CHM January 2024
Author: CHM LLC
Date: 2023-12-20 13:25:24+00:00

Copyright © 2024 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 - Trevor Henderson

Cosmic Horror Monthly

Editor: Charles Tyra

Co-Editor: Carson Winter

Associate Editor: Jolie Toomajan
www.cosmichorrormonthly.com

Greetings Dear Reader,

A new year and a new era begins for Cosmic Horror Monthly this month and some exciting changes are just around the corner. First, we officially welcome CHM’s new editor: Jolie Toomajan. She will be learning the ropes and taking over as chief editor as of issue number 49. We have a new column for readers interested in writing cosmic horror and weird fiction. Nicole Cushing provides the debut article this month, and it’s one you don’t want to miss. Of course, we also have a lineup of some of the most terrifying fiction we’ve published up to this date. Let’s dig in.

We’ll start with a weird story of weight loss taken to the extreme in “163.3.” Then in Patrick Barb’s “The Secret Society of Schrodinger’s Children,” we’ll explore the nature of existence. Next up, discover a terrifying retelling of an old sea shanty in “Dragging Bones from the Ocean.” Then a strange scientific discovery gives way to a horrific natural disaster in “Ambiguation” by CHM alum Alex Wolfgang.

Enjoy the nod to one of the great weird horror writers of our time in “Doctor Gotilli and Mr. Clark.” Then, the trip home for two women becomes dangerous after hitting a strange creature in “Interstate 80.” We will begin to wind things down with a post-apocalyptic horror story called “The Sunbathers” before descending deep into The Crypt for a short but effective classic by Ambrose Bierce that you may or may not be familiar with called “The Boarded Window.”

Enjoy.

Meet the CHM staff

Charles Tyra: Editor

Oenophile, logophile, long time devotee to cosmic horror, sci fi, weird fiction, and all things pulp. 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.

Jolie Toomajan: Associate Editor

Jolie Toomajan is a writer, editor, and all-around ghoul. Her work has appeared in Upon a Thrice Time, Death in the Mouth, Apex, and Black Static (among other places), and she is the editor of Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction. She has a PhD in English, and her dissertation focused on
the women who wrote for Weird Tales. Despite all this, she would read out loud from a book written in backwards Latin. You can find her anywhere @JolieToomajan

Featured artists this month

Trevor Henderson is a writer and illustrator. His love of monsters, cryptids, ghosts and other horrible entities is enduring and vast. When he is not drawing or writing horrible things, he is thinking about the unknowable and hostile forces working against all of humanity, and playing with his cat, who is named Boo.

Drew Cuturilo is a Serbian artist from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania who works primarily with pencil, ballpoint pen, and occasionally charcoal. Drew studied art under former Disney animator Alexander Frendy in a three-year accelerated art program all the way back in the 90s. He has been influenced by the works of Gustave Doré, Hans Rudiger Giger, Zdzislaw Beksinski, and Salvador Dalí, along with the written word of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and William Hope Hodgson. When Drew is not grinding away at his day job, he takes on commission work, sells prints of his art, and maintains the online Cuturilo Gallery.

Table of Contents

1. 163.3

2. The Secret Society of Schrödinger’s Children

3. Reality is the Antagonist:
4. Dragging Bones from the Ocean
5. Ambiguation
6. Doctor Gottili and Mr. Clark
7. Interstate 80
8. The Sunbathers
9. The Boarded Window

Welcome to Cosmic Horror Monthly

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

163.3

By Christopher Reed

163.3 pounds. I stared at my scale, naked and confused. That couldn’t be right. The scale had to be wrong.

At the beginning of the year, I, like so many others desperate for improvement, resolved to lose 10 pounds of holiday weight gain. I’m not in bad shape, never have been, but moderation is an unfair requirement when surrounded by cookies and cocktails for six straight weeks.

I’ve lost weight before, always doing the sensible thing: counting calories and doing just enough exercise to ensure I was burning more than I was eating. I’m too much of a science-guy to fall into fad diets and quick fixes, despite my oldest daughter’s pleas to try out some things she saw on Instagram.

But she’s young and eager, where I am old and more inclined to reason and experience. Throughout her 17 years, I’ve lost 5, 10, even 15 pounds following the same tried and true, science-backed methods.

Which is why I was so perplexed on that horrible day in September following my New Year’s resolution.

I started the year at 168 pounds, and by the beginning of April I was already down to 164. Once again, science and reason carried the day.

Until it didn’t.

By the end of April, I was down to 163.3 pounds. Not as much of a drop as I would like, but fat is stubborn and slow to leave sometimes. Stay calm and carry on, as they say.

When I weighed myself again on June 1st, I was shocked to see I was still at 163.3 pounds. Where had I gone wrong? Perhaps I was not as mindful as I should have been. Maybe there was an extra cookie or bag of chips I wasn’t paying attention to. No bother, I thought, just continue on course and be more careful with eating.

And as the weather warmed in my small town in Wisconsin, I could benefit from more daily walking and even the occasional jog to maintain that calorie deficit.

I approached the scale on July 1st, eager to see my new status. With the Fourth of July and our family vacation to the cabin approaching, I knew I had some pounds to give to allow for some s’mores and craft beer.

Only, I didn’t. The scale still read 163.3.

I was initially disappointed, but I went through the checklist in my head as to what could explain this. I had no reason to doubt my own efforts; I was more active physically and more mindful of my food intake. I had even enlisted the family to catch me when I reached for an extra cookie or glass of wine. My son, whose attention to detail was honed by playing so many puzzle games on his Nintendo thingy, was quite good at scolding me for trying to sneak in one extra treat.

Maybe the scale itself was acting up? It was one of those “smart” scales that connected to the internet and kept track of everything. My wife, much more of a tech expert than I, caught me looking at the scale.

“Problem with the scale, John?”

“I’m not sure; it says I’m still at 163.3,” I explained.

“That can’t be right. Let me try.”

Cindy stepped on the scale and chuckled.

“I’d like to say it’s wrong, but it says I’ve gained 2 pounds, which unfortunately seems right.”

“Weird. Well, I guess it’s time to bust out the food journal.”

Cindy cocked her head and softly said, “Are you sure that’s necessary, John? You’ve still clearly lost weight; actually, you look like you’ve lost more than what the scale says.”

I considered her words and looked in the mirror. I did look good, in fact the best I’ve looked all year. My face and hips were less bulky, and my summer shorts weren’t as tight as they had been only a month ago.

“Maybe this is just your new weight? Our bodies are weird, you know. Maybe this is just where your body wants to be at your age.”

I was with her until she mentioned my age. At 52, I knew things weren’t far from getting more difficult. With two kids still on the way to college, I couldn’t afford excessive hospital bills that simple body maintenance should avoid.

“Maybe, but I think I can do better.”

“Well, that’s your decision. But you look good to me.”

She smiled and walked off. I was grateful that she was more forgiving than I was. This was my battle, and she left me to fight it.

I exercised for much more that month. I limited myself to no more than 1500 calories a day, documenting every bit of food and drink I took in. I didn’t have any alcohol or sweets (which made me a grumpy bastard on the Fourth of July) and drank only water, and lots of it. By conservative calculations, I should have been losing roughly one pound a week, maybe more considering how much I was pissing due to the water.

It was the morning before we left for our annual vacation to northern Wisconsin in our cabin. I routinely gained at least 5 pounds on the trip drinking beer, wine, and eating s’mores and other junk. I intended to proceed with even more moderation than normal but I was hopeful I could still have some fun, more than I’d had all summer.

My hope was to be down to 157, maybe even 156. I expected to be closer to 158.

I stepped on the scale, and my heart froze: 163.3.

How? How was this even possible? It had to be the scale.

My daughter was walking by the bathroom. I called for her and asked her to step on the scale.

“Why daddy?” She asked when she looked up from whatever TikTok she was watching.

“You were doing that juice diet or whatever this month, right?” I asked, knowing full well about the diet, given the mess she left by the blender every morning.

“Oh, that’s right! Let’s check on that!” She excitedly hopped on the scale.

“Hey, look at that! I lost 4 pounds in only two weeks, just like the video said!”

Before I could stop and ask her anything, she stormed off to FaceTime one of her friends and share the news. I stepped on again; maybe her stepping on it reset it or something?

163.3.

I flipped it over, took the batteries out, waited for a minute, then put the batteries back in. I stepped on the scale. It gave a “THINKING” message for about 20 seconds or so, giving me hope that maybe it was recalibrating and correctly scoring my weight.

163.3.

I turned around and looked at myself in the mirror. I was clearly slimmer, with less flesh around my face and hips. Some might say I was starting to look a little gaunt. But hey, the scale can’t lie, and I had no reason to doubt its measurement at this point.

I took my more extreme diet with us on our trip up north. I did not have a good time, and the family didn’t have a good time either. I was irritable most days. Usually, we would go get donuts at a nice local bakery almost every morning, but I couldn’t tempt myself this year. Normally, we’d go out for ice cream and shakes every other night, but I couldn’t have that either. Our favorite burger place was off limits, and the pizza diner we had limited to one visit. We didn’t even go once.

The family tried to tell me it wasn’t my fault; I told them they could go wherever they wanted. But they felt guilty leaving me in the cabin alone with only celery and water.

We returned home from our trip, more exhausted than refreshed. The kids did their thing waiting for school to start, and Cindy and I did ours. Finally, the day came to make sure all this effort was worth it. September 1.

Before I stepped on the scale, I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked sick; dark shadows hung under my eyes, my cheekbones were tight, and my skin color had a tinge of yellow in it. You could even see my rib bones for the first time in years. Relieved that my eyes couldn’t deceive me, I stepped on the scale.

163.3.

Impossible, I thought. Just impossible. I put on my jogging clothes and sprinted outside. For 20 minutes straight I did wind sprints on our street; sweat dripped from me and left a trail of droplets on the road. I wiped myself off with a towel, waited a few minutes to be completely dry, and went to the bathroom again. There was no way the scale wouldn’t register listing even a half pound on water weight after such an intense activity.

I took a deep breath in, exhaled, and then stepped on the scale.

163.3.

No. Way.

I put on my gym clothes and drove to our YMCA. Cindy goes there frequently, but I usually prefer running outside. Plus I don’t like gym rats.

I swiped my FOB and went straight to the scales there. They were old fashioned, using weights and pulleys and whatever else old scales used, not this electronic crap that can lie.

I stepped on the oldest, most used-looking scale, one that had been there for years both giving and dashing hope for its patrons.

That day, it dashed mine: 163.3.

163.3.

After that day, time became… well, I can’t quite keep things that happened in the order they may have happened, if you catch my drift. All I know clearly is that I was determined to move the needle, to get that damned number below 163.3.

When my daughter still talked to me, she fed me diet after diet, fad after fad. I drank smoothies, cut out carbs, put on crystals, smoked weed, smoked cigarettes, took speed, still take speed when I can get the scratch, ate seaweed, fasted, took cocaine, still take cocaine when I can steal it from another junkie, blended everything, blended meat, blended my hand, blended my son’s Nintendo thing, blended wedding pictures, almost blended the cat, threw the blender at my daughter.

163.3.

I consulted doctors, checked in with doctors, screamed at doctors, got kicked out of clinics, stalked doctors, waited outside doctor offices, tackled doctors, threw trash at doctors, pissed and shit on doctors, almost beat a doctor to death.

163.3.

I joined the gym club at work, quickly became the leader on the leaderboard for activity, broke machines working too hard, pushed my co-workers down when they got in my way, got kicked out of the gym club, got kicked out of the gym, got arrested for throwing cans of food through the gym windows, got fired, got kicked out of my own house, trashed the house, left.

163.3.

I fled and joined a commune in the deep woods; I picked berries and nuts, and that’s all that I ate. I pissed out of my ass for a week. My mentor told me how Siddhartha Gautama supposedly ate only one grain of rice a day for 40 days when he was an ascetic. I tried that too.

163.3.

My mentor asked me why I kept saying that number. I told him it was my current weight. He asked how I could know. I told him, “The scale never lies.”

163.3.

My mentor asked again; he seemed more concerned this time. I kindly reminded him of my weight. The scale never lies.

He said there was no scale at the commune. And then he asked why I had written the number in blood all over the lodge walls.

163.3.

After I set fire to the commune and watched the north woods burn I wandered the empty highways until I found a nice alley behind a meth clinic in Duluth. I don’t know how long I’ve lived there, collecting just enough cash for hits of speed, coke, or whatever I can get. I befriended the alley rats and birds; they talked to me, told me secrets, and kept me from eating what I shouldn’t. The rats were always good at taking food so I couldn’t eat it mindlessly.

That’s where you found me. You all picked me up and brought me in. You told me I look terrible, like I haven’t eaten in weeks. I even heard one of you say that I look like one of those pictures you saw of a death march or concentration camp or something.

You all can tell me all you want how my body fat is dangerously low, how my body cannot maintain its water and sugar levels, how close to death I am. You can tell me that I’m woefully malnourished and my muscles have atrophied beyond the point of rehabilitation. You can tell me I look like death itself, that my liver and kidneys are on the verge of failure, and that you’ve never seen a condition like mine.

All I can tell you in return is to get me a fucking scale and I will tell you exactly what it will read:

163.3.

End.

Christopher Reed is a teacher and occasional writer. His fiction has appeared in Innsmouth Free Press, Bards and Sages Quarterly, and Halloween Haiku II by Popcorn Press. He has also written about and discussed video games for The Thirsty Mage podcast and website and helped design Bookmark the Stars! for the Bookmark No HP Role-Playing Game. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, son, and two dogs. He can be found on X/Twitter @ReedChrisR and on BlueSky @christopherreed.bsky.social.

The Secret Society of Schrödinger’s Children

By Patrick Barb

For as long as they were lost, the Children wore masks and were neither alive nor dead. But once someone found one of the Children as they were in the real world, then the boy or girl was definitively alive. Or definitively dead. They’d leave their mask for the next new child initiated into the Society.

The membership requirements were simple enough to join, but specific nonetheless:

(1) you have to join as a child and (2) the world at large can’t know if you’re alive or dead.

Sometimes, “the world out there” meant parents. However, for plenty of Children in the Society, existence depended upon their final fates remaining a mystery to caseworkers or police detectives or a social studies teacher who stared through the blinds of her classroom while a cloud of chalk dust falls on her robin’s egg blue cardigan, wondering what happened to the girl in the back of the class who always wore long sleeves no matter the weather.

In the case of this particular member of the Society, her name was Grace, a sight easier to remember than “the girl in the back of the class who always wore long sleeves no matter the weather.”

Grace came to the Society like all of its other members. One minute she was not a member of the organization, then she was. She materialized in the cafeteria line wearing a sundress showing her thin, bared arms and legs, pale skin mottled with greens and purples, deep royal blues. The other Children, marking her arrival, whispered about the new girl with a body colored in the manner of the Earth when viewed from outer space. All their quiet words reached Grace because no secrets exist among the Society’s Children. She smiled under her new mask.

After she’d filled up in the cafeteria line, Grace sat down with a plate of macaroni and cheese, cooked carrots, chocolate pudding, and soda pop. She held up her spoon and studied the mask given by the Society. In the contorted reflection, she witnessed a black-eyed, black-beaked blue-feathered bird’s head studying her right back.

Then, Grace touched a pale unblemished hand—smaller than those of the other girls in her old classes from her old life—to the feathered mask, confirming the new avian visage as hers.

“What do you figure, new girl, you alive or dead?”

The speaker, whose voice sounded soft at first but ended with a rattle like a poisonous snake, wore a skull mask, bone-white detailing outlined in black. They sat close by Grace, their hands stopping short of touching the new girl’s mask. Grace stared into the coal-black pits of the skull mask’s eye-sockets. The skull-mask wearer dropped their hand lower, holding it out the way an adult does when play-acting formality with a child. Shaking their hand, looking them in the eye.

Grace’s arms hung by her sides though. Old fears flared up—her body dry kindling and this stranger’s question a long match struck true. “Um, excuse me?”

“Are you alive? Or are you dead?” Her inquisitor repeated the line of questioning.

Grace studied the still-extended hand, finding something stiff and angular in its placement the longer it went unaccepted. The nail beds of the offered hand were black, and the stink of soil and nightcrawlers wafted from the offered appendage. Grace considered how the skull-mask wearer appeared a head or two shorter than her. She wondered how old her inquisitor was.

“I’m here,” she said, “Doesn’t that mean I’m alive?”

The rattling voice emerging from the skull-mask-covered face became a hissing, gasping laugh. A high-pitched whistling so sharp and intense, Grace had to cover her ears. Or at least the feathered portion of the mask set over her ears.

Then, another hand touched her shoulder. She spun around in her seat, pulling away from this new presence. “Don’t mind, Grim,” the new Child—who wore an old t-shirt and ripped blue jeans with a droopy basset hound face mask covering their features, except for spikes of bleached blonde hair poking out from the dog’s ears and jowls—said.

This new voice reminded Grace of sunshine, toes wiggling in wet beach sand after a wave rolls in and teases the shoreline. Comforted, she took the dog-faced boy’s offered hand. “My name’s Marvin,” he said. “Welcome to the Society!”

From behind them, a gravelly “I’m sorry if I came on strong there,” followed.

Grace, living up to her name, turned and shook the skull-masked Child’s hand, which felt cold and clammy, with bathtub wrinkles on each digit. “Is your name really Grim?” Grace asked them once their handshake ended.

“Is your name really Grace?”

Before the new girl puzzled out the question, Marvin interrupted. “Grim believes he’s special enough for a code-name. Like we’re heroes or something.”

“We could be,” Grim mumbled, swiping a handful of carrots from Grace’s plate.

Grace didn’t mind. She sat still, letting Marvin (and Grim to a lesser extent) fill her in on the requirements for both joining and leaving the Society. She learned about the masks, though what her companions shared amounted to more or less what she’d already assumed. When they finished, Grace’s questions still bubbled up inside. Her blood pumped under her motley-colored skin as a proxy.

“But what do we do?” she asked. Marvin and Grim exchanged inscrutable looks across Grace.

* * *

The trio, Grace and her unofficial welcoming committee, waited behind the bushes of the hospital. A children’s hospital, but not a Children’s hospital. Grace tripped over an uneven cemented chunk of sidewalk. Both Marvin and Grim took one of her hands to steady her.

Adults and other children walked past the trio, giving them not even a glance back. It wasn’t Halloween, yet the three Children of indeterminate age wore masks. And not some cheap department store masks either.

Marvin let go of Grace’s hand once he was sure she’d recovered. When he did, he leaned close and whispered, “Look at the hairs on the backs of the children’s necks.”

Grace watched a thin boy in a bathrobe, tubes emerging from his body connected to a pole with sacks of fluid attached. The oversized covering, draped over the boy’s form, drooped at his neck. With a little concentration, Grace saw the world anew, through the bird’s eyes of her mask.

Hairs stood stiff on the boy’s back. As if his physical form knew them, but his mind refused to process this breach of reality.

A cough from Grim pulled the new girl’s attention away from the dying child and his entourage. “Don’t worry about him,” the skull-masked kid said, “Every single goddamn person in his life’ll know when he’s dead. No mistaking it. No need for him to wear a mask.”

The sliding doors to the hospital’s main entrance opened before the three members of the Society. Then they closed. Opened and closed. The masked trio held hands forming a line in front of the entryway. Passersby going in and out of the hospital swerved around the trio without a word, as though avoiding an ill-placed puddle.

Grace never liked silences in her old life. “Are we going in?” she asked.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Grim answered.

“Grim!” Though impossible to read expressions under the full-face-covering masks they wore, and only loosened at the jawline during mealtimes, Grace was certain she heard the scowl in Marvin’s reprimand.

Marvin turned his hound dog droopy-cheeked visage to her and said, “He means, the Director sent us here, but they never tell us why they’re sending us somewhere. We’re supposed to…figure it out, I guess. So, we wait…until we’re sure about what we’re supposed to do.”

Grace nodded. “I understand,” she said. Except she didn’t understand.

She held back a bevy of questions ready to burst open the seams of her mask. “Who’s this Director? When will I meet them? Are they a member of our Society? Or something else? Are they in charge?”

The last question chewed up the girl’s insides. Having someone in charge was supposed to mean something. There had to be someone to make the rules, to set the examples. To lead the way and keep her safe.

“Heh.”

“Grace?” Marvin’s voice contained a tiny uptick of concern.

“Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh.” The bird-masked girl’s laughter came in fits and starts until it exploded out of her. Her true face moved under the mask, her lips turning up into a grin that grew as her chuckles escaped.

She doubled over, hands clutching her sides. Marvin kept his distance, but held his hands out in front of his chest, like the dog whose face he wore, begging for treats. “Are you…should I…?”

Unlike his comrade Grim embraced the sudden bout of mirth and joined in, laughing alongside the new girl. His laughter sounded like wet leaves against headstones. When he caught his breath, Grim said, “I take back what I told you earlier, Marvin. I like ol’ Bird-Brain here.”

Grace cut short her chuckles, snapping to attention. “Wait. You didn’t like me?”

Grim shrugged. “To be fair, I don’t like most Children. But it’s all I get at the Society. So, c’est la vie, et cetera.”

The girl shrugged right back. Fair enough. Then, she added, “But don’t even think about sticking me with Bird-Brain.”

“Yeah, yeah, back to the drawin—”

“Grim, shut up.”

Marvin slapped the flat of his palm against the other’s shoulder. Through the hollow echo of his mask, his voice came loud like a cur’s bark and sharp as a bite. Both the other Children turned back to face the hospital’s entrance.

Through the glass, they watched people meandering through the lobby, either heading for the exit or checking in with the security guard at the tall black reception desk a few feet from the entry. Others wandered toward the first-floor reception area or the elevator banks leading to the upper floors. The floors with sick children. Dying children. Nothing out of the ordinary for a children’s hospital though. Nothing to remark upon, nothing except for the day-to-day triumphs and tragedies of those who deal in matters of sickness or health, life or death.

But then, Grace and Grim looked closer and noticed the woman, with her hair pulled back tight and an oversized pink hoodie draped over the upper part of her body. A large piece of clothing, its hem fell to just above her knees. She’d zipped it to her neck. The pink body-covering sweatshirt and the woman’s pale, sweaty face reminded Grace of an earthworm, wriggling up to the surface after a thunderstorm’s soaked the soil between the cracks in a sidewalk.

The woman’s wide-eyed expression betrayed a turmoil barely contained beneath the surface. She held her eyes open, unblinking until a thin line of tears trickled down her cheeks and her lip quivered. Not to the point where anyone asked her what was wrong, but enough so they’d give her space. Let her figure things out for herself.

She looked innocent. Lost and innocent.

“Yeah, so wha—”

When Marvin moved to slap his palm against Grim a second time, the other Child intercepted the dog-mask boy’s hand. Grim shook their head. It reminded Grace of the boys in her health class who’d played with the life-size skeleton replica when their gym teacher went to the bathroom. She’d sat in the back of the classroom, feet tight in her old shoes, and she’d smile and smile.

With a drawn-out sigh, Marvin pointed at the strange woman standing beyond the glass. “Look down,” he said.

Grace followed her new friend’s command. First, she noted the white dress flats, the footwear shining like lacquered snow. Who’d wear those shoes at a hospital?

“A nurse,” she whispered, answering her question.

The shoes were the giveaway.

Any adult-sized passersby took in a sweet-faced, cowed woman in a salmon-colored sweatshirt.

Nothing to see.

But kids would see. Masked, unmasked, it didn’t much matter.

The Children did see.

Then, the trio’s gaze rose as one to observe the woman’s protruding belly. From a curve at the mid-section, something pushes against the pockets. Almost like she was pregnant.

Except it’s not sitting right.

When the thing inside the woman’s shirt punched and kicked against the cloth material, Grace gasped. Her hand flew to her mask, to her bird face. She winced when the razor-sharp beak sliced open her palm. Blood splattered to the cement. Dark red droplets fat and singular like cherry-pie filling.

“She’s got a baby in there,” Grim said, stating the more than obvious.

Marvin nodded.

But then, silence. More hesitation. Standing on either side of the girl in the bird mask, the boy in the dog mask, and the other child in their skull mask waited.

Grace wiped her bloody fingers across the front of her dress. She smeared a crude circle, then a star. She didn’t check her handiwork, operating by feeling alone.

“We must save the child,” she said. Her declaration was loud and profane. Like the raucous trill of a raven. She pressed her still-bleeding hand against the sliding glass door. With a heavy whooshing sigh, it slid open for her. Before Marvin could protest or Grim could applaud Grace’s sudden decisive action, she was gone. On the other side of the glass, heading toward the nurse and the baby secreted away inside her sweatshirt.

* * *

Back at the headquarters of the Children, the Director stood at rigid attention, waiting for the report to come from the three members sent into the field. The rookie in her bird mask and the other two—”the outcasts among the outsiders,” as so many of the other Children called them. The Director would sigh if capable of doing so. But time left them stiff with age, always silent unless throwing their voice out wide to issue commands or reprimand or on the rare occasion offer praise.

The Society’s latest mission proved a tricky undertaking for everyone. Not only were the operatives meant to prevent a new member from joining the ranks of the Society prematurely and/or inadvertently, but the Director received hints regarding potential sensitive information related to one of the Children selected for the mission. One of their Children.

“Stay inside the mission parameters,” they’d warned the trio.

Of course, the Director understood the compulsion to disobey, to look deeper for the monsters. After all, they were a child once. Lost like all these others. Unlike these new Children, when the Director founded the American chapter, disguises went further than mere masks and glamours.

They remember running through the trees, bare feet covered in the dirt of a new world. A baptism in reverse. They recall darkness settling over the land their people tried to break. The world was unwilling to yield and was still imbued with enough power to fight back against trespassers.

Then, everyone disappeared. And the Director found themselves hidden in a tree. Not up in a tree, but inside. Living, but unseen by all who followed.

And there they stayed until there wasn’t much difference between the Child in the Tree and the wood of the tree itself. Then, someone felled the tree and sanded it down, making a door from the tree. The door was the Child. The Child, the door. In subsequent years, they became the Director of the Secret Society of Schrödinger’s Children.

On one side of the door, the Children gathered, taking orders, giving reports of the world outside. On the other side, the craftsman who’d changed the tree and the Child into a door left a word carved, marking the hiding place no one who came after ever guessed.

One word: “CROATOAN.”

* * *

Another nurse stopped the three Children, blocking their way forward once they’d made it inside the hospital. Unsure how to respond when the woman leaned forward, her “cheerful, yet wary in the way grown-ups always are of children they don’t know” face close to the feathers, her lipstick-glazed mouth appearing like candle wax set in stasis, Grace looked to her companions. Forgetting how much emotion the masks hid and thus unable to gauge a proper response from their reactions. Or the lack thereof.

“Well, it’s early for Halloween. But y’all sure have some darlin’ costumes.”

Grace nodded. Over and over again. Through the compact lens magnification of her birds’ eyes, she tracked the other nurse. The one with the baby hidden under her shirt. The other woman paced back and forth. Grace caught her eyeing the exit. Something between the growl of an empty stomach and the lightheaded sensation of euphoria took hold of the girl.

But they’d need to get closer for confirmation.

“You lost?”

Grace stopped nodding.

“We’re looking for our…” Marvin’s words came in choked gritty sobs. Like he spoke through six feet of soil. Maybe less.

“…aunt,” Grim finished.

The interrogating nurse nodded this time, standing up straight. Her eyes focused on a tiny corner of the ceiling. Weighing the value of the Children’s words against her belief.

Grace exhaled. Her breath caused the feathers to fluff up around her cheeks. She pointed over to the nurse in the pink sweatshirt. The one with a secret. The one with a hand pulled inside the sleeve of her shirt, covering the gurgles and gasps of her “secret.”

“There,” Grace said.

“There? Oh.”

Grace took the other nurse’s hand, and the two other Children followed them. They stayed close to Grace and her escort, but not too close.

“Marie? Hey, hon, you waiting around here for some kids?”

But the other nurse’s words went unheeded as the nurse in pink made a sudden dash for the sliding glass doors. Her face transformed into an anguished mask of its own. Mouth downturned, eyes wide and streaming tears—a Tragedy mask come to life. One hand, with bloody cuticles, chewed open so thin streaks of pink blood remained behind, pressed against the other nurse’s wrist, twisting her around. Soon enough, the smiling nurse took to screaming. Letting everyone know her pain.

All the eyes, young and old, turned to take in the scene playing out across the hospital lobby. The weeping woman trying to make her escape. Her stomach appeared alive with wriggling limbs. Down at the Children’s eye level, they caught the impression of a face pressing against the soft pink fabric. The muffled, choked cries followed.

The nurse in pink looked up, staying focused on the sliding doors.

But by staying so keyed in and focused, she missed the skull-masked boy and the dog-masked boy as each put a tiny leg out—across her path. The slightest contact proved good enough. Her arms flew up and her body tilted forward, the angle unsustainable for balance.

Grace put her hands out. Always so tiny. A child’s hands.

But nothing so small as those on the naked screeching newborn dropped the short distance from the loosened folds of the nurse’s pink sweatshirt into Grace’s arms. The shock knocked the wind from the screaming baby. The girl pulled the baby close, getting it as far away from the nurse as possible. She held the shivering infant against her, feeling a heartbeat through near-translucent skin.

Time’s passing. But what is Time when you’re either alive or dead, or neither alive nor dead?

Grace looked down at the baby. Still silent, but alive. Breathing returned to normal with each slow exhale. The remnants of an eggshell-colored mask melted away like cotton candy in a cup of water, dissolved to nothing but a sweet aftertaste.

Still alive though. Still breathing.

A hand, a tiny, tiny hand, scrawny like a bird’s leg, shot up to brush against Grace’s mask. His thin, new fingers touched her feathers.

A voice spoke inside of Grace. A voice from behind the bird mask and from behind her Grace mask as well.

l know you.

Then, hands took the baby away from her. “He’s okay,” someone said.

Good.

Marvin and Grim helped Grace back on her feet. They offered no condolences or reassurances.

But, then she heard the voice again…

* * *

By the time the detectives finished interviewing Barbara, it was close to the end of the day. They’d asked her all kinds of questions from every angle. Did she know Marie St. Anna? Did she suspect her colleague capable of stooping so low as to steal someone else’s child? Was she aware of what a brave thing she’d done, confronting Marie and saving the poor baby boy? What compelled her to act?

Barbara kept silent about the children in the masks. No one else said anything about them anyway. The police never asked her about them. Such a strange detail to leave unremarked upon.

During the barrage of questions, Barbara sensed their words crowding her and her heart beat fit to wake the devil. She almost asked, “But what about the Children…” But she held her words, letting them sit heavy on her tongue.

Then, she swallowed them back.

One of them left his card. A young man. Well-built, chiseled features, like an old movie star. Barbara blushed when she took the card. She was old enough to be his mother.

Leaving the administrator’s office, Barbara paused. She carried all her belongings with her. After all, she’d been about to leave when the…“incident”…occurred. Now, she’d walk out the sliding doors, go home to draw a bath and finish one of the old TV Guide crosswords she’d saved up over the years. One referencing shows starring forgotten names like James Garner, Suzanne Somers, or Michael Landon.

But not yet. Something kept her there. She poked her head back in the office and cleared her throat to get the handsome young Detective’s attention. “Excuse me,” she said. “The child. The baby. Is he…”

“He’ll be fine, ma’am,” the boy detective said. “I believe the infant’s back in the…nursery.”

Barbara nodded, appreciating the delicacy of his phrasing. She hadn’t worked in the neonatal unit for years. But word got around. Especially with special cases. “Yes, yes, the mother, she’s…”

* * *

“It’s me,” Grace said, standing on her tip-toes to look through the thin pane of glass in the door.

Through the glass, she glimpsed a hospital room and a hospital bed. She watched another version of herself, blonde hair spread across a pillow in an angel’s halo. No bird mask, but an oxygen mask strapped across the bottom of her face and a long tube snaking down inside of her. Even with the mask, Grace knew herself. After all, she’d watched a video of herself sleeping before. Stuck in a fog of deep, deep sleep. So deep she’d never wake up, no matter what happened or who entered the room. So deep she wouldn’t feel a thing.

Marvin tugged on her elbow, trying to get her attention. “Come on, Grace, let’s go,” he said.

“Wait, wait,” she said, “One more thing.”

But this was “one more thing” of many.

First, she’d followed the doctors and nurses taking the baby to get checked out after the rescue. Everyone credited the nurse and said nothing of the Children. Marvin told her their mission was over and they needed to go. But she wanted to watch as the doctors and nurses looked and listened all over. Like a pawnbroker assessing the value of an heirloom sacrificed.

No one noticed the Children. The bird mask, the dog mask, and the skull mask were background detail, like the paneled ceilings and track lighting, tiny colorful footprints painted from a stencil along the wall. As easy for the adults in the room to ignore the odors of lollipops and ammonia.

Grace sobbed when the doctor—the one who looked like he was in charge—said the baby was okay. When she turned to her companions, Marvin looked down, avoiding her gaze and the thick black circles of Grim’s mask hid their eyes from view, offering no clue to their response.

She followed the nurses down winding hospital corridors, skipping between the cracks in the checkerboard pattern on the floor.

What’d Daddy say about Mama?

She flew the coop.

‘Guess that makes you the Mama now.’

She followed the baby and his white-garbed escort to the nursery. She ignored Marvin’s pleas, even as they grew louder and more insistent. “Remember what the Director said.”

Grace recalled a door. A closed door. Nothing good ever came from behind closed doors. Too many secrets.

She no longer cared for the dog-masked boy. Grim, on the other hand. Silent, aspiring to danger, letting her go. She felt the sudden urge to stick her beak through the black eye sockets of his mask. To indulge in decay and melancholy. Pull out a wriggling graveyard worm and share it with Grim, each swallowing down their half.

They put the baby boy into one of the fiberglass bassinets, with his naked form wrapped tight in a rainbow-striped blanket.

Grace followed them down another hall and then another.

“Poor baby. Too much trauma for such a young child. Hope he gets the help he needs or finds some family to help him.”

“Mmhmm. His mama still in the coma ward?”

“Mmm.”

In the coma ward, outside a room with a closed door, the name on the chart belonged to a “Jane Doe.” A made-up name. A disguise. Masking the truth of who the comatose girl was.

Grace brought her feet back flat on the floor. She touched her mask.

“I’m still here,” she said.

Grim answered. Beneath her mask, Grace’s cheeks flushed at his attention. “It doesn’t matter if you know. Doesn’t change anything. It only matters if…they know.”

Grace wanted to reach up and rip the skull mask and the dog mask off her companions’ faces. Then, she’d do the same for the bird mask over her face. She wondered what she’d find under there. An oxygen mask? A smile? Tears? Was her skin torn away, replaced with feathers and glue and string?

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

She opened the hospital room door and her companions followed. On the other side, the Children hummed and buzzed with Society work. The potential for something better lifted their spirits. Grace watched everything and changed.

Not all at once, but slowly. Day by day, moment by moment. Until she couldn’t recognize herself any other way.

End.

Patrick Barb is an author of weird, dark, and horrifying tales, currently living (and trying not to freeze to death) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His published works include the dark fiction collection Pre-Approved for Haunting, the novellas Gargantuana’s Ghost and Turn, as well as the novelette Helicopter Parenting in the Age of Drone Warfare. His forthcoming works include the themed short-story collection The Children’s Horror and the sci-fi/horror novel Abducted. Visit him at patrickbarb.com.

By Drew Cuturilo

Reality is the Antagonist:

a Theory of the Weird

By Nicole Cushing

Part 1: Hating Betty White

My theory of the Weird emerged from an unlikely place: my reaction to the novels of Stephen King. You see, King’s fiction has seldom worked for me. I’ve tried. Honestly I have! But the magic that so delights his Constant Readers just bounces off of me. I don’t get it.

I have to admit to feeling a twinge of irrational guilt for not liking King’s stuff. Hundreds of millions of people do. Am I just being an obnoxious contrarian? Am I somehow broken, as a person? My inability to appreciate the oeuvre of Stephen King feels morally equivalent to some crass boor’s inability to appreciate the oeuvre of Betty White! What the hell is wrong with me?

To answer this question, I decided to study King’s work to see what makes it tick. I came away with this realization: his stories make an assumption about the nature of human relationships, an assumption that I do not share. Specifically, in King’s work an individual’s attachment to a group is quite often presented as a good thing. Interpersonal closeness is assumed to be a good thing.

In general, King writes about groups, not individuals: families of choice (The Losers Club), post-apocalyptic communes (The Boulder Free Zone), or even whole towns (‘Salem’s Lot). Moreover, the antagonist in a King book is often a lone, unnatural outsider who comes to town with a lie on his lips and malice in his heart.

Communities are presented as sources of strength. Those who cannot find a place within one are particularly vulnerable to evil.

As a recovering misanthropist prone to relapses, this approach doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t resonate with my experience. I like protagonists who are misfits, because I have been a misfit. I like protagonists who go mad because I have, at times, gone mad. Some of the most significant moments of my life have involved my status as a misfit and/or alienated madwoman. Therefore, any fictional representation of the world that gives a community the benefit of the doubt strikes me as dishonest.

Part 2: Loving Erich Zann

What has any of this got to do with the Weird?

Well, it seems to me that weird fiction is, in this context, the opposite of King’s work. There is nary a positive, nurturing community to be found in the works of Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Sadegh Hedayat, Roland Topor, Franz Kafka, etc. Their protagonists are isolated, tormented misfits. That’s a distinction worth noting.

But who, or what, is the typical Weird antagonist? Is it a perfect, one hundred and eighty degree reversal of the typical King scenario? Individual good, group bad?

Well, not exactly. Let’s look at a few examples.

Who is the antagonist of The Haunting of Hill House? Perhaps the answer rests in that magnificent first paragraph, wherein “absolute reality” is called out as being incompatible with sanity. To be sure, Eleanor’s family certainly opposes her as well. And a case could be made that Hill House, itself, is the antagonist. However, I think that these are mere conduits for the real antagonists: the malicious duo of sensation and perception and their nefarious partner, reality.

Who is the antagonist of “The Music of Erich Zann”? Although it might be tempting to reply “Erich Zann!”, it’s clear that poor Erich is as much a victim as the narrator. It may be closer to the truth to say that the window in Herr Zann’s garret apartment is the antagonist. But, in my opinion, both Erich Zann and the window are merely the conduits for the true antagonist, the chaotic, vertiginous reality seen outside the window.

Who is the antagonist of The Tenant? It would be easy to say that Trelkovsky’s neighbors are the antagonists, but I think it’s more on point to say that, once again, they are merely the conduit for a new horrifying reality that is visited on him. (The novel’s ending is downright soul-shattering.)

In all of these works, the protagonists’ alienation is important because it denies them the opportunity to be reabsorbed back into nonthreatening, consensus reality. Forced to trudge ahead more or less alone, they are less likely to find their impressions challenged or explained away by ordinary people. Rejected by the herd, they are less likely to be roped back into the herd’s perspective.

If I’m right about all of this, then we might be able to define the Weird as literature describing the struggle of an alienated protagonist who has: 1. a conscious, waking, real, confusing, unsettling (but sometimes, simultaneously delicious) experience, or series of experiences, with a phenomenon that should, according to consensus reality, be unreal 2. a desire (often unfulfilled or unfulfillable) to comprehend this experience and 3. the lingering impression that the unsettling experience was a fleeting glimpse of reality’s true face, a look behind its mask; a sense that the experience is evidence of a pervasive unreality that secretly reigns.

In other words, reality is the antagonist because it has betrayed us.

Part 3. The Escape Artist

I’ve tried my best to articulate my perspective in the space of a short article, but I acknowledge that the Weird is an ever-evolving beast with a seemingly-infinite number of tentacles reaching out to (and in from) every corner of the globe. Therefore, I do not claim that my definition of the Weird is, well, definitive.

It’s quite possible that I’m only describing one subtype of the Weird. So, feel free to look at this article as a starting point for further thought, rather than as an assertion that I’ve Figured This All Out. After all, the Weird is an escape artist, too clever to be confined in clearly-delineated boundaries. If a discussion of this sort is to be intellectually honest, we must approach it with humility.

Nicole Cushing is a writer of dark, weird fiction. Is her stuff horrific? Well, about ten years ago she won the Bram Stoker Award and garnered a couple of Shirley Jackson Award nominations. So, that label might fit. However, reviewers tend to apply other adjectives to her work (“cerebral”, “brutal”, “transgressive”, “wickedly funny”, “taboo”, “groundbreaking” and “mind-bending”, for example). Cemetery Dance released her most recent book, The Plastic Priest, in December 2023.

Dragging Bones from the Ocean

By Pauline Chow

May 1860

Vultures break the silence, circling and searching at dusk. They seek the fallen. My sails drift into the San Francisco Harbor. Waves lap at my rudder. Go no further. A rotting stench sweeps in with the morning tide is my soiled bones carrying unfortunate news.

The shoremen gaze through the thinning fog. They remember the living. White gulls perching upon my bowsprit raise their beaks. My masts glide slightly to one side. Men do not hum melodies with my arrival.

“Ahoy, friends?” Shouts from the pier from suited men. These officials scan papers which must bear my name, The Golanda.

The floating mass is disquieting to picketers who expect to spill their scorn. Luggage carriers swivel carts away in the opposite direction. The souls of the dead fill the spaces of their minds.

As rowboats creep closer, flying a familiar banner. The ocean invites them to come aboard. A Captain, a doctor, the crew, passengers, and cargo will never disembark. Under my sundered remains, excitement flutters. I am a clipper ship on a last commission.

My voyage did not start this way. The Gilford Trading company paid a handsome fee for the expert builders on board. Men who had pledged themselves to the Qing Emperor. Those men had erected gold palaces and indestructible fortresses. A contribution to American progress. Their laughter and cheers echo inside of me.

The inspectors roll up their sleeves and turn their heads as death assaults them. Men finding men. My damage is much deeper than flesh. They must search where sailors met their ends. The monstrosity onboard is certain to find them.

* * *

One month ago to the day, I meandered to the point where the Pearl River Delta met the South China Sea. A British port on the island of Hong Kong. Through many sunrises and sunsets, I observed the British Royal Navy prepared to invade. Each battleship glistened with shards of glass and metal like Crown Jewels. This, as the mainland fought itself. Cinders floated over the bow, burning my crew’s eyes. Hot embers scarred my stern. While the living fought, death searched for a purpose.

Summer’s unrelenting heat threatened my shape. Dampness stretched the tar and unraveled my rivets. Lethargy took hold. Luckily, my captain had plotted a course to a place that I knew. Saved by the cool waters, I sprinted forward.

Captain Henry Renald Gray towered over the others. A studious man who poured over weather charts and maps of stars. He shared his personal brandy with the ill crewmembers. Morale even before food and water. The captain collected small gifts from foreign lands for his children.

As the winds whipped my sails, a small group of men appeared on deck. Five men of varying sizes. The Captain introduced himself. “This voyage across the Pacific Ocean will be fine.”

A shorter man stepped forward, lifting his tortoise rimmed glasses. “I am Doctor Ji Seng Peng and must keep the two-hundred builders safe. This is my seventh voyage, and I understand the dangers. Nature is not the enemy.”

Wrinkles appeared on the Captain’s forehead as he surveyed this doctor’s flowing silk clothing. Then, he burst into a smile, “a lucky number, isn’t it? Have you no faith?”

“In the sea but not in men.” The doctor’s face was unmoving. “ I transport workers to lift up a nation while mine crumbles at the hands of greed.” A large gust blew, and the doctor’s eyes turned glassy.

The other men’s lips tightened as the waves roared and tumbled their thoughts. Both the doctor and captain stand tall. The others lost their balance and fell.

“Aye, put our trust into the sea. Otherwise, only the bones of the ocean will witness this voyage.” The captain bows and extends an open hand. “My spirit is a humble servant.”

The water stirred. Limbs clawed under the draught with hungry fingers. Awakened to the strife and struggles aboard my ship. Let us remember our forgotten friends. Dear Captain, I fear not the weather, I fear not the sea.

The men exchanged stories. I heard the captain’s so many times. He joined a crew of seamen at thirteen but sustained a life out of the water. Every few years, he visited a wife and three children. Last time, before he departed for white sands, he reminded his crew that his heart remained in the sea.

As the day returned to routine, I evaluated the inventory aboard: intricately designed ceramics inlaid with stones, letters from lonely souls, fragrant sun-dried goods, and passengers taking refuge in my hull. I counted the boxes of tea, rice, and dried ginger. The stacked wooden crates held the goodness of earth, which was the reason the bones wish them burnt.

A shapeless figure slithered from the water, dragging the bones from the ocean. The unnamed thing sang a jarring song. An open window beckoned the creature into the hull of my ship.

Traversing through cargo and the dark corners, it glided through dreams, tasting fear and aspirations. A shadow to the human eye. A ghostly soul in my visions. A monster that sees itself as god. Whispering into the minds of those onboard, it decided the fate of this ship.

“I want to know this vessel.” Darkness stroked my boards, fraying my sails. “The men and women are mine.”

Please believe my assertions. I attempted to fight back. But its fangs ripped into my sails, carved pagan symbols into the wood, and gnawed at the ropes. No empty threats. I caved when a flame was held over the cooking oil. This last test, I would not pass.

The shadow laughed, “why do you stand by these vile creatures? They hate and destroy.”

“They are better than you.” But I knew this wasn’t entirely true. The captain, I thought of him. He would preserve. Foil the mutineer.

“Matter not, a few valiant ones. You do not owe them.” The shadow twisted its form.

The bones of the ocean showed me the future. Words of the dead fill my spaces with their eyes.

The shadow poisoned the ship, spreading chaos through warm bodies. One idea corrupting pliable minds of human. Follies stoked madness. Theories on hate held fast. It was right to doubt the strength of humans.

So, while the captain and the doctor spoke as gentlemen, the mariners and the laborers fumed. From the deck down to the hull, the crew poked the passengers and incited their enemies with curses and foul names. The sailors believed that men who fashioned long braids were constructed weak, Passengers complained that the light-eyed and fair-haired enjoyed cruelty. Men were made fiends before they had chanced friendships.

The ship languished. Even those with strong fortitude cracked amidst swelling and deflating of the waves. They searched without sleeping. Peace would not come.

“Do not make more enemies,” the doctor advised his cadres. He removed his spectacles and pointed to a tilted nose: “Education and skill did not entitle me to special treatment. Hold your tempers or worse will happen.”

The royal builders paid attention. They razed their passions and extinguished their spirits. As familiar land receded into the horizon so too faded the memories of ornate palaces, pristine fountains, and lush gardens. Yet, distance relaxed the builders’ tongues. Their woes flowed: “Land rents rise, year after year. Pirates pillage the coast. Famine is rampant in the countryside. We sell our daughters to feed our sons. The emperor gives our treasures away for the favors of strangers.” All men sighed and swallowed their grief.

In the captain’s cabin, Henry and Ji Peng sipped from crystal glasses. Unaware of that a darkness eclipsed the ship.

“We shall reach the destination in excellent time,” said the captain, raising his glass.

The shadow grinned at ignorance.

A ship in fine weather brings a false peace.

When the winds dampened, a woman with gold eyes arrived in the infirmary. She caviled of chills and headaches.

“What troubles you at this hour?” asked the doctor, cleaning his glasses with care.

The woman wrung her hands. “A nightmare with bones under our feet.” She sniffled and turned away. Red and orange painted the unending sky.

“Your nerves speak for you. Ten more days until our arrival in the Beautiful Country.” The doctor handed the patient a cup filled with herbal tea harvested by Fire Mountain monks. He lied for there is no solace in the new world for a different kind.

“We have boarded a spoiled ship…” She paused, catching her breath. “The dead sing to me….” The women’s neck strained. Before the doctor could reply, black engulfed her pupils and she fell into a disturbed sleep.

At the same time, the boatswain complained of a moldy smell in the cargo bay.

Men filled the sick beds. Medicines did not quell fevers. Tonic did not ease the aches. Sailors thrashed and wept, twisted in pain. Patients pinched off their skin and pulled out their hair. Blinded by rage, men turned to fists and drowned themselves in spats.

Swabbies filled their pockets with stones and plunged themselves into the sea. Better to choose a path than to wait for death.

Women screamed, locked in for their own safety. Their dead eyes look outward to the sea.

A madness took the ship.

When the captain learned of the disturbances, it was too late. Will could no longer mend shattered peace. “No crew of mine can be careless with precious cargo. Hold your tongues and lower your fists.” Distress clouded Captain Gray’s eyes, he scolded and withheld rations to no avail. He stared into the darkest abyss.

In the end, men whimpered regrets and cursed their lives. An unlucky soul remained to the bear the weight. So, carrying on, I made sail for the dawn until the darkness was gone.

* * *

People die the same. Comforted only by memories. If the winds had blown, this voyage may not have been my final. This is my regret.

On the ocean, we live the years that are left behind.

Inspectors climb on board. Bird’s severed heads litter the upper portion. Visitors stroll to my captain’s quarters in shock. Two men hunch over a table. Tea leaves still sloshing in half-filled cups.

The lower levels are caked in blood. Deep grooves are carved along the pathway. A residue infests the tea leaves and mites sprout inside the rice. The inspectors hear scratching inside the walls of the ship. A swam of flies escape the sick bay, assaulting the world with the stench of ten rotting corpses. Rodents scurry away fattened on flesh.

Nothing is worth salvaging. My destruction is eminent.

Oil splashes across the deck and soaks into my planks. After many masters and captains, I realize that I too have fought battle with determination and speed. I did not wield a sword or a shield. Arriving on time with precise boxes and passengers, I make good of promises set in the manifests.

As the flames speed up the masts, a woman crawls out of my bulkhead. One with tinted eyes. In the moonlight, she swims ashore unharmed. She will remember this doomed voyage and my name. I bid farewell.

But a shadow trails behind her.

What will plague the lands?

Comrades stand fast and forge on.

Heat travels downward to my hold, burning sickness and charring death. Vases shatter, letters curl into ashes, and tea leaves emit a smoky scent. Fire blackens my insides. Into the water, my sails buckle and collapse.

This is the end.

For my heart will join the sea.

Forever will be my bones in the ocean.

Remember the fallen.

Think of me.

End.

Pauline Chow grew up in Chicago binging Hong Kong movies on vhs and Original Batman reruns. She is a mom, writer, data scientist, and former legal aid attorney. Snow days are her favorite. Read her stories at www.paulinechowstories.com.

Ambiguation

By Alex Wolfgang

Warm air wafted through the lab’s open window while San Francisco slumbered. Dr. Lee Miller’s two assistants had already gone, citing early morning lectures—not that he expected them to stay this late anyway. But a yearning kept him late into the evening, one he couldn’t put his finger on, one which could not be easily satisfied. He did his best to ease it by pacing along his freshly-dusted wood shelves, admiring the specimens he’d spent the last year collecting. These fish were now far removed from the alpine lakes of the Sierras, but their new home was a thing of beauty. Here they were a torch in the darkness of human ignorance. Thanks to his work, papers could be concocted, hierarchies discovered, nature understood. He was the architect’s assistant, laying God’s blueprints bare for the brightest minds on Earth to fathom.

Those yet-to-be-named fish fascinated him most. They were outlaws, rebellious through their audacity to exist without human knowledge. They’d waited in their hidden waters, flickering in and out of a kind of half-existence, waiting for the eyes and words that would make them real.

This listless feeling was nothing new. Now that Ursula was gone for good, he could indulge it to his heart’s content. There would be nobody waiting at home to rebuke his lateness. Nobody to tell him fish could never love him back. Here, he could remind himself if it was all worth it. Here, he usually believed it was.

Stanford’s clock tower struck midnight from the courtyard nearby, and Lee bitterly took it as his cue to leave. He had courses to teach in the morning, but afterward, he would return to his sanctuary to continue the work that really mattered.

As he made his way through his lab, shutting off the lights, he spotted dark movement in a corner below a window. He flipped the lights back on and stared at the spot for almost a minute, but nothing moved.

Christ, he thought, shouldn’t stay up this late anymore.

When he reached to shut the light back off, something moved again before he hit the switch. A shadow slid across a wooden desk before settling into another patch of darkness between two cabinets. Lee examined his surroundings carefully, but nothing in the room moved, nor did anything seem capable of movement on its own.

He was ready to call it a hallucination when the shadow emerged again. It settled on the floor before him, an amorphous shape suggesting nothing. Lee staggered backward a step and checked the room’s lights one by one. Nothing was being occulted—the shadow had no source. His stomach churned.

“Is anyone here?” Lee asked, his voice strained.

The shadow taunted him with silence.

Lee jolted as it raced up the side of a wooden cabinet and entered a specimen jar backlit by a table lamp. The water went murky, the fish disappearing from view. Even the name on the label was obscured. Then it moved along to the next one, then the next.

“Who’s there?” Lee asked, trying and failing to muster strength in his voice. “This isn’t funny. You need to leave.”

The shadow slid out of the jars and dashed to the window, where it disappeared.

For several seconds, Lee stood staring. Sweat coated his palms. His fingers shook as he fumbled with switches to fill the room with as much light as possible. A mirror across the lab showed him his own face, and he lurched at the sight of its movement.

While his heart threatened to burst from his chest, he moved to the window and looked at the lone streetlight illuminating the street before his building. The shadow hovered over a crack in the ground, then disappeared inside it. All that remained was the lamp’s sodium yellow glow.

He was losing his mind. He needed his bed, his sleep. More than anything, he needed to leave. The sanctity of his lab felt violated, its white walls teeming with menace.

But something still pulled at him when he moved toward the door. He fought through it. The act of leaving was physically painful, the steps like walking through hot molasses. He imagined the shadow returning after his departure, but what could it do? It was only a shadow. But a shadow must have a source. With what little strength remained, he pushed that thought from his mind and forced himself out into the hall. Through the doorway, he glanced backward at the line of jars one last time. His guts now roiled at the sight.

As he made his way through the empty streets of San Francisco, he tried to escape his dread through familiarity. He took comfort in the signs that identified his surroundings, from the bookstores and classroom buildings of the Stanford campus to the closed-up bars and restaurants that lined the roads of the city proper. He’d taken the route so many times that it was etched deep into his memory. The order of it all helped calm his nerves, but he never relaxed completely. He still jumped at each sound, whether it was the clicking shoes of a fellow nocturnal pedestrian or the distant hum of a gasoline-powered car. But he saw no more strange shadows.

In his apartment, he flipped every light on and paced from room to room. For once, the feeling of being alone was unbearable. Even the presence of Ursula would have been a comfort. He would have spoke of anything she wanted, of her new lover, of the fish she resented, of the starring roles he never saw her in because he was knee deep in some alpine lake—the conversations he refused to have so many times she gave up trying.

His home had never felt more like a cell. Gone were the artworks she’d lined the walls with, the rug that always glowed red in the morning sun. Each room was encased only by white walls and utilitarian furniture. Empty slates for shadows to crawl across and taunt him. Yet the shadows never returned, maybe because they knew they were expected.

Dread followed him to bed and kept him awake until past three o’clock, when desperation and exhaustion finally sucked his consciousness away. When the earthquake began, he thought he was dreaming.

* * *

Screams jolted him awake. By the time he was fully conscious, the shaking had ceased, but more chaos replaced it. Concrete cracked as neighboring buildings crumbled. His building felt weary, strained, the floor slanted. He stumbled to his feet and rushed to the window.

Day had barely begun to break, but in the dim morning twilight, a wasteland had sprung forth. Half the buildings visible had fallen to rubble. Cries of pain and terror came from all directions.

Lee stepped backward, trembling. His dresser had toppled, leaving clothes strewn across the floor. The glass of water he’d left on his bedside table was now a wet pile of shards. He grabbed his clothing and dressed as fast as he could, threw on his shoes, and left the apartment. As he ran, the building groaned under the weight of the chaos.

The banisters had come loose in the stairwell, so he dodged those that lay across the pathways as he dashed down to the street. Some of his neighbors joined his descent, their faces pale with shock. They said nothing, but he no longer craved conversation.

On the street, the screams were louder. Sirens sounded in the distance. Half the buildings on his block were piles of rubble. In a few, lifeless limbs poked out from the wreckage. People rushed through chunks of concrete, picking pieces of debris apart. Others walked the streets in a daze. In the corners of his periphery, more sourceless shadows flitted from one piece of rubble to the next.

The acrid scent of smoke wafted through the air. Through the holes where buildings once were, infernos winked at him in the distance.

He tried to ignore it all. His vision was a tunnel; his legs carried him automatically. His state of hypnosis didn’t end until he was on the Stanford campus, eyeing each pile of rubble in terror.

Along the way, he glimpsed the church steeple, which had fallen forward into its courtyard in an almost unrecognizable mass. Entire sections of the outer cloisters had fallen into the roadway. A man ran out of the engineering building just as a chimney collapsed on him, his scream stifled by instant death.

When he turned the corner to reveal the building that housed his top-floor laboratory, he felt as if his soul was sucked from his body. The structure still stood, but it was engulfed in flames. He fell to his knees, weeping, trying to comprehend the implications of what he saw.

He thought of the alcohol in the jars, erupting and burning what they were meant to preserve. Specimens charred to ash. Labels destroyed. A world plunged deeper into chaos.

On the street, a crew prepared sticks of dynamite to separate the buildings that burned from those that didn’t. Lee ran to them, dodging the other shocked and panicked pedestrians.

He tried to cry out, but his voice disappeared into the din of sirens and cries of terror and pain. He instead rushed past the firefighters, ignoring their shouts of protest, and charged up the remains of the stairs, not caring if he burned, not caring if he plunged through a damaged floor to his death, not caring if sticks of dynamite exploded while he was inside. He already knew what he would find, but he wasn’t in control of his body.

By some miracle he made it to the remains of his lab, only to find his fears confirmed. No fish remained. Many of the jars had fallen and crashed on the floor, but others had remained on the tables, their alcohol burned away, leaving unrecognizable, charred remains. There were no labels in sight.

Legs trembling, he stumbled back down the stairs. A man grabbed his arm and shouted something, but he couldn’t comprehend it. Once back out on the street, a shadow slithered forth and froze before him. It lay silent before creeping over the tops of his shoes and up his pant legs and beyond. It slipped into his skin like a cold wind.

Numbness overwhelmed him. Rationality vacated his brain, leaving room for delirium. The world flashed in and out of existence. He could no longer remember what screams meant, what the faces around him expressed, what the words he heard meant. Thoughts and images stormed through his consciousness, but they moved too quickly to follow. He was a lone animal on an alien planet, driven by instincts he didn’t understand.

Just as quickly as it had come, the shadow slid back down his torso and moved away. A semblance of lucidity returned. He saw terror and confusion, recognized words and expressions, remembered who he was, but coherence lapped at his mind like waves at low tide. He knew only one thing for sure: he needed to leave the city. The desire was so potent that he had no desire to question it, to even think it through.

In a daze, he walked home through the devastation, packed a small bag with food, water, and a few changes of clothes, and started the long walk out of San Francisco.

As he walked past block after nearly unrecognizable block, he looked for street signs that would help him identify where he was in the city, but they were nearly all gone, toppled to the ground and buried under rubble, their words illegible. Buildings and shops that once identified themselves with signs were now faceless, generic piles of destruction. Disoriented, he made so many wrong turns that he questioned how well he’d ever truly known San Francisco—if it could still be called by the same name it had yesterday. He jumped at the sight of their shadows, of any shadows.

Nothing made sense, and nothing seemed interested in trying.

* * *

He walked in a daze for hours before finally reaching the outskirts of the city. Train tracks leading away from the destruction had buckled, leaving engines toppled and abandoned. He followed the tracks to an empty station, then set off into the wilds.

Far from the destruction, his mind began to clear. He had only one way to go: north. His sister lived in a small town about a hundred miles up the coast, and though they hadn’t spoken in three years, the semblance of a destination helped him justify this journey. He had no delusions that what he was doing was rational, but for reasons he couldn’t explain, he didn’t care. This was where he needed to be. The farther he got from San Francisco, the better.

Hours later, Lee stopped to drink and eat and think. What was he condemning himself to? His treks into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest were always meticulously planned, marked by overflowing bags and detailed itineraries. Ursula would always look over his packing list the night before an excursion and tell him what he’d forgotten. He hoped she was still alive.

The weight of his destroyed work fell over him. So many expeditions, so much progress, all gone. His fish had returned to their half-existence, and he mourned their loss. But all he could do was kick aside the pieces and begin again. Was that why he had come out here? He could think of no other reason, but then again, he hadn’t been operating on reason. Deep down, he knew he still wasn’t.

Despite the warm afternoon, a cold wind swept across his arms, raising goosebumps. The sun had emerged from the gloom, so light flooded the surrounding vegetation. When the shadow slid toward him across the forest floor, he only watched it, resigned to its whims. Its presence felt inevitable.

“What are you?” he whispered. “Why are you doing this?”

The shadow moved closer, then ascended the back of a boulder before him. It hovered for a few seconds. He tried to touch it, but there was nothing substantial. Still, it moved with the tenacity of a living thing.

Just as soon as it had appeared, the shadow slipped away toward a pine tree-covered mountain. Before he could think better of the idea, he stood, and began to follow it deeper into the wilderness.

As he trudged through dense trees, thoughts of his own survival came to mind. He wasn’t prepared for an overnight excursion. The food would last a couple days, the jug of water probably just one. Surely he would find civilization tomorrow. There were plenty of settlements north of San Francisco. At the very least, there were roads.

The day was waning. By his estimates, it was about four o’clock, leaving maybe three hours of sunlight. But there was no sense in lamenting his decisions—they had been made. Instead, he followed the path where he’d seen the shadow move.

An hour, two hours passed. To keep himself calm, he tried to recall the names of the trees that he passed and the birds flying overhead.

Pinus Ponderosa. Cornus nuttallii. Junco hyemalis.

But just as soon as they entered his mind, the cold wind picked back up and carried them away. When he tried to remember again, they receded from his memory, like he was looking at their names through glasses smudged with oil. Panic entered his mind, but he suppressed it.

Every few minutes, he glimpsed shadowed movement, but he was never sure if it came from the creatures he sought or from something much more familiar. The waning daylight did nothing to aid him. Shadows elongated further and further until they joined into one darkened mass.

When night had fallen almost entirely, the flora and fauna of northern California were reduced to unrecognizable silhouettes. He finally stopped in a copse of trees and prepared to bunker down until daybreak. There was no sense searching for shadows at night. He drank timid gulps from his dwindling canteen and munched on nuts and dried fruits he wished he’d brought more of.

The moon was new and the sky was cloudy, so the night was soon nearly pitch black. Now that he had no choice but to continue, he allowed himself to realize what a stupid thing he’d done.

He tried to sleep, but it was hopeless. Each time he started to drift off, something would wake him. The cracking of a stick could have been a deer or a bear. A distant shriek could have been a coyote or someone calling out to him. The shadows could be surrounding him, climbing him, invading his body, but there was no way to tell. In the pitch black, all life swirled together into a tapestry of ambiguity. Until he could recognize something, it was everything all at once.

Finally, mercifully, dawn broke. Light swept through the forest, illuminating it in a pink haze. Shadows from the trees were long and spindly, but he could at least see their source. He drank a little more water, ate more of his meager rations, and wondered what to do next. In the distance, barely visible plumes of smoke still rose in the direction of San Francisco. He scanned the horizon for any other nearby cities or settlements. In two other directions, more smoke stacks had risen into the sky. Had the quakes really traveled so far?

As if on cue, the ground beneath him rumbled so suddenly and severely he nearly lost his footing. Just as quickly as it had started, it stopped again.

Aftershocks, he thought, just aftershocks. A shadow scurried by, as if to taunt this conclusion.

He should have headed back to San Francisco. It was the sensible thing to do. Even if it still lay in ruins, he could find a better method for escape. No doubt word had spread to the entire region about the earthquake and the fires by now. Maybe all the neighboring cities had fallen victim to the quakes already anyway.

But something else pulled at him—something he couldn’t resist. The cold wind within him stirred.

The shadows appeared again, several this time, their shapes morphing as they slunk across sticks and grasses. He stood, repacked his bag, and prepared to follow. After a few steps, he hesitated. He imagined heading back and living out the rest of his days, never knowing what he’d seen. And though he hadn’t admitted it to himself until that moment, a stone in his gut told him that if not for those things, San Francisco would likely be standing.

He cut himself a deal: for now he would follow, but he wouldn’t spend another night out here. This lie was all he needed to convince himself he was in control. The wind stirred again, then settled.

He started to follow but stopped. Deep down, he knew where they were going—to other cities, to other places where people had organized their lives. Where there was more to dismantle and plunge into chaos. What he needed to know was where they were coming from. Instead of following them, he headed for their source.

Each time they disappeared for a while and he was left searching in desperation, they’d make quick, shallow movements just ahead, as if coaxing him along. Eventually they led him up a hill. The climb was exhausting, and when he reached the top of the ridge, he stopped to rest and look out.

Before him was a valley, long and bean shaped, with trees lining the slopes and a pond in the center. All around, the shadows slipped between the trees away from the water. He descended after them.

Halfway down the slope, he hesitated. The trees surrounding him became unfamiliar. Gone were the species he recognized on sight, even if in the moment he couldn’t recall their names. These looked as though they’d emerged from an alien landscape. Their thick leaves were almost triangular, the tips curving downward as if pulled by gravity. He ripped one from a branch and pocketed it, but as soon as it touched his pants, it dissolved into nothing.

Above him, birds chirped in languages he’d never heard in all his expeditions, like rushing water heard through radio static. They circled overhead. Their ink-black bodies were like those of crows, but they were more elongated, their necks long and then, their beaks short and flat.

The closer he got, the more foreign his surroundings became. At the bottom of the slope, he was fully immersed in a new world, nothing recognizable in sight. He marveled in terror at the morphing flora and fauna. Despite the day approaching noon, the sky was a haze of pink instead of blue. Tiny insects like ladybugs hovered in the air, but they were striped instead of spotted, long and thin instead of round.

Lee approached the edge of the water and peered inside. The pond’s depths revealed silhouettes of creatures that darted around as if agitated by his presence. Though the bright sun above should have illuminated them in the clear water, their features remained indistinct. Any time he thought he recognized one’s shape, it would change direction and become obscured once more.

A knot formed in Lee’s throat. He staggered backward and sat by the side of the pond. His thoughts raced so quickly he could not follow their course.

The creatures emerged from the water as shadows and moved toward the edges of the valley. Once on land, they took their amorphous shape. Trying desperately to calm his mind, he focused on their forms just as they left the water. He could think of no names for them, not even words to describe their shapes or movements.

Panicking, he tried to think of the names of any fish he did know. Yet he came up with nothing. The pond reached into his mind and scrambled it. He tried to latch onto something, anything.

He could not remember the name of the city he’d just escaped from, nor the one he was heading for. Nor the university he’d taught at for the last fifteen years. The image of a blonde woman’s face appeared in his mind. He knew her well, but he couldn’t remember her name or how they’d met. The thoughts were a soup in his brain.

“What are you?” he said, again and again, knowing the question was useless.

Somewhere in the maelstroms of his mind, his own voice whispered back: what are you?

He opened his mouth, compelled to announce the answer aloud, but the words didn’t come. He was nowhere to be found.

His gut burned with an unbearable need to understand something, anything. But no relief came. The knot in his throat swelled, and he doubled over, tears obscuring his view of the water. The agony of panic without context consumed him.

With shaking fingers, he dipped his hand into the pond. It was neither warm nor cold, but the exact temperature of the air. He could barely tell when he’d penetrated the surface. A creature swam by his fingers, its slimy scales rubbing against his knuckles. He longed to be able to see it and know it.

Without thinking, without even removing his clothes, he slipped into the water. Words like ‘water,’ ‘fish,’ and ‘lake’ began to recede from his brain. He swam outward.

In the center of the lake, the creatures emerged one-by-one from an abyssal hole that stretched to unfathomable depths. He swam down to it, unconcerned by his lack of breath, unconcerned by anything. Death was meaningless. The abyss called to him with the sweet serenades of another existence, one where chaos reigned supreme. Where so much was unknown that it came leaking out. The call was louder than anything he’d ever heard.

There was nothing left to do but answer.

End.

Alex Wolfgang is a horror author from Oklahoma City. You can find his work in Cosmic Horror Monthly, Nocturnal Transmissions Podcast, and anthologies by Grendel Press, Nosetouch Press, Future Dead Collective, and Howl Society Press. When not reading and writing horror, you’ll find him drumming, hiking, playing tennis, and watching movies with his wife. You can follow him on Instagram @alex__wolfgang, on Twitter @alexwolfgang, or visit his website alexwolfgang.wordpress.com

Doctor Gottili and Mr. Clark

By Justin A.W. Blair

Through a late confidant, I learned of the private practice of Doctor T. Gottili. It was to his office, located in a quiet neighborhood, separated from an abandoned department store by labyrinthine cul-de-sacs, where I made my way.

Daylight had caused visual distortions and an ever-present sense of unease lately. I lived in what I had deemed the “Wild Hours” falling asleep only when dawn’s red-weak light crested the horizon. I slept through the day soundly enough.

The drive over effected no great strain on my nerves. Calling ahead prior, I was told by a woman with a warm voice, and a continental accent: 3:00pm was the latest possible appointment.

The office was an old home, a slouching beige ordeal separated from its neighbors by a wet wooden fence swamped in vines. There was little sound—no children scrambled or played in the yards or street adjacent, no one was visible at all. A kind of sterile peace encapsulated the place. Despite the lack of life, I felt as if I were being watched by some presence, but this was only one of the symptoms I had attributed to a fault in my vision and I hurried through the door.

I saw a living room half-heartedly converted into a waiting lounge. A small reception desk had been placed against a wall accompanied by a tattered chair. Tobacco-colored carpet covered the floors and smelled like old humidity. The white paint was rough and chipped on the walls where a series of peculiar works of art hung.

They all appeared to be produced from the same brush, similar in design, depicting various creatures native to the area—alligators, manatees, various sea birds.

They were accompanied by other works of similar dimensions from the same artist. However, in these the creatures in question appeared blurry, hiding a secret physiology from the viewer’s eyes and cast in shadows by some advanced technique of chiaroscuro. These were old renderings, and on close inspection looked original; perhaps pseudo-scientific works from a crafty Spanish missionary of the sixteenth century. I admired this priest-artist who seemed more interested in a morbid and strained taxology than his God. Water stains and dark rust-colored splotches beneath the glass frames insinuated great age.

There was no trouble with the receptionist, who wore a nametag that read: Esmerelda. Her long black hair looked soft in the low light of the room and made me nervous. I stuttered out something about how interesting the paintings were, (“and what is the story behind the ones with the shadowy nature?”) to which she only replied, “Flora and Fauna,” but not in an unkind way.

I began the task of filling out several forms and took a chair in the waiting room.

The forms contained no questions pertaining to my medical history but many probing at certain mental habits, attitudes and illnesses:

“Do you find yourself wondering about eternity and what lives within it?”

“Do you ruminate on death too much?”

“If asked to sacrifice yourself to a greater power, would you hesitate?”

The forms did not leave enough space for a comprehensive answer. Alas, I had consulted certain other healers in my time who subscribed to their own eccentric methodologies. I answered as best I could despite the space provided.

As I scribbled within the meager margins, I recalled the man who had told me of the Doctor, my late confidant and colleague. At our final meeting he warned me with the laugh of a true believer not to question the Doctor’s methods. He wore strange scars about his hands and forearms. He never spoke to those.

“Mr. Clark? The doctor is ready.”

* * *

Esmerelda led me down a short hall and into what must have once been a bedroom but now served commercial purposes.

It appeared like a normal optometrist’s office—a desk, some charts and mirrors, and a large chair for the patient. I was relieved and disappointed.

The doctor came into the room at once. He wore a simple tan suit, too large for his small frame and no tie. The shirt beneath it was crumpled, damp and smelled vaguely of a tidepool. His head was large and blocky. Blond hair, like the mane of a solar animal sprouted from it but I suspected a wig of some sort.

His eyes darted about the room and settled on me. They were a simple grey, like a fact undisputed. I saw nothing in them except a hint that he enjoyed his profession after long years of practice.

“We will need to dilate your eyes, of course,” Doctor Gottili said. This after a weak handshake, introduction, and a cursory study of the forms I had filled out.

“I prefer we don’t,” I answered, “I’m only seeking some advice about my sensitivity.”

He looked to Esmerelda who had settled into a chair beside him. She appeared to double as his medical assistant as well as receptionist. I wondered if she were qualified for both tasks by degree or necessity. I felt a pang of irrational jealousy suddenly towards the Doctor, suspecting they were coupled in other ways.

“I insist,” the Doctor said.

My instinct was to stand and leave. “I’m not ready for that, don’t you see? I drove myself here. Isn’t one supposed to arrange for someone else to drive in these cases?”

“Not necessary at all. This is not like other dilations. There is no way to decline today. The charts indicate this is a propitious time. I would simply refuse to treat you if you decline,” the Doctor said.

I blinked at this rudeness. “I don’t really need ‘treatment’ per se. You see, it’s been more difficult to read at night and then also I admit the daylight has bothered me—”

“There you are,” the Doctor said, “trouble with the daylight. It is a common symptom in my patients. Does the daylight seem artificial at times, as if the light itself is set against you? Do you feel its malign intentions? Do people and objects appear as if at a distance? I must know your eyes. To know your eyes, I need to open your eyes.”

Esmerelda nodded in agreement to this but remained mute.

“Yes, well, that’s very close to how it feels. The light seems wrong. Oh, I don’t know.”

I felt a fool for dithering in front of Esmerelda and this man who had a reputation for uncanny ability. I shouldn’t demure so I reprimanded myself. Didn’t I want to be healed?

“Come now, it doesn’t hurt at all. You say that you are a reader. Do you read history?”

“I have.”

“Well, let me tell you a historical fact. The medicine I will put in your eyes, they are just drops used through centuries. An ingredient in them is related to the Belladonna flower. Did you know certain Italian ladies of the night employed drops distilled from that flower to make their eyes look larger? They used it as a kind of makeup. I have added a few of my own ingredients, certainly—all natural, completely natural origins to those ingredients despite their rare provenance.”

I know myself well enough to back away from certain disputes, even when my contrary nature implores me to “put up a fuss.” I felt like a child arguing. It was me after all who made the appointment.

“I suppose I should let you be about your business. You are the expert, after all,” I said.

The Doctor stood, pointed Esmerelda to another room, “Now while she collects the medicine, we will do a small test. Take this pamphlet and read the top line, then the next, then the next until you can’t see it anymore.”

The Doctor found a stiff, laminated paper in the drawer of his desk and handed it to me.

I started to read aloud. It was a series of Bible verses, which I found to be gauche, but made no complaint. I had grown up in the Church. At the end of each line, was noted the chapter and verse. The type became increasingly smaller testing the reader’s ability to discern it.

I finished some dry passage from the book of Romans and moved on to the next line, the fourth one, but my vision blurred after reading only the first phrase.

“Hear, for ye do not see. Listen to the depths where Leviathan sleeps, pierced only by…” I stopped, an odd verse I was not aware of. “I can’t read anymore. It becomes…indistinct.”

At that moment, a strange multiplicity of hissing sounds emanated from the area of the old house where Esmerelda had gone to fetch the medicine. I began to shake as it seemed whatever creature made the noise emitted it from many different mouths simultaneously. I laughed so to blot out that thought.

Before I could study the strange writing closer, the Doctor snatched away the paper and clapped his hands once, twice, with enthusiasm, as if dispelling an unseen creature from the room.

“That’s fine, very fine.”

Esmerelda returned. She handed the doctor a blond vial of liquid. It was then I noticed her hands were covered in similar scars to that of my late colleague.

“Look up and open your eyes wide. It might sting for just a moment, but that’s all.”

My neck felt stiff as I craned my head to the ceiling to partake of the medicine. The Doctor infused each of my eyes with three to four drops of his proprietary liquid, squeezing them from a dropper.

There was little sting, yet I blinked once at the last dose and it rolled down my cheek. Esmerelda quickly daubed it away. I felt an odd desire to dart out my tongue and catch the liquid there before she could dry it, and failing that, to lick her hand. But she moved too fast, or I held back, I can’t recall now. I stifled an embarrassed chuckle at these fractions of thoughts, tiny moments of instinct which appall if examined.

“We will leave you for a few moments while the medicine takes effect. Then we will begin the exam,” the Doctor said. I thought I could hear remonstration in his voice, as if he had sensed my strange desires and considered my mind unruly.

They left.

I sat there regarding the mirror on the wall across from me. It occurred to me as odd that I couldn’t see my own face in the reflection. I thrust myself out of the chair and went to study it closer. Nearing it, I saw that the mirror was tilted to reflect a projection from some other angle while appearing to transmit the area behind the seated patient. Standing close, my image was perfectly safe there in the mirror though I did notice through slightly fuzzy vision that my pupils were quite enlarged.

“Well, I had nothing particular to do today,” I told myself and sat back down.

* * *

They both returned after some time. I could not recall what I had done in the interim.

“So, now we look into your eye, Mr. Clark, and find what we will find,” Gottili said, swiveling a silvery machine in front of my face.

“I want to say that I have noticed, the last couple times I went to a traditional doctor that I found myself sensitive to the light they used. It made me feel…I don’t know the right word.”

“Anxious? Nervous, yes?” the Doctor said.

“Vulnerable,” Esmerelda offered.

“Not quite. Could you use a softer light, perhaps?”

“Of course, yes. We use a very special light here.”

The light came on behind the machine. The glare formed a rectangle. Beads of sweat coalesced on my lip. Wasn’t the light just like a door? A door of light a person could open and slip into. I wanted to pull away because I knew if I were to go inside that door, I would never return.

“I want you to look at the door,” the Doctor said.

I shifted my eye to the door which led out to the waiting room and seeing it something inside me pulled toward it, but I sat still.

“No, not that door. The door of light.”

How did he know I perceived this door?

“I can’t stand it much longer. I refuse to go in there.”

Esmerelda laid a hand on my arm. I felt a prick on my finger and stifled a shout.

“Just a little something to relax you. Now behold the door,” Gottili said. He had stopped staring into my eye and was rattling around in his little desk for a tool of some sort. I heard the sound of stainless-steel meeting stainless-steel.

My body was frozen. My hands were two claws grasping the sidearms of the chair. I could not move or look away.

“I refuse whatever is next Doctor. I decline the procedure. I feel a need to stand.”

How pleading my voice must have sounded. Esmerelda, I thought, suppressed a giggle.

“It is common. I have had patients who cannot stand the light. Some have even passed right out! But you will not. No, I see inside your eye and you are stronger than that, Mr. Clark.”

“That’s good,” I agreed, weakly.

“Now, I’m just going to make a little mark,” the Doctor said and in the periphery of a periphery I saw a metal stylus approach my open eye. I tried to blink. Impossible. Forgetting all encouragement to the contrary I buckled, tried to twist in my chair. I heard my teeth gnash, and I emitted an animal snorting. I felt my eye drying out, engorged and hot from the light, free-floating now as if divorced from my head.

“I don’t want that mark. I decline the procedure, Doctor! I decline! What is that for?”

“It’s to take excise your problems. I’m doing medicine on you. Fixing you, Mr. Clark.”

I felt the metal touch my eye, begin to slice into it and there was a burst of darker light, unbearable pressure and a sensation of blood trickling down my cheek. The last thought I had was of my tongue darting out and licking it up and Esmerelda, a shadow, performing a strange dance in a crooked mirror.

* * *

When I woke, I was propped up in the examination chair, the lights were dimmed in the room and it was night. I heard the Doctor’s voice from another part of the house, but I could not discern the words. It seemed a chant or song he engaged in, punctuated by a childish clapping.

The world was restored to a degree. The door was shut. I was not certain on what side of it I now walked. The sensation of being watched had dissipated. Instead I felt the weight of the watcher inside me now looking out.

When I blinked, there lingered the outlines of a symbol, the one the Doctor had inscribed on my eye. It pulsed a mahogany red against the blackness of my mind.

I staggered outside into the waiting room. The entire house was dark. I studied the paintings again in low moonlight seeping through the windows.

Now the shadowed subjects, the “Flora and Fauna”, appeared clearly. Alien things, a misshapen genus, birthed under a malignant star no astronomer had yet catalogued threatened to erode the foundation of my beliefs. Or were they not alien entirely? Natives obscured to this world, some ragged offshoot in deep time of an evolutionary trunk now forgotten by humanity. Fang-eyed animals, brute beasts with bodies of impossible geometry, tangled lines of energy in their myriad eyes met my open-mouthed gaze. Were they a hybrid of starry things and terrestrial being?

I was not certain of where I stood in relation to creation.

But I noticed my lack of certainty failed to produce any nervous manner in my own being.

I had been cured.

The symbol in my eye did not explain the creature’s origin, their plan, their place in the world or mine. It simply assured me there were plans in place and I need not bother with these designs. What blessed relief I felt.

Before leaving, I noticed a small volume on the reception desk entitled: “Hymns to Astral Leviathan.” A small note was attached, addressing the gift to me, assuring me this was the prescription I had been seeking.

* * *

I must say I would recommend the good Doctor.

I still avoid the daylight but now I have purpose. The symbol and the hymns guide me. There is always something useful to do. The creatures in the paintings inhabit the shadow places in our world. Like all living things they are hungry. My nights are filled with esoteric obligation.

Admittedly, I had doubts in the first few weeks after the symbol appeared. These concerns of mine were decisively stopped by a persistent and authoritative pain emanating through my head and the sound of the good Doctor chanting and clapping. The song corrected untoward notions I had about my new ways of seeing. I am thankful for that.

I tire sometimes in the Wild Hours. There are difficult passages in the hymns which I study and recite night after night. And then there I am, crouched in an alley, gripping knife or hammer, or blinking rapidly in a parking lot and searching all frequencies of the stars for instructions. I wait for the blind, the stumbling and the drunken and render them into a sacred meal. I portion them, according to the verses, a great tithe for the creatures who move back and forth through the door of light. Some meat I keep for myself but only the scraps, for I am a humble servant.

I returned to the Doctor’s office last month. I was disappointed, though not surprised, to find the place abandoned.

End.

Justin A.W. Blair is a writer and painter and the creator of the documentary, Across the Forest: Tales from Transylvania.

Interstate 80

By Georgia Riordan

You might want to keep your eyes on the road—it’s safest that way. You won’t need to worry about your girlfriend in the passenger seat if you keep your vision straight. Don’t let your eyes drift towards the trees. Don’t switch into the fast lane at this hour; the highway is desolate, save for your shitty 2010 Toyota Camry. You don’t need to worry about anyone else on the road, though that might make you worry more. You don’t even have to turn the radio back down after your passenger turns it up. She’ll say, what, you don’t like this song? And she knows the answer already, so you don’t have to respond. You can just hum a different tune under your breath until the terrible song ends.

You should pull over soon. You should tell your girlfriend this. It doesn’t matter what excuse you give her, since you’re the one who’s been driving for two hours while she naps and plays pop music on the radio. You deserve a break. You didn’t want to go on this trip, anyway. She says, just wait until we reach the rest stop, it’s in fifty miles, and you grit your teeth as she fucks with the radio again. Another fifty miles of bad music to go.

You only get forty miles before she sighs and says, I have to pee.

Are you serious?

Yea. I really have to pee.

You glance at the GPS. We have ten miles left til the nearest stop.

But I really have to pee!

What would you like me to do? You turn to her for a moment, taking your eyes from the road. Do you want me to pull over now? You want to piss on the side of the highway?

Gross, she says, frowning.

Not like anyone will see you. There’s literally no one else traveling at this hour. You don’t pause to consider how odd it is that a main highway is completely silent, even at 10pm. You’re just trying to get your girlfriend to stop whining.

No. I’ll wait. She crosses her arms at you. Watch the road.

You can’t help but roll your eyes. Okay. Then wait.

You make the ten miles without any more conversation. The highway continues to be dark and empty, barely lit by your headlights hitting the reflectors. You don’t pass much except for some collections of trees and patches of what looks to be corn. At one point, the car passes two does, who seem less startled than you that you’ve run into each other. They turn their faces to you as you drive by, unaffected by the sudden light of your headlights. You almost miss the turn into the rest stop—the sign isn’t lit, the writing is faded—but your girlfriend exclaims, there it is! And you quickly slide into the far lane and follow the path to the rest stop.

It really shouldn’t be called a rest stop. That’s too generous a term. It’s closer to a glorified porta-potty made of brick with two vending machines inside. There’s only one parking spot with lines. You could make your own, you suppose, but parking on the grass feels...wrong. Sacreligious, somehow. This is a pitiful pit stop, you decide, and pull into the only lined spot.

Your girlfriend clambors out of the car without so much as a glance at you. You watch her head towards the brick-clad bathrooms inside. It’s not your fault that her parents live four hours away from the city. It is your fault that the trip is taking longer than expected, but do you really want to go thirty over the limit at this hour? Who knows where the state troopers are hiding? You haven’t seen any yet, but that doesn’t mean they’re not watching, right?

As soon as your girlfriend is in the building, you decide to take a look around. Count the trees. Count the lights strewn around the building—some of them are out, and you wonder how long this place has been without maintenance. Count the shapes moving just beyond the pit stop, blending and blurring just beyond your field of vision. Are there really other creatures alive at this hour? You remember the does from before and wonder where they’ve gone. Do deer sleep on human-esque schedules?

Your girlfriend should really hurry up. You still have two hours on the road to go.

You decide to light up a cigarette. You fish the lighter out of your jacket pocket and slide the cig between your fingers. Luxury pink cigs are too expensive for your habit. You take a moment to curse your fifteen-year-old self for smoking to look cool for other girls. It never made you more attractive. It never did anything for you besides create an ache for something you never needed in the first place. At least you figured out how to stop choking on the smoke.

Your girlfriend frowns when she sees you. Is this why you wanted to pull over?

You shrug. You don’t remind her that she’s the one who needed a stop. Do you want one?

She stares at you. What?

Do you want one? You wiggle it at her. They’re pink.

Nadia, when have you ever known me to smoke?

You shrug again. I thought maybe it’d ease your nerves.

What nerves?

The ones you always get after visiting your parents.

Her mouth drops open, and then tightens into a thin line. That’s bullshit. She crosses her arms. Absolute bullshit.

Is it? We go through this every time.

No, we don’t.

Yes, we do. You always regret this trip.

You make me regret this trip, she retorts.

The two of you stare at each other. It is completely and utterly silent at the pit stop. It’s so quiet you could almost hear the electricity humming. There’s no wind. No cars whipping by. No chatter of birds or conversations of other people. Not even a chorus of crickets or cicadas. Just you and your girlfriend staring each other down over a goddamn cigarette.

She suddenly plucks the cigarette from your fingers and tosses it on the ground, stomping away from you. You roll your eyes. You could at least put it in the trash.

Fuck you, she snaps. She jiggles the handle to the passenger’s side. It’s locked. Unlock the car, please. She doesn’t look at you.

You click the button on the car key and watch her climb back inside, buckling up and still refusing to look at you. She closes the door. You walk over and attempt to talk to her through the passenger window. Were there coffee machines inside? Your girlfriend doesn’t answer. Em?

I’m not talking to you.

Jesus. I guess I’ll go look for myself.

She doesn’t respond, so you slide your hand into your pocket—enough change for an instant coffee, perfect—and walk towards the buildings. Thought you wanted to get back on the road? She calls, but you ignore her and keep going. You still have the keys, anyway.

Something smells distinctively wet and rotten inside of the pit stop. The lights are blinding, descending from the ceiling in the form of sputnik chandeliers. You can’t find the source of the smell as you blink away the harshness of the fluorescents. At least you can find your way to the coffee dispenser. You don’t even care which flavor you get. They’re all going to taste mediocre at best. You push whatever button you think is cleanest, slide the change into the machine, and listen to it drip coffee into the paper cup. You look for one of those complementary paper lids and find the dispenser empty. Who takes a lid without a cup? Guess you’ll just have to be careful with it.

You should probably go to the bathroom while you’re in here. It’s always a good idea to pee while you’ve got the chance. You leave the coffee and make your way to the bathroom. You can hear a soft scuttling sound—rats?—coming from behind the bathroom door. The scuttling makes you uneasy, sure, but it’s the weird thuds you can make out that are giving you pause. Against your better judgment, you open the door.

Oh. It’s not a group of rats making the noise. It’s a handful of possums. Fat, beady-eyed, cowering possums. You count six, maybe seven. They’re using their little hands to pull apart what used to be a bag of chips. One of them shat on the floor. Two of them are wrestling over a singular chip, their fleshy fur forms hitting the stall door over and over. At least you guys explain the smell, you tell them, and the one closest to you wrenches open its mouth, giving you a glance at all of its nasty teeth.

You decide it’s best to grab your coffee and go.

Did you take forever just to spite me? your girlfriend greets you once you’re back in the car.

No, I got held up by the possums in the bathroom. You laugh humorously.Didn’t know they ate potato chips.

The what?

You turn to your girlfriend. The possums, Em. The crowd of possums in the bathroom.

She blinks at you. What possums?

Don’t fuck with me.

I’m not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

In the women’s room, Em. Chowing down on chips and shitting on the floor. They wouldn’t let me in to piss. You run your hands through your long hair. Little fuckers.

She chews her lip. Babes, I didn’t see any possums in the bathroom. I thought the place was very clean.

Clean?!

Yeah. Very clean.

The two of you stare wordlessly at each other. You shake your head. Am I losing it?

No, you’re just tired. It’s late and it’s been a stressful trip. She’s using a much softer tone than she was before. You’re too freaked out to gloat over her admission. Why don’t you nap for a bit? I’ll drive.

What? You have never heard her offer to drive home from her parents’ before.

Yeah. She unbuckles her seatbelt. Give me the keys. I’ll drive. It’ll feel better than chugging down that shit. She gestures at the coffee.

A nap would be better than the coffee. But do you trust her driving on the highway this late? It might be empty for now, but what if the usual traffic returns? Will she be able to get you both home? She blinks again, fluttering her eyelashes at you in the way she knows you can’t resist. She holds out her hand for your keys. Okay, you tell her, dropping the keys into her palm. Just don’t hit anything, you say, half-seriously, and she rolls her eyes.

You’ve killed more squirrels than a blood hound, she quips back, and you switch seats with her before you can retort. You buckle up and lean the seat back slowly.

Can we not listen to pop? you ask, shuffling around to get comfortable. You take off your jacket and place it behind your head like a pillow.

What does it matter? You’re going to sleep.

I can’t fall asleep to fucking Taylor Swift.

Your girlfriend shoots you a glare as she starts the car. Really?

Really.

Then we’ll sit in silence, she snaps, switching off the radio and sliding the car into reverse. The two of you leave the pit stop behind. The car jostles more than you’d like as she pulls out of the spot. A bit of coffee sloshes over the cup and onto your hand. You put the cup in the cupholder before you forget. You really, really wish it had a lid.

Thanks, Em, you tell her.

For what? She sounds pissy again.

For offering to drive. It’s nice of you.

Yeah. She doesn’t even look over. Her eyes are already trained on the dark road. You close your own eyes and listen to the sound of the car’s engine. It hums louder than a new car, but doesn’t rattle threateningly. It almost sounds like the radiator in the bedroom back home, the one your girlfriend switches on any time the temperature drops, purring and vibrating in four steady beats…

You must have fallen asleep. There’s a gap in your memory from listening to the car’s engine and then hearing your girlfriend scream OH FUCK and then your eyes are open and the car is spinning and your girlfriend is screaming and something is hitting the windshield—

It’s a deer. A doe. You watch in horror as the doe’s body cracks the windshield, sliding over the top of the car, thumping along the sunroof and slamming down over the back of the car. Your girlfriend is still screaming, but she’s had the good sense to hit the brakes. The two of you lunge forward—caught by your seatbelts, how lucky—and fall backwards against the seats. The car is no longer spinning. The windshield looks more like spiderweb than glass. Your lap is wet, and for a moment, you’re confused as to how, until you see the paper coffee cup by your feet. Didn’t I ask you not to hit anything? you grumble to your girlfriend, half-joking.

She turns to you, open-mouthed. Are you fucking serious?

You look out over the mess of a windshield. It appears that the car is in the dead center of the highway. Em, pull over.

What? So you can have another smoke break?

You bite your tongue. No. We need to get out of the median.

She looks back out onto the highway. Oh. She puts her blinker on—force of habit, there hasn’t been anyone else on the road all night—and moves the car out of the median. The engine’s shuddering a little louder now and you wonder if the front of the car is damaged. Your girlfriend slowly but surely drives the car over to the grass outside of the lane lines. She parks it right on the border of the trees. Better? she asks, but it’s less venomous.

Yes. Now we won’t get hit by a random tractor trailer.

Funny, she says, in a tone that tells you it’s not very funny. What do we do now?

We check on the deer. You unbuckle your seatbelt. If it’s dead, we have to call the police.

She laughs in disbelief. What are the police going to do about a dead deer?

You sigh. They call someone to mark it and move it.

And if she’s alive?

Then we see how bad the injuries are. You already have a feeling about how bad the injuries are. The last deer you hit with this car did not survive. The one before that had to be put down by the nearest officer. You decide to just step out of the passenger side and onto the silent highway. Your girlfriend follows in suit. You walk behind the car and to her side. As she exits the car, you notice her rubbing her neck. Does that hurt?

No, I’m just rubbing it for fun, she says, but she sounds more tired than annoyed.

Whiplash is really common. You’re not bleeding, are you?

She shakes her head. No.

Good. You instinctively hold out your hand, and she stares at it, pausing, debating, before she takes it. Her hand is trembling slightly. You squeeze her hand, but she doesn’t squeeze back. Let’s go check out the damage.

The two of you carefully cross the highway, moving to the slumped shape you hope is the body of the deer. What else could it be, really? You’re thankful, for a moment, that no one else is around. It’s dark as shit, granted, with the only light sources being your phones’ flashlights, but at least the doe is the only thing that will be hit. No sudden 18-wheelers charging down I-80 at this hour, just waiting to gun down two unsuspecting lesbians on their unfortunate journey home.

You make it to the middle of the road. Your girlfriend shines her phone over the body. The fuck? she says, examining the deer.

Are you sure this is the one you hit? you ask. Nothing seems wrong with the deer. It’s not bleeding. Its eyes are closed. Her pelt doesn’t look ruffled. Nothing is obviously broken or bent out of place. You know there could be something happening internally, but the doe isn’t even breathing heavily. ’Cause this one looks fine.

Your girlfriend shines the light over the doe’s face. As she does, one eye opens, revealing solid white. Your girlfriend shrieks and stumbles back. But you’re transfixed on the deer’s mouth, not its obvious blindness.

The doe is holding half a pink cigarette in its mouth.

The cigarette between its lips isn’t lit, but it’s singed like it has been recently, like someone’s girlfriend knocked it out of their hand. Is that really your cig? Half-lit cigarettes are everywhere on the road. More than one brand makes pink cigs. It’s just a coincidence. Smoking will kill you, you know, you tell the deer, and you could swear its eye rolls.

Her eyes...your girlfriend is whispering as you lean closer to the deer.

She’s blind, Em. It’s okay.

Oh my god. Did I blind her? Her voice is escalating with hysteria.

Unlikely, you murmur, and tilt your head at the deer. It is not blinking. Its eyes are moving slowly, like it’s examining you, which would be normal, if it could see.

Nadia…

Give me a minute, Em. The deer’s lips move around the cigarette. You reach into your pocket and fish around for a loose one. You shine the phone on it, then back to the deer.

It’s the same shade of pink as the deer’s.

Nadia. Your girlfriend reaches down and grabs your shoulder. You slowly stand, turning so you can see what your girlfriend is looking at. Another doe is standing in front of her, noticeably taller than both of you, even at this distance. Are deer usually so tall? You haven’t had to face one before.

Uh, hi, you say to the doe.

Nadia. Your girlfriend’s tone is sharp.

What? It’s rude not to say hello.

The doe takes a step closer. You hold out your hand. What are you going to do, pet it? your girlfriend hisses. It could have ticks.

Because that’s the concern, right? Ticks?

The doe obviously doesn’t care for your bickering, because it rises up on its back legs, growing two feet taller as a bipedal animal. Straight-backed and rigid, it stares down at you both with an emotionless expression. The muscles in its torso ripple threateningly.

Holy shit, your girlfriend whimpers. She grips your hand again and squeezes hard. The deer pauses to look between you before stepping forward on her hind legs. Its front arms dangle lifelessly at its sides as it glides gracefully toward you. There’s not a single teeter or wobble in its gait. It moves fluidly, like it’s always walked this way.

Deer are definitely not supposed to move like that.

What do we do? Your girlfriend is shaking.

Can we get to the car? You take your eyes away from the doe and glance at the car. As long as the deer doesn’t charge, you could make it. You squeeze your girlfriend’s hand. She squeezes back. We can get to the car.

Can we outrun it?

I don’t know.

It’s standing.

I see that, Em.

It’s standing, she repeats, and you can hear her choking back tears.

So are we. You squeeze your girlfriend’s hand again. She squeezes back. It’s gonna be okay.

I don’t think they’re deer, Nadia.

Let’s worry about that later. The doe takes another poised step forward. It’s within arm’s reach now. You can see that the fur on its stomach isn’t just white. It’s patterned in a way that forms a brown and white “E”. You hope your girlfriend hasn’t noticed. You hope your eyes are fooling you. Run on three? Your girlfriend squeezes your hand as a yes. One. Two—

THREE, your girlfriend yells, and tears off down the highway. She drags you with her, and the two of you are running towards the car as if your lives depend on it. Maybe they do. Neither of you locked the car, thankfully, so the two of you climb in without any trouble. You’ve taken back your spot as the driver. You lock the doors and look out the window.

Both does are on their hind legs, facing the direction of the car.

My god, you whisper. You watch as they take a singular step forward in sync.

Can we go? your girlfriend grabs at your arm. You turn back to her.

Sure, you tell her, turning the key in the ignition. It’s nearly impossible to see through the windshield. You can barely make out the highway lanes just under the cracks in the glass. It’ll have to do. How long do we have left to drive?

Just an hour, says your girlfriend, buckling up. Step on it.

You slam the gas as hard as you can, praying that the glass doesn’t blow into the car, slicing up your faces. The wheels screech in protest as the car peels away from the scene. You’ll take the next exit off the highway; the back roads will just have to do. Hey, Nadia? your girlfriend whispers.

Yeah?

She reaches over gives your thigh a squeeze. Let’s not visit my parents again for a long, long time.

You laugh, a loud note of hysteria, and press the gas again.

You might want to keep your eyes on the road, if you want to make it home in an hour. Don’t look behind you as you speed away from the deer. Don’t watch them as they walk effortlessly on two legs into the trees. You don’t have to know that as soon as another car—the only other one so far—makes its way to that part of the highway, the deer lower themselves back down and simply watch the car drive. You don’t have to know if they were really deer or not.

All you have to do is drive.

End.

Georgia Riordan (she/they) is an MFA student at Rosemont College with a Writing BA from Ithaca College. They write primarily within the forms of poetry, flash, and short-story and within the genres and cross-genres of horror, magical realism, and creative nonfiction. Their works have found homes in many places, including Alan Squire Publishing’s Bulletin, Red Noise Collective, The Asbury Park Press, and Star 82 Review—amongst others. You can find all their previous publications on their website: georgiariordan.com.

The Sunbathers

By Lindz McLeod

As usual, we’re forced to retreat into the burrow just before dawn. I linger at the edge of the rough-hewn hole, desperate to see a single glimpse of the first pink finger of the sun slithering over the horizon, but Eilidh tugs me in after her. “Careful, Soph,” she hisses. “You know we can’t take risks now that Beltane has passed.”

She has a point, but I still resent the cold fingers wrapped around my wrist. Our bare feet thump on twelve compacted earthen stairs before the floor slopes steeply into darkness and safety. The burrow has become more like a warren over the past three years; we dug tunnels to connect chambers and ventricles, forming a great, unbeating heart. Often, we lost people to collapses, to unsafe structures with unseen fractures. Not as often as we lost people to the Sunbathers above, but even so, the death toll is both high and unavoidable. Cave-ins, disease, madness—all rife down here, where the blackness is absolute. We dare not risk a single light, not even in our deepest caverns.

Christ, how I miss the sunrise.

I follow Eilidh down the lefthand tunnel which leads to our den, where we’d left Old Jeff, Cygnet, and Maya last night. It had been our turn to venture out, to gather what fruit we could from the trees, what stores we could scavenge from what the Sunbathers had left amongst their still-smoldering campsites. It had been a good haul, too; I’d found a still-spitted roast chicken while Eilidh had picked an armful of ripe peaches from the trees overhead. Ahead of me, Eilidh hums softly. True silence is rare here—we’re encouraged to communicate our presence to avoid collisions, and every scuff and scuttle is clearly audible. Without sight to guide us, we’ve made use of our other senses as best we can. Eilidh hums again, upticking at the end. Fighting back a sigh, I hum to let her know I’m still here—though, where else would I be?

She reached back and gropes for my hand. I allow her a single, brief squeeze, before I pull away. In another few seconds we reach the den, where three voices rise to meet us. I kneel. A hand touches my shoulder, the fingers scuttling cancrine down to my wrist.

“Chicken?” Old Jeff’s voice is more gravelly than usual, the distinct slug of phlegm coating each word. “Been a long time since I ‘ad chicken.”

I hand over our harvest. I already ate above ground: a single leg, accompanied by three sticky-sweet peaches, washed down with tepid water still warm from the sun. We hide full bottles in various places at night, so that the sun can purify it during the day. This reduces the number of bacteria, since without the ability to boil water underground, we’re stuck using rudimentary methods. We can’t light a fire in the deepest parts of the burrow because of the smoke inhalation, to say nothing of the signals to Sunbathers. They’ve been known to root people out or cave in the tunnels from above, then pull bodies from the rubble afterwards. We can’t light a fire near the entrance for the same reasons, plus there is always the possibility, no matter how unlikely, that a Sunbather might find a way to protect themselves. If they could ever figure out a way to reach us, we’d be sitting ducks.

“Amazing,” Cygnet mumbles through a mouthful.

I can’t stand the sounds of other people eating, the sickly washing-machine squelching of roiling, syncopated mastication. Even in the old days, I preferred to eat alone. I retreat into the tunnel while they chomp away on our bounty, and listen to the faint hums coming from further up, where the tunnels diverge. The right-hand fork leads to another community, a larger one. A splinter group which cleaved from a much bigger crowd a year ago, though none of them will say why. One of them used to screw me occasionally, above and below. Rose or Roz or something. Freckles, seen by moonlight, look like a hundred decimal points, separating wholes from fractions. Everything is so delineated these days: day and night, us and them, living and dying. I took every opportunity I could to blur the lines. She’s dead now, whatever her name was. After a cave-in, somewhere shallow, I found a freckled foot spitted over a campfire. I’m never sure whether Eilidh didn’t guess about my little tryst or just chose to turn a deaf ear. She either thinks about things too much or too little; I’ve never been able to figure out which it is.

Eilidh has no freckles. Not a single mole adorns her pale curves. When she kisses me I taste pure navy. She’s no Indigo, tainted with the barest hint of a passionate red, nor the dulled sea-glass palate of an Aegean blue. She’s an empty night sky, or an ocean trench under my dangling feet. A bowl curving over the world, or a slow licking tide, devouring it inch by inch. Never something as complicated as a horizon, as a boundary between one place and the next. She’s too much for me and also somehow not enough.

Sometimes I think I hate her. Sometimes I think I hate myself.

“Darling,” she murmurs after a few minutes. “We’re finished.” I slide back into the den, into the smoggy clouds of other people’s breath and belches and worse. She winds her arms around me. “Are you okay?”

The wool of her sweater rasps against my own scavenged garment. “Yeah.”

They’re all asleep in minutes while I lie awake, wondering how hot it might be above ground right now. I picture the sun caressing green summer leaves, the buzz of a bee flirting with each individual bright flower. The smell of fresh grass, of smoke and fire, of the salted sea, which I know to be not far from here, but which in the three years I’ve been living here I’ve never been able to witness. What I wouldn’t give to stand barefoot on scorching sand, to feel the snarl of hot metal against my tender flesh.

Surrounded by steady, sour breath, I compare our lives down here. The endless cold. The crumble of damp earth and pebbles under my back. The smell of lingering memories, like the underside of mushrooms. The dark steals more than sight; it steals our very selves. I wriggle out from Eilidh’s embrace and creep back up the tunnel. Even thirty feet away, the brightness of the day stings my eyes. Outside, lavender bushes obscure the entrance, which provides us with some protection, but if they happened to step a certain way—

Two voices, nearby. I halt, my heart hammering, and press a hand over my chest as if that will stifle the noise. One laughs. They are often laughing, and why not? The Sunbathers are tanned and tall and beautiful. Their eyesight in daylight is better than perfect. Their strength is unparalleled. They are walking gods, illuminated by the eye of the paternal loving sun, while we scuttle around in the dirt and dark like vermin.

I creep a little closer. “They say they are close to finishing a great lamp like the one in Las Vegas, only better,” one drawls. His voice reminds me of sunlight on snow—cold, crystalline, dangerous. “That was 42.3 billion candela and one could have gone blind just looking at it too long. This new lamp will be more powerful than the Sun itself. Think of it, Cecily. Think how strong we shall be.”

The second voice puts me in mind of a satisfied cat. Sleek. A single claw, currently sheathed. “And they say it will last?”

“They do.”

I frown, not sure what they mean. I can’t imagine something that bright—stronger than any stadium floodlight, more powerful than the sun. A desperate urge rises like bile; I want to stand in that light, stripped down to my bare skin, and let it take me. Their voices grow distant as they stroll away. The wind soughs in the trees, sliding between branches like a great invisible serpent, catching the cocked ear of every leaf, whispering ethereal temptations. I creep an inch closer, almost to the base of the steps. I want so badly to stick my head out, to taste the breeze, to win a single golden moment.

Instead, I retreat into the darkness like the lumbricine monster I am.

When the solar flares had worsened, turning into frequently and deadly bursts of intense radiation, most ordinary people had simply cowered, quaking, in their houses. When the star was brightest we tacked reflective foil over our windows to keep the worst of it out, and when it became clear that the flares were happening every few days, it seemed more sensible to leave it up permanently. We grew used to living in reduced light, gaining a little relief from the shade of our homes. Of course we did. We had no idea what was coming.

When the first of the sunbathers had turned, it had made the news. A crowd of twenty or so had ignored the weather warnings and stood outside in a tree-lined plaza during a particularly bad flare. To begin with, they’d made a game of it, tunelessly belting a selection of appropriate songs including Here Comes The Sun and This Little Light of Mine and Walking On Sunshine. As their mostly-naked bodies changed—reddened, blackened, tanned, according to skin type, but all bubbling like cheese under a grill—they’d fallen silent. Several had deserted early on, fleeing for the safety of the shade. One had tried to withstand the pressure and had fallen, unable to drag himself to safety; he subsequently burst into agonized flames and died wailing.

A photojournalist lying in wait in a first-floor office had captured the range of expressions on those of the still-living. A victorious snarl here, unfathomable grief there. Unusual countenances for people being burned alive, or so we thought. Most of them had cried, the tears steaming off their faces in hissing spurts. By the end, every single one was supine, their bodies lit with a faint golden glow. One of them had leapt to her feet, had strutted across to a nearby lamppost. Had experimentally tugged. The lamppost had erupted from the ground in a shower of dirt and crumbled concrete, and the woman had held it uncertainly for a moment before raising it aloft like a trophy.

Afterwards, during a live interview, one of the group had grinned into a waiting camera. “We met on a forum for people sick of living in fear,” they said. “An anonymous source told us we’d been lied to about the danger. Glory in our sufferings!” they added, and the crowd chanted the words back in unison.

Behind them, the smoking corpse still hissed and sputtered like a guttering candle. “How did you know you wouldn’t die?” the interviewer asked. Her thick makeup and glossy blonde curls couldn’t cover the fact that her hands were shaking and pale-knuckled around the offered mic.

“We didn’t. We just accepted what the sun has to offer.”

“Those who accept the sun will never die,” another announced, standing side by side with the first. Their glow was ethereal, making the interviewer look washed out and haggard. A scruffy bird, surrounded by glittering specimens.

The interviewer cast a single glance towards the corpse before the mask of professional composure slipped back into place. “What makes you different from those of us inside?” she prompted.

Another cut in, “I don’t think you should be asking what makes us different. I think you should be looking at what makes us the same. This could be you too,” a glowing thumb, jabbed towards their heart, “if you do the work.”

“Is it not…” the interviewer stumbled over her words, “uh, a dangerous procedure? What kind of work do you recommend they do?”

As one, the crowd had stared at her; a great, golden Argus, many-limbed and hundred-eyed. “The sun’s light shines on everyone. To hide in the darkness is to turn away the power and glory of the sun, who gives its warmth to aid us,” the first person said decisively. “Why would you reject such a bountiful gift?”

“Some people are sensitive to the—” the interviewer began, but they interrupted her once more.

“Darkness is weakness. It’s a sin. Aren’t you tired of living in the shadows?” They turned to the camera, looking straight into the lens. “Step out and be seen.”

After that, more than a thousand people braved the next flare. Most of them survived it, and the idea grew roots. The sun will burn away your frailties and leave you strong, they insisted. If you don’t survive the process, it is your fault, not the sun’s. Those who had turned claimed they no longer indulged in vices, were no longer enticed by bodily temptations. No more worrying and doubting and ruminating and deciding and discovering. The sun told them who they were, then burned the sins right out of their bodies and minds. They argued this was the apex of the human condition, adapted to our changing world instead of hiding from it in fear like animals.

Individual choice wasn’t enough for the Sunbathers, though. We should have known that they wouldn’t settle for notoriety. Spreading the message was only the start. They escalated gradually—recruitment evolved into pressurized solicitations, then into outright kidnappings. It wasn’t enough that they had changed, that they were saved. They insisted on saving all of us too. If we resisted, that was merely proof that the darkness held us in sway. If we protested, then it was their obligation to perform their parts more aggressively, to rescue us from our own failings. They demanded loyalty and deference to the center of our universe above all else; a homage to the life-giving, vitalizing powers of the sun. Despite these tactics, many went willingly. Desperate to be cleansed, to be pure.

Growth happens in the dark too, Soph, Eilidh often reminds me. Plenty of seeds require shade and cool conditions to thrive. The moon moves the tides. We need darkness as well as light for a circadian rhythm. Neither better than the other. We simply are.

Eidlidh never asks if I am happy simply being. Maybe it never occurs to her to question it; maybe she knows she wouldn’t like the answer.

Prior to our world changing, Eilidh claims she read a study which concluded that Roque de los Muchachos Observatory—located in the Canary Islands—is the darkest place on Earth. Eilidh insists that we’ll go together someday. We’ll be safe there, she’d said. We’ll be able to sleep under the stars, Soph. Won’t that be wonderful? When she nibbles her way down my neck, the tenderness turns my stomach. When her tongue tastes flesh, I’m dreaming of sunlight lapping on my skin. When I climax, it’s the red glare of a summer afternoon I see behind my eyes.

“I love you,” she whispers, and for once I’m glad of the darkness. It hides the truth. She doesn’t say it often. She knows I don’t like it. I haven’t said it back. I was in danger of doing it, once, but the fling I had with what’s-her-name helped put a necessary barrier between me and the words. Real love isn’t grubbing around in the darkness, taking whatever scraps you can, no matter how my stomach flips when she kisses me.

I volunteer to go out to harvest that night with Cygnet and Maya, even though it isn’t my turn. The night is dark, a tiny sliver of moon peeking between curtains of cloud, and the breeze is blissfully warm against my face. In the gloaming, the stars are bloodspeckles spattered around the single raw orange wound of the sky. In the distance, a Sunbather camp lights up the night sky like a rave. Strobe lights flicker and flash in a rainbow of whites and creams. I’ve heard they sleep cocooned inside individual tanning beds, swaddled in light. A single shadow won’t kill them, while a dim room would simply inflict a high degree of pain. They have the advantage of us in this respect. It’s much easier to drag a body out of a hole than it is to drag them in. We tried, once, and lost four members of our community in the struggle.

We walk for a couple of miles through the grove of trees, to where Eidlidh and I discovered a new campsite the night before. “They get close now,” Cygnet says, their accent clipped.

Maya bends, touches the ashes with a single digit. “Still warm.”

Cygnet frowns. “We move? Move house?”

I bite back a bitter laugh. The burrow is as far from a house as its possible to be. I can still vividly picture my old home, with all the luxuries I treasured—a stove-top cafetière, the latest gaming console, abstract artwork hanging on every wall—and my laugh threatens to turn into a sob. These days I’d happily settle for the most basic amenities: a flushing toilet, a working oven, a hot shower.

We gather up whatever we can find—more peaches, a couple of forgotten roast eggs rolled in ash, and something spitted that looks suspiciously like a handless arm. We avoid each others’ eyes as I unhook the arm and carry it over my shoulder. The scent of the meat, fatty and rich, wafts towards me. I grit my teeth as my mouth waters. I’ve done plenty ugly things in order to survive. Consuming other people isn’t even in the top ten. A familiar thought drifts across my mind, a solo cloud in an otherwise baleful grey sky: maybe if I was a Sunbather, I wouldn’t hate myself quite so much.

On the way back, Maya disappears into a clump of trees and returns empty-handed and anguished. “They found our water,” she wails, eyes bright with unshed tears. “How did they—it’s all gone.”

I push past her and find the ground littered with empty plastic bottles. The lids have been unscrewed, the precious contents dumped onto the thirsty ground. I stand up and swear, aiming a kick at the nearest tree. We have three more supply spots but even so, my stomach clenches with sudden certainty. If they found this one, they probably went looking for the others too. Without a safe place to purify water, we’re screwed. I’d scoffed at Cygnet’s question of whether we should move, whether the Sunbathers were too close, but maybe they’d been right. By discovering this cache, the Sunbathers would know for sure there was a skulk of us nearby. It wouldn’t be long before they decided to root us out.

Back in the burrow, the news is met with horrified silence. Old Jeff shifts, and I can tell by the way air whistles through his nose that his sinuses are swelling, that he’s on the verge of tears, if not crying already. If we have to travel, he’s the least likely to make it. His once-broken leg never healed properly and walking is a chore. He makes up for being unable to harvest by doing what he can in the den, but he hasn’t been pulling his weight for some time. I don’t even know how old he is. I try to picture the last time I saw him by faint starlight but there’s only a vague impression of wrinkled jowls and a shiny, bald head.

“Don’t worry,” Cygnet says, also rustling. Patting him, probably, like a dog scared of a thunderstorm. “We’re all in this together, okay? It’s what sets us apart from them. We have community.”

I roll my eyes.

“Maybe this is a sign,“ Eilidh chimes in. “Maybe we should head for the Canary Islands.”

She can’t help herself. She knows it means making sacrifices, but she wants it so badly she’s entertaining the notion of breaking the group bonds, maybe even leaving the others behind if it means reaching her goal. An unexpected wave of sympathy twangs in my chest. Maybe we’re a little more alike than I thought.

“And what happens,” Maya asks, “when we get to a place where no one has dug burrows? Where will we sleep then?”

“There are cave systems,” Eilidh insists. “Abandoned mines. Probably boats too, if we can get to the coast. Ferries and stuff. My dad used to have a boat so I know how—”

“You’re delusional,” Maya says. The smallest sound of teeth, scraping over cracked lips. She’s trying not to add something else, trying not to cross a line by making accusations she can’t rescind. I’m tired of listening to them fret and whine. I scramble out into the tunnel, ignoring the whiny way Eilidh calls my name. “Leave her be,” Maya murmurs, irritation finally spilling into her voice. “For God’s sake, Eilidh, get a grip.”

The instruction evidently has an effect, since no one follows me into the tunnel. Dawn is only just breaking—I can see pale light dribbling down through the entrance—and I can’t help myself. I scuttle closer. A cool morning breeze billows down, stroking my skin with a thousand tiny feathers. Closer. The scent of lavender wafts towards me. Closer. No one is around to stop me. Why shouldn’t I indulge everything I desire for a single shining moment? Anyway, if we left the burrow we’d have to risk being in the open air sometimes and therefore it’s actually good to test it out now, and now my foot is on the bottom earthen stair and I am raising myself up, up, until my head is above ground, my eyes stinging with the delicious pain of overwhelming light and I want to wail as if I’ve just been birthed into a strange new world, bloody and new, and—

A Sunbather grabs me by the throat, raises me into the air. I splutter, clawing at her fingers, but she takes no more notice than if I were an alighting butterfly. Her dark hair is streaked with grey, her skin a luminous tan. Her eyes are a dazzling, vulpine amber. “Look, a worm,” she says calmly.

A flicker in my peripheral vision. Her companion approaches, frowning. His eyes are a pale, bleached blue, a violent, beautiful contrast to his dark skin. “You have such a talent for the hunt, sister.”

“Don’t hurt me. I want to be one of you,” I choke. It’s the first thing I thought of, but even as I say the words, I feel the truth in them.

“We love to hear those words, don’t we brother?” Her hand doesn’t waver. My feet dangle inches from the ground, my vision turning red at the edges. The Sunbathers exchange looks; his hands flash rapidly in a complicated pattern I can’t parse. “Hmm.” She turns back to me. “Some would rather die than join us.” She lowers me until my tiptoes touch solid earth, then lets go and steps back.

“I wouldn’t.” I massage my aching throat. I could hurl myself back into the burrow, run and warn the others, but that would only put them in danger too. At least, that’s how I justify remaining still. Sweat dribbles down my spine.

“The ritual kills as many as it saves, these days. You’ve left it rather late, worm.” He studies me. Takes in the appalling state of my clothing, my pale skin, the way I can hardly bear to open my eyes even in this dull light. The flickering flame dances along his cheekbone. “Still, even trying should absolve you somewhat. We never turn a soul away who begs to be saved.”

I nod vigorously. So magnanimous. They’re right, of course; I’m nothing but a worm, compared to them. Another bout of hand-waving follows. He tells me that the induction needs blood for the ritual. I kneel in front of them and bow my head, ready to obey their next order. “Not yours,” she says. “A sacrifice. To show your devotion.”

“To you?” I ask, uncertain.

“To yourself. To the Path.” She pronounces it oddly, emphasizing the word. “You have to renounce the darkness. Cast off your sins. Sear away the taint of your old ways.”

What’s my alternative, really—becoming another spitted limb strung across a campfire? Screw that. I nod again. They make me tell them where the burrow is, how it whorls under the pockmarked land, how far it extends. How deep. They tell me I have to pick someone. That life requires death, that godhood requires giving up one’s humanity. Not mortality, I notice, but humanity. It’s a trolley problem, then—either I choose one person to die, or we all do. Simple, really. I make a half-hearted plan to talk Old Jeff into coming with me; who’d miss him, after all? The idea fizzles out before I get more than a couple of steps in. The truth is that there is only one person connecting me to the darkness, who’d ever made me feel even remotely okay about being there.

They watch my face keenly, watch the realization dawning. Pleasure ripens in their eyes, blooms on their lips. “We’ll wait here. Hurry. Bring your lamb.”

I descend back into the burrow. My vision dances with sunspots, floating like pale amoeba against the petri dish of the darkness. Nausea simmers in my stomach; I bite down hard on my hand, until my canines break the skin. The pain grounds me. If I don’t do this, they’ll root the rest of us out anyway. This way, I can at least save myself.

Eilidh is waiting for me at the entrance to the den. “What the hell are you doing?” she whispers.

The words slide out, easier than they should. “I found something topside. Come and see.”

“Soph, you know it’s not safe,” she protests.

I lean into her, rest my temple against the groove of her neck, press my nose into the hollow there and feel her pulse skitter. “Please,” I say. “Please just do this one thing for me.”

She hesitates.

“I love you,” I add.

It’s enough. Her fingers slide into mine.

The Sunbathers catch her on the outskirts of the grove. “Soph!” she screams. “Soph, run!” The third time, the word is halved by suspicion.

I turn away from my betrayal, not wanting to see her last moments. A quick cut, they said. A sharp knife, they said. The wound would heal soon enough; for me, anyway. A faint gurgle behind me informs me that the deed is done. I lift my face to the sky—oh, the blue sky!—and position myself like a flower, arms outstretched. I want to throw up, to purge myself inside as well as out, but I swallow it down. The sound of dragging—a heavy, leaden slither—could be anything. Not necessarily a body. Not necessarily my fault.

The Sunbathers order me to lie down and spread my limbs like a star. The sun overhead is almost at its zenith. I remember heat from my childhood as a pleasant warmth, from my teenage years as a baking roast, from my twenties as an ever-present scald. I’d thought my memories were relatively intact, but I don’t remember anything as bad as this. I howl as the sun’s rays sear my skin. The smell of my sizzling flesh, pork-rich and crackling deliciously, is sickening. I turn my head to vomit but there’s no time—the red glare becomes a white-hot scald over my whole body, interspersed with the pop-pop-pop of tiny blisters bursting along my bare stomach like simmering water, and I open my mouth as the sunshine coats me, covers me, fills me up, and I scream as if by emptying my lungs I might drown myself all the faster, and—

My world is full of crackling, ferocious pain. Time roars by in a torrent, washing my senses away, boiling them clean. When it finally ends, I lie dazed and whimpering.

“She’ll need a second bath. Maybe even a third,” he says.

My cracked eyelids flicker. Please, no more. The other Sunbather shrugs. “We endure the heat to stand in the light, do we not?”

“Of course, sister.”

I am dying. I am more alive than I have ever been. I reach out, desperate for any touch, any reassurance. They instantly retreat out of reach.

“Every soul stands alone,” the Sunbather says. His voice is a mirrored lake, but a muscle jumps in his jaw, belying his displeasure. “Touching is a vice we do not indulge in.”

Stung, I let my hand flop onto the dirt. Their footsteps fade as they leave me alone. My skin ripples and sheds flake after flake, huge red blisters knitting together into a golden pool of purity. Nearby, I hear their voices raised in choral song. By the time I have recovered enough to flip myself onto my side, they’re in full flow. A crowd of hundreds, each an island, joined only by a sea of sound and movement. They smell of nothing; a grey absence where scent should be, making the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

When the song is over, they disperse in twos and threes without speaking. I crawl to kneel by the place where Eilidh died and dig my hands into the mottled patch of brown-red earth, my fingers spidering down as if there might be something to catch, to grasp, something that might be retrieved and relit. Growth happens in the dark too, Soph, she used to say.

You lied, I think, my fists clenching, clawing great mounds of dirt into compact balls in my hands. You lied.

End.

Lindz McLeod is a queer, working-class, Scottish writer and editor who dabbles in the surreal. Her prose has been published by Apex, Catapult, Pseudopod, The Razor, and many more. Her work includes the novelette LOVE, HAPPINESS, AND ALL THE THINGS YOU MAY NOT BE DESTINED FOR (Assemble, 2022), her short story collection TURDUCKEN (Spaceboy, 2023), her novels BEAST (Hear Us Scream, 2023) and SUNBATHERS (Hedone Books, 2024). She is a full member of the SFWA, the club president of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club, and is represented by Laura Zats at Headwater Literary Management.

The Boarded Window

By Ambrose Bierce

Originally published in The San Francisco Examiner 1891

In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier - restless souls who no sooner had hewn fairly habitable homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which today we should call indigence, than, impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain the meagre comforts which they had voluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for the remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word. His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed possession. There were evidences of “improvement” - a few acres of ground immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the axe. Apparently the man’s zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in penitential ashes.

The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping clapboards weighted with traversing poles and its «chinking» of clay, had a single door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however, was boarded up - nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant›s dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living today who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you shall see.

The man›s name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years old, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his ageing. His hair and long, full beard were white, his grey, lustreless eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles which appeared to belong to two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and spare, with a stoop of the shoulders - a burden bearer. I never saw him; these particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the man’s story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in that early day.

One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should remember. I know only that with what was probably a sense of the fitness of things the body was buried near the cabin, alongside the grave of his wife, who had preceded him by so many years that local tradition had retained hardly a hint of her existence. That closes the final chapter of this true story - excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many years afterward, in company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the place and ventured near enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informed boy thereabout knew haunted the spot. But there is an earlier chapter - that supplied by my grandfather.

When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his axe to hew out a farm - the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support - he was young, strong and full of hope. In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart. There is no known record of her name; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent and the doubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I should share it! Of their affection and happiness there is abundant assurance in every added day of the man›s widowed life; for what but the magnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spirit to a lot like that?

One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest to find his wife prostrate with fever, and delirious. There was no physician within miles, no neighbour; nor was she in a condition to be left, to summon help. So he set about the task of nursing her back to health, but at the end of the third day she fell into unconsciousness arid so passed away, apparently, with never a gleam of returning reason.

From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some of the details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather. When convinced that she was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember that the dead must be prepared for burial. In performance of this sacred duty he blundered now and again, did certain things incorrectly, and others which he did correctly were done over and over. His occasional failures to accomplish some simple and ordinary act filled him with astonishment, like that of a drunken man who wonders at the suspension of familiar natural laws. He was surprised, too, that he did not weep - surprised and a little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to weep for the dead. “Tomorrow,” he said aloud, “I shall have to make the coffin arid dig the grave; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight; but now - she is dead, of course, but it is all right - it must be all right, somehow. Things cannot be so bad as they seem.”

He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair and putting the finishing touches to the simple toilet, doing all mechanically, with soulless care. And still through his consciousness ran an undersense of conviction that all was right - that he should have her again as before, and everything explained. He had had no experience in grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know he was so hard struck; that knowledge would come later, and never go. Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way affected, for (and here we are upon surer ground than that of conjecture) no sooner had he finished his pious work than, sinking into a chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay, and noting how white the profile showed in the deepening gloom, he laid his arms upon the table›s edge, and dropped his face into them, tearless yet and unutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window a long, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening woods! But the man did not move. Again, and nearer than before, sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wild beast; perhaps it was a dream. For Murlock was asleep.

Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this unfaithful watcher awoke and lifting his head from his arms intently listened - he knew not why. There in the black darkness by the side of the dead, recalling all without a shock, he strained his eyes to see - he knew not what. His senses were all alert, his breath was suspended, his blood had stilled its tides as if to assist the silence. Who - what had waked him, and where was it?

Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he heard, or fancied that he heard, a light, soft step - another - sounds as of bare feet upon the floor!

He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce he waited - waited there in the darkness through seeming centuries of such dread as one may know, yet live to tell. He tried vainly to speak the dead woman›s name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across the table to learn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his arms and hands were like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy body seemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it against his breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the same instant he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor with so violent a thump that the whole house was shaken by the impact. A scuffling ensued, and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe. Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control of his faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!

There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the flash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw an enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth fixed in her throat! Then there were darkness blacker than before, and silence; and when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the wood vocal with songs of birds.

The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when frightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was deranged, the long hair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal›s ear.

End.

Ambrose Bierce (born June 24, 1842, Meigs county, Ohio, U.S.—died 1914 possibly in Mexico) American newspaperman, wit, satirist, and author of sardonic short stories based on themes of death and horror. His life ended in an unsolved mystery.

Dear beloved reader,

I hope you found the chills you were looking for. Perhaps while entrenched in the pages of this issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly, you questioned both your own sanity and your place amongst the malevolent whims of our cold universe. If so, let not your thirst for more cosmic terror go unquenched. Simply visit WWW.COSMICHORRORMONTHLY.COM
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Editor

Table of Contents

- 163.3

- The Secret Society of Schrödinger’s Children

- Reality is the Antagonist:
- Dragging Bones from the Ocean
- Ambiguation
- Doctor Gottili and Mr. Clark
- Interstate 80
- The Sunbathers
- The Boarded Window