CHM January 2023
Author: CHM LLC
Date: 2022-12-13 12:57:56+00:00

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: Lars Strömquist

Cosmic Horror Monthly

Edited by Charles Tyra
www.cosmichorrormonthly.com

Greetings Dear Reader,

Rejoice for it seems we are entering a golden age of cosmic horror and weird fiction. We are seeing more and more adaptations as well as new original stories on the silver screen, be it the genius of Benson & Moorhead or the tireless efforts of Del Toro in adapting Lovecraft, or genre films like Hellraiser, Glorious, and The Breach. It is truly a great time to be alive and a fan of the weird. The art of the short story is showing no signs of slowing. We received some of my favorites I have ever read as an editor and finally, over the next six issues of CHM Magazine, we get to share them with you.

We open this new era with a delectable combination of cyberpunk and weird horror in “A Current of Darkness,” followed by a story that still haunts me now as I am writing this letter. Afraid of being buried alive? Then ingest Guy Reissen’s “Not Everything Buried is Dead” with caution. Next up, you’ll look differently at the dirt beneath your fingernails after the beautifully weird tale “Digital Maintenance.” We are treated to a terrifying stream of consciousness in this month’s headliner “Our Bodies Keep Rupturing Each Time We Love” by Eric LaRocca followed by a story of existentialism and extraterrestrial ghosts in “In the Wind, Their Voices.”

For a brief intermission, we offer a chilling work of flash fiction body horror in “The Midwife” before we continue on to an untold war story where the only thing we have to fear is what lies just beneath the sea in “Shadows Beneath a Boiling Sea.” We’ll start to wind down with a story of absolute cosmic horror in the workplace, or rather, just another day at the office in “Your Call is Very Important to Us” and come to a haunting conclusion with the gorgeously written cautionary tale “Der Zedernwald” by RSL.

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: Co-Editor |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: Lars Strömquist is a illustrator and artist with a taste for the dark and fantastic. In his art you’ll often find the small hero set against some greater force. Lars lives with his awesome family in the cold and dark northern part of Sweden. When not drawing he enjoys playing the occasional boardgame or tabletop rpg. For more of his art you can visit his instagram or checkout his deviantart page: www.deviantart.com/happytodraw

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/

Fahim Anzoom Rumman is a Bangladeshi Artist, currently working for Dhaka Comics. His work mostly involves digital mediums such as comic books, illustration, and animation. His art generally involves themes of Horror and fantasy. He takes major inspiration from Genndy Tartakovsky and Chittaprosad.

Welcome to Cosmic Horror Monthly

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

A Current of Darkness

By Mike Voss

I flew six hours to Amsterdam, fighting a DMT hangover, to identify a dead man. All because the dead man may have had information about Rachel, my own personal event horizon. An official I didn’t recognize met me at the airfield. He was bedecked in black, half a head taller than me and twice as broad. “I’m Navarro,” he said. “This way, please.” His indifferent tone grew into belligerent silence during the short drive to the scene.

“Where’s Harris?” I asked, getting out of the vehicle.

“Waiting,” Navarro said. “I need to verify your clearance.” I passed my ID to him; his eyes narrowed when he caught a gleam of the platinum wire intagliated around my fingers. “You off-world?” he asked.

I ignored the question. “The body?”

Navarro grunted, returned my badge. “Come on.” He led me to a land bridge, verdant and overgrown, adjacent to the New Canal in Jordaan. The Westerkerk bell tower was one of the few historical monuments that remained above the water line. Its great brass bells chimed two o’clock. The water amplified the sound and the reverberations seemed to make the whole world tesselate in green and gold.

Harris waited on the far bank under the shade of the canopy. I’d known Harris as cold, fastidious, manipulative. He was also the best boss I ever had. When things ended with Rachel, he gave me the only advice he knew, because it always worked for him: “Go on sabbatical, little monk. Be silent. Be humble. Pray. Get closer to God.”

Harris uncovered the body, splayed and half-hidden within a thicket of lindens. “A group of kids found him floating in the canal a couple hours ago. Recognize him?”

The man’s skin was mottled, ulcerated in various shades of pink and grey. From the angle of his limbs, it seemed the only thing holding the body together was the clothing. I tried to look beyond its present condition and picture the face in ruddier health, and with its jaw re-attached. “Canton?”

Harris nodded. “James Canton.”

“Do you have leads?”

“Yes and no,” Harris shrugged. “Unusual behavior’s begun to manifest in some of the modified Diplomatic Corps. A process takes over where the brain releases a biological signal to self-destruct. Some compulsively engage in self-mutilation; others stop eating and waste away.”

“And the Jeletz?”

“They’re telling us fuck-all.” Harris gestured toward the mangled remains of James Canton. “Rachel was in Canton’s treatment group. I thought you should know.”

* * *

I first met Rachel at a reception hosted by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. In those days, we still used a combination of Virtual Intelligence interpreters and psychotropics to facilitate communication with the Jeletz. I found it nearly impossible to function under the necessary quantity of hallucinogens to even tolerate being in proximity to them. When a Jeletz alpha cornered me, and its orchid shaped face flashed vibrant indigo in benign greeting, the intensity of the contact was more than I could take. I rushed outside and puked behind the lawn art.

Rachel had just arrived at the reception grounds and found me heaving in the hedges. With a smile that seemed to come so easily, she helped me to my feet. She wore a long summer dress, emerald green, to signify her rank as a Diplomat.

“Is this how you try to impress the new girl?” she asked.

“Just had a bad reaction.” I over-enunciated the words, which made the slurring worse.

“Working with the Jeletz can be a bit much,” she said. I snatched a glass of champagne from a passing server and used the liquid to clear my mouth of the bitter eau de throw up aftertaste. Rachel pointed to my drink. “Especially when you mix in social lubricant. I find building up a tolerance slowly works far better.” She flashed that easy smile again and leaned close. I was soul trapped, helpless behind the gleam in her dilated, coffee-colored eyes.

“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.

“You’re very direct,” her smile disappeared, “and way out of line.” She pulled a torn red sash from the remains of the hedge. “Yours?”

“Mine,” I said. “I’m a Consultant.” Everyone in the Ministry knew that ‘Consultant’ was a euphemism for ‘security’, which was a euphemism for ‘underhanded bastards who preferred the dark and strove to prove mathematically that wrong actions equalled right.’

“A Consultant,” Rachel said with exaggerated surprise. “Of course. That would explain your manners.”

I offered my hand. “Alex Bishop.”

“Consultant Bishop,” she placed the sash in my open hand. She turned and walked into the reception hall, but not before sharing one last smile over her shoulder.

“Is that a pity smile?” I called after her.

“Pity?” she shrugged. “Let’s go with that.”

“I’d prefer animosity.”

“It’s your lucky day. I am feeling especially antagonistic. Well? Are you coming to the party, or not?”

* * *

Rachel’s first posting was as a liaison between colonists and the Jeletz delegation stationed on Europa. The Jeletz used chromatophore communication and, to reduce the need for the colonists to continually ingest high octane drugs, the Ministry felt it would be beneficial to deep dive into parsing the complex Jeletz color patterns by creating the equivalent of human translators. Rachel volunteered.

The Ministry called them treatments; a euphemism meant to sooth failed subjects’ surviving relatives. Rachel’s treatment began with ocular implants that allowed her to regulate input of visible and near UV light. Finally, a symbiotic implant, a Jeletz embryo, was surgically grafted onto the base of her spine. It swapped DNA with her cells and grew tendrils along her nerves to stimulate melanocortin receptors. V.I. tutors instructed her in fifteen-hour sessions, impressing upon her the language of color.

The day before her departure, she broke her quarantine protocol and asked to see me. When I arrived at her place, she was in the closet, standing between two mirrors. She was craning her neck, attempting to inspect the implant. “It’s pretty noticeable,” she said, “isn’t it?”

“Are you going to name it?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?” She cocked her head and considered for a moment before deciding. “Grigori,”

“Why ‘Grigori’?”

“Read your classics.”

“How does it eat?”

“It doesn’t”

“That’s good, because my next question was going to be, ‘what do you do when it takes a crap?’”

She punched my arm and flashed neon orange. “You’re such a child.” I kissed the back of her neck and waves of gold-vermillion flowed horizontally down the length of her body. She sighed and said, “I shall run before him, arcing cloths besprinkled with colors small as fish eggs…” She looked at me through the mirror “Are you going to forget me?”

“How could I?”

She turned to face me and rested her arms on my shoulders. Her skin glowed deeply. “How do I look now?”

“Like a sunset.”

After we were through, we lay together in silence, trying not to sully the moment with empty platitudes. I don’t remember which of us started the conversation, but we ended up discussing the inevitable.

“You’re already older than dirt,” she said.

“Why thank you,” I said. “Explain how thirty-five…”

“I go into cold pack. I arrive and thaw out, I’m still thirty. I do my tour, repeat the process, and I return, gaining one year to your five. You’ll be forty.”

“You can add me to your collection of antiques,” I said, gesturing to an ancient map she had hung on the wall. It was a star chart, illustrated with imaginary animals settled in a border of deep blue. Little did the mapmaker know that indeed, here be monsters as well. “Seal me in a temperature-controlled box,” I said. “I might just last forever.”

“And you might also become too fragile for me to play with anymore,” Rachel said. She pointed to the lower left corner of the map. “I’ve been there. And there. And there. And I’m going…” she paused. “I don’t think Europa is on there.”

“It’s an old map,” I said, “it’s not worth more than the paper it’s printed on.”

“Vellum. It’s not paper.” She leaned on her elbow and looked down at me. “Now, when I gaze up into the dark of the night sky, I see it as the same brilliant blue on that map.” She paused and her tone changed. “They can survive in the vacuum of space.”

“The Jeletz?”

She nodded. “It’s one of the things I learned. One of their secrets I shouldn’t be telling you. When they first began to explore, they’d take to the sky and let their bodies drift along the dark currents, colonizing as they went.” Her skin flashed coral, pink, white and her expression changed.

“What else shouldn’t I know?”

“I’m dreaming in color. I think in color.” Then, as if to stop herself from revealing something I couldn’t be privy to, she turned on me, saying, “just go. Please. Now.” I replayed that night over and over in my mind, thinking about what I should have said, or could have done. But each revisit ended the same way: I left without looking back.

* * *

Harris was kind enough to provide me with a list of former staff that the dead man, Canton, may have been in contact with when he arrived on world. The names were familiar and entirely useless, leading me away from Rachel. I knew that if I wanted real information, I’d need to start with a thorough scan of Canton’s hotel room.

The multi room suite was lush for someone on an Ambassador’s income. The foyer and bathrooms were covered with polished pink marble flecked with gold. Canton’s open luggage sat on the wide bed, still neatly packed. The room was too pristine. I dug through his clothing, unzipped hidden compartments and was able to turn up the manifest for his flight. Rachel was listed along with Canton. Both travelled in stasis, both revived upon landing.

“What time did Canton leave his room?” I asked the suite’s V.I.

“Ambassador Canton left at 2:45 this morning”, the V.I. said.

“Who else has been here?” I asked.

“Director Harris. Ambassador McCourt.”

“Repeat,” I said.

“Ambassador Rachel McCourt.”

“When?”

“Ambassador McCourt left with Ambassador Canton at 2:45 this morning.”

I scanned the list of names on the manifest but didn’t recognize any others as Ministry or from Rachel’s treatment group. I moved on to the crew and thought it best to start at the top with the captain.

Lucas Farrington was a pilot who’d developed a reputation for confounding timetables while under the influence of mountains of drugs. After making a few calls into the Ministry’s navy, I tracked Farrington down to the top floor of a half-submerged hotel near the city’s shipyards, skulking through his downtime.

Farrington didn’t look too surprised to see me, just disappointed. We climbed to the roof with a bottle of scotch between us. In the shipyard below, a small craft, a caravel, was being readied for launch. We drank and watched as the platform holding the caravel was raised. Its engines growled and it took off with a hiss as the force of its jets hit the water below.

“Ambassador James Canton was found dead this morning,” I said. “He was a passenger on your most recent flight.”

Farrington shrugged. “I’m a pilot. I shuttle a lot of personnel between here and the colonies.”

“Another passenger was Rachel McCourt.”

Farrington looked up from underneath his thick eyelids and smiled. He refilled his glass and sat back. “Why should I be talking to you?”

I shook my head and told him truthfully, “there’s no reason.” I walked to the balcony and traced the trajectory of the contrail left by the caravel, a magenta streak against the ultramarine sky. “We have a history, Rachel and I.”

“But no future,” he ventured. “The two ambassadors de-boarded together. If there was something,” he searched for the word. “Something off with either of them, I couldn’t tell.”

“Can you be sure?”

Farrington’s eyes shot waves of impatience. “Son, how old do I look to you?”

“Old enough to be addled and attaining your second childhood.”

“Nice try, smart ass. I’ve been piloting ships since I was twenty-five. I’ve been serving on them since I was sixteen.”

“You look fifty. If I say fifty, will you answer my fucking question?”

Farrington smirked. “Add a hundred more and you’ll be getting close. Having to go into cold pack adds a lifetime or two. I am old enough to remember reports about initial attempts at contact with our new neighbors, how the first volunteers were never quite right afterwards. I remember the first iteration of the Ministry. And how wrong headed it was even then.” He gestured for me to sit back down. He refilled my glass and slid it forward. “I’ve had to clean up more bad deaths than I care to count.”

“Like Canton.”

Farrington nodded. “Like Canton. Did you know that when Jeletz reached maturity, they were genetically predispositioned to mate and die? Well, the males died. The females killed and ate them. They stopped, of course, once they reached a certain level of social and scientific development, but primal instincts are universal.”

“Fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fucking.”

“Very good,” Farrington beamed. “But not always in that order. Every treatment was a game of roulette. The volunteers knew that.”

“There has to be a way to help her.”

“Short of a cold pack nap in a stasis module? No.” He leaned forward. “How long since you’ve seen her?”

“Five years.”

Farrington nodded. “Five years of exchanging genetic material with an exotic, off-world lifeform.”

“She was in cold pack most of that time. You said stasis stops the change.”

“Slows, not stops. She’s not the same person you remember. Her thoughts are different. Her priorities are different. If I were you, I’d stay very far away from her.”

I left Farrington and walked along the quay, watching the ships entering and leaving the port. The smell coming off the water had a surprising sweetness to it, which was undercut by the sour smell of heated metal from the ships cooling after re-entry. The scotch helped quiet my nerves and made the anticipation of confronting her more bearable, if I could believe what Farrington was telling me.

As I walked back to my hotel, the sun sank to the horizon in an uncomfortably hot copper glow. I entered the foyer and climbed the three flights to my room. Once there, I peeled off my jacket and fell back on my bed, kicking up dust motes that swirled in shafts of dying daylight. I imagined myself drifting among them, on the contrails of an almost happy dream until a noise startled me to wakefulness. “Hello Bishop.”

It was Rachel. Her face and hands flashed indigo and she faded into the shadows once again. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep, or how long she had been there watching me. In the dark.

“I can’t see you,” I said to her silhouette, black against a deeper black.

“I can see you just fine. Give me a moment.” Her bioluminescence lit up the room in bands of red, gold, and orange. “Is that better?” she asked and approached the bed. Her voice was strained, artificial.

“That’s better,” I agreed. “The Ministry is looking for you.”

She laughed and I saw a gleam in the dark. She wore a thin metal band around her throat; a locket housing a V.I. interpreter that spoke in her voice. “Why else would you be here?” She cocked her head and the strobing on her skin slowed. The rhythm of her display with its pattern of herringbone parabolas was hypnotic.

“I want to help.”

“Are you playing the white knight for me, Bishop? I don’t need help.” She approached the bed.

“What do you need?”

“Trust. Do you trust me?” She sat beside me.

“Tell me about Canton.”

“Canton.” The V.I.’s tone expressed what seemed to be genuine sadness. “After we’d disembarked, he told me he felt unwell and retired early. I wandered the city, ate a late dinner, and went to check on him before I turned in. He was in an adjoining room. I knocked but there was no answer, so I assumed he was asleep.” Her skin strobed faster, her color more saturated.

“Sometime after midnight a noise woke me,” she continued. “It came from his room. The door was unlocked. When I saw him, he was on the floor, thrashing, clawing at his throat. His body was communicating the silver-white colorings for distress. He ran out of the room, and I followed him for blocks. When I caught up with him, he was on his knees, his coloring indicated he was in extremis. He was pleading for help, and I knew what to do.”

“What did you do?”

“Words,” she placed her fingers on my lips, “are filler for pure thought which can only be conveyed through color. Canton was drowning on his own vocabulary, so I removed the organs that blocked his true language. I am sorry to say that neither of us could stop the bleeding.” Rachel took my hand in hers, leading my fingers over the smooth skin of her throat, the delicate flesh of her lips, and into the moist warmth of her tongueless mouth. “I removed my unnecessary means of expression long ago. I’ll ask one last time, Bishop. Do you trust me?”

“I want to,” I said, and almost meant it. “I came here for you.”

Rachel considered my answer, her hands and face dappled in pensive blue. “Then follow me. I want to show you my becoming.”

* * *

We alighted to the shipyard and boarded a vessel she had on standby. On our way, I tried raising Harris but couldn’t get through. I knew I’d need Ministry guidance to get the vessel back down once I’d gotten Rachel safely into stasis. She closed the entry way and began to load coordinates into the navigation system. I brushed passed her and turned down a passageway, looking for the life support cabin.

“Where are you going?”

“I want to take a look at the ship,” I said.

“Let me give you the tour.” She smiled in waves of fuchsia.

I followed her to the galley, the sleeping quarters, and the entertainment room. She ended the tour at the atrium where, amongst the hanging gardens, the stasis modules hung like clinical coffins of steel and glass.

“How far will we travel before we have to go on ice?” I asked.

“You’ve never been in cold pack, have you? Don’t be anxious. It’s like going to sleep. You don’t dream, and there’s no sense of time passing, but you wake up with the worst hangover.” She ran her long fingers over the smooth glass of the unit’s window. “We won’t be using them.”

“So, they aren’t working?”

“They work.” Her fingers slid to the control panel and depressed the button, opening the glass door. Rachel read my intention. She flashed viridian and closed her eyes. I reached up to touch her face and felt tears. She doubled over, sobbing. “I trusted you.”

Before I could guide her into the pod, Rachel leapt, her face flashing a tiger’s mask of indigo and scarlet. She used my leverage against me, grasping my neck and spinning me backward into the open device.

She raised her arm and heaved the door downward. I tried to push back against the padding behind me but only managed to get my arm between the door and the metal seal of the pod’s frame, pinning it just below the wrist. I shouted to her, begging her to stop, but she only pushed harder. I tried to reason with her. “Rachel. Please. I want to help.”

Rachel pulled her body downward on the pod’s frame and used that anchoring force to thrust her weight against the door. Agony exploded behind my eyes as she made one final lunge, shutting the hatch, and severing tendon, bone, and wire with the sound of a whip cracking. My hand pinwheeled across the floor like a pale crab. I uselessly continued to beat my remaining hand against the door until darkness encroached the edges of my vision. I called her name over and over again.

After what seemed like half a lifetime, Rachel stepped forward and peered through the glass. She relaxed her chromatic cells and her mask of colors fell away. Blood lazily filled the pod. Delicate ruby and garnet spheres splashed like an opaque rain against the module’s window. She stood unmoving, unblinking before me; I saw my reflection captured in her coffee-colored eyes until my blood obscured the view.

My last selfish thought was a sad hope she’d have the kindness to initiate stasis before I died.

End.

Mike Voss is a writer of weird tales and dark fiction. He is currently working on his first novel. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and their rescue pup.

Not Everything Buried is Dead

By Guy Riessen

Tommy LeGuin’s eyelids snapped open. His eyes flicked left, right, left again. He blinked, not believing at first that they were open, then blinked again, trying to focus on something, anything, but there was only total darkness.

He could still feel the dissociative effects of the animal tranquilizer Jimmy had nicked from the vet clinic. Tommy’s thoughts swirled around his head like the rancid air filling the dark space. His memory was fuzzy, mixing with drug-induced paranoid dreams of his old water tank escape gone horribly wrong.

He was breathing fast, could feel his heart hammering, hear every inhale, every exhale, and the stale, low-frequency noise of his blood pumping around his inner ear.

He was lying on his back, his arms by his side. In the complete dark, he raised his hands to his face, but his wrists thudded into slick, damp fabric over what felt like wood about a foot up from where his arms were resting. Raising his head, his face pushed up into the same clammy fabric before his forehead also struck solid wood. The sound was flat, more like he’d rapped his head against concrete than wood. He could feel his own breath, hot, moist, in the tight space.

Oh my God!

They actually goddamn did it.

His throat suddenly dry, Tommy choked, coughing in the confined space. A bead of sweat rolled along his jaw and slipped down the side of his throat to the back of his neck.

They fucking buried me alive!

* * *

“No. Damn. Way!” Tommy sat down hard on the old couch in the one-room flop Frank was renting just off Lewis Street.

“Look, Tommy, it’s gotta be you. You’re the one Lansky wants dead.” Frank leaned against the doorjamb of the tiny shack which sat on the dirt and gravel lot behind the Arkham bus depot.

Jimmy walked back from the counter that marked the boundary between kitchen and living room, plopped himself onto the end of the couch, nodding. “It’s gotta be.”

Tommy scowled as the big man bounced the entire couch, the worn-out springs screeching. Jimmy was none too smart, but he was a great slab of beef and gristle to have at your shoulder when the going got tough.

The smell of diesel wafted thick and heavy in the air, and a wash of gravel dust blew past the window as the noon 157 bus left the lot.

Frank said, “Lansky knows you cut and ran when the heroin never made it to Borowski. Damn it, Tommy, Borowski’s his brother-in-law, so who d’you think Lansky’s gonna believe when the stories don’t match? It sure as hell ain’t gonna be the hired runner.”

“Not gonna be you, Tommy. Ain’t gonna be the hired runner,” Jimmy said, staring at the floor, shaking his head, “Nuh uh.”

“Yeah, I got it, Jimmy,” Tommy said.

Frank gave Tommy a hard look. He pushed off the doorframe with a twitch of his broad shoulders. Leaning forward and pointing his whiskey-filled jar like he was holding the snubnosed revolver Tommy could see tucked into his waistband.

“Word’s out, Lansky’s already lookin’ for hatchetmen.” Frank swirled his jelly jar; the ice tinkled. “Plus, think about it, Tommy… someone’s gotta work the deal with the mob boys, and we all know it can’t be ol’ Jim, here.”

Tommy tossed a glance at Jimmy, who was staring slack-jawed out the window.

Frank continued, “And someone’s gotta be the dead guy. Right? Ain’t none of us wanna really be dead, yeah? And you’re the only one of us that’s got the Houdini-skills to pull this off.”

“Yeah, I used to have Houdini-skills… on a stage, man. Not goddamn buried in a wood box! Shit. I ain’t in showbiz no more because I almost died. Did fucking die, as a matter of fact, Frank.” Tommy watched the ripples in his whiskey as his shaking hands danced the jitterbug with his glass. “If it hadn’t been for that doctor in the audience that night…” his voice trailed off. His voice was quieter when he continued. “Just thinking about being in a coffin makes me want to shit my damn pants.”

He set his drink on the arm of the couch and wiped his hands on his faded jeans. His palms left faint dark streaks. He grabbed his glass again and emptied it, feeling the liquid burn a hot streak to his belly. Frowning, he dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth.

His eyes flicked from Frank to Jimmy. “Shit,” he muttered, seeing Jimmy all puppy-eyed. How a soft heart like Jimmy ever started running with the likes of himself and Frank made no sense. He stood up and stormed to the counter where the half-empty bottle of whiskey sat. Goddamn puppy-dog eyes. He scowled at Jimmy while he filled his glass to the brim, sipping at the edge before it could spill.

* * *

In the unforgiving darkness, Tommy felt the adrenaline-fueled hysteria tugging at his limbs, spasming his muscles. It was like standing at the edge of a building roof; the urge to step off thrumming his nerves. The panic. The pinprick stars slithering at the edge of his vision. His mind drawn to thoughts of what wormed and crawled and lurked at the edges of death.

He wrested control of his breathing, fought to relax his cramping muscles from the tip of his toes to the top of his scalp. But then he pictured the impossible thickness and mass of dirt that stretched between him and the open air. His heart raced again.

His mouth was dry, like he’d been sucking on a wool sock, but he concentrated, reaching back to find the control he had before he almost died in the water tank.

His pulse slowed.

Tommy slipped his hand up to the breast pocket of his burial suit. Touching the metal and glass of the flashlight Frank and Jim had put there, he pulled it out and slowly brought it up near his face. Sliding his other arm up, he pushed the sleeve back away from his wrist.

He switched the light on.

8:37.

Aces.

Wait a sec….

Tommy squinted at his watch. He tapped the watch face with the butt of the flashlight. The second hand wasn’t moving. At all. His heart spasmed.

Goddamn Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum forgot to wind my watch!

Why the hell did I think I could pull something like this off with fucking Frank and Jimmy? And stealing the entire shipment of heroin from Lansky, what in all that’s holy was I thinking? Shit. Who am I kidding, I’m the one in the box. I’m the fucking Tweedle-Dum.

His hand twitched and he dropped the flashlight. He could feel the fake satin brush the top of his head, sense the wooden walls just inches from his shoulders. His hands scrabbled around the fabric of his suit until he caught up the flashlight again. He felt his white-knuckled grip on the thin metal cylinder. Cold sweat trickled along the small of his back.

Stay calm, Tommy.

It can’t have been that long—you just woke up. The boys will get you out, just like they said they would.

Breathe.

* * *

Tommy grimaced, looking up from his rapidly dwindling jar of booze. He had to admit, Frank had actually thought this one through. “So, I take it you two are gonna go get the hit contract on me? That’s where the ‘we’re gonna score big’ part comes in, yeah? You guys thought about how you’re gonna approach Lansky for a contract on your known friend and associate?”

Frank and Jimmy looked at each other.

“You shitballs already got the contract on me, didn’t ya?” Tommy growled.

After a moment of hesitation, Frank spoke up, “Yeah. He didn’t seem surprised we’d turn on you for the cash… it’s serious bread, man. Five G’s. Figure that’s a grand for me, a grand Jim, and three for you, Tommy, since you’re the one’s gotta…” The pause hung heavy in the air.

“I’m the one’s gotta be in the box. Still, three g’s is some serious scratch, I’ll give you that,” Tommy said, kneading his forehead. “And that’s on top of the five c-notes we each got for selling Lansky’s horse on the street. But shit, boys… buried alive? Damn.” Tommy stared at the cracked linoleum at his feet, but when he looked up again, Frank and Jim were both grinning. Shit, they can tell I’m starting to cave on their bullshit plan….

* * *

In the dim light of the small flashlight, Tommy listened, trying to pick out sounds of a shovel in dirt. But all he heard was the rush of blood in his ears, the crinkle of fabric as his neck twitched. The lack of sound was stifling; he could sense the dead air pressing down from the weight of so much dirt between him and fresh air.

Tommy slipped the end of the flashlight into his mouth and moved his hands together to wind his watch.

He set the time to 12:00, so he could at least track the time as it passed.

His breath sucked past the flashlight and he blinked to clear the mix of sweat and condensation from his eyes. The flashlight flickered.

He took the flashlight out of his mouth and tapped it against his palm.

The light brightened again.

Tommy shined the light around. White, swampy satin pressed in close. He tipped his head and tried to peer down to his feet. The fabric hanging from the lid of the coffin lid sagged and he could see drops of water glistening along every fold of the cloth.

The light dimmed again. Tommy flicked the light back off and slid it into his jacket breast pocket. Methodically, he moved his hands from one pocket to the next.

The ignition key for his shot-to-hell Ford Deluxe, probably still on the old dirt road by the racetrack for Lansky to find as more evidence of the hit, was in his pants pocket, as was his Zippo lighter.

There was a slip of paper in the other front pocket of his pants. Tommy pulled the flashlight out again and clicked it on. It flickered a bit, but he could read the note.

Hey Pal we’ll be back to dig you up at midnight.

—F&J

Tommy clenched his jaw.

How the fuck long till midnight?

He crumpled the piece of paper in his fist.

He switched the light off.

The air was warm and thick. He shifted his shoulders, shrugging first one side then the other, trying to keep the muscles loose. The sound of the fake satin crumpling with his movements was loud.

What was that?

Tommy lay still, but the sound had stopped. He shifted, and he heard it again. It wasn’t the satin crinkling, no this was a definitely a slosh and gurgle.

Ah, the boys got one thing right, anyway.

Slipping his hand further inside his jacket pocket, he felt the hard metal shape of a flask. He pulled it from the pocket; the metal was warm from his body heat.

What I wouldn’t give for a short glass and a tall pile of rocks right now….

He spun the cap off and took a swig, feeling the sharp burn that quickly numbed his mouth.

Frank’s flask. This’s Hudson Bay Demerara 151.

Tommy felt the warmth wash across his cramping muscles.

* * *

“Frank, you and Jimmy run out and get some cow’s blood from the butcher shop on third. Then you guys meet me on the dirt road out south of the racetrack. You know the one. I’ll bring my piece and we’ll shoot up my car, spill the blood all over the place, and leave it for the cops to find when they go looking.”

Frank said, “Sure, Tommy, sure.”

“With Lansky already handing out writs to gun me down, I wanna move fast so someone else doesn’t actually off me while we’re still planning our shit.”

Tommy dug the car key from his pocket while he walked past Frank and out to his car. He opened the driver’s door and reached under the seat, making sure his gun was still there. Leaning over, he pulled a beat-up carton out of the glove box. He slid it open. Fifteen or so bullets rolled around inside.

Tommy looked back. Jimmy and Frank stood lit against the black rectangle of the open front door. Tommy dropped his ass into the seat and fired up the engine. He shook his head. He looked in the rearview, at the two galoots in Frank’s doorway, as his tires spun dirt and gravel into the air behind him, and he accelerated away.

“Well, you’re in the shit now, Tommy,” he said to himself.

* * *

Tsssssch.

Tommy’s breath caught in his throat.

Was that the sound of a shovel?

Tommy listened, ears aching, feeling like they were stuffed with cotton as he strained to pick up that sound again.

Something that sounded like shifting dirt.

His head felt stuffed and achy, like he’d just gone a round with Rocky Marciano. His muscles stiffened in anticipation of the sound, but it did not repeat.

It was nothing. Imagination.

He was sleepy, but it was more than just the alcohol. He knew the feeling from his days in the water tank. The Handcuff King. The Prison Breaker. Le Maître du Mystère, Tommy LeGuin.

He was running out of oxygen. Down at his feet, he could feel the metal cylinder of the small tank of oxygen that Frank had lifted from a construction site down off Bennet Street. He’d hoped to not use it until he was within a couple hours of midnight.

If only they’d wound my watch.

Scrrrch. Tick, ssssscrch.

Tommy started as heard the sounds again, his muscles twitched like he’d touched a live wire.Turning his head, he lifted it toward the lid of the coffin and listened intently.

The sound didn’t repeat.

Like most buried corpses, he wasn’t wearing shoes or socks. Shifting his hips, he raised one foot enough to allow the bottle of oxygen to tip to the side. With his toes he grasped the knurled edges of the valve and twisted.

In the leaden silence, broken only by the rapid beat of his heart and incessant tick of his watch, he heard the reassuring hiss of the pressurized gas. Within moments, he could taste oil and metal in the fetid, sweaty, and stale air.

He fished the flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on.

The light was dimmer than before.

He checked his watch. Two hours and forty-five minutes since he’d wound it.

Tommy moved his hand along his side until his fingers grazed the crumpled piece of paper again. He held the flashlight in his mouth and smoothed out the note and held it up.

No date. No day, even. No information at all. Just “midnight.” Sweat dripped from his armpits, sliding a tickling trail along his skin to his back. An uncomfortable tingle clawed at the base of his spine and the front of his thighs.

His hands were shaking as he took the flashlight and shined the dull orange glow toward his feet. He tipped his head up to watch while he used his toes to grip the valve to slow the rate of the hissing oxygen.

Tommy bit his lip, hoping he hadn’t let it run out too much oxygen too quickly.

He turned the flashlight so that the lens faced him. The filament was barely glowing now. He clicked it off.

He lay still, trying to not breathe too quickly; the slimy satin dripped a soggy drumbeat onto his forehead.

* * *

They stood in the fading afternoon light on the road south of the racetrack. Frank raised a bottle of Hudson Bay Demerara 151, what he invariably called “milk from God’s teat,” and said, “To Tommy! The badass King O’Arkham: the man who’s gonna swindle Lansky twice!” Frank poured rum down his throat and passed the bottle to Jimmy.

Jimmy raised the bottle toward Tommy. The amber liquid sparkled like wild honey as Jim said, “To Tommy!” He tipped the bottle to his lips, then passed it on.

Tommy took several large gulps in succession, coughing and wheezing at the end. “I’m not gonna feel shit after that, Frank. Alright. Let’s dress me for the dance,” Tommy said as he glanced back towards his bullet-riddled car.

The three of them worked quickly to get Tommy, and the driver’s seat, splashed with the cow’s blood. Then they all piled into Frank’s truck; Jim braced the bucket holding the rest of the cow’s blood between his thighs. Frank spun the pickup and gunned it out to 5th Street and back into Arkham.

They reached the County Coroner’s building far too quickly for Tommy. In the growing dark, Frank pulled into the parking lot and around to the back. Frank’s cousin Samantha worked the weekend day-shift as a Kelly Girl. The office was closed during the weekend, but reports still needed to be typed and filed. As promised, Sam had seen to it that there was a steel gurney rolled up next to the metal fire-door at the back of the building.

The flood light above the door was out. Frank pulled up next to the gurney.

“Ok, here we go.” Frank said, opening his door.

Frank helped Tommy up onto the gurney. He rolled onto his side while Jim poured the rest of the of the blood onto the metal bed. Tommy laid back into the bloody mess, giving a shudder. The old crippling feeling was coming back—the stomach-clenching spasms he’d had when he tried to get back in the tank during the first rehearsal after the accident. They’d had to drain and refill the water after he’d vomited the remnants of his lunch into it.

“Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, Tommy. Sam’s got this, and you’ll be processed lickety-split.”

“I ain’t worried about Sam. I know she’s tops.” Tommy’s voice cracked as he grabbed Frank’s arm. “I’m scared. Really scared. Don’t leave me in the ground, Frank. Please. Whatever happens, you gotta get me outa there. I can’t….”

Tommy took a deep, shuddering breath. Visions of the tank lit by the stage floodlights pressed hard, like fingers digging into his brain. “I can’t die twice like that, man. Not twice, Frank.” Tommy’s irises floated on runny egg-whites. “You hear me, Frank? You can’t let me down.”

Frank looked down at Tommy and patted his shoulder. “Tommy, it’s me and Jimmy. You know we’d never let our pal down. Not ever. We’re gonna be there with bells on and shovels in our hands!”

“OK, goddamn it.” Tommy swallowed, but the hard lump in his throat wouldn’t budge. “Just fucking do it, Frank.” He blew a breath out, his limbs shivering even though the metal gurney was still warm from sitting in the afternoon sun.

Frank popped the cover off the needle. Tommy could see the plunger was already drawn back. It was filled with the clear fluid of the tranquilizer. With two fingers, Frank quickly pinned the vein in the crook of Tommy’s elbow and slid the needle in. He barely felt a prick. Tommy watched Frank’s thumb press the plunger, and the world swam into oblivion.

* * *

The dark pressed on Tommy’s open eyes. He reached for the flashlight and clicked it on. And off. And on again. Just the faintest glow.

He felt a tear slip from the corner of his eyelid.

We’d never let our pal down. Not ever.

He shut the light off again.

Listening, he heard the steady tick tick of his watch, his breath, the slow hiss of the tank, and his pulse.

No goddamn thunk and scrape of a couple of shovels, that’s for damn sure. Wait!

Tommy held his breath.

Tick… scccetch.

He panted quickly, then held his breath again.

Scrrrch Scrrrrch.

There! Yes! That has to be Frank and Jim!

It was the sound of dirt scraping and shifting outside the casket! Tommy pounded his fists against the casket walls. Drops of sour-smelling condensation spattered his face.

“I can hear you! Dig, you motherfuckers, dig!” He shouted, his voice deafening in the thick, viscous air. He fought the urge to turn on the flashlight. It wouldn’t help. He turned his head to one side, then the other, trying to sense how far above the shovels might be.

Stars danced at the edge of his vision as he held his breath, listening.

Thoughts welled up and scraped through his brain, dragging channels deep into the memory of his near-death experience, when his dad had to use the sledge on the tank to free Tommy when everything had gone wrong—la fin du Maître du Mystère.

Scrrrrrrrrch, tssssssk, Scrrrch.

Tommy shuddered as he realized the digging sound was not coming from above.

He screamed.

The sound was coming from below…

He scrabbled for the switch on the flashlight. His thumb found the slide and turned it on. A dim red glow briefly flared enough to light all the way to his bare feet, then faded until again; there was only the oppressive lack of light.

The dead flashlight slipped from his sweaty grip.

Scrrrrrch.

Shhhhhck.

Tommy’s breathing was fast, shallow. His brow was knotted, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight, but tears of panic kept building at the corners of his lids.

He lay still, panting in the humid darkness, and he strained to hear any sounds coming from outside the box.

Maybe I didn’t hear anything, after all? Or maybe Frank and Jim are up there right now, and just taking a break?

He couldn’t stop panting. He needed more oxygen.

Shifting his feet until he could feel the tank with his toes, he braced it with one leg, and gripped the handle with the toes of his other foot. His bare feet were slippery with sweat and the condensation from his breath. He felt the knob turn and heard the hiss grow louder.

His head ached as he listened.

Tick. Tick. Tick….

Hisssss

Scrrretch, scraaaahtch.

His heart stopped, then thudded back to life.

Tommy grabbed and flailed until he found and shook the flashlight and banged it hard against the side of the coffin. The sound was muffled, numbed like his brain.

Scretch.

He jabbed his thumb at the switch again and again. Nothing.

Tommy screamed. The flashlight dropped with a thud to the side.

Scraaatch! Tick. Tap tap. Tick. Scraaaatch.

The sound was no longer coming from the dirt beneath him. The scratching came from the wooden bottom of the coffin itself. Like nails dragged across a crate.

Beads of sweat were building on his scalp, rolling back through his hair. Tommy twitched in the dark, blinking, tasting the salt and feeling the sting of his own sweat on his chapped mouth.

Feeling the crescendo of his rattling nerves, Tommy grabbed for the flask and spun the lid free. Gulping at the rum, he choked, the cough wrenching his body, spattering his face and hands. The stale air was heady with the odor of alcohol fumes. Tommy blinked. Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes, along his cheekbones, to settle into his ear canals.

The sound from outside was coming faster now.

Louder.

Scratch, Scritch.

The casket shook, the movement startling after the oppressive stillness. The flask slipped from his sweaty grip. The gurgle of the liquor sounded loud, and he instinctively jerked sideways as the rum soaked into his pants.

Shit!

He snatched for the flask and with trembling hands brought it up to his lips. He took a long pull.

The coffin juddered again, and there was a new sound from underneath, down where his legs were. A tearing, crunching sound, like ripping sheets of bark from the trunk of a eucalyptus.

He had to see! Frantically digging into his pockets, his hand closed around his Zippo. The metal warm, like living flesh in his clammy grip.

The coffin shuddered violently and Tommy screamed, feeling something pounding against the wood bottom of the coffin, against the tender flesh behind his knees.

He lifted the lighter, flicked open the lid, thumb on the sparker.

Snick! His thumb rolled the wheel, sparks flashed in the darkness, briefly illuminating the breath-damp, white, undulating satin in the jostling coffin.

Snick! He thumbed the wheel again. Sparks arcing, Tommy’s wide eyes saw the floor of the coffin warp and bow inward, shoving his legs to the walls on each side.

As the afterimages of the sparks faded, there was a rending squeal of tortured wood that drowned out the hiss of the oxygen tank, and jagged splinters burst inward, bouncing off his hands and clothes.

The smothering stench of dank, moldering earth filled his nostrils and choked his scream into staccato barks.

Time slowed, each moment an eternal fraction.

Snick! The sparker wheel spun again and the butane flame flared to life.

There was a flash of impossibly bright light as the mix of alcohol fumes and oxygen filling the casket ignited. The flash momentarily lit two arms that had pushed up between his legs. Pendulous, flaccid, pale flesh traced with blue distended veins hung from limbs tipped with twisted claws, and long blackened and broken nails tore into the coffin.

For a split second, from the black and utter dark just beyond the gaping maw of the hole through which the arms reached and grabbed, Tommy saw grotesque, pallid flesh swathed in sheets of slopping mucus. Lit from the lighter’s dazzling flash, frozen in a moment of absolute clarity, his mind gibbered and slathered toward insanity.

An incomprehensible, undulating mass covered in too many ragged, dark pink holes—chattering maws filled with needle-like teeth that gnashed and gnawed, throbbing up through the gash between his legs and into the casket.

There was a fragmented instant of searing pain as layers of suit and skin melted and fused, and imitation satin vaporized in a burst of explosive oxygen and alcohol vapors. The walls of the coffin crumpled. Thick, damp earth collapsed, its weight crushing the coffin.

* * *

Frank stepped out of the coffee shop, a copy of the Arkham Gazette he had read while standing in line was tucked under one arm, and two paper cups of coffee were in his hands. He scowled at the police cruiser, visible over the low cemetery wall. The squad car pulled away, leaving a single cop standing by the cordoned-off grave. He and Jimmy had been moving around the area all night, trying to figure out why the cops were crawling like fucking picnic ants all over the cemetery. The two of them probably looked suspicious as hell, but the cops never seemed to notice.

He spat on the ground and took a sip of coffee. Tasted like fucking lukewarm tap water with a brown crayon dipped in it. Shuddering briefly at the thought of Tommy in the dark, probably thinking his friends had abandoned him, Frank looked toward Jimmy, silhouetted by the rising morning sun, standing on the corner, shoulders sagged.

Frank cut across the street, zigzagging between the cars idling at the stoplight, and stepped up next to his friend. “It’s in this morning’s rag.”

Jimmy turned; dark circles cradled his bloodshot eyes. “What’s that, Frank?”

“The reason why we couldn’t get in there to dig up Tommy. Something happened, Jimmy… something weird.” Frank handed his coffee to Jimmy and unfolded the newspaper, refolding it in a crisp rectangle centered on the article. His finger traced the words as he read.

“See it says here, ‘Arkham cemetery was rocked by a mystery last night. John Haverton, the cemetery’s night watchman, told us it was during his second rounds that he noticed the collapsed grave on the south side of the cemetery. Mr. Haverton said, ‘I’ve never seen the likes in none of my years here. The ground was all sunk down like it was one of them graves from the 1600s we got over in the oldest part of the cemetery.’ When asked what could have caused it, Mr. Haverton said, ‘It’s like the coffin just up and imploded. The poor guy was just planted yesterday.’”

Frankie paused so Jimmy could pass him his paper cup back and he took a sip.

“What else does it...” Jimmy’s eyes glistened in the cloudy morning light as he stared at the newsprint. He dragged a meaty paw across face. He cleared his throat. “What else does it say, Frank.”

Frank handed the cup back and continued reading, “‘Tommy LeGuin, former circus star and escape artist, was buried at Arkham Cemetery site S110. The victim of a gangland-style shootout just outside the Arkham city limits less than two days ago, Mr. LeGuin was buried on Saturday morning.’”

Frank paused and said, “Well, that explains why the place was crawlin’ with cops last night.”

Moving his finger across the page, Frank said, “Let’s see, uhm. Here we go. ‘When contacted, the Arkham police had no official comment on whether they would seek a court order to disinter the grave, but a source at the station confirmed that it was unlikely without further criminal evidence, since the grave appears undisturbed except for the collapse. Mr. LeGuin does not have any known living relatives.’”

When Frank looked up from the paper, Jimmy was scrubbing at tears running freely down his cheeks. “I know I ain’t so smart, Frankie, but what’s it mean im… imploded?”

“It means, I don’t think poor Tommy suffered. Whatever happened, it happened fast-like.”

Jimmy sniffled, nodding, then bent his head down to blow on his cup of coffee. Frank didn’t have the heart to tell Jimmy the coffee wasn’t even warm anymore. Frank draped one arm across Jimmy’s thick shoulders. “C’mon tough guy, let’s head back to the flat. We gotta clear our stuff and catch the first Greyhound outa this shithole.”

Jimmy sipped noisily and looked up. “Greyhound?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how this is gonna play out with Lanksy but it’ll be best for the two of us if we just move on. Maybe get over to Rockport, or even Boston.”

“I ain’t never been to Boston.”

“Well, let’s see if we can’t change that, Jimmy,” Frank said. Jimmy looked up at Frank and nodded.

They turned away from the corner, away from the yellow and black police tape they could see flapping between the two oaks where Tommy’s collapsed grave was watched over by a bored Arkham flatfoot. Frankie paused for just a moment.

“Why’d ya, stop, Frankie?”

“I thought I felt something. Like the ground shifted just a bit. You feel it?”

Jimmy shook his head.

“Yeah, it’s nothin’. It ain’t like this is Californy earthquake country or something. Let’s go.”

End.

Guy Riessen is a Californian Dark Fiction author and VFX artist now living in Montreal, Quebec. He’s been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including Cosmic Horror Monthly, Shotgun Honey, Miskatonic Dreams, Poe-Pourri, Urban Temples of Cthulhu, and more. His novel, Piercing the Veil, is available on Amazon, and you can follow him at www.guyriessen.com or @GuyRiessen on twitter.

Digital Maintenance

By Ryan Marie Ketterer

In precisely three hours I will attend my biannual digit cleaning. I expect my Digist will relay that I have once again neglected my duties in maintaining clean, bacteria-free digits. There is a buildup of grime in the crevices of my fingers, a brown mold growing in the webs that connect one finger to the next.

I grab my digit brush, a long, thin plastic device with sharp bristles at one end, and get to work. As I scrub my fingernails, chunks of dust flake to the floor, where they shall remain until I discover the motivation to clean something else. I run my hands under water, rubbing the visible tarnish from each finger until the water runs brown and eventually red. I ignore the swollen webs between my fingers, bleeding again due to my utter lack of inclination in maintaining clean digits. Surely this must be good enough.

* * *

I dance down the street, dodging cracks and craters, holding a severed head preciously between my fingers. I pass by structures that might be called homes, hidden by overgrown weeds. From one of the windows, eyes stare back at me, holding my gaze, as I continue my celebratory prance.

The crumbling gravel upon which my feet leap turns to dirt littered with the fossils of commercialism, and I stumble. My small body falls, crushing my newest organic treasure. I rise and pull pieces of rock from my bloody scrapes, leaving behind deep pits in my damaged skin.

The head in my hands remains intact, its face frozen in a state of shock, and I smile. Mother will be so pleased. I continue on, letting my fresh wounds drip blood.

When I open the door, Mother is waiting, expectant. This will make her smile, I know it will.

“Where have you been, child?” she asks.

I raise the rancid head triumphantly before her and she leers. I just want her to smile. My stomach turns as her glaring eyes grow darker and her face falls into an indignant frown.

“You’re filthy! Brush your digits and stay out of my sight”, she says, knocking the head roughly from my hands and shoving me away.

* * *

I take the bus to my Digist’s office. There is impurity everywhere: the railing on the stairs, the machine dispensing tickets, the narrow seats. It is all covered with the crud from other peoples’ digits, and has now become a part of my own filth. With each touch, the gunk builds up once again, working its way back between my fresh fingers. It surely won’t be enough for my Digist to notice though.

My Digist is well-known in the community, as he is the only Digist to serve my town, the town to the west, and the town to the north. He is a young man who, rather than inspiring excitement about clean digits, reproaches those who bring grime before him. His office is located centrally between the towns which seems to be an attempt at convenience, yet the roads leading to the Digist’s office are always congested and the only bus always overcrowded.

I step from the vehicle. The strip mall before me mirrors my putridity: cracked windows smeared with brown-tinged sludge and unreadable signs hanging precariously from an unmaintained eave. My Digist’s office sits in the middle, a shining white facade projecting an air of purity and cleanliness not seen elsewhere.

* * *

Mother grips my ripped shirt tightly in her gloved hands and pulls me through the empty parking lot. Before us lies a concrete wasteland containing a single functioning business.

“You’ll learn your lesson now, kid.”

I reach up to pry her hand from my sleeve, and she bats me away, cringing. We reach the glass door and she thrusts me inside. Maybe after this, Mother will smile, just once, just for me.

An immaculate man stands before me. He scrutinizes me, then raises his hand and wiggles his clean, polished digits. A smooth white gown rests upon his shoulders and falls below his knees. He steps aside and invites me into his intimidatingly clean business.

“This brat’s digits have never been cleaned, and he won’t listen to me. Thinks running around outside in the dirt, thinks that’s okay,” Mother says.

The shining man nods, a heinous grin frozen upon his face, as he gazes down at my malodorous body.

* * *

I enter my Digist’s office and wait, flipping through an outdated magazine, my fingers slipping over each greasy page, accumulating more defilement in the final moments before my biannual digit cleaning will begin.

My Digist beckons me beyond the waiting area. He attempts to engage me in idle chat for far too long while I put my jacket onto a hook, and then leads me to a wide desk. Digit cleaning tools line the table, the sharp edges reflecting the medicinal bright light into my eyes as I lower into the uncomfortable chair.

The uncontaminated room is a small cube with bleached walls. My Digist has gone to painstaking lengths to keep it sanitary so as to give off an orderly appearance that pairs well with the sterile smell of sharp chemicals. This is no doubt done intentionally by my Digist as a way of bringing into focus the unmitigated feculence of my digits.

He pulls his blue mask snugly over his mouth and folds down a plastic shield that protects him from the putrescence he is about to encounter.

“I trust you’ve spent the past six months taking very good care of your digits, yes?”

I slowly bring my hands above the desk and lay them on the sheet of paper that protects the desk from my vile digits, spreading my fingers wide to show off the filth I have acquired.

My Digist leans forward, grabbing my left hand and squinting at the undeniable rottenness set before him. He pulls down a tiny headlamp and flicks the light on, casting a bright white light that highlights just how horrid my fingers are.

“Please spread your fingers more.”

I force them apart as much as I can muster. My Digist sighs deeply, before holding my hand down firmly and pulling my pinky digit further from its neighbor. I wince and pull back at the sudden pain. My Digist stops and asks, “Was that uncomfortable?” as if he cares.

Without waiting for an answer, he takes a small tool from the table for removing grime and begins to scrape the dregs from between my digits.

* * *

Mother smacks my face, and pain prickles throughout my skin. I raise my hand, as if I could rid the burning sensation with a touch. She smacks me again, knocking my hand away.

“Stupid child. Your digits have just been cleaned. Don’t go touching things!”

I step away, into the shadows where I belong, resentment simmering in my gut. Mother sits at the table, the only table we have, and begins scrubbing her own digits. The ferocious motion shakes the whole house, and blood begins to seep from her skin.

She cycles through several digit cleaning devices, each more torturous than the last, no doubt trying to rid herself of my revolting scent.

* * *

“Have you been scooping daily like I instructed at your last biannual digit cleaning?” My Digist’s eyes signal that he knows I have not been scooping. “We’ve discussed the importance of scooping. Brushing your digits alone is not enough. If you do not also scoop the gunk from the webbing between your digits, bacteria can grow and cause many medical ailments.”

He begins the scooping process, causing the tissue between all of my fingers to inflame and blood to trickle down onto the protective medical paper lining the desk. After an infinite amount of time passes, the scooping ceases and I hear the metal clank of the tool being set aside.

My Digist grabs his mechanical finger brush, adds to it a small amount of an unscented soap, and begins brushing my fingers vigorously.

Despite my annoyance at the scooping procedure and my Digist’s harsh words about the possible debilitating medical conditions in my future, I must admit that the brushing feels nice. The circular motion lulls me into a sense of comfort, and for the first time this day, I begin to relax.

This continues for some time as my Digist is quite known for being thorough in his technique, known by all the people in my town, as well as in the towns to the west and to the north. At some point my Digist turns over my hand to begin brushing the other side.

I shift in my seat, allowing myself to unwind as the operation continues. My Digist pauses, eyeing me with a furrowed brow, and says, “Please stay as still as possible while I perform the scrubbing maneuvers.”

The mechanical brushing continues and my muscles tense as I use all of my effort to stay completely motionless, lest I further upset my Digist.

* * *

Mother sits silently across from me at the table while I scoop refuse from between my digits. The brown flecks drop onto the table, onto my shirt, onto the floor. I scoop and I scoop and I don’t stop, no. I won’t ever stop. I scoop until my skin rips; the tearing excites me.

My scooping leads to blood, so much blood. It drips, it leaks, it spreads. I smile. The blood mixes with the sediment, my sediment. I am proud to see the fragments of scum, my scum, fall from my hands.

My bleeding, swollen digits are clean, but not clean enough. I use the brush to scour even more, never satisfied.

I stop to glance at Mother. My breath quickens when I see the smile on her face. Her smile is so beautiful.

* * *

“I’m incredibly displeased with the foulness you’ve brought here today. It’s clear you’ve not been properly maintaining your digits.” My Digist’s voice drips with disgust, causing me consummate shame at the poor state of my digits.

I knew that the nature of my fingers did not meet the superior standards set forth by my Digist, but I had hoped that this biannual digit cleaning would be better than the last. The mechanical brushing finally ends and my Digist seems concerned, though I can only judge by his eyes due to the carapace of plastic protection gear that shrouds his face.

“I think that perhaps we should have you come for digit cleaning appointments quarterly, as the condition of your digits has declined considerably since last we met. Biannual digit cleanings will simply not be enough. Now, let’s move on to your lowers.”

I look down towards my feet, covered in a seedy, dirt-laden pair of shoes that have not been replaced in many years, remembering just now that my feet too have digits that must be maintained.

My Digist’s distressed eyes settle on me once again as he taps a finger impatiently. The ulcer of anger that has been growing in my gut since I arrived at my biannual digit cleaning finally pops and festers.

* * *

My Digist has joined Mother at our table and his stubborn scowl remains. Mother’s smile is steadfast, reliable. I limp to the table, my freshly cleaned and bloody lowers bare on the greasy linoleum floor, and sit between them.

Mother’s arms are bone white, cleaned of all the grime and contamination she had built up over the years. Her gorgeous face gazes at me and I am proud. I am proud of how well I cleaned her. Her flabby cheeks, her wrinkled brow. I cleaned them right off so now, only her smile remains.

Once my Digist sees how well I can brush and scoop, once he sees that, I know he’ll be proud of me. I take my scooper, the reliable scooper I’ve used all my life, and I hold it tight with my newly immaculate digits. I bring the scoop to the cheek of my Digist and grin.

“Let’s clean off those freckles,” I say cheerfully, digging the scooper deep into his imperfect face.

End.

Ryan Marie Ketterer is from Malden, Massachusetts. Her work can be found in Dark Matter Magazine and several anthologies. She’s a fan of the weird and uncanny, and her writing draws most of its influence from the works of Shirley Jackson and Thomas Ligotti. When she isn’t writing stories, Ryan is writing code for a software startup in Boston, MA or training for another road race. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @RyanMarie47.

Our Bodies Keep Rupturing Each Time We love

By Eric LaRocca

THE WALL

There’s a sharp part of the wall that I’ve been careful to avoid ever since I discovered it hurt to touch.

It’s a small indentation—about the size of a quarter—near where the two walls come together at an impossible angle in the drawing room.

I usually describe it as “an impossible angle” because as long as we’ve lived in the house, I’ve always found it decidedly queer how certain parts of the structure meet and connect the way bones do when they’re joined in shallow sockets.

I can’t pretend to understand why the particular indentation insulting the wall in the drawing room is so sharp. In fact, I can’t even pretend to admit I’ve given it much thought since we removed the ladder that was leaning against it when we first made the discovery—a tiny pocket no deeper than a toddler’s bellybutton, the curled edges gnarling at us and muted with the dim color of rusted metal.

I’ve only touched it once. Or was it twice—? I can’t remember. Regardless, I can distinctly recall how I nearly leapt out of my skin when I pushed my index finger against one of the edges, blood beading and trickling from the tip of my finger. I recall how my husband asked what I had done to myself when I staggered into the kitchen and forced my hand under the kitchen faucet as it sputtered alive. I’m not quite sure why, but I lied to him. For the first time in the twenty years we had been married, I told him something that wasn’t true. I told him that I had mistakenly cut myself on one of the decorative clay pots while tending to our backyard garden. He, of course, accepted the lie without comment and resumed frying eggs on the stovetop.

But I remember how I so desperately wanted to return to the sharp part of the wall in the parlor room. I wanted to peel back more of the edges of the small opening and peer inside. Naturally, I knew that nothing was in there. But something told me—quietly whispered to me—that if the house was wounded, it meant that I was injured as well.

I often find myself milling about in the parlor, loitering in the corner of the room where the two walls meet at that impossible angle I can’t help but detest, the tiny pocket staring back at me with its mouth gagged with plaster. I don’t understand why, but I’m suddenly overcome with a sense of sadness, a feeling of indescribable despair. I gaze at the small opening in the wall—the wound that can never be undone—and I feel such pity. Of course, I feel foolish for thinking such a thing. But why should I feel so foolish?

It’s a living thing in pain. Just like me.

I linger beside the wall for what feels like hours. When I’m certain its suffering has been eased by the gift of my presence, I pull myself away until I’m at the room’s threshold. I glance at the wall and find myself somewhat unsettled. Not because of the small opening I’ve come to cherish. Rather because I’m stunned to recognize that the wall has been painted fern-like green.

I don’t recall ever ordering the wall to be painted such a color. In fact, I know for a fact I would never. I’ve always detested the color.

I think of asking my husband about it, but I know he’s already gone to bed. I’ll ask him tomorrow.

THE HUSBAND

There’s a man who refers to himself as my husband sitting in the parlor—the small room adjacent to where I’m currently seated—and various parts of him have blackened like rotted fruit, been eaten away and blighted like a farmer’s crop that has been flooded with raw sewage.

He sits with his head lowered like a respectful mourner at a memorial service, eyes peeking from between narrow slits and tirelessly going over and over the leatherbound journal he’s been pretending to read for the past several weeks. When I am confident enough to approach him and ask about what he’s reading, he glances at me with an assuredness that doesn’t seem quite possible for someone who has withered so terribly. His lips crease—the corners crusted black as if his blood had dried there—and he tells me in a low, grating tone, “It’s marvelous, Leonard.”

I’m unsettled only for a moment.

I know for certain that is not my name and I cannot help but wonder why he’s called me that.

That’s strange, I think to myself. Why would he call me Leonard? He knows my name is Alexander. “Alex” for short. He’s called me that ever since we were students together at Gilchrist Academy for Boys.

The thoughts spinning through the corridors of my mind suddenly come to a complete stop. Of course, I can fault my husband for calling me a different name. That’s entirely worthy of ridicule and rejection. However, I certainly can’t be expected to claim I am in complete control of my faculties if I insist on preserving tall tales for the sake of posterity or, even worse, romance. I know full well that my husband and I were never schoolmates together at Gilchrist. After all, my husband did not grow up in Connecticut as I had. He was sent to boarding schools abroad and eventually returned when he was eighteen. We had met later in life thanks to a friend who insisted the two of us would be perfect together.

Why should I think of something so senseless? How could I possibly insist that my husband and I were schoolmates at Gilchrist Academy?

Then another thought makes itself known to me. This one, more troubling than the last. What if I’m mistaken? What if my husband did attend Gilchrist and I’m misremembering?

Of course, that’s certainly a possibility. However, I can say with absolute certainty that the thing sitting in the parlor is not my husband.

THE DOG

There’s a small black dog I’ve never seen before pawing at the terrace doorway, smudging the glass with its wet snout when it pushes its wrinkled face against the window pane. I stand quietly for a moment and observe the dog as it paces back and forth on the balcony, visibly anxious to be let inside but also somewhat distrustful of me as it usually avoids eye contact whenever I draw near. Perhaps the most curious thing about the small black dog is that its hind legs are broken—snapped in half—and they drag obscenely behind the poor thing when it crawls from one end of the walkway to the other. I’ve thought of calling the local veterinarian and asking him to make a house call so he can tend to the miserable wretch, but the thing that refers to himself as my husband always shoos me away and urges me not to worry.

“Is this our dog—?” I ask the thing sitting in the parlor. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize it.”

The thing in the parlor laughs. “Next thing you’ll say you don’t recognize me, darling.”

I’m too frightened to tell him the horrible truth—that I don’t recognize him, that I haven’t recognized him for weeks.

I find myself worried—deeply troubled that I’ve somehow neglected an animal that I was supposed to love, supposed to care for. Even as I worry about the poor small black dog circling the balcony as if it were diseased and about to perish, I know with the utmost certainty that I have never seen that dog before.

I wouldn’t even know how to love him.

THE CHILD

There’s an infant stirring inside a bassinet in the small room at the top of the stairs that I partly recognize, and I thank God for the brief moment of recognition when I peer into his crib to check on him. His hair is auburn, and his eyes are chestnut brown like mine. At least I think mine are the same color. I cannot be certain. His face is sweet, and he smiles when he sees me, as if he had seen me before and had desperately wanted to see me again.

However, there’s something hideously wrong with him. I curse myself for not realizing sooner, for wasting so much time silently praising his preciousness.

I squint, leaning closer to make sense of what I’m looking at—a small white fang nestled in the crater of his ear. The skin around it does not look swollen or infected and I figure it’s far better to appreciate little mercies such as that. However, the fang seems to trouble the poor thing as the infant begins to stir, legs thrashing and palsied hands swatting at his ear.

I shout downstairs to the thing in the parlor and ask him what’s to be done.

“What do you mean?” he calls up to me.

I hesitate, thinking it curious he’s not more concerned for the well-being of the child we had adopted.

After all, we had adopted this child. Right? This is what we wanted more than anything in the world—to be fathers. Even though we were older than most of the other applicants, we always knew we wanted to raise a child in the comfort of the life only we could provide.

“He seems—agitated,” I say. “Should we call for the doctor—?”

“Let the baby cry,” the thing in the parlor tells me in a tone that seems to describe his desire for the child’s suffering. “He’ll be better in the morning. You’ll see….”

I hesitate, my attention lingering on the poor thing as it trembles helplessly in the small crib.

“No. There’s—something wrong,” I shout downstairs to him. “Something about his ear. I think he’s—”

But I can’t finish the sentence. Not that it even matters anyway. The thing sitting in the parlor stops responding to me and seems to delight more and more in my bewilderment when I shout to him, begging him to answer me.

But he won’t. Even when I begin to sob, tears webbing in the corners of my eyes and then sliding down my face. I observe the small child stirring helplessly in the bassinet—the fang glinting at me inside his ear like a strange piece of ancient bone—and I wonder: “To whom do you belong, little one? Because it certainly isn’t me.”

THE BIRD

There’s a black bird milling about in the driveway whenever I glance out the parlor window. Whether or not the bird notices my staring, I cannot be certain. Part of me wonders if the creature happens to understand my fixation as it has already begun to pace back and forth on the promenade ribboning from one end of the causeway to the other.

It’s not a particularly large bird. Not necessarily impressive in size or stature.

Its feathers are perhaps the most noteworthy in all sincerity with their iridescence so impressive that each feather resembles a fang made of metal. They shimmer in the sunlight while the creature perches there, as if waiting to be adored.

I’ve considered going outside and scattering a few seeds on the ground because the poor thing looks famished. But each time I return from the kitchen with a pocket filled with seeds and corn, I find the bird has vanished.

It’s very early on a Tuesday morning when I make my way into the parlor and press my face against the window to look outside when I notice that the bird has returned. Only this time, the bird seems to crawl around the way a small child might. Its legs are as thin as reeds and appear to hook into the ground wherever it moves.

Then there’s the matter of its face.

Yes, its face.

There’s something uniquely disquieting about the bird’s features since I last saw it. Although it pains me to admit, there’s something vaguely human about what the bird resembles, but not necessarily human in the way that it definitively resembles another person. Its humanity is more than evident in the way it seems to whimper, plead with me for help, and struggle as it thrashes violently on the ground.

As the poor, wretched thing convulses there in the driveway, I can’t help but think of my father who’s been dead for nearly eleven years now.

Has it really been eleven years? I wonder to myself.

Why should I think that? My father isn’t dead. I know for certain that he isn’t. He remains the Dean of Students at Gilchrist Academy and has been serving such a distinguished position since long before I was a student there.

No. That can’t be true, I think to myself.

He was never the Dean of Students at Gilchrist. Even if he was once the Dean, he certainly wouldn’t be serving now given how old I’ve become. That makes no sense. How could I possibly consider something so nonsensical? More to the point, how could I have been so easily convinced that it was true?

I glance out the parlor window and my attention snaps to the black bird loitering there. I cannot say for certain, but there’s a part of me that thinks the bird is secretly delighting in my puzzlement.

THE DOCTOR

There’s a doctor dressed in celestial white at the front door of our home. He carries a small black leather bag monogrammed with his initials, and he wears spectacles that look ridiculously large for the gauntness of his face.

He’s older than me by what I can only presume is a few years and I wonder if I should trust him. After all, how could I be expected to take the word of someone so close to my age as gospel? We’re instructed to revere the words of our elders as wise. However, when it comes to our peers, it seems more than unlikely to be gifted with enlightening counsel.

I open the door and greet him, ushering him into the foyer. I offer to take his hat and coat and he’s as polite as I remember from the last time he made an impromptu house call at my request.

Or had he?

As we stand there at the threshold, I squint at him and wonder if I’ve truly seen him before. There’s a questioning part of me that sincerely doubts I have. Perhaps he hasn’t visited our home before. Perhaps this is the very first time I’m seeing him.

But that can’t be true, I think to myself.

After all, I knew well enough to call him. I knew him well enough to seek him out and send for him on such short notice. How could I possibly not know him the way I think I do?

I explain to him how there’s something wrong with my husband—something I cannot possibly begin to explain. I tell the doctor how I’ve been seeing certain things that I do not understand, that defy explanation. I call the doctor by his first and last name.

But as soon as I do, he regards me with such queerness, such unreserved bewilderment. It’s a frightened look that seems to say: “That’s not my name... or perhaps it is?”

He looks at me with such terror, as if I had uncovered some awful truth about him he can’t remember. Perhaps the most agonizing part of the ordeal is when he finally softens and doesn’t attempt to correct me. Instead, he seems to settle into the new name I’ve remembered for him, indulging in the world I’ve somehow invented before the thing in the parlor eventually beckons me to drown us in the vulgar thoughts I peel from rust crawling across our helpless bodies. Each little form, each indecent thought—swollen with what could once be described as love and threatening to finally burst the same way all decomposing lovers can only give birth to beloved worms and maggots.

End.

Eric LaRocca (he/they) is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of several works of horror and dark fiction including the viral sensation Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. A lover of luxury fashion and an admirer of European musical theatre, Eric can often be found roaming the streets of his home city, Boston, MA, for inspiration. For more information, please follow @hystericteeth on Twitter/Instagram or visit ericlarocca.com.

by Fahim Anzoom Rumman

In the Wind, Their Voices

By Michelle Tang

Weak sunlight glinted off the half-buried husk of a TR-31 Sparrow, a metal tombstone. Years of wind storms and abrasive sand had scoured the corporate logo off the abandoned vessel, but some Chinese characters, barely legible, survived. The engines of the Raven-44 whined as I adjusted our descent, veering past a small rise, before I slowed our speed. I activated the belly repulsors and smiled as the ship settled onto the sand. Smooth as simulated butter. I’d touched down at the very edge of the planned landing site, before the solid ground was broken up by crevices large enough to swallow us whole.

Settling dust clouds obscured our exterior cameras, filling the small monitors on our control panel like static. I unbuckled my safety harness and stepped out of the cockpit, towards the center of the shuttle to check the large side windows. The raised ridge we’d flown past was high enough to obscure the remains of the Chinese spacecraft. At the peak, a metal flagpole had been spiked into the grey rock—it slanted towards the ground, the fabric of the flag hanging faded and frayed.

Roger pushed out of his seat and caught the way I eyed the flag. “Let me guess, a bad omen. That why you landed so far from where we’d planned? Superstition?”

“She makes my kids cover their eyes when we pass graveyards,” Carmen teased. My twin stretched tall, her short, red-lacquered nails brushing the cabin ceiling. “No way she’d sleep next to a ship full of dead astronauts.”

I shook my head and returned to communicate our safe landing to Manna HQ, back on the colony. “No need to attract trouble.”

We changed into our Extravehicular Mobility Units and crammed into the airlock. After a moment of depressurization, the outer door whooshed open and we stepped onto Treia-3234’s surface. Within seconds, the upper left of my visor flashed red: Atmospheric Oxygen: 2%. Insufficient levels for human respiration. I gazed around us: empty land sprawled to the horizon, the sense of isolation suffocating. Already, encroaching night leached away the orange of our suits. The wind had picked up, strong enough that gravel plinked against our helmets.

“We could pull Oscar out, get started early,” Roger suggested.

I dodged another piece of gravel. “In this weather? One sharp piece of rock, and your suit’s useless.”

“Let’s go check out the old ship then.” Past his visor, he grinned. I stuck my tongue out at him.

The more generous businesses had drones to maintain the scout ships, but Manna Corp. was not one of them. Moving quickly, we cleaned the dirt off the cameras and the windows before we were chased back inside by the howling wind.

Even after the interior doors hissed closed and we removed our suits, my shoulders ached with tension. The sun set quickly on this dwarf planet, but it wasn’t just the darkness that prickled at my skin. I’d been sent to sample other planets whose surfaces never knew the sunlight, but the atmosphere on Treia-3234 was different. Heavier, though its gravity was one-fifth what it was on our colony. It was an unnerving but familiar sensation, and I couldn’t place where I’d felt like this before.

Like all of Manna Corp’s scout ships, Raven-44 was built low and sleek. It rocked with the force of the wind, and gravel rained staccato taps against the exterior hull. Our cabin lights must have blazed like beacons across the barren land. Silly Nora, I thought. We’re the only ones on the entire planet.

The other two didn’t seem to share in my unease. They stood by the windows, gazing out, voices loud and unafraid. I coaxed them to the bunks and tried to warm myself with their brashness.

Then Carmen hushed us, her hand halfway to the card deck. “Shh…did you hear that?”

I didn’t, at first. The storm was too loud, and our old comms panel buzzed with static. It wasn’t until Roger said, “Is that Chinese?” that my ear picked out the voices.

“Shéi zài nà’er?” A man called, his voice crackling through our speakers.

“What’s that mean?” Roger looked from Carmen to me.

“Who’s there, I think.” We spoke Common in the Beta A747 colony, and Carmen and I had only learned Mandarin at home. It had been twenty years since we’d heard it, not since our mother had left. Since I’d driven her away by not following the rules. I forced the unrelenting guilt from my head, its remnants clinging like clenched fingers. “It’s impossible.”

“Is that a message from the TR-31 Sparrow? When did that ship go down?” Carmen asked. “That spacecraft model has to be four decades old.”

Another silence, then another man spoke through the panel, shouting as if from a distance. “Nǐ zài nǎlǐ?”

Carmen translated this time, “Where are you.” Static bursts interrupted the silence that followed.

I stood up and made my way to the monitors, which showed nothing but darkness outside. Roger went to look out the window, and I gulped down the urge to tell him to move out of sight. He wouldn’t listen, anyway. Carmen slid into the seat beside me. “Turn the exterior mics on, Nora. Maybe they’re headed over.”

“And the lights.” Roger pressed his face against the glass. “There’s something out there, I think?”

The wall speakers filled our small cabin with the high-pitched whistling of the wind. I wiped my palms against my pant legs and waited, but no more voices called.

“Nora. The lights,” Roger said again.

I forced my finger to flip the switch. Instantly the monitors went from black screen to grey contours. Aside from the flag, which billowed, nothing moved. We waited, silent and still, while sweat dampened my shirt and prickled my hairline. I tensed at the intermittent static from the comms speaker, but no more Chinese came through.

Afterwards, Roger and Carmen kept watch at the windows. We spoke with hushed voices, our card game forgotten. When it grew late enough, we prepped for bed and I turned off both the exterior and interior lights. We slept.

The dwarf planet Treia-3234 had two hours of sunlight per day, which meant that when we woke, the world beyond the windows remained dark. Roger swore when he sat down to check our messages. “The storm must have jarred something. We’ve lost contact with Manna HQ again.”

“I wish they’d hurry up and upgrade the tech, like the other scout ships out there. It happens on too many missions to be safe.” Carmen shook her head and finished her coffee.

After breakfast, we headed outside to work. I programmed our drone, Oscar, to take deep core samples from the ground. A nice bonus awaited any team who first found a decent trove of Molytonite, and we’d been on a streak the last few trips. Oscar moved independently, crawling over the uneven ground on spider-like legs, and Roger followed close behind, making sure it was keeping clear of the deep cracks that marred Treia-3234’s surface. I fought the urge to ask Roger to stay close, like a nervous mother in a large crowd. Instead, I waited with Carmen, standing closer than normal. The weight pressing against my skin returned. My eyes scanned the area around us constantly.

Roger returned with Oscar after a few minutes. “I’m going to check out the other ship. Want to come?”

“The Interplanetary Alliance dictates that entering another colony’s vessel without expressed approval—”

“—If I don’t take anything, it’s not looting,” Roger argued. “It’s a gesture of good-will. I’m just checking to make sure—”

“—If you’re looking for survivors, you’re forty years late.” I was the team lead on this mission. I could pull rank and make him stay. Then I’d have to suffer through his surly resentment until we left. Anyway, what harm could come to him in this deserted place?

When I didn’t say more, he looked at Carmen. “You coming?”

She squeezed my arm over the EMU and nodded. “Worth checking out.”

Roger handed me the controls for Oscar in case its auto-pilot failed. They walked towards the crooked flag, their steps bounding from the lower gravity, and disappeared over the ridge.

They’d been gone an hour or so, enough time for the distant sun to rise, but since our comms were connected, I wasn’t worried. I sat on the ground and stared out over the landscape, but the threadbare strips of flag pulled at my eye. It felt like a bad omen—what had gone wrong with the Chinese company’s team?

Roger and my sister barely spoke on their trip towards the Sparrow. Despite their teasing yesterday, no astronaut took a failed mission lightly.

“Nothing,” Roger said.

“Black box is dead,” Carmen reported.

When they started to banter, I knew they’d left the vessel and were returning to ours. Carmen waved at me as soon as she cleared the ridge, and they settled beside me to enjoy the brief sunlight.

“Old model ship for sure,” Roger said. “It had two small portholes on the side, and both of those were cracked. Exterior and interior doors were wide open.”

“Sand had blown in everywhere. No bodies, no sign of what happened.” Carmen let the sand fall between her gloved hands, coarse grains and gravel intermingling.

“Maybe a technical glitch?” I wondered. “Doors blew open, they became anoxic, and ran outside? Maybe the wind pushed their bodies into a crevice. Or maybe they jettisoned in the escape pod?”

“The escape pod was still there.” Roger stood and held out a gloved hand to each of us. “The sun’s going down, and I’m starving. Let’s go inside.”

Carmen took his hand. “So the voices we heard last night...?”

“Nothing. Just interference on an outdated system.” I opened the exterior door, the hiss drowning out my twin’s reply.

I stowed the metal sample tubes Oscar had filled inside the floor compartment and took my suit off. The initial breath outside of my helmet always felt the best, like I’d gasped in real air after a long time underwater. We wiled away the hours of interminable darkness in the bright shelter of the cabin. Roger and I played games on our devices, trash-talking each other, while Carmen repainted her nails, the chemical smell of her red polish reminding me of the sleepovers we used to have.

The wind increased, and I put down my tablet. “Better move Oscar back.” We’d left him parked by the side of the ship, analyzing samples.

“I’ll do it.” Roger leapt up and donned his gear again.

The ship jostled as he opened the drone compartment from outside. Minutes passed, and the second jostle that signified the drone’s door closing never came. I didn’t want to close it from the cockpit—the compartment was in our camera’s blind spot, and I didn’t want to damage Oscar. Carmen rolled her eyes at me. “You know why he volunteered to put Oscar away. He never does, usually.”

I’d been too distracted to catch it. “He can’t... if there’s something out there, it’s against protocol to engage with any organisms.”

“I wonder if, somehow, after a year of working together, he figured you’d say that.” Carmen smirked, but she glanced towards the closest speaker, which was relaying sound from the external mics. The wind had changed, had taken on a tonal quality, and both of us sat upright.

“Nǐ zài nǎlǐ?” A man’s voice, faint in the wind.

“Don’t, Roger. Don’t,” I pleaded under my breath. “Don’t answer.”

“Hello?” Roger called. The microphone in his helmet was sensitive, and auto-linked to the cabin speakers. He was breathing faster. “Is anyone there?”

I hid my face in my shaking hands, dread churning in my guts like spoiled milk. Protocols were what kept us safe. Bad things happened when rules were broken.

“I’m going to drag him in.” My sister stood, and I wrapped my arms around her neck.

“Not you too. Please, stay. I don’t want to order you.”

Carmen pulled my arms off her and grabbed her own suit. She spoke into the microphone set beside the visor. “Roger, come inside. You’re scaring Nora.”

“They could need our help. I’ll be in soon.” Roger’s voice came through the helmet and the speakers both, a millisecond out of sync and disembodied. He shouted again. “Is anyone there?”

I went to the monitors and studied them. They showed nothing except Roger. His helmet turned to look back at the Raven’s door before he walked into the darkness, beyond our lights.

Carmen, watching from the window, cursed and hurried into her suit. I stepped in front of the door to block her way. “Don’t go out there.”

“We can’t leave him to go out alone, Nora. He’s being an idiot, but we always pair off away from the ship. I’ll be back in a minute, and you can yell at both of us then, okay?”

I shook my head. “We’re in danger here. Can’t you feel it? Something’s not right.” The realization dawned on me—that sense, the eerie and familiar heaviness that had raised my hackles since we’d landed, clarified. “Something’s watching us.”

“All the more reason to help Roger.” She moved for the door and I pushed her back. Carmen gaped at me, and then her eyes narrowed. She lowered a shoulder into my chest, and I crouched to grab at her waist, pushing against the wall to give me leverage. The slippery material of her suit slid beneath my grip, and she managed to reach the button to open the interior door.

“Shéi zài nà’er?” A voice cut through the cabin.

“That’s the second one.” I let go of her and straightened up the moment she stopped pushing at me. I whispered. “I can’t hear Roger anymore, can you?”

Carmen listened. “Roger? Roger, can you hear me?” She waited, and tried again. “Roger, come back. Please.”

The wind wailed from the speakers. Static shushed at us from the comms panel. Even the sounds of Roger’s breathing had ceased.

I stepped away from the door and my sister, the tremble in her body enough assurance she wouldn’t leave the safety of the Raven.

Carmen and I clung together on my bunk, the interior lights off, listening for our crew-mate and hearing only the same words from dead astronauts. I stroked her hair and tried to remember how to pray.

When most of the night had passed, Carmen pushed away from me. “If he doesn’t turn around soon, he’s going to run out of air.”

I nodded, too afraid of the bite in her tone to say what I was thinking. We stayed inside until what passed as dawn came, even though the voices had stopped hours ago. I checked the screens before we opened the door—nothing. Carmen and I walked in the direction we’d seen Roger head, but the wind had cleared any sign of his passage from the sand. In the distance, the deep crevices yawned. The sensation of something staring at me persisted, and I looked this way and that, trying to find the cause. My eye traveled uninterrupted across flat land devoid of vegetation or insects. I felt the same way when I stared out into the vastness of stars. Tiny. Powerless.

“We’ll put one more day of sampling in,” I said. “See if Roger comes back. If not...we’ll leave tomorrow.”

Carmen glared at me. “How can we leave? We don’t know what happened to him. What will we tell the team? His family?”

“We’ll tell the truth. He broke protocol, engaged with something, stepped beyond our line of sight, and never returned.”

We gathered samples for two hours in silence, stopping often to check around us.

The voices returned at sunset, much earlier than yesterday, floating like lost souls from beyond the rocky ridge. I gathered the samples Oscar had collected and hurried, awkward in my EMU, to our ship. “Come on.”

Carmen stood up, her eyes searching the grey land, and made no other sign of hearing.

“I’ll have to report you for breaking SOP.” I put steel into my words to hide the tremble. “You’re putting the mission at risk.”

That turned her head towards me, and I was grateful that the glass of our visors half-hid the expression on her face. “And who left our crew-mate at risk?

A familiar, deep baritone called in the distance, as if in agreement, and I flinched. “Please, Carmen. Please. Come inside with me.”

I shifted the crate of metal tubes onto my hip and grabbed for her arm. She allowed me to guide her in through the external door, and only when the interior door hissed closed did she pull her arm from my grasp.

She removed her suit and stood at the porthole. “Turn the lights on, please.”

“They’ll be able to see—.”

“Now, Nora.”

Already the sky had grown so dark that the lit cabin transformed the window into a mirror, reflecting my sister’s face. We were so identical I could pretend she was staring at me from outside, that both of us traced the letter R with short, red nails, on the glass fogged by our breath.

I flipped the switch. The exterior lights brightened the area surrounding the Raven, pushed back the darkness until my sister’s features were replaced by the rock ridge. The slanted pole and the tattered strips of the Chinese flag shifted in the wind, looking like a crooked woman with long hair dangling.

Carmen wouldn’t leave the window. Her dinner cooled on the table across from me, untouched. Every time the comms panel crackled, I flinched.

“I think I hear him,” she said.

I did too. His voice was easy to distinguish from the others, English words discernible from Chinese.

“Is anyone there?” he called.

“Shéi zài nàlǐ?” another said.

Carmen turned to me. “Maybe they’re blinded. They can’t see the lights. Maybe Roger’s helmet malfunctioned, and he can’t hear us.”

“Don’t. Go. Out. There.” My hands ached from their grip on the table edge.

She took her suit from its hook, checked the oxygen level on her tank. “No farther than the airlock, I promise. I’m just going to help Roger find us.”

“Don’t you get it? Roger’s already dead. Whoever it is outside can’t be him.”

“And whose fault is that, if he’s dead?” Carmen stepped into her suit. “I was a coward for not going out there last night. I’m doing this for you as much as for Roger. Think of what mission control will say if we go back without him.”

“They’ll say I followed protocol,” I pleaded. “That’s what they trained us to do.”

“It’s not always about rules, Nora. This is Roger’s life.” Carmen stepped through the interior door and out to the airlock. I went to my suit, running my hands over it, reassuring myself that everything was where it should be. I could never stand it when my sister was upset. Even though she was talking about a different person, a different situation, the anger in her tone was like a time machine, forcing me back to an empty bathroom, the rows of antiseptic agents and hand soaps finally gone, but not the way I’d hoped. Carmen crying as she scrubbed at the sink, as if it that would summon my mother back. “If you’d just followed her rules, Mom wouldn’t have left!” We’d never spoken of it again. Maybe she’d forgotten her harsh words—she certainly wasn’t the stickler for rules I was, but then she wasn’t the one who’d ruined our childhood. I owed her a mother.

I jumped when the speakers blared with Carmen’s screaming voice. “Roger! Roger, we’re over here!”

“Is anyone there?” Roger shouted. Closer.

My hands stopped running over the EMU. I crept to the window but saw no one. Felt eyes staring through the glass right at me.

Carmen shouted again, from the airlock. “Roger!”

I banged on the door, and a moment later my sister came in. “What?”

“Did you see him?”

She removed her helmet and wiped the sweat from her face. “I heard him. But he wasn’t alone. I could hear the others with him.” Carmen shook her head. “Who else could be here?”

From just outside the window, Roger called. “Is anyone there?”

Carmen turned to me. “I’m going to let him in.”

I shook my head. “You’ve got kids who need you.”

“Then you go.”

I took hold of my sister’s shoulders, spoke slowly so she’d hear the truth in my words. “I swear, I would go if it meant you’d return to Bobby and Bree, to Andy. I’d go if there was a chance. But Carmen, his air ran out hours ago. There. Is. Nobody. To. Save.”

She didn’t respond, but she allowed me to help her out of her suit. Roger and the others called until I flicked off the exterior mics, powered down our helmets. I tried to send a distress signal, to call command, anything, but every attempt failed. When we lay in bed, my twin embraced me, and I finally fell asleep.

I woke alone, a message from her tablet to mine reading: Roger has kids too. I have to try. I love you.

The words blurred in front of me, and I wiped my tears off the screen. “Carmen!” I screamed into the empty cabin, until my ears rang with her name. She’d left me. Whatever watched us here would never allow her to return.

As soon as the sky lightened, I searched, peering into crevices, Oscar at my side so I wouldn’t feel so alone. My eyes were raw from crying, my voice hoarse from calling my sister’s name. I wandered, until my own oxygen tank dipped low from my ragged breathing, until my mouth was as gritty as the sand at my boots.

Dusk came. “Hurry, Carmen,” I said, before I remembered she was gone. I hesitated, wondering if I dared stay beyond nightfall, but my traitorous feet were already moving, hurrying me to safety.

I felt my way around the ship’s unlit interior, not daring to turn on the lights. The Raven, shining across this dead hellhole, must have called the predators to us like moths to a flame. Though I still hadn’t seen any sign of life, neither flora nor fauna, instinct told me to stay small and quiet.

Roger shouted outside, sounding so close I could hear the rasp of his breath. I’d left the mic on, in case Carmen needed help. “Is anyone there?”

“Shéi zài nàlǐ?”

The wind began to rise. It flung loose gravel against the Raven’s exterior and rocked the small ship. The shaking felt violent. It reminded me how alone I was in this metal vessel with one exit, how vulnerable, while outside the dead echoed their last words until dawn.

Carmen’s voice joined them. “Roger, we’re over here!” She screamed, and I climbed out of the tight ball I’d been huddling in to step over to the window. If my sister was out there, I needed to see her. Her face, and not just the top of her head through the camera screen.

There was nothing moving outside but the damn flag. The strong gusts shook the metal pole, and I hoped the bloody thing would collapse. It represented failed missions, the brevity of human existence, and a trick of my eyes kept mistaking it for a person.

Where did the souls of people who died off-colony go—would Carmen be trapped here, on this husk of a rock, instead of reuniting with her family—with me—in the afterlife? I clamped a hand over my mouth and choked back a sob.

Remember protocol. If you followed the rules, no one would get hurt.

Roger hadn’t listened to me, and now I was forced to listen to him. “I told you. I told you,” I whispered at his deep voice, calling above the moaning wind. “You asshole. Always trying to be the hero.” Hadn’t he felt the heaviness in the air, hadn’t his skin prickled, as if something was studying him?

The Chinese astronauts still called out questions. What had they heard, before there were voices to hear? How had they died?

The ship rocked again. Carmen shouted for Roger, her voice half-lost as gravel hailed against the windows. I crept to my EMU and pressed the mic button. “Carmen, say something, anything else. Roger, answer me. Please. Please. Don’t leave me here alone.” My voice cracked. Maybe they could still hear in their helmets. Maybe they’d found an alternate source of oxygen after their tanks ran out.

For a moment, hope flared, and I fought against the temptation to step outside. SOP Section 43 subsection ii) The EMU must be worn at all times unless gas samples analyzed by mission control are deemed safe for respiration. Of course, if Manna Corp. had sent a certification of external air quality, we’d never know. I lay down in my cot, trying to memorize every sound of Carmen’s voice. Somehow, I slept.

I waited until dawn before stepping outside. Even at its zenith, the sky never fully brightened, but the ink-black night lightened to a dusky grey. The flag greeted me, both of us survivors of the windstorm, its red strips of cloth waving like bloody hands. The exterior door had closed behind me when I noticed the footprints. The windstorm hadn’t blown them away. They were recent. A set of boots had tread over the sand to stand at the exterior doors, and then moved to face the window. Careful, I pressed my own booted foot beside one of the imprints. They were identical.

“Carmen!” I shouted into my helmet, so loud I flinched. “Roger!”

Carmen had returned to the ship last night. That much I knew. Perhaps she’d heard me call over comms. Was I frustrated or relieved that I had locked the doors before I’d gone to bed? What had I expected? I packed up our things and cleaned up, carefully, the way my mother had drilled into me, and I tried once again to reach mission control. We had standing clearance to return as soon as we’d determined adequate sampling, or if the mission became too dangerous. I could have left yesterday, but how could I have done so, with my sister and Roger missing? How could I ever leave Carmen?

I followed the footprints. The sand faded into the rocky ridge I’d flown over, and I climbed up the small elevation and looked around. The landscape was the same uniform grey, empty and silent. The Chinese spacecraft—both porthole windows broken, door agape—leered in the tepid light like a skull. Another bad omen.

There were no visible tracks leading away from the rocky outcropping. The atmosphere was oppressive, a held breath before a wail. Suddenly I felt exposed, standing on a hill with nothing around me. When I turned to go back, I jumped at how small the low-lying Raven looked in the distance. I’d come too far.

I reached the spaceship just as the sun set. The darkness closed in, and I rattled around in the small ship that was now far too cavernous. I felt as though I was the ghost, haunting the Raven with my tangled hair and wet cheeks, while outside the metal hull the rest of the universe moved on. When the voices came, I stood by the lit window, waiting. I stared through the glass as the night fell, until my own eyes stared back, and it reminded me of Carmen. There was no storm this time, no blowing dirt to obscure my vision. When the voices sounded right outside, I turned on the external lights.

This time, I saw them. They were every astronauts’ nightmare, these creatures, with their helmets cracked open like oyster shells and their torn red suits. The light illuminated their strange gait: they seemed boneless, and yet the lighter gravity on Treia-3234 made every step look as if they were floating. From a long tear in one suit, the dull-grey of a rib-bone peeked. Not alive, then. I couldn’t imagine what animated these things, what controlled their desiccated limbs in this severe, windswept place, but my shaking legs stopped supporting me and I sank to my knees. The lack of wind made louder the crunch of gravel beneath their boots, their still young voices calling into the silence.

“Nǐ zài nǎlǐ?”

“Shéi zài nà’er?”

I laughed as I wept, forehead pressed hard against the floor, asking questions of the dead. “When Roger found you, what did you do to him? What did you do to my sister?”

I crawled to the control panel and shut off the lights, inside and outside, and triple-checked that I’d locked the doors. I wouldn’t be able to sleep, the grief too close, but I recited the multiplication table until my heart stopped racing. When I was able to take a breath without crying, I turned on the helmet’s mic again. “Can you hear me, Carmen? Roger?”

Static flooded my ears. Why hadn’t I seen her tonight? “I want to see you, Carmen. Please. One last time. I can’t leave until I... know for sure.”

The next day was a blur. Regret and memories of my mother mingled with my worry for my crew-mates, old scars giving way to deeper wounds. If I’d agreed to explore the voices as a group—if I’d done a better job at convincing Roger to return—and once Roger had gone missing, if I’d just aborted the mission and dragged my sister home. I’d failed them, disappointed them as I had my mother.

I thought I might sleep when the sun rose, but the ghosts of regret possessed me. I staggered outside instead, and circled the Raven to make sure the bobbing corpses hadn’t done any damage. This time, there were too many footprints to see if Carmen had come, and I wondered if anything of my sister remained to understand my messages. My shallow breaths whooshed loud in my helmet. By the external doors, there were new scratches on the hull. Beneath them lay small red shapes in the sand.

Fingernails, painted red and unbroken, as if ripped entirely off the nail bed.

I straightened quickly and hurried inside, my back prickling. That was enough proof, wasn’t it? Why hadn’t she knocked, or called out? What would I have done if she had?

I should leave, now. There was nothing more that kept me here, besides feelings. A part of me longed to step outside, to escape the claustrophobic, too empty ship and join the others. I’d be with Carmen. It’s all I wanted, to die as we were born, together. I could make sure my last words were important, something to warn away the next team who came to scout for Molytonite. And then I would know exactly what I had put Roger and Carmen through.

Night descended while I stood at the window, undecided. The exterior lights were on—I couldn’t feel safe knowing Carmen had tried to come in, and the lights gave me a measure of peace. I couldn’t imagine leaving Carmen. Roger. I’d barely survived finding my mother’s closet empty, knowing it was my fault. I couldn’t bear the burden of two more ruined lives. Movement fluttered at the far edge of the light’s reach, and at first I thought it was the flag again, until I saw her.

She moved like they did, eerily weightless, like a puppet on strings. The light glinted off the metal of her helmet, but the visor was entirely gone. Like the other night, she retraced her steps to the door, and tried to open it with gloveless hands. Her suit, ripped on the right side, exposed the dark-grey of her liver. No blood poured from her injury, only grains of sand. I raised trembling fingers to my lips, my mouth too dry to swallow. I didn’t want her in here. That was not Carmen. She didn’t scratch at the airlock again, instead coming to stand in front of the window.

I stared at the face I’d known my entire life, the face once identical to mine, and imagined it was me with the clouded eyes, the frost-bitten skin that sloughed off her left cheekbone. She opened her chapped grey lips, and I braced myself.

“Roger! We’re over here!” she screamed into the glass. One of her front teeth was missing.

She stared into the window, not reacting to my presence. I stared at the interior door. If I shared her fate, would it be painful? Did she have any sense of consciousness? If we both died, her twins, Andy, would never know what happened. They deserved to know. And if I could get back home, I could warn mission control to stay away from Treia-3234. Still, to leave her behind, to know this was the last I would see of my sister...

I reached for the helmet I’d set beside me. “Carmen,” I said. “Carmen, I’m sorry. I should have gone with you. I should have—” My words failed, too inadequate to carry the weight of my emotion.

An hour passed. I should leave before another windstorm came, but I couldn’t turn away while Carmen’s body stood in front of me. I couldn’t desert her while she watched.

They surrounded the ship, shrieking their words into the dark. I shivered each time the Raven moved, unsure if it was the wind or their strength. Finally, their voices faded, until only my sister remained.

“I love you. I’ll help raise the twins, and tell them stories about you, and teach them to be just like you.” No light of understanding dawned on her face. She turned and followed the others, a floating horror, away from the circle of exterior lights.

I slipped into my chair in the cockpit, but Carmen’s absence in the seat beside mine gaped like an empty eye socket. The Raven shot forward when I activated the nuclear reactor, climbing as it gained speed. As the ship flew back to our colony, dread filled me. The future was a ghost I couldn’t escape, a punishment to endure as much as the nightmares that would plague my sleep.

There was no moving on from this trip. Everything would remind me of Roger and Carmen: in their children, I’d see their faces. In their belongings, their scents. In the wind, their voices.

End.

Michelle Tang writes speculative fiction from Canada, where she lives with her husband and children. Her short stories have been published by Cemetery Gates, Escape Pod, and Flame Tree Publishing, among others. When she’s not writing, Michelle reads movie spoilers, plays video games, and tries to get off Discord.

The Midwife

By Jonathan Gensler

“The bairn’s head is crowning now, dear.”

Mother Nox spoke and her words brought Matilda back to the reality of bloody pain and waves of tidal gravity.

Matilda wanted nothing but the process to be over.

She had been at this through the night, and now the sun was beginning to stream through the trees surrounding the midwife’s hovel. A year prior, her first child came much quicker than Mother Nox expected, and she said this one—“’Tis’ a girl, Matty, I can feel ‘er sitting high up in your womb”—should go like lightning once labor had begun. But Mother was wrong. Matty had taken the moon’s entire path across the sky and the rising sun to bring her child into the world.

“Stay with me. Keep bearing down, moan down through your whole body. One more I think’ll do.”

Then—release—a momentary sense of emptiness—and she was holding a squirming infant, her little miracle.

“We aren’t done yet, Matty, but you hold that little girl. I’d correct, yeah? A little maiden for you to raise up.” The midwife began to rub Matilda’s flabby belly, still large and full despite being emptied.

Matilda held the newborn against her naked chest, the baby’s waxy, bloody covering smearing into the mother’s skin. As the purple face faded into red and finally pink, Matilda whispered, “What shall we call you, dear angel. What shall we call you?” Tears welled up as her thoughts chased backwards to her husband, three months dead of the Red Sick.

“S’bad luck to give ‘er a name now, Matty. She may live, she mayn’t. Best to see how she fares ‘afore dropping a name into her life. How about we jes’ call her Wee One for now, right? She is a healthy thing though. Wriggly pink, with bright eyes looking up at you.”

Matilda watched those dark blue eyes open wide then shut tight as the baby’s mouth exploded with a life-fueled cry.

Mother Nox nattered on, as much to herself as to Matilda,

“Hol‘er tight Matty, the rest is about to come. I’ll take the afters and prepare ‘em for you and the babe. Yer going to want it for her birth tree or we can make the powder for you. O’course, I’ll let the choice be up to you, but I think you will need all the ‘elp you can get, so I’d take the powder rather than give ‘em to the soil. But it’s your choice.”

Matty stiffened as the contractions came on again, passing the placenta into the midwife’s hands.

“There she is, safe and sou.... Oh my. Oh dear, that isn’t…”

The midwife cut herself off as she glanced up to Matty’s face and the babe, her eyes flickering between the two.

“How? I don’t see…”

Mother Nox stared at the mass of flesh she held in her hands, scanning the remains of a malformed twin caught in the afterbirth: a tiny arm and hand, no more than the size of a finger, yet perfectly built; a minuscule, half-formed mouth, with lips and toothless gums; and a single, lidless eye looking up at her. At first, she thought the eye moved to follow her with a deep reddish-purple iris. She peeked up to Matilda and then to the nightmarish thing in her hands. She had never seen the like in her twenty years of midwifery, had only heard of such things from the previous Mother Nox who had taught her when she herself was a girl. The abomination was covered in mottled streaks, an unborn victim of the Red Sick.

“Nothing to worry about, Matty. Let me take this and Cassie will keep massaging your womb. We’ll fix you right up—you jes keep holding that bairn and love it. She is more dear in these dark times than any of us realize.”

Matilda remained focused on the cries of her newborn as Mother Nox called “Cass, we need those birthing shears, righ’ now!” Mother Nox wrapped the remains of the ruined twin in the birth cloths, pulsing even though it was disconnected from Matty’s womb. The pulsing would stop soon, she thought, but that little face, and that hand.

Well, we aren’t going to be able to use that to feed Matty, now are we, she told herself. Shame, but this second wee’un will need to be dealt with by the priests. She’d have to take it to them to decide what needed done. Was the other’s soul now also a part of the new babe? So many questions.

“Cassandra, run me those shears!”

Mother Nox looked up at Matilda’s blood-stained thighs. She spotted red mottled streaks, climbing out of the womb and spreading like vines, grasping for the placenta in the midwife’s hands.

She couldn’t let The Sick spread to the bairn.

“Cass, take the wee’un. I need to talk to Matty.”

Cassie handed over shears with dark ivory handles, runes carved deep into the ancient blood-soaked bone. Mother Nox held the tool and adjusted her headdress, lowering a blackened patch to cover her eyes, readying herself for a different ritual.

Cassie took the babe perhaps a bit too forcefully from Matilda, who was holding tightly as she had been instructed. Matty’s eyes went wide and she screamed, “Oh gods, what is that burning?”

“Quiet, dear. ‘Tis the Red, jes’ like your dear Timoté.”

Mother Nox tried to soothe the doomed woman. “You knew... this was a risk.”

“No... no.... Oh, no, please.”

“Shhhhhhh. Shhhhhhh.”

Mother Nox slid the open shears into Matilda’s womb and up through her belly, the blades encountering no resistance. The body was already a dry husk, red and desiccated, falling to paper, a wasp’s nest.

She managed a coughing whisper, “But we saved the baby.”

“Hand the little one here. Burn the mother right away.” Holding the newborn as Matty’s blood drifted away like ash, Mother Nox sang a song of darkness to herself.

End.

Jonathan Gensler grew up in a haunted house in West Virginia, and now writes dark slipstream and speculative fiction. He has been a soldier in combat, a day laborer in Aotearoa New Zealand, and a cleantech entrepreneur. He now resides in Nashville with his wife and three minions children. You can connect with him on Twitter @jgensler.

Shadows beneath A Boiling Sea

By Rita Oakes

Geerit shifted Miroslav’s weight across his shoulders. The Czech RAF pilot gasped in pain and muttered something—perhaps in English, perhaps in Czech—Geerit couldn’t be sure. Geerit shushed him and crept, hunched over by his burden, from shadow to shadow.

The Flemish village of Diepven was small, virtually unchanged from when Geerit fled more than ten years ago. He’d been so eager to escape from the wide-eyed stares of his fellow inhabitants and the endless stink of rotting fish. How he hated fish.

The presence of barbed wire and sentry points upon the roads and docks, the hulking shape of a kubelwagon parked at the harbor master’s house, and drunken voices singing Lili Marlene drifting up from the single tavern, proved that the Germans had swept through to even this forgotten and insignificant slice of coastline.

Damn it. Now what?

The last safe house had been compromised. Mischance, or more likely, betrayal, meant that half the agents in the network had been shot, if lucky. Or were in the hands of the Gestapo. Geerit had been fortunate enough to avoid the trap, but not before his “package,” Miroslav, had taken a gunshot wound to the leg as they scrambled out of the top floor of a farmhouse window.

Three days they had been on the run. Geerit had given Miroslav a hasty bandage, but the man urgently needed a doctor, not to mention food and a warm place to rest. And a fishing boat to rendezvous with an Allied vessel in the North Sea, since the southern route to the Pyrenees was now out of the question.

Therefore, Geerit had turned his steps toward the last place he ever expected to seek out again. Diepven. The Cursed.

Home.

His stomach tightened as he surveyed the once familiar shoreline. You’re not a scared boy anymore. Get hold of yourself.

Miroslav roused. “Where are we?” he whispered in accented English as Geerit eased him to the ground, where a hummock of marsh grass provided concealment.

“Nowhere,” Geerit said. “I need to reconnoiter.”

Fretful in the way of a proud man unused to depending on others, Miroslav said, “I’m sorry to be so useless.”

Shot down over Lille, Miroslav had spent weeks evading capture, passed from one agent to another, until arriving in Geerit’s hands. And useful enough in a fight before taking a bullet.

Heat radiated off the injured pilot. Fever. If he didn’t get medical attention soon, Miroslav would lose that leg. And possibly his life.

In their short time together, Geerit had come to like the pilot, waging war in a foreign service to free his homeland—and all of Europe—from the German yoke. Every fighter returned to the Allies was another strike against the invader.

“Just shoot down another German plane or three for me when you get back in the air,” Geerit said. “Wait here while I check things out.”

Miroslav clasped his hand, hard. “That is—what is the phrase? —a deal. Yes.”

* * *

The church was Geerit’s first choice of a hiding place. It squatted on a rise overlooking the village—unused almost from its construction 800 years ago. He would listen rapt as Bompa, his grandfather, told him tales of how the village had resisted all efforts to convert them from the worship of a forgotten sea goddess to that of a Bethlehem carpenter. After all, he would say, as gnarled fingers worked to repair fishing nets, “We can see the sea, feel her fury in storm and spittle, even on the calmest days. The sea gives and the sea takes.”

Though Diepven did not repudiate the representatives from Rome, they never embraced them. The priests tried by cajoling and by the fires of the autos da fe, but ultimately left the residents to their own devices. Or drowned when the ocean boiled in anger.

Geerit used to play in the cool shadows of the abandoned church, heedless of the stares from the cracked and flaking portraits of saints upon the walls. As the highest point in the village, he never worried about being snatched into the restless waves while inside—an unreasoning fear that gave rise to many childhood nightmares. And not a few adult ones.

The church would make an excellent temporary shelter for Miroslav, and then Geerit could fetch a doctor. And see about smuggling the pilot onto a fishing boat.

He crept to the church, tracing his hand over damp stone slimed with moss, froze as he heard German voices from within. Damnation. They’re billeted here.

The bicycle shop. Less ancient than the church, for certain. Another tale his Bompa relished in the telling: an enthusiastic Belgian from Wallonia had thought to make a success with his two-wheeled marvels some eighty years ago, but the residents of Diepven simply goggled at the contraption and went on about their business. The sea had no need for bicycles.

One day, the Walloon simply disappeared. Perhaps he drowned himself in the North Sea, Bompa said. Or perhaps he left to try his hand at a more favorable town. The shop remained, brooding and silent, paint eaten away by the implacable salt air and wind.

The wooden door of the bicycle shop was easy enough to force. The sea wears away the stoutest wood over time and takes an even greater toll on iron. And men.

Inside, the air was a stale mix of old mouse droppings, decayed rubber, a hint of machine oil. The contents of the shop had long been plundered—most likely for the war. But it was dry and apparently forgotten. It would do until he could arrange for a boat.

* * *

Miroslav had lapsed into unconsciousness by the time Geerit deposited him onto the floor of the bicycle shop. Geerit switched on the torch, set it on the ground. Miroslav’s face gleamed with sweat. A check at the base of his neck revealed a thready pulse. He unwrapped the bandages about Miroslav’s calf to reveal swollen flesh and an oozing wound. Angry, red streaks had crept to the knee. Geerit did not need medical training to know this was a serious development.

The darkness was near total, due to blackout and the glowering clouds. Geerit made no sound as he left the shop, pushing the door closed behind him. Miroslav needed attention, but the village, at least at the time he had left, was too small for a doctor. The residents tended to be self-sufficient. But he could perhaps at least liberate supplies.

Geerit made his way, reluctantly but unerringly, to his childhood home. Dread slithered in his stomach like a basketful of eels. Never had he thought to return. But now he had no choice. The old smugglers tunnel ran from the house to the sea and if he could manage a boat, he could use it to complete their escape. Assuming the Germans had not discovered it. Or that it had not been damaged in the years he’d been away.

But he would bet a hundred francs that the tunnel was intact. Other than the presence of Germans, the inhabitants of Diepven stolidly resisted change. So had it been for centuries; so it would continue. Until the sea rose and swept them all away in its cold and watery embrace.

The tunnel. His palms slickened with sweat at the memory. You’re not a child any longer. You don’t even know what you saw. And whatever it was must be long gone.

The house was shuttered and silent. Were all abed already? Well, fisher folk were early risers. And he could avoid awkward conversations with his parents and sister. Just a quick look to ensure the tunnel was still viable and grab food and supplies. It wasn’t stealing if it was family, was it? Best for their own sake not to let them know he had been here.

Geerit retrieved the key from its place under a potted geranium He let himself in, wincing a bit at the creak of iron hinges.

Eyes long adjusted to the dark, he stepped soundlessly to the kitchen, where a banked fire in the stove cast residual and welcome heat. How strange to be back.

A sweater draped over a rack gave off the rank and yet somehow pleasant scent of damp wool. The rough-hewn table and benches where he had laboriously copied his letters as a boy stood unchanged, surface marred and stained from decades (centuries) of cleaning and filleting fish. His grandfather, his bompa, used to give the discarded fish bladders to him and his younger sister, Marjean, to play with.

The piscine smell hung in the air like the torn remnant of a dream.

That’s enough. You’re not here to revisit childhood memories.

He reached for a kerosene lamp hanging from the low rafters where it had always hung. He lifted the glass, lit it with a match from his pocket. As the lamp flared to life, he replaced the globe, lifted the lantern to survey the china cabinet and its odd collection of driftwood, pottery shards, and bits of scrimshaw—all gathered by generations of beachcombers. And smugglers.

On the middle shelf lay an item Bomba used to tell him was the horn of a sea unicorn, very ancient and precious, twisted lines of pink and gray spiraling round and round to the sharp tip. He remembered being allowed to hold it and marveling at the smooth luster.

Of course, when he grew older, Geerit realized it was no magic and mythical relic, but merely the shell of a large gastropod. It was a betrayal well-meaning adults often visited upon children, akin to tales of St. Niklaas.

Pulling open the double doors at the base of the cabinet, Geerit found the first aid kit as expected: a rusty and battered tackle box. He pulled it out, froze as a scent drifted from the back of the cabinet, coated his nostrils and tongue. Something of brine and the tang of a marsh at low tide and something of cold and darkness and a fleshly touch and—he stood up abruptly. Memory unremembered surged over him like a storm-driven wave. His flesh prickled and suddenly clammy hands nearly let the tackle box slip from his fingers. He sucked in a breath and fought down inexplicable panic.

You’re not a child, anymore. Get hold of yourself.

He set the lantern and tackle box on the table, flipped the metal latches to open the box and check its contents. A roll of gauze, some rubbing alcohol, tweezers, an assortment of needles and horsehair sutures, and a flashlight. It would have to do. He should find food, too.

Instead of prowling the kitchen, he rubbed the fleshly base of his right thumb absently. As a boy, he’d gotten a fishhook snagged there. Bomba used this very box as he teased the hook free while Geerit did his best not to flinch or cry while Marjean goggled at him with somber eyes. The twin scars that remained had faded to two pale bumps that looked almost like a healed snakebite.

Bompa. He’d had gentle hands for someone so gruff and no-nonsense.

The strange smell from the cabinet lingered. How much was real and how much memory, Geerit couldn’t say. He retrieved the flashlight and switched it on. He closed the kit and returned to the china cabinet, sliding his fingers along the back to the hidden button. Lower than he remembered, but he supposed he’d been considerably shorter in those days. He pressed it and the cabinet swung away from the wall—far more silently than the front door.

The smell, faint enough from inside the cabinet, now intensified. Wet stone. Rotten fish, something sulfur-like. The sea.

His heart sped up. He swept the tunnel with the flashlight, his hand clutching so tight his knuckles ached. Something had devoured his bompa in these tunnels and made a barely twelve-year-old Geerit flee Diepven, for what he thought would be forever.

Not devoured. Dissolved.

Geerit damped down panic. He wasn’t a child any longer.

He descended narrow steps into the tunnel.

The smugglers’ tunnel was rough-hewn, but straight, heading toward the sea, where it would emerge amid a jumble of rocks to the narrow beach. The floor gleamed with wet stone and small pools, indicating the tide was going out. He could bring Miroslav here then down to a waiting boat.

If only he had a boat.

And if the thing which had killed his grandfather was dead or asleep in the ocean depths.

Geerit froze as a hand reached from behind and pressed something sharp to his throat.

“Any reason I shouldn’t cut your throat and feed you to the fish?” a voice said, low, angry.

He should not have left the lit lantern on the table, or the secret door open. Careless. Too many days on the run and not enough sleep had made him stupid. “No reason at all,” he said. “May I turn around? I’d like to see my executioner.”

“Slowly.”

The blade withdrew and he turned to view a woman by flashlight. “Marjean?”

His little sister. Not so little now. She was as tall as he, and round in the fashion of his kindred, her arms well-muscled from hauling nets and barrels of wriggling mackerel and herring and eel. Her face was weathered beyond her years. Sun and salt and wind will do that. She had the wide forehead and goggle-eyes common around these parts, humorless and stubborn.

“It’s me. Geerit. You’re not going to cut the throat of your own brother, are you?”

She did not change expression. “Well, well,” she said. “I just might.” She studied him a moment before lowering the knife. “I suppose you’ll want coffee. Come back inside.” She turned her broad back and retraced her steps, pace solid and filled with restrained fury.

“If you have it.” He followed.

“It’s ersatz. No sugar.”

He suspected she had black market sugar. Fisher folk generally had no prejudice against smuggling in hard times. And times were hard indeed.

“That’s fine,” he said to her rapidly retreating back.

Marjean grunted something that might have been an acknowledgment—or a curse, he couldn’t tell. They re-entered the kitchen and Marjean pushed the cabinet back in place with an emphatic thump.

She busied herself, filling the pot with water, lighting the burner on top of the stove, measuring whatever passed for coffee—acorns or chicory root or something more creative.

He pulled out a chair and sat at the table. “How are mama and papa?”

She turned, fixed him with an unblinking stare as cold and gray as a shark circling prey. “Do you care?”

“If I didn’t, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“They have verandered. That should have been your responsibility, but you left me to deal with on my own. Thank you for that.”

“Verandered?

He didn’t know what that was. He should have. If he hadn’t fled while still a boy, he supposed the word would make sense. There had been whispers, of course. Something mysterious and vaguely scary, like sex before you understood it. Something that made Diepven oppressive and secret and . . . cursed. An omnipresent, suffocating secret. Whatever it was, certainly it left Marjean more aggrieved with him than seemed entirely justified. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” She thumped a thick ceramic mug of steaming ersatz coffee on the table. “Why have you come back?”

He picked up the mug, drank in the scent of toasted non-coffee and something briny, like dried seaweed. It was terrible, but it was warm. “I need your help.”

She did not laugh outright, but he sensed the struggle. She poured herself a cup and sat at the table across him. “You need my help? That’s rich.”

“It’s not for me.”

“Go on.”

He drew a deep breath. “I need to get an Allied flier out of the country.”

She eyed him over her cup, irises a fathomless slate grey. Only a tightening at the corners of her eyes betrayed surprise. “So, you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in that, have you? I’d have figured it was something less heroic, like gambling debts.”

Geerit made a conscious effort not to rise to the bait. “He’s injured. In need of food and medical attention I haven’t been able to give him on the way.”

She took another swig of the awful coffee. “You do realize we are Occupied, don’t you?”

“I heard the Germans singing in the tavern. They’re drunk.”

“Not all of them. And not all the time. You ever hear of a place called Lidice?”

“Of course. The Nazis destroyed it in retaliation for the murder of Heydrich.”

“Not just destroyed. Annihilated. Some of those men are here now. You can tell them. The ones who served in the East. Their eyes are . . .”

“Cold?”

“Soulless.”

“We need to beat them, Marjean. Every flier we return to the Allies is another flier who will be dropping bombs on Berlin.”

She snorted. “So, you left the family a coward and return a patriot? “

“You never saw it. The thing that ate Bompa. You can’t know!”

She scowled at him. “I have seen a great many things since you abandoned us.”

Geerit rose, scraping his chair against the floor. He met her gaze without blinking. “I’m not going to debate my failings with you. I should not have come. Give my best to your German overlords.”

“Oh, sit the hell down,” she said. “What do you expect from me? Hugs and a big kiss?” She picked up a knife and began sawing furiously at a loaf of bread. “There’s no butter. And the bread is half sawdust, but I figure it’s been a while since you’ve eaten. You want some smoked herring?”

“You know I can’t abide fish.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers. Though, to be sure, fish don’t taste as they used to. There’s always a hint of diesel nowadays. All those U-boats, I suppose.” She wrapped the rest of the bread in a cloth and seized a bottle of aqua vitae from underneath the sink. Thrusting both at him, she said, “Well, take me to your airman.”

He blinked at her, unsure if he had heard correctly.

“Well, come on. Or are you going to dither until the man dies of old age?” Marjean extinguished the lamp. She eased the front door open and peered out. “Follow me and for god’s sake be quiet. I don’t want to be arrested for violating curfew. Bring the kit.”

The wind had freshened. The rain, once a mere mizzle, drove into them with icy fury. Good, Geerit thought. It might keep the Germans inside. And if not, the sound of rain plopping against German greatcoats would alert them to any approaching soldier.

Geerit took the lead, keeping to the shadows and mixing up the route so no direct line of mud prints would lead directly back to the cottage. With any luck, the rain would wash away traces of their passage, but he would take no chances.

At the bike shop, Geerit tugged the door open. Marjean slipped inside and he followed. He closed the door and Marjean re-lit the lamp. The knelt on either side of Miroslav, who muttered something unintelligible, but did not rouse. His stubbled face shone wet with sweat. Heat radiated from him.

“In for a penny, I suppose. Best bring him to the house while we have the advantage of bad weather.” She re-bandaged Miroslav deftly, rose. “Well?”

Geerit hauled Miroslav over his shoulder. Marjean thrust the supplies back in the tackle box, snapped it shut, and blew out the lamp.

They made their way back toward the cottage. The rain had slackened. Mud made the footing treacherous and Geerit found himself sweating despite the chill in the air.

“Halt! Wer da?”

Geerit froze, tensed. The voice came from behind. And close. Where was Marjean? Burdened as he was, he could neither flee nor spring to attack. Going for his knife would likely get all of them shot. Had not Marjean said these men were veterans of the Eastern Front? They would have no compunction against summary execution.

With any luck, Marjean, at least, had time to slip away unseen. “Ja?” he said, turning slowly.

The soldier was a dim shape in the darkness, but tall and solid. “It is past curfew. Where are you going?”

“My friend is drunk,” Geerit said, spouting the first thing that came into his head. “I was taking him home. His wife will give him an earful when he wakes up.” He kept his voice light, with a jocular “we’ve-all-been-there” tone.

Which must have failed to convince, for the soldier’s weapon made an ominous metallic snick in advance of firing. No time for fear, just empty resignation. This is it. We’re going to die.

The soldier dropped to his knees, gurgling. Something wet and warm sprayed into Geerit’s face. Through a haze of red, Marjean stepped from behind the soldier. Geerit blinked blood from his eyes. The man pitched forward, twitching.

“Come on,” Marjean said. She hoisted the dead German over her shoulders, straightened with a soft grunt.

* * *

Back in the cottage, Geerit lay Miroslav on the horsehair couch and drew a quilt over him.

“Open the tunnel door,” Marjean said, a bit breathless from hauling the German’s corpse so far.

“What are you going to do with him?” Geerit asked, stepping aside so she could brush by with her burden.

“Give him to the sea. The sea gives and the sea takes. Clean yourself up.”

The sea gives and the sea takes. Yes. Geerit bent over the kitchen sink, grimacing at the icy water as he scrubbed dried blood from his face. Unlike Miroslav, he had no stubble from lack of opportunity to shave. During their time on the run, Miroslav had commented on Geerit’s beardlessness more than once--with something approaching envy, as the Czech complained daily about the itchiness of his own growing stubble. At least, he had before getting shot.

Facial hair was almost entirely absent from the fisher folk of Diepven.

Geerit wiped up where he had splashed water and sat down at the table. A maddening itch started between his fingers, which he worried at until exhaustion claimed him.

Miroslav stirred, groaned.

“Go check on him,” Marjean said. “I will make a tea for his fever.”

Miroslav was awake, more alert than he’d been in a long while. “Where are we?”

“Safe, for the moment,” Geerit said. “How are you feeling?”

“If one wakes in the morning with no pain, he must have died in the night. I fear I am very much alive.”

Geerit snorted, squeezed Miroslav’s shoulder. “Can you sit up? There’s porridge and tea.”

* * *

When Marjean went to market, Geerit left Miroslav dozing on the sofa and ventured upstairs. The stairs creaked in the familiar places. He opened the door to his old room only to find it abandoned, the feather mattress rolled up and tied, rope supports sagging in the bedframe. The air was stale. The only relic remaining of his youth was the collection of folktales his grandfather used to read to him, cover faded and dust coated.

As if I’d never existed.

He stood on the threshold of Marjean’s room. Small and free of dust, the room seemed stark as her personality. The open window let in sea air. He could hear the waves in the distance. The ancient quilt on the neatly made bed provided the only color.

Geerit closed the door without entering and crossed to his parents’ bedroom. He turned the knob and entered.

Dust furred the furniture. The air held an off smell, like the lingering hint of cabbage days after cooking. The bed, like Marjean’s was neatly made.

Downstairs, the door slammed. “Geerit!”

Marjean’s voice had a note of impatience, almost of panic.

“I’m upstairs.”

Her feet pounded up the steps. “You need to take your friend and get into the tunnel. Now!”

He gestured at the empty room. “Where are mum and dad? When are they coming back?”

“There’s no time. You need to hide. Now. The Germans are conducting a house-to-house search. Seems they’ve missed their soldier and didn’t fall for the idea he might have deserted. And I think they’ve been alerted to escape and evasion activities in the area.” She scowled at him. “Don’t look at me like that—I certainly didn’t inform on you. Now hurry.”

Miroslav blissfully asked no questions as Marjean ushered both of them through the secret entrance. He clutched the quilt wrapped about his shoulders and sat on the second step with his bad leg straight down before him. Geerit crouched beside, drew his pistol as Marjean slid the china cabinet back into place. Already the Germans were pounding at the cottage door, the noise only slightly muffled as darkness enveloped them. At least worrying about the Germans takes my mind off this damned tunnel.

Which was not entirely true. If he were honest, he’d rather face a dozen Germans than whatever thing had taken his bompa. But that was a long time ago. Surely the creature had slithered back to whatever watery hell it had come from.

Voices. Guttural. Angry. But the sound was muffled, so he couldn’t make out the words. Another voice. Female. Uncharacteristically patient. Marjean attempting to mollify the soldiers, he supposed. A crashing. Breaking crockery.

Beside him, Miroslav tensed, as if he were ready to burst in, injured as he was, and come to the rescue of a damsel in distress. Geerit gripped Miroslav’s shoulder. An impetuous move now would get them all shot, Marjean, included. Besides, she was more than capable of handling herself. He hoped.

Behind, a wet, squelching. Geerit clenched his jaw. It’s nothing. My imagination, that is all. Please, God.

But God had very little to do with Diepven.

“What was that?” Miroslav asked, too softly to carry through to the Germans.

“Nothing.”

“There it is again. There’s someone in here with us.”

Something.

Icy sweat dripped along Geerit’s spine. So much for my imagination. “It’s the tide coming in. The tunnel distorts the sound.”

Skittering noises over rock, but at least the noise grew no closer. Crabs, Geerit thought. Only crabs from the beach. Damn, but his fingers itched. “Hold this,” he pressed the pistol into Miroslav’s hand. Geerit laced his fingers together and scraped them up and down in a futile attempt to scratch. Why did his hands feel like he had plucked fistfuls of stinging nettles?

After what seemed an endless time, but which was probably only a quarter of an hour, the house seemed quiet. The curio cabinet door scraped open. “They’ve gone,” Marjean said.

“Are you all right?” Geerit asked. A flaming red blotch had bloomed on Marjean’s cheek. She jerked away when he cupped her face.

“I’m fine.” She opened the china cabinet and took out the spiral shell. “The Germans have ordered everyone to assemble in front of the church in twenty minutes. If they don’t find their missing soldier—” she fixed them with an unblinking stare— “Or you two, they will start shooting civilians.”

“Just like Lidice,” Geerit said. We can’t permit such a thing. Miroslav and I will have to surrender.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Marjean said. “Go back inside the tunnel.”

She darted inside herself, the seashell gripped in one hand, a lantern in the other. She brought the pointed tip of the shell to her lips and blew long and hard. A high-pitched trill, distorted by the surrounding rock, set Geerit’s teeth on edge. “Come on,” she said, “Both of you.” She blew again.

Another trill answered from deep inside the tunnel. An echo?

Miroslav hunched against the tunnel wall, favoring his wounded leg. “Who else is in the tunnel?”

“No one,” Geerit said. “The rock and the tides distort sound.”

“Come on,” Marjean said.

“I don’t—” Geerit said.

“Yes,” said Miroslav, “Let’s explore this fascinating tunnel, shall we?” He leveled the pistol at them.

Geerit’s stomach clenched. He’s joking, surely. “You know better than to fool around like that.” Please be making a stupid joke. Otherwise . . ..

“He’s not fooling,” Marjean said, her face expressionless in the lamplight. “You’re not an Allied flier.”

Miroslav gave a modest nod. “No, I am not. My task was to explode the escapist line and I have done so.” He gave a rueful smile. “Getting shot was not part of my plan. I must thank you, Geerit, for your resourcefulness and determination to keep me alive. It will grieve me to see you publicly executed.”

For a moment Geerit forgot his dread of the tunnel. Every refuge, every safe house, they’d barely escaped each until Geerit’s only resource was to come home. Good people, brave people, dead or captured. Miroslav’s betrayal at every turn. And Geerit too dense to suspect. I should have known. How could I not have known? He tasted bile at the back of his throat.

“Bastard!” Geerit lurched forward, weapon be damned, but Marjean blocked him.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said.

“Your sister continues to be wise. Perhaps she will be spared execution and only face deportation to Ravensbruck.”

Miroslav—or whatever his true name might be, gestured with the pistol—the very pistol Geerit had handed him earlier. Geerit ground his teeth in frustration. Marjean is right. I am an idiot.

“Let us explore this tunnel and return before my compatriots begin executing your neighbors. Another gesture with the pistol. “After you, fraulein.”

Another trill sounded from the far end of the tunnel. And other noises: an impossible mix of wet squelching and dry skittering in the distant dark. Geerit’s fingers itched abominably and dread prickled at the base of his neck.

“What’s this?” Miroslav asked, squinting past the two of them into the shadows. “More of your compatriots? Escapees? Perhaps black marketeers? Excellent.”

Geerit’s legs locked. Better a bullet in the back than to go further down the tunnel. But there was Marjean to consider. He had to admire her calm. For the first time he regretted having left home so young. He had missed the chance to see her grow into the remarkable woman before them.

“Come along, then,” Marjean said, and strode into the darkness, her lantern swinging gently, casting shadows, magnifying the darkness rather than dispelling it.

Miroslav shoved Geerit’s shoulder. Geerit forced himself forward. I deserve whatever fate awaits. Miroslav followed behind, hopping awkwardly on his injured leg, but the muzzle pressed into Geerit’s spine did not waver.

The tunnel floor was smooth, worn by tides and time. As they crept, icy water puddled about their feet. The stench of brine and rotting seaweed assailed them. Meager lamplight hid as much as it revealed, casting moving, unnatural shadows. Geerit’s stomach roiled. I’ve moved into one of my nightmares.

Something cold brushed against his ankle. Geerit clamped his lips tight against a startled outcry. The thing, whatever it was, coiled about Miroslav’s leg.

“What the hell?” Miroslav muttered.

Geerit took advantage of Miroslav’s startlement to jam his elbow into the man’s ribs. Marjean grabbed Miroslav’s arm. The pistol flashed. Light stabbed. The shot went wide, chipping stone.

The afterimage of an impossible tentacular thing seared Geerit’s retinas. Miroslav swore, struggled to regain control of the weapon, but by now the thing had snaked about Miroslav’s wrist.

Setting his teeth against touching the alien flesh, Geerit wrested the pistol free. He shoved it into Miroslav’s belly and fired.

Miroslav sank to the tunnel floor, groaning. The thing moved over him. Miroslav screamed, fell silent.

Marjean raised the lantern high.

The thing rose to tower over them, dark, bulbous, with eyes the size of dinner plates and a round mouth crowded with jagged teeth. And yet it held the general form of a man. If a man had tentacles for arms.

Geerit brought the pistol to bear.

Marjean put her hand over his, lowering the weapon. “You don’t shoot family,” she said.

A cold, but tentative caress with what used to be a hand, now melted into a muscular tentacle. The huge black eyes glimmered with intelligence and impossible familiarity.

Bompa? Unthinkable. And yet.

Verandered. Changed. How did I misunderstand so completely? “Bompa?” he whispered. He placed a diffident hand upon the strange flesh. He expected something unpleasant and slimy, but the skin, though cool, had a pleasing smoothness and strength. “Bompa,” he said, with more confidence. “I abandoned you.” His face warmed with shame. “Forgive me. I didn’t understand.”

“Come,” Marjean said. She led Geerit out of the tunnel to the beach, Bompa squelching alongside.

The sea boiled. Moonlight glistered on the waves like erratic strings of electric lights. Shadows poured out of the darkness—a great mass of beings that smelled of the sea, spume still clinging to wet flesh.

“They had to wait until I mapped the mines the Germans placed all along the beach,” Marjean said.

Writhing, lurching, slithering, chittering they came—pouring onto the beach and funneling into the narrow darkness of the tunnel. “Our kin will pour up into the village and feast well on the intruders,” Marjean said. Bompa made a fluting trill as if in agreement and with a final caress, joined the throng.

“How did I not know?” Geerit said.

“You didn’t want to know, my brother. But now you’ve come home.”

Home? Geerit examined his hands and the webbing that now stretched between his fingers. The itching had passed. How long before he dissolved into a creature like the others? And Marjean? Would she also change? There was so much he didn’t know; so much he might have learned had he not fled like the vilest coward.

Distantly, the first screams began, followed by scattered gunfire. But screams soon eclipsed the guns and the tide of the Verandered roiled on.

Yes. The sea gives and the sea takes.

End.

Rita Oakes writes horror, dark fantasy, and historical fiction. A graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, she enjoys history, travel, and Belgian beer--sometimes at the same time. Her work has appeared in Paradox, Aeon Speculative Fiction, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, as well as in the anthologies The Many Faces of Van Helsing, Time Well Bent, and Zombies: Shambling through the Ages. In addition, she has a story collection titled Comrades-in-Arms from Lethe Press.

Your Call Is Very Important To Us

By J.L. Kiefer

Of fucking course.

Of fucking course your password would stop working twenty minutes before you leave for the day. And just as you finished the document you need to email to your boss by end of day. But Outlook closed, and it wants your password. You’ve typed it in five times, and it says you’re locked out.

Contact an administrator, it says, helpfully.

You open a new tab and initiate an online chat with I.T. After eating five minutes of your remaining twenty asking questions to identify you—I’m fucking chatting with you on my work-issued laptop and I couldn’t even reach this page if I wasn’t on the company network; shouldn’t you be able to tell?—the agent tells you that password resets can only be performed by calling the company’s line. The chat disconnects.

“Fuck,” you whisper. “Seriously?”

You look at the clock. Eight minutes have passed. You’re going to be late to your girlfriend’s birthday dinner.

You lift the receiver out of its plastic cradle, the curly cord tangled so much that the base jumps forward, ribbeting like a frog. One desk across and three to the left, Carol huffs. She types, stops, huffs again. Keeps typing. Every other cubicle houses empty chairs.

Just a month ago, each one was filled—you’re sure of it. Stacy, Linda, Mark sat in the now-cleared cluster of desks at the corner, the perfect spots for concealed monitors and goofing off without fear of your boss suddenly manifesting, becoming corporeal behind your shoulder the second you decide to take a five-minute break to skim an NPR article to ask you where Form 1BC3 is. But when you search the company’s form repository, the form doesn’t seem to exist. You email the content owner of the repository but receive an automated response that they are Out of Office until August. It’s January.

And it dawns on you—last Tuesday you passed Phillip’s desk, Phillip scrubbing at the rough fabric of a new chair after spilling tomato soup. The next day he was gone, his desktop sterile, and you found a photo of Phillip and his daughter wedged beneath the rolling drawers that accompany each cube. You asked Julia, his cube mate, if he left a forwarding address or a phone number. She stared at the photo, continuing to type, and said she did not recognize him.

The receiver in your hand buzzes like a cicada. You don’t remember the phone number for the company’s I.T. You stare at the keypad, willing it to come. You have it saved in a flagged email. Of course.

“Hey, Jim, do you know…” The question dies in your mouth, tasting ashy, when you turn your head and find his cubicle cleared. Wasn’t he just here this morning? You discussed that weird new show that makes the chefs cook blindfolded.

“What happened to Jim?” you ask, swiveling your chair to the opposing cubicle.

“He left the company,” Gina says.
“When?”

“We wish him the best in all future endeavors,” she says.

“There seems to be a lot of that lately,” you joke. “Should we be concerned?”

“He’s moved on to other opportunities,” she says. The constant clacking of her keyboard rises in a cacophonous cloud that drowns the still-screaming receiver begging for your attention, centering you back from the ghosts of coworkers past.

“Do you know the number for I.T.?”

Gina removes one typing hand from her keyboard, still clattering against the keys with the other, and plucks a yellow sticky note from her cubicle wall. She hands it to you, her face still glued to her screen. You push ten digits into the keypad on your phone, each tone increasing in pitch, the pain sharp as a needle in your ear canal.

You settle in, the receiver already slimy and sweaty against your face.

“Thank you for calling COMPANY Technology Solutions,” a recorded voice says. “If you are calling about a network outage in the Chicago office, we are aware and are working for a solution.” The recorded voice continues with its long string of disclaimers, of policy reminders, of boring shit you half-listen to while waiting for the menu that will lead you to a human. Meaning: phones clogged. A long wait. You glance at the clock—ten minutes to five.

You click open a new browser tab. You type in the URL to NPR and just as you press enter, your boss materializes behind you, asking if you’ve sent that report.

“I’m on the phone with I.T.,” you say, jigging the receiver, which still spits out its various diatribes. “I’m locked out of email.”

Your boss says nothing but ticks his head to the clock, then his watch, then your screen, then walks away. Finally, you press through four separate prompts before navigating to password help.

“We’re receiving a high volume of calls at the moment,” the voice of a pleasant woman says. “We value your call. Please wait for the first available representative.”

Eight minutes until your shift is supposed to end. The fabric of your seat scratches against your leg as you pump it, as if that nervous tick will advance your spot in the queue, as if it will make a magician appear on the other end of the line who will be able to reset your password in two seconds. But no such magician exists. A hole wears in the seat, a little mouth with frayed lips stuffed with cotton.

Back in his office, your boss types with fury, slamming fingers down into the keyboard with such force that the little black cubes of E and S jump into the air.

After a full decade (you’re sure of this, sure you saw your remaining coworkers leave their desks, turn off the lights, return a thousand times while you stayed on this fucking call with a grumbling stomach and, you discover three years in, a blooming migraine), a representative speaks on the other end.

“Hello, this is—” Static replaces the tech’s name. “–can I help you?”

“I need to reset my password,” you say.

“–can definitely–with that. What–?”

“I’m sorry,” you say, your leg unraveling the hole further. A fluffy cloud emerges between your knees. “You’re breaking up. Can you repeat?”

The next thing that eeks through the receiver is so garbled it almost sounds otherworldly, you think. Sinister.

“Can you hear me now?” a human voice asks. Is it the same as the one who answered?

“Yes, I can now. I need to reset my password.”

“Okay, can you–your–?”

You provide them with any conceivable piece of information they might need, your work ID, your full name, your email address, your social security number, your hire date, your dog’s name.

Two minutes until your shift ends. There’s no overtime. There’s no response, worldly or otherwise, on the line.

“Do you need something else?” you ask.

“It looks like the system is down.”

“What system?”

“Yes, sorry. The system is down. You’ll have to call back later.”

“What? My shift is almost over!”

The R key drops to the carpet of your boss’ office. He locks eyes with you as the call drops.

You set the receiver into its cradle. Before you can mumble fuck underneath your breath, the phone rings, its scream shrill and warped like a cry for help, like it has never had an incoming call and isn’t sure what to do.

“Where is that report?” your boss asks. “I can’t leave until you send it to me.”

“I’m so sorry,” you say, trying to avoid the glass windows of his office. “I.T. said the system was down.”

“What system?”

“Uh, I guess whatever system can reset the password?”

The line clicks dead.

You redial I.T. The recorded message begins again. You click 9, the number that started the chain to lead you to a technician last time. But it only restarts the recorded message.

The clock, though an eternity has passed, says one minute to five.

The spritely voice drones on and on. Your bladder is suddenly full, your waistband pressing into it. You’re sure that the second you put the receiver down to run to the bathroom, that’s the moment a technician will answer. So you wait, your body vibrating and trying to contain itself.

Across the sea of empty cubicles, your boss’s door opens. He slams it shut and the glass shatters into little clear pebbles. They spill out next to his littered letters. You wait for the commotion, for his underlings to run, to ask if he’s alright. But no one comes running. The cubicles are all pristine, sterile. Even Gina has disappeared next to you, her keyboard now at rest.

Your boss screeches, presumably at your missing report or maybe the glass, and the sound of it scrapes into the eardrum not covered by the receiver, where the cheery voice continues but seems to be speaking a language you don’t understand (Did you accidentally press to hear a different language?). You strain to hear it beneath your boss’s primal rage, the high-pitch vibrating against you like a fist. Still, you’re pretty sure that whatever is coming out of the receiver in that shitgrin robo voice is not a language currently spoken by Earthlings.

At least you’ve forgotten you need to pee, until you remember that you forgot and now it’s full to bursting.

You’re about to hang up. Your finger is craning towards the button to end the call when the robo voice tells you to press 5 to speak with a representative. Your finger moves automatically, presses 5 before you can think of why it was going to hang up in the first place.

Your boss is still screaming.

“Hello, thank you for calling COMPANY I.T.,” the rep says. “Your call is very important to us. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

“Look, I really need–”

“Thank you,” they say. “What can I help you with today?”

“I’m locked out of my email and need help resetting the password.”

“I’m happy to assist you with that. Have you tried restarting your computer?”

“Yes,” you lie. “I’ve already tried restarting, closing out my browser, clearing the cache, and opening a ticket online.”

“Okay, thank you for confirming. Have you tried closing and reopening the browser?”

You want to bang your head against the desk, to shatter your skull into as many fragments as your boss’s glass door. At least loose fragments of skull wiggling beneath the skin of your forehead would give you something to fidget with, something to distract you from your boss’s wails and this useless technician and your fucking full bladder. Instead you slam your fist against the desktop.

Amidst everything vying for your attention, you don’t notice the tickling at your foot. When you do, the tickling has already reached your thigh, and you think, oh god, my bladder finally gave up. I’m going to have to stand up and walk out of this fucking place with a migraine and stained, stinking pants. A janitor will have to clean this fucking chair that’s tagged and IDed to my desk. I’ll have to show up with soaked pants like a toddler. Wait, where was I going after work?

And you do piss yourself, but only when you look down to find an ethernet cable has coiled around your right leg, constricting the limb like a string of sausages. The piss soaks into the chair, yellows the little tuft of stuffing poking out of the frayed hole. From the receiver comes the continued chirping tech, but you’re blinking and trying to decipher if you’re really seeing the ethernet cable snake towards your crotch.

Only when the little plastic head tickles the spot between your legs do you make any movements to stop it. You try shaking it off, but it curls tighter. You pull the scissors from your drawer, having to reach over your body because the receiver, still spitting out the tech’s unhelpful tips beneath your boss’s screams, won’t release from your hand, like the plastic and skin have melded together. Your chest constricts in panic, like the cable has reached your heart.

With the scissors, you slice at the cord, careful not to snip your own skin, but it splits and vines in two directions, into two smaller, but stronger, cords. They curl around the back of your knee. When you try to lift your leg to get a better angle with the scissors, you discover that your foot is missing. Your pants end in carpet, the gross, short-haired, gray shit that somehow always clogs the wheels of your chair. Leaning forward, you start to snip at the carpet to free your foot, but you jump back in pain, as if you and the carpet are united, your nerves pouring into the subfloor.

“What the fuck,” you whisper, sweat dripping from your forehead to the wretched carpet, trying to end the current call, but the tech continues to twitter about restarting your computer: Have you tried refreshing the page? Is your browser up to date? You have no idea, but you do know that the sharp, cut end of the cable has wormed its way through the seams of your clothes, is scraping and nibbling at your stomach. You can’t feel your feet anymore.

Your heart thumps in your chest. There’s no one around to help. Even if you could end the I.T. call, you can’t remember how to dial out.

Your cell phone. It’s in your messenger bag, which you’d set in the empty seat of the cubicle next to you at lunch. Had that been empty this morning? You vaguely remember a body, but you can’t recall a name. You stretch towards the bag, the phone’s cord uncoiling, the wheels of your chair unmoving as if glued to the carpet. As if part of it. The bag is so far away. Another cable snakes from the floor, twisting around your ankle. The one that had been tickling your thigh bites, stabs its way beneath your skin. You can feel it slither, slicing through muscle.

Now your screams join the cacophony.

Your receiver-hand hooks the strap of the bag, but the fibers of your shirt have fused to the chair. They are woven together and your skin is next, the scratchy quilt of acrylic scraping at the moles on your back. You retrieve your cell phone and dial 911.

You are fading fast. The line rings.

“Hello,” the dispatcher says.

You try to eke out Help!, to say anything but you are soaking into your chair. Your mouth fills with dry stuffing.

“Thank you for calling emergency services. For the latest updates on public health services, please visit our website. To learn more about how you can support our cause, please hang up and dial non-emergency services. Someone will be with you soon. Your call is very important to us.”

End.

Jenny Kiefer is a horror writer living in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the owner of Butcher Cabin Books and her debut novel, This Wretched Valley, is forthcoming from Quirk Books. Her work has also appeared in Howls from the Dark Ages, Louisville Magazine, Miracle Monocle, and Whisky Advocate.

Der Zedernwald

By RSL

On a cold, blistering night, two travellers fought wind and rain to reach der Zedernwald. As they arrived at its stump-laden edgelands, the blizzard that had been threatening to form all day took shape, lashing at their backs and faces with hail and snow. Soon even the woods thickened, and great poplars bunched together like the forever-closed fists of dead giants. Progress seemed impossible. Still, the iron-willed travellers marched. They had sworn an oath and accepted a quest of dire importance. So strongly did they hold high that quest in their hearts and minds that even their imminent death seemed inconsequential.

Fate, that ever-unknowable wind, took mercy on these tiring brothers, and for the briefest moment, the white veil of the storm lifted. A little further into the forest, there shone the Northern star of what could only be a fire. Heat, warmth: lodgings.

Renewed, the travellers made their way toward where they saw the light, continuing to wrestle the wood as they went.

They were half dead when they arrived, knocking on the door of the sudden apparition. Upon being granted entrance, the taller, Moritz, fell inside. The other, Reiner, ignored the temptress flames of the fire in the hearth and helped his brother. The man who allowed their entry bolted the door behind them.

“Are you quite alright, lads?” he asked, kneeling to help Reiner with Moritz. “Mighty cold out there I must admit. I’ll fix you both a stew.”

Reiner was too busy with Moritz’s strained whispers to hear the host.

“It’ll be alright, Reiner,” Moritz said. “Get to the fire, get to the fire.”

A while later—only after the two, having made their way, finally, over to the fire, sat covering their frozen hands and faces with the radiating heat surrounding the hearth—their host returned, bowls in hand. He placed one near the puffy- and red-faced Moritz who was sat directly in front of the flames, then handed the other to Reiner who was hovering anxiously near his brother.

“I thought that was it,” Moritz declared. “When that snow came, the wind. I saw in that blank sheet the end, I did.”

“You’re safe now,” the host said, pulling a second and third chair to the hearth so that he and Reiner could sit. He patted Moritz on the back. “Eat, lad. You’ll need it.” He looked at Reiner. “Join us at the fire. Your friend will recover.”

Reiner undid his face covering as he sat down, joining them both. He let the stew warm his now ungloved hands. “Thank you, mister. We have funds, and we’ll pay you right.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” their mystery host replied, taking out a pipe, lighting it with the flaming end of a twig from the fire. “We’ve us a fire for our hearts, a meal for our bellies, and I suspect we’ll have us a mighty fine talk for our heads. There is no hungrier belly than the mind.”

Reiner smiled, surprised at how pleasant the stranger was. “Thanks, Herr,” he said.

“Call me Rodrick, my lad; no officialities in my court. Though, tell me yours and your friend’s name so I can return the honours.”

“I’m Reiner, Herr… Rodrick,” he replied, apologizing with his eyes for being unable to dispense with politeness, “and that snowman by the fire is Moritz.”

The shivering Moritz nodded to them both, savouring the heat from the bowl.

“Great to meet you both,” Rodrick replied. “Now, I bet there’s a tale behind your travelling, ain’t there. Two young lads such as yourselves marching southward to der Zedernwald.”

Reiner smiled, though a little sadly. “There is a tale, you’re right, Herr. But we’re sworn to secrecy, Herr, by our master.”

“Master?” Rodrick replied, puffing out smoke.

“Yes, Herr, he’s not a master as such—”

“He just calls him that,” Moritz interrupted from the fireside. “’Master’ saved our little mouse Reiner.”

“Is that true, lad?” Rodrick asked Reiner.

“Ja,” Reiner replied, “though in much less crass terms, Herr Rodrick. I was a sickly thing, and Master was always fond of sickly things.”

“Didn’t half fill the house up with them,” Moritz added, sharing a glance of fond remembrance with Reiner.

“They are the kindest, souls like that,” Rodrick said. “I have had the pleasure of knowing some myself. Lost now, though.”

A midnight mist of silence rolled over the men. Nothing so much as peeped or creaked but for the flickering of the fire and the whips of wind wrangling the wooden lodgings.

Reiner was about to speak: then Rodrick stood.

“Right, then,” Rodrick announced, lighting ablaze the pall of sorrow, “let me fetch myself a stew, and I suppose I’ll get to thinking on a tale that might befit a celebration of those men fond of sad and sickly things.”

He grabbed Moritz’s empty bowl, to which Moritz nodded a thanks, and went to the kitchen.

Something groaned.

Reiner looked around him. “What was that?”

“The house is an old thing,” Rodrick replied, stood over the bubbling cauldron, “and so is my sickly mother.”

“Sorry to hear that, Herr,” Reiner said, casting his eyes upward to where presumably the mother was lying. “She lives here?”

“Ja. She’s quite unwell. Pale as Lady Blizzard herself out there. I’m waiting for her to pass proper before I leave this place, start anew.”

“I’m sorry,” Moritz said, eyes still on the fire. Reiner was quiet.

“It’s alright, lads. I’ve made my peace,” said their host, returning to his chair.

Another lull, another hush. The fire shook, wooden spoons clinked in bowls, and the house shivered and moaned with the wind.

“I know just the stories to tell tonight,” Rodrick said, clapping his hands. “In honour of sad and sickly things!” Rodrick clattered his bowl with Reiner’s. Moritz didn’t react, focussed still on the fire. Reiner shaped a sorry with his face, and Rodrick winked back.

“All my life I’ve lived in these woods,” he started, digging into the stew. “To me it feels as if the world revolves around them. Tell me, lads, do you know where der Zedernwald ends?”

Reiner and Moritz were silent.

“That’s because it doesn’t. And you know what things are like when they don’t end. They’re mad.” Rodrick put his bowl aside. His jovial mood softened —his loudness and cavalier way with words dampened. “There’s no darker black than the midst of der Zedernwald, let me tell you. When you’re deep in its gullet, light doesn’t work the same. You saw yourself how dense and thick the copses can be, and, though you arrived at night, if you arrived by daytime you’d be fighting the same thing: shadows.

“No one knows why the trees grow so tall and so thick and dense. We only know that we grow a lot of em, and quick. As you’d expect, there’s a strong felling trade these parts. It’s a dream, really. A wood that never stays empty. Armies have fought with these woods at their backs for many, many years. There was some old King who might be to blame for half of these stories I’m to tell you tonight. To be a feller back then, you see, you were expected to go deep into the woods for King’s wood; not at the edgelands, but right and far down into it. The further in you go, the stronger the wood is, see. Makes sense, like. The tallest trees and the best wood lives most-centre to this place. But a lot of lives were lost going that far in to those woods. You’d be walking alongside a feller and, poof, gone like a candle in the cold.

“These lords and kings didn’t really care about the cost of that, though. They figured the loss of these lives into their calculations. It was worth it to them. If they’d went in, been there themselves, maybe… Well, it’d never happen, would it?” Rodrick took a big puff of his pipe. “Anyway, there was this feller named Cane, from Wurmrote Village, not far from here. He’s working deep in the woods with his men when they hear crying. Now, if you hear crying deep in the black of the Zedernwald, there are only two reasons. Some parent has lost their head and gone for a stroll with their newborn into that dark place, or worse, a child had been thieved.

“Either way, Cane and his fellers had a duty to search.

“They follow the source of the crying for a while (the echoing plays with your head in these woods), and it wasn’t until an hour later they had found what it was that was crying.”

Rodrick leaned forward to both Moritz and Reiner who were paying a deep, monk-like attention.

“It was a sapling.” Rodrick sized up an inch with his hands. “Tiny little thing, screaming, crying—wanting.” Rodrick leaned back. “Now the lads, they were all a little spooked. They didn’t like that it cried. But they were young. Cane, he’d been a father, his lad having moved away many years ago, and he took a soft spot for the sapling crying like that. He’d noticed something else as well. At its roots: upturned soil. This little sapling had been freshly cut and brought from somewhere else, abandoned to that darkwood dirt.

“Cane did what all lapsed parents would do. He took it home.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking, cause I’m thinking it too. Wurmrote Village would have burned him at the stake bringing a monster such as this. Didn’t happen. The only reasoning for me is that far stranger has come out those woods than a sapling that cries. So Wurmrote welcomed Cane with open arms, coming to his aid with the sapling. You know what people are like with babies. Get excited. Wanna dress them, feed them.

“So Cane plants his crying sapling in his garden and his wife is overjoyed. They were parents again.”

Rodrick went to smoke, but the pipe was empty. He busied himself with refilling it with tobacco.

“What happened?” Reiner asked.

Rodrick smiled like a man with a royal flush. “So that isn’t where it ends?”

“There’s always more,” Moritz replied.

Rodrick filled the pipe, stood, and fetched a flame from the fire. Taking a deep breath of smoke, he exhaled slowly. “So… trees are old things, aren’t they? Live far longer than any of us do, with our flesh, our bones. The maggots eat us quicker. But trees… ginormous things! Old and ancient. And in the Cedar, you’ll find big bastards the size of houses. Cut one (if you can) and you’ll likely see more rings than a jeweller could ever make.

“Well, it just turns out that this sapling was one of the same. Deep Zedernwald wood. It was going to grow to be thousands of years old. That meant it was going to be a baby for a long, long time.

“Cane and his wife had about a month of crying before Wurmrote wanted it dead. But Cane was attached to the poor thing. His wife wasn’t. She hadn’t found it like it was, lost and alone in the woods.

“So the village voted Cane out, even his wife. Turns out she’d been with someone else anyway when he’d be felling, and this was good reason to have him gone.

“Cane left the day after the vote, and the village knew silence once more.”

Reiner shifted in his chair. “What happened to Cane?”

“Story is that he set up somewhere,” Rodrick said as he stood to collect Moritz’s and Reiner’s bowls. “Got a house on some disused land. There was a war going on, and still a need for fellers. And not to mention the orphans pumped out of the war. He adopted.” Rodrick moved to the other side of the room. The house moaned again—Rodrick’s mother stirring.

“How long has she left?” Moritz asked to the noise. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“No,” Rodrick replied, “not at all. She’s been ill a while now. But I’m hoping it’s not long. These woods aren’t a home. Not for anyone.”

Reiner meanwhile was looking around the room. He paused, his eyes squinting at the penumbra where the fire failed to shine. What was he seeing?

Another moan from above: Reiner followed the noise, stared upward.

“Don’t worry about her,” Rodrick said on his return, handing Reiner a cup of ale. “Sometimes things are just born wrong, you know. Born with death in their heads. That one has had it a long time coming.” He handed Moritz his ale, then sat back on the chair. It creaked. “There was a man who found that out in quite a misfortunate way.

“It started when a trader came to Wurmrote, selling wood to the craftsmen and the carpenters. I know what you’re thinking. A man selling wood to a felling village? Well, it wasn’t just wood from the edgelands. He had, what he called, wood with the seed of God within. He’d turn up and he’d say, ‘Ask it to burn to flames and it’ll pop along to the nearest fire!’”

“No one really saw any use for it, though. I suspect many of them thought the man meant quite literally it’s only good for burning. Simple, you know. All but for one. J, Hoover.”

“Hoover out of curiosity asks where the wood came from. The trader says it came with his land. Now, Hoover’s suspicious at this point. He asks for a demonstration. The trader, with all the flair of a showman, pulls out a strand of wood from his pocket. He hands out his palm so Hoover can see. ‘Jump, little wood,’ the trader says. And sure enough, the strand bops up and flings itself into the pool below it. It shivers wildly in the cold water. Hoover picks it up, drying it, then pays the trader handsomely for his stocks. The trader leaves.

“Hoover’s not seen for a while after that. The only noises people hear from his workshop is this high kind of buzzing sound. Like a hive throttled by fabrics and shook.

“Two weeks after he bought the wood, Hoover announces a show at his studio. At this point, the village is curious what he’s been up to, and they’ve heard of these apparent skills of the wood, so they turn up, all of them.

“The studio doors open, and centre of the workshop, there’s a little stage, curtained by a shaking crimson cloth. Hoover arrives stage-left and welcomes his crowd, thanks them for coming.

Rodrick stands as though he himself were giving the performance. “He bows, then shouts, ‘Behold: A Pilgrim’s Search for Meaning’. And with that, he rags the curtain from its pole on this small scaffolding, and there, standing nude and shaking, is a little puppet. People are still and quiet, looking for its strings. They’d have been better off looking for their own.

“He shouts, ‘Cry for me, Blockhead’. And Blockhead cries. Really weeps. But his weeping is dry, the sound of leaves rustling across a plank. The crowd are confused at first. Sitting still, mouths agape. It’s only when Hoover smacks Blockhead’s bottom and knocks him into the cold dirt that the crowd finally laughs. ‘Thus are we created!’ Hoover shouts.”

Moritz is looking into the fire, watching the wood turn black. Reiner can’t look away from Rodrick. “Why did he hurt the puppet?” Reiner asked.

“Hurt it?” Rodrick replied. “It’s a puppet, lad.”

“What happened?” Moritz asked, tired, voice curt.

Rodrick picked up the terseness. “The chill must have lashed you hard,” he said. “Is your ale fine? Heat bounteous?”

“He just wants to know,” Reiner replied.

Softening his hardened face, Rodrick smiled. “If you must know, Blockhead was getting on just fine. He went through the motions with practiced ease. Did everything commanded of him.

“Until it began pausing, as if confused. During this stillness, Blockhead’s face always faced the workshop benches, or the stage, the door, even the chairs.

“We forget what we clothe and protect ourselves with, don’t we? Our wool from sheep, our stones and metals from mother earth. And wood… well. This puppet had a unique vantage point. Soon it began hugging very tightly any wood it got its hands on, its face calm as an unrippling lake. Hoover had to guide it toward the centre of the stage every time.

“For a while, it complied.

“But soon little Blockhead took to standing completely still whenever Hoover ordered him to move; it looked at something beyond the crowd. Wandering eyes found its focus: the edgelands, the trees of der Zedernwald.

“Blockhead moved its arms gently side to side, mimicking their waving branches. The crowd began leaving, bored of Blockhead’s peacefulness. Hoover didn’t like that. He’d spent a lot of money and time chipping away that wood and creating this obsequious little ingrate who now was content to simply stand still and wave in a non-existent breeze. Hoover wasn’t going to let an investment like that break down so easily.

“So he pulled out an axe, started doing big thumping steps toward the puppet. Blockhead stared at him, unawares, like, of what was going on, still tranquil. The crowd, though, saw the change in the act and stalled their leaving. Hoover affects this kind of low, grumbling tone, but loud enough for the crowd to hear. ‘Little Blockhead and Its Search for Safety’, he said. He pulled the axe back, ready to chop.

“Now, even flies that drink slime know to flee a flying hand. So when Hoover swings that axe, Blockhead sidesteps, watching dumbly as the floor quakes. The crowd gasps. Not because of the miss, though. Because of what was happening behind the pair.

“Hoover had knocked a torch from the bench in his missing Blockhead. The flames were spreading quick. Spooked like cattle, the crowd panicked. Hoover, ever the shepherd, sought to calm them. And no one had chance to pay attention to what was going on in the back of the workshop.

“Blockhead was seeing what fire could do, and maybe this sparked some innate realization about what wood is for. I like to imagine that when Blockhead sees its kin in the fire, it has some grand epiphany about itself. It sees itself, finally, as unnatural, standing there, thinking in its tinderflesh, and so does only what God would intended wood to do.

“The crowd’s clamour has quietened by the time it happens. Quiet all but for the sudden reappearance of the buzzing that droned in Wurmrote for two weeks prior. Hoover turned instantly to its source. He was too late.

“Blockhead had done what all wood ought to do: it launched itself toward a torch and was now aflame, jumping and running across oils and rags on the worktops like some infernal Puck. A formidable blaze ripped through the roof, alighting the straw on the floor. Hoover tried to save his workshop.

“It wasn’t until he caught fire and started wailing that people put together what that buzzing had been for those two weeks. It was Blockhead’s mouthless agony manifest. It was his screams.

“Didn’t take long for Hoover to expire, for his own pipes to burst in the fire. Blockhead’s cries, meanwhile, continued. In the smouldering ruin of the workshop, there was only the drone of buzzing. A ghostly dirge rippling through the Wurmrote air. As soon as they were able, the villagers scavenged for any piece of keening wood and took its charcoaled remains far into der Zedernwald and buried them deep.” Rodrick stopped and let the hush of lodgings blossom. “If it weren’t for the blizzard, I wonder if we’d still hear it?”

Reiner tried to choke out a laugh. Couldn’t. He opted for another method. “These tales are rather heady, Rodrick.”

“Nothing but nourishment in this lodge, my lad. You’ll leave with your heads bursting.”

Reiner nearly fell from his chair as the house rocked from the blizzard. A pained and muffled wail from upstairs.

Mortiz and Reiner winced.

“Was that your mother?” asked Moritz.

“The blizzard might have knocked her from the bed,” Reiner added softly.

Reminded of his duty as a son, Rodrick replied, “I suppose she needs something, aye.” He took a rag from near the cauldron, a cup of ale, and left the two men momentarily to go upstairs.

“Do you think he knows, Reiner?” Moritz whispered, watching the door Rodrick left through.

“If he’s local to these woods as he says he is, maybe. But I don’t like him. The way he speaks of his mother.”

Moritz nodded. “Say, what were you looking at over there?”

As Reiner went to speak, the house quivered, and the two men watched the far end of the room where Rodrick appeared at the door.

“Hello lads,” he said. “Sorry about the wait. I just like eating, is all!” He boomed with laughter as he refilled the bowls and the cups of ale. Back at the fire, he handed the men foods and drinks and sat down on the chair with the same gait as an elephant rolling backward. The floorboards wailed under his weight.

“So how did you hear all this?” asked Moritz. “Have you lived here a while?”

Rodrick drank from his cup and nearly finished it all. “I’d say so, yeah. I run a lodge, so you hear tell here and there. Travellers, merchants.” The blizzard raged still, and was a symphonic ruin whenever conversation lulled.

“You know,” Rodrick continued, blithe to the blizzard’s blare, “you see weather like this and you question what Lordly order there is. Looks more to me the Great Composer is losing His wits.”

“Or just likes a good song,” Moritz added.

“That might be. But I shudder, sometimes.” Rodrick sighed, and leaned forward, toward the two men. “I’ll be truthful, lads. Your coming here has been a difficult reminder.” Rodrick’s eyes hung on the ceiling. “I suppose these stories of mine have been laying the groundwork, if you like.” He coughed, leaned back, downed a pint of ale, and took in a hit of tobacco. “I lost a lot to those woods.”

Rodrick went to refill his ale. Downed it instantly. “The damned place fools us, you know that? It’s a poisoned pawn. I only wish they’d known…

Taking a deep breath, Rodrick tried to unwind the albatross of worry that had coiled around his neck. “Mother had sent me and my brother into the forest. It was under the guise of finding my father. My brother and I knew her motives, though. Clear as unclouded crystal. She wanted more cuttings of that tree. Father, see… He sold them. On his last trip into der Zedernwald, he hadn’t returned. There was nothing for us to do but agree. Damn her. Damn her.” Rodrick’s eyes fell with grey evil on the ceiling. Loathing made mundane.

“It was different then, lads, marching into that place. Sure, the Cedar is still thick and dangerous and difficult to move through, as you men know, but we’ve other means of lighting now. Up north I know they have electric lights in the towns, and I’ve seen a few expeditions into here that made use of such advancements. Nothing scares those men with their rifles and their lights. Back then, with only the little flame of an oil lantern, every step was a herculean feat.

“But sure enough, we’re marching through. My brother, he was like you, Reiner. A sickly thing. And I was sure he’d give up not even halfway in. He’d heard the other goings-on in der Zedernwald. Beetles with the small heads of humans. Bones shaped like cutlery, right down to flowery engravings on their handles. It’s like with no light, there was no sense. The hinterlands of God. But my brother, he never stopped. Never flinched at even the slightest imagination. I wasn’t sure why he was so driven to help mother.

“Soon, we got in so deep that the night was like a smog. The air tasted of mud, and there was always some sound of running water, kind of gushing thickness, as though the river was a stream of blood.

“Even those noises died eventually. It was a silence insulated by ancient and impossibly thick trees. So dense and tall where they that they arched upright like stray rib bones of ancient Leviathans dead in the dry earth. Oftentimes the only way to pass through them was through small lesions and holes.

“And then, just as I didn’t think they could get any bigger, we hit what looked like a wall at first. Both my brother and I thought we’d hit the boundary between this world and the next. It was, with our lighting, endlessly wide. Walking right or left only led to more of its length. So we picked a direction and walked alongside it.

“After a while, my brother noticed that it was sloping slowly left. We were glad to know it was indeed a tree and had some form of circumference. He marched faster after this. It must have taken us a day just to move around a quarter of this thing.

“And as we walked, I started going all, well, not okay. My mind had been getting a little loose, all that walking and to nowhere. Literally marching in circles. And I said this to my brother, but he kept moving, not saying a word. So I kept going, for him. That’s when we heard the first sound that wasn’t the pair of us.

“The shaking of a tree.

“I’d grown so accustomed to it, that deep airless nothingness of der Zedernwald, that this sound was offensive. I thought I was losing my mind because it wasn’t just a tree shaking randomly, it was shaking with reason, finessed purpose. Expression. When the branches moved, it gave off a kind of cry. Deep and guttural and somehow old. My brother ran toward the noise.

“As we ran, the tree’s stump thinned until it gave way to a clearing leading within itself. If it was a tree, it had been hollowed out. Inside this hollow base: a grove. A tangle of six infinitely tall poplars stood equidistant from each other in a circle as wide as two men. In the middle of it all: the weeping tree.

“Standing near it was hard. I wanted to leave, and I hated my brother and my mother for forcing me here. It was odd to look at the tree crying with its branches. Its face was right in the middle. But not as we understand faces. It had two eyes that looked like the wrinkles of unfolded elbows, and they were on different spots, slightly out of line. Its mouth, so to speak, shaped words through the shaking of the branches, and so when it spoke, it was always a sort of soft whisper, and when it cried, it was as though a gale blew, whistling through the spaces between the branches. Its wrinkly eyes were bunched up at first. They opened when we asked its name.

“‘Are you real?’ it asked in between its weeps.

“My brother replied, ‘We are, my friend. And it must have been so long for you.’”

“The tree cried again, whimpering with its branches. My brother asked the tree its name, and it said it was called Edgar. And my brother asked, ‘Why are you sad, Edgar?’”

“It only replied, ‘For I am alone, and I have killed my friends. And every visitor who happens upon me cuts me dry. Will you cut me?’ The tree shook again and I followed its movements. Many of its branches had been cut to the trunk. The nearest branch I could see was at least the height of a church steeple.

“I wanted out. This was enough for me, lads. I won’t lie. But my brother held onto me, wouldn’t let me go. He asked Edgar what had happened. Edgar explained that he was the centre-most tree out of this little pack, and that for many, many years he had been the tallest. He got more light, being the tallest, and so he grew more.

“And when he grew, his roots grew. His friends, the trees beside him, they were tangled up with his roots. And after a while, they became him. They died.

“I looked over the shut faces of those other trees again and wondered if he had their memories.

“My brother hugged the tree and told Edgar he was very sorry. He asked Edgar why the trees were so close together. And Edgar nearly screamed, ‘It put me here like this,’ and my brother asked who, but Edgar was too emotional after that. It had been alone for far too long.

“My brother asked it to wait a second, and Edgar, ignoring him, continued on crying. My brother took me aside.

“‘We need to help him’, he said. I laughed in his face. We’d marched for days on next to no food and supplies and now he wanted us to save it somehow.

“I’d seen and heard enough of all of this. Mother had sent us to take a cutting. That’s all. And I wasn’t even sure how we’d do that. I told my brother as such. He replied, ‘No one will cut this tree again.’

“We’d marched, and survived, into this Cedar and he wanted to, what, bivouac? Live in the woods? The endless wood that God had forgotten? He’d gone mad. I told him I had every right to leave him here and take my cutting. It was only a tree.

“You know what he said? Go. He told me, his only brother, to go.”

Rodrick was up then, screaming. “Go? Go! I’d marched in there with him, scared out my whits! Scared and tired and terrified and he chose a goddamn tree over his brother!” He smashed a piece of wood off of his chair and lashed it into the fire. Upstairs, his mother gave a muffled shout. Reiner and Moritz’s eyes flicked briefly upward.

“He made me leave him there, you understand? I left, okay. I was scared and angry and lost and terrified. Blood rivers? Human-headed beetles? Bone knives? No. I was a boy! I couldn’t take it. So I left him. Yeah, I left my brother in those woods and I started back home.”

Rodrick panted like a tired bull. With new eyes, he saw the mess he’d made.

“I went back, though. Not twenty minutes later, I went back. To my own hazard, I went back. And when I found that tree—my brother was gone. Edgar, crying, crying, crying… ‘He went to find you,’ he said.”

Rodrick wiped his eyes and spat on the floor. “Excuse me.” He left to go upstairs.

The brothers turned to each other. “That’s Master Vogeill’s brother?” Reiner asked. “He will know where the tree is!”

The sound of smashing wood punctuated Rodrick’s roars from upstairs. “Why did you let me go?” Rodrick shouted.

“We need to leave,” Moritz said, standing. “At least we know it’s true. It’s gonna be somewhere here. Forget him—he left Herr Vogeill to die.”

“We can’t leave his mother!” Reiner protested, already on his way to the stairwell.

Moritz fumed at Reiner’s good-heartedness and followed him up.

Reiner was shouting as he climbed the stairs, “Herr Rodrick, stop!”

And as they climbed, the blizzard rocked the house with earth-crumbling quakes. The brothers struggled to steady. When they crested the stairs, recently-fed flames howled through the door ajar. Moritz burst ahead of Reiner and through the door.

They couldn’t believe the scene.

This was no room of a sick old woman.

Chisels pierced the flooring like knives into the back of a gentle giant. Saws were left half-cut through stumps like blades caught in the meat of a human throat; and in various spots of the room, planes with their dusty, wood-covered metals lay in its own debarked waste, where the floor had been planed and planed till it was smooth as parchment, meatless as bone.

In the far left of the room, where Rodrick was shouting and screaming, was the sorest sight. Crippled, stabbed, pierced and planed by tools strange and unknown to the two brothers, was what they could only assume to be the sad, lonely, now branchless stump of Edgar, being ripped apart by Rodrick.

“You took him away and he’s gone and it’s all your fault,” Rodrick screamed at the wood that had its tongue cut, the house shaking with each hit. Reiner eyed the walls again. He knew now what he’d been seeing: the black, stretched faces of Edgar’s dead friends. Reiner’s stomach turned at the bowl he’d been feeding from.

Rodrick had turned to the two brothers now. “If you take issue with a man and his tools, you can leave and go back to your blizzard.”

Reiner couldn’t stop looking at Edgar’s face on the poor, shaven stump. It was so small. He noted how it had a mouth where a human mouth would be, just beneath its eyes, but that it was stretched to ghoulish proportions, stuck in a permanent, wailing soundless scream. Though he knew that this was just circumstance and that Edgar had long lost any ability to speak, and was again just like all trees; alive, but in inexpressible pain.

“Get away from him,” Moritz said, stern.

“Him?” Rodrick laughed. “Him. This thing not only killed its friends, but my brother. My only brother—even my father, I suppose.”

Reiner noticed to his right a can of oil—if he could reach the fire…

“He didn’t,” Moritz said. “You did. You left him in that wood. But it was Edgar who saved him. Edgar told him where to go.”

“Saved him?” Rodrick’s face twisted in calculation.

That’s when Moritz lunged toward Rodrick to push him in the fire.

He missed.

Moritz clattered against the wall and Rodrick squared on him and—

The house shook and moaned and wailed and Rodrick lost his footing. Moritz sidestepped.

Rodrick’s hand landed in the burning wood. He screamed.

Reiner grabbed Edgar and Moritz and they turned to leave.

Moritz fell and wailed.

A firepoker in his leg. Holding it, a half-charred Rodrick. To Reiner’s right, the oil. He cringed at what he had to do.

He kicked the can and it splashed. Droplets flung to the fire. Heat swelled. Rodrick slipped in pain and fell in the pooling liquid now feeding the frenzy.

He burned.

Moritz crawled away as the fire ate at Rodrick and at the floorboards. Edgar screamed the only way he could: The house, his bones and his skin and his repurposed-everything, was coming down.

Reiner grabbed Moritz and pulled him up. He picked up Edgar and led them both downstairs.

Rodrick screamed as the house crumbled inward and Edgar, in his hands, shook so hard that Reiner couldn’t help but cry—he wanted nothing more than to stop his pain.

They reached the door as the fire hit its hardest; Reiner left them both outside, running inside as quick as he could to grab their coldwear.

He escaped within seconds. The house fell and erupted into a great pyre.

Rodrick was dead.

Edgar shook hard in the snow, and Reiner tried his best to cover him up, but he knew that his shaking was not from the cold, but from his own burning body in front of him. Reiner hugged Edgar tightly.

Moritz was badly wounded beside them, leg cut to bits. Reiner didn’t know what to do.

“What—what happens now?” Reiner asked, weeping, because his brother and Edgar might die.

Moritz wouldn’t wake when Reiner shook him a couple times. Only stillness. Covering Moritz as best he could, Reiner didn’t know whether to put out the fire to save Edgar his pain or to keep it aflame to keep Moritz warm.

If only the blizzard would end.

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

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

- A Current of Darkness
- Not Everything Buried is Dead
- Digital Maintenance
- Our Bodies Keep Rupturing Each Time We love
- In the Wind, Their Voices
- The Midwife
- Shadows beneath A Boiling Sea
- Your Call Is Very Important To Us
- Der Zedernwald