Cosmic Horror Monthly: Issue #45
Author: CHM LLC
Date: 0101-01-01 00:00:00+00:00

Cosmic Horror Monthly

Issue #45

Edited by Charles Tyra

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.

Cosmic Horror Monthly

Cover Art - Jakub Jagoda

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, Mikołaj Grygorcewicz

www.cosmichorrormonthly.com

Created with Vellum

Meet the CHM staff

Charles Tyra: Editor

Oenophile, logophile, aspiring writer. Completely captivated by Cosmic Horror and Weird Fiction from an early age after first reading the story: Dagon by HPL. Resides in the flatland that is Oklahoma City.

Carson Winter: Co-Editor | Social Media

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

Jolie Toomajan: Co-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

Cover art: Jakub Jagoda. I’m from a small sea town in Poland. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been doing art and expressing myself on a canvas. I love exploring all things dark, twisted and surreal in my illustrations. My Lovecraft inspired paintings have been some of my most popular work. I’m extremely grateful to have one of my illustrations featured on the cover of this magazine.

M. A. Del Rosario is an artist and a published author of short stories and graphic novels published in the Philippines and the US. He is an advocate of reading and tells people to go to libraries and bookshops. He lives with his family in a quiet subdivision
where fireflies still exist and where cats question the existence of men.

Contents

Meet the CHM staff

Introduction

Charles Tyra

Black-Holed

Paul Wilson

My Sister’s Nest

Tim Waggoner

Memorabilia

Timaeus Bloom

The Question

Stetson Ray

SWALLOW

Tania Chen

The Dearly Departing Radio Broadcast

Christine LaChance

Room One

John K. Peck

Demons of the Sea

William Hope Hodgson

Introduction

Charles Tyra

Greetings Dear Reader,

Welcome to the March edition of Cosmic Horror Monthly. We tiptoe toward spring and toward the beckoning void unsure of what is to come. But you can always count on a tome full of terrifying tales to keep you up at night, whether you are holding a copy in your hands or it comes to you by the soothing blue light of a device. We would love to hear what you think of CHM. If you’d care to share your thoughts, please send them posthaste to publications@cosmichorrormonthly.com. And now, down to business.

We’ll start with a pure cosmic horror story when a man wakes up disoriented in a strange land in “Black Holed.” Then the relationship between siblings becomes weird in “My Sister’s Nest” by three-time Bram Stoker award winner Tim Waggoner. Take a tour through a museum of history and horror in “Memorabilia,” followed by a weird and cosmic answer to that query every writer hates in a story aptly named: “The Question.”

After a brief intermission via terrifying flash fiction piece “Swallow,” a noir private eye discovers a strange radio program late at night in “The Dearly Departing Radio Broadcast.” Then, an escape into virtual reality goes terribly wrong in “Room One” before we travel deep into the crypt for a story by one of my favorite writers, “Demons of the Sea” by William Hope Hodgson originally published in 1923.

Enjoy.

Black-Holed

Paul Wilson

Walter felt a sudden lurch. He gripped the steering wheel and instinctively applied the brakes. The Monkees continued singing “No Time” but the radio’s sound warped to a tinny, thin buzzing. Vision narrowed to a bright pinpoint, like a floor-model television suddenly snapped off. Walter opened his mouth to protest, but no sound emerged. His voice was gone, the Monkees were gone, the world was gone.

My God, an accident?

Then, a sizzling, both in sound and feeling and his vision returned; the television powered on. Walter was no longer sitting in his car. He was standing. His legs wobbled. He took a few shuffling steps to steady himself. He moaned, produced a peculiar whistle, and found his throat dry, like when he slept with a fan on and his mouth open.

Where’s my Ford?

He was surrounded by a weird red landscape instead of the rainshined pavement he had been following just a moment before. He had been creeping along, telling himself there was no need to speed. If he had an accident, he would never get to his granddaughter's graduation, and she was counting on him.

Where am I?

The teenager behind him hadn’t appreciated his caution. The boy had been honking his horn and flashing his brights, yelling out the window for him to go—for Christ's sake, move! Walter had ignored the profanity and gestures. They had been traveling a skinny single lane road, the rain making percussion on his roof, and then—

Darkness. Had he lost control of his car despite his precautions?

Am I dead?

Walter turned, trying to look everywhere at once. The alien crimson stretched in all directions. Rocks and shadow varied the desert plane. Corrugated dunes crested in the distance, maybe the fins of some great buried beast. Deep cracks traced the ground, making map squiggles. The horizon met a sky so deeply blue it was practically purple.

"Hello," someone said behind him.

Walter jumped, squeaked, and nearly fell. The young woman reached out and steadied him. He grabbed her arm in a panic.

“It’s okay. Well—it’s not okay, but you’re safe.” The young woman smiled. It was thin, but it was an attempt. She wore a cloth harness. A baby wiggled in the folds. Walter righted himself. His heart jackhammered his ribs.

"I'm sure you want to know what's going on.”

Walter nodded, then forced words past the sandpaper in his throat. “Where am I? Am I dead?"

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound, a first-date kind of sound. She played with her wedding band. Her baby cooed from its confinement. She patted its bottom. Walter noticed her hand looked thick and misshapen, as if she were wearing a glove filled with old meat.

"That's what I thought when he got me. No, you’re not dead, but it may feel like it for the first few months."

"Months? What is this months talk? Where am I? I have to get to my granddaughter's graduation."

Her smile disappeared. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them, and Walter saw her hand was a claw. The fingers had fused together and ended in a single, jagged nail.

"I’m sorry. You'll never get there.”

“Never get there? What do you mean?”

“Come. Sit with me on those rocks. We don’t have much in the way of furniture here, but—”

“I want to go home!”

“We all do,” a new voice said. A man rushed to join them from the indicated rocks. He floated in a baggy suit that looked two sizes too big. He wore glasses. Walter thought an arm was missing from the black frames until he saw that the man’s scalp had grown grey mottled skin over the plastic piece.

“Will this one flip out, Melinda?”

“He’s scared,” she said. “Don’t you remember how it was waking up here?”

“I just want to know what’s happening,” Walter said. He let Melinda guide him to the rocks. There were several good-sized ones perfect for sitting. They reminded Walter of sitting by campfires at Folly Beach.

The new man hitched up his pants before sitting. The end of his belt flapped. Melinda rearranged the baby across her chest, cooed to it, then addressed Walter.

“We’ve all gone through what you’re feeling. I was on my way to pick up my husband from work. Two years ago. I was in the mall, talking to a friend I hadn't seen since college, telling her to call me later because I had to pick up Dale. I turned and smacked into this kid who was running down the aisle. He called me a stupid bitch, told me I should look where I was going. He said all of this before we got ourselves untangled. You know how it is when you're trying to move out of someone's way. You go to the right, so of course they do, too. You go left, they follow. The boy and I were like that. Then . . . There was darkness. I couldn't hear or see, and then I was here."

“What do you mean?”

"He sent me away."

"But where are we?" Walter hated the shaking in his voice. It was much more prevalent these days. It made him feel like the old man he didn’t want to admit he had become. That’s why he had insisted on driving himself to the graduation.

"We don't know exactly," the man said. He put on his own smile-without-humor. “The Lord appeared to Isaac and said ‘Do not go down to Egypt, live in the land where I tell you to live.’” His smile evaporated. “We should have stayed out of Egypt.”

Walter scowled in confusion. Melinda introduced the prophet as Curt. Walter gave his name in return, offering a numb handshake. The pleasantries in this bizarre landscape doubled his sense of out-of-joint-ness. Curt continued.

"We all ended up here after running into a snotnosed kid who we impeded. At least he saw it that way. He sent me here after I slowed to make a turn on the highway while he was trying to get by me. I heard him scream out the window of his Mustang for me to 'fucking move'—sorry Melinda."

Melinda waved away the apology.

"This kid has the ability to banish people, to move folks who get in his way. I think he . . . well, it sounds strange. Even ridiculous.”

“Try me,” Walter said.

“Okay. Okay.” Curt rubbed his hands together. He was excited to sermonize. “I was a science fiction writer before he got me. But this isn’t so much sci-fi as fantasy. That is, I mean to say, there is no science that I can understand. But I suppose that doesn’t exclude the theory that his ability could be technology based. In fact, I have a theory—”

“Rabbit trails, Curt.”

“Ahh yes, of course. Sorry Melinda. That’s a fault of mine, my new friend. My mind races, multiplies, then divides. Anyway, I believe this boy gets mad and opens a sort of black hole that inhales us, then deposits us here. We call this place Mars because of the red landscape.”

“For all we know, it may actually be Mars," Melinda said.

“No, no” Curt said. “Not possible. The atmosphere on Mars is about 100 times thinner than Earth. We couldn’t breathe if we were on Mars. Yet, as you can see, we all breathe quite easily. There are plentiful berries and game. We have found many small streams. No, I think we’re somewhere else, perhaps somewhere the boy created.” Curt stared into the sky. “I think it’s more likely we’re in a holding area. A waiting room. Something like a cosmic closet.” He looked back to Walter. “As I said, this is far more fantasy than science fiction.”

"For how long?" Walter asked.

"I've been here for eight months. One bloke has been here for five years. I would say our captor means for us to be here forever. In fact, it’s my theory that he has forgotten about us all together. I base that on his callousness in our initial meetings. He was so selfish, so rude to each of us, you see.” Curt wrinkled his lips in disgust. “There has certainly been no communication since our deposit. Any cell phones that arrive become smooth, blank bricks."

Walter began to cry. He couldn’t help it. "How can he do this? Doesn't anyone come looking for us?"

"We don't know how he does it,” Melinda said. “Some of the people here think he's a demon, but I agree with Curt, I think he's just a brat who has a special talent, like ESP or something."

"I'm sure our friends and family do look for us," Curt said. “I'm sure all of us here adorn missing person flyers. Some are just yellowed and curled by now."

Walter put his head down and sobbed. "I'm trapped here. Because I wasn't moving fast enough for some punk kid." He sniffed. “My God, I should have just moved out of his way.”

“No!” Melinda said. “Why should you have conceded? Why does this kid get what he wants? Everyone has to wait sometime. Everyone deals with inconveniences. No matter what he can do, this little bastard isn’t special!”

Walter wiped his nose. "What the hell do I do now?"

"We think we know a way out," Curt said.

Walter looked up. "You do? Then why are you still here?"

"Whatever this place is, however this punk transports us here, he must open a door to push people through. The door must exist whether you call our situation science fiction, fantasy, or horror. To travel anywhere there must be an entrance.”

“Yes, I see,” Walter said.

“I believe that if we can get to one of those doors before he finishes pushing a new person through, we can jump back to our world."

Melinda continued.

"But it only takes a few seconds for him to push someone through. When that little shit blackholes someone, it's quick."

"What would one of you do if you did get through?" Walter asked. "What about everyone else trapped here?"

From the shadows, a third man joined them, unfolding like a black umbrella. He was tall, thin, and wearing an over-sized hoodie. He raised his right arm. Walter gasped. There was no clean pink appendage at the end, but rather a gleaming curved blade of bone. Pulsing purple veins clung to its base. The man sawed the air.

"This place changes you,” Melinda said. “Maybe its radiation or something. Who knows? The point is that every day it changes you a little more.”

“I see that,” Walter said.

“The first one of us who gets through is going to grab that kid and force him to open his door so the rest of us can escape.”

The third man spoke. His voice was a low rasp. Walter saw rows of crooked fangs as if nails had burst from his jaw.

“And once we’re free, there will be a reckoning.” The man produced a grin that promised dark things. “A slow reckoning.”

* * *

Avery Ames was ten when he discovered that he could make people go away. He was sitting on the sidewalk and moping because his mom wouldn't let him stay up to watch a scary movie on cable that night, when he saw the neighborhood bully, Fat Charlie, coming. Avery wanted to run. Fat Charlie always ragged him about his skinny size and usually administered a series of sharp punches for daring to be puny. But the bully was too close. If Avery moved, Fat Charlie would see him. Avery was frozen between fear and anger, but that day Avery closed his eyes and wished the bully away. Go away, go away, goawaygoawaygoaway!! And then Avery heard tearing. More, he felt the tearing, and then the bully's screech of terror echoed over the sidewalk. Avery opened his eyes in time to see the fat boy disappear into a black hole that had appeared over his head. Avery got a single flash of Charlie’s terrified face, then he was gone, outstretched hands reaching for help. The hole stitched itself up, a few leaves rattled down the sidewalk, and that was it.

A grin spread slowly over Avery's face. He understood that he had made the hole appear. He had sent Fat Charlie away.

That night Avery didn't care about missing the scary movie.

Avery began to hone his ability, and by the time he was a teen, he could blackhole someone in the blink of an eye. How many people had he sent away? He didn’t know, but the number was in the hundreds. He didn't keep count. That was their problem and penalty for getting in his way. People should be more careful—and faster!

He didn't know where the black hole went, but some deep instinct told Avery that the people didn't die. For all he knew they were going to a much better place, maybe the Garden of Eden. They might be happy, even grateful! Either way, it wasn’t his problem.

* * *

June 23, 1:53 in the afternoon, Avery entered a McDonald's. There were half a dozen people in line. Having no patience, his ability having trained him that he didn't have to wait on anything, Avery decided to blackhole all the people ahead of him. He had never tried to do so many at one time, but he was young and foolish and full of himself. He concentrated, feeling that muchworn part of himself flex. Everyone looked up as the air tore open above them. They all felt it at once, that curious lurching. The hole that he had used so many times appeared, but this time it rolled out of Avery's control. There were too many people to push through, and the hole quickly grew. It wobbled like a warped lp. Then Avery saw a figure peering down at him from his hole.

The figure's name was John Henry. The people of Mars called him Snake Eyes because his eyeballs had morphed into thick and scaled vipers that constantly bit John's cheeks, creating the illusion of never-ending bloody tears. Avery began to scream. John Henry grinned. Those screams were the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

The customers ran. The staff ran. Humans shoved each other out the doors. A skinny employee dove through the drive-through window, losing her shoes and not caring. The back door banged open with management’s exodus.

John flipped through the hole and grabbed Avery. Avery squirmed in the big man's grip. He tried to scream but no sound emerged, only saliva. The black hole above them fizzled and closed as Avery wet himself. Debris, mostly napkins, see-sawed through the settling atmosphere.

"Well, boy, we meet again." John laughed. He was feeling fine now. He made sure the vipers couldn’t reach the boy. No good for him to die before he could get to work.

"You're gonna open up that portal of yours and let everyone out, or I'm gonna dunk your face into one of those fry cookers back there. But before I do, I’ll tape your eyes open, filling those baby blues with hot, frying grease."

“I. I. I—”

John shook him.

"Focus! And get started. I'm gonna hold on to you until everyone is free. Get used to my smell, boy, there are a lot of us in there. This could take a while.

And it did.

* * *

Melinda, Curt, and Walter let the waitress collect their plates. They sipped coffee. A week later and it still tasted like ambrosia. Their mutations had faded before Avery freed the last person. They all felt human again.

"I still wonder if we shouldn’t have killed him," Curt said.

"If he could get out, he would have immediately,” Melinda replied. “I believe he’s trapped. Gone.” In the highchair, her daughter played with her eggs and laughed.

After the last person came through (ironically, it had been Fat Charlie), John Henry had tossed Avery into the black hole as it was closing. The boy had screamed going in.

"I think," Curt said, "that he can't open the door from inside. I think he's stuck there unless there is another like him.

The trio grew silent, each thinking about that possibility, and each hoping that Avery Ames was one-of-a-kind.

End.

Paul Wilson lives in a suburban neighborhood much like the one he turned into a horror playground in his novel Hostage.  He lives with his wife, kids, and a moody cat.  He has worked a spectacular list of jobs including retail district manager, a 911 operator, and the head of a college security department. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram at Storydweller102.

My Sister’s Nest

Tim Waggoner

“What are you doing?”

I’m standing in the doorway of my sister’s apartment. She’s invited me over to have morning coffee with her, which is kind of a big deal, since the two of us haven’t been on good terms for the last year, not since our parents died. She moved into this place since then, and this is the first time I’ve seen it. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Her decorating tastes are different than mine, to put it mildly—I’ll never forget the emperor penguin desk lamp she once had—but I could never have anticipated what takes up the entire space in her front room now.

A giant nest.

It’s made from tree limbs, autumn leaves, scavenged odds and ends such as plastic grocery bags, pieces of cardboard, with lengths of twine threaded through the mess to hold it all together. Jeannie is standing on the far side of the thing, tying two ends of twine into an intricate knot. I had no idea she knew how to tie anything more complicated than shoe laces.

Jeannie doesn’t look up from her work as she answers.

“What does it look like I’m doing, Julie? I’m working on my nest.”

If Jeannie was an artist, I might think this was her latest—and strangest—project, but neither of us has a creative bone in our bodies. I’m a physician’s assistant, and she works at a pet grooming business. We’re both practical, no-nonsense people. At least, that’s what I thought.

“Your . . . nest.”

She nods, but doesn’t look at me, still focused on her work.

“I need to get it finished before it happens. I brewed coffee. It’s in the kitchen if you want some.”

The question is right there: What is it? But I don’t ask. Instead, I make my way around the nest, careful not to touch it, although I’m not sure why. Maybe I don’t want to mess it up. After all, Jeannie’s obviously put a lot of work into it. Or maybe I fear that if I touch it, I’ll become infected with whatever madness has seized my sister.

Jeannie gives me a smile as I pass her, and I try to smile back. I enter the small kitchen and find a French press filled with hot coffee, half and half, sweetener, and wooden stirrers sitting next to a pair of mugs.

“Do you want some?”

“Not now, thanks.”

I pour coffee into a mug, doctor it, take a sip. It’s not bad. I don’t really want it, though. I only made it to give me time to think, but it hasn’t helped. I have no more idea what to say about the nest than I did when I walked in here. Still, I take the coffee with me, hoping it will give me some small sense of normality.

I return to the front room in time to see Jeannie carefully crawl into the nest and sit in the middle. She wiggles her butt, as if trying to get comfortable, a thoughtful look on her face.

“How is it?” I ask.

“It’s not as comfortable as I’d hoped, but I suppose that doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I’ll be sitting directly on the nest.”

“You’ll be sitting on . . . the egg?”

She laughs.

“No, silly! I’ll be the egg.”

* * *

Jeannie is three years younger than me, and I’ve always felt protective of her. The cord was wrapped around her neck when she was born, and when Mom told me this, I instantly felt a need to take care of her, because if the Universe tried to kill her at the start of her life and failed, it would undoubtedly try again. For the first month after Jeannie came home, I slept on the floor of her bedroom next to her crib. Our parents made me go back to my own room after that, but I couldn’t sleep without hearing Jeannie’s soft breathing, so eventually Mom and Dad moved us into the same room. I slept fine after that.

As we grew, I made sure to remain near her as often as I could. I couldn’t follow her at school, of course, which was a source of great frustration and worry for me. What if something happened to her when I wasn’t around? But otherwise, it was like we were joined at the hip. Our parents found it endearing at first—their two little girls were best friends—but they began having concerns after a while and took me to see a therapist. I smiled and nodded when he talked, but I paid no attention to his words. My sister needed me, and I intended to be there for her, and nothing in the world was going to change that.

Except her, of course.

As she entered adolescence, she began wanting time away from me. She wanted to hang out with her friends, talk to boys, or just be by herself. We fought a lot during this time, and it was only when I realized that I might end up driving Jeannie away for good that I relented and backed off. Our relationship improved after that, although we were never as close as we were as kids.

After our parents died, I suggested Jeannie come live with me for a while. I’d recently gotten divorced—my husband said I was too needy—and Jeannie had broken up with her last boyfriend a month or so earlier and hadn’t found another yet. I thought this was a good idea, a way that we could help each other through our grief, but it made Jeannie angry.

For Christ’s sake, stop smothering me! I don’t need you—I never needed you!

Don’t’ say that! I’d do anything for you!

Then leave me the fuck alone!

* * *

I came over to Jeannie’s expecting us to discuss the fight we had after our parents’ combined funeral, they’d died in a car accident one winter night when the roads were treacherously icy, and hopefully make peace with her. Instead, I was watching her try out a giant fucking nest she built in her living room.

“I need you, Julie.”

She’s still sitting in the middle of the nest. She smiles at me, holds out her hand, curls her fingers in a come-here gesture. I don’t want to do this, but I can’t resist. My sister needs me. I put the mug on the floor and cautiously climb into the nest, feeling like a goddamned fool. I take her hand to help steady myself, and then I slowly sit next to her. The nest is extremely uncomfortable. It feels like my ass is being prodded by dozens of sharp little spears, but Jeannie still has my hand, and she pats the back of it, and I forget my discomfort.

“It’ll be time soon,” she says. “And when it happens, I’ll need you to watch over me. Not every minute—you still need to go to work, I get that—but at least a couple hours every day. Can you do that?”

I’m not sure what she’s asking of me, but my sister has invited me back into her life, and I’m not about to question why.

I take her hands in mine, gently squeeze them.

“Of course.”

* * *

“I’m not the only one,” Jeannie tells me. “There are a lot of us, all around the world, all building nests and getting ready.”

“Ready for what?”

She just smiles at me.

I ask her what made her build the nest.

“Nothing made me. I didn’t have strange dreams, hear mysterious voices, or experience prophetic visions. I just knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was chosen.”

“To do what?”

She frowns. “I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it’s important, though, I know that.” She smiles then. “Want to help me finish the nest? It’ll go a lot faster with two of us.”

I should take her to a hospital and get her into the psych ward before this goes any farther. I know this.

“Sure,” I say.

* * *

She gives me a key to her place, tells me to come back in a week. I do. The nest is so big now that it’s nearly impossible to squeeze past it to get to any of the other rooms. One more change: It’s not empty. In the middle rests a leathery green sphere, its surface pebbled like rhino hide. It’s large, about the size of a small car, and the top almost reaches the ceiling. I think of the conversation we had during my last visit.

You’ll be sitting on . . . the egg?

No, silly! I’ll be the egg.

That green thing is supposed to be Jeannie. Or rather, it’s what she’s become.

I can’t bring myself to believe it.

“Jeannie? Are you here? Jeannie?”

No answer. I search the apartment but find no sign of her. I do, however, find a note taped to the refrigerator. I recognize Jeannie’s handwriting. I step closer to read it.

Thanks for helping me, Sis. I couldn’t do it without you! – J

That’s it. No further explanation of what the egg is, and no instructions for what I should do while watching it. It’s still possible that this is some kind of joke or a manifestation of a mental illness my sister is suffering. Maybe she sculpted the egg out of papier mâché or similar substance and left it here to teach me a lesson about being an overprotective big sister. You want something to watch over? Try this big fake egg. In the meantime, Jeannie is out there somewhere living it up and having a laugh at her big sister’s expense. How long until she returns, throws open the door, grins, and says, I can’t believe you fell for it!

I go back to the living room, get as close to the egg as I can without stepping into the nest.

“Jeannie? Is that you?”

No response.

I go into the nest, moving gingerly, trying not to break anything or lose my balance. When I reach the egg, I stretch out my hand, hesitate, and then touch its surface. It’s rough, but when I press it gives a little beneath the pressure. I feel a slight pulsing, as if it has a heartbeat, but the rhythm is so slow it’s barely detectable. It’s warm, too, much more than I expected, and after a moment, I drape my body across it, let its warmth suffuse me. I feel like I should say something to Jeannie, but I can’t think of anything. I close my eyes and drift off to sleep.

* * *

Jeannie left a manilla folder on her bed. Inside are handwritten notes for me. I trace a few letters with my fingertip, then I read what she’s written.

1. I’ve paid the rent for the next two months. That should be more than long enough.

2. Utilities are included in the rent, so you won’t have to worry about that.

3. I quit my job.

4. I stocked the fridge and cupboards in case you get hungry.

5. Like I told you, spend at least a couple hours a day with the egg. No less or it may die of loneliness. (I don’t know this for sure – It’s just a FEELING.) Of course, you can spend as much time with it as you want. Feel free to move in if that’ll make things easier for you.

6. You don’t have to sit on the egg or anything weird like that, but I think it will need your touch. Stroke it, maybe even talk to it. (Another FEELING.) Sing to it, maybe. You have such a beautiful voice.

7. I love you.

I read her words three times, then I lie down on the bed and cry.

* * *

“How are you doing in there?”

I’m not sure if Jeannie is inside the egg or if she is the egg. Either way, she’s still my sister.

I’m sitting next to the egg, a hand resting on its surface. I’ve adjusted to the feel of the nest, and I find it comfortable now, so much so that I spend most of my time in it. I sleep here, too, and the dreams I have . . . so dark, so beautiful.

It’s been nine days since I first saw the egg, and it’s changed in that time. Its surface is smoother now and harder, and its color has deepened, the green so dark it’s almost black. It’s pulse is much faster, like a rapid beat on a snare drum—rat-a-tatta-tat, rat-a-tatta-tat. It’s warmer, too, so much so that it hurts to touch it for any length of time. Feeling the pain is a privilege, though, so I endure it. I’ve stopped going to work, and I left my phone in my own apartment so no one can reach me. I don’t leave the nest anymore, and I can’t remember the last time I ate or drank anything. I’m weak and tired, but I’m happy. The time is almost here.

Neither Julie nor I wanted children. We didn’t have any objection to the concept in principle, but we didn’t believe in the bullshit notion that biology is destiny. Just because we were women didn’t mean we had to procreate. Our bodies, our choice. But now, sitting here in the nest, sweating because of the heat given off by the egg, I feel like I am a mother. Maybe I didn’t produce the egg or become the egg or go through whatever transformation Julie experienced, but I've been at its side ever since, touching it, talking to it, even singing to it as Julie requested. Whatever eventually comes out will be my child as much as hers, and I can’t wait to meet it.

I regret the time Julie and I were estranged, but I’m so glad this event has brought us together again, even if it is in such a . . . nontraditional way. Together is together. I think about something Julie said on the day I first saw her nest.

I’m not the only one, there are a lot of us, all around the world, all building nests and getting ready.

Ready for what? I asked her, but she didn’t answer. I wonder if she even knew. I wonder if any of the others know or if, like her, they acted on some compelling instinct only they felt. Are their eggs being watched over by someone, too—a family member, friend, spouse? I imagine so, and the thought makes me happy, makes me feel connected to something much larger than myself.

I wonder then if the real reason I feel so weak is that the egg, or the thing inside, has been feeding on me all this time, draining my life energy the way an embryo obtains nourishment from its mother. Maybe the egg didn’t need companionship from me. Maybe I’m simply food. I suppose this idea should disturb me, but the thought that I am literally part of the thing inside the egg makes me feel close to my sister. I tried to protect Julie all her life, and I’m still taking care of her now by feeding whatever it is she’s become. I let out a weak, contented sigh and close my eyes.

* * *

I open my eyes. I’m lying on my side, and my face hurts from where the nest’s sticks have poked it. I sit up, look at the egg—

—and see that it’s split in two, the halves several feet apart, as if whatever was inside thrust its way out violently. I can’t believe I slept through the birth, but I’m so very tired, and it’s an effort to keep my eyes open.

Something shifts its weight in the nest behind me, sticks and branches cracking. I feel its presence, sense how much space its large body takes up. The air is filled with a wild, alien scent, the smell of something that has never walked on this planet before. I want to turn around and look at it, but now that the moment is here, I’m afraid.

“Jeannie?”

The reply is harsh, guttural.

“No.”

I smile, knowing my sister doesn’t need my protection anymore—if she ever did—and I hope that happens next will be over quickly.

But it isn’t.

End.

Tim Waggoner has published over fifty novels and seven collections of short stories. He writes original dark fantasy and horror, as well as media tie-ins, and his articles on writing have appeared in numerous publications. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a one-time winner of the Scribe award, and he’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Splatterpunk Award. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. His papers are collected by the University of Pittsburgh's Horror Studies Program.

Memorabilia

Timaeus Bloom

Do you like museums? I do.

I find them fascinating, sure enough. While I am undoubtedly sure that my interest in history has much to do with it, I think there’s something else, too. Maybe it has much to do with the remains of what once was. Artistic pieces crafted by those long before us. Standing or hanging to be judged by us in our “modern” period. Antiquated tools, simple or ingenious, used ages ago to get jobs done that today can be finished in minutes—seconds sometimes.

It’s possible that’s not it, either.

I think there is something more nefarious, complicated even, about the harboring of stuff, the “claiming” of old things. Certainly, this concept is not new. If one is simply to bring up the idea of a hotly debated topic such as colonialism, arguments ever persist about just why someone should own the labors and fruits of another, that they should be given back. Or better yet, what of those things that should be destroyed? Statues that symbolize harmful things. In the city square of Hillside, there is a statue of one noted Doctor: Alexander Lemuel. If you don’t know the man, you know the drama. The council put a big, ugly plywood box around the statue. A camera weaves up and down, too, I’ve heard. Gotta keep the riff raff out. Alex was a friend of mine once upon a time; the man was fascinated in all sorts of innovations and scientific mumbo-jumbos.

* * *

The hesitant soul walks into the large plantation house with his friend. Alone at Christmas, he’d apprehensively agreed to spend the holidays with another family. The beams of the chalky white house are covered in yuletide vines and wreaths; “Jingle Bell Rock” plays through hidden speakers. They knock on the door and are given a warm welcome.

* * *

Like I was saying, you’re likely not to hear much about his work these days—unless you sit among the plush chairs of the genteel and downhome sophistos. He brought Hillside tonics, cures of all sorts of whimsy. But it’s the way old Alex made his discoveries that makes the weaker citizenry of today’s age a bit antsy. Why’s that, you ask? Well, the good doctor experimented on slaves. Those chained fieldhands and dung cleaners who were given the worst hand at the poker table. I never watched him do his work, mind you, but I often saw the leftovers: poor young negros with one eye and an unblinking pupil the shape of a twirling lizard; a cook with no hands and way too many feet. Though half of her tongue had been removed, she sang like nobody’s business.

When she belted out an absolutely harmonic “Oh My Darling, Clementine '” her mangled feet would stomp the ground to the beat. Blood from scarred and coal-walking toes would drip and drip and drip into the doctor's unturned soil. From the crimson gold would sprout crying trees that bloomed docile little pygmies that would coo in the middle of the night. Those rowdy imps would be given to all the fun-loving children of the city. They’d bash ‘em against rocks and twist their necks. When the sun reared its blistering head, though, those chubby cherubs had turned into clay little sculptures. Put ‘em to your ear and guess what you’d hear? Yessir, old Clementine.

But that was then, and we’re all about the now. Sit a spell, my friend. You’re an interesting one, aren’t ya? I was talking to my nephew here about you a bit before you guys drove up. How do you like that Georgia air, by the way? Papa always said you could just smell the peaches. Oh, where are my manners? Merry Christmas, buddy. I understand you’ve broken up with your little lady? Sad that, sad that. But I’m happy you decided to spend a bit of time with the family. Snacks and little finger thingies are over there. We’ll eat a bit later, around 6:00 or 6:30, I reckon? Oh, you like the house? Thank you. We’ve had it for a few generations. Mama’s finally moved into the place. She’s had more than a handful of knee replacements. Getting up and down the stairs has been an issue. Did you know you could get an elevator installed? Yeh, I’ve got some of those smarty types coming in to measure and take a look-see. Don’t know where we’ll put the damn thing, though. Maybe out on the porch?

Did Rooster tell you about the little tour I had planned for ya? Look at him looking away. Doesn’t like his city friends to know down here we call him Rooster! Used to cluck like one every morning when he was a kid. You like history too, don’t you? That’s what I heard! A fellow enthusiast of the old and dusty. Also heard you want to be a college professor? Well, look at you. The world needs more people like you teaching, I think. Show ‘em that you’re not all on the lam or out doing God knows what. Honest business, teaching. It’s because I know you’re a student of history that I’ve allowed you to see my little room. Rooster’s right again. It’s been closed for about two years. With all the statue business and the flag controversy and the boisterous youngins saying what shouldn’t be, I’ve closed it. Damn near want to erase us all, don’t they?

But first, I’d like to show you the library. Just you and me, sport. Watch out for Mama, there. She’s not moved much today. What’s that? You’ve got a bit of a headache? Probably because you’ve been too close to Trevor. I know you’re bleeding from your ears a little bit. Don’t mind that. When he snores, he kind of leaves, goes elsewhere. He’s said all manner of things. Talks about fishing on a sea of sludge where human frogs jump on lily pads made of stretched skin. The fish are always bitin’, though. But you gotta have good bait. Trevor says they like memories. Give ‘em a bad one, and you’ll pull up buzzards with melting faces that whistle hymns. Give ‘em a good one? You’ll get little trinkets: rocks in the shape of toadstools that leak buttermilk or maybe a rubber ducky coated in human teeth. Oh, shit. Poor bastard’s crying. Must not have given them anything good. I think he’s all out of good memories, the few he had. All he can give them now are nightmares. They don’t like nightmares. They go down nasty. Poor thing.

Tell ya what, son. An esteemed man such as yourself with your degrees and love of learnin’, I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of libraries. Now Rooster speaks the truth, it’s a nice library with many books, all kinds. But those are just books, little squares of leather and paper that don’t amount to much when it comes to the real truth of things. As somethin’ of an amateur historian m’self, you and I both know it’s all bullshit. Facts and suppositions and biases. Lemme show you something a bit more interesting—stuff straight from out of the good ol’ days. When men were men, and they fought for what they believed in. And before we make another step, you stop with that “Mister” stuff. I’m Rooster’s Uncle Lebaux, and I’m yours too. I welcomed you into my house, didn’t I? Follow me.

* * *

As they make their way through the antiquated house, immaculately clean and clashing in a struggle with modernity, the guest seems interested, if not completely comfortable, being here. He looks up, noticing a portrait that his guide seems to pay very little attention to. It is a beautifully drawn, but undeniably saccharine, portrait of Jesus as he is classically depicted: long hair, face of beard, white robes, and a purple sash. He has a plaintive air about him as he nestles a baby lamb in his arms, as black as a welcoming void. The lamb turns its adorable head to look at the tourist. Jesus remains still.

* * *

Put your phone right in the bowl there. Let it be. That’s what’s wrong with all of your generation, I reckon. Glued to your devices. Yeah, yeah. I sound like an old timer. I trust you, but I don’t trust the phone. With their blue teeth and wireless bubbles. I took a little course with my friend’s nephew on geocaching. Don’t really know what it was, and I think it was about as much of a waste as a trailer with a glass hitch, but I did find something out. No pictures in here, bucko. People can trace photos, see where they were taken. Digital footprints and all that. Now I’m an open man—used to call us Yellow dog Democrats before the whole thing got all topsy-turvy. But like I said a’fore: if people, even my neighbors, like Brad and Redge, the two men with the Oriental twins, got a whiff of my collection they may not take too much of a shine to me anymore.

They love Uncle Lebaux, you see. Even made me some cookies for the holidays. I chomped and grinned when I got ‘em, but they were TOUGH. I gave them to Trigger, though. That old boy loves ‘em. Take a look at that dumb mutt over there–can’t tell his head for his ass. Redge came by the other day and said one of their little tikes was missing. Said their daughter saw Trigger three nights back opening his jaw wider and wider and then a bit more wide, said his jaw extended over the entire window, tongue lapping all over it and green saliva spreading over the glass. Saw handprints pressed against the muck. Then Trigger shut his jaw tight. Where his tongue was instead stood a dry field dotted with gray outhouses that floated above the famished grass, wood splintered. The outhouses shook and rattled, and pale hands opened the doors. The kids are crying now, loud and deafening. And then Trigger swallowed and one kid came back, and one didn’t.

But those are just stories. You know how babies are. I’m sure he’ll turn up. Now right this way. Your phone won’t miss you for a few minutes. Let me take out the key here. Where did I put it? Hah. Here it is. I swallowed it for safekeeping. Little trick I learned back in my wild youth. Carnies. Disgusting people, but funnier than a motherlover. Especially the freaks. Don’t give me that look now. I can show you, too, if you want. Naw? Maybe later. I’ve swallowed a whole mess of stuff.

Well, here it is. It’s small, and dingy. There’s a lot to take in, I know. But I’ll walk you through. Take you through the whole little shebang. I’m something of a Civil War Buff, as they call it. If memories can be history, then you might say I have a whole archive. It’s quaint but watch your step. Don’t wanna knock any of the cannonballs over–you’ll blow us straight back to Antietam.

Of course, you made your way straight to the pile of books here. They’re old and ratty but look at these. Bonafide slave narratives. Here, look at the dates here: 1874, 1863, ‘65. Flip through the pages but be careful. Stare at the words, read a little bit. Do you feel that? The journey, the determination? The struggle to survive. Look at the picture here of the poor man with all those lashes on his back. What’s that? You’ve never seen scars like those? No, I’m not sure they look like sigils or words. Just look like marks of the lash to me. Woah, buddy. Did you cut yourself on something? You’ve got marks spreading on your arm. Carved–or whipped–lines that are riding up your skin. Hmm. That’s never happened to any, er, of my kind I’ve given my little tour before. Yeh, I’ll get you something to wrap it with, but after the fun. You’re not even bleeding. These scars look old, blistered. Many of those before you beat the odds to hand you those scars. Wear ‘em proudly.

Come on over here now. You see this? This is what they call a “war log.” I found this from a guy selling it on some website or another. I’m not too good at that stuff, so I had Rooster poke around for one. Yeh, he has his uncle’s hunger for the old. On the surface it’s just a big stump with a bunch of bullets lodged in it. My understanding is that soldiers, be they Yankies or Rebs, would dive behind trees to escape fire. Then the opposing militia would just shoot and shoot, mowing those suckers down. And man, is it heavy. Ah, dammit all. I never know what to do with the thing. When the guy handed me that certificate of authenticity, he didn’t say just how “authentic” it was. If you mess with it too much it starts bleeding. There it is. I don’t know why I bother. It’s such a mess. Watch your toes there. From all of those puncture wounds what I can imagine could only be blood leaks out of it, pools around the stump. You want to experience something wild? Dip your finger in it. It’s sweet as candy. Not interested? Where’s that spirit of adventure, buddy? Well, don’t mind if I do. It’s so savory.

I think the tree doesn’t like being here. It messes with the order of things, I believe. I think the tree has what you or I might call a phantom limb, missing the full sum of its parts. Do you think it longs for better days? When it could feel the wind rustling its leaves, the bliss of a whip-poor-will nesting in its crevices? It suffers eternal pain, to be united to the earth from which it stood, was torn and ripped away from. Its roots were yanked and twisted, left useless with nothing to nourish. Nature is as selfish as we are. It cries for itself. Instead of sap, we get the red stuff, all syrupy. Used a bit of it in my flapjacks once. Delicious, but overpowering. Too much for little ol’ me. Here’s the certificate here, I’ll read it aloud for you, you seem a bit out of sorts:

“This section of tree was taken from the Battle of Oaken Plain. Twas here that opposing forces met in the spring of 1864. Soldiers who survived this battle recall nothing of the conflict itself, but those on both sides speak of seeing an identical general of unidentified insignia who had the head of a boar. The soldiers, too, recall this general moving through the battlefield and laying its hands on stupefied soldiers, skipping some and touching others as if playing its own game of Duck, Duck, Goose. Those chosen as Geese, too, became Boar Men and fled the field, mauling as they made their way. Those who survived laid their bodies upon the battlefield and squealed, unable to be interrupted, for three nights. They spoke of this as ecstasy. Some bred children who had upturned tusks. They ate those children. Those who were able to return home continuously searched for their missing general. Those who found him, continued for the rest of their days to wish they had not.”

Boars blood, huh? Maybe that’s why it sizzles so well.

We better move swiftly. I can smell ham. They’ll be wanting us to head for the table soon. Now I have plenty of shells and cannonballs here and rifles and that sort of thing just to make the place look a bit more “historical,” but I don’t care much about those. They all go boom and then bodies fall. Yes, that’s well and good, but I don’t find those especially interestin’, but I got a few things here on the shelf. You see this bugle here? Looks like a simple, standard instrument, right? A rooty-toot-toot and all the boys line up in formation? Weird thing is it won’t blow. I’ve had it checked out, inspected, cleaned myself. By all signs, it should be able to let out a nice, bright tune. But it doesn’t. Check this out here. Hear that? It’s more of a groan, isn’t it? Maybe a wail? You can feel it reverberating in your chest. Trev loves this thing. He’d play it all day and night if he could—well, except when he’s dream-fishin’. I can’t recall where I got it from, however. It took me far too long to realize that the old thing did work. Just that its purpose wasn’t so much to proclaim or gather, so much as it was to mourn and remember. The cries of the mother seeing her son off to be the hero, the weeping of a once bountiful farmstead razed in fire and baptized in ash. The hoarded possessions of a kooky old man with a lust for collecting. Let’s move along.

Now this mantle is filled with a fair assortment of things, yup. See these bayonets? The blades were forged in the pits of hell–I’m just teasing! I have a couple uniforms in the closet there. And, oh you caught that? Beautifully drawn, isn’t it? You see, and I don’t think I’m sharing any forbidden knowledge here. But there were less back-breaking ways to keep your property in line. Yes, there was the whip, and separation, all kinds of torture. But the best of ‘em—us, I will uncomfortably admit—realized that the brain is a rather fascinating little thing. Funny, too. Mess with that and you can keep the subjugated in line. Hell, how do you think the pharaohs built them pyramids? You can call it aliens or other such hogwash, but Khufu had it right. Create the fear. Listen here: got a wiry cotton-picker that might up and sprint? Make him afraid of the outside. You ever heard of Old Crying Agnes? It may be tough up here, but out there? My god, boy! Agnes has been missing her head for many a year and she’ll kill and kill until she finds a suitable noggin. Lives right out there by the lake. A lot of ‘em will stay put.

But there’s a double-edged sword to all of that, o’course. Fear is strong, a power even. There came a time when honest white folk started seeing a woman’s body, naked as a jaybird, walking around through the vines and mud. Said she was missing a head, too. Gnats and all kinds of crawlers scuttling in and out of her open neck in wild frenzies. We don’t talk about it much, but there were more than a few of us who got an old “haircut” under very odd and unforeseen circumstances. We had to start placating Agnes. Started leading a few slaves here and there to the forest, closed our eyes and headed back home.

Speaking of, this is a slave tag. All framed and pretty like. Have you ever seen one of these? They were mainly used in South Carolina, I believe. Charleston to be exact. We hear a lot about slaves who worked on the green, but there was a wide assortment of city slaves who left the property, able bodies utilized to push this great country into the industrial age. Incredibly functional. You won’t see a name or anything like that on ‘em, just a number and your job. Here, see, I’ll take it out for just a little fun. Take it. No, no it’s alright. Don’t freak out on me now. Slavery is long and gone, ain’t it? Honest Abe saw to that. And then Johnny Wilkes saw to him. Just take it. Come on. Grab it. Good lad. It’s surprisingly heavy, isn’t it? I think it’s probably iron. Warm to the touch, eh? Stings a little. Damn, those arms of yours have taken a fair beating today. You smell that? Is that you? Sizzlin’ and bubblin’.

Shit. I figured this might happen. I don’t think I’ll be able to get that badge back. It’s embedded into your flesh, melting its way through. Your skin is forming around it, being squeezed apart as the tag finds its home. Sears history into you, scorches you with obedience, and discipline, and a concern for integrity. It never did like nesting in that case, huh?

That must be awfully painful. It’s given you a number too, eh? 1333: “Dock Worker.” Well, we don’t have much in the way of ship passage around the estate. But we’ll see about that.

That’ll be the dinner bell. Why don’t you start by helping us serve the little family? Mama was worried about where you might sit at the table, but it looks like you won’t be sitting at all will ya?

* * *

The lamb gazes outside of the painting, watching closely as the guest-turned-tenant walks outside of the museum. Uncle picks up the discarded cell phone that the ebony-skinned man will never use again. Trevor rustles, still trying to hook a big one. The lamb raises its front legs. At the end of those extremities of lanolin are a small set of peach-colored human hands. The nails are filled, and the palms are soft to the touch. The man looks towards the painting, sees the lamb beaming with curiosity.

The lamb's eyes rest on him, too. Its eyes are green. The babe feels what may be sorrow, though overwhelmed by anthropological interest. It looks towards the television. It plays old black and white films that show falling snow and high-pitched carolers. It pulls itself up from Jesus’ lap and rests its hands on the inside of the portrait like a child leaning against the window of a candy shop. It salivates in delight, red and sticky. The blood of the lamb.

End.

Timaeus Bloom is a black author of speculative fiction from Alabama. A fan of the strange and fantastical, he spends his free time laboring over just what to do with his free time. You can find his words in Howls from the Wreckage, and upcoming in Nightlight Podcast and Beyond the Bounds of Infinity. He is also the co-editor of the upcoming Howls from the Scene of the Crime: an Anthology of Crime Horror in 2024.

The Question

Stetson Ray

“Where do you get your ideas?” the man asked.

It was a question that Herman Blake had been asked many times.

“They come in the mail,” Herman replied.

The audience roared with laughter, same as always. Most of Herman’s fans weren’t hard to please, especially after he had signed their books and shaken their hands.

“Sometimes I don’t even have to write ‘em,” Herman continued. “I open my mailbox and there it is, a polished manuscript just waiting to be published.”

Another wave of laughter swept across the crowded convention hall.

Herman was glad it was over: the question had been asked, and he had answered. Like every writer, Herman hated the question. It was always there, following him like a shadow. Whether two people showed up to one of his book signings or two thousand, at least one person always asked. The question was part of the job, part of being a writer. People want to know if people who served in the military ever saw any action. They want to know if limousine drivers ever chauffeured anyone famous.

And they want to know where writers get their ideas.

Now that the question was behind him, Herman felt something unwind inside his chest, like tension leaving a compressed spring. His chance of pitching a no-hitter was ruined. The pressure was off.

When the laughter died down, a young woman asked Herman a different question:

“Are you ever going to write a sequel to Reaper’s End?”

That was another popular one.

Reaper’s End had been Herman’s first novel, the book that made him a household name. Half the country had bought a copy, and Herman had finally been able to quit teaching and live out his dream of being a full-time horror writer. Things had changed because of Reaper, and the book held a special place in his heart.

“I haven’t ruled it out, so if the story comes to me, I’ll write it. Only time will tell.”

The woman sat down, visibly disappointed. She had wanted a definite answer, a definite sequel—just like the rest of Herman’s readers.

The fans asked more questions.

And Herman answered them.

* * *

When the signing was over, Herman was on the first plane back to Atlanta. His flight was first class, like most things in his life. He could afford the finer things. The royalty money from his books never stopped pouring in, and after growing up poor, Herman appreciated every penny, but he was beginning to worry his fans would buy anything with his name on it, regardless of quality. His agent and his publisher seemed to think so. They had been toying with the idea of releasing three of his novels per year instead of two, but the idea made Herman sick.

He was growing tired of the things that came along with being a famous author: the fans, the critics, the interviewers, the fanatics who gathered outside his home, the Hollywood producers who couldn’t adapt his books to film fast enough.

But worst of all were the writers.

They wanted to rub elbows, talk about craft, compare processes—but Herman didn’t fit in with them, didn’t speak their language. Part of him wished he could go back to being a teacher. In truth, that’s all he wanted, though he couldn’t admit it to himself. And the money. He wanted the money. A few million dollars never hurt anybody.

After Herman arrived at his home near Marietta, he went to the living room and collapsed on the couch.

“Honey?” Herman called. “Would you come down here and rub my feet then make me a sandwich?”

With his face pressed into the couch, he had a good laugh. There was no honey. Herman’s multimillion-dollar mansion was empty. He was utterly alone. Even the Muse had left him. All he had was the success he’d always wanted. He tried not to think about it.

* * *

Herman woke up late the next morning, exhausted from a night of uneasy sleep. He lay motionless, staring at the ceiling. He had no reason to set an alarm, no reason to get up in the mornings. His writing for the day was already done—revised, polished, and checked for grammatical errors. He was simply waiting until his deadline grew closer before submitting his newest manuscript to his agent.

Sometime around noon, he rolled off the couch and went upstairs and took a shower. Afterwards, he put on his bathrobe and made a pot of coffee (he always felt tired; a restful night’s sleep had eluded him for years; coffee helped a little, but not much) and looked out the kitchen window toward the road as he drank. Thankfully, there were no fans outside, but someone had left a cheap Halloween decoration leaning against his front gate: a sickle, the weapon the Reaper had been known to carry.

Herman went outside and trudged down the path to the road and looked around carefully, wary of hidden photographers or overzealous fans who would do anything to get a shot of Herman Blake in his pajamas. He stared at his custom made mailbox, which was padlocked shut. There was a slot for the mailman (and whoever else, unfortunately) to drop off mail, but Herman was the only person who could get anything out. He keyed the lock and opened the metal box and looked inside.

He dropped his cup.

It shattered on the ground, splashing coffee on his legs.

“Oh no,” Herman breathed.

He reached in and pulled out a thick manuscript, another finished novel. He tucked the paper-stack under his arm and hurried back inside his home and went to his office and dropped it on his desk and stared at the manuscript as though it was something dangerous.

The Old Ways
by Herman Blake

There was a handwritten note attached to the manuscript via paperclip, same as always. Each note said the same thing, so there was no use in reading it. He stuck the note in his desk drawer and began pacing the floors, wondering what the title might mean. He looked at the manuscript again. He couldn’t bring himself to open it. He paced some more. He looked at the manuscript. He repeated this process many times.

Sometime later he phoned his agent. He needed to tell someone the bad news.

“Looks like you were right,” Herman said. “I think publishing three novels next year is a great idea.”

“That’s fantastic news!” Janice Holman beamed, one of the namesakes of the Carter, Holman, and Nash Literary Agency. “I know this is a big step for you, Herman, but I’m certain the market can handle it. Nobody else is doing what you’re doing. You’re one of a kind, and readers can see that. I think they could handle four novels a year, truth be told. I know your die-hard fans certainly could.”

Her voice was dripping with positivity and excitement, but Herman felt dead inside.

Janice said something else, but he was having trouble listening.

“Did you hear me?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“What’s it about?”

“What’s what about?”

“The novel, Herman. Your new novel. What’s it about?”

Herman peered through the doorway into his office and looked at the pages he had not written.

“I don’t know yet.”

Janice laughed and said, “Well, congratulations anyways. I can’t wait to read it.”

After they hung up, Herman went to his office and stared at the hideous thing lying on his desk.

The Old Ways
by Herman Blake

Herman sat down and eyeballed the manuscript for a long time. He eventually peeled back the title page and once he began reading, he couldn’t stop. The book was a certified page turner. He read through lunch then dinner, lost in the prose. He finished around sunset, his brain swimming in his skull, steam pouring from his ears.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Herman grumbled, rubbing his face with both hands.

He’d never read anything like it. The manuscript was literary with all the trademarks of genre—real art, but with all the fun stuff. Pulp of the highest literary merit. High brow horror. Not since Hill House had such a summit been attempted and conquered. Whoever had written The Old Ways had reached for the moon and pulled down a handful of stars.

Herman collapsed onto his desk, his head resting on the manuscript. He could already imagine it: the tours, the interviews, the throngs of screaming fans who would never be satisfied until they owned a piece of him, not just his books, not just his autograph.

Him.

They wanted him.

And they were never going to stop.

One day Herman was going to wake up an old man, his life wasted. Sure, he was a famous writer, but he hadn’t earned it. He couldn’t gab with other authors about what it meant to make good art. He couldn’t take advantage of the women who sent him suggestive messages online. And it was getting harder and harder to spend the money he had not earned.

He didn’t deserve any of it.

With each autograph he signed, he gave away a piece of his soul. With each new book, the world grew a little colder. With each glowing review, Herman lost a little faith in everything in which he’d once believed.

And every time someone asked The Question, Herman inched a bit closer to the edge.

He had been ashamed to claim the other books were his, but this one would kill him. There was no way he could sit on a stage in front of a camera and lie to the world. He would snap. The first time someone tried to hand him an award for writing The Old Ways, he’d snatch it out of their hand and club them to death with it.

Suddenly, Herman had an idea, an original. Calmly, he picked up the finished manuscript and walked into the kitchen. He dropped the pages into the sink, found a lighter, and set the book on fire. As it burned, a weight lifted from his shoulders. When the smoke alarms began to scream, he began to laugh—to cackle. He laughed so hard he thought he might puke, and by the time the manuscript had been reduced to ashes, he felt as light as a feather.

That night he slept better than he had in years.

* * *

The next morning, Herman stood staring at his mailbox.

A car rolled by on the road behind him and someone yelled, “You better get back inside and get to work! That next book ain’t gonna write itself!”

The occupants of the car howled with laughter as they sped away.

The fans.

They never stopped.

Every weekend it was like a festival outside Herman’s house. Some fans wore costumes. Some read passages from his books. They left things for him to find: poems, thank you notes—cheap plastic sickles. But at the moment, the fans were the least of Herman’s worries.

His only concern was what might be inside his mailbox.

He keyed the lock, reached in, and pulled out a thick manuscript, a finished novel.

The Old Ways
by Herman Blake

He held the story in his hand, weighing it, weighing everything. There was a note attached to the first page. Herman didn’t bother reading it. He spun around and hurled the manuscript across the road into the woods and stormed back inside his house, thinking what a wonderful souvenir the book would be for some lucky fan.

* * *

“Forget what I said about publishing three novels next year,” Herman said into the phone.

“What are you talking about?” Janice asked.

“I want to try something else. I don’t want to (release another novel I didn’t write) keep doing the same thing over and over again. I need to…experiment, and I think my next book might take a while.”

“What about the book you told me about yesterday? You said it was already finished.”

“I spoke too soon. I thought I had something, but I was wrong. There is no next book. I’m going to start a new one from scratch. And like I said, it might take a while.”

There was a long silence.

“Is this about the Townsend Award?” Janice asked. “Listen, those goons don’t know Faulkner from Fitzgerald, and I can guarantee next year they’ll—”

“No, it’s not about that or anything else. I just need some time to write. Only me. Just me this time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I have to get to work, but I’ll call you again soon.”

“Herman, what about—”

Herman hung up.

* * *

Sitting at his desk, Herman stared at his blank computer screen—the worst thing any writer has ever seen. Hours passed, yet no words appeared. He decided to take a nap, thinking he might dream up a good idea, but upon waking, he found his mind still empty. He returned to his office to find his desk askew, as though someone had been fiddling with his things while he slept. It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed such a phenomenon. He often wondered if whoever was dropping the manuscripts off had a way to get inside his house. It seemed likely.

He stood perfectly still and listened. He heard nothing. He searched his entire house but found no one. He went back to his office and sat down at his desk. Idea after idea came to him, but they left as quickly as they came, water through his fingers. The feeling reminded him of the first time he had attempted to write a novel.

The idea had been there, but the words would not come. For days he had stared at the blank screen, doing his best to will the words into existence, but they would not. It had always been Herman’s dream to write a book, to be a professional author, but it didn’t look like he was cut out for it. He’d never told anyone about his dream, and that was good, because it made giving it up easier; his students and colleagues couldn’t mock him if they didn’t know he had ambitions.

About six weeks after Herman realized he’d been a fool for attempting a novel, the first manuscript came. He found it in the passenger seat of his car one morning before school, like someone had dropped it in through the cracked window.

Reaper’s End
by Herman Blake

He figured it was some kind of prank, but who was the prankster? No one knew of his writing aspirations.

No one.

Herman spent all day thinking about the mysterious manuscript. When the school day was over, he hurried to the parking lot and sat in his car turning pages until there were none left to turn. There was a note fastened to the last page, and at the time, he hadn’t understood what it meant.

Herman opened his desk drawer and pulled out the original note. He had kept it all these years, afraid to let go of it. It read:

Dear Writer,

We hope this letter finds you well. This manuscript is to be submitted without alteration to a literary agent or publisher of your choice. If you choose to submit this story, you are accepting our future involvement in all facets of your professional writing career, including but not limited to: short stories, stageplays, screenplays, novels, novellas, graphic novels, lyrics, and poetry. By submitting this manuscript, you are signing a contract, and the contract is binding for life. If you choose not to submit the manuscript, it will be passed along to another writer.

You have forty eight hours to decide.

Best Wishes,

The People Upstairs

After a day and a half of nervous contemplation, Herman had submitted the novel and his publishing career had begun shortly after. It was that easy. The manuscripts kept coming, and with each new novel, a new note had come. Herman had saved them all—nine notes for nine bestsellers—even though each note said the same thing:

Dear Writer,

This manuscript is to be submitted in full with no alterations. Failure to comply will result in early termination of your contract.

Best Wishes,

The People Upstairs

Herman had set up cameras to find out who dropped the manuscripts off, but the cameras had never caught anyone. He had spent weeks searching online for anything pertaining to “The People Upstairs” but had never found anything relevant.

After years of releasing the gifted stories under his name, Herman still didn’t know what it meant. Were The People Upstairs members of a secret underground cult that used talentless writers like him to unleash their ideas into the world? Or did he simply have the world’s worst case of imposter syndrome? Or was it something else?

He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that the manuscripts kept coming and they kept getting better, almost like the writer was getting better—unlike him, who hadn’t gotten any better at writing because he’d never finished anything longer than a handful of crummy short stories.

It was time for that to change.

Herman was going to write his own novel, and then the fans would be his fans, the awards his awards, the money his money. He didn’t care if The People Upstairs terminated his contract. He didn’t need them. So what if he stopped receiving books in the mail?

Problem was, he couldn’t get started.

He had nothing to write about.

He stared at the blank screen, and the blank screen stared back.

* * *

Around sunset, Herman decided to stretch his legs. He found himself walking toward his mailbox, his body moving on its own. He looked inside. There it was, another manuscript.

The Old Ways
by Herman Blake

They had dropped it off right under his nose! He held the pages, thinking about the world that lay inside. It was almost wrong to deny readers of such a story, such a rich and satisfying tale. A small piece of him wanted to just submit the thing; it would be easier that way. Then he remembered that some other writer would receive the story if he didn’t submit it—or that’s what The People Upstairs claimed anyways.

As always, there was a note attached to the manuscript, but this one was a bit different than the rest.

Dear Writer,

Reminder: Failure to submit this manuscript will result in early termination of your contract.

Best Wishes,

The People Upstairs

“Early termination?” Herman read aloud.

He read the note again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He stood there, the words buzzing inside his head.

“I won’t do it! Did you hear me? I’m done! I’m going out on my own! I can write my own stories! I don’t need your help!”

He stood there panting, wishing for someone to yell at.

“Excuse me, but can I have your autograph?” someone asked, and Herman whipped around.

A girl was standing before him, a copy of Reapers End in one hand, a pen in the other. She was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, a frizzy haired highschooler.

“Why?” Herman hissed. The girl leaned away from him, her face turning red. “Why would you want me to sign anything?”

Her hands began to tremble. Tears glistened in her eyes. She dropped the book and fled, crying as she went.

Herman looked at the book lying on the ground. It had fallen open to his first author photo. He hated the man he saw—a grinning fraud, an empty, soulless liar. He punted the book across the road and grabbed the manuscript from the mailbox and scurried up the path toward his house, his bathrobe billowing behind him like a cape.

* * *

Herman was more determined than ever to write a book himself, but that didn’t stop his computer screen from being barren. The finished manuscript was sitting on the corner of his desk–watching him, taunting him.

“You’re not so great,” Herman told the manuscript. “Your first act drags, and your main character is a little flat.”

He knew there had to be an idea somewhere inside his mind, a story begging to be told. He closed his eyes and thought. His mind cycled through some of the more popular horror tropes: vampires; werewolves; haunted houses; possession by demon; possession by ghost; zombies; killer creatures; apocalyptic scenarios; curses; aliens; alternate dimensions; alternate personalities.

Herman tried to plug himself into one of the scenarios—develop a character based on himself. It didn’t work. He could think of nothing. No plot. No characters. His mind was as empty as his computer screen.

He opened his eyes and there it was:

The Old Ways
by Herman Blake

He picked up the manuscript and shouted, “What about the new ways?” and cast it to the other side of the room.

It slammed into the wall and exploded; four hundred pages fluttered and fell like loose flower petals caught in the wind. He got up. He paced. Hours passed. The computer screen was empty. Empty! He paced again.

Around sunrise he sat down and concentrated as hard as he could. He strained, pushing with his mind. He could feel something coming untethered. It was an idea. Had to be. He lay his hands on the keyboard and waited. The idea was burning through his mind, trickling down into his body from his brainstem. In a few short moments, the idea would reach his hands, and then he could start typing. Once he got started, finishing would be easy. If he could get one sentence, he’d figure the rest out as he went. One sentence and he’d be set.

The idea crawled down his spine , seeped into his body. He could feel it in his lungs, his heart. It shot down to his feet then back up to his arms. Stars flashed to life behind his eyes–a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors he had never seen before.

When it finally came, The Idea was bigger and better than anything Herman could have ever imagined. He couldn’t help but laugh. God had reached down from His glorious kingdom above and placed one of His divine thoughts into the mind of a mortal man, and it was Herman’s responsibility to transcribe the Sacred Thought.

His whole body began to shake with its power.

It was the best idea any writer ever had.

* * *

Janice Holman tried for days, but she couldn’t reach Herman on the phone. She tried e-mailing. She tried texting. Her worry for him began to interfere with her sleep. If there was one thing Janice had, it was instincts (her colleagues at the literary agency liked to joke that Janice could tell if a manuscript was good just by holding it in her hands; of course that wasn’t true, but her gut had never lied to her, not once), and her instincts were saying that something was wrong.

“Something’s not right,” Janice said, sitting up in bed.

“Uhg?” her husband grunted, half asleep.

“I have to go to Georgia,” she said, then sprang out of bed and began packing a bag.

“Why?”

“I need to see Herman Blake.”

“Herman? Is something wrong with him?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She left her husband lying in bed with a confused look on his face, and six hours later she was driving a rental car that had Georgia plates. She was tired and hungry but she drove straight to Herman’s house, a sprawling old Victorian estate on the outskirts of Marietta. She pulled onto the shoulder of the road and watched the house for any sign of life as the sun rose behind it. She tried Herman’s phone, but there was no answer. She honked the car’s horn, but no one came. She got out of the car and tried the gate, which she was surprised to find unlocked, considering how fanatical Herman’s fans could be. She crossed the yard and stepped onto the porch. The feeling she was trespassing was overwhelming, but she kept going.

She rang the doorbell.

She shouted his name.

She tried the door, which like the gate, was unlocked.

“Herman?” Jance called. The air inside the house was stale and lifeless. “Herman, are you home?”

She walked through the house, taking her time, not knowing what she might find. Herman wasn’t the type to drink or use drugs, at least not to her knowledge, but what if he was on some kind of binge and he didn’t want to see or speak with anyone? Suddenly she was afraid of overstepping her boundaries and losing her most successful client, her number one cash cow.

Janice crept through the living room, through the kitchen, and finally into Herman’s office. She had only visited his home once, but she remembered where Herman wrote—where he made the bacon.

He was sitting at his desk, his back to her, his head resting on his right shoulder.

“Herman?” she said, but she already knew he was dead.

She went to him slowly, her legs shaking. She reached out and slowly turned his chair around. When she saw his face she began to scream. She backed away, and despite her best efforts, she couldn’t make herself look away.

It was his smile.

She had never seen anyone who looked so…happy.

* * *

A young policeman and an old detective were surveying the room where acclaimed author Herman Blake had written most of his novels. The coroner had hauled the body away and pictures of the room had already been taken.

“You think there was any foul play?” the policeman asked.

“I don’t,” the detective answered.

“You think he had a stroke?”

“Most likely.”

“Is that why he had that look on his face?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot of stroke victims in my career, but I’ve never seen a dead man with a smile like that stuck to his face. Beats all I ever saw.”

“That lady, his agent, she said he was perfectly healthy.”

“Apparently not.”

The policeman knelt down in front of a mess of scattered papers and picked up a page and read it. “Hey, this is pretty good.”

“I’m sure it is,” the detective said. “A few years ago, I read a book this guy wrote about a haunted school. It was good, but I had to keep the TV on at night for a week afterwards. That was the last Herman Blake novel I read, or ever will read.”

“No kidding…” said the policeman, already reading another page.

The detective went to Herman’s desk. Upon it lay reams of spent paper, stacks of manuscripts that appeared to be in various stages of development. Draft after draft after draft. And enough research notes to write at least ten books. The keyboard of Herman’s computer was nearly worn out; most of the letters were faded and hard to read. The finish on his wooden desk was rubbed away where his wrists had wriggled as he wrote.

The detective asked, “Can you imagine what it would be like trying to hold all this stuff in your head?”

“It would drive a person crazy. No wonder he had a stroke.”

Herman’s computer had died at some point, but there was a single word burnt onto the screen, the last word that Herman Blake ever wrote:

The

The detective opened a desk drawer and took out a stack of handwritten notes and began to read them.

“What’s that?” the policeman asked, joining the detective at the desk.

“Notes.”

“What do they say?”

“Same thing mostly. Something about, The People Upstairs. You ever heard of such a thing?”

“No. What do you think it means?”

“Don’t know, but it looks like Herman’s handwriting, same handwriting as these research notes.”

The policeman began to thumb through the stacks of paper on the desk.

“Where did this guy get all his ideas?” he asked, gently shaking his head.

“Beats me,” the detective answered.

* * *

The literary world mourned for a life lost too soon. The condolences came pouring in, which helped Janice Holman feel a little better. Then Herman’s books sold out of every bookstore in America, and that made her feel a lot better. It seemed that Herman’s premature death had elevated him from a popular genre writer to an icon, and everyone wanted to know if there were any posthumous novels coming down the pipeline, so a few days after his passing, Janice issued a statement across all of Herman’s social media pages:

“…Herman Blake’s work ethic was stunning and his output was unmatched, at least by his contemporary peers. I don’t know where he got his ideas, but thanks to Herman’s hard work and imagination, he was able to complete a number of manuscripts before he passed. So in regards to the question everyone has been asking, the answer is yes! I’m thrilled to announce there are more books on the way, and that fans of Herman Blake have a lot to look forward to in the coming years!”

End.

Stetson Ray once discovered a wormhole that allowed him to catch a brief glimpse of the horrors that await humanity in the nearby fourth dimension, only to later learn he had contracted food poisoning from strip mall sushi and wandered into Spencer’s Gifts. He lives in Tennessee.

SWALLOW

Tania Chen

Sit at the end where the metal table curves inward, distorting your reflection like a funhouse mirror. Pinned under the fluorescent discount bulbs that bathe the room in whitewashed light. You know they make all the teens wait like livestock before offering them to the machine. Squinting the gravelly remains of sleep, your clockwork heart continues the arduous task of pumping, pumping, pumping the copper wiring: refurbishing the worn out plastic, replacing it with vein wall tissues.

Organic is best, they told you, ignoring how your hands tightened their hold on your 100% recyclable cotton-suit. Only the best for those ranking highest within the Academy. Every part of you has broken at least once, thermoplastic skin welded to copper-muscle over and over until the old scars are hidden over new ones. At least, that’s what you remember.

The mind is a distorting entity; it paints those memories over in a golden light that hides the tangled mess of wires that suffocates your inner space. The tranquillity of the many years of training dissipating as graduation draws closer. If you had been less skilled, you would have been happier; for this moment you gave up the taste of chicken feet and siriacha. Everyone around you looks so proud.

You want to gnaw at them. Leave the imprint of your teeth behind on their hospital-white skin: a reminder of you, and a warning to the one who will come after.

* * *

At graduation the black ink-colour of your hair looks perfect, when you finish your apple juice someone else steps in to clear the glass instead. You startle, far too used to immediately getting up and disposing of your own plates. Being the guest of honour is exhausting—the hours-days-months-years of study mean nothing.

You’re the only one graduating today.

Suspended as you are in this moment, the stars howl outside, static filling your eyes. Easy enough to pretend those are the stars you remember from your childhood; not the raging, hungry things that cover everything they touch in a burning glaze. Flesh and bone ground to frit. The enamel spine that prevents you from collapsing at the table holds your frame upright, rigid as the spacesuit they’ll shove you into.

This intolerable long table where you are joined by others: a father, a mother, a great-something-or-other, a nephew, and so on. Family members you only call ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ because the family tree loses a branch or two, and you are loosely related but you don’t know how loose. Endless seats that stretch all the way to the other end where people who share your DNA sit and watch.

When they speak their voices engulf the room, rising like the tides of Titan’s inner ocean, and you pretend that you’re small. Small and held between the rings of Saturn, tiny, tiny, tinier still so that anxiety doesn’t eat at you when you remember the incomprehensible vastness of the universe outside. If everything is small then there is no great distance to fall. No ample room to judge.

“About time we left, the Academy sure has gone downhill with each class, soon they will be utterly defunct.” Your mother says, “You took too long.”

“You’ve not worked hard enough.” Your father adds.

There is no pleasing a single soul in this mausoleum of a shuttle, hurtling through space without direction. An honour given to the families of graduates, the chance to accompany them on their search for paradise across the exoplanetary firmament. There are less and less graduates each year, like dandelion seeds drying up under the weight of solar flares and unforgivable cyclones. Today there is only you.

The Academy holds the highest hopes for you and your family.

(But actually, their hopes are just for you. And the engraved knowledge of the past stored in nanochips along your throat.)

* * *

The weight of navigation falls on your shoulders like a shower of liquid oxygen, a breath for every life aboard. It slips over you like woven iron plating. You can carry it.

When the visors drop, complacency follows. No one wants to look away from the screens carefully tailored to deliver short bursts of serotonin. That makes the interstellar trips bearable; you can go mad looking at the endless black infinity outside. Not yours though. A graduated navigator can withstand everything. Besides, the algorithm doesn’t have your mental blueprint if your mouth stays closed. If it knows nothing it cannot tempt you away from your mission, and your teachers taught you well.

* * *

Look at the panel, fingers twisting into keys as the wires feed information onto the flat, worn-down dashboard. Redirect, seek out that place a million light years away where your voice belongs.

You can feel it now. Right where the muscle of your tongue starts is the place on which each and every word you ever wanted to say perches awaiting flight.

Those who share your DNA do not understand your true mission; it has never been about a home, a life, a new start for them. You have always had the final destination imprinted inside the lids of your pale, orb eyes.

They are all sleeping in their pods when the structure comes into view, vine black tower blended into the darkness of space, and the lights turn on as your shuttle approaches. A whirl of mechanical fireflies escort you the rest of the way, and finally you’re home.

This is what you studied for, what you gave up your metal synapses and crystal bones for: this, this moment and no other. What instructors drilled into you until your name was forgotten beneath equations and formulas and ‘what-if’ scenarios.

The long table in the main body of the ship is empty.

You made sure the dosage of propofol delivered directed into each pod will be sufficient to keep them down during the landing and transfer. It will not do to have them awake and disturb the instructors and academics scurrying about. After all, they had said: organic is best. Cultivated and transported before being carefully delivered.

And upon landing you know what you must first do: help re-birth the Academy from the carefully hidden code slinking in your veins. They are your family, they are your future.

End.

Tania Chen is a Chinese-Mexican queer writer of living nightmares. Their work was selected for Brave New Weird Anthology by Tenebrous Press, and has also appeared in Unfettered Hexes by Neon Hemlock, Apparition Lit, Strange Horizons, Pleiades Magazine, Baffling Magazine, Longleaf Review, The Dread Machine among others. They are a graduate of the Clarion West Novella Bootcamp Workshop of 2021, Clarion West Workshop 2023, and a recipient of the HWA’s Dark Poetry Scholarship. Currently, they are assistant editor at Uncanny Magazine and can be found on twitter@archistratego or https://bsky.app/profile/archistratego.bsky.social

The Dearly Departing Radio Broadcast

Christine LaChance

Private Investigator, Lester Roger, only half-listened to the start of the national anthem, the final song the station would play before ending the broadcast day. Static, nothingness was to follow. The bottle of whiskey left a fog over his head that Saturday night, a bribe, and a thanks from the nearby speak-easy for keeping his mouth shut and to keep the cops from sniffing around. Roger would never let the cat out of the bag about that place, and happily accepted the weekly bribe. That little juice joint was one of the few comforts he had those days. It took all his strength and control to move from his desk, where the radio sang, over to his resting place. Roger let himself fall onto the squeaky cot, his head swimming with whiskey. “Went a little heavy on the giggle juice,” he groaned to himself, laying down and letting the alcohol swirl. He’d be feeling this in the morning. He had been sleeping in his office fairly often, and he still hadn’t gotten used to the awkwardness of the circumstances. Long nights here typically kept him at his desk into the early hours. There were always cases to solve, always cheating spouses, always coppers wanting him to track down some rum-runners and gin mills. Police Chief Radcliffe, a real hard-boiled bull, kept him busy with this sort of things. Most nights, he gave up on the idea of going home. It was easier just to stay. The whiskey, as risky as it was to have, especially here in the office of an investigator, became essential for even the possibility of sleep. There was one consolation; the window offered a view of the city from his office that was always astounding, no matter the time of day.

“Blast it!” Roger cursed when he realized he had left the radio on. “Oh, well. It’ll wake me up tomorrow morning with the news.” Roger thought the new and fancy Philco radios were aptly named. With that cathedral style, the tombstone shape and design, it was like something from long gone days, and it spoke to us by using the newest technology. Roger was given this radio after a rather wealthy client lost her spouse. Suicide. He was the only one who didn’t suspect the grieving widow of foul play, and was determined to make sure the coppers saw his reasoning. Things didn’t add up quite right for it to be a murder. He had been right, and saved that dame from a long stay in the hoosegow. She had been so grateful, she gave him her late-husband’s state-of-the-art radio. “He always loved his programs. I’ve not the heart to keep it here.” Roger couldn’t turn down the offer, and soon found he enjoyed the entertainment while he worked away on his case files and typewriter.

“O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. This concludes our broadcast day.” Roger was already half-asleep when the static began to drone on through the dark hours.

The nocturnal swing dance of whiskey and Roger’s empty stomach made its grand finale in the small washroom attached to his office. The gaslights in the streets below were his only source of light. After the dance of his stomach settled, Roger made a short detour to hisdesk, littered with files, forms, and every newspaper the city produced that week. The tombstone-shaped radio was a solid shadow amongst the mess. Fumbling for the knobs, to silence the static, Roger mistakenly knocked the tuner. The steady static suddenly changed. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear melodious sounds, like the idea of a song, something dark, yet ethereal, haunting, yet captivating. This was a type of music which dared you to dance, but somehow, you knew it would be wrong, inappropriate to do so. “That’s funny,” he thought in his fog, “there aren’t usually broadcasts this time of night.”

Roger listened to the curious music, so strange, but there was something familiar about it. The music soon faded and was replaced by a cheerful voice. “Good evening to my darling listeners. The witching hour is upon us this late Saturday night, and you know what that means.”

An applause resounded in the background. “Wait. There’s a studio audience?” Roger inquired to the radio, as if it would answer.

The announcer continued after the affirmation from the crowd. “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. It’s time to announce next week’s Dearly Departing.”

“What?” Roger took a seat at his desk, intrigued by the strange program he accidentally stumbled upon.

“We’ve got a doozy coming this week, folks. The boxing champion, Lawrence Lockjaw Johnson, will be joining us this Wednesday after getting bumped off. A devastating right hook from his opponent, Grand Graham McNeil, in the sixth round of their match. Talk about a knockout, am I right?” The audience laughed along with the announcer. “Boy, oh boy, if only I could bet on that one.”

Roger flicked on the desk lamp, feeling the pain in his eyes from the light. Ignoring the hangover, he rustled for that morning’s newspaper. Tearing through the pages, he found it: “Lockjaw vs. Grand Graham This Wednesday” in large print on the front page. “Is this a joke? Is the announcer making a guess about who is going to win the bout?” What was this about ‘joining us?’

“As always, that’s not all, folks. We’ve got more on the way from this grand city of ours, and I’m happy to spill these beans.” The announcer began to list off names. Sometimes he would also add additional details like, being struck by a car, falling down stairs, spoiled food, all which sounded like causes of death, immediately followed by applause from the audience.

Roger continued to listen, fascinated and uncertain of what he was hearing.

Once the announcer completed the list, the audience applauded, amused by the promises. From behind the cheers, the eerie music started up again. “Ladies and gentlemen, it has been my pleasure to entertain and inform you. Keep your eyes out for our newly, dearly departed. As always, may the festivities ever go on. See you next week. This concludes our broadcast.” The music crescendoed, and static, once again, filled the office. Roger continued to stare at the radio, too shocked to move.

The following morning, hungover and sleep-deprived, Roger walked the thirteen blocks to the radio station. No way any cabs would be available early. The sun wasn’t even up yet, but Roger was determined to catch anyone from the radio station who might be going in for the early news reports. Someone there had to have answers. He paced along the empty sidewalk, waiting and watching the city wake up.

* * *

“But the dial was set to this very station. You must know something about this.” Roger tried to bargain with the station manager, trying to find some sort of clue about the mysterious broadcast from the previous night.

“Mr. Roger, I’m not sure what you heard that night, but I can assure you, there is no such radio program being broadcast within this city, certainly not at so late an hour.” Roger stared at him for a moment, trying to probe any possible giveaways about what the man had just told him. Nothing. “Listen, Sir, I have some shows about to start, so unless you want to join a studio audience, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Roger knew when he had been defeated. Rather than press and give this man reason to believe he was insane, he chose to relent. “Take care, then,” he said, tapping his hat in a salute. “Thank you for your time.” Spifflicated as he was, he knew there had to be an answer. There had to be.

Even with the new mystery under his hat, Roger had more work to do. Even on a Sunday, crime didn’t rest. After his short, fruitless detour, he made his way to the police station. Chief Radcliffe was expecting him. Roger quietly cursed himself for forgetting to clean himself up that morning. He must have looked terrible. Then again, this wasn’t the first time the chief had seen him after a sleepless night.

Early in the morning, the station was buzzing. There had been talk of bootleggers finding alternate routes into the city, and the coppers were trying to figure out the routes they were now taking. Weaving his way through the cops and cups of steaming coffee, Roger approached two officers with whom he frequently spoke. The two men were in a light-hearted conversation.

“Lockjaw’s got this in the bag, Rocco.”

“Yeah, and that bag’s in the river, Charlie. Graham is the new contender.”

“Lockjaw’s gonna wipe the floor with this Graham kid. Deal with it.”

“What’s it like living in Dreamland, Charlie?”

“I’m betting this’ll be the end of Lockjaw’s career,” Roger chimed in his two cents, repeating what the radio announcer had said. “Down in the sixth.”

Rocco smirked at Charlie, his opinion backed up by an outsider. “Thank you, Lester. This ninny can’t see reason when it slaps him in the kisser.”

Charlie turned his attention to Roger. “All right, smart guy. You wanna put your money where your mouth is?”

“I take chances in life, not money, Charlie.”

“Fine,” Charlie relented. “Get in there and see the Chief, Roger. We’ve got some work for ya.”

The oak door at the end of the line of desks was slightly ajar. The glass window of the door clearly displayed to whom the domain belonged, Chief Henry Radcliffe. Roger didn’t bother knocking, and simply strolled in. The broad, muscular shoulders of Radcliffe were hunched over some photographs, fresh from the onsight darkroom. Roger tensed when he saw they were from the nearby business of Dimer’s Diner, the business hiding the speakeasy he protected with his silence. Roger immediately knew what Chief Radcliffe wanted from him. Clearing his throat, Roger put on his confident veneer. “G’morning, Chief.”

Radcliffe straightened and stood up in greeting. “Lester, come in.” Roger closed the door behind him, dreading what was to come. “Looks like you’ve had a rough night.”

There was no hiding the stubble, the tired eyes, and possibly the lingering stench of a sick stomach. “Most nights are rough these days,” Roger assured. “Strange times.”

“Ain’t it the truth.” Radcliffe looked Roger up and down before returning his attention to the task at hand. “Let’s get down to business. We’ve been seeing some suspicious activity around these businesses.” Radcliffe spread out the photographs for Roger to get a better look. “I need you to go in and see if you can find any juice bars. My men can’t search without suspicion. Rocco and Charlie out there have been trying to get a better idea where it is.”

Roger felt his stomach churn, even without the weekly whiskey bonus. He’d have to warn them if that whiskey was going to keep coming. “I know the area. I’ll report anything suspicious, Chief.”

* * *

The crowd was uproarious. This had been the fight of the century up to this point. The announcer could barely be heard over the sounds of the crowd. Roger smoked away the entire fight. Now, the sixth round was about to begin.

“Here we go folks, another round of Lockjaw and the Grand Graham going head-to-head and, oh, what a hook from Grand Graham. Lockjaw is down for the count. What an impressive hit. Here comes the end of the count. Eight. Nine. Ten. That’s it! We have a new champion, Grand Graham McNeil has dethroned Lockjaw!”

The crowd screamed as Lawrence Lockjaw Johnson left the ring for good.

Lester Roger felt his stomach fall to the floor.

* * *

Roger tapped the nearly empty glass of whiskey nervously. He was pacing around his office to the sound of static from the Philco radio. The dark wood appeared black against the night sky through the large window, a shadow looming over his office. The announcer had said, “same time, same place.” He’d be ready this time. Roger had a pen and paper ready to note everything, every detail this radio announcer reported. Then, he’d compare the obituaries for the following week. He needed to culminate evidence if anyone was to believe what he was hearing. Roger knew no one would ever believe there was a radio program devoted to announcing the following week’s deaths. He didn’t like the idea of spending the rest of his life locked away in a padded room.

The weekly gift from the speakeasy was nearly drained. Roger couldn’t help himself. He was anxious. He almost didn’t want to be right about what he had heard, quietly pleading it had all been a drunken delusion, but that boxing match said otherwise. Roger shivered and gulped down what remained in his glass, feeling the cheap hooch burn all the way down his throat. The eerie song had begun.

“Good evening, my darling listeners.” The audience applauded the anonymous announcer. “Saturday has come again, and it’s our favorite time. Say, what time is it, folks?”

The audience announced together, “The witching hour!”

The announcer chuckled loudly, “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, which means it’s now time to list off next week’s dearly departing.”

Roger rushed to his chair, ready to take names and causes of death, if the announcer gave them. Quickly, he scribbled out the names: Mary Sheen, Robert Black (electric shock), Angela Merkle (choking on food), Herman Jones, and a few others.

After some time, the announcer gave two more names. “This one’s a real doozy. Hang on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, because it looks like Police Chief Henry Radcliffe will be going down in a blaze of glory.” Roger froze in horror at the sound of the chief’s name while the audience oh’d and ah’d. “That’s right. Chief Radcliffe has had his hands full with these bootleggers. Well, he thinks he’s going to get the leg up on these boots.” The audience laughed in the background. “Looks like a double barrel will cause some double trouble, folks. Radcliffe will take a shot straight in the noggin will behind the wheel, trying to intercept these rum-runners. Talk about hooch worth dying for.” This time the announcer laughed at his own joke. “The then headless chief will bring fellow officer Rocco Lemmings to a fiery death when their car goes flying off a railbridge of all things. Huh, I thought we weren’t supposed to drive on those.”

Roger felt his throat tighten and his heart pound. The announcer just called for Chief Radcliffe and Rocco’s deaths. His pen fell to the desk after he lost all feeling in his limbs.

“Well, folks, we’ve got quite the week ahead of us. Tune in again, same time, same place for more Dearly Departing. May the festivities ever go on. This concludes our broadcast.” The music played out, followed by static once again.

* * *

Roger let himself into the police station early the following morning. Moving and darting between coppers with their morning coffee, he made a beeline for Radcliffe’s office. The door was closed, which meant he was occupied with something important, but he didn’t care. Lives were on the line. In a burst of determination, manners be damned, he pushed in the door. “Chief.”

Radcliffe, Rocco, and Charlie all jumped at the sudden intrusion. “Lester,” Radcliffe shouted, “What the hell do you mean bursting through here like a hurricane?”

Roger paused for a beat, trying to calm himself. Two dead men were watching him. “Pardon the interruption, fellas,” he began to explain. “Chief, I’ve got some information for you.” Rocco and Charles looked over to Radcliffe, unimpressed thus far. “Of vital importance.”

Radcliffe crossed his bulging arms over his barrel chest, “More vital than taking down these bootleggers, Lester? Somehow, I doubt it. Have you got any information about that gin mill I sent you hunting for?”

Roger straightened up, remembering his indulgence from the previous night. “Nothing about the gin mill, I’m afraid. I have to warn you about something.”

“Warn me?”

“Yes,” Roger looked down to one of the two seated men. “You too, Rocco.”

“Go on, then.”

Roger took a deep breath and tried to explain the situation as calmly and clearly as possible. “Don’t ask me how I know this, but there’s a good chance you and Rocco are going to get killed this week.”

Radcliffe shot Roger a threatening look. “Come again?”

“It’s the bootleggers, Chief. They’ll get you on the rail bridge.”

The three men listening all gasped. Their faces stretched into enormous smiles, like kids at Christmas. “The rail bridge!” Charles shouted.

Radcliffe guffawed at the lead Roger had unintentionally provided. “We’ve got them now, fellas. Well done, Lester. There’s a reason why you’re such a great investigator.”

“No,” Roger protested. “No, listen. You go out there this week, you will be slaughtered. This isn’t something to take lightly.”

“Lester, Lester,” Radcliffe assured, “I appreciate your concern. We aren’t worried about a few rum-runners. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.” Radcliffe moved over to Roger and slapped him on the back. “This is police business, Lester. You worry about finding us that juice bar. We’ll handle the runners.” With a gentle push, Radcliffe had removed Roger from his office, closing the door behind him.

“Chief!” he shouted and began pounding on the door. “I’m begging you, please don’t do this!” The entire office went quiet. Roger could feel the eyes of the confused officers around him, taking in the scene. “He’s going to get himself and Rocco killed. Mark my words, he’s a dead man.” He didn’t wait for a reply. He stormed out of the police station to purchase the morning papers. He had research to do.

* * *

Roger sat at his now cleared desk. The only things he kept on it now were the newspapers, the list of people the announcer called the deaths for, and the radio, which kept him company. He checked and rechecked the obituaries each day of the week. Now, he went through that day’s paper, disbelieving what he was seeing. Everything had lined up exactly as the announcer said. Dutifully, he clipped out the announcements, along with the date they were announced in the papers. These clippings would be filed and cataloged with that week’s list of deaths announced over the radio program. He’d make a case if he had to. Something was going on at that station, and he was going to gather enough proof to warrant an investigation. “I’ve got to get someone else to listen to the broadcast too. Then I’ll have a witness who can back me up.”

The music on the radio stopped, and a melancholy voice began speaking. “We interrupt this program to bring you a newsflash. Police Chief Henry Radcliffe and Officer Rocco Lemmings have had a run-in with a few rum-runners about an hour ago on the North line rail bridge, coming into the city. Chief Radcliffe had been driving a vehicle at the time, while in pursuit. Officer Rocco had been with him when his double barrel shotgun fired on a sharp turn, taking Chief Radcliffe’s life. The vehicle was out of control and careened off of the rail bridge. Officer Lemmings was trapped inside, and the car caught fire after impact.”

Roger felt his body go numb, and leaned back in his chair, shocked and defeated. “Those dumb bastards.”

* * *

The speakeasy had become his sanctuary the next two days. Saturday had reared its ugly head once again. Roger didn’t know if he had it in him to keep up this personal investigation. What was the point? He had warned them both, and both of them had gone and got themselves killed anyway. Still, if he had the power to end the madness, even to find out who the announcer was, where he was getting this information, it would be worth it in the end.

Roger gulped down the final shot of the evening and collected his weekly bribe. Stashing the bottle under his coat, he walked out into the cool darkness. The gaslights had been lit, so he had a safe path back to the office, home away from home. He patted the hidden bottle, thankful for the medication. He’d need it tonight.

Back at the office, Roger drained the bottle of whiskey like he had been wandering the never-ending desert, and finally came across an oasis. Depleted and drained, Roger dropped the bottle to the floor, and dragged himself over to his desk, ready to continue his grim work. A quick look at the clock told Roger he was right on time. “Serendipity,” he sighed, raising the volume on the radio, surrounding himself with static. Waiting for the unfortunately familiar theme to begin playing, Roger turned on his desk lamp, and readied a paper and pen.

He didn’t have to wait long. There was the melodious, eerie tune. Roger focused. He had work to do.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the witching hour. You know what that means.” The audience cheered, distant from the microphone. “You’ve got it. It’s time for this week’s Dearly Departing.” Roger wasn’t even phased by the peculiar announcements anymore. He had all the evidence he needed to know this was actually happening. This broadcast was the real thing, all he needed was proof.

“Now,” the announcer continued. “I’m going to have to rush the listing this week, because I've got a little surprise for you, my darling audience.” The audience predictably clapped, pleased they were going to be amused and awarded. “Let’s begin, shall we?” Roger wrote quickly, taking down all the names and causes of death the announcer was willing to divulge. An oddly short list this week, Roger noted. Maybe that was a good thing, a little blessing for once.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer finished. “The time has come for your surprise, and let me tell you, it’s a real zinger.”

Despite his exhaustion, and numbness from what had transpired this week, Roger found himself intrigued by what the announcer had planned.

“We’ve got one about to happen any moment. Everything is all set up, and the players are all in place. Now, picture it; an investigator drowning in his vice, desperate to find answers to something he could never understand. Would those two men still be alive if he hadn’t intervened? Was he ultimately to blame for their deaths? He’s been asking himself these questions, whether he’ll admit it or not.” Roger stood up from his desk, the quiet numbness he had been living in broke. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, he’s about to be a victim to that very vice that has destroyed those two men. Let’s listen in, folks.”

The radio went quiet. The broadcast didn’t end, and there was no static. It was silent.

From the hallway, Roger could hear someone coming in fast. This time of night, Roger expected the worst. Rushing to a file cabinet, Roger sought to find his pistol to defend himself. In his drunken cloud, he stumbled and swayed, but it was too late. The door to the office thundered open, and Charlie stomped in, holding a pistol out to Roger, sneering at the man, illuminated by the city lights and a small electric lamp. “What the blazes are you doing here, Charlie?”

“Put your hands up, Lester.” There was no humor in Charlie’s voice.

Roger obeyed. “You here to pinch me, Charlie? For what? Tell me why you’re here.”

Still holding out the pistol, freezing Roger in his place behind the desk, Charlie snarled. “You knew they would die. You knew exactly where it would happen. Did you have a hand in it? Answer me.”

Shaking his head slightly, confused about the late-night intrusion, Roger had to ask his own question, “Horse feathers. What makes you think I would want them dead, Charlie? Think for a minute, will ya? What could I possibly stand to gain?”

“Don’t try to give me the run-around, Lester. You think I don’t know when a guy’s been hitting the juice? You’re in on it, aren’t ya? You knew about those bootleggers. You’ve been a regular at that gin mill this week, the very one we’ve been huntin’ for. You’re drunk on the hooch now. Look at yourself.”

Roger felt himself shrinking. He never felt so exposed, so vulnerable in his whole life. All of his secrets were coming to the surface. “How did you know about the speakeasy?”

Charlie scoffed. “Because I followed you, ya mook. You come into the police station hungover and reeking to high heaven. Did you really think I didn’t notice? We only kept you around because we knew you’d lead us there eventually.”

“Charlie, listen. You can’t take me in. I’ve got work to do here,” Roger pleaded.

“Oh, yeah? And what work is that?”

Roger decided to lay all his cards on the table. What was the point in stalling? “There’s a radio program I found,” he confessed. “Every Saturday night at this hour, an announcer lists off the names of all the people in this city who are going to die the following week. I’m trying to figure out who’s behind it, and how they know.”

Charlie contorted his face, disgusted and confused. “You’re out of your ever-loving mind, Lester. I might bring you straight to the loony bin.”

“Please,” Roger begged. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m gathering evidence. The program is on now. Listen.”

Charlie looked over to the silent radio on the desk, quiet as a funeral. “I don’t hear a radio program, Lester. What I hear are the crazed ramblings of a drunk.”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“Now, you’re coming with me to the station.”

“No!” Roger rushed to grab his gun to level the battlefield. Charlie would listen. He had to understand.

As Roger stepped towards the file cabinet to grab his pistol, his foot caught the side of the empty whiskey bottle he’d dropped. The bottle rolled, and Roger drunkenly stumbled back. Flinging his arms desperately to find steadiness, he only managed to find the radio. Unable to hold up Roger’s weight, it gave up and came falling back with him. Charlie moved in to save him from his drunken clumsiness, but he couldn’t reach him in time. Back he fell, through the thin glass of his office window with nothing to catch him but the night air.

Charlie rushed down the stairs to call for aid. No aid was needed anymore. Roger lay still and shattered under the gaslights. The radio was still clasped in his arm. Only he heard the mysteriously captivating music swell. Roger faded quickly, but not before catching one more goodbye from the announcer.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our broadcast.”

End.

Christine LaChance has contributed to several publications including, Every Writer, The Alien Buddha, Swim, The Gorko Gazette, and Chicken Soup for the Soul.  She is also the author of the LOZERS trilogy.  She lives in Rhode Island with her two black cats, Gaia and Luna.  Feel free to summon her on X @TheCLaChance

Room One

John K. Peck

Though the room did not exist, he nonetheless sat in the center of it, at his desk, in his favorite wooden chair with the rounded leather back. It was a replica of a chair he’d sat in once or twice as a small boy, recreated here in its original size: outlandishly large in his memory, it was now snug to his grown form. He looked at the tall bookshelves that stood in rows on either side of the room, filled with books whose leather spines glowed faintly in the light emanating from a cut-crystal ceiling fixture. A brass chain ran through the lamp’s center, and ringing the spot where the chain entered the ceiling were the molded plaster fleurs and shells he’d spent hours staring at as a child in the Culandotte Library reading room.

Now the plaster flourishes were his and his alone, as were the chair, the desk, the shelves with their thousands of books, the lead-paned windows, the polished hardwood floor with its massive rug, replicated from the memory of a rug glimpsed through a train window as he’d rolled past a bazaar in Azeres. Though the room did not exist in any real sense and would only ever have a single visitor, it had been created with exquisite attention to detail. And while he preferred the heft and contours of the real world and would often go days or even weeks in a row without visiting this private library of his own making, he could nonetheless do so easily at any time by uttering a single phrase, silently, in the quiet mind-voice he used to speak to himself: Room Two, doorless, opens its doors to you.

* * *

The father of the so-called “method of loci” developed it out of necessity: a hopeless student, he was given one last chance to impress a tutor enough to warrant his training. In one week the young man was obliged to commit Callos’ Dialogue with the Spirit to memory. For days he struggled, agonizing over each line, feeling earlier passages slip away as he moved to later ones. Finally, on the evening of the fifth day and in a state of acute desperation, he strode from the study and into the garden to clear his mind.

As he walked, he found that lines from the Dialogue came to him unbidden, and soon the text was as visible to him as a real thing, placed among the thistles and oleander that lined the paths.

* * *

After nearly three decades of practicing property law, he had finally begun to see real dividends. The money had always been more than adequate, but these new rewards were more meaningful: he could call new contacts without introduction, was commissioned by corporate clients at shockingly high rates, and even received the occasional request for expert testimony.

His current case, in which he represented a stubborn client named Kellerman who owned several downtown properties, seemed to be nearing its crescendo: the city would either accept his client’s offer of basic asbestos mitigation plus a small penalty fee, or reject it and go to trial. Either eventuality was fine, as he had, to his mind, built an airtight case on decades of precedent from similar mixed-use spaces. From a rhetorical perspective, his potential arguments met the standards set out by a former professor: Sharp enough to stab, broad enough to bludgeon.

He sat at his desk—his real desk, in his real study—on a warm late-summer evening, reading the newspaper. He found his eyes beginning to lose focus, and at the edge of his desk, he noticed a book he did not remember pulling from the shelf, folded open face-down. The book was a blue paperback, and the title was written along the spine in bold yellow lettering: Working Within the Footprint. Though he remembered it well enough as a decent guide to calculating square footage for properties with unusual shapes, he was certain he hadn’t consulted it in years. He picked it up and read:

[…] is a losing battle, as space that is not usable in a practical sense does not increase the value of the property in a meaningful way. It is suggested that rather than trying to maximize the listed square footage of an attic, owners instead explore ways in which the space can be made more comfortable and usable for a variety of room types. A skylight, for example, can give the illusion of far more space than such a room can actually offer.

He closed the book and went to put it back on the shelf, but couldn’t remember what section it had come from and couldn’t see any clear gaps between books. Eventually he placed it, somewhat unsatisfyingly, on the “general architecture” shelf.

* * *

Summer became fall. Against his advice, Kellerman opted for arbitration with the city: the man had no taste for legal wrangling and simply wanted the case to go away. He set about creating an airtight argument tailored to the selected panel and practiced his delivery as he made his way through the city to his office, using the journey as a loose string of loci: the five subway stops corresponded to the five key points of his opening; the walk through the labyrinthine South Cross station, with its antiquated glass display cases and polished limestone corridors, triggered the various counterarguments and pushbacks he anticipated; the windy ascent to 32nd Street, emerging to a gray sky with circling gulls, cued his backup argument if a potential subclause was invoked; and the last few blocks to his office, at the edge of the park, corresponded to his final summation. The large oaks that loomed over the brick wall demarcating the park’s edge marked the beats of his closing points, both spatially as loci and in their iterative timing.

* * *

In direct contrast to the loci of memory used by most practitioners, which correspond to lines of poetry, mathematical formulas, or ledgers and lexicons, the books in the private room of his mind instead contained his own personal memories. In this way he freed the parts of his mind that would otherwise have been burdened by sentimentality, nostalgia, or deep visceral recalls of a sensory or erotic nature, instead allowing him to focus on his work and the tasks that make up daily life. If this made the real world more monochrome and flat, the tradeoff came in his visits to the room, which took on a depth and exhilaration many others would find only in more hedonistic pursuits.

The pages of the books that filled its shelves were inked in vivid colors, depicting each sunset and dawn and full moon, every unnamed flower and strange bird he had encountered. When opened, they rang out with sounds, from the crack and boom of fireworks over the Tirenius at night, to the yap of his first flop-eared dog, to the dying moan of his father in a darkened hospital room in North Wye. They were scented with everything from the salt air of the White Sea to the rosewater perfume that Sally Lynette had been wearing when she gave him his first kiss. One page, which he visited with particular frequency (as some people seek out a familiar song when in need of comfort), gave off a broad sun-drenched warmth and the smell of cherry licorice while playing the looping organ-notes of a merry-go-round. The two-page spread was painted lavishly to show his first view of a summer carnival, set against the tall pines of the surrounding forest.

* * *

The arbitration succeeded, but just barely; one of the panel members had unexpectedly pushed back against his take on Tremont v Lindh. He’d recovered, but in a somewhat weakened state: having practiced the argument while walking past the park near South Cross station, it was as if his endgame loci, the looming oaks at the park’s edge, had failed to manifest—or rather, they could be recalled easily enough as objects, but the particular points of his argument had become untethered from them. Trying to recall the minutiae of his argument, he had simply seen trees, their gray-brown branches standing still and blank against an overcast sky, evoking nothing.

Now he sat at the desk in his study, sipping a drink. He considered visiting the room, but decided to wait until he’d calmed down a bit. He set his drink on the desk and closed his eyes, attempting a technique he often used to regain composure: he pictured an idealized version of his childhood room, in which he’d assembled his very first collection of loci nearly half a century prior. He was lying in bed; it was a warm night, and though the lights were off, an electric fan whirred steadily on a table across the room. He stared at the ceiling, where hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars, stickers he’d placed meticulously using a ladder, made a rectangular cosmos. He looked from one star to the next, and with each new star he recalled, memory-within-memory, a fragment of his earliest years he’d embedded within it, before he’d even known the name for such a system, or that anyone besides him would find it useful.

This was Room One.

Rather than being attached to any specific time or place, the sensations contained in the glowing stars spread across the ceiling of Room One were simply that: sensations, ideas, non-specific experiences. The big star straight overhead, somewhat brighter than the others around it, was ice cream, hot day. Down and a bit to the left, a cluster of smaller stars hovered; the centermost was taking off socks, cool air on feet. His gaze moved to the left wall, the edge of his delimited galaxy, and up to a star stuck to the edge between ceiling and wall: looking into the sun, closing eyes, sun still burned into dark.

He was about to focus on another star cluster when a jarring thud shook the bedroom. Startled, he looked around the darkened room but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He looked back up at the stars, and a second thud rang out, louder, now clearly coming from overhead. A lump formed in his throat as a different sound joined the first: a sort of shuffling, like something bound and struggling. Then a third bang shook the room and jarred him back awake, to the late-afternoon dimness of his own study, where he cursed and reached for a tissue to mop up his spilled drink.

* * *

Non-literate societies around the world have used loci systems for millennia. These systems are both place- and object-based and are used as tools to recall things as diverse as ethnic histories, navigational routes, and plant and animal classifications. One such object, the curutl of the natives of South Iselien, consisted of threaded beads sewn into a leather armband, which was almost never removed. Wearers of the curutl were the equivalent of scribes, but as their knowledge could not be transferred to scrolls or codices, they were given their own guard and granted the status of nobles.

* * *

The following Saturday evening, after spending several hours brushing up on trust law, he poured himself a glass of wine. He had not returned to either mind-room—neither the tall bookshelves of Two, nor the star-ceilinged bedroom of One—since his unexpected expulsion from the latter. Instead, he had spent the time pursuing a sort of balance between work and reverie, free from any systems of memory or alternate mental spaces, as the overwhelming majority of the population did on a regular basis. He’d fled work through escapism, which he considered among the lowest of human urges, before being chased back to it by guilt, the absolute lowest. Though he found this back-and-forth repellent, he had allowed it to guide his more open post-Kellerman schedule, in the hopes that he could curb his dependency on the room.

But in that moment, his mind involuntarily spoke the words: Room Two, doorless, opens its doors to you, and once again he was sitting in his chair at the desk at the center of the room, surveying the lead-paned windows and book-lined walls, the freestanding bookshelves with their neat rows of volumes, the large rug stretched out before him. Then he opened his eyes, or tried to, but he was still there, in the room, sitting in the wooden chair with its leather-lined back that fit him so well. He lifted his hands from his sides and placed them on the desk in front of him, palms down, feeling its cool, smooth surface. He began to picture the spines of the books, sorting through them for the perfect one, but found himself strangely unable to focus. Something new. Or different. He glanced around, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Not visual. Something else. Another sense. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, removing any doubt: there was a strange smell, faint but persistent, familiar yet unfamiliar, slightly ripe.

He made his way through the shelves, seeking its source. Toward the end of an aisle, the smell grew stronger and took on a different counter-tone. Sour; overripe. Rotten. He scanned the shelves until a book caught his eye. He recognized it as the first of several books of forests, containing primal examples of the subject: warm woods with sunlight filtering through leaves; cold pines at night, snow falling from branches; fairytale woods prowled by talking bears and wolves. The book’s spine stuck out further than those on either side, and when he tried to pull it free it stuck in place, as if it had expanded or swelled. With some effort he pulled it clear, and the scent hit his nostrils: a sharp tang of rotting meat, with deeper odors of mold and brackish water. He turned to a random page and felt a knot growing in his throat: the pictures were blurred, smeared, as if the book had become water-logged. Not possible. He turned the pages faster, their images distorted, his eyes unable to focus on the blotches of green and black and brown that had once been clear pictures, and were, with each new page, increasingly intermixed with noxious washes of pink and yellow-brown.

Another sensation entered his consciousness, and though at first it was nearly too faint to register, it soon became undeniable: a hissing sound, like air escaping from a punctured tire. He turned a page and the colors, smell, and sound hit him simultaneously: a sickly splatter of chemical yellow and bloody reddish-pink, a sharp odor of putrescence that leapt straight to his nostrils, and a louder wheezing that, as he listened, horrified, grew into a guttural moan and then a groaning shout, like air being forced from the lungs of some near-dead creature. He threw the book spasmodically, as if it had burned him; it landed in a corner, face-down and mercifully silent. He returned shakily to the center of the room and stood behind the chair, eyes closed, gripping its rounded back with trembling fingers, waiting for his breathing to return to normal.

Several minutes later, still gripping the chair, he took a last deep breath to calm himself. Home, he thought, closing his eyes, but when he opened them he was still in the room, gripping the chair, blinking in the strange half-light.

* * *

Edwin Karlovy, who memorized pi to 3,428 places, described his process as one of creating a path in his mind, which he could walk at any time, and could even, with some prompting, start at an arbitrary point or walk in reverse, reciting the digits in reverse order. Asked whether he could have memorized yet more digits, Karlovy’s reply was that he certainly could have, just as, in a journey on foot, one could choose to take another step, and another, and another. The 3,428th digit, however, had a particular beauty to it, he said, like a certain cobblestone that stood out in a road, slightly taller than the others, catching the rays of the setting sun.

* * *

Weeks had passed, or must have, though the light from the windows was the constant gray of a single unbroken day. Any sunset tinge of pink-orange had long since drained away, and the room itself was dim throughout, with darker dusk-like shadows at its corners and between the shelves. Books were scattered across the floor: some in loose stacks or piles, some open, some closed.

He spent most of his time in the dusk-gray aisles, lying on the floor, opening one book after another and inhaling their various scents. Though there was no manner of physical sustenance in this act, it nonetheless began to take the shape of an addiction, and soon he stopped reading altogether and simply buried his face in the pages, inhaling deeply, sometimes tearing out multiple pages and pressing them under his nose. As soon as the smell of a book inevitably faded, he would move on to the next. He occasionally let himself experience their images and sounds, but a sort of malnutrition had begun to take hold of him, and soon the images were little more than a blur of faint grays. He developed a ringing in his ears and began to actively avoid books with loud or shrill sounds, tossing them into a growing pile in one corner of the room.

Each time he tried to close his eyes and return to the world, he saw only darkness. Eventually, despite his overall weakness, he stayed in this darkness and began to shape it, dividing it into solid and empty parts, demarcating boundaries and walls. Fueled by deep inhales from the remaining books—perfume, wood fires, cigars and cigarettes, wet wool, wildflowers, gasoline—he began to add color and shape to the darkness, and soon it took the form he had worked so hard to bring about once before: a room, but smaller and more modest, an attic room with a low, lightly slanted roof that held a single skylight, through which a dim misty light filtered. After several hours, the act of creating this room, which he called Room Three, would drain his strength, and he would wake, shaking and exhausted, among scattered books in the dusk-light between the shelves.

* * *

From Vitrius, who first placed the Dialogues along his walking path, to Karlovy, who built a path of numbers in his mind, one theme recurs over and over: that of “performing” memory, of proving one’s feat to the world at large. But what of private memories, of those meant only for oneself? We cannot ask the former, being millennia removed from his era, but Karlovy has a succinct answer: “I don’t store my own memories away, no,” he says in an interview. “I would just be handing them back to myself later. So I prefer to keep them with me, but perhaps I winnow or cull them a bit. The mind is a garden; as with any garden, the dead branches need trimming.”

* * *

Months passed with no way to mark the time. Despite the weakness that consumed him and the increasingly ragged state of the books that served as his nourishment, he was able to keep the small attic with its slanted roof and single round window consistently in his mind, refusing to allow it to return to nothingness. He shuttled between the two rooms, sometimes half-voluntarily, though more frequently he simply found himself in the attic, unbidden, as one finds oneself inside a dream with no memory of falling asleep. He had added a bed and small bedside table, as well as a single bookshelf with several volumes. Like most books in dreams, they were printed in inscrutable ciphers and unknown languages, and would fall apart at the bindings when he attempted to open them, sliding from his hands into loose sheets that fluttered to the floor. The single skylight, like the windows of the library, brought light but no view, as nothing beyond the glass had been required. He felt himself growing weaker in this new space, as if his primary self in the library were the rotting roots of a spindly tree, incapable of sending nutrients where they were needed. He lay on the sweat-stained mattress, tossing and turning weakly beneath thin covers.

Almost imperceptibly, over many hours and days under the unbroken half-light of the single window, a sound began to take form, near-inaudible at first but growing gradually stronger: a faint whirr or whine, like a distant engine. Day by day it grew louder until it seemed to fill the room and he could no longer focus on anything else. Eventually he gathered his remaining strength and slid from bed to floor, still wrapped in the blanket. He placed his ear to the wooden floorboards and the sound grew slightly louder. He searched the floor until he found a gap, then placed his eye to it and peered through it. At first he saw only darkness, but eventually his eye adjusted and he saw what looked like a bed with a shape beneath the covers. Drawing on his last reserves of strength, he balled one hand into a fist and slammed it against the floor. Though he couldn’t be sure, the shape beneath the covers seemed to move slightly. He hit the floor once again; the covers seemed to shift but stopped just as quickly. Fighting against overwhelming fatigue, struggling to free himself from the blanket wrapped around him, he raised his hand once more and slammed it, open-palmed, against the floor.

Finally, the figure sat up in bed, staring at him, and for a moment he saw through two pairs of eyes: one staring down at the young boy in the darkened room, one staring up at the darkened ceiling, looking through and beyond the glowing stars for the source of the unknown and fearsome sound.

* * *

Though he did not remember dragging himself back onto the bed, he found himself there, lying on his back, the sweat-soaked sheet wrapped around him. The attic was dark; the skylight above showed the blackness of a night sky with only a faint ambient light filtered through. He closed his eyes, trying desperately to return: to the world, to Room Two, to anywhere. He spoke the phrase in his mind, but instead of the familiar words, new words came unbidden: Room Three, waiting to be born. He opened his eyes, blinking, still in the attic, trying to sit up but finding himself too weak to do so.

Suddenly, a booming thud rang out, making his eyes snap wide open. He struggled but couldn’t sit up, as if the sheet were somehow tied around him. He closed his eyes again, trying to say the words, but others came in their place: Unfurled wings, black in the wordless night. Another sudden bang made his eyes snap open; he looked up at the sloped roof, thinking he saw something fluttering at the edge of the skylight. Another sound, faint at first, then growing louder, began to take shape beyond the ceiling: a scratching or scraping, as though claws were trying to gain purchase on a smooth surface, accompanied by a heavier rhythmic sound like gusts of air being pushed downward with great force.

Then a third bang, far louder than the others, rang out, and the room was plunged into darkness. He closed his eyes, already speaking the unbidden words which he had always known and had been waiting his whole life to say—Room Four, sarcophagus, vaulted by unknown stars—feeling a rush of air against his face as he did so, as if he were falling, or perhaps being borne upwards with tremendous speed.

End.

John K. Peck is a Berlin-based writer, musician, and letterpress printer. His fiction has appeared in Interzone, Pyre, Cold Signal, Dark Horses, and the anthologies Dark Stars (Shacklebound) and The Nameless Songs of Zadok Allen (JayHenge). He is also a frequent contributor to McSweeney's Internet Tendency and has appeared in several McSweeney’s anthologies. Find him on Twitter at @johnkpeck.

Demons of the Sea

William Hope Hodgson

Originally published in Sea Stories 1923

"Come out on deck and have a look, Darky!'" Jepson cried, rushing into the half deck. "The Old Man says there's been a submarine earthquake, and the sea's all bubbling and muddy!"

Obeying the summons of Jepson's excited tone, I followed him out. It was as he had said; the everlasting blue of the ocean was mottled with splotches of a muddy hue, and at times a large bubble would appear, to burst with a loud "pop." Aft, the skipper and the three mates could be seen on the poop, peering at the sea through their glasses. As I gazed out over the gently heaving water, far off to windward something was hove up into the evening air. It appeared to be a mass of seaweed, but fell back into the water with a sullen plunge as though it were something more substantial. Immediately after this strange occurrence, the sun set with tropical swiftness, and in the brief afterglow things assumed a strange unreality.

The crew were all below, no one but the mate and the helmsman remaining on the poop. Away forward, on the topgallant forecastle head the dim figure of the man on lookout could be seen, leaning against the forestay. No sound was heard save the occasional jingle of a chain sheet, of the flog of the steering gear as a small swell passed under our counter. Presently the mate's voice broke the silence, and, looking up, I saw that the Old Man had come on deck, and was talking with him. From the few stray words that could be overheard, I knew they were talking of the strange happenings of the day.

Shortly after sunset, the wind, which had been fresh during the day, died down, and with its passing the air grew oppressively hot. Not long after two bells, the mate sung out for me, and ordered me to fill a bucket from overside and bring it to him. When I had carried out his instructions, he placed a thermometer in the bucket.

"Just as I thought," he muttered, removing the instrument and showing it to the skipper; "ninety-nine degrees. Why, the sea's hot enough to make tea with! "

"Hope it doesn't get any hotter," growled the latter; "if it does, we shall all be boiled alive."

At a sign from the mate, I emptied the bucket and replaced it in the rack, after which I resumed my former position by the rail. The Old Man and the mate walked the poop side by side. The air grew hotter as the hours passed and after a long period of silence broken only by the occasional "pop" of a bursting gas bubble, the moon arose. It shed but a feeble light, however, as a heavy mist had arisen from the sea, and through this, the moonbeams struggled weakly. The mist, we decided, was due to the excessive heat of the sea water; it was a very wet mist, and we were soon soaked to the skin. Slowly the interminable night wore on, and the sun arose, looking dim and ghostly through the mist that rolled and billowed about the ship. From time to time we took the temperature of the sea, although we found but a slight increase therein. No work was done, and a feeling as of something impending pervaded the ship.

The fog horn was kept going constantly, as the lookout peered through the wreathing mists. The captain walked the poop in company with the mates, and once the third mate spoke and pointed out into the clouds of fog. All eyes followed his gesture; we saw what was apparently a black line, which seemed to cut the whiteness of the billows. It reminded us of nothing so much as an enormous cobra standing on its tail. As we looked it vanished. The grouped mates were evidently puzzled; there seemed to be a difference of opinion among them. Presently as they argued, I heard the second mate's voice:

"That's all rot," he said. "I've seen things in fog before, but they've always turned out to be imaginary."

The third shook his head and made some reply I could not overhear, but no further comment was made. Going below that afternoon, I got a short sleep, and on coming on deck at eight bells, I found that the steam still held us; if anything, it seemed to be thicker than ever. Hansard, who had been taking the temperatures during my watch below, informed me that the sea was three degrees hotter, and that the Old Man was getting into a rare old state. At three bells I went forward to have a look over the bows, and a chin with Stevenson, whose lookout it was. On gaining the forecastle head, I went to the side and looked down into the water. Stevenson came over and stood beside me.

"Rum go, this," he grumbled.

He stood by my side for a time in silence; we seemed to be hypnotized by the gleaming surface of the sea. Suddenly out of the depths, right before us, there arose a monstrous black face. It was like a frightful caricature of a human countenance. For a moment we gazed petrified; my blood seemed to suddenly turn to ice water; I was unable to move. With a mighty effort of will, I regained my self-control and, grasping Stevenson's arm, I found I could do no more than croak, my powers of speech seemed gone. "Look!" I gasped. "Look!"

Stevenson continued to stare into the sea, like a man turned to stone. He seemed to stoop further over, as if to examine the thing more closely. "Lord," he exclaimed, "it must be the devil himself!"

As though the sound of his voice had broken a spell, the thing disappeared. My companion looked at me, while I rubbed my eyes, thinking that I had been asleep, and that the awful vision had been a frightful nightmare. One look at my friend, however, disabused me of any such thought. His face wore a puzzled expression.

"Better go aft and tell the Old Man," he faltered.

I nodded and left the forecastle head, making my way aft like one in a trance. The skipper and the mate were standing at the break of the poop, and running up the ladder I told them what we had seen.

"Bosh!" sneered the Old Man. "You've been looking at your own ugly reflection in the water."

Nevertheless, in spite of his ridicule, he questioned me closely. Finally he ordered the mate forward to see it he could see anything. The latter, however, returned in a few moments, to report that nothing unusual could be seen. Four bells were struck, and we were relieved for tea. Coming on deck afterward, I found the men clustered together forward. The sole topic of conversation with them was the thing that Stevenson and I had seen.

"I suppose, Darky, it couldn't have been a reflection by any chance, could it?" one of the older men asked.

"Ask Stevenson," I replied as I made my way aft.

At eight bells, my watch came on deck again, to find that nothing further had developed. But, about an hour before midnight, the mate, thinking to have a smoke, sent me to his room for a box of matches with which to light his pipe. It took me no time to clatter down the brass-treaded ladder, and back to the poop, where I handed him the desired article. Taking the box, he removed a match and struck it on the heel of his boot. As he did so, far out in the night a muffled screaming arose. Then came a clamor as of hoarse braying, like an ass but considerably deeper, and with a horribly suggestive human note running through it.

"Good God! Did you hear that, Darky?" asked the mate in awed tones.

"Yes, sir," I replied, listening—and scarcely noticing his question—for a repetition of the strange sounds. Suddenly the frightful bellowing broke out afresh. The mate's pipe fell to the deck with a clatter.

"Run for'ard!" he cried. "Quick, now, and see if you can see anything."

With my heart in my mouth, and pulses pounding madly I raced forward. The watch were all up on the forecastle head, clustered around the lookout. Each man was talking and gesticulating wildly. They became silent, and turned questioning glances toward me as I shouldered my way among them.

"Have you seen anything?" I cried.

Before I could receive an answer, a repetition of the horrid sounds broke out again, profaning the night with their horror. They seemed to have definite direction now, in spite of the fog that enveloped us. Undoubtedly, too, they were nearer. Pausing a moment to make sure of their bearing, I hastened aft and reported to the mate. I told him that nothing could be seen, but that the sounds apparently came from right ahead of us. On hearing this he ordered the man at the wheel to let the ship's head come off a couple of points. A moment later a shrill screaming tore its way through the night, followed by the hoarse braying sounds once more.

"It's close on the starboard bow!" exclaimed the mate, as he beckoned the helmsman to let her head come off a little more. Then, singing out for the watch, he ran forward, slacking the lee braces on the way. When he had the yards trimmed to his satisfaction on the new course, he returned to the poop and hung far out over the rail listening intently. Moments passed that seemed like hours, yet the silence remained unbroken. Suddenly the sounds began again, and so close that it seemed as though they must be right aboard of us. At this time I noticed a strange booming note mingled with the brays. And once or twice there came a sound that can only be described as a sort of "gug, gug." Then would come a wheezy whistling, for all the world like an asthmatic person breathing.

All this while the moon shone wanly through the steam, which seemed to me to be somewhat thinner. Once the mate gripped me by the shoulder as the noises rose and fell again. They now seemed to be coming from a point broad on our beam. Every eye on the ship was straining into the mist, but with no result. Suddenly one of the men cried out, as something long and black slid past us into the fog astern. From it there rose four indistinct and ghostly towers, which resolved themselves into spars and ropes, and sails.

"A ship! It's a ship!" we cried excitedly. I turned to Mr. Gray; he, too, had seen something, and was staring aft into the wake. So ghostlike, unreal, and fleeting had been our glimpse of the stranger, that we were not sure that we had seen an honest, material ship, but thought that we had been vouchsafed a vision of some phantom vessel like the Flying Dutchman. Our sails gave a sudden flap, the clew irons flogging the bulwarks with hollow thumps. The mate glanced aloft.

"Wind's dropping," he growled savagely. "We shall never get out of this infernal place at this gait!"

Gradually the wind fell until it was a flat calm. No sound broke the deathlike silence save the rapid patter of the reef points, as she gently rose and fell on the light swell. Hours passed, and the watch was relieved and I then went below. At seven bells we were called again, and as I went along the deck to the galley, I noticed that the fog seemed thinner, and the air cooler. When eight bells were struck I relieved Hansard at coiling down the ropes. From him I learned that the steam had begun to clear about four bells, and that the temperature of the sea had fallen ten degrees.

In spite of the thinning mist, it was not until about a half an hour later that we were able to get a glimpse of the surrounding sea. It was still mottled with dark patches, but the bubbling and popping had ceased. As much of the surface of the ocean as could be seen had a peculiarly desolate aspect. Occasionally a wisp of steam would float up from the nearer sea, and roll undulatingly across its silent surface, until lost in the vagueness that still held the hidden horizon. Here and there columns of steam rose up in pillars, which gave me the impression that the sea was hot in patches. Crossing to the starboard side and looking over, I found that conditions there were similar to those to port. The desolate aspect of the sea filled me with an idea of chilliness, although the air was quite warm and muggy. From the break of the poop the mate called to me to get his glasses.

When I had done this, he took them from me and walked to the taffrail. Here he stood for some moments polishing them with his handkerchief. After a moment he raised them to his eyes, and peered long and intently into the mist astern. I stood for some time staring at the point on which the mate had focused his glasses. Presently something shadowy grew upon my vision. Steadily watching it, I distinctly saw the outlines of a ship take form in the fog.

"See!" I cried, but even as I spoke, a lifting wraith of mist disclosed to view a great four-masted bark lying becalmed with all sails set, within a few hundred yards of our stern. As though a curtain had been raised, and then allowed to fall, the fog once more settled down, hiding the strange bark from our sight. The mate was all excitement, striding with quick, jerky steps, up and down the poop, stopping every few moments to peer through his glasses at the point where the four-master had disappeared in the fog. Gradually, as the mists dispersed again, the vessel could be seen more plainly, and it was then that we got an inkling of the cause of the dreadful noises during the night.

For some time the mate watched her silently, and as he watched the conviction grew upon me that in spite of the mist, I could detect some sort of movement on board of her. After some time had passed, the doubt became a certainty, and I could also see a sort of splashing in the water alongside of her. Suddenly the mate put his glasses on top of the wheel box and told me to bring him the speaking trumpet. Running to the companionway, I secured the trumpet and was back at his side.

The mate raised it to his lips, and taking a deep breath, sent a hail across the water that should have awakened the dead. We waited tensely for a reply. A moment later a deep, hollow mutter came from the bark; higher and louder it swelled, until we realized that we were listening to the same sounds we had heard the night before. The mate stood aghast at this answer to his hail; in a voice barely more than a hushed whisper, he bade me call the Old Man. Attracted by the mate's hail and its unearthly reply, the watch had all come aft and were clustered in the mizzen rigging in order to see better.

After calling the captain, I returned to the poop, where I found the second and third mates talking with the chief. All were engaged in trying to pierce the clouds of mist that half hid our strange consort and to arrive at some explanation of the strange phenomena of the past few hours. A moment later the captain appeared carrying his telescope. The mate gave him a brief account of the state of affairs and handed him the trumpet. Giving me the telescope to hold, the captain hailed the shadowy bark. Breathlessly we all listened, when again, in answer to the Old Man's hail, the frightful sounds rose on the still morning air. The skipper lowered the trumpet and stood with an expression of astonished horror on his face.

"Lord!" he exclaimed. "What an ungodly row!"

At this, the third, who had been gazing through his binoculars, broke the silence.

"Look," he ejaculated. "There's a breeze coming up astern." At his words the captain looked up quickly, and we all watched the ruffling water.

"That packet yonder is bringing the breeze with her," said the skipper. "She'll be alongside in half an hour!"

Some moments passed, and the bank of fog had come to within a hundred yards of our taffrail. The strange vessel could be distinctly seen just inside the fringe of the driving mist wreaths. After a short puff, the wind died completely, but as we stared with hypnotic fascination, the water astern of the stranger ruffled again with a fresh catspaw. Seemingly with the flapping of her sails, she drew slowly up to us. As the leaden seconds passed, the big four-master approached us steadily. The light air had now reached us, and with a lazy lift of our sails, we, too, began to forge slowly through that weird sea. The bark was now within fifty yards of our stern, and she was steadily drawing nearer, seeming to be able to outfoot us with ease. As she came on she luffed sharply, and came up into the wind with her weather leeches shaking.

I looked toward her poop, thinking to discern the figure of the man at the wheel, but the mist coiled around her quarter, and objects on the after end of her became indistinguishable. With a rattle of chain sheets on her iron yards, she filled away again. We meanwhile had gone ahead, but it was soon evident that she was the better sailor, for she came up to us hand over fist. The wind rapidly freshened and the mist began to drift away before it, so that each moment her spars and cordage became more plainly visible. The skipper and the mates were watching her intently when an almost simultaneous exclamation of fear broke from them.

"My God!"

And well they might show signs of fear, for crawling about the bark's deck were the most horrible creatures I had ever seen. In spite of their unearthly strangeness there was something vaguely familiar about them. Then it came to me that the face that Stevenson and I had seen during he night belonged to one of them. Their bodies had something of the shape of a seal's, but of a dead, unhealthy white. The lower part of the body ended in a sort of double-curved tail on which they appeared to be able to shuffle about. In place of arms, they had two long, snaky feelers, at the ends of which were two very humanlike hands, which were equipped with talons instead of nails. Fearsome indeed were these parodies of human beings!

Their faces, which, like their tentacles, were black, were the most grotesquely human things about them, and the upper jaw closed into the lower, after the manner of the jaws of an octopus. I have seen men among certain tribes of natives who had faces uncommonly like theirs, but yet no native I had ever seen could have given me the extraordinary feeling of horror and revulsion I experienced toward these brutal-looking creatures.

"What devilish beasts!" burst out the captain in disgust.

With this remark he turned to the mates, and as he did so, the expressions on their faces told me that they had all realized what the presence of these bestial-looking brutes meant. If, as was doubtless the case, these creatures had boarded the bark and destroyed her crew, what would prevent them from doing the same with us? We were a smaller ship and had a smaller crew, and the more I thought of it the less I liked it.

We could now see the name on the bark's bow with the naked eye. It read Scottish Heath, while on her boats we could see the name bracketed with Glasgow, showing that she hailed from that port. It was a remarkable coincidence that she should have a slant from just the quarter in which yards were trimmed, as before we saw her she must have been drifting around with everything "aback." But now in this light air she was able to run along beside us with no one at her helm. But steering herself she was, and although at times she yawed wildly, she never got herself aback. As we gazed at her we noticed a sudden movement on board of her, and several of the creatures slid into the water.

"See! See! They've spotted us. They're coming for us!" cried the mate wildly.

It was only too true, scores of them were sliding into the sea, letting themselves down by means of their long tentacles. On they came, slipping by scores and hundreds into the water, and swimming toward us in droves. The ship was making about three knots, otherwise they would have caught us in a very few minutes. But they persevered, gaining slowly but surely, and drawing nearer and nearer. The long, tentacle-like arms rose out of the sea in hundreds, and the foremost ones were already within a score of yards of the ship before the Old Man bethought himself to shout to the mates to fetch up the half dozen cutlasses that comprised the ship's armory. Then, turning to me, he ordered me to go down to his cabin and bring up the two revolvers out of the top drawer of the chart table, also a box of cartridges that was there.

When I returned with the weapons he loaded them and handed one to the mate. Meanwhile the pursuing creatures were coming steadily nearer, and soon half a dozen of the leaders were directly under our counter. Immediately the captain leaned over the rail and emptied his pistol into them, but without any apparent effect. He must have realized how puny and ineffectual his efforts were, for he did not reload his weapon.

Some dozens of the brutes had reached us, and as they did so, their tentacles rose into the air and caught our rail. I heard the third mate scream suddenly, and turning, I saw him dragged quickly to the rail, with a tentacle wrapped completely around him. Snatching a cutlass, the second mate hacked off the tentacle where it joined the body. A gout of blood splashed into the third mate's face, and he fell to the deck. A dozen more of those arms rose and wavered in the air, but they now seemed some yards astern of us. A rapidly widening patch of clear water appeared between us and the foremost of our pursuers, and we raised a wild shout of joy. The cause was soon apparent; for a fine fair wind had sprung up, and with the increase in its force, the Scottish Heath had got herself aback, while we were rapidly leaving the monsters behind us. The third mate rose to his feet with a dazed look, and as he did so something fell to the deck. I picked it up and found that it was the severed portion of the tentacle of the third's late adversary. With a grimace of disgust I tossed it into the sea, as I needed no reminder of that awful experience.

Three weeks later we anchored in San Francisco. There the captain made a full report of the affair to the authorities, with the result that a gunboat was despatched to investigate. Six weeks later she returned to report that she had been unable to find any signs, either of the ship herself or of the fearful creatures that had attacked her. And since then nothing, as far as I know, has ever been heard of the four-masted bark Scottish Heath, last seen by us in the possession of creatures that may rightly be called demons of the sea.

Whether she still floats, occupied by her hellish crew, or whether some storm has sent her to her last resting place beneath the waves is surely a matter of conjecture. Perchance on some dark, fog-bound night, a ship in that wilderness of waters may hear cries and sounds beyond those of the wailing of the winds. Then let them look to it, for it may be that the demons of the sea are near them.