CHM February 2024
Author: CHM LLC
Date: 2024-01-23 14:15:13+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 - Lars Strömquist

Cosmic Horror Monthly

Editor: Charles Tyra

Co-Editor: Carson Winter

Co-Editor: Jolie Toomajan

A special thanks to our Patreon subscribers for making this issue possible:

Ronald Morton, David N

www.cosmichorrormonthly.com

Greetings Dear Reader,

Welcome to another edition of Cosmic Horror Monthly. This month features one of my favorite collections of fiction we’ve assembled. Including some absolutely terrifying cosmic horror and weird ideas driven right over the edge of absurdity. There may be plenty of cold air circulating outside, but don’t worry, we’ve packed the chills into this one. Let’s dig in.

We’ll start things off with a nice relaxing dinner party, only one of the guests is an evil celestial being in “You Are Cordially Invited to the Last Dinner Party.” Then in a brilliant showing by CHM alum Erik McHatton, the cosmic and the weird go hand in hand in “We Must Be Rabbits.” A bond grows between a boy and his puppet in the Ligottian nightmare “Saywakaw.” Then enjoy an insightful breakdown of differing philosophies on ghosts by J.A.W. McCarthy called “Why Can’t We Live With Ghosts” followed by an interview with Nicole Cushing discussing her latest novella.

In “Pink Smoke,” something other than lava has erupted from Italy’s Mt. Etna. Then, a man attempts to connect the dots in the disappearance of his father, a writer whose stories prove more powerful than words in “A Book of String, A Book of Thread.” We are treated to a fresh and vivid take on a Lovecraftian trope in “FairyTale Lost” before the blood of a giant arthropod proves to be a powerful aphrodisiac in “Black Ichor.” We wrap things up this month with an obscure classic from deep within the crypt called “The Clock” by W.F. Harvey.

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, and she has a PhD in English with a focus on speculative fictions. Despite all this, she would read out loud from a book written in backwards Latin.

Featured artists this month

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

Michael Noonan is from Halifax, Yorkshire. Has had artworks published in literary journals in the US and UK, including, After the Pause, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, and Noctivigant Press. He won a runners up prize for a drawing in a competition run by Arts and Illustrators Magazine in the UK, and his own painting can be seen on the cover of a volume of his short stories, entitled, SEVEN TALL TALES.

Table of Contents

1. You Are Cordially Invited to the Last Dinner Party

2. We Must Be Rabbits
3. Saywakaw
4. Why Can’t We Live With Ghosts
5. Interview with Nicole Cushing
6. Pink Smoke
7. A Book of String. A Book of Thread
8. Fairytale Lost
9. Black Ichor
10. The Clock

You Are Cordially Invited to the Last Dinner Party

By Chelsea Pumpkins and Christopher O’Halloran

Across the street, the streetlights quiver over the mow-striped lawn, and through the bay window of 34 Wachusett Circle. With her back to that very window, Margaret grips the handle of her best Japanese paring knife in knuckles whiter than her perfect teeth. A shiver descends from the base of her skull, down through the edge of the knife and nicks the tip of her freshly manicured thumbnail.

“You have to be kidding me,” she snivels.

From behind the batwing doors of the kitchen: “What was that, Marge?”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Elliot.” She slams the knife down with a clatter and dabs her damp decolletage with the hem of her apron.

The Bennetts are already here, and the table isn’t even set. Kelly and Gerard had mistaken the formality of the dinner invitation—and its dire importance—for urgency, and now the two of them sit with barely-chilled champagne on a barely-dusted chesterfield across from him. Early wasn’t what she’d asked for. Early wasn’t planned.

Elliot’s heavy footfalls shake the heirloom chandelier in the dining room, and Margaret counts with the tap of her toe—five, four, three, two—until he bursts through the doors, a stack of plates in his arms. “These the ones?”

“We’re not hosting the cast of Jersey Shore for Christ’s sake. No, those aren’t the ones. I said fancy.” Margaret flexes her hands at her sides. “Tonight has to be perfect. Is that clear?”

“Crystal, darling.” Elliot pulls a long breath as he marches back into the hallway.

* * *

They’re plenty fancy, Elliot thinks as he makes yet another trip back to the cupboard where the extra plates live. It isn’t enough that Margaret demands specific ones, but those specific ones just happen to be buried in the back, tucked safely away lest they be accidentally used on lesser company.

Why? Why in the hell do they need so many plates of varying class designations? Work friends get the B tier, family gets the C.

Tonight’s guest of honor gets top of the line. The ones with the gold rim. And, of course, the heavy silverware.

“If she thinks we have time to polish every fleur de lis, she’s out of her goddamn mind.” With the cuff of his sleeve, he rubs at an oil smudge left behind by his damp fingers.

“What was that?”

Elliot squeals and nearly drops the plates. Over his shoulder, Gerard breathes coolly. He’s too damn stupid to grasp the severity of their situation.

“Nothing, Gerard.”

“Kelly says I should give you a hand with these.” Gerard holds strong hands toward the stack of dishes.

I should let him, Elliot thinks. Let them slip through his clumsy mitts and crash to the floor. Give Margaret something to really lose her cool over.

Her jabs and barbs are beyond old—the little attacks, pitiful irritants. He’d rather her throw one of these plates at his head than make another passive-aggressive remark about a spot he missed while washing them.

“I’m good,” Elliot says, reaffirming his grip on the heavy stack. “Should... should you really have left Kelly with the—” He stops. “With him?”

Gerard’s face slackens. His mouth falls open, displaying rows of filled molars and overlapping canines that charm the ladies with their perfect imperfection.

Let this be our last dinner party. Elliot has this thought every time they host.

“I should go check—”

“Yes, you should,” Elliot says.

Gerard spins on his heels and darts toward the living room where who knows what his wife is facing.

Let this be the last dinner party.

“Where are those goddamn plates?”

* * *

“Shit,” Margaret spits as she catches her heel on the edge of the area rug, canapes teetering on the edge of the silver platter. Three pairs of doe eyes with matching pinched lips flash toward her. And, from the being on the loveseat, one relishing smirk.

“Well pardon your French,” Elliot says.

Margaret clears her throat, but when she does, the feculent smell wafting off their dinner guest chokes her. Her eyes flood, burning, as she represses a cough.

Kelly plays her part. “Oh, thank you, Margaret. You really shouldn’t have. These just look to die for.” She reaches for steak tartare on a mini toast and freezes under the weight of realization.

“I—I just mean these are lovely,” Kelly stammers. “And these embroidered silk napkins—divine!”

Margaret looks from guest to guest to Elliot, all three spread out on the sofa, begging through her affected grin for one of them to make room. There’s room for four if they scooch together.

“Have a seat, Margaret,” he says, voice dripping with the unseen shadows of the bottom of the sea.

Her eyes meet Elliot’s.

“Well,” he says, “don’t keep him waiting, Marge.”

Margaret stiffly sits next to him. Her insides clench as her hip grazes his velvet suitcoat. His slippery presence worms its way beneath her thighs and turns her cold. But the cold is okay—it keeps her still.

“Elliot, how’s that electric car treating you these days?” Gerard leans back and spreads his knees.

“Feel free to go look for yourself, Gerard. Elliot scrubbed it spotless for company tonight,” Margaret says through a pursed-lipped smile. “Even though dinner is, of course, served inside the house.”

Elliot rebukes her with a flick of a glance. Margaret catches it and, behind the couch where he’s sitting, she notices a finger of gray mold wriggling down the drapes towards Gerard’s hairy-bald head. Her heart flutters in alarm.

“Well, a man’s gotta keep his toys clean and his bills paid,” Gerard says. “Must be nice to save on gas now that the Saudis are milking us for all we’re worth. And that tax credit too, huh?”

“Yeah,” Elliot says, squinting in a question mark. “Yeah, uh, it’s fine. It’s good.”

“Ha, good. You can thank my Commander-in-Chief for that.”

“Gerard,” Kelly warns.

“What?” says Gerard. “If it weren’t for the deal we cut with the—”

“Gerard.”

“It’s not politics, Kelly. These are just facts.”

Kelly shakes her head at him, eyes unblinking.

“It really is a fine car, Gerard,” Elliot says. “Thank you.”

The mold seeps into the cream linen and fades before Margaret’s eyes. The jingle of the oven timer interrupts her unease.

“I’ll get that,” Elliot says.

“Oh, no!” Margaret pops up as if she is the temperature pin in the poultry. “It’s no trouble, allow me.”

“I insist, Margaret. Lest sloth appear on my report card again.” Elliot fakes a laugh.

“Elliot, really.” Cold sweat beads on her flawlessly powdered forehead. “I don’t mind. Look, I’m already up.”

“Marge.” He’s stern now. “I’ve got it.”

Kelly pulls a loose thread from the napkin in her lap.

“Hey, have you all heard Marge pound the keys?” Elliot says as he pushes through the batwing doors. Never let her say he doesn’t compliment her.

Margaret blushes to her company. Hate when he calls me Marge.

“Relax, Marge.” He reaches for her elbow and pulls her back to the cushion. “You really are quite uptight.”

The percussion from his ancient larynx vibrates the bubbly in her flute, or maybe it’s her shaking grip. The pale drink ripples black, and Margaret feels a warning in her gut.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

* * *

Elliot is barely through the kitchen doors when he collapses, a keening noise climbing up his throat.

That thing. That fucking thing. He can’t take it. How can she sit there next to him and even breathe? He makes Elliot’s skin electric, his blood acid. Even from across the coffee table, a safe distance from him, his eyes burn and his brain screams like a boiling lobster.

Tears roll down his cheeks as Elliot tries to get his racing heart under control.

It’s okay. It’ll be okay.

They’ve hosted a million times. Margaret—for every little trick she uses to bring out the worst in him—is a fantastic host. She’s a master in the art of conversation, she knows how to hold back in Trivial Pursuit so others have the illusion of a chance, and she’s a great cook.

Not that Elliot would tell her that. Not when she takes every chance she gets to tear him down.

Speaking of cooking...

Elliot takes a deep breath, the claustrophobia dissipating. He’ll try to find a way to sit farther away from him. Margaret can bear his focus for a bit. Be the entertainment, just like she loves.

When he opens the stove, his heart sinks.

Smoke billows out, blasting him in the face with a sulfurous rush.

“Shit,” he mutters, fanning the plume toward the closed window. “Shit!” The red eye of the smoke alarm throbs from across the kitchen.

He thrusts the window open and blows air like it’s his birthday, but the cloud of smoke grows thicker on the ceiling, inching toward the alarm. Elliot grabs the kettle off the stove and bashes the alarm to the ground before it gets the chance to wail. Defeated, the smoke tiptoes over the plastic innards and slips out the window.

“Everything okay in there, Dear?”

“Shit.” He remembers. The cauliflower pizza he made last week. It had cracked in the middle, dripping cheese onto the bottom of the stove. He told Margaret he would clean it.

“What was that?” she calls from the living room.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Margaret,” he yells back. “Everything is fine.”

She couldn’t know. She’d never let him live it down. The way she had rolled her eyes when he bought the pizza and lost it over the mess…

Focus.

This wasn’t the time to get petty. He recalls the inky voice that bled into his mind two weeks ago. A perfect dinner party, or the end of all humanity.

Why them? Why does the fate of existence hang over their heads? He could have picked a happy couple. People who actually have their shit together.

He checks the baking dish. The damage isn’t so bad. The breasts on the edge are a little charred. Deep breaths. He’ll scrape off the burnt pieces, keep the worst one for himself.

Selfless. That’s what he is. Not that he’ll get any recognition for it.

* * *

Everything is fine, that’s what he said. Everything is fine.

But nothing feels fine. The air in here has an edge of smoke to it. That streak slithering down the curtains… And the crash—there was definitely a crash in the kitchen.

Where the fuck is Elliot? The champagne is empty. Gerard keeps smirking at me. The chicken should be done by now, and this fucking thing is combing his claws through my hair.

“Marge.” Elliot practically falls through the batwing doors. “Can you give me a hand here? Everyone, please have a seat in the dining room. Dinner’s ready.”

The smoke is heavier in the kitchen. Plastic shards litter the floor. Warm air floats in through the open window.

Margaret has a million questions, but she’s sure none of Elliot’s answers would satisfy.

She pulls the crystal serving bowl from the fridge and removes the foil. The arrangement of arugula and baby kale had blackened in the last hour.

“No,” she whispers, delicately peeling leaf from slimy leaf. The putrid smell gags her. “Elliot, the salad…”

He looks over her shoulder and suppresses a gag, too. “Can we douse it in vinaigrette?”

If looks could kill, Margaret would be charged with first degree.

“What about the pecans?” he adds. “Can we put these on the table as an accoutrement?” He uncovers the pinch bowl, and an intrusion of roaches spills over the lip and up his arm. “SHIT!” He flings the beetled bodies away from him, scattering them around the kitchen.

Margaret squeals and slaps her hand over her mouth.

Out the window over the sink, the evening sky turns bile yellow, and beneath the sill Margaret’s vases clink against one another.

The floor beneath them rumbles so hard it splits. A violent crack in the tile stretches between wife and husband. A disoriented pecan-with-legs tumbles over the edge, and they don’t hear it hit the ground.

Two more cracks split the tiles at the end of the chasm closest to the batwing doors. Together with the largest furrow, they create an arrow.

It points them out of the kitchen and into damnation.

“Forget the accoutrements,” Margaret says, voice low, eyes fixed on the fault line. “The asparagus and potatoes will be enough. Let’s get it out while it’s hot.”

He wants to play with them. He’s batting them around like a cat with a baby mouse.

Well, they can play. Margaret’s been playing all her life. Having to fight for everything. Having to bust her ass. She’s never had a choice.

Now, more than ever, they have no choice.

* * *

Elliot sits at the head of the table, Margaret seated to the right, and on his left, him. Trying to breathe through his grin, he looks to Kelly then Gerard and reaches for the serving fork.

“No blessing?” He is relaxed in his chair, tapping his long, curled, calcified fingernails against Margaret’s finest tablecloth. His obsidian eyes glow fiery red.

“Well,” Elliot stammers, “we really aren’t religious. I mean, my grandmother was a devout Jew, so we’d always go to her house for the holidays, but I barely remember—”

“Nonsense,” he says. The candles flicker around the centerpiece bouquet of freshly cut geraniums, which wither and fall before them in an instant. “Surely there is a higher power to whom you owe thanks.”

Elliot’s mind whirlpools around the annals of his religious upbringing, and the room spins in time. As cold sweat drops from his temples, the walls of the dining room weep from their seams; black mucus oozes quickly down the baroque wallpaper and pools onto the floor.

“I can do it,” Kelly says. “I can give the blessing.” With trembling lips, she begins.

“Thank you, lord, for this bountiful harvest—”

“Look in my eyes when you speak to me,” he growls.

Kelly shakes, eyes glued to her clasped hands before sliding them off and onto him.

“Thank you for everything you’ve given us.” The blasphemy pains her. Looking into his nebulous eyes is agony.

Elliot doesn’t know how she’s doing it.

“Thank you for the peace. The living things. The dead.”

Her chin quivers. The tips of her fingers turn purple, hands squeezed so tight.

“The rotten and the decayed.” A tear creeps from her eye. “The endless torment and fleeting euphorias.”

She is fully crying by the time she reaches “amen.”

Elliot shivers. The temperature plummeted during Kelly’s tearful grace.

Palpable pleasure hangs in the air. He loves it.

Elliot reaches for the serving fork again.

He has no objections this time. He is waiting.

Elliot scans the Cordon Bleu. Looking for the best breast. Only the best for their powerful guest.

There’s pressure on his right foot. He looks over.

Margaret presses her sole over the laces of his shoes.

Elliot shakes his head and lifts his eyebrows in a way he hopes conveys, “what?”

“Hurry up,” she whispers, lips barely moving.

What does she think he’s doing? Does she think this is helping?

Elliot forces a smile.

“This is all your work, Marge,” says Elliot. “I think you should serve it.”

Margaret seals her lips and smiles fire at him. “Gladly.”

Let her do it her perfect way. He’d only fuck it up, find some way to do it wrong.

She hovers over a breast hugging the edge of the dish. Elliot knows what’s on the bottom of it. Charred meat.

“I’ll take that one,” Elliot blurts out.

The fork clatters against the serving platter. Fury bubbles beneath Margaret’s fragile surface.

Outside, something rumbles faintly. Like a semi-truck driving by, gently shaking the ground.

Kelly whimpers.

Gerard blows a calming breath through his lips, but his jittering leg betrays frayed nerves. The tough guy ain’t so tough now.

“Man of the house,” he says. “You deserve to be served first.”

Elliot freezes. Was that sarcasm? Guests should be served first, he knows this, but he couldn’t risk someone else getting the charred breast. This needs to be perfect.

Everything rides on this night being perfect.

Elliot needs to stop. He knows this. He knows the passive aggression isn’t helping, and he doesn’t need the nicotine-stained sky outside to tell him that. Why can’t he stop?

Margaret dishes out Elliot’s breast without a word.

“Thanks, Maggie.” He reaches a hand out and gently places it on her lower back. Nothing too forward, just a way of saying he’s got her. She can count on him. They didn’t have to keep taking shots at each other.

Margaret smiles at Elliot, and it’s like they’re twenty-six again. Back when this felt more like playing house and less like moving through the same mindless exercises pulling them inexorably toward a joint grave plot.

They’re doing this together. They’re saving the world. This is why they were chosen. Why she was chosen.

She lifts a large breast and places it gently on the plate closest to her: Gerard’s.

“Interesting,” says their guest of honor.

Margaret pays the comment no mind. She dishes out a breast to Kelly.

What’s interesting? The breast Margaret gave to Gerard?

Why would that be interesting? Elliot should shut his mouth. He should be a good host. He shouldn’t challenge this force of malevolence, this being he’s unable to focus on for too long.

“What’s interesting?”

Margaret freezes. Is she shaking her head? What is that twitch?

“The portion your wife gave Gerard.”

He leans forward in his seat.

Everything on the table crawls an inch toward him.

“It was large. A choice serving. Maybe the nicest.” He folds his hands before the empty plate in front of him. “One would think she’d save it for the guest of honor, but—”

“I think this one—” Margaret lifts a breast with the fork, “—is better.” She goes to place the breast on his plate, but it slips and bounces off the edge.

She gasps.

The carving knife pins her hand to the table, and Elliot’s grip is on its handle.

They all gasp.

“Pull it out,” Margaret says.

“Maggie, I’m sorry. I was trying to catch the—”

“Pull it out, Elliot. Now!”

The black pool on the floor spreads towards the table, befouling the room with its odious scent.

Elliot yanks the knife from Margaret’s hand, and with a blood-gushing spasm, she’s free.

Her face is porcelain and her hand is clutched tightly against her chest. Crimson petals bloom against her tailored cream dress.

“Please,” she tries to catch her breath. “Eat. While it’s hot. I insist.”

“Margaret, don’t be ridiculous. Let’s get you to a hospital,” Elliot says. A geyser of blood shoots from between her clenched fingers.

“We can’t leave, Elliot. What about dinner?”

“She’s right,” he purrs. “What about your guests?”

“Where are your first aid supplies?” Kelly asks. “Let’s get you bandaged up while the men dig in.” Her eyes dart between Margaret and Elliot, all their faces plaster-still.

“Good idea, hon’. Patch her up,” Gerard says.

He snickers.

“What’s he laughing at?” Elliot asks, as if he isn’t there at all. “What the fuck are you laughing at?”

“So much depends upon a perfect dinner party.” He laughs and laughs.

Kelly’s head swivels back and forth, between Gerard, Elliot, and Margaret.

“Oh, Margaret,” he continues, “stop torturing the feeble cuckold. You have lifetimes of torture ahead of you.”

Margaret shrieks. Her remaining good hand thrusts out over the table, against her will, and her fingers snap backwards, one by one. Kelly screams with her and reaches for her hand.

“Cuckold?” Elliot says. “Maggie, what’s he talking about?”

Her jaw clicks as she stares silently at her mutilated hands.

“Do something,” Kelly screams at her husband.

“Oh, c’mon,” Gerard says. “Let’s stop the charade now. Everyone here knows. A woman needs servicing every now and then, and when you let that go too long, well…”

“Excuse me?” Elliot answers. He picks the bloody knife back up. “What are you implying?”

Gerard shifts in his seat, puffs out his chest. “Elliot, let’s be men about this, yeah? No need for knives.”

Kelly’s face flushes. She pulls Margaret from her chair and ushers her upstairs by her shoulders.

“Men?” Elliot asks.

“It was just one time, she and I. Alright,” he chuckles, “Maybe a few times. Didn’t mean a damn thing though. We ended it months ago.”

“Months,” Elliot says. Not a question, not addressed to anyone in particular. His shoulders sag, but his grip grows fierce. A humming meets his ears, emanating from their dinner guest. It bounces about his skull and burrows behind his eyes, molten static.

“Get out,” Elliot mutters. The carving knife rises to meet Gerard’s sightline.

“Hey now, no need for hysterics,” he replies. “Lot at stake here tonight, Chief.”

Elliot saunters to Kelly’s empty seat, across from Gerard, knife erect.

“Kelly,” Gerard shouts. “You almost done up there?”

The acrid black magma drips burning from the dining room ceiling, and the polished walnut floor quakes in response. All of the glass and silver in the house tinkle. Elliot walks closer.

“If you don’t get out of my house in the next thirty seconds, Gerard, I’m going to cut your meager little chub clean off your balls, dunk it in this dijon creme sauce, and feed it to you on this miserable silver platter I polished for this perfect fucking dinner party.” Elliot’s wrist is below Gerard’s chin, the blade threatening his Adam’s apple.

Gerard’s face is cherry-red as he calls up again for Kelly. “We need to go, hon’. Right now.”

The house replies in a wave, the floor heaving and rolling. Windows shatter, lightbulbs burst, and with an enormous tear of ripping plaster, the heirloom chandelier above the dining table falls onto Gerard.

Elliot drops the knife and stumbles backward in shock-induced slow motion. Gerard’s blood drips from Elliot’s nose onto his loafers. “Gerard?” he whispers in vain. There’s no reply, of course—just a dead-eyed stare through crystal shrapnel, his friend reduced to pulp.

Kelly jogs down the stairs. “I think I’ve stopped the bleeding but she’s gonna need stitch—”

She sees her shredded beloved and, with a screeching howl, Kelly darts for the knife on the table and charges directly at him.

He allows her to get within arm’s length before snapping his fingers.

In mid-stride Kelly unravels like a hand-knit sweater. He draws her flesh and blood and miles of viscera into one long, connected strand, unspooling from her core and coiling into a gory pile on the carpet.

Elliot vomits instantly, the champagne churning his bile into sour foam. The inky pool oozes forward and slurps it up.

“What a show, Chap,” he says. “What a show!”

Elliot staggers into the living room without another word.

* * *

At the sight of Margaret descending the stairs, he grins. His teeth glow like hot embers. “I think I’m ready for the concerto Elliot promised earlier,” he says.

Margaret looks down at her bent and bandaged hands, her mouth hanging open in shock. Looking back up at him, she whispers, “What?”

He gestures at the baby grand piano in the corner of the living room, amidst the rubble of their failing dinner party. “Go on,” he says. “Let’s hear you pound those keys.”

Margaret peers at Elliot through glassy eyes, but he’s huddled into himself on the chesterfield, rocking to and fro, catatonic.

On unsteady feet, she walks to the piano. Her heels crunch crystal shards that line her affluent death march. She cries out as she lifts the lid of the pearlescent instrument. “I—I don’t think I can…”

“You will,” he says.

She stares at him, attempting to truly see this creator—this destroyer. What looks back at her is the ancient cosmos of time, a malevolent and unforgiving force amused by his playthings. And for all the power this entity possessed, here he sits in her living room, with two eyes, two arms, two legs, wearing a pressed suit and pocket square. Claws and horns too, but recognizable enough. Human enough. How did it come to this?

He winks at her, and in that gesture he gifts her knowledge—that it didn’t matter, never has.

She nods back.

Margaret turns to face the piano, flips back the keyboard lid, and opens the sheet music on the stand. Inside the cover, the pages are ash. They crumble under her touch.

She can’t help but chuckle at the hopelessness of it all. She leans her head back, maniacal, and her laughter turns to tears. They stream down her face as she flexes her hands through blood-soaked gauze.

She presses broken fingers to the keys and taps out the opening notes to their wedding song. The only song she can play by heart.

“Doo-doo-doo-doo,” she croaks.

The ceiling crumbles onto her from above, pelting her with plaster. The front walls of the house fall away from its skeleton.

Searing pain shoots up her wrists, but she presses on, finds her rhythm.

Shrieks ring out through the neighborhood, feet hitting the tree-lined pavement of Wachusett Circle. “It’s alright…”

This is it.

Margaret chokes back sobs as the raw nerves in her gashed hands send tremors through her body. There’s no point in crying now. No point in anything.

She hits a wrong key, winces, and the world tilts under her.

Margaret hangs her head over her frozen, twisted hands. Scalding heat radiates her back and she awaits the eternal damnation she failed to stave off.

“It’s alright.” The voice that sang those same words of comfort as she twirled nervously during their first dance. “Scooch over,” he whispers.

Elliot takes over on the keys, allowing Margaret to rest her head on his shoulder. He plays. She sings.

“Sun, sun, sun—”

An enormous crack of thunder shakes them. Margaret opens her eyes to see him clapping his hands.

They perform as the only world they’ve ever known falls into ruin.

And he applauds.

“Here it comes.”

End.

CHELSEA PUMPKINS is a Massachusetts writer of strange, chilling, and sometimes sad fiction and a fan of all things macabre. She is a hiker, an animal lover, and considers herself a foodie but has absolutely no standards when it comes to mac and cheese. You can read her stories in various horror anthologies, in Shortwave Magazine, and upcoming in Cosmic Horror Monthly. She is the editor of AHH! That’s What I Call Horror: An Anthology of ‘90s Horror, and a co-host of The Cutthroat Queens podcast. Learn more about her work at chelseapumpkins.com and follow her on social media @chelseapumpkins.

CHRISTOPHER O‘HALLORAN (he/him) is a milk-slinging, Canadian actor-turned-author with work published or forthcoming from Kaleidotrope, NoSleep Podcast, Tales to Terrify, The Dread Machine, and others. He is president of the most active horror book club on the web, HOWL Society and editor of the anthology, Howls from the Wreckage. Follow him on Twitter @BurgleInfernal or visit COauthor.ca for stories, reviews, and updates on upcoming novels.

We Must Be Rabbits

By Erik McHatton

Bumble wakes and finds Beeswax out of his cage again; asleep on the ground, his ears around his neck. Father may not be patient a second time. Bumble thumps, grunts, and hisses until Beeswax stirs, and sits up. Blinking, Beeswax grinds his fists into his eyes and looks across to Bumble blearily.

“Whaa…,” he starts to say, but Bumble growls, cutting him off. Sounds, not words, are for rabbits.

Beeswax gets the message, shutting his mouth and yanking his ears up over his head before loping back into his cage, pulling the door closed behind him. He circles, and lies down, casting an anxious glance toward Bumble, who purrs his approval.

The commotion has roused Bramble, and Bill. They stretch and scratch themselves like they’re supposed to, before drinking from their water dispensers. Their behavior is expertly executed, practiced to perfection. They have grown into fine rabbits. Each morning they do B Room prouder than the day before. Bumble purrs at them as well, and they purr in return.

A mostly successful waking. Father should be pleased.

The speaker buzzes, letting them know it’s okay to leave their cages, and Beeswax is the first to do so. He awkwardly makes his way across the room to the toy area, doing his best to hop properly. He’s only been in B Room a few days, so it’s okay that he’s awkward. Bumble isn’t worried. Father never punishes those who are trying. He’s very fair that way.

After a bit of play, their morning ruffage tumbles down the food tubes and out onto the floor. Bramble and Bill have no problems managing, of course, but Beeswax, being new, is still getting the hang of eating like a proper rabbit. No hands, no fingers, only teeth, that is how rabbits eat. As Bramble and Bill dive head first into their piles of kale, lettuce, mint, and alfalfa, Bumble helps Beeswax by going slowly, showing him how to pick through the leaves with his nose; to chew carefully, and furiously, just as real rabbits do. Being very new, it takes Beeswax more than a few tries to get it right, but by the time their carrot pieces are dispensed, Bumble is quite pleased with the progress he and Beeswax have made.

Their carrots are scarcely gone when the doors to their running wheels are opened, announcing the start of morning exercise. Beeswax has some trouble, but gets on mostly without Bumble’s help. After a few failed attempts, he gets his wheel moving, and soon masters the gait of a running rabbit, his wheel going faster than even Bramble’s, who Father has called the fastest among them.

The morning is going great, thinks Bumble.

The speaker crackles. Father’s voice bounces off the walls. “Good morning B Room. The sun is shining and there are rainbows in the sky. What a wonderful day to be a rabbit! Please tidy your area and return to your cages. I will be with you shortly.”

Tidying up takes little time, and soon they are in their cages, eyes forward, in their best rabbit postures, just how Father likes it. Bumble checks on Beeswax one last time. Beeswax is shaking—he’s not quite used to Father yet—and his greasepaint has smeared from sweating. Father will have to reapply his whiskers for sure. That’s okay, though. Father enjoys putting on their faces. Beeswax glances at Bumble, and Bumble risks a quick smile to reassure him.

The door buzzes. Father is here.

He tumbles into the room, a cloud of joviality; belly jostling, smile wide, yellow-white beard whispering against his chest.

“Hello my precious little bunnies. It is so nice to see you on such a fine day.” Father spreads out his blanket, and with some effort manages to get himself seated on top of it. He pulls the paddle, paint tubes, towels, and bandages from the red, fuzzy bag slung over his shoulder. Bumble wishes he could tell Beeswax not to stare at the paddle. Father gives them all the signal that it’s okay to come out of their cages, which they do, forming a semi-circle several feet away from him.

Once settled, Father continues. “First things first, I think we should start with commendations today! Doesn’t that sound swell? I know we normally do lessons first, but things happened this morning that got me so worked up, I just have to talk about them right away!” Father picks up a tube of black greasepaint and uses it to beckon Beeswax over to him. “Beeswax, come here please. You’re all sweaty from that positively magnificent display of running you performed this morning. Your face is all out of sorts. I’ll fix you right up.”

Beeswax makes his way over. He settles in front of Father, rolls onto his back and places his head in Father’s lap. Father pats him, and begins rubbing the greasepaint off with the towel.

“Okay then, without further ado, the first commendation today goes to…Bumble, for being such a fantastic mentor to dear Beeswax here. A good teacher is an invaluable resource, and Bumble has really stepped up in this regard.

“Bumble and Beeswax. Such a clever pairing. Bramble, Bill, you two should take note of Bumble’s unselfishness. For his efforts, Bumble will receive two gold stars on the board, instead of one. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Father stares right at Bramble and Bill, who momentarily squirm before jumping into the air and clicking their heels together, performing simultaneous celebratory binkies. Father’s smile never waivers, but does broaden as they leap. Bumble, for his part, never takes his eyes off Beeswax, who remains ever so still as his smeared whiskers are removed.

After Beeswax’s face is clean, Father moves on.

“Now, the second commendation today goes to…little Beeswax here, of course.” He looks down into Beeswax’s eyes and lowers his voice, talking only to the young rabbit. “You’ve done so well in such a short time. I’m so proud of you. Before long you might prove yourself to be the best bunny B Room has ever begotten. I truly believe that.” Father boops Beeswax’s nose with his forefinger, and reaches for the greasepaint.

Without lifting his gaze from his lap, Father delicately applies Beeswax’s new whiskers. When finished, he sends Beeswax over to his cage, and folds his hands across his lap, an indication that commendations are over, and it is time for the lesson of the day.

“Alright my rabbits, it’s time for today’s lesson, and while I know it’s one that some of you have heard before, for Beeswax, it will be all new. So please, bear with me.

“Today I want to talk about the importance of conformity, which is the most important thing a rabbit represents to the wide world. You see, in their ecosystems, rabbits have no grand purpose. They are mostly insignificant in relation to other, greater things. Rabbits do not overreach. They do not pontificate, proselytize, or promote. They simply are. They jump, and run, and play. They sleep, and wake. They live. They die. And they do all of these things in service of very little, but do it in such elegant quietude; noble in their simplicity.

“To a fox a rabbit means exercise, and food. To a dandelion it means death and rebirth. These are simple, naturalistic, and warm meanings, important in a small, simple sense, but largely overlooked and forgotten by the world. This is tragic, but little tragedies happen every moment of every day, and why focus on that when one can instead choose to see the benefit, the beauty of it. Rabbits fill their role and they do it in a way that should be aspired to. You all are very lucky to be becoming like these gracious creatures, for there are so many other, worse things you could become.

“This is why I am teaching you to be rabbits. For one day, it will be your turn to go upstairs and meet a greater Thing. The Thing, the one that looks over us all. And when you do, it is so important that you know how to fill a rabbit’s place, because there is no room for other, grander things before that Thing. As far as it’s concerned, it is the only thing that matters. In the moment you are placed before it, to be anything other than a rabbit will mean certain doom. And I don’t want that for any of you. I want you all to live as long, and as happily as a rabbit can. It breaks my heart every time one of you is lost.

“So, remember what I’ve said. Use it. Focus on being the best rabbits you can be, and when you do meet The Thing, when you stand before it for the first time, it will be with all the knowledge and practice you’ve put in here in B Room. And if you try, really try, oh what a bunny you will be. For that is today’s lesson. In this world of greater things, things of importance and danger, to be useful, we must be rabbits.”

Father puts his hands down to his sides, and looks around the room, expecting. Bumble glances from side to side at his brothers, twitches his nose and runs in a circle, and then performs a perfectly executed binky. The others follow suit, giving Father the adulation he desires. Beeswax has a hard time managing, but Father seems unbothered by his awkward form and landing.

We might be in the clear, Bumble thinks.

He thinks this too soon, however, for after their display, Father’s mouth turns down sharply, and his brow furrows until it overlaps the top of his large, ruddy nose. He reaches for the paddle and lays it across his lap.

“Now, it’s time to move on to more uncomfortable matters. As we’ve just discussed, perfect conformity is extremely important to becoming a rabbit. Deviations from this path mean certain death in the face of the greater Thing. So, while recognizing good behavior is important, equally important in your continuing instruction is the correction of bad behavior.”

He points toward Beeswax. “This morning, Beeswax was out of his cage. His ears were around his neck. This kind of behavior is dangerous, unacceptable. I wish it wasn’t so, but that is the way things are. I was patient enough last time, after all it was his first day, but I can not let an incident like this go by again absent repercussions.”

Father grabs the paddle and stands. “Beeswax, please come with me to the punishment corner for readjustment.”

Beeswax starts to shake, tears welling up and streaming down his nose. Bramble and Bill lower their faces to the ground. Bumble’s mind races. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, he thinks.

When Beeswax doesn’t move, Father starts toward him, emitting a loud huff. Bumble, on pure instinct, moves in front of Beeswax, and stares up at Father, directly challenging him.

Father’s face reddens. He raises the paddle. Bumble flinches, squeezing his eyes closed, readying for the blow that is surely coming.

But it doesn’t, and after a long moment Bumble opens his eyes and looks back up. Father is smiling. He reaches down and pats Bumble on the head.

“Rabbits must be brave sometimes, too. I’m proud of you.” He looks to Beeswax. “You’re very lucky to have such an ardent and resolute protector. Follow his example and you’ll be just fine.” He steps around Bumble toward Beeswax, squats down to get eye level with him. “If it happens again, however, I’m afraid there’s nothing and no one that will save you. Remember that.”

Without another word, Father gathers his things and puts them all back in his bag, slings it over his shoulder and leaves the room.

Beeswax moves to Bumble and nuzzles his neck. Bumble returns the gesture, and then goes back to his cage to lie down.

The next morning, Bumble finds Beeswax asleep inside his cage, ears properly perched upon his head. He thumps his approval, waking the young rabbit, and Beeswax blinks into wakefulness, thumping in return.

Playtime goes quite smoothly, as does feeding, and exercise. Beeswax requires almost no help from Bumble for these activities, managing recreation, ruffage, and running with equal vigor, and discipline. By lesson time, Bumble is sure that Father will have nothing but glowing things to say about his progress. Perhaps even more commendations will be in order. Perhaps again for Bumble himself.

But Father does not arrive. While it is not completely unusual for Father to miss a day of lessons, given the tenor of his previous visit, Bumble is extremely worried by this development. Bramble and Bill nervously twitch and circle again and again, looking to Bumble for some kind of comfort. Bumble has none, not for them, or for himself. Beeswax, sensing their collective unease, huddles close to Bumble for the rest of the day, nuzzling him over and over before the buzzer sounds that evening, sending them all to bed.

Settling into their cages for the night, they share wide-eyed looks between them before drifting off into fitful, troubled sleep. Father’s absence has completely drawn the air from “B” room, leaving its bunnies to suffocate on stinging dreams of paddle swings.

It isn’t until the middle of the night, in the throes of pitch dark, that Father finally comes to see them.

Bumble hears him first, waking to Father’s face—indistinct and pale in the darkness—full across the front of his cage.

“Wake up, dear Bumble. It’s time for you to go,” he whispers.

Bumble can hear the other rabbits rousing, standing up in their cages, forgetting themselves in their panic and banging their heads against the top bars. They begin thumping furiously, no doubt frightened at this unexpected turn of events. Bumble understands and shares their anxiousness, but dares not thump his own disapproval.

Father stands. His shape moves back into the darkness, wobbling into nearly formless shadow.

“Now, now my dear rabbits. This is the way of things. Bumble has performed admirably in his capacity as both bunny and brother, and now it is his time. One day it will be yours, but this time is his. Please, do not ruin this moment for him. Be happy that you have known his love and companionship. Be grateful for his guidance and fine example. Be anything but cross, for cross bunnies are disobedient bunnies, and as you all know, disobedience will not be tolerated in “B” room. Isn’t that right, Bumble?”

The thumping stops. Bumble pushes his nose against the door of his cage and hops out into the room. He purrs, loudly enough for the others to get the message.

“There we go. I will be back to see the rest of you later, but for now Bumble and I have quite a bit to do. Go back to sleep, my precious little rabbits. And sweet dreams to you all.”

There is a creaking sound as the door opens. A dim light weakly illuminates the entirety of “B” room. Father steps through the door, turning and beckoning Bumble toward him. Bumble gives one last look back at his compatriots. Bramble and Bill have lain back down, staring at him stoically. Beeswax is still standing, his face wet, greasepaint smeared again. Bumble thumps one last time at him, and Beeswax lies down, tucking his face into his arms. Bumble turns and leaves the room. Father shuts the door behind them.

Bumble looks around. The two of them are inside a long hallway, full of doors. Lifeless bulbs dot the walls, hanging next to the doors, casting ungainly light. Watery shadows warble across the walls and ceiling.

“Alright. Let’s get on with it.”

Father’s voice is different. All the bubble and charm is gone, replaced by a dull weariness, heavy and stark in its contrast. Bumble looks up. Father’s body now matches this voice. His shoulders are slumped, his arms hang down listlessly. He looks as if ten thousand pounds is lying across his broad back. His eyes have become cloudy, almost lifeless, matching his downturned mouth.

“Yeah, I know I look different out here,” he says. “This is the only place I get a break, where I can be myself again, the only place in the house she can’t see. She didn’t think to have me put cameras in here, on account of me not ever being in here for very long. You can be yourself again too for a while, if you want. It’ll make it easier for us to talk, anyway. We have a lot to go over before we head up.”

Bumble slowly stands. It might be a trick, but playing along with Father’s games is second nature to him by now. His joints ache with relief at being back in their natural positions. He stretches his back, his arms, squats up and down. Father watches him do this with a bemused little grin.

“Enjoy it. You won’t have the opportunity again. She’ll demand nothing less than total rabbithood from you from here on out.”

Bumble risks speaking. “Who are you talking about?” He hasn’t spoken in so long that the words feel strange leaving his throat; hoarse and halting like coarse bubbles of sand.

“My daughter, or what used to be my daughter anyway. The “Thing” I keep telling you all about. That’s who I’m taking you to. C’mon let’s go, we don’t have a lot of time. If we dawdle too long she’ll get suspicious.” Father walks ahead of Bumble down the long corridor. Bumble hurries to catch up, passing many doors marked by letters other than “B.”

“Used to be?”

“Yeah. A couple of years ago she got taken in a grocery store parking lot. She and some of her little shit friends were playing in a field near there and they dared her to go into the store and steal some candy. Some creep picked her up on her way back.” Father turns around, suddenly. Bumble stumbles backward, throwing his hands up instinctively. Father’s face flushes.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, quietly. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. It’s her, she…she makes me do it. If I didn’t there’d be a lot worse in store for all of you, believe me.”

Bumble lowers his hands slowly. Father smiles, a small, genuine smile. He looks more human than ever. He starts walking again.

“Good. Now, like I was saying, this creep picks her up and takes her off somewhere, where he and a bunch of his sick fuck friends do ungodly things to her. Carve symbols all over her body, chant over top of her, shit like that. She was gone for two whole months until one day, poof, she just shows up on my doorstep covered in other people’s blood. Seems they carried on like that in order to put something that they worshiped inside of her, thinking they’d curry favor with it by bringing it into our world. They were wrong. She…it killed every last one of them, angry because they trapped it, trapped it inside of my sweet baby.”

Father swipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

“See my little girl, Tanya was her name, well Tanya and that thing are all mixed up now. It wants what it wants, but also what she wants, like they’re both working the controls inside her brain. She dresses like my princess, plays pretend with her toys, watches little kid shows, but she talks like something much, much older. And her tastes can run as sick as a rabid dog sometimes.

“For months after she came back to me they fought for control. My baby’s tough. She fought like a momma grizzly protecting her cubs. She thrashed around on her bed, screaming like the girl in that one movie, until one day, finally, she stopped all at once. Told me they’d settled on a kind of compromise. This is that compromise.”

They reach the end of the hallway where a doorway containing a set of stairs leading up awaits. Father opens a foot locker positioned beside the doorway and produces a large, gray, full body rabbit costume with a zipper in the back. Dark, brown splotches are splashed across it, the face hole ringed with them. It reeks of iron, urine, and sweat.

“She only gives it things that aren’t what they’re supposed to be. “Bad Things,” she calls them. Grown men, is what she means. Hates men now, except maybe for me. They both do, for what men did to them, I suppose.

“This is their favorite game. Kidnapping you, breaking your spirit, forcing you to act like something you aren’t. She calls the whole thing “poetic,” but it don’t feel like poetry to me. Feels like ten tons of homegrown shit, if I’m honest.

“So I have to do this. Take you all, train you to be what she wants you to be, make sure you get it hammered into your heads, and then take you to her when she decides you’re ready. She always wanted pets, and now she has them. As many as she wants. And when one of you inevitably steps out of line, acts more man than animal, well then, that’s when the thing inside her gets what it wants.”

“What’s that?” asks Bumble.

Father draws his thumb across his throat slowly.

Bumble’s eyes are wide. “You’re crazy,” he says.

Father laughs, a deep, rumbly belly laugh ending in a low wheeze. “I wish that were true. But don’t worry. If you make it long enough for her to get tired of you, to want a new rabbit, then she’ll send you away and I get to set you free. Those are the rules.”

He thrusts the rabbit costume at Bumble. “Put this on. Sorry it’s so messy, but she won’t let me clean it, or buy a new one. Says they like it just the way it is. There’s a flap in the back so you can…well, you know.”

Bumble takes the costume from him, eases into it. The fabric is coarse inside, slick in the joint areas. He pulls the hood up over his head, pushes the ears back after they flop down in front of his face. He holds his arms out in front of Father when he’s finished. “Happy?” he asks.

“Not in the least, but that’ll do. Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but I don’t have a choice, okay? Neither of us do.”

“Right, because you have my family, you sick fuck. If I go along with this, are you going to let them go, like you said you would?”

“I will. You have my word, for whatever that’s worth to you. I know it’s real hard to believe any of this, I know how it sounds, but once you get in there with it…with her, I mean, you’ll understand, and you’ll know everything I’ve told you is true, and that your wife and son are safe.”

Father’s face is genuine, a picture of pure honesty. Either this man is the best actor in the world, or he genuinely believes what he’s saying, Bumble thinks.

“Assuming everything you’re saying is true, and that you’re not just some psycho, why don’t you…why don’t you just kill her?”

Father looks down at his shoes. “You don’t think I tried? It won’t let itself die, so it won’t let her die. One night, not long after she came back to me, it let me put a pillow over her face, laughed the whole half hour I kept it there.”

Father raises his head. The two stare solemnly at each other for a moment.

“What about Beeswax, Bramble, and Bill?”

“I’ll take good care of them. I’ll do what I can, try and give them the best chance to make it. I promise.”

Both men let that promise hang in the air, to seal the deal between them.

“Okay. Let’s do this then,” says Bumble, somewhat satisfied.

Father starts up the stairs and Bumble follows close behind. At the top Father stops and half turns.

“Two things. One, once we cross this threshold she can see us, so we both have to be in character. That means you need to be the best bunny you can be, and I have to do the whole Mr. Rogers schtick. Second, my name is Robert. I wanted you to know that. You remind me a little of myself, or at least what I used to be—a survivor. I really think you’ll make it.”

Bumble says nothing. He gets down on all fours and nods.

“Here we go,” says Father, then opens the door.

They step out into a dark kitchenette, the kind they have in offices or factories. Shafts of light come from between slats in the windows, and a doorway on the far side of the room, bathing the interior in gray shadow. The smell of mold and rotten food permeates the air. Father turns to Bumble and pats him on the head. “C’mon Bumble, let’s go meet your new master! You’re gonna love her, yes siree, you surely will. She’s the best, the greatest, the tee-total tippy top of the heap, you betcha. Doesn’t that sound swell?”

Bumble notices for the first time that the wide, constant smile Father wears doesn’t really meet his eyes. Now he sees that what he’d previously mistaken for plain insanity is actually closer to manic desperation. His eyes are bleeding a silent plea. Bumble plays along, does a binkie, and they move to the door.

Father leads the way through to an abandoned factory floor. Giant decaying machinery crumbles all around. Rusty debris litters the ground, along with broken pieces of dull plastic, remnants of small baubles and trinkets. A tang stings Bumble’s nose. He stops and looks. He thinks he recognizes the place for a second, but the memory is fleeting, and he can’t catch hold.

“Let’s go Bumble. No time to dawdle. Nobody works here anymore, anyway. I had to let them go. This is Tanya’s toy factory now. She gets it allll to herself.”

They make their way across the factory floor, and through two double doors that lead into a hallway containing abandoned offices. From his hunched position on the ground, Bumble can’t see over the office windows and inside them, but he can see paper scattered in their open doorways, and smell the hazy scent of pressed wood and old faux leather.

“This is where I used to work. Ran the whole big thing from right here, if you can believe it. We made so many amazing things for little boys and girls all over the world. Terry Toys for Terrific Tots, that was our motto. Bringing smiles from pole to pole. But now, Tanya’s the only terrific tot I bring a smile to. She’s all that matters to me, yes siree.”

Bumble can hear sadness underneath Father’s carefree facade.

They come to a stop at a door marked “Daycare.”

“Here we are! The last stop. Toot, toot, the whistle’s blowin.’ Time to get off the train, little Bumble.” Father turns the knob, pushes the door open. “Go on inside now. Tanya’s just raring to meet you.”

Bumble freezes. His skin prickles with a cold chill beneath his rabbit suit. He flashes a desperate look at Father, tries to say “You’re not coming with me?” with his face. Father returns his look with a flat smile. Under his breath he says, “Go. I can’t. She’s waiting.”

Bumble turns, takes a deep breath and steps inside. The door shuts quickly behind him.

The room is bright. It stings Bumble’s eyes. Sunlight streams through several giant bay windows along the far wall. The adjoining walls are covered in washed out posters with cartoon animals and characters from children’s shows, along with innumerable crude crayon drawings.

As his eyes adjust, Bumble sees half a dozen furry figures gathered around a giant pile of pillows stacked up on the right side of the room. A bank of television monitors sits off to the side, most of them showing black and white surveillance footage, cartoons on the others. Atop the pile, lounging, is a little girl adorned in a mish-mash of children’s fashion, a silver plastic tiara askew upon her head. The pink tu-tu fitted around her waist clashes with her red overalls painted and colored with symbols of childlike wonder. Pink striped socks poke out from yellow galoshes, and a tie-dyed shirt protrudes from beneath the overall straps. Sitting below the tiara and atop the conglomeration of “I can dress myself, daddy” clothes, is a tiny head nested within a mane of wild, unruly brown hair.

“Look my darlings! Our new playmate has finally arrived,” she says clambering down from her makeshift throne.

The figures turn toward Bumble as she passes them, falling in line as she makes her way to him. There is a cat, a dog, a mouse, a rat, a chicken, and a duck, each of them crammed into a dirty costume just like Bumble’s, all wearing haggard human faces. They drag themselves in the manner of their assigned role, swaggering, bouncing, and skittering accordingly. Little Tanya pays them no mind. Her focus is squarely on Bumble.

As she reaches him Bumble can feel the power radiating from her. It makes the air heavy, presses down on him. She holds her hand out as if to pat his head, and he recoils involuntarily. Tanya stops, straightens.

“Now, now. Bumble. We can’t have that.” Her squeaky child voice gradually changes, deepens, and by the last word is overtaken by a sonorous bellow that sounds like a howl escaping a deep well. Her body appears to grow, wavering like a figure seen through a curtain of heat hanging over a large fire. A corona of darkness materializes around her body. The other animals cower and whimper. “Let’s try it again,” she says in her deep well voice, then reaches out again.

Bumble remembers himself, recovers his wits. The faces of his wife and little boy push to the forefront of his mind. I can do this, he thinks. I can do this!

He raises his head into her hand, and purrs as loud as he can, then flops over, the ultimate sign of rabbit contentedness. Tanya returns to normal, curls her fingers around his fake rabbit ears, and scratches behind them. She strokes his face, rubs his belly, and finally boops his nose with the tip of her finger.

“There we go. That’s a good rabbit. Now, show your new playmates how happy you are to join us here in the playroom,” she says, backing up just a little. Bumble stands, swallows, turns in a circle three times and then jumps up, clicking his feet together in the perfect binky. Tanya claps her hands enthusiastically. The room explodes in barks, meows, clucks, chitters, and quacks.

“Wonderful,” she says. “Just wonderful, I believe you’ll fit right in. Come, we were just about to have story time. You can sit beside me today, okay?”

Bumble turns one more circle, purring.

“Yay!” says Tanya, and starts back across the room. In turn, the other animals follow, each of them favoring Bumble with a look of wan commiseration before they do.

Bumble takes just a moment to steel himself, thumping softly his disapproval before hopping over to play.

End.

Erik McHatton’s passion for horror literature began in grade school and can be credited to an early fascination with the “Terrific Triples” horror collections of Helen Hoke. He began writing fiction seriously in 2019 and has since been published several times in print and online publications. He hopes to follow in the footsteps of authors like Ligotti, CAS, Bloch, Jackson, Barker, and Cushing. He lives in Kentucky with his beautiful wife and kids, along with dear friends and family; surrounded on all sides.

By Michael Noonan

Saywakaw

By Logan McConnell

Our summer home sat by the riverbanks of Saywakaw. Every June, when the school year ended, Father and I would travel to the house and stay until August. All my happy memories are from that house, where the two of us lived secluded lives. Sometimes, I would whisper the name Saywakaw under my breath, emphasizing each S and feeling the K click in my throat, over and over until the name Saywakaw, like any word, lost its meaning with repetition, and failed to register in my mind as a real place at all.

The first floor of the house had a den, which Father insisted would never have a television, a kitchen where we ate, and his study. He was a materials engineer. Never ‘engineer’, always a materials engineer, as if this detail were crucial to his identity, that the materials themselves held all significance, the engineering a trivial matter.

Upstairs was the master bedroom where he slept, my smaller bedroom, a shared bathroom, and a linen closet. Above the second floor was an attic, accessible by pulling down on a cord kept coiled on a small ceiling hook, always out of my reach. At the start of every summer, he would remind me I was not allowed to go up into the attic.

Last summer began like all the others; Father getting settled in his study while I prepared to run outside and explore the creek that ran along the hills. That first day, before slipping my sneakers on, Father stuck his head out from his study.

“Don’t forget,” he said, adjusting his glasses, the thick, convex, perfect circles reflecting sun rays, “you have to practice your singing for music class. Don’t want to lose all your progress over the summer.”

I told him I would, and a part of me believed I just might practice while down at the creek, though by the time I reached the water I had lost all illusions I’d do any singing. I couldn’t even remember choir lessons; my attention was on finding tadpoles and maybe crawfish under rocks.

At sundown I ran inside for supper, careful to take my shoes off on the porch and avoid tracking mud into the house. When I closed the door behind me, Father appeared from his study. He had likely been there all afternoon, lost in thought. He leaned down to examine my face.

“You’re sunburnt,” he muttered, so softly I barely heard him.

When he said this, my face tingled with a warm sting. I looked down at my pink arms. “Sorry,” was all I could say.

“No, that’s good. Nothing to be sorry about.” Father patted my head. Then he straightened up and spoke at normal volume. “I’m having friends over in two days,” he announced. “They’ll get to see the house. It’ll be fun, having people over.”

We had never had guests in the summer home before, and inviting others into our life built for two felt sacrilegious. “Oh,” was all I could say.

“But it’s just us for now.” He tousled my hair. “Let’s go eat supper. I’ll make sandwiches.”

We ate at the kitchen table. Father preached his opinion on a new type of plastic as I stared back at him, trying to pay attention, distracted by the mental image of all his friends standing in our den. I put my sandwich down, which I had barely eaten, and waited for Father to finish speaking. When he stopped to eat, I asked, “Will the guests get to see inside the attic?”

My shoulders tensed, bracing for some stern silence to cut the air. Father never said not to discuss the attic, but there was a nonverbal understanding between us that the subject shouldn’t be broached. I just knew from the way he whispered the word ‘attic’ and his reluctance to acknowledge its existence. I was certain my question would anger him.

He continued chewing and pushed his eyeglasses up on his nose. Looking back, I think he knew my curiosity would build until it burst out into conversation, and what I thought was a breach of our agreement was an event he foresaw years ago. When he finished chewing, he took a sip of water and asked, “Do you want to see one item from the attic?”

I was so grateful he responded with something other than a discouraging look, I shouted yes, I would. He hadn’t answered my question, not directly, but that didn’t matter. I scarfed the rest of my sandwich down and followed him upstairs to the square seam in the ceiling that marked the threshold to the house’s one forbidden room.

By the time he unspooled that attic cord, the sun had nearly set. Everything that followed was saturated in the evening’s ephemeral, violet haze, coloring us in shades I considered only possible in a dream. I’m not sure this even happened. He opened the attic door and instructed me to wait where I stood as he climbed up the accordion ladder, out of sight into the hollow void.

When he returned, it was completely dark. I heard him groan as he descended, followed by a loud thud on the ground. He folded the attic ladder back up then turned on the hallway light. Between us was a large, navy blue trunk with scuffed gold hinges and frayed handles on the sides. He bent down and opened the trunk. Inside was a ventriloquist dummy.

The dummy was petit, making the large trunk seem unnecessary to house such an item. I had seen dummies like this one before and found it to be rather standard. Red lips, goofy grin, freckles, buck teeth, bow tie and black suit. Father picked it up and held it in front of me.

“This,” he said, lifting the dummy higher, “is the first thing I ever made.” There was only one unusual feature: the hair. The shaggy crown appeared realistic, and I ran a long, silky lock through my fingers.

“Feels life-like, doesn’t it?” he asked, handing me the dummy.

I nodded, examining the figure.

“I was so proud of that. Of course, the hair is the only part even close to realistic,” he said, his glasses reflecting light from the bare bulb above. “But, not bad, I think, for a beginner. I made this when I was your age.”

My age. I stuck my hand through a square hole in the dummy’s back, feeling gears and rods. I could never build something so complex. Suddenly, I blushed, thinking of my day spent at the creek.

Father pointed at the dummy’s back. “One of the levers broke years ago, so I put it away. I have no patience for broken things.” He rubbed his chin then handed it to me. “You can keep this, if you want,” he offered.

I thanked him and stretched my arms out, moving the dummy further away. Its head swiveled around to face me, the hair tickling my bare wrists, its blue eyes rolling back in its head. The figure was too cartoonish to appear human, yet I couldn’t convince myself it was totally lifeless.

“Keep it in your room,” Father suggested.

In the warm air of our muggy summer house, I shivered. This dummy would be an unwelcome companion. If I refused, if I begged Father to return the dummy back to its trunk, he may be offended and never reveal more secrets from the attic. Without saying a word, I forced myself to smile at him, giving thanks with a look.

Hours later I went to bed, the dummy on top of a wooden bureau in the corner, slumped over, facing me. Even with the curtains shut, a sliver of moonlight seeped into my room, keeping the dummy visible while everything else was dark. I watched it watch me. I shut my eyes, trying to lull along to the crickets’ droning song, finding it impossible with those blue eyes fixed on me.

At some point that night, my frustration grew stronger than my fears. I flung the covers aside and stared back. I focused my attention on the center of one of the pupils, the nexus of its consciousness, and, like the name Saywakaw that I repeated over and over until it failed to seem real, I returned my attention repeatedly onto that pupil until it no longer looked alive. Only black paint.

Next, I moved to a blue iris. Then an entire eye. That eye, once a leering organ from a potential predator, was just a large round marble groaning dumb sounds when moved. The hair, so realistic, were coarse strings no different than violin bows. By midnight I had mentally disassembled the dummy, reducing it to a pile of junk in the shape of a tiny man. Exhausted by my triumph, I drifted into a peaceful sleep.

* * *

The toast was dry so I added more butter.

“You going to practice singing today?” Father asked me, scooping up his eggs. “Playing is all well and good but don’t forget to practice for choir.”

“OK,” I said, thinking about the forest beside the creek, what games I’d make up between the trees. If there were specific songs I should have been practicing, I couldn’t remember them. For a second, I considered checking my school bag for sheet music, but once breakfast was finished, I gave up my thoughts of singing and ventured outside.

The creek was different that day. The water, which had flowed every summer for all my life, remained still. In the trees, birds looked down at me without chirping, tense in their nests. This didn’t stop me from splashing around and (attempting to) skip rocks on the water’s surface. After an hour or so I collapsed on the grass and leaned over to discover my reflection.

It occurred to me my blue eyes were the same shade as Father’s dummy. Exactly the same. I blinked, then returned to staring at my eyes. I turned my focus onto my own pupil, the tiny black dot swaying as my breath caused little ripples in the water. My reflected pupil, like the dummy, like the name Saywakaw, for one second, stopped feeling real.

I jerked away from the creek, then clasped my sun kissed hands together, so tight it hurt, proving to myself that I was still me. I stepped away from the creek and over to the woods, far away from any reflection. There, I lost track of time.

During supper, Father told me about his experiments with materials and his friends coming over the next night, and how I should be on my best behavior. I nodded along but didn’t listen. I was mesmerized by my reflection in my empty milk glass.

“They’re nice people. I think they’ll really like you,” he told me.

“Cool,” I said. We continued these pleasantries until he announced it was getting late, that he would read in his study and suggested I get ready for bed.

Upstairs, I tried brushing my teeth without looking in the mirror. I really did. The temptation to look, to begin a slow, mental disassembling starting with my eyes then spreading to the rest of myself, was too great. I looked up and did to my reflection what I did to the dummy. To this day, I do not know how long I spent in that bathroom, how long it took me to un-see my body as nothing but a collection of tissue and bone.

I ran my hair through my fingers. Then again, until strands came out and drifted down into the sink basin. It felt just like the dummy’s. All the talks my father gave about materials, about engineering, about creating something, came back to me. How real the dummy’s hair was made to seem. The illusion of being alive.

My Father’s razor was kept in the upper right drawer. I took it out. The blade was heavy. I held it against my thumb and pressed. The skin broken, I waited. Instead of pain, a cold, numbing wave washed over me. I returned the blade back to the exact spot on my thumb and pressed harder. Nothing came out. No blood.

A minute passed, maybe two. I had images in my head of taking that blade to the dummy’s wooden hand, cutting the surface, carving out splinters and pine chips, never causing pain, finding no blood. Then, all at once, I bled. The red flowed out, unable to stop, dotting the faucet before dripping down into the drain. Wrapping my thumb in toilet paper, I cleaned up best I could, then returned to bed.

Again, I had trouble falling to sleep, this time because of the sharp agony of the cut. What had just happened in the bathroom would have been impossible to imagine two days ago. Who I was at that moment felt so different than who I was pulling up to the summer house. I gripped my covers, wondering if identities could be as fake and malleable as dummy bodies.

As if my thoughts beckoned him, Father appeared in my room, without a sound. I hadn’t heard the door open; he went unnoticed until I caught in my peripheral vision the moonlight reflecting off his eye glasses.

He said my name.

“Yes?”

“There’s blood in the sink,” he stated.

I stammered. “I had an accident.”

Father waited a long time before responding. “Was it an accident?”

“Yes, Father, I swear.”

He took a step closer to my bed. “Sometimes, when people’s minds are broken, they hurt themselves on purpose.” He sighed. “Is your mind broken?”

I shut my eyes, grit my teeth and shook my head, swearing, crying, I wasn’t broken, I just had an accident.

“All right then. Good night,” he said, leaving me and his dummy alone in the dark.

* * *

The creek was running again. I could hear it outside, over the sound of Father’s morning coffee percolating behind me. That was the first time I wondered where the water flowed, if it carried all the critters burrowed in muck far away from Saywakaw. If it led to an ocean, vast and free.

“Today’s the day,” Father mentioned. “Friends are coming over.”

I said something, nodding.

“They’re materials engineers, like me. Always did want to see the summer house. They’ll be eager for a tour, probably. And to meet you.”

I remember thinking of asking him if this tour would include the attic and if meeting me meant I’d have to sit still during long talks the way I’m told most adults do but decided against it. I finished my breakfast and told him I would read upstairs in my room, which I think surprised him given my fondness for being outside.

Before I left the table, I looked at Father’s eyes. I wanted to test if he, like me and the ventriloquist dummy, could undergo the same disassembly. His pupils, my starting point, were blocked by the glare of those thick glasses.

“You OK?” he asked. “You look pale.”

“No, I’m fine,” I said, wandering upstairs to my room.

I sat down and opened my book, facing the words without reading them. I took the dummy, which no longer unnerved me, and pulled it close. The two of us watched the sun rise and fall, the darkness thicken, the planet’s landscape fade away into a void called night, a void that only now revealed itself as frightening.

Downstairs came the sound of unfamiliar footsteps and odd voices. I sat up off the bed, listening to strangers fill the downstairs den. I opened the door and crept closer, peeking at the guests. They were all approximately Father’s height and build, though with different clothing and hairstyles (a few were bald). Every one of them had thick eyeglasses just like his.

I watched them mingle, Father in the center speaking to them, when rather suddenly he noticed me hiding at the top of the stairs and called my name. Everyone stopped talking and turned to face me.

“Come down and meet my friends.”

I marched downstairs and gripped the banister, swaying in place.

“Son, I was hoping you could do us a kindness,” he said. I could tell everyone but me knew what would happen next. “Son, can you sing a song for us? One you’ve been practicing?”

He turned off the furthest light, leaving me exposed under the light in the stairway. Father and his guests waited in the dark, the outlines of their faces reduced to shadow, except the glares in their glasses. I tightened my hold on the banister, as if the floor would fall out from under me at any second, casting me into a freefall.

I opened my mouth and sang one note. The sound was not my voice. It was the blare of a busted organ pipe. I coughed and tried again. The second time, I released a whooshing noise like wind blowing through an abandoned, rusted flute. My other attempts were no better. Singing, somehow, was impossible.

Father’s friends murmured. I heard a few of their words:

“What did you use for vocal cords?”

“What’s the neck diameter?”

“Did you check for any blockage?”

Father turned the lights back on. He shook his head and approached me. As he walked closer, something changed. He didn’t grow. I didn’t shrink. But it was as if there had always been a great distance between us, and with each step he took, that distance —suddenly revealed— was diminished, until he stood like a giant in front of me, and picked me up, cradling me in an arm.

“I was close this time,” he said aloud. He took me upstairs and opened the attic ladder. The ventriloquist dummy watched me from my room. I wanted it to come alive. I wanted it to move, to spite its creators and live with volition. The two of us remained still, nothing could change that. Father brought me up to the attic.

The highest floor contained a universe, dotted with far-away stars, ending beyond my range of vision. Father shivered. I saw his breath swirl out and followed the vapor as it curled downwards, discovering there was no floor beneath us. Father could walk, nonetheless.

We passed a few cases of luggage, some cardboard boxes marked with words I couldn’t read, over to a shelf. The shelf spanned miles on either side, crammed with figures, arms dangling over the rim, some face down and eyes open. They all had my face, with dumb, frozen stares. Father placed me on the crowded shelf and left.

Sometimes I hear whispers from the mouths around me, but I know it’s all in my broken mind.

End.

Logan McConnell is a horror writer living with his husband in Tennessee. He spends his free time taking long walks in the woods and sitting alone in the dark. His work is published or upcoming in Chthonic Matter Quarterly, Coffin Bell, Dark Recesses Press, Lovecraftiana, and others.

Why Can’t We Live With Ghosts

By J.A.W. McCarthy

The hero’s journey of ghost stories is: get haunted, deny the haunting, learn about the ghost, banish the ghost.

The unwanted entity can be a nuisance (Slimer in Ghostbusters), malicious (Stephen King’s The Shining), or a misunderstood victim in need of justice (Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed In Blood). Whether victims or aggressors, ghosts are also intruders—squatters unwilling to move on due to confusion at best, spite at worst.

They’re in your home, but it’s never once occurred to you that you’re in their home.

Often, in more poignant ghost stories, banishment means sending restless souls to the peace they’ve sought all along: heaven. Evil spirits get sent to hell. The point of these stories—the happy ending—is that the ghost is gone and everyone gets to return to their lives (and afterlives), strengthened and enlightened by the experience. A happy ending means the living and dead never meet again.

But what about just…living with the ghost?

The first time I saw people simply coexisting with ghosts was in Thailand. I was nineteen and visiting my family there for the first time. I remember walking into the living room the morning after arrival and finding my aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends gathered around the TV watching a soap opera. Even though I understood very little Thai, I soon became enraptured by the story for one striking reason: one of the main characters was a ghost.

I’d never cared so much about a soap opera in my life.

My mother explained the storyline to me. What sticks in my memory is that this ghost character, despite being dead, remained in a committed relationship with his girlfriend, still perfectly happy together. No one viewed their relationship as odd or wrong. I soon learned that living with ghosts is a common occurrence in Thai—and many Asian—films and TV shows. In reality, people coexist with spirits, so of course those relationships will be reflected in entertainment.

On a broader level, this harmony can be seen in front of Thailand’s houses, apartments, offices, shopping centers and other buildings: the spirit house. These dollhouse-sized structures, which often sit on a pillar in front of the building, are common in other parts of Southeast Asia as well. Sometimes the spirit house is a miniature twin of the main house, sometimes it’s elaborately decorated with intricate carvings and gold trim like a temple, sometimes it’s a simple wooden structure. Despite their differences, these little dwellings all serve one purpose: to house the spirits displaced by the new building. Like living people, ghosts need somewhere to reside, and if you’re going to build your home on top of theirs, the least you can do is provide them this small decency.

Though spirit houses are constructed with reverence in mind, there’s an element of appeasement here, too. Many people make daily offerings of incense, flowers, fresh water, and fruit for the spirits inside. Happy ghost, happy life. Even if you comfortably reside with ghosts, there’s always the fear that you might anger one, and we all know what angry ghosts can do. Still, these structures are not a reflection of a need to clean house, as much as a desire to promote harmony.

After my experience in Thailand, over twenty years ago, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why Western media can’t do the same. Why are ghosts usually portrayed as evil entities running innocent families out of their homes (remember, that was the ghost’s home first), rage-fueled demons misdirecting their ire, or forlorn victims in need of a helping hand into the white light? What if the deceased wants to stay on earth? And what if the living want them here too?

Western narratives prefer them gone, for a hero to eradicate what is deemed invalid. It’s the belief that ghosts shouldn’t be here that creates an opportunity for a savior—but why? If they are not a malevolent force, why the need for heroism? A moral judgment is being made, the dead cast as criminals for remaining. Relocation becomes their rehabilitation, banishment their justice. Or, for the tragically wronged, their liberation.

A wonderful western example of coexisting with ghosts is Christi Nogle’s 2022 Bram Stoker Award winning novel, BEULAH. Protagonist Georgie has always been able to see and interact with the dead. As she moves through her new town, she encounters ghosts often no different from the living—some friendly, some malicious, some stuck reliving the penultimate moments of their lives, others simply wandering the same as her. There is no impetus to “move on,” as Georgie experiences firsthand.

The same is true in Beetlejuice (1988). After their sudden deaths, Barbara and Adam are introduced to the tedious bureaucracy of navigating the afterlife. Through it all, they want only one thing: to remain in their beloved home. It’s the new owners who are the intruders here, and we get a delightful turf war of hauntings versus exorcisms. The heart of this movie, though, is the new owners’ teenage daughter, Lydia, and the love and support she finds in the spirits of Barbara and Adam. They not only coexist, but thrive, forming their own family.

Then there’s the classic haunted love story, Ghost (1990). A couple’s blissful romance is shattered when one of them is murdered. They’re able to interact through a medium, their love unfaltering as they search for his killer. Though the living and dead temporarily coexist here, the message, again, is that both need to move on. But watching this couple so deeply in love, I want to know why? Molly and Sam are quintessential soulmates. Does she really have to live without him? Would heaven really be paradise to him without her?

Of course, Asian media doesn’t always portray people as comfortably living with the dead. My favorite Thai folklore is a bit of an outlier when it comes to living with ghosts: the story of Mae Nak (Lady Nak). Long ago, Mak and Nak were a happily married couple eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child. When Mak is conscripted to the Thai army, Nak is left alone in their village to welcome their baby. Unfortunately, Nak and the baby die during childbirth. They linger in their home as ghosts, now eagerly awaiting Mak’s homecoming. When Mak finally returns from battle, his neighbors tell him the tragic news; they warn him that the family in his home are ghosts in need of banishment. Mak doesn’t believe his wife and new baby are not, in fact, alive and enjoys the reunion. It isn’t until he witnesses Nak reaching for a dropped lime with a supernaturally long arm that he realizes the neighbors were right. He flees, leaving Nak, in her grief, to terrorize the village.

There are various regional endings to this story: a powerful monk captures Nak’s ghost in a jar and throws it in the river; another monk binds her spirit to his waistband (now in the possession of the Thai royal family); one telling shows a kinder monk promising Nak will be reunited with her family in a future life if she departs voluntarily.

As a ghost, Nak did nothing wrong by remaining in her home with her family. Why did her ghost need to be feared and banished? The couple lived happily for months in this state; she didn’t become a threat until Mak realized she truly was dead, as the neighbors had warned, and he abandoned her because of it. Much like in the American movie Ghost, Mak and Nak were a happy, loving couple who could have continued on that way if it weren’t for the belief that we can’t live with ghosts.

You may be asking yourself if you could live with a ghost. The tap in the ceiling, the creak of the floorboards, the keys and wallet that traverse the house as either prank or phantom routine—some actions are frightening while others are minor inconveniences. Thai folklore reflects mostly spirits who are not necessarily good or evil, but hungry individuals seeking something, whether that be acknowledgement, vengeance, or simply mischief—very much like the living humans they once were. This is part of life, and life after death: learning to live with others.

If they cause no harm, why can’t we just live with ghosts?

J.A.W. McCarthy is a Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award finalist and author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021) and Sleep Alone (Off Limits Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, PseudoPod, Split Scream Vol. 3, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13 (ed. Ellen Datlow). She is Thai American and lives with her spouse and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest. You can call her Jen on Twitter @JAWMcCarthy, and find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.

Nicole Cushing

Interviewed by Carson Winter

You should be reading Nicole Cushing. Full stop.

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). In any event, she has received praise from Thomas Ligotti, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Evenson, and Jack Ketchum (among others). Cemetery Dance released her most recent book, The Plastic Priest, in December.

If you haven’t, here’s the pitch: vivid, personal, absurd, and confrontational weird fiction that delights in the confessional squirms it yields from its readers. For the already initiated, Cushing’s catalog is marked by a series of bleak modern classics that reinvent what horror fiction can be with creativity and craft to spare.

The Plastic Priest is due out from Cemetery Dance at the end of 2023 and we’re delighted to be able to pick her brain about her latest work.

Here’s a quick synopsis courtesy of the publisher:

“When the soul has been thoroughly poisoned, the body must abandon it. Everything feels unreal afterwards, but plastic heads shed no tears. Bram Stoker Award® winning author Nicole Cushing offers an excursion into the Weird, a quiet novella of a madwoman in a mad town, as an Episcopal priest grapples with the meaning of faith, reality, and if there is anything real to either of them, at the end of it all.

We were lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Cushing’s latest foray into madness and are pleased to report that it’s another Certified Banger from the mind that brought you such boundary-pushing works as A Sick, Gray Laugh and Mothwoman. Using the power of email, we sat down with Nicole to talk more about The Plastic Priest, the personal influences that led to its development, and the unique approach to writing that makes Cushing one of the most compelling voices in weird fiction working today.

CHM: Your new novella, The Plastic Priest, is a very strange book with a lot to say about religion, as well as small-town life. How did this book come to be and what parts of your own life did you insert into it?

NC: The day my father died in 2021, one of our local Episcopal priests visited my family and led us in prayer and in a reading of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want...”). Even though I’m not much of a Christian, I had a powerful emotional experience during that reading. I bawled my eyes out in grief, but I also felt this reconnection with the rituals I grew up with.

But what can you do with something like that? There are aspects of such rituals that stir intense, positive feelings inside me. Yet, at the same time, the idea of actually returning to the faith in any permanent, sustained way strikes me as ludicrous. Christianity is in many ways a nonsensical path, and also a toxic one. So I wasn’t about to start going to church again. However, I could use fiction to explore the feelings of a middle-aged woman who struggles with her connection with the church. Moreover, I’ve met middle aged clergy who have privately confided in me, telling me about their frustrations with their jobs. Those in the clergy often find themselves locked into playing a role, adopting a persona, and championing an orthodox dogma they don’t really believe. They chafe under such burdens. So that seemed like fertile ground to explore. Those are the elements that brought about the novella’s protagonist, Mother Kaye.

In regard to small town life, I’ll just say this: although I now live in a blue collar suburb in southern Indiana, I grew up in a small town in Maryland. About twenty years ago, I also lived for about a year in a small town here in Indiana. There’s a dynamic to small town life that I very much wanted to capture in this novella. It’s not like there isn’t a lot of fiction written about small towns, but (in my estimation) few of those works hit the right balance between cynicism and empathy. Yes, I bring many shallow, awful people on stage during the novella. But I try to endow them with a modicum of dignity.

CHM: Compared to Mothwoman, The Plastic Priest is a lot more subdued in regards to its supernatural angle. What role do you think the supernatural plays in The Plastic Priest, and why is it a more subtle, ambiguous element for this story?

NC: The supernatural plays an essential part in The Plastic Priest. (Remove all the supernatural events, and you don’t have a plot.) However, it’s also true that the supernatural expresses itself a bit differently than it usually does in my books. I don’t think it’s necessarily ambiguous. At least, that wasn’t my intention. But it is certainly less violent. This was a conscious choice. For me, writing is play. A playful mindset allows a writer to try different approaches without worrying about staying on brand.

CHM: I love how character-oriented your work is. So often in weird fiction there’s a feeling that the protagonists are cyphers or stand-ins for the author, but your work feels like an entirely different approach while still being self-expressive. Why are characters so important to you and how do you balance a work that feels confessional while also writing a three-dimensional fictional character?

NC: There are strong currents of cosmicism in weird fiction, and cosmicism has often been expressed through mood rather than characterization. This makes sense, because if the point of a story is to convey the despair and awe that results from an awareness of humanity’s irrelevance in the vast scheme of things, the depiction of interpersonal relationships may work against the goal.

I’m less of a cosmicist than I used to be. I’m much less interested in humanity’s insignificance than I am in its irrationality, and interpersonal relationships are one of the main stages upon which the irrational struts its stuff! Moreover, my fiction often focuses on mental illness. I have suffered from severe depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. I’ve had four or five particularly difficult episodes, episodes that I can most accurately describe as spells of full-blown madness. (I know that word may be frowned on but it’s the word that matches my subjective experience of my worst episodes.) It’s impossible to portray madness without getting deep into a character.

How do you effectively pull this off? I think, once again, playfulness is an asset. To paraphrase Milan Kundera, characters are “experimental selves”. A confession can be multifaceted, nuanced, and riddled with contradictions. By having the same (multifaceted, nuanced, contradictory) confession expressed through the perspectives of three or five or fifteen different characters, the confession achieves a richness and a fullness that it wouldn’t ordinarily have.

Artificiality plays a large part in your work—oftentimes creeping into the lives of your characters. It’s a very abstract fear, but it’s also very affecting. What scares you about artificiality and how does it reveal more visceral fears?

Images of plastic often appear in my work, and when I insert them into my stories I’m usually not thinking about why I put them there. They just occur to me. However, I think it reflects two fears of mine. The first is the fear of unreality. There’s something uncanny about people who appear to be plastic (or plastic figures who appear to be people). The second is the fear of conformity. Plastic figures are rarely one of a kind. They’re typically mass produced. We live in an era in which thoughts and desires are mass produced by various commercial and political propagandists. Because of this, I think individuality may be heading toward the brink of extinction. Tribalism is replacing it. That terrifies me.

CHM: Do you think you naturally write weird fiction/horror or do you make a conscious choice early to write a piece of work in that genre?

NC: I don’t aim for any particular genre or subgenre. I just write the kind of story I want to write, the kind of story I’m in love with at the moment I start a project.

CHM: What I love about your work is the unique blend of humor, absurdism, and bleakness that serves as the backdrop to great horror. How do you balance being so funny and so scary at the same time?

NC: I grew up in a family in which everyone, to varying degrees, enjoyed a good morbid joke. That early experience probably helped. It also helps that I read a lot of books that balance comedy with unease. Few of these come labeled as horror or weird fiction, but I love them. Continental European authors have created a lot of this sort of work: Kafka, Roland Topor, Witold Gombrowicz, Johann Grimmelshausen, Debravka Ugresic, and Milan Kundera come to mind. But you can also find it in Africa (Amos Tutuola), here in the U.S. (Percival Everett), and among the English (Leonora Carrington). Reading these authors have helped me to appreciate how the balance is struck.

CHM: While The Plastic Priest is out now (and highly recommended!), I’d love to know about what you have planned for the future. Are there any new projects on the horizon?

NC: I’ve recently finished a short novel tentatively titled The Pessimistic Adventures of Gigglenoose. It’s about an old widow (Francine Gigglenoose) who suffers from a bizarre bone disease that requires her confinement in an absurdly cruel hospital. It’s about her quest for euthanasia. It’s about all the political, economic, demonic, and angelic bullshit she has to cope with along the way, and about her desire to join her beloved husband (Max Gigglenoose) in a state of mindless annihilation. I fear that one day I’ll end up in a nursing home. This novel is one way I’ve been coping with that fear. I hope to start submitting it to publishers in late December, 2023.

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.

Pink Smoke

By Jessica Peter

Dr. Cecilia Cambruzzi, a top volcanologist of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, associate professor of geological sciences at the University of Catania, and recent recipient of the Wager Medal for outstanding contributions to the field, was burned out.

She drove her knuckles into her closed eyes as the wall of screens in the INGV’s Catania Operations Room flickered their rainbow in front of her. Mount Etna’s seismic activity was as low as it got, the formations of gas were normal, and Etna hadn’t changed her shape in some time. Yet still Cecilia kept assigning herself to the all-night monitoring shifts.

Carefully tracking Italy’s volcanoes was once the only thing that brought her joy. People and their pettiness disappointed all too often, but volcanoes were greater than humanity. The sheer scope of billions of years of rock formation held a certain magic that the constant droning pressures to publish and achieve could never match. Now, though, even her darling Etna wasn’t bringing her contentment. It was time for a sabbatical, not that Cecilia would ever admit it to her higher-ups. Especially with the way things were going in her department in the last few months.

Cecilia stood, arched her back, and rolled her neck, the little snaps giving her some satisfaction. She checked her watch: 9:30 in the morning. Her heart jumped. That couldn’t be right. Her shift had ended over two hours ago. The INGV offices should be filled with the usual bustle of staff and scientists.

She checked the clocks on all the screens, and sure enough it was well past nine. Given the low priority of Etna right now, perhaps the others had forgotten about her in here and were settling in at their own desks? Cecilia strode out of the Operations Room, only to find that every office was still dark.

Unease gathered in her body, tingling down her fingers, but she refused to panic. Instead, Cecilia calmly but briskly exited the building through the front door to see what was going on. A wave of heat walloped her, her curls immediately limpening. The heat of the Sicilian summer sang to her of prosecco and patios, of walking the evening passeggiata and listening to the chatter of those conversing around her. But today, the streets of Catania were oddly quiet. A hot pink sunset hung in the air with the ragged peak of Mt. Etna centered in the middle.

It took Cecilia a moment of blinking her night-shift-bleary eyes at it to recall, once more, that it was mid-morning. Not sunset, not sunrise.

She gasped and put her hand over her face.

The hot pink seemed to emanate from Mount Etna, dense clouds or perhaps smoke which swirled and thickened around the peak, spiralling like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

But Etna wasn’t erupting. She couldn’t be.

Forgetting her promise not to panic, Cecilia rushed back to the Operations Room and checked all the trackers and feeds. There were no signs of an imminent eruption, let alone one that was already occurring.

Now the quiet of the INGV building was rattling her brain. Had she even seen anyone, heard anyone, on the usually hectic streets?

She ran into the hall and started banging on the doors of the darkened offices. At the research director’s windowless office, Cecilia gave only a quick ‘Mi scusi’ to announce her presence, then ripped open the door.

The motion detecting lights turned on. No one had been here for quite some time.

Cecilia pinched herself, her short fingernails in crimson red against the tanned skin of her arm. She winced at the pain. But didn’t wake up. This was all real.

The building was empty. Even if the pink cloud was Etna, the place wouldn’t be empty. Sure, some of her team would be getting closer to understand the eruption, but the Operations Room would be full of technicians and researchers, frantically calculating potential risk. And Cecilia would know. She knew Etna as well as she knew herself. Better, sometimes.

A rustling sound came from behind Cecilia. She jumped. Then, she gripped both hands to her pounding heart.

If her colleagues weren’t here, what was that?

The men’s bathroom door opened, and a familiar figure came out. With his chunky headphones over messy dark-blond hair, the Australian graduate student working here for the summer pushed a mop and bucket as he head-bopped to his music, entirely oblivious to his surroundings.

A puzzled chuckle wormed its way out of Cecilia’s mouth, and the young man looked up. What was his name again? David, that was it.

He hit a button on his headphones and pulled them around his neck.

“Oh Dottoressa Cambruzzi, uh . . . Buongiorno?” He winced, then laughed. “Three months here and that’s the best Italian I’ve got.”

His chatter was so normal compared to the emptiness and the ominous pink cloud outside that Cecilia had to center herself for a moment, blinking at him without speaking.

“Dottoressa Cambruzzi?”

“Just Cecilia is fine,” she said automatically. “David, what’s happening?”

“Just Dave is fine,” he said with a grin, then tilted his head. “Whaddya mean?”

It took Cecilia some time to parse the blended words, but then she did a double take. At him, at the empty offices, and back to him again. “No one is here. Where are they?”

“Huh.” He looked down the hall at the darkness. “Right you are. Don’t rightly know.”

“Have you seen Etna?”

“The volcano?” he asked.

“Sì.” Cecilia resisted the urge to shake the young man. “Yes. The volcano.”

“I mostly just clean here. I think the volcano is more your side of things.” He laughed in a way that made Cecilia feel she was in on the joke. Contagious indeed.

“Come,” she said crisply instead of laughing, walking to the front door without looking back. The tap-tap of his sneakers on the marble of the lobby floor followed her.

On opening the door, Cecilia couldn’t help gasping. The pink cloud had expanded and almost swallowed the blue sky; only the far-off edges of blue were still visible.

She turned to Dave as he stared wide-eyed.

“It’s erupting?” he said.

“It’s not erupting. That is what is strange.”

“Hm,” he said.

They stood watching it for some time. Cecilia tried to use her other senses, but she could smell no sulphur or other gases, could hear no explosions or other sounds. It was just a massive pink cloud.

“Where is everyone?” Dave finally said.

Only now did Cecilia turn back to fully look at the narrow streets around them. Catania was quiet. Catania was never quiet. No rumble of traffic, no honks of Vespas, no chatter of tourist throngs or barking of dogs. The rickety cobblestones and the wrought-iron balconies clinging off low-rise buildings were all empty of life.

“Everyone is gone,” she whispered. “Where could they be?”

Dave frowned. “Well I guess they’re at the volcano.”

“At the volcano?” she repeated, feeling like a fool. “All of them? Everyone?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I mean, don’t you hear that sort of, I dunno, singing? Music? Really weird stuff.”

Cecilia frowned and listened as hard as she could, but the only things she could hear was the cawing of gulls from the harbor. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Yeah, it’s got a real feeling to it.” He shrugged. “Like you hear that long enough, you’ll be going up. Know what I mean?”

Cecilia frowned. “I don’t. It’s coming from the volcano?”

Dave closed his eyes as a soft smile lit his face. “Nah, kind of from everywhere at once. Not like outside in the world, but inside my head.” Opening his eyes again, he chuckled. “Weird, huh?”

“Yes,” she said. “Weird.” Why didn’t she hear this mental sound? Perhaps it was due to the same reason that she didn’t quite relate to other people, even those in her academic field; she always related better to the volcanoes than the volcanologists. At least Dave didn’t seem to notice her awkwardness, the way she didn’t meet his eyes when they spoke.

His talk of music, of singing, tickled at the edges of Cecilia’s memories. As they stood and stared toward Etna, she tried to gather the thoughts, but after a moment she accepted it wasn’t happening. She tore her gaze away from the strange pink cloud long enough to speak.

“If you think they’re on the volcano, let’s look at the cameras.”

Dave nodded and followed her into the building.

In the Operations Room, the grainy livecams showed an orderly queue of people snaking all the way up the volcano. From the bottom, all around the flank, and to the very peak. The thick cloud blocked her view of the crater itself, but the line moved forward every few moments. One figure moved up to the edge, and then they were gone. And then another, and another. . .

“Santa Maria,” she whispered. They were throwing themselves in. Even though she’d left her Catholicism behind long ago with everything else, her lips began forming the prayer. Ave Maria, piena di grazia. . .

“Jesus,” Dave said behind her.

“Yes.” She turned and found him looking at his phone, not the cameras.

His face was white as he tapped furiously, an expression she couldn’t name on his face.

“What is it?” she said.

“Reddit is like weirdly dead. Except for a few people posting. . .” He turned the phone to her.

The first video was a shaky video from the deck of a massive US Navy ship, out in the deep oceans. There was no pink smoke, but there was a queue. A tidy line of people in uniform, mostly men, some with large smiles on their faces. As they reached the front of the line, they climbed up onto the railing and dropped into the ocean.

Some bobbed to the top, but none swam. Some just never surfaced at all.

The most striking thing was the one filming. Behind the camera, you could hear him screaming and begging for the others to come back, to stop. But they didn’t care.

Dread tickled up Cecilia’s spine as she looked at the livecams behind her.

“It’s happening everywhere,” Dave whispered and took his phone back, flipping through screens with dawning horror on his face. “These people are swimming out into a lake without an opposite shore. This city has the pink cloud like here, but I can’t see what else is happening. Oh God. . .”

“Dave,” Cecilia choked out. “Look at the screens behind me.”

He studied them and they together watched as the line moved forward. It had to be hundreds, thousands of people. Dropping one after another into the crater.

Only then did the memory Cecilia was trying to grasp hit her full force.

A few months ago, Dr. Alessandro Messina had summoned Cecilia to his office at the university. They’d drifted apart since he’d supervised her dissertation a decade earlier, with Cecilia more interested in how new knowledge could improve society’s responses to volcanoes, and Alessandro more interested in how he could use new knowledge to plump up his CV. Or so it seemed to her. Still, it had been so long that she was curious what he’d request her for.

“Ciao, bella,” he’d said upon her entry, and Cecilia’s back immediately went up. She’d managed to make it through the five years of her PhD with him, but for some reason, she’d assumed he would change after she had a doctorate too. How wrong that was.

“What is it?” she said tightly, expecting anything but what actually came.

Her previous supervisor, ambitious and misogynistic yet always excessively scientific, began spewing nonsense. Of impossibly old beings beneath volcanoes, of haunting songs beneath ocean waves, of the possibility of harnessing it all. Of power, beyond anything imaginable.

Cecilia’s logical mind rebelled and she almost walked right out without another word. But she made herself stay. She made herself spit out the next words.

“If any of that is true, why would these old things give you power? Why give it to anyone?”

“Ah, if I were the one to learn to wake them. . .” Alessandro had sat back in his armchair and stroked his salt-and-pepper mustache with a smug smile on his face. “Why wouldn’t they?”

It was spoken like someone who had only ever been in a place of privilege, someone who’d had their success handed to them on a silver platter.

Cecilia strode out, disgusted by his falling for conspiracy theories, disgusted even more by his plans of what to do with them.

Only now, here, in the INGV Operations Room, she wondered if it was all true.

“What do we do?” Dave finally said.

“We have to try to stop them.”

* * *

The drive through Catania on the back of one of INGV’s 4x4s was quiet. And far, far too quick. Nausea churned Cecilia’s gut. She was already beginning to mourn for the city that once was.

“You all right?” Dave said.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “As well as I can be.”

He grunted in acknowledgement and turned back to stare at the empty streets. They couldn’t be the last two left. There had to be someone else who couldn’t hear the lure like Cecilia, or who evidently didn’t listen like Dave. Cecilia didn’t let herself ponder whether Alessandro was set up like a king somewhere as people threw themselves to their deaths.

At least the fact that there were other people filming the horrors gave her a small measure of hope. It wasn’t everyone.

They reached the bottom of Etna and the end of the line. Like the men on the Navy ship, the faces of the people in line were blank and unfocused, some with smiles pasted on that seemed so unnatural it sent the tiny hairs on Cecilia’s arms raising.

“It’s so weird. I just. . .” Dave trailed off, his gaze fixed outside at the people. “Do we stop here?”

“I think we should go closer,” Cecilia said, trying not to look too hard at the people beside her. “Get the ones most at risk.”

Still, as she slowly drove uphill, she opened both windows and shouted in Italian, “Come with us! We’ll take you back to Catania!”

“You don’t have to do this!” Dave joined her in English.

There wasn’t even a flicker of response, like she and Dave were invisible. Inaudible.

Wetness gathered in Cecilia’s eyes against her permission as she caught the shapes of the people in line. Large, small, young, old, from the oldest seniors leaning on canes to children barely able to walk.

Please, God, don’t let this have been caused by my people. She swallowed down the emotion and kept driving steadily, as far up as the truck could take them. The pink smoke settled around them as they drove, making everything hazy and tinted.

Dave became more and more unsettled as they climbed, shifting in his seat, his call-outs to the people in line slowing and finally stopping. Cecilia closed the windows.

He turned to her and nodded, an unidentifiable emotion filling his face.

Moments later, she stopped the truck and turned to him. “We’ll have to walk from here.”

Dave nodded, pale and shaky.

“Will you be able to do this?” Cecilia asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I can do it.”

They climbed out onto the black and craggy ground, as comforting and familiar to Cecilia as her own kitchen. The pink hung around them, but this deep inside, you could barely notice it. There were none of the key volcanic scents; not the rotten-egg stench of hydrogen sulfide or the lit-match sharpness of sulfur dioxide. Just a faint hint of ozone. The smoke felt like nothing but a whisper along Cecilia’s bare arms.

The crater was in sight now. Cecilia’s gaze was drawn to it as the first person in line took a casual step and went in, bouncing once off the edge. A quick, sharp sizzle was the only sound. No scream, no reaction. Cecilia flinched violently as if it had been her.

The nasty burn scar on her calf from years ago marked how quickly lava could destroy human skin, and Etna’s crater was brimming full of lava.

She turned to David, whose face was ashen. Quickly, she squeezed his hand for a moment. He nodded a thank you for the comfort, and then dashed across the rocks toward the line of people, nearly stumbling on the loose stones in his haste.

“Come on man,” he said to an older man in line. “You know better than this.”

Cecilia expected nothing, so when the man turned to Dave and started muttering, she jumped.

“What was that?” Dave’s voice peaked in anxiety. “I don’t speak Italian. Cecilia, Cecilia!”

She came closer to find the man was repeating the same thing over and over and over again. “We’ve found it. We’ve found it. We’ve found it.”

Cecilia repeated it in English to Dave and he blanched under his tan.

The old man turned back to the line and became an automaton once more, ready to throw himself into the volcano.

These people couldn’t do this. They couldn’t all do this.

“I get it,” Dave whispered, giving Cecilia another horrible chill.

Then she caught a familiar face. That tanned skin and salt-and-pepper mustache. Dr. Alessandro Messina stood in line, his face as blank as the others’.

With a scream, Cecilia yanked the sleeve of his seal-grey blazer. He knew Etna; he knew better.

Alessandro shrugged her off like she was nothing but an irritating insect, and Cecilia fell backwards, scraping her hands on the sharp rocks.

“If this was you, damn you,” she growled at him as tears spilled onto her cheeks. She turned to address everyone at once from her place on the ground. “What are you all doing!?”

Cecilia turned back to Dave, but he wasn’t standing behind her anymore. Frantically she looked around and found him in line, in front of the old man.

She jumped to her feet and ran to him, gripping him with both hands. Dave’s face was empty. Unfeeling, unknowing.

“Dave! David!” she yelled right into his face, but to nothing. “No, no, no.” A massive, choking sob came out as she gripped both of Dave’s sleeves and pulled.

“Don’t you dare,” she said, tugging with everything she had and having as little success as with Alessandro. “Don’t you fucking dare leave me like this.” Fat tears rolled down her face.

Dave blinked. Once. Again. Cecilia’s hope lifted. Then his face slackened, expression sinking into bland nothingness.

“Per favore, Dave. Please.” Cecilia dropped her head against her chest, her energy depleted. If this was the end of Catania, perhaps it was the end for her too.

Then something shifted under her hands. For some reason she couldn’t fathom, Dave moved out of line.

“Yeah,” he nodded, blinking as if waking up. He tipped one half of his mouth into an almost-smile and raked a hand through his hair. “We better get back down. Nothing we can do here anymore, and this pink stuff can’t be good.”

Cecilia gripped him in a quick hug and dashed away her tears, surprised at how important this one young man had become to her.

The enormity of the whole thing ripped through her. This wasn’t just here, wasn’t just them. The whole world was emptying. Of humanity, at least.

Etna still stood, suddenly oblivious to how the people around her behaved. For another billion years, rocks would shift and re-form; volcanoes would remain. There was a certain magic in it.

End.

Jessica Peter writes dark, haunted, and sometimes absurd short stories, novels, and poems. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. You can find her writing in Haven Speculative, The NoSleep Podcast, and Brigid’s Gate anthologies, among other places. You can find her at www.jessicapeter.net or @JessicaPeter1 on Twitter.

A Book of String. A Book of Thread

By Corey FarrenKopf

He said the path was hidden in the childrens’ books he illustrated. Over the phone, it sounded hallucinatory. The path to what? I asked. To whom is more appropriate, he replied. Then the line went dead. I dialed back, but only got his voicemail. You’ve reached esteemed children’s book author, Jeremy Leiland, leave a message after the beep.

When the police searched his house, they found blood all over his study, crimson streaks covering bookcases and drafting tables alike.

The issue was, most wasn’t fresh.

Estimates placed the stains anywhere between a month to three years back.

Beyond the blood, there was little evidence. No fingerprints. No weapon. No motive. Just the crimson and brown splotches and my father’s absence. The lead detective had already pulled most of his men and women off the case, the word cold bantered around like an easy out.

* * *

Yellow crime scene tape draped the front door as I slid back the deadbolt. The police hadn’t returned to clean up their mess.

“This stuff doesn’t biodegrade,” Lil said, spooling filmy caution in her arms.

“I’m sure they aren’t concerned with recycling,” Benny replied.

I couldn’t return to my father’s house alone. After what the detective said, I didn’t think I could face the scene. Both Lil and Benny worked as vet techs during the day to pay for their electronic music careers at night. Sometimes they were in a relationship. Sometimes they weren’t. Occasionally they messed around with polyamory, sometimes it was just monogamy. Either way, I had no idea what phase they were in, but I didn’t care. They both loved the esoteric and were fine around blood.

“Least they could have done was kick off their shoes,” Lil said, crouching low. Smears of mud ran the length of the hall leading to my father’s study, soiling the white carpets in two mirrored tracks.

“The police said it was like that when they got here,” I replied.

“Probably an excuse,” Benny said.

“Or maybe it has something to do with what dad mentioned,” I replied, pushing open the door to my father’s creative space, another web of police tape falling at my feet.

“The hidden path in the books. Right,” Lil replied, eyes darting to Benny as if I wouldn’t notice. I shook my head, flipped on the lightswitch, and stepped inside.

There was less blood than I expected but the sight still made me freeze. Arcs of gore streaked the spines of his books. It pooled in brown lagoons on the otherwise snowy expanse of carpet. The largest quantity stained the space around the drafting table, footprint-like on the rug, smeared here and there like stray arms flailing for purchase. I dropped into an armchair and covered my face with my hands.

“We don’t have to do this, Nick. We can hire someone to clean. I’ve got numbers already…I…” Lil began, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“No,” I cut her off. “He said I’d find the answer in the books, and the books are here. I really don’t have a choice.”

“Well, then aye aye, captain,” Benny said.“Where do we start?”

* * *

My father was best known for a series of children’s books called the Thinwater Chronicles, a hundred-and-twenty-six book epic, all pen and ink illustrations of a group of bumbling knights who had to uphold the peace in the land of Thinwater. There was the bog witch to keep in check, the swamp boys who never understood why the king didn’t want them at his parties. There was a toothless werewolf who had a thing for stealing dairy products. A dragon who acted as an old-timey airborne alternative to a taxi service. The list went on, encapsulating every fantasy trope imaginable, rendered in exacting detail highlighted in hues of orange and green.

Looming over everything was the Master of Murk, a rarely seen, but often heard puppetmaster pulling the strings for all the shenanigans in the kingdom. Critics and reviewers said the books were marketed to the wrong age group, that six-year-olds weren’t mature enough for the dark imagery and cryptic humor, but he’d sold out at every Scholastic Book Fair I’d ever known. If he didn’t want to write anymore, he could live off royalties, but he never stopped. His latest title was half finished when he went missing, page outlines tacked to a corkboard behind his drafting table, rudimentary sketches of a being wrapped in shadow, a cloak draping over more arms than any living thing should possess.

“What was he going to call the new one?” Lil asked, seated at the long table at the room’s center, a small pile of hardcovers before her.

“The Master of Murk and the Murky Mystery,” I replied, sifting through a pile of rough sketches. “He really loved alliteration.”

“I think it’s a requirement for childrens’ fiction,” Benny said, flipping the pages to Shivering Skeletons and the Sinking Ship, an early entry in the series where the group of knights rescue a tourist barge that sailed too deep into Murk’s swamp-nest. Each skeleton was anatomically correct and looked like it belonged on a metal band’s t-shirt rather than on the pages of an elementary school required reading list.

“You’re writing down all the places, right?” I asked.

“Yup. Cliffside Castle. Bogwitch Island. Blythe’s Bellowing Bordello,” Lil said.

“I have no idea how he got away with that last one,” I replied.

“Don’t you think it’s more likely one of the maps that’s the hint?” Benny asked, cracking open his book to where an antique map was penned.

“They all have maps though. I’m not sure that’s narrow enough,” I said.

“Maps show paths. Maybe we just need to find one with a path actually listed,” Lil said.

“God, there’s so many,” I said.

“We’ve got time,” Benny replied.

At first, I didn’t know if the secret would be in the wording or in the topography, if he’d spelled it out like a treasure map or if the path was hidden under layers of word play. The maps made sense. I had to give Benny that, but my father had never been very straightforward with me in regards to anything. My mom died when I was five and he never told me how it happened. He’d disappear for long “publishing trips” leaving me with Grandma Fern for months, but he never explicitly told me where he went.

In light of our current situation, things started to look less disconnected.

We laid out each book, flipping to the map, snapping cell phone pictures, searching for anything labeled path. Every book my father had published, and several he hadn’t, were achieved in his study. It was like a tiny museum to his life spread across thousands of pages. I’d tried to find him there in the text, in the drawings, to understand him in some way, glean the closeness I never got from the man himself. But there was nothing there. Just the story of the three knights, battling evil and making silly jokes, page after page, occasionally a cliffhanger, almost always a quest narrative.

I’d become an illustrator, taking whatever jobs came my way, hoping that the mirrored trajectory might bring us closer, but it only seemed to make us more distant. My father didn’t want to talk about technique or career plans. He didn’t really like to talk at all. It seemed to hurt him every time he opened his jaw, but I still asked, still needing that connection.

* * *

Three hours passed and we were still rifling through books, searching for the right name.

“How many more do we have?” Lil asked, draped over a plush chair clean of blood splatter.

“Who knows. Each of these has several drafts,” I replied, holding up a stack of books. “Each map is different. Some slightly. Some completely. We’re going to be here for…”

I was cut off by a book falling from the shelves, a heavy double feature we’d overlooked.

No one was near the bookcase. The room was still. I didn’t know how it fell, but I wasn’t going to question divine intervention. I wiped a spider web from its cover and flipped to the first map, Lil and Benny reading over my shoulder. My eyes traced the labeled routes until they fell on Red Cedar Path, a squiggly line running into a dense cluster of trees. There was a time stamp drawn beneath: 9:59.

“Oh, god,” Benny said.

“There’s a few hours of my life back,” Lil said.

“Isn’t there a cedar swamp in Yarmouth, you know, by that church parking lot we used to skateboard in?” I asked.

“There is. Benny and I went to third base there when you were hung up on learning kickflips. Not the most romantic spot,” Lil said.

Benny’s finger tapped at his phone screen, light flickering onto his face.

“Good times,” Benny said, pushing the phone my way, a map displayed, showing the edge of the swamp, the little parking lot just off the side of Red Cedar Path. “Doesn’t this feel too easy?”

“My dad wanted me to find this place. He wouldn’t have said anything otherwise. He wasn’t one for wasting words,” I said.

“Fine, but we’re stopping by my house before we get there. We need supplies,” Lil said.

“Supplies?” I asked.

* * *

“It’s not like we could return them after the music video,” Lil said, pushing open the lid of an old chest she kept in the chicken-wire wrapped storage space in her apartment’s basement. An army of silverfish fled the noise, tucking themselves into wall crevices, tiny twitching antennae sticking out between bricks.

“Even though it’s just food coloring and corn syrup, stuff’s hard to clean,” Benny added, dragging a machete from the chest’s innards, holding it up to the bare bulb light of the basement. He stabbed an invisible foe before dropping the blade into the box, metal singing against metal. Inside were a dozen similar weapons, more machetes, axes, something that looked like a hammer with a dagger welded to its base. All were covered in the fake blood I helped them boil down for their Walking Dead themed music video.

That’s how you get the views, Lil had said, Be referential. Built-in fandom, right?

A nest of zombie masks lay beneath. I could distinctly remember the taste of the rubber, that sweat-swollen stench from the hours I spent running around before the camera. I shivered, the nostalgic taste rancid in my mouth.

“Was it worth it for forty-thousand views? Yes, yes it was,” Lil said, grabbing two of the axes.

“Choose wisely,” Benny said. “I’ve read enough of your dad’s books to know you never go on a quest unprepared.”

“There was a lot of blood,” I said, grabbing the machete Benny had dropped.

* * *

The entrance to the swamp trail bled away from the parking lot, an archway of dried tree limbs constructed at the mouth of the path, a portal right out of the Thinwater Chronicles if I’d ever seen one. Everything smelled of cedar and damp earth, algae blooming in the standing pools between the trees. It was practically pitch black. The nearest streetlamp was a half mile down the road. Benny dragged his cell phone’s flashlight across the surrounding trees, disturbing roosting birds and red squirrels alike. I checked my watch, tapping the illuminating dial. 9:56.

“Do we really need to wait?” Lil asked, leaning against the warm hood of her Honda, twin axes lying at her feet.

“That’s what the note said. Dad wouldn’t write it if it didn’t have meaning,” I replied.

“Everything in those books had meaning,” Benny said.

“Did you really read them all?” I asked.

“I think so. You’ve got to appreciate great children’s literature. The meaning of life honed down to thirty-two pages,” Benny replied, harassing a family of frogs with his light, tiny eyes catching the reflective glow before they dove beneath the surface.

“And what meaning did you get from his books?” Lil asked.

“There’s darkness everywhere. If something looks like a monster, run. Don’t trust—”

His response was cut short by the echoing clunk of a portal dragged through time, ancient hinges yawning wide. Where the stick-bare archway had stood, there was now a massive wooden door, slightly ajar.

“Nine-fifty-nine on the dot,” I said.

“We better get a good story out of this,” Lil said, shouldering her axes.

“Oh, definitely. Maybe a little inspiration for our next music video,” Benny replied, snatching his nail-studded baseball bat.

“People do love those portal fantasy vibes,” Lil said, as I pulled open the door, my flashlight struggling to push back the shadows within.

* * *

The hallway was composed of woven vines enmeshed with spiderwebs, silver strands reflecting like moonlight in the flashlight glow. I checked for spiders, but the webs were vacant. The narrow pathway was a straight shot, the dirt floor muddy, imprinted by the thousand feet that arrived before us. Somewhere far off came the sound of whistling, trilling and off-key.

Lil and Benny followed.

It was only fair that I took the lead. He was my father. Or is my father? I had so many questions, so little understanding. My father kept everything to himself. What he liked, disliked. Childhood stories. Friendships and failures. All he did was write books and stay locked in his study. I wanted to know how we were similar, how we differed, how I could make sense of my life in his shadow, but he didn’t seem interested in that story. Nor did he seem interested in telling me what happened to my mother. The Thinwater Chronicles were the only narrative that mattered.

The hall widened, walls drifting apart, ceiling rising higher and higher. The whistling swelled to an uncomfortable pitch. I heard Benny’s voice in my mind, isn’t this too easy? I tightened my grip on the machete, hands shaking, sending the flashlight illumination dancing over web-stuck walls.

“We can always leave,” Lil said.

“I need to know what happened. This is the only way,” I replied.

“So, no turning back?” Lil asked.

“Of course you can’t turn back,” came my father’s voice from the end of the hall, where an open doorway waited. I looked at my friends, eyes darting from one to the next. There was no mistaking his voice.

I took off running.

“Maybe we should wait,” Benny called from over my shoulder. “I’ve definitely read this one before.”

But I hadn’t.

I was already in the room, the vaulted ceiling of tree limbs and muddy mortar flying skyward. The space was massive, the farthest walls barely visible, the scent of blood and rot all around. Thousands and thousands of silken strands wove about over my head, creating a symmetrical cosmos, an entire universe of thread. On the floor lay my father’s body, lacerations peeling back the skin on his arms and neck, flayed flesh drooping from the confines of his blue oxford. A thousand silver strands led away from his corpse, the thin strings pulling into his skin, slowly separating muscle like tiny razors.

I followed the lines to the room’s center where a figure stood, a near replica of the drawings my father left above his drafting table. The Master of Murk, all his unhinged arms working the strands, pulling and shifting beneath a massive black robe, causing my father’s body to writhe.

I lashed out with the machete, severing what I could, but there were too many.

“Why so angry?” the creature asked, voice identical to my father’s, fishing with the twine, its thin conical head tilting inquisitively, hundreds of mouths opening and closing with each word. “This was inevitable. Workers only work so long before strain gets them.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked as my friends made it to my side, creating a barricade of wood and steel with their weapons, as if it would somehow ward off the reality we stumbled into.

“Your father did my work. And now I need someone else to continue,” Murk said. “Someone has to tell the stories. People need to know the name of their coming king. Acceptance is necessary before arrival. You were always a promising artist…”

“Darkness everywhere, see what I’m talking about,” Benny said. “Did I ever mention the last rule?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, breath catching in my throat.

“Always kill the evil shit.” And he was off, nail-stuck bat leading the way.

“Fucking Benny,” Lil shouted, panicking, tripping over herself as she followed.

“I only need one, but three, three could work. They did once before, maybe now they will again,” Murk said, head swiveling towards the nearest wall where three suits of armor slumped against the root woven architecture, bracers and chest plates crosshatched with webbing.

They weren’t hard to place, the three knights from my father’s stories, or the Murk’s stories. I was beginning to understand my father may have never been my father, that all our interactions had been ventriloquism, shadow puppets on a wall, dialogue cast from miles away. My eyes dropped to the body of the man who’d raised me, still in the dirt. This wasn’t what I wanted to find. Proof of our disconnect, the connections that never were.

My mind was tugged into the present by an echoing scream. Benny lay on the ground, a dozen lines of thread wrapping about his limbs, around his neck, pulling taut, just as they had on my father.

“This one might not be quite so good with a pen,” Murk said, arms pulling and wheeling, more strands drifting from its oddly-jointed fingertips. Benny was turning blue as I rushed the towering creature. He curled in on himself, fingers trying to shred the ties, frantically grasping at threads. He wasn’t finding purchase, eyes roving wildly, terror blind.

A wet thwack cut through the chaos. A spurt of blood rose from the creature’s shoulder, Lil’s ax buried deep. A number of Murk’s arms swiveled, grasping at the blade, attempting to free it from bone. I abused the distraction, winding up, cleaving the machete through the creature’s narrow neck. The blade swam through, faint resistance meeting metal, a torrent of blood to mark the passage of death.

Its skull clattered to the floor, the hundred mouths flapping for a moment before stillness froze their lips. The thing’s body remained rigid and upright while Lil dropped to her knees, untangling Benny.

His eyes fluttered, a series of harsh coughs racking his chest as the strands drifted away, falling about his feet like dying snakes.

Benny coughed and smiled. “I think you just killed my favorite author.”

“Too soon, Benny,” Lil replied, brushing threads from his shoulders.

As she spoke, Murk gave a sudden shiver, its statue-like pose tumbling backward, limbs pulled towards a doorway in the far wall. The creature’s body dragged across the muddy floor, robes tearing, exposing the mass of arms hidden beneath the fabric, all those thin appendages and their tangled twine pulled taut by unseen hands.

The corpse put distance between us, reeled in like a dead fish at the end of a line.

“Who’s pulling the strings?” Lil asked, eyes glued to the Murk’s retreat, watching as it drifted through the doorway, out of sight.

The humming began again, far off, happier than before.

“I don’t want to know,” I said, wrapping my arms around my father’s body, attempting to drag him towards the door. “I came for one answer and now I’ve got it.”

“I mean, if something looks like a monster, run, right?” Benny added.

“I don’t know if you should be following that advice anymore,” Lil replied, giving the Murk’s head a kick. The skull tumbled twice before coming to rest against a pile of bone.

I didn’t want to think who the remains belonged to. My mother? Someone else the Murk lured to its lair? An entire nation of puppets who’d lost their usefulness, no longer orators and artists dedicated to what may come.

Every memory of my father hadn’t been my father, just one of those flapping mouths, those twining strings, and that, somehow, was comforting. The real man hadn’t pushed me away, hadn’t remained silent for so long. No, my father had never been a monster.

That’s a narrative my mind could live in, fiction or not.

“I guess it didn’t work out for my heroes,” Benny said, eyes on the three suits of armor, the rusted repose of their slumped forms. He reached out, taking some of my father’s weight off my shoulders before the whistling stopped.

“It did not,” Came my false-father’s voice from the other room, seemingly miles away, distant, yet right in our ears. “But who’s to say it might be different for you? A king’s story still needs telling. Risk for reward?”

“No reward could ever be enough,” I called back, the three of us hurrying for the far door, my actual father’s corpse draped between us.

The voice laughed as we made it into the vine-wrought hallway.

“Suit yourself,” the voice echoed as we traversed the narrowing tunnel. “You, or someone else, it doesn’t matter. There will always be someone to draw my likeness.”

Then the whistling returned, jaunty and high as the threads in the wall fell loose, drifting to the floor, slowly recoiling towards the voice. Thousands of strings, thousands of restraints, thousands of tongues and throats and voices searching for their next mouthpiece, promising whatever new story was to come.

End.

Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and works as a librarian. His work has been published in/is forthcoming from The Deadlands, Nightmare, Vastarien, Smokelong Quarterly, The Southwest Review,  Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Living in Cemeteries, will be published by JournalStone in April of 2024. He is the Fiction Editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on TikTok at @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com.

Fairytale Lost

By J.J.O. Cilione

“Knowledge forbidden? …

Can it be a sin to know?

Can it be death?”

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

The growing dawn slides through the venetian blinds, creating a striped pattern over the extensive blood splatter on the opposite wall. If one squints, the spatter resembles a Starving Artists abstract found in any cheap motel room.

“So, this is what it took to get some art on this fuckin’ wall,” Mark mumbles.

His foot taps against a bottle, its contents slosh inside. He picks it up with a trembling, leaden hand, unscrews the top, and takes a long swig. Ugh! His taste buds wince. It’s that sweet wine Robbie insisted on keeping ‘for company.’

The flowery tang tickles his nose as the liquid sugar coats his throat; its syrupy texture forces a slight gag. His stomach bubbles, convincing him not to try for seconds. He lets the bottle slip between his fingers, hitting the floor with a thud. Its lopsided clunking along the carpet stops with a subtle sucking sound as a puddle of goop swallows it. Mark exhales a frustrated breath.

“Oh, my darling love, you may have worn many hats, but that of a sommelier never quite fit.”

Covered in blood and gore, he plops into a chair. It’s one of those fake, antiqued, overstuffed numbers Robbie found at a thrift store. Its faded pleather, cracked in all the right places, gives the perception of character and taste—it’s as uncomfortable as it is cheap. But with his boyfriend’s body taking up the bed, it offers the only suitable place in the room to sit.

He leans forward, rubbing his temples with the heel of his hands as he tries to relieve the pounding in his head. The temptation to just close his eyes for a few minutes rushes through his mind.

No!

Mark sits up straight and tries to focus, attempting to break through the swirling fog that clouds his thoughts. But all he can do is sit and stare at the wall as the horizontal slashes grow sharper with the onslaught of sunrise.

He glances around at the brightening bloodshed, grateful Robbie chose an apartment in a less-than-desirable part of town. The people living here keep to themselves, minding their business behind closed doors.

Robbie’s mangled form is sprawled across the bed; a 9-iron, covered in wet and brains, wedded to what remains of his skull. His bodily juices had soaked through the mattress and were dripping thick onto the linoleum tiles, keeping a staccato beat to the ticking alarm clock drowning in the sanguine lava flow spreading across the floor. A coppery bite fills Mark’s nostrils, competing with the smell of the partially empty containers from last night’s Chinese takeout. His stomach clenches as the regurgitated sour aftertaste of General Tso’s chicken sends Mark running to the bathroom.

His insides erupt before he can lift the toilet cover. The putrid stench of partially digested lo mein sears his eyes and nostrils as his stomach acids scorch him deep inside. He drops to his hands and knees, continuing to retch sour air from a now empty stomach. Mark falls back against the cold tiled wall, sweating and panting. Splashback clings to his hair and clothes, mingling with pieces that were once Robbie. His face drops, his chin resting on his chest, and he begins to sob. Quietly at first, but soon it reaches uncontrollable. He slams the back of his skull against the yellowed wall tile, pulling at his hair and punching his head. The scream of anguish burning in his throat erupts into a high-pitched wail. His keening continues until his soul is empty. Mark curls into an inconsolable fetal position, whimpering, until his torment gives way to exhaustion, and sleep overcomes him.

* * *

Though it was only Thursday night, the local cruise bar was hopping. Murmurs of conversations and laughter competed with the music while the clinks of glass and ice knocking together played a tune of their own. Someone lights up a joint.

Mark kept his head down, not daring to make eye contact with anyone. He recently came out and was both mystified and terrified by the scene. A growing thought gnawed at the little confidence he had, telling him this was a bad idea and he should leave. Nervously chewing on the last ice cube from his now-empty glass, he ignored the defeatist inner voice and ordered another drink.

Robbie spotted Mark from across the room. “Mmmm. New meat,” he thought, and with his sights locked on the prize, made his move. Mark looked up to see Robbie striding across the room towards him. As their eyes met, something moved between them, like a jolt of electricity that Mark felt deep in his soul. He panicked. With legs shaking and cheeks flushed, he thought about downing his drink for courage but knew he’d throw it back up—despite being 6 feet tall with a thick build, he was a lightweight with alcohol. Trying to act nonchalant, he leaned against the bar, fidgeting for the right look every other second; it didn’t help. When upon him, Robbie flashed one of his brilliant smiles, placed his hands on either side of Mark as if straddling him against the bar, leaned in close, and whispered in his softest Tennessee drawl, “We are going to have a fairytale life together.” Five years later, that whisper still rang true.

* * *

Being a scion of Pilgrim stock, Mark had a laconic and staid way about him that others misconstrued as unfriendly. His no-nonsense way of getting things done quickly and efficiently only heightened the perception. He wasn’t always the easiest to be around, but he was a very loyal friend.

He had plotted out his life since high school, knowing what career he wanted, which college to attend, and how to succeed within a set timeframe. Methodological was a badge he wore with honor.

And so it was with anything he set his sights on; his determination was all-consuming, and nothing would get in its way. Even Robbie, with his carefree demeanor, something Mark found both endearing and annoying, got a taste of his ire when he tried to entice the bear out of his den for a drink and away from his work. Mark snapped,

“Hey. This is what I do to get where I need to be. Our vows stated, ‘in sickness and health.’ Well, this is my sickness. Deal with it.”

And before hurt could set in, Mark added, with a wink and a smile,

“And I’m counting on you to be my health.”

Easygoing Robbie, the dripping mess on the bed, had been on the opposite end of the spectrum in his approach to life. His friendliness and casual attitude made him the type of person others were genuinely happy to see and comfortable to be around. A southern gentleman of a bygone era, he was quick to hold open a door or offer a stranger a seat. “Thank you” and “You’re welcome” came naturally to him, as did his smile.

“Kindness shouldn’t be difficult,” he’d say.

A job-related accident a couple of years back left him with the need for Oxycontin and the freedom he always yearned for—no more 9-5 grind. The insurance payout and his SSI kept a roof over his head; maybe not the nicest, but Robbie wasn’t picky. He had a talent for masking the decay of the place; a rug here, a bookshelf there, all covering the landlord’s neglect.

“It doesn’t take much to make it fabulous.”

Robbie volunteered at a center offering services for homeless and runaway LGBTQIA teens. He handed out clean clothes and warm meals, but was especially good at offering a sympathetic ear to those who needed someone to talk to. A natural, his supervisors spoke of sending him to school for training to become a counselor.

Long walks holding hands, flowers to get through the ‘Hump Day blues,’ surprise dinners for those little anniversaries—first kiss, first ‘I love yous.’ Through these shows of affection, there was no truer a romantic than Robbie. His love ran deep; his support was boundless.

Two peas in a pod? More like a charmer and a hard ass. But they made it work, complementing each other and making the other whole—one showing how to loosen up, the other giving much-needed structure.

Life together was wonderful until they began studying an obscure tome.

* * *

Although different in many ways, Mark and Robbie shared a passion for eldritch teachings. When they first got together, Mark had already accumulated an array of ancient tomes on various subjects. Fascinated by what he saw, Robbie unveiled his own collection, one on more dangerous and taboo matters. Mark was enthralled, and together, they spent many evenings delving into forgotten lore.

During their studies, Mark stumbled across a reference to an English translation of an alleged 9th-century treatise based on a little-known gnostic creation myth—a book claiming to reveal the existence of a pre-human civilization, its secrets of which could change humanity’s destiny. Mark thought this would make the perfect gift for Robbie’s upcoming birthday. He spent weeks scouring and cross-checking references, discovering hints buried, oddly enough, deep in religious texts. Mark picked through manuscripts of Kabbalistic and early Christian mysticism to no avail. Going back further, he read hidden Akkadian folklore, and the blasphemed Icthtalyas tales from a forgotten civilization in the Yin mountains of Northern China, hoping to find mention of the original legend. Then, a glimmer of hope in a word-of-mouth story from the Puntities from the Horn of Africa. And, following a month of extensive phone calls, not only did he find proof of the book’s existence, but he discovered a bookseller a few towns over had a copy for sale. And a day trip later, the prize was in his possession.

Back at home, freshly blown-out candles scented the air, and excited laughter filled the apartment as Robbie ripped away the wrapping of his present. A musty odor greeted them, but another smell hung in the air, one that Mark couldn’t identify. Robbie, however, had experienced it before while volunteering in hospice care—the scent of dried blood and death. And for reasons unknown, he kept this realization to himself, beginning his withdrawal into secrecy.

The book sat unusually light for its size; its leather covering blotted a dark brown like dried and decaying leaves. It carried no title except for a small sigil on the lower right corner, a pair of crescent moons encircling an eye with a cross hanging upside down beneath it.

Later that night, bundled beneath the covers, with knees up, a cup of hippie blend tea in his hands, and the remaining half of his third helping of birthday cake on the nightstand, Robbie sat, ready for Mark to begin his oratory.

“Could it be that our faith in a higher power is not to save us from damnation but is born from lies created on dark, moonless nights, huddled together for warmth and safety? Fabrications made to conceal a history we wanted—nay, needed—to erase from the collective memory? That of an antiquity shattering the myth we are made in the divine’s image but tells of the mind-numbing horror of what actually crawled out of the primordial ooze in Its image.

And with our connection to divinity severed, we realize what we are; insignificant specks of dust in the endless cosmos.”

The two became aberrant over the text, spending more and more time in Robbie’s apartment, barely venturing out for food or essentials.

“Why go out when there’s DoorDash and Amazon,” Robbie would joke.

But soon, the joking stopped as a heaviness settled over them, weighing them down while sapping their will to reach out and connect with the outside world. Those relationships on the fringes of their lives—fair-weather friends and acquaintances—they cut out. And after a while, closer friends also got the message, as they stopped trying to coax the two to brunches or dinners. Even a simple afternoon coffee was rebutted as the couple sank deeper into the ancient text and their self-imposed exile. For Mark, the solitude was part of doing research, but for Robbie, it was something else entirely. Something unsettling and familiar.

As days became weeks, the air thickened with unease and apprehension. A sense of long-buried dread attached itself to the apartment, growing like black mold in the walls, manifesting into something almost tangible. Time lost meaning as they recited passages in strangled whispers, wary that others might overhear. And these readings had their strongest effect on Robbie.

With each turn of a yellowed page, each diagram meticulously traced, with every covert, self-inflicted cut in the name of a distant memory, an ancient past began to awaken within him—glorious nightmares of an existence long forgotten. Savage flashbacks clawed at Robbie’s reality, whispering to him of what was and hinting at what could be again. Glimpses of repressed hunger and desires, of a time all but erased; an ancient susurrus awakened atavistic yearnings. As he later referred to it, this “calling” became painfully vociferous as it peeled away at his grip on his humanity.

Like that of decomposing brine from a low tide, an effluvium filled the room. Minutes shriveled by as the two sat, steeped in a sepulchral stillness, waiting as the brackishness enveloped them. Robbie then confessed his waking dreams.

Mark was incapable of grasping his husband’s visions, being far too grounded in reality. But the readings taught him anything was possible, and he hoped his impunity could be their bulwark against this unknown. Robbie continued, his words flowing with urgency into the night. And as the story unfolded, a palpable divide inserted itself between them: that between enlightened and imperceptive. By the time Robbie finished, they had made a sorrowful pact which was necessary yet heartbreaking.

The night air hung like a dead man. Shadows loomed and twisted across the room as if to choke the partnered two who sat within them. Robbie sat in a lotus position on the bed, pale and sweaty; his once bright blue eyes were now so bloodshot it was as if the blood vessels had erupted, obscuring the whites. Rings of exhaustion had taken over his sallow face. With eyes crinkled in emotion, caught between a smile and regret, he extended his hand and caressed Mark’s cheek with a warmth and tenderness that belied his frigid touch. The coldness sent a shiver through Mark, yet he did not move away, remembering the comfort and happiness these little gestures brought him.

“You know I have loved you since I laid eyes on you in that dank piss-hole of a bar. Right then and there, I planned on growing old with you. But I sense that is no longer in my future.” His breathing was labored.

“Remember when  ...” and Robbie began reminiscing about the good times they’d shared. And after a few stories, he concluded, “We’ve had a good run,” his voice thinning to a whisper.

Tears welled up in Mark’s eyes at the thought that this might not go on much longer. They sat in anxious silence, then Robbie reminded him of their decision, “If anything goes wrong tonight, I need you to promise that you’ll put me out of my misery. You will end this.” Mark struggled to keep his tears at bay as he nodded in the affirmative—he understood what Robbie was asking him to do. They gazed into each other’s eyes, feeling their grief and love for each other. This one last look seemed almost like a goodbye. Robbie undressed and settled onto the bed, slipping into a fitful sleep.

Even asleep, peace didn’t come. His eyes, sinking into deep black hallows, danced beneath their lids. The planes of his face became taut, sharp, and angular, his breathing erratic. He inhaled large amounts of air only to let it out in short, choppy spasms, echoing through the room like footsteps on a gravel path. Mark felt an oily sweat that reeked of decay seeping from Robbie’s pores as he held his hand. A darkness settled over his face, leaving Mark overwhelmed by an uncanny dread, his stomach knotting with fear. The room shuddered.

Robbie leaped up from the bed, screaming in pain, his muscles tensing and twitching—something was shifting beneath his skin. He crashed onto the floor, thrashing about as whatever was in there moved from one side of his face to the other, pushing outward—exploring, searching … testing.

In between shrieks of agony, Robbie begged,

“Do it, Mark! Please…do it! You promised!”

Sobbing, Mark picked up the golf club he had leaned against the nightstand.

But Robbie was on his feet before Mark could raise it to strike. What had been seeking its way out found its opening; Robbie’s penis was growing. Not in arousal but expanding in tumorous, bubbling growths. The shaft throbbed, and the dorsal vein pulsated with movement as something wriggled its way down the urethra. His foreskin split at the end, and a spidery-like limb poked out of the meatus. A gash formed from the glans along the length of the hardened corpus, cracking open as three more limbs fought their way out. Blood and semen erupted from the enlarging breach, showering Mark in bodily juices.

Robbie buckled over, convulsing; his body ripping open from the inside. Ruptures formed, erupting like fissures in a volcano, spewing vomit, blood, or excrement as he smashed into the walls and furniture. His cries were piercing, deafening, and heart-wrenching.

In the turmoil, Mark was knocked to the floor. Shock and terror kept him there, frozen, seated in his urine,  knees held tight to his chest, rocking in childlike dread. He stayed there, staring unfocused into an abyss of fear, until his attention targeted upon something, releasing him from inaction. Across the room, amidst the havoc, was the grimoire.

Belly down, he snaked across the floor towards the cursed volume, pulling and pushing by elbows and knees, leaving a trail of yellow fear in his wake. Mark had to reverse the incantation. But his heart sank when he dug the book out; the pages were illegible, soaked in a bloodied, plasma-like substance. With his mind racing, Mark hoped that after weeks of study, he could fill in the blanks from memory. Or at least try.

He rose, gripping the book to his chest. The pandemonium of seconds before had vanished, leaving an eerie silence in its wake, save for a guttural rasping behind him. Mark turned to face Robbie and froze, his eyes wide in disbelief, a knot balling up in his chest. For what was crouched in front of him, hunched over, was no longer Robbie.

A large, bluish-green form slowly raised its torso from its huddled position. The sounds of joints popping and cracking filled the room as the mass twisted and stretched. Then, what could only be described as a sigh of relief—a scratchy, gurgling, phlegm-caked cough—vomited from a black hole filled with rotted fangs and a slavering tongue from the middle of its blotchy, scaled head. There was no other feature to suggest a face. It discharged another, deeper exhalation, releasing an insufferable fetor of dead wetness into the room. And at that, the creature reared itself to its full seven-foot height. Its impossibly wide torso had cephalopod-like tentacles, slick with slime, growing out of its bulk. Two of them had a row of string-like appendages hanging off the bottoms that twitched in oddly graceful movements as if to feel the air, sensing their surroundings without needing touch. Each end held a malefic talon, obviously used for piercing. But it was the upper four limbs that caused Mark’s heart to skip a beat; double-pupiled eyes peered out from each of their tips. An array of eight sets swayed back and forth as they scanned the room. Mark tried to stifle a gasp; he was unsuccessful.

Mark stood in a bubble of fear as each doubled orb twisted toward his direction and fixated on him, their black irises a mirror to Mark’s shock and horror—a myriad of open mouths, their screams denied voices. Then, like a flick of a switch, Mark’s shattered senses reconnected with his vocal cords, and his terror filled the air.

A pulsing blue light saturated the space, giving Mark’s skin a deathly pallor. The walls and ceiling, now a confluence of bizarre angles colliding together, seemed to breathe. And with each inhalation, they cracked and splintered until they tore apart, leaving them in a vacuum of emptiness; no buildings, no streets, even the stars melted away into a desolate black void. Mark and the Leviathan were all that existed on this incorporeal plane.

As his mind teetered on the brink of collapse, Mark detected a faint whisper tickling his brainstem—a murmur, slowly climbing higher and higher in range until it exploded into a deafening roar, filling the vacuous nothing with weight.

Dropping to his knees, Mark threw his hands to his ears, trying to lessen the onslaught of sound. It failed. Blood leaked between his fingers. His screams harmonized with the surrounding din until his throat cracked, and he could only produce a long, fractured wheeze. Mark realized the acoustic barrage emitted from the monstrosity, which moved in his direction. The reptilian part of Mark’s brain kicked into overdrive—the primitive sense of survival cleared away his confusion. He knew what he must do.

Mark again picked up the 9-iron and rose to his feet. With his knuckles turning white from his grip, he took a deep breath and, between clenched teeth, whispered an invocation, and swung with all his strength at the obscenity’s head. With a sickening crunch, metal connected with flesh. The behemoth staggered, dazed, as a gelatinous juice seeped from a small gaping hole. Its arms dropped, sweeping close to the ground, its many eyes glazed over, unfocused—except for the top two. They remained tall, alert, and angry. Their quadrupled pupils, dilated in hatred and intent, narrowed to slits as they locked onto their attacker. Mark stood motionless as they held him in their glower, siphoning his willpower.

With its hateful gaze locked on its attacker, the thing juddered itself to full awareness and moved towards him, its taloned feeler swiping the air. Electricity shot through Mark’s arm as a hooked nail tore into him—his blood bubbled as meat oozed from the gash. The pain snapped him out of his haze.

Mark swung again. Hot liquid and gore splashed across his face and into his mouth, stinging his eyes and burning his throat. And then he heard it; Robbie’s voice, frantic, pleading,

“No, Mark. Stop. Why are you doing this? Please, stop. I love you. Don’t do this. Stop!”  But his begging did not register through Mark’s ears; the words echoed in his head.

Robbie’s appeal drilled deep into his heart; the desire for his love’s return overrode his survival instincts. Tears rolled down his cheeks as his will began to break. Mark lowered the weapon and was about to drop it when he detected an upward curl in the corner of the abomination’s mouth—an almost imperceptible smile. Anger snapped him out of his grief.

Blood rampaged through his mind as adrenaline screamed through his veins. Mark raised the club and swung, smashing it against the creature’s head. He swung again—bone fracturing and splitting, and again—brain matter turning to slush. With each strike, blood and muck splattered, coating him. Mark’s stomach lurched, but his fury abrogated his revulsion. With his arms aching and his heart breaking, he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

The creature lay across the bed, writhing in its death throes. With sweat-soaked clothing clinging to his skin, Mark wiped his guck matted hair out of his eyes and stared at the monster until its tentacles were motionless. Though the adrenaline rush had abated, his heart still punched at his chest as he fought to catch his breath. Blood and sweat pearled across his face. Then, from the corner of his eye, motion—an appendage quivered. In between his shrieks, Mark smashed the club down, again and again, until exhaustion forced him to release the club. The monster’s skull was a puddle of muck. A steaming orange ichor swelled out of its thick neck, releasing a putrescence of dead eons. But Mark didn’t notice. All he knew was Robbie was gone. He collapsed to his knees, his grief ripping him in half as he cried like a child, choking on his sorrow.

* * *

An hour passes before Mark can pull himself off the bathroom floor, and while the morning bright creeps into the room through the air shaft window, it does nothing to soften the harshness of the flickering neon light above the sink—its fluorescent hum, a musical backdrop to the sounds of the neighbors’ morning bathroom rituals. Gibbering whispers toy with his attention from the shadowed corners.

He makes his way to the sink, sliding across the vomit-coated tiles, his fingers fumbling in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. Amazingly, the pack of Newport is still there. He flicks open his Zippo, but the lighter’s wheel doesn’t catch—his gore-covered fingers clog up its mechanism. Eventually, a spark takes, and with both hands, Mark brings the quivering flame to the tobacco tip, draws in deep, and holds it; the rush of mentholated nicotine saturating his lungs is a high like no other. Slowly he exhales, savoring the coolness as the smoke trickles past his lips. In the back of his memory, he can hear Robbie begging him to stop that disgusting habit.

Well, so much for that healthy lifestyle.

A few more drags, and he drops the cigarette onto the floor. It sizzles as Mark watches the spark drown in a pool of his regurgitated dinner. He stands there, lost in his devastation. Then, panic presses in on him as reality settles into pockets of his consciousness. I need to think clearly and get my bearings.

Mark decides to head back to his apartment to figure out a plan. But before he can act on it, his nose crinkles as an acrid scent reaches through his alarm. A glimpse of his carnage-covered reflection in the mirror tells him no amount of ‘touching up’ will make him presentable. A shower is needed.

Fifty minutes later, cleaned up and wearing a fresh set of clothes, he stands despondent on the subway platform. His eyes focused on nowhere.

It’s the tail-end of the morning rush, and commuters pack the platform. The sweltering humidity highlights a malodorous dew that coats the air. Faces are buried in newspapers and phones, sucking down their morning fix from cups and containers to face the daily grind. Someone cracks open a beer.

The train pulls up, and the rush for the doors sweeps Mark into the car. The air conditioner struggles, wheezing and spitting freon that mixes with the pungency of stale sweat and bad breath. Mark squeezes himself into a seat between two moist, unmoving bodies, oblivious to his struggle. Settling in, he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. A tremor courses through his body. Blood pounds in his skull as pressure builds below his left temple. A ripple crosses under his cheek. His body jolts as the bridge of his nose splits open—something punches its way out. The woman next to him screams.

End.

Jeff writes queer-themed short stories focusing on wyrd, cosmic horror, and splatterpunk. He has the propensity to turn any conversation into one about humanity’s insignificance in the universe and gore. When not writing stories of dread and goop, Jeff lives a laid-back life as a tonsorial artist in San Francisco with his husband, Gustavo, and their dogs, Rico and Bolsa. He’s an Affiliate Writer with the HWA and can be found on Twitter, Bluesky, and TikTok as @JeffWritesWyrd and on Facebook @JeffCilione.

Black Ichor

By Hillary Dodge

We shouldn’t have fucked with the black ichor all over us, stringy globs slimed to the surface of our skin, getting in our mouths as we kissed, sliding between our limbs as we intwined. Like a toddler’s first foray with glue, we should have washed it off right away. Scoured all the places where it coated before sitting on the nice sofa.

But fucking—that’s what you do when you survive, when you come crawling, half-dragging your sorry, exhausted ass out of the quaking gateway, trembling in the moments before its eventual collapse. Because we had stopped it, hadn’t we? We killed the beast, its fluids spattered across our faces in a grim chiaroscuro of victory.

And in so doing, we reclaimed our lives, our estranged love. We had once been in love, hadn’t we? It seemed so long ago, our normal lives, before the gate had opened.

* * *

Things were strained between us, had been for a while. You wanted something I didn’t. We fought all the time. But when the apocalypse came—a sudden cessation. While everything got worse outside, we drew closer together. It was a curious thing.

Strange noises woke us up at night and you pulled me close. Black mold spotted the neighbors’ faces, and we hid, arms around each other, when they knocked on our door crying for help, snot bubbling and throats raw.

Things started to go missing. Birdsong first, then the cat. Our favorite songs were suddenly missing the chorus. We rewound the tapes again and again looking for them, but the words were gone forever. We couldn’t even remember them.

Not long after, all the meat began to rot—even the ground beef stored in the freezer—fuzzy gray fronds bursting through the plastic. Cans fizzed and popped, splitting open like overripe carcasses. Bread petrified overnight into tasteless stones. We squeezed packets of expired ketchup and mustard into our mouths, desperate for something to fill our howling stomachs as the days passed.

* * *

Before we lost power, our parents began to call us on repeat, saying the same things over and over, broken records and skipped CDs. Words that made no connection to the ones that followed, sentences jostling against each other in unrelated ways.

My parents were closer, so we headed there first. But it was no use. The car stopped at the county line, and horribly, we found we could not move a foot past the car, our limbs refusing to obey. There were others gathered there at the border, but not one person could step beyond. Cars piled up at the invisible barrier and people beat fists against the pavement. But it did no good. No one could leave.

* * *

The mayor called a town hall meeting, and everyone showed up, the high school gym packed with desperate citizens, stinking of fear. We stood at the back, hands clutching one another in uncertainty.

“How do you expect us to survive with no food?” shouted Ed Barnes, the now-fat quarterback from 84’.

“My children’s teeth fell out. All of them,” yelled Nancy Gorse, the housewife with the cheating husband.

“I understand your fear—our fear,” said the mayor, hands raised. “But we must remember to remain calm.”

“Queue typical mayoral response,” Jed McDermot stood up, brown trench flapping open to reveal his latest conspiracy theory t-shirt as he punctuated his words with overblown gestures. “I seen where it started—all these changes.”

The crowd rattled around him like dice about to spill from a cup.

“It’s in the old mall, the broke-down one out by the highway.” McDermot jabbed a finger in the direction of the highway. “That’s ground zero. That’s where we gotta go to stop it.”

The dice spilled and the crowd surged out the doors, trailing us along in its wake.

* * *

The detour was your idea. At first, I argued. They would need us. They would need all the help they could get. But, no, you said. You needed to get something first. Something that might help.

As we approached the house, we already knew something was different. I mean, it was obvious, wasn’t it? What was once on the left was now on the right. The kitchen window, which looked out over the gardenias before we left now overlooked the driveway. And the garage door opened onto the gardenias.

It was the same inside. Everything flipped in some manner. Doors led into unexpected rooms. The stairs had lost their treads and become a steep slope of wood. Your heavy heirloom chest bobbed and bounced off the floor, now inexplicably weightless. The wine glasses were sculptures of sand that crumbled with the barest touch. Even the colors of the carpet, walls, and upholstery had become the opposite value on the color wheel. In the garage, I found my VW Beetle from high school, shrunken to the size of a matchbox bar. This I pocketed on a whim, spinning its small tires with my fingertips.

It’s useless, you declared, of the thing you had come for. Everything was different now and it wouldn’t work. This was always your problem, I pointed out, you never commit. I know it’s stupid, you admitted, that I thought a good luck charm would help. Wear the damn blue hat, I said. But it used to be orange, you said with a sigh.

* * *

We arrived at the mall long after the rest of the town. The front entrance was hacked open, boards pulled to the ground and gate bent upwards. We crunched across the broken glass and into the empty mall. Signs from another era graced empty shopfronts: Gimbels, Ritz Camera, Piercing Pagoda, Penneys, Brown Derby.

Signs of their passage showed us the way. A dropped handbag. A lost shoe. Scuffs in the dust. And Jed McDermot’s left hand…about fourteen feet away from the rest of his body, his stupid flaming sword tattoo bisected at the wrist. An elegant swirl of blood pinstriped across the tiles.

Where did they go, you asked.

We listened, almost expecting to hear the muted sound of mall music. But instead, we heard a sliding, grinding noise somewhere down the passage to our right. All was darkness except for the subdued gray light that fought its way through the dirt-encrusted skylights…and a curious flickering glow at the far end of the mall.

We weren’t very prepared. Neither of us had thought to bring a flashlight, not that it would have worked reliably anyway. But, as we crept through the mall towards the light and sound, we found the rest of the town. Well, bits and pieces of them, anyway. Mostly unrecognizable, except for the left half of Nancy Gorse’s face, looking strange without the structure of the skull beneath to support her sharp cheekbones and pointy nose.

We paused at the entrance to the arcade, realizing this was the epicenter. Somehow all the consoles had been left behind when the mall closed, and every one of them was turned on. Lights flashed and strobed. Sounds jangled and chirped and trilled. Mechanical clinks and whirrs and pings—both familiar and abrasive—met our ears. It was a sensory storm in the quiet and stillness of the abandoned mall.

Jeez, you said, wiping the sweat from beneath your blue hat. I would kill to have one of those in the house.

We may have to kill if we ever want to get back to the house, I said, veins turning to ice, forgetting for a moment that our house was no longer our house.

You saw what I meant as it slid-rolled into sight. Giant segments coiled around the arcade cabinets, dozens of legs scrapping and banging against the artwork.

It’s a centipede, you said, stupefied. The centipede.

* * *

A gurgled cough drew our attention to a leg sticking out from behind a large dead potted plant. Behind the pot, slumped most of the mayor. His hands were busy with a glistening reddish rope, trying to stuff it under his jacket. I knelt at his side.

“Mayor—”

“It’s no use,” he was mumbling to himself. “We are doomed. Have been for some time.” Tears streaked his face. “I should have destroyed those satanic games when the mall closed…teens caught sneaking in…drinking, playing…opening portals to hell.”

He paused and tilted his head, and by the time the sound registered, the centipede had skittered through the arcade doors, slid around the potted plant, and wrapped itself around your leg, pulling you off your feet. You screamed and bile boiled at the back of my throat because I had never heard you make that sound.

I threw myself after you, but it was dragging you faster than I could reach, tugging you through the doors and into the arcade. I stumbled through the broken glass and scattered tokens, chasing your shoe—the only thing I could keep sight of—as the giant bug whisked you around the cabinets and under the pinball machines.

Your screaming became distant, and as I rounded a set of claw machines, I glimpsed the segmented tail of the centipede retreating into the glowing screen of its cabinet. The tips of its tail legs crossed the threshold with a sickening buzz that caused the lights to flicker and pop.

I did not hesitate. I jumped after you, sliding through the screen, feeling woozy and vibrating to my bones as I passed through the humming portal.

* * *

I landed on my butt, ribs aching from colliding with the joystick. On the other side, the landscape distorted and bent the light into varying shades of darkness. It was hard to keep you in sight as the beast writhed and zig-zagged around the glowing fungus.

The air crackled as bolts of light shot across the blackness. The centipede turned and turned again, doubling back, spinning around, knocking into the fluorescent mushrooms that appeared and disappeared at random. As it moved, it passed through patches of space and time that warped and refracted, causing the centipede to expand and shrink, become pixelated, appear multihued, or even translucent at times.

Your eyes caught mine and I felt a tug deep inside. We needed each other. We could not be apart. This much distance was too much distance. We had not been so far from one another’s touch in many weeks. I felt deeply ill, and I know you did too.

I cast about for something to throw or use as a spear as the centipede drew closer in its manic path. It came around a mushroom and curiously your blue hat turned orange once more. How it had stayed on your head was another mystery I doubt we would ever solve, but in a sudden moment’s inspiration, I rushed forward and shouted at the thing. It reared up, loosening you from its coiled grip, antennae questing before it as its jaws opened and closed.

I tossed the only thing I had in hand—my VW Beetle from high school—shrunken to the size of a toy, torn out of my pocket in a desperate attempt to distract the beast so I could pull you away. And as the miniature car sailed through the air, it began to expand. The centipede pushed forward and caught the car in its mouth which exploded apart as the Beetle returned to its former size, sending one half of its head over its back and the other in front of its waving arms, splattering us with its black ichor.

I dragged you from beneath its calcified segments, wincing at the pungent smell of its seeping glands. We were covered head to toe in sticky black ooze, warm at first but quickly cooling.

* * *

We broke apart the game cabinet after crawling out, smashed the screen and buttons to pieces with our fists. Our blood mixed with the black ichor and still we pounded it until the buzzing stopped. And then we broke all the other machines, worried that however the portal came to being—through whatever demented combo of button and joystick movements—we could not allow it to be remade.

We picked out pieces of glass from between our knuckles and then we kissed, lips and mouths open and tongues hungry to push inside. We didn’t think. We didn’t stop to clean up or wipe down. We fucked. Fucked like it was the last and only thing left to do in all the universe.

And as our limbs slid against one another, hands probing and touching, we began to feel the ichor catching and pulling at our skin. It was a minor sensation that was easily ignored at first, with so many other sensations taking precedence. But a heat began to build, and our skin began to stick. We sucked at our tongues and when we tried to pull away to put our mouths to other places, we found we could not. Our lips had melted together, buccal mucosa stitched together with strands of black ichor.

Our hands quested over our bodies, and we found ourselves melded together in other spots, tender and secreting. The pleasure built and burned, and we could not pull apart. We had become trapped in one another.

* * *

We shouldn’t have fucked with the black ichor all over us. We were so close to returning to our normal lives. We had defeated the beast, broken the gateway, restored the rules of physics. All that was left was to pick ourselves up and get the hell out of the mall. Take a scalding hot shower, cross the country line, and order a burger and fries at Yvette’s Diner. It would have been so easy.

We shouldn’t have fucked with the black ichor all over us. We know that now.

End.

Hillary Dodge is a writer, motherthing, horror-enthusiast, and goat-cheese apostle. She has explored the far reaches of the South American continent, wandering abandoned estancias and climbing the ribs of shipwrecks. Her short fiction has been published in online and print magazines, podcasts, and print anthologies. Visit her online at hillarydodge.com.

The Clock

By W.F. Harvey

Originally published in The Beast with Five Fingers 1928

I liked your description of the people at the pension. I can just picture that rather sinister Miss Cornelius, with her toupee and clinking bangles. I don’t wonder you felt frightened that night when you found her sleepwalking in the corridor. But after all, why shouldn’t she sleepwalk? As to the movements of the furniture in the lounge on the Sunday, you are, I suppose, in an earthquake zone, though an earthquake seems too big an explanation for the ringing of that little handbell on the mantelpiece. It’s rather as if our parlour maid — another new one! — were to call a stray elephant to account for the teapot we found broken yesterday. You have at least, in Italy, escaped the eternal problem of maids.

Yes, my dear, I most certainly believe you. I have never had experiences quite like yours, but your mention of Miss Cornelius has reminded me of something rather similar that happened nearly twenty years ago, soon after I left school. I was staying with my aunt in Hampstead. You remember her, I expect; or, if not her, the poodle, Monsieur, that she used to make perform such pathetic tricks. There was another guest, whom I had never met before, a Mrs Caleb. She lived in Lewes and had been staying with my aunt for about a fortnight, recuperating after a series of domestic upheavals, which had culminated in her two servants leaving her at an hour’s notice – without any reason, according to Mrs Caleb, but I wondered. I had never seen the maids; I had seen Mrs Caleb and, frankly, I disliked her. She left the same sort of impression on me as I gather your Miss Cornelius leaves on you — something queer and secretive; underground, if you can use the expression, rather than underhand. And I could feel in my body that she did not like me.

It was summer. Joan Denton — you remember her; her husband was killed in Gallipoli — had suggested that I should go down to spend the day with her. Her people had rented a little cottage some three miles out of Lewes. We arranged a day. It was gloriously fine for a wonder, and I had planned to leave that stuffy old Hampstead house before the old ladies were astir. But Mrs Caleb waylaid me in the hall, just as I was going out.

“I wonder,” she said, “I wonder if you could do me a small favour. If you do have any time to spare in Lewes — only if you do — would you be so kind as to call at my house? I left a little travelling-clock there in the hurry of parting. If it’s not in the drawing-room, it will be in my bedroom or in one of the maids’ bedrooms. I know I lent it to the cook, who was a poor riser, but I can’t remember if she returned it. Would it be too much to ask? The house has been locked up for twelve days, but everything is in order. I have the keys here. The large one is for the garden gate, the small one for the front door.”

I could only accept, and she proceeded to tell me how I could find Ash Grove House.

“You will feel quite like a burglar,” she said. “But mind, it’s only if you have time to spare.”

As a matter of fact I found myself glad of any excuse to kill time. Poor old Joan had been taken suddenly ill in the night — they feared appendicitis — and though her people were very kind and asked me to stay to lunch, I could see that I should only be in the way, and made Mrs Caleb’s commission an excuse for an early departure.

I found Ash Grove without difficulty. It was a medium-sized red¬brick house, standing by itself in a high walled garden that bounded a narrow lane. A flagged path led from the gate to the front door, in front of which grew, not an ash, but a monkey-puzzle, that must have made the rooms unnecessarily gloomy. The side door, as I expected, was locked. The dining-room and drawing-room lay on either side of the hall and, as the windows of both were shuttered, I left the hall door open, and in the dim light looked round hurriedly for the clock, which, from what Mrs Caleb had said, I hardly expected to find in either of the downstairs rooms. It was neither on table nor mantelpiece. The rest of the furniture was carefully covered over with white dust-sheets. Then I went upstairs. But, before doing so, I closed the front door. I did in fact feel rather like a burglar, and I thought that if anyone did happen to see the front door open, I might have difficulty in explaining things.

Happily the upstairs windows were not shuttered. I made a hurried search of the principal bedrooms. They had been left in apple-pie order; nothing was out of place; but there was no sign of Mrs Caleb’s clock. The impression that the house gave me — you know the sense of personality that a house conveys — was neither pleasing nor displeasing, but it was stuffy, stuffy from the absence of fresh air, with an additional stuffiness added, that seemed to come out from the hangings and quilts and antimacassars. The corridor, onto which the bedrooms I had examined opened, communicated with a smaller wing, an older part of the house, I imagined, which contained a box-room and the maids’ sleeping-quarters. The last door that I unlocked (I should say that the doors of all the rooms were locked, and relocked by me after I had glanced inside them) contained the object of my search. Mrs Caleb’s travelling-clock was on the mantelpiece, ticking away merrily.

That was how I thought of it at first. And then for the first time I realised that there was something wrong. The clock had no business to be ticking. The house had been shut up for twelve days. No one had come in to air it or to light fires. I remember how Mrs Caleb had told my aunt that if she left the keys with a neighbour, she was never sure who might get hold of them. And yet the clock was going.

I wondered if some vibration had set the mechanism in motion, and pulled out my watch to see the time. It was five minutes to one. The clock on the mantelpiece said four minutes to the hour. Then, without quite knowing why, I shut the door on to the landing, locked myself in, and again looked round the room. Nothing was out of place. The only thing that might have called for remark was that there appeared to be a slight indentation on the pillow and the bed; but the mattress was a feather mattress, and you know how difficult it is to make them perfectly smooth. You won’t need to be told that I gave a hurried glance under the bed — do you remember your supposed burglar in Number Six at St Ursula’s? — and then, and much more reluctantly, opened the doors of two horribly capacious cupboards, both happily empty, except for a framed text with its face to the wall.

By this time I really was frightened. The clock went ticking on. I had a horrible feeling that an alarm might go off at any moment, and the thought of being in that empty house was almost too much for me. However, I made an attempt to pull myself together. It might after all be a fourteen-day clock. If it were, then it would be almost run down. I could roughly find out how long the clock had been going by winding it up. I hesitated to put the matter to the test, but the uncertainty was too much for me. I took it out of its case and began to wind. I had scarcely turned the winding-screw twice when it stopped. The clock clearly was not running down; the hands had been set in motion probably only an hour or two before.

I felt cold and faint and, going to the window, threw up the sash, letting in the sweet, live air of the garden. I knew now that the house was queer, horribly queer. Could someone be living in the house? Was someone else in the house now? I thought that I had been in all the rooms, but had I? I had only just opened the bathroom door, and I had certainly not opened any cupboards, except those in the room in which I was.

Then, as I stood by the open window, wondering what I should do next and feeling that I just couldn’t go down that corridor into the darkened hall to fumble at the latch of the front door with I don’t know what behind me, I heard a noise. It was very faint at first, and seemed to be coming from the stairs. It was a curious noise—not the noise of anyone climbing up the stairs, but — you will laugh if this letter reaches you by a morning post — of something hopping up the stairs, like a very big bird would hop. I heard it on the landing; it stopped. Then there was a curious scratching noise against one of the bedroom doors, the sort of noise you can make with the nail of your little finger scratching polished wood. Whatever it was, was coming slowly down the corridor, scratching at the doors as it went. I could stand it no longer. Nightmare pictures of locked doors opening filled my brain. I took up the clock, wrapped it in my Macintosh, and dropped it out of the window on to a flower-bed. Then I managed to crawl out of the window and, getting a grip of the sill, ‘successfully negotiated’, as the journalists would say, ‘a twelve-foot drop.’ So much for our much abused Gym at St Ursula’s. Picking up the Macintosh, I ran round to the front door and locked it. Then I felt I could breathe, but not until I was on the far side of the gate in the garden wall did I feel safe.

Then I remembered that the bedroom window was open. What was I to do? Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me into that house again unaccompanied. I made up my mind to go to the police station and tell them everything. I should be laughed at, of course, and they might easily refuse to believe my story of Mrs Caleb’s commission. I had actually begun to walk down the lane in the direction of the town when I chanced to look back qt the house. The window that I had left open was shut.

No, my dear, I didn’t see any face or anything dreadful like that... and, of course, it may have shut by itself. It was an ordinary sash-window, and you know they are often difficult to keep open.

And the rest? Why, there’s really nothing more to tell. I didn’t even see Mrs Caleb again. She had had some sort of fainting fit just before lunchtime, my aunt informed me on my return, and had had to go to bed. Next morning I travelled down to Cornwall to join mother and the children. I thought I had forgotten all about it, but when three years later Uncle Charles suggested giving me a travelling-clock for a twenty-first birthday present, I was foolish enough to prefer the alternative that he offered, a collected edition of the works of Thomas Carlyle.

End.

William Fryer Harvey (1885 - 1937) was an English short story writer who left his mark in the horror and mystery genres. He hailed from a wealthy Quaker family, studied medicine at Oxford and was a doctor by training. During World War I he served in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, later became a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He suffered lung damage during a rescue mission and was plagued with poor health the rest of his life. He devoted himself to writing macabre tales of gothic fiction.

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
/SUBSCRIBE and offer your tribute to the old ones at a reduced rate!

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

Charles Tyra

Editor

Table of Contents

- You Are Cordially Invited to the Last Dinner Party

- We Must Be Rabbits
- Saywakaw
- Why Can’t We Live With Ghosts
- Interview with Nicole Cushing
- Pink Smoke
- A Book of String. A Book of Thread
- Fairytale Lost
- Black Ichor
- The Clock