CHM October 2023
Author: CHM LLC
Date: 2023-09-12 13:22:58+00:00

Copyright © 2023 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 - François Coutu

Cosmic Horror Monthly

Editor: Charles Tyra

Co-Editor: Carson Winter
www.cosmichorrormonthly.com

Greetings Dear Reader,

The best month of the year is here for spooky fans! A rush of cool air brings relief to the end of a sweltering summer, and the blackbirds are circling. We love everything about Halloween here at CHM, from marathoning copious candy consumption to haunted cornfields to rotted pumpkin heads springing to life. We’d love to hear about our readers’ favorite haunted traditions, so send them any way you can! As one might expect, October has seen the release of a lot of great weird pulp, from Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model to Smith’s The Hunters From Beyond. We are stoked to finally present the nine pieces of fiction we’ve gathered and prepared for this month.

We start with a performance of absolute terror in “Divine Violence,” followed by one of the most disturbingly weird pieces of fiction I’ve ever encountered as an editor in “Mayo Monday” by Richard Shifman. We find cosmic horror in the workplace in “Capital Gains” followed by an investigation of a strange Halloween tradition in “The Scarecrow Chase.” For a brief intermission, we have a nice cosmic prose poem in “When I Swallowed the Sun, I Kissed the Night” by Maxwell I. Gold.

Enjoy some traditional cosmic horror in a research setting and then at sea in “What Mel Knows” and “Flensing and Hyphae” respectively. As we begin to wind down, we have a weird take on a classic monster tale in “Universal Monster” before we descend to the crypt for part II of our presentation of Blackwood’s “The Willows.”

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

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: François Coutu graduated in 2D animation from Cégep du Vieux Montréal. François’s capacities ranges from full on visual design to animation, illustration and story boarding.

François has been working for six years in the indie and mobile game industry. Now he is spending time working on his personal project while taking contract work in illustration.

Drew Cuturilo lives in Pittsburgh, PA. 48 years old.

Primary medium: pencil and ballpoint pen. Influences: HR Giger, Gustave Dore, Salvador Dali, Zdzislaw Beksinski.

Table of Contents

1. Divine Violence
2. Mayo Monday
3. capital Gains
4. The Scarecrow Chase

5. When I Swallowed the Sun I Kissed the Night

6. What Mel Knows
7. Flensing and Hyphae
8. The Universal Monster
9. The Willows: Chapter II

Landmarks

1. Cover

2. Table of Contents

Welcome to Cosmic Horror Monthly

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

Divine Violence

By Valo Wing

Dying, the conservatory informed us, was for sopranos. Rule number one. As if we weren’t already aware of our fate; like it’s some great honor to sing ad nauseam a character devoid of agency and doomed from the start. We were warned. Told to accept it with a smile and move on. But my name’s never been Obedience and I took out insurance to safeguard myself instead.

“Keep her secure,” a voice—Archer’s distinct coloratura—directs. “We need to cut them out.”

Dust and darkness. Decaying velvet curtains. Wood varnish and the smell of dried spit staining the orchestra pit. We’re definitely on stage, but I can’t move, can barely see. Can’t make sense of the spasms wracking my body while copper clings to the roof of my mouth. There’s a dripping down the back of my throat, metallic and sharp.

Another voice swears. Says, low: “And if we can’t?”

I inhale a shallow breath laced with artistic desperation gone stale; concentrate on the insistent wet pulsing beneath my skin. There’s an innate alienness to the sensation. As if the wrong muscles are writhing in the wrong places. It’s claustrophobic; suffocating. So maybe this is salvation. Maybe Archer is here to help.

Archer, scoffs: “Can’t? Or won’t?”

Consciousness returns in a violent explosion of gilded pain.

They have me bound to a metal folding chair. I’m restrained by ropes—curtain tassel cord, by the feel of it—around my torso, my wrists, every goddamn finger. Incapacitated and on display center stage for an audience of ghosts.

I move to murmur Archer’s name—rotted sweet, ritardando, not to beg but to merely reason—and find no sound.

In my throat, only a vast and terrifying emptiness. My tongue is immobile, and I don’t know why. Terror slicks oily and suffocating in my lungs. Without my voice I hold no value. And I’ve done so much to safeguard the instrument.

Singers—the conservatory informed us—are not humans but commodities.

That’s rule number two.

Archer looms into my vision, a singular spotlight washing rainbows in her anemic, long hair. Her mouth curls. “The reign of terror ends tonight, Florian.”

And it’s then I realize we’re not alone. Others obscured by shrouds form a crescent around us. Closing in. Smiles of bared teeth, of malice, gleam painful white in the dark. Witnesses? Accomplices perhaps, or victims? A reign of terror implies acts of violence perpetrated. And a need for vengeance, for a dramatic curtain fall.

But I’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing we haven’t been taught.

“Hesperus,” Archer snaps. “Now, please.”

From stage left comes footsteps heavy and resigned and accompanied by the squeak of leather Doc Martens. The stage manager I finally succeeded in sleeping with last week says under her breath: “Fucking monsters.”

Archer, dry and flat in response: “You know what she did to Blanche, to Iris, and all the others. What she almost did to me. This is necessary.”

What she did to Blanche, only, I have no memory of ever touching the soprano—she died five days after my arrival here, I’d barely met her, was trapped in rehearsal when the news of her death broke.

There’s an audible swallow from the stage manager. Archer rolls her eyes and crouches before me. Her mouth is a horizon, and she fills the entirety of my vision, jeweled eyes blinking discordantly in some strange twitch. A haze of shrouded specters stand sentinel behind, silent and watchful with their grinning mouths.

“I’m simply following the rules,” Archer says, soft, as she tucks a strand of short hair behind my ear. The oil in my lungs rise; tar and blood suffocating vocal cords rendered useless by my recalcitrant tongue. Her finger lingers for just a moment. Hope blooms in my lungs but her hand retreats, nails scraping skin as she pulls away. “A villain always dies. Just like sopranos. Lucky for you, you’re both.”

The muscles undulate under my skin, desperate.

Archer crooks a finger over her shoulder. The smiling mouths advance. Rules one and two loop through my brain, a sear of hot metal, the slice of a sword. Barbed wire and viridian lightning. I can’t remember rule three. My eyes rove wildly, burning in my skull, hoping for mercy in a merciless crowd; the inability to speak, paralyzing.

A hand grips my shoulder; familiar but no longer comforting, no longer gentle and teasing. I crane my neck and Hesperus’ severe expression shatters what’s left of my sanity. In her eyes, the gleam of a razor blade, the promise of pain.

And I know what’s coming.

I just don’t know why.

“Do it now, Hes,” says Archer and turns away.

Hesperus doesn’t hesitate. The woman I so sweetly slept with just a week ago withdraws a switchblade from her pants pocket and slices into my arm, brutally efficient. One cut, two; parallel lines that round out at the bottom to meet. Then: the peeling back of skin; excruciation. She slides expert fingers into my arm. Wraps them around the flapping muscle taken residence there, now exposed to musty air. Tugs.

My jaw unhinges, and I scream soundless.

Archer glances over her shoulder, a slight smile playing like bloody dawn on her face. “For the love of fuck, Hes. Just cut it out. Return what was stolen.”

Hesperus inhales with determination as the first shrouded figure steps into the spotlight and falls to their knees before me. Opens their mouth to expose the swirling emptiness within.

And I remember rule three; realize what’s taken residence under my skin:

Tongues, and more than I can count. Tongues in my arms, my chest, wrapped about the knife’s edge of cheekbones and behind my eyes. I am fifty tongues and forty-nine of them lie; each lie protecting me from becoming the victim this place demands.

Stolen tongues, stolen voices, stolen stories.

And one soprano carefully entombed within.

Hesperus cuts the first tongue free, but I’m not concerned. Everything’s going to be okay. It doesn’t even hurt. Probably because it never belonged there in the first place. I made a valid attempt but I’m not out of options yet. There is still rule three.

Spray of blood in the air. Droplets on the floor like a scattering of rubies.

“Fucking shit!” growls Hesperus. The detached muscle in her fist struggles thickly. “Fucking goddamn shit.”

The kneeling, shrouded singer holds forth their cupped palms like a lost saint seeking absolution. Hesperus shoves it into their hands. The mouth takes their tongue and swallows the writhing mass: Iris, I suddenly recall, is her name. Recall how I slithered sweet adorations in her ear under a new moon, pressed my tongue against hers; bit and swallowed. Now she stares at me with a gaze unforgiving. My mouth is dry as starlight. In my arm, the place I stored her tongue bleeds brackish blood.

Archer’s steel voice over the insanity: “Keep cutting, there’s more, there’s more.”

She’s not wrong.

The entirety of my body quivers, the tongues alive and furious at their wrongful imprisonment, pushing against tendon, against bone, against blood vessels; desperate for freedom, frantic to reunite with their rightful owners.

I strain to clap a hand over the hole in my arm. Remember I’m tied down. Lips curl in a soundless growl of frustration and despair. There’s no fucking way I’m going back to the person I was before; a singular being, naked and exposed and raw. I’ve hidden myself in the voices of my classmates and it’s kept me safe, my real voice buried so deep no one can unearth it, no one can take my talent and use it against me. As long as I armor myself in everyone else, I can’t be killed.

Or to be more accurate, I can die forty-nine deaths and still live.

Like I said, insurance.

But—

Hesperus cuts and cuts until I’m down to only one.

So much for insurance.

When she’s finished, fingers crimson stained and shaking, I am a pulverized thing formerly human. Emptied. Blood in the air, on skin, leaking between cracked floorboards. Archer kneels before me, free of gore splatters, eyes like ice chips. She licks her lips, that tongue so red, so wet. I salivate with want. In the black of her pupils, I see a performance with my obituary inked into the program.

“Any defense?” she goads.

But there’s no speech in my mouth, no sound, no way to talk myself out of this. My tongue: stubbornly stone, hard as diamond. And it’s clear her victory, the smug portrait of an uncharacteristically triumphant soprano.

Archer holds out an open palm, and Hesperus hands over the dripping blade.

“I think a similar fate would befit the crime,” she croons, and my classmates nod within their shrouds behind her. Fingers cage closed mouths, as though in fear I’ll lunge from my bindings and devour their voices all over again. A cacophonic hum in the air duets the steady metronome of blood dripping to floor. Singers reunited with their instruments but too scared to open their mouths.

Stage lights and performance nights and one final fight.

I tease the urge to smile because I know what Archer’s forgotten.

Rule three sings in my mind.

Hesperus yanks back my head, hands like a vice. Archer advances. Pries her fingers between my teeth and studies the mass of flesh sitting useless with the black hole of my mouth. When the knife cuts I don’t flinch. I make no sound. No lamentation aria or tragic plea for mercy will spill from these lips. I sit, bound by the stage, blood pooling in my mouth and pouring free.

And smile.

Archer drops the blade in my lap. Examines the tongue with one eyebrow raised, revulsion carefully tucked away. With a spin, she faces the choir. (She’s a performer. Performers crave an audience.) Stuffs my tongue into her mouth, swallows dramatically. Takes a bow.

Then—

Like thunder, it begins with a rumbling basso profundo, before crescendoing into a histrionic riot of sound. Forty-nine singers rescued from the horror of Florian Beck’s violent assault. Forty-nine singers free again to sing their way to death, blissfully naïve players to a narrative that couldn’t give less of a shit for their well-being, their agency.

Because, of course, there is no agency in opera: not for the singer.

Archer massages her throat with delicate fingers. Looks at me with blood lust and pulls Hesperus into her arms; kisses the stage manager without breaking our eye contact. When they separate, Hesperus staggers to the floor. Archer tangles a possessive hand in her hair; a god and her scion from hell. Says:

“How does it feel, Florian? To have your voice ripped from you as you ripped from so many. To know you’re worthless to the conservatory. That it was all for nothing.”

It wasn’t, though.

My smiling silence prompts a curl in Archer’s lip; the dissatisfaction of not getting a response twitching in her fingers, causing a hitch in her breath. She shoves Hesperus toward me. Says, ragged and breathless: “Cut her free, Hes. She’s of no threat to us now.”

And Hesperus obeys as I smile on, slide to the floor in a puddle sunset-hued. The blade, at my side. I cast it a sideways glance. Come to my hands and knees so as not to choke on the blood pouring from the hole in my mouth. A deranged grin reflects from the red mirror. Voices in surround sound: singing, screaming, an unholy clamor of assholes and idiots.

I inhale blood and lift my head. Bring a hand to my lips and blow Archer a taunting kiss. She sneers, opens her mouth, and—

Silence: it’s an interesting brand of violence, if you’re asking my opinion. I always find it uncanny, how the things we learn on stage translate easily to real life, yet almost no one takes advantage. Silence: a concept unfathomable to most singers but not forgotten by me.

Archer’s eyes widen. Hand around her throat. Confusion. Terror. My dead tongue inside her an infection of soundlessness rapidly spreading. I couldn’t stop the infliction with Iris’ tongue. Or any of the others. Silence was coming for me the second I understood what it meant to be a singer and decided instead to fight.

Well.

Sharing is caring.

I claw at the bloodied switchblade. Stand. Hand it to her with a quiet gaze.

“Archer, no!” screams Hesperus while the chorus behind us falls into mourning choreography.

Too late.

Eerily compliant, she slices into her stomach, cuts free the poisoned tongue swallowed. It lands before me with an unceremonious plop. I scrabble for the muscle. Bring it to my lips and reinstate what was lost while Archer bleeds out on the floor.

Amused, I watch as every other singer takes up the knife in a panic, empties their mouths of tongues tainted by time spent under my skin, hoping my poison didn’t yet enter their veins. Idiots. Eager, I watch as the stage floor becomes a graveyard. Wait until the screams fade to ghosts.

Exhale.

Hesperus, still on the floor, shaking and tear-stained, looks at me with eyes haunted. Asks, raw: “Why?”

Copper and desperation and lost melodies in the air. I pick through the carnage, running my fingers through a strand of hair here, pinching an earlobe there, analyzing an iris dazzling blue until I have exactly what I need. The knife slips easy from Archer’s lifeless hand.

I carve myself a new set of armor, assemble it stronger, radiantly luminous and irresistible. The perfect suit to hide my true self beneath. Safe this way. The conservatory never should have told me the rules. Because once I understood the game, it was only a matter of time before I discerned how to win.

Hesperus watches wordless as I slip into my costume. In her eyes, only a fearful obedience, a silent vow to never betray. I smile with a tenor’s sensual lips, massage my new jaw constructed of mezzo-soprano grief, blink with the eyelids of a pretentious bass. Toss Archer’s anemic hair scattered in soprano rainbows over my shoulder and pull a few bills from my wallet; the payment a sprinkle of grave dirt over used-up bodies.

In opera—the conservatory informed us—there are only three rules:

Dying is for sopranos.

Singers are not humans but commodities.

And, most importantly, though almost never utilized, never fully understood:

The non-spoken moment controls the speaking.

I exit stage left, an untouchable god, without looking back. The curtain falls, obscuring an Act Three massacre. Hesperus follows behind, boots a slick slide through a wet wake of ruby droplets. Unhinged laughter bubbles in my throat but I smother it, choke it down, focus instead on what comes next. The industry won’t expect war. But I crave vengeance and am a desolation of the conservatory’s creation, wielding all I’ve learned.

Silence, a singer’s ultimate weapon. Silence: divine violence.

End.

Valo Wing (they/them) is a recovering operatic soprano turned professional funeral singer. Their short fiction is published in Dread Stone Press, Haven Speculative, and Brigids Gate Press. A Pitch Wars 2021 alum, they are represented by Naomi Davis at BookEnds Literary Agency. When not writing about unhinged lesbians or singing for dead people, they enjoy indulging an obnoxious velvet blazer obsession and drinking too much champagne. You can find them on Twitter @valo_wing.

Mayo Monday

By Richard Shifman

4:15 AM

“Shh,” she chides, emerging from shadows. “You’re turning the pages too loudly.”

He is bundled within the dark-tan throw, swallowed in its lumpy folds like a Chinese Shar Pei. His pale hand slips out, offering the book.

“I don’t want your story. I need you to stop making noise with it. I’m trying to sleep. Why are you up, anyway?”

“I woke at about three.” Always at 3:00. “I tossed and turned for an hour. I’m, uh, I don’t know. I grabbed the first book I saw.”

“Metamorphosis? I didn’t even know we had that.”

“I didn’t either. It was lying here. Maybe Davey found it in the basement.” He rises from the love seat, shedding the throw, leaving it splayed darkly across the couch’s lighter fabric, which could be green or yellow—impossible to tell in the dark bedroom. “Sorry I’m bugging you with my rustling. I’ll get out of your hair.” A thin crack of light from the hallway nightlight sneaks under the door, outlining his boxer shorts and T-shirt. “I’ll shower in the kids’ bathroom.”

“Don’t wake them either.” Her tone bites like mustard.

“I’ll wait downstairs until 5:30. They wake at 6:45 to get ready.”

“Do you want to stay home today and see them to the bus?” She knows he can’t do this.

“No…that’s okay.”

6:15 AM

The man on the radio—the self-proclaimed shock jock—gives a twisted giggle. “So, a massive tanker truck rolled on the Interstate just north of downtown Philadelphia. No fireball explosion, but its tank of mayonnaise broke wide open on the highway.” He laughs deeper. “What a thick mess on the road. Perfect for a Monday. Right?”

“You can make a sandwich on your way into work,” the shock jock’s partner opines, tongue-in-cheek. “Bring a butter knife, reach out your car window, and slap some of that goo on your white bread. Mayo Monday, Baby!”

Such a strange thing, he ponders as he zips north up the two-lane divided road stretching from his home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania into Central New Jersey. He drives five-miles-an-hour over the speed limit, keeping to the right lane in the daily event nicknamed the Route 202 Rally. All while wondering: Do tankers transport mayo? Mayo spill on a Monday? Are gallons and gallons of mayo oozing across the road? Will a giant stroll along and take a bite of the asphalt, now properly dressed in this fitting condiment?

7:01 AM

He reaches work in one hour. If he leaves his house at 6:00, he arrives at 7:00. If he stays to see the children off on their bus, and leaves at 8:00 in the morning, the road becomes congested, the trip takes twice as long, and he arrives at 10:00. That is late enough for his boss, Linda Lesser, to notice. So, he always leaves his house at 6:00 or 6:01.

As he pulls into the lot, he is thankful the mayo tanker did not overturn on 202 North, stalling his day interminably.

7:03 AM

He notices the difference as he exits his car, his brown cap-toe shoe sole scraping the parking lot blacktop. The elastic of his gray dress sock has given up and crumpled around his ankle, and the skin between his failed sock and gray slacks is soft and puffy…extra white. He pokes at his own flesh, and it gives. It is spongy, powdery. His leg is…a marshmallow? I am part marshmallow in both legs, he considers, and he thinks no more of it, except, striding toward the building, he presumes when he returns from work later, his children might toast one of his legs in the family room fireplace until it warps, charring and bubbling in the flame. They’ll sink their teeth into the lightly crisped leg, gazing up with perky lips ringed by white, gooey sweetness. Everyone in his family of four, including him, will laugh and laugh around the fireplace. It will be a rollicking good time. His wife will yank at his other leg, and it will detach from his body in a tangle of soft, sticky gelatinous foam. She’ll skewer his other leg with a jagged branch she brought from outside and thrust it into the fire where it will burn and shrivel. And she too will take a grand bite of him, although his leg will singe her mouth, her lips blistered and reddened. She won’t be as lucky as the children. Still, he is sure he is delicious on the inside, and he imagines if she only waits until his steaming, crunchy leg cools, she’ll find him safe to eat. Something his young daughter, Marley, likes to say comes to mind: ‘Tastes like peanut butter—take a taste.’

No, his legs are not peanut butter. Marshmallow. Marshmallow is softer and safer than peanut butter, which can kill you if you’re allergic to it.

The sun, a blood orange, rises over the trees behind the sprawling, three-story, New Jersey home office of Hutzin F. Co. He wonders how long it will take to clean all that mayonnaise off I-95. The road will be jammed up for miles and miles outside of Philadelphia, and here he is already at work up in New Jersey. He arrived on time, as usual. Early for work on this crisp January morning.

He stands in front of the employee doors, the secret doors to Hutzin F. Co. Now, there is no time to think about how his family might cook and eat him later, no time to wonder if they will enjoy him. There is serious work to be done. A lot of work. More than enough work to fill his day.

First, though, nutrition.

7:05 AM

The building’s interior carpet, dark and splotchy, looks like it hasn’t been replaced since 1975, its scent a mixture of butt-sweat pooling on a vinyl office chair and hospital disinfectant. He lopes down the narrow hall toward the elevator, gets in, and presses the button to the basement cafeteria. There, he will order the same as ever from reliable Pierre: one egg over-medium on a lightly toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese and a parfait of yogurt layered with fresh blueberries, strawberries, and granola. His mouth waters. He wonders, as the elevator doors close him in, how he is standing on marshmallow legs. He should not be upright.

No employees from upstairs are in the cafeteria. This is not that unusual, given he arrives before many of his co-workers, beginning work at 7:23 when nobody knows he is secreted in his tiny office. However, none of the cafeteria workers are present either, the triangular food area a dim ghost town, its fluorescent lights flickering above. Pierre is missing. Gladys is not at the register. The open cold cases along the wall are well-stocked, though, and he reaches for a plastic parfait cup.

Wait.

He cocks his head, inspecting the parfait cup. This is different. The lidded plastic container is the size of a parfait cup. Yet, there is no fruit, only what appears to be vanilla yogurt. He wonders if the cafeteria workers are on strike, and he did not hear about it. A yellow label is pasted to the cup. It reads: ‘MAYO – 5 cents.’

Something his father—a man’s man who fought in the second world war and worked at a Hutzin competitor, Durbin Inc., for forty years afterward—used to say comes to him: ‘All that and a nickel will buy you a cup of coffee.’

“Or a cup of mayo,” he says aloud. A nickel. As if. His father had been an ‘old dad’ with old-timey thoughts. Every morning, his dad had pulled out of their driveway as the school bus, lights flashing, rumbled up; every night, his father had rolled up the darkened driveway. His dad had claimed it was God’s intention for him to work hard.

He scans the open, refrigerated cases, which usually hold parfaits and fruit cups and small juice containers and milk cartons. They are lined with clear plastic cup after clear plastic cup of yellow-labeled mayonnaise. The case lights are bright, in sharp contrast to the murky food area. Were these lights bright before? he wonders. There are five cases, each with four shelves, each shelf holding about twenty mayo cups across. Four hundred mayo cups, he calculates quickly. How did this happen? Did they clean the mayo from highway, package it, and ship it up here? It all must have happened so fast, so very fast, that Mayo Monday (Baby) spread like The Blob from Philly to Central New Jersey. The mayo in each cup is clean and white, though. No crumbles of asphalt. Just pristine mayo.

He takes a cup of mayo, knowing he must eat, his stomach growling. Will the mayo mix with my marshmallow? he ponders. What would that even produce?

He fishes in his pocket, leaves a dime heads-up on the cash register, and grabs a plastic spoon. He sits at a small table by a floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the Koi Pond in the sunken courtyard outside the lower level. The bright orange and pinkish-white fish, beautiful creamsicles, dart about in the silvery water, steam rising from its surface. It is still cold outside. He passes a spoonful of mayo between his lips. It’s sour, tart, savory, yet also bland and blah. He struggles to swallow it, wishing he had some orange juice or grapefruit juice to wash it down.

This is all I have and all I deserve, he thinks.

“Daydreaming at the window?” Sal Mesmer, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for the Hutzin Growth-Product Division sits across from him. He’s a bulldog, broad shouldered with a thick nose, square jaw made of marble, and icy dark-brown eyes, nearly black as buttons. He always wears a bright yellow tie, done up in a perfect Windsor knot and contrasting with a starched, deep-blue dress shirt with a white collar like he’s come from the set of the movie Wall Street.

Daydreaming? “Uh…”

“What do you have there?”

“Oh. It’s mayo. It’s all they had. The cases are full. It’s from a spilled tanker near Philly.”

“Oh. Nice. Mayo Monday.” Sal declares this as if he knew it was a mayonnaise-only Monday, and he is sad he forgot to buy some himself, although he could rise at any time and grab a cup from the cases. Sal reaches over, snatches the spoon from his hand, and scoops it into the cup, digging up an extra-big, jiggling glob. “Here comes the mayo plane! Open up,” Sal commands, waving the spoon, an airplane weaving through the air.

Like an automaton or that Droog from A Clockwork Orange being spoon-fed his mush at the end of the movie, he pops open his mouth for the Vice-Presidential mayo plane.

In goes the mayo. He puckers.

“Good. You like it,” Sal states. “Because it’s good, and you know it’s good.”

Sal is always so assured, so yes, he believes he must like it. Sal is certain, so he is certain. He closes his eyes and gulps, shunting the slick mayo down his throat. “Mmm.”

“Good, you’re eating it. This is harvested fresh from the highway in Philadelphia, you know. You heard about that, right?”

He thinks he himself said that a moment ago, but he nods because of course Sal is never wrong. Sal would know. Sal says everything with confidence, making what he says always true.

“I didn’t like your recommendation on the latest ad test,” Sal says plainly, urging another spoonful.

In goes the mayo, this bite tarter than the last.

“You market research people need to be more pragmatic. You’re going to rethink which concept won.” Sal feeds him another spoonful, cleaning the edges of his mouth for him with a napkin. “There you, go, baby. Mayo Monday,” Sal mutters.

He is choking now, trying not to sputter. God forbid, he spits up a dribble of mayo on Sal’s beautiful ensemble.

“I could make you choose the right concept if I wanted to, you know.” Sal offers another heaping spoonful, quivering like white Jell-OTM. “If I wanted to, I could decide for you,” Sal states, flipping a napkin at him.

Eyes watering, he coughs into the napkin.

Sal continues. “But you’ll make the right decision. Which is not the conclusion you came to before. You will see. Good mayo, right? Mayo Monday, Baby!”

He nods, wiping his mouth, and he studies his ankles, swollen and puffy. He shoves his legs under the table. If Sal notices he is a confectionery treat, the VP will light him on fire, wait until he’s charred, and take a bite, crunching through his crispy burnt skin to suck on his gooey inner sweetness.

Sal stands and hands him back the spoon. “So, you’ll reconsider which ad concept won?”

He nods. Of course, he will. Sal must be right; Sal is convinced, equaling perfect correctness.

“Well, we should get to work. I’m prepping for a presentation to the entire home office. It’s on Monday motivation. Do you always get here so early?”

He nods. He works at his desk, getting results, from shortly after seven until 5:22 PM. Ten hours. “I’m always getting results for you,” he says.

“You should get fewer results. Tomorrow you’ll come in later,” Sal instructs. “If you come in at all. Because this is a corporation,” he claims as if that explains everything. “Hey man, you’ve got a bit of mayo here.” Sal’s pinky diddles the corner of his own sneering lips.

“Yes, Sal.” He wipes his mouth, his pinky coming away greasy, smeared with white.

“Finish your mayo. Don’t leave the dining hall until it’s gone.” Sal marches off.

“Okay.” He does as he’s directed, shoveling globs of shivering white emulsion into the back of his throat, swallowing without hardly tasting it, yet still gagging three times.

7:24 AM

There is so much to do upstairs on the second floor in his windowless office. Checking budget spreadsheets, reviewing field numbers, managing dispositions, contacting suppliers. He calls a supplier who isn’t achieving results. “Why is this segment low?” he asks.

“Didn’t you hear about the tanker truck that spilled mayo everywhere?” she replies, seeming to switch tack.

“Yes.”

“Well, the segment in question is tied to the mayo industry. They’re on strike.”

“Oh.”

“Now that there’s been a huge mess, the strike is over. It will get better tomorrow.”

“Will it?”

“Our team of forecasters predicts.”

“You have a team of forecasters to predict the responses we will obtain in each segment?” No wonder this supplier’s prices are so high. He figured it was because they kept their office in Center City.

“Of course. Did you enjoy some of the spilled mayo?” She is making small talk. He glances at his clock. There will be no time for lunch.

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Wasn’t it scrumptious? Delicious on a hoagie.” She says ‘hoagie’ like a real Philadelphian, hard accent on the o.

“Mmm. It was…clean?”

She laughs. Suppliers will laugh when you make a lame joke. “My children called it road-kill mayo. Amelia, my pre-teen, wouldn’t let me put it on her sandwich. Can you imagine the nerve?” She has steered the conversation to their kids, his weakness. She knows this. She is the face of her company, and she’s good at selling…constantly selling.

But he bites. “I bet my wife spread it on Davey and Marley’s lunches. She’s efficient.”

“I know. One thing I love about you, you really care about your kids.” She is selling. “It’s great you get home around six-thirty for dinner every evening. You’re a good dad. But Marley and Davey are seven and nine, right? Wait until they hit the pre-teen and teen years like mine. You might find yourself spending more time at work.” She laughs.

“Maybe.”

“So…we’re good?” she asks.

“Yeah. I trust you. Talk with you later.” He signs off, and he’s back to his spreadsheets and completing forms and submitting questionnaires/ market research stimuli through the online Process. There are many steps to the Process. The Process takes a while, and he loses track of the time. He keeps his door cracked, but nobody bugs him. Shadows rush to and fro outside his office. Somebody yells, “There’s more mayo in the cafeteria,” followed by a couple of whoops and a smattering of applause. He looks up and it’s 4:22. He knows the real work starts at 5:30. That’s when everybody in Sales & Marketing, his internal clients, winds down on the other side of the building and emerges from their offices.

A year ago, when he was transferred to this building, Tony Baroni, his mentor, who since retired after forty-five years at Hutzin, told him he must wander over that way at 5:29. ‘It’s a casual cocktail party,’ Tony explained. ‘Everything but the mixed drinks. This isn’t the 1970s after all, so no cigarettes or alcohol. But the important stuff gets done then. Mingling. The real consequences. You’ll find your best friend at work. You know the GallupTM question? You absolutely must make a best friend at work.’

He knows Tony was right. Still, he can’t help but get things done—get results.

A tap at his door. Will E. Littleman, zombie salesperson extraordinaire, peeks in his head. “Thought I’d find you here.” Without asking, Littleman lurches in and half collapses into a chair in front of his desk. A bit of the top curve of Littleman’s ear plunks to the carpet, and the ghoul grabs it and smushes it back onto his ear at an odd angle. Littleman rips the plastic top off a container, dips a spoon, and takes a taste. “Mmm. Mayo lunch. Have you tried it yet?”

He nods. “For breakfast.”

“Yum, huh?” Littleman grunts.

“Yeah. For sure. So good.”

Littleman bends his plastic spoon backward and flicks a dollop of mayo across the desk at him. Some of it, cold and wet, finds his nose with a small splat. “No, don’t remove it,” Littleman scolds him for lifting a finger. “Leave it there. Leave it there.” Littleman likes to say things twice. “I have one question. One question.”

His stomach drops. “You do?” The last round of ad tests went well. What could Littleman want?

“Why? Why?” Littleman growls, popping a spoonful into his mouth and slurping as if he is sucking down brains.

He licks his lips, his mouth dry. “Why, what?”

Littleman makes a zombie sound, an ‘urrgggh.’ Never a good sign. “Why? Why would you remove from the tracker the single attribute we really need? The attribute we use to see how well we’re competing on sourness.”

His eyes dart about. The tracker. He’d sent a pre-read of the report yesterday. They’d kept it the same, except…

“Why would you tell the supplier to drop that attribute from the questionnaire?”

He recalls, two months ago, the ad agency guy, Slim Shadai, popping his head into his office, much like Littleman had just done. ‘Oh, hey, we want to remove that attribute from the tracker, okay. To make room for the two we added,’ Slim Shadai had declared.

At the time, he had been immersed in a half-dozen other things. He had not thought to ask Littleman about it. He had deleted the attribute—the question. A rookie mistake, not cross-checking with Littleman. Now, the undead is before him, knocking on his door, sprawling in his chair. To blame the ad man, he senses, would be a mistake on top of a mistake. Mayo on top of more mayo.

“Why? Why?” Littleman growls.

“I’m sorry. I made a dumb mistake.” His heart plummets into a black hole, swallowed by time and space.

“You know you did. Hey, eyes on me, guy!” Littleman flicks more mayo at him, and a yellowish-white clump plops onto his shoulder. The mayo is going bad. “What are you looking at? The clock?”

He had been checking the clock in the lower right-hand corner of his computer screen.

“You know, you leave early every day at like 5:22, right? But we all have places to go, man. What makes you special? You don’t think I’d rather be out on the streets, staggering slowly toward unsuspecting passersby? Gouging their necks with my sharp, sharp teeth, tearing off chunks of muscle and sinew as their blood spurts brilliantly through the air. You don’t think I’d rather be out bashing peoples’ heads into the pavement and scooping out clumps of their brains?” Littleman’s gray tongue darts out. “Instead, I’m here from 9:30 to 6:30 every day, doing the work. You should try working at least an eight-hour workday, dude. Then you might not make terrible errors like the one you just made.”

Terrible error, he thinks as Littleman flicks another spoonful at him, a dribble landing on his neck. He imagines he is now a Jackson Pollock masterpiece of mayo.

Linda Lesser’s round face nudges between the door and the jamb. “Oh, here you fellas are! Having fun?” Linda smiles. The Executive Director of Growth-Product Analytics at Hutzin always smiles. She is a bagful of smiley smiles.

Littleman stands. “I’m leaving.” He slaps the half-filled mayo container onto the desk. “You eat the rest, okay?” Littleman slides it at him.

“Okay.”

As he passes Linda, Littleman gnashes his teeth and fake grabs at her throat as if he might chomp on her neck or smash her head against the door, grabbing a fistful of her dripping brains to gobble. “Oh, you,” she laughs, tapping his shoulder, and Littleman guffaws, a zombified silly-laugh.

With an ‘urrgh, urrgh, urrgh,’ he vanishes around the corner.

“I need to see you in my office at 5:22, okay?” Linda asks, but it is not a question.

“Okay.”

“Enjoy your mayo.” And she’s gone.

5:22 PM

“We’re going to put you on a performance improvement plan,” Linda states, the smile never dropping from her face. “There have been several issues.” Her voice drops to a murmur. He doesn’t hear the rest, but he’s sure the missing attribute is one of the issues. “We’ll know more in ninety days,” she finishes.

Tony Baroni’s voice echoes in his head: ‘Nobody survives a performance improvement plan.’

The mayo bubbles in his throat. “Can we expedite it to thirty days? I’ll take a package.”

She nods, grinning with her mouth closed. “Okay. I know you’ve got a lot going on, and I told you a year ago this job would be a challenge. And now your legs have turned to marshmallow.”

So, she noticed.

“When you leave, we’ll tell people you must take care of your marshmallow legs. Everyone will understand.”

“I’ve been with Hutzin twelve years. What’s the package?”

“Eleven years. You’ll be three days shy of twelve years. So, you’ll get eleven.”

“Eleven?”

“Eleven gallons of mayo.” She stands and extends her hand.

They shake. “That seems fair. Thank you.”

“It’s 5:26. You go home early. Take a half day.” She laughs. “Be careful with those legs though.” She sneezes. “This darned cold. Hope I’m not getting that thing on the news.”

“Isn’t that in China?”

“It’s out in Washington state, too. Can’t recall the name. A beer brand? Anyway, take a half day. Go home to your family. Don’t show them your legs. Be safe.”

“Okay.”

He imagines dressing for work and leaving the house each day, so his wife doesn’t know he’s jobless.

He doesn’t remember getting in his car, but suddenly he’s driving. His wife is on the speakerphone asking him to make a quick stop at the grocers, and she will delay dinner by thirteen minutes. She asks him to pick up:

one quart of milk
one pack of graham crackers
three chocolate bars

“Okay.”

The sun has dipped below the hills, the miles-away Pennsylvania sky a muted purple with splashes of pink. The road south is clear, no mayo in sight as he barrels toward home.

End.

Richard Shifman is an author of speculative fiction, part-time market research contractor, and lover of hoagies loaded with extra mayonnaise. His science-fiction short story, Accumulation, was published in 2019 in Eunoia Review. He writes YA novels—mostly horrifying and bizarre stories—under the pen name R.B. Shifman, and he’s been actively querying for the past few years. He lives with his wife near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. His son, a recent Emerson College graduate, lives in the Boston area, and his daughter is a Computer Science major in college.

By Drew Cuturilo

capital Gains

By Matthew Chabin

‘Тэнгэр том, төв оффис алс хол байдаг

Tenger tom, töv offis als khol baidag

The sky is big, and Head Office is far away.’

Tim from IT (with a degree from MIT) came pushing a stainless-steel trolley that resembled an airline service cart with a large keypad lock. I leaned back in my chair and watched. He wheeled it up to Meeting Room 1, propped the door, pulled the cart through.

‘Та нарт ямар хугацаа байна?

Ta nart yamar khugatsaa baina?

What time do you have?’

He moved with imperturbable, priestly economy—opening the box, unrolling hoops of cord, poking around under the table. He was a priest, of sorts. Had he minored in necromantics, or was that just part of general tech studies now? I heard a slurping sound and deduced that Gary Stilhort was standing behind me. Gary slurped his coffee and took liberties with personal space.

Үдийн хоолны ү—I paused the Mongolian language-learner and took the earbud out of my ear. A slurp, and a deep, monotone voice, “Is that what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is, Gary?”

His mug said ‘Careful, or you’ll end up in my novel’ in blotchy, typewriter font. Some days I felt like I was already in such a hell as Gary Stillhort would author (talk about the banality of evil). Tim was turning the wand that closed the blinds, disappearing behind the louvered, gray shield.

“Saw you rubbernecking,” I said.

“Saw you checking out his ass.” Slurp. “You going to the gala thing tonight?”

“Don’t know,” I said. I stood, took my coat off the chair. “Will it be as spectacular as last year’s?”

“I heard they’re going to gild the Behemoth.”

“That so?” I unhooked the earbuds from my desktop and plugged them into my phone. I opened the Mongolian app, and stuck the earbud back in my ear, picking up where I’d left off. “Shughla will want us in there as soon as he’s set up. I’m going for a puff. You?”

“Promised my kids I was quit.”

“Right. See you in the box.”

The auto-walk made a belt through the access corridor that circled the building. Outside, darkness, a bloodless glow in the east that looked underqualified to lift it. Stalled cars on the interchange strung the old market district like a pearled garotte, streets dark under 24-hour-lighted towers. I was running on less than four hours sleep, and the half-remembered dream-stuff bobbed up between thoughts. Fragments, floaters. Shughla following me around a department store nursing a wolf-pup. A whole department devoted to shearing rats. Waiting in line to buy…dynamite? Rat fur, 50% off; regular price for a half-shaved rat.

Дэлхий тойрон байна. Инноваци бол хэзээ ч тогтоогдоогүй нар юм

Delkhii toiron baina. Innovatsi bol khezee ch togtoogdoogüi nar yum.

The Earth is round. Innovation is a sun that never sets.

My lips traced the words as I watched the track-mounted TV screens gliding towards me. They were supposed to move in synch with the walk, but the timing was screwy. Pictures always moving closer or drifting way, like the tides. Today the tide was coming in. The Hourly Agon was a handsome blue crayfish versus an imposing, black scorpion. Even money on the scorp? Stinger an ace, surely. I let the impulse slide. Who the hell bet on bugs? Crustaceans. Whatever. Cray, a dark horse, bulldozing Scorps with outsized pincher-claws, stinger glancing off bleu de France armor. Scorp’s tale an unexpected handicap, the curve causing it to ramp up the glass, tip, topple sideways. Cray capitalizing, ground and pound, groans and curses up and down the track, bug-betters crapping out. Too much confidence in that stinger.

Баяраасаа татгалзаж, агуу оролдлогыг оролдохоос бүү ай

Bayaraasaa tatgalzaj, aguu oroldlogyg oroldokhoos büü ai.

Don’t be afraid to give up the good, and go for the great.

A reversal! Scorps, with a good brace against wall, had flipped Cray. Not just jabbing but gouging with the sting, working a joint in the carapace. Smart. For a bug. Arachnid. Whatever. I leaned back to catch the action as the darkening screen sailed overhead. A chorus of hoots and cheers from the betters signaled the outcome. Picture Cray, flopping in paralytic agony as Gary Stilhort writes him an epitaph. The next screen drifted in, next matchup: a 600 lb., steroid-enhanced wild boar versus a genetically reconstructed cave hyena. I’d be stuck in a meeting.

It wasn’t until I was out on the deck, sucking pineapple-flavored nicotine mist with a secret, micro-shot of amphetamine to keep me on my A-game, that I thought of poor Kirby Kincaid.

Тамд хэдэн хохирогчийг авчирсан уу?

Tamd kheden khokhirogchiig avchirsan uu?

How many sacrifices have you brought us?

If I squinted and counted down from the aircraft warning light on the hundredth floor, I could make out what had been his office on the northwest corner of the Grayson and Tyde building. A light on—new occupant already? G&T was about the oldest edifice on the horizon, and after the titanic, upstart marble horns of Plethorax across the canal, the biggest. It would survive the lateral loss of Killer Kirby-K. Nuts for me, though. He’d been my main contact over there. He raised purebred Vizslas with his wife, loved opera, smoked Cohibas dipped in rum and shot a mean game of billiards. Sonofabitch had made his bed, though. They (Shughla and Upstairs) had tried to do it the nice way, and he’d said no, so he’d met with the headhunters instead. Lateral promotion. He was ours now.

I felt a vibration in my pocket, checked my phone. Message from Shughla: seats in 5. I took a last peck of vape and hurried inside, wondering what a cave hyena weighed.

As usual, I sat beside Kate Paradis and across from Terrence Drybough.

“Did we have to do this before lunch?” muttered Kate under her breath. Kirby Kinkade’s head sat in a faux-travertine dish of sorts facing away from the Chair. His graying hair was pressed down in a listless, blood-crusted Caesar, his eyes hooded with the morbid stupidity that seems always to attend death by violence. This was the man who’d singlehandedly opened Mongolia and drafted their new constitution in Mongolian, sitting (well, not exactly sitting) in a puddle of his own drool looking dumb enough to eat his shoes. Not that he’d ever eat anything again. Or wear shoes.

“He doesn’t look so proactive,” said Terrence.

“Tim’s still working on him,” said Ron. Ron Wellings, the Ops Director, a large, sleek walrus of a man in a maroon jacket. “Shughla wants to start as soon as he’s ready.”

Terrence stifled a yawn, and his eyes traveled around the table until the settled on me. “How’s fishing, Samuel?”

I presumed he meant my recent scouting trip to the Gobi. “Call me Ishmael, Terrence.” I made a harpooning gesture in his direction. He smiled with glinting, pointed teeth, but I didn’t think he took the reference.

“You’ll be attending the gala tonight, I trust?”

I shrugged. “Haven’t decided yet. I might take in a show.”

He wagged an admonishing finger. Pound for pound, Ron was the most dangerous person at the table (pending Shughla’s arrival), but Terrence was my biggest enemy. It was typical office bullshit. Shughla, recently promoted to Floor Manager, had gotten her teeth filed. Terrence had followed suit, showing up at the office Christmas party with a load on and a bloody mouth from biting his tongue. Everyone held their breath to see how it would play, and the next week Shughla tapped him to chair the New Year kickoff. Within six months everyone with a director’s pin was sporting $12,000 shark smiles. Everyone except me.

I wasn’t trying to make any grand statement, I just didn’t think filed teeth would look good on me. They looked great on Shughla—you’d think she’d been born with them. They complimented Terrence’s blade-thin, youthful face rather well, and Ron looked like an affable cannibal chieftain who’d just eaten his weight in missionaries. But Gary looked like an absolute moron, wanting only an earring to commemorate his midlife crisis, and Kate looked especially comical mincing cafeteria salads with her superfluous canines. Still, I probably would have folded too if I hadn’t come in one day to find my desk—every single drawer—filled with lawnmower clippings.

Ha-ha, Samuel has square teeth! What an asshole! What a grass-eating fool!

I knew Terrence was behind it, out to capitalize on his momentum. But the one who’d laughed the loudest was a new hire named Jim Franklin, brash young jackass we’d brought up from one of our subsidiaries. Jimmy didn’t have a proper rabbi yet, just Terrence egging him on, and here he was, messing with a twenty-year veteran. Incredible. It took me all of two phone calls to start a whisper campaign three floors up that little Jimmy was having lunch with G&T Intel Division. They flayed him at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for our Jersey building, fed him to the Behemoth while we ate ambiguous hors d’oeuvres and the band played ‘Moving On Up.’

A week later Shughla came in with her teeth dyed black, like the courtesans of ancient Japan. She seemed to be daring the office to imitate her a second time. No one did. I was promoted to Director of Imminent Dominion and Terrence received no further favor. Camels have square teeth. You don’t want one taking a bite out of you.

Shughla came in. Everyone’s posture improved. A dark-skinned, blue-eyed Pashto woman with a helmet of silver hair, she was only five-four, but moved in a field of fearsome energy. “Where’s Tim,” she said as she took her seat.

“Here ma’am,” said Tim, slipping through the door with his sleeves rolled up and his hands sheathed in rubber gloves.

“I’d like to start.”

“Yes ma’am.”

We watched as he tipped Kirby’s head sideways and affixed a latex plunger to the nub of vertebrae sticking out of the ruined neck. This screwed into a rubber tube that ran through a hole in the middle of the bowl. It seemed indecorous to look under the table and see what it connected to, but a clutch of wires and smaller tubes ran out near Shughla’s chair and into tanks, cylinders and ports in the open trolley. So much for the practical engineering side of capitular reanimation.

As for the rest, Tim opened a compartment, took a pair of tongs, and placed the four scarab beetles—red, green, black, and silver-white—at cardinal points around the rim of the bowl. They sat, torpidly still, while he sprinkled them with salt and applied a drop of water from a dropper. Then he used an app on his phone to play a rapid series of notes that sounded like an atonal jazz riff. Immediately the beetles began to march in a clockwise direction, keeping their equal distance.

“By the way,” said Shughla, “I expect you all to be at the gala tonight.”

Terrence smiled at me, his fangs peeking out.

“Word from Upstairs is that the Behemoth has been sullen, possibly due to the low turnout for its birthday.”

“We were in Ulannbaatar,” said Kate.

“I’m not interested in why people missed, only that enough of you were absent to put the B off its feed. See that it doesn’t happen again, or you will be its feed. You know you all mean the world to it.”

Tim had disappeared below the table, and Gary, shielded from Shughla’s view by Terrence, rocked slightly in his chair and let his eyes roll up. I declined to acknowledge his clowning and instead watched the beetles parade the hours. Suddenly Kirby made a noise, a low, muddy groan, and drool trickled from his mouth. “Muh…Mumma…” he said. “Mumma!”

“This is obscene,” muttered Ron. Kate stifled a whimper and looked away. Shughla curled her lip at her. I calculated she had about a month left under Shughla’s wing before she was packed off to Mongolia for good.

Everyone jumped as Kirby belted out a verse—“Born on a mountain top, raised in a bog! I’m a Sigma Nu stallion got a twenty-meter hog!” Then “Ohhhh Mumma, mimesooorry Mumma….” His eyes fluttered open, looked around—seeing us. Nobody spoke. His eyes followed one of the beetles as it marched around the dish, and a look of horrified dawning overtook his face. “Oh God, no! No-no-no! You bastards! You fucking bastards, no!”

“He’s up,” said Tim. “Buzz me if you need me.” He went out.

Kirby was weeping big, gelatinous tears. I looked at my hands. Ron said, “Mr. Kincaid, I know this must be stress—”

“Stressful?!” shouted Kirby. “I had a life! I was three years shy of retirement. Are you going to tell my wife? Huh? My kids?”

“Mr—”

“Is that Ron Welling?” Kirby grinned savagely, his eyes beaming hate. “I nailed your wife, you know that? Last year in Bahrain, the trade summit. She showed me your little box of toys, told me how you like it. Stay golden, ponyboy!” Ron turned a color to match his coat, breathing audibly through his nose. I’d never seen him bent out of shape before, even when he’d cut off his little finger to appease the Khuvsgul magistrate.

“Kirby,” I said, “Come on, we’re all professionals here. You’re—”

“I’m a fucking beef turnup, Sam, and you’re a two-faced Judas company man, and that’s the truth about us both!”

“You know this wasn’t my—”

“Oh I know whose idea it was. Where’s that hell-whore, huh? Where’s that skull-faced—”

He didn’t finish, because Shughla had picked up one of the beetles and dug her thumbnail into the joining of its head and thorax. The beetle thrashed its legs and beat its wings with a mad, chittering sound, and Kirby’s eyes bugged out and his mouth worked like a fish in dry air. Gary looked into his coffee mug where perhaps his next great novel was gestating. Kate looked ill. Ron shook his head with avuncular condescension, and Terrence smiled with open amusement.

Finally, Shughla set the beetle back on the dish. Kirby sucked a breath and gave a puling whine. The beetles, I’d heard, wove the veil in situ around the reanimate and kept him from seeing into the realms that awaited him. Whatever he’d seen had sucked the fight right out of him. He stared a thousand-yard tunnel through Ron Wellings, and blood trickled from his nostril.

“That’s enough,” said Shughla. “Ron here is going to see you situated, go over the details of your new contract, but that’s later. Right now, we need you to brief us on greasing the Mongolians. I shouldn’t need to tell you that time is money so—”

“God!” said Kirby.

Shouts outside. Someone ran past, heading for the observation deck. Shughla got up slowly and walked out the door. One by one, the others rose and followed. I was last.

At first I couldn’t tell what everyone was gawking at. I had the momentary impression that the building was rotating, a parallax effect as the gray slums that clung to the distant hills like barnacles seemed to move behind the Plethorax tower. Then I realized the horizon wasn’t moving, Plethorax was! The building had uprooted itself and now wore a skirt of crumbling earth and concrete through which a fluidly shifting blackness could be glimpsed. At this distance its progress seemed slow, but the shadow of the great, black obelisk swept across the rubble lots, junkyards, and warehouses, and I figured its speed-over-ground as comparable to a large ship underway.

By the time it reached the dry canal dividing Plethorax territory from Grayson and Tyde, the mass of multi-jointed, hook-toed legs had shuffled off most of the debris, and their reduced agitation brought it to a near stop. “It’s gonna tip!” someone shouted. Instead, a protuberance of pulpy, flesh-like material bulged from its basement undercarriage and spilled into the 60-meter trench. On this pseudopod the vast tower drifted out over the edge, so slowly its progress was nearly insensible, the barbs of its hundred-odd legs sunk deep into its own lower organ to make a tensile bracing. Poor G&T. They’d been on the cutting edge of market trends for the last three decades, but they hadn’t seen this one coming.

The collision happened at 11:46, just twenty-eight minutes after Plethorax went mobile. By then it looked like the G&T building was tilting slightly in the opposite direction, perhaps straining with some underdeveloped ambulatory system of its own. A long, black proboscis burst from the glittering glass dome of Plethorax, arced down and punched through the left pauldron of G&T’s famous New Deco armorial design. Several more such appendages emerged from the lower floors and grafted themselves through the victim’s undefended lower levels. A hundred-foot section of G&T’s south-facing windows exploded all at once, venting glassy, greenish flames, and black torrents spewed from the breach and ran down the side of tower. The gap between the buildings disappeared as G&T was wrenched out of its foundations and crushed against the mighty upstart.

A chorus of hoots and savage cheers went up.

“Maggots, die!”

“Fucking worms!”

“Death to G&T scum!”

Some blind, milky-eyed mystagogue from upstairs was banging a gong and shouting “Creative destruction! Creative Destruction!” over and over. A skulk of interns on the lower deck had taken up the mantra and were masturbating in a circle while two female recruiters went around biting them on the necks. No one with half a brain was celebrating, though. Shughla and Ron had the blank faces of primitives watching the eruption of a volcano.

I turned and slipped through the crowd, back into the deserted office. The meeting room was dark. The power-saving lights came back on as I entered. I’d thought to give Kirby a word of encouragement, tell him he still knew how to mint good luck out of bad, but one look at him stopped me. He was just staring, weeping and drooling into the dish while the beetles marched circles around him.

On the table was a pencil with needling teeth marks, like a tiny, gnawed bone. Terrence was always biting his pencils—he was known for it. I picked it up. I picked up Kirby’s head by the hair. The suction cup came off with a tug, and a moist, popping sound. I poked around the base of his skull with the pencil until I found a soft spot. I pushed it in as far as it would go, cramming the eraser up into the soft tissue. The muscles in his face twitched violently and went slack.

I slipped out and went back to my desk, wondering how long it would take Tim from IT to figure out the problem. Whether Shughla would kill him first. I put the ear buds in my ears, pressed play.

“Look sharp people, a new day is coming.”

Khümüüsee amid kharaarai. Shine ödör irj baina.

Хүмүүсээ амьд хараарай. Шинэ өдөр ирж байна.

End.

Matthew Chabin hails from Portland, Oregon.  He worked as a journalist in the Navy, as a teacher in the Czech Republic, and in several volunteer capacities with the Tibetan community in Dharamsala, India.  He currently lives with his family in Japan, where he teaches full-time.  He holds a Master’s in creative writing, and his work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.  His Face Book writer’s page, ‘Matt’s Dark Places,’ has more information and links to published material.

The Scarecrow Chase

By Robin Maginn

At Andrew’s funeral, Alison found it made things just a little bit easier to calmly catalogue the demonstrations of grief she was witnessing. For that to be her focus rather than anything else.

Tears and embraces and brave smiles. Eyes that forced themselves to meet hers; eyes that couldn’t, elusive and darting. The sound of people talking, the changes in tone, the way words sometimes caught in mouths. The faint scent of soil on her clothes that lingered after the burial.

If it felt like she was putting up barriers to keep herself sane, then at least it was something she was familiar with: the documentaries Alison had been making for more than 20 years went to some of the darkest places to reveal the truth hidden there.

She knew how to protect herself.

Her ex-husband Mike grew progressively drunker as the day went on and, later, when friends and family departed, he clumsily tried to kiss her. She pushed him away, and he howled for their dead son, collapsing in a heap at her feet.

She catalogued that moment too, in her head, without emotion.

* * *

The following day, she travelled to Mike’s flat. In Andrew’s bedroom, she traced the books on his shelf with her finger - cinema theory, filmmaking techniques, and biographies of auteurs. All the DVDs he owned were documentaries; not the usual collection of an eighteen-year-old.

‘You were his hero,’ said Mike, standing in the doorway. He looked pale. ‘You know that, right? Ali? He worshipped you.’

‘Can I smoke?’ asked Alison.

‘Not in here.’ said Mike. ‘Please.’

Outside, on the cramped balcony, they sat on wooden chairs and smoked in silence for a bit.

‘When did he start getting serious about making movies?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘No, well he wanted to surprise you, I think, when he was ready. You’re a lot to live up to.’ He dropped his head suddenly. ‘Oh fuck. Live up to…’

‘It doesn’t feel real for you yet, does it?’ she asked, after a beat.

‘Are you joking? It only feels real. Does it not for you?’

From the courtyard below, she heard children laughing. She looked over the balcony edge and frowned as she saw three boys and one girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, carrying another, smaller child on their shoulders. But flat on their shoulders, like a procession. They reached a tree and dumped the child down hard. Alison flinched.

‘Does it not feel real to you?’ Mike repeated.

‘What’s going on down there?’ she asked. Now she could see that what she thought was a child was actually, thankfully, not. It was dressed garishly, in mismatched clothes and the face was relatively featureless. A football, she realised. The whole head was a football but punctured and half deflated so it folded in on itself like a huge toothless mouth.

‘Where?’ asked Mike.

She pointed, as the children tied the model, the mannequin or whatever, to a tree and strapped fireworks to the limbs. They shoved more fireworks in the football-face, under the armpits, in the groin area. One child lit the fuses and they all ran a few steps away, and waited.

From the distance, the explosions weren’t particularly impressive, yet for a half-second Alison was elsewhere, in a small bombed-out town near Kabul, as a man searching for his sister stepped on a landmine.

She blinked away the past.

‘It’s just the Chase,’ sighed Mike, and sat back from the edge.

The model tied to the tree now hung in bits, the detonations having done a thorough job of maiming it. Alison watched the children approach the model, deep in animated discussion.

Alison turned to Mike. ‘What do you mean, “the Chase”?’

‘The Scarecrow Chase. It’s this month,’ he replied. ‘Come on. You’ve heard of it.’

‘Vaguely?’

‘It’s been a thing in London for the last five years,’ Mike said. ‘I guess maybe you haven’t really been here.’

She searched his words for a hint of the accusations he had thrown her way over the last decade: absent mother, bad mother, not even a mother to her son.

‘Andrew was making a documentary about it,’ continued Mike. ‘Must have been working on it for…’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe a year? Something like that, on and off.’

‘Can I see it? His film?’

‘I don’t know if he finished it.’

‘The footage then. Please, Mike,’ she said, tentatively touching his shoulder.

‘Ok. It’ll be on his computer.’ He motioned back inside. ‘You’re welcome to take a look.’

‘Can I take it home with me?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got all the software I need back there.’

‘Fine.’

Back in her son’s bedroom, she picked up his laptop, and called to Mike, ‘Does it have a password?’

‘Yeah. Your full name, all lower case, no spaces.’

* * *

At home, she started up Andrew’s computer. It had been scrubbed clean, deleted of all files and folders and internet history, except for one folder entitled “Chase WiP”.

In the folder, there were more than two dozen film segments of varying lengths. Several sound files. Images and notes. It didn’t look like he’d yet put together a longer piece.

She clicked on the first bit of film: shaky phone footage taken from a train passing by through somewhere in London, past an old factory, and just visible hanging from one of the chimney stacks was the shape of a scarecrow.

The next clip: a park. A scarecrow sitting in a chair beside an old oak tree. The camera moved closer to the scarecrow’s face: a wicker basket with two small wooden staves hammered in for the eyes. The ends of them were painted red. A small hole had been cut for the mouth and a set of upper false teeth had been pushed in.

She sipped some wine, watching copied footage from Youtube, a video showing how to make a scarecrow with paint packs inside. A knife was stabbed in the side of the scarecrow, and when it was removed, a thin trail of red paint dribbled from the wound.

She continued: Two teenage boys were running with a scarecrow in their arms, throwing it from the top level of a car park. The camera followed the flight of the scarecrow’s body until it smashed to the ground.

Another: A middle-aged woman shoved a flat plank of wood down the arm of a suit. She stabled the end of the suit closed, then placed her knee in the middle of the arm. With a grunt, she snapped the arm so it dangled loosely at an L-shape.

Alison closed the computer slowly. On unsteady legs, she went upstairs to her bedroom, and lay down on the bed, staring at a spinning ceiling until sleep took her.

* * *

A few days later, she sat in a sparsely furnished office at Burton University, a small cluster of brutalist buildings on the outskirts of Luton.

Alison heard footsteps coming her way and Dr James McGarry returned. A senior lecturer in Modern English Culture & Folklore at the university, McGarry was younger than her, perhaps in his early forties. He was clean-cut although his hair was messy.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘The nearest water station was broken of course so I had to go to the canteen and…’ He smiled, handed her a mug of water, before settling into the seat across from her. ‘Anyway.’

‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice,’ she said.

‘Of course, of course. I mean, it’s a fascinating topic, and well, I saw your film on the Rohingya genocide. Absolutely heart-breaking. Amazing but I was…’ He looked away, like he was ashamed. ‘I was not the same for few weeks afterwards.’

After a moment of silence, he continued. ‘And now you want to do a film about the Chase? A bit different to your other work, no?’

‘I’m just helping to finish a project for someone,’ she said. She put a tape recorder on the table, pressed record. ‘What can you tell me about the Scarecrow Chase? It’s been a thing in London now for about, what, four, five years? How did it start?’

McGarry stared at the recorder for a second before answering. ‘Well, there are two answers to that question, the first being: nobody knows how it started in London. About five years ago, communities around London began building scarecrows and displaying them. Across all boroughs yet each incidence seemed to occur independently. Across class, across ethnicities, political leanings.’

He sipped his water. ‘Now, scarecrow chases, or by whatever name they are known as - there’s a few variations - have certainly formed part of other, rural traditions… harvest festivals, just one aspect of a wider celebration. I’ve found mentions in sources going back to the 14th century. Chases have taken place all over the UK, and likely all over the world.’

McGarry leaned forward, joined hands meeting his chin as if he was praying. ‘Very few people ever accepted the argument that it was a thing in and of itself, with its own performative aspects and rites. The London Chase has caused people like me to go scurrying back through the archives to re-evaluate the evidence.’

‘Sounds dramatic,’ Alison said.

‘It’s not Mexican drug cartel level violence, but it has made things, let’s say, spicy in our niche community,’ chuckled McGarry. ‘Sometimes we can be over-enamoured with the past: who knows what we miss right in front of us? The new folklore.’

‘Is it new though?’ Alison asked. ‘Abuse and ritual mutilation of monsters isn’t exactly a new thing for Britons. Guy Fawkes. The tabloid press.’

‘Well, yeah, but then there is the second answer I mentioned, a muddier answer.’

‘Which is?’

McGarry looked at the recorder again. He shifted in his seat, his face darkening. ‘The London Chase as we know it started in an estate in South London and eventually spread from there. A series of four buildings which overlooked an enclosed courtyard. For many years, within that courtyard they held the Chase. Displaying their scarecrows. Just for themselves.’

‘Where was this?’

He held her gaze. ‘Corbett’s Wood.’

After a moment, she said, ‘Bullshit.’

‘I told you it was muddier. I mean, after what happened there, I can understand why people would make up stories. But I’ve seen photos, taken before... well, you know.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘It was an identical kind of Scarecrow Chase, just on a smaller scale. The same feeling of caged violence. And then, the following year, the Chase seemed just to be everywhere.’

McGarry cleared his throat. ‘Look, in all honesty, I don’t like that answer at all. I’m not one for social contagion theory and I think it is crass at best, given what happened at Corbett’s Wood. But people are puzzled by what’s happening right now, and the one thing a folk story loves is another folk story enfolded within it. They are tricky things.’

* * *

On the train back from Luton, she drifted off into a half dream involving her son.

It is not observing it is waiting Andrew said but his mouth was gaping open and there was no movement to make the words yet they were clear as anything.

Not observing just waiting not observing only waiting and waiting until it is time Andrew said before the train rocked her awake and asleep again, although now she didn’t dream of her son. She dreamed of bodies torn and broken. She knew them, she had seen these bodies in real life. Victims of atrocities, of violence, of injustice.

The subjects of her documentaries. Tortured and beaten and raped and murdered and hidden and guilty and ignored and abused and innocent and discovered and corrupted and driven mad and on and on without end.

But here, now, all their faces, all their mouths (the ones who still had mouths and tongues and teeth and jaws) were open in an ‘o’ shape just like Andrew’s had been. No movement, no working of their tongues and teeth to form a sound but Alison could hear them perfectly.

Not observing just waiting.

It will come and nothing will be the same.

The train movement woke her again and she rubbed her face, forcing her eyes open. Holding armrests to keep her balance, she went down the aisle to the toilets and pushed the button to open the automatic door.

‘Oh, I’m so sor—’ she started, thinking the toilet occupied, before she saw what it was inside: a scarecrow in a suit and tie, with a threaded mop head for a face.

She took out her phone, turned on the video. She pressed record, then reached forward and touched the threads of the mop head. She pushed her fingers inside past the material until she felt the wooden handle underneath it all. When she withdrew she found her fingertips wet.

Back in her seat Alison watched the footage on repeat, slowing it down and speeding it up.

* * *

‘Did Andrew ever mention anything about Corbett’s Wood?’ she asked Mike over the phone.

A silence before he said, ‘No. No, why would he?’

‘Someone mentioned it and I was… never mind,’ she said, regretting asking him already.

‘We missed you at the lunch today,’ he said.

There had been a memorial meal in Andrew’s honour, and it wasn’t strictly true that Alison had forgotten about it, but that wouldn’t have been a complete lie either. Something about the event had just been intangible to her.

‘Yes, something came up,’ she said. ‘How was it?’

‘Sad but, you know, affirming at the same time? The stories his friends told about him. I think I smiled as often as I cried.’ He was quiet for a moment and then said, ‘I wish you could have made it. I think you would have enjoyed it.’ Another pause. ‘Not enjoy, sorry, obviously that wasn’t the right word.’

‘Listen, I have to go. We’ll talk tomorrow, ok?’

‘Sure, sure. How is the film going? I’d like to see it when it is finished. You can always see part of someone in the art they make.’

‘Mike.’

‘Even you Ali, even in your films. I could always see you there.’

‘Good night, Mike.’

* * *

Back to Andrew’s film.

She cued up a clip of an interview her son had recorded with an elderly woman from Norfolk named Hettie Gorman, according to his notes.

‘Oh yes,’ Hettie said as the clip began. ‘I remember the Scarecrow Chase from when I was a child. Mawkins we called them.’

‘Do you remember the reason why you did it? The Chase?’ asked Andrew, off camera.

(Alison smiled, briefly, at the sound of his voice, so familiar yet so… not. A professional tone, even for his age.)

‘Reasons? Oh Lord, no one knew, not really. When we did the Chase it was a way of... well, we were told certain things, certain things that weren’t true. That couldn’t be true.’

(On screen Hettie went quiet for a long time. Alison was proud at how Andrew didn’t falter in that silence, allowed it to play out.)

‘I’ve heard people say that London’s mawkins are more frightening that ours,’ said Hettie, her smile empty of teeth but warm. ‘That crazes me! Our mawkins were terrifying, and the things we did to them. It was just after the war, so maybe we were angry. We lost a lot of people in my town, and those who did some back didn’t always come back whole.’

Hettie looked away for a moment, then back to camera. ‘But the biggest difference I know of is the end of the Chase. When we did our Chase, all them mawkins would be rounded up and burned on a huge bonfire.’

Andrew again: ‘That doesn’t happen in London.’

‘No, it doesn’t. The London Chase never seems to end.’

‘Was the end important in your day?’

‘My heart alive! The most important part. You raise things in the Chase and you must end those things too. You leave that out and...’ Hettie shuddered. ‘It has to end.’

* * *

Alison watched the young man struggle as he stuffed balled-up magazine pages into the shirt. After a moment, she asked, ‘Can I help?’

‘Yes please,’ he replied, and Alison felt a familiar wave of affection for him. His name was Raheem, and she had known him for most of his young life, her son’s best friend since childhood. A sweet, sensitive boy, who smiled shyly at her and Andrew on the first day at school.

Though he was far from that little boy – Raheem worked as a personal trainer now, and he was built in the way young men who take these things seriously can be – he still radiated a core of shyness towards her.

‘Did you know he was making films?’ she asked.

Raheem shifted awkwardly. ‘I’ll be honest, I hadn’t talked to him in almost a year. Barely anyone had. He just sort of…’

‘It’s ok,’ she said, reaching to touch his hand gently. ‘He’s dead now. You can’t offend him.’

‘He sort of cut us off. Stopped returning calls, would blank us when we saw him out. To be honest, at first I thought: he’s got a new bird. But I don’t think that was it. Can you give me a hand with that?’

She held the stuffed torso and legs while Raheem leaned over with a staple gun and attached the two ends. He sat it up, headless, and he pushed a metal bar into it, where the neck would be.

‘When we did see him, he would be filming things. So, I guess I knew he was into something like that. One time I heard he had been attacked.’

‘Attacked?’ she said.

‘Yeah, someone said he had been beaten up, but then I saw him in the street and he hadn’t a mark on him. Walked fine. Walked right past me like he didn’t know me.’

‘Did you ever talk to him?’

‘No. I was, um, I was angry with him. He just dumped me, I was going through some things and he just cut me off entirely.’ Raheem rubbed his eyes and said, ‘And it fucks me off that I won’t get to talk to him about it. That I’ll never know why.’ He paused and caught his breath. ‘It just goes around and around in my brain, won’t stop.’

‘I know the feeling,’ she said. She nodded to the scarecrow body. ‘What are you doing for the head?’

He smiled and reached into his bag, withdrawing a mask. ‘Favour for mum, she never forgave Tony for Iraq.’ He twisted the mask around to show it to her. ‘A Blaircrow.’

The mask went on top of the metal bar, a body fully formed and deformed simultaneously. ‘How is your mum?’ Alison asked.

‘She’s ok. We think her cancer is back, but she can’t get seen by the GP so it’s all a bit of limbo.’ In his bag, he withdrew one last item, a blowtorch. ‘Do you want a go?’

‘I think I’m happy just to watch,’ she said.

Alison stepped to the side. As the flame touched the mask, the rubber began to blacken and melt. Globs of plastic dripped down the mask, distorting the face, twisting and warping it. The left eye bubbled and popped and slid down to the cheek. Little spots of fire broke out across the face.

Finally, he stepped aside and poured some cold water on the mask. It sizzled and if at the start it had been recognisable as Tony Blair, now it very much wasn’t.

For a second, she remembered someone else, a woman in a refuge in Leeds named Diane and the burns on her neck, on her chest. On her face.

‘I’m really glad I got a chance to talk to you again,’ she said, finally, to Raheem as he picked up the scarecrow proudly.

‘It’s been a while,’ he agreed.

* * *

One of Andrew’s clips stood out from the others in the absence of any scarecrows. It was a POV shot of Andrew walking through a deserted and ruined building at night.

It wasn’t until Dr McGarry had mentioned Corbett’s Wood that she suspected where the filming had taken place.

Now, tonight, she stood at the edge of the abandoned estate and looked for the entry point Andrew had used. She held her phone out ahead of her, watching his footage, following his footsteps past the railings and the boarding. She found a loose panel, prised it open and, one step behind Andrew’s POV, she followed inside.

She found herself in a shell of an apartment. The torch on her phone illuminated walls scorched black with strange shadows. She continued to follow her son’s path through holes and empty doorways, along gutted corridors and up and down pitch-black stairwells until she found herself on the roof. From here, she could look down into the courtyard below, and the wreck of it all.

Corbett’s Wood had been a small, enclosed estate in south London. Located in a leafy suburb on the outskirts of Sydenham, it had consisted of four art-deco buildings joined up at the edges by stairwells to make an enclosed courtyard. One warm June and July, police were called somewhere in the region of 300 times by various members of the estate. They claimed that there were people coming to hurt them. Intruders all over the estate, threatening them with violence.

Each time the police arrived, they found nothing.

On the 30th July, a gas explosion rocked the buildings. 124 people died, with only a few survivors. Dr McGarry hadn’t been lying: rumours swirled around that night. Why had the fire brigade taken so long? Why were police sighted in the area hours before? The sound of helicopters had filled the night air long before the explosion.

She looked down through Andrew’s POV shoot and then followed his gaze upwards to the sky. It was full of stars everywhere.

She put the phone away. His night might have been star-bright, but her sky was cloudy. She glanced down at the courtyard again.

There was someone down there.

A dark shadow, standing directly below, looking up at her. She backed away from the edge and felt her breathing increase.

‘Get it together, Alison,’ she chided herself. She moved back to the edge and looked down. The shadow was still there. Still looking up at her.

‘Hello!’ she called down. ‘Can I talk to you?’

The figure didn’t move and she wondered if she was mistaken, and maybe it was a trick of the light or dark and it was a tree or a pole or something.

She squinted and now she saw movement everywhere. It wasn’t just one figure down there. There were over twenty. Fifty maybe.

They all moved at once, swarming inside the building. There was noise everywhere, echoes of boots and shoes on stairwells and whispers.

She ran from the roof, trying to remember the route she had taken, but she got turned around partly by confusion and partly because she could sense and hear the figures coming her way.

Suddenly, an abrupt silence fell over the building. She crept on her hunkers, disorientated and feeling her way along cold walls and rubble. She moved carefully yet the sound she was making felt impossibly loud to her ears. She paused at a stairwell. It was dark down there, but she remembered it. Two flights down and then through a shell of a room and she would be out.

Her foot hovered at the top, and then she withdrew, stepped back. She backed away and into an alcove sheltered in darkness.

Whispers came up the stairwell like a gust of wind, and then the sound of many people rushing up the stairwell, a stampede of bodies passing by her.

She closed her eyes, hidden, she hoped, by the darkness.

The sound spread out around the building, and she couldn’t take any more. She raced as fast as she could, taking the stairs at a run and she stumbled at the last step, fell forward hard on her knees, bumping her head against the wall.

She looked behind her, her vision blurred.

There was a crowd of people at the top of the stairs staring down at her. She forced herself up, worked her way out of the estate, back onto the street.

Behind her, she heard the sound of whispering, and she kept running until she was out of breath entirely.

* * *

Back at home, she wiped disinfectant across her knees and checked the graze on her head. Her left eye was swelling up badly.

Just some local gang trying to scare her, she thought. Probably not even a gang. Probably just some kids.

Something occurred to her, and she rolled that thought over in her head for a few moments. With a nod, she went to the computer and pulled up one of the sound files Andrew had recorded. She pressed play and listened.

It was the same kind of whispering she had heard. How could that be? The recording was the last thing he had made, just a sound file on the night before he died.

There was metadata on the file including location details, but it didn’t point to Corbett’s Wood. Instead, it led to somewhere in Wandsworth, miles away from the ruined estate.

What had he seen that night? All she knew was that afterwards he had come home, uploaded the file.

Cleaned his room and his computer. Drank half a cup of tea.

Hung himself to death in the bathroom.

* * *

The final video Andrew made was of himself talking to the camera. Some kind of self-memo.

Nobody considered it a suicide note.

‘What does a scarecrow actually do? It just watches. Observes. Waits.’ He laughed, leaning into the camera, and when he did Alison saw how pale he looked. How hollow his cheeks were, his eyes sunken. She had seen people who looked like that, people in prison and in displacement camps. In shelters.

In broken places.

‘But it doesn’t just watch, does it? It must have a function. It needs to be seen, it’s there for a reason. The Scarecrow Chase doesn’t happen privately. It is out in the open. Like the thing it wants to frighten away is right there, right in our faces. Brazen.’

His voice too, Alison noted. The tone drained. He seemed exhausted and jittery.

‘You bring rituals to a close or they take on a life of their own. They become something more. And I’ve seen what can happen when that occurs. But now I’m thinking, what if we’re not manifesting anything. What if something is using us? Something even worse than us.’

She put her hand to her mouth as she watched him talk. The last time she had seen him Andrew had been a healthy, vibrant, brilliant young man. She could barely recognise the boy in front of her now.

What had he done to himself?

‘Hettie knew the score. Endings are important. I know I won’t be brave enough to end the Chase. I’m not brave like Mum. But even if I was, is there anything I could actually do to stop it? Something is coming and we don’t have a fucking hope.’

He leaned into the camera again, his grin wide and painful.

‘I don’t feel in control of myself any longer.’

* * *

That same night, but now a few drinks in, she found herself on the phone to Mike and she had never felt anger like this before. It boiled inside her.

‘Just what are you accusing me of?’ Mike said, his voice sounding high.

‘He was closed off from his friends. He was isolated. Obsessed with strange things. Someone said he was attacked… How can you have missed all that? Jesus, just the look of him was obvious.’

Mike cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t miss it. I was here. I saw it all with him.’

‘And you did… what exactly?’

‘I tried to reach him.’

Alison laughed. She couldn’t help it. ‘You tried to reach him. He was our fucking baby, and that’s all you have to say? Did you just not see him?’

‘Ali, I just fucking told you I saw it. I told you I tried to reach towards him. I held out my hand to him so many times. You weren’t here, you couldn’t possibly know what it was like.’

She laughed again. ‘Always that crutch, Mike. You always lean into that, don’t you? Oh, you poor saint, bringing up a child alone, as if millions of women don’t do that every day. You poor martyr. Absolve you of all your sins. All your failings. What would you do without me, without someone to blame for all those failings?’

A long silence, and then Mike said, ‘What failings do you think I have then?’

‘Not being able to keep Andrew alive for one,’ she said, and caught sight of her own face, twisted into a snarl. ‘Yeah, I’d say that’s top of the list for me.’

‘Christ. Fuck you.’

* * *

She managed to track down the address of where Andrew visited the night before he died. A warehouse in Wandsworth; ghost signs fading on the wall suggested the building had once been a factory of some kind.

A security guard named Russell undid a chain on the warehouse and opened the doors for her.

Long corridors of darkness greeted her, broken only by scattered light from Russell’s torch. She glimpsed outstretched limbs and torsos. Ruined faces looked out at her before they were gone again, engulfed in darkness.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she heard Russell say behind her. ‘Just trying to find the light switch.

Her foot touched something in the dark, something soft and long, and she reached down to touch it with her fingers. It felt coarse and she lifted it for a closer look. From outside the warehouse, floodlights illuminated the courtyard, and Alison brought what she was holding to the threshold of the door.

The light revealed an arm. Thin woollen pillows had been tied together with masking tape; at one end were metal strings Alison recognised as belonging to a guitar. They hung like sinews and ripped skin.

Alison shook her head. No, they didn’t hang like that at all.

She tossed the false limb back to the floor.

The warehouse lights switched on, staggering on down the corridors to reveal rows and rows of shelves, high and packed tight.

‘And how many years does this encompass?’ she asked.

‘Like, maybe three years’ worth? Probably more.’

‘There must be hundreds of them here,’ said Alison. On either side of her, metal shelves were stacked with bits of scarecrows. One shelf had only an assorted number of heads. Another had several full bodies packed in tight.

‘Yeah, well you know, the council rounds them up and brings them here. Nobody wants to destroy them. I remember reading in a newspaper calling them “found art”. So, we keep them,’ said Russell. ‘We get more and more every year, and we’re not even getting them all. There are other warehouses and I bet they are as full as this one.’

He quickened his pace. ‘This is my favourite,’ he said, and reached into a dark hollow and pulled out a half torso. Holding it by the head, he showed it to her: a store-mannequin’s head with two holes gouged for the eyes, and two small light bulbs inserted there. Around the mouth fairy lights had been threaded through to make a smile.

Russell fiddled at the back of the head and suddenly the eye-bulbs lit up and the mouth flashed on and off. Some loose wires dangled from the end of the torso.

Alison looked around her at the carnage of scarecrows. ‘Is it at all unnerving working here?’

Russell switched off the scarecrow and replaced it carefully, quietly. ‘Night work is hard,’ he said. ‘Your mind can play tricks on you, you know?’

‘How so?’

‘Just... Come on, look around you. Some of these are bonkers. We got one the other day, and it was a plastic model of a human head. A detailed face. And someone must have slowly melted it and stamped on it, because the imprint of their foot was also on it. The grooves and all, you know? Doc Martins.’ Russell laughed. ‘Who does that? Found art, my arse.’

Alison picked up a rudimentary head, a cardboard box with a face childishly drawn on. Long slit marks scattered the face where someone had slashed it with, she supposed, a Stanley knife.

‘Like that,’ said Russell. ‘That was probably some little kid who done that.’

Alison stared at the slashes and, in her mind, she was in Juarez seeing the results of torture-cuts on very human skin.

Alison looked around her, beginning to compose in her head how she wanted to capture this on film. ‘I’m about ready to start here.’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Russell.

She watched him walk out of sight and heard the warehouse door scrape closed again.

She turned on her camera and walked slowly around the shelves. She recorded as many scarecrows as she could. Some were on the top shelves and out of her reach, but it looked good on the camera: tilting upwards, silhouettes of maimed body parts against the warehouse lights.

She closed her camera after about a half hour. She wandered back to the entrance and turned off all the lights and stood in the darkness.

And finally, Alison couldn’t hold it back any longer and she started to sob. She cried so hard she could barely breathe and her insides filled with broken glass. When her sobs finally died away, she heard whispering all around her.

Without turning back on the lights, she knelt down and felt for her bag. Inside, she rummaged around with her hand until she found what she was looking for.

Everywhere she could hear noise, the sound of bodies slipping down from shelves onto the floor. Dragging sounds, shuffling sounds, clawing sounds.

Above it all the whispering, and she paused to listen to it, trying to make out what it was saying.

A footfall ahead of her. Another, then another but coming from elsewhere in the warehouse. Approaching her from different directions.

She took out a thin metal canister from her bag, and in the darkness she sprayed it around her, emptying it entirely. The pungent smell of lighter fluid enveloped her.

The first match gave her a glimpse of what was coming towards her and her shock blew out the flame.

The second match caught, and she threw it toward one of the shelves. A third, fourth and fifth match followed, and soon there was light and heat and smoke coming all around her. Into the flames she threw another canister of lighter fluid, and she flinched as it exploded.

Despite the spread of the fire, shapes continued coming towards her, hundreds of them walking, or crawling or dropping from the high shelves around her.

This would only delay what was coming, she thought. Only delay what they could not hold back. Next year it would all start again, and the year after that and on and on until what was made engulfed its makers.

But some parent somewhere would get a little more time with their child because of what she was doing, and that seemed good enough to Alison even as fire and disfigured things approached her.

The sound of whispering crescendoed eventually to a chorus of screams, and then died down entirely.

End.

Robin Maginn is an Irish writer currently living in the UK. He has had several short stories published in print and online, including with Albedo One, ParAbnormal Digest, Idle Ink and Syntax & Salt. He was shortlisted for the 2010 Aeon Award (placing third). He was runner up in the Fall 2018 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award, and appeared in the anthology 21st Century Ghost Stories: Volume 2.

When I Swallowed the Sun I Kissed the Night

By Maxwell I. Gold

i. The Beginning

I marched across the desolate earth, flashes of familiar spectral auroras painted the skies, the painful reminders like bloated songs so dissonant in their harmonies – too late to be resolved – too late to understand the colors the glow from the horizons began to throb, beat, and repeat as if some feverish insanity took hold inside me while along the road I saw the ghosts of what used-to-be cities. Great metal graveyards, jagged institutions simulated only the wild possibilities in a future of fire coaxed through the artificial bot-brains, putrescent twilight-moons, and hallucinatory bathhouses where the stars were like toys and reason felt like a derangement meant to torture,
flash,
bang,
no more sun.

Flash,
bang,
that was the end
when boots marched in mud over manacled destinies,
the alpha-godless-machines constructed from the darkest parts of our own toxicities and engendered what-ifs, spilled from the innards of the great machine, one by one. I stood at the edge of reality, the brown and brittle skies were painted in discolored spectral auroras as backdrop to the heinous, metallic contraption at the center of the city. Metal fingers, masculine and awful dug deeper into the earth, dragging within its calloused grip the future and flames, consuming every possible bit and byte. The music of domehow, it didn’t matter how, really, but scent of iron and blood which painted my nostrils began to fade away and the memories of The Crash were almost mythological as if there was no more rhythm in the world, no shape to reason where words, emotions, even perceptions within the quantum fluctuations as simply as

Flash,
bang,
no more sun
flash,
bang,
and it was too late
when the skies were clogged with fire and death after the stars really went out. Screams like a choir of billions echoed across the world, but I remembered, too late, the last survivor of a doomed race where I marched across the desolate remains of a glassed planet, familiar reminders painted the old skies like phantoms whispering in my ear, you left us to die,
flash,
bang,

No more sun,
flash,
bang,
and it was too late,
to save the world
ii. The Fall
while the stars sank beneath the hills,
they took everything from me, with indifference, without regret pressed into the sullen cracks far below my bruised neurons where nothing remained but ash, fire, and the disheveled, useless body curled into the ruins of yesterday
they took it! Consumed in the worst parts of myself, forged with the beliefs I was less than, atomically unreasonable and battered by the brutish philosophies floating in the remnant fogs like some toxic fleck, caught in my throat settling in prepared to cut me down at any moment. The cyber-bastards, they took everything from me, and I’d take everything from them,
flash,
bang,
no turning back,
flash,
bang,
it was too late,
to save the world

From me,
from perception, the tools of useless control for what-used-to-be the bastion of reason like awful, crooked nails along a chalkboard, grated down to the unknowable bottom I looked up with sinister jubilance as I swallowed the sun, knocked from its holy perch, thrown into the mouth of oblivion like
flash,
bang,
heat-death louder than words,
gone, forever
the future
was over like
flash,
bang,
life overrated,

I was dark matter

I was the Crash...

iii. The Crash

Inevitable, unquenched, and cold, I sat on the frozen edges of a broken, dying world, belly full with flame, ash, and metal as clouds billowed high in sparkling cerulean peaks, were soon crushed against my lips.

Salty, covered in the icy cadavers of raindrops and misty faces, I savored this moment; my fingers clutched o’er the tired dusty, earth, prepared to skin the world. No more metal graveyards or plastic cities, or simulated putrescene. They didn’t deserve the sun, and they’d never have the sky, let alone the clouds.

Self-declared shields as ennobled protection from artificial enemies forged within, too fragile to peer beyond the gray hills, melted cities, and dead forests, but
that time
was gone, now like

Flash,
bang,
glassed over, nuclear kisses,
gone, forever,
the future was
edged over the horizon where the same clouds begged me for relief, even death, their bodies transformed into toxic rain-corpses spread across a broken world they’d never see
flash,
bang,
overrated,
their time
was over, now,

I was the Crash.

No, that was too easy, too good for them; they were mine, forever, compressed by the awful weight of a billion stars beneath my lips as I swallowed the ruined, purpled night.

Their time
was over, now,

I am the Crash.

Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish American multiple award nominated author who writes prose poetry and short stories in cosmic horror and weird fiction with half a decade of writing experience. Five-time Rhysling Award nominee, and two-time Pushcart Award nominee, find him at www.thewellsoftheweird.com.

What Mel Knows

By A. L. Munson

I can tell by Mel’s demeanor that she jumped again. She blinks her eyes as she reorients herself. “It’s now 8:16pm on November 4th, 2034,” she says.

Seven years this time. Each jump is longer than the last, but I’ve yet to find any predictable pattern to them.

Mel resumes pacing the concrete room, and I sit quietly in my chair, waiting for her to say something more. Speaking to her is pointless. She can’t hear me. Though Mel is physically present, her conscious mind is over a decade into the future.

“Yes,” she says in answer to something I must’ve asked—something I will ask. “Oh, wait! I forgot to tell you the question. Sorry, I keep thinking I’m speaking to the ‘you’ who’s right in front of me and not the ‘you’ who’s still in the past. You look so much older, Amy. No offense.”

I heave a sigh and glance at the recording time on my video camera’s screen. Eight hours and twenty-seven minutes—that’s how long we’ve been communicating this way. Eight long hours here in the lab’s basement.

It started last night when Mel called me in a panic. There’d been an accident while she was testing the temporal shift machine. Throughout our phone call, she responded to my thoughts before I even said them. By the time I arrived at the lab, she was talking to a future version of me that I couldn’t see. That’s when I grabbed my camera and brought her down here.

“You asked if I feel like I’m aging,” Mel says. “The answer is yes. But like the last several jumps, I can’t see or feel myself moving or hear myself speaking. I mean, I can hear the replay of my words on your video camera, but I’m sitting motionless in a chair. I am still moving where you are, aren’t I? Probably pacing back and forth like I always do when I’m anxious. It’s so strange to have my thoughts and my senses here in the future controlling my body in the past.” She glances down at her hand. “The IV drip’s still there, and I can feel wires on my head. I think you’re monitoring my brainwaves. God, Amy! What happened to me? Why can’t I move anymore?”

She stops pacing and stares at the wall just to my right. I assume that’s where my future self will sit.

“Amy, what if this doesn’t stop? I mean, it’s been years! My back aches even in this chair, and my vision’s not as sharp as it used to be. I know I’m not aging where you are, but what if I reach the point where I’m... where there is no ‘future me’ to see and hear through?”

I have no answer for her. Maybe, by 2034, I will.

Mel places a hand on her forehead and sways like she’s going to pass out. After a moment, she steadies herself, but her back hunches slightly like she’s lost bone density.

“Yes, I’m here,” she says. “What’s that now?... Please tell me that’s a joke!”

“I need the date and time, Mel,” I mutter under my breath, “or I won’t know when to meet you here.”

As though responding to my gripe, she says, “It’s 3:05am on May 10th, 2049.”

Fourteen and a half years. More than twice the length of the last jump. Mel was thirty years old just eight hours ago. Now she has maybe one or two jumps left before she dies of old age.

“Come on, Amy! You, Seth, and Laura are the most brilliant physicists I know. You must have some idea of how to stop this. Are you even trying?”

Her dim eyes narrow. “You’re not, are you? You’re just monitoring me as part of your experiment. Do Seth and Laura even know I’m here? Do they know what’s happened to me? You’re the only one I’ve seen since all of this started. Year after year, it’s just you and your recordings and your notes. For fuck’s sake, Amy! You were supposed to be the one in the lab that night! You were supposed to run the tests on that fucking machine! I covered your ass and this is what I get? How dare you!”

She’s not wrong. She is part of the experiment now, though that was never the intent. The machine was supposed to send a probe into the future, not the conscious mind of one of our physicists. But the fact that it sent anything into the future is a major breakthrough—the kind that could win a Nobel Prize. I’d be a fool not to isolate her and study the results.

Mel runs to the door and collides with it. Her hands grope around for a knob that she can’t see or feel. Even if she manages to find it, it won’t matter. I locked the door hours ago and stashed the key in my pocket.

“Seth! Laura!” She pounds her fists against the thick, metal door. “Get me out of here!”

The basement lies beneath layers of concrete. She can scream all she wants. No one can hear us down here.

Mel kicks the door in frustration, reminding me of a lab rat that bites at the bars of its cage.

“What did you say?” She turns in my direction. “What danger?... No... No, I won’t relay the message. Knowing you, you’d use the information to save yourself and no one else.”

I sit up straight in my chair, now fully attentive. What “danger” is she referring to?

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Mel says. “I’ll tell the ‘you’ in the past your message if, and only if, you get me out of this room and take me to someone willing to help me. You can’t keep me locked away down h—”

The severe look in her eye disappears as she places a hand on her head and grimaces in pain. Another time jump.

She heaves a few heavy breaths before lowering her hand. “Amy? Are you in here? Hello?” Her eyes scan our surroundings as though they’ve changed. “I guess I’m still talking to ‘past you.’ I don’t know what year this is. Usually, you’re here to tell me, but I don’t see you. The lights are out, and the room smells musty. I hear something dripping, like a pipe is leaking somewhere. Did you abandon me? If you left me here to rot, I swear to God—”

Her eyes shift to the door. “Amy,” she says in a whisper, “someone’s trying to get in. They’re ramming the lock.”

She backs away until she runs into the wall. “The door’s not holding!... What the—”

Mel raises her arms in front of her face, as though shielding herself from an attack, and lets out a piercing scream.

Her body goes limp against the wall and slides to the floor.

I run to her side to check her vitals. She’s still breathing and her pulse feels strong, but her eyes are glassy and she doesn’t move a muscle.

What attacked her? Was it the “danger” my future self warned of? How far into the future was she when this happened? Only Mel knows the answers to these questions, and she’s past the point of relaying them. All I know is that I wasn’t there. Maybe I did abandon her. Or maybe the “danger” got to me first.

I walk back to my camera and, with shaky hands, rewind the recording to the beginning. Mel’s first major jump was to October 18th, 2023 at 5:53pm.

“I guess I’ll see you then, Mel,” I say to her slumped-over form.

I make a note to get an IV drip and an EEG machine to detect when her consciousness reappears. But I wonder about that warning she wouldn’t give me. I have until 2049 to figure it out. I only hope that’s enough time. As Mel knows, years go by much too quickly.

End.

A. L. Munson is an archivist, physics major, and member of the Vancleave Live Oak Choctaw tribe. She is originally from Louisiana but now lives in Kansas where she practices archery and photography on her free time. She is working on her first novel, but short stories and poetry tend to lure her away from it. You can find her at almunson.com.

Flensing and Hyphae

By Maxwell Marais

Even from a distance we knew the whale was sick. We knew it was sick when we launched the whaleboats, knew it was sick when the first harpoon struck, knew it was sick all the long way dragging it back to the ship.

But we were desperate. We were tired, and reckless, and wouldn’t make a penny unless something was brought back to shore, and this, surely, was something.

When we hoisted it starboard it reeked like it was already rotting. By the time we cut into it, it was bad enough to knock a man over. Whales have a stench, naturally. It seeps into the decks of the ships who hunt them, into the clothes and skin and bones of whalers and it never washes out. But this was a different kind of stench. Rank, fouler than death, the stench of something dredged out of deeper, blacker depths than any whale had ever plumbed.

We found the first real signs that something was horribly wrong not long after nightfall, when we reached the whale’s organs. Andrews was the one who spotted the stuff. He turned to me, cutting spade slick with blubber and gore. “Look here,” he said, gesturing with the tip of the blade, “in the lung.”

I looked.

And it was moving.

Not the lung itself, I realized, but something inside. Twitching. It was spread out through the cavity, weblike and greasy and shining like oil-slick in the guttering deck lights. The flesh of the organ was raw, yellow-white and oozing where the thing’s strands had taken root.

Andrews’ face was pale when I looked back to him. He was still staring into the suppurated flesh. “What exactly,” I heard him say hoarsely, then swallow, then start again in a voice only vaguely closer to confident, “What do you reckon it is?”

I told him I didn’t know, and then watched him keel and vomit into the sea.

By the time of my next watch, it was gone. I heard nothing more of it. But when the butchering was done and the tryworks belched the smoke of melting blubber I thought I could see a smear of it across the decks – tendrils, hazy and indistinct, visible only at the edges of my vision, weaving their way down between the cracks in the wood. Down belowdecks, into the dim, dark warmth.

It did not shake the unease from me when we scrubbed the decks clean of blood. It did not shake the unease from me that we did not find it there. Despite the heat of the tryworks’ blaze and the effort of work, something within me felt cold, and heavy as a stone. Somewhere in my mind, dread whispered: it is already inside the ship.

The salt breeze smelt of rot as it stirred the hairs at the back of my neck.

* * *

We did not catch sight of a single other living creature after the whale. No spouts were visible on the horizon. No gulls, no seabirds flew overhead. Even as we headed south and crossed into tropical waters, there was nothing. Nothing but the restless lap and lash of the sea, and air that grew increasingly hot, sweltering, stagnant. I thought of where the thing belowdecks must be festering, oily hues glinting in the darkness as it spread.

I thought I could see it some nights, as I lay awake in the fo’c’sle listening to the ship’s creaking. I would squint my eyes and stare into the pitch dark, waiting to spot its slow, creeping movement. In the daytime we found roaches and swollen bedbugs gathered into corners, legs kicking as they tumbled over each other and struggled for some impossible prize. Once, I tried to clear them away to see what it was.

There was a slick residue there, gathered like veins and shining opalescent, almost hypnotic, in the light.

One month later we crossed another whaleship. Plans were made to make an occasion of the thing, to meet and make merry. A whalers’ gam. Most of the crew were abuzz with the news. New faces! New stories! Music and dance and festivities!

I couldn’t help but feel that with each hour that passed we grew closer to bringing these unfamiliar men a curse.

* * *

It happened to Lewis, the man with the fiddle.

The sky was dusky, and the deck shook under the thud of boots as a crew-and-a-half danced and shouted and spun, as the makeshift band played off-pitch instruments and sweat and spittle flew. We didn’t even hear the first few coughs. It wasn’t obvious until the music stopped with the shriek of the bow over strings as he fell, hacking, to his knees. A crowd gathered, quieted. The man’s coughs grew phlegmy, strangled, gurgling – and then he crumpled, limp.

But something in him was still moving.

It started along his back, a sort of undulating below the fabric of his shirt, like worms under a hot sun. Then the fabric’s seams began unraveling, and we all heard a crunch as his shoulder blades arced up, bent outwards at twisted angles. Someone at the front of the crowd ran before his ribs did the same, pried open like bloodied gates as oil-slick tendrils flailed and stretched free of the flesh that held them.

The smell in the air was rank, like iron and months-spoiled meat and things that wash up on beaches at low tide. By the time the thing had burst through Lewis’ back the crowd had broken into chaos. The taste of bile rose in the back of my throat. Someone else was coughing, but I couldn’t see who through the jostling bodies between myself and the sound. Further down the deck there was a wailing cry and a heavy splash into the water below. The deck was rapidly becoming slick with – something. Blood, oil, something veined and pulsating.

I ran. Coward that I was, I shoved my way through the tumult and ran. The stench belowdecks was worse, so much worse, and I could hear something coming from the blubber storage that sounded like nothing a human could make. Down there in the dark I almost thought I could feel that thing (that sickness, that living disease) crawling its way up beneath my own skin, and I understood then that this, down amongst the remains of the whale we’d butchered, was where it had taken root. I understood that, coward or not, I could end it.

The door to the blubber room was sealed with something sticky that peeled apart into webbed strands as I shoved it open. Andrews stood in the opposite corner, hunched in a way that made it look like he’d fallen asleep standing up. The entire room felt like the inside of the sick whale’s lung, all webbed with purulent tendrils and mucus and oil. And listening very closely I almost thought I could hear it breathe.

“Andrews.” My voice sounded hoarse and unsteady even in my own ears. “Andrews, man, it’s all gone to hell up there, we’ve got to – “

He was making some sort of gurgling whine, the same sound I’d heard muffled from the corridor, a sort of pained sob, like a kicked dog. His speech sounded full of cotton. “We should never’ve broughth up thhat whale, Thomson. Shhould never’ve broughth ‘er up.” He retched, and I heard something dense and wet hit the floor.

And then he turned, very slowly, and I could see that the webbed tendrils had burst out his throat, cracked his collarbones wide and spread like viny growths across his front, had grown up through his neck and begun to protrude from his mouth and nose and the corners of his eyes.

And I choked back a scream and told him that yes, we never should have, what fools we crewmen were and what a bastard our captain was. And I told him I was sorry.

And I backed out the door, and grabbed a lamp off the corridor wall, and threw it in.

The fire that erupted burned a thousand searing colours as I scrambled back to the hatch, flames already licking up the corridor behind me. The ship, coated as it was in its layers of slick and filth, burned wildly, the gemstone hues of the burning sickness reflecting off the dark waters below as all around beams and rigging crashed and fell.

When darkness overtook me, I wholly believed it was all at an end.

But now I find myself in a whaleboat-turned-lifeboat rowed by men from the opposite ship (the ship that never burned, the ship that never knew, the ship that was still safe), asking me about the blaze they saw last night, across the water. About what happened. About what caused that spectacular colour.

And in the pit of my throat, I feel more than the answer waiting to escape.

End.

Maxwell Marais is an author and illustrator of all things horror living in Montreal, Canada. When they aren’t frantically scrawling down the weird fiction and horror that crawls out of their brain, they can be found attempting to summon (with limited success) horrible abominations from beyond our world. Their works have been featured in such publications as The NoSleep Podcast, Thuggish Itch, and Dark Recesses Press.

The Universal Monster

By Jon Carroll Thomas

From nothing, I’m born into a world of sickness. I feel it whirl around me, not quite knowing where it ends and I begin, and though we are intricately connected, I know that we are not the same—the sickness and I.

I strain for context in a dark and turbulent sea, tangled in oblivion. It resists my every effort—clinging, tearing—awakening indefinable pain. With the pain, though, comes a realization—I have a body, even if only a vehicle for suffering.

In my flailing, an object falls and shatters somewhere beneath me. My eyes shoot open to a light of such searing intensity that they sizzle and smolder even after I clamp them shut again. Demonic shapes and colors linger where they were burnt.

Clambering backwards, I feel the lurch of gravity before I too fall and crash among the wreckage. Heedless of additional pain, I rake my limbs through the debris until I am on my hands and knees, mouth gaping downward. A thin shriek pierces my ears, rising and rising, until there is only cottony silence.

And from that silence, a voice emerges. Deep and calm like a mountain lake, it speaks.

“In with the good…”

I draw a long, long breath. It burns like smoke and fumes, but I hold it and draw more. My ribs creak; my skin tightens.

The voice, closer now, is a low rumble just behind my head.

“…And out with the bad.”

My insides writhe like angry snakes. My throat dilates. I purge.

When the nothingness returns, I am grateful.

Sadly, it doesn’t keep me.

* * *

My eyes reopen, slowly now, and I see a hand—my hand—gaunt and pale, lying in a shallow pool of syrupy filth. I turn it over and over, pondering it. Pebbles of broken glass cling to my palm and inside my wrist. The wounds gape like ugly little mouths but do not bleed. But, there is blood, to be sure; I smell it all around me, pungent and metallic.

An impression lingers on the sticky tile as I peel away and a misshapen shadow forms beneath me. My head, I see, is canted from my shoulders and lolls unnaturally on my neck. I straighten myself and the sound jolts an image from the back of my mind: a body snapping at the end of a noose. I catch myself before I collapse, but a strange relief spreads like warm oil over my naked head.

I touch the hollow of my neck where begins a braid of stitches. My chest is a raw, aching patchwork. Behind my flattened hand, my heart beats frantic, desperate to escape its cage. I scrape the stitches, perhaps to help it on its way, but they crumble and fall away, exposing a web of smooth, fresh scars.

I gather a blurry impression from the things around me: the surgical slab from which I fell, a glass-fronted cabinet full of jars, a butcher’s scale.

“Help!” I cry, but the word is a cinder in my throat.

I listen, but there is only stillness.

Every joint in my body, every bone and sinew, protests as I rise. My heart races even harder from the exertion. My vision pinholes, and I teeter at the brink of darkness. I lean against the slab but it is too hot to touch. Even the air against my skin is stifling and oppressive.

A powerful lamp lights the room from behind me but its glare singes my back as if I were standing near a fire. Anger boils up within me and I lash out blindly. Even though it is well beyond my reach, the lamp topples backwards and breaks. I don’t know how and neither do I care. I think only of the soothing darkness, curling around my ankles like a grateful kitten.

Beyond my focus, a lone candle stains the darkness. By its light I see that the operating slab is streaked with drying blood. Red rivulets lead me to a built-in basin. I turn the spigot but there is only scalding water. With a shaking hand, I pluck a thick shard of glass from my arm and hold it for examination. Pasted to it is a portion of a brittle, yellow label but I cannot decipher its faded cursive. I drop the glass, it clatters in the drain.

I am suddenly aware of another set of eyes upon me and I turn. Again, I lose my balance and sink to the dirty tile, but not before glimpsing a dark figure seated across the room. I reach toward him, pleading, but I hear no reply. Eagerly, I crawl, slowing only as my hand slips in wet blood. A scalpel, carelessly discarded, spins subtly near my hand, etching circles on the floor. I look again at my imagined savior, a singularly large and well-dressed man, but hanging over his slumped form is the pall of death.

I slip again at his feet where I can’t help but notice his shoes—beautiful black leather oxfords, flamboyantly detailed, polished to resemble glass. I then see his hand hanging at his side, blood dripping from twitching, bloated fingers.

I grip the man’s broad knee, cruelly bunching the material of his trousers. Surprisingly, I hear a gasp and I raise myself closer to his face.

Our eyes meet, and a grotesque smile spreads between his thick cheeks. A thin, dark mustache stands out against his drained complexion. His most arresting feature, though, is the yawning wound that jaggedly distorts the deep folds of his neck. It widens and oozes as he tries to speak. He manages only a short guttural rasp and stops himself, content to merely smile.

For all my suffering, this strange man appears to have suffered even worse. I pull myself closer, my knees creaking and popping.

What has happened here? I mean to ask, but I only wheeze and babble.

He looks amused. With measured effort, he raises one heavy arm and places a hand gently over mine. I feel his heat and the tacky wetness from his blood. This morbid sensuality, this sudden intimacy, makes me want to recoil, but I simply lack the strength. His hand closes over mine and I see that his shirt-sleeves are rolled up past his elbows. As he turns my hand in his, I see another long gash inside his forearm. It puckers and bleeds as he moves. His other arm remains uselessly slack at his side.

Around his open collar hangs a pendant on a long silver chain. He sees me looking and his eyes become wide and rapturous. He releases me and his hand flutters toward his chest. He hooks his thumb under the chain and proudly holds out the ornament, as if for my approval. It depicts some strange symbol framed in a silver circle. I do not recognize it but it seems that it was meant to convey some obvious meaning. The man becomes discouraged and releases the chain. It startles me when, with a burst of strength, he seizes me by my shoulder and draws me towards him. He cradles my head against his wound and holds me there. Barely a moment later I feel his body relax entirely and I watch as the last, lazy constriction of his heart pushes out a slow trickle of blood that spreads hot against my cheek.

For the first time I begin to sense my wits. I’ve been caught up in something I want absolutely no part of, and I feel a desperate urge to leave. I wrestle myself away and, so doing, pull the dead man from the chair; his face strikes the tile with a sickening slap. Folded neatly over the back of the empty chair is a man’s topcoat with a long lavender silk scarf. With difficulty, I cover my aching, frail body, but the coat is so over-sized that I need to wrap it around me nearly twice and I lurch under the additional burden. I cinch it closed with the scarf and complete my ensemble with a fine men’s hat that I find on a nearby desk resting beside an open book.

When I turn back to the room, I am astonished by the volume of blood that I see—far more than the fat man could have yielded himself. It has been tracked all over the tile, and a well-worn path leads me to an open doorway. Outside, I hear the murmur of approaching voices. Ignorant but determined, I totter into the waiting darkness.

The footprints trail off in one direction so I depart in the other, favoring the large swathes of shadow along the wall to my left. Along my right are several offices. By day, I imagine that they are a bustling place, but at this strange hour they are desolate and unwelcoming.

A sudden commotion comes from far behind me accompanied by the bouncing beam of a flashlight. I lapse into one of the shallow doorways and pray not to be seen. When I look, I see only blurs suggesting two men possibly dragging a third. They fall silent as they direct the light into the room I had just escaped. They allow the third shape to slump to the floor.

My hand finds a doorknob at my back and I turn; it makes a noise but it does not yield. I hear a conspiratorial whisper and the flashlight sweeps in my direction. My grip around the knob tightens. As the men draw nearer they become lost in the glare. I succumb to helplessness, closing my eyes. One man whispers for the other to be cautious, steady.

I feel the heat from the light and I smell the wine on their breath well before their footsteps halt beside me. Only then can I compel myself into action and I’m astonished by its extremity. I pull the doorknob and it comes loose in my hand while the other end falls inside the office. I strike blindly, and one of the men cries out as the light falls and breaks. The ensuing confusion allows me to force the door and I slam it behind me, cracking the glass pane. Outside, I hear panicked whispers and gurgling sounds. The doorknob is still in my hand, its threaded spindle jutting like a deadly spike—slick and dripping with fresh blood.

Across the shadowy office is a window. The dark grey sky beyond is fringed by orange, like fire spreading over the horizon. It is not the breaking dawn, but the night sky as I now remember it, eternally overcast and lit from within by the persistent flame of modern industry. Though I cannot picture it, I know that I’m not far from my home and my urge to be there cannot be contained.

I take the bare coat rack from beside the door and use it to knock out the window glass. Crisp air eddies into the room carrying the unmuffled din from the factories. Closing my eyes, I climb up into the broken frame, and, just as the door kicks open behind me, I surrender to the allure of the night.

I land firmly on a sparsely wooded slope in several inches of packed snow dusted with grey soot. In another few strides, I am crouching in the shadow of a stout tree. Several stories above, a figure appears at an open window, too high to be the one from which I leapt, but I see no other. If he sees me, I cannot tell, but he remains at the window, hot breath streaming into the cold air, but otherwise silent and motionless until, eventually, he recedes into the darkness.

Further down the hill, a passing automobile catches my attention. I lurch after it, but it is well gone before I can go even a few paces. My last exertion has taken more from me than I can spare, and the cold ground seems more welcoming than it ought. I feel like I could make a bed here, in the snow and ash, and be content. Reason alone propels me onward.

I arrive at a section of paved road awash in the light of an isolated streetlamp. In either direction, the road follows the bank of a wide, dark river but leads seemingly nowhere. Only random streetlamps interrupt the darkness. On the opposite shore are even darker hills defined by the fires from the distant ironworks; the noise and the scent are strange comforts to me. When another automobile passes with its bright headlights I make no effort to hail it. I have my bearings now, and it is not going my way.

* * *

It isn’t long before I am among the cobbled alleyways of a familiar neighborhood, slogging barefoot through mud and slush, curiously untroubled by the cold. Few other people are out at this hour and I’m grateful; I sincerely doubt I’d be able to present an intelligent account of myself. I want only the refuge of my own bed and to put this strange ordeal behind me, at least until I am properly rested. I am nearly overcome by relief when I find myself looking up at the threshold of my old home.

I take the three short steps to thumb the latch and I am genuinely dazed when it does not yield to my touch. When a frantic search of my person doesn’t produce a key, I consider calling out to be let in, but I cannot picture who might answer. My hand is around the handle again when I notice an automobile idling on the street behind me. From an open rear window there comes the murmur of hushed voices and the faint but familiar aroma of red wine. I force the door with surprising ease and burst inside.

The house is dark and vacant. On a wall where photographs might have hung, there are only darkened rectangles and nails holding nothing. The hardwood is likewise discolored where a rug might have lain; the hearth is cold and empty, like the mouth of a tomb. There is nothing to spark my memory, only formidable absence.

A figure darkens the doorway behind me, similar to the one that I saw looming in the window. Only now, he is smaller, less threatening. My face must clearly transmit my anger, for, when I step toward him, he stumbles back and nearly down the steps. I catch him by the head but my nails bite too deep behind his ears, and he screams. Hot blood jets between my fingers and I instantly release him. He crumples to the steps and the terror frozen on his young face strikes me at my core. Three more young men in suits stand beside the automobile. They only watch as I withdraw into the shadows of my old home, the blood of their fallen brother dripping from my—I can only call them—claws.

I run through the empty house to the rear door, throwing it open, and I burst across the small yard. I bound the tall fence into the alley and I run. I run until the night is a blur all around me, and I don’t stop until the sound of the morning whistle shakes me from my trance and I find myself, once again, by the river. I stand at the end of the iron bridge a mile from my home. Ahead of me, a pair of laborers totters toward the factories. A glance skyward indeed shows me that the light is beginning to soften. Soon, droves of workers will shamble by with their lunchboxes, their grey faces cast downward. The bridge will sway under the weight of them.

I cross half way and linger, looking out over the railing. Down river, the ironworks is ablaze, its sparks and flames reflected in the black water. Coal barges, like great, floating sentries, patrol the banks. Far beneath me, the water-logged corpse of a dog drifts past and I begin to sense my place. It is something much more ghastly, however, that drives me up onto the narrow railing: the realization that, since I had attacked that poor, young man, I’ve been casually licking my fingers clean. With no small measure of disgust, I throw myself into the waiting water.

* * *

And it is there, beside one of the bridge’s great stone pilings that I wait for the nothingness to return.

How long I wait, I cannot tell, but I wait well after the last of my exhalations leave me in a thin strand of sickly, yellow bubbles. Even with the river bottom drawn over me and my pockets heavy with mud and slag, I wait. It is not until I catch myself adjusting for comfort that I admit that drowning might not be the end of me.

I wait then for sickness or even hunger to claim me, but even they abate after a time. My heart slows, but never stops, its beat deep and resonant. For great lengths of time it is all that I hear—that, and the persistent crawl of the current. Other times, I hear the thrum of the passing barges which glide above me only as monstrous shadows in the murk. I come to accept that this relative peace, while no substitute for the grave, is the best I can hope for and, perhaps, I should be grateful.

I get to know my niche quite well, monitoring with greater and greater interest the patterns of the river: the speed of the current relative to its depth, the depth relative to the weather, the weather relative to the amount of light reaching me, and the changes in light and temperature relative to the passing seasons. My senses attune to passing time in this manner and it is with keen eyes that I watch the last tatter of my top-coat unfurl from my bloated and blackened forearm and float dreamily downstream.

I recall nothing further of my past life. Memories of my waking, of blood, and mysterious men, dissolve and are washed away. I exist only in the moment, like the old masters of the Orient. But, there is one thing I cannot dismiss—the image of the strange symbol hanging from the fat man’s neck. I try to redraw it in my mind, but it eludes me—a distant whisper.

Sadly, there is the matter of my sustenance. It disturbs me to even contemplate but I cannot deny what has become such a defining fixture of my new life. Though seldom hungry, I often find myself mindlessly partaking on things that men ought to shun—the small, dead things that the river carries my way—and other things too shameful to mention. But, with every awful morsel, I feel somehow restored, and, Heaven help me, the more I crave.

In the rainy months, flooding is not uncommon, and after one particularly potent spring storm, the water runs darker and deeper than I have ever previously noticed. Though I have grown quite strong, I struggle to keep myself from being swept away. Anchored to the piling somewhat like a barnacle, I see a passing shape and seize it as a matter of reflex. It is the body of a man, long dead, and for some time after, I prefer to pick at the decaying meat. Only once I drain the brittle bones and spit out the chewed remains like peanut shells do I return to my previous fare, but it leaves me wanting.

After a greater while, the water cools and the fires of industry die. Life returns to the water, and with it, my own health prospers. I venture further from my niche, often breaking the surface to admire the foliage along the banks and the tall, shiny buildings looming over the green hills. But, not everything is so prosperous. On one of my sojourns, I am surprised to find another dead man tangled in the boughs of a fallen tree. A folded letter in his suit pocket describes a sad story, though I find the language difficult to follow. I cradle his head like an oversized apple, and with my first bite, I taste some lingering warmth. Eagerly, I devour the rest of him with a sense of joy that I know I don’t deserve. Once nothing remains and I am bloated and basking in the shallow water, I am slowly overcome by guilt. I’ve become a ghoul, plain and simple.

The horrors that drove me into the river however long ago no longer seem so terrible and I vow to restore what I can of my humanity. That night, I emerge beneath the wide shadow of the bridge and splay myself on a large, flat rock to purge the water and draw in my first real breath in an age. The air is clean and fragrant but the experience is rather like drowning in reverse. When my coughing subsides and my vision clears, I stand fully upright and lumber up the bank.

In the wedge of shadow beneath the end of the bridge, I see a man sleeping in a tangle of blankets. He is dressed strangely and smells strongly of sweat and urine. He wakes as I approach, and he must be quite unstable because he cries out in violent horror at the merest sight of me. I move to silence him but it works too well. His face, soft as a handful of cake, falls in a wet clump to the concrete. He scrambles backwards, tripping and slipping, until he strikes his head hard against a beam and falls down silent. I come nearer in time to watch the life drain from his one lidless eye. Steaming blood courses down the slope. I run my finger through it and I stop before it reaches my mouth. My hand is long, leathery, and gray; my fingers, swollen at the tips, hold long, curved nails. I must be foolish to think that I have a place in the living world. However, it would also be foolish to waste a warm meal.

* * *

I trudge along the river bottom, carrying behind me the sad remains of the vagrant, puzzling over where I should now hide myself. The water is no longer sufficiently removed from the world to which I am now an enemy and an alien. But, after several tedious miles, an open sewer outlet welcomes me and I follow it into a chamber just above the water line. It is darker and more toxic than anything I can imagine, and so, perfectly suited for me to retire in shame and seclusion.

Again, I experience the dull creep of time, but without the small amount of sunlight on which I previously based my days and nights. The water flows in its way—rising, falling—but I pay it little mind. There are no plump catfish here to eat, only scampering rats, small snakes that skim the black water, and the occasional turtle. My mind darkens by degrees and I exist mostly in a dreamless stupor, sulking as it seems I’ve always done. Even my shame is forgotten.

Inevitably, the chamber is visited by living men—workers, judging by their lights and helmets and tell-tale swagger. I make little effort to conceal myself; I merely cling to the pipes with the other vermin, watching from above—close, yet still escaping notice. The scent of their blood sings to me and I imagine myself snatching and devouring the lot of them. They leave before the temptation grows too strong. Later, to prevent their return, I force a collapse of the adjacent passage, burying my sanctuary behind a mass of brick, earth, and roots. The rats soon find their way in, as they do, but I’m hopeful that I have seen my last living person.

With nothing else to occupy me, I become singularly obsessed with trying to recall the symbol from the fat man’s necklace. Though I had seen it only once, its impression hasn’t faded, and it taunts me from the brink of consciousness. Every surface where I can drag a claw becomes etched with my attempts to recreate it until patterns emerge and it is like I am writing in some forgotten alphabet. I even find myself making frantic erasures and corrections then rushing to resume my place, an artist possessed by his creation.

The chamber, while awful from the start, becomes even more loathsome. Vermin arrive in ever-greater numbers, and though I never remember feeding, their little corpses continue to collect around my feet. The survivors learn to keep their distance, watching from the corners, multiplying, until they seem like a solitary, seething mass—hundreds of little, black eyes glinting through the rising miasma. Only when I abruptly cross the chamber and they clamber to clear my path, do I see their individual shapes, and I’m certain I glimpse things no sane mind can describe.

At last, the constant writhing and chittering stops, and I step back to admire the finished design. It reminds me of the workings of a clock, made of elaborately interlocking and concentric circles, yet still maintaining the ideal of the original. It spreads across the largest and adjacent walls, and onto the ceiling. It isn’t clear where it ends, but it has a clear focal point, because, no matter where I direct my eyes, I’m drawn to the same blank spot toward the center. How I could have a hand in its creation is beyond me. I am in awe. This is not my work; this is the work of a master.

* * *

The world is lifted away, like a backdrop from a stage.

Far away, in the distant black of horizonless space is a shape—a glittering obelisk—moving almost imperceptibly: turning, shifting, growing…

“The abyss gazes back.”

The deep voice comes from behind me, familiar. I’m afraid that if I turn the vision will vanish.

“Nietzsche, or something to that effect. Have you ever read Nietzsche?”

I turn, hesitantly. Behind me is the chamber as it was, or nearly. Only now, it is awash in warm, amber light, and soft around the edges, like an old tintype. A man in a smart, brown suit is seated in an armchair, an island in the shallow water. Beside him is a little table with a reading lamp and a fresh cigar burning in an ashtray. One leg is ankle-deep in the water; the other is crossed over his lap, dry.

“Me neither, really. I’m just making small talk.” He shifts in his seat, taking me in. “Goodness, you’ve changed; Bless your heart.”

I make a noise and he lifts his hand in mild protest. “That’s alright,” he says. “I can do the talking. I see that you are having difficulty. You want to know who I am. Fair enough—fair enough.” He pauses. “I’m you—as you used to be anyway, though you probably don’t remember. And that’s fine—for the best, really. I can tell you are confused, obviously you are, and I’m afraid no explanation will be sufficient. So, let me just say this.” He smooths the part in his hair and smiles white teeth. “The universe—or whatever you want to call it—is vast, no mistake.” He points behind me. “More vast than anyone can know, but you? You’re special—because you’ve got something special inside you.” He taps his chest with his finger. “You’ve got time, real time. And that makes you valuable.”

Just then, I hear a low mechanical rumble coming from the outer passage, beyond where I brought down the tunnel. The man must also hear but doesn’t react.

“Valuable to whom, you may ask.” He gestures again to the void but this time I am too afraid to look. “Call him your benefactor. Long ago, when the world was new, he visited. He left a son—of sorts—to watch over things until he got back. Now, a piece of that son lives on in you.”

I touch my scars, creamy gray against the muscles of my oil-black chest.

He sits up, placing his other shoe in the water. “But, I’m afraid that’s all we have time for today. Just keep patient; you’re doing terrific.” And then, he is gone, the water rippling in ringlets where the chair had been.

The light fades, and again I am alone before the wall. Even the rats have gone—driven, no doubt, by the fearsome mechanical growl now shaking the chamber. The workers have at last returned, but I remain frozen where I stand. I drop my gaze to my reflection in the water—my wide, expressionless eyes, my slack jaw crowded with long, jagged teeth; it is doubtful that, beneath this dense obsidian flesh, there is anything that could have ever been considered human. I am, every inch, a monster. For the first time in an age, and though it is not quite the sound I expect, I allow myself to laugh.

* * *

The digging machine pierces the chamber, and when it withdraws, a powerful light breaks through from the outer passage. From my hiding space among the pipes, I watch three men enter, all wearing bright coveralls and gasmasks. Immediately, they begin to stagger and stumble and blather uselessly into their hand-held radios. They cannot even locate the passage they had only just made. As I will it, their flashlights darken and the machines outside sputter and die. When the first man sheds his mask to be sick, I descend on the other two, draining them as quickly as I would crush the air from a paper sack.

By the time I stand over the gasping survivor, I am a vision of demonic potency. But, I am over confident. He takes from a pocket, a chemical flare and ignites it. The explosion is catastrophic.

* * *

The river is rushing far beneath me, farther than what seems natural. I raise my eyes; the day-time sky, though muted by thick fog and dark clouds, is still nearly more than I can stand. I’m perched on the edge of steel catwalk running beneath a massive bridge, taller and wider than any I’ve seen. My skin feels stiff and crackles with every movement. Badly burned and semi-consciousness, I must have retreated here, where I last felt safe. But so much has changed. Absently, I resume eating—a blackened, severed arm from one of the workers that I managed to retain. I feel my strength slowly return.

I remain motionless, allowing what must be hours to pass. By degrees, I start to feel pain, and cold. I can’t remember when I last had these sensations, and though invigorating at first, they quickly become unpleasant. I am grateful when a lone workman happens along when he does, whistling casually. His blue coveralls fit me quite nicely and the extra blood helps chase away the chill. I feel strangely content as I climb into a space among one of the massive cement structures, disturbing a nest of pigeons, and let myself be lulled by the drone of the passing traffic above.

When I awake again, night has fallen and the moon presides over a starry sky. The air is scented with spring blossoms, apparent even over the automobile fumes, and I find the combination is surprisingly appealing. I dig through my new pockets and find a small handful of coins; the dates minted on them are, in order: 1989, 1999, 2001, and 2017. I flip them, one-by-one, into the river.

That I was ever a living man, with my own past and a family, has no more bearing upon me now than the fact that I was likely once a child. When I look back, I see only shadows of memories that stir in me no latent emotions. The mystery preceding my death has been overshadowed by the one that followed it. Perhaps, I should not have fled those strange men when I was first “awakened,” or whatever I dare call it. Whatever their dark purpose, I suspect that they too are long gone. Although, given the things I’ve seen, I can’t be certain.

I notice a patch of clean, new skin through a break in the charred flesh of my forearm. I prod it with a finger and the tissues easily separate, widening the opening. I slip my hand inside, like removing a glove, and the burnt flesh sloughs away in big, dusty pieces. Beneath it all, is an ordinary human hand. I uncover my other arm, and then my head and neck. When I run a clean finger inside my mouth, the crumbles of my misshapen teeth tumble out, and in their place, a new row of perfect teeth. Behind my open collar, even my scar has vanished.

Renewed, I leap down to the catwalk, landing with such poise that I barely make a sound. My body is like a coiled snake, ready to strike, and I cannot contain myself. I leap out over the railing, barely snagging a steel beam far out over the water; I scale up the ironwork with such athleticism that I never thought myself capable.

From the highest point, amid painted iron and colored lights, I look out over a shimmering city that is as unfamiliar to me as I’ve become to myself—strange buildings, strange automobiles, strange people. There is activity along the far shorefront, a stream of people, like a drove of cattle, headed or returning from I can’t imagine where. When I focus on their faces, their thoughts are almost as clear as my own. So much hidden fear, yet they are entirely oblivious to the horrors with which I have only become acquainted. I, myself, feel so insignificant, so neglected, how else would I expect them to feel? Is it possible that I value life more than it deserves? I’ve been a monster now far longer than I’ve ever been human. Perhaps it’s time to act accordingly.

End.

Jon Carroll Thomas is a (sometimes) writer living in Raleigh, NC. He shares a little log home with his wife, young son, and five cats. His recent work appears in Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery. He also leads a Literary Horror book club through a local, independent book store. You can find him on Facebook and Instagram.

The Willows

By Algernon Blackwood

2

“You’ve been gone so long,” he shouted above the wind, “I thought something must have happened to you.”

But there was that in his tone, and a certain look in his face as well, that conveyed to me more than his usual words, and in a flash I understood the real reason for his coming. It was because the spell of the place had entered his soul too, and he did not like being alone. “River still rising,” he cried, pointing to the flood in the moonlight, “and the wind’s simply awful.”

He always said the same things, but it was the cry for companionship that gave the real importance to his words.

“Lucky,” I cried back, “our tent’s in the hollow. I think it’ll hold all right.” I added something about the difficulty of finding wood, in order to explain my absence, but the wind caught my words and flung them across the river, so that he did not hear, but just looked at me through the branches, nodding his head.

“Lucky if we get away without disaster!” he shouted, or words to that effect; and I remember feeling half angry with him for putting the thought into words, for it was exactly what I felt myself. There was disaster impending somewhere, and the sense of presentiment lay unpleasantly upon me.

We went back to the fire and made a final blaze, poking it up with our feet. We took a last look round. But for the wind the heat would have been unpleasant. I put this thought into words, and I remember my friend’s reply struck me oddly: that he would rather have the heat, the ordinary July weather, than this “diabolical wind.”

Everything was snug for the night; the canoe lying turned over beside the tent, with both yellow paddles beneath her; the provision sack hanging from a willow-stem, and the washed-up dishes removed to a safe distance from the fire, all ready for the morning meal. We smothered the embers of the fire with sand, and then turned in. The flap of the tent door was up, and I saw the branches and the stars and the white moonlight. The shaking willows and the heavy buffetings of the wind against our taut little house were the last things I remembered as sleep came down and covered all with its soft and delicious forgetfulness.

Suddenly I found myself lying awake, peering from my sandy mattress through the door of the tent. I looked at my watch pinned against the canvas, and saw by the bright moonlight that it was past twelve o’clock—the threshold of a new day—and I had therefore slept a couple of hours. The Swede was asleep still beside me; the wind howled as before; something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid. There was a sense of disturbance in my immediate neighborhood.

I sat up quickly and looked out. The trees were swaying violently to and fro as the gusts smote them, but our little bit of green canvas lay snugly safe in the hollow, for the wind passed over it without meeting enough resistance to make it vicious. The feeling of disquietude did not pass, however, and I crawled quietly out of the tent to see if our belongings were safe. I moved carefully so as not to waken my companion. A curious excitement was on me.

I was half-way out, kneeling on all fours, when my eye first took in that the tops of the bushes opposite, with their moving tracery of leaves, made shapes against the sky. I sat back on my haunches and stared. It was incredible, surely, but there, opposite and slightly above me, were shapes of some indeterminate sort among the willows, and as the branches swayed in the wind they seemed to group themselves about these shapes, forming a series of monstrous outlines that shifted rapidly beneath the moon. Close, about fifty feet in front of me, I saw these things.

My first instinct was to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate—the sudden realization, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself that I was not dreaming.

They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within the tops of the bushes—immense, bronze-colored, moving, and wholly independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky. They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost—rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.

I stared, trying to force every atom of vision from my eyes. For a long time I thought they must every moment disappear and resolve themselves into the movements of the branches and prove to be an optical illusion. I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed. For the longer I looked the more certain I became that these figures were real and living, though perhaps not according to the standards that the camera and the biologist would insist upon.

Far from feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the world’s history. But, before I could arrive at any possible explanation, something impelled me to go farther out, and I crept forward on the sand and stood upright. I felt the ground still warm under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and worship— absolutely worship.

Perhaps in another minute I might have done so, when a gust of wind swept against me with such force that it blew me sideways, and I nearly stumbled and fell. It seemed to shake the dream violently out of me. At least it gave me another point of view somehow. The figures still remained, still ascended into heaven from the heart of the night, but my reason at last began to assert itself. It must be a subjective experience, I argued—none the less real for that, but still subjective. The moonlight and the branches combined to work out these pictures upon the mirror of my imagination, and for some reason I projected them outwards and made them appear objective. I knew this must be the case, of course. I took courage, and began to move forward across the open patches of sand. By Jove, though, was it all hallucination? Was it merely subjective? Did not my reason argue in the old futile way from the little standard of the known?

I only know that great column of figures ascended darkly into the sky for what seemed a very long period of time, and with a very complete measure of reality as most men are accustomed to gauge reality. Then suddenly they were gone!

And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush. The esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me, and I began to tremble dreadfully. I took a quick look round—a look of horror that came near to panic—calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind.

As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the watch.

But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror. It was neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting bolt upright—listening.

Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings. They had been coming, I
was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above. Was it the body of the wind? Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves? The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops? I thought quickly of a dozen things.

Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind: a bough from the poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind. Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall with the next gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised a loose flap and rushed out, calling to the Swede to follow.

But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.

A cold, grey light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several hours must have passed since I stood there before watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled the air, and a fine spray made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.

Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly unaccounted for.

My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles—two of them, I’m certain; the provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.

I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I reflected—the wind bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry particles smartly against the taut canvas—the wind dropping heavily upon our fragile roof.

Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead. Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast terror. From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did....

It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember saying to myself, for the winds often move like great presences under the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river, crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought a cry up into the throat.

But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me, compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at all.

For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. They had moved nearer.

Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity.

Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd, that I felt inclined to laugh. But the laughter came no more readily than the cry, for the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.

The wind buffeted me about, and, very quickly it seemed, the sun came up over the horizon, for it was after four o’clock, and I must have stood on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew, afraid to come down to close quarters with the willows. I returned quietly, creepily, to the tent, first taking another exhaustive look round and—yes, I confess it—making a few measurements. I paced out on the warm sand the distances between the willows and the tent, making a note of the shortest distance particularly.

I crawled stealthily into my blankets. My companion, to all appearances, still slept soundly, and I was glad that this was so. Provided my experiences were not corroborated, I could find strength somehow to deny them, perhaps. With the daylight I could persuade myself that it was all a subjective hallucination, a fantasy of the night, a projection of the excited imagination.

Nothing further came in to disturb me, and I fell asleep almost at once, utterly exhausted, yet still in dread of hearing again that weird sound of multitudinous pattering, or of feeling the pressure upon my heart that had made it difficult to breathe.

The sun was high in the heavens when my companion woke me from a heavy sleep and announced that the porridge was cooked and there was just time to bathe. The grateful smell of frizzling bacon entered the tent door.

“River still rising,” he said, “and several islands out in mid-stream have disappeared altogether. Our own island’s much smaller.”

“Any wood left?” I asked sleepily.

“The wood and the island will finish tomorrow in a dead heat,” he laughed, “but there’s enough to last us till then.”

I plunged in from the point of the island, which had indeed altered a lot in size and shape during the night, and was swept down in a moment to the landing-place opposite the tent. The water was icy, and the banks flew by like the country from an express train. Bathing under such conditions was an exhilarating operation, and the terror of the night seemed cleansed out of me by a process of evaporation in the brain. The sun was blazing hot; not a cloud showed itself anywhere; the wind, however, had not abated one little jot.

Quite suddenly then the implied meaning of the Swede’s words flashed across me, showing that he no longer wished to leave post-haste, and had changed his mind. “Enough to last till tomorrow”—he assumed we should stay on the island another night. It struck me as odd. The night before he was so positive the other way. How had the change come about?

Great crumblings of the banks occurred at breakfast, with heavy splashings and clouds of spray which the wind brought into our frying-pan, and my fellow-traveler talked incessantly about the difficulty the Vienna-Pesth steamers must have to find the channel in flood. But the state of his mind interested and impressed me far more than the state of the river or the difficulties of the steamers. He had changed somehow since the evening before. His manner was different—a trifle excited, a trifle shy, with a sort of suspicion about his voice and gestures. I hardly know how to describe it now in cold blood, but at the time I remember being quite certain of one thing—that he had become frightened?

He ate very little breakfast, and for once omitted to smoke his pipe. He had the map spread open beside him, and kept studying its markings.

“We’d better get off sharp in an hour,” I said presently, feeling for an opening that must bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably: “Rather! If they’ll let us.”

“Who’ll let us? The elements?” I asked quickly, with affected indifference.

“The powers of this awful place, whoever they are,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the map. “The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world.”

“The elements are always the true immortals,” I replied, laughing as naturally as I could manage, yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my true feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke across the smoke:

“We shall be fortunate if we get away without further disaster.”

This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed myself up to the point of the direct question. It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long run, and the rest was all pretence.

“Further disaster! Why, what’s happened?”

“For one thing—the steering paddle’s gone,” he said quietly.

“The steering paddle gone!” I repeated, greatly excited, for this was our rudder, and the Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide. “But what—”

“And there’s a tear in the bottom of the canoe,” he added, with a genuine little tremor in his voice.

I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the words in his face somewhat foolishly. There, in the heat of the sun, and on this burning sand, I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round us. I got up to follow him, for he merely nodded his head gravely and led the way towards the tent a few yards on the other side of the fireplace. The canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles, or rather, the paddle, on the sand beside her.

“There’s only one,” he said, stooping to pick it up. “And here’s the rent in the base-board.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I had clearly noticed two paddles a few hours before, but a second impulse made me think better of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of the canoe where a little slither of wood had been neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length, and investigation showed that the hole went through. Had we launched out in her without observing it we must inevitably have foundered. At first the water would have made the wood swell so as to close the hole, but once out in mid-stream the water must have poured in, and the canoe, never more than two inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk very rapidly.

“There, you see an attempt to prepare a victim for the sacrifice,” I heard him saying, more to himself than to me, “two victims rather,” he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along the slit.

I began to whistle—a thing I always do unconsciously when utterly nonplussed—and purposely paid no attention to his words. I was determined to consider them foolish.

“It wasn’t there last night,” he said presently, straightening up from his examination and looking anywhere but at me.

“We must have scratched her in landing, of course,” I stopped whistling to say. “The stones are very sharp.”

I stopped abruptly, for at that moment he turned round and met my eye squarely. I knew just as well as he did how impossible my explanation was. There were no stones, to begin with.

“And then there’s this to explain too,” he added quietly, handing me the paddle and pointing to the blade.

A new and curious emotion spread freezingly over me as I took and examined it. The blade was scraped down all over, beautifully scraped, as though someone had sand-papered it with care, making it so thin that the first vigorous stroke must have snapped it off at the elbow.

“One of us walked in his sleep and did this thing,” I said feebly, “or—or it has been filed by the constant stream of sand particles blown against it by the wind, perhaps.”

“Ah,” said the Swede, turning away, laughing a little, “you can explain everything.”

“The same wind that caught the steering paddle and flung it so near the bank that it fell in with the next lump that crumbled,” I called out after him, absolutely determined to find an explanation for everything he showed me.

“I see,” he shouted back, turning his head to look at me before disappearing among the willow bushes.

Once alone with these perplexing evidences of personal agency, I think my first thoughts took the form of “One of us must have done this thing, and it certainly was not I.” But my second thought decided how impossible it was to suppose, under all the circumstances, that either of us had done it. That my companion, the trusted friend of a dozen similar expeditions, could have knowingly had a hand in it, was a suggestion not to be entertained for a moment. Equally absurd seemed the explanation that this imperturbable and densely practical nature had suddenly become insane and was busied with insane purposes.

Yet the fact remained that what disturbed me most, and kept my fear actively alive even in this blaze of sunshine and wild beauty, was the clear certainty that some curious alteration had come about in his mind—that he was nervous, timid, suspicious, aware of goings on he did not speak about, watching a series of secret and hitherto unmentionable events—waiting, in a word, for a climax that he expected, and, I thought, expected very soon. This grew up in my mind intuitively—I hardly knew how.

I made a hurried examination of the tent and its surroundings, but the measurements o the night remained the same. There were deep hollows formed in the sand I now noticed for the first time, basin-shaped and of various depths and sizes, varying from that of a tea-cup to a large bowl. The wind, no doubt, was responsible for these miniature craters, just as it was for lifting the paddle and tossing it towards the water. The rent in the canoe was the only thing that seemed quite inexplicable; and, after all, it was conceivable that a sharp point had caught it when we landed. The examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with that diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my “reason.” An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary—however absurd—to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life. The simile seemed to me at the time an exact parallel.

I at once set the pitch melting, and presently the Swede joined me at the work, though under the best conditions in the world the canoe could not be safe for traveling till the following day. I drew his attention casually to the hollows in the sand.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. They’re all over the island. But you can explain them, no doubt!”

“Wind, of course,” I answered without hesitation. “Have you never watched those little whirlwinds in the street that twist and twirl everything into a circle? This sand’s loose enough to yield, that’s all.”

He made no reply, and we worked on in silence for a bit. I watched him surreptitiously all the time, and I had an idea he was watching me. He seemed, too, to be always listening attentively to something I could not hear, or perhaps for something that he expected to hear, for he kept turning about and staring into the bushes, and up into the sky, and out across the water where it was visible through the openings among the willows. Sometimes he even put his hand to his ear and held it there for several minutes. He said nothing to me, however, about it, and I asked no questions. And meanwhile, as he mended that torn canoe with the skill and address of a red Indian, I was glad to notice his absorption in the work, for there was a vague dread in my heart that he would speak of the changed aspect of the willows. And, if he had noticed that, my imagination could no longer be held a sufficient explanation of it.

To be continued next month…

After farming in Canada, operating a hotel, mining in the Alaskan goldfields, and working as a newspaper reporter in New York City, experiences that he recalled in Episodes Before Thirty (1923), Algernon Blackwood returned to England in 1899. Seven years later he published his first book of short stories, The Empty House (1906), and became a full-time fiction writer. Later collections include John Silence (1908), stories about a detective sensitive to extrasensory phenomena, and Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (1949), 22 stories selected from his nine other books of short stories.

In his later years Blackwood achieved a wide audience as a teller of ghost tales on British radio and television.

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