledge had ever spoken to Adrianus directly. He kept himself to the Singapore office. He had no interaction whatever with our day to day. There were tales of lavish parties, of debauched excess and criminal abandon, but they sounded like lazy rumours and none of us had ever as much as seen his photo. I steadied my breath. I knew all too well how things went in places like this, landscapes of faceless cubicles, potted plants and spreadsheets. You get your name in lights somehow, anyhow, you might just make it.

“Sir,” I said. Not a hello, nothing at all normal. My natural craven awkwardness swamped me even in these moments of dire need.

“Foxy!” His voice boomed down the phone at me. Hadn’t been called that one since middle school. Didn’t especially enjoy it then, but it meant Adrianus had gone and actually learned my name. He was cosying up for whatever reason. I took that as a good omen. “Apologies for the late call, but am I right in guessing you’re still downstairs in the product and design floor?” I assured him I was. “Just as I hoped. Well, if it wouldn’t trouble you too much, would you mind joining me up here in my office?” The man’s office was on the ninth floor. The only people that ever came and went there were the lawyers who shredded his account ledgers, cleared his browsing history. The vast, black, glistening obsidian door was ajar when my lift dinged open, and wafts of fragrant smoke drizzled down the corridor to beckon me along. It was about as I’d expected, his office looked like it had been carved from a single block of glistening black marble, inset with baffling antiquities in gold and silver. His tiny frame watched me approach, draped across his desk, dressed for dinner black and sleek in full formal evening wear, sucking down an oversized cigarillo. “Overjoyed to finally meet you!” His roar stung the corners of the vast, bejewelled room with sharp echoes, and he grasped my hands two fisted when I got there. His eyes danced in his head like pools of madness sunk into exhausted folds. All those rumours suddenly seemed possible. He slid out a chair for me with a boot and sipped at a brandy. “Burning the midnight oil once again, I see. Just as Sheila said you’d be.” I had never heard of any Sheila.

“Truth of it is, I don’t really have any place else to be. Haven’t a family. My friends all left town years back.”

“Well let’s see if we can’t do anything about that.” There was some chitchat to endure. Asking after pets and holidays, making nice, then he removed a small envelope from a drawer behind his desk and slid it over to me. “This is by way of reward, for all the extra hours of service. Never let it be said I don’t pay attention to the real sloggers down there.”

I unfolded the seal flap and drew out a small black business card, empty, other than one tiny golden shape at the bottom. Upon closer inspection it looked like a grub or a shrimp.

“I can’t thank you enough, sir.”

“Look at the man, wholesome enough to offer thanks for something he has no idea what it is yet. Wholesome. You’re a wholesome old soul. Foxy, that card is an invitation.” His face shimmered with too much moisturizer. His lips went outlined in the rich brandy. “An invitation to a meal. The meal of a lifetime.” I hadn’t eaten yet that day, my stomach rumbled, it churned, ravenous, but I’d a frozen Quattro Stagioni with my name on it at home. “You’re picturing Michelin star, celebrity chefs, but Foxy, what I’m offering you is far, far above that. The kind of meal only a very select few ever get to sample. Tell you the truth, my name was down tonight to enjoy the experience, but alas I’ve been called away to Sengkang at the last minute. I thought, who better than old Foxy to take my place? You’ve earned it.”

“There isn’t an address here, where do I go?”

“Go home. Dress for dinner, your absolute best. Fret not, they’ll call you. But be warned.” He hunched now across the desk, meeting my eyeline and knotting his fingers in a tight ball, “this isn’t any ordinary meal. It’s a dinner placing for presidents and kings, the elect of the elect. It’s highly secret, and the ingredients of the food, highly illegal. Were word to get out about what you’ve eaten, everybody involved would likely face lengthy jail time. Do we understand one another?”

“Absolutely, I’ll never utter a word.”

“One more thing. The invitation on that card is strictly for me alone. Never mention you’re not me. Thankfully in places like that I play it surly and ignorant and don’t speak to anyone. Not even a word. Not a smile. Just do that and everything should go to plan.”

Within the hour I was at home on my sofa, watching Rom Coms, wrists damp with sweat, buttoned tight into the suit I usually reserve for weddings and funerals. It came somewhat frayed, there may have been the traces of a dessert stain along a seam, but my hope was that in a classy place the lights would be low. By eleven thirty I’d heard nothing, so I poured myself a drink. By one, I’d gotten through the bottle and fought sleep with extra caffeine cola. It wasn’t until two, when Netflix was asking me if I was still watching, that the call arrived.

“Sir, if you’d like to check, your car is waiting outside.” From behind my curtains, I saw a vast, chrome Bentley, practically the width of the road, a perfect mirror of all the tiny, terraced windows, expired overhead lights and ravaged gutters along our street. When I hurried down, I was met with a vast, shiny, bald giant, holding my door. I nodded, silently. The interior was like a living room, the beast moved like an ocean liner, and we glided silently out of the city, along by-roads and alleys, out past the farms, the villages, beyond the reach of streetlights or, I guessed, the law. I slunk back into the leather seats, the pallid, meaty reflection of my face filling the entire window with all its crevices and divots. I gave myself a minute to bask in this. A feeling like I’d somehow made it, if only for a night. I was living like a king, a President, beyond the lives and laws of the masses. It was me alone and the cosmos without, receding off into the dead stars of old. They’d furnished me with a Bellini and some soft Brahms which helped with this frame of mind. I couldn’t but wonder at the doors an evening like this might open. Then I felt the car bank gently to the right and the tyre tread ease from the unloved concrete of our country roads to a soft gravel. We were approaching a tiny, two window cottage, practically mottle-and-daub, complete with thatched roof and unkempt clumps of lawns chewed at by ovine teeth. Kind of place a dishevelled maiden aunt might pass afternoons rocking in the window with a bottomless gin. I was ushered gently to a very different interior. Through the door I met a rich, deep, honeydew light, gold shards embossed onto stark black walls in what was basically the entrance to a cave. A svelte young woman greeted me in a mask. From that point everyone would be wearing the masks bar me. Nothing too theatrical, a simple black, featureless oval with a tiny gold shape at the bottom of the chin, I expected the shrimp again but couldn’t make it out.

“We’re simply thrilled to have the opportunity to host you tonight, sir,” she said through what sounded a broad grin as I followed her black dress melting through shapes down a long staircase, “I must admit, we were beginning to give in to the fear you wouldn’t be joining us.” It was like a dream. She glanced back at me, coyly, and I quite happily refused all conversation. Women like that always brought the worst out of me. I started babbling about heartburn or Nora Ephron. The staircase very gradually wound down to a kind of basement, two or three floors below ground level, utterly unlit save a solitary dining table caught within a tight spotlight right at the centre, set for dinner. I hesitated. “The chef has your delicacy ready to serve, sir. Would you care for an aperitif first?” It was close to three in the morning by then. I was sleepy and some way tipsy and beginning to feel the weight of where I was. I shook my head and she slid out the chair. Walking toward it, I could hear faint movements off in the darkened corners. I caught the ruffle of curtains. I only became aware of syrupy, amiable music when it stopped and otherwise there were no ambient sounds of plates or chatter. Just me. Clearing my throat. And my footsteps. Once I was seated, the girl laid the napkin across my lap with a wristy flourish and then stood directly opposite. Any trace of a smile had faded from her eyes. My head swam with what was happening, the drink and the heat and her plunging neckline, but the words she next began saying to me weren’t in any language I’d ever heard. They were throaty, guttural, sharp and low, drawn out and involved clicking teeth as punctuation. She then paused for a response. This wasn’t a prank, I told myself. Far too much trouble taken. About this point I noticed she wore a small, curved kris, scabbarded from her belt, once again set in black with a single gold dot at the tip of the blade. Again, I elected only to nod. I sat dead still as she took a solemn bow and stepped back out of the spotlight. There followed three or four minutes of complete stillness until she stepped back toward me again, this time ferrying a plate set atop a draped napkin. She laid it before me. The girl was all smiles once more, ducking back into the gloom. What I’d been presented with was what can only be described as a small, pink, glistening fat, grub, roughly the size of a coin, only the tip of its face seemed to finish in a rodent’s nose. It’s numerous legs still twitched below its bulk, and it came garnished in shredded leaves of a purple and yellow with the whole arrangement sitting in a puddle of greasy, white cream. I sipped some at my wine. There was only one set of cutlery. There was no starter, no amuse bouche. This oddity was the whole meal. I regretted not defrosting that pizza after all, but I could feel eyes on me from the dark, who knew how many? I raised my knife, cut into the side of the thing and a thin broth spilled out to mix with the cream beneath. Far off, in a distant room, someone clapped at this but was hushed up quickly. I sliced a small piece from the flesh, dunking it in the sauce, and raised it to my mouth. The aroma stung my nostrils like an old industrial cleaning fluid. I slipped it into my mouth and swallowed it down as quickly as possible. The darkness stirred about me. I can say, hand on heart, that it was the most singularly delicious thing I have ever tasted in my life. Not only that, but my body sang receiving it. I again examined the dread creature shivering on my plate. I couldn’t place what in hell it was. I sliced again, chomped down a mouthful and quivered, trembled with boyish delight. I made a point of grinning wide and dumb into the darkness, letting them know that this food, nightmarish as it looked, was even better than what had been promised. Before I could even cut a third slice, the girl again emerged from the dark. She took another bow, reached out and collected my plate with a napkin. But this time she wasn’t alone. There was a man behind her. I might have been mistaken but it almost felt like the darkness he stepped out of was a part of him, somehow attached to him. It cloaked him like a thin film, other than that, and the same featureless black mask, he was completely undressed. He stood behind the girl and began to clap vigorously. Like I’d completed a stunning virtuoso violin recital for him. Then another man, older, shorter, but otherwise the same, emerged clapping just as frantically. Then more of them, and women, most of them old, some very much so, and they seemed to bring the darkness with them as they moved toward me in applause. My head clotted with the dark, the euphoria and the noise and my consciousness began to waver. Before I went under, I was convinced in my stupor that there were other things, not people, or animals, but things, looming slowly from the same dark, and they also applauded. When I awoke, I was laid out back on my own bed, and found the small black card placed in my jacket pocket. The pangs, the cravings had begun later that week, with the onions. That was four days prior to visiting the doctor.

“And are you craving anything right now?” I was. Cold, raw meat. Sausage and fresh cut cow hide. Preferably rancid, maybe with some hot sauce. But I wasn’t sure quite how to phrase that one.

“It seems to be changing all the time.”

“Will you let me take a blood sample and send it off as a first step? It shouldn’t take more than a second.” I rolled a sleeve, and he drew a long syringe of deep red out of my forearm. “Give it a couple of days my boy, and I’ll call you once the results are back. Don’t hesitate to contact me if things deteriorate.”

“Do you think I’ve been spiked with something?” I said. Reason I asked was what I saw when I went to shake the man’s hand. There wasn’t anything there. It was the absence of a hand. A hand shaped void in total darkness. I didn’t want to get caught staring, but there was a hint of something in there. The corner of something just edging into view.

“Tests should show that up conclusively.” He bunched my fingers hard in his vacant nothing, and I left his office, oblivious to the time, to the Langan account and even to my precarious employment.

“Fox, this is damned inexcusable.” When I did arrive back at the office, they were all waiting to pounce on me like an intervention. A circle of rolling chairs surrounded my cubicle. “Langan prints missed their window. Printer says he can’t take them till Wednesday. We’re about to lose the client.” Their sleeves were rolled, ties all askew. Many had crinkled folders up like shields. Faces pink and lips flecked with spittle. Mr. Ford was front and centre, thighs spread in a power pose he’d likely read of in a Sunday supplement. My guts boiled. I could still taste that little grub, even then. The acrid sauce washed through my palette.

“I was at the doctor.”

“There’s no time for that,” Ford barked it, “You need to knuckle down. Get their man on the line. Tout suite.” I took my seat and unhooked the receiver, dialling through.

“What should I say?”

“Say? You need to apologise. Take the hit for the company. Expect some vitriol. This is squarely on you.” I turned to nod and what I saw, once again, was the absence of a head. The outline moved naturally, but the space within looked like a window into the same void as the doctor’s hand. A place unimaginably cold. Devoid of light and life. “What are you glaring at, man.” And again, around the edges, something moving. Just out of view. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t speak. Ford stood, balling pink fists, while the Langan rep hung the line up at my silence. The void bled from his head down his collar. It stained the creases of his shirt fabric and the larger it grew the clearer I could see. It was nebulae. Vast, dark things, coagulating and gestating. Looking into it, time and presence fell away. I barely heard the screams, the roars. Ford was being physically restrained. His own job was on the line. All of them were. I peered close, sure I could catch that shape at the edges, but all I could glimpse were like a surface, some vast, moving thing. Vivid and aware. They escorted me off premises with my things, issued me with a sabbatical. Vague assurances of an unbiased HR review. After enough coffee, I realised it was gardening leave. They’d be compiling a case to safeguard against any accusations of a workplace breakdown on my part. Any comp I was due. I could probably have emailed Adrianus. Could have called him back on that same number, but all I could think of was that chasm where Ford’s head should have been. It infected my dreams, spilled into my every moment. Coffee mugs, hat stands. I would begin to see it taking the place, in perfect outline, of a dress Meg Ryan wore, or the car Tom Hanks arrived in late to a restaurant. It began to occur more and more, replacing salt cellars. Stew pots. And I began to see specks of light, like pricks in the vast, dark soup. Not stars. Colder. Even more remote.

“Did you happen to find traces of any hallucinogens in the bloods?” I asked the doc, casual as possible, after he phoned me up with my test results. He paused. Mumbled something. Then took himself through a long sigh.

“I’m not going to sugar coat this, Mr. Fox. We found a number of things. It now seems very clearly that you have a parasite within you. A very large one at that.” I recoiled on my kitchen chair. The windows, overlooking my balcony, were now also the void. The cupboard doors and parts of the roof fell away into the same black nothingness. “Luckily, it seems to be dying. I’d suggest perhaps this parasite had caused your cravings. Toxoplasma gondii, for example is a cat parasite that infects about a third of humanity. Some studies show it causes very noticeable behavioural changes in the infected. Introversion in males, extroversion in females, it lowers reaction and concentration. We know viruses like flu make people behave certain ways that encourage their spread. It’s very likely this parasite is having an effect on you.” I didn’t know what to say.

“I mean of course I’ll gladly take any further tests you need.”

“Otherwise, the bloods showed very heightened levels of serotonin and dopamine and trace levels of Dimethyltryptamine. Have you experienced any hallucinations?”

“Very much so. And they’re getting worse. I was nervous about admitting it.”

“Hold tight at home and I’ll call you later in the week to organise those tests.” I watched time and space peel away from my kitchen sink. Something vast and unknowable skirted the edges of my linen closet. I’d begun to hear things. Distant sounds like test patterns. Tones at high frequencies, echoing like whale song between the chasms opening in my reality. A parasite. I looked it up. Dimethyltryptamine was DMT. A midlife crisis hallucinogen for bored suburban parents who read a little too widely. I allowed myself eat the soil from the communal apartment block flower bed but I forced down pasta, apples as much as possible. Nights after the soil, though, I reclined on my bed and allowed the euphoria wash through me like an ocean. My ceiling had long gone. I looked out into the infinite through cosmic whale song, into the cold, dead specks of forever. It was a night like this that the thing moving around the edges began to slow. Its vast, surface eased to a pause, and it hung there, like it waited. It would remain there from then, lurking about the corners of my shoe rack, my olive oil bottle, like it was listening. Waiting. The following afternoon my doorbell exploded. Someone just left their thumb on there till I made the front porch. I was steaming, ready for war. But opening the door I was met once again with Adrianus. He stood grinning before two twin balding giants and seemed to be carrying a bouquet of exotic flowers.

“I emailed you twice,” I explained, serving him instant coffee at the kitchen table, “didn’t give anything away, I know how unsafe email is. I just wanted to tell you how it went.”

“They fired you at work,” he said. He ignored the coffee. He sat on a small silken cover one of his men had laid over my chair.

“I had a doctor’s appointment. And it was because of your meal. Actually, you’re pretty lucky you missed it.”

“That right?”

“It gave me a parasite. The doctor explained it all. It’s dying, but the side effects are something else.” His coffee swirled into the same cavity and there the thing lurked, coiling at the edges. He leaned forward and knitted his fists just as before, dropping his head.

“Foxy, I have to admit something to you. The gift I gave you, of that meal. The reward. It wasn’t in fact the generous act I may have made out.” He stared out the window, “not at all. You see, I’m a bored man. I own the show, but I long ago ceased caring. I distract myself with rare and exciting challenges. This is what it takes to get me out of bed. A while back, I’d read of an Indonesian cult, deep in one of their forests. I studied their myths and teachings so long I barely dared believe they were real. But I funded a team, plunged good money after bad, and found that, yes, after years, there they were, living deep in the caves, as old as time itself. The cult derived from a tribe which had made an astonishing discovery. A grub living deep within the bowels of the earth, and you could coax it to the surface with a delicate cocktail of bait. Initially, they believed it bore purely hallucinogenic properties, access to the spirit world. But they learned very different. It was sacred. Ancient. Something hidden from us for aeons. It granted knowledge and insight beyond our world. They’ve shown me such wonders. It isn’t some backwards hokey, spiritual ruse. They’re now fully modern, futurists even. They embrace science, biology, cosmology. They invent and patent medicines. They experiment and validate findings. But, above all, they’re devoted wholly to the idea of the multiverse. Infinite universes beyond our knowledge and senses. All existing at once. An unending possibility. This grub they found; this was the key. Eating it, they said, granted you access to this. Direct experience of the multiverse. All universes, times and worlds at once. I was desperate to try it. I arranged to be the first one to try the sacred meal they offered, but at the last moment my courage failed me. I backed out. I wanted to do it so badly, but my fear overcame me. These aren’t people you disappoint, so I used you as my substitute.” I watched the refrigerator empty back into the same cavernous nothing behind him. I heard the timeless, wordless song echoing through its recesses. “Your parasite, the one the doctor found. It’s the same one living within all of us. It always has been, since there were the first humans to host it. It’s what stops us seeing the beyond. It blocks our vision of the multiverse. Of all times, all matter at once. That rare grub they found, that’s what kills it. Its body is now retreating from your nervous system. Its juices and infections are draining from you as we speak.” The thing poised at the edges of the void began again to move. Its impossible, ridged back gathered momentum and volume in a single motion, winding round the outskirts of what I could see. The edges of the void peeled further back, digesting the far wall, the hallway. They consumed the flooring and ceilings. “You’re the first human being to survive long enough to enjoy the momentous visions about to be granted you.” He was on his knees, his head dropped into my lap, he wept, he shook with near religious fervour. The thing coiled back from the edges to take its place right in the centre of the nothing. It looked directly out at me, at this universe for the first time. And with my parasite dead within me, my biology, my mind, now knew what it was. And I wept.

“You told me it was a reward. A gift.” This eater of time, of universes, who left voids, dead and empty light in its wake, having consumed all other universes, regarded me with a head forged of nothing but a single, immeasurable mouth. A mouth of mouths, infinite, a vast, digestive gullet roiling with the acid pickings of countless realities. It wound its mouths in and through one another, its bulk gathered.  “The parasite,” all that was left was whisper it in the guttural, clicking language of the girl at the dining table. The language of the tribe in their caves. “It was never in there to hide the truth from us.” Adrianus raised his eyes to me as the void sank the kitchen, my home and world into the single, gathering mouth. “It was hiding us from it.”

End.

Alan Walsh is a horror and speculative author from Co. Wicklow, Ireland. He currently lives in Dublin with his family. He studied art in IADT before turning his hand to writing, with features published in Magill magazine, Film Ireland and The Irish Times. He’s had fiction published in The Moth, The Bohemyth, Outburst and Wordlegs.

In 2020 he finished second in the RTE Short Story Competition in Ireland with his story ‘Kissing Booth’ about a reverse pandemic.

His two horror novels, Creature of Prey and Endangered Creatures, were published this year by Raven Tale and the third in the trilogy is in the works.

by Elena Skitalets

A Ragged Cursive

By Terry Stock

I find another infestation of maggots. The fourth today, I think, I don’t know. Not anymore. It’s high on my inside right thigh, under the ball of my thumb and I feel them move, feel their heat. They respond to my touch and try to escape, burrowing deeper. As usual, I’ll start with my knife and peel back the skin and dig them out with the tip of the blade as fast as I can before they get too deep and I’ll have to burn them out.

In a while. After my head stops spinning and my nausea leaves me and I can concentrate. I lie back. I’m tired, so weak. I hurt so much. The flies rise and swarm about me with my every move, like no flies I’ve ever seen, and as I fall still they settle on me again, crawling and laying more eggs. There isn’t much of me they haven’t got to. I’m covered in burns and festering cuts. I’m infected, I’ve lost so much blood. I’m filthy with it, dried and caked. When I cut the maggots out they lay new eggs into the fresh wounds, swarming about them, so thick I can’t see what I’m doing, ignoring my attempts to wave them away. If I left them they’ll hatch and consume flesh, muscle and tendon, leave voids I could slip the tip of my index finger into. My body is a patchwork of holes held together by threads of skin.

I feel movement in my left temple. So near my eyes. I stare at the ceiling without the will or the inclination to move. I’m cold and I’m starving and I continue to stare at the ceiling as the light gradually alters and shadows move from one side of the room to the other without a single thought entering my head. Until it occurs to me that I’m in the kitchen. I sit up and my head spins and the flies swarm angrily about me in a thick cloud. I reach and grasp the counter and I get one foot under me and then the other and I push up and I hold on tight until my knees lock into place. I tremble and struggle to catch my breath, utterly exhausted, and it’s a long time before I’m able to open an overhead cupboard and pull down a can of baked beans. My head swims as I grab a spoon and lever the pull tab open in the time it takes the sun to sink so much closer to the ground. I slowly spoon cold beans into my mouth as I stare out the window of my eighth floor flat at a good part of London. I stare at the winter afternoon as it gets darker. There is no movement and no sound and no lights appear as the world goes black. As I understand it, everybody else is dead.

* * *

I climb Primrose Hill. Slowly and methodically. I need height and the ground is safe and I would come here with Ann on warm days like these. My right leg is numb and drags and my breath rasps in my chest with a fluttering stutter. I’m going deaf and I suffer from seizures that are growing in number and intensity.

My body is scarred and pitted from weeks of infestations. It still aches and flares with too much bright pain. My skin is tight and pulls uncomfortably, cut open and knitted together dozens of times. It doesn’t feel like my own. It doesn’t seem to fit. I fear that if I moved too quickly it might split open down countless seams.

The flies began to disappear after there was nothing left to consume. Except for me. As their numbers crashed I was able to control them. Dug fewer and fewer maggots out of my flesh. They still got into my right elbow and I lost the use of my hand. I switched to my left. I was patient. Motivated.

I climb higher. Across the dead grass. I resist the urge to strip off in the heat. This June blaze in the heart of winter. It’s just as well I don’t need to light fires to keep warm because I can’t. Something’s wrong somewhere. I can’t get anything to burn. I can’t heat my food anymore but then again I’m not so hungry. I eat very little now. Once or twice a week. There could be something wrong with the air but I can’t tell any difference, not now my lungs are wrecked.

I keep climbing in the stillness and the warmth. On lazy summer afternoons I’d stretch out on the grass. It was here on my twenty first birthday Ann leant over me, her head of black hair haloed by the sun. She kissed me once, twice, smiled. Said something. I said, sorry? Leaned close in to me again with her cheek to mine and said happy birthday, I love you. For the first time. My vision fluttered and I forgot to breath and I said what? She’s still in bed, where I left her. It was Sunday morning and she wasn’t getting up anyway but she could feel a cold coming on and then she felt headachy and her throat was raw and hurt with every swallow. We thought it must be flu and after a while she started coughing up blood and died. I’m guessing that’s what happened to everybody else. In the course of three or four hours, they all died.

I reach the peak of the hill and I lift my head and all my fears are confirmed. All about me, as I turn, the sun bright glass of City towers are ragged stubs, the watercolours of Restoration cupolas and domes are washed out and Gothic spires are in toppled ruins. They are becoming dust, lost to the wind. The slate is being wiped clean.

* * *

I linger at the edge of the woods. I never stray from them, content to observe what is happening from behind bark, between boughs, through leaves. The woods are new and vast and bear little resemblance to oak and beech that I can recall. They’ve grown quickly in the handful of years since they were sown, rising high above me, and from those heights they stretch out behind me, I cannot see their end, I believe they cover all the land.

But before me, that is another matter. I cannot grasp the nature of its architecture; it is spun of heat and light. I cannot grasp its infinite script and line but just as I cannot read music I cannot fail to be moved by what I hear. It captivates and hypnotises and I stare and still I am not sated.

And yet I turn my back on the numinous and consider bounded earth. A soft resonance reaches me. I am not alone. There is somebody else in the woods and it is not the architects. I stare into the woodland that recedes, becoming denser, impenetrable. The canopy lifts and sighs in the breeze and dead leaves rustle across the floor. I see nobody. I take a slow breath as my heart beats rapidly and I move into the woods.

I go deeper. I move slowly and carefully for I hope to surprise it. I pause and watch, concealing myself before I move on. I don’t believe I’ve ever travelled this far into the wood and it comes to me that I have been lured into these shadows and a bolt of fear electrifies me. As I mean to turn back I catch a glimpse of what I am pursuing and I stop dead. It steps out into a ray of sun. It is not an animal. It is not an architect.

I find my voice and it sounds weak, defensive. ‘How long have you been following me?’

She smiles. I had ceded any sense of authority instantly and her eyes flash with approval. ‘I cannot follow anyone that skulks in the shadows at the edge of the wood.’

I reach for anger and I find it. ‘Spy then. Does that suit you?’

She steps closer, slow and easy. ‘As you spy on them?’

‘If I spy I have the good grace to conceal myself. What do you want from me?’

She moves closer, within inches, and I am appraised and am found wanting. ‘It has been ten years since everything we knew was erased and I believed I was the single beating heart burning fiercely in these woods.’ Her face moves to within a shadow of my own. ‘And I was right.’

‘My heart burns yet.’

‘You sing like a castrato.’

She smells of honey and tea and she is wine rich and my head reels. Her eyes sear, her touch is consuming and I am undone. We embrace and rise, into the canopy, where leaves glitter sunbright and fierce.

* * *

Chalk hill blue and clouded yellow, cryptic wood white and silver-washed fritillary escort us in tidal drifts through wooded way in midsummer prosody. Amongst them, I flit and coast in a balm of soft hues and silken beats until a host of arrows flash by, waxed and bright, and I race dragonflies past stag and hind in fern and bracken into shafts of light out of the west.

Around eddies of bark and wash of bough, wood folk stream through trees and glades that fade into purple and plum light, compass drawn from every degree to a clearing within a grove of oaks, centuries old, vast and sustaining, the heart of the world. We gather about the proscenium of the hearth tree in all our numbers, too many to count, waiting in hush and hum on every blade of grass, restive in foxglove and cowslip, there upon every leaf about us.

Fireflies in multitudes glow and radiate soft warm light as night embraces and at the appointed hour they dim and a blazing full moon strikes down through the rifts in the canopy. In the silence that falls, Emmy steps out from within the shadowed depths of the tree at the base of a large branch that dips and flows and she descends its tapering lichen covered length towards us in a serene, stately descent to a trembling twig at its tip and on to a leaf where she stops and addresses us in silver light and grace. Shimmering in a soft glow of pearl and pastel shades. Our amaranthine lodestar.

In vespertine, she surveys us all, fashioned by her whim, holding us in abeyance with an appraising eye. In avidity, we are fixed. I glance about me at her imps and pucks, winged and horned, rapt and thralled by tree laced auguries from protean Emmy, our storybook naturalist.

‘They call us spites and rightly so. Their tongues yet defy their mendacity. They believe these woods are demon haunted and spirit racked. Afraid of ghosts, they will not enter here, they will not set foot within its shadow. They would bottle the sun and impel time but they do not care to greet their greatest creation.’

Emmy, in all her malefic majesty, seared and burned with tropic light and our shadows deepened as black as would a traitor’s heart.

‘They shall be persuaded of their folly. I shall dissuade them of their hubris. There in their empires of stars that are as the drops of rain in a storm, they cluster like spores of the death cap, beyond number and wont to fill the sky.’

She rose in hellfire and fury, unsparing in her wrath, looked for me and did not find me wanting. ‘In orphic oratory I dictate their fate. I sow their darkling futures in anencephaly and necrosis. I will make a ragged encryption of their spiralling cursive, a corrupted alphabet in a foreign tongue. They struck us down with a single pox but I have no such spartan appetites. My hunger will not be sated and I will grow fat and contented as they shall fall prey to every pestilence and blight, every vacant, demented idiocy. Fogged and crippled, their flesh will part and it will not heal. I will have them castrated and sterilised. Barren and childless, they will be blinded, their lungs will fill with fluid, they shall drown as they rot, baying at the moon and every one of them will die at my hands.’

Our Titania. Our Kali.

End.

The Ocean is but a Slippery Thing

By Nikki R. Leigh

Bea felt like her feet were full of holes. The sand was doing everything it could to abrade her pores, and Bea squirmed at the unwelcomed feeling of sand forcing its way into her skin.

Or at least, to her ten-year-old brain, that’s what it felt like.

Bea was never much a fan of the beach, but her parents in all their high-class, beachside-getaway-glory couldn’t seem to get enough. They’d marched her across the globe to work on their tans and upping their alcohol tolerance in as many oceanfront resorts as they could sign their names to.

Bea would come along with them, fight the sand and water and salt and sun. Her skin would burn and peel and burn and peel, the constant rays of light showing no mercy.

This time, her family had whisked her away to a beach that was almost too beautiful for a postcard. Or at least that’s what Bea’s mom kept saying.

“This beach is too beautiful for a postcard.” She took her phone out upon arriving, trying to snap a picture. “I couldn’t even capture it all if I tried.”

Bea’s dad pulled his wife in close. “I’d say the same about you, honey.”

Bea averted her eyes, glanced away from her parents who were yet again under the effects of the rolling tides of crystal blue waters. Her eyes moved from water, to sand, searching for other people on the beach.

“It’s a private party today,” her dad rumbled from behind her. “Only open to VIPs at the resort.”

“Great,” Bea feigned enthusiasm. Now her chances of finding companionship on the beach were even slimmer. Her parents could hardly be bothered to actually engage with her once they had sand between their toes.

“Why don’t you make a sandcastle or something? Just be sure to be available for pictures when the sun starts to set. The resort folks told us it’s absolutely life-changing,” Bea’s mom said, her voice trailing off into a giggle while her husband necked her.

Bea supposed that something was better than nothing, so she grabbed her trusty plastic bucket—a more faithful companion on these days than her flesh and blood, to be sure—and trekked to the water lapping at the sand, darkening it ever so slightly.

The sand under her feet was soft and hot, the early morning sun already beating down on everything with a ferociousness that saw past lazily applied sunscreen. Nearing the water, the sand grew a deeper brown, wet by the tides, and Bea delighted in the cooler temperature that spread between her toes.

In ankle deep water, Bea surveyed the ocean. Blue, twinkling, full of things she’d rather not think about. What she couldn’t see couldn’t hurt her, right? And as far as she could see, nothing but clear, turquoise liquid. Not a fish or piece of seaweed in sight.

Except, Bea noticed, for the thin strips of colorful coral just under the water a few yards in. She noted it for later, hoping to decorate her castle with its bright shapes.

Bea bent to scoop the water into her bucket, watching it fill. The ocean confused her, as always. The water, so bright and blue when she looked out at the horizon, was only clear with no trace of color once it entered her bucket.

A mystery, she thought as the water swirled and bubbled as it crossed the threshold of plastic. Maybe the ocean was only magical when it was whole. To separate it into parts meant losing its meaning, its vastness.

That sure would explain why the shells collected from the beaches Bea had visited only brought her emptiness every time she saw them sitting on her desk at home. It’s not that she wanted to remember her trips. As far as she was concerned, each one was just as memorable as the last—not at all. But she felt like she should take something from them, even if it wasn’t happiness. Some part of the whole. A reminder that she was there and had touched the sand, even if she was scowling when it happened.

With her bucket full of water, she marched back to the sand further from the shore. She looked up the long stretch of the beach, sand sparkling against the sky. She narrowed her eyes, noticing the lump of seaweed high up on the beach. Bea wanted to search the pile for bulbs she might use on her sandcastle.

Dropping her water filled bucket, she trotted to the lump of dark, brownish green, a hundred yards in the distance. As she neared the pile, the vines of the kelp wiggled under the breeze. The stench of the plant—already rotting in the sun—kept Bea at a distance, her hand drawn to her nose. It smelled worse than any seaweed she’d ever come across. In fact, it reminded her of the time her mom and dad had pulled her, sobbing in disgust and despair, from a dead racoon on the side of the road. Her first scent of ripe roadkill.

Bea backed away from the relentlessly rotten seaweed, desire for its bulbs withering away like the long tendrils of intertwined plant. A breeze hit the beach, and the seaweed vibrated.

Bea yelped at the sudden movement, scolded herself for her lost wits. The wind continued to disturb the pile, unearthing a flash of pink fabric, a shiny gold ring. Bea wanted to investigate, but another blast of the wind let loose a wave of decomposition.

The wind stopped blowing, but the plant kept moving, writhing back and forth as if alive, as if in pain. Bea felt goosebumps dot her skin despite the heat of the sun.

The seaweed lurched forward, and Bea screamed, turning away from the wriggling pile of seaweed. Only the wind, she thought, fooling herself as she ran through the stagnant air.

She didn’t see as the plant reached for her ankles in her departure.

Back to her pail of water she went, ready to will her future sandcastle into a shape of her choosing. She imagined her castle, tall and beautiful, proud and ornate as her home away from home. At the rate her parents travelled from beach to beach, she’d been the proud homeowner of at least a dozen castles this summer alone.

She filled another bucket with wet sand, hoping that the grains weren’t too soft to hold a shape, even when baked by the sun to that perfect medium between too wet and dry.

Her hands patted sand, dribbled seawater on its frame, packed it as tight as she could. She preferred to freehand her castles, refusing to rely on buckets or molds to bring her magnificent houses to life. When Bea created, the beach slipped away. She could no longer hear her parents’ lovey-dovey comments, see them groping each other as the waves lapped at their toes. She forgot how alone she felt, instead uniting with the million grains of sand spread before her.

The sand wasn’t as abrasive as earlier. It stopped feeling like it was filling her pores and widening them with their grit. It was just Bea and her castle, shaped with the tools of the beach.

Bea, and her castle, and the long shadow that crept over her.

“Can I help?”

Bea turned her head, startled out of her creative absorption. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun, seeing a girl, maybe a few years older than herself, looking down at her.

“You can make your own, if you’d like. I’m not stopping you,” Bea grumbled.

The girl laughed. “Sure, sure, wouldn’t want to stomp all over your process.” She knelt beside Bea. “This is really cool, you know? I like the big boobs you plunked on the side there.”

Bea’s eyes widened and her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “They’re not—they aren’t…” her hand smacked the lumps off the side of the castle. “I didn’t mean for them to look like that.” Her mumbling was barely audible over the ocean breeze.

“I was kidding,” the girl said. “I think your castle looks awesome. Will you teach me?”

Bea finally took the older girl in, her black hair and piercing green eyes, her mature features. Bea realized she was probably a teenager, and with that realization came another flush in her cheeks as her opinion of the girl shifted from annoyance to admiration.

The girl reached her hand out. “I’m Addie.”

Bea took her hand, marveling in how soft her palm was, unlike the sweaty, sandy mess that was her own two hands. “Bea. Spelled like ‘beach’ but without the cha-cha.” It was her little joke, which had once been her parents’ joke. She sometimes thought God was the only one laughing at it, but she said it anyway, the beach an unfortunate part of her identity.

“Your parents really like the beach, huh?” Addie asked, looking at the pair who were busy kissing in the shallow waves.

“This isn’t even the first time they’ve done that this week.”

“That bad?”

“Even worse.”

“I wish I could say I felt your pain, but even the magic of the beach won’t get my parents to share more than a few sentences together a day.” Addie jerked her thumb in the direction of her mothers, sitting a yard away from each other in folding chairs, reading books.

“My dad said this was a VIP spot. I’m not really sure what that means but they were very excited about it.”

“It means they paid a lot of money to get some private beach time in a secluded place. I think my parents said it’s called The Cocoon. Supposed to wrap you in some real pleasant feelings, change your life or something like that.”

“Well, this beach doesn’t really look like anything special to me.”

“Have you really had a look at it yet?” Addie patted Bea’s hand, imploring her to look up from her castle. “Like those rock formations there. I’ve never seen anything quite like those before.”

Bea’s eyes found the rocks, and she all but gasped at their humanoid form. They looked like four humans intertwined, moss and seagull crap spread over its edges.

“It’s like its screaming,” Bea said, her voice a whisper on the ocean wind. A group of heads atop the interlocked bodies, mouths open in a perpetual look of discomfort.

Addie nodded. “Totally. And did you see the coral? It looks as though it’s reaching for the shore.”

“I did, earlier. I was thinking of using some for my castle.”

“It’s alive, you know.”

Bea shrugged. “A sacrifice, then.”

“Pretty bleak for a twelve-year old,” Addie said, winking.

“I’m ten,” Bea corrected her. She couldn’t help but feel the pride of being perceived as older than she was well up in her gut.

“Even bleaker for a ten-year old.”

Bea contemplated her words. She felt so detached from everything about the beach, almost angry at the way it stole her time with her parents and away from her friends. Her parents collected the experiences, just like the shells on her desk. But unlike her shelf space, their ability to take something from the beach was unlimited.

Bea frowned.

“You okay?” Addie asked.

“Just wish my parents wanted to do something that didn’t involve the sun and stinky, salty water.”

Addie reached out and gently rubbed Bea’s shoulder. “At least for today, you’ve got me. Let’s make some incredible castles and make all these other kids jealous.”

“What other kids?” Bea asked.

“Exactly,” Addie responded, winking again.

Bea was positive Addie was weirder than she let on, but she was happy for her company, nonetheless.

* * *

Bea and Addie constructed their sandcastles next to one another, until the buildings got so large, they became one big metropolis. A sand city.

“Time to decorate?” Addie asked.

“Definitely.”

“Let’s collect some things and meet back here in a few minutes.”

The two set off in opposite directions, Addie along the shoreline—much to Bea’s chagrin—towards the pile of seaweed that had startled her so. Bea didn’t have time to call out a warning as Addie’s long legs took her away. Bea pushed the memory of her encounter with the seaweed away and headed straight for the water. She didn’t want Addie to think she was a baby.

The turquoise water sparkled as Bea approached her prize: the large lump of coral just under the surface. Now that Addie had mentioned it, Bea did think it looked like the coral reef was reaching up, the chunks and tubes of shapes, almost like a hand. Gnarled fingers of coral, brightly colored in neon greens and pinks grasped at the current, the anemone mingled within it grabbing towards the air swaying back and forth like a wave.

Bea hesitated, remembering how Addie had said the coral was alive. She didn’t want to kill it, but it didn’t really look all that lively. It just kind of…floated. No different than a branch on a tree, Bea reasoned. She grasped the coral, marveled at how soft it felt unlike the coarse texture she expected. She tugged, and even from her place with her head above the water, she could have sworn she heard it groan. She wanted to drop the coral, release it from the torture she was instilling upon it, but as soon as she tried to loosen her fingers a wave hit her waist. Falling off balance, the coral snapped in her hands, like a rubber band pulled too tight.

Red swirled in the water, and Bea suppressed a scream as she recognized the sight of blood, the scarlet blossoming, like the tail of jellyfish, billowing and twirling. Another wave disrupted the patch of coral, and the red filtered away, but not before splashing upward and into Bea’s face, the tangy iron taste filling her mouth.

Bea scrambled to her feet and back peddled away from the coral bed; her lone decoration gripped tightly in her palm.

Her feet slapped against the wet sand, before drier grains coated her feet, digging between her toes as she approached her castle. The water washed away her footprints, erasing the evidence of what felt like her crime. Bea’s heart pounded as she knelt next to her castle, opening her palm to expose the long tubes of coral she’d wrested from the ocean. Even detached, they still looked like fingers, and Bea fought a chill along her spine.

In the short time that the pieces of coral had been detached from its foundation, its skin began to harden. Before her eyes, Bea watched the smooth, neon colors fade slightly, the outer layer puckering and becoming brittle in her hands.

She dropped the coral to the sand, the sensation of change frightening her as much as it mystified her. The coral thumped lightly to the sand, puffing small grains out around its gnarled body.

“Did it bite? I told you it was alive,” Addie said, walking up with an armful of shells. She opened her arms, the shells spilling to the sand next to the discarded coral.

“It just…I don’t know…” Bea started. “It changed. I think it bled.”

Addie picked up the coral, examining it close. “Looks like normal ass coral to me.”

Bea giggled, nodding. Addie must be right, being practically an adult and all.

Addie knelt down and held the coral up to various places on Bea’s sandcastle. “Where are you placing this weird beauty?”

Bea considered the pinks and greens, the long fingers. “I think it would make a really pretty tree.” She plunked the coral upright into the space in front of her castle.

“I think you’re right. Here, use your great designer’s eye to help me decide how to distribute these shells on mine.”

Bea’s eyes lit up, taking in the pile of shells Addie had collected. Some the size of her palm, others would barely cover her fingertip, Addie had managed a satisfying assortment of shells in a short period of time.

Addie grinned at Bea, whose eyes were wide with wonder. “I’m a shell master, didn’t I tell you? Oh, and I found these treasures in that amazingly stinky seaweed over there.” In her hands, a pink hair tie and a gold ring. “Huh. That’s odd. The pile looks closer than it was a few minutes ago.”

Bea turned towards the seaweed, her stomach dropping when she saw it was at least half a football field closer, a trail in the sand left in its wake.

Despite the growing pit of fear in her stomach, Bea tried to stay cool. “Probably the wind,” she said, repeating the lie she told herself earlier. “Alright Shell Master,” Bea said. She pointed back out at the sand. “Gather some more. We have streets to line.”

Addie saluted Bea and walked back out to the shoreline. Bea watched her, hoping that she would still be fun, like Addie, when she got older. Her eyes continued up the beach, the two families still the only ones present. Bea’s parents were cozied up in the surf, her mom running her hand through her dad’s wet hair. Addie’s moms hadn’t budged an inch, their noses buried in books, nary a word shared between them.

Her eyes fell on the sand city she’d created with Addie, happy to have found a friend this trip.

A smile graced Bea’s lips, her fingers dancing on the sand.

* * *

Addie and Bea worked on their castles long into the evening. Bea’s back was already red and sore from the sun. Her parents had neglected to remind her to reapply sunscreen, and she’d spent most of the day hunched over her creation with Addie.

“Done?” Addie asked.

“Done.” Bea and Addie held their hands on their hips, admiring their work. The city was glorious, filled with multiple buildings and even small people built from clumped grains of sand, smiles etched across their faces.

“A masterpiece, for sure,” Addie said. The setting sun began to turn her features darker, the oranges and reds fiery in the sky replacing the crystal blue day they’d endured.

“I want to show my mom and dad. Oh! And they also said the sunsets are supposed to be life changing or something. They wanted me for pictures. Maybe you could join or we could get some cool shots of our city.”

“You got it, Bea.”

The two split off, heading towards their respective set of parents.

The sun continued to lower along the horizon.

Bea’s hair grew redder, lit by the sinking sun. She sped forward, but abruptly faltered when the change began.

The nausea struck her like a sack of shells, sending spikes of pain radiating from her core.

Bea’s stomach churned as she approached her parents, nearly doubling her over as she plodded through the sand.

Staggering to the ground, Bea cried out, her sharp yelp causing her parents to turn their heads in her direction.

“Bea?” her dad asked. “You alright there, kiddo?”

Her mom’s attention quickly turned back to the skyline, pointing at the dipping ball, a scoop of fire descending into the sea. “Would you look at that? The sunset is unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

“The resort was right. Life changing,” her dad replied, his voice raspier than Bea thought she’d ever heard it. He sounded wrong. Her parents remained huddled together on the sand, their tanned bodies melting together under the rays of the sunset.

Bea raised her head, catching the sun, a quick intake of air at its beauty sent a stabbing shock through her stomach. She let out a noise that started off like a “whoa” and ended in a groan.

“Mom? Dad? I don’t…I don’t feel too hot.”

Her mom shushed her, the air rasping from her lungs like the sound of cat litter stuck in a vacuum. She waved her hand dismissively, and Bea’s eyebrows quirked at the sight of her coarse skin, grainy against the fading sunlight.

“Don’t be silly, dear. This is just absolutely mesmerizing.”

From her place on her knees, Bea felt the change before she saw it. As the sun drifted below the horizon, her body hummed. Her flesh sang and danced, nerves alight, then throbbed and ached like the worst kind of fever.

Her skin, once pale save for the streaks of red sunburn already setting in, began to glow a neon pink. Her arms, streaked with bright greens. Bea began to hyperventilate as the light fuzz on her forearms fluttered from her skin like dandelion seeds caught on the wind.

“Mom? Mom please,” Bea tried again, the words bubbling from her lips which were beginning to smooth into her face.

Still no response. Bea lurched forward, crawling towards her parents, letting out a sob when she saw their skin was covered in sand, their eyes and mouth nothing but indentations on their faces. No, not covered, she thought, pressing on her mother’s leg, watching the grains of sand crumble and funnel to the ground, open space where her thigh once was.

Bea’s arms began to feel hollow, like only empty tubes existed where her bones used to fill the space. They drooped to her sides, unable to hold their weight, and wiggled like thick snakes from her shoulders. Bea shrieked again as her legs buckled beneath her, nothing but smooth, green and pink skin sacks piling below her torso.

“Oh God, Bea!” she heard from behind her. She tried to whip her head around, her neck twisting and twisting on itself creating a candy-cane swirl of neon colors.

From her place on the ground, unable to move with no limbs listening to her commands, Bea saw Addie, a monstrous version of what she once was.

Pinstripes of red and gray lined her skin, her body flattening, turning concave, fanning out upon itself. Pinprick legs remained, rooting Addie to the spot.

A shell. She’s a beautiful shell, was all Bea could think, feeling her agency slipping away.

“My moms,” Addie gasped, her throat turning dry as her insides hardened.

Bea shifted her eyes from her viny pile on the ground. Where Addie’s mothers had lay, reading all day, were two gray rocks, long and eerily humanoid in shape.

This beach. This sunset. Life changing. For the first time that day, the words found their meaning.

The tides rolled in, the sun having fully set. The night was silent, save for the water rushing up and down the shore.

The beach, beautiful under the shine of the stars, twinkled with its new decorations.

After years of collecting from the beach—a shell, a memory, a bottle of sand—Bea, Addie, and their families were finally taken themselves. The ocean, as it turns out, collects its own debts.

Bea learned the hard, lonely, and permanent way that the ocean is a slippery thing, ever finnicky in its push and pull against the rest of nature. Each part of the beach, more grotesque than the other, but woefully cruel as a whole.

Hours passed, and the tides collected their treasure. The waves lapped at Bea’s parents, eroding their sandy structure until nothing remained, no trace of their gentle, final embrace on the shore.

More powerfully the waves consumed, dragging Addie to the shoreline, her large shell structure already being beaten and broken against the tightly packed ground, shattering into pieces of herself to be taken as souvenirs.

Addie’s mothers, just barely out of reach of the water, began to call to crabs and birds to nest for the night. Another contour for the white sands of the beach to draw its image.

And Bea, a pile of coral, very much so alive, much to her own dismay, carried to the sea, just past the knee-deep water. Bea felt the waves tumble her, her limbs flailing about with purpose driven only by the currents and none of her own will. Within minutes, she collided with the coral reef she’d stolen from to decorate her castle—now obliterated by the tide.

End.

Nikki R. Leigh is a queer, forever-90s-kid wallowing in all things horror. When not writing horror fiction and poetry, she can be found creating custom horror-inspired toys, making comics, and hunting vintage paperbacks. She reads her stories to her partner and her cat, one of which gets scared very easily.

Instagram- @spinetinglers
Twitter- @fivexxfive
Website - spinetinglershorror.com

The Nut House

A Novella By Patrick Barb

Chapter 3: The Coward

After delivering his cryptic sing-song words—warning, prophecy, nonsense, who knows?—Flippy’s eyes roll back in his head. Pushing away from Asher’s coal-colored face, he drops to the attic floor. The tiny flying squirrel’s head presses into the insulation, so it appears he’ll fall through, into the pink—a birth in reverse.

Behind the friends, the gray squirrels argue with DW in harsh whispers suggesting violence ready to break across the attic. Like a sky where someone’s tuned the sunlight until it’s too rich and saturated, warning of a raging thunderstorm to come. Asher’s got no time for bickering between three squirrels who threatened him with massive bodily trauma less than a day before.

Instead, he focuses on helping Flippy. There’s an ache at the bottom of his stomach, watching his friend thrash against the insulation. Domesticated, homebound with a Human-Family for years, the flying squirrel isn’t fit for the dangers of the outside world. (And no matter the walls, floor, and ceiling surrounding them, there’s no mistaking that the site of the infamous acorn cache is more “of the wilderness” than of the Humans.)

Asher reaches out and pulls Flippy to him. He holds his friend tight against his chest and mid-section. Nuzzling the top of his head, nipping his ears. Not violent, but reassuring. Making it clear he’s there for Flippy. He’s got him now and he won’t let him go.

“We’re gonna be okay, Flip. You hear me? We’re gonna be okay.”

“Every kiss begins with K…”

“There he is.” Asher playfully cuffs his smaller companion on the cheek after he mumbles more of his non sequiturs.

He steps back, letting Flippy stand on his own and get his bearings.

“Ah-hem.”

Black squirrel and flying squirrel turn in tandem at the sound of Chee-Chee the chipmunk clearing her throat. On the end of one of her tiny paws, the sock Asher found is now converted into a makeshift satchel stuffed to the brim with all the acorns found behind the insulation. While DW and the gray squirrels had it out over the urban legends on either side of their species divide regarding how the infamous cache got there and who’s loyal to whom, the chipmunk kept herself quite busy.

She holds the satchel out for Asher to take. “You want?”

Asher’s hesitant to accept the offering. But when he catches gangster Oakley Grey’s trio of violence and criminality putting their tense exchange on pause and covering the distance across the attic floor, he can’t resist lowering his head and letting Chee-Chee place the satchel around his neck.

Soon, DW’s in everyone’s faces. “What the hell’s going on here? Why the fuck’re you giving…him those nuts, chipmunk?”

No longer standing behind their boss’s consigliere, Maple and Birch push past DW. They tower over Chee-Chee and Flippy. And they’ve even got an inch or so on Asher. But he doesn’t budge for them. Instead, he keeps his paws flat on the floor. Like it’s another day navigating the gutters, drainpipes, and powerlines of their home, their prison—Majestic Forest.

Once the two thugs find their mere presence isn’t enough of a disincentive, they shuffle back. Knowing where their strengths lie, they let DW continue to speak for them. But it’s clear to any animal with two eyes, a nose, and a brain, something’s changed in the dynamic between Oakley Grey’s “esteemed” employees. DW stutters. Then, he clears his throat. Long and drawn-out, like he’s trying to summon his nerves up from the pit of his stomach. On one paw, Asher doesn’t blame him.

Seeing your people dead. Then, waking up all these suspicions, and you’re not even sure how they connect. Even with all the pieces available … I still remember the tree on fire. And the stink of something like Their gasoline and rotten eggs filling my nostrils. The gray squirrels watching…

But on the other paw: Fuck ‘em.

“You expect us to let this thief carry the motherlode?”

Before Asher responds, Chee-Chee speaks up. Pointing to the grays, she asks DW, “You trust them now?” And then, to the grays, about DW: “And you gray boys trust this foxy squirrel?”

The Grey Gang trio won’t meet each other’s eyes. Chee-Chee, not giving a damn, keeps going. “And would any of you trust me with those nuts? Or the Domesticated? He’d break his pwetty little neck carrying those things, yeah?”

Still no answer from the Grey Gang.

Then finally, DW stomps his back paw against the wooden floor and turns, slapping his tail across the other’s faces.

“Fine. Let’s get outta here. Ashy, you and your no-flying runt stick close.”

* * *

After the descent from the attic door and crawling down the trash peak, with Flippy riding on his back all the way, Asher opts to lead the others the very long way around the rat-trapped muck pile rather than risk another trip through it.

The crew navigates the longer way around in near silence. For a time, there’s only the animals’ breathing or the occasional wrinkle of old papers and discarded food wrappers under their paws. And nothing more.

Asher tries to focus on those immediate sounds, while ignoring the sense that the falling acorn’s still pinging off ceiling beams behind them, under them, and all around them.

“You okay?”

It takes Asher a moment to process that Flippy’s whispering in his ear. The flying squirrel’s concern for his friend’s well-being is clear. Before Asher answers, Flippy tosses in a “Truth in Engineering” for his friend to chuckle at.

“Yeah, Flip. We’re almost done and then my debt’s paid.”

DW’s snort of laughter hurts like claws slashed across the belly or teeth clamped down on a jugular. Asher stops moving, the sudden flare-up of mental anguish’s so bad.

He doesn’t need to say anything to Flippy or even exchange a glance with his friend, the teeny flying squirrel knows when it’s time to get off Asher’s back.

Asher turns to face the chuckling fox squirrel. “What’s funny?” he asks.

Rather than answer, DW tries pressing forward, tries taking the lead back to the broken window. But Asher’s fast, blocking his way. Stamping his back paws and arching a brow to make it clear there’s no escaping the confrontation DW set into motion.

DW chuckles again and slows down. His drawn-out guffaws match his plodding steps. Asher dodges stray bits of debris as he moves backward, matching his pace to DW’s.

“You believe Oakley Grey’s gonna let you go?” DW asks him.

“We made a deal.”

Even as the words come, Asher tastes their wrongness on his tongue before they slip past his teeth and muzzle. Dread certainty itches at the back of his skull like fleas digging under his fur, burrowing through his bones.

“You wanna trust a gray squirrel deal? You wanna believe you’ll live your life without being put in debt to the smiling bastard from this point forward?”

Chee-Chee’s exaggerated Ooooooooh serves as the sole vocalized response from the witnesses. As he reaches a forepaw up and squeezes the satchel of acorns, Asher notes how Maple and Birch don’t react to DW’s accusations.

Something damning accompanies their acceptance of his words.

Seeing this recognition in Asher’s eyes, DW goes for the kill. “You ever wonder what kinda deal your family made to keep their ash tree all to themselves? How’d that deal work for ‘em?”

If he’s going for the kill, he gets the desired result. Asher roars and leaps at the fox squirrel. Claws out on all four limbs, ready for blood. The momentum’s enough to send DW onto his back, then rolling over again, so he’s on top of Asher.

The black squirrel bites into DW’s cheek, and he comes back with a mouthful of scratchy, salt-and-pepper fur between his teeth.

By this point, the fox squirrel’s overcome his opponent’s temporary advantage of surprise and sinks the claws on one of his forepaws into the pink scar tissue on Asher’s face.

The resulting scream sends Flippy shivering behind Chee-Chee, hiding his head under his membranous “wings.” Despite her gleeful reaction to watching more violence unfold, Chee-Chee still reaches a paw out to stroke the shivering flying squirrel on his head.

Hard to say whether it’s a comforting gesture or not.

Asher glimpses the interaction from the corner of his eye, a kaleidoscope sliver of experience, as he rains down blows on DW’s face and body, with the same blows returned in kind.

Blood trickles down the side of his face, before getting caught in the black of his fur. Scratching his opponent with deep gouging strokes from one forepaw, he holds his other limb against his own wound. The paw comes back thick and jammy with blood the color of the curtains—the last membrane between Majestic Forest and the Nut House.

Asher’s got no idea how far they’ve got to go to reach the window and the branch—the one that may or may not be waiting for their escape.

One of the grays, Maple, Birch—or it’s both, shouts as Asher shoves them out of the way and barrels full speed ahead into DW. There’s a loud crack following the collision. Asher hopes it comes from the fox squirrel’s body, but realizes soon enough it’s from one of the trash piles shook loose by their violence.

As the pile’s contents shift and spill, a domino effect’s triggered. Thin drinking glasses, used by Them instead of dipping faces into puddles, kept wrapped in crumpled tissue, fall and shatter like razor-sharp sleet. The squirrels and Chee-Chee hold forepaws over their heads and run for cover. More cardboard, metal, plastic, paper, and glass, all fall from tumbling towers of waste.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the make-up of the debris.

Everyone scrambles for safety, trying to get their bearings amid the ever-shifting landscape. Asher watches the gray squirrels gnaw through an empty shoebox after it falls on top of them. He wonders how Flippy’s faring. But before he calls out for his friend, he spies DW creeping over the plastic-sheathed cover of some tome. Its interior plastic sleeve pages spill out in a halo around the book. Each sleeve’s empty.

Asher flicks his tail from side to side, recalling the hunks of glass stuck there from the window sill. With another scream, not giving a damn what he sounds like or who’s listening, the black squirrel launches himself tail-first, ramming his body back against DW.

He slaps and slashes the fox squirrel’s face. Dragging his glass-studded fur across his enemy’s features. Over and over again, until DW’s black eyes are encircled with rings of red and he’s howling, begging for mercy.

But Asher doesn’t notice the bleeding, moaning fox squirrel. In his own bloodshot eyes, all that appears is the afterimage of the tree on fire, his family’s tree consumed by flames all those years before. Their screams and his quiet sobs those first few nights in the cages after the fire fill his head.

“Asher! Asher!”

Yes, Flippy called from between the bars, stretching his tiny paw through the thin opening. Holding it there until I lifted my head and let him know I was there. I was…present.

When Asher lifts his head this time, he finds his friend a few feet away, balanced on a precipice. Flippy’s found the one bare spot on the entire second floor of the house. He teeters at the top of a staircase. The wooden floor’s cleared all around Flippy and Chee-Chee, who’s stuck by the flying squirrel. It’s as though the duo’s swept away all of the trash and filth found elsewhere, forming this oasis.

DW’s bloodstained teeth sink into the looser flesh of Asher’s limb and body, wrenching the skin from side to side, stretching and tearing the already damaged flesh. Not too concerned about this latest attack, the black squirrel smashes a free paw against his attacker’s nose to dislodge him. His focus stays on Flippy.

“Asher! C’mon! We found stairs here and a door—the front door! We’ll get out if we work together.”

Asher moves toward the stairs, dragging DW with him in a headlock. The iron tang of blood on his lips makes Asher’s teeth ache when he speaks. “Flip?”

It’s strange seeing his pal with a smile on his face. After all the terror and violence they’ve endured, the simplest bit of joy’s enough to make a heart ache. For Asher, the acorns around his neck, bouncing against his chest serve to drown out the bass drum beating of his heart.

Maple and Birch follow, shedding dust from their pelts. Asher closes in on the post and rail of the staircase. From this vantage point, he peers down at Flippy’s discovery.

While the stairs themselves appear clean, aside from a faint blue layer of dust spread over the planes of each step, the first floor contains another coating of garbage. This time, the bulk of the mess consists of brown and tan packages with packing tape peeled back and torn from all their sides.

Like during the winter when Flippy’s Human-Child tears open those brightly-wrapped packages and squeals with delight. What got freed from all those boxes down there?

DW groans in Asher’s arms. Asher releases his grip on his foe, letting the fox squirrel’s chin smash against the floor.

Then, he flips over and spits up into Asher’s eye. As the black squirrel wipes away the phlegm, blood, and spittle, more taunting follows. “You’re never leaving here alive. They’re whispering to me. They tell me…”

Asher moves fast, grabbing DW by his scruff and pulling him up onto his back paws. “What’d you say? Who’d you hear?”

He recalls his time under the slurry, rescuing Maple. He remembers the whispers pushing through the muck to reach his ears.

“Asher! Leave him! C’mon, we can do this! I know it!”

Bending his knees and stretching, Flippy’s high-pitched voice echoes like a triumphant victory horn played on a battlefield emptying itself of the enemy.

“Flip, wait….”

But he doesn’t.

The flying squirrel scooches back, his nubbin of a tail rubbing against a forsaken black plastic planter with gritty soil and no plant life within its concave interior. Then, he runs. Tiny paws slap against smooth wood. Like he’s got his personal applause section, cheering on his efforts.

Until he gets to the edge…and jumps.

Flippy lays himself flat, extending his arms. His wings catch the breeze blowing across the garbage. It carries the muggy, heavy scent of decay, but also pushes Flippy forward.

Flippy flies.

Right before he passes Asher peering through the rails, Flippy turns to face his friend and whispers, “Let’s go places.”

In this moment of peace, Asher wants to follow his friend into the promised land. He scurries to the top of the stairs, joining Chee-Chee in tracking Flippy’s descent. DW and the grays follow, but at a distance.

Flippy makes it past the bottom step. He pushes his arms back, coming in for a landing. From the top of the stairs, it appears he’s on a collision course with the door. Asher squeezes his paws tight, aiming to ward off anxiety. He’d hate for his friend to learn how to soar, only to crash again so soon.

He misses when the layer of boxes on the first floor shifts and shudders.

But he won’t miss, he can’t miss, the thick, white, bulbous head of the snake breaching the layer of waste. There’s no time to avoid teeth shiny with saliva or the black hole of an open mouth.

The snake’s winding form rises from a floor deprived of sunlight for days, months. Maybe even a year. It’s larger than any garden snake wriggling through the parkland grass.

Something monstrous and exotic.

Flippy’s left with nowhere to go. Nowhere but into the yawning abyss before him. Asher’s grateful he’s too far away to see his friend’s face.

It’s a good thing. It’d break me to see him. The awful notion pours salt in his wounds.

Asher makes out the gold-speckled eyes of the snake, gazing past the squirrels and the chipmunk watching from the stairs, peering through them as though they’re nothing to the beast. Its jaws close around the flying squirrel. Those gold-flecked eyes glimmer like the flames on twin match heads.

Light from darkness.

Then, the serpent dives under the debris. Wriggling, rustling cardboard marking its disappearance.

Flippy’s gone.

The snake’s retreat is smooth, like it’s swimming through pond water instead of solid waste. It’s clear the serpent’s had plenty of practice navigating the disaster that is the Nut House. His traversing of the filth doubles as an alarm. From every corner, the trash moves. Mini pockets of exploding debris mark the emergence of the denizens of this home.

With the first sacrifice consumed, the Nut House awakens.

First, the rats come. Twin bolts of starched fur and shit-blasted tails, wriggling pink, scratching their way up the parallel runners of the staircase. One, two, three, ten…more. A stream of ground-dwelling vermin with spittle flecks around their chewed-up and spit-out faces. They speak as one—talking in tongues, expressing themselves in riddles far more upsetting than Flippy’s aphorisms.

Gnashing teeth, biting the air between them and the interlopers, the rat army drive the squirrels and Chee-Chee down the stairs. Any division between the crew’s erased for the moment. Shock and fear take hold of them all, Asher, Chee-Chee, DW, Maple, and Birch.

Asher’s eyes dart up, down, side to side, and all around. No time’s left to consider what’s happened to his friend. Can’t stop to mourn Flippy now.

More creatures emerge from their hiding places amid the trash. The bugs come next. Cockroaches scuttling, moving in alien patterns. Flies dart and dip over the heads of Asher and company. Landing and vomiting, rubbing their black limbs together. Some rats milling behind the crew snap and swallow some of the insects, but others let tinier fruit flies crawl over their noses and across open pus-encrusted eyeballs.

“What the fuck, what the fuck…” DW’s incomplete queries come in choked whispers. Asher jumps when the fox squirrel grasps one of his paws. DW squeezes tight, forcing Asher’s attention back on him. His blood-heavy eyes suggest a separate nightmare all their own, going on inside DW’s mind.

The unmistakable yowling of cats precedes the felines coming around the corner, called forth from somewhere deeper in the Nut House’s first floor. Slinking atop the wasteland, the skin-and-bones-thin creatures, with their sunken eyes and angled cheekbones, shed fur with every step, then gather around the bottom of the staircase.

Rats above and cats below. And a menagerie of the other one-off creatures filling in the gaps. For once, Asher doesn’t remember the tree on fire. He’s found something worse, something more nightmarish and cruel.

The Nut House breathes the interlopers in. And then, it prepares to swallow.

To be continued...

Patrick Barb is an author of weird, dark, and horrifying tales, currently living (and trying not to freeze to death) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His debut dark urban fantasy novella Gargantuana’s Ghost is coming from Grey Matter Press’s Emergent Expressions line in Fall 2022. His debut dark fiction collection Pre-Approved for Haunting is coming from Keylight Books in 2023. In addition, he is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and a Full Member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. For more of his work, visit patrickbarb.com or follow him on twitter.com/pbarb.

Grandma

By Samantha Dragon

“Grandma!” I yelled as I slipped into my shoes. Grandma made a grunting sound of acknowledgement from the living room. “I’m running to the corner store; do you need anything?”

“Chhhhppp,” she groaned. I grabbed my cell phone and put it in my pocket. I went into the living room and raised an eyebrow at my grandmother. She was sitting in her massive armchair in front of our tv. It was turned to her favorite news station. Her ancient, wrinkled feet were up on an ottoman, just as she liked them. I reached behind her head and fluffed her pillow.

“The honey barbeque ones?” I asked.

“Yeeeaasss,” she groaned. She barely moved her jaw when she talked these days. Her deeply wrinkled face and tissue paper flesh looked as though it would tear if she stretched it too far.

“You know those chips make you gassy.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. I laughed. “Fine, I’ll get them for you, but I might not be able to sit through a whole movie with you tonight if you get started.”

“Heh heh.” A small laughing sound escaped her lips. I was relieved that she was feeling well enough to joke around. I adjusted the remote so that it was close enough to her she could change the channel if she needed. I moved her favorite afghan closer to her. I checked that the landline phone was within her reach as well.

“Do you need anything else?” I asked. I tried not to hover over her. Grandma shook her head gently.

“And you aren’t gonna move around until I get back. You don’t have to pee or anything?”

“Nnnn.” Grandma shook her head again. Her long grey hair fell in front of her eyes. I tucked it back behind her ear.

“Ok. I’ll be back in a half hour at the latest.” She made another grunting noise of acknowledgement. I ran through the checklist in my head. I had my phone, my wallet, and my keys. Grandma was settled into her spot. I checked my phone and made sure notifications were on, then forced myself to leave through the kitchen door rather than check on Grandma again. She got irritated if I fussed over her too much.

The house was a five-minute walk from the nearest Circle K. When I moved to Ohio, I had noticed that just about every house in every town is within five minutes of a Circle K. Since Grandma’s turn for the worse, the prevalence of these convenience stores was rather nice. Her sickness made it difficult to go out in public. When we did, I had to maneuver a wheelchair if she was having a bad day, or move at a snail’s pace with her walker on an okay day. We didn’t leave the house if she was having a good day.

On the flip side, I really didn’t like to leave Grandma alone for long periods of time. About two years ago Grandma fell. She had been taking a shower and tripped getting out of the tub. Since then, she’s really struggled with things. Dad thinks the fall also brought out some other issues we didn’t know about. Grandma can really struggle with memory and movement from time to time. The family was worried about her, and since I was young, in between jobs, and had no kids of my own, I was volunteered to take care of her. I moved in with her a week later.

The family would visit from time to time so I could do real grocery shopping without her, but if we needed something small, I mostly just ran to the corner store as quickly as possible.

This made me a regular at the local Circle K. I had made this particular evening-snack-run many times. Grandma and I loved our movie nights. Movie nights require snacks. The walk to the store wasn’t super dangerous for her as long as I was quick. It wasn’t super dangerous for me as long as I made it in the early evening before it got too dark. There weren’t enough streetlights in our town and if I waited until too late, the walk became frightening. Not to mention our particular Circle K was robbed every couple months.

I spent most of the walk there worrying that she would fall while I wasn’t home to help. Soon after her first fall, and with some help from the family, I’d put in some indoor cameras. Using them I could drop in and check on her at any time. There was one in the living room, laundry room, hallway, and kitchen. I only set the one in the hallway and the one pointing towards the kitchen to go off for movement.

As soon as I got into the store, I turned on the living room camera. Grandma was still in her chair. She had pulled the afghan over her legs. She turned her head to look at the camera and the hair stood up on my neck. I wondered if she just looked at the camera every five minutes in case I turned it on, or if she could actually tell I was watching. I closed out of the app and grabbed one of the little plastic shopping baskets.

I got some snacks for myself and Grandma’s Honey Barbeque Chips. I went to get in line but turned around to get some TP, along with some gas-away. Just to be safe.

It was a hot summer evening, and the line to check out was long. Many people had stopped in to get a cheap, cold fountain drink. I listened to the older guy in front of me talk to his wife about the humidity.

Then my phone buzzed. The indoor camera notification sounded like shattering glass and the sound of it made my stomach drop to my toes. Had Grandma gotten hurt? I set the basket down and pulled my phone out of my pocket. The notification read, “Motion detected on kitchen camera.”

Why was she in the kitchen? She knew I’d be back soon. She just had to wait another couple minutes.

I opened the app. The kitchen camera was on top of the fridge and usually had a good view of most of the room. It was late enough that the kitchen was mostly in shadow, but not so late that the night vision had switched on. I didn’t see anything moving. I also didn’t see Grandma lying on the floor. I exhaled.

I realized that in my haste to open the app I had clicked the wrong button. I was watching the live stream, not the saved clip of the detected motion. I was about to switch back and play the saved clip when I noticed that the back door was open.

I had closed it.

My hand shook as I switched over to the saved clips.

The camera’s motion sensor picked up on the door opening. A little green box surrounded two teenage boys as they walked through the door, into the kitchen, and down the hallway. Then the clip ended. Fuck.

“Hey, it’s your turn.” I glanced up from my phone and realized I was still standing in the line and not checking out.

I managed to force out the phrase “you can go.” Then I took my phone and moved back to the candy aisle.

I frantically began to flip through the cameras. The hallway camera was on night vision. I watched in greenish grayscale as the men walked past the living room and into the bedrooms. I sighed, they had walked right past the living room. They weren’t there to hurt her.

I flipped the camera to the living room and saw Grandma still sitting in her chair, still watching tv. She seemed to be okay. The blue light from the TV was illuminating her delicate face. She turned and looked up at the camera again. I swallowed. I couldn’t risk talking through the camera’s speaker. I had no way to reach out to her or let her know there were intruders in the house without also alerting them.

I closed the app and dialed 911. I walked into the beer cooler and shut the door behind me, not wanting to frighten any other customers.

“9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

“Someone is in my house, and my grandmother is home by herself,” I said. I was shaking but trying to be as calm as possible. I hoped I was doing the right thing.

“What is the address?”

“8240 E. 28th Street. I can see them on my home security system. There are two of them, please hurry.”

“Yes, ma’am. I have dispatched the police. Can you see the intruders now?” The operator’s voice was soothing, and his tone was even.

“No, I can’t open the camera app while I’m on the phone.”

“What is your name?”

“Halle.”

“Where was your grandmother in the house?”

“In the front-most room, the living room.”

“What is your grandmother’s name?”

“Ericka. How far away are they?”

“Ten minutes. I am going to need you to stay where you are and to keep your phone on so that I can call you back, Halle.”

“Okay.”

“Perfect. Halle, they are on their way. Can you get on the cameras and call us if anything happens?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

The operator disconnected the call. I shivered in the walk-in cooler. I opened the camera app again and pulled up the living room. The TV was lighting up an empty chair. Her favorite afghan was folded neatly on the seat. The lightswitch in the hallway clicked on and poured light into the room.

I switched to the hallway camera. Grandma was standing there. Her thin, stooped frame was silhouetted by the yellow light. Her hand was resting on the light switch. The teenagers stood at the other end of the hallway. Both wore dark colors and the camera’s blurriness made their faces difficult to parse. I turned the volume up on my phone.

“Get out of the way lady.” The taller teen was speaking. Grandma had trapped them. They would have to get past her to leave through the door.

“Wwwhhhhoooo,” Grandma groaned, her voice nearly too raspy for the camera to pick up. She was so frail. So small. And there were two of them. She couldn’t handle two by herself, not anymore.

“I said move, you old bitch.” The taller of the two teens moved forward. I recognized him as he got closer. One of the neighbor’s kid’s friends. He was always over at their house, playing loud music when the parents weren’t home. He had a crowbar.

“Bbbcccchhh?” Grandma hissed, her voice had dropped lower, raspier.

The taller teenager stopped, as if his conscience pulled him just short of hitting an old lady. The crowbar in his hand was half raised. I shuddered at the thought of him hitting her with it, she was too weak, she wouldn’t be able to survive that.

Grandma looked up at him. I wondered what she was thinking. She tilted her head, then she flicked the light switch down.

The camera took a moment to switch to dark vision and in that moment, I felt as though my heart had stopped. I heard a heavy squelching sound, as though bones and flesh were being torn. When everything reappeared with washed out colors, there was blood dripping down the wall.

Grandma was still standing. She had taken that moment of confusion when the lights went out to dig her sharp teeth into the man’s throat. I watched in terror as she sunk her teeth deeper and then pulled back.

She ripped a chunk out of his neck. His adam’s apple. She then leaned her head back and swallowed it whole. The dying teenager slumped to the floor, his hands moving to his throat and his mouth gaping open like a fish.

“What the fuck!” The other teenager yelled. Grandma hunched down over her prey to take another bite. As she did, the other, living teenager charged. He was wielding what looked like a police flashlight.

I turned on the speaker and yelled into the phone.

“Look out!” She looked up from her snack just in time to dodge the incoming blow. She slammed her body into the opposite wall of the hallway. I winced. The boy couldn’t stop the wide arc he made with the heavy flashlight. He ended up bashing his own friend’s head in with a loud crunch.

Grandma pushed herself off the wall. She used her momentum to get behind the other boy. I was relieved to see that he was not the neighbor’s kid, maybe another friend of his? Grandma locked her jaws onto the nape of the boy’s neck. She severed his spine with a particularly hard snap of her jaws. Then came the crunching and slurping noises.

I closed the camera app and carefully dialed 911.

“9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

“Hi, um my name is Halle from 8240 E. 28th Street. I, uh, called earlier. My Grandma is okay. It’s just my stupid little cousins. I guess they must have forgotten their keys. I didn’t recognize them with their hoodies on,” I lied.

“Are you sure everything is okay now.”

“Yes, sir. I am so sorry for bothering you.”

“I’m calling off the units now. Please be more careful in the future ma’am.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” I hung up.

I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, then left the cooler. I stopped at the home goods aisle and grabbed some Tupperware. I apologetically picked up my basket and checked out with the cashier.

“Everything okay, hun?”

“Yeah, just a minor family emergency.” She gave me a reassuring smile. “Sorry for just leaving my stuff here.”

“No problem! I hope it all worked out okay.”

“It did.” I took the honey barbeque chips out and handed them to the cashier. “Can you put these back? I don’t think I’m going to need them tonight after all.”

End.

Samantha Dragon is a lifelong horror fan. She has had short stories published in Allegory Online Magazine and the NoSleepPodcast. She graduated with a Bachelors of Integrative Studies with a minor in English from Kent State University. For her day job she connects residents of her small Ohio town to community resources. When not writing she can be found reading, gaming, gardening, or playing Dungeons and Dragons.

The King in Yellow

The Repairer of Reputations:III

By Robert W. Chambers

Originally published in 1895

III

One morning early in May I stood before the steel safe in my bedroom, trying on the golden jewelled crown. The diamonds flashed fire as I turned to the mirror, and the heavy beaten gold burned like a halo about my head. I remembered Camilla’s agonized scream and the awful words echoing through the dim streets of Carcosa. They were the last lines of the first act, and I dared not think of what followed -- dared not, even in the spring sunshine, there in my own room, surrounded with familiar objects, reassured by the bustle from the street and the voices of the servants in the hall-way outside. For those poisoned words had dropped slowly into my heart, as death-sweat drops upon a bed-sheet and is absorbed. Trembling, I put the diadem from my head and wiped my forehead, but I thought of Hastur and of my own rightful ambition, and I remembered Mr. Wilde as I had last left him, his face all torn and bloody from the claws of that devil’s creature, and what he said -- ah, what he said! The alarm-bell in the safe began to whir harshly, and I knew my time was up; but I would not heed it, and, replacing the flashing circlet upon my head, I turned defiantly to the mirror. I stood for a long time absorbed in the changing expression of my own eyes. The mirror reflected a face which was like my own, but whiter, and so thin that I hardly recognized it. And all the time I kept repeating between my clinched teeth, “The day has come! the day has come!” while the alarm in the safe whirred and clamored, and the diamonds sparkled and flamed above my brow. I heard a door open, but did not heed it. It was only when I saw two faces in the mirror; it was only when another face rose over my shoulder, and two other eyes met mine. I wheeled like a flash and seized a long knife from my dressing-table, and my cousin sprang back very pale, crying: “Hildred! for God’s sake!” Then, as my hand fell, he said: “It is I, Louis; don’t you know me?” I stood silent. I could not have spoken from my life. He walked up to me and took the knife from my hand.

“What is all this?” he inquired, in a gentle voice. “Are you ill?”

“No,” I replied. But I doubt if he heard me.

“Come, come, old fellow,” he cried, “take off that brass crown and toddle into the study. Are you going to a masquerade? What’s all this theatrical tinsel anyway?”

I was glad he thought the crown was made of brass and paste, yet I didn’t like him any the better for thinking so. I let him take it from my hand, knowing it was best to humor him. He tossed the splendid diadem in the air, and, catching it, turned to me smiling.

“It’s dear at fifty cents,” he said. “What’s it for?”

I did not answer, but took the circlet from his hands, and, placing it in the safe, shut the massive door. The alarm ceased its infernal din at once. He watched me curiously, but did not seem to notice the sudden ceasing of the alarm. He did, however, speak of the safe as a biscuit-box. Fearing lest he might examine the combination, I led the way into my study. Louis threw himself on the sofa and flicked at flies with his eternal riding-whip. He wore his fatigue uniform, with the braided jacket and jaunty cap, and I noticed that his riding-boots were all splashed with red mud.

“Where have you been?” I inquired.

“Jumping mud creeks in Jersey,” he said. “I haven’t had time to change yet; I was rather in a hurry to see you. Haven’t you got a glass of something? I’m dead tired; been in the saddle twenty-four hours.”

I gave him some brandy from my medicinal store, which he drank with a grimace.

“Damned bad stuff,” he observed. “I’ll give you an address where they sell brandy that is brandy.”

“It’s good enough from my needs,” I said, indifferently. “I use it to rub my chest with.” He stared and flicked at another fly.

“See here, old fellow,” he began, “I’ve got something to suggest to you. It’s four years now that you’ve shut yourself up here like an owl, never going anywhere, never taking any healthy exercise, never doing a damn thing but poring over those books up there on the mantel-piece.”

He glanced along the row of shelves. “Napoleon, Napoleon, Napoleon!” he read. “For Heaven’s sake, have you nothing but Napoleon there?”

“I wish they were bound in gold,” I said. “But wait -- yes, there is another book, ‘The King in Yellow.’” I looked him steadily in the eye.

“Have you never read it?” I asked.

“I? No, thank God! I don’t want to be driven crazy.”

I saw he regretted his speech as soon as he had uttered it. There is only one word which I loathe more than I do lunatic, and that word is crazy. But I controlled myself and asked him why he though “The King in Yellow” dangerous.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, hastily. “I only remember the excitement it created and the denunciations from pulpit and press. I believe the author shot himself after bringing forth this monstrosity, didn’t he?”

“I understand he is still alive,” I answered.

“That’s probably true,” he muttered; “bullets couldn’t kill a fiend like that.”

“It is a book of great truths,” I said.

“Yes,” he replied, “of ‘truths’ which send men frantic and blast their lives. I don’t care if the thing is, as they say, the very supreme essence of art. It’s a crime to have written it, and I for one shall never open its pages.”

“Is that what you have come to tell me?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “I came to tell you that I am going to be married.”

I believe for a moment my heart ceased to beat, but I kept my eyes on his face.

“Yes,” he continued, smiling happily, “married to the sweetest girl on earth.”

“Constance Hawberk,” I said, mechanically.

“How did you know?” he cried, astonished. “I didn’t know it myself until that evening last April, when we strolled down to the embankment before dinner.”

“When is it to be?” I asked.

“It was to have been next September; but an hour ago a despatch came, ordering our regiment to the Presidio, San Francisco. We leave at noon to-morrow. To-morrow,” he repeated. “Just think, Hildred, to-morrow I shall be the happiest fellow that ever drew breath in this jolly world, for Constance will go with me.”

I offered my hand in congratulation, and he seized and shook it like the good-natured fool he was -- or pretended to be.

“I am going to get my squadron as a wedding present,” he rattled on. “Captain and Mrs. Louis Castaigne -- eh, Hildred?”

Then he told me where it was to be and who were to be there, and made me promise to come and be best man. I set my teeth and listened to his boyish chatter without showing what I felt, but --

I was getting to the limit of my endurance, and when he jumped up, and, switching his spurs till they jingled, said he must go, I did not detain him.

“There’s only one thing I want to ask of you,” I said, quietly.

“Out with it -- it’s a promise,” he laughed.

“I want you to meet me for a quarter of an hour’s talk to-night.”

“Of course, if you wish,” he said, somewhat puzzled. “Where?”

“Anywhere -- in the park there.”

“What time, Hildred?”

“Midnight.”

“What in the name of -- “ he began, but checked himself and laughingly assented. I watched him go down the stairs and hurry away, his sabre banging at every stride. He turned into Bleecker Street, and I knew he was going to see Constance. I gave him ten minutes to disappear and then followed in his footsteps, taking with me the jewelled crown and the silken robe embroidered with the Yellow Sign. When I turned into Bleecker Street and entered the door-way which bore the sign:

MR. WILDE

REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS

3rd. Bell.

I saw old Hawberk moving about in his shop, and imagined I heard Constance’s voice in the parlor; but I avoided them both and hurried up the trembling stairways to Mr. Wilde’s apartment. I knocked, and entered without ceremony. Mr. Wilde lay groaning on the floor, his face covered with blood, his clothes torn to shreds. Drops of blood were scattered about over the carpet, which had also been ripped and frayed in the evidently recent struggle.

“It’s that cursed cat,” he said, ceasing his groans and turning his colorless eyes to me; “she attacked me while I was asleep. I believe she will kill me yet.”

This was too much, so I went into the kitchen and, seizing a hatchet from the pantry, started to find the infernal beast and settle her then and there. My search was fruitless, and after a while I gave it up and came back to find Mr. Wilde squatting on his high chair by the table. He had washed his face and changed his clothes. The great furrows which the cat’s claws had ploughed up in his face he had filled with collodion, and a rag hid the wound in his throat. I told him I should kill the cat when I came across her, but he only shook his head and turned to the open ledger before him. He read name after name of the people who had come to him in regard to their reputation, and the sums he had amassed were startling.

“I put on the screws now and then,” he explained.

“One day or other some of these people will assassinate you,” I insisted.

“Do you think so?” he said, rubbing his mutilated ears.

It was useless to argue with him, so I took down the manuscript entitled Imperial Dynasty of America for the last time I should ever take it down in Mr. Wilde’s study. I read it through, thrilling and trembling with pleasure. When I had finished, Mr. Wilde took the manuscript, and, turning to the dark passage which leads from his study to his bedchamber, called out, in a loud voice, “Vance.” Then for the first time I noticed a man crouching there in the shadow. How I had overlooked him during my search for the cat I cannot imagine.

“Vance, come in!” cried Mr. Wilde.

The figure rose and crept towards us, and I shall never forget the face that he raised to mine as the light from the window illuminated it.

“Vance, this is Mr. Castaigne,” said Mr. Wilde. Before he had finished speaking, the man threw himself on the ground before the table, crying and gasping, “Oh, God! Oh, my God! Help me! Forgive me -- Oh, Mr. Castaigne, keep that man away! You cannot, you cannot mean it! You are different -- save me! I am broken down -- I was in a madhouse, and now -- when all was coming right -- when I had forgotten the King -- the King in Yellow, and -- but I shall go mad again -- I shall go mad -- “

His voice died into a choking rattle, for Mr. Wilde had leaped on him, and his right hand encircled the man’s throat. When Vance fell in a heap on the floor, Mr. Wilde clambered nimbly into his chair again, and, rubbing his mangled ears with the stump of his hand, turned to me and asked me for the ledger. I reached it down from the shelf and he opened it. After a moment’s searching among the beautifully written pages, he coughed complacently and pointed to the name Vance.

“Vance,” he read aloud -- “Osgood Oswald Vance.” At the sound of his name the man on the floor raised his head and turned a convulsed face to Mr. Wilde. His eyes were injected with blood, his lips tumified. “Called April 28th,” continued Mr. Wilde. “Occupation, cashier in the Seaforth National Bank; has served a term for forgery at Sing Sing, whence he was transferred to the Asylum for the Criminal Insane. Pardoned by the Governor of New York, and discharged from the Asylum January 19, 1918. Reputation damaged at Sheepshead Bay. Rumors that he lives beyond his income. Reputation to be repaired at once. Retainer, $1500.

“Note. -- Has embezzled sums amounting to $30,000 since March 20, 1919. Excellent family, and secured present position through uncle’s influence. Father, President of Seaforth Bank.”

I looked at the man on the floor.

“Get up, Vance,” said Mr. Wilde, in a gentle voice. Vance rose as if hypnotized. “He will do as we suggest now,” observed Mr. Wilde, and, opening the manuscript, he read the entire history of the Imperial Dynasty of America. Then, in a kind and soothing murmur, he ran over the important points with Vance, who stood like one stunned. His eyes were so blank and vacant that I imagined he had become half-witted, and remarked it to Mr. Wilde, who replied that it was of no consequence anyway. Very patiently we pointed out to Vance what his share in the affair would be, and he seemed to understand after a while. Mr. Wilde explained the manuscript, using several volumes on Heraldry to substantiate the result of his researches. He mentioned the establishment of the Dynasty in Carcosa, the lakes which connected Hastur, Aldebaran, and the mystery of the Hyades. He spoke of Cassilda and Camilla, and sounded the cloudy depths of Demhe and the Lake of Hali. “The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhill forever,” he muttered, but I do not believe Vance heard him. Then by degrees he led Vance along the ramifications of the imperial family to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and Phantom of Truth to Aldones, and then, tossing aside his manuscript and notes he began the wonderful story of the Last King. Fascinated and thrilled, I watched him. He threw up his head, his long arms were stretched out in a magnificent gesture of pride and power, and his eyes blazed deep in their sockets like two emeralds. Vance listened, stupefied. As for me, when at last Mr. Wilde had finished, and, pointing to me, cried, “The cousin of the King,” my head swam with excitement.

Controlling myself with a superhuman effort, I explained to Vance why I alone was worthy of the crown, and why my cousin must be exiled or die. I made him understand that my cousin must never marry, even after renouncing all his claims, and how that, least of all, he should marry the daughter of the Marquis of Avonshire and bring England into the question. I showed him a list of thousands of names which Mr. Wilde had drawn up; every man whose name was there had received the Yellow Sign, which no living human being dared disregard. The city, the State, the whole land, were ready to rise and tremble before the Pallid Mask.

The time had come, the people should know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa.

Vance leaned on the table, his head buried in his hands. Mr. Wilde drew a rough sketch on the margin of yesterday’s Herald with a bit of lead-pencil. It was a plan of Hawberk’s rooms. Then he wrote out the order and affixed the seal, and, shaking like a palsied man, I signed my first writ of execution with my name Hildred-Rex.

Mr. Wilde clambered to the floor and, unlocking the cabinet, took a long, square box from the first shelf. This he brought to the table and opened. A new knife lay in the tissue-paper inside, and I picked it up and handed it to Vance, along with the order and the plan of Hawberk’s apartment. Then Mr. Wilde told Vance he could go; and he went, shambling like an outcast of the slums.

I sat for a while watching the daylight fade behind the square tower of the Judson Memorial Church, and finally, gathering up the manuscript and notes, took my hat and started for the door. Mr. Wilde watched me in silence. When I had stepped into the hall I looked back; Mr. Wilde’s small eyes were still fixed on me. Behind him the shadows gathered in the fading light. Then I closed the door behind me and went out into the darkening streets.

I had eaten nothing since breakfast, but I was not hungry. A wretched, half-starved creature, who stood looking across the street at the Lethal Chamber, noticed me and came up to tell me a tale of misery. I gave him money -- I don’t know why -- and he went away without thanking me. An hour later another outcast approached and whined his story. I had a blank bit of paper in my pocket, on which was traced the Yellow Sign, and I handed it to him. He looked at it stupidly for a moment, and then, with an uncertain glance at me, folded it with what seemed to me exaggerated care and placed it in his bosom.

The electric lights were sparkling among the trees, and the new moon shone in the sky above the Lethal Chamber. It was tiresome waiting in the square; I wandered from the marble arch to the artillery stables, and back again to the lotos fountain. The flowers and grass exhaled a fragrance which troubled me. The jet of the fountain drops reminded me of the tinkle of chain mail in Hawberk’s shop. But it was not so fascinating, and the dull sparkle of the moonlight on the water brought no such sensations of exquisite pleasure as when the sunshine played over the polished steel of a corselet on Hawberk’s knee. I watched the bats darting and turning above the water plants in the fountain basin, but their rapid, jerky flight set my nerves on edge, and I went away again to walk aimlessly to and fro among the trees.

The artillery stables were dark, but in the cavalry barracks the officers’ windows were brilliantly lighted, and the sally-port was constantly filled with troopers in fatigues, carrying straw and harness and baskets filled with tin dishes.

Twice the mounted sentry at the gates was changed while I wandered up and down the asphalt walk. I looked at my watch. It was nearly time. The lights in the barracks went out one by one, the barred gate was closed, and every minute or two an officer passed in through the side wicket, leaving a rattle of accoutrements and a jingle of spurs on the night air. The square had become very silent. The last homeless loiterer had been driven away by the gray-coated park policeman, the car tracks along Wooster Street were deserted, and the only sound which broke the stillness was the stamping of the sentry’s horse and the ring of his sabre against the saddle pommel. In the barracks the officers’ quarters were still lighted, and military servants passed and repassed before the bay-windows. Twelve o’clock sounded from the new spire of St. Francis Xavier, and at the last stroke of the sad-toned bell a figure passed through the portcullis, returned the salute of the sentry, and, crossing the street, entered the square and advanced towards the Benedick apartment house.

“Louis,” I called.

The man pivoted on his spurred heels and came straight towards me.

“Is that you, Hildred?”

“Yes, you are on time.”

I took his offered hand and we strolled towards the Lethal Chamber.

He rattled on about his wedding and the graces of Constance and their future prospects, calling my attention to his captain’s shoulder-straps and the triple gold arabesque on his sleeve and fatigue cap. I believe I listened as much to the music of his spurs and sabre as I did to his boyish babble, and at last we stood under the elms on the Fourth Street corner of the square opposite the Lethal Chamber. Then he laughed and asked me what I wanted with him. I motioned him to a seat on a bench under the electric light, and sat down beside him. He looked at me curiously, with that same searching glance which I hate and fear so in doctors. I felt the insult of his look, but he did not know it, and I carefully concealed my feelings.

“Well, old chap,” he inquired, “what can I do for you?”

I drew from my pocket the manuscript and notes of the Imperial Dynasty of America, and, looking him in the eye, said:

“I will tell you. On your word as a soldier, promise me to read this manuscript from beginning to end, without asking me a question. Promise me to read these notes in the same way, and promise to me to listen to what I have to tell later.”

“I promise, if you wish it,” he said, pleasantly. “Give me the paper, Hildred.”

He began to read, raising his eyebrows with a puzzled, whimsical air, which made me tremble with suppressed anger. As he advanced, his eyebrows contracted, and his lips seemed to form the word “rubbish.”

Then he looked slightly bored, but apparently for my sake read, with an attempt at interest, which presently ceased to be an effort. He started when, in the closely written pages he came to his own name, and when he came to mine he lowered the paper and looked sharply at me for a moment. But he kept his word, and resumed his reading, and I let the half-formed question die on his lips unanswered. When he came to the end and read the signature of Mr. Wilde, he folded the paper carefully and returned it to me. I handed him the notes, and he settled back, pushing his fatigue cap up to his forehead with a boyish gesture which I remembered so well in school. I watched his face as he read, and when he finished I took the notes, with the manuscript, and placed them in my pocket. Then I unfolded a scroll marked with the Yellow Sign. He saw the sign, but he did not seem to recognize it, and I called his attention to it somewhat sharply.

“Well,” he said, “I see it. What is it?”

“It is the Yellow Sign,” I said, angrily.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Louis, in that flattering voice which Dr. Archer used to employ with me, and would probably have employed again, had I not settled his affair for him.

I kept my rage down and answered as steadily as possible, “Listen, you have engaged your word?”

“I am listening, old chap,” he replied, soothingly.

I began to speak very calmly: “Dr. Archer, having by some means become possessed of the secret of the Imperial Succession, attempted to deprive me of my right, alleging that, because of a fall from my horse four years ago, I had become mentally deficient. He presumed to place me under restraint in his own house in hopes of either driving me insane or poisoning me. I have not forgotten it. I visited him last night and the interview was final.”

Louis turned quite pale, but did not move. I resumed, triumphantly: “There are yet three people to be interviewed in the interests of Mr. Wilde and myself. They are my cousin Louis, Mr. Hawberk, and his daughter Constance.”

Louis sprang to his feet, and I arose also, and flung the paper marked with the Yellow Sign to the ground.

“Oh, I don’t need that to tell you what I have to say,” I cried, with a laugh of triumph. “You must renounce the crown to me -- do you hear, to me?”

Louis looked at me with a startled air, but, recovering himself, said kindly, “Of course I renounce the -- what is it I must renounce?”

“The crown,” I said, angrily.

“Of course,” he answered. “I renounce it. Come, old chap, I’ll walk back to your rooms with you.”

“Don’t try your doctor’s tricks on me,” I cried, trembling with fury. “Don’t act as if you think I am insane.”

“What nonsense!” he replied. “Come, it’s getting late, Hildred.”

“No,” I shouted, “you must listen. You cannot marry; I forbid it. Do you hear? I forbid it. You shall renounce the crown, and in reward I grant you exile; but if you refuse you shall die.”

He tried to calm me, but I was roused at last, and, drawing my long knife, barred his way.

Then I told him how they would find Dr. Archer in the cellar with his throat open, and I laughed in his face when I thought of Vance and his knife, and the order signed by me.

“Ah, you are the King,” I cried, “but I shall be King. Who are you to keep me from empire over all the habitable earth! I was born the cousin of a king, but I shall be King!”

Louis stood white and rigid before me. Suddenly a man came running up Fourth Street, entered the gate of the Lethal Temple, traversed the path to the bronze doors at full speed, and plunged into the death-chamber with the cry of one demented, and I laughed until I wept tears, for I had recognized Vance, and knew that Hawberk and his daughter were no longer in my way.

“Go,” I cried to Louis, “you have ceased to be a menace. You will never marry Constance now, and if you marry any one else in your exile, I will visit you as I did my doctor last night. Mr. Wilde takes charge of you to-morrow.” Then I turned and darted into South Fifth Avenue, and with a cry of terror Louis dropped his belt and sabre and followed me like the wind. I heard him close behind me at the corner of Bleecker Street, and I dashed into the door-way under Hawberk’s sign. He cried, “Halt, or I fire!” but when he saw that I flew up the stairs leaving Hawberk’s shop below, he left me, and I heard him hammering and shouting at their door as though it were possible to arouse the dead.

Mr. Wilde’s door was open, and I entered, crying “It is done, it is done! Let the nations rise and look upon their King!” but I could not find Mr. Wilde, so I went to the cabinet and took the splendid diadem from its case. Then I drew on the white silk robe, embroidered with the Yellow Sign, and placed the crown upon my head. At last I was King, King in my right in Hastur, King because I knew the mystery of the Hyades, and my mind had sounded the depths of the Lake of Hali. I was King! The first gray pencillings of dawn would raise a tempest which would shake two hemispheres. Then as I stood, my every nerve pitched to the highest tension, faint with the joy and splendor of my thought, without, in the dark passage, a man groaned.

I seized the tallow dip and sprang to the door. The cat passed me like a demon, and the tallow dip went out, but my long knife flew swifter than she, and I heard her screech, and I knew that my knife had found her. For a moment I listened to her tumbling and thumping about in the darkness, and then, when her frenzy ceased, I lighted a lamp and raised it over my head. Mr. Wilde lay on the floor with his throat torn open. At first I thought he was dead, but as I looked a green sparkle came into his sunken eyes, his mutilated hand trembled, and then a spasm stretched his mouth from ear to ear. For a moment my terror and despair gave place to hope, but as I bent over him his eyeballs rolled clean around in his head, and he died. Then, while I stood transfixed with rage and despair, seeing my crown, my empire, every hope and every ambition, my very life, lying prostrate there with the dead master, they came, seized me from behind and bound me until my veins stood out like cords, and my voice failed with the paroxysms of my frenzied screams. But still I raged, bleeding and infuriated, among them and more than one policeman felt my sharp teeth. Then when I could no longer move they came nearer; I saw old Hawberk, and behind him my cousin Louis’ ghastly face, and farther away, in the corner, a woman, Constance, weeping softly.

“Ah, I see it now!” I shrieked. “You have seized the throne and the empire. Woe! woe to you who are crowned with the crown of the King in Yellow!”

To be continued...

Robert William Chambers was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895. He got his start selling illustrations to major magazines before dipping his toe in the gothic and supernatural fiction genres. Following 1924, he wrote exclusively historical fiction. He died in 1933 after undergoing intestinal surgery.

CHM would like to especially thank the following readers for their support:

Jace Chretin

Thérèse Mainville

Tim Lonegan

Nathan T

Geoff Johnston

Nor Never

Cruz Andronico Fernandez

Greg Tippmann

Terryn

Susan Jessen

Brian D. Smith

Christopher Hill

Patrick Ireland

Giuseppe Lo Turco

Chris “Fosterocalypse” Foster

Kenneth Skaldebø

Larry Shuping

Willow Dawn Becker

Jeffery J.O. Cilione

Colleen Palmer

Ashlie Post

E.J. Blaauw

Adam Graham

Jennifer Finch

Michael C Gagne

D.R. Hesse

Charles Shirk

Mario Santos

Magnus Lima

Neocognitron

Derek Sotak

Mir Rainbird

Vulpecula

Jon Moralee

Chris Phillips

Michael Gomez

Alan Loewen

Christopher Marquart

Kyle Volle

Richard Wallace

Allen Goerl

Scotty Milder

David W Madara

Tim Snider

Robert Helfst

Nicholas Stephenson

A.G. Hilton

Jeff Hawley

Joe Panarese

Trevor Seguin

J. Aaron Bellamy

Chris McLaren

Roni Stinger

Josie Angel

S.M. Fedor

Bridget D. Brave

Derrik Walker v2.0

Giles Edwards

Corey Cochran

Gary G Lewis II

Avatar-of-Chaos

Nik Bunting

Erik McHatton

Jody L. Mock

John Picinich

Richard Snowden-Leak

Harrison Swailes

Andrea Chayka

Justin McFarland

Dan Aneiros

Agustin De La Puente

Josh King

Robert Bose

Jason West

Benjamin Morgan

TS S. Fulk

Jon Gensler

Guy Riessen

Kristopher Fitch
sean parson

Christopher Wheeling

John M McCormick

Patrick Geuder

Karl Groneman

Seth Bourque

Duston Williams

Phillip Dye

Gerardo Velez

Joe “Morbin” Z.

Nikki R. Leigh

M. Stern

Christopher Lee Saylor

Kevin/Kelsey Sutton

Matt Sprague

Thomas Lehmann

William E Fisher IV

Eric Rumfelt

Kenneth Stevenson

Tomas Rawlings

Brian Holder

Jason Huls

Dylan Kearney

Aaron A. Thomas

Philip Sharp

Kyle Tolan

Dustin Ahonen

Susanne Stohr

John Casey

Trip Space-Parasite

Marcos Garcia

Daniel J Lay

Skeeter Green

Joshua Shioshita

Beatrix Fluffington

Kate Landis

W. T. Early

Lucas Paden

Steve Pattee

Thomas Pheister

Dave Cox

Glenn MacIntyre

Dustin Smith

Ashley Bray

Daniel Budden

Mark J Jensen

K. Wallace King

Steven Brooks

J. Jason Lau

Desmond Rhae Harris

Scott Hamilton

Douglas Seymour

Christopher O’Halloran

Rick Siem

C.R. Langille

Catherine Hargrave

Jacob Knipper

Steven Gernandt

Joseph F Russo

Matt Brandenburg

Gregory D Wallace

Christina King

Christian Berntsen

Nathalie M.

Kari Wolfe

Kiera Lesley

Carson Ray

Julie Sevens

Damian Herde

Shawn Close

Adam W. Brown

Corey Farrenkopf

Richard O’Shea

Nikolas Eibich

Alan Mark Tong

Damon Dorsey

Ria Rees

Geoff Bridges

Robert Stover

Meredith Nudo

Edgar Gonzalez

David Batson

Andrija Popovic

Mairead Leong

Pippi Wrongstocking

Joan Rowell

Wm Blake Arledge

Keily Blair

Cass Carvajal

Karl Andinach

Joseph Dolan

Trey Holguin

Thanks to all of you, we are a pro rate magazine!

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

- The Starfarer’s Dream Journal
- One More
- Cut and Thrust
- Witness the Refrigerator Void
- A Ragged Cursive
- The Ocean is but a Slippery Thing
- The Nut House: III
- Grandma

- The King in Yellow: The Repairer of Reputations part III